The Servant's Tale

20

DAME ALYS’S COLD had begun to clear. Still croaking but her energy returned, she was taking up the slack that had crept into the kitchen during her illness. Roaming among the tables, she spent the morning harassing her workers, her large, bent spoon at the ready as she surveyed and expounded on their inadequacies.

“That’s bread dough, not pastry, you’re handling, girl! You put more muscle into your kneading, or I’ll muscle your head! We’ve eleven extra mouths now because there’s hardly a thing in the guesthall kitchen to feed them-so much for the ‘we never get guests at Christmastide’ opinion. Meg! That’s a slicing knife, not an ax. The chickens have already been butchered. You only need dice them up, not kill them all over again.”

She banged her spoon on the table beside Meg, making her jump and grow busier still, cutting the flesh of five boiled chickens into small pieces for pies. It was Sister Amicia, taking her turn helping in the kitchen by cutting up vegetables to be mixed with the chicken pieces, who burst into tears. Dame Alys stopped, hands hard on hips, to glare at her.

“And why your tears, Sister? Those are carrots, not onions, you’re slicing. And I’ve not even told you yet you’re slicing them so thin they’ll cook to nothing in the pies. Use your wits, and your time, more wisely, and stop that blubbing.”

Sister Amicia dug for a handkerchief up her sleeve. “It was your talk of butchery,” she sobbed. “It made me think of Sister Fiacre.”

Quiet spread across the kitchen. Even Dame Alys fell silent. She had never much cared for Sister Fiacre, who had flared into hysteria or crumpled into despair whenever her fumbling ways in the kitchen were pointed out to her. The nunnery had agreed long before she fell seriously ill that everyone would live more peaceably if her path no longer crossed Dame Alys’s. But not even so unhappy a spirit as Sister Fiacre deserved so ugly a death.

Sister Emma reached out to pat Sister Amicia’s arm. “Well it is to mourn her passing, but remember, she’s gone to Heaven now and everything is better for her.”

“Not Heaven yet, I’d say,” Dame Alys rumbled. “She’s her time in Purgatory to serve first and that may take her a while.”

“Oh, surely not,” Sister Emma protested. “Prepared as she was for death, and dying as she did, praying at the altar. Surely her soul is as pure as it could be.”

Dame Alys glowered. “I’ll ask your leave to doubt it. Remember, God had laid a trial on her…” Dame Alys placed a hand on her bosom with a meaningful grimace. “He’d laid a trial on her and she’d not completed it. So there’s that to answer for, at least. My guess would be she’s gone to Purgatory and her time there will be the longer, to make up for not living out her trial here on earth. And the harder maybe, too, because of it.”

“Oh, no-” Sister Emma began, but swallowed further protest quickly; Dame Alys did not bear contradiction calmly.

But beside her Meg made a protesting sound. Dame Alys swung around on her, demanding, “Now what’s your problem? If you’re about to faint, just get yourself away from that bowl so you don’t pull it over with you. And put that knife down so you don’t cut someone.”

Meg put the knife down. She was not near to fainting but trembling all through herself with a kind of fiercely suppressed anger. Through stiff lips, not quite daring to look at Dame Alys, she said, “She’s gone straight to Heaven as truly as any soul could go. She was pure in her serving God in His church, and purely praying to Him when she died, and so surely she has gone straight to Heaven to be happy and out of her pain forever. You’re the one who’s sinful-sinful to be saying otherwise!”

If one of the chicken carcasses had risen off the table and spoken to her, Dame Alys could not have been more surprised. To that moment Meg had never spoken out of turn, rarely spoken at all. They all gaped, then Dame Alys’s jaw began to work, and there was a general cringing at what was surely coming next.

But from the doorway Frevisse said in a voice all calmness, “You may have the right of it, Meg. But it’s hardly ours to say, is it? It being a matter between God and each soul as it comes to Him. And we have all been warned not to judge, in fear of our own judgment.”

