The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 23

Afterward, Master Gruesby never cared to think much about the rest of that day. There were outcries that brought servants running, with more outcries and confusion, but by then Lady Agnes had seized hold of Mistress Haselden and taken her into her chamber, out of the way, along with her woman and Dame Frevisse’s prioress. It was Dame Frevisse who stayed to order the servants, quieting them and seeing to it that Lady Juliana’s body was moved to lie flat on the hall floor and that a blanket was brought to cover it while Master Christopher sent his own man at a run to bring the rest of his men from the nunnery while holding Master Haselden under guard himself.

Master Gruesby hovered aside from all of that, making sure he had Lady Juliana’s statement safe in his belt pouch and keeping an eye to Stephen, who had drawn back until flat against the rear wall of the gallery, out of the way and out of sight of Lady Juliana’s body, unheeded by anyone until Dame Frevisse went to speak low-voiced to him. He answered with first a sideways shake of his head and then a nod, and she turned from him to give order to one of the servant women, “Take him to the kitchen, Emme. Give him something strong to drink, keep him warm by the fire, don’t let anyone make him talk about anything.”

“Lady Agnes…” Emme started.

“Has enough on her hands just now. Nor does Stephen need to deal with women for the while. He needs quiet and something strong to drink. Go with her, Stephen.”

Stephen went, not saying anything and his head turned aside from Lady Juliana’s blanket-covered body when he had to pass it at the stairfoot. Master Christopher’s men came then and Master Christopher sent one of them promptly out again to keep guard in the yard against anyone coming in, because if the screams and cries had not been heard, then the running to and from the nunnery had surely been seen and the curious would be gathering.

To Master Gruesby’s relief, young Denys was given the task of going to tell Lady Juliana’s family that she had fallen and was dead and to promise that Master Christopher would see them himself as soon as might be and tell them more. In the meanwhile he would keep with Master Haselden until somewhere was found to lock him up and keep him under guard until he was given over to the sheriff. It therefore fell to Master Gruesby to go with the men who carried Lady Juliana’s body to the nunnery, where the nuns and nunnery servants would be better able to help her family with all that would need doing than anyone at the inn. But when he had told the nun at the cloister door what was the matter, she took him to explain again, to Domina Matilda, who granted the nunnery’s help-“Of course”-and went to see what she could do.

He made his escape only barely in time. As he crossed back to Lady Agnes‘s, Denys was coming down the street toward the nunnery in company with Mistress Champyon, her son, and husband. For Master Gruesby that made it easier to go forward into the gathering of people already outside Lady Agnes’s, their questions flurrying around him-What had happened? Whose body had been carried out? Who was dead? Had someone died?-his head bowed and shoulders hunched, thankful when Master Christopher’s man let him into the safety of the yard.

But to be thankful was not the same as to be happy and he was not happy as he went into Lady Agnes’s hall. Was even further from happy seeing a maidservant on her knees at the foot of the stairs scrubbing Lady Juliana’s blood from the stone floor, and he shied aside to the fireplace, to stand with his back to her and his hands out to the fading coals and gray ashes of the neglected fire. Not that he would have been any better warmed by flames. He was cold right through with a cold against which no fire had chance.

He had seen someone die before now. In the ordinary way of things it was natural for people to die. He had even taken comfort once in being beside someone he cared about until her end and thought she had taken comfort in his being there. But he had never seen someone killed before now. He had seen the aftermath of violent deaths often enough, of course. As crowner’s clerk he had seen a great many bodies dead in any number of unpleasant ways. But by the time he had seen a body it had been… a body. Not a person anymore. Even little Mistress Lengley yesterday. He had seen her alive one day and then, when next he’d seen her, she had been dead and he had been able, as always, to keep the two things-the being alive and the being dead-apart in his mind.

With Lady Juliana it had been… was different.

Not that he had liked her. He had not. But he had watched her this morning laughing, being scornful, angry, proud… and then between one instant and the next, in the time it had taken her to strike the stair and floor, she was no longer there. Instead of Lady Juliana there had been only a sprawled body with blood spreading from under its head. No longer anyone at all.

And that was how it had been with all those other bodies he had seen. Upon a time each of them had been someone who had laughed and been angry, hurt, and happy. Had been someone as alive as Lady Juliana had been. And then they were not. No more than Lady Juliana was or ever would be anymore.

