The woman servant who had come with Lady Isobel was seated on the bench outside their chamber. She made no move to stop Frevisse, but Frevisse paused, turned from her intent to talk with Sir John and Lady Isobel because so casual a chance to talk to the woman might not come again.
“God’s greeting to you,” she said lightly, and nodded her head toward the door. “Your lord is still hurting?”
The woman, obviously bored at sitting attendance here, brightened, glad to talk about troubles. “Indeed he is. Wearying my poor lady with his needs and her so good to him she’ll not deny him anything.” She lowered her voice and said, leaning forward as if to give a great confidence, “Fancy, a big, strong man like him letting some passing peddler muck with his tooth because he’s afraid to have it drawn!”
Frevisse was not interested in Sir John’s toothache, but asked without a qualm at her own duplicity, “Do you suppose it was all the quarreling brought it on this time?”
The woman shrugged. “It comes on anytime it feels like, but I’d not be surprised. All that shouting would make anyone’s jaw ache.”
“They argued all the night, I’ve heard. And Sir John told Lady Ermentrude to leave.”
“Now that’s not quite right but close enough. Sir John was the one who tried to quiet it between them, but hardly a word in edgewise they let him have. We could hear them right through the door of the solar most of that evening. But the next morning when Lady Ermentrude came to leave, hardly a word was passed among them, except Lady Isobel sent my lord out to say, nice as you please, that he hoped, it would all come right after she’d thought on it and wouldn’t she break her fast before she left.”
“And did she?”
“Not her! She’d hardly open her mouth to him, and rude when she did, she was still that angry. Said she had wine to steady her after so harsh a welcome and that would suit her til she chose to dine, thank you. Then off she rode, and Lady Isobel was all white and near to tears and decided she and Sir John had best go after her.”‘
“So she accepted a gift of wine from them? Or had she brought it with her?”
The woman shrugged. “Not her! No, she sent for wine, she knew they kept malmsey particular for her. Sent that mincing dark-haired cat to fetch it. But that was Lady Ermentrude for you. Bring the house down with her temper and then demand the best it has to give. I don’t hesitate to say it, though she’s dead and coffined.”
“It sounds as if it was a huge quarrel, and no forgiveness anywhere,” Frevisse said.
“No, not like that at all. A huge quarrel, right enough, but it was Lady Ermentrude would have none of making peace. And they came riding after her, didn’t they, with more of her favorite wine for a gift. And Lady Isobel sitting up with her that last night. No, it wasn’t my lord and lady who didn’t want peace.”
“But what was it all for? No one has ever said.”
Disappointment shaded the woman’s face. “Now there’s the pity. All that shouting and none of us could make out the sense of it. The solar door’s that thick, it muffled all but the noise.”
“And no one happened to walk outside the window?” Frevisse smiled to make a conspiratorial joke of it, as if it were the thing she would have thought to do.
The woman smothered appreciative laughter, but her eyes gleamed, showing she was glad to find a nun so ready to forget her dignity and have a friendly gossip. “Well, I won’t say it might not have crossed someone’s mind mayhap, but outside the solar is Lady Isobel’s own private walled garden, and no one quite dared to be going in there like that, over the wall. It would be worth your life to cross her like that. She’s a fine lady but she can be sharp when she’s been crossed, you know.”
Frevisse said with real regret, “And so all that disturbance keeping everyone awake, and no idea at all what they were on about?”
The woman shrugged. “Something about a marriage. That word was said loud enough a few times. And something about it being none of Lady Ermentrude’s business. But nothing else clear enough to make any sense. It made all of us in the household nervous, I promise you.”
And moreover what a waste, her expression said: A splendid subject for gossip spoiled by an honest carpenter’s thick doors.
Frevisse shared her disappointment, although for other reasons, and went to knock on Sir John and Lady Isobel’s door.
