The Reeve's Tale

Chapter 6

Two days later there was a soft rain falling from a low gray sky as Frevisse came with Sister Thomasine and Father Henry, the nunnery’s priest, by the road from the priory into the village. Simon Perryn had sent word the manor court would be held in the church, rather than on the green, but they would have been able to tell it anyway by the scattered drift of villagers into the churchyard.

‘Too wet to work in the fields,“ Father Henry said; and therefore most of the village would be free to come to the court and probably would, since Perryn’s hope to forestall trouble by having it soon had been vain. He had likewise sent word there had been a shouting match between Gilbey Dunn and Tom Hulcote at the alehouse last night that had not come to blows only because various neighbors had stopped them, but then others, including Perryn, had had to stop the fight that had threatened to flare up then and there between the few who backed Gilbey- more out of dislike for Tom Hulcote than liking for Gilbey, Frevisse gathered-and those who favored Tom, probably for the reverse reason. Therefore Frevisse had asked Father Henry’s company, because when the village had sometimes been without a priest in the past years, Father Henry had seen to the villagers’ needs as well as to the nunnery’s and knew the folk maybe better than Father Edmund yet could, being there less than a year. Her hope was that between them the two priests would force order if tempers flared but, all else failing, Father Henry’s size would be of use because except for his tonsure, almost hidden by unruly yellow curls, and his plain dark priest’s gown, he had more the burly look of someone ready to swing a scythe to good purpose than use chalice and paten in the Mass, especially set beside Father Edmund who, with his dark hair smoothly combed to his well-shaped head around a neatly kept tonsure and his priest’s gown of finer cloth than any Father Henry had ever worn, ever looked better suited to a bishop’s household than a village church.

But he reportedly did his duties well and just now he was waiting under the pentice that roofed the churchyard gateway, greeting everyone with a smile and quiet words, doing what he could to forestall trouble, Frevisse judged. He welcomed the three of them with open relief, and when Frevisse thanked him for having agreed court could be held in the church, he smilingly said, “With the rain, the choice lay between here and the alehouse, and here seemed better.”

‘You think it’s likely, then, that there’ll be trouble?“ Father Henry asked.

‘If there is, it will be more Tom Hulcote’s fault than Gilbey Dunn’s, I fear,“ Father Edmund said. ”Tom has been talking too big at the alehouse and around the green about how if he doesn’t have Mary Woderove and the holding, it’s because Gilbey Dunn is willing to beggar everyone else to make himself more wealthy than he already is.“

‘And those who like trouble for trouble’s sake are listening to him?“ Father Henry said.

‘Even so.“

Four women were approaching in haste and probably fear of having missed their chance at a good place in the church. Frevisse left Father Edmund to them, leaving the gateway’s shelter with Father Henry and Sister Thomasine to cross the churchyard through the warm rain to the church porch and into the church where, as she had expected, there was a full crowding of folk, even given that St. Chad’s was small, its nave hardly larger than a good-sized byre, its chancel even less. It was a plain space, unaisled, with a simple timber roof and everything open to the wooden shingles, but over the years its people and priests had done well by it. Father Clement in his day had paid for the chancel window to be glassed, and though the glass was unpainted, greened and slightly bubbled, it was the only glass in the village and so the light that fell through it onto the altar was strange, adding to the mysteries made there by the priest at Mass. It also meant that with the nave’s few, small windows kept closed except when there were services, there was no longer a constant fight with the sparrows to keep them from nesting in the rafters and atop the rood screen.

