The Servant's Tale

16

SORE-NECKED AND ACHING, Meg raised her head from the table. Dimly, as her mind stirred back to awareness, she realized she had been sleeping. By the faint gray web of lesser darkness at the guesthall’s windows she guessed that dawn was nearing; and then she remembered where she was. And why.

Slow with stiffness, she straightened on the backless bench, forcing herself to move. She reached out her hand to Sym’s wrapped body in front of her and stroked where she knew his arm to be. Father Henry had been with her a while last night; he too had promised her that Sym’s soul was safe, so surely it did not matter that she had fallen asleep at her praying. She had not meant to, had not known she was so tired, or she would not have told Father Henry that he did not need to stay, that she and Hewe would keep the watch. She had even said that maybe someone would be coming from the village, though she had half known that was not true. Some might have come if Sym were laid out at home, but the priory was not a village place and no one was friendly enough with her or Sym anymore to come there, where he had to stay until the crowner came.

So Sym’s watching belonged to her and Hewe, and they had both slept.

Meg smiled down at the curled dark shape in the rushes by the bench that was Hewe asleep. She had not expected him to stay awake with her. He had been a good boy yesterday, going to the village and back again twice over, seeing to things there so she could stay here. And he would do it again today, so she could go back to working for Dame Alys for her halfpence. They couldn’t afford to lose any more of those, or let Dame Alys think Meg was not needed here.

Under the rough skin of her fingers the cerecloth was smooth and cool. Meg had never owned so large a piece of cloth in her life. And would never have given it away if she had, the way the nuns had simply given this one for Sym. That was a blessing, at least, because the only spare blanket had gone to wrap Barnaby for his grave. The nuns’ pity was a blessed thing.

But then, they had more cloth where this had come from. More of everything. Meg had seen what they had folded and stacked away in chests in one of their storerooms. And that had been just one storeroom. They had others. What was it like to have so much?

In her mind she heard the nuns begin their singing in the church. She had heard them singing, when working in the cloister, and the unworldly beauty of their voices had stirred her mind. Singing and praying seven times a day, even in the middle of the night, every day, all the year round, was to her mind what the angels did in Heaven, too. How wonderful to be so close to Heaven here on earth! She rubbed at her tired eyes. Sometimes the beauty of the life they led tempted her into the sin of envy.

The dim light was growing. She turned a corner of the shroud away from Sym’s face. She could not see his features yet, but remembered how they had been in the lamplight last night. A young face. Younger than he had looked for the last few years as his sullenness and temper had grown. Not a man’s face taut with tempers and desires and needs, but her sweet son’s face, all quiet and at peace.

She stroked a finger along his cheek. The stubble of his beard pricked at her flesh, but his own flesh under it was cold and strange, not Sym at all. Meg took her hand away. She did not want to touch him anymore, just look at him while the day grew slowly into light in the hall, and think of what might have been if things had been some other way.

She only knew that she was crying when a tear left a warm trail down her chill cheek.

Hewe stirred to wakefulness a while after that. He huddled against her for a while, like a little boy again, until he was awake enough for Meg to tell him to stir up the fire. One of the servants had built it for them against the long night’s cold. It had burned down to a few coals while they slept, but enough was left that Hewe shortly had it roused. He crouched beside it, hands out to its heat, and said, “I’m hungry, Mam. Isn’t there food?”

“We’re not guests here,” Meg said wearily. “Just bidersby. There’ll be something you can eat at home when you go there.”

Hewe looked at her guiltily.

“Did you eat what was left from the funeral foods?” Meg asked.

Hewe nodded. “Yesterday. I was hungry.”

Meg sighed. “I’ll find something in the kitchen here today for you.”

“And come home soon?” Hewe asked hopefully.

“Tonight,” Meg said. “I’ll do my day’s work and come tonight and bake. If I can find someone to watch by Sym.”

“Father Henry will, if you ask. Or he’ll find someone. Then you can come.”

“Then I can come,” Meg agreed, and added, “He’s a good man. A holy man.”

Hewe faced the fire again with a calculatedly indifferent shrug. Meg patted absentmindedly at Sym’s shrouded arm, wondering why Hewe would not see what she saw in his becoming a priest, why he did not understand how right it would make everything.

