The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 18

The afternoon had drawn on while Frevisse walked and the others talked. She was thinking she should rejoin them when Sister Johane joined her at the gate, leaned on it beside her, and said, “In spite of Dame Emma and Sister Amicia, I’m not used to this much talking. I’m going to see how Lady Anneys does. Should we do Vespers after that?”

Pleased that for once she need not remind Sister Johane about an Office, Frevisse said, “I’ll come with you and save you coming back.”

As they crossed the silent, empty hall, the hound Baude-stretched out on the cool floor-tiles near the empty hearth-opened one eye as they passed but did not bother to raise her head. Upstairs, they found Lady Anneys just awakened, sitting on the side of her bed trying to pin up her hair. Still slow with sleep, she was not doing well and Sister Johane went to take comb and hairpins from her, asking, “How do you feel, my lady?”

Lady Anneys gave a soft half-laugh. “I’m not sure I’m awake enough yet to know. But my headache is gone. Thank you for that.”

“You can have the sleeping draught again tonight if you like. It’s a mild one. Having it twice in one day this once will do no harm.”

“I should like that, I think.” Lady Anneys sighed and moved her neck from side to side as if she were stiff. “It’s so tiring when even going to sleep takes effort.”

Still eased from her sleep and maybe from the quieting aftereffects of whatever Sister Johane had given her for the headache, Lady Anneys unprotestingly let Sister Johane finish her hair and then pin on her veil for her. “But not my wimple,” she said. “I know as a properly grieving widow I should go wimpled, veiled, and all but invisible, but the day is hot and I’m not properly grieving and we have no guests to be offended. So just the veil.”

“Lady Philippa is here,” Frevisse said.

“Philippa is family, not guest.” Lady Anneys made to rise, found herself a little unsteady at it, and thanked Sister Johane for a steadying hand to her back. On her feet, she straightened her shoulders with a visible effort and asked, “Is Elyn here, too?”

“Only Lady Philippa,” Frevisse said.

“Where is everyone?”

“In the garden, except Master Hugh, who went to see how the harvest does.”

Lady Anneys was both fully awake and had her balance now and said as she started for the door, “I’ll go to the parlor then. I don’t want all Lucy’s chatter just yet. But could you ask Philippa to come to me, Dame Frevisse?”

Frevisse took the errand willingly. By the mingle of voices from the kitchen as she passed, she guessed someone was back from the field and readying supper, and in the garden she found Hugh had returned, too, and was sitting beside Ursula, pretending to find fault with her sewing. Philippa had moved to the other bench, while Miles had shifted back to the ground and was leaning with his back against the wooden wall of the bench near her, his hound stretched out beside him, chin resting on his knee, his hand on its shoulder. Frevisse gave her message. Philippa said she would come in a few moments, and after returning to tell that to Lady Anneys in the parlor, Frevisse went thankfully up to the bedchamber with Sister Johane again.

Vespers was supposed to draw the day’s work to an end in prayer that left the heart and mind free of whatever burdens the day had held. In the nunnery there would be supper afterward, the nuns silent while someone read aloud from a suitable book, then the hour of recreation followed by Compline’s brief prayers and bed in good time for a few hours’ sleep before Matins and Lauds in the middle of the night. But today Frevisse could not settle her mind to the Office. Vespers’ comfort did not come and she was merely grateful when at last she and Sister Johane ended, “Fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen”-The souls of the faithful through the mercy of God rest in peace-and could cross themselves and stand up.

She made herself wait, though, until they had put their breviaries away before she said, “Shall we see if Lady Anneys wants our company?” Because this might be her chance to talk with Philippa apart from the others.

Her restlessness must have showed despite herself or else she had betrayed herself in some other way, because rather than immediately answering, Sister Johane gave her a long look and finally said, “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”

Frevisse was surprised into asking, “I’m doing what again?”

