The Hunter's Tale

Chapter 21

In the instant that Bevis seized Sir William, Selenger swung himself in front of Lady Anneys, between her and sight of what was happening but not enough blocking Frevisse’s own view, everything happening so fast that she had time to see but do no more than throw her hand up against the spraying blood, and then Lady Anneys was screaming and Selenger was pushing her at Frevisse, saying, “Get her away!”

“Carry her!” Frevisse ordered back at him, that being the surest way to have Lady Anneys away, turning from them back into the garden herself as she said it. And Selenger obeyed, caught Lady Anneys into his arms and followed Frevisse as Lady Anneys broke off her screaming and began to struggle against Selenger’s hold, crying, “Hugh! Miles! I can’t leave…”

“Ursula,” Frevisse returned sharply. “Lucy. You can’t let them come out to this. And the servants. They shouldn’t see it.”

They were to the door but, “Put me down,” Lady Anneys ordered at Selenger with such sudden angry certainty that he stopped and did but kept hold on her, which was as well because she swayed, looking either about to faint or be ill; but she steadied, straightened in Selenger’s hold, and shoved his hands away, saying, “The girls. Yes. And Father Leonel. We need him,” as if air were hard to find but rigidly in control of herself again. “And the servants.” Who were only now-it had all happened so fast-coming out of the kitchen in answer to Lady Anneys’ screaming, both women with a knife or heavy pan in their hand, looking uncertain whether they should be angry or afraid.

Lady Anneys, her bedgown caught up and gathered to her in both hands-a way to hide their shaking as well as clear her feet-went forward to turn them back from going out, assuring them that, yes, something terrible had happened but that Hugh and Miles were seeing to it, no, they were unhurt but it was better that everyone else stay inside.

“Go with her,” Frevisse said at Selenger. “See to it she has something strong to drink. Wine, if there is any. And you, too.” Because his face was the same ashen gray as Lady Anneys’.

And so was her own, Frevisse supposed as Selenger nodded with full understanding and followed after Lady Anneys shepherding her servants into the hall ahead of her. Frevisse, wishing she were going with them, turned back because Lady Anneys was right-Hugh and Miles should not be left alone. Though going back to the cart-track was among the last things she wanted ever to do. Part of her was even trying to believe it had not happened, but her hand was sticky with blood and there must be blood on her and when she went through the garden gate into the golden-slanted morning light of the newly rising sun, scarlet droplets of Sir William’s blood were falling from the leaves where the arbor’s vine overhung the fence; and there was red brightness on the fence and in the grass, and dark red pools and streams across the beaten-smooth earth of the cart-track, spreading out from the ruin that had been a man bare moments ago.

Both Sir William’s and Selenger’s horses had startled away along the track. Near Sir William’s body were only Hugh kneeling and Miles crouched, both soaked with blood, beside the equally bloodied Bevis, who was standing very still, panting, his neck stretched out, his head lowered, Sir William’s dagger hanging out of a red, blood-welling gash along his side.

The removed, assessing part of Frevisse’s mind judged that the dagger must have raked shallow over bones from the hound’s shoulder to almost his flank rather than been thrust deep, and now it was stuck into a rib, not buried in the hound’s side. Otherwise he would be dead instead of standing there.

But even as she thought that, Miles jerked into movement, grabbed out the dagger with a cry of pain and rage, and spun around, his arm rising with his clear intent to stab down into Sir William’s sprawled body. But Hugh cried out, “Miles!” and lurched forward in time to catch his arm and force him around, putting them face to face as he cried again, “Miles!” and let go his arm to take hold of his face with both hands, saying desperately, “Don’t! Don’t make it worse!”

And Miles shut his eyes, shuddered, let his arm fall and the dagger drop, then bent over, to slide forward onto his knees and cover his face with both hands.

Hugh, with the wide eyes and stark paleness of someone hit too hard but not yet crumpled to the blow, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, looked up at Frevisse, and asked hoarsely, “What… do we do now?”

By morning’s end the sky had clouded to gray and in the early afternoon the rain began.

At least it wasn’t the battering storm they all had feared, Hugh thought, watching it through the parlor window. The light, steady pattering would likely hold up the harvest no more than a day. But maybe it would be enough to wash away Sir William’s blood, dried and darkened now on the cart-track, the grass, the fence, the leaves. Enough to wash away the sight of it, the smell of it. Wash away everything except Hugh’s memory of it.

He could still hear his own hoarse voice asking Dame Frevisse what they should do and her crisp answer, “Tend to the dog. Miles, get up and go find men and canvas to cover and move the body.”

