That brought laughter and a shout that they would see he kept his promise.
Watching them scatter across the yard, some of them crowding around Benet, poking at him friendly-wise and him jabbing good-humoredly back at them, Joliffe said quietly, “He did that very well. Clever boy.”
“That clever boy is the reason we have a stolen girl on our hands,” Frevisse said. “But yes, out of the lot of them, he’s probably the best.”
“So he’s the thwarted lover, is he?” Joliffe said with interest. “Any hope for him?”
“Not at present. Joice would rather see him hanged. A song about a madman and a nun? You have one like that?”
Joliffe shrugged. “Not until I’ve changed a word here and there in ‘The Priest and the Nun.” Probably you’d best not hear it when I have, though,“ he added thoughtfully.
“I suspect I probably shouldn’t even before you do. Now, what about him?”
They looked down at the madman, crouched on his heels with his arms wrapped around his legs and his face buried against his knees, rocking a little and making no sound. He wore a dirt-thickened shirt, filthy leggings, and rough-wrapped cloth for shoes, and smelled most particularly of pig manure.
“Fellow,” said Joliffe and touched his shoulder.
The man flinched violently, lost balance, and sprawled sideways onto the cobbles, then scrambled back into his huddled heap, but now an eye gleamed out from the tangle of hair, shifting uneasily from Joliffe to Frevisse to Joliffe to Frevisse again.
Partly because of the smell of him and partly not to frighten him, Frevisse made no move to come closer but asked, because food seemed the most likely way to reach him, “Are you hungry?” She patted her stomach to help the thought go through to him. “Are you hungry? Food?”
The man made no answer except to shift his eye to Joliffe again. Joliffe knelt down and said very gently, “We’re not going to hurt you. Are you hungry? Do you want food?”
The man’s eye was wary but not wildly afraid now, and Joliffe said without changing his voice or position, “I think two of us are too many for him. Maybe you should leave him to me.”
Frevisse drew back a willing step. “Take him around to the kitchen. Not inside but to the kitchen yard. I’ll go through the cloister and tell someone to bring out food for him and a cloak or doublet, whatever is to hand in the alms clothing.”
“Better that than anywhere around the guest halls,” Joliffe agreed. “I’ll see him fed, then put him out the back gate, maybe find someone to take him to the village. Away from here for certain.”
“It would probably be better for you if you were away, too,” Frevisse said.
“And leave behind what I’m likely to make here? No thank you. But when I’ve seen him on his way, I think I’ll spend my time until supper trying my luck with your masons, safely on the other side of that wall.” He jerked his head toward the wall that closed off the far end of the yard and the priory buildings from the orchard beyond the church, where the masons had set up their lodge for stoneworking and now were mostly living, since the crowding of the guest halls by Sir Reynold’s men. It crossed Frevisse’s mind that Joliffe had learned a great deal of how things were in the few hours he had been here; but the quick movement of his head had made the madman cringe and begin to shiver. “You’d best go,” Joliffe said. “It will make this simpler for me, and she went.”
Chapter 9
Alys leaned her head against the high, carved back of her chair, her eyes closed, her fingertips pressed to the sides of her forehead where the pain seemed trying to break through her skull. “Are they finished yet?”
Reynold answered without turning from the window, “Your nun is coming back toward the cloister. The minstrel is leading the madman off somewhere.”
“Good.” Everything hurt the worse when she moved in one of these headaches; she had been afraid she would be needed in the yard. “Why does everything have to be trouble? Why can’t it all be simple?”
“Because no one lets it be.” Reynold turned from the window and crossed to the table. “So there’s no use your worrying on everything the way you do.”
Her head gave a throb of greater pain. “I have to worry on everything. Nothing is done if I don’t worry on it.” He was pouring some of the wine he had brought; she could hear him and said without opening her eyes, “I don’t need wine. My head hurts enough as it is.”
“I’m not giving you the bottle, only a gobletful. You try too hard, my girl. That’s what makes your head to ache. This will ease you.”
Alys opened her eyes to find him standing beside her, smiling down and holding out the goblet.
“Drink,” he urged. “It’ll help.”
She took the goblet blindly, shutting her eyes against the unexpected bite of tears, not wanting Reynold to see how near she was to crying because of his kindness. When was the last time anyone had bothered to be kind to her simply for kindness’ sake? She could not remember. All they ever seemed to want was for her to give and give and give so they could take and take and take. And she gave! God knew she gave. She was all but giving her sanity, come to that. Today, for the nunnery’s need, she had worked over those crab-handed accounts until she was sick with this headache as well as sick with being unable to make the foul things give her the answers she wanted.
“They fight me on everything,” she whispered, more to herself than Reynold. “They all fight me.” Her nuns, her erstwhile steward, the master Mason, even those miserable accounts that went on lying, went on saying there was not enough money when there had to be. That was why she had sent Katerin to fetch Reynold to her. He was the only hope and help she had, and her nuns grudged her even him. She knew they did and talked about her behind her back. They grudged her everything. So she had sent Katerin for him while they were at dinner so they would not know he was here. And she had only Katerin companioning them so there would be no tattletales of what they said; and she meant to have him leave while they were closed away at Vespers. That would serve them as they deserved.
She pressed her eyes desperately tighter. Tears were no good. They were a weakness and she could not afford weakness, not with everything she wanted to do, hoped to do, for St. Frideswide’s. She had no time for weakness, her own or anyone else’s. Reynold was the same. He understood demands, not tears, and to show she was not weak, she said fiercely, eyes still closed, “I want my tower done. That will do more for me and my headaches than wine will.”
Reynold had gone back to the table to pour wine for himself. Not looking full around, he answered over his shoulder, laughing a little, “Wine is just to help see you through. Don’t worry over your tower, girl. You’ll have it.”
“Not according to Master Porter.” She had the urge to cry under control now, out of her way, and she took a deep draught of the wine, savored it before swallowing, then said resentfully, “I had to fight with him again today.”
“As if all the priory didn’t hear you.” Reynold sat opposite her in the other chair with his own wine and leaned forward to nudge her hand. “Drink. It won’t do you any good in the goblet.”
She drank. Ale was what they mostly had in St. Frideswide’s, wine only with Communion or when someone thought to give it as a gift. That was another of the things she meant to change when she had made St. Frideswide’s into what it ought to be. There would be wine every feast day then. Good wine. Bordeaux wine. Wine like this.
But that solved no present problems, and she reached her free hand out to grasp Reynold’s wrist to make him hear her. “You have to make Master Porter finish my tower. He’ll listen to you where he won’t listen to me.”