6 The Murderer's Tale Page 9

  Each of a day’s nine offices was different from the others, and each changed from day to day according to the season and where they were in a week, but they were also all the same year in, year out, and linked by the desire for God and the soul’s salvation. Sext, coming in late morning, was a brief office but Frevisse had long since learned its value, its reminder in the midst of every day’s bothers of eternity. Today, aware even in her prayers of Lionel kneeling nearby and the curse he carried with him, she prayed with more compassion than usual its daily reiteration, “Confer salutem corporum, Veramque pacem cordium.” Give health to the body, And true peace to the heart.

  Or to the soul. Cordium could mean heart or soul. Or both at once, she supposed, and that would be very right for Lionel. Peace to his heart and soul, because there seemed small hope of it for his tormented body.

  He was still in prayer when they finished, but as they rose to their feet in a soft sound of skirts, Frevisse saw his head lift, his hand move as he crossed himself, meaning he was done, too. Already on their feet, they left him but in unspoken agreement waited in the porch for him. It might have been natural to go on, but their going on might look too much like avoiding him and so they stayed. Frevisse wondered how often that was the way of it for him: people either avoiding him in fear and disgust or else deliberately seeking his company, to prove they did not fear or despise him. And which of the two did Lionel resent the least?

  There was no way to know, but she caught his hesitation as he saw them, and the swift glance he swept across their faces that told her he was trying to tell if they knew about him now and what they thought of him if they did. It must always be like that for him, she realized—assessing people in the moment that he met them, judging what they knew and how they were going to be toward him if they knew too much.

  She did not think that she reacted at all, except to curtsy with Dame Claire who said for both of them, “Master Knyvet.”

  “My ladies,” he answered, bowing.

  It was Fidelitas who made it easier, trotting forward to sniff first at Dame Claire’s skirts, then at Frevisse’s, waving her plumed curve of tail in approval. Lionel smiled with actual amusement. “She has opinions,” he said.

  “She’s assuredly taken to you. What’s going to happen when you leave here?” Dame Claire asked.

  Fidelitas returned to him and he bent to rub her behind the ears. “I may have to buy her from Lady Lovell by the look of it.” He did not seem to mind the thought or worry that Lady Lovell might demur; he was probably as sure of her kindness as Frevisse was coming to be.

  The path was wide enough they could walk together, Fidelitas ahead of them, back toward the churchyard gate. In the sunlight, Frevisse could see Lionel’s face was shadowed with tiredness, dark under his eyes, and there was a bruise on his forehead that had not been there yesterday.

  Dame Claire commented on the weather. Lionel agreed it was very fair. He moved a little ahead to open the gate and stand aside for them to go through before him. On the path that skirted the greensward, not far beyond the gateway, Edeyn and Martyn Gravesend were coming toward them in close talk, and something Martyn said made Edeyn laugh in the moment before they realized that Frevisse, Dame Claire, and Lionel were there. Edeyn’s already happy face brightened with wider smile, her hand going up in greeting as she moved more quickly toward them, calling in her bright voice, “Lionel! My ladies. Well met! We were coming to warn you it’s nigh dinnertime, Lionel.”

  They met and all turned toward the house, Frevisse falling back, to let Edeyn walk on Lionel’s other side from Dame Claire. Martyn, as was proper, stood aside to let them all pass, his low bow sufficient greeting. His face, even more than Lionel’s, betrayed he had spent a night that had been worse than merely unrestful, shadowed around his eyes and hollowed below the cheekbones as if part of him had been drained away with effort.

  Instead of leaving him to walk a few paces behind her, Frevisse said, “Walk with me, please you.”

  Martyn slightly bowed again and did, but left it to her to make conversation if she chose so that for a little way they went in silence, the light flow of Edeyn’s talk about the men’s successful hunt and Lady Lovell’s return passing back to them.

  But their pace was slightly slower than the others so that gradually they were a little farther behind and then a little farther. That was Martyn’s doing and Frevisse let him until they were enough behind that what they said would not be easily overheard. Then she looked at him and he returned her look and said, “You know about Lionel.” Statement, not question.

  “Yes,” she agreed. And after a moment’s pause she added, “Everyone knows.”

  “By way of Master Giles.” Again not question but fact, bitterly said.

  For perfect accuracy, she answered, “I heard it from Master Geffers first.”

  “Who doubtless had it from Master Giles.”

  Frevisse slightly inclined her head in acknowledgment.

  Martyn smiled wryly. “Master Giles has a way of making certain no one is long ignorant of it, wherever we are.”

  And not out of kindness either, Frevisse wanted to add, but Martyn already knew that, probably more surely than she did. Instead she said carefully, wanting to see his reaction, “He says that for their safety people should know, on the chance they’re there when Lionel is attacked.”

  “The only person in danger when Lionel is attacked is Lionel himself. He’s the only one that’s ever been harmed in them.”

  “Giles said you had.”

