The Reeve's Tale

Chapter 12

Hoping her bowed head and hidden hands concealed her fine shuddering of anger, Frevisse followed Perryn and Gilbey out of the house and across the foreyard to the street. Montfort had always brought her to anger and, at his worst, fear, because he was an arrogant and dangerous fool, disliking anyone and anything that came between him and whatever his present purpose was, and what she saw of his present purpose here frightened her.

Ahead of her, at the green’s edge, Gilbey turned on Perryn and said angrily, “He wants us guilty.”

They were well away from any of Montfort’s men but not out of their sight and maybe not out of their hearing, and Perryn said back, “Not here.”

‘My house then,“ Gilbey said, and Perryn nodded terse agreement.

They must needs talk somewhere and quickly, Frevisse thought, because she doubted they would have much time. All Montfort need do was bring the jurors around. When once he had their agreement-and she had seen no sign they would make much trouble over it-it would be small matter to put together a full jury to have an indictment and Gilbey and Perryn arrested.

Gilbey’s messuage was not far. Most of Prior Byfield stretched out down both sides of the long green, but at its churchward end a short lane pushed out and Gilbey’s was there, the farthest and nearly the only house along it, Frevisse saw as she followed the two men that way. Of the other two on the lane, one was no more than a poor toft- a small house set in a small garden and no more-while the other had some time been lived in but was now turned into a cattleyard, its house into a byre.

Beyond it was Gilbey’s, and even taken up with the tangle Montfort was making, Frevisse nearly came to a stop at full sight of it across the low withy fence between the street and its wide yard. Most villeins’ houses were serviceable but simple: of timbers, wattle, daub, and plaster, long and low, easily put up, easily taken down and shifted around in the yard as desire or need required, with thatch likely to be the greatest expense in keeping it up and nothing much changed from one generation to the next because what was the point in putting much money into something that belonged, when all was said and done, to the lord rather than the man who lived in it? But although Gilbey’s house was of timber, wattle, daub, plaster, and thatch well enough, there was nothing long and low about it. Beyond its foreyard garden, it stood square, with gable ends high enough, roof steep enough, it must have an actual upper floor instead of merely a loft tucked among rafters; there was even a small window poked out under a little gable of its own from the thatch along the side of the roof Frevisse could see and a fireplace chimney showing on the other side.

Elena was at the door, looking out over its closed lower half, either watching the chickens at work in the dust between doorstep and garden or for Gilbey, and she waited there while they came across the yard but stepped out as they came along the garden’s path and asked, her failure of other greeting betraying her worry, “How went it?”

‘Badly,“ Gilbey answered, and as they reached his doorstep turned on Frevisse with, ”You, with those questions of yours. You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days.“

‘Gilbey!“ Elena said.

Gilbey ignored her. “What if what you asked hadn’t brought the right answers? He’d have us under his arrest by now!”

‘I wasn’t asking those questions to keep you from arrest,“ Frevisse said back at him. ”I was asking them to find out what the answers were.“

She heard Perryn’s soft, hissed intake of breath as he understood she would have asked her questions whether she thought them dangerous to him and Gilbey or not.

Gilbey, realizing the same thing, started to swear, “By God’s holy…”

‘Gilbey!“ Elena said.

This time Gilbey cut off, though he looked more irked than penitent, and Elena laid a hand on his arm as she said, “If it went that badly, we’d best go in to say whatever else needs saying.” Belatedly she curtsyed to Frevisse. “If you would do us the honor, my lady?”

‘With pleasure.“

‘Here then,“ Gilbey said and led the way, with Perryn asking Elena as they went, ”How goes it with your boys?“

Belatedly in her turn, Frevisse saw that Elena looked very much the way most other of the village mothers presently looked-unkept, plainly dressed in a workaday gown of rough-woven linen, with simple cap and unstarched veil, gray-shadowed around her eyes with too little sleep and too much worry. But her fine-boned beauty was still there and woke, startling, as she smiled and said with open gladness of her sons, “Their fevers broke this morning, St. Roch be praised. Both of them. They’ve been mostly sleeping since.”

‘Agnes with them?“ Gilbey demanded.

Without apparent offense at Gilbey’s rudeness, Elena said, “Of course.” Or it might have been she was simply too tired to bother with being angry at him just now. Or else she was dangerously capable of hiding what she felt.

‘And your children?“ Elena asked of Perryn. ”I heard Colyn was past the worst. But Adam and Lucy?“

‘Lucy’s fever broke last night. Adam’s hasn’t,“ Perryn said tersely.

