The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 20

With Hugh almost to the woods, Miles broke the startled silence left behind him, saying, “If you’ll pardon me, too, my ladies,” and went the other way, across the churchyard, not even to the gate but bracing one hand on the low wall when he came to it and swinging over. His hound cleared it in an easy leap after him and they disappeared together into the village.

When Frevisse looked back toward the woods, Hugh was out of sight. Beside her, Sister Johane said softly, “Oh my,” and when Frevisse looked at her, her eyes were large with pity and unease.

“Oh my indeed,” Frevisse agreed.

“Do you think one of them did it?” Sister Johane almost whispered, though there was no one to overhear them.

Slowly Frevisse answered, “There’s nothing that says so.”

“Nor anything that says not,” Sister Johane said, her gaze fixed on Frevisse’s face.

“No. There’s nothing to say that either. In truth”-and the truth came hard-“I’ve not yet learned anything that tells against anyone more than another. Anyone at all.”

Hopefully, Sister Johane asked, “Then you’re going to let it go?”

Staring downward at the grassy edge of the graveled path, Frevisse said slowly, “I don’t know what else I can ask or where else I can look for answers. But to leave it like this…”

“If it’s the only place you can leave it, you have to,” Sister Johane said.

Frevisse lifted her head with a sigh somewhere between accepting that and impatient at herself, her heart and mind heavy with more than the day’s growing heat.

Hugh was afraid and Miles was angry, and she understood Miles’ anger. Sir Ralph had done enough to him to fuel a lifetime’s anger. But what was Hugh afraid of?

Of being found out for his father’s murder?

Or of finding out who had done it?

Or did he know who had done it and was afraid for them?

Or afraid of them.

She stood staring at the woodshore where Hugh had disappeared. It was the weather, she told herself. It was too hot for her to think clearly. But the woods’ rich greens of high summer were already dulled toward the dusty beginnings of autumn. The year was on the turn.

“This weather can’t hold,” she said. “There’ll be a storm before long.”

“Shall we stay here for Tierce and say it in the church?” asked Sister Johane.

“No,” Frevisse said, finding she did not want to meet Father Leonel again just yet, with his burden of knowledge about the Woderoves. Had Sir Ralph’s murderer confessed to him yet? Did he know who it was? Or maybe, with his deeper knowledge of everyone here, did he at least have too true a suspicion? “No,” she said again to Sister Johane’s question. “Let’s go back to the manor for it.”

The day passed somehow. The heat grew worse, weighing on everyone, stilling even Lucy’s chatter. Neither Hugh nor Miles came in to midday dinner and for once Lady Anneys was impatient at them, saying, “They could at least say when they’re not going to be here.”

At her order, a double share of ale was sent out to the fields for the harvesters’ midafternoon rest-time. Later, Helinor came into the garden to tell her, “Alson brought back word Master Hugh and Master Miles are both in the field, helping to harvest. Thought you’d want to know,” and afterward Lady Anneys was a little farther away from the edge of her ill-humour. She even had supper delayed until nearly dark, waiting for their return, and buckets of water set on the bench outside the hall door to the foreyard to warm in the afternoon sun, with towels and a bowl of soap and clean tunics laid beside them, so that when Hugh and Miles finally walked wearily into the yard, they were able to wash there, stripped to the waist and scrubbing each other’s backs, Ursula reported, hanging out the tall window to watch them.

“Well, tell them to hurry. I’m starved,” Lucy said irritably from the table.

“Not so starved as they surely are,” Lady Anneys said curtly. “You’ve done nothing all day except moan about the heat while they’ve been out working in it. Ursula, come here and sit down. They don’t need your help to wash themselves.”

They came in, in their clean tunics and with their hair slick to their heads from dunking in a bucket. Baude, wide with her whelps, heaved up from beside the hearth and waddled to meet them, she and Bevis circling each other with waving tails. Talk through the meal was of how the harvest went and whether the weather would break in a storm sooner rather than later.

“Gefori says sooner,” Hugh said. “Late tomorrow maybe. If it holds off to late afternoon, we’ll have most of the wheat safe.”

“What of the beans and peas?” Lady Anneys asked. A storm that battered them into the ground when they should be drying on their plants could ruin the crop and mean much of the manor’s food for the next year was gone.

“Father Leonel is praying,” Hugh said.

