The Servant's Tale

22

DAWN CAME LATE and reluctantly, graying the walls. A cluster of bells near the dormitory door was jangled by a servant, the wake-up call to Prime. The air was damply chill and immediately sank through flesh into bone the moment the covers were thrown back. The nuns dressed in shivering, snuffling, coughing haste, and huddled themselves into a brief double line that hurried to the warming room where no fire had yet been built and so was even colder than the dormitory. Their shivering did not ease until they were in the refectory, which, being next door to the kitchen, was warm and fragrant from the ovens’ discharge of fresh-baked bread, though that treat would not come until dinner. Frevisse wrapped both hands around this morning’s sole nourishment, a hot, sweet, sharp-flavored drink made of honey and rose hips, that soothed both face and inside with drinking it.

Afterwards, she crowded with the rest near to the new-built fire in the warming room until chapter, and eased her stool back toward the heat after it began. She did not in the least object, even mentally, to the meeting’s length today, because she was storing up heat. She likely would not have another chance to get near a fire until long after midday when she must spend three frozen hours in the church keeping watch by Sister Fiacre’s coffin.

Chapter over, going out was inevitable, and Frevisse decided she would do the more pleasurable of her duties first and crossed the yard to the old guesthall. Inside, all of last night’s trappings were gone, packed away into the chests and baskets set against the wall. The players were again in their plain clothes, gathered near to the fire, with Piers lying on a stack of blankets beside his mother, his head in her lap, and Ellis sitting nearby, stabbing his dagger into a hapless log, jerking it out, and stabbing it in again, while Bassett and Joliffe were in close talk with Hewe. She wanted to speak to him presently. From Bassett’s gesturing, Frevisse thought he was telling the boy a story; and thought, too, it would be a long time after the players were gone before their glamour would fade for the boy.

Joliffe saw her first, raised a hand in greeting, and started to speak, but Ellis jumped to his feet and demanded, “Any word from the crowner? We thought he’d let us out of here today and all the word we’ve had is that he’s not done with us, we have to stay.”

Frevisse shook her head. “He’s still asking questions.”

“It’s not right.” Ellis flung back onto the floor and assaulted the log again.

Hewe, with a stubborn set to his face, did not try to fade into the background, though neither did he look toward Frevisse, but continued talking softly with Bassett.

Piers raised a languid hand to scratch his nose and Frevisse said to him, “You sang very beautifully last night. You’re not ill again, I hope?”

Piers shook his head as his mother lifted an edge of a blanket to tuck it across his knees. “No. I’m well. Only she”-he rolled his eyes toward his mother-“says it’s too cold to risk me going outdoors to play.” His disgust was plain.

“We’ve not cosseted you all these days so you can go and sicken again,” Rose said. “The cold is bitter today. We can only hope there’ll be snow to soften it.”

“Oh, yes. Snow so we can’t go anywhere even if that visiting idiot gives us leave,” Ellis grumbled.

Meanwhile, Hewe was heard to exclaim suddenly, “But I could do that part! I could be Herod! I’d tear a passion like you’ve never seen before. Let me show you!”

He sprang to his feet and began to assume a pose of amazing ferocity. But Bassett laughed and took him by one lifted arm to say, friendly-wise, “No you don’t, cockerel. Herod’s part is for a full-grown man, such as me, when our company has grown enough to do it. You’re still an unfleshed stripling.”

“He could be a servant to my Wise Man,” Joliffe said. “We’ve got a gown that might fit him, if the hem were raised.” Hewe turned to him, bright with eagerness. With a stir of unease Frevisse saw that Bassett and Joliffe weren’t altogether teasing. And Hewe was not jesting at all.

“I think,” she said carefully, “you may be forgetting he’s Lord Lovel’s villein and not free to take to the high road, with or without you. Let alone what his mother would say to the matter.”

Hewe swung around to her, his face darkening again with stubbornness. “Lord Lovel has villeins in plenty,” he declared. “His steward won’t miss me, he won’t even look for me. And Mam will marry old Gilbey, so she’ll be taken care of, too.”

“She means you to be a priest,” Frevisse said, aware that she should take offense at his too-presuming speech. “Have you been going into the priory church lately?”

