Nor any assurance that his coming would aid in finding the truth. Master Montfort had been to St. Frideswide’s before, and to Frevisse’s mind he was an arrogant fool who resisted any help anyone tried to give him, especially women, and most especially cloistered nuns.
Frevisse said, “There’s no one knows this is murder except us. Can we keep it so?”
Dame Claire paused. Like Frevisse, she felt that Montfort could be a menace to the truth. She nodded.
Father Henry, a worried frown of thinking between his eyes, worked at it a little longer before saying, “You mean keep secret that he was murdered?”
“Until the crowner comes. To give us time to question and learn things before the murderer knows we know and are looking for him.” She picked up one of the cloths, dipped it into the water, and wrung it out. “It was someone that knew Sym was hurt and where to find him.”
“It may be just as well his mother was gone,” Dame Claire said.
Frevisse joined her in the task of cleansing Sym’s body. It was not hard to think that whoever had killed Sym and coolly taken the time afterward to arrange his body, might well have killed Meg, too, if she had been there.
“Father Henry, are you free this morning to go down to the village and spend time in the alehouse asking questions? And to listen to what’s being said? For surely the talk will be rife about last night.”
Father Henry did not need to consider on that. He nodded readily. “I can spend the whole day if need be, until I’m sure I’ve heard everything there is to hear.”
“And remember it all and bring it back here to me,” Frevisse said. “Can you go now?”
Father Henry looked doubtfully at the body.
“We’ll see he’s not left,” Frevisse assured him. “He’ll be well prayed for. And finding his murderer is a service to him, too.”
Father Henry nodded agreement with that. “I can go now.”
“Try to learn who he’s fought or argued with lately. And where they were after he left the alehouse last night if that’s possible. But don’t let people know you’re after more than only gossip,” Frevisse warned.
Father Henry nodded. “They’re used to me gossiping. That will be no problem.”
When he was gone, Frevisse put down the cloth. “I’m going to bring Joliffe’s dagger and see if it matches the wound. He’s still going to be the first suspected when word of this is out.”
“And the other player’s, too. The one who fought with Sym.”
“Their daggers are all the same.” But she would check to see if they had other knives beside the daggers they had shown her. She would need to have the players cleared beyond any doubt before Montfort arrived; he was ever willing to take the easiest path to a solution, and the players were a very obvious choice.
It did not signify, for example, that Ellis had said he’d never left the priory last night. She would need to find out that no one saw him leave, or, better, that someone, not Bassett or Rose, saw him asleep in the guesthouse at the right time. And Bassett and Rose would have to be proven innocent as well. And Joliffe. She hoped Father Henry had the wit to seek out the girl Tibby.
“What if…” she began, thinking out loud.
Dame Claire, looking past her, shook her head.
Meg was coming into the hall. Her hours of sleep from Dame Claire’s drink seemed to have brought a little more life back into her body and mind. She looked less shrunken, less bewildered as she came to stand beside Sym’s body. She gazed at his face, then tenderly laid a hand over his own resting on his chest and looked up at Dame Claire.
“He’s gone to Heaven,” she said. “He’s not hurting nor angry anymore. Never angry anymore again.”
“Never again,” Dame Claire agreed gently.
A single tear moved down the lines of Meg’s face. “He’s better where he’s gone.”
“It’s what we pray for, each of us,” Dame Claire said.
Meg turned her look to Frevisse. “You said you’d seen to my other boy? He needs to go home to see to things there, if he hasn’t already. Has he, do you know? He doesn’t always remember the stock needs tending, come what may.”
“I’ll see if he’s gone,” Frevisse said, “and send him to you if he hasn’t.”
“Nay, then. This is women’s work here and none of his,” said Meg as she reached for the cloth Frevisse had laid down. “We’ll see to Sym. Just tell him to go on home, pray you, but I want to see him later.”
“I will,” Frevisse said, thinking as she went that Meg was on the body’s right side and that Dame Claire could be trusted to keep her from seeing his left side and the second wound if it were at all possible.
The cold had a crisper edge to it as she crossed the yard but the sky was still shining, barely wisped with far-off clouds. Frevisse huddled her habit around her as she hurried and indulged in a moment of covetousness, wishing for Domina Edith’s fur-lined cloak.
The players were gathered around their hearth. Hewe was with them, leaning forward on a bench to listen to something Bassett was saying while Ellis and Joliffe, working at a piece of leather harness, sat across from them, looking amused. Rose was on a cushion near the fire, sewing at something bright and threaded through with gold on her lap, with Piers wrapped to his ears in blankets and looking pallid but unfevered, leaning against her. He was the first to look up at Frevisse’s coming, and he smiled as brightly as a young angel. Rose, following his look, made a reserved greeting. It appeared, Frevisse thought, that the warmth and strength of her affections were saved for her menfolk.
“Mending?” Frevisse asked, gesturing to the sewing.
Rose held up a pennon whose hem was ripped. “We use it for St. George. Bought from a town’s pageant when they decided they needed something better, but it does well enough for us, although travel is hard on it.”
“And on people?” Frevisse asked.
Rose smiled. “Travel is hard on everything, one way or another.”
She was a strong-featured woman, her mouth and eyebrows and nose drawn in bold strokes, but she was not grown coarse with spending her days on the roads and in uncertainty. Except that her skin was marked by being out in too many sorts of weather and her hands showed that they did hard work, she might almost have been a lady in her bower sitting there, deft at her sewing. And her voice, though not nobility’s, had not come from a peasant’s cottage.
Frevisse wondered about her, and asked, “How does Piers?”
Rose left her sewing long enough to stroke the boy’s gold hair back from his forehead. “He’s mending.”
Piers ducked out from under her hand. “I’m bored.”
“But you’re better,” Rose said, and retucked his blankets.
“Well enough to sing, say, tomorrow?” asked Frevisse.
“Easily!” Piers declared.
“Quite probably,” his mother corrected. Piers smiled up at her and snuggled closer.
The men and Hewe had acknowledged Frevisse’s coming with brief looks and nods. Now Frevisse moved toward them to draw their attention. “Hewe has been no trouble?” she asked.
“A grievous pain and unending trouble,” Bassett declared, then relented at Hewe’s startled, stricken look, and rumpled his hair casually. “No. None at all. He slept, and we’ve fed him, and told him he could stay until someone came looking for him, if he wanted.”
“And he’s one reason I’ve come,” Frevisse said.
Hewe already knew that. And he was remembering why he was here, and that he was supposed to be in grief. But it was an effort.
Had life with Sym been so unpleasant, Frevisse wondered, that his own brother had trouble grieving for him? But all she said was, “Your mother says you should go home to see to your animals for her. Later she wants to see you here.”