The Reeve's Tale

Chapter 16

She awoke in thick darkness, for a moment con-fused, the room around her wrong for her cell in the nunnery’s dorter, until the narrow, door-shaped outline of lamp-yellow light told her she was in St. Chad’s sacristy, not in bed but on a mattress on the floor; and if she was awake, then the hour was probably near to midnight and time for Matins and to take Sister Thomasine’s place. Used to her cell’s darkness, she rose and with little trouble found by feel her wimple and veil where she had laid them carefully aside, with unthinking familiarity put them on, pinned the veil in place, stood, and shook out her skirts. With nothing else needed to be ready, she paused to gather herself with a murmured Deo gratias and slipped from the sacristy to find the nave reassuringly sunk in silence and shadows.

After so many other nights of children whimpering or crying, miserable and in pain, with women moving back and forth in the low-kept lamplight, the stillness was like balm. Even Anne Perryn was sleeping, stretched out narrowly between Colyn and Lucy, though it was likely unbearable weariness had taken her down, rather than desire, because on the mattress next to them Adam lay awake- or something like awake-his eyes closed but his head turning restlessly from side to side. Sister Thomasine was with him, one hand laid lightly on his chest’s uneven breathing while with the other she soaked a cloth in a basin of water.

As Frevisse came toward them, she glanced upward but said nothing, and Frevisse waited while she wrung out the cloth and was reaching to lay it over Adam’s forehead again when suddenly his eyes were open, staring at her, startling both her and Frevisse to stillness, before his head began to turn again, his fever-bright eyes roaming as if he searched for something to fix them on, then suddenly did, staring upward past Frevisse with such fear that she turned and found herself looking up at the tall figure of St. Chad painted on the narrow wall flanking the rood screen between chancel and nave. Unnaturally lean, it rose through shadows toward the rafters, but the face was caught by some trick of lamplight that gave life to the large eyes staring away into the dark.

Adam whimpered and Sister Thomasine leaned over him, asking, “Adam, what is it?”

Eyes still on the painted saint, Adam tried to speak, choked dryly, managed to whisper, “That man. He never smiles. He just stands there.” The boy gave a dry sob. “He just stands there staring and waiting for me to be dead!”

‘Adam.“ Sister Thomasine touched his cheek, bringing him to look at her, and gently but certain, said, ”He never smiles because what he’s seeing is too beautiful for smiling at.“

Adam lay still. “Too beautiful for smiling?” he whispered, his voice a bare thread of sound.

Sister Thomasine nodded, as unsmiling as the saint as she asked, “Haven’t you seen a summer sunrise, just when the light strikes out of the darkness and across the fields and every drop of dew turns to diamonds and the sky to a blue you never see another time and any clouds there are to gold and everything is changed and strange and more beautiful than you knew anything could be?”

Slowly Adam nodded.

Sister Thomasine nodded with him, saying gently, “Heaven is even more beautiful than that and the saint is looking into heaven. That’s why he doesn’t smile. Because what he’s seeing is too beautiful for smiling.”

His gaze still clinging to her face but unfeared now, Adam took a deep, slow breath. “That’s why you don’t smile, either, isn’t it?” he whispered.

Sister Thomasine touched his cheek and laid the wet cloth over his forehead and eyes, and in a little while, when he was surely asleep, she rose to her feet, stood for another moment over him, hands folded, head bowed to prayer, then turned to Frevisse and said softly, “He’ll do well now.”

He looked no better to Frevisse, the fever-flush still on him, his breathing still ragged, but she nodded agreement. Together, they made sure all was well throughout the nave before going to say Matins and Lauds together in the chancel until part way through Laud’s third psalm, a child roused, whimpering, and when there was no sound of anyone moving to quiet it, Frevisse broke off with a hasty crossing of herself and went, finding it was a little girl who had bettered yesterday and so her mother was gone to see to things at home for tonight. When Frevisse had given her a drink and settled her to sleep again, Sister Thomasine had finished Lauds and was gone to bed, and Frevisse stood in the aisle between the clusters of mattresses and dark, low humps of sleeping bodies, listening to soft snufflings and snores without finding anything that needed her and, for lack of something else to do, returned to Adam.