Hewe kicked sullenly at the rushes. “I stay away from churches so my mother won’t think I’m weakening. She may mean for me to be a priest, but I don’t.” He looked up eagerly at Bassett. “I want to be a player!”

“Hewe,” said Meg from the doorway. “You don’t.”

They all turned toward her standing there, her bare hands tucked up into her armpits, her shoulders hunched down to conserve her meager body’s warmth. She had no cloak or hood, only her rough dress and her kitchen-spotted apron. Her face was raw red with cold and her voice hoarse, but her gaze was rigid on her son as she said, “I told you and told you to stay with your brother. There’s villagers coming to take him home soon; for shame if they find him all alone.”

“But the crowner-” began Hewe.

“The crowner’s given leave for us to take him home. There’s to be the wake today and you are to stay with him until they come, so you can tell me they are here.”

Hewe scuffed at the rushes and would not meet her gaze. “Ah, Mam, it’s so cold there-”

“And you could find nowhere to be warm but here with this sort?”

“They’re not bad-” Hewe flashed.

“They are.” Meg did not sound angry, only tired. “You come along. You’ve praying to do, and penance, too, for not caring for Sym like you ought, and for not doing what your mother tells you.”

Hewe flared again. “He never cared for me! Anyhow, I’m sick of praying! How can you say I’m to be a priest? I’ve no mewling, mincing priest in me!”

“You hush your words. Don’t say one more word.” Meg’s voice came out flat, but still not angry. “You come with me,” she repeated. “Now.”

Slow footed, he went. When he came close enough, Meg’s hand whipped out to grasp his arm, hard enough that he flinched and cringed from her. Meg, still not acknowledging anyone else was there, left, taking him with her.

Ellis let out a heavy breath. “There’s a woman who knows her own mind. Who would have thought it? Too bad the lad won’t be back.”

“Yes, that’s a pity,” said Bassett. “He had possibilities.”

“Did he?” Frevisse asked, surprised.

“Indeed. He has a better voice than most, and all the priest teaching she’s forced on him has given him a quick memory. He was the one working the curtain yestereve, and he did it as well as any of us would. He’s aflame to join us, and I would he could, for he might do us proud.”

“Well, no use crying over spilt milk,” Ellis said. “There will be others down the road, and I pray it’s not a long journey, for with more players we can do more plays.”

Piers said, “Shall I talk to him later?”

“No,” Joliffe said. Still looking toward the closed door beyond which Hewe and Meg had disappeared, he added, “He’s frightened of her.”

“And well he should be,” said Ellis. “Did you see that clout she fetched him yesterday? I warrant his ear is still ringing.”

“You don’t understand,” Rose said. Like Joliffe, she was looking where they had gone, with a strange expression on her face. Her tone echoed his. “He’s frightened of more than that.”

“He hates what she wants for him,” Bassett said. “As if we haven’t got enough bad priests.” He broke into old-fashioned English. “‘And shame it is to see, Clene sheep and a shitty shepherd.’ Begging your pardon, my lady.”

“Since those words were written by my great-uncle, I can hardly object.”

“Old Geoffrey is your-” Bassett was both surprised and awed. “Did you ever see him? No, of course not, you’re not old enough. But you must know his son.”

“I was partly raised in his household. He’s told me many stories of his father.”

“Well, I never! As I live and breathe! My lady, you take my breath clean away!”

Nearly Frevisse laughed at him, covering her mouth to hide her smile. To be related by marriage to the son of a famous writer was hardly to be famous oneself. Yet his pleasure and awe were warming to one who had too long practiced humility and self-denigration.

Rose said, “But we have thanks to be giving to Dame Frevisse for what she has herself done for us. Joliffe, you should speak up.”

“I keep trying. But I keep being interrupted.” Joliffe rose to his feet in a single long, graceful movement and swept Frevisse a deep bow. “My lady, you did me good service yesterday. My thanks to you shall be eternal, my gratitude unending, my repaying of the debt perpetual, if that becomes possible.”

Frevisse answered his bow with a deeper than necessary curtsey and answered, “My thanks for your bounteous thanks but be assured that seeing justice done is my recompense in full.” She straightened and added drily, “Besides, I doubt either of us could bear that much gratitude for very long.”

Joliffe grinned. “But it’s so grand while it lasts.”

