The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 14

By midday the world was soaking, with mud underfoot and every eave steadily dripping when Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth picked their way across the street to Lady Agnes’s to find four more guests had come, three men and a woman, friends of Lady Agnes ridden in for the funeral, though Frevisse gathered from their cheerful talk as they stood together in the hall waiting for the tables to be laid for dinner that they were here more for curiosity’s sake than out of mourning for Montfort. When all was ready and they moved to be seated at the high table, Lady Agnes bade the men-Frevisse had not tried to keep their names in mind-to sit all together on her right because, she said, they would talk of things the women would not want to and therefore she would have the women on her left, the better to talk without the men.

For herself, Frevisse was pleased to be put to the table’s far end with Domina Elisabeth between her and the other woman and Lady Agnes. From there she would hardly be part of any talk and able to listen or not, as she chose. Mostly she chose not. The nearest talk, between Lady Agnes and the woman and sometimes Domina Elisabeth, was as easy to foretell as Lady Agnes had said the men’s would be-of the weather and neighbors and children. Frevisse, sitting with eyes lowered and all her heed seemingly on the well-spiced, roasted meatballs and creamed parsnip soup, found herself listening past Domina Elisabeth’s agreement that indeed the snow was melting fast today, who would have thought it after yesterday’s cold, to the men’s talk at the table’s other end. If the meal had been a full feast, the hall full of people, there would have been no hearing them, but there were only household folk at the lower table today, speaking quietly in the presence of their betters, while the men were trading comments on Montfort, boisterous with each other’s company and most of what they said coming clearly over the women’s talk. The surprise for Frevisse lay in how little ill of Montfort they had to say. The times she had encountered him, his stupidity had seemed exceeded only by his rudeness, but among the three men here there was a kind of grudging respect for the way he had been rising in the world.

“He was sharp enough,” the farthest man granted to something one of the others had said. “Look where he started from and where he ended.”

“He ended dead,” the man beside him said.

They all laughed but the first man went on, insisting, “So will we all, but in the meanwhile Montfort did well enough. Look at him buying that manor two years back.”

“And this year he bought his way into the escheator-ship,” the third man said. “Word is that he was looking to be sheriff one of these years soon.”

God forbid, Frevisse thought, while the second man said, “He’d been making warm with Suffolk, the word is.”

“Oh, aye. Suffolk.” The first man’s tone carried a burden of unsaid things and a moment’s silence among the men agreed with him before the third one said, “Have you heard he’s been given keeping of the Norwich bishopric until a new bishop is made?”

“He’ll make a pretty penny off of it, that’s sure.”

“He does off of everything else.”

Frevisse was grateful that if Domina Elisabeth or Lady Agnes heard any of that, neither of them saw fit to offer comment on her own tenuous link to Suffolk. For her own part, she would as soon forget it but it was unsurprised that Montfort had been trying to attach there.

Just as James Champyon was.

His purpose and Montfort’s had been running the same way, it seemed. Had they run together? Because if they did, then neither Master nor Mistress Champyon had had anything to fear from Montfort, no reason to want him dead. Never a man to be put off from his own ends unless forced to it, Montfort would have found in their favor over the contested manner, whatever the truth might be.

But what if Master Champyon had been Montfort’s rival for Suffolk’s interest? Or Montfort been playing to some other end than the plain one and somehow against Master Champyon’s interests? Then Master Champyon or even his stepson Rowland might have had reason to want him dead rather than treacherously alive.

But to what other end than Suffolk’s favor could Montfort have been playing?

And how would Master Champyon or anyone else have known of it, been certain enough of it to go to the length and danger of murdering Montfort?

She knew too little and had to depend too much on things overheard or happened on by chance, as with these men now-and following her own thoughts, she had lost what they were saying-or with Sister Ysobel this morning.