  “Giles would.” For the first time Martyn’s tone betrayed that Giles’ dislike of him was fully returned. “In the worst of the fits Lionel flails. He doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know anything when one is on him. He loses all control of his body and his mind isn’t there. I used to be hit sometimes, until I learned better, but that wasn’t deliberate by Lionel, only because I was near, and I’ve learned how to duck since then. Nobody is in any danger from Lionel, not even by chance, because no one but me is willing to be near him when an attack comes. Lionel has always been the only one who’s badly hurt in them.”

  “The scar down his face?”

  “That’s one. Once he broke his arm when it caught under the edge of a bed and he wrenched before I could free him.”

  Ahead of them Edeyn turned her face smiling up to Lionel, and his laughter and hers and Dame Claire’s mingled clear in the morning air. Momentarily Frevisse wondered if that was another cause for Giles’ dislike of his cousin. “How did you know I knew about Lionel?”

  “You’d been in Master Giles’ company last night. I didn’t suppose he had changed his ways.”

  “And that’s something Lionel knows, too, I suppose.”

  “He knows.”

  Frevisse had noticed before how much meaning Martyn was able to put into few words. What was it like to be Lionel, caught not only by his demon but between Martyn and Giles? For he was caught, on every side. By the reality that Giles was his heir and therefore could not be ignored. By the necessities forced on him by his attacks. By his need of Martyn because there was no one else willing to take on the danger of caring for him when an attack came.

  “And when people know about him, what then?” she asked.

  “What do they do? It varies. Some shun him completely. Those are the simplest to deal with. Others keep company with him, but you can see them hoping, behind their manners, to see an attack come on him. Others try to treat him as if there were nothing untoward about him at all, as if he were like anyone else.”

  “And mostly he is,” Frevisse said. “It’s not as if he were constantly possessed.” Not like his cousin Giles whose demon was merely of more subtle sort and therefore worse, in her opinion, because less readily seen and dealt with.

  “No,” Martyn agreed. “He’s not constantly possessed.”

  There was a weariness in his voice that matched the strained tiredness of his face, and, completing what he had left unsaid, Frevisse murmured, “Except by the fea
r of what could come on him at any time.”

  Martyn’s look at her was sharp with appreciation and a hint of smile eased his mouth. “Except for that. But at least he usually has warning. Sometimes as much as half an hour, usually less but almost always enough for him to go where he won’t be seen.”

  Like a sick, hurt animal, Frevisse thought.

  Ahead of them the others had reached the door and Lionel had stepped aside to bow the women through, smiling at them both as he did. Tall and angular as he was, he was not graceful, and his scarred and long-jawed face missed handsome by several degrees, but there was a warmth to him that like his cleverness and ready laughter made it easy to like him. Frevisse abruptly ached with unexpected pain for a life lived the way Lionel had to live his, shunned by other people, always waiting for the evil to come on him despite everything he had done to be free of it, despite all his prayers. Even given the friendship he had from Martyn and Edeyn, he was very much alone.

  Chapter 8

  Dinner was a loud and pleasant meal in the great hall, a jumble of talk among the morning’s hunters who apparently had had a good run and taken sufficient deer for a few days’ needs, and everyone else with their own matters to complain of, discuss, or laugh over.

  Used to the quiet of St. Frideswide’s refectory where the only voice at mealtimes was the reader’s quietly giving the daily reading, Frevisse listened more than she talked to the knights on either side of her about the hunt until they became absorbed in talking past her to each other and then she gladly stopped talking or listening to them at all.

  Dame Claire farther along the table was in steady conversation with the gentlemen on her left side but too far away for Frevisse to hear any of it. She did not much care; it was enough that Dame Claire seemed more herself than she had been for a long while past, and probably from more than last night’s good rest and the morning’s ease, Frevisse thought. The days away from Domina Alys were the larger part of it, and she deliberately put away from her the worry of what would come when they returned to the priory at the end of their pilgrimage. Let today’s goodness suffice and the morrow’s evils be dealt with when they had to be.

  Instead she occupied herself with ignoring the men beside her and watching everything else around the hall, most particularly noticing at the rightward table just below the dais a young boy and girl she did not remember from last night’s meal, both of them well dressed and so assured in their manners and each with a woman in attendance on them that almost surely they were Lady Lovell’s own children. Frevisse vaguely recalled that there were four Lovell sons and, she thought, two daughters. She was not sure of their ages, but some at least were old enough by now to be already sent to other households to be raised, and likely these two here were the youngest, the boy near eight by the look of him and soon to be sent away, too.

  He looked something like his mother, with her coloring and strong oval face. Possibly the girl, brown-haired, her eyes heavy-lidded, was more like her father, but Frevisse had never had occasion to see Lord Lovell and could only guess. At least they were giving their nurses no trouble. Like all else she had seen at Minster Lovell, they were well kept and well mannered.

  Farther down the hall at the lower tables, John Naylor was still in company with Master Holt the steward. Martyn had joined them, and the talk among them looked good-humored, judging by their smiles. Father Henry, seated just below the high table but at the far end from herself, was deep in talk with Sire Benedict, both of them intent but seeming to be enjoying themselves. To her regret the Knyvets, though at the high table with her, were at its far end so she could not see them at all. Knowing more about them, it would have been interesting to watch what went on among them and it would have helped to pass the time.