The last was a direct hit on Dame Alys, who visibly swallowed her ire, clamped her fist more tightly around her spoon, and grumbled, “What brings you here? I can’t do more about Montfort than I’m already doing.”

“And what you do will be splendid,” Frevisse said, which was little more than the truth. What came from Dame Alys’s kitchen was worth eating, despite the ill temper and bad treatment that accompanied its preparation. “I only wanted to tell you the guesthall kitchen will be able to see to him and his men by supper time.”

“There’s a blessing,” Dame Alys muttered. “But excuse us if we do not continue our conversation, but go on with what needs doing now. It being the holy days, we must needs have a bit of a treat, no matter what’s toward otherwise.”

Frevisse let that go by. Like a dog that barks all the time, most of what Dame Alys said could be safely ignored. Instead she said, “May I ask questions of your folk here if I don’t interfere with their work? It’s about Sister Fiacre. Domina has directed me to ask questions.”

Thus forestalled of further complaint, Dame Alys grunted and gestured permission.

Frevisse knew that, if she were strict in her obedience, she would be in the guesthall. But she told herself that the truth must be sought where it might be found, which was everywhere, and went quietly from servant to servant, asking if they had seen anything yesterday afternoon, heard anything then or later that might matter. She was careful to keep her voice low, which encouraged the servants to do likewise, seemingly to placate Dame Alys, but actually to keep them from hearing one another’s answers. But each said only that she had been busy in the kitchen, and none had been anywhere near the church yesterday, to see or hear anything that might matter.

Then she came to Meg, and asked, “Have you seen Gilbey Dunn lately?”

Without looking up from her work, Meg answered in a voice hardly above a whisper, “When I went home this morning, yes. He came over when he saw I was there.”

“What did he want to say?”

“To tell me he’d seen to my animals since Hewe hadn’t come home last night.”

“Is he still wanting to marry you?”

Dull color covered Meg’s cheeks, but she did not ask how Frevisse knew of that, only said, “Yes.”

“Have you seen Hewe yet today?”

“He came home a little after I did. He’d been with friends. He’d forgotten the animals. That’s what he said. That he’d been with friends and forgotten the animals.” She went on dicing the cooked chickens while she spoke. “He’s not interested in tending the animals, which is as it should be. He’s not meant to be a villager. He’s to be a priest.”

That was a matter Hewe and his mother would have to fight out between them, so Frevisse offered no opinion. She asked, “You knew Sister Fiacre?”

That startled Meg into looking up at her. “Yes,” she breathed, her voice catching a little on the word. “She was kind to me in the church yesterday morning.” She looked back down at her work. “But I’m glad she’s dead. She’s in no more pain now. She’s gone to Heaven and won’t be crying anymore with hurting.” She cast a resentful little glance toward Dame Alys’s back.

“That’s true enough. The only pity is she did not die in God’s time for her.”

Meg looked up at her directly then. “But she did die in God’s time. We’re in God’s hands in everything, so Father Clement used to say. Everything is His.”

“Except evil,” Frevisse said.

Meg’s eyes widened, and she looked fearfully around, crossing herself, before returning doggedly to her work.

“Were you in the church yesterday afternoon?” Frevisse asked.

“For a little while. I went to pray again. Prayers feel better there.”

“Was Sister Fiacre there then?”

“She was kneeling on the altar steps when I came in.” Meg swallowed thickly. “She’d told me that was her favorite place to pray.”

“Did you talk with her?”

Meg shook her head dumbly.

“Was there anyone else there? Did you see anyone else in the church?”

Meg shook her head again, hesitated, looked from side to side and down and then finally at Frevisse again, bringing herself to say, “But afterwards I saw one of the travelers-one of the players-the fair-haired one-going toward the church.”

Frevisse felt a hard knotting somewhere near her stomach. Careful of her voice, she managed to ask, “How soon after?”

Having started, Meg seemed less shy of saying more. “Soon. I was coming back here. I saw him going toward the church then.”

“Do you know what time it was?”

