The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 15

Neither hungry nor feeling like hiding behind food or drink, Frevisse circled somewhat wide from the tables and through the crowd toward Master Gruesby, masking her purpose, she hoped, by going slowly, taking time to look about her and pleased to find Master and Mistress Champyon not far off from her, without Rowland or Juliana near them this time but again standing apart and ignored, each with something to eat in one hand, a cup in the other, and sour looks on their faces, no longer waiting to be noticed, it seemed, only waiting to be out of here. A small shift in her way through the crowd brought Frevisse to them. There was unlikely to be better chance than this to meet them but, unable to think of any clever reason whatsoever she could give for pausing to talk, she simply stopped in front of them and said with the bright voice useful for such moments, “You’re as much out-comers here as I am, aren’t you? First that inquest and now this. With all of it and everything, how has your stay in Goring been?”

“Too long.” Master Champyon’s answer was terse with displeasure, at life in general rather than at her, Frevisse judged; and when his wife twitched an elbow sideways against his arm, he managed to add with somewhat better grace, “At least the weather hasn’t been too bad. Mostly.”

Frevisse agreed, aware that Mistress Champyon was studying her, sharp-eyed, and therefore not surprised when the woman said, “You’re a friend of the Lengleys, aren’t you?”

Without hesitation Frevisse said, “Praying your pardon, no. My prioress and I met Lady Agnes when we first came to Goring and had just found there was no place for us at the nunnery. When she offered to take us in, my prioress accepted, thinking an honorable widow’s house better than an inn for us.”

“ ‘Honorable,’ ” Master Champyon scoffed.

Mistress Champyon’s elbow pushed against him again while she said at Frevisse, “But you’ve heard since then what’s going on between us?”

Glad to be saved the trouble of bringing the talk around to that, Frevisse said mildly, “Between you and her grandson, you mean?”

“Between us and the old malkin herself, more like,” growled Master Champyon. “Her and that lying bastard Haselden are the ones…”

“We think,” Mistress Champyon put in moderately, “that young Stephen is maybe unknowing of what wrongs they’ve done.”

“In a pig’s ear,” Master Champyon grunted.

Like his wife, Frevisse ignored him, merely granting to Mistress Champyon, “I’ve heard a little about it all.”

“A little?” Master Champyon seemed to take that as some sort of offense, too. “Only a little?”

Mistress Champyon balanced her nibbled piece of cake on top of her cup, freeing a hand to lay on her husband’s arm. “It’s hardly something to be talked of much in front of guests, my dear. Is it?” she added to Frevisse with what she probably meant to be subtle prompting toward telling more.

Choosing not to be prompted, Frevisse said with a smile as false as Mistress Champyon’s own, “No.” Added, “By your leave,” and moved away, having judged Mistress Champyon was too intent on learning what she could for there to be much chance of learning anything from her in return.

But if the woman had gained nothing by their talk, Frevisse took away an increased dislike of both her and her husband that now she would have to work against in judging anything she learned, either to their favor or not. And worse, at the moment, was that her way to Master Gruesby was going to take her past Juliana and her brother standing in talk with another woman farther along the hall. A careful steering among other people would keep her well clear of them but the woman with them had been among the Goring couples in talk with Lady Agnes and the others outside the church before the funeral, and curiosity made Frevisse curve her way to pass behind them.

She did not slow her going, for fear of being noticed, but as she eased around a broad woman complaining to a narrow one that whoever had made these honey cakes had stinted on the honey, she was near enough to hear Rowland say, “Let it go, Juliana,” as if he had said it before.

“You let it go, Rowland,” Juliana mocked back at him impatiently.

Frevisse was able to see between them now to where they were looking across the hall and table to Stephen and Nichola standing with another girl and young man, food and drink in their hands and laughter a-light in all their faces.

“You have to grant, they’re very sweet together,” the Goring woman offered, nothing sweet in how she said it.

She was much about Juliana’s age, a well-gowned, amply-wimpled wife of a prospering townsman by the look of her, with no plain reason for her voice’s venom edge. A venom Juliana matched in, “That much sweetness makes my teeth ache.”