The rood screen itself, between nave and chancel, had been carved in an open fretwork of black walnut maybe fifty years ago and its red paint and yellow stars had been kept fresh, redone whenever need be by whoever in the village had the best hand for it at the time. The other paintings in the church went untouched because no one dared say they had the skill. So far back that no one had any notion of when, the nave walls had been painted with Bible scenes in strong reds, greens, and blue-greens, with here and there a touch of yellow to be the gold of a king’s crown or an angel’s halo. Flanking the chancel arch were St. Chad himself and St. Peter, their robes falling in rigid, beautiful folds about their lean, long, tall-beyond-mortal-men’s bodies as they stared solemnly with wide ovaled eyes into an eternity somewhere above and far beyond the worshipers’ heads, while beyond them in the chancel Christ sat enthroned in majesty, as oval-eyed and formal as his saints, one hand raised in benediction, the other resting on the book of God’s word that all men should heed, with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John arrayed around him in their aspects of Lion, Man, Ox, and Eagle borne on clouds to show they were in heaven with him.

Rushes covered the nave floor for cleanliness and, in the winter, for warmth and besides what the priest and altar needed, there were no furnishings except the baptismal font and a few benches for those who came early enough to services, with no need for a pew because no lord lived in the village to warrant one. Today, the shutters open to give what light there was from the overcast day, the benches had been shifted end-on to the rood screen to serve the court and everyone else was left to stand and the villagers, not much damp from the softly falling rain, were gathered in clumps and clusters of family and friends, busy in talk, though heads turned and the hum of voices fell as Frevisse, Sister Thomasine, and Father Henry entered, only to take up again, a little lower and maybe faster, to have all said before they had to stop when court began.

Sister Thomasine, wordless since leaving St. Frideswide’s, her eyes lowered, her hands tucked into her habit’s opposite sleeves, went silently across the little width of the church to the corner beyond the baptismal font, raised on its single stone step, where no one else was, withdrawing as much as might be from everything and everyone around her. Frevisse, with people shifting, bowing, curtsying out of her way, went to the front of the nave, Father Henry following more slowly, pausing to speak to various folk. Simon Perryn and six men Frevisse took to be the jurors were waiting beside the benches. They bowed to her as she joined them, no need to remove their hoods or hats that were already off in God’s house, and she bent her head to them in return, no one bothering with giving names because Father Edmund entered then and passed up the nave with smiles and words to various folk, to take a seat at a table set ready with paper, ink, pens, and several closed scrolls behind the jurors’ bench.

‘By your leave, we’ll begin then?“ Perryn asked her, and Frevisse agreed with a slight nod. To be to the fore of so many people, all of them looking at her, was not something she liked, but Perryn, seeming to have no mind of it at all, said easily to the jurors, ”We’ll start then,“ and bowed her to a place on the bench facing the jurors on theirs across the space between them left for the court’s business to be done but angled enough to the nave that she could watch the people watching her.

While Perryn, the jurors, and Father Edmund took their places, she noticed Father Henry had shifted away to the nave’s north wall, from where he could come readily into the midst of things if there was need, though thus far there was no sign there would be, only the expected shift and shuffle of people making themselves comfortable on their feet. She glimpsed Anne well back and near the door, Dickon Naylor and her sons beside her. Of little Lucy there was no sign but there were other children in plenty, including a baby carried on its mother’s hip, fretfully rubbing its eyes and trying to burrow its head into the side of its mother’s neck while she talked with the women around her. Frevisse thought the woman with a face like a wizened apple might be Ada Bychurch, Prior Byfield’s midwife, but it had been years since Frevisse had seen her and she was not certain and none of the others were familiar at all, save Elena, Gilbey’s wife, standing to the side and fore of the crowd not far from the jurors, her hands folded quietly into each other at the waist of her rose-colored gown, her fair loveliness encircled by soft wimple and starched veil shiningly white in the nave’s gray shadows. Graceful even in her quietness, she looked what she was, a wealthy villein’s wife who had servants to see to such things as having her veil starched and smooth-pressed when she went out. Standing squarely beside her, his thumbs hooked into his wide, finely wrought leather belt, Gilbey was no balder than when Frevisse had seen him last-how many years ago was that?-with only a little more flesh on his stocky frame and nothing softened in his blunt face. To Frevisse’s eye he looked like what he was, too-someone bound to the world by the gold and silver circles of coins and-unless he was greatly changed from when Frevisse had last encountered him-by the lusts of the flesh.