Miles had pulled himself to his feet and gone. Dame Frevisse had helped Hugh tear his shirt and bind it around Bevis, the wound covered by the time Miles came back with Gib and Duff and a long piece of canvas from the stable. There was pause while Gib threw up in the ditch and then they spread out the canvas where the track was unbloodied, and Hugh and Miles-already bloodied past more blood mattering-carefully lifted and shifted Sir William’s body onto it, troubled most by the head. It had so little still holding it on…

Not until the body was safely wrapped and out of sight did Miles go aside and throw up in his turn.

Father Leonel came through the garden then, disheveled and with more haste than a man his age should have made. Clutched to his chest he had his box of things needed to give the last rite to the dying but the canvas-wrapped bundle and all the blood told him they were past use and he only said, “Best bring him to my house.”

Hugh moved to help Gib and Duff with the burden but Father Leonel said, “Not you or Miles. You need to clean yourselves. And you, my lady,” he had added to Dame Frevisse, who was still standing beside Bevis, a quieting hand on his head.

Only then did Hugh realize she was bloodied, too-nothing like so badly as he and Miles, soaked as they were, and her black nun’s gown hiding more than it showed, but bloodied enough, her white wimple spattered and her face smeared where she had wiped at it. But as Father Leonel led Gib and Duff bearing Sir William’s body away, she only said, “I’ll order water heated in the laundry shed and someone to bring you clothing. Clean yourselves before you come in,” to him and Miles before she went away toward the house, leaving them to take Bevis to the kennel, to the corner kept for hurt or sick hounds.

Together they cleaned his wound, medicined and bandaged it, and in all that while Hugh said nothing and Miles no more than, “It’s a shallow cut. He should heal well.”

It wasn’t much to bring out of the wreck of the morning, and against a man’s death, a wounded dog maybe should not count for much; but there were a good heart and faithfulness in Bevis. Sir William had had neither.

“I’ll stay awhile with him,” Miles said when they were finished, and Hugh had left him and gone around to the far side of the kitchen yard to the laundry shed, where both Helinor and the two large laundry kettles full of heated water were waiting for him. Helinor’s stark stare at him told him he looked as ghastly as he felt but she said nothing, only bustled at having him out of his hosen-nearly all he was still wearing after ripping up his shirt for Bevis-threw them into one kettle to soak, and left him to wash as he would, saying as she went out, “Don’t forget your hair, too.”

He had scrubbed thoroughly, beginning with his blood-matted hair, then dressed, and all the while felt that everything was being done by someone else. Most of him was not here, was hiding behind what needed to be done, rather than facing everything it was not yet safe to feel or think.

He found the hall empty save for Selenger sitting on the end of a bench behind the high table, head bowed and hands hanging between his knees, and Degory still with Baude beside the hearth. Hugh paused to ask how she did, counted the heads nursing heartily along her belly, and said with surprise, “Eight? There’s eight of them?”

Degory nodded happily. “They came right quick after you left. Strong ones, all of them.”

Very briefly Hugh thought that Degory was probably the only happy person here this morning. The hounds were the center and circumference of his world, and if all was well with them, all was well with him. Hugh, remembering when his own life had been almost that simple, dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder in acknowledgment that he had done well and moved on to Selenger, who looked up, haggard-faced, and said, “Your mother is upstairs with the nun to help her. She was spared most of the blood and seeing too much. She…” His voice shook and he stopped.

“That was your doing,” Hugh said, remembering what he had hardly seen at the time-Selenger putting himself between her and… the death. “Thank you.” Then added, hearing the words come in the strange, removed voice that did not sound like his, “And you? How are you?”

“I don’t know.” Selenger seemed truly bewildered by the question. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“He’s dead. Should I send word to… to Lady Elyn? Or do you want to take it?”

“I’ll take it. In a little while. I’d like… I’d like to see Lady Anneys before I go.”

Hugh did not have it in himself to say that Selenger had seen enough of Lady Anneys. Instead, the words a little thick in his throat, he said, “Your back, it’s all soaked with blood.”

Selenger shifted his shoulders inside his shirt and doublet, stiff and sticking to him with dried blood. He must not have noticed it until then because sickened horror began to spread across his face and Hugh said quickly, “Go and wash. Someone in the kitchen will show you where. I’ll find you something else to wear.” And added, when Selenger started to refuse, “You can’t go back to Lady Elyn and Philippa like that. Leave your clothes in the laundry. We’ll see to washing them.”