“Do you still mean to hunt tomorrow?” Lady Anneys asked.

“The hounds need it, if nothing else,” Hugh said. “But I’ll make it short and be done early.” Taking great care at spreading butter on a piece of bread, probably so he did not have to look at her, he added, “I asked Sir William if he’d join me.”

Suddenly no one except Lucy was looking at anyone else, until after a moment Lady Anneys said with careful quiet, “And is he going to?”

“He sent back his thanks but said he’d not.”

“Another time, then.”

Lady Anneys spoke as if hardly interested one way or the other; and Hugh with relief said, “Yes. Likely later.”

The message had been passed between them that, when the time came, she would accept it.

Because they had dined so late, there was little time for staying up and by the last fade of twilight they all went to their beds, before there was need to light candles to see their way. Shut into Lady Anneys’ bedchamber, Frevisse freed her head from veil and wimple with a relief matched by Sister Johane’s sigh of pleasure as she rubbed at her bared neck. While Sister Johane settled onto their truckle bed, Frevisse moved to close the window shutter but Lady Anneys said, “Pray, leave it open.” She was sitting on one of the chests with her hair already loosed and falling to her waist, Ursula combing it with long, slow strokes in which both she and her mother seemed to be taking pleasure. “I’d rather risk the night vapors,” Lady Anneys said, smiling, “than smother the way we surely will with the window shut.”

So would Frevisse and she willingly left it open, but it made small difference. The hoped-for evening coolness did not come and sleep was hard to reach, no matter how much it was wanted. And Frevisse wanted it very much, because otherwise she lay thinking when there was far too much she did not want to think about because there was far too little she knew.

But without sleep, she found herself considering, in the quiet darkness after Lady Anneys had gone to her bed and Lucy and Ursula to theirs, how comforting it would be to believe Tom Woderove had killed his father.

Found herself likewise thinking how unfortunate it was that she believed Father Leonel when he said Tom had been with him.

If she believed that and refused to believe there had been an unknown someone there or that one of the women or girls could have done it without being bloodstained, she was down to the four men and Degory for the murderer. Or three men if she accepted that Miles and Philippa had been together-and hadn’t themselves killed Sir Ralph. Because it might have been planned between them, to go off together but Philippa wait somewhere alone while Miles stalked Sir Ralph and killed him, with her to claim afterward that they had never been apart. It would have been a very quickly made plan, though, and if they were going to kill someone, wouldn’t Sir William have been the better choice? His death would have made Philippa sure of her inheritance, setting her and Miles free to marry in despite of whatever rage Sir Ralph might have against it.

Perhaps Philippa had balked at plotting her father’s murder. But killing Sir Ralph was purposeless for them. Or maybe not so very purposeless, because Sir Ralph’s death freed everyone from him. Which was the trouble. Everyone had that reason to want him dead.

But if Tom was left out of it, who had had best hope of profit from Sir Ralph’s death? Sir William if he thought he could take control of her children’s marriages from Lady Anneys. Master Selenger if he wanted Lady Anneys and thought he could win her once she was widowed. Hugh if it mattered enough to him to have the hounds all for himself…

Sleep was finally starting to come, her mind drifting loose of connected thought… and into the thought that maybe they were all lying. That they had all killed him and were all lying. That Hugh and Miles and Sir William and Master Selenger and even Degory had all planned his death and done it, and everything any of them said was lies for the sake of protecting each other…

Frevisse found she was stark awake again, staring angrily at her thoughts.

She was like a hen scratching in the dust, throwing bits of everything around at random in hopes of finding a stray fact to feed on, she told herself. And if that was all she could do, she would be better putting her efforts into prayer for peace for the souls of everyone here, that they might come to God’s mercy, since it looked unlikely anyone would come to Man’s judgment.

The familiar ways of prayer brought her slowly toward sleep; but when it finally came, she found herself in a troublous dream where a man that she knew-in the way one knew things in dreams-was Sir Ralph was struck down and killed and stood up to be killed again, first by Tom-again, in the way of dreams, Frevisse knew who he was, though she had never seen him-and then by Hugh, and then by Miles, and then by Sir William and Master Selenger together, and finally by Lady Anneys, who-unlike the others-beat and beat and beat on him after he was down, making sure of his death and that he did not rise again.

