Free The Stone-Worker's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries) by Margaret Frazer Page B

not suffer if you charge Nicol with it."
    "Nicol doesn't think so," Alice pointed out sharply.
    Master Wyndford sent his son a hard look.  "Simon Maye is his friend.  He speaks from that rather than honestly about his own skill."
    And his father would take him to task for it later, Frevisse thought.
    Alice, unsatisfied, looked from father to son to father again, and said impatiently, "I'll think on it and tell you later."
    She swung away from him in a swirl of long skirts and fine veiling.  It was to her back that he bowed, saying, "My lady," Nicol and all the workmen bowing, too, as she swept away across the church toward the outer door in even worse humour than she had come.
    Outside the church, her ladies were waiting for her, already under her disapproval, come to it long before Master Wyndford, when one too few of them had come to her bedchamber at dawn to ready her for the day.  She had looked around and asked, concerned, "Where's Elyn?"
    Lady Sybille, senior among her ladies-in-waiting, in her service for years, had looked at Beth and Cathryn, youngest among Alice's ladies – girls whose noble families had set them to serve and learn in Lady Alice's household until they were old enough for the marriages made for them.  "Tell my lady," Lady Sybille had said sternly.
    Beth and Cathryn had traded guilty looks, with Cathryn shifting uneasily a little aside, leaving answering to Beth, who had said with sufficient boldness to show her innocence in the matter, "We don't know, my lady.  She went out last night and never came back to bed."
    The three of them shared a bed in the chamber beyond Alice's bedchamber where her ladies-in-waiting and waiting women slept. Lady Sybille, who oversaw them all, had her bed there, too, but it was curtained, giving her such privacy as befitted her higher place in the household.  Alice looked at her, and she answered, not needing to hear the question, "We saw you and Domina Frevisse to bed.  Then they saw me to mine.  So far as I knew, Elyn then settled to bed with the rest of them.  I had no reason to think she did not, the other women were paying no heed, going to bed themselves, and these two did not see fit to say anything."
    "She said she would be back!" Beth protested.  "Then we fell asleep and didn't know she didn't come!"
    "Not until we woke up this morning," Cathryn added.
    "Do you at least know where she meant to go?" Alice had asked.
    Cathryn had looked at the floor.  Beth had whispered as if in the confessional, "To see Simon Maye.  We think.  She didn't say."
    Lady Sybille drew in a sharp, impatient breath.  "At that hour?  Surely not," while Alice had said angrily, "Has it gone that far between them?"
    Spurred by Alice's anger, Beth had said with sudden enterprise and some desperation, "She maybe did come back and we were asleep too heavily to know it, and she woke up before we did and is only gone out for an early walk."
    "She'll be back for breakfast, surely," one of the other women had offered.
    "That's somewhat too late," Alice had snapped.  Already in her undergown of cream-colored linen, she had pointed at her green outer gown and ordered, "Finish dressing me."  And to Lady Sybille beginning a protest over the tray waiting with bread and cold meats for her to break her fast,  "No, I'll eat when I come back."
    "Come back?" Lady Sybille had faltered.
    "From seeing what Simon Maye has to say about this," Lady Alice had said grimly.
    Severe as Elyn's foolishness was, Frevisse supposed Alice would likely have left dealing with it to Lady Sybille and the household priest except Simon Maye was part of it and that meant that so was work on her tomb.  Frevisse had seen the young man each time she had gone with Alice to the church to see how the work went.  The first time, intent on his work, he had been unaware of anyone else was there until Master Wyndford had said behind him, "Simon, my lady has come to see your work again."  Then Simon had hurriedly laid