It was as if he had come around a comer in his mind where he had never gone before and instead of only knowing something he was feeling it.

Feeling anything much at all unsettled him. He did not like it and he was grateful to Master Christopher for coming at that moment through a nearby doorway into the hall, letting him leave the fire and his thoughts to go to him, a little guilty at being found idle, saying, “All’s seen to at the nunnery, sir.”

“My thanks. With Lady Agnes’s leave, we’ve tied Master Haselden for now in a storeroom with a small window and heavy door.”

“Mistress Haselden?” Master Gruesby ventured to ask.

“Lady Agnes has given bond to answer for her. Now I’d have you write me word to the sheriff that he’s needed here. Tom will take it…”

Master Gruesby slid, pleased, into familiar duties. There was comfort to be had from duties. If one only held to them hard enough, they kept a great many thoughts at bay, and today they served to see him well into the afternoon, until Master Christopher could no longer put off going to see Lady Juliana’s family. Mistress Champyon had been sending demands to him, that he tell her himself what had happened, and finally, with everything done that could be done for the day, he faced the task but took young Denys with him. “Because if you’re there, Master Gruesby, she’ll want to question you about it, too, and that would mean more talking,” Master Christopher said, to Master Gruesby’s great relief.

But it left him with no excuse against doing the thing he had to do and, unhappy at it, he returned to the nunnery and displeased the sacristan by asking to have the Lengley strong chest brought to him. At least he did not keep her long. There was only the one thing he needed from it and when he had it he stood for a moment over the open chest, holding it, then seemed to put it back among the other papers but in the doing somehow set the scrolled documents he had set aside on the table rolling over the edge to bounce and scatter on the floor toward the sacristan and servant, who moved to stoop and gather them and did not see Master Gruesby slip the folded paper up his sleeve before he came around the table to help them, begging pardon for his unhandiness. The sacristan was not much disposed to pardon him, instead snapped, “You’re always doing this,” as she snatched and dumped documents back into the chest, then asked if he were done, and at him humbly admitting that he was, slammed shut and locked the chest and went away with it, leaving the servant to see him out.

Clear away, he went back yet again to Lady Agnes’s, half expecting to be told Stephen had returned to the Haseldens’ manor but found that he had not, was still with his grandmother. Master Gruesby would have asked if he might speak with Master Stephen alone but the tiredly impatient servingwoman gave him no chance, showed him up to Lady Agnes’s solar without question, announced, “It’s the crowner’s man,” and withdrew, all in a bustle that frighted him off saying anything.

He immediately regretted his weakness. Not only was Lady Agnes there, sitting straight-backed in a cushioned chair close to the fire, looking weary and grim, with one age-thinned hand held out toward the flames and the other holding tightly to Master Stephen seated beside her, but so were Dame Frevisse and her prioress, seated across the hearth with hands folded in their laps, the both of them with the look of someone praying inwardly and hard. He had heard, during the day, that they had put off their remove to the nunnery, asked by Lady Agnes to be with her a little longer, but he had also forgotten he had heard it and the knot already in his belly knotted a little tighter. He would rather not have had Dame Frevisse anywhere near what he was going to do.

But there was no going back from his purpose now, and as the four beside the fire looked toward him, he bowed and said, close to a whisper but unable to help it, “By your leave, Master Stephen. I’d talk with you apart, please.”

He had hoped Master Stephen would leave the room with him but he only rose, looking puzzled, and crossed to the window, where the late-afternoon sunlight was slanting in, long and golden. Perforce, Master Gruesby followed him but, once there, sidled a little sideways to put his back toward the women by the fire.

“Is something wrong?” Master Stephen asked. Too little time had passed yet for all of yesterday and today’s happenings to be lined deeply into his face but the pain that would make those lines was there, along with a weariness that wanted only to be done with hurts both given and received as he amended his question to, “Is something else wrong?”

For answer to that, Master Gruesby drew the folded paper from his sleeve and held it out, more wishing he was elsewhere than at almost any time in his life before. Master Stephen took the paper from him, turned it over in search of a superscription that was not there, and asked, “What is this?”

Master Gruesby drew breath to answer that but could not, let out his breath, drew it again, and succeeded in saying toward Master Stephen’s belt buckle, “It was with the Lengley deeds and documents. I found it. It’s yours.”

“Mine?”