The rest of the upwards of two score other folk crowded into the nave were only faces to her. Young faces fresh-fleshed and little touched by living yet. Older faces marked, less and more, by their years and their lives’ happenings and, especially for the men, by weather lived in day in, day out, no matter what it was. Old faces seamed and etched by all their years of living. Worried faces, wondering how much trouble there would be. Dull faces here to stare at whatever happened because they’d stare at anything. Faces eager with wanting trouble, a few faces angry, meaning to make it. They all lived through their days a scant half-mile, if that much, from where she lived her own, year in, year out, and she knew no more of them than they did of her and she was come here to help make decisions that would shape some of their lives and, that done, would go back to her own and leave them to theirs as utterly as she had left them to it until now.

Heart-felt and unbidden, the prayer that began so many of the daily Offices came to her. Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. God, come to my aid. And then the antiphon that was part of today’s Terce. Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, ut salvos facias nos. Rouse, Lord, your power, that you make us safe.

And suddenly she was sure which of the men standing to the fore of the crowd was Tom Hulcote. His uneasiness, different from the men’s around him, gave him away as, restless-footed in the rushes, with both smothered anger and deep unease shadowing his face, he kept shifting his look toward and away from Gilbey who never bothered with so much as a glance his way.

Or it was maybe Elena, Gilbey’s wife, he was looking at? From where she sat, Frevisse could not tell.

He was younger than Frevisse had thought he would be. Not beyond his twenties. Why had she thought he would be older? Because Simon Perryn was of middle years and therefore likely his sister was, too, and so would be the man she was sinning with? But he was not, nor was he the surly, heavy-built bully with a rough face and rougher ways that had somehow been in her mind. Except for the in-held anger and open unease, he was simply a young man with nothing particular about him, plainly dressed in what was surely his best-though they were none too good-tunic and hosen and hood, with his brown hair trimmed and clean.

And now Frevisse noted the woman standing close behind him, her hand laid on his forearm as she rose on her toes to whisper in his ear. Mary Woderove, surely. A small-boned, child-pretty woman whose head came hardly to her lover’s shoulder, though he was not over-tall, until she tiptoed. She looked all the younger for the black veil she wore in token of her widowhood instead of the married woman’s usual white one, but the veil seemed to be all she gave to her widowhood, Frevisse thought uncharitably, watching as Mary leaned nearer, pressing her breasts against Tom Hulcote’s back while she went on whispering to him, smiling up at him until as Simon Perryn gave word to the jurors for the court to start, Tom Hulcote frowned, shook his head, and urged her away with a small twitch of his arm. Mary whispered something else, still smiling, and drew back, leaving her lover with a dark flush reddening his face.

Along with word of where court would be and warning there might be trouble, Perryn had asked if another matter besides the Woderove holding could be seen to, too. Frevisse had sent back word it could and now settled to listen while Alson Bonde and Martin Fisher were called forward. There was a stirring through the crowd, with whispering between those who knew what it was about and those who did not, but it seemed that Perryn had dealt in the matter as he had purposed, because agreement on the lease between them was smoothly made and written into the court records, and a man who must be Alson’s son was waiting at the crowd’s fore-edge, to lay an arm around her shoulders when it was done and nod friendliwise to Martin Fisher, too, who nodded back the same, as Perryn said low in Frevisse’s ear, “The betrothal’s agreed on and everybody happy…”

He was interrupted by a bull-shouldered youth shoving out into the court’s open space, pulling an older man after him by a hard grip on his sleeve, and Perryn stood up and demanded, “Hamon? Walter? What is this?”

‘It’s him,“ the younger man said, jerking his head back at the other man. ”He won’t leave off bothering me. I want the court to tell him to leave off, he’s got no right.“

‘Walter?“ Perryn asked, not seeming greatly disturbed.

The older man twitched his sleeve from Hamon’s hold and answered, equally calm, “He’s on about how I’ve told him he’s to work for me, to pay back what he cost me on that surety.”

