The Servant's Tale

12

THOMAS BASSETT MOVED more quickly than seemed possible for one his age and weight. Bursting from among the villagers, he shouldered in front of Ellis, pushed him back one-handed and thundered in St. Nicholas’s rich voice, “That’s enough! Back off, the two of you! Ellis, there’s the frame to take down and Piers waiting back at the nunnery for us. Come on.”

Meg, still clinging to Sym, with Hewe now hanging on his other arm, saw the fury drain out of Ellis. His face and then his fists slacked. Keeping an eye on Sym, he drew back, then turned away, snapping at Joliffe to come help. And now some of the village men elbowed in around Sym, clapping him on the back and jibing at him friendliwise, trying to draw him off, too. Sym resisted more than Ellis had, shrugging their hands away and swearing, but Meg knew the fighting anger was gone out of him, and let him go. He was drunk enough not to be sure where his quarrel was gone, and they would have it out of his mind altogether in a minute.

But lurching against Hamon’s and Peter’s pulling on him, he blundered face to face with Gilbey Dunn who held his ground and said, grinning, “Homeward bound, Sym? Making an early day of it?”

Sym knew an old quarrel when it came his way. He jerked loose from his two friends. “You’d be knowing about early days, wouldn’t you? And late nights, sneaking out and sneaking in, looking to grab what isn’t yours and nipping to the steward every chance you find to tell him how much better our holding would be in your foul-fingered keeping. And now Da’s gone, you’re nipping after his widow, thinking that’s a warmer way to have it. Only you’ll not be getting it that way either. You’ll be dead first, Gilbey Dunn. Mark me on it! Cold in a grave like Da before you lay hands on anything of his!”

“Sym!” Meg cried in anguished warning. Everyone’s attention was swung to Sym and Gilbey, and clearly Gilbey’s temper was come up now to match Sym’s. His face was dark with it, his eyes gone small and hard, his mouth tight. But all he said was, “You’ve a bad mouth on you when it’s wet with ale. Hamon, Peter, take him home or somewhere else until his head’s clear.”

Peter, a burly-shouldered youth a little quicker in his wits than Hamon, understood. As if it were all a joke, he said, “Hoy, Sym, there’s no sport here. Let’s be off.”

Sym looked around at him, distracted. Peter swung an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, then,” he said heartily. “Let’s see what’s about at my place.” He leaned his head near to Sym’s. “There was a bit of honeycomb left the last I looked. How’s that sound? Hamon, can you lay hands on some bread?”

Hamon, not much stronger-headed than Sym, blinked and brightened. “Cor, I can that, Peter. Why didn’t you say about the honeycomb before?” He hurried off.

To Meg’s relief, Sym gave way to Peter’s friendly pulling on him. “You hurry!” he yelled after Hamon, and lurched away, leaning on Peter’s shoulder. Hewe hesitated, glancing at his mother, then trailed after them. Everyone else, now that the entertainment was fully over, began to drift away.

But Gilbey Dunn stayed a moment longer and said to Meg, low voiced, “He’s going to give you trouble, no matter what you do. Think on what I offered. You’ll be in safekeeping then, and have someone to keep an eye on him. He needs a man’s hand.”

“He doesn’t like you.”

“He’ll not be liking anyone that tries to steer him right. He’s Barnaby’s own son in making bad choices and you can see it as well as I can.”

“You shouldn’t be talking so of Barnaby, now he’s dead.”

Gilbey shrugged. “I wasn’t saying ill, only what’s true. You know it is as well as I do. You’ll never be able to manage Sym and all on your own. And you know I’ll deal fair by you. There’s none ever been able to say that I don’t deal fair.”

But Sym had just been saying exactly that; and Barnaby had said it often enough these past months while fighting to hold his own against Gilbey’s efforts to have Barnaby’s share of field strips and manor rights for himself. But Sym had been talking out of too much ale, and Barnaby out of the ills he had mostly brought on himself. Meg did not know where the truth lay so she kept quiet, looking at the ground between them until Gilbey said with a shrug, “You think on it, Meg,” and went away.

