An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters

don’t doubt it, but, man, man, you should have put in a word to give her due
warning then. You come three years too late!”
    “Too
late?” Nicholas sat back and drew in his hands slowly, stricken. Then she’s
already married?”
    “You
might call it so!” Reginald hoisted wide shoulders in a helpless gesture. “But
not to any man. And you might have sped well enough if you’d made more haste,
for all I know. No, this is quite a different story. There was some discussion,
even, about whether she was still bound like a wife to Marescot — a great
foolery, but the churchmen have to assert their authority, and my father’s
chaplain was prim as a virgin — though I suspect, for all that, in private he
was none! — and clutched at every point of canon law that gave him power, and
he took the extreme line, and would have it she was legally a wife, while the
parish priest argued the opposing way, and my father, being a sensible man,
took his side and insisted she was free. All this I learned by stages since. I
never took part or put my head into the hornets’ nest.”
    Nicholas
was frowning into his cupped hands, feeling the cold heaviness of
disappointment drag his heart down. But still this was not a complete answer.
He looked up ruefully. “So how did this end? Why is she not here to use her
freedom, if she has not yet given herself to a husband?”
    “Ah,
but she has! She took her own way. She said that if she was free, then she
would make her own choice. And she chose to do as Marescot had done, and took a
husband not of this world. She has taken the veil as a Benedictine nun.”
    “And
they let her?” demanded Nicholas, wrung between rage and pain. “Then, when she
was moved by this broken match, they let her go so easily, throw away her youth
so unwisely?”
    “They
let her, yes. How do I know whether she was wise or no? If it was what she
wished, why should she not have it? Since she went I’ve never had word from
her, never has she complained or asked for anything. She must be happy in her
choice. You must look elsewhere for a wife, my friend!”
    Nicholas
sat silent for a time, swallowing a bitterness that burned in his belly like
fire. Then he asked, with careful quietness: “How was it? When did she leave
her home? How attended?”
    “Very
soon after your visit, I judge. It might be a month while they fought out the
issue, and she said never a word. But all was done properly. Our father gave
her an escort of three men-at-arms and a huntsman who had always been a
favourite and made a pet of her, and a good dowry in money, and also some
ornaments for her convent, silver candlesticks and a crucifix and such. He was
sad to see her go, I know by what he said later, but she wanted it so, and her
wants were his commands always.” A very slight chill in his brisk, decisive
voice spoke of an old jealousy. The child of Humphrey’s age had plainly usurped
his whole heart, even though his son would inherit all when that heart no
longer beat. “He lived barely a month longer,” said Reginald. “Only long enough
to see the return of her escort, and know she was safely delivered where she
wished to be. He was old and feeble, we knew it. But he should not have
dwindled so soon.”
    “He
might well miss her,” said Nicholas, very low and hesitantly, “about the place.
She had a brightness… And you did not send for her, when her father died?”
    “To
what end? What could she do for him, or he for her? No, we let her be. If she
was happy there, why trouble her?”
    Nicholas
gripped his hands together under the board, and wrung them hard, and asked his
last question: “Where was it she chose to go?” His own voice sounded to him
hollow and distant.
    “She’s
in the Benedictine abbey of Wherwell, close by Andover.”
    So
that was the end of it! All this time she had been within hail of him, the
house of her refuge encircled now by armies and factions