Losing hold a little on her patience, she scooped her spoon forcefully into a browned-almond-topped white rice pudding, tired of time spent eating and thankful that since there would be food after the funeral and therefore no point to feeding full now, the meal was shorter than it might have been. Once done and making ready to go out, Lady Agnes and her woman guest held brief debate on whether they should wear the thick wooden pattens that would put them dry-footed above the snowmelt and mud, but mindful of the clatter they would make on the church’s stone floor or the bother of dealing with them if taken off and carried, they decided against, despite Letice’s frown at Lady Agnes. Instead, with Frevisse slightly trailing behind everyone else and their busy talk, they all made their way into the street and along it with much swerving from puddles, the women with lifted skirts.

There was drier going across the priory’s cobbled yard and into the churchyard with its wide, graveled path between the graves, leading from its penticed gateway to the wide gathering place outside the church’s north door. With the door still closed, no one was going in yet, the perhaps two score other folk standing around in clusters, most of them knowing each other, to judge by the steady on-go of subdued talk among them and how widely Lady Agnes and the men and woman with her were welcomed. But Domina Elisabeth had fallen back from among them to Frevisse’s side when they came into the churchyard and now she drew Frevisse aside with her, saying low-voiced, “I think it best that we’re seen to be here on our own, rather than with Lady Agnes. Because of this inheritance matter. It wouldn’t be seemly to give appearance of being somehow entangled with it.”

Frevisse slightly bowed her head, willingly agreeing with that and, more than willingly, followed Domina Elisabeth’s quiet sideways drift to a lee behind one of the larger clusters of people, not far from the church door but out of the way and people’s notice, in their black cloaks and veils unremarkable among the rest of the dark-clad mourners.

Outside the cloister and among so many strangers, Frevisse should have had her head deeply bowed and her eyes lowered. Instead, she bowed her head only enough to seem looking downward while able to cast quick looks around the yard, finding she knew few among the people gathered there. Besides Lady Agnes and her friends now in talk with several men Frevisse thought had been jurors, paired with women probably their wives, the only others familiar to her were Master and Mistress Champyon standing well away across the yard, with Juliana and her brother Rowland beside their mother, the four of them noticeably by themselves. Others there would be mostly relatives of Montfort or his wife, Frevisse guessed, or else unrelatives of sufficient acquaintance-she never seemed to think of friendship as part of Montfort’s life-to feel they should be here. Others, like Lady Agnes and her friends, were there for no more than curiosity or because they felt their importance required their presence. Some of that latter sort were easily picked out from among the others, standing with a puffed awareness of themselves, their voices a little too loud, their gestures a little too bold, to make certain they did not go unnoticed.

Master Champyon was of their kind, Frevisse judged, though presently restrained because no one was giving him any notice save his wife and stepchildren. Nonetheless he stood with his feet set firmly apart, as if claiming that space of yard for his own, with his thumbs hooked into his belt and his elbows cocked wide to spread his cloak open, showing his fine, dark-blue houppelande trimmed in black fur and the ornate, gold-shining-but brass, Frevisse guessed-buckle of his wide, black-dyed leather belt.

His wife well-matched him. Her fashionable padded headroll, set over cauls rather than a wimple, was that little too wide, the layers of veil draped over it that little too full, and she stood with the same over-boldness as her husband, a lift to her head as she looked around the yard with sharp, determined eyes that suggested she was going to be offended soon at being so completely ignored.

Her son, standing on her other side from Master Champyon, had neither his stepfather’s arrogance nor his mother’s sharp eyes, only the set face of someone who wished he were somewhere else. Broad-boned and of good height, he was somewhat wide-girthed for so young a man and likely heading toward what would be fat in a very few years. If he had been named after Rowland, Charlemagne’s great hero of legend, his mother must be displeased with how he was going, but more likely his namesake and probably godfather had been a wealthy uncle, or neighbor who might be hoped to remember his godchild generously in a will.

