The apostate's tale (21 page)

Edward reluctantly drew back from her and slowly turned around, one hand still clutching to her skirts, the other fisted at his side. Frevisse had half expected him to be crying, but he was not, and now that he was brought to it, he said with surprising steadiness, no matter that his eyes were still large and frightened, “She said I was not to tell anyone I had them in my collar. That they’re ours and nobody else’s. But that’s not true, and I don’t want to go with Master Breredon, and my father told me that if ever I was in trouble or needed help I should go to Symond, but I can’t, and now he’s sick, and I wanted to ask Jack but I didn’t, and…” He paused for his breath to catch up to him, then burst out, “And my father said people should be good, but I don’t think it’s good for me to have—” He pointed at the parchments in Frevisse’s hands. “I shouldn’t have them, should I?”

“No, I don’t think you should,” Frevisse agreed gently. “You’ve done right to give them to me. It was a good thing to do and it will maybe make things well for everyone. You are very brave and very good, Edward. Just as your father would want you to be.”

Edward kept his eyes fixed on her, as if looking to see how much truth she was telling him, until beside him, Mistress Petham said quietly, “Why don’t you set up another game of boules for us, Edward, while I see Dame Frevisse to the door?”

Probably glad to be released, Edward immediately turned away and went to his knees beside the scatter of bright-glazed boules, beginning to gather them together as Frevisse stood up and moved with Mistress Petham toward the door. There, with one hand on the handle to let Frevisse out, Mistress Petham said, too low for Edward to hear, “He kept pulling at his collar. I think he meant for the threads to give way, so someone would find what was there.” She hesitated, then added, “I looked at them. I think you—or Domina Elisabeth or my lord abbot—should read them before they’re given to anyone else.”

Frevisse nodded silent agreement to that and left, slipping the folded parchments into her undergown’s close-fitted sleeve, having them against her wrist and out of sight by the time she reached the stairfoot. There she paused to decide what she would do next.

Surely best would be to go to Domina Elisabeth with what she had.

But that did not seem best when Frevisse thought on it. Domina Elisabeth was presently so removed from everything, so deep in dealing about Sister Cecely and only with Abbot Gilberd, that to take anything else to her felt nigh to impossible.

And then there was the blunt fact that Frevisse wanted to know for herself what was on these carefully secreted parchments, and she turned not toward the stairs to Domina Elisabeth’s rooms but the other way, to the infirmary that was close at hand and almost a private place.

Thinking that, she was discomfited to find Dame Johane in the outer room, frowning in either thought or displeasure while putting small linen bags back into the chest of medicines sitting on the table. Not to waste the chance, Frevisse paused to ask, “Have you found anything missing?”

Dame Johane, still frowning as she took up one of the small bottles, made no other answer than a shake of her head. Frevisse took advantage of her silence to say nothing else, left her to her plainly heavy thoughts and went past her into the next room. Standing where the best light fell through the window, she unfolded the parchments.

There were three of them, each wider than it was long. Because there was no point in wasting parchment, a document was often cut off below the names signed at its end if there were any, as there were here, so that the unused portion could be used for something else. Of the three parchment pieces she held, one was far shorter than the others, hardly an inch and a half of parchment used. The other two were longer but short enough that they had been easily twice-folded, the shorter one inside them, to the width of a child’s collar, making it simple to lay them along the stiffening already there, to be then stitched out of sight. There were signs that wax seals had been hung from the two longer ones, but the seals were gone, cut away probably because thick as such seals were, they could not have been hidden.

The longer writings were, as Frevisse expected, two deeds to carefully described properties. She judged that with a little forging of other documents and names, they could very well be used to make as much trouble for the Rowcliffes as both Rowcliffe and Breredon had claimed. She took up the third parchment piece and read it.

It was not a deed.

She lifted her head and stood staring at the near wall.

Not a deed. Instead, a bill of obligation between Guy Rowcliffe, Symond Hewet, and young Jack Rowcliffe, acknowledging that Jack had been loaned a large sum of money by his two cousins, with promise that he would pay them back in full before…Frevisse took up the parchment and read the date on it again. Before this coming first of May. Three weeks away.

Why had Jack bargained for money from his cousins rather than asking it from his father? Because he needed money for something he would rather his father knew nothing about. That was the most likely answer.

With Guy dead, Symond was his only debtor. Had Jack found he was not going to be able to repay the debt—or did not choose to—and been desperate enough to want Symond dead?

If that was the way of it, then Breredon’s sickening could have been done to confuse the attempt on Symond when Jack made it.

She had already thought of that as a possibility, without having any name or reason to put to it. This bill of obligation maybe gave her someone with a reason. Or, come to it, if Jack feared Breredon was lying about what he wanted from Cecely, feared Breredon wanted these deeds after all, and knew the bill of obligation was with them, could he have been willing to kill him to block him having it?

And finding that whatever poison he gave Breredon was insufficient, had he given Symond a larger dose of it, whatever it was, when attempting his death?

But how had Jack known Sister Cecely had the bill?

Well, it could well have been among Guy Rowcliffe’s papers. Symond would have known it was there, and if he and Jack had looked for it after Sister Cecely fled and not found it, they could well suppose she had it.

For the first time Frevisse wondered how Sister Cecely had come by the deeds.
Those
had assuredly not been in Guy Rowcliffe’s keeping.

Never mind that for now.

She refolded the parchments and slipped them into her undergown’s sleeve again, stood up, and tucked her hands into the opposite, fuller sleeves of her overgown in the ordinary way. With her hands folded in front of her that way, there was no way to tell she carried anything hidden, and that was surely safest, since it might be that two men had come near death because of these deeds and bill. Sister Cecely could not have known it would come to that danger, or she would not have used her son for hiding the things. Nor had Edward been thinking of his own safety when he gave the secret away. He simply had wanted to do right instead of wrong, had wanted truth instead of lying.

