The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the prioress.
    That was not unusual. People often came with need to see Domina Elisabeth, but it meant Sister Johane would not be back to her desk soon, would have to stay with Domina Elisabeth and her guests, it being unseemly for any nun to be alone with a man or men. Frevisse, quite happy it was Sister Johane and not her trapped to that duty, was less happy a moment later to hear old Ela’s limping shuffle along the cloister walk and—resigned—had already stoppered her inkpot and was cleaning her penpoint when Ela bobbed a curtsy beside her desk and whispered, “I think you ßmight best come to the guesthall, my lady, if it please you.”
    To leave Dame Perpetua and Dame Juliana undisturbed, Frevisse waited until she and Ela were outside the cloister, crossing the courtyard toward the guesthall, to ask why Ela wanted her, but Ela only answered, “Something’s not right. I don’t like it. There’s two women come with those men. You’ll see. There’s that, too.”
    She jerked her chin toward a curtained litter at the gateway into the nunnery’s outer yard, the two horses between its forward and rear shafts standing with the head-lowered weariness of having come far and hard. A travel-dressed man, standing much like the horses, was holding six other saddled, equally wearied horses nearby. Since there were priory servants who would have seen to watering them at least, even if the travelers did not intend to stay, why were they all standing there like that? Added to Ela’s dislike of whatever was going on, the question brought so many possibilities to Frevisse’s mind—ranging from unpleasant to unlawful— that she held off asking anything more.
    The priory’s guesthall, though it had a few rooms kept for travelers of the better sort, such as last night’s franklin, was mostly a wide, long, open-raftered room where trestle tables could be set up for meals, then taken down and set against the wall at night, clearing the floor for bedding to be laid out for lesser guests and poorer travelers. At this mid-hour of the afternoon neither tables were set up nor bedding laid out and certainly there was no fire in the fireplace at the near end of the hall, but one of the low, backless wooden benches was set beside it, and on it sat the two women. Two men stood a little beyond them, obviously travel fellows to the one waiting with the horses but only servants, and Frevisse no more than noted them, then ignored them. It was the women who were—as Ela had sideways given her to understand— troubling.
    One of them was dressed in a dark green, low collared riding gown of summer-weight linen, her headdress a light veil over a close-fitted coif to cover her hair. She would not have been unlovely, save for the hard set of her mouth and her hawk stare at the woman beside her, as if daring the other to move or speak.
    There seemed small likelihood that the other woman would do either. She was altogether a slighter person, pale and huddled in on herself in a way that made Frevisse think of ill-health and utter weariness. To judge by the black veil over the white wimple that tightly circled her face and completely covered her hair and throat, and the starkly plain, black, sleeveless, open-sided gown she wore over an equally stark, gray, straight-sleeved undergown, she was a widow. It was hardly clothing in which to travel, though, not even in that waiting litter. She looked to have slept in her gown, too, and more than once.
    A prisoner with her guard, was Frevisse’s thought in looking at her. The way the two men stood watchfully behind them made the thought stronger, but Frevisse approached the women showing no more than a mild smile of greeting and in a voice mild to match asked, “My ladies, have you been made welcome? May I ask someone to bring you something to drink, or are you hungry? You or your men?”
    The huddled woman made no move, did not look up from her hands clasped tightly in her lap. One of the men shifted