Frevisse chided herself for judging Mistress Champyon without knowing her except by guesses grown from other people’s words. As for Rowland himself, she had even less by which to guess anything about him. All she could really say with any certainty was that he was of a size to have been able to drive a dagger into Montfort.

And then there was Juliana.

Frevisse took some comfort that, by openly acknowledging her dislike of her, she could at least try to work against it toward being fair. But her good intent was not helped by Juliana being the only one of her family who looked at ease with being here, as if wherever she was should be pleased that she was there. Slender and bright in her blue cloak, she had an assured grace in even the slight turning of her head as she looked around the yard. Like her mother, she wore cauls and padded headroll rather than merely wimple and veil but the cauls were neatly proportioned to frame the delicacy of her face, the headroll only wide enough to spread the short veil draped over it into soft wings that drifted gracefully on either side as she turned her head back to say something to her brother.

Rowland bent his head toward her, said something in return that Juliana seemingly answered with something else because he broke toward laughter that changed his glooming face to that of a younger, brighter man before he stifled it with a hand over his mouth and their mother said something at him that brought his gloom back. Juliana turned her head away, removing herself again from their company. A moment later her look sharpened and Frevisse turned her own head to see Master Haselden entering, trim in black doublet and hose, one side of his cloak thrown back over his shoulder to leave his left hand free, held at waist-height for the woman beside him-surely his wife-to cling to with one hand while holding her skirts clear of the ground with the other. Only when she was safely through the gateway, but still clinging to her husband and her skirts, did Mistress Haselden look up and around with a rapid little glance that made Frevisse think of a mouse caught out of its hole, too frighted to know which way to run. Nichola and Stephen were just behind them and the likeness between mother and daughter was easy to see, though Nichola was pretty with a youth her mother had long since left behind, nor did she have any of her mother’s shyness. Very likely she had never met Montfort; his death could hardly mean anything to her; she was maybe too young to believe much in anyone’s dying, let alone a stranger’s, and though she was trying to keep a mourner’s face, she was looking about her with hardly inheld eagerness as Stephen led her in her parents’ wake toward Lady Agnes.

It was slow going, with constant pausing for greetings and brief talk with various people. Their way took them nowhere near the Champyons, Rowland, and Juliana, which was just as well. Likewise to the good, they made not even a look toward Master and Mistress Champyon’s proud and bitter glares.

Rowland, on the other hand, was studying either his toes or the ground in front of them and Juliana…

Her look was both aching and angry as her eyes followed Stephen across the yard, but all Frevisse curtly thought was that if it hurt that much to see him, then she should not look-unless seeing him with his wife would serve to remind her that neither should she touch.

“We’re going in,” Domina Elisabeth said.

Frevisse gladly turned both herself and her thoughts away from living troubles to the needs of the dead, with hope that Montfort’s funeral would help her find way to pray more whole-mindedly for him than she yet had. She and Domina Elisabeth were among the last to go in, passing from the day’s thin sunlight into the church’s twilight and column-shadows, stopping not far inside the door with no pretense of right to any forward place, here by chance and only because it was more seemly that they be than not. Through the shift and settle of people ahead of her, Frevisse briefly saw Mistress Montfort standing, veil-draped, in a cleared place in front of the rood screen, her two daughters on her left, Christopher and another man and a half-grown boy on her right. They made a black-clad cluster of mourning with their equally black-clad household folk gathered behind them, Master Gruesby probably among them.

Somewhere beyond the rood screen, near the altar, was Montfort’s body and, beyond the altar, the place readied for its burial beneath the chancel floor. From where she stood behind so many people Frevisse could see only the altar itself, shining in a halo of candlelight, with a glimpse of St. Mary’s nuns in their choir stalls, before the priest in gold-embroidered black vestments moved into his place at the altar. The Mass for the dead went its slow, mourning way, carried on the priest’s strong voice and the nuns’ singing, with incense from the swung censors making a golden nimbus in the many candles’ light around the altar, drifted among the rafters and down among the crowd. Carried on the wonder of the prayers wound through with the dark mystery of death and the golden hope of life eternal, Frevisse found that at last she had slipped past any troubled effort to pray for Montfort into the glory of praying a soul toward God. Death was the journey beyond journeys, and whatever Montfort had been in life, his soul was on it now, gone into eternity, and she could only wish him mercy, as she hoped for mercy in her turn when her own journey came.

