“Can’t. She sent their horses home with a servant. He’s not to be back until week’s end. Odd, though,” Ela said. “She’s not carrying on like I thought she might. Not bothered at all by there being so many men about and only her and her daughter. Doesn’t even keep the girl to their chamber.”
“Ah,” said Frevisse somewhat shortly. That would most certainly be strange in a mother who wanted her daughter to become a nun, but then, according to Elianor, a nun was not what Mistress Lawsell wanted her to be. In truth, it seemed she wanted it so little that she was willing to set Elianor deliberately among men, assuredly not with intent that anything happen here but probably in plain hope of stirring the girl’s blood, that the body’s lust might persuade where a parent had not.
It would be interesting, Frevisse thought, to see how that went with Elianor.
“Now,” said Ela, “about what we’re supposed to feed these folk.”
All Frevisse could tell her was that when she had raised the matter of feeding their guests in chapter this morning, Domina Elisabeth had said she would send to learn if there was chance of lamb or mutton from the nunnery flocks and if anyone in the village might be willing to sell flour. Until something came of that, Ela would have to do with what was on hand, with green cheese and brown bread and stretching the oat-pottage to last as best she could.
That settled, Frevisse gave herself up to the next necessity, sighed heavily, and went up to the hall. The trestle table had been left standing after breakfast, and Rowcliffe and the man Symond were seated on the benches there, the nunnery’s battered old chess set between them. By the captured pieces at his side of the board, Symond was rather thoroughly winning. Neither Jack nor either of the Lawsells was in sight, and the door to Breredon’s room was shut. Other than the guesthall’s Tom clearing ashes from the fireplace, with wood waiting for him to lay a fire ready for tonight’s chill, she had Rowcliffe and Symond to herself and she went, however unwillingly, to stand beside Rowcliffe while he finished moving a bishop to a square that she saw would do him no good against the attack Symond had ready against him. Seemingly not seeing it, Rowcliffe said “There!” in a satisfied voice and followed Symond in rising to his feet to bow to her.
She gave them both a slight bend of her head in return, but before she could say anything, Rowcliffe demanded, “Have you heard from your abbot yet?”
With more outward mildness than she inwardly felt, Frevisse answered, “It’s somewhat early in the day for that.”
“I want to see Edward.”
“I’ll tell Domina Elisabeth your desire,” Frevisse answered stiffly.
“This morning. I want to know he’s as well as you say he is.”
“Ease back, John. She’s God’s servant, not yours, for you to be ordering her to anything,” Symond said half-laughingly, his gaze on Frevisse so that possibly he was reading a-right how near she was to snapping back at Rowcliffe.
Rowcliffe blew out his breath impatiently but seemingly at himself rather than anyone else for he next said, sounding abashed, “I ask your pardon, my lady. It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s Cecely and maybe Breredon. I want to be mourning my nephews, not having to waste time forestalling that woman’s idiot-doings.”
Frevisse accepted that apology with another slight bow of her head and said, “We’re as willing as you to have this matter settled and be done with her.”
Symond laughed outright at that.
Frevisse looked at him and said, “Please, sir, no one has said what your part in this is, or even your name.”
He looked surprised. “My part? I’m cousin to all of them.” He nodded at Rowcliffe. “My mother was older sister to John’s father. I’m Symond Hewet, but count as a Rowcliffe in all of this.”
So she had been right about that, Frevisse thought. They were all Rowcliffes and together “in all of this.”
“It was to Symond that Guy told his secret,” Rowcliffe said. He gave his cousin a hard stare while adding bitterly, “Then he kept it to himself until she disappeared with Edward.”
“Guy swore me to secrecy before he told me,” Symond said simply, not noticeably bothered by Rowcliffe’s unspoken but very clear accusation. “He said someone should know the truth, on the chance something ever went to the bad. Then things did go to the bad, and so I told.”
“Fool of a woman,” Rowcliffe muttered.
“Wasn’t there something you wanted to do when next you saw-” Symond paused, looking at Frevisse.
“Dame Frevisse,” she obliged.
“When next you saw Dame Frevisse?” Symond finished.
“Ah. Yes.” Frevisse could not tell whether Rowcliffe was relieved to be reminded or irked, but he reached with seeming willingness to the leather purse hung from his belt, brought out several silver coins, and held them out with, “A guest-gift. To help against the cost of all our being here.”
While the Benedictine Rule required the receiving of guests without asking payment from them, even to the impoverishing of a house, it did not require the impoverishment, and Frevisse took the coins with true thanks, then said, as much to Symond Hewet as to Rowcliffe, “I promise you we’re doing the most we can toward making an end to all this.”
“Keeping close hold on Cecely the while, I hope,” Symond said with a smile.
“Very close,” Frevisse said grimly.
“Good,” snapped Rowcliffe.
Frevisse suspected his dislike of his cousin’s “wife” went back far further than her present treachery. Maybe it had even underlain Sister Cecely’s choice to flee rather than deal with him. She could never have thought they would find her here, not knowing her flight would bring worse trouble on her by loosing Symond Hewet to tell her secret.
Leaving the Rowcliffes to their game, she went to knock at Breredon’s shut door. His man opened it warily, then widely when he saw her there. As she entered, Breredon rose from where he had been sitting at the window and bowed to her. The manservant’s wife likewise stood up, sewing in her hands, from where she had been sitting on a stool, to curtsy, and Frevisse asked her, “How are you?”
“Much bettered, my lady,” the woman said softly, with downcast eyes. She was altogether a soft little woman but cleanly kept in a plain gown and apron and headkerchief, just as her husband looked the proper servant in his plain doublet.
He had stayed beside the door, and his wife edged away to join him there as Frevisse went toward Breredon. Since yesterday it had crossed her mind to doubt the woman had been truly ill. At the same time she had doubted that Dame Claire would have been deceived, but as somewhere to begin, she said at Breredon, quietly, to keep their talk between themselves, “So, was your servant’s wife truly ill? Or was that another lie to serve your ends here?”
Openly surprised by the attack, Breredon answered, “No. She was ill. She’s better but not well yet, your infirmarian says.” He dropped his voice even lower than Frevisse’s to add, “She miscarried a child last autumn. It left a shadow on her mind. A melancholy. Then this spring she began to sicken. When I needed a woman with me, to keep an honest front to my dealings with Mistress Rowcliffe…”
“Sister Cecely,” Frevisse said coldly.
Breredon acknowledged the correction with a slight bow of his head and continued, “…my man Coll and I thought to make a double purpose in bringing Ida, both for my need and to ask help for her.” He smiled. “For Ida at least it’s gone better than we hoped. Your infirmarian has given her something that seems be easing the melancholy. I think she said something about borage? Would that be it?”
“Very likely.”
“Besides, it seems Ida is with child again. That was what had her ill these past three months. But Coll isn’t going to tell her that until he has her safely home again. So,” Breredon shrugged, still smiling, “however it goes with my business here, it’s been to the good for them.”