The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 18

Left behind, Frevisse sat and made talk with Mistress Montfort over how long a ride she would have to home tomorrow-it would take more of a day than not, Mistress Montfort said-and about how long Frevisse thought she and Domina Elisabeth would stay here in St. Mary’s-Frevisse was unsure-before a small silence fell between them, until Mistress Montfort said, “I think we’ve served to cover my son’s purpose well enough, if you want to go.”

Frevisse did, only paused when they had both risen to their feet, to ask, “What’s Master Gruesby’s place now? Is he become your son’s clerk or is he working for him only this while?”

“I don’t know if they’ve made decision or if what’s happening is simply happening. My hope is that Christopher will take him on as a crowner clerk again. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll have to think of giving him place in my household.”

“And you’d rather not.”

“I’d rather not,” Mistress Montfort agreed.

Because he made her as uncomfortable with his silences and watching as he made Frevisse? Or for some other reason? Or reasons?

Abruptly impatient with herself for conjuring up yet more questions she could not answer, Frevisse moved toward the door. Mistress Montfort moved with her, following thoughts of her own but in the same direction because she said, “I think he makes me uncomfortable because he never seems happy nor unhappy. He never seems much of anything. He’s always just simply there.”

For something to say rather than because she had considered it, Frevisse offered, “Mayhap it’s because he’s happier than any of us. It may be he’s so settled into it he’s past need to show it.” Once said, though, there was a kind of sense in it-that there might be small outward sign of someone’s happiness if they were so deeply happy as to be past the need for seeking out of pleasures and bursts of merriment.

“Much like you, I might guess,” Mistress Montfort said musingly.

Because they were at the door, Frevisse was spared trying to find some answer to that. Instead, hand on the handle, she asked, “Should I send someone in to you?”

“No.” Mistress Montfort was both quick and sure of that. “They’ll come soon enough, thinking I shouldn’t be left to myself. Until then a few moments of peace…” She smiled and made a small gesture meant to show Frevisse had not troubled her peace. Frevisse smiled to show she understood, slipped out the door, closed it and turned all in one quick movement, and was still barely in time to hold back the two Montfort daughters and the woman ready outside to knock and enter as soon as she was out of the way, saying to them in a hushed voice, “Best let her be for a time, I think. She’s in prayer.” Which was close enough to truth; she was probably praying to be left alone a little longer.

Outside, full day was come, with the thickness of clouds that had darkened the dawn broken into drifting fluff high overhead and clear morning sunlight slanting long across the yard. Not far from the guesthall stairs Christopher was in talk with several men and women, their servants standing nearby with their horses, ready to leave. Master Gruesby seemed to be nowhere in sight but neither did Frevisse much look for him as she passed along to the cloister door. Her knock brought the same servant as yesterday, who said as soon as she saw her, “Oh, good. Your prioress is with Domina Matilda in her parlor. I was to bid you join them, if you would.”

Frevisse felt she would rather not, but good manners did not permit that choice and she said only, “Of course,” and followed as the woman led her into the cloister walk and around it, past the church to stairs up to a door where the woman scratched lightly and, at someone’s bidding to come in, opened it and stood aside to let Frevisse go into the room beyond it, a large, comfortably furnished chamber. Because among a prioress’s duties was the receiving of particular visitors, often for the sake of dealing with matters beyond what could be dealt with in the daily chapter meetings, her parlor presented the best a nunnery could offer and St. Mary’s could offer much, it seemed. Besides beautifully braided reed matting for the floor and glass in the upper quarter of the two windows that let light in even though the shutters were closed, there was a bright, fringed cloth over the broad table in the middle of the chamber, beautifully embroidered cushions on the window seats, a woven tapestry covering one long wall showing the Three Christian Worthies with their banners unfurled above them, and a wide fireplace where the two prioresses were seated in high-backed chairs, a small, silky-haired spaniel curled against Domina Matilda’s skirts.

They looked to have been in comfortable talk, each holding a mazer bowl of what Frevisse feared was more spiced wine, and indeed it was, she found, after Domina Matilda had welcomed her, gestured to a third chair beside Domina Elisabeth, and bade her help herself to the wine and cakes from a nearby table. Frevisse hardly wanted more wine or any food but took both for courtesy’s sake and to occupy herself, pouring only a little of the wine while answering Domina Elisabeth’s asking how Mistress Montfort did, and taking the smallest cake before she joined Domina Elisabeth and Domina Matilda, talking together of the troubles that went with being prioress.

Frevisse had long since seen enough of the duties and worries that came with being a prioress to be purged of any desire she might have had, when she was young and foolish, ever to be one herself. Worse, as if the usual burden of seeing to the spiritual and bodily well-being of her nuns at St. Frideswide’s was not enough, Domina Elisabeth also had the repairing of all the damage left by her predecessor, both to the nunnery’s worldly well-being and its spiritual health. St. Mary’s looked to be in altogether better circumstances although presently Domina Matilda had the pressing problem of yet another day of feeding guests. “Though, thank St. Anne, there’ll be almost only Mistress Montfort’s household folk and the escheator’s men before the day is out. A few more days of so many as there were and I’d be going door to door asking for alms instead of giving them out. Happily, Master Haselden has promised us a roedeer. Or maybe two, if the hunt goes well today.”