Dame Frevisse came a little while after that. Meg and Hewe both rose to their feet and Meg curtsied, saying, “My lady.”

“Good morrow, Meg.” Dame Frevisse swept a sharp look around the hall. “You have wood enough. Has anyone brought you food?”

Meg was surprised. “No, my lady.”

Hewe made an eager movement and Dame Frevisse turned a smile toward him. “I’ll see that someone does,” she said.

“Thank you, my lady,” Hewe said with undisguised grateful eagerness. Emboldened, he moved a little toward her and asked, “The players, my lady. Are they leaving today?”

“Not today. They’re to do a play for us tonight. Nor I don’t think they can go until the crowner has come and talked with them.”

Meg wondered at Hewe being so plainly pleased with that, but was distracted by someone else entering the hall; and more distracted to see it was Gilbey Dunn, with Peter and Hamon at his back.

So far as she knew, Gilbey had never been so far into the priory before. Certainly Peter and Hamon had not; they were gawking to one side and another and up at the wide-beamed roof and at the glassed windows; and when they realized Dame Frevisse was there, they dragged off their hoods with clumsy haste and bowed at her nervously.

Gilbey on the other hand, drew off his own hood smoothly and bowed as if well sure of himself, first to Dame Frevisse and then to Meg. Nor did he gawk; his look around the hall was quick and assessing, and when he spoke to Dame Frevisse his tone was confident behind its respect. “Asking your ladyship’s pardon, is it allowed I speak with Mistress Meg here, by your leave?”

“Assuredly,” Dame Frevisse said. “She’s welcome to speak to whom she will. And I’m just leaving, so you may speak freely.”

“And I’ve brought two friends of Sym to watch by him so young Hewe needn’t stay,” Gilbey added. “And you can step aside, Meg, so we can talk more private.”

Meg wanted to deny him, to tell Hewe to stay and Dame Frevisse to make Gilbey go. But she lacked the nerve to be so bold and only watched helplessly as Dame Frevisse said, “That’s kindly done. Come, Hewe. I’ll see to your being fed. Meg, if you need aught, have one of the servants tell me.”

“Thank you, my lady. And Hewe-” She caught at his attention as he went willingly away. “Don’t be biding here. You go on home and see to things.”

He jerked his head in a grudging nod and left behind Dame Frevisse.

Outside, at the head of the stairs leading down to the yard, Frevisse stopped and turned to Hewe. “That man. Who is he?”

“Gilbey Dunn. He’s our neighbor and he’s been making trouble, and now I think he wants to marry Mam.”

He said it so readily, with no particular caring one way or the other, that Frevisse was taken a little off stride. “Indeed,” she said. “And what do you think of that?”

Hewe shrugged as if it did not matter much. “He’d treat her better than Da did, and so long as I stayed out of his way he’d not bother me.”

“Your mother wants you to be a priest.”

Hewe made a face like sipping vinegar. “And that I won’t be doing. But she won’t listen to me.” He brightened and pressed a hand over his belly. “Do you think I could eat with the players and save you the trouble of getting me something? I’m fair growled with hunger and it’s a long walk home.”

Frevisse repressed a smile. “Yes. I’d think that would be all right.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

He remembered to bow and then was gone, leaping down the stairs and running across the yard to the other guesthall with far more eagerness than he had shown at any word from his mother.

Frevisse watched him go and then the yard was empty. No one was out in the cold and deliberately she stepped backward, nearer to the closed door behind her. Its thickness muffled what was being said but close to it inside-well away from Peter and Hamon, she suspected-Gilbey Dunn was in earnest talk with Meg. At least she assumed it was Meg. She could only be certain of Gilbey’s voice, going on at length and strongly. If Meg was answering him in the occasional pauses, her voice was too low to be heard at all.

Because she was not learning anything beyond the fact that Gilbey Dunn was come well out of his way to talk to Meg, and because she did not want to be caught eavesdropping, Frevisse left, not hurrying, but descending the stairs and crossing the yard with the outward purpose of seeing how matters were in the old guesthall but going as slowly as she might without actually stopping. She had finally stopped near the door of the old guesthall and was, in desperation, bending to check her shoe strap when Gilbey came out at last.

