The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 19

Hugh awoke too early, when only the first bird was twittering outside the loft’s small window, and lay in the darkness too long with only his thoughts and the even sound of Miles’ breathing for company. When finally the black square of the window lightened to the dark blue of dawn’s beginning and there were the sounds of the servants who slept in the kitchen below him getting up, he could no longer bear it and rolled off his bed, gathered up his clothes from on and around the stool where he had tossed them as he undressed last night, and groped his way to the ladder-steep stairs.

Miles mumbled a question. Hugh answered, “Out,” and creaked down the steps into the passage between hall and kitchen. Bevis, lying on an old blanket put along the wall for him there, raised his great head but did not bother to rise. Hugh touched him briefly, silently letting him know everything was well, and went along the passage to let himself out the rear door into his mother’s garden. He stopped there to dress. The birds were in full choir now and the world was brightening from blue shadows into colors. By the time he went, fully dressed, out the garden gate in the already warm half-light of dawn, he could hear Helinor in the kitchen threatening Alson over something and, from above, at the far end of the hall, Lucy complaining to Ursula in their room that Ursula’s bad dreams had kept her awake in the night.

With no particular purpose except to be away from all that household busyness beginning the day, he went to the kennel where the hounds, strewn in long-legged sprawls around the yard, lifted their heads to look at him, but only Bane rose and ambled to the fence. Degory, burrowed into sleep with an arm around Skyre’s neck on a heap of straw in a corner of the yard, stirred less readily and asked, not fully awake, “What is it?”

“Nothing. I just came to see the hounds.” He stroked Bane’s long head. “I don’t see them enough anymore.”

Yawning, Degory sat up with straw in his hair. Skyre sat up, too, and licked his face.

“Is she doing better?” Hugh asked.

Degory climbed to his feet, scratching. “Better, but I doubt she’ll ever be right.” He ambled to the fence much the way Bane had. “We’re going to be short on lymers without her.”

“Not if she breeds true. I’m thinking to try her with Makarie when the time comes.”

“Aye, that might do. How is it with Baude? Are you going to bring her back here to whelp?”

“I mean to, yes.”

“I’ve her place ready for her. She can’t be long off it now.”

They made comfortable dog-talk for a time, daylight growing around them and the manor coming well awake. The hounds roused and wandered around their yard, came to be petted, wandered off again. “What about old Bevis, then?” Degory asked. “Still following Master Miles everywhere?”

“Except into the loft to sleep with us.”

“Odd, that,” Degory said on a yawn. “Him being so much Sir Ralph’s dog but taking to Master Miles like this.”

Hugh kept back from saying that it showed Sir Ralph had not been worth even a dog’s loyalty, but offered, “Come to that, it’s just as odd that Miles has taken to him.”

“That’s true enough. Master Miles never much cared for dogs that I ever saw.”

“Maybe he’ll be one of us yet. What do you say? Are you and the pack up to some hunting tomorrow?”

“That we are!” Degory exclaimed, then added hopefully, “A hart maybe?”

“I can’t take any men off the harvest to make a hart-hunt. It will have to be hare again, but I’m thinking we’ll go all the way off to Beech Heath. We haven’t coursed there since spring and Miles said he saw signs of hare in plenty of late.”

“They’ll be fat and lazy by this time,” Degory said happily. “Ready for the hounds to tickle them up they’ll be. We’ll have to be off early though, to be ahead of the heat. Is it staying this hot?”

“Gefori says there’ll be rain in a day or two.”

“Too much for the harvest?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“St. Peter bless us,” Degory said. He slipped the latch on the gate and came out of the yard, pushed several hopeful muzzles back inside, and fastened the gate. “I’m to breakfast. You?”

“No. I’ll linger here a time. You go on.”

Degory left and Hugh stayed where he was, a hand out to stroke heads and receive licks. The sun edged into sight over the horizon, sharpening the day to long-thrown shadows and molten gold. Hugh wished he felt that bright about the day. His heart had lightened with talk of hounds and hunting and the thought that tomorrow he’d not be bound to the manor by one duty and another but away and rid of everything save the needs of the hunt. But that was tomorrow. There was still today and then the days after tomorrow and him tethered here at the manor for most of them. Tom had had everything in hand and ready for the harvest, and the reeve saw to most of the rest, so that presently there was too little to keep himself fully busy here, just duties enough that he wasn’t free to go about such hound and hunting work as he could have otherwise.

Dissatisfied with almost everything, he left the kennel and, vaguely minded to go to Mass, circled the stable and saw, when he reached the road toward the church, that the two nuns were ahead of him, bound the same way, their black gowns and veils dull against the morning’s late summer green-and-gold. Hugh wondered, not for the first time, if Ursula would choose that life. He hoped not. He couldn’t imagine her a nun, shut up for the rest of her life. But then he could not imagine her married, either. She was just his little sister.