The quick darkening of Elena’s face showed she understood what that meant, but “Soon then,” she said kindly as Gilbey stood aside to let Frevisse go into the house ahead of him and Perryn after her.

Gilbey, following them in, said, “Hen,” at a beady-eyed red one that had taken advantage of the door Elena had left open to come in and peck for crumbs under the table.

With a soft laugh Elena took up a broom from beside the door and shooed it out in a ruffle of feathers and clucking, giving Frevisse a chance to see around the low-ceilinged room. Well-lighted by a window beside the door and another in the southward wall, it took up almost all this floor of the house, with a board wall and doorway at its far end closing off what looked to be storage space. Against one wall narrow stairs went steeply up to another room or rooms, probably where the children and Agnes must be since there was no sign anyone slept down here where most of the living and all the cooking were done. The furnishings were usual-table, benches, joint stools, chairs, chests-but all of better quality and quantity than usual in a villein’s house. That and the chimneyed hearth and that the floor was of boards instead of dirt told Frevisse much about how well off Gilbey was and something more about what Elena must have brought to their marriage because all this was more what a well-to-do townsman would have, rather than a country-bred peasant.

What if the rumor was true and there had been something between Tom Hulcote and Elena? What if she had come to choose him openly over her husband? It would have been a choice condemned by law and the Church, impossible ever to be anything but illicit, but women enough made that kind of choice. If Elena had, how much of all this would Gilbey have lost? Because Frevisse judged Elena would not have left behind anything she could take.

As Elena turned to her husband and guests-hen disposed of and the door’s bottom half shut and firmly latched against return-Frevisse clamped off that thought. All other consideration aside, Elena frankly lacked the look of a woman who had lately lost a lover for whom she might have done desperate things. That, from what Frevisse had heard, was Mary Woderove’s part; the talk among the women in the church was that she had gone wild at word of Tom Hulcote’s death, had been kept from harming herself only by quieting draughts from Mistress Margery, and had needed much counseling and consoling from Father Edmund.

And none of that was to the present need, and Frevisse said, abrupt with impatience at herself, “These jurors. Tell me about them.”

‘Tell you what?“ Gilbey asked. ”Fools, the lot of them.“

‘You’d better hope not. Perryn, tell me, how did it happen they were the ones helped you bring Tom Hulcote’s body in?“

‘They were who came to hand first, that’s all. John Rudyng and Bert Fleccher at the alehouse, Walter Hopper and Hamon Otale at Walter’s place on the way. That’s all there was to it.“

‘What sort of men are they?“

‘That’s not the problem here!“ Gilbey said.

‘It’s part of the problem,“ Frevisse said back at him. ”How long there is to find Tom Hulcote’s murderer depends on how well they can hold out against Montfort wanting it to be one or both of you.“ Elena gasped but Frevisse asked Perryn again, ”What sort of men are they? Hamon I remember from manor court. He’s not likely to be happy with you just now.“

‘No,“ Perryn agreed, ”but Walter Hopper is solid enough.“

‘He’s the one who didn’t say anything while we were there?“

‘Aye. He’s hard to push where he doesn’t want to go.“

‘And the others?“

‘Bert Fleccher…“

‘A troublemaker,“ Gilbey said.

‘He’s that,“ Perryn agreed slowly, ”but not mean-hearted about it.“

‘Nay, just a fool, and that can be as bad,“ Gilbey said. ”He’d not mind seeing us down if he could do it without hurt to himself. Then there’s John Rudyng. He’s no use either. Without his mother-in-law there to tell him what to do, he’ll go whatever way looks easiest.“

‘Aye, maybe,“ Perryn agreed glumly.

Gilbey sat down in the chair beside the table, fingers drumming angrily at the broad wooden tabletop. “And that crowner will likely…”

Elena, turning back from a wall-hung aumbry with pitcher and fine blue-glazed goblets, said on a soft but rising note, “Gilbey. Guests.”

Gilbey twitched a startled look toward her, then at Frevisse, realized he was sitting and she was not, and stood abruptly up, making an awkward gesture toward the room’s only other chair, saying, “Pray, sit, Dame. If you will.”

He did not have it smoothly down but he was trying. Frevisse made a slight bow of her head to acknowledge his manners and sat. “You, too,” he said at Perryn less graciously but waiting until the reeve had sat on a bench end before sitting again himself. Elena put the pitcher and goblets on the table and began to pour a clear, golden ale while Gilbey, going back to what he had been saying, said, “That shit-witted crowner will bring them around to indicting us by suppertime, so what are we going to do?”

Elena’s hands jerked, making the ale she was pouring miss the goblet. “Indict you?” she repeated. “For what? For Tom Hulcote’s murder?”