Lady Isobel’s voice bade her enter. Except for the very best one, which Sir Walter had now, the guest-hall bedchambers were small and sparely furnished, but Lady Isobel had made this one into her own. A dress lay in careful folds over a stool; a small prayer book was open on the plain table; Sir John’s cloak hung evenly from a wall hook, its folds arranged by a loving female hand. Even the air was faintly scented with her perfume.
Sir John lay dozing on the bed, propped up on pillows, one hand still cupped to his swollen jaw, his face pale with pain. Lady Isobel rose with a quick and graceful movement to come between him and Frevisse, saying in her light voice, “Forgive me. I thought you were the girl come back with the medicine I’ve begged of your infirmarian.”
Frevisse, remaining by the door, said, “I won’t stay long. I have only a question or two I need to ask.”
“Questions?” Lady Isobel’s slight frown hardly marred her smooth loveliness.
Frevisse had the sudden – and ungracious – thought that Lady Isobel probably went to a great deal of trouble to keep from marring her loveliness.
“About the quarrel Lady Ermentrude had with you before she returned here.”
Sir John stirred and groaned. Lady Isobel looked around at him with concern and a quieting lift of her hand. “It’s not the servant with the medicine yet, my heart. It’s Dame Frevisse. Just a little longer.” Then to Frevisse, with a tiny show of exasperation, “We’ve told you of that already. We’ve told everyone. She came on us unwarned and ranting. Her wits were unhinged, by drink or a brain fever maybe, I don’t know.”
“But what was she ranting about?”
Lady Isobel drew a deep sigh. “She was demanding that our marriage be ended. She kept demanding it over and over and never listened to anything we tried to say. She frightened me and made no sense at all.”
“What was her thought behind the demand? Did she ever say?”
Lady Isobel firmly shook her head. “No more than her mad thought that Thomasine was brought here by coercion. If there was more to it, she was so incoherent I never discerned it.”
“You know that Master Montfort wants to arrest Thomasine for Lady Ermentrude’s death?”
Lady Isobel put her fingers to her lips. Her face was grieved. “I can’t believe she would do something like that. How could she have been so desperate? She’s meant to enter St. Frideswide’s since she was old enough to say so. I suppose Montfort thinks it was our lady aunt insisting she should not that frightened her more than she could bear. But how someone set on being a holy nun could bring herself to do it – it passes thought.”
“You think she might have done it?”
Lady Isobel looked at her with wide and bewildered eyes. “You think perhaps she didn’t? Sir Walter and Master Montfort seem so sure. And Master Montfort is a very knowing man in matters such as this.”
Frevisse managed to keep her voice untouched by her incredulity. “Master Montfort…”
Sir John moved on the bed, making a small, painful sound, then mumbling, “Who…”
Lady Isobel went to him quickly. “Hush now, my dear, hush. I know it hurts but more medicine will be here soon. Dame Claire promised. Then you’ll have ease and can truly sleep. I know you need your silence. The lady is going now.”
That was more than a mere hint, but Frevisse asked, “Have you ever been to France, you or your husband?”
Lady Isobel, still bent over Sir John, her hand on his forehead, did not even look around. “France?” she said distractedly. “No. Why should we ever want to go to France? Lie easy, my love. She’s going now so you can rest.”
Frevisse went with outward grace, a brief farewell, and the unsettling realization that Lady Isobel was willing to believe that Thomasine had killed their aunt.
She was at the guest hall’s outer door, at the head of the steps to the yard and intent on taking what she had so far learned to Domina Edith, when Master Montfort said officiously from behind her, “Dame, we wish to speak to you.”
She stopped and turned. Her single long look at his nervous, determined face and Sir Walter’s angry one behind him told her enough, but very politely, controlling her own voice and face, she said, “Yes, my lord?”
“We must needs talk with you, Dame,” Master Montfort said.
“At your service, my lord.” Deliberately, calmly, she met his eyes, looked past him to Sir Walter and added, “But in God’s first. It is coming on the hour of Sext and I must go to the church.”