At the end, when all was finished, she stood with bowed head, returning only slowly into the day, into ordinary time and where she was, grateful that Domina Elisabeth stood unmoving beside her until they were crowded back by others crowding out of the way of Mistress Montfort being escorted out by her household, Christopher beside her, the other children behind them, the two girls weeping as if they owed it to themselves to be as openly grieved as possible, the youngest boy stiff-faced with knowing he was being looked at by a great many people whom he did not wish to see him crying. When they were out of the church, people began to mill and talk, voices rising and interest turning, somewhat too openly among some of them, to what there would be in the way of food and drink in the guesthall now but no one making haste out the door, giving Mistress Montfort and her people time to be there ahead of them. For herself, Frevisse wanted to go the other way, following the nuns filing out through their own door into the cloister’s quiet, and nearly said yes when Domina Elisabeth, a little loudly against the mounting voices around them, said, “I promised Ysobel I’d tell her how the funeral went. Will you come with me?”

But this might well be her only chance to find a way to speak with Master or Mistress Champyon without being too noticeable about it. She might well have chance to talk to Master Gruesby, too, and regretfully she said, “By your leave, my lady, I think I’ll go to the guesthall with the others.” And added, not untruthfully, merely inadequately, in answer to Domina Elisabeth’s faint surprise, “I’ll be able to bring all the talk I hear there to Ysobel tomorrow.”

Domina Elisabeth smiled and nodded, satisfied by that, and turned cloisterward, leaving Frevisse to join the drift of folk now leaving the church, although once outside she made no haste across the churchyard back toward the nunnery’s foreyard and the guesthall but took time to gather herself, breathing deeply the sharp-edged air so welcome after the incense-laden church.

That excess of incense and candles had surely been Montfort’s doing rather than anyone else’s. As with his wife’s mourning clothing, he had probably provided for them beforehand by orders and money to their purchase, to be sure his funeral would suit him, and just as well he had because no one else was likely to care as much as he had about it, Frevisse thought.

And so much for where she had gone in prayer during the Mass, she added wryly. Already and easily she was, alas, as uncharitable as ever toward Montfort.

Nor was she much further-if any further-toward learning who had killed him, and the uncomfortable thought rose into her mind that maybe it was not lack of chance holding her back from knowing more about his death but lack of care. Maybe she cared so little that he was dead that it hardly mattered to her who had killed him.

As she passed through the penticed gateway from the churchyard, someone said, “Dame Frevisse?” and she turned to find Dickon standing a little aside from it, plainly waiting for her but looking unsure he should be there until she said, letting him know she was pleased to see him, “Dickon. How goes it with you?”

His unsurety vanished with a grin and he jerked his head toward the guesthall, saying, “That depends on how much they leave for the rest of us.”

He and the other St. Frideswide men, like most of the guests’ servants, had not been in the church for the funeral but neither would they have any part in the feast except for whatever leavings might come their way afterward.

“I’ll eat as little as may be,” Frevisse promised, walking on that way.

Falling into step beside her, Dickon laughed and said, still grinning, “I’ve done what you asked.”

“Good! What did you find?”

“That bank that closes in the garden on that side, it’s for the millstream.”

“The millstream?”

“The mill is there.” Dickon pointed toward a building’s thatched roof showing over the high wall at the other side of the churchyard, not far off from where they stood. “There’s been a deep ditch cut to bring water from the Thames past the mill and then the nunnery,” Dickon explained. “The ditch and the piled-up bank run all along that side of the nunnery before curving back to the Thames near the ferry crossing.”

