The last was a direct hit on Dame Alys, who visibly swallowed her ire, clamped her fist more tightly around her spoon, and grumbled, “What brings you here? I can’t do more about Montfort than I’m already doing.”
“And what you do will be splendid,” Frevisse said, which was little more than the truth. What came from Dame Alys’s kitchen was worth eating, despite the ill temper and bad treatment that accompanied its preparation. “I only wanted to tell you the guesthall kitchen will be able to see to him and his men by supper time.”
“There’s a blessing,” Dame Alys muttered. “But excuse us if we do not continue our conversation, but go on with what needs doing now. It being the holy days, we must needs have a bit of a treat, no matter what’s toward otherwise.”
Frevisse let that go by. Like a dog that barks all the time, most of what Dame Alys said could be safely ignored. Instead she said, “May I ask questions of your folk here if I don’t interfere with their work? It’s about Sister Fiacre. Domina has directed me to ask questions.”
Thus forestalled of further complaint, Dame Alys grunted and gestured permission.
Frevisse knew that, if she were strict in her obedience, she would be in the guesthall. But she told herself that the truth must be sought where it might be found, which was everywhere, and went quietly from servant to servant, asking if they had seen anything yesterday afternoon, heard anything then or later that might matter. She was careful to keep her voice low, which encouraged the servants to do likewise, seemingly to placate Dame Alys, but actually to keep them from hearing one another’s answers. But each said only that she had been busy in the kitchen, and none had been anywhere near the church yesterday, to see or hear anything that might matter.
Then she came to Meg, and asked, “Have you seen Gilbey Dunn lately?”
Without looking up from her work, Meg answered in a voice hardly above a whisper, “When I went home this morning, yes. He came over when he saw I was there.”
“What did he want to say?”
“To tell me he’d seen to my animals since Hewe hadn’t come home last night.”
“Is he still wanting to marry you?”
Dull color covered Meg’s cheeks, but she did not ask how Frevisse knew of that, only said, “Yes.”
“Have you seen Hewe yet today?”
“He came home a little after I did. He’d been with friends. He’d forgotten the animals. That’s what he said. That he’d been with friends and forgotten the animals.” She went on dicing the cooked chickens while she spoke. “He’s not interested in tending the animals, which is as it should be. He’s not meant to be a villager. He’s to be a priest.”
That was a matter Hewe and his mother would have to fight out between them, so Frevisse offered no opinion. She asked, “You knew Sister Fiacre?”
That startled Meg into looking up at her. “Yes,” she breathed, her voice catching a little on the word. “She was kind to me in the church yesterday morning.” She looked back down at her work. “But I’m glad she’s dead. She’s in no more pain now. She’s gone to Heaven and won’t be crying anymore with hurting.” She cast a resentful little glance toward Dame Alys’s back.
“That’s true enough. The only pity is she did not die in God’s time for her.”
Meg looked up at her directly then. “But she did die in God’s time. We’re in God’s hands in everything, so Father Clement used to say. Everything is His.”
“Except evil,” Frevisse said.
Meg’s eyes widened, and she looked fearfully around, crossing herself, before returning doggedly to her work.
“Were you in the church yesterday afternoon?” Frevisse asked.
“For a little while. I went to pray again. Prayers feel better there.”
“Was Sister Fiacre there then?”
“She was kneeling on the altar steps when I came in.” Meg swallowed thickly. “She’d told me that was her favorite place to pray.”
“Did you talk with her?”
Meg shook her head dumbly.
“Was there anyone else there? Did you see anyone else in the church?”
Meg shook her head again, hesitated, looked from side to side and down and then finally at Frevisse again, bringing herself to say, “But afterwards I saw one of the travelers-one of the players-the fair-haired one-going toward the church.”
Frevisse felt a hard knotting somewhere near her stomach. Careful of her voice, she managed to ask, “How soon after?”
Having started, Meg seemed less shy of saying more. “Soon. I was coming back here. I saw him going toward the church then.”
“Do you know what time it was?”
Meg hesitated, thinking, then held up three of her fingers side by side and parallel to the floor. “The sun was that much above the horizon.”
“Did he go into the church?”
Meg hesitated before saying, “I didn’t watch. But he was going that way.”
“And you know it was one of the players. You saw his face? Where were you when you saw him?”
Meg hesitated, uncertain which question to answer first. “I didn’t see his face, he was going away from me. But his hair, so fair, I saw. And they dress differently, the players do. And he’s tall. It was him.”
Joliffe. Or someone dressed to look like him, Frevisse’s mind determinedly offered.
Frevisse went on to Dame Alys, who was brooding over a pot bubbling with dark broth on one of the fires. Frevisse breathed in the rich smell of its steam and said, “Rabbit?”
“Rabbit,” Dame Alys agreed grudgingly, as if it were meant to be a secret. “For Domina’s especial New Year’s treat-if the meat ever cooks to tender enough to go into a pie. It’s taking its while, let me tell you. Every rabbit that’s come to me from him this year has been tough as tanned leather.”
“Come from whom?” Frevisse asked. If a villein managed to snare a rabbit he generally kept it for himself and his family, and few of the servants had time enough to course rabbits. So who was responsible for bringing Dame Alys rabbits?
“Father Henry. He and that little hound of his can’t ever seem to catch aught but the oldest rabbit in the warren. It’s wearisome, it is. He brought one in yesterday that will have to hang a few days, or it might do. But this one hung a week and is tough as fresh killed. And it’s not so big as the one he brought me at harvest time. Why, it was big as a shoat and likely twenty years old.”
She would have gone on comparing rabbits until the meat boiled to invisible fragments in the broth, but Frevisse made her escape. The cold air of the cloister made her nose and head ache, and she paused a moment, leaning against one of the pillars to steady herself while she collected her thoughts. Meg had seen Joliffe near the church yesterday afternoon. And probably told someone else besides Frevisse about it. Which meant that eventually Montfort would know of it.
But worse, Joliffe had lied to her. She felt betrayed. She had trusted these people, and one-all of them?-had lied to her.
She was so angry she dared not go directly to the guesthall; it would not do to let them see her angry. But she also wanted to talk to Gilbey Dunn again. And to Father Henry about what he might have learned. And to Annie Lauder.
Annie was alone in the laundry today, elbow deep in a suds-crested washtub, with a pile of soaking tablecloths heaped white beside her. Well muscled from her years of carrying buckets of water and baskets of wet laundry, she did not look as tall as she was. She looked around as Frevisse came in, nodded to her, but went on mauling another tablecloth in the water. “No holidays for laundresses,” she said in rhythm to her movements. “They just come clean in time to be dirtied again come Twelfth Night. A daft occupation, laundering, but God wills I must earn my pence and I obey. Is there aught I can do for you, Dame?”
“Maybe,” said Frevisse. “And certainly something I can do for you.”