Frevisse smiled and went away, moving hastily only when out in the cold. She crossed the yard to the new guesthall to see what Montfort was up to. A quick look around as she entered told her that all was in order in the hall. Frevisse went on to Montfort’s chamber. The man on duty outside its door shook his head at her as she approached and said, “He’s busy now, Dame, questioning another.”

A loud questioning, so loud that Frevisse did not need to strain to hear. As she paused, Montfort’s voice came strongly through the closed door, and then another man’s right after, declaring no, he had not.

“Gilbey Dunn!” Frevisse exclaimed.

“Came in this morning of his own will,” the guard said obligingly. “Said he’d come home late last night and heard this morning he was being looked for, and walked in before we even knew he was about.”

Come in of his own will he might have but Montfort did not sound mollified by it. But, “I’ve a right to go where I please, so long as I come back in goodly time, and I did! Look you, I was in Banbury for a day. I’ve a sister there, a freewoman, and was minded to see her and it was nobody’s business I meant to go so I wasn’t telling no one, was I? And I wasn’t to know you’d be swinging in here wanting me that very day. Nor have I run off, I’m here, so why be yelling at me for it?”

“You mind your tongue or you’ll be looking for it one of these days,” Montfort bullied.

“Now, you don’t know my lord so well as you think,” retorted Gilbey. “He’s a fair man and so’s his steward, and they don’t punish a man for speaking his mind, even if he is a villein. Especially me, for I’m the best laborer in all the village, and an honest man.”

A voice slipped in between them, too low for Frevisse to make out the words but enough for her to recognize. “Father Henry?” she asked.

“Your priest? Yes,” the man agreed, and added hastily, “Here, now, you can’t be going in there.”

But Frevisse had already lifted the latch. Montfort would bring Father Henry around to saying anything-or else believe what he wanted to believe out of anything Father Henry said-if left to himself, and she wanted the truth as it was, not as Montfort preferred it to be.

Montfort, red-faced and leaning forward across the table where his clerk was busy scratching down all that was being said, whirled to glare at her coming in. “You’ve been putting your nose in again, woman!” he snapped. “Sending this priest to ask questions that are no concern of yours. That will have you in trouble yet, you mark my words.”

Frevisse murmured with a feigned humility, “I pray your forgiveness yet again.” And could not forbear asking, “Has he been of use to you?”

“Maybe. Some.” Not liking giving that much ground, Montfort swung back toward Gilbey Dunn standing in the room’s center like a thick-necked, stubborn bull. Their glares were mutual. “So you left the alehouse early, you say, just after the fight between this player and Sym and went home to bed, you say.” Montfort made it sound a crime.

“Aye. I went home. It was late and I’m not minded to sleep in the alehouse.”

“And you heard the furor when Sym was found and stayed in your bed anyway?”

“I heard the noise but was warm in bed. They sounded like no more than drunken fools to me and I stayed where I was.”

Montfort said, “It’s illegal to ignore the hue and cry.”

“It wasn’t a hue and cry, it was a clot of fools seeking to go on a loon’s errand.”

“So you stayed in your house the rest of the night?”

“Aye.”

“Alone?”

“…Aye.”

Frevisse thought not, but she said nothing.

“This Sym was no friend of yours, though, was he?”

“You’d be hard put to find anyone who liked him, quarrelsome as he was.”

“And what did you have against the nun Sister Fiacre?”

That sidestep caught Gilbey flat for a moment. “Who?”

“The priory sacrist. She keeps the church in order. She’s been murdered, too.”

“Is she the one? I heard a nun had her bread baked in the church, but I didn’t catch the name. I’ve no idea what she even looked like. For all I know I never set eyes on her in all my days, let alone ever speak to her. What could I be having against her?”

“And you’ve some tale of where you were the afternoon that she was killed? You were seen coming in the back nunnery gate about then, let me tell you that much.”

So Montfort had actually found out something she had not. But as Gilbey Dunn’s face furrowed into stubborn lines, she thought of something else. Sullenly he said, “There’s those always watching others when they should be tending to their own work.”

“That’s as may be but what business had you here that afternoon?”

“None that’s any man’s business but my own. And I never went near the church where she was killed! You’ll not find anyone can say in truth I did.”