Sir Walter’s lips clamped angrily tight. “To give comfort to your little sanctuary nun? I’ve posted my guards. There’ll be no stealing her away from the nunnery without I know about it. And word has gone to the sheriff, so when her sanctuary time is up, he’ll have the girl anyway. Why draw this out for everyone? It’s your doing that put her there–”
Lifting her voice to be heard across the yard and into the hall, Frevisse said, “And let you be grateful for it since it kept you from breaking both England’s law and the law of God’s Holy Church.”
Sir Walter began to color again. Frevisse reflected that a man so easily angered to red would never make old age. She knew that nothing would satisfy him except having his own way, so that she might as well not even waste more time quarreling with him. Making sure her voice still carried to everyone, she said, “I have duties now. I pray you excuse me to them.”
She made to turn away from both of them. “God’s teeth!” Sir Walter swore. “Take her, Montfort, you fool!”
Frevisse grabbed up her skirts and bolted down the stairs and toward the cloister door across the yard.
Behind her Sir Walter bellowed, “Hold her! One of you down there! Stop her!”
There were men scattered across the yard. A few began to move, but uncertainly, not clear on whether he meant her, and how they were supposed to lay hands on a nun. Only two were quick enough to intercept her. One was a large man who only needed to move a few yards sideways to block the cloister door. As he moved to do so, Robert came suddenly at her from the side. He grabbed her by the upper arms and said fiercely under his breath, “Fight me,” as he swung her around and staggered toward the cloister door as if carried by the force of her running.
Frevisse jerked an arm free and clouted him over his ear. He staggered and ducked, and they lurched forward, almost into the large man in their way. He shifted sideways, circling to try and catch hold of her, too. Robert yelled, pushed her away, and grabbed for his ankle as if he had been kicked. Hopping and yelping, he managed to lurch into the other man, staggering him off balance and bringing him down in a heap with Robert on top.
Frevisse flung herself at the door, but even as the latch gave under her hand, hands grabbed at her from behind, dragging her back and spinning her around. The other man and Robert still lay on the cobbles. It was Sir Walter, quicker than all the others. He hauled her away from the door, out into the center of the yard.
“Boldly done, Dame. But I have you now and here you’ll stay. If we can’t have the novice, then the nunnery can’t have you, unless your prioress thinks again and offers a fair exchange.”
“A fool’s exchange,” Frevisse retorted breathlessly. “And you little know our prioress if you think she’ll make it. Nor the bishop either. You’ll find yourselves excommunicate if you go on this way.”
“Damn the bishop, and that silly old woman your prioress! My mother’s murderer does not go free!”
“I beg your pardon for intruding,” a familiar voice said quietly at Sir Walter’s back. “I don’t think you heard me come.”
Sir Walter spun around. Thomas Chaucer was standing dismounted beside his horse under the gateway from the outer yard, his mounted men behind him: He was regarding Sir Walter coolly, not seeming to see Frevisse at all. His gaze traveled around the yard and up to Montfort, still gaping at the head of the steps. Chaucer nodded to him in polite greeting and then strolled forward to Sir Walter. At his moving, Montfort hasted down the steps, reaching Sir Walter just as Chaucer was saying, with mild interest, “Is there some sort of trouble here, my dear?”
Frevisse, in her great relief, had to hold an urge to laugh at Sir Walter’s face as, confronted with so important a man as Chaucer, he struggled to curb his anger. Very evenly she said, “A little trouble, Uncle, but it’s being sorted out, I think.”
Sir Walter jerked away from Montfort’s plucking at his sleeve and demanded, “What are you doing here, Chaucer?”
The question was more peremptory than polite. Montfort made a choking noise of protest. Sir Walter far outranked Chaucer in title and birth, but Chaucer’s power and connections went far beyond any Sir Walter could claim. The part of Sir Walter’s mind not taken up with his anger knew it, but for just now he plainly did not care. “What brings you here?” he repeated.
“Your mother’s’ death, surely,” Chaucer said, unoffended. He looked casually around the yard again. “I heard she’d suddenly died and I came this way in hopes of offering condolences to you before you took her body home to burial. Is there a problem?”
