The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 17

As Frevisse passed through the garden, returning to the arbor, she saw over the garden’s back gate a manservant sitting on the grassy edge of the far side of the cart-track, holding the reins of two grazing horses. She knew neither the man nor the horses and for a moment did not know the girl, either, seated in the arbor between Lucy and Ursula, turning the pages of Mandeville’s Travels, then realized she was Sir William’s daughter, the talked-of Philippa, as the girl stood up and curtsied to her, saying, “My lady.”

Frevisse bent her head in return and they both sat, Frevisse beside Sister Johane on the bench facing her and taking the chance for a long look as Lucy went on saying, “… didn’t come with you only because it’s too hot? She’s feeling well, isn’t she? She’s not, um, not…”

“Breeding?” Ursula asked brightly, looking up from her sewing.

“Ursula,” Lucy said, sending quick looks toward Sister Johane and Frevisse, probably to warn against talking about such things in front of nuns.

But Ursula had spent enough time among nuns not to think their living out of the world meant they were unworldly, and said, still brightly, “But that’s what we all want to know, isn’t it? Is Elyn going to have a baby and spoil Philippa’s chance to marry Hugh?”

“That won’t spoil her chance to marry Hugh. She just won’t bring as much to the marriage,” Lucy snapped.

“How far have you gone with Mandeville?” Philippa asked somewhat quickly, opening the book again. She was an even-featured girl, nothing particular about her and her hair simply brown, but she knew when and how to change the course of a conversation. “I like the part about the dog-headed people the best. What about you, Lucy?”

“There are too many dog-heads around here as it is,” said Lucy. “I like to hear about all the riches in Cathay. When is Master Selenger coming to visit Mother again?”

“I don’t know,” Philippa said with a lightness that failed to ring completely true to Frevisse. “He probably wouldn’t be good company if he did. He had angry words with Father this morning.”

“About what?” Lucy asked eagerly.

“Lucy,” Ursula said.

But Philippa answered, “I don’t know. I could hear that they were angry, but not about what.”

“It’s because of Mother,” said Lucy certainly. “He’s pining and angry because she won’t say she’ll marry him.”

“Lucy, why would that make my father angry at him?” Philippa said patiently. “Besides, Uncle John isn’t that unsensible, to expect Lady Anneys to be ready to marry again so soon.”

“How is your father?” Sister Johane asked, taking the talk a different way. Deliberately, Frevisse thought, but this time regretted it. She would have liked to hear more about Selenger. And if Philippa had come visiting to forget troubles at home, no one was helping her do it.

“He’s still unsettled by… all of it,” Philippa answered. “And that Lady Anneys won’t have anything to do with him.”

“It’s early days yet,” Sister Johane said comfortingly. “Lady Anneys only needs time until she can face him again.”

“Besides,” Lucy said cheerily, “you and Hugh can’t be married for probably a year anyway. There’s plenty of time yet.”

“Lucy, you don’t care who marries who,” Ursula said impatiently, “just so long as somebody is marrying somebody.”

At the opening of the arbor Miles said, “If Hugh is wise, he’ll find a husband for you, Lucy, before he does anything else and get you out of here.”

“Miles!” Ursula exclaimed happily while Lucy complained, “I wish he would,” and Miles laughed at her. He was still in the rough, dark green tunic, hosen, and soft-soled leather boots he wore to the forest and his hound was beside him.

“Oh, Miles, not Bevis,” Lucy protested. “Not here.”

Ignoring her, he made a half-bow to Philippa and said, “I saw your horse and man and thought I’d find you here. You look well, my lady.”

“As do you, good sir,” she answered as lightly.

“Where’s Lady Anneys?”

“Gone to bed with a headache,” said Lucy, “and Hugh is gone off with Father Leonel, so you might as well join us. Here. But do leave Bevis there.” She started to shift sideways to make room between her and Philippa.

“By your leave,” Miles said, coming only a single pace into the arbor’s shade before he folded his legs and sank down cross-legged on the ground. “Here will suit me better, where I can look on all your lovely faces.” The hound Bevis lay down beside him with a heavy huff. “How go things at home, Philippa?”

“Well,” she said, then amended, “Well enough.”

