“But not now?” Hewe asked.
“Not now. She’s tending to your brother’s body and will want you afterwards. Is there anyone in the village who can come help her?” she asked as an afterthought.
Hewe, gathering up his cloak from the far side of the bench, shook his head. “She doesn’t have any friends to mention. Someone will likely come if she asks, but she won’t.”
He seemed to take that as a simple given of life, ducked a bow to her and to the players, but added a suddenly shy smile for all of them and said, especially to Bassett, “Thank you.”
Bassett inclined his head in acceptance. “And to you, youngling. You have been both a good guest and a good companion.”
Hewe flushed with pleasure, ducked another bow, and quickly left.
Bassett grinned after him. “A likely enough lad and as different from his brother as cheese from chalk.”
Joliffe leaned toward Ellis and said in mocking conspiracy, “He says that because the boy listened to all his stories and thought they were wonderful.”
“Well, they are,” Ellis said indignantly. “Until you’ve heard them three dozen times. Or four. Or more.”
Bassett pulled a face at them, unoffended.
Frevisse put down her rising amusement at their banter, and came to the heart of her reason for this visit. But she kept her tone light. “Joliffe, may I see your dagger?”
With a slight puzzlement, he drew and held it out to her hilt first. She took it, appreciating the good weight and easy balance of it in her hand. “Yours, too?” she asked Bassett and Ellis.
They drew and held out their own, not questioning what she wanted but with an undertone of wariness that Rose’s sudden watchfulness reflected. Frevisse did not take their daggers, but contented herself with comparing them to Joliffe’s. As they had said, and she remembered, they were all of a kind, perfectly matched. She nodded them away, but said to Joliffe, “I need yours for a while,” not asking his permission, simply telling him.
Quite still, he met her gaze with a knowing she could not read. In stillness his face was older, the boyishness gone out of it. Frevisse turned and left, taking the dagger with her, feeling their silence at her back.
Dame Claire and Meg were still beside Sym’s body. With Dame Claire at his feet and his mother at his head and shoulders, they were lifting him sideways onto the white cerecloth he would be wrapped in for his burial, moving him as tenderly and smoothly as if afraid of waking him. It being New Year’s Day and Feast of the Circumcision, there would be no coffin made until tomorrow, but there was no need for haste. He could lie here until it could be made; the body could not be buried in any case until the crowner had seen it, and would keep in the unheated hall.
Frevisse had hidden the dagger up her wide sleeve as she came. She waited while Dame Claire and Meg wrapped the cloth over the body. When they were done, Dame Claire asked Meg to take the wash water away, to dump it before it could be spilled. Eyes down, Meg took the basin without questioning and disappeared toward the garderobe.
Frevisse stepped quickly to the table, drawing the dagger from her sleeve to compare it to the wound.
“The blade is too broad,” Dame Claire said. The neat-edged hole between Sym’s ribs was too narrow by the width of her widest finger for the dagger’s blade.
“And too short,” Frevisse added. She laid the dagger on Sym’s chest to gauge how deep it would have gone. “Striking from the side, the blade has to go in a fair ways to reach the heart and this is hardly long enough. It wouldn’t reach.” She tucked the dagger out of sight again with concealed relief. Whatever had stabbed Sym, it had not been one of the players’ daggers.
Unless they had others, she forcibly reminded herself. That was still a possibility, though not one easily pursued.
But, her mind insisted, if one of them had deliberately used some other dagger than the one he usually carried to give the deathblow, then the killing had almost surely not been the mere taking advantage of a happenstance; it had been deliberately planned and purposed beforehand. Which was impossible, no one could have known Sym would go home and frighten his mother into seeking help.
So who then might have done it? Someone watching for a chance and ruthless enough to take it.
While she thought, she tucked her hands into either sleeve. It was a habitual gesture; now it warmed her hands and hid the dagger from Meg coming back. Belatedly Frevisse remembered and said, “I saw your Hewe. He’s gone back to the village to do what needs doing there. He said he would come to you later.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Meg said, looking at her feet.
The cloister bell began to ring for Nones. Meg raised startled eyes toward the band of sunlight from the nearest window. “Midday?” she asked, completely bewildered. “How did it come to be midday?”
Dame Claire laid a gentle hand on her arm. “It was the drink I gave you. It made you sleep a long while.”
And so heavily she had not even noticed what time of day she had awoken. Meg looked around a little frantically, as if to find the lost hours. “My work,” she said. “I was supposed to be in the kitchen. Dame Alys…”
Dame Claire said, “She knows what’s happened. She understands and isn’t expecting you today. Or tomorrow either. It’s all right.”
Meg began to say something, stopped, looked to Frevisse, back to Dame Claire, then seemed to collect herself and turned away to her son’s body. So low they could barely hear her, she said, “I’ll stay here and pray then, please you.”
It was probably the best thing she could do, both for herself and Sym. Leaving her to it, Frevisse and Dame Claire hurried away to church.
The service of Nones was fairly brief, consisting of a hymn, lesson, and verse in addition to three short psalms sung straight through. Frevisse’s cold had given her a headache, made worse by the way one person’s cough set off a noisy chorus of them, by the shuffling of impatient feet, and the frequent exchange of bored or exasperated glances. It was painful to hear this group of sufferers croak, “‘Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing…’” Frevisse was startled to realize near the end that she had let Joliffe’s dagger slip down into her hand, and that she had taken it with a grip so tight her fingers were cramping.
In the original Rule, St. Benedict spoke of two meals a day, the main one at midday and a light supper in the evening, with variations, including fasts and late dinners, with never the flesh of four-footed animals to be served. The only part strictly observed at St. Frideswide’s was that they ate their main meal at midday. Today they were served mincemeat pies and cabbage boiled with caraway seed.
Sister Thomasine, whose voice alone remained clear, had volunteered to be the reader at dinner until someone else recovered enough to take her place. They were reading from a borrowed book, St. Bede’s History of the English Church and People. They had arrived at the late seventh century and were hearing of the death of St. Chad, Bishop of Mercia, and of miracles associated with his burial place in the Church of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles. “‘Chad’s tomb is in the form of a little wooden house,’” read Thomasine slowly, “‘with an aperture in the side, through which those who visit it out of devotion to him may insert their hand and take out some of the dust. They mix this in water, and give it to sick men or beasts to drink, by which means their ailment is quickly relieved and they are restored to health.’”
Ugh, thought Frevisse, I would have to be sick indeed before I would drink anything flavored with spiderweb and dead man’s dust.
At the end of the meal, Domina Edith declared that everyone not so sick she must take to her bed was to come to the church and help Dame Fiacre sweep and dust.