“There’s murder. My mother was murdered and this woman is keeping the murderer from us.”
Chaucer looked at Frevisse in surprise. “Are you, my dear? I raised a niece in my own house who would behave like that?” Without waiting for her answer, he turned to Sir Walter. “Your mother was murdered?”‘
Sir Walter’s face was shifting expressions rapidly. But he answered belligerently enough, “Poisoned. By their novice. And now she’s taken sanctuary to keep from justice.”
“Poisoned,” Frevisse agreed quickly, “but not by Thomasine.”
“Then who else?” Sir Walter snarled. “Who else had chance and reason both for doing it?”
“That little mouse of a child I saw last time I was here?” Chaucer’s tone was still mild, as if no one’s voice had been raised. He glanced at Montfort, who nodded to show he agreed with Sir Walter then bowed to Chaucer. “Really, my dear Frevisse, if she’s taken to poisoning, I wouldn’t think you’d want her anywhere about.”
Frevisse bit the inside of her lip. Chaucer’s light response made anger and confusion mix across Sir Walter’s face. Chaucer held out his hand to Frevisse and said, “But I’ve come a weary way this morning, and missed my dinner in the bargain, and would pay my respects to your lady prioress, my dear. Is there possibly more of that wine I had last time I was here? It was particularly good, I thought.”
It was a prompt Frevisse was ready enough to follow. As smoothly as he, she said, “Of course, Uncle,” and took the one step that put her beside him.
“You’ll pardon us, my lords?” Chaucer asked.
Whatever they were thinking – and judging by Sir Walter’s face it was nothing pleasant – there was no reasonable way of stopping him. They made small bows, their men did likewise, and then Chaucer had her to the doorway and through it.
With a gasping laugh, Frevisse dropped the thick wooden bar, locking the door with herself and Chaucer safe inside.
“I suppose this can all be explained?” Chaucer asked as she turned back to him. “Wrestling in the yard with young men, quarreling with nobility, sheltering murderers. This is the way you spend your holy days, Frevisse?”
“When needs be,” Frevisse said. “But I’m hoping to change my ways. Weren’t you a little obvious in ‘my dearing’ me just now?”
“I was afraid anything more subtle would be lost in the thickets of Sir Walter’s brain. I notice you ‘uncled’ me readily enough. What’s all this about?”
Frevisse said, “Come with me to Domina Edith. I have to tell her what I’ve learned today. So doing, we’ll both tell you what’s been happening.”
The parlor was drowsing in its comfortable sameness as they entered, except that Domina Edith, leaning heavily on the arm of Sister Lucy, was turning from the window.
“I saw only the last of it,” she said. “You were well come, Master Chaucer, and have mightily displeased them. You see something of the trouble we’re in of a sudden.”
“The sight of Dame Frevisse beset with a Fenner and Master Montfort tells me enough to make me want to hear the rest, I promise you.”
With Frevisse’s and Sister Lucy’s help, Domina Edith sank carefully into her chair. When she was settled, she bid Sister Lucy go, saying Dame Frevisse would see to her until Sext. When she was safely gone, Domina Edith fixed Chaucer with a firm look. “There have been two murders done here, Master Chaucer,” she began and then explained, concluding, “Sir Walter has decided our novice Thomasine is the guilty one and is determined to see she suffers for it.”
“And you’re sure she is not?”
Domina Edith cocked her head toward Frevisse. “You and Dame Claire know that part best. Tell him.”
It was a relief to lay everything out in simple steps to someone not entangled in the mess, and Frevisse said readily, “From all the symptoms on Lady Ermentrude when she rode in here that second day, she was poisoned before she ever reached St. Frideswide’s. Dame Claire swears it is true, and believes the poison was henbane. It was when that failed that the killer went to nightshade, and killed first Martha Hayward and then Lady Ermentrude. So certainly Lady Ermentrude died of poison given her here in St. Frideswide’s, but assuredly she arrived already poisoned. I’d been trying to learn who could have poisoned her wine the night before she died since only a few people were near her. When we learned of the henbane, I had to learn who was with her both at her niece’s and here.”