That was something toward which she might have at least made guess if she’d thought about it, Frevisse realized. To run water through or beside a place was a common way of dealing with a common problem. At St. Frideswide’s the water to carry off kitchen and privy wastes came from a nearby stream by way of a wide, shallow ditch dug past the nunnery and back to the stream. Here the water came from the Thames and served first to turn a mill’s waterwheel as well.

“Is there a path along it?” she asked.

“Not on this side. On the other side there is, beyond the up-banked earth but no way from one side to the other and on their in-sides both banks go down steep, into the water. And the water’s deep. It took a stick almost as tall as me to reach the bottom. And flowing fast, too.”

Frevisse could well believe that, what with the mill to drive and all the force of the Thames behind it. “But someone could make their way along the top of the bank on the nunnery side if they wanted to?”

Dickon shook his head. “There’s barely toes-room at its top. The buildings crowd right up to it and the bank is all grassy anyway. I wouldn’t even try it, for thinking I’d not go far without I’d slip off of it.”

“That’s sensible, then,” said Frevisse. And if a boy could not do it, neither could a man.

“But…” Dickon paused, trying to hold down the smile that wanted to be broad across his face.

“But?” Frevisse asked.

“From the other side of the ditch, looking across, I could see something.”

He was drawing it out, pleased with himself, and patiently Frevisse asked, “What could you see?”

“Below that withy fence, in the grass on the bank where it goes down into the water, there’s stones sticking out.”

“Stones,” Frevisse repeated, failing to see how that mattered.

“Worked stones. Big ones. Like from a wall that had fallen.” He was open about his excitement now. “Not a lot of them. At least not a lot that show. The ones I could see look to be mostly buried in the bank, with the grass grown up and nearly hiding them.”

Frevisse caught up to what he was saying. “You mean someone could have used them to climb up the bank that’s otherwise too steep to climb. They would have been hand and foot holds.”

“Yes!”

Her own rising excitement faded. “There’s still the matter of how he reached them across the ditch.”

“A rope,” Dickon said promptly. “If he had a rope, he could have stood on the meadow side of the ditch, tossed a loop of it over the top of one of the posts the fence is tied to, they’re heavy things, by the look of them, and held on to it to keep from being swept away while he crossed over. He could have gone back the same way and pulled the rope free, and just walked off.”

“It’s possible,” Frevisse granted, slowly. “How well can that part of the bank along the ditch be seen from anywhere? Did you think to notice?”

“Of course I thought to notice.” He sounded a little offended and somewhat scornful that she thought he might not. “Upstream, there’s an upstairs window in the mill looks that way and another one in the gable end of whatever cloister building it is that overlooks the garden and two more in the same building where it runs along the bank. Downstream towards the ferry there’s the only blank back of barns. You’d have to be on their roof to see anything. Then the ditch curves back to the river, keeping this side of Ferry Road, and you’d think you could see from there but you can’t because everything is all grown with willows that way. To hold the banks there,” he added kindly, as if she could not be expected to know something like that. “They’re pollarded and so thick that even with the leaves off you can’t see beyond them very well. You’d have to be standing right in among them to tell much about what’s on the other side.”

“And toward the river?”

“There’s a wide meadow that doesn’t look to even be grazed lately. Probably resting for the winter, to be used for milch cows come the spring.” There spoke the well-taught son of a steward. Frevisse could almost hear Master Naylor’s voice, but it was with a boy’s eagerness that Dickon went on, “There’s alders and more willows and such like all along the river’s bank, of course, and there’s a bank diked up against flooding, that anybody on the path there is along the river would have to climb to see the nunnery.”

Frevisse saw fairly clearly what he was describing. If everything was as Dickon said, the murderer had run some risk of being seen coming and going from the garden but a limited one and apparently worth it to him.