Meg hesitated, thinking, then held up three of her fingers side by side and parallel to the floor. “The sun was that much above the horizon.”

“Did he go into the church?”

Meg hesitated before saying, “I didn’t watch. But he was going that way.”

“And you know it was one of the players. You saw his face? Where were you when you saw him?”

Meg hesitated, uncertain which question to answer first. “I didn’t see his face, he was going away from me. But his hair, so fair, I saw. And they dress differently, the players do. And he’s tall. It was him.”

Joliffe. Or someone dressed to look like him, Frevisse’s mind determinedly offered.

Frevisse went on to Dame Alys, who was brooding over a pot bubbling with dark broth on one of the fires. Frevisse breathed in the rich smell of its steam and said, “Rabbit?”

“Rabbit,” Dame Alys agreed grudgingly, as if it were meant to be a secret. “For Domina’s especial New Year’s treat-if the meat ever cooks to tender enough to go into a pie. It’s taking its while, let me tell you. Every rabbit that’s come to me from him this year has been tough as tanned leather.”

“Come from whom?” Frevisse asked. If a villein managed to snare a rabbit he generally kept it for himself and his family, and few of the servants had time enough to course rabbits. So who was responsible for bringing Dame Alys rabbits?

“Father Henry. He and that little hound of his can’t ever seem to catch aught but the oldest rabbit in the warren. It’s wearisome, it is. He brought one in yesterday that will have to hang a few days, or it might do. But this one hung a week and is tough as fresh killed. And it’s not so big as the one he brought me at harvest time. Why, it was big as a shoat and likely twenty years old.”

She would have gone on comparing rabbits until the meat boiled to invisible fragments in the broth, but Frevisse made her escape. The cold air of the cloister made her nose and head ache, and she paused a moment, leaning against one of the pillars to steady herself while she collected her thoughts. Meg had seen Joliffe near the church yesterday afternoon. And probably told someone else besides Frevisse about it. Which meant that eventually Montfort would know of it.

But worse, Joliffe had lied to her. She felt betrayed. She had trusted these people, and one-all of them?-had lied to her.

She was so angry she dared not go directly to the guesthall; it would not do to let them see her angry. But she also wanted to talk to Gilbey Dunn again. And to Father Henry about what he might have learned. And to Annie Lauder.

Annie was alone in the laundry today, elbow deep in a suds-crested washtub, with a pile of soaking tablecloths heaped white beside her. Well muscled from her years of carrying buckets of water and baskets of wet laundry, she did not look as tall as she was. She looked around as Frevisse came in, nodded to her, but went on mauling another tablecloth in the water. “No holidays for laundresses,” she said in rhythm to her movements. “They just come clean in time to be dirtied again come Twelfth Night. A daft occupation, laundering, but God wills I must earn my pence and I obey. Is there aught I can do for you, Dame?”

“Maybe,” said Frevisse. “And certainly something I can do for you.”

“That’s a fair trade then,” Annie grinned.

“The crowner has come to look into Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s murder.”

“Aye. That word was all over the priory long since.” Apparently her work did not keep her separate from whatever news might be going through St. Frideswide’s.

“Can you tell me where Gilbey Dunn was the night that Sym died?”

Annie paused just two beats in her movements, then continued. “How should I know?”

“Was he with you?”

“In here?” Annie looked around grimly. “I’ve never thought he’d be one for taking much interest in laundry.” Frevisse thought that no answer at all and her face said so. Annie said, less flippantly, “I’m not much of one for following after him, or any man. I’ve trouble enough with aprons and napkins. At least they don’t go sneaking off getting themselves dirty after I’ve washed them.”

But Frevisse did not consider that an answer, either. She continued to wait.

Finally, defiantly, Annie said, “What would I be doing with him? I know when I’m well off, and living at some man’s beck and call while he spends my good silver pence is not my notion of well off. I have what I want and I’ll keep what I have, and if this crowner says he’s found things that any fool knows aren’t there to be found, well, we all know the fool’s word never hanged nobody.”