“And you’ve done so?”
“As nearly as possible, I think.”
The cloister bell began to chime for Sext. Domina Edith sighed. “I confess myself strongly tempted to miss my prayers this time to hear more of this. But Heaven takes precedence, and I’ve learned too many times that prayers both aid and comfort me in worldly matters. Do you stay and talk, Dame Frevisse, about this with Master Chaucer. His greater knowledge of the world may be the boon we’ve needed. I give you leave to stay here with him and miss Sext because matters are becoming worse and the sooner there is answer to this matter, the better. Only call for Sister Lucy to come for me, if it please you.”
Chaucer withdrew to the window to wait while Domina Edith was helped from her chair and out of the room. Her shuffle of footsteps faded down the stairs, and Frevisse found she was thinking the brief verse that belonged to Sext’s prayers day in and out: “Incline to my aid, O God: O Lord, make haste to help me.” With an inward, unhappy smile at how apt that was, she turned to Chaucer.
“It’s all in bits and pieces, Uncle, with none of it giving an answer I can hold to. Some several people could have killed her but what I need to know now is the reason for her dying. It must have been a sudden one, something beyond the ordinary, because Lady Ermentrude had been like this for years.”
“You mean dead?”
Despite herself, humor twitched at Frevisse’s mouth. “Be respectful. I meant offensive.”
“That’s much more respectful, yes.”
A moment of laughter warmed between them, then faded. Quietly Frevisse said, “The question I can’t let go of is, what changed? Why suddenly now did someone decide Lady Ermentrude was no longer bearable? Why suddenly now did she need to be dead? We have to find it out, and who did it, before it tears any further at St. Frideswide’s peace.”
“Perhaps after all it wasn’t only Lady Ermentrude they were after. Perhaps Martha was an intended victim, not a chance one. Tell me about her. Was she anyone in particular, this Martha Hayward? Anyone Lady Ermentrude knew?”
“Before she came here, she was in Lady Ermentrude’s kitchen, a position of no great importance, but she would talk of her mistress as if she were her chambermaid. Lady Ermentrude found her a place here when she was reducing her servants after her husband’s death.”
“Has she been much in contact with Lady Ermentrude of late?”
“Not at all, that I know of. It seems only chance brought her instead of someone else to watch at Lady Ermentrude’s bedside then.”
“How did she die? Where?”
“There in the room. Of poison. She had a tendency to greed and it seems she drank some of the drugged wine and gobbled the milksop meant for Lady Ermentrude. The poison was in one or the other.”
“Hmmm,” said Chaucer. “So Lady Ermentrude was given the rest of the goblet’s contents later?”
“No, a fresh mixture was prepared for her, and after she drank it, she died. And so, it seems, did her monkey.”
He sat down, to show he was willing both to wait and listen, and said, “Tell me what you’ve learned, and what you suspect. Lady Ermentrude left almost as soon as I did?”
“I saw you out the gate and as I turned away, Lady Ermentrude was coming, intent on leaving.”
“You don’t know why?”
“She never said, simply rode off with a few men-at-arms and two of her ladies because she was in haste, she said.”
“And she went direct to–”
“To Thomasine’s sister and her husband. Sir John Wykeham and Lady Isobel. I believe you know them?”
“He was in my ward. I helped to arrange their marriage.”
“Lady Isobel says that Lady Ermentrude arrived all in a taking and told them their marriage had to be undone. When she and Sir John tried to reason with her, Lady Ermentrude flew into a mindless rage and fought with them far into the night, then in the morning stormed away, intent on returning here. She was still in such a temper she refused to eat, only drank some wine brought from Sir John’s stores. Sir John and his lady followed after her, in fear she would do damage to herself or make herself ill, she was so angry.”
“Does Sir John tell the same story?”
“Sir John is telling nothing at all. His tooth is paining him and his jaw is swollen, but he heard what his wife said to me and made no denying gesture to anything.”
“What do you think of them?”
