The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 17

The dawn next morning was a narrow bar of rose behind the black shapes of Goring’s eastern rooftops when Master Gruesby crossed from the guesthall into the churchyard and toward the church, hurrying behind a few late-coming townsfolk through the stone-fretted patterns of candlelight thrown to the path through the high choir windows. Behind him in the hall and beyond it in the stables there was yellow lamplight and busyness and beside the church door a single lantern was hung to show feet the way over the threshold, but once inside the nave everything was shadows, the goodly number of people gathered to hear Mass only dark shapes, shuffle-footed in the cold and crowded in small groups for better warmth.

He was in quest of Dame Frevisse, certain she would be at Mass and therefore here in the nave rather than the choir because one of the guesthall servants had told him that the cloister door would not be unlocked until full light. He thought he saw her but there were too many cloaks and veils and women among the shadows for him to be certain, and since there was anyhow no way to have her out of here before the Mass was done, he patiently sidled into the lee of the pillar nearest the door. Wary as always of what the world and the day might have in store for him, he tried to take his usual comfort in the Mass, in its reminder that just as the candlelight around the altar, distant beyond the rood screen, was promise that all of life was not darkness and cold and uneasy shadows, so the Mass was promise that however far life might seem from holiness, God was as near as the bread and wine that could become His body. But today the comfort did not come. Master Gruesby was too aware of Master Montfort’s body laid to its corruption there beyond the altar, his soul gone to a judgment for which Master Gruesby had no doubt it had been unready. Alive, Master Montfort had been a trouble. Dead, he still was, and Master Gruesby was only glad when the Mass was done and he could set to what he had been sent to do.

By the gray light growing through the nave’s windows now he could be certain of Dame Frevisse, tall for a woman, as she moved with her prioress not toward him and the door into the yard but toward the door through the rood screen. He saw they meant to go into the cloister and hastened forward along the wall, skirting everyone going the other way, and along the rood screen, overtaking them just before they were beyond his reach.

“Dame Frevisse.” he said low-voiced and made them a low, hurried bow as both women turned around. “Please you, my lady, Mistress Montfort wonders if you could come to her presently.” He ducked another bow, this time directly to her prioress. “By your leave, of course, my lady.”

Surprised but not apparently put out, her prioress asked, “Do you want to, Dame Frevisse?”

“If you please, my lady,” she said quietly. “I can join you with Sister Ysobel later, if that would be all right.”

“And maybe be a comfort to Mistress Montfort in the meanwhile. Yes, go on.” Her prioress dismissed her with a brisk nod. “Come and join us when you can.”

As she turned away, Master Gruesby made her another quick bow to her back, then yet another to Dame Frevisse, who said in answer, “Lead on, then.”

She was not, he thought, in the least deceived that it was Mistress Montfort who had asked to see her, and with no wish to answer any questions she might have of him, he hurried away, his head bowed in the hope that he looked merely respectful, his hands tucked deep into the folds of his heavy overgown as if he could tuck away the unease she always made in him. He succeeded at least in not being spoken to while they left the church and churchyard, back into the nunnery yard now busy with horses, servants, and guests preparing to leave. At the guesthall stairs he had to thread his way upward against the outward flow of baggage and people but Dame Frevisse kept close behind him there and through the hall-loud with bustle and talk-to the door to Mistress Montfort’s chamber. There, he knocked in a way Master Christopher would recognize, opened the door, and stood aside, bowing to her to go in ahead of him. She did, and relieved to be quit of her, he followed, nothing more he need do but close the door and take a place beside it while she crossed to Mistress Montfort and Master Christopher waiting for her beside the fire.

The three of them made a dark gathering, Master Gruesby thought-Dame Frevisse in her Benedictine black, Master Christopher and Mistress Montfort in their mourning-and of the three of them, only Mistress Montfort’s face was at variance with it. These past days of dealing with Master Montfort’s death and funeral she had held herself in well, nor did Master Gruesby doubt that if she was to go out into the hall or someone else came in here, she would take on her expected widow-look readily enough; but without that need to satisfy others, she was a-glow with gladness, free of any pretense of grief.

It was otherwise with Master Christopher. All that he had had to do and feel these past days was weighing on him, and even though that other inquest had meant he had not been here to keep the vigil beside his father’s body the night before the funeral, young Denys said he had instead kept it in the church where he had been. That had meant little rest that night, and if he had slept well last night the gray shadows under his eyes this morning belied it. Besides that, Master Gruesby was worried for him on account of what more trouble might come of his having asked Dame Frevisse’s help. He doubted Master Christopher understood that she was not a woman easily put aside once she had turned her mind to a thing. She might well have kept aside from dealing in the matter of Master Montfort’s murder, given her dislike of him-and of that dislike Master Gruesby had never had doubt, try though she did to hide it behind seeming respect and womanhood-but now that she had been started on it, she would not let go and what trouble that might draw down on Master Christopher was a worry.