On the other hand, the sooner a husband was found for Lucy, the better. Tom had said something once about asking Master Wyck if he knew anyone in Banbury who might be suitable. That was likely the best way to go about it and he would, once the harvest was done and he had talked with Mother about it.

By then this trouble with Master Selenger and Sir William might be settled, too-another thing off his mind.

Ahead of him the nuns went into the church. A few village folk were going in, too, and Father Leonel would be making ready to begin the Mass, and in his mind Hugh could see it all, familiar all of his life. The short, windowless nave; the chancel hardly big enough to hold the altar; the small sheen of candlelight on the silver altar goods given by the widow who had held Woodrim before Sir Ralph bought it; the green altar cloth that Hugh could remember his mother embroidering with vines and wheatsheaves when he was small; the small, plain-glassed window high in the east gable end of the roof letting in so very little light that gray shadows filled all the rest of the church. And suddenly Hugh knew he could not go in there, to the shadows and the prayers, and already in the churchyard, halfway between gate and door, he turned aside, onto the little dirt path that curved through the churchyard and around the church.

He would sit awhile with Tom, he thought.

They had made Tom’s grave on the other side of the church and just outside the chancel, as near to the altar as could be without being buried inside, and the heaped earth of his grave-mound was still raw under the turfs of green grass laid over it at his burial’s end.

Sir Ralph was buried across the churchyard, almost against the churchyard wall, the hump of his grave already well-settled, its green turfs melded together by the summer’s rains. He had made no provision in his will for where he should be buried. It had been Lady Anneys’ choice and she had pointed there, a place that would be easily lost among the other graves and grass if no one bothered to mark it with more than the plain wooden crosses that marked the village folk’s graves. Those, being wood, decayed and the graves were lost along with them as folk who might remember died in their turn. No one had known whose bones were dug up when Sir Ralph’s grave was made; their bones were simply added to the other bones piled in the small charnel house screened by yew trees at the far corner of the yard, where someday Sir Ralph’s bones would go and maybe sooner than some because no one was minded to mark his grave with even a wooden cross, let alone visit or remember it.

Hugh meant somehow to find the money to lay a stone grave-slab over Tom, though. Even if it were only flat to the ground and carved with no more than a cross, it would be something, would mean Tom would maybe sleep undisturbed in his grave until Judgment Day.

Hugh had no clear thought why he was going to Tom’s grave. To pray for him maybe, or just to be somewhere no one else was; but as he came around the church’s corner, he saw Miles at the churchyard’s far end, standing near the yews around the charnel house. Miles had his back to him and Hugh paused. He knew Miles came here sometimes-possibly more often than Hugh knew-to where his mother was buried.

“There’s not much I remember of her,” Miles had said once. “She had black hair, very long. She’d let it down at bedtime and hold me on her lap and wrap it around me and tickle my ear until I curled up laughing. I remember walking somewhere with her, too. On a sunny day. Picking flowers out of the wayside grass to make a flower crown. Not much else.”

Not much at all but enough that he still came to her grave, and Hugh’s half-thought to leave before Miles knew he was there; but Bevis lying beside Miles raised his head to look at Hugh, and Miles turned around like someone not wanting to be taken unaware from behind.

But seeing Hugh, he waved and started toward him and Hugh waited where he was, beside Tom’s grave. Father Leonel had begun the Mass, his old voice faint from inside the church, and Miles, joining Hugh, cocked his head, listening, and asked, “You came too late to go in?”

“Found I didn’t want to, once I was here.”

“You were out and about early, gone when I awoke. Where’ve you been?”

“To see the hounds. I’m thinking to have a hare-hunt at Beech Heath tomorrow, to give them a run and bring in some fresh meat. Bevis ought to come. Will you?” Before Miles could answer, Hugh felt bound to add, “I’m going to ask Sir William if he wants to join us.”

“Why?” Miles asked, more rude than curious.

“Because we can’t afford to have him angry at us.”

“What about our being angry at him?”

“We can’t afford that either. Not when there’s no point to it.”

“There wasn’t any point to Tom’s death either.”

“That wasn’t meant, Miles. I was there. I know.”

“Tom is dead, whether it was meant or not,” Miles said bitterly.

Hugh abruptly sank down on an old grave’s low green mound across the path from Tom’s unweathered one, drew up his legs, wrapped his arms around his knees, bent forward to press his forehead onto them, and said miserably, his eyes tightly shut to close out the world, “God’s mercy. I’m so tired.” He didn’t mean “tired.” He meant “in pain” but he didn’t know how to talk about pain, or about the fear or the wariness or the darkness in him. When Sir Ralph was alive, he had known what the pain was for, had known from where all of it-the pain, the fear, the wariness, the darkness-came. Now Sir Ralph was gone and all of those things should have gone, too. But they hadn’t. They were all still with him.