“Then where were you, man?” Montfort demanded. “Have it out.”

Gilbey’s mouth clamped down in tight refusal. He would have to say it sooner or later but he was stubborn enough to make it later if he could. Frevisse, with an excess of impatience at both of them, said sharply, “If you really want to know, go ask Annie, our laundress. She can probably tell you where he was that afternoon. And she knows better than anyone why his bed was warm enough he didn’t leave it the night that Sym was killed!”

Gilbey’s face went white and red by turns as he gaped at her. Fools, she thought, and turned on her heel to stalk out of the room.

Frevisse went out the door and saw Roger Naylor across the courtyard speaking with a man standing in a wagon burdened with a hogshead barrel.

Naylor looked around and saw her coming. “My lady,” he said with a broad smile, “Thomas Chaucer has sent you a gift of cider, though I think it wicked of him to think you suffer from a thirst so great as this.”

Frevisse lifted her chin at his impertinence. “I believe it is the priory’s thirst he caters to, Master Naylor. He asked me if I had a Christmas wish, and this was it. Would you have this taken to the priory kitchen? I’ll go to Dame Alys and warn her of its coming.”

But as she came within hearing of the kitchen, she knew Dame Alys had another matter in hand at present.

“Gone again! I turn around and the woman is gone again! What’s the use of giving any of you leave to do anything if you never see fit to bother doing it after I’ve told you? Where’s she gone, I ask you?”

One of the women, scouring with full-armed strength at a frypan on a table near the door, said in the subdued tone the kitchen staff found best to use around Dame Alys, “Maybe to see her son again. The dead one, you know. There’s his wake this afternoon.”

“And about time. Maybe then she’ll stop wearing herself to the bone with all this flitting about. In the door, out the door. She might have said she wasn’t staying when she came in. I’d not have told her to see to the onions otherwise and now we’re behindhand on them because I thought she was doing it.” Dame Alys, parading the length of the kitchen and back, rapping her heavy spoon on each of the thick tables as she passed, turned and saw Frevisse. “And you, Dame,” she croaked. “Don’t be asking for more cider for anything whatsoever, I’m telling you.” She rounded on another kitchen worker before Frevisse could reply. “And why aren’t you chopping the kindling like I said? Are you expecting me to do that, too, as well as think for you into the bargain? That fire goes out and it will be your hide they’ll be writing next year’s accounts on, I’ll see to it myself.”

The woman standing by the wood stack in the near corner spread out her empty hands. “The ax is gone. I’m looking for it.”

“The ax is gone. Your wits are gone. My patience went a long, long time ago. You couldn’t find it two days ago. Meg had it out killing chickens for the pies and you couldn’t figure that out. So who has it today? Nobody. Nobody is killing anything today and the fool thing is here somewhere, so look for it, you daft-wit. Pick up something and look. What do you want here, Dame Frevisse?”

Before the chance to answer disappeared, Frevisse replied, “Only to tell you, Dame Alys, that my uncle Thomas Chaucer has sent us a hogshead of cider. Master Naylor is having it moved from the courtyard to your storeroom. So that’s one grief and worry off your mind.”

Since grief and worry-transposed to temper and nagging-were Dame Alys’s main pleasure in life, she was maybe not so happy with the news as she might have been. Her brows drew down heavily, but before she could find something wrong about an excess of cider, one of the women held up the ax and said, “Here! I’ve found it!” and Dame Alys turned on her.

“Not a minute too soon, I’d be saying. And you,” she snapped at another woman. “Why aren’t you chopping the onions?”

“I can’t find a knife for it.”

Dame Alys threw up her hands with an inarticulate cry. Frevisse decided this was not the time to twit Dame Alys further about the cider and left. The hapless kitchen workers would have to endure without her.

The watch over Sister Fiacre’s body, two by two, had come round again to Frevisse this afternoon. She had time to put on her warm nighttime shoes, the ones lined with woolly sheepskin, before going to the church.

Sister Emma came in soon after her, and the two nuns ending their watch flashed them grateful nods as they rose, genuflected toward the altar, and left.