“We talk about it sometimes. What you do. Finding out murderers. You’re trying to find out who murdered Sir Ralph, aren’t you?”

Frevisse opened her mouth, closed it again, and at last answered, “Yes.”

“Is it wise?” Sister Johane asked seriously.

Again Frevisse hesitated before saying with matching seriousness, “I don’t know.”

“You can’t just let it go?”

That at least she could answer without hesitation. “I can’t, no.”

Now Sister Johane paused, before finally saying, simply, “If you need any help, I’ll give it.”

The simple steadiness of that took Frevisse by more surprise. She had to will herself to remember that, after all, Dame Claire trusted this girl-this woman-and that said much for her, before she could bring herself to say, “Just listen for anyone saying anything about the day Sir Ralph was killed. Or anything that’s said that’s… not right to your mind.”

Sister Johane gave a small nod. “I understand.”

“But don’t ask anything. Don’t let anyone know you’ve any interest. I’d have you promise me that.”

Steadily, Sister Johane said, “I promise.”

Frevisse stared at her a moment longer. Sister Johane levelly returned her gaze in a way that satisfied Frevisse, she understood the danger there could be, the odd thing being that until now Frevisse had not clearly considered the danger that someone who had killed once might well kill again to protect himself. But there was no going back from it now and she only said, “I’d like to see Lady Anneys and Philippa alone. Would you go back to the garden without me?”

Sister Johane agreed to that with a nod. They went down to the hall and parted and outside the partly open parlor door Frevisse forwent the temptation to pause and listen, instead scratched lightly at the doorframe and, at Lady Anneys’ bidding, went in. Lady Anneys and Philippa were seated on the long chest under the open window to catch whatever breeze might come that way, both of them leaning on the windowsill, Philippa with her head bowed and resting in one elbow-propped hand, Lady Anneys with her arm lying along the sill, her hand touching the girl’s arm. By the look of it, Philippa had been crying, and although she was recovering from it, she turned her face away without lifting her head, hiding behind her hand, as Frevisse entered. Contrariwise, Lady Anneys was calm-faced and asked in an even voice, “Where’s Sister Johane?”

“Gone back to the others in the garden.”

“Please, sit, if you like.” Lady Anneys nodded toward a carved joint stool near them and went on as Frevisse crossed to it, “Philippa has been warning me of exactly what I feared.”

Philippa raised her head, began a protest. Lady Anneys briefly, tenderly squeezed her arm and said, “I’ve already talked about the will and Sir William and your uncle with Dame Frevisse. She knows enough there’s no harm in her knowing more. Please, tell her what you told me.”

Philippa let out her breath on an unsteady half-sob but obediently straightened up, folded her hands into her lap, and faced Frevisse. Dry-throated from her crying and her voice not so even as Lady Anneys’, she said, “You heard me saying my father and uncle were angry at each other this morning. What I didn’t tell was why.” She looked down at her hands in her lap and said, pacing the words like something learned by rote, “Father wants Lady Anneys married or unchaste so he can take over Hugh and Lucy and Ursula’s marriages. He’s set my uncle on to do it and is impatient because it hasn’t happened yet. This morning he was saying he wants it done sooner rather than later, before she does anything on her own about the marriages. About Hugh’s marriage especially. Father is afraid she won’t agree to me marrying him.”

Frevisse looked at Lady Anneys. “You’re thinking against it now?”

“My lady,” Lady Anneys said wearily, “Sir William is ahead of me on this by a long ways. I’m too tired and hurting, heart and mind both, to think about any marriages. Left to myself, I’d leave at least theirs to Hugh and Philippa’s choice anyway.”

“That’s one of the things that worries Father,” said Philippa, her head still bowed. “He doesn’t want it left to our choice.”

“Because he thinks you or Hugh will refuse the marriage?” Frevisse quickly asked.

Philippa finally looked up. “He thinks Hugh is too cool toward it. He’s afraid Lady Anneys will influence Hugh against it. Because of Tom.”