“Venison,” Domina Elisabeth said on a sigh. “How lovely.”

Domina Matilda’s sigh matched hers. “Especially since we’ll soon be having naught but salt fish.” Because Lent would soon be on them. “How many barrels of saltfish do you find sufficient for a year?”

They were away on practical matters then, leaving Frevisse with chance to think about what had passed between her and Christopher this morning. Faced squarely on, it seemed to her they were trotting in circles, on the move but going nowhere, unable yet to close on one person more than another for the murderer. Somehow, some way, Montfort had been threat enough to someone for that someone to want him dead. And the threat had most likely to do with the Lengley inheritance. But what was the threat? Who had been threatened? How had they lured him to the garden and come and gone from there themselves unseen?

The same few certainties. The same returning questions. Around and around.

She finished both the wine and the cake, set the bowl aside, and folded her hands into her lap, to sit with downcast eyes and not much listening to Domina Matilda and Domina Elisabeth, who were comparing the prices of London spice merchants and whether the added cost of carriage from London made it more reasonable or less to buy from a merchant nearer to home. Uninterested, Frevisse drew her mind back to Montfort. If the supposed threat had to do with the Lengley inheritance, then it was almost surely some sort of proof-something firmer than one person’s word against another’s-of whether Stephen was legitimate or not, because that was the one thing on which everything else hung. If Montfort had found certain proof that Stephen was-or was not-legitimate and then had, for whatever reason, told the wrong person of it, yes, his murder could have come easily from that.

But what proof? From where and in what form?

Her own guess would be it was something written.

And that brought Master Gruesby and his perpetually ink-stained fingers immediately to mind.

But if he had known of anything to do with the Lengley matter, he would surely have told Christopher about it long before this.

“Are you well, Dame Frevisse?”

Frevisse raised her head to find both prioresses looking at her and said hurriedly, “Yes, my lady. Only tired.” Which was maybe not a strict untruth. She was tired of too much thinking up questions to which she could find no answers, was tired of other people’s troubles… She brought herself up short and made a small beckon toward the room’s windows. “May I look out?”

“Of course,” Domina Matilda said graciously. “If you see the hunt coming home, tell me, please.” And added to Domina Elisabeth, “Everywhere near here was fairly well hunted out at Christmastide. Master Haselden thought that rather than spending the day riding far enough afield for good hunting and then having the long ride home afterwards, the hunt could ferry over the Thames to hunt closer to hand. You can see the ferry from my window there.” She nodded toward the room’s far end.

“But given the cost of ferrying hunters and hounds and horses…?” Domina Elisabeth questioned.

Domina Matilda laughed. “St. Mary’s owns the ferry. I gave them all free passage both going and coming back, since they’re hunting to our good.”

While Domina Elisabeth asked how well the profits from the ferry balanced against its costs, Frevisse rose and went to the nearer of the room’s two windows, finding when she had set back one of the shutters, that it overlooked a little of the churchyard but not much because the parlor was built out from the church’s west end and the church’s tower and the townfolk’s porch and door into the nave blocked sight of most of the yard, leaving only a narrow slice of it to be seen along the millstream bank, with the mill’s roof and millwheel showing above the wall not far off.

She closed the shutter and went to the other window, opening its shutter with better hope and was not disappointed. This was the window she had seen from the mill. From it she could see across the water meadow to the Thames and the Berkshire hills that in the pale, winter-misted morning air seemed distant and unlikely, as if they might dissolve away with the mists. The loveliness held her a moment. Then she leaned forward onto the wide stone sill and looked down into the dark-flowing ditch, deep within its banks below her, and then leftward along the priory’s buildings, able by leaning a little further out to see the garden’s withy fence.

Behind her, Domina Matilda was saying, “One of the useful things about owning the ferry is that at least we don’t have to pay to have our grain hauled over to our mill and brought back as flour. Isn’t it foolishness we don’t own the mill right outside our walls but the one over the river at Streatley? You can see it from there, Dame Frevisse.”

Frevisse could, high enough here to see over the pollarded trees along the river to Streatley and its mill and the ferry landing not far from it. Behind her, both prioresses rose and came to join her at the window, the spaniel padding beside his mistress, Domina Elisabeth asking as they came who owned the mill in Goring if not the nuns.

“Oh, the earl-only I must say marquis now; such a foreign word-of Suffolk. He’s lord of the town, you know.”