‘What else?“ Gilbey returned.

She set the pitcher down, looking at Frevisse and Perryn’s faces, wanting a different answer. “Truly?”

Perryn nodded.

‘On what proof?“

‘Fool’s proof,“ Gilbey snapped, ”but since he has fools for jurors, it’ll be enough.“

‘It won’t be enough when it comes to county court,“ said Perryn. ”Not with men he can’t force the way he can here.“

‘He’ll have us ruined long before it comes to that,“ Gilbey said. Because in the while until then, all their property would be taken into the king’s hands for keeping, forfeit to the king if they were found guilty, returned to them if they were found innocent, but either way, some officer of Montfort would likely have the running and profit of it all in the meanwhile-officially on the king’s behalf, and surely much would reach the royal coffers, but a great deal would go into the crowner’s purse along the way, and Frevisse no more doubted it than Gilbey or Perryn did.

Nor did Elena, who said slowly, wiping up the spilled ale, “So it’s not so much who’s guilty that he’s looking for as that you two are the wealthiest men in Prior Byfield, yes?”

‘And justice be damned,“ Gilbey agreed grimly. ”He’s reckoning what a pretty profit he’ll make out of his share of our property if we’re found guilty and how much he’ll make off it even if we aren’t, and since there’s not much profit to be had in finding a poor man guilty, we’re his murderers of choice.“

‘More than that,“ Perryn said, ”if he settles for us being guilty, then the true murderer goes unfound and that’s as bad a wrong.“

Elena paused in holding out a goblet to Frevisse. “Worse still,” she said quietly, “is that it has to be someone of the village and they’ll go on being here, with none of us knowing who he is.”

In the silence that answered that, Frevisse took the goblet Elena was holding out to her, before a small knock at the door made them all look that way, to see Dickon Naylor looking over it uncertainly.

‘You weren’t at your house,“ he said to Perryn, plainly unsure of his welcome, ”so I came here…“

‘Come in,“ Gilbey snapped. ”Don’t stand there looking lost. That ass of a crowner let you go, then?“

Shutting the half-door carefully behind him and snicking the latch, Dickon answered, “He’s finished for today, he says. He’s sent everybody home.”

‘Finished?“ Frevisse repeated, surprised along with Perryn and Gilbey.

‘I don’t see any guards with you,“ Gilbey said as Dickon crossed to stand beside Perryn. ”We’re not for it yet, then?“

Perryn took the boy’s hand and pulled him down to sit on the bench beside him while Dickon shook his head and answered, “After you left, Master Montfort tried to lead the men back to where he’d had them before you came in…”

‘Damn him,“ Gilbey said.

‘… but they wouldn’t go.“

Frevisse had never paid the boy much heed but seeing him now, she realized he was not much the “little boy” she had been thinking him when she thought of him at all. He was already well into the lanky growth that came on some children earlier than others, and there was enough of his father in the contained way he had answered just now that she thought it likely it wasn’t only in body he was ahead of himself. Attending more to his answer than she would have earlier, she asked, “What happened after we left?”

Dickon regarded her gravely. “Just that. Master Montfort wanted them to say the hood and belt were reason enough to find Simon and Gilbey guilty of Tom’s murder, and Hamon might have, just to make trouble, like, but the rest of them dug in their heels and wouldn’t. They said it didn’t make sense, the hood and belt being there when both men couldn’t have been. Even Bert said there was more looking to be done before things should be called settled, but I think that was because he liked the color Master Montfort’s face was turning and wanted to see how purple it would go. Then Hamon went along with them.”

‘What’s this about a hood and belt?“ Elena asked.

Gilbey told her, briefly, both about them and what had passed with Montfort, ending, “So all he’s got is nonsense and no proof of anything.”

‘But it’s your belt?“ Elena said.

‘Oh, aye, it’s my belt, right enough, and Simon’s hood, but they’ll do Montfort no good.“

‘Unfortunately,“ Frevisse said, ”Montfort is able to believe whatever he wants to believe, ignore whatever he wanted to ignore, unless he’s forced to go another way. We held him off a while with mention of Lord Lovell and Abbot Gilberd and putting questions to him that he didn’t like but none of that will keep him back for long, set against the chance for profit your guilt offers him.“

‘You mean disproving Gilbey and Simon could have been there together isn’t going to be enough?“ Elena said.

‘Not if he wants to believe in it, and that brings us to the need to prove who did kill Tom Hulcote.“

Gilbey rapped impatient knuckles on the table top. “How likely are we to be able to do that?” he said scornfully.