Practical things. Small things to set against the enormity of death but no less needing to be thought of, needing to be done, and small things were what saw Hugh through the rest of the morning. Small things and Dame Frevisse. It was by her doing that, by the time Master Selenger returned to the hall, clean and in some of Tom’s old clothing Hugh had found for him, Lady Anneys was waiting there, dressed in her black mourning clothes, with Ursula on one side of her, pressed close to her and clinging to her hand, and Lucy on her other with tear-blotched face and a packed bag at her feet, Sister Johane standing behind her in a quelling sort of way and Dame Frevisse to one side of them all as if making certain they stayed where she had put them. With some part of his mind determined to note things without feeling them, Hugh saw she, too, was no longer bloodied.

Without other greeting, Lady Anneys said to Selenger as he and Hugh approached her, “Lucy is going back with you. She can be a comfort to Lady Elyn.” Not mentioning the comfort it would be to have Lucy away from here. “Sister Johane is going with her, to help them all.”

Selenger accepted that with, “Yes, my lady,” and went down on one knee in front of her, his head bent low, his voice choked but clear enough as he said, “I have to beg your pardon, my lady, for the wrong I tried to do you. It was not willingly done, I swear to you and by any saint you ask of me.”

For a startled moment no one moved or said anything, until Lady Anneys asked uncertainly, “Not willingly done?”

Head still bowed, Selenger said, “Sir William told me what was in Sir Ralph’s will and that he wanted you out of his way. He set me on to do it. If you could be brought to marry me, fine and well and good because that would be enough; but if not marriage, then whatever else I could manage that would ruin you.”

“So everything you did was at his orders?” Lady Anneys said coldly.

Selenger raised his head to look at her and let her see his face. “By his orders but by my choice, too, because he meant to ruin you. If not by me, then by a rougher way.”

“A… rougher way,” Lady Anneys echoed.

“He would have hired someone to… do whatever was necessary. To take you by force if need be, so you could be declared unchaste and no longer fit to be executor of Sir Ralph’s will. Rather that let it come to that, I agreed to… what I did.”

“And this morning?” Dame Frevisse asked. “What was this morning supposed to be?”

“It was a trap,” Selenger said. “Sir William was impatient to have the matter settled. You weren’t giving way to me, my lady, and I wouldn’t… force you the way Sir William wanted me to. With Hugh and Miles gone hunting this morning, I was to find a way to be alone with you and Sir William would come on us and accuse you. Just as he did.”

Selenger bowed his head again, away from Lady Anneys’ stare into his face. Lady Anneys went on staring, now at the back of his bent head, until finally she said, “And if you hadn’t done this, he would have done something worse to me.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Lady Anneys bent forward and touched his shoulder. “Then you have my thanks, John Selenger, and…” She paused, then brought herself to say, “And my forgiveness.”

Selenger raised his head. For a moment their eyes held, before he stood up and bowed low to her.

Not until Hugh turned then to see him and Lucy and Sister Johane to the yard where their horses waited-Dame Frevisse had given order for that, too-did he see Miles standing in the doorway, the look on his face telling he had heard it all.

Selenger, Lucy, and Sister Johane left. Duff was sent with word to the crowner. Lucas the reeve was summoned and told what had happened so he could report it to the manor’s folk and slow whatever rumors were surely starting. Baude and her whelps were moved to the whelping kennel for Degory to keep watch on them and Bevis. One thing and then another was seen to, and somewhere along the way Hugh had the sudden discovery that he had had no breakfast and was starving. If he had thought about it beforehand, he would have thought he would never have desire to eat again, sick as he was inside himself, but hunger came on him and there was bread and cheese and-at Lady Anneys’ order-wine for him and Miles that she said Miles must drink, whether he ate anything or not.

That had been somewhere around midday. The clouds closing across the sky by then had made it hard to know the time, but soon afterward Philippa alone rode into the foreyard. She said she had been at Father Leonel’s to pray beside her father’s body and she did not want to go home where Elyn and Lucy were wailing pointlessly on each other’s shoulders. Could she stay here a time before she faced them again?

She had been crying herself but was calm then. Too calm, Lady Anneys maybe thought, because she gathered Philippa to her and took her into the parlor alone and a while later, when Hugh went in, Philippa had been crying more. “It cleanses,” Lady Anneys said to him, though he’d said nothing. “Crying cleanses the weight of grief and makes it easier to bear.”

And he remembered how she had cried not at all after Sir Ralph’s death.