Frevisse awoke from that with a start that wrenched her upright in bed, gasping for breath, certain something terrible was happening. And heard, not in any dream, the high-pitched scream of someone in mortal agony or fear.

Beside her, wrenched equally awake, Sister Johane sobbed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, protect us now and in the hour of our death!” But from the bed above them Lady Anneys said, “It’s Baude. She’s begun to whelp and is frighted by it. She always does this.”

“Are you sure?” Sister Johane gasped.

“I’m sure,” Lady Anneys said with a calm that could only come from complete assurance. A plaintive voice called from the girls’ room and Lady Anneys called back, “It’s only Baude. Go back to sleep.”

Reassured along with Lucy and Ursula, Sister Johane lay down with a relieved sigh. Frevisse lay down less quickly, her mind still tainted by her dream. Baude gave one more agonized howl before Hugh must have reached her and begun to soothe her because the night’s quiet came back and in it Frevisse tried to say some of the prayers she should have awakened to do at midnight. A slight stir of air had cooled the room a little and she soon slept again, but not deeply. The ugly tendrils of her dream still strayed through her mind and she was fully awake sometime later when Lady Anneys rose restlessly from her bed.

The darkness beyond the window had thinned to the blue-gray of coming dawn. In the dimness Lady Anneys groped for her bedgown where she had laid it aside before going to bed, found it, and slipped it on before-so quiet-footed that she must have had every squeaking floorboard held in her memory-she went out and down the stairs. Frevisse, having pretended to be as asleep as Sister Johane was, settled herself determinedly for a last small sleep before the household stirred awake and the day began, but there seemed to be no more sleep in her and impatience took over, and rather than resort to pillow-pummeling in the hope of finding a shape both cool and sleep-inducing, she rolled warily off the bed. The ropes stretched under the mattress squeaked slightly the way ropes stretched under mattresses always did, but Sister Johane did not stir, and Frevisse dressed by feel and pinned on her wimple and veil blindly but with practiced fingers before going down the stairs. Lady Anneys had probably gone to the garden for the early morning’s coolness. So would she.

Faint lamplight shining around the shut door at the stairfoot somewhat surprised her, and she was more surprised when she opened it to find Hugh and Miles and Degory all there in the hall, crouched near the hearth around a heap of straw where Baude lay on her side, looking far flatter than she had last evening. Hugh and Degory barely glanced up as Frevisse circled them, careful not to come too near. It was Miles who looked up, a wholehearted smile on his tired face, to explain, “She was too frantic. We didn’t want to move her to the whelping shed. So Degory brought straw and we’ve done it here.”

“All’s well?” Frevisse asked softly.

“Five so far and we don’t think she’s done.”

Craning her neck to see without coming too close, Frevisse saw the little bodies lined along Baude’s belly, suckling mightily. Baude looked the least pleased of anyone about the whole business, lying still but with her eye rolled sideways and fixed rather desperately on Hugh, who was crooning to her, telling what a brave, good girl she was.

“You won’t be hunting today,” Frevisse half-whispered to Miles.

“We won’t, no. The hares will live to another day,” he agreed.

The long, hard surge of a contraction rolled down Baude’s length. She tried to flounder to her feet in protest against it, setting Hugh to talking more earnestly to her and Miles to handing the whelps to Degory to put tenderly into a wide, waiting basket nested with rags. Frevisse quickly departed, most definitely not needed there.

At the hall’s far end she found Bevis stretched out across the doorway to the rear passage, his great head resting on his outstretched forepaws and such a desolate look on his face that she stopped to tell him comfortingly, “It will be done soon and you can have Miles back.” He regarded her solemnly but not as if he believed her, then pushed himself up on his pony-long forelegs, clearing the doorway for her. She thanked him because his dignity seemed to require it and, when she was past him, heard him lie down again behind her with a heavy, patient sigh and slight thud.

She likewise heard people early-morning mumbling among themselves in the kitchen as she passed and the rustle of straw-stuffed mattresses being put away for the day. Ahead of her the door to the garden stood open, the morning’s coolness flowing in, and she stopped on the threshold to breathe it in with relief. The morning birds were chirruping welcome to the new day, though the sunrise sky was a sullen red along the horizon that warned the threat of storm to come was real.