“And you? Is he afraid you’re cool toward it?”

Philippa looked down at her lap again. “He expects me to do what I’m told to do.”

“And will you?” Frevisse asked.

“Yes.” Flat and without feeling.

“What about Miles?”

Philippa jerked up her head and stared at Frevisse, eyes frightened wide and not answering.

It was Lady Anneys who asked, puzzled, “Philippa?”

Philippa turned her head to stare at her, still making no answer.

Carefully, making no mention of Lucy’s tattling talk, Frevisse said to her in a meaningful way, “I watched you together today.”

She did not add that she had seen nothing that truly betrayed them, but Philippa gave a small gasp and covered her face with both hands.

Beginning to be alarmed, Lady Anneys asked, “Philippa?”

Philippa dropped her hands into her lap again and lifted her head. She was flushed but not crying, and said, somewhere toward defiant, “Miles and I. Yes. If I had my choice, I’d choose Miles. Only he won’t let me. Because we know there’s no hope in it. Father will never let it happen.” She gave a brief, unhappy laugh. “Nor will Miles. He says I’d lose too much by marrying him. He says he won’t do that to me.”

Gently Frevisse asked, “Does Sir William know what’s between you?”

“If he did, I doubt I’d be let out of the house again until safely married to Hugh.”

“Does Elyn know of it?” Lady Anneys asked.

“No. Nor even suspect. She’d surely tell Father if she did.”

“But when you went alone with Miles, didn’t that make her wonder?” Frevisse asked.

“How do you know I’ve been alone with Miles?” Philippa asked with sudden fear. “Who else knows we’ve been meeting?”

“Oh, Philippa,” Lady Annys said, sharp with worry. “You’ve not been meeting secretly?”

“A few times. That’s all. Just a poor, few times. But no one else is supposed to know about it at all. Who’s seen us?” she demanded of Frevisse, half-angry as well as frightened. “Who told you?”

Quickly, deliberately mildly, to soothe her, Frevisse said, “All I know is that someone said that the day of Sir Ralph’s death you and Miles went walking together while the others were searching for the dog.”

Philippa put a hand over her mouth, realizing she had said things she could have left unsaid; but an instant later she dropped her hand and said, “Miles and I went off on our own that day, yes. There was nothing wrong about it. Lady Anneys was there. She saw us and said nothing.”

“Because I thought it was simply that you and Miles couldn’t bear Lucy’s and Elyn’s nattering any longer. There seemed less harm in your walking together than in Miles knocking their heads together. I never thought…” Lady Anneys shook her head. “I never thought you and Miles…”

Or maybe she had unknowingly chosen not to think it, Frevisse thought. Among the things Lady Anneys had not needed in her life then, any more than now, was one more trouble. She might have unknowingly chosen not to see that one.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Philippa. “Nothing can come of what we want. It’s Father is the trouble. And Uncle John.” Whose treachery-to judge by her voice-hurt her worse than her father’s did.

“He’s completely willing to do Sir William’s bidding in this?” Lady Anneys asked bitterly.

“I… I gather so. What he seemed angry at was being pushed too hard at it. Father wants it done now and he says it can’t be.”

“Is he supposed to go so far as to marry me? Or will ruining my reputation be enough?”

“I don’t know,” whispered Philippa.

“Or why not do both?” Miles asked angrily from the doorway.

He and Hugh stood together there, both of them dark-faced with matching anger, and again Frevisse was struck by how much like brothers they looked. But it was Miles who came forward ahead of Hugh, saying at Lady Anneys, “Why shouldn’t Selenger ruin your reputation for Sir William’s behalf, then marry you for his own? That way both of them will have something out of it.”

Behind him Hugh said warningly, “Miles.”

Miles, halfway across the room, swung around and said at him, “For years, because of Sir Ralph, we’ve always talked around things, never straight at them. Where has it put us? Anywhere we want to be?”