Before kneeling, Frevisse looked briefly at Sister Fiacre’s face. It was waxy now, and faintly mottled, the color too false to mistake its stillness for sleeping, but the expression was serene. There was no evidence, lying as she was, positioned with Dame Claire’s great care, of the terrible destruction to her skull. She might have simply died, Frevisse thought as she knelt and bent her head over her clasped hands.

But she had not. She had died in a way that made no sense, and that lack of sense bothered Frevisse as much as the murder itself. They did not even know what she had been killed with. Something heavy, and therefore perhaps large, not easy to hide surely. Or two weapons, one blunt, one sharp. But no one seemed to have seen anything. It was as blank as the reason for Sister Fiacre being killed at all, if revenge by the players was discounted.

And was she wrong in discounting that, Frevisse wondered?

Because they were the one link between Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s. Had she let her own feelings interfere?

Yes.

She had cared more about proving that Joliffe was innocent than in finding the killer. She almost cared more that the players not be arrested than that the murderer be discovered. Even that she could admit if she faced it. And that was dangerous because what if they were guilty after all? Not just one of them, but all of them together, which looked like the way it had to be if any of them were.

Frevisse pressed her folded hands against her lips until they hurt against her teeth. She had learned as much as she could about the murders and had solved nothing. She was here to pray for Sister Fiacre. She would.

After all, Sister Fiacre’s death was maybe some sort of mercy, wracked as she had been by the cancer in her breast, with nothing but months of cruel and growing pain ahead of her. It was a death as merciful, in its cruel way, as maybe the man Barnaby’s had been, with only a crippled life ahead of him.

Frevisse realized the ugliness of her own thoughts even as she thought them. It was the basest wrong to take God’s place in choosing what was mercy and what was not, in choosing what was right and what was not. She bent her head lower, humiliated by her mind’s treachery, and pressed her knuckles against her forehead, making a new pain to draw her mind away from crippled judgment and crippled lives.

Her mind paused for a frozen moment, then felt that thought again.

Crippled lives. Sister Fiacre and Barnaby had both been crippled, hurting in their different ways.

So many lives were crippled if looked at from a certain angled way. Barnaby. Sister Fiacre. And Sym. And if you looked at it a certain way, so was…

Without realizing it, she had risen to her feet. What she was thinking had a kind of sense to it, no matter how much her mind recoiled from it. Had a kind of sense that explained the unexplained about Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s. Explained in a way that was close to madness.

“Dame Frevisse?” Sister Emma asked uncertainly.

Frevisse shook her head once, sharply, shaking off anything that would break the way her thoughts were now running at full, frightening pitch.

Sister Emma insisted, “Dame Frevisse, what is it?”

Frevisse spun around, grabbed her arm, cried, “Find Dame Claire!” and pushed past her.

“Dame Frevisse!” Sister Emma cried after her but Frevisse was past heeding. She ran the length of the church and out the western door into the yard and wan sunlight. There was no one there but as she ran on, across the yard and through the arched gateway into the outer yard, she saw Naylor talking to two servants in a stable doorway. Her suddenness brought him quickly around, and he started toward her, his mouth opening to question her, but she did not stop. “Come with me!” she cried.

He came after her, catching her urgency.

“Oh, God,” she prayed as she ran, “don’t let it be,” and kept on running.

She smelled it as she reached the closed door of the calving shed. Recognized its warm, coppery smell in the clear cold of the day. She hesitated, unwilling to see what she knew the smell meant.

Naylor reached past her and opened the door.

Meg had killed him beside his brother’s coffin. His blood was there in a spread pool where she must have held him until it finished. But when the bleeding was done, she had moved him to a clean pile of straw. They were there together now, Meg sitting with her legs curled under her, Hewe with his head on her lap, his hands folded on his chest over the embroidered front of Father Henry’s surplice. She must have put it on him afterwards because the only blood on it was a little around the neck, soaked through the cloth she had wound there to cover the gash that let out his life.

With the things she had taken from the sacristry Meg had made Sym’s coffin into as near an altar as she could, covered by one of the white altar cloths, set with the paten and the chalice, all brought from the sacristy. A lamp, in lieu of the candles she did not dare take off the altar, shed its light over the quiet scene. In the moment before others came and the yelling began, Meg looked at Frevisse and Naylor and said serenely, as if she could not see their horror, “He’s gone to Heaven now. He’s safe.”