“What you mean is that Sir William is still glooming because Lady Anneys doesn’t want to talk him just now, and that your Uncle John is glooming because she doesn’t want him wooing her. And you’re glooming because you have to wait a year to marry Hugh?” Just barely he turned the last into a question and put a stinging edge to it.

Lucy protested, “Oh, Miles, don’t be mean!”

But Philippa laughed and tossed his challenge back at him with, “And Elyn is glooming because everyone else is. I came here so I could gloom somewhere else for a change, yes.”

Miles laughed, too, and with mocking regret said, “It seems Father Leonel will have to give us a sermon on the virtue of patience some Sunday soon.”

“And on how blessed it is to have a cheerful heart in the face of adversity,” Philippa returned.

“And about the sin of gloom,” Miles said.

“And the sin of sloth,” Philippa retorted.

“Sloth?” Miles protested. “Where does sloth come into it?”

“Sloth in pursuing the virtue of patience. Sloth in avoiding the sin of gloom.” Philippa paused in counting them off on her fingers to say, “Though I’ve never heard gloom listed among the sins. And your sloth in not giving up tormenting your sisters and me.”

Miles and Ursula laughed, while Lucy looked back and forth between him and Philippa and said, “Oh, you two. You’re so strange.”

“Strange and stranger,” Miles agreed. “So, as long as we’re talking of gloom and marrying, who do you want to marry, Lucy?”

Frevisse immediately guessed it was a question to which they all knew the answer, because Ursula rolled her eyes upward and took up her sewing again and Philippa sat back with smothered laughter while Lucy unhesitatingly launched into telling how she wanted a husband who was wealthy, not too old, and certainly not ugly, and lived in a town because she was so tired of living in the country and never seeing anything, and for her wedding dress she wanted…

Frevisse watched the others listening to her and wondered what angry things Sir William and Master Selenger had been saying to each other. Philippa had seemed unsure her uncle’s anger this morning was from disappointment over Lady Anneys, but even if it had been, why would that bring him to angry words with Sir William? Because Sir William disapproved of his interest? Or because Lady Anneys was right-Sir William had set Master Selenger onto her for Sir William’s own ends? If that was it, then both Sir William’s and Master Selenger’s anger could have been not at each other but at Lady Anneys for forestalling them. Or Sir William might be angry at Master Selenger for, thus far, failing in his purpose. Or just possibly Master Selenger was unwilling to the work and angry at having to do it.

Or this morning might have had nothing to do with Lady Anneys at all.

And possibly Master Selenger was only what he outwardly seemed-a man honestly drawn to a woman.

But what was the likelihood that Sir William had indeed ordered Master Selenger at her, the way Lady Anneys feared? Uncomfortably, Frevisse had to admit that, from what she had been told, Lady Anneys was the one hindrance between him and the profitable control of Hugh’s, Lucy’s, and Ursula’s marriages. If he had ambitions that way, Lady Anneys was the obstacle he needed to remove.

Once Sir Ralph was out of the way.

Which brought her back to the question at the heart of everything here. Who had killed Sir Ralph?

Miles was telling Lucy that however rich a husband she married, she would undoubtedly use up all his money within a year. Lucy was telling him he was mean and Philippa was saying that they simply needed to marry Lucy to someone so rich she couldn’t possibly use up all his money in a mere year.

No one more than barely noticed when Frevisse stood up and, with a murmur that she would walk awhile, left the arbor.

The garden was drowsy in the afternoon’s warmth and sunshine. Hands quietly clasped in front of her, Frevisse moved along the paths. The beds enclosed in their low wattle fencing were full as could be with the end-of-summer flourish of flowers and herbs. Blue scabious and borage, feverfew with its flood of yellow and white flowers, tall and golden St. John’s Wort, towering scarlet hollyhocks, thick-growing low thyme and marjorem, others that Frevisse did not know by name. Pleasures for the eye, ease for the mind, healing for the body. But her thoughts came with her and the garden’s loveliness did not keep her from turning them over and over with the care she would have given to coals she feared were hot enough to burn.

Everyone said Sir Ralph must have been murdered by someone now long gone and never likely to be found out. They all said it… but how many of them believed it?

Some of them might. Others might doubt but were willing, Frevisse thought, to ignore their doubt. What she feared was that someone here knew for certain it was a lie. Because if the murderer was not long gone away, he was still here.