Domina Elisabeth said no, she had not known that, and Frevisse braced for her to say more, but they had reached the window, Frevisse moving aside to make room for them, and Domina Matilda said, pointing toward the path along the millstream’s other side, “Isn’t it strange to think that Master Montfort’s murderer very possibly walked right past here? I might even have seen him if I’d been here and happened to look out.”

“You weren’t here?” Domina Elisabeth asked.

“We were all at Nones, I gather, when it happened. Look.” She leaned a little out, as Frevisse had done, and pointed, leftward this time. “You can even see the garden fence from here.”

Domina Elisabeth leaned out to look and Frevisse took the chance to ask, “How long ago did the wall along the garden there fall down?”

“Oh, goodness, let me think,” Domina Matilda said. “How ever did you know of that?”

“Someone mentioned it,” Frevisse vaguely answered.

Domina Matilda, busy reckoning, was not curious enough to ask who, and said, “Twenty and some years ago, it must be. No, longer than that. Oh, my. The bank gave way and the wall collapsed the year before Agincourt. I was just out of my noviate and remember we were gathering money to rebuild it and instead had to pay it all into our tithe toward our late King Henry, God keep his soul, going into France. Afterwards, we just never bothered with it. It’s been one withy fence after another. I suppose it’s something I should take in hand, shouldn’t I? But if there’s ever money to spare, it’s always needed somewhere else more.”

“Isn’t that always the way of it?” Domina Elisabeth said. “More things to do than money to do them with.”

Before they could go off on that, Frevisse asked, “Wasn’t Mistress Champyon at school here then?”

“After that, by a little, I think.” Domina Matilda made a face. “Cecely Bower and her sister Rose. We none of us much liked them.” Then she thought better of being uncharitable and asked more moderately, “Do you know her?”

“No. It’s only that she’s being talked about so much.”

“She’s doing her share of talking, too, if she’s anything like she was.”

However long since Cecely had been there, it seemed Domina Matilda’s feelings toward her had not warmed. “Not even her sister liked her much.”

“Nobody seems to now, either,” said Domina Elisabeth, moving away from the window, back toward the comfort of the fire.

Domina Matilda followed her, saying with a laugh, “Well, her present husband and her children must-or maybe-do. But that makes one wonder about them, doesn’t it?”

Left to herself, Frevisse leaned out the window and looked down again, thinking that the drop from there to the top of the bank would not be too long for a man if he slid down and hung by his hands from the window’s sill before dropping. Before he did, he would have been able to see if anyone was in sight, too, and judge whether or not he could go unseen for the brief moment it would have taken him to be out the window and drop to the bank and slide into the ditch. To a desperate man, the chance of being seen would have been little enough, and he must have been desperate to take the chances he had taken.

But the problem with having him drop from the window was that he would have had to be in the prioress’s parlor and how he would have come there Frevisse did not yet see. Even given all else he had dared to have Montfort dead, even depending on all the nuns to be at Nones, still the hope he could pass through the nunnery to reach the parlor unnoticed by any servant seemed one chance too many.

Unless Domina Matilda was with him in planning Montfort’s death.

Frevisse eased back from the window and turned to look at Domina Matilda, seated again by the fire, stroking her spaniel’s ears and sharing with Domina Elisabeth the constant costs of keeping up a nunnery’s buildings. What interest could she possibly have had in wanting Montfort dead? Nothing Frevisse had heard so far linked her in any way with the Lengley inheritance. Unless her friendship with Lady Agnes ran so deeply she was willing to help toward murder…

It made better sense to think she might not have known it was going to be murder and was holding quiet now out of fear.

But also holding quiet at peril of her soul, and what would be worth that?

A promise of lands or goods or money to the priory in payment for her silence?

That was possible, Frevisse supposed. She had known a prioress who had imperiled her self and soul for worldly gains. But Domina Matilda did not seem that kind. She seemed more like Domina Elisabeth, firm and able in her duties, now asking Domina Elisabeth, “Do you think Mistress Montfort might want to aid the rebuilding of the garden’s wall as a sort of memorial to her husband?”

Frevisse looked away, out the window again. Then turned to face it fully, leaning forward as if that would be enough to help her see more clearly what was happening at the ferry landing across the river.

Something in her suddenness must have drawn Domina Elisabeth’s notice because from across the room she asked, “Dame Frevisse? What is it?”

“I don’t know. Would the hunters be coming home this soon?” That seemed the most likely reason for the milling of horses, riders, and-small with distance but no mistaking the surge and shift of them-a pack of hunting hounds in the wide space left among Streatley’s low buildings for travelers to gather to the ferry.

“No,” Domina Matilda said, rising and coming back to the window. “It’s too soon, surely. They…” Her voice faltered as she reached Frevisse’s side and saw what Frevisse was now seeing-a long shape wrapped in a dark cloak being carried toward the ferry by three men, and softly she said, “God have mercy. Someone’s dead.” She swung away from the window. “Or hurt. Please God, only hurt. I’ll send someone to find out.”