To her surprise he did not go to the gate but across the yard diagonally, to the small wicket gate into the walled way that hid the storage and work sheds built along the inside of the priory’s wall between the guesthalls and the priory’s kitchen and back gate. Hidden from the courtyard but handy to the main life of the nunnery, it was usually busy with servants, but these were the Christmas holidays and not much in the way of usual work was being done. Frevisse, following Gilbey through the gateway at what she meant to be a discreet distance, found the area deserted. She paused. Gilbey was out of sight and there was no one to ask which way he had gone. The only movement was a white drift of smoke from the laundry’s roof hole, showing that someone was there at least, and that cleanliness-like prayers-went on no matter what.

So, too, did human anger, to judge by the roused voices Frevisse heard as she approached the laundry door. And one of the voices was Gilbey Dunn’s.

The other’s, unsurprisingly, was Annie Lauder’s.

Frevisse smiled narrowly. Gilbey was a bold man if he chose to quarrel with the priory’s laundress. Her will was as strong as her arms and she brooked no interference in her work or her life from anyone.

Not needing to go too near the door to hear them, Frevisse stopped at the corner of the building. It helped that the door stood partly open, the laundry’s escaping hot, damp air roiling into a cloud as it met the outside’s chill.

Annie was saying loudly, “Don’t go honeying to me, Gilbey Dunn! All the village knows you’ve asked her to marry you. You’re as great a fool as that son of hers was, God keep him, if you think I want to hear you wooing me again.”

“What’s marriage got to do with us, girl? You know as well as I do that I’m not asking her for love. There’s sense to our marrying and that’s all there is to it.”

“Does she know that?”

“As surely as I do. She wants to better herself and so do I, and here’s the way to do it.”

“You’re always out to better yourself.” But she said it less angrily. “You’ve gotten what you want from me, and now you’ll have what you want from her, and that’s the end of it between us.”

And Gilbey answered, “Why should it be over between us? Don’t you like what I bring when we’re together?”

“It’s little enough you bring me,” Annie returned, but playfully now.

Gilbey answered her in kind, his voice lower as if he were nearer to her. “Little enough maybe, but sweet.”

The silence after that was weighty with possibilities that made Frevisse consider leaving, but she chose not to; there might be more to learn from these two.

But there was not. And when, in a little while, Annie asked, “Know what I want right now?” and Gilbey answered, “I know what I can give you. Same as always,” Frevisse moved away, knowing she must not hear more.

But what she had heard put both Gilbey and Annie in the priory’s mercy. There was a fine imposed on any unfree couple who carnally indulged themselves outside of marriage. A fine Gilbey and Annie had clearly incurred. He would pay his to Lord Lovel, who owned two-thirds of Prior Byfield, land and villeins. Annie belonged to the nunnery, and her coins would go into the priory coffer. But it was not coins Frevisse was interested in. She wanted information and the means to it had been put into her hands.

She was feeling the cold through her sheepskin-lined shoes before Gilbey came out of the laundry. She had counted on him leaving by the priory’s back gate, the one most villagers used when they had business at the priory. She was waiting in the doorway of the storage shed across the narrow way from it, and nearly let him reach it before she stepped out into his way.

He jerked to a halt, startled, and glanced back over his shoulder, plainly wondering if she knew where he had come from. But almost as quickly his expression went smooth and innocent, and he said with a respectful bob of his head, “God’s good day to you again, lady.”

“And to you, too, Gilbey Dunn.”

That startled him again, because he had no reason to think she knew his name. Meaning to keep him off-balance, she said, “Show me your dagger.”

It did not please him. But he had nothing to gain by being rude to her. His being Lord Lovel’s villein instead of the nunnery’s would not serve as excuse for anything.

But he paused, a momentary shadow of a frown between his eyes, before he unsheathed his dagger and handed it to her, hilt foremost.

She took it and laid her fore and middle fingers together along its blade, measuring its width against the width of Sym’s mortal wound, and found that at its widest Gilbey’s blade was near enough a match as made no difference. Measuring the blade along her forearm, she saw it was longer than Joliffe’s dagger. Maybe long enough.

She gave it back, looking directly into Gilbey’s face as she did. Expressionless, he took it without meeting her gaze. And that told her nothing; villeins were not supposed to presume so much on their betters as to dare look at them eye to eye, but she had already overstepped her own propriety in talking with him alone this much.