And there had to be those among the doubters who feared it, too.

Feared… but refused to face it: would rather live with the murderer still among them than find out who he was.

Whoever had killed Sir Ralph that savagely, beating his head in even after it had to be clear he was dead, had to have hated him. Unhappily, that hardly limited who might have done it. To guess from all she had heard, there were surely villagers in plenty who hated him; and certainly no one in his family loved him. And all of his family had been in the woods that day when he was killed, except for Ursula.

And Tom, Frevisse amended. He had quarreled with his father and gone back to the manor before the dog ran off.

But had he gone back to the manor? He wouldn’t have purposefully lain in wait for Sir Ralph since they were hare-hunting that day and Sir Ralph unlikely to be alone in the forest. But what if he had stayed in the woods to walk off his anger, rather than going back to the manor, and had happened on his father and, still in a fury at him, killed him?

That was possible. Someone had told her it had taken a long time to find and bring Father Leonel and Tom after Sir Ralph’s body was found. Although how long “a long time” was to someone frantically looking for someone would be difficult to determine.

And besides his immediate anger, Tom could have been afraid his cheating on the accounts with Father Leonel was about to be found out. Had Sir Ralph lately been growing suspicious? If so, Tom had better reason than a quarrel to want him dead and better reason to kill him if he suddenly had the chance.

Who else had immediate reason or need to have Sir Ralph dead? Hugh? Had he stood to gain anything from his father’s death? Unless he had simply been unable to bear his father any longer, he had already had all he seemed to want-the hounds and hunting. Or was there more he wanted that she had yet to see? Tom had stood between him and inheriting the manor and now Tom was dead, too; but nothing about Hugh told Frevisse he had wanted the manor at all, let alone wanted it badly enough to kill for it. The only other thing that would come to him because of Tom’s death was Philippa. Did he want her that badly? Frevisse had no way to know.

For what it was worth, Lucy claimed it was Miles, not Hugh, who was something more than only friendly with Philippa. From what Frevisse had just seen of them together, they did accord well together; but accord and love were two different things and neither one was enough for murder. Or rather, love could be used as a reason to kill but only by the most desperate or foolish, and Miles did not seem to be either. Not for the kind of murder that had been done on Sir Ralph. Hatred, though, was another matter, and Miles did not in the slightest hide his hatred of Sir Ralph or his pleasure that he was dead. Besides, with Sir Ralph’s death he gained his freedom. Lucy had said he and Philippa were together when Sir Ralph was killed, but if there was love between them, she might well lie for him. But could she lie well enough? And keep up the lie? And if she could, then what sort of person was she, to see murder like that done and not only hold quiet about it afterward, but stay a laughing friend with the murderer?

That was, of course, supposing she had not killed Sir Ralph herself. But the objection to that was the same Frevisse already had against Lady Anneys or Lady Elyn or Lucy doing it: a woman repeatedly smashing a man’s skull could not have avoided such a splashing and spattering of blood onto her skirts as would have been afterward seen and questioned.

For that matter, a man would not have escaped being bloodied either but after a morning spent hunting there had likely been blood on more than one of them already. If no one noted Sir Ralph’s when it was fresh, later it would simply be dried blood along with other dried blood and unremarkable.

Her pacing of the garden had brought her past the arbor again and Sister Johane said, “You won’t come back into the shade and sit?”

Frevisse made a smile whose worth she doubted and said, “No,” and walked on, wishing she had not seen that Miles had shifted onto the bench facing Philippa and was leaning toward her with one hand out to hold a fold of her skirt while she leaned toward him, a hand resting on his knee, the two of them laughing together over something. But she had seen it and she put it with the rest.

The rest of what? What, altogether, did she have? There was Tom, who might have killed his father to protect himself. And Hugh, who maybe wanted either the manor or Philippa or both badly enough to kill for them not once but twice, meaning Tom’s death was not by chance after all. And Miles, who openly hated Sir Ralph and had gained freedom by his death but not Philippa. To have Philippa, if he did want her, which was not certain, he needed both Tom and Hugh out of his way and, true, Tom was dead, but not by Miles’ doing. So far as anyone had yet said, Miles had been altogether somewhere else when it happened.