“Juliana,” Rowland said wearily. “He’s not yours.”

Past them, Frevisse looked again toward Stephen, so guilty in this, and Nichola who at that moment turned her head to look, as if she had felt the burn of eyes on her, directly back at Juliana with a stare that betrayed, to Frevisse if no one else, that the girl knew far more than Stephen or Lady Agnes thought she did. Then Stephen said something that brought laughter from the others and Nichola turned back to them, laughing, too.

Juliana must have said something because Rowland said again, “Let it go, Juliana,” not as if he thought it would do any good this time either.

Then Frevisse was beyond hearing anything else said among them, but not beyond wondering how much how many other people knew of what was between Juliana and Stephen. And how long it would be before Nichola was certain of it, if she was not already.

Unhappy with that thought, she threaded the few yards and half-dozen more people to Master Gruesby, who had not moved from where she had first seen him, a mostly undrunk cup of wine in one hand, a barely nibbled, crust-wrapped piece of meat in the other and his usual huddle-shouldered seeming of trying not to be where he was.

“Master Gruesby,” she said as she reached him.

“Dame Frevisse,” he offered in return, mostly toward his feet but with a sideways, upward glance at her through his spectacles’ thick lenses.

Bypassing any attempt at pointlessly light talk with him, she asked, “When will I likely be able to talk with Master Christopher?”

Master Gruesby cast a hunted look from one side to the other, as if answer to that might be lying about, waiting to be found, before he finally said as if it were a desperate secret drawn from him by force, “Tomorrow. His mother means to stay one more day before he sees her home. He’ll have chance tomorrow to see you.”

“She’s staying over another day?” Frevisse said before she could stop herself. Another day and night she and Domina Elisabeth would have to spend with Lady Agnes and out of the nunnery?

Master Gruesby huddled his shoulders a little higher, into a small shrug. “To let everyone else leave ahead of her. So she won’t have to ride with anyone but her own people. She says she’s tired of people.”

Sharing that feeling all too readily, Frevisse pried loose from her own disappointment to ask, “Have you read the letter from Lord Lovell yet?”

Master Gruesby gathered himself, not happily, and managed to answer, “It was only an asking that Master Montfort let my lord know quickly, once the Lengley decision was made, how he’d decided.”

“Did it say which way Lord Lovell wanted him to decide?”

Master Gruesby lifted his head enough to look at her reproachfully. “That would hardly be seemly. Or”-his gaze dropped again and his voice fell to a whisper-“nec-essary.”

That told her what she had only supposed so far-that Lord Lovell was taking an interest in what shifts in power there might be here. From that she could guess that surely so was Suffolk.

Which meant Montfort had been caught between them.

There was a certain black-livered humour to that, she supposed. Ever more devoted to his ambitions than to truth, Montfort had finally worked his way up from crowner toward being escheator only to be immediately caught between the ambitions of two far more powerful men.

Men powerful enough to bring on a man’s death?

But almost any man had that much power. If not to kill by his own hand, then to hire another man to do it. In which case it was only a matter of the cost. And some men came cheaply.

Not that cheap or dear would matter that much to either Suffolk or Lord Lovell. They could both afford to pay well for a task well done. The trouble was that she did not know-had no way of knowing-whether either of them was so base as to buy a man’s death, had no way to know whether this manor of Reckling was worth that much to one or the other of them. Had Montfort already decided which way he meant to go and the losing lord somehow learned of it-or knew Montfort well enough to suspect it-and decided to be rid of him in hopes that the next escheater might be more inclined his way?

That was possible. But how probable? And somewhat sharply she asked, “Had Master Montfort made up his mind on the Lengley matter?”

“He’d not have told me.” Master Gruesby was reproachful again, then unexpectedly had a question of his own. “Have you learned anything of yet?”

What she had mostly gained thus far were questions but she gave him what she could. “I’ve talked with Sister Ysobel, the nun in the infirmary.”

“Master Christopher had already done that,” Master Gruesby said with a firmness that surprised Frevisse and she returned, a little shortly, “There was more to be had from her than Master Christopher waited to hear. She says very few words passed between Master Montfort and whoever else was there, nor did it sound like there was a quarrel between them. That means that almost certainly the murderer came ready to kill him. Came meaning to kill him.”