“In that, you’re right,” Lady Anneys said before Hugh could answer. “So let’s talk straight at them now. But let’s not have anger in place of silence. Sit down. You and Hugh both.”

It was an order more than a request, and Hugh came forward to sit on a joint stool. Miles held back, on the edge of rebellion for a moment, then went to lean his hips against the table edge, arms folded across his breast.

“First,” said Lady Anneys to both of them, “Philippa came here today to warn me about Sir William and Master Selenger. Dame Frevisse and Hugh both know I already feared it. Miles, did you?”

“Yes. From almost the first day Selenger came here after Sir Ralph’s death.”

“Well, now there’s no more need to fear because now that we know for certain and I don’t have to worry you’ll find out, I won’t let him near me again. It’s finished. That leaves us with you, Miles. You and Philippa.”

She must have seen as clearly as Frevisse did the look that flashed between Miles and Hugh because she asked quickly, “Hugh knows?”

For once Miles was less than assured, his glance at Philippa uncertain as he answered, “We’ve talked some of Philippa and me, yes, but this isn’t the time to-”

“You said you were tired of talking carefully around things,” Lady Anneys pointed out. “So am I. Philippa has already given away more of what’s between you than she meant to, so Dame Frevisse and I know. I take it Hugh knows, too?”

Grudging and uncomfortable, looking aside rather than at any of them, Miles said, “I’ve told him, yes.”

“Hugh? What have you thought of it?”

Hugh looked as if he were thinking he’d like very much to be somewhere else just then but met his mother’s gaze and said, “I favor it.”

Philippa stood quickly up and went to Miles. Laying her hands on his folded arms, she said gladly, “You see?”

“Except,” Hugh said with a wary look from his mother to them and back again, “he keeps saying I should marry her.”

Philippa looked unbelievingly from Miles to him to Miles again, stepped back, and said fiercely, “You idiot!”

Miles tried to catch her hands but she did not let him and he spread out his own, half-entreating, half-insisting, “We’ve talked of the hopelessness of it often enough. What can I give you except trouble? It’s better that you’re safe with Hugh than ruined with me.”

“Idiot!” she said again, still fiercely.

Lady Anneys laughed, startling them, maybe startling herself; but she pointed a finger at Miles and said, “I don’t know much of love, but when a woman calls you ‘idiot’ in that way, my guess is she’s much too much in love with you to reason about it.”

Stubbornly Miles said, “It doesn’t solve anything.” But even as he said it, one of his hands reached toward Philippa, who moved close to him and took it.

“No,” Lady Anneys agreed. “But with it in the open among us, it makes one less secret.”

For her part, Frevisse was watching Hugh. He had been tensely silent until, when Miles reached out to Philippa, his face lightened into a smile of relief and pleasure, telling her he had meant it when he said he favored Philippa for Miles rather than for himself. The friendship between them was that true. But because she was unlikely to have better chance than this, she asked, “Miles, when you and Philippa were away together the day Sir Ralph was killed, did you hear anything-any angry voices, a quarrel, someone moving in the woods who shouldn’t have been there…”

At mention of Sir Ralph, Philippa pressed close to Miles and hid her face against his shoulder. Putting his arm around her, Miles answered, “If we had, we would have said so.”

“Except maybe you were afraid of Sir William learning you’d been away together?” Frevisse asked.

“I don’t want to hear or ever think about that day again,” Philippa said, her face still to Miles’ shoulder. Lady Anneys, her own head bowed over her hands now clenched together in her lap, nodded sharp agreement. Hugh made no answer at all except to turn his head away from all of them. Only Miles met Frevisse’s gaze and said steadily, “It was murder. We would have said if we’d heard or seen anything, Sir William or no.”

Hugh turned back. “That’s one thing. We none of us heard anything. There was no shouting.”

“And Sir Ralph was a famous shouter,” Miles said dryly.