Since yesterday’s morning Frevisse had been afraid of exactly this watch, midnight through to dawn, when, even at the best, life ebbed low and death so often subtly came. She did not want to watch a child die. Nor see his parents’ grief. Nor have to try to give comfort where there was none to be had. With those uncompaniable thoughts, she sat down on the joint stool between the mattresses, feeling that the only present mercy was that Anne Perryn looked likely, at last, to sleep a night through. If Adam died…

Frevisse put the thought from her, took the fever-dried cloth from his forehead, soaked it again, wiped his face and throat and arms, and relaid it on his forehead. He never stirred the while except to go on breathing in that light, labored, frightening way, and when she had finished, Frevisse lay her hands in her lap and began to pray, for him, for all the children, for help in the matter of Tom Hulcote’s murder…

How long and how deep she went into the praying she could not have said, but when the bright caroling of bird-songs outside in the last darkness before dawn brought her back and she tried to straighten, she found herself stiffened with long sitting and, hand pressed to her spine, eyes still shut, had to draw herself upright bone by bone, feeling every one of them. Then froze to stillness as she heard something besides the birdsong. Heard Adam’s breathing. Changing.

Quieting.

With a heart-thud of fear, she leaned over him, starkly far from her prayers’ peace of a moment before, until she saw as she stripped the cloth from his forehead and laid her hand there that his face was sheened with sweat. With blessed sweat.

He was drenched with it, all over. The fever was broken.

Quickly she shook Anne by the arm, telling her even while waking her, forestalling her fear, and watched while she felt of her son’s face, kissed his damp forehead, laid her hand over his even, easy breathing, and began to cry.

Frevisse had expected prayers and thanks to God but watching Anne’s huge, silent tears swell and slip down her face, she knew they served as well for thanks as any prayer ever could.

Behind her, come so quietly Frevisse had not heard her, Mistress Margery said, “He’s strong. He’ll do well now.” She was carrying a cloth-covered pottery jug and to Frevisse’s glance at it, she answered, “It brewed well.” But she was looking at Frevisse in return and asked, “How do you, my lady?”

‘Tired is all,“ Frevisse said though her head felt as stale as the nave’s air.

Mistress Margery’s look at her did not lessen. “Best you step outside a time, maybe. I can see to things here the while.”

Frevisse accepted the offer gratefully and found, even before she had left the church porch, that the cool dawn air worked on her much as a strong draught of rich wine would have done. For a few deep-breathed moments she simply stood on the churchyard path, breathing, feeling, deliberately not thinking. The day was barely there, the world still mostly only shapes and shadows in the cool and colorless dawnlight, with no more than the barest trace of rose and peach tinting the eastern sky but the birds still in full-throated song, and Frevisse softly joined them with a prayers from Prime. “Domine Deus omnipotens, qui ad principium huius diet nos pervenire fecisti...” Lord God all powerful, you who to the beginning of this day have made us come…

It was a prayer that almost always served to lift her heart but its other words struck too near to what else the day was going to ask of her. “… semper ad tuam iustitiam faciendam nostra procedant eloquia, dirigantur cogitationes et opera.”… may always our words lead, our thoughts and works be directed, to fulfilling your justice.

Because today she would have to go on with what she had started yesterday.

But not yet, she prayed. For just now let there be simply the dawn and a quietness of heart and mind and soul.

The riot of birdsong was ending as the daylight grew and the world took on colors-summer greens of grass and trees, gold of the grain in the field beyond the churchyard wall, subtle blues rising across the sky. Without haste, Frevisse began to walk, her gown’s hem sweeping over the churchyard’s long, dew-damp grass, keeping her mind away from what she would all too soon have to deal with, thinking instead that the worst of the plague was past now Adam’s fever had broken. Even better and for a wonder and against all likely hope, it seemed no one was going to die. And three and more days were gone by without any new mesels now, and that made it likely there would be no more, and soon she and Sister Thomasine would be free to go back to St. Frideswide’s.

There was still the harvest to face but that seemed simpler now…

And the matter of Master Naylor’s freedom…

And Tom Hulcote’s murder…

Frevisse sighed to find she had come back to that.

And that she was standing looking down at the raw brown, clodded earth of Matthew Woderove’s grave mound.