Meg stayed, looking at the dead, stiff grass in front of her feet and trying to think. Gilbey might be right about her marrying him. It would surely make things easier. And it did not much matter that she did not like him. But Sym would hate it. No matter how it might work out for the best, he would never make peace with it. Meg was sure of that, and sure that Gilbey knew it, too. But maybe it did not matter to him. Not the way it had to matter to her.

She was abruptly aware that she was cold and that the little she had had to eat was gone and she was hungry again and she had to go to work or there would be no money today. It would have been good to sit down by someone’s hearth and talk. But she had somewhere along her way lost the women who had been her friends. The other village women seemed to resent her trying so hard to make things better. They nodded and spoke when she met them, but there was none of them she talked to, and none who came to talk to her.

Her way had taken her without thinking back past the church, across the graveyard toward the field path that ran behind the hedges to St. Frideswide’s. She paused at Barnaby’s grave. Its dark earth was heaped in clods frozen too solid for the shovels’ breaking. Come spring and the rains, they would soften and slump down into a proper mound, and grow grass, and next year a hollow would mark the place instead of raw, broken earth. Meg tried to think of a prayer but nothing came. Barnaby had made confession and been shriven and given last rites. Then he had slept, and died, and no man’s soul could have gone to Abraham’s bosom more pure and cleansed than that. He was surely there now, in brightness and warmth, with angel choruses singing and the sight of the wicked tormented in Hell far below to entertain him. And someday, with God’s help, she and her boys would join him there, as pure and cleansed of sin as he had been.

Meg sank into that thought of being always warm and never hungry in place of her cold and hunger here and now; then started as she realized she was wasting time, and hurried on toward the priory.

Frevisse had come to see how matters went in the guesthall. With so few guests, and only the older hall occupied these holy days, her duties were few and easily done. She first made sure the servants were not slacking their few duties and then went to see how Piers did, left to himself while the rest of the players were at the village.

He was curled in a nest of blankets, obediently staying down, watching the small fire dance in the hearth. Hearing her coming, he twisted around to see, and showed his disappointment that it was not his mother or the others coming. Frevisse smiled at him and bent down to feel his forehead. It was only slightly warmer than it should have been and the fever brightness was out of his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Hungry, my lady,” he said, croaking only a little. He looked at her expectantly, as if she might have something edible up her sleeve or in a pocket.

Frevisse regretted she did not, but only said, “That’s a good sign. Would you like a drink?”

“Milk?” Piers asked hopefully.

Frevisse shook her head. “Water.”

Piers sighed and nodded. Frevisse fetched the cup from the bucket for him. While he drank, she asked, “Shouldn’t you be trying to sham illness a while longer, so you can all go on staying here?”

Piers looked at her scornfully as he handed the cup back. “What’s the use of that?” he asked. “There’s money to be had in Oxford, and good times at the Rose and Crown, and not much of either here. There’s better places than here to be, and not much use in staying in one place for very long.”

What Frevisse could have answered to that was forestalled by the players’ noisy return from the village. Their loud voices dropped as they crossed the threshold but their arguing went on, intense and maybe not completely cheerful, with Bassett saying, “So couldn’t you have found someone else to flirt with that didn’t have her sweetheart lowering over her shoulder, and him already angry with us?”

“Am I supposed to care about that clod-witted lout?” Ellis asked. “She was the best of the lot, as pretty a thing as I’ve seen since Michaelmas.”

“And willing as well as lovely,” Joliffe added.

Ellis grinned. “Yea, you were quick to notice that, I noticed. And left me to handle her angry clod while you looked for a chance to handle her.”

“Well, it didn’t come to handling for either of us, did it? So there’s an end of it.”

“That’s enough,” said Rose. “Here’s Dame Frevisse, who doesn’t need to hear your nonsense.”

Piers lifted his head out of his nest again and asked, “Was Ellis in a fight again?”

“Hush, pigsney,” said Rose, stooping to lift the blond thatch from his face and feel his forehead.

