Without looking back at him, Domina Elisabeth said, “I understand I have heard something of Sister Cecely’s side of the matter and something of your side. Beyond that, I look forward to hearing what you have to say to each other.”
So did Frevisse.
Chapter 12
Domina Elisabeth had sent the nuns back to their tasks, true enough, but following her and Master Rowcliffe into the church, Frevisse saw that somehow those tasks all seemed to be there. Sister Margrett and Sister Helen were sweeping the nave’s stone paving. Dame Juliana and Dame Perpetua were working dust cloths through the fretted wood of the rood screen despite it had just been dusted for Easter. Even Dame Claire had forsaken her usual work among her herbs in the infirmary and was with Dame Amicia along the choir stalls, polishing the brass candleholders as if they, too, had not been well-seen to last week. Other than Dame Johane who was likely still with the injured village man, only Dame Thomasine was where she might best be expected to be-just standing up from where she had been kneeling on the lower of the two steps up to the altar.
Sister Cecily was at the altar, too, but had not been kneeling, instead was standing with her back to it, stiffly straight, head up, hands clenched together at her breast.
Master Rowcliffe started toward her with a triumphant, “Hah!” but Domina Elisabeth put out an arm, barring his way, then pointed into the nave beyond the rood screen and said, “There. You can talk to her from there.”
“From there?” he protested. “But she’s…”
“She will come forward. You will stand on that side of the rood screen. She will stand on this. We will all talk,” Domina Elisabeth said.
“I won’t!” Sister Cecely cried.
“You will,” Domina Elisabeth corrected coldly. She gave a nod to Dame Claire and Dame Amicia. Needing no better order, they instantly dropped their polishing cloths and went to Sister Cecely. Each taking her by an arm, they shoved her forward. Master Rowcliffe, apparently satisfied, went around the rood screen into the nave and turned, hands on hips, to confront Sister Cecely as they brought her to the end of the choir stalls, still several yards from him and still firmly held by them both.
None of the nuns were pretending to any work now, were all openly staring, save for Dame Thomasine who had turned away to kneel again.
If Sister Cecely was frightened, her defiance and anger were hiding it as she twisted her arms free from Dame Claire and Dame Amicia and challenged at Domina Elisabeth as much as at Master Rowcliffe, “You can’t force me out of here! I claim sanctuary! For Neddie, too!” She pointed at Master Rowcliffe. “You want Neddie dead. I claim sanctuary for us both!”
Before Domina Elisabeth could answer that, Master Rowcliffe said impatiently, “Oh, give over, you dawe-brained woman. I don’t want you out of here, and he’s safer with me than with you any day of the year. These women and your abbot and all are welcome to you. What I want are Edward and the deeds you stole.” He looked around. “Are you sure you haven’t lost him? You’re that careless it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Of course I haven’t lost him!”
Domina Elisabeth said quietly. “He’s safely here. You can see him later, if you like.”
“So long as he’s well,” Master Rowcliffe answered.
“You can’t have him!” Sister Cecely exclaimed. “I claim sanctuary for him, too!”
“You give me those deeds and we’ll talk about Edward.”
“I don’t have them. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You have them. I want them. They’re not yours.”
“I don’t have them!”
“What deeds?” Domina Elisabeth asked.
“To two of our best manors,” Master Rowcliffe answered. “I knew as soon as I knew she’d gone that she would have taken more than just the boy. That’s how she’s paid back Guy’s putting up with her all these years. By stealing from us.”
“They’re Neddie’s manors!” Sister Cecely exclaimed hotly. “They should have come to Guy when George died, so they’re Neddie’s now!”
Master Rowcliffe heaved a huge sigh of impatient anger and said aside to Domina Elisabeth standing like a judge between them, “George was my elder brother’s son. Guy was my younger brother’s boy. They were both of them my nephews, and they drowned in the same shipwreck, both without heirs of the body, and so all the family lands they held come back to me. That’s how the inheritance was set up two generations back.”
“Guy has an heir!” Sister Cecely said furiously. “He has Neddie!”
“Your Neddie is a bastard. You and Guy were never married. Couldn’t be, could you? Not when here is where you belonged all along. Neddie has no claim on anything except the manor Guy bought and willed to him.”
“You’d take even that from him if I didn’t protect him!”
“I would not. What’s his is his,” Master Rowcliffe replied with the harsh patience of someone who has had to say that several times too often. “What I want-what we all want-is to protect him from you.”
“I’m his mother!”
“You’re a whore and a fool,” Master Rowcliffe threw back at her.
Someone among the nuns gasped at that bluntness. Sister Cecely was already too colored with anger to color further with shame-supposing she felt any-and before she could make any answer, Master Rowcliffe added, “Nor it’s not as if you were left with nothing, woman. All you had to do was bide where you were and behave yourself.”
“And wear black all my days and live on whatever nothing I was allowed and do as I was told and be expected to be grateful for it,” Sister Cecely scorned.
Master Rowcliffe raked her with his gaze. “You’re wearing black now, seems to me. And what’s this ‘nothing’ you’re on about? Guy left you a good widow’s dower out of Edward’s manor. You’d not have lived poor.”
“Until Neddie came of age!”
“That’s ten years and more away!”
“And then what happens to me?”
“You could always have come back to your nunnery,” Master Rowcliffe said with hot mockery.
“God damn you!” Sister Cecely screamed.
Domina Elisabeth stepped forward, saying in a voice flat with authority and the intention of being obeyed, “Enough. Enough from both of you.”
“I haven’t…” Master Rowcliffe began as Sister Cecely started, “I won’t…”
Openly not caring what they did not have or would not do, Domina Elisabeth said, “Dame Frevisse, please see Master Rowcliffe to the guesthall since it seems he’ll be here at least the night.”
“I’ll be here a good while longer than that if I don’t get those deeds. I’m going nowhere until I have them. And Edward,” Master Rowcliffe said.
“I don’t have the deeds!” Sister Cecely cried at him.
“While I see to Sister Cecely,” Domina Elisabeth went on, cutting ruthlessly across their quarrel. “I promise you, Master Rowcliffe, she’ll be here for you to talk with further. Dame Claire. Dame Amicia. Bring her, please.”
They unhesitatingly took hold on Sister Cecely’s arms again, tightly enough that she winced, and not gently forced her, writhing against their hold, after Domina Elisabeth. Frevisse caught glimpse of several servants scattering from where they had been listening outside the open door to the cloister, but her own charge was Master Rowcliffe who had been left flat-footed and a little gaping by Domina Elisabeth’s suddenness, and she said, matching her prioress’ authority, “If you’d come this way, please you, sir,” going not toward the cloister but into the nave and toward the church’s west door. She moved and spoke as if there were no question of him coming with her, and he did, at first slowly and then more quickly. He even passed her as they reached the door, so that he was able to open it for her, standing aside for her to go ahead of him into the sunlight.