“You’ve been most gracious,” Bassett said. “I think there’s nothing else but to let us make glad your evening.”
“I look forward to your performance,” Sister Lucy replied, so formally it was impossible to tell if she were telling the truth or only being polite.
All three of the men then bowed both to her and Frevisse and left. Frevisse meant to go after them, but paused to ask Sister Lucy, “How does Domina Edith? Is she ill again?”
Sister Lucy smiled slightly. “Not truly. She resents her body being weak, but Dame Claire has said she should stay quiet today and rest, lest her sickness come back on her. She’s presently more impatient than anything.”
“Can she be visited?”
Sister Lucy hesitated, then said, “It would depend. It wouldn’t be well for her to be truly disturbed…” She paused, looking at the floor.
“As Sister Fiacre might do,” Frevisse finished for her. “But would it be possible for me to call on her sometime today?”
“With God all things are possible. With Domina Edith things are a little less certain. I will inquire.”
They smiled at each other and went their separate ways, Sister Lucy returning to Domina Edith, Frevisse to the old guesthall.
As she went she told herself that simply because the priory had so few guests this holiday time, and those guests not of the most important, her duty still required that she see to their needs. That was why she was going to them now, no other reason, except of course that Joliffe’s dagger needed returning.
He was leaning against the wide stone frame of the guesthall doorway as she crossed the yard. He seemed unaware of her coming. Staring down in front of him at nothing in particular, he looked gone away somewhere far in his thoughts. Frevisse knew the moment he became aware of her, not by any movement that he made but simply because his awareness turned outward some several heartbeats before he raised his eyes and met hers.
She drew the dagger from her sleeve and held it out to him. “Thank you. It was useful.”
“On whom?” he asked, taking it from her.
Deliberately Frevisse said, “On Sym,” and watched Joliffe’s face.
Only slightly disconcerted he said, “He must have made an easy target. He was already dead.”
“Yes,” Frevisse agreed. She would have asked him about the trouble between Sister Fiacre’s family and the players, but was interrupted by an angry voice beyond the door behind him. She listened and then asked, surprised, “Rose?”
Joliffe, with a grin, nodded. “Bassett was telling her what happened in the church. It’s why I came out here. If you’ve any pity, you might want to go in and rescue him.”
“But what-”
Frevisse paused, distracted by Rose’s rising voice. The words were indistinct but the anger clear.
“She’s afraid we’ll be put back on the road before the day is out,” Joliffe explained. “And that Piers will sicken again if we are. Few things rouse Rose to temper, but danger to Piers is very definitely one of them.” He stepped aside, opening the door for her. “So go rescue Bassett, if it please you.”
Frevisse entered the hall. Joliffe did not follow her.
Bassett and Ellis were seated by the fire with the hunch-shouldered look of men who would have left if they could. Rose stood across from them, silent just then, her hands on her hips, glaring at them. At Frevisse’s coming they all looked her way, and Bassett rose quickly to his feet with plain relief.
“If I’ve come at a bad time,” she started.
“No,” Bassett said quickly. “We were just talking about how well the church would serve for the play. Piers’s voice should be excellent there.”
“He’ll be well enough for it by then?”
“We’re thinking so, if he keeps warm till then and goes directly to his bed afterwards.”
“I’m tired of bed,” Piers announced loudly from his blankets beyond the fire. “Hewe, hand me that.”
One of their baskets full of props and goods had been dragged close to where he lay. Like the others, it was large, almost his boy’s length and waist high on him if he had been standing. It had completely hidden Hewe where he was sitting, but now he moved at Piers’s command, holding out a brightly painted box and glancing warily at Frevisse to see what she would say to his being there.
She said nothing; where he was was his concern, or his mother’s, and he seemed to be doing no harm. Instead she said to Bassett, “Will you be rehearsing this afternoon?”
Assured of her uninterest, Hewe crawled closer to Piers and they began to look through whatever the box held.
“We mean to,” Bassett said. “But I suppose not in the church?”
“It might be better if you didn’t. Sister Fiacre-”
Rose made an angry sound and a sharp movement.
“Rose,” Ellis said, and went to her. His gesture was one of support, but he did not touch her, only stood close. She folded her arms tightly across her breast, making a battlement of them.
“She’s there by choice and by duty,” Frevisse went on. “She’s sacristan. If her temper seems uneven, it’s not that she wills it thus. She’s…unwell. She has a cancer in her breast, and is often in much pain. What medicine Dame Claire can give her doesn’t help much anymore. So she seeks the silence of the church and the solace of offering her pain for her few sins and for the repose of the souls of those who have helped our priory prosper.”
Bassett grimaced with pity, and the others looked abashed or embarrassed. But Bassett’s gaze shifted past Frevisse’s shoulder, and she turned to find Meg standing there, bent sideways under the weight of a bucket of coal.
“Meg!” Frevisse said. “Surely there’s a man servant better able to carry that. Why don’t you go home?”
Meg’s worn face seemed sunk more deeply into its lines than ever. She was carefully not looking beyond Frevisse’s feet to any of the players. In a monotone she said, “I don’t want to risk losing my place here.” She glanced at the bucket of coal. “Domina Edith sent word this was to be brought over to the guests. I’ll just set it by the fire then, may I?”
Eyes still down, she staggered forward, set the bucket by the fire, and turned to leave; but her lifting eye was caught by Hewe and Piers who had been sitting still as fawns that hoped to escape the hunter.
Frevisse saw both her amazement and Hewe’s chagrin, before anger clamped over Meg’s face and she said, “Hewe, how dare you sit idle here with work to be done at home? And if you’ve no strength or will for that, then you should be by your brother, praying for his soul, while I can’t.” For the first time, her eyes raked the players. “Least of all should you be found with these folk. You don’t belong here, not with them. Come with me.”
“Aw, but Mam-” Hewe started.
But Meg was already by him, grabbing him by the ear. “Don’t you speak back to me!” She twisted and he came to his feet making sounds of pain. “Come along! I can’t trust you to do what you ought, can I? Well, there’s chickens to catch, and be killed and plucked, and you can help. Hush, hush that noise! I don’t understand how you can be so wicked. Can’t trust you an inch! You come along with me!”
She stopped by the door long enough to bob a clumsy curtsey in Frevisse’s direction, and Hewe grimaced an apology to Piers, then they were gone.
18
MIDDAY AND NONES passed. Frevisse, coming and going about her tasks, kept watch for Father Henry’s return from the village and left word with the gateward and servants to find her when he came back, if they saw him before she did. But he did not come, nor was there any word of the crowner’s arrival, and the clear winter’s day drew in toward its early sunset, the cold starting to deepen with the twilight.
In the long slant of shadows and thickening light, the bell began to ring for Vespers, and from all around the nunnery, in a flurry of hurried footsteps, coughing, and one loud sneeze, the nuns gathered toward the church.