“The thing is,” Dickon said, having thought along the same way she was going, “with the steep banks of the ditch nobody would be seen, unless from the mill maybe and those nunnery windows, except when he was right at the fence and he wouldn’t have had to be there long, cutting his way in or coming out. And coming out, anyway, he could have taken time to be certain no one was in sight in the open at least.”

And that lessened his risk by a great deal. But there was still the going to where he crossed the ditch, when he would have been in the open for a long way, and although anyone seeing him there might not have thought about it at the time, once word of the murder had spread, they would have said something about it to someone, wouldn’t they? Frevisse was not easy yet, either, with how he had crossed the ditch-a rope was a bulky thing to carry-and thinking aloud, she said, “It seems he could have done it with no one seeing him. But would anyone, when he was doing murder, be willing to trust so much to chance?”

Dickon scrunched his forehead into a frown before reluctantly admitting, “If it was me, I wouldn’t.”

“Nor I. But we’re not murderers.”

Dickon laughed at that, as she meant him to. They were nearly to the guesthall steps; she thanked him and they parted, he to wait for whatever would be left of the funeral feast, she going up the stairs behind two men in warm talk about the embassy come last month from France-“So do we call the Dauphin king of France now or don’t we? That’s what I don’t see yet”-and ahead of three women intently sharing their ways of dealing with winter rheums-“If it’s an old cough, I favor hazel milk in honeyed water, with a good dose of pepper to clear the head. That’s what I’ve found best.”

Once through the door, she slipped aside, out of the flow of people to stand for a moment and look about her. Mistress Montfort was still on display, seated at the near end of the hall in a high-backed chair probably brought from the prioress’s parlor for her, to judge by its size and carving, keeping widow’s court with her children ranged on either side of her, her daughters less tearful now, only sometime having recourse to their handkerchiefs, her younger son rather openly copying his two older brothers in solemn dignity to the people doing their duty to the widow, giving her and her children consolations on their loss before moving on to the food and drink laid out in generous array along several trestle tables down the middle of the hall.

No attempt was being made at seating anyone. People helped themselves and, except for those who had found a place on the benches rowed against the walls and looked unlikely to shift anytime soon, stood around in talk with food and drink in hand, voices beginning to rise and laughter breaking out here and there now that duty to both the dead and the living was done and the shift started away from death’s ceremonies to everyday life again. Except for the saints and greatest mystics, turned as they already were in life to the wonders and joys that could come when they were done with the flesh, awareness of the body’s mortality did not linger long in the forefront of men’s thoughts. It might be better for them if it did, but it was maybe more merciful it did not. Surely here it seemed that Montfort buried was Montfort forgotten.

Coming behindhand as she was, almost last of those to reach Mistress Montfort after a few pointless words to her daughters, Frevisse expected to find her worn down by the difficult day, but she was sitting straightly upright, dealing with people’s murmured consolations with quiet assurance and no particular care to look the downcast widow, only a deep-willed intent to see it through and have it done. And when they were face to face, Frevisse instead of false words about the sorrow of her loss said, “Only a little longer and then you’re free.”

In the same level, low voice with which she must have been answering one comment and another all through this, Mistress Montfort said, “Yes. Thank you.” But into her eyes, meeting Frevisse’s just for a moment, a gleam of delight danced.

Frevisse, reassured that all was as well with her as it might be, moved on to her sons, leaving her to a swag-bellied man who, to guess by the crumbs on two of his chins, had been to the tables before bringing his consolations to the family.

This was neither time nor place to talk to Christopher, but although he was shadowed under his eyes with weariness, he gave her somewhat better greeting than either of his brothers did, not knowing her at all, and she said the only thing she could truthfully as well as courteously offer, “It was a very seemly funeral.”

He bent his head to her in acknowledgment and said, “Thank you,” but as he raised his head, he met her gaze and then very deliberately shifted his eyes to the side, drawing hers away to Master Gruesby hovering uneasily on the edge of a cluster of other Montfort household folk further down the hall, aside from the shifting crowd around the tables. Frevisse, with another slight bow of her head, moved away.