Even as she said a prayer for his soul, she noted there was no sign to show that more had happened here than a hole been dug and the dirt then shoveled back into it for maybe no good reason.

She had talked to Elena Dunn about Tom Hulcote’s murderer being someone who was unhappy, but now that she thought on it, unhappiness was part of both men’s deaths. By all she had ever heard of Matthew Woderove, he had been unhappy in his life and now, to judge by his grave, he was not even mourned in death. An unhappy man come to an unhappy end.

Like Tom Hulcote.

Frevisse paused on that thought.

She had only thought of Tom Hulcote as angry, but behind the anger he had to have been unhappy-unhappy in the life he had and unhappy in not being able to better it, his best hope broken that day at the manor court and no likely way it could ever be mended. An unhappy man brought to an unhappy end.

Like Matthew Woderove.

Frevisse shook her head, still not wanting the two deaths together in her mind.

But what if they should be?

What if the matter of Hulcote’s death had to be taken back a step? To Matthew Woderove’s. What then?

She didn’t know.

Her head bowed, she turned and walked away from the grave and only as she was passing the churchyard gateway heard soft-soled footfalls and looked up to find Simon Perryn there.

He bowed and said, “Good morrow, my lady,” as she stopped, and she bent her head in return, wondering if she looked as under-slept as he did.

Then she saw the fear rigid in his face and said quickly, “Adam is better. His fever broke just ere dawn.”

Perryn sagged against one of the pentice posts, letting go his taut hold on himself. “It did?” he breathed, wanting to hear it again.

‘I left him sleeping quietly.“

Perryn crossed himself. “Praise be to all the saints. And the others?”

‘All doing well.“

‘None…?“

He hesitated over the question, asking after not only his own but all the children, Frevisse realized, and she answered, “Mistress Margery says we’ll lose none of them. They’re all going to live. It’s over.”

The worst of it at any rate, and as easily as that there were suddenly tears in Perryn’s eyes, not falling as his wife’s had but shining in the morning light as he said, finally smiling, “Thank you.”

‘God’s doing, not mine.“

‘But your help and your prayers. And Sister Thomasine’s.“

Now Frevisse met his smile. “And yours. All of us. Your wife was awake when I left, if you’re thinking of going in.”

‘I was, aye.“

Smiling, he went and, smiling, Frevisse watched him go, taking pleasure in his pleasure. The more she knew of Simon Perryn, the more she liked him.

But it would take more than her liking to save him from Montfort.

The sun’s rim slid clear of the horizon, its low rays striking long across the fields, changing the world to sudden brightness and long-reached sharp shadows, the dew to glinting silver, the rising dawn mist along the stream into a golden veil. With its dazzle in her eyes, Frevisse turned away, toward the village, and found that Perryn had only barely been the first out and about. Folk had been at their first work around their houses and byres before light, surely, and now they were bound, men, women, older children, most with hoes as well as scythes or rakes over their shoulders, for probably Shaldewell Field to weed in the beans until the hayfields dried and they could turn to those.

Frevisse held where she was, caught between returning inside to join Sister Thomasine for Prime and all the first-of-a-morning work there was or setting out to ask more questions before Montfort did worse than he already had. Both were her duty, in their different ways, but she knew which was the one only she could do and, bearing the weight of her choice, she went out the gateway.

Going along the street beside the green, she met folk on their way to the church, bringing food and to see how family or neighbors did. The children were too shy to more than give her a quick bow of the head and sidewise looks as they passed, and Frevisse discouraged their elders from talk by giving them a brisk nod and a bare smile to acknowledge their bows or curtsies without encouraging more, thereby reaching Perryn’s messuage unhindered. Neither Watt nor Dickon was in the yard, but she was not seeking them and before ever she knocked at the house door, standing open to the warm day, she could guess where Cisily was by the rasp of sand being scrubbed over wood, and indeed, when at her knock Cisily called, “Come in then. No need to hang about out there,” Frevisse found her with sleeves rolled to above her elbows and a rag in her hand, stretched over the table, scouring at a stain. At sight of Frevisse, though, she stopped, pulled up to straight and said, “Pardon, my lady, I didn’t know ‘twas you. Pray, come in,” as she dropped the cloth out of sight below the table and began to roll down her sleeves.