Master Christopher was pouring wine from the silver pitcher into the goblets waiting on the small table close to hand while Mistress Montfort said, “You’ll have some warmed, spiced wine with us, Dame? To take off the morning’s chill?”

“Yes, thank you,” Dame Frevisse answered and added in the dry voice that always made Master Gruesby more wary of her than ever, “I’m pleased to see you’re still doing so well against your grief.”

With a deepened smile, Mistress Montfort acknowledged, “I do what I can.” Master Christopher offered her the first goblet but she nodded it away to Dame Frevisse, going on, “I’ve sent John and Edward and the girls to bid folk farewell and good journey on my behalf and Christopher’s. It’s understood I’m too stricken down to show myself and Christopher is comforting me. I suppose that’s why you’re here, too, if anyone should ask. But in truth it’s Christopher who must needs talk with you. I”-she swept her skirts around to one side and sat down in the chair beside the hearth-“am merely here.”

She took the goblet Master Christopher now offered her, smiled on him and on Dame Frevisse, and turned her head away toward the fire, showing she was leaving them to whatever business there would be between them.

Master Christopher took up the third goblet of wine and brought it to Master Gruesby. Discomfited, Master Gruesby fumbled toward thanking him but Master Christopher said with a smile, “You’re in this with us, sir,” and returned to the table, leaving Master Gruesby in confusion because that was altogether more courtesy and kindness than he could remember ever having from Master Montfort even once in all the years he had served him.

Fortunate for what quiet he had left, no one was heeding him. Instead Master Christopher was pouring wine for himself and saying to Dame Frevisse, “Master Gruesby said you wanted to talk to me.”

“And you to me, I trust,” she returned. “Master Gruesby told you what I gathered from talking with Sister Ysobel?”

“That whoever was there in the garden, they came purposing to kill my father?” Christopher turned from the table to face her, wine in hand. “Yes.”

“We agreed, too, that someone had to know the nunnery well to have chosen the garden as the place to kill him. That made both Master Haselden and Stephen Langley more likely than Master Champyon or Rowland Englefield.”

“That was also in my mind.”

“I’ve since learned that Mistress Champyon was at school here in her girlhood. She’d know the nunnery enough to tell her son or her husband about the garden.”

Christopher’s face darkened. “Damn.”

“There’s the matter of the fence, though. I had Dickon-he’s one of my…”

“I remember Dickon.”

“I had him go to look at the nunnery from outside. He says there seem to be stones half buried in the bank below the garden, almost hidden in the grass. Worked stones, he said.”

“I saw them, too. They would have served the murderer in climbing the bank, I thought.”

“Yes. But they’re worked, as from a fallen wall. When did it fall?”

Master Christopher cocked his head, silently asking why that mattered, then straightened with a jerk, understanding, and said, “If it fell after Mistress Champyon was familiar with the garden, then she wouldn’t think of that as a place to lure my father because she wouldn’t think there was an easy way into it.”

“Even so. So we need to know when the wall, if there was indeed one, fell. I’ll ask about it today. I couldn’t yesterday, there being only so many questions I can ask at a time.” Without giving away to anyone what she was doing, she meant.

It made Master Gruesby ill at ease how often he understood what she meant even when she did not say it. As always when he was uneasy, he wanted to busy himself with pen and paper but lacking that refuge, he took an incautiously deep drink of wine. There proved to be too much nutmeg among the spices and the effort not to choke on it noticeably occupied him while Dame Frevisse went on to Master Christopher, “Could you find out if Mistress Champyon has gone out walking while here in Goring, that she might have seen the change in the wall? It’s hardly been walking weather nor does she seem to me someone given to pointless wandering along the back ways of places. If she’s gone out, the inn servants will likely remember it.”

“I’ll have questions asked,” Master Christopher said.

“The trouble is that all we know so far are odds and ends and apparent nothings. We lack what would fit them all together into sense. Would you have questions asked, too, about where everyone most concerned in the Lengley inheritance was that day? All that day but most especially at the hour Master Montfort was killed. Women as well as men.”

Master Christopher nodded in agreement to that.

“Everyone with a near concern in the Lengley inheritance,” Dame Frevisse repeated. “Including Master Gruesby.”

She looked across the room to him as she said it and he froze, the goblet raised for another drink, staring back at her over the rim of it before he hastily lowered it and said, shaken, “I’ve nothing to do with the Lengley inheritance!”

“Master Montfort was dealing with it, and you as his clerk were therefore dealing with it, too,” she said back at him. “Just as any of the Lengleys’ or Champyons’ lawyers and their clerks are.”

