A Twisted Vengeance

Laughing as they were caught in a downpour, Kate, Jennet, and Berend hurried into the kitchen, watched with interest by Lille and Ghent, who’d had the good sense to seek shelter with the first drop. The three had lingered out on the bench beneath the eaves, talking quietly while listening for signs of trouble. That was Kate’s doing. Or Geoff’s. He was strangely present in Kate’s mind this evening, worrying, wondering about Eleanor’s behavior, itchy with foreboding.

Earlier, Kate had found her mother in the Martha House garden and tried to make peace. “I have invited Dean Richard and Helen to dinner tomorrow. Will you join us?”

Instead of a surprised smile, Eleanor shook her head, a tight shake, more a shiver. “How well do you know your uncle?”

Kate thought about his surprising gift. “Not as well as I might like. He has been helpful.” Until Eleanor arrived, she thought. “But we have argued of late.”

“You are strong, Katherine. I am proud of you, of the life you have made here despite Simon’s regrettable behavior.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, surprised and moved by her mother’s praise, though uncertain what that had to do with her invitation.

“But the girls, the weaponry,” Eleanor added. “They are not being brought up on the border as you were, they are city girls. Such knowledge – it will only hurt them when it comes to marriage. Or the religious life.”

“They have both suffered much loss,” said Kate, “and the indifference of their parents. They both know how unreliable others can be. How important it is to know how to care for oneself.”

Eleanor covered Kate’s hand with hers. “They have you, my dear. Your task is to prove that to them. That you are always there.”

As Mother was not? She was so busy blaming Father for our troubles when we were small she could not be bothered protecting us. How would she? She disdained anything resembling a weapon. Geoff’s words were so loud in her head that she braced herself for her mother’s reaction.

But Eleanor was patting Kate’s hand and talking about Marie’s delicate frame, how Petra might benefit from more time with the sisters, learning to be quiet and still.

“Petra is skilled in the art of stillness,” said Kate. Be quiet, Geoff. I do not want her to know you are here. “Will you come to dinner with the dean tomorrow?”

That tight shake of the head again, the unease in her mother’s eyes. “No. No, I think not.” Eleanor rose, shaking out her skirts. “It is time for prayer.”

She trembles, Kate. What frightens her?

“Did the dean offend you, refusing to be the sisters’ confessor?” Kate asked.

Eleanor touched Kate’s cheek. “He is your family, not mine. I feel about the Cliffords” – she seemed to search for words – “much as you feel about the Nevilles. It is said we marry the families, not the individuals, but that is not true. We are tolerated by the families while there is the possibility of an heir, a son who will bring renown to the name. I lost my sons, you were denied them.” A shrug. “I have no quarrel with your uncle.” She emphasized the last word. “He is nothing to me.”

Not true. He is something, and it terrifies her, Geoff noted.

Kate saw it as well. He is a Clifford. This is about the Cliffords. Before she could ask her mother if that was so – she might not respond, but her reaction to the question might be telling – Eleanor had changed the subject.

“You should know, Thomas Holme says the sheriffs are making no effort to find Hans’s murderer. They presume it was one of many brawls among the soldiers and the men of York that begins in taverns and alehouses and spills out onto the streets, that he might have been as much to blame as the man who unwittingly killed him. I have never heard such nonsense. Thomas says they care naught because Hans was but a servant, not even a man of the realm, and therefore not worth the bother. He thought, hearing that, I would tell him where Werner is. He said Werner was his servant, his responsibility. But I cannot help Thomas. I’ve no idea where Werner might be.”

“Is that true? You do not know where he and Griffin are?”

“That part is true, Daughter. I deemed it best I knew nothing of their plan, how they intended to find out who murdered Hans, and why.”

“You said that part. What knowledge did you keep from Thomas?”

Eleanor waved away the question. “I misspoke. A storm is coming – can you smell it? My head is pounding. Of course I misspoke. You must have patience with me, Daughter. I am not so young as I was.”

“Werner is with Griffin, and they have a plan?”

A hesitation. “Of course they have a plan. They walked off together, did they not? They must have some plan. We would be lost without a path, an intention, a guide – that is what the beguines have given me, a guide for living.” She waved a hand and began to walk away.

There was cunning in her mother’s feigned confusion. “Werner has not been seen with Griffin.”

A shrug. “They are being cautious. That is all to the good.”

Frosts and Cliffords. Her uncle, her mother, both pointed to a rift in the bond of Kate’s two families.

Three. The Nevilles.

For once, that lot are not troubling me, Geoff.

Another feud. Will it prove as deadly as ours with the Cavertons? Or the king’s with his cousin?

Ever since Kate’s conversation with their mother, Geoff had whispered of feuds and imminent danger.

I will wish you gone if you persist, Geoff, she’d threatened at last.

He had been silent since that thought, his absence simply adding to Kate’s unease. Lille and Ghent had caught her mood, eyeing anything that moved, peering into the shadows.

Now, Kate tried to shrug off her concerns about that conversation as she rushed into the kitchen, forcing herself to laugh with Jennet and Berend. Laughter cleared the mind. She blinked in the light. The kitchen was bright with lamps and the fire that would keep the bread dough rising through the night. The three moved close to the fire, drying their clothes, grinning at themselves for biding there as the fat drops began. They’d all known that was prelude to a downpour.

“Aimed at us where we sat!” Jennet said with a laugh.

Berend nodded, but he eyed Kate with concern. “All the while we sat out there, you were listening for something. For what?”

How well he knew her. She told them about her conversation with Eleanor, all her pauses, the care with which she chose her words, words that denied the fear so evident in her cold hands, her shakiness. All so tangible that Kate could not even now, in the warmth and comfort of the kitchen, escape the sense that danger was near. She held up her cup for more ale. “And she will not dine with us tomorrow. My uncle distrusts the Frosts, Mother distrusts the Cliffords.” She paused there, glancing at her companions, waiting for them to say it.