“I have a witness who can swear you and Gilbey Dunn had sexual concourse in this very shed, and that your conversation made it clear this was a regular occupation for the two of you.”

Annie resumed scrubbing in her tub. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Annie, I think it possible that Gilbey murdered Sym, whom he considered an obstacle to his proposed marriage to Meg Shene. You should be careful of giving your affections too easily. You are breaking the law of God and man, and putting yourself in danger of a charge of helping a murderer.”

“He didn’t! He never did!”

“So you say. But can you prove it?”

Annie threw the tablecloth into the water and sat down on the wet bench beside her tub. “Lord have mercy,” she sighed.

“What has Gilbey said to you?”

“Only that he’s not unhappy Sym is dead. He told me that day before yesterday.” She sighed again. “I’ve saved almost enough to buy my freedom,” she remarked inappositely.

“All the more reason to be glad you’re not married to him.”

“Humph. He could be free if he wanted. But he’d have to give up his holding, and what’s the use of being free if you’re landless in the bargain? No, no, what breaks my heart is that to save his rotten hide I’m going to have to pay leyrwite, for we were together all night the night Sym Shene was killed.”

The bell for Sext was ringing as Frevisse came out of the laundry. After the shed’s heavy, damp heat, the January air cut crisply, and she paused to breathe it, then shivered in a sudden chill and hurried toward the warming room where they were worshipping now that the church was desecrated, with her hands thrust into her sleeves and her chin tucked down for warmth.

The lesson and gospel readings for the hours covered, in a year’s time, the whole of the Old Testament and three times through the New. Now, between Christmas and Epiphany, they were reading Daniel. Frevisse, with her basic Latin and familiarity with Wycliffe’s English translation of the Bible, was just able to understand and enjoy the psalms and readings. So it was with a touch of annoyance that she struggled to hear past the complaining coughs of her fellow nuns the complex prophesy of conquest from the man with a face like lightning and arms the color of polished brass.

“‘And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the King of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.’”

Frevisse blew her own nose and wondered, lost in pronouns, which King should not stand because of the devices of the other. Was it important to understand that?

Was it important to try to understand everything?

Sister Fiacre, wrapped in the deepest of all silences in her box near the altar, might at last be understanding what was important, and have dropped what was not, like a wet and filthy robe. Was that what she, Frevisse, should do? But was it not important to understand the lessons of the Bible? And to discover who among them was a murderer?

Or was it?

Was being dead a peace beyond understanding-or an understanding that, at last, brought peace?

Sext ended, Domina Edith gave her benediction over them, her eye on Frevisse the while-a look Frevisse could not return with any steadiness-and they were released to go about their tasks. Frevisse bent her will to obedience, left the cloister, and crossed the yard to the old guesthall.

Two of Montfort’s men stood just inside the door, leaning against the wall. They glanced at her but her nun’s habit put her beyond their authority; nor did she speak to them, but stood silently between them a while, watching the players.

They were well along preparing the hall for the play. What would be their stage in front of the hearth had been swept clear of rushes. Bassett and Joliffe were nearly finished setting up a framework of poles that would support the curtains while Ellis and Hewe moved the last of the gear behind it where it would be out of sight. Piers was sitting on a large basket with a mixed expression of pain and patience while Rose evened the shaggy back of his fair hair with a pair of small shears.

Hewe was the only one who turned toward the sound of the door opening and saw her. But head down, he kept busy at one of the baskets, seeming to think that if he did not look at her, she would not see him. Perhaps she should order him to stay away, but it was clear he was being useful to them, at least at present, and so she thought perhaps she would not.

Holding two poles steady while Joliffe, standing on a stool, cord whipped the cross pole to them, Bassett said, “Thank Heaven that old prioress wants us to do this. Keeping occupied will avoid bad thoughts. Next time we see Dame Frevisse, we’ll have to ask about those candles she promised. Is there anything else we need?”

“To get out of here,” Ellis growled.