Frevisse said cautiously, “He seems an easy man, and kind. He and his lady are most fond of one another, but… Lady Isobel seems utterly willing to accept that her sister killed Lady Ermentrude, though it pains her to think it.”
“Have you pointed out that Thomasine couldn’t have done it?”
“No one knows about the henbane except Dame Claire, Domina Edith, me, and now you.”
“A quarrel lasting well into the night and yet so little to be said of its details seems unlikely,” mused Chaucer. “Have you asked anyone else what they might have heard?”
“I’ve questioned two servants who were there, but the door to the solar where they argued is regrettably thick and the window protected by a walled garden. All that was heard besides Sir John trying to quiet them was something about a marriage and France and the need to undo it.” Chaucer’s expression changed. “What are you thinking?”
He did not reply directly, but asked, “Lady Ermentrude said nothing about marriage when she returned here? Nothing at all?”
“No, what she wanted was to take Thomasine away. That’s all she said before she went into a sort of screaming, gibbering fit, and then collapsed into exhausted sleep or unconsciousness.”‘
“But you’re sure Lady Ermentrude was already poisoned before then.”
“Very sure. What we thought was drunkenness when she arrived was the effect of henbane.” Something shifted and slipped into place in Frevisse’s mind. “Henbane,” she said.
But Chaucer was not listening; he rose to his feet and went to the window to stare out at the sky. “I thought there would be more rain but it’s looking to break to sunshine soon. That will be good for the harvest, I’m thinking.”
“You’re thinking something else as well,” Frevisse said.
Chaucer turned back to her, his face grim, untouched by any of his wonted humor. “What I’m to tell you goes no farther than yourself.” She nodded and he continued, “When I went from here the other day, it was to Hertford and the queen I went, not my own business. And I went because of what Lady Ermentrude was stupidly hinting at that afternoon. About secrets and trouble in the queen’s household.”
Frevisse cast back to what they had talked of that afternoon when Lady Ermentrude had come. There had been no seeming importance to any of it at the time, and she had not thought on it since, but, “Yes, I remember. You knew what she meant?”
“I didn’t know then. I know now. Her Grace Queen Catherine, daughter of King Charles VI of France, widow of King Henry V of famous memory, and mother of our present King Henry VI of England, has been married this half year past to a Welsh esquire of no family worth mentioning, an officer in her household. Before spring comes, she’ll bear his child.”
Frevisse felt her mouth open, then drew it sharply closed on every question or comment that came into her mind. A queen’s marriage – a widowed queen’s as well as any other’s – was a matter of state, to be talked over in councils, debated and decided on by the lords of the government for the best ends of the realm. It was not a thing done in secrecy, as this one must have been, and never with a nobody of both foreign and ordinary birth. And if there was going to be a child, it was a secret that had to come out, and when it did there would be a scandal that would taint anyone connected to it.
“So it’s no wonder Lady Ermentrude was leaving her service,” Frevisse said. “To escape what will come when the marriage is disclosed.”
“Exactly. Loyal to her own well-being to the end. Though she wasn’t the first or last to find an excuse to leave.”
“But how did you find it all out?”
Humor glinted again in Chaucer’s eyes. “I went and asked Queen Catherine, of course.”
“Just… walked in and asked her?”
“It seemed the straightest way,” Chaucer said. “I told her of meeting Lady Ermentrude and that if there was indeed something afoot, she might be well advised to let me know of it because I don’t want more upsets in the government than are already there, and if this were a secret I could help her keep, I would, if I knew it.”
“And she told you.”
“She knows me. And I met this Owen Tudor of hers for good measure. He may not have any birth to speak of but Her Grace has a fine eye for a well-made man. Small wonder our King will have a half brother by spring. Or a half sister. But none of this is talk for your ears. And it had certainly best never come out of your mouth.”
“No fear of that,” she said fervently. “And this somehow concerns Lady Ermentrude?”