Gilbey, his dagger back in its sheath, said “I’d best be getting back to the village.”

Frevisse gestured at the gate to indicate that he could depart. But she stood there alone a while longer, considering what she had discovered, before going on her way, wiping her nose, harkening to the bell calling to Tierce.

The only way Tierce that day differed from what was expected of it was that Domina Edith was not there. She had suffered a mild relapse-nothing dangerous, Dame Claire said-but she should keep to her chamber.

After, the other nuns bustled away to their various work and to be out of the cold. Frevisse, with the smothered feeling of being too enclosed, stayed in the cloister walk, pacing a while before finally sitting down on the low columned wall that ran around its inner side, between the roofed walk itself and the little garden in its center. There were other things she should be doing, and she would be called forward in chapter meeting if she were seen so apparently idle, but she needed to gather her thoughts and so far as she was concerned that was work indeed just now.

For one thing, she discovered she did not have much in the way of thoughts. What she had was a head that felt full of porridge-dull, lumpy porridge, lying on her thoughts like a dead weight.

She leaned against a column, feeling its carved spiral of vines and leaves pressing at her flesh through the woolen and linen layers of her habit. The stone’s chill would creep through soon, but for just now sitting felt very good while she tried to sort out what facts she had.

Sym was known in the village as a quarreler and a fighter so there was nothing special in his discord with Ellis and Joliffe; the players were only the latest people to have reason to be angry at him.

Nor were Tibby’s relatives happy with Sym’s attentions, according to Father Henry. Maybe, wary of his temper, one of them had wanted him out of the way for better reasons than either Joliffe or Ellis had.

And there was Gilbey Dunn, of course, the pushing neighbor who could not leave the widow and grieved mother alone a decent while. Though Gilbey Dunn did not strike Frevisse as the sort of man who cared for risks he could avoid.

Sym had not been badly hurt in the fight with Joliffe; apparently he had not even known it, or else thought it no more than a scrape, until he reached home. It had been his mother’s fright that had frightened him into wanting to be shriven. With his father’s death so new in his mind, he had probably been especially afraid he was dying, and his mother in her own fear had done all she could before she left to find help. That was maybe the only comfort the woman could have from his death; that she had helped make his soul safe before she left him. Because then, before she had returned, someone had come in; and either Sym had been lying with his eyes closed and did not hear him, or it had been someone he was easy enough with that he did not stir when they came. He possibly had not even had time to know what they were doing before they thrust a dagger between his ribs and into his heart. The wound had been too clean and simple for him to have struggled at all. He had probably died barely knowing he was hurt.

And then whoever had done it had folded Sym’s hands on his chest and covered him and gone away. Had they hoped his mother would only think he was sleeping when she came back and so put off the outcry for a while?

But why had they wanted him dead at all? What little she had seen and now knew of Sym, he seemed to have been more his own worst enemy than anyone else’s. It was only his death that told that someone else had felt very differently. But why? That was the question she found herself holding to now. Gilbey Dunn had reason; he could be more sure of the marriage and the land if Sym were out of the way. But murder was a desperate act, and a final one for the murderer as well as his victim if he were caught. She had the distinct impression that Gilbey was a man who liked to keep his options open. And very likely he had someone to say where he had been that night, it being New Year’s Eve and people gathering for festivities of one sort or another.

She found that her hands, tucked up either sleeve for more warmth, were pressed against Joliffe’s dagger in her belt. There was where the next real danger lay. Master Montfort the crowner would come sooner or later, and from past dealings with him, Frevisse knew him well enough to know that he favored the easy solution over the harder. In this matter Joliffe was the easier solution. A stranger of the less desirable kind, with no protector, and a tongue that he would not curb even if his life depended on it. She could already hear Montfort’s quick summation of the facts that would make his work simplest; and she could imagine Joliffe in his hands, hauled off to Oxford and a quick hanging.

Frevisse shivered from more than the day’s cold and the stone’s chill. She stood up. There were still her daily duties to be done, including returning Joliffe’s dagger to him, and she had best see to doing them. She had thought as far as she could with what little she knew, and could only hope Father Henry would return with answers that she needed.