Soon after that, when somehow there was nothing else to be done for the while and the rain had started, bringing coolness with it and the autumn smell of rain-settled dust, Dame Frevisse and Miles came into the parlor, too. Ursula was gone off to be with Baude and her whelps and that was good, because she should not be here in their silence, so many things going unsaid and all of them sitting apart from each other. Lady Anneys was on one end of the chest below the window, Dame Frevisse at the other end, both of them with their hands folded into their laps, their eyes down. Philippa, sitting very straightly in one of the chairs, her hands gripping its arms, was staring out the window, the marks of her tears still on her cheeks though she was dry-eyed now. Miles was not with her but on one of the joint stools, leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees and his hands tightly clasped, his gaze toward the floor. Hugh, able neither to sit nor pace, leaned against the wall near the door, watching the softly falling rain, its light pattering the only sound in the room.

Afterward Hugh thought how that should have been enough. To listen to the rain and be simply quiet for a while before having to do whatever came next.

But into the quiet Miles said, “It had to have been Sir William who killed Sir Ralph.”

Heads lifted and turned toward him, no one saying anything and Hugh silently begging him not to start this.

But, “It makes sense,” Miles said, looking around at them all. “He killed Sir Ralph and set Selenger on to ruin Lady Anneys. Maybe Tom’s death was an accident or maybe it wasn’t, but he surely murdered Sir Ralph.”

“Miles,” Dame Frevisse said softly, barely louder than the rain.

Miles looked toward her.

She met his look and said, still softly, “Not once since I came here have I heard anyone care about Sir Ralph’s death. No one has cared who did it or why. Now, suddenly, you’re accusing Sir William. Why? Why now this need to accuse when there was no need before?”

Miles straightened. “Because I didn’t know before. Now it’s all of a whole. He killed Sir Ralph and then tried to ruin Lady Anneys, all as a way to have control over the marriages so he could profit from them.”

“It was a savage murder done on Sir Ralph,” Dame Frevisse said, her voice still soft and careful, her gaze still fixed on Miles. “He wasn’t hit only once. He wasn’t simply killed. His head was smashed in, struck, and crushed again and again and again. That wasn’t murder merely for profit’s sake. It was murder done from hatred, and I’ve heard no one say Sir William hated Sir Ralph. But you did. You still do.”

Hugh straightened away from the wall and said, “We all hated Sir Ralph. That makes it likely for any of us to have done it. Me as much as Miles.”

“Yes,” Dame Frevisse agreed without looking away from Miles. “Except you didn’t deliberately murder Sir William. Miles did.”

Lady Anneys stood up, protesting, “He didn’t!” as Hugh exclaimed, “You’re wrong,” and Philippa said, “No!”

Only Miles said nothing and Dame Frevisse looked away from him to Hugh to ask, “You know what happened to make Bevis attack Sir William?”

“Miles stumbled and while he was off guard Sir William went for him,” Hugh answered without hesitation. “Went for him with the dagger. That’s enough to set any wolfhound from defense to attack when they’re defending someone the way Bevis was defending Miles then.”

“I know,” Dame Frevisse said. “I’ve had to do with wolfhounds before this.”

Hugh went wary, hoping his face was as blank as he meant it to be. Most nuns were of gentry if not noble families; any of them might well have had to do with hounds before entering the nunnery. But the way Dame Frevisse said it warned him there was something more than that.

“Wolfhounds,” she said, “except when on the hunt, are the gentlest of dogs. They’re bred to be.”

“Except when on the hunt or defending someone,” Hugh said.

“Or when they think they’re defending someone,” Dame Frevisse said. “You could see what happened even more clearly than I did. Miles didn’t truly stumble, did he?”

A swift denial of that would have been best; but Hugh, fatally, froze and Dame Frevisse returned her look to Miles. “You seemed to stumble as Sir William came at you with his dagger. Bevis was defending you, and because you seemed thrown off your balance and off guard, he did what he had been warning he would do. He attacked.”

“He was defending Miles,” Hugh said fiercely-the more fiercely because Miles was saying nothing.

“Sir William knew wolfhounds, too,” Dame Frevisse said. “He must have known how far he could push what he was doing, His dagger thrust wasn’t meant to come anywhere near to Miles and it didn’t. It was because Miles seemed to stumble just at that moment…”

“Did stumble,” Hugh said sharply. “Not seemed. Did.” Said it too sharply, too desperately, willing Miles to say nothing, to let things lie where they were, leave the denying to him.

Maybe Miles would have, but Philippa stood up and said, “It wasn’t my father killed Sir Ralph. I did.”