Joliffe said, “Does he work at being an idiot or does it come as easily to him as it seems?”

Nearly Frevisse spoke then, alarmed at his flippancy and worried that the players’ incorrigible lack of humility could only help convict them in Montfort’s eyes.

Ellis slammed a lid on a chest. “He’s not so much of an idiot that he can’t hang us if he chooses! I would we had never seen that fellow in the ditch, or that we’d played the Pharisee and passed him by!”

“‘O God, I thank thee that I am not like other men-’” began Joliffe, playing the Pharisee from a different parable, and was interrupted by Ellis flinging a small basket in his direction. He caught it and laughed, jumping off the stool, but there was nothing cheerful in the look on his face as he turned away.

“One of our problems is that you are so little like other men that bailiffs and sheriffs and crowners yearn to take you by the hand and make you explain yourself,” Bassett rumbled, but without rancor. “But you aren’t a murderer, nor is any of us. What worries me is getting to Oxford by Twelfth Night.”

“Hush, Thomas,” said Rose. “There’s no sense lathering yourself over that. We either make Oxford by Twelfth Night or we don’t, and likely the world won’t end if we don’t. And the rest of you, stop playing the fool and start trying to think like the holy Kings.”

Ellis growled wordlessly. Rose pointed him to a place across the hearth from her and said, “Sit. Eat something. You haven’t eaten enough today to keep a sparrow alive. And that goes for the two of you, as well,” she added to Bassett and Joliffe. “And you, Hewe, come here and share a bite with them.”

The boy looked at her, startled, then at Frevisse warily. When she still gave no sign of saying anything, he came.

Rose ignored his hesitation, running her fingers through Piers’s hair, tangling his gold curls and smoothing them again. “As for me, I’m content to stay awhile longer; there’s no harm in Piers being out of the cold another day.”

“And the day after that and the day after that,” Ellis muttered. He had come not to eat but to pace restlessly around the curtain-hung poles. They ignored him, Bassett and Joliffe and Hewe busy with their bread and cheese, Rose slicing cheese for Piers.

Frevisse, watching her, sensed in the controlled force of her movements how much the child mattered to her-as much and maybe more than the survival of their group. Or maybe the child and the group were one to her.

Frevisse had never had that kind of affection turned on her. Her parents’ fierce loving had been mostly for each other, with herself a happy adjunct, and she had come into Thomas Chaucer’s household as a pleasant addition to an established order. She probed briefly at her feelings to see how much that mattered to her and found hardly any regret. There had been love, and kindness, and freedom to be herself. These were good things. They contented her.

Joliffe said in a bold, dramatic tone, “‘I ride wandering in ways wide. King of all Kings, send me such guide that I may-’ no.” He cleared his throat and began again, this time in dreamy, gentle voice, “‘I ride wandering in ways wide-’” Piers giggled. Joliffe cleared his throat again and intoned, “Eggs and beer, be of good cheer, ho, ho, ho. ‘King of all Kings, send me such guide, such guide, such guide…’” and subsided, thinking.

“If you could only be a little more convincing,” said Ellis from behind the curtain, “perhaps the fool crowner will release us to follow our star.”

Frevisse took a deep breath and started for them. Further delay would only continue to weaken her resolve; it was time to ask the important questions.

“Joliffe, I want to speak with you,” she said.

He started and looked toward her, rising. She had forgotten how clear and light a blue his eyes were, and how easily they saw the foolishness of others.

She turned from him and said abruptly to Bassett, “Bassett, Montfort knows about your quarrel with Sister Fiacre. Has he asked you about it?”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we had quarreled and Lord Warenne had turned us out of his service.”

“What did you say when he asked you why?”

Bassett did not answer. Only Ellis, just come from behind the curtain, was looking at her. The others were staring at the floor in front of them. “Domina Edith has given me leave to ask the questions Master Montfort won’t think of, to try to find out what has truly happened here. I need truths, not silences.”

“Tell her,” said Rose.

They all looked at her, surprised. “Lord Warenne-” Bassett began.

