The Reeve's Tale

Chapter 10

Master Naylor had had no helpful answer to her question. From all he knew, Tom Hulcote had not mattered enough in anyone’s life-except Mary Woderove’s-for anyone to want him dead-and it was not dead that Mary wanted him. “He had no enemies I’ve ever heard of,” Master Naylor had said. “Nor friends, come to that. He wasn’t a man anyone cared that much about, either way.” Except for Mary Woderove, he had not bothered to add.

‘The men who were ready to make trouble at the manor court,“ Frevisse had said. ”Weren’t they friends?“

‘From what Father Henry told me, they’re just the usual lot who make trouble because they lack the wit to make anything else. They’d take up a sick dog’s cause as fast as Tom Hulcote’s, especially against Gilbey Dunn.“

‘What about Gilbey? He had no liking for Tom.“

‘Or Tom for him. If it was Gilbey found dead, it might be Tom I’d look to first, but for Gilbey to put himself to the trouble of killing anybody-you’d have to find good reason for it.“

‘The Woderove holding?“

‘It was by far a greater matter to Tom than it was to Gilbey. It would be Gilbey I’d look for to be dead because of it, rather than Tom.“

And that had been all the help he could give her. Nor had she found out much more than that in the two days since then, because she had returned to the village to find too many of the children worsening, and almost all the hours since then had been taken up with their necessities. Last night she had been so tired that when her turn came to sleep, she had barely been able to unpin her veil and set it aside before she fell onto her mattress and was still so tired when she awoke that her fingers had fumbled at pinning it on again. But St. Roch be thanked, since dawn this morning seven more children’s fevers had broken, one after another in a welter of sweat and mothers’ tears and the need for dry sheets or blankets and turned mattresses and urging, urging the children to drink just a little more barley water, just a little, before they sank into their first deeply quiet, blessedly cool sleeps in days, often with their spent mothers stretched out asleep beside them.

With all that, she had had little time to think of questions about Tom Hulcote, let alone ask them of anyone. She only knew, from undercurrents of talk among tired women and whoever of their family and friends came to help sometimes when other work was done that the uncertainty of Tom Hulcote’s death was beginning to take its toll.

It was not that there had never been murder here before. Besides the several Frevisse knew too well it seemed, from what she half-heard and overheard, that some while back one man had done for another with a dagger in an alehouse quarrel, and ten years ago one of the Gregorys had clouted someone over the head with a shovel about a boundary stone, but those had been open killings, seen by others, the why and how and guilt known to everyone and the murderer seized while his victim’s body was still bleeding.

Tom Hulcote’s death had happened secretly. No one knew why or where or by whom he had been killed. The only certainty was that his murderer was not a passing stranger and long gone. A stranger would have killed him and left, not chanced lingering for a day and more or bothered with shifting the corpse. But if it had not been a stranger, it had been someone here, and that meant there was someone among them who was able to kill a man and show no sign of it afterwards. Someone among them was a murderer and they had no way of telling who, and therefore, when there was chance, there were tight little huddles of talk among the women and worry over more than their children when presently their children were more than enough worry; nor did Frevisse doubt there was more talk in the village, and unsure looks and unspoken wondering and distrusts and wariness growing, with no cure for any of it so long as Tom Hulcote’s murderer went unknown.

Worse-and this she hoped no one else had thought of-was that since no one knew why Tom had been killed, there was no certainty that his death would be the only one.

She straightened, sore-backed, from helping small Elyn Denton drink her barley water and managed a smile down at the child, who smiled sleepily back, rolled on her side, and burrowed into her pillow, ready to nap, Frevisse hoped, until her mother returned from seeing to her older children still at home.

‘Please you, my lady, Simon Perryn is asking if you’d come out to him,“ Joane Goddard said in a low voice beside her.

‘Me?“ Frevisse said, looking where his children were bedded near the rood screen, Anne crouched between them, leaning over Lucy, whose fever was among those that had broken this morning.

Joane’s voice dropped lower. “He doesn’t want her to know, please you.”