Unnerved so badly he could hardly stand, Master Gruesby repeated, somewhat desperately, “Yours.”

He had carefully refolded the paper with its attached wax seal safe inside it. There was no doubt that Master Stephen could feel the weight of it and indeed he unfolded the paper carefully, caught the seal as it slid out, and as he began to read, kept it in his hand rather than letting its heavy wax hang loose on the green ribbon that had been threaded through a pair of slits near the bottom edge of the paper and doubled over, both ends of the ribbon fixed firmly in the wax so that the seal could not be removed from the paper without destruction of the seal or tearing of the paper or cutting of the ribbon.

It was a short letter, considering what it had to say. In the days it had been his and no one else’s, Master Gruesby had wondered how many times Stephen’s mother had written it over, and with what effort and agony, to bring everything she had wanted to say down to those few sentences before she had left it to God’s will whether it would someday come to her son or not. Now it had and the son she had hardly known was reading it more than once, guessing from the time that passed until he looked up from it to Master Gruesby and asked with a quietness worse than shouting, “How long have you had this?”

Master Gruesby cleared his throat. “It came from the strong chest in the nunnery within the hour.”

With that same quietness, Master Stephen said, “I mean, how long have you known about it?”

With desperate effort Master Gruesby met his gaze and answered steadily, “Since the day we first came to Goring. Master Montfort and I. Since then.”

Master Stephen opened his mouth, shut it over whatever he had been first minded to say, paused, and finally asked, “Who else knows about it?”

“Master Montfort did. No one else. He set me to look through the Lengley documents as soon as we arrived. While he went to see the Champyons. I gave it to him when he came back.” Master Gruesby’s throat was so tight the words would barely come but there was relief in saying them, in not being the only one to know. “He took it with him the next morning. I th-think he liked the power he felt, having it. Over everyone he was talking to. You see. He gave it back to me when he returned. He said to leave it where it had been. Until he asked for it again.”

Stephen’s gaze had returned to the letter. “My God and Judas’ blood,” he breathed. “Juliana wasn’t lying.” And then, accusingly, “Why give me this? Why not to the crowner or escheater?”

“Because…” Master Gruesby stopped and gathered himself, and went on, “Because you should know. Because it should be your choice. Instead of someone else’s.” And also because Master Gruesby knew something of what it was to lose out on one’s life for no other reason than one’s birth. But that was aside from Master Stephen’s trouble and he did not say it, and if the shadow of it was in his voice, Master Stephen did not hear it, eyes on the letter again. That morning, before Master Christopher’s men had taken Master Haselden away, Stephen had asked of him, “If my mother wasn’t my father’s wife, what happened to her?” And Master Haselden had said back with angry pleasure, “Dead a long time ago. Your grandmother can tell you all about it. Make her.”

Now there was far less Lady Agnes would have to tell him.

But from across the room she was become aware that something more than a mere message was happening. Sharply she called, “Stephen. What is it?” And when he did not answer, she pushed herself to her feet by an arm of her chair and her staff, saying more sharply, “What is it? What have you there?”

Master Stephen looked over Master Gruesby’s shoulder at her, a long-drawn moment passing before he said, level-voiced, “A letter from my mother.”

Lady Agnes straightened, her mouth thinning to a harsh, determined line before she said, “Nonsense. There’s no such thing.” She held out a demanding hand. “Give it here.”

Master Stephen made no move toward her. “It was with the documents you gave Master Montfort leave to look at.”

“It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.”

Master Stephen stepped aside from Master Gruesby, as if clearing a tourney field between him and his grandmother, and read, “ ‘I, dying with nothing of the world to leave to you, leave only this, a gift of truth, and knowing that neither your father nor your grandmother can be trusted to give it to you, nor feeling I should burden any living soul with it, I have persuaded Domina Aylenor to let me put it in the Lengley strong chest, that if it be God’s will that it come someday and somehow into your hands, it will.’ ”

Lady Agnes struck her staff against the floor. “The treacherous whore!” She thrust her hand out angrily. “Give that thing to me. It’s lies and nothing but lies. Give it here.”

“No.”

“It’s lies! All of it!”

Master Stephen took his look from her and from near the bottom of the page, close to where the seal was attached, read, “ ‘I, Domina Aylenor Thedmarch, prioress of the nunnery of St. Mary the Virgin in Goring, do attest and swear that I have not read what is herein written but have taken oath from Mariota Coleshill that it is true…’ ”

“Stephen, ” Lady Agnes said in a voice that utterly forbade him to read more.