“I’m almost better,” Piers said, ducking from her hand. “Dame Frevisse says so. Ellis, did-”

“Look here, Piers,” Bassett interrupted deftly, holding out the half loaf of bread and end of bacon.

“Ah!” Piers’s enthusiasm quickly changed direction. “Is that for eating now?”

“No better time,” Bassett said, and broke a generous chunk from the loaf to stuff into the boy’s mouth. Then he held out a cap and jingled it under Piers’s nose. “We’re set for our journey to Oxford, too. We can have Tisbe shod.”

Piers removed the bread wad from his mouth. “Then can we leave now? I’m nearly well. Well enough. I could have gone with you to see Ellis start that fight in the village.”

“I never start fights,” Ellis said. He sat down on his heels beside the boy and pushed the hair back off his forehead, making a playful gesture of feeling for a fever.

Piers, clearly bored with being sick, pushed his hand away. Sucking on the chunk of bread, he said, “I’m thirsty.” He thrashed at his blankets, making a tangle of them. “Was it a good fight? Who did you fight?”

Rose handed him a cup of water while Ellis patiently untangled him and said, “Nobody. I just sat this villein down on the ground to think about the error of his ways. It’s Joliffe I’m going to fight with if he doesn’t stop stealing my girls.”

“I can’t steal what isn’t yours,” Joliffe said. He had taken the bread from Bassett and was slicing it into five equal pieces. His dagger sliced through the thick crust and tough brown bread effortlessly, Frevisse noticed; and when Ellis drew his own to reach across the distance and spear his share, Frevisse said in surprise, “Your knives match, yours and Joliffe’s.”

Bassett drew his own and held it out for her to see. “And mine, as well,” he said.

The blades were an identical shape and the handles, of wood with copper wire inserts, also matched.

“And my mother’s,” Piers added around a mouthful of bread. “And mine, too. Only they won’t let me have it yet. They say I’m too young.” His tone scorned that notion.

“We played at a wedding up Sheffield way,” Bassett said. “We were a little larger company then and did one of our better plays-”

“Not,” said Joliffe, pressing a hand over his face and shaking his head in mock shame, “The Statue of St. Nicholas.”

“Don’t be complaining,” Rose said. “St. Nicholas brought in a pretty number of pence.” She dumped the coins into her lap and tossed the hat at Ellis. “I’d not have thought there were so many to be had from the place. A whole penny,” she added in admiration. She looked at it close up.

“From Henry the Fifth. Probably in the peasant’s pouch these twelve years and more since his grace died, I’d not be surprised.”

“They’d not seen players in a while. And it’s the holidays so they were ready for a bit of sport,” Bassett said. He had dropped wearily onto a bench and was surveying his group with fulfilled pleasure. “All in all a good morning’s work.” He looked at Frevisse. “I don’t suppose there are any more villages near to hand?”

“The nearest is two hours’ walk away,” Frevisse said.

“And two hours back. Too far for a short winter’s day,” Bassett said regretfully. “But as to the wedding that brought us our daggers, we did so well that the bridegroom-he’d made his fortune forging steel-gave us these, being his specialty, beyond our agreed fee. A gentleman, and generous. Somewhere there’s three more like these loose in the world, but they went when our company broke.” He brooded into some distant thought, his mouth grim. “But that’s another story.”

“And not for here and now,” Rose added. “Is anyone going to cook that bacon, or are we going to sit here staring at it until it rots?”

“It’s not likely to rot in this cold,” Joliffe said. “What happened to mild winters? I don’t suppose anyone could arrange for spring to come next week and warm the world for a while?”

“I don’t suppose you could arrange for me to warm that girl you filched today?” Ellis returned.

“It’s not my fault she prefers my charm to your brawn.”

Frevisse, smiling inwardly, left them to what were clearly their familiar ways and went about her own.