‘No need for pardon,“ Frevisse said easily. The last thing she wanted was Cisily on her manners. ”I’ve come to tell you Adam’s fever broke at dawn.“

Cisily crossed herself with huge relief. “Praise God and the Virgin. The master was bound for the church, so he knows?”

‘He’s there now.“

Smiling as if unable to stop, Cisily came around the table. “Come in. Sit you down, please. There’s oatmeal still from breakfast and the cream is fresh if you’d like. Please.”

Despite what she had seen of Cisily’s cooking yesterday, Frevisse accepted; she was here to talk with Cisily and the woman might do it more easily across food than otherwise. Or maybe not, because when the bowl of oatmeal and cream was in front of her and she asked Cisily to join her, Cisily did readily, sitting on the other bench, across the table, with mug of ale in hand and talk on her tongue, beginning with how blessed they were that the children were past the worst. “Though trying to keep our three a-bed from now until they’re full well, that’s something I’m not looking forward to. And what with Anne worn out with all this, I can see already where the burden is going to fall.”

‘They’re fortunate to have you,“ Frevisse said with shameless flattery.

‘I’ve known them since they were born. Known Simon and Anne all their days, too, come to that.“

‘You’re village-born, then?“

‘Oh, aye. Born, bred, and never been out of it except twice to Banbury,“ Cisily said with pride.

‘You knew Matthew Woderove then, too.“

‘Matthew?“ Cisily clucked her tongue. ”Aye. All his life, poor man. Never had a chance, he did, with a father like that and then wedding Mary Perryn, though I say it who shouldn’t, seeing I work for Simon who’s as good as Midsummer Day is long.“

‘And Mary isn’t?“

‘Good as the day is long? Not even nearly,“ Cisily said bluntly. ”Never has been. Never will be.“

‘Not even for Tom Hulcote?“

Cisily tutted fretfully. “Well, there’s no surprise you know about that, is there? People talk, that’s sure.”

‘Do you think Matthew ran off because of his wife and Tom Hulcote?“

‘Who’s to say? Though he’d put up with it two years and more already, so why go hot over it all of a sudden?“

‘He maybe didn’t know until now.“

‘Who’s to say? He never did. Still, everyone else knew, didn’t they?“

‘And Father Edmund never sought to put stop to it?“

Cisily put down her mug, frowning a little. “Now there you have me. He didn’t know because nobody would tell him, would they? Him being new-come here and all.”

‘But Matthew Woderove never said anything to anyone? Not about his wife or Tom Hulcote or running off?“

‘Not that I’ve heard, and I would have.“ Cisily seemed quite sure of that. ”My own thought is that, Mary or no, losing his land was too much shame for him, that’s all. He just wanted to be away, once and for all, and he went.“

‘How did he go?“

‘At night.“ Cisily shuddered. ”That shows you how desperate he must have been, to be away in the dark like that.“

‘With no warning either?“

‘Oh, he’d had a yelling time that afternoon with Mary, out at the end of their furlong at west end of Shaldewell Field.“

‘What over?“ Frevisse asked.

Cisily shook her head, looking put out. “Now there, no one else was working that end of the field that afternoon. No one was near enough to hear more than that they were angry. But they were that, right enough. The way I’ve heard it, they were at it a while and while, then Mary threw down her hoe-a wonder she didn’t throw it at him, I’d say-and went home on her own and that was the last she saw of him.”

‘He never went home?“

‘Oh, aye, he did, but not until he’d worked the afternoon out, there in the field, and came home when everyone else did. Wouldn’t talk to anyone nor didn’t want them talking to him neither. And then what do you think he found when he was home?“ Cisily leaned a little forward over the table and said with slow relish, ”She’d barred the door. Wouldn’t let him in. Not into his own house, with half the village passing by on their own ways home and able to see it. That’s what she did to him.“

It briefly crossed Frevisse’s mind to wonder why it was not Mary Woderove who was dead instead of her husband, but all she asked was, “What did he do?”