The difference was that he no longer knew the reason for them.

And he was afraid to find out.

Miles sat down beside him on the grave-mound, briefly touched his shoulder, and said with the rare gentleness that was always a surprise from him, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

Without lifting his head, Hugh rolled it from side to side, refusing Miles’ guilt. “You didn’t do it. It’s me. Everything is wrong since Tom died and I doubt I can ever make it better.”

“You’re doing well at it,” Miles said. “Give it time.”

“I’d rather give it away. All of it.”

“Not until you’ve married Lucy and Ursula off, and by then your own wife, whoever she is, won’t let you.”

Hugh raised his head and looked at Miles.“‘Whoever she is’?” he echoed, and was pleased he matched Miles’ light touch on the words. “You mean you’ve decided not to make me marry Philippa?”

“I don’t think I’d like what she’d do to either one of us if we tried.”

“Then you’ll marry her before you leave for Leicestershire?” Hugh pressed.

“If I marry her, I’ll have to leave and it won’t have anything to do with Leicestershire. It will be because Sir William is after me.”

Hugh let go the lightness, said seriously, “Have you thought that once Philippa is married, Sir William loses one of his reasons for trying to take over Sir Ralph’s will? Then I’ll find a husband for Lucy as soon as may be and someone for myself, and with only Ursula left, none of it will be worth Sir William’s bother anymore and Master Selenger will give over troubling Mother.”

“Selenger had better give over troubling her before then,” Miles said. “And how are you going to protect her in the meanwhile?”

“She’s doing that, by seeing to it she’s never alone. That’s why she brought the nuns back with her, I think.”

“You can’t keep them forever.”

“When they leave, I’ll do something else. Meanwhile, the thing is to get you married to Philippa.”

“Leave it, Hugh. For now, just leave it,” Miles said amiably. But firmly. He slid down to lie on his back, his head pillowed on the grave. Bevis, who had been sitting patiently this while, promptly lay down and nudged his muzzle into Miles’ side to remind him he was there. Miles obediently began to play with his ears.

Hugh held silent. Silence was better than making a quarrel where he did not want one, and although the sun was well up now and the dew already dried from the grass, warning the day would be hot later on, just now it was good simply to sit here in the warm, heavy sunshine. He pulled at the grass beside him until he had a handful, then let it fall in a small scatter, listening to Father Leonel without making out the words, while the quiet drew out between him and Miles, until he said, “You still mean to go to Leicestershire come Michaelmas?”

Miles made a wordless, assenting sound.

Hugh plucked more grass and let it fall. “I’ve thought of another reason you should marry Philippa.”

“Hugh…” Miles started warningly.

“Just think how angry it would have made Sir Ralph.”

That took Miles enough by surprise that he laughed, choked, began to cough, and had to sit up. Hugh cheerfully beat on his back, helping not at all. Bevis, looking confused about whether he should worry or not, sat up, too. Miles, fending off Hugh’s blows with one hand, put his other arm around Bevis’ neck and croaked, “Let be, you dolt.”

Hugh let be and stood up out of reach before Miles recovered enough to repay him. “Mass seems done,” he said. “I’m going in to talk to Father Leonel before going back to the hall. Will you come?”

“May as well,” Miles said, and together they circled back to the other side of the church. The village folk were already out, spreading homeward down the village or to work, but as Hugh and Miles reached the broad, round-topped door of thick planks and heavy ironwork standing open into the nave, Hugh heard Father Leonel, inside, saying to someone, “Go on then,” not sounding pleased about it.

“The day Sir Ralph was killed…” Dame Frevisse said.

Hugh stopped in midstride. So did Miles beside him. “… why did whoever went looking for Tom Woderove have such trouble finding him? I understand he’d come back to the manor well before his father’s body was found, but he couldn’t be readily found when he was looked for.”

Crisply, in a way that made Hugh think she had been asking other questions and the priest was not happy about it, Father Leonel answered, “Tom took so long to be found because no one thinks to look first thing in a church for a young man. That’s where he was. He’d come to me to talk off his anger and make confession of it. Why is knowing that of any help to Lady Anneys?”

Hugh and Miles looked at each other, each silently asking if the other knew what this was about, both of them shaking their heads that they did not.

And Dame Frevisse was ignoring Father Leonel’s question to ask, “Was he worried that Sir Ralph was going to find out what you both had been doing with the accounts?”