Meg’s tasks kept her at the priory until the sun was going down. It was New Year’s Eve and there were special little things to be cooked, not just for tomorrow but for afterward because the day after New Year’s was going to be given over to killing and readying the chickens meant for the pies Domina Edith had said the nunnery would have for Twelfth Night.

“So there’s more than enough that has to be done if we’re having holiday tomorrow and there’s going to be dead chickens all over here afterward,” Dame Alys had declared. “Nasty, messy business, and I hope there’s sage enough to see us through-someone’s been wanton fisted with it again-or the pies won’t be worth eating. Don’t thump that pan down like that, you’ll kill the pudding and then I’ll thump you.” Narrow-eyed with hostility but still tired from her cold, she did not rise from her stool but contented herself with pointing her spoon like a sword at the offender, who out of habit ducked. Anyone who worked in her kitchen quickly learned to keep clear of her if possible. But there was no keeping clear of her temper and when the day was over, Meg dragged herself out of the kitchen into the quiet of the back passage from the cloister in a weariness too deep even for thankfulness.

Out of the kitchen’s heat of ovens and cooking, the air bit deeply into her thin flesh. From habit, not from any hope of it doing any good, Meg huddled her cloak more tightly around her and let herself out the back way into the side yard that ran between the nunnery and its outer wall and opened by another gateway into the courtyard at the front, from where she could take the road until she reached the field path again.

The sun was a deepening gold, swollen in the cloud-clear sky as it dropped to setting. Across the fields under the sweep of sunset light, darkness was already gathered in the grass and along the hedge line, waiting to take the world as soon as the sun slipped away; and Meg hurried, driven as much by the coming darkness as the cold, wanting to be home and close to her own fire.

If someone had bothered to bring in wood. If someone had bothered to feed it to the fire.

There was no one in sight as she came past the church and along the frozen ruts to her house. The sun was gone and everything in twilight shadows. Yellow light showed here and there at cottages where a window’s shutter did not fit close enough; but there was only darkness at her own, she saw as she came to it, and her faint hope of a fire and warmth sank lower.

But after all, as she opened the door, there was a glow on the hearth from wood burned down to coals but still alive. Warmth, and familiar smells of woodsmoke and animals wrapped around her as she closed the door at her back. Hewe was there. He turned from laying hay in front of the goat. In the half darkness she could not see his face clearly but his voice was cheerful. “I made the fire, Mam. Only I’ve waited to build it up again so it wouldn’t be gone before you came.”

“And brought in Nankin,” Meg said, letting approval come into her voice. “You’re a good son, Hewe. And the chickens?”

“They’re fed and watered.” His voice fell, waiting for her to be angry as he added, “But I’ve not cleaned their mess yet.”

Meg was too glad of the fire to care. “That can bide. Come to the warmth now.”

“And one of them’s dead,” Hewe added in almost a whisper.

Meg sighed and sank down on one of the three-legged stools close to the hearth, opening her cloak to the warmth, holding her hands out over the coals. “That can’t be helped,” she said wearily. “Maybe I’ll set it to boiling tonight and we’ll have a New Year’s feast of it. Come lay wood on the fire for me. My hands are that stiff with cold I don’t know if I could.”

Hewe came and with great care built up the fire until it danced, throwing shadows and light around the room and over his face. Meg fondly watched him watching the flames, and after a while said, “Where’s your brother? Why isn’t he here helping you?”

Hewe did not look around from the fire. “He’s at the alehouse, or near it, I’d guess.” Sym was willing to do for others the chores he neglected at home, because of the few coins he could earn to drink away at the alehouse. “And like to be out for a while.”

The shabby cottage that served as gathering place for idle men and dishonest women had been his father’s place and he looked like making it his own, too. Then, like his father, let him take the consequences. “There’s something in the flour kist,” Meg said. “You bring it to me.”

“Something besides flour?” Hewe asked in surprise.

“Besides flour.” Though precious little of that there was. She must be making some deal with the miller, or finding a way to buy or barter some from Dame Alys.

“What’s this?” Hewe asked, puzzled, holding out the orange that Barnaby had brought from Lord Lovel’s feasting.