But overhead the sky was still clear and brightening to rich blue, the last stars washed away by the swelling daylight that showed Lady Anneys standing at the gate, facing outward toward the red sunrise, her arms wrapped around herself as if her bedgown was not warm enough in the morning’s cool. From where Frevisse stood, able to see only her back and the long fall of her hair, she looked more a young girl than a husband-wearied wife and mourning mother. There was such peace in her standing there that Frevisse held where she was in the doorway’s shadow with a sudden ache for the moment’s perfection: Lady Anneys quiet here in her garden; Hugh and Miles intent and content in their work together over Baude and her newborn whelps; Lucy and Ursula safely sleeping; the household servants setting about their everyday early work. This was how lives were supposed to be lived-with pleasure and work and rest in fair amounts all around. Not in the tangled ugliness of angers and fears Sir Ralph had made of it for everyone here, nor the torn, painful mess of secrets, broken hopes, distrusts, and doubts there had been through these past weeks.

Slowly, sadly, Frevisse crossed herself, praying better would soon come.

At the gate Lady Anneys startled and her head flinched sideways, to look leftward along the cart-track toward the stable and other manor buildings. Frevisse’s view that way was blocked by the garden’s fence and the arbor but the next moment she heard the soft hoof-fall of a slowly ridden horse and had just time to wonder who it could be at that hour and place before Lady Anneys opened the gate and stepped out onto the small bridge across the stream there, saying, wary and worried together, “Master Selenger. Is there something wrong? Has something happened to Elyn?”

He rode into Frevisse’s view. Beyond him the sun had just begun to rise, throwing the shadow of him and his horse sharp-edged and black across Lady Anneys still at the gate as he said, “Everything’s well. There’s nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why are you here?” She put a hand behind her, to the gate, ready to retreat. “Sir William said he wasn’t going to hunt today.”

Master Selenger swung down from his horse, stood holding his reins but very near her now. “Lady Elyn has said you always rise to see her brothers and Miles off on a hunt. I thought this would be a better time than most to see you alone. To hunt Beech Heath they’d have to leave before full light and they have. I came around by the kennels to be sure and all’s quiet there. But you see.” He gestured at his high riding boots and old, forest-green hunting doublet. “I came ready with my excuse. If they’d been still here, I would have simply joined them on the hunt. But I’ve won my chance and here you are alone.”

“They’re still here. They didn’t go on the hunt,” Lady Anneys said. She was fumbling to clear the folds of her bedrobe from around her feet, trying to back away but hampered by them and kept by the bridge’s narrowness from turning around. “Baude’s whelping. They…”

Selenger dropped his reins and moved toward her with abrupt purpose, caught her by the arm, and drew her to him, off the bridge and away from the gate.

Lady Anneys tried to pull free, protesting, “Let me go!,” and Frevisse stepped out of the doorway’s shadow, demanding in a clear, carrying voice, “Master Selenger! Have done!”

He sent her a single, swift, dismissing look, pulled Lady Anneys-now outright struggling to be loosed-against him, put an arm around her waist, and took hold of her other arm, pinioning her to him. She was struggling desperately now, beginning fully to believe what was happening, and Frevisse-her skirts caught up, away from her feet-began to run toward them, but thinking even as she did that oddly Selenger was neither forcing Lady Anneys back into the garden or toward his horse but only out into the middle of the cart-track. He had even let his horse go and it was drifting away to crop grass along the track’s far side. What…

Sir William’s voice cracked whip-sharp into the morning air. “Lady Anneys!”

Both Selenger and Lady Anneys froze and Frevisse came to a stop in the gateway. Scarcely fifteen yards away, from the same way Selenger had come, Sir William sat on his black palfray, frowning at Selenger and Lady Anneys. He cast Frevisse only a short look that dismissed her as completely as Selenger had done before he said with dark displeasure, “What have I caught you at, Lady Anneys?”

“Nothing!” Lady Anneys said shrilly. “Tell him to let me go!”

“Master Selenger?” he demanded. “What was happening here?”

“As you see,” Selenger said. He pulled Lady Anneys more tightly to him.

It was wrong. Where he should been defiant, even angry, or coarse with laughter and satisfaction, he sounded sullen, the words and gesture made almost more by rote than will; and then he let Lady Anneys go except for a hold on her near wrist.

An ugly suspicion awoke in Frevisse, made more ugly by Sir William saying with a flicker of what could only be pleasure across his face, “What I see is that you’ve been at the man-woman sport together.”