“There was nothing to worry about that way. We always made certain there was money enough for his hounds and Sir Ralph cared nothing about the rest. Dame, be advised-let all of this go. Let it rest with the dead. It’s better there than being raised up to plague the living.”

Hugh could not make out her murmured answer to that. Maybe she had bowed her head and was accepting the priest’s order, because the next that Hugh heard was Father Leonel blessing her in farewell. Beside him, Miles drew back a step, making to leave before they came out. Hugh was ready to retreat with him but they had waited too long. Nor was it Father Leonel who came out but both the nuns, and there was nothing either Hugh or Miles could do, caught flat-footed and in the open, except bow, wish them good-day, and move to go past them into the church. But Dame Frevisse, quicker than they were, said, “Master Woderove, we were just talking to Father Leonel, trying to understand matters better, so we can maybe better help your mother.”

“Help her how?” Miles demanded.

“She’s in deep grief,” Dame Frevisse said.

“For Tom,” Hugh said stiffly. “We all are.”

“For Tom, yes,” Dame Frevisse agreed. “But she’s in grief for her own life, too.”

“In grief for her life?” Miles echoed, sounding as if he understood no better than Hugh did.

“For her life,” Dame Frevisse repeated. “We gather that Sir Ralph was not… kind… to her.”

Miles gave a short, harsh laugh. Hugh said only, “No. He wasn’t.”

“Or to any of you,” Dame Frevisse persisted.

“Or to anyone,” Miles snapped.

“And to you most especially,” Dame Frevisse said to him evenly; but she returned to Hugh with, “You got on the best of anyone with him, didn’t you?”

“For what that was worth,” Hugh said, “and only because of the hounds and the hunting. He probably got on best with Sir William.”

“Since they were both of a kind,” Miles said, not hiding his raw dislike of that “kind.”

“Does Lady Anneys ever talk about Sir Ralph’s murder?”

“We’ve none of us talked about it,” Hugh answered sharply. “Ever.”

“Not at all? Not even when it happened?”

“Not then and not now,” Hugh said almost harshly.

“We were too glad that he was gone,” said Miles.

Dame Frevisse fixed a suddenly narrowed look on him. “Somebody wanted him gone badly enough that they killed him.”

Miles met her look with his own and answered, “Yes. And blessings on them for it.”

“Don’t you care who?”

“Not greatly, no.”

“Whoever did it,” Hugh put in, “is long gone and not likely to be found. So there’s no point in caring.”

“What about Master Selenger?” she asked them both.

Hugh traded quick, questioning looks with Miles, who did not look as if he understood the question either, before Hugh answered, “Master Selenger didn’t kill him, no more than any of us did.”

“How do you know he didn’t? He was there that day. And he’s made plain his interest in Lady Anneys.”

“He’s only interested because Sir William told him to be,” said Miles.

“Or was Master Selenger interested before,” Dame Frevisse asked, “and it’s Sir William who’s being led, rather than the other way on?”

Hugh and Miles traded looks again, and this time it was Miles who answered, somewhat slowly, thinking it out as he went, “Because if one of them murdered Sir Ralph, it would be the one who first thought of how they could gain by his death. Master Selenger because he wanted Lady Anneys. Or Sir William through the will.”

“Yes,” Dame Frevisse said.

He and Hugh looked at each other again.

“That,” said Miles, still slowly, “could be worth the finding out.”

But Hugh said, “My lady, please leave it alone. Please.”

“The day Sir Ralph died…” she started.

Worried and puzzled, Sister Johane said, “Dame…” at the same moment Miles burst out, “Hugh said let it lie, my lady! So let it!”

Hugh, still pleading more than demanding, held out a hand to silence Miles and said, with more quiet than he felt, “Dame Frevisse, please believe this-that we’re all far the better off with Sir Ralph dead than we ever were with him alive. His death is neither a trouble nor grief to anybody here. If there’s any grief over Sir Ralph, it’s for the wasted years he was alive.”

And there was the terrible truth. That was what Sir Ralph’s life had been and it was what he had made of all their lives while he lived. A waste. His life had been a waste, and Tom’s death was a waste, and the grief of both those truths suddenly choked Hugh. “So let his death go, my lady,” he forced out. “We’ve grief enough and don’t need more.” And because he could not trust himself beyond that, he turned away from her and the other nun and Miles. Turned away from them and everyone and everything except his grief and tangled thoughts. Turned and went out of the churchyard and across the road, blindly headed toward the forest’s edge across the pasture there, wanting the sanctuary the forest always gave him. Sanctuary and time to think. Sir Ralph’s life had been a waste of all of their lives and none of them talked of his death because no one wanted to know… who among them had done it.

Because, very surely, one of them had.

And Dame Frevisse knew it as well as he did.