“ ‘… and because she is near to death and has repented of her sins and made confession, I do believe her.’ ” Stephen raised his eyes to his grandmother. “It’s sealed with the nunnery’s seal.”

“Mariota was always a liar. She was lying to Domina Aylenor. She’s lying to you through that letter. Let me burn it.”

“It isn’t her lies I’ve been living by,” Stephen said, coldly calm. “It’s been your lies. And my father’s and Master Haselden’s. Her only lie was in letting you have your own way against her and she did that for my sake.”

“Everything was done for your sake,” Lady Agnes said back at him, angry but also, Master Gruesby thought, afraid.

“But for your sake and my father’s and Master Haselden’s first,” Stephen answered. “I was simply the means to your ends.”

For the first time Lady Agnes showed desperation. “Your father loved you, Stephen. I love you…”

And gently Stephen answered her, “I know you do, and I love you and ever will. But the lying has to stop. I want to take my own course instead of one set for me by others.”

“Not this course. This is the wrong course.” Lady Agnes turned to Domina Elisabeth. “She was an apostate nun. Utterly damned. She fled out of St. Mary’s with a man. Not my son. Someone else. It was only after the first man deserted her that my son took her and then at the last she deserted him, went crawling back to the nuns begging forgiveness. How can anyone believe anything she ever wrote or said?”

“Grandmother,” Stephen said, dangerous in his quietness. “Listen. She confesses she fled her vows and was later taken up by my father. Then she writes, ‘We loved each other carnally but more than carnally. We loved with our hearts as well as our bodies and when the time came that I bore you, his second son, and knew even while my happiness was at the height, holding you in my arms, that I was dying without hope, I gave your father and grandmother their wish and let them have you in return for being allowed, weary of the world as I was become, to return to St. Mary’s, to pray for the nuns’ forgiveness and God’s in my last days.’ ”

He stopped and, grim with remembrance, Lady Agnes said, “Your father was so bitter over that. His little bitch-wife had been sickly for years but wouldn’t die, while his paramour who had been so full of life died in a bare few months of lung rot. Only then and at almost the same time did his wife finally die, the useless woman.” Lady Agnes jerked her staff toward the letter. “But that doesn’t mean that has to be the truth there!”

“ ‘Dying,’ ” Stephen remorselessly read, “ ‘I leave you what I can of my love and the truth, and hope it comes to you. They say God’s will is over all. That being so, I wonder why he willed this life, this death on me, but that is not the manner of question we are taught to ask. May God be with you, as I know he is now with me. Written by my own hand this seventh day of…’ ”

Now, finally, Stephen’s voice twisted toward the tears he had been holding in and he stopped until he had them at bay, not shamed by them but in need of dealing with other things first, lowering the letter and saying to his grandmother when he had steadied his voice again, “There’s been enough of lying. I’d rather live by the truth from here on.”

“The ‘truth’ will cost you your legitimacy and your lands,” Lady Agnes said back at him.

“Your lies cost Nichola her life! And have helped to ruin Master Haselden and Mistress Haselden. And Juliana come to that. And even Montfort. I think that’s enough. Don’t you?”

Tears filled Lady Agnes’s eyes. “We didn’t think your brother would live, and to lose all because there was no other heir…” Her tears flowed over, down the long lines of her face. “It isn’t only the Bower manor that you’ll lose by this. It’s everything. You’ll be left with nothing, Stephen. Don’t you see? You’ll have nothing.”

Stephen went to her, three long strides, and put his arms around her, taller than she was though she was tall, and held her to him, her face against his shoulder, and said to the top of her head, “Grandmother, Grandmother. I’m not a fool and I’m not a weakling. I’d rather make a life for myself that wasn’t come from lies and people dying for it. Besides…” He set Lady Agnes back at arm’s length from him and said with a smile for her sake and something like laughter, broken though it was on his own tears, “Besides, don’t I remember that you have a manor in your own name, to will to whom you wish, and who better than your well-loved grandson?”

“A small manor,” she protested. “Not worth a quarter of all you’re giving up!”

Smile and laughter gone, Stephen looked into her eyes. “But without Nichola’s death because of it,” he said.