For once Master Gruesby’s eyes were fixed on her face. He even seemed, from what she could see of his brow above his spectacles’ thick rim, to be frowning slightly, as if listening very hard as she went on, “Also, the murderer has to know Goring and the nunnery well. That he knew of the garden and how to reach it unseen and was certain he could safely kill Master Montfort there all argues that. Or else there’s someone else, who told him what he needed to know.”

Master Gruesby blinked at her from behind his thick lenses. “Someone else,” he said, seeming to like that thought no better than she did. His gaze slipped away from her face and past her shoulder, to hang for another moment before he brought himself to look at her again and say, “A woman. It would more likely be a woman than a man who knew so much about the garden. And all. It being a nunnery.”

Frevisse had thought of that, too. Nor would the woman have to be a nun. Besides Lady Agnes there would be any number of other women over the years who might, like Domina Elisabeth, have been there while visiting an ill friend or kin. Or girls now grown to women who might have been at school in the nunnery. Like Nichola. Like the woman with Juliana just now.

“But then,” Frevisse went on, “it surely had to have been someone Master Montfort knew or had been given reason to trust or he’d not have met with him secretly?”

She made it a question, to see how Master Gruesby would answer, and after a moment’s hesitation he granted, “Yes.” He hesitated again, then offered, “Or else he thought he knew who he was meeting. But someone else came.”

A well-taken point which brought up another and she asked, “Have you learned yet who brought him themes-sage, written or otherwise, that sent him to the garden?”

Master Gruesby blinked. “No.”

“But you or someone else has tried to find out.”

“Yes. Of course. Yes. It’s one of the things… one of the things Master Christopher tried to learn right away.”

“What did he find out?”

“No one says they know anything of any message brought to him here. Master Christopher thinks it must have been given to him during the morning, while he was out.”

“He was out during the morning? Where?”

“Here in Goring. To talk with various people. About the Lengley matter. With Lady Agnes and Master Lengley and Master Haselden. And with the Champyons.”

“He went to them instead of having them come to him?”

Master Gruesby bobbed his head up and down.

“Did you go with him?”

“One of the yeomen did. I didn’t.”

“The man’s been questioned?”

“Of course. Master Christopher asked him about everything. But he was left outside every time and knew nothing.”

“Every time?”

“Every time.”

“He never heard anything that was said?”

“Never. He only knows that Master Montfort came away cheerful at the end of it all. I saw that, too, when he came back to the guesthall. That he was cheerful. It was…” Master Gruesby gave a small, vague flutter of his hands.

“Unusual,” Frevisse finished for him. Unusual and worrisome, because the only times she had seen Montfort anything like cheerful were when he had thought he was going to have his own way about something. What had he succeeded at this time? “When Master Christopher talked to Stephen, Master Haselden, and the Champyons, did he ask about this?”

Master Gruesby bobbed his head again. “But all they said, all of them, was that he’d asked things about the inheritance and the Champyons’ challenge, and nothing was said that wasn’t already known, by him and everyone.”

So Montfort had somehow had a message of which there was no trace, from someone he might or might not have known, whom nobody else had seen.

Frevisse’s jaw was beginning to hurt with holding her voice so forceably level as she said, “Then there’s also the question of how the murderer came to the garden wall at all. There’s still no word that anyone was seen along there about the time Master Montfort was killed?”

“Questions have been asked.” Master Gruesby sounded almost reproachful that she would doubt it. “Nobody saw anyone. It was a cold day. With a wind. I remember. People weren’t out.”

“So whoever it was wasn’t seen.” Frevisse supposed she must resign herself to that. “But at some point he had to cross the ditch that’s there and the water would have been cold and it flows strongly, I’m told. However he got across it, he would have been cold and soaking wet afterwards and had to have gone somewhere. Why wasn’t he noticed then?”

“Oh.” Master Gruesby’s gaze veered away from her and back again. “He wouldn’t have been. There wasn’t any water in the ditch that day. Or very little. At most he would have wet his feet. Would have muddied them. Probably nothing more.”