Frevisse thought, with a touch of bitterness, that if people simply told the truth, the way Edward had, and were good and brave to one another, there would be far less sadness and hurt in the world. Far less.

Among other things, there would not be two men in the guesthall who had come near to dying because someone was lying and hoping to hide it.

As Frevisse passed through the infirmary’s outer room, leaving, Dame Johane was frowning at small glass vials and Frevisse did not trouble her with any question. Once in the cloister walk, though, she stopped, pausing while trying to choose between the several things she could do next. She was yet again considering going to Domina Elisabeth when Alson came from the stairs to the prioress’ rooms and along the walk, head down, carrying a pottery pitcher and hurrying, passing Dame Margrett sitting outside Sister Cecely’s door without a word, probably returning to the kitchen, not seeing Frevisse at the corner of the walk until Frevisse said her name.

Alson stopped, her head jerking up. She made a short, bobbed curtsy, saying, “My lady,” and looking unsettled, even frightened.

“What is it?” Frevisse asked, with a glance past her, back toward the prioress’ stairs. “How is it with Domina Elisabeth? Is she still in talk with Abbot Gilberd?”

At just above a whisper, Alson said, sounding as frightened as she looked, “She’s crying.”

“Crying? Domina Elisabeth?” Of any of the things Frevisse had thought to hear, that was not one of them. “Is the abbot angry at her and she’s crying for it?”

“No,” Alson whispered, almost as if giving away a secret. “It’s more like he’s trying to comfort her.”

That explained nothing, but it decided Frevisse on what to do next. She nodded at the pitcher and asked, “Is that for the kitchen?”

“Aye, and I’m to say they won’t be wanting more before Vespers. It’s a good thing the abbot brought wine or we’d be near to out now.”

“I’ll take the pitcher and your message,” Frevisse said, reaching for it. “I want you to go to the guesthall and tell Mistress Lawsell’s daughter I’d to speak to her in the church. Just the daughter, not the mother. Make that plain.”

“Yes, my lady.” Alson gave over the pitcher, bobbed another curtsy, and hurried back the way she had come.

Frevisse went on to the kitchen, delivered the pitcher and the message, then went on around the cloister walk and into the church. The rain had sometime stopped but the sky was still low and gray, and the church, too, was gray with shadows. Even the light above the altar seemed dull and small as Frevisse curtsied toward it before passing through the rood screen, to wait for Elianor in the nave. While she waited, she slipped the parchments from her sleeve again, separated the bill of obligation from the deeds, slid the deeds back into her undergown’s sleeve but kept the bill in her hand, hidden in her overgown’s looser sleeve.

The girl came soon, alone and eagerly, saying as she rose from her curtsy to Frevisse, “You wanted to see me?”

“In truth,” Frevisse said, “I want to see Jack Rowcliff without his father, and by you seemed the best way to do it.”

While Elianor was still looking surprised at that, the west door, that she had shut behind her, opened again and Jack came in. Seeing Frevisse and Elianor together, he hesitated, but at Frevisse’s sharp beckon, he shut the door and came toward them. While he did, Frevisse said to Elianor, “If you would like to go beyond the rood screen and kneel in prayer at the altar, you have my leave to do it.”

Delight bloomed in Elianor’s face. She made a short curtsy and swiftly, happily, left Frevisse as Jack neared them. While he looked, confused, back and forth between Frevisse and Elianor’s departing back, Frevisse held up the bill of obligation in front of him. Pulling his heed away from Elianor, and thrusting his head close to the bill, he was probably just able to read it in the gray light, so that it was a moment before he realized what he was seeing. His eyes widened. He straightened sharply and asked in open surprise, “How did you come by that?”

Frevisse saw no alarm, no sudden wariness, no quick calculation going on across his face or behind his eyes, only the surprise. Not until she said, “Sister Cecely had it,” did his face tighten with alarm and anger.

“Hell’s fires,” he said. “We feared as much.” Sudden alarm took over from the anger. “Who else knows about it, knows it’s here?”

“Not your father,” Frevisse said dryly and watched him ease a little. So she had guessed rightly there. She slid the bill into her sleeve again. “Nor your cousin Symond yet, if that’s who you meant with saying ‘we.’ I mean to ask him about it, though.”

“But not my father!” That was clearly first in the youth’s concern.

“Symond first, and maybe not your father after that. It will depend on what Symond has to say.”

“He’s still too ill to talk.”

“I’ll wait until morning. He should be better by then. In the meanwhile, we shall hope no one else falls ill.” She very deliberately added, heavy with meaning, “And that Symond does not worsen.”

Jack frowned at her, seeming perplexed. Then he startled into understanding and burst out in confused protest, “You think he’s been…You don’t think I…You don’t mean you…” He could not seem to get the words out.

“Don’t I?” she challenged.

“That I…that Symond was…that I…” He still could not find the words and finally settled for, “No!”

“There’s good chance
someone
sickened him of a purpose, yes,” Frevisse said steadily. “And Master Breredon before him.”

“No!”

Believing him more with every protest he made, she relented enough to point out, “Better than that there be disease spreading among you all.”

“Yes,” he said uncertainly. “Maybe.”

“But better yet that no one knows the truth while we’re still trying to learn who did it.”

“Yes,” he agreed again, still doubtful.

“So you won’t say anything about it, even to your father,” she ordered. “Not before I’ve talked with Symond.”

Jack nodded slow agreement to that, too, before asking, “But if it’s tried again?”

“After two failures? I think they’ll be careful for a time.”

She prayed so, anyway—there being nothing else she could do about it for now.

Jack looked past her, toward Elianor, she supposed. Firmly gentle, she said, “She means to become a nun.”