‘There was naught said about paying back!“ Hamon protested.

‘There was, while Father Edmund was writing out the agreement, and there were those heard you say it,“ Walter said.

‘But it weren’t in the agreement! I never signed naught that said I’d have to pay back!“

‘But you gave your word to it. Before witnesses,“ Walter said.

‘But I never swore…“ The younger man’s voice was rising.

‘Steady, Hamon,“ Perryn said.

Hamon tucked in his chin, like a bull baffled by baiting. “I never…” he stubbornly began again.

‘Hamon,“ Perryn said warningly.

Hamon dropped to sullen silence.

‘Now,“ Perryn said, ”we’ll tell Dame Frevisse what’s toward here, you both being priory villeins and in her rule.“

None so happy to hear that, Frevisse sat up straighter, to pay closer heed as Perryn detailed a loan made to Hamon by Jenet atte Forge-a broad woman in a yellow dress took a step forward from the women around Ada Bychurch to make curtsy to the court-with Walter Hopper here and Dick Blakeman-a narrow-framed man moved forward a step from the north wall, made a quick, awkward bow, and stepped hurriedly back beside a wide-hipped, sweet-faced woman holding a swaddled baby- as surety it be repaid, which it hadn’t been, and Walter had seen to Jenet atte Forge being satisfied with use of one of his cows in milk for the summer, in place of him and Dick paying outright money, which they did not have.

‘And now?“ Frevisse asked at Walter.

He bowed with more assurance than Dick Blakeman had and said to her, “Now I’ve been telling Hamon here that he owes me work until I’m paid back for paying off his debt.”

‘And I say I don’t! I never signed to any such thing and I’m off two days hence to work over Bloxham way where they’ll be paying me something and you say you won’t!“

‘I’m not going to pay you because you’re working to pay me back what you owe me,“ Walter said as if it were something he had already said more than a few times before.

‘I don’t owe you aught!“

‘Hamon,“ Perryn said, ”hush.“

Hamon hushed. Perryn looked to Frevisse who realized he was giving the problem over to her and gathered her wits to say to Walter, “You said there were witnesses heard him agree to pay you back.”

‘Aye.“

Perryn put up a hand, stopping Hamon from saying anything to that, and Frevisse asked of Walter, “Who?”

‘Father Edmund, for one.“

Frevisse looked to the priest.

He met her look. “It’s even as Walter says. He said to Hamon, ‘If I have to pay this in your place, you’ll work it out on my land for me, yes?’ And Hamon said, ‘Surely.’ ”

‘But I didn’t…“ Hamon started.

‘Hamon,“ Perryn said.

Hamon huffed and held quiet.

‘Who else?“ Frevisse asked.

Walter named two other men, one of them a juror, the other raising his hand from the far end of the nave to show he was there. To Frevisse’s question, they both agreed that Walter and Hamon had said what Father Edmund said they had said. “Walter even asked Hamon twice,” the juror said. “Twice he said it, and twice Hamon answered he would.”

Both the other man and Father Edmund agreed to that, and Frevisse looked to Hamon. He looked down at his feet. He was not as young as he had seemed to her at first sight, and she thought now it was not lack of years but lack of good sense that made his face so soft as she said with curbed impatience, “Well, Hamon? Three men besides Walter Hopper say they heard you say you’d work for him if you failed the debt. Have you answer to that?”

Hamon started to scuff his right foot at the floor without looking up. “I might have said it. I was that glad he was going surety for me, I’d likely have said anything. But I never signed…”

‘But you said it,“ Frevisse interrupted.

Hamon tucked his chin down more sullenly. “I said it,” he granted.

‘Before witnesses.“

‘Aye.“ Grudgingly.

‘Then it would seem to me it’s an agreement you must keep.“ From the side of her eye she saw by a small nod of Perryn’s head that he agreed with that. She looked to the jurors. ”Yes?“

They equally agreed, and while Father Edmund wrote it into the record, Walter clapped a hand on Hamon’s shoulder, saying, “There now. That’s done and it’ll be none so bad, you’ll see. Come on. I’ll stand you a drink when we’re done here,” drawing him away into the crowd.