Lady Anneys started a strangled refusal of that. Over it Frevisse said strongly, “I’ve been with Lady Anneys since before Master Selenger came. Nothing has passed between them except her refusal of him and his seizing of her against her will.”

“It’s good of you to say so, Dame,” Sir William said coldly at her. “But this has openly gone past your lies being any use. I saw them embracing and how willing she was to it. And in her bedgown for worse measure.”

Lady Anneys cried out in wordless protest and wrenched her wrist free of Master Selenger’s hold, but Sir William pointed an accusing finger at her. “You’ve violated your husband’s will, my lady. You are unchaste and thereby have lost the right to control your children’s marriages. I fear that-”

“I fear,” Miles said, his voice barely recognizable with fury, “that you’re wrong, Sir William.” He pushed past Frevisse and crossed the small bridge to the cart-track and Lady Anneys’ side, Bevis stalking beside him, both of them undoubtedly brought by the angry voices. Raw with anger, he said, “No woman affairs with a man in the presence of her grandson and a nun, and that grandson and nun will testify we saw nothing between her and Selenger save his ill manners.”

“Don’t waste your time with perjury, Miles,” Sir William said scornfully back. “It’ll do no good against my word and Selenger’s.”

“My word won’t be perjury,” Frevisse said and found she was as angry as Miles.

Sir William’s look at her was cold. “One woman defending another. Worthless.” He urged his horse forward at Lady Anneys. Caught now between outrage and tears, she pulled loose from Selenger’s slight hold and tried to retreat, but Sir William rode nearer, looming over her, saying with thick satisfaction, “No, my lady. Even Selenger will say you’ve been willingly his. His word and mine against yours. You-”

“You,” Miles said. “You set him on to this. He’s to perjure himself to ruin her for your gain, you miserable…” He sprang forward and seized Sir William by belt and sleeve. “… cur!” And hauled him from his saddle.

Sir William’s horse shied violently away, adding to the force of Sir William’s fall; he hit the ground hard enough to jar every bone in his body and Miles, his grip torn loose, staggered backward, momentarily off balance. Selenger, who might have come to Sir William’s aid, instead caught Lady Anneys by the shoulders from behind and drew her backward, away from the two men and toward Frevisse. Miles caught hold of Bevis’ rough-coated back and regained his balance while Sir William rolled over and crawled to his hands and knees, then lurched to his feet, gasping for breath and red-faced with fury.

“You damned whelp,” he panted. “I’ll hang you with my own hands for that. You tried to kill me!”

“If I’d tried,” Miles snarled back, “you wouldn’t be getting up.”

Bevis moved forward, putting himself in front of Miles, trying to push him away from Sir William with a wolfhound’s instinct to keep his master out of danger.

“Miles,” said Hugh, suddenly at Frevisse’s side. “He’s armed.”

Sir William was, only with the kind of belt-hung dagger that men wore most of the time but he was drawing it and neither Miles nor Hugh had anything at all, dressed only in the loose shirts and hosen they had pulled on while seeing to Baude. Bevis was still pushing against Miles but his dark eyes were fixed on Sir William and he began to growl, the hackles rising the length of his back as Sir William, too blind with fury to heed him, moved toward Miles.

Miles, as able as Bevis to read Sir William’s fury, stepped back as Sir William thrust at him. Sir William was just far enough away that the thrust was probably meant more in threat than actually to stab-but Miles stumbled sideways as if his foot had caught in a trackway rut, throwing him off balance, unable to defend himself, and that made Sir William’s move too much a threat for Bevis, who-so swiftly there was no chance to stop it or guard against it-twisted sideways between the two men and reared on his hind legs to his full wolfhound height, forequarters and head towering over Sir William for the bare instant before his forepaws hit Sir William on chest and shoulder, driving him backward, snapping his head back to expose his throat that Bevis seized from the side in his jaws with all the intent to death that he had ever seized on a stag in the hunt. Sir William stabbed at him once but then was being shaken and flung from side to side like a barn-killed rat. There was a gurgling that must have been his last attempt to cry out and then blood was spurting from his flopping body and Hugh and Miles both yelled, “Drop it!” at Bevis, who-well-trained hound that he was-immediately did, letting blood from Sir William’s ripped-out throat fountain red into the red morning light, spraying wide and over everything.