But they weren’t the only possibilities in Sir Ralph’s death. There were Sir William and Master Selenger, too. Master Selenger could have wanted him dead, to clear his way to Lady Anneys if his interest in her was real rather than a thing made up between him and Sir William for their profit. And for Sir William himself, of course, there was the obvious reason that Sir Ralph’s death put him in reach of profitable control of the Woderove marriages. That did not explain the savagery of the killing, though.

Of course, Sir William might have had an entire other reason for needing or wanting Sir Ralph dead, and the control of the marriages be only an afterthought. Come to that, Master Selenger might have other reason of his own, too. Some old anger or wrong only finally avenged.

If that were it, Frevisse had no thought on how she might find it out, but what did she know about them that day at least? Lucy had said they left the clearing together but that Sir William had come back alone. If he and Master Selenger had separated in the woods, one of them could have come on Sir Ralph and killed him. Or they could have killed him together and then separated. Either way, Master Selenger was Sir William’s man. If Lady Anneys was right in believing his wooing of her was at Sir William’s bidding, it could be supposed he might equally well lie to keep Sir William clear of murder.

Or Sir William could be lying for him.

About what had they been angry and arguing today?

She swiped an impatient hand at a tall borage plant as she passed. All she had were guesses and questions and no thought on how to find answers. Someone had murdered Sir Ralph. That was one certainty. Another was that he had been well-hated by many people, while some of them and too many others stood to profit by his death. Set the question of “who” to the side, then, since it was so wide. What about “why then” and “why there”? Why that time and place for his death?

Those questions told her something anyway-that his killing hadn’t been planned. There had been no way to know the dog would run off and Sir Ralph go after it, no reason to expect he would be alone at all that day. That meant the chance to kill him had merely happened and someone had taken it, probably without thought of afterward. And very likely only blind luck, rather than forethought, had kept whoever it was from being caught at it or found out soon afterward.

Frevisse paused to rub thyme leaves between her fingers, releasing the scent into the warm air. A chance murder, yes. But had it been someone taking the chance when it came or someone forced to it then and there? There was still the possibility that it had been nothing more than Sir Ralph catching someone where they should not have been-someone poaching or a peasant taking wood. Though how could someone have been fool enough to be anywhere near where Sir Ralph was hunting when it was known he favored that place in the woods for his midday rest she did not know.

Hunting. The dog-boy Degory. She had forgotten him but he had been there. He had even said that Sir Ralph had hit him when the dog ran off. Had it been one blow too many?

He had also said Sir Ralph had hit Hugh then, too. Had that been one blow too many?

Frevisse found she had stopped and was standing over the same cluster of red gillyflowers that Lady Anneys had looked at so long last evening. They seemed such simple flowers until one not only looked but truly saw them; then, with their finely veined, delicately fringed petals, their careful stems and leaves, their rich and subtle coloring, they were not simple at all. Beauty, at its heart, was rarely simple, and yet the world held so much of it, and what Frevisse found forever hard to understand was why mankind so often chose ugliness when beauty was so readily, amply there.

Was it because the ugliness was easier? Because it let a person feel powerful without the cost of being anything but selfish?

She walked on. Sir Ralph, by all that she had so far heard of him, had been that kind of petty, small-hearted man, his life a blight on everyone around him. The pity was that the blight had not been cleansed by his death. It was still here, a blood-tainted shadowing in minds and hearts.

She came to the garden’s rear gate and stopped there to gaze out across the field stubbled yellow from the summer-harvested hay. Come autumn, the cattle would be turned out there to feed and in the spring it would be ploughed and planted, to be harvested when another autumn came and after that left fallow, to be hay again another year.

Year went around into year, the pattern of them repeating and yet never the same. This year had brought murder here. She wished she could forget that. Wished she would let the matter lie, for someone else to take up or leave, as they would. She could do that, she told herself-could just leave it all alone. Guilt and justice were the crowner’s and sheriff’s business, not hers. If the crowner was satisfied and everyone here content, shouldn’t she be, too?

But she couldn’t be. Someone here was a murderer, and even though no one might know who he was, enough of them knew he was here that their denial, their willed unknowing, was a rot at the heart of things-and rot, left to itself, only spread, rotting everything around it.