Only desire not to be overheard kept Frevisse’s “What?” between her teeth in a harsh but hushed demand.

“The mill,” Master Gruesby said. “The wheel needed repair. It was being done that day. The sluice was closed. The ditch was drained from early morning until late afternoon. All there would have been was some water standing in the bottom of it. And mud.”

She had been troubled over a problem that was no problem, Frevisse thought. Worse, another problem took its place, because it would hardly have been a secret in Goring that the mill was shut down for the day, the ditch emptied. It was the sort of thing everyone in Goring was likely to have known. But, “How far ahead were the repairs decided on?”

“How far ahead?”

“That day? The day before? Longer? Was it because of a sudden-come problem with the wheel or something foreseen and planned?”

Master Gruesby’s eyes widened as he understood. “You mean, did the murderer have a long time or a little to plan the murder. I… we don’t know. I don’t think Master Christopher has considered that.”

“Then you’ll find out.”

“Yes.”

Something else came sharply to her. “Wait. If the mill was being repaired, where were the workmen? Didn’t they see anyone along the ditch?”

“The workmen.” Master Gruesby shrugged unhappily. “They were at dinner. They’d been given a hot meal as part of their day’s wages. In a tavern up the street from the mill.”

Another question returned to her. “Has Rowland Englefield’s story of where he was that afternoon ever been better looked at?”

Master Gruesby made a small sound that might have been a fretful sigh before he said, “Master Christopher sent a man there. Into that place. He didn’t say he was there for that. He just… made talk. And listened. From what he heard, Master Englefield was there. Just as he said.”

“At the time Master Montfort was killed?”

Toward his toes Master Gruesby whispered, “I don’t think anyone keeps close time there.”

No, they probably did not, Frevisse thought and held back from saying tartly they probably wouldn’t notice, either, if Rowland had come in muddy-booted and dripping as if just back from a stroll in the mill-ditch, would they? Instead she went another way, asking, “The lands that were divided between the two Bower sisters, Rose and Cecily, how are they entailed? What ways can and can’t they be inherited?”

Master Gruesby brightened. Happy to be on sure ground, he said confidently, “The lands are entailed to descend in the right blood, entire by the male line or, if the male line should fail, to be divided equally among such female heirs as there may be.”

Frevisse sorted that out. “That means if Rowland Englefield has no children, at his death his properties will go to his sister.”

“Yes. Except for such as are dowered to his widow for her lifetime. And if there are no males by a collateral line.”

“Which there are not or there would have been no division between Cecily and Rose at their father’s death.”

Master Gruesby bobbed his head in agreement to that.

She had gathered most of that already from other people’s talk but it helped to have it plainly laid out and she asked, “If it’s proven that no heir to Rose is yet living, then her share-this manor of Reckling-reverts to her nephew Rowland or else to his heirs, yes? Meaning his sister Juliana if he sires no legitimate children.”

Master Gruesby bobbed his head in further agreement.

Which meant that for Rowland the straightest way to have this manor of Reckling would be not by way of Montfort’s death but by Stephen’s.

And for Juliana the straightest way to it would be over both her brother’s and Stephen’s dead bodies.

Not that it was Stephen’s dead body she wanted.

Frevisse removed her mind firmly from that uncharitable thought, to turn the problem another way. Since it seemed that Montfort’s death did not directly serve the Englefelds, did it serve Stephen? Or Master Haselden, for that matter, because his stake in Stephen’s legitimacy was high. And the answer to that was that if Montfort had determined to decide against Stephen, then, yes, his death might be useful, in the hope his successor would decide otherwise. But how would either Stephen or Master Haselden-or anyone, come to that-have known what Montfort was going to decide?

Unless his business with them all that morning had been to tell them so. Or to ask for reasons-meaning bribes-why he should favor one side over the other. If that had been what he was at, then someone might very well have decided his death was a simpler way to go than bribery.

With nothing else she thought she could learn of Master Gruesby, she said, “I’d best go. Please, I pray you, tell Master Christopher I want to talk with him.” Master Gruesby bowed and she added to the top of his head, “Tell him, too, that he had better ask more strongly after that dagger.”