“Dame Johane,” Sister Helen gasped. “I was with her. Someone from the village was hurt. He was bleeding. His friends brought him. They sent someone ahead and we went out to meet them. We did. In the outer yard.” She paused her rush of words to draw a few quick breaths, starting to steady but her grip on Frevisse’s arms bruising as she made to pull Frevisse toward the cloister door, saying more urgently, “But there’s men come. Riding in. Dame Johane said I should come to warn everyone. We have to…”
“Yes,” Frevisse said. She could hear the horses now, coming at a hard trot, and she began to move toward the cloister door without Sister Helen’s pull. Before she and Sister Helen were to the door, six men rode through the gateway. They had the dusty look of hard travel on them, were plainly in haste about something. They had no bared weapons in hand, though, which was to the good, and it being too late to reach the cloister door, Frevisse stopped herself and Sister Helen with a tight, steadying grip on Sister Helen’s arm and ordered under the clatter of shod hooves on cobbles, “Stand calm. Just stand calm,” then let go of Sister Helen and tucked her hands up her opposite sleeves while lifting her head and setting her face to a quietness that did not match the hard beating of her heart.
Beside her, Sister Helen drew a gasping breath and fumbled her own hands into her sleeves. Whether she was able to feign an outward calm to go with it, Frevisse could not see because her gaze was fixed on the lead rider now drawing his horse to a stamping halt a few yards in front of them. He was a firm-built man of late middle years, in plain doublet and high boots for riding, with his clothing and horse all of good quality. He was not wearing a sword, only a man’s usual dagger, and some of Frevisse’s alarm at his harsh coming eased a little. The men had come in haste but not ready for violence, it seemed.
With her black veil and Sister Helen’s white one, he knew which of them was senior and demanded at Frevisse, “A woman and a small boy. Are they here? Have they been here? Come within the past few days? Do you still have her here?”
“God’s blessing on you,” Frevisse said firmly, hiding her mind’s immediate and angry turn toward Sister Cecely. She looked a little sideways to Sister Helen. “Sister, please, if you would, tell Domina Elisabeth we have new guests.”
Blessedly quick-witted enough not to question or hesitate, Sister Helen made a quick half-curtsy to her and retreated to the cloister door. The man made no effort to stop her but said sharply at Frevisse, “If they’re here, I’ll find out. You can’t keep them hidden forever.”
Purposefully misunderstanding him and hearing the cloister door shut behind Sister Helen, she answered, “We keep no one here against their will, sir. Sir-?”
“Master Rowcliffe. John Rowcliffe,” he answered impatiently. “A woman called Cecely. I don’t know what else she might call herself. It better not be Rowcliffe. And a boy. She used to be a nun here. So it’s said.”
Before Frevisse could form an answer that would win Domina Elisabeth a little more time to ready to face this man, he gave way to his impatience, swung down from his horse, threw his reins to a younger man on a horse beside him, and went past Frevisse to the cloister door. She did not try to get in his way. There was only so much she was willing to do to guard Sister Cecely, and getting in his way was not part of it.
He had a leather-gloved fist raised to pound on the door’s thick wood when the man who had caught his thrown reins said, “Ease down, John. Give the woman chance to answer you.”
Master Rowcliffe spun from the door. “Well?” he demanded at her. “Is she here?”
“Sister Cecely has returned to us, yes,” Frevisse answered evenly.
“What of the boy? Is he here, too?”
“There’s a child with her that she says is her son.”
The second man laughed. “‘Says is her son.’ She knows Cecely.”
“Then she’s here!” Master Rowcliffe made that an accusation.
Frevisse could not see where accusation came into it, and before she could answer, a third man, much younger than the other two, sitting his own horse the other side of Master Rowcliffe’s, said to him calmingly, “So we don’t have to carry on like madmen. We’ve overtaken her. She won’t slip away again.”
“By Saint William’s bones she won’t!” Master Rowcliffe snarled.
Having had time to look at them all, Frevisse judged the three men were likely related. They resembled each other in face and garb and good horses. The three other riders, hanging a length or more to the rear, looked by their clothing and lesser horses to be servants, probably ready to give aid if needed but equally willing to leave the shouting and all the rest to their betters-and very willing to be distracted by the guesthall’s two servants, Tom and Luce, just come up the steps from the guesthall kitchen and starting across the yard toward them, carrying trays laden with wooden cups.
Frevisse sent a quick prayer of blessing toward Ela for the distraction. Men with a welcoming cup of ale in hand were less likely to be reaching for weapons, and she reached for a cup from the tray of the servant coming to the two men nearest her, saying with forced outward calm, “Thank you, Tom.”
Tom ducked his head in answer. He was trying to keep his face servant-straight but she could see the unnerved fright in his eyes and she gave him the slightest of smiles, hoping to reassure him. The nunnery did not need its servants going useless with fear.
Holding that smile, she turned back to Master Rowcliffe who had now taken a step back from the door and was glaring at it, probably adding its offence at staying closed to all his other angers.
“Master Rowcliffe?” she said courteously, holding the cup out to him. “If you would do us the honor?”
He swung around. “What?” He glared past her at his companions, all of whom already held or were reaching for cups of their own. He hesitated, but courtesy won over ire for the moment and he took the cup from her, mixing muttered thanks with, “This makes no difference.”
“Still,” Frevisse said quietly, “if you’re not pounding on the door, someone may be the more likely to open it to you.”
Small snorts of laughter from his two companions earned them Master Rowcliffe’s glare before, unwillingly, a smile tugged at his own mouth. He drowned it with a long gulp of ale, then held the cup out for Tom, still standing nearby, to take and said, “Right then, Symond, and yes, Jack. She won’t get away again and there’s no need for me to carry on like a madman.” He switched his look to Frevisse and demanded, “I want to see her. And the boy. Is he well?”
“He’s well,” Frevisse said. She moved past him to the cloister door, adding, “For the rest, you would do best to speak to our prioress about it.”
Before he could answer that, she knocked lightly at the door and to her relief it immediately opened. Master Rowcliffe started to stalk forward, and the younger of his two companions began to dismount as if to follow. Before Frevisse could say that allowing Master Rowcliffe into the cloister was as far as she was ready to go, the other man put out a hand to him, bidding, “Stay, Jack. Leave it to your father for now.”
Master Rowcliffe looked over his shoulder and nodded agreement with the man who must be Symond, and Frevisse, thinking that explained something of who the men variously were, went into the cloister, letting go the smile she had been keeping on her face. Sister Margrett, standing with her hand on the door’s latch, whispered as she went past, “Should I bar it?”