  This being the day’s main meal, there were more courses than last night, and though dishes were served and withdrawn with swift competence, it all went on far longer than Frevisse’s hunger or interest in eating. When it ended at last she rose and withdrew from the table in a haste that was only barely within the bounds of good manners. Dame Claire might be the better for being away from St. Frideswide’s, but Frevisse was forced to admit that her own problem of an inclination toward impatient ill temper was not particularly abated.

  Unfortunately the realization made her impatient.

  Inwardly smiling at her own ridiculousness, she eased toward Dame Claire and they stood aside, with neither duty nor place to go to and both of them a little uncomfortable with it. Her going marked by quick curtsies and bows from those she passed, Lady Lovell left the dais through the door to the small room from where the stairs led up to the solar and the bedchambers beyond. A few other people went that way, including the boy whom Frevisse had noticed earlier, accompanied by a squire instead of his nurse now. She did not see the girl and had lost sight of John Naylor and Father Henry in the general shift of people. Everyone seemed to be scattering to their afternoon duties, and she found it was aggravating to be caught in a routine familiar to everyone else but unfamiliar and useless to her, used as she was in St. Frideswide’s of being certain where she should be and what she should be doing through her days.

  “She said we’d talk with her this afternoon,” Dame Claire said, perhaps out of the same unease, reminding them both there was a reason for their being here. Her hand went to her belt pouch where she carried the papers concerning the priory’s case.

  “Luce will come for us. Or someone,” Frevisse agreed. And soon, I hope, she added, even if only to herself.

  It was not Luce who came but the squire she had seen with the boy. He came back through the door and directly to her and Dame Claire, now alone on the dais except for the servants clearing the tables away. He bowed and said, “My lady asks you to come to her now, if you will.”

  Frevisse had supposed they would go to the garden or parlor until she had seen which way Lady Lovell went. Now she expected they would go up to the solar, but the man led them through the small chamber not to the stairs but to another door standing open on its far side. He went through, bowed deeply, and turned to step out of their way, gesturing for them to enter.

  There was no doubting that the room they came into was where the manor’s business was done. Or, more likely, the business of all the Lovell lordship. A wide table dominated the room’s center, with record rolls laid out on it, some held open with small lead bars, others labeled and waiting to hand. Two clerks’ desks set to one side caught the light across them from the wide window looking out on the yard, and around the walls were chests and aumbrys for the keeping of documents and records as an open door in one of the aumbrys showed. By marriages, royal grants, and purchase, Lord Lovell held properties in more counties of England than he could visit in a year, and here was where the records of all of them were kept.

  Two clerks sat at the desks, one copying a draft onto a bright new parchment, the other comparing two documents and making notes on a scrap of paper. Lady Lovell stood beyond the table, still dressed in her green gown, her hand resting on an unrolled scroll as she pointed something out to the boy who had been in the great hall at dinner. She glanced up as they came in and smiled greeting but went on explaining to him about the number of sheep a particular manor could be expected to graze. “If more are noted, then either new land has been assarted and there should be record of it or else they’re scanting their fields and the bailiff had best have good reason why. You see?”

  The boy’s likeness to her was even more marked when they were together. He was dressed simply, in doublet and hose and leather shoes, and had a boy’s look of being ready to be gone about more interesting business the moment he might be dismissed, but he said sensibly enough, “What if the bailiff doesn’t have good reason?”

  “Then your steward there had better have looked into it and settled the matter long before you begin to go over the figures for yourself and ask him about it.”

  “But if the steward is going to see to it, why do I have to know?”

  “Because
your steward works for you and it’s your business to know what and how he does. You’re no better than the bailiff who misuses the land if you don’t know how well or ill your steward does his duty.”

  “And if he doesn’t do his duty?”

  There was more impudence than honest curiosity in that. His mother, smiling, tapped him lightly on the end of his nose and answered, “Then, like you, he’s put to his lessons again until he understands them and does them right. Or more likely, since he’s old enough to have learned them if he’s ever going to and he seemingly hasn’t, we put him out of our service.”

  The boy grinned up at her. She put her hand on his shoulder and nodded toward Frevisse and Dame Claire. “Now here’s another matter of business for us. These ladies are from St. Frideswide’s Priory beside our village Prior Byfield near Banbury. You remember where Banbury is?”

  “North of Oxford,” he answered promptly, plainly pleased with himself.

  His mother bent a stern look on him. “ ‘North of Oxford’ covers much of England. More precisely, please you.”

  He scrunched his face with thinking and said, “It’s two days’ ride toward Coventry. We went that way when we went to the plays!”

  “Exactly,” his mother agreed, letting her pleasure with him show. “Now greet Dame Claire and Dame Frevisse, please you.” To them she said in way of formal greeting, “My youngest son, Henry. Harry,” she added with a smile to show that was what he was mostly called.