“Is going to be telling his side of it to the crowner if the matter isn’t settled soon. Tell her. I don’t see how it can help but she won’t use it to hurt us either. Tell her.”

Bassett questioned Ellis and Joliffe with a silent look. Darkly brooding, Ellis tersely nodded his agreement. Joliffe, anger clamped behind the tight set of his face, shrugged as if it had ceased to matter to him. Bassett returned to Frevisse. “We were the late Lord Warenne’s players for three years. You know what that means to our kind, I think.” Frevisse nodded. A skilled, well-traveled troop could sing a patron’s praises over a wide area. And they did, for patronage gave them protection, and was such a guarantee of their good behavior that they could be sure of welcome everywhere, so long as he was pleased with them. To find a patron and then lose him was normally a quick road to ruin.

“We were a larger company then. Six of us to act, so better plays could be done. When Lord Warenne died, he commended us to his son, your Sister Fiacre’s brother. He was willing to continue our patronage but the first spring we came to perform our season’s work for him, as we had every spring for his father, he gave us to understand that he knew the ways of players and that he wanted us, as we traveled, to now and again-’collect’ was his word-an occasional young woman on our way. We were welcome to our sport with her but he would be appreciative in monetary ways if we brought her to him eventually. He said he knew our ways and that we could woo them to it easily enough.” Bassett’s flat tone and the stony set of his face stripped away any lightness the words might have had. “He said village girls were easily come by and sweet enough if gathered young.”

“He also said,” Joliffe added with mocking bitterness, “that he would pay more for any we delivered to him with their maidenhood intact.”

“Joliffe,” Bassett said quellingly. “Good lady, pardon our words but there’s no way to say this less offensively.”

Frevisse did not need the apology but accepted it with a small nod. “You refused him.”

Bassett gestured at Ellis and Joliffe. “As you see. There are only three of us now, and the boy, and Rose, and we journey without a lord’s name.”

“Rose would have taken our heads from us if we’d accepted,” Joliffe said.

Rose’s wry, downcast smile agreed with him. Bassett went on. “As importantly, he threatened that if we said aught to anyone about the matter, he’d spread word we had made the offer to him and he’d turned us away in disgust.”

“His word would be more readily taken than ours,” Ellis said. “And since he can have us all into prison and no way out, we keep our mouths shut and swing well clear of Lord Warenne. Those of us that are left.”

Frevisse, looking from one to another of their set faces, was sure they were telling her the truth.

Rose said, “You see this does not help in our present trouble? If we defend ourselves by defaming Lord Warenne, we put ourselves in more peril and do not clear ourselves of this present suspicion of murder.”

Frevisse nodded slowly. “But I must go on asking questions. I have to go on asking questions.”

“We’ll answer those that we can.”

Frevisse said, “Then I would speak out of your hearing with Joliffe.”

Joliffe sketched a bow and went with her to the other hearth. Frevisse said, “I have a report that you were seen going toward our church about four of the clock yesterday.”

“Lady, that I was not.” This was said readily, with what might have been no more than an actor’s smoothness.

“Are you accusing my witness of lying?” asked Frevisse.

“I cannot accuse anyone of anything, since I know nothing about him. Or her. I can only say what I know. I was in the church with Ellis and Bassett in the morning to see where we would perform. But not since.” This sounded more like the rough truth.

“Where were you then at that hour?”

For a wonder, his clear blue look did not see that she was only guessing he was not here in the guesthall. “I went walking after our rehearsal and was gone several hours.”

“Alone?” Frevisse asked, remembering the girl in the village.

“Alone,” Joliffe agreed.

“Not meeting anyone?”

“Not anyone.” He gave her a mocking grin. “Unless you count a small spotted hound, but I doubt he’ll speak on my behalf. He seemed to be somewhat occupied with coursing a rabbit at the time. Careless of me to be so solitary, but there it is.”

Discouraged and her head aching again, Frevisse turned on her heel and walked away, weighted with her thoughts.