“Does she know that?”
“As surely as I do. She wants to better herself and so do I, and here’s the way to do it.”
“You’re always out to better yourself.” But she said it less angrily. “You’ve gotten what you want from me, and now you’ll have what you want from her, and that’s the end of it between us.”
And Gilbey answered, “Why should it be over between us? Don’t you like what I bring when we’re together?”
“It’s little enough you bring me,” Annie returned, but playfully now.
Gilbey answered her in kind, his voice lower as if he were nearer to her. “Little enough maybe, but sweet.”
The silence after that was weighty with possibilities that made Frevisse consider leaving, but she chose not to; there might be more to learn from these two.
But there was not. And when, in a little while, Annie asked, “Know what I want right now?” and Gilbey answered, “I know what I can give you. Same as always,” Frevisse moved away, knowing she must not hear more.
But what she had heard put both Gilbey and Annie in the priory’s mercy. There was a fine imposed on any unfree couple who carnally indulged themselves outside of marriage. A fine Gilbey and Annie had clearly incurred. He would pay his to Lord Lovel, who owned two-thirds of Prior Byfield, land and villeins. Annie belonged to the nunnery, and her coins would go into the priory coffer. But it was not coins Frevisse was interested in. She wanted information and the means to it had been put into her hands.
She was feeling the cold through her sheepskin-lined shoes before Gilbey came out of the laundry. She had counted on him leaving by the priory’s back gate, the one most villagers used when they had business at the priory. She was waiting in the doorway of the storage shed across the narrow way from it, and nearly let him reach it before she stepped out into his way.
He jerked to a halt, startled, and glanced back over his shoulder, plainly wondering if she knew where he had come from. But almost as quickly his expression went smooth and innocent, and he said with a respectful bob of his head, “God’s good day to you again, lady.”
“And to you, too, Gilbey Dunn.”
That startled him again, because he had no reason to think she knew his name. Meaning to keep him off-balance, she said, “Show me your dagger.”
It did not please him. But he had nothing to gain by being rude to her. His being Lord Lovel’s villein instead of the nunnery’s would not serve as excuse for anything.
But he paused, a momentary shadow of a frown between his eyes, before he unsheathed his dagger and handed it to her, hilt foremost.
She took it and laid her fore and middle fingers together along its blade, measuring its width against the width of Sym’s mortal wound, and found that at its widest Gilbey’s blade was near enough a match as made no difference. Measuring the blade along her forearm, she saw it was longer than Joliffe’s dagger. Maybe long enough.
She gave it back, looking directly into Gilbey’s face as she did. Expressionless, he took it without meeting her gaze. And that told her nothing; villeins were not supposed to presume so much on their betters as to dare look at them eye to eye, but she had already overstepped her own propriety in talking with him alone this much.
Gilbey, his dagger back in its sheath, said “I’d best be getting back to the village.”
Frevisse gestured at the gate to indicate that he could depart. But she stood there alone a while longer, considering what she had discovered, before going on her way, wiping her nose, harkening to the bell calling to Tierce.
The only way Tierce that day differed from what was expected of it was that Domina Edith was not there. She had suffered a mild relapse-nothing dangerous, Dame Claire said-but she should keep to her chamber.
After, the other nuns bustled away to their various work and to be out of the cold. Frevisse, with the smothered feeling of being too enclosed, stayed in the cloister walk, pacing a while before finally sitting down on the low columned wall that ran around its inner side, between the roofed walk itself and the little garden in its center. There were other things she should be doing, and she would be called forward in chapter meeting if she were seen so apparently idle, but she needed to gather her thoughts and so far as she was concerned that was work indeed just now.
For one thing, she discovered she did not have much in the way of thoughts. What she had was a head that felt full of porridge-dull, lumpy porridge, lying on her thoughts like a dead weight.
She leaned against a column, feeling its carved spiral of vines and leaves pressing at her flesh through the woolen and linen layers of her habit. The stone’s chill would creep through soon, but for just now sitting felt very good while she tried to sort out what facts she had.
Sym was known in the village as a quarreler and a fighter so there was nothing special in his discord with Ellis and Joliffe; the players were only the latest people to have reason to be angry at him.
Nor were Tibby’s relatives happy with Sym’s attentions, according to Father Henry. Maybe, wary of his temper, one of them had wanted him out of the way for better reasons than either Joliffe or Ellis had.
And there was Gilbey Dunn, of course, the pushing neighbor who could not leave the widow and grieved mother alone a decent while. Though Gilbey Dunn did not strike Frevisse as the sort of man who cared for risks he could avoid.
Sym had not been badly hurt in the fight with Joliffe; apparently he had not even known it, or else thought it no more than a scrape, until he reached home. It had been his mother’s fright that had frightened him into wanting to be shriven. With his father’s death so new in his mind, he had probably been especially afraid he was dying, and his mother in her own fear had done all she could before she left to find help. That was maybe the only comfort the woman could have from his death; that she had helped make his soul safe before she left him. Because then, before she had returned, someone had come in; and either Sym had been lying with his eyes closed and did not hear him, or it had been someone he was easy enough with that he did not stir when they came. He possibly had not even had time to know what they were doing before they thrust a dagger between his ribs and into his heart. The wound had been too clean and simple for him to have struggled at all. He had probably died barely knowing he was hurt.
And then whoever had done it had folded Sym’s hands on his chest and covered him and gone away. Had they hoped his mother would only think he was sleeping when she came back and so put off the outcry for a while?
But why had they wanted him dead at all? What little she had seen and now knew of Sym, he seemed to have been more his own worst enemy than anyone else’s. It was only his death that told that someone else had felt very differently. But why? That was the question she found herself holding to now. Gilbey Dunn had reason; he could be more sure of the marriage and the land if Sym were out of the way. But murder was a desperate act, and a final one for the murderer as well as his victim if he were caught. She had the distinct impression that Gilbey was a man who liked to keep his options open. And very likely he had someone to say where he had been that night, it being New Year’s Eve and people gathering for festivities of one sort or another.
She found that her hands, tucked up either sleeve for more warmth, were pressed against Joliffe’s dagger in her belt. There was where the next real danger lay. Master Montfort the crowner would come sooner or later, and from past dealings with him, Frevisse knew him well enough to know that he favored the easy solution over the harder. In this matter Joliffe was the easier solution. A stranger of the less desirable kind, with no protector, and a tongue that he would not curb even if his life depended on it. She could already hear Montfort’s quick summation of the facts that would make his work simplest; and she could imagine Joliffe in his hands, hauled off to Oxford and a quick hanging.