“Following that way of seeing it,” Master Christopher protested, “we must needs ask where all their servants and wives and children and maybe distant in-laws were that day.”

“If they were anywhere near Goring, yes.” Dame Frevisse’s gaze was still fixed on Master Gruesby. “For a beginning, where were you when Master Montfort was killed?”

She was not using him merely for example, Master Gruesby realized. She wanted to know because she was truly willing to suspect him. But why shouldn’t she? They had no certainty yet as to why Master Montfort had been killed. She could well suppose he himself had as good a reason as the next man, and steadied by how reasonable it was for her to ask, he answered with hardly a shiver, “I was here in the guesthall all the morning and through dinner. Until I began to search for him to give him Lord Lovell’s letter. There are servants who’ll say so, surely.”

Dame Frevisse turned back to Master Christopher. “You’ll ask?”

“I’ll ask,” Master Christopher said with a glance at Master Gruesby that asked pardon.

“And about the women. Mistress Champyon. Juliana.” Dame Frevisse paused a moment, then added, “Lady Agnes, too. Not simply where they were but if they sent a message to anyone. Though a sent message is unlikely. Master Montfort saw all of them that morning. Whatever took him to the garden that afternoon could have been set then, with no need to pass word by way of anyone else.” She looked at Master Gruesby. “You still say no message came to him that day except the one from Lord Lovell?”

He blinked rapidly but managed to nod.

“Nor the day before,” Master Christopher said. “We’ve asked.”

“And you’ve read that letter from Lord Lovell and there’s nothing in it that helps?”

Master Christopher paused. Master Gruesby guessed he was considering how much to say, but when he answered he held back nothing. “Without saying it in so many words, it makes plain that Lord Lovell supposed my father knew which way his decision over the manor should go. If he were to please my lord Lovell.”

Mistress Montfort had seemed at ease this while, leaned back in her chair and sipping occasionally at her wine, removed from all of them in her thoughts if nothing else, but now of a sudden she asked, “What if the killing was for something other than this inheritance?”

Master Christopher looked at her bleakly. “Then our chances of finding the murderer out are even less than they already seem to be.”

“Oh,” Mistress Montfort said as if a little surprised but not much concerned.

Dame Frevisse turned her head to stare into the flames and after a short silence said, slow with thought, “Since it seems he had no messages and talked to no one that day but those concerned with the Lengley inheritance, we’re in safe bounds to think his death has to do with that. Given that, the questions about who was where and when can be centered on those most concerned with it.” She moved away from the fire, toward the table, and set her goblet with its untouched wine beside the pitcher and turned back to Master Christopher. “What have you done toward finding out about the dagger?”

“I’ve had men asking about it through the town and looking for it. But only quietly and by the way. No one knows anything, it seems.”

“You may have to ask less quietly. There might be use, too, in knowing,how much beforehand people generally knew the mill would be closed that day, the ditch drained.”

“You want to know how long ahead the murderer had to plan.”

“Yes.”

“Master Gruesby,” Master Christopher said. “Find out, please.”

Master Gruesby gave a small bow, not letting show how pleased he was to be treated as if he were still crowner’s clerk instead of not. There was still young Denys to consider, but as often as not these past few days, it had been himself and not young Denys to whom Master Christopher had turned. He had not enjoyed being an escheat clerk, because dealings over property too often led to arguments and angers. Crowner’s work was usually with people either grieving or wary or both but on the whole far less troublesome than those involved in escheats. He did not like trouble.

The thought of trouble made him think of Dame Frevisse, and with his head bent as if he were staring into his wine cup, knowing his spectacles’ thick rims hid his eyes, he watched her where she stood beside the table, silent again, her hands folded out of sight up her opposite sleeves. He had sometimes wondered if she so often hid her hands because they gave away what her carefully still face did not; even now, here with Master Christopher, whom she seemed to trust, both her face and voice were mostly bare of anything except quietness as she raised her head and said, “I can’t see what else we should do for now.”

“Nor do I,” Master Christopher said. “But thank you for all you’ve managed so far.”

“Little though it’s been.” Briefly her voice gave away how much that annoyed her.

“It’s the little pieces brought together will tell us finally what we want to know.”

“True,” she said and smiled at him, to Master Gruesby’s startlement. Had he ever seen her smile before this? She never had in Master Montfort’s presence, that was certain.

There came a knock at the door and Master Christopher sighed, raised his voice to say, “I’ll be there,” then said more quietly, “I must needs go and make farewells to people too important to be neglected. If you’ll stay awhile longer with my mother, it will give color to why you’re supposedly here. If you will.”

“Of course.”

He set down his goblet, slightly bowed to her, and went to kiss his mother on the cheek. With no wish to be left here to Dame Frevisse, Master Gruesby quickly set aside his own drink, and with his eyes carefully down, followed Master Christopher out of the room.