Perryn turned to the jurors and said, “It’s Woderove’s holding we have to deal with now,” and if he regretted that as much as Frevisse did, he gave no sign of it. Ignoring both the jurors’ uneasy shifting on their bench and the ripple of talk and movement through the crowd, he looked to Father Edmund. “You have the records for it ready?”

Father Edmund laid a hand on the scrolls on the table in front of him. “Here.”

‘Then read them aloud, if you please, Father.“

Mary Woderove stepped forward past Tom Hulcote, into the space between jurors and crowd and said angrily at her brother, “You know full well what they say! Everyone knows. That the holding goes to the firstborn son and down the line of sons, and if there are no sons, then to the daughters. You know that and that Matthew and I had nobody, no sons or daughters either, and now you want to take what’s mine away from me because of it and everyone knows that, too!”

Steadily, looking straightly back at her, Perryn said, “If that’s the right of it, that the custom and law is for the Woderove holding to go by blood from heir to heir, and you say it is, then you say, too, that there being no heir by blood, the holding is in Lord Lovell’s hands for the while, yes?”

‘No!“ Mary cried. ”It naught matters what your foul custom says! The holding’s mine! Matthew meant for me to have it!“

Steadily, as if repeating a thing that he had said before and known he would have to say again to no better end, Perryn said with heavy patience, “If Matthew had, as he sometimes talked of doing, given up the holding to Lord Lovell and taken it back on lease and in the lease given reversion of the holding to you at his death, then, yes, the holding would be yours. But Matthew never did that, and so the holding is not yours.”

‘But it can be,“ Mary said sharply. ”It’s for you to say who has it. You’re the reeve. You can give it to me.“

‘I’m the reeve,“ Perryn agreed, ”but last say in this is Master Spencer’s, or else even Master Holt’s.“ Lord Lovell’s high steward.

‘But the first say is yours,“ Mary flung back, her pretty face all taut with anger, ”and they listen to you!“

‘And since they listen to me, I cannot say to them that you should have the holding, because the holding is too much for you to manage on your own.“

‘You gave Avice Millwarde her widow’s holding two years ago. Why not me now?“

‘Because Avice Millwarde can run a holding and everyone knows it. Everyone likewise knows that you could not.“

Mary took a step toward her brother and pointed an angry finger up toward his face. “What everybody knows is that I’m your sister and you hate me!”

Perryn looked down at her with no outward feeling, answering after a moment, “Are you going to let Father Edmund read the custom concerning the holding or not?”

Mary’s face worked, unlovely for the moment, toward answering that, but before she found it, Father Edmund said quietly from behind his table, “Mary.”

She jerked her head toward him, looking as ready to snap at him as at her brother.

Unheeding her anger, Father Edmund said with simple quietness, “Let things go on as you know they have to, Mary. All will be well, I promise you.”

Mary opened her mouth to say something. Father Edmund cocked his head at her, more in question than rebuke, and she seemed to think better of whatever she had been about to say, closed her mouth, made him a curt curtsy that pointedly ignored her brother, crossed her arms tightly across herself below her breasts, and bowed her head to stare at the floor in a fierce silence that gave up nothing except words.

Perryn looked near to telling her to step back among the onlookers, but Father Edmund warned him off that with a small shake of his head and, before anything else could happen, began to read from the scroll he had been holding partly unrolled this while. What he read said much the same as what had passed between Mary and her brother concerning the Woderove holding, and when Father Edmund had finished, Perryn looked to the jurors and asked, “Is that how you remember it being in time past?”

They agreed that it was.

‘Does anyone remember otherwise?“ he asked of the onlookers at large.

No one said they did.

‘Then the Woderove holding is in Lord Lovell’s hands, to be kept or given as is seen fit,“ Perryn said. ”Yes?“

The jurors nodded silent agreement, but Mary said sullenly at the floor, “Then you can give it to me.”