‘Not likely at all if we don’t try,“ Perryn said curtly. He rubbed a large hand over his face, took a deep breath, and looked to Frevisse. ”You have some thought on how to do it?“

For answer, she asked, “What do we know for certain about Hulcote’s death?”

She waited but no one said anything, all of them- Dickon, too-waiting with gazes fixed on her.

‘Begin this way then,“ she said. ”He was last seen alive late on Saturday, yes? By whom?“

There was a pause, the others looking at each other, before Perryn said, “By me.”

Frevisse failed to choke off her surprise. “By you?”

‘Near as I’ve heard anyway.“ Perryn was faintly defiant about it, understanding it was not to his good to have been the last who saw Hulcote living.

Frevisse rethought how to ask the next question, but there seemed only the one way. “He was by himself?”

A unreadable mix of expressions crossed Perryn’s face and he shifted awkwardly where he sat, as if the bench had suddenly become doubly hard under him, before he answered, “Nay. He was with me.”

Hopefully keeping her thoughts hidden, Frevisse asked, “Doing what?”

‘Quarreling.“

‘Over what?“

Perryn did not try to hold in his bitter disgust. “Over Matthew Woderove’s holding, surely. Tom wanted I should tell him I’d change my mind over the holding, let him have it after all, or at least tell him you’d not have it either.”

‘Did you?“ Gilbey snapped.

‘How likely do you think it?“ Perryn snapped back. ”Nay, I told him naught. I was going into church to see how it was there and he overtook me at the church gate, demanding, like there was nothing else in the world but him and that damned holding, and I was that angry at him for it that when he wouldn’t let it go, I told him I wouldn’t even tell him what day of the week it was if he’d asked me, and I certain as hell wasn’t going to tell him about the holding.“

‘And then?“ Frevisse asked.

‘Then he cursed me and said I’d be sorry for it and flung away along the field path there, and I went into the church.“

‘Did anyone see or hear the two of you there?“

‘Not that I know of. They might have. But if they did, they saw him go off alive and well.“

And angry. Angry enough to come back later, when Perryn was home and quarrel with him again?

Frevisse did not ask that, only, “No one has admitted to seeing him after that?”

‘Not anybody.“

‘He was at the alehouse,“ Gilbey said. ”Folk have said so.“

‘But that was before he met me,“ Perryn said. ”The sun was just to the horizon when he left there, Bess has said. It was half gone below when I was talking with him.“

‘You didn’t tell the crowner that,“ Gilbey said.

‘Right enough, I didn’t! That’s all he needs.“

‘If somebody else saw you, they might,“ Gilbey persisted.

‘If somebody else saw us, they saw us quarreling and wouldn’t have kept it to themselves this long, given the way tongues run on wheels around here. It would have been all through the village long before Tom was found dead and you know it.“

‘But you said nothing about it to anyone?“ Frevisse asked.

‘What was to say? That we’d quarreled? No new tidings in that. I had other things I was worried on more than him. I doubt I even thought on it again until after I knew he was dead, and that didn’t seem a good time to say aught about it.“

‘Judging by his body, then,“ Frevisse said, ”we can guess that he was killed sooner rather than later after you last saw him.“

‘Aye.“

‘And it’s certain the body wasn’t put into the ditch until soon before it was found. That tells us someone kept it somewhere the while between. Why?“

The men and Elena passed puzzled looks among themselves before Elena said, slightly a-frown with uncertainty, “Because they couldn’t move it until then?”

‘Why not?“ Frevisse asked. ”It’s easy to understand why they couldn’t leave it where they’d killed him if it was somewhere that would give their guilt away as soon as it was found, but what was different about Monday’s night that made it a safer time than Saturday or Sunday’s night to move the body?“

They all thought again a long moment, before Gilbey said impatiently, “There was naught particular about Monday night. Nothing about Saturday or Sunday either.”

‘It rained once in there,“ Dickon offered.

‘At dawn on Monday,“ Perryn said. ”Just before sunrise and for a little afterwards, not in the night. There was no rain any of those nights. And what would rain have to do with moving the body anyway?“

‘The moon?“ Elena asked but answered for herself, ”No, there wasn’t that much difference in it from one night to the next those nights.“

‘Nor point in waiting in hope of an overcast night when he couldn’t be sure of one,“ Frevisse added. Not when waiting meant the risk of a decaying body betraying the murderer’s secret.

‘And if an overcast night was what he wanted, why didn’t he use the overcast there was Sunday night before the rain?“ Elena asked.

‘Aye,“ Perryn said, impatient, frustrated. ”Why wait until the next night?“

‘To give him a chance,“ Frevisse said, ”to lay hands on your hood and Gilbey’s belt.“