“I warned Her Grace what Lady Ermentrude had said and nearly said, but Queen Catherine knew her well enough and had made sure before she left that there was someone paid among her women to keep eye and ear on what she did. If she looked like becoming too free of tongue, she was to be reminded there were ways she would suffer, too, if the queen did.”
“Or be silenced,” Frevisse said. Thomas did not even nod; he would not admit a queen might even think of giving order for a murder. “Maryon,” she said.
“That’s the name Queen Catherine gave me, yes.”
Frevisse felt a momentary, airy relief that it could all be so simple. Then she lost the feeling. “Maryon wasn’t here in the parlor to hear Lady Ermentrude be nearly indiscreet.”
Chaucer asked, “Was she with her to the Wykehams’?” At Frevisse’s nod he looked grimly satisfied. “Then Lady Ermentrude said something on the ride. Or for all we are knowing, her almost indiscretion here wasn’t her first. She may have been doing it ever since she left the queen, and with one thing and another, Maryon may have decided the risk was great enough to warrant her death, and at the Wykehams’ was her first chance.”
“The marriage that Lady Ermentrude wanted undone!” Frevisse said excitedly. “It wasn’t Lady Isobel and Sir John’s, it was the queen’s! But why would she have told them about it?”
“I’ve no idea on that, but I mean to ask them very soon,” Chaucer said grimly. “At any rate, Maryon must have heard enough to think it best to end her then.”
“There’s no question of the Wykehams’ marriage being doubtful?”
Chaucer made a dismissive gesture. “We managed it between us, Lady Ermentrude and I, since Lady Isobel’s father was already ill then. All things were rightly done and they’re firmly married. That at least is certain.”
“So if now Sir John and Lady Isobel are insisting it was their own marriage they were quarreling over, it would be because they’re frightened and trying to cover the real cause of it. But then why…” Frevisse fell silent a moment. Chaucer waited until she firmly said, “But then why did Lady Ermentrude come back here insisting Thomasine had to be taken from the nunnery? That’s not of a piece with the rest. It doesn’t make full sense.”
“We don’t have to make full sense of it,” Chaucer said. “It may have been the henbane working in her, so there’d be no sense to anything she did. For our purposes, we only have to be sure of who did the poisoning. And that brings us to the little problem of how I am to take the woman Maryon from here without Sir Walter knowing it.”
“Without him knowing it?” Even as she echoed him, Frevisse caught at his unsaid thought and felt her face, like his own, go very still and unrevealing. Carefully she said, “He has to know it. How else do we call him off Thomasine?”
“The matter of Thomasine will have to wait. The matter of the queen’s secret is more important. If we accuse this woman Maryon, our reason for it has to come out and that is not possible.”‘
Frevisse’s chin came up. “Then Thomasine remains in danger of her life?”
Chaucer held out his hand and said quickly, “No, assuredly not. All I need do is have the woman away from here without Sir Walter or Montfort having their hands on her first. Word can be sent back of what I’ve done and then the priory and Thomasine will both be clear. It’s Montfort’s questioning her we can’t have. Once away, she’s the queen’s concern, and the queen can deal with both Montfort and Sir Walter. But I have to have the woman out of their reach.”
There was sense enough in that, and ways out for the priory and Thomasine and Chaucer and the queen all at once. Frevisse sighed and asked, “How?”
He had already thought that far. “At my asking, Sir John will surely be willing to help. There’s no reason for him to stay longer. He can claim his own pain, or his wife’s concern for their children, and make his departure in the morning. The woman Maryon can go with them, as if Lady Isobel had taken her into their household. But she’ll be under Sir John’s arrest, and he’ll keep her for me until I can come, no more than an hour later. I think Sir Walter and good Master Montfort–”
Footsteps heavy with hurry and clumsiness beat suddenly on the steps outside the open door.
“Benedic–” Frevisse began, but the servant Ela flung into the room without waiting. All panting and red-faced, disheveled from her limping haste, she gasped out, “They’re going to take her! Sir Walter’s men, they’re all outside the church and they’re going to break in and take her!”
Continue with Chapter 13 tomorrow!