Ignoring he had heard her, though he must have, Perryn said, “Is there anyone here makes bid to have the holding?”

Tom Hulcote was stepping forward even as he said it, with an angry glance across to Gilbey Dunn. “I do. I bid for it at the terms Woderove held it and another workday to the lord into the bargain.” He put an arm around Mary’s shoulders. “And I’ll marry the widow with it for good measure.”

‘Is she willing to that?“ Perryn asked formally.

Mary jerked her head up. “Yes. Very willing. And you damnably well know it.”

Tom Hulcote tightened his arm around her, drawing her to him.

‘Is there any other offer?“ Perryn asked, not looking at Gilbey Dunn.

Gilbey took a measured pace forward, and when Perryn acknowledged him with a nod, said, bold with self-assurance, “I offer to take the holding on lease for twenty years, at six shillings a year, or whatever else may be agreed on between Lord Lovell’s steward and me.”

Mary Woderove swung out from Tom’s hold and around on Gilbey. “And what becomes of me if you take it all?” she demanded fiercely.

Gilbey turned a cold look on her. “You have a toft and some land, and he has something.” He made an equally cold look at Tom Hulcote. “Let you marry, if that’s what you want, and live as you can with what you have.”

Tom laid a hand on Mary’s shoulder. “I want better than that for her!”

‘Then you should be a better man,“ Gilbey said coldly back.

Tom made a threatening step forward. “I’m as good as you and likely better!”

‘Then pity you don’t show it,“ Gilbey returned, holding his ground, older than Tom by some not-few years but with no apparent doubt that he’d be his match if their quarrel came to more than words.

Mary shifted away from them, back toward the onlookers. Elena took a step forward-toward her husband or toward Tom Hulcote, Frevisse wondered-but before more happened, Perryn said, “That’s enough. From both of you. Think on you’re in the church.”

‘Let him think…“ Tom Hulcote began.

‘You’ll be fined if you keep on like this,“ Perryn warned.

‘Fined!“ Tom cried. ”You’d do it, too! Me but not him, because all you’re for is to keep the poor down and folk like him and you up, and don’t think we don’t know it! Them that has, keeps and always has, and now for bad measure you want to take what the rest of us have, too!“

There were answering grumbles and shifting among some of the onlookers. Father Henry eased away from the wall and in amongst the largest clot of them, beginning to lay hands weightily on various shoulders and saying things into various ears as Father Edmund rose to his feet behind the table to say in his clear, carrying priest’s voice, “Remember, all of you, where you are and what will come of violence done here.”

Tom Hulcote turned to him with suddenly a desperate plea instead of anger. “Help me in this,” he begged, and pointed at Gilbey. “He has land enough, more than enough. Tell him to let this bit go to someone as needs it!”

‘Tom, that isn’t where the issue lies,“ Father Edmund began.

‘It is!“ Tom’s anger flared up again. ”Tell him, priest- tell yourself, come to that-what’s said in the Bible about rich men and heaven! You’ve preached it often enough!“

‘Tom!“ Perryn warned sharply. ”Don’t make me have to judge against you!“

‘Judge against me?“ He swung toward Perryn now, voice rising. ”You’re the one who’d best watch out for judgment. You and him!“

He pointed viciously at Gilbey, and Frevisse stood up abruptly, rapping out with bridled anger, “Enough!”

She had been still long enough to be forgotten, and her suddenness brought heads around toward her and a brief, startled silence into which she said at Tom, “You’re the priory’s villein and my say has been asked in this matter on that account. My say is that angers are too high and hot now for decision to be made. By your reeve’s leave and yours-” with a nod to the jurors and in a quieter voice “-I say we should have a half hour’s pause before we finish.” Long enough to talk Tom Hulcote down and around, she hoped, and give Father Henry more chance at settling the other men.

‘A good thought,“ Perryn said quickly. And to the jurors, ”Yes?“ and to a man, they nodded in matching, swift agreement.