“A treat for us,” said Meg. She had kept it in her apron until she had come home again; and put it in the flour kist for safekeeping. “Look you.” She wiped the flour off of it with her cloak and held it out into the firelight so its color glowed and its strangeness showed.

Hesitantly Hewe reached out a forefinger to touch it, stroked it cautiously, and then drew back. “What is it? Where did you find it?”

“Hold it,” Meg said. “It’s not tender. Go on.”

Hewe took it, turning it around and around in his hands while she told him where it had come from, how his father had earned it.

“By singing for the lord?” Hewe asked.

“Noble folk like to be entertained when they’re feasting,” Meg said. “And do you know what we’re to do with it now?” Hewe shook his head. “Eat it!” she said triumphantly.

Hewe prodded at its hardness doubtfully, as Meg had when she first held it. But she had seen what Dame Frevisse had done, and held out her hand for it. “Give it to me. I’ll show you.”

It proved to be more messy than she had thought. The thing was no more like an apple under its rind than it was without, but they managed it at last, pulling it into the slices already formed, once they understood how it was put together. They shared the pieces between them, laughing and delighted at the tart sweetness and juice and surprise of it all, until the orange was all gone except for its peel, and they were themselves fragrantly messy, hands and faces both.

When they had washed the stickiness away, and Meg was on her stool again with Hewe sitting beside her, his head leaning on her knee, he sighed. “That was grand. All that, just for singing for Lord Lovel.”

“Umm.” Meg was not much listening. Warmth and weariness were overtaking her. She had meant to think about Gilbey’s offer tonight, but thoughts did not seem to want to come.

“I could do that,” Hewe said.

“What?”

“Sing for Lord Lovel. Or dance, maybe. I can dance, you’ve seen me. So they would give me things. Or pay me. Like the players did today. They did their play and then people gave them money.”

Meg had hardly thought of this morning’s nonsense on the green since it had ended. A little sharply she said, “That’s not man’s work! Dressing up and pretending some foolish tale. And look what sort of folk they are. Not decent, wandering the roads and belonging nowhere.”

“It looked as good a sort of work as any I’ve seen,” Hewe said warmly, sitting up away from her, his face taking on all the rebelliousness he otherwise saved for saying he did not want to be a priest.

Meg opened her mouth, wanting a sharp reply to put sense in his head, but the door fell open from someone’s heavy thrust and in a draft of cold air and night’s blackness, Sym lurched into the room.

He was drunk. That much was immediately clear. He staggered against the doorpost and stayed there, gaping at her as if not remembering where he was or why. And sometime he had fallen; one knee of his breeches was torn through its patch and where she would find another piece of cloth to mend it again, Meg did not know. That, added to Hewe’s foolishness, made her angry, all the contentment of hardly a moment before gone in a frustrated urge to hurt him back the way he was hurting her.

“If you’re that drunk, Sym, take you off to someone’s sty and sleep it off,” she snapped. “You’re not to come in here to be sick.”

He slurred, “Mam…” and swayed forward from the doorway, leaving it open behind him.

“He stinks,” Hewe said disgustedly, moving away from him. “He stinks like Da did.”

“You stink, brat!” Sym snarled. “Of mother’s milk, baby. I’m going to rub your head with knuckles till it bleeds, you come in reach of me!”

“Hewe, close the door. There’s no need we have to freeze because he’s drunk.”

Hewe circled his brother to obey. Sym lurched for him but Hewe was too used to that to be caught. He deftly avoided him and in the doorway said over his shoulder to Meg, “I’m off to Peter’s for the night. When I see Sym’s sober I’ll be back.”

Meg cried out, “Hewe!” but he was gone, pulling the door shut behind him, leaving her alone with Sym, whose lurch had carried him on sidewise to fetch up against the table where he leaned, resting his weight on one arm, his head bent down. His other arm had been wrapped across his stomach. He moved it, held out his hand in front of him and frowned at the dark gleam of it in the firelight. “Mam.” He sounded bewildered. “I’m bleeding.”