‘Matthew?“ Cisily was as free with her scorn as with her tale. ”Some of the men asked if he wanted they should bring a timber, they’d have the door down for him, and that’s what he should have done, if you ask me, and given her a beating she wouldn’t forget. But then he should have done that years ago, God’s truth. I’ve heard Simon tried to bring him on home to here, but all Matthew did was shake his head at everybody and skulk away into his byre, to spend the night in the hay, it was reckoned. Like always.“

‘She’d done this to him before?“

‘Oh, aye. More than once. Have a screaming quarrel with him, bar the door, and leave him to sleep in the byre, and the next morning he’d be asking her pardon and thanking her for letting him back into his own house, fool man. Nobody thought but it’d be the same this time, but next morning he and one of Gilbey’s horses was gone.“ Cisily slapped the tabletop with a merry hand. ”And you should have heard Gilbey swearing over that horse!“ She changed her mind. ”No. Pardon, my lady. No, you shouldn’t have.“ But the memory was too ripe for her; she could not help adding, ”But it was worth the hearing anyway.“

Frevisse did not doubt it had been, if your humor went that way. Trying to make the question sound like idle talk, she asked, “That was about Midsummer, wasn’t it?”

‘Two days past. They held the court where Matthew lost his land-and wicked that was of Gilbey, he doesn’t need more land-the day after Midsummer’s, and a day later was their quarrel, and Matthew disappeared that night.“

‘How did Mary take his leaving her like that?“

‘Well, I mind she came to the well that morning with the rest of us, and when some cat asked after Matthew, she answered that she hadn’t seen him and hoped she didn’t. She thought he’d gone out early to the fields somewhere, you see. It was only later, putting together that Gilbey’s horse was stolen and Matthew nowhere to be found that we started to guess he’d gone and didn’t mean to come back. Then there was some caterwauling, let me tell you.“

Frevisse supposed that sooner or later she would have to talk to Mary Woderove but doubted she would enjoy it when the time came and asked, “What did she do when Tom Hulcote disappeared?”

‘Now that I don’t know,“ Cisily said with deep regret. ”She was that upset over them not being given the holding that she’d taken against everyone, and being I’m Simon and Anne’s, she’d have had nothing to do with me, even if I’d not been taken up then with the children and all. What I’ve heard is she racketed on to anyone who’d listen and to Tom most of all that everything and everyone was rotten against him here and he’d never have a chance in life at all except he left.“

‘Ran off, you mean?“

‘He’d have to. He’d never money enough to buy himself free, that’s sure.“

‘And she was going to go with him?“

‘Nothing so good as that, and not that most everybody here wouldn’t mind seeing the last of her, but no, she was saying, too, she meant to stay and keep the Woderove holding in the teeth of whatever anyone tried to do to her and be damned to her brother and everyone. That’s what I’ve heard. She has hot humors, does Mary.“

And not overmuch sense, to be telling the world at large you wanted your lover to break his bondage and run, Frevisse thought, but aloud she only said, “When Tom disappeared then, nobody thought anything about it but that he’d run?”

‘If they thought about it at all, that’s what they thought,“ Cisily said. ”Or just that he’d wandered off like he was always doing and would come back when it suited his own self. Nobody much cared except Gilbey and only because Tom was supposed to be working for him. This time there wasn’t even Gilbey to care. Nobody but Mary, I’d guess, and likely she thought he’d run, sure, like she’d been telling him to do. Else we’d have heard about it. Loud and long.“ Cisily shook her head, lips pursed. ”The way we’re hearing about him being dead. You think no one had ever been grieved but her.“ She suddenly crossed herself. ”It’s being said, my lady, there’ll have to be things done, for fear he’ll walk, dying the way he did. Have you heard aught about that?“

Caught by the changed direction, Frevisse hesitated, then said, “Not once he’s been laid in consecrated ground and prayers said over him. Not with Father Henry and Father Edmund both to pray for him. And I will and Sister Thomasine.”

Cisily gave a little shudder of pleased fear. “That’s well enough then. I shouldn’t like to meet him of a twilight, that’s all, with him all bloodied and angry about it.”

Frevisse readily agreed that neither would she, and Cisily, diverted to remembering village stories of ghosts there had been-none she had ever seen herself, mind, and all of folk dead before her time but nonetheless…

With much thanks for the breakfast, Frevisse escaped out into the warming day.