Frevisse feared she knew what that meant but had no way to refuse it. Mistress Margery was sleeping in the sacristy, in easy call if needed, and enough mothers were awake again and seeing to their children that Sister Thomasine was hardly being left alone to it, and when she spoke briefly to her on her way out, Sister Thomasine merely said without looking around from persuading Joane’s boy Ralph, still fevered, to drink balm water, “Of course. Take as long as need be.”

The rain that had been lightly falling since midday was drizzling to a stop, leaving behind it a thick, damp heat, but Frevisse paused inside the church porch to draw a deep breath of the heavy air with rather desperate relief. These past hot days, the church’s stone walls and thatch had held coolness in as hoped, but with so many people so closely kept and the shutters not opened during the days to protect the meseled children’s eyes from light nor after dark because of sick-making night vapors, the air was long since thickened with the smells there had to be among so many sick children as well as begun to warm, and she had not been outside since one brief time yesterday.

But Perryn was waiting at the churchyard gate, leaning against one of the pentice posts, looking as weary as she felt, but he straightened as she joined him, bowed, gave her greeting that she returned, then asked him with a nod at the last slow dripping of the rain off the edges of the pentice roof, “Will this set the haying back?”

‘Most of the last cut was stacked before it started, and what’s left lying will dry without much hurt from this,“ he said. ”It’s what we couldn’t cut today we won’t make up.“ He nodded past her, toward the village green. ”The crowner’s come.“

Frevisse turned to see two men in brown livery strolling across the green toward the alehouse. “When?” she asked, surprised no one had brought word of it into the church yet.

‘About an hour ago.“

‘Who?“ she asked.

‘Master Montfort.“

The way Perryn said it told her that, like her, he had dealt with the crowner before and felt no better about him than she did. That Montfort might not come himself was something she and Master Naylor had discussed, with her own hope being, “He might not. It being ‘only’ a villein’s death, he might send one of his Sergeants rather than come himself.”

‘We can but hope,“ Master Naylor had replied.

But hope had failed and he had come.

‘He’s at Father Edmund’s,“ Perryn said, ”and giving orders like no one had wit in the world but him.“

‘Has he called for the jurors yet?“

‘Almost as soon as he was off his horse. They’re there now.“

Frevisse looked sharply away from the green to him. “Already? Why aren’t you there? You were one of the finders of the body.”

‘He said I wasn’t needed.“

Frevisse saw now the hard set of Perryn’s mouth, the rigidness behind his face’s tired lines as he stared broodingly at the two men going into the alehouse, and she echoed with the beginning of alarm, “Not needed?”

The jury inquiring into a death was made of the men who first found the body because they were ones most likely to know the closest details concerning the death. Or if the matter were complicated enough, the jury was made of them and men from neighboring villages, and even though Montfort’s usual way was to ask questions enough to have his mind made up before he had to deal with a jury, if this time he had already called a jury, then Perryn should have been on it, as one of the men who had brought in Tom Hulcote’s body.

‘He’s sent for Dickon, though,“ Perryn said. ”To witness. And ordered I wasn’t to go far.“

Worse, thought Frevisse. Montfort was moving as if he already had answers, and if he did, she did not like what she was seeing of the shape of them.

‘It was to ask about Adam, though, I wanted to see you,“ Perryn said. ”He’s not bettering, is he?“

That had been the question Frevisse had feared and she tried to find another answer than the only one there was but had to say, “No. Not yet.”

‘Will he?“ Perryn asked, his bluntness giving away more than Frevisse wanted to share of his fear. Colyn had bettered steadily since his fever had broken and Lucy had taken the mesels only lightly. But Adam…

This past day and more he seemed hardly to know even his mother and still his fever refused to break despite everything they did. If it did not break soon…

Low enough she hardly heard her own voice, Frevisse said, “We’re praying for him.”

Perryn stepped away from her, past her where she could not see his face, but not quite quickly enough she did not see the pain there. He knew as well as she did that the answers to prayers were not always the answers sought for. And although she believed that whatever came, came by God’s will and therefore for a greater good than men could see, she had rarely found that to be much comfort against hurt or the harsh, present edge of grief, and for now she gave Perryn the only thing she could- her silence-looking the other way from him until behind her, he said tautly, “Here’s trouble coming.”