“The crowner asked the same thing,” Hugh said, “but whoever it was must have taken him by surprise. They must have been lying in wait and taken him by surprise.”

Philippa stepped back from Miles. “I’d best go home now.”

Miles moved as if to see her out, but Lady Anneys said, “Let Hugh go with her, Miles. He’d be expected to and for now we might do best not to bother giving anyone other thoughts.”

Hugh and Miles exchanged looks and matching wry smiles before Miles nodded. Philippa, missing none of that, smiled much the same, curtsied to Frevisse and Lady Anneys while Hugh bowed, and then left easily with him, except as they went out the door she pushed his arm and said, “He told you about us?”

Miles, as if abruptly weary, sank down on the joint stool Hugh had left. Lady Anneys rose and went to him, leaned down, and kissed his forehead before laying a hand on his shoulder and saying quietly, “Heed me in this, Miles. Don’t lose or ruin what there is between you and Philippa. You can only guess at how much hurt there’ll be for her if she marries someone she doesn’t want, but I know, and I say that whatever she loses from Sir William is nothing when set against it.”

Miles stood abruptly up and without a word or even a bow went out of the room.

Lady Anneys watched him go, then turned back to the window, sat again on the chest, and said, “I would never be so young again for all the world.”

“Nor I,” Frevisse agreed. She went to sit at the chest’s other end. There were heartaches of one kind and another all through life but those of one’s young years, even looked back on, seemed to cut with a sharper edge than almost any later ones, simply-or not so simply-because one had not yet learned any defense against them. And that, in time, like all things, they passed. But slowly, feeling her way through the thought as it came to her, Frevisse said, “I would never have thought, seeing Philippa in the garden this afternoon, that she was as deeply upset as she showed here about what she’d overheard between her father and uncle.”

Lady Anneys looked out the window into the dusty sideyard where the broad-trunked, thickly green-leaved elm tree spread its branches to half-hide the back of the stable and byre and slowly said, “We’ve all learned not to show our thoughts or what we feel. We hide almost everything from one another. Around men like Sir Ralph and Sir William, that’s safest, but sometimes we even hide ourselves from ourselves, I think.”

She was calm rather than bitter about it. But she was calm about most things, Frevisse had found. Except now Frevisse was coming to think it was not so much calm as the smoothness of old, old scars over deep wounds. The kind of scars that ache when the weather is wrong and sometimes hurt with shadow of their old pain. Gently, and again because she could not be sure she would have such another chance, she said, “Neither you nor anyone else cares at all that your husband is dead, do they?”

Lady Anneys paused before answering, then said, “If by ‘cares,’ you mean ‘grieves,’ no. No one grieves for him. His death lessened, not increased, our grief here.”

“No one even cares that his murderer goes unknown.”

Again the pause. Then, “Whether we care or not makes no difference. His murderer is long gone from here and there’s an end of it.”

“And you’re content with that?”

“I’m content because of that.”

From the hall came the sounds of the tables being set up for supper and servants’ voices. The girls and Sister Johane would come in from the garden soon, or Hugh come back from seeing Philippa away, and Frevisse considered quickly asking who else had left the clearing the day Sir Ralph died and what Lady Anneys might have noticed about anyone when they came back there after his death. But those questions were too open; Lady Anneys would understand too readily why she asked; and unable to think of anything else to say, Frevisse let the silence lie between them, looking out the window at the elm tree’s leaves hanging unmoving in the still, hot air.

It was Lady Anneys who stirred and spoke first, answering something that had not been asked. “My husband was murdered. My son died by mischance. But that mischance came because of all the wrongs and ugliness my husband made while he lived. Those are deaths and griefs enough. I only want it all to be done with and forgotten and the rest of us left free to go on with our lives. I want to remember Tom and forget my husband as completely as if he had never lived.”

And could there be worse epitaph than that for anyone, Frevisse thought. To be so hated that someone wished to forget that you had ever been at all.