The Servant's Tale

3

THE PLAYER HAD not boasted. Frevisse had seen joints reset before and knew it took as much strength as skill to put a shoulder back into its socket. The sinews that allowed a man to swing a scythe all morning or wrestle a plow along a furrow were equally able to resist the effort to slide bones back into their place. Insensible though he was, Barnaby groaned while two of the priory men held him down and the player pulled and twisted with seeming brutality at his arm, until at last there was the unmistakable snap of arm bone into shoulder joint.

The men stood back, grinning at one another in shared triumph, and Barnaby subsided into low moaning.

“My thanks to you,” Dame Claire said. “Your name, that I may properly thank God who sent you to us when we were in need of you?”

The black-haired man bowed to her. “Ellis, my lady,” he said.

He returned to the others, still smiling.

Dame Claire said to the gathered gawkers, “You can go back to your duties or your rest, except you and you and…” Her gaze fell on Sister Amicia the same moment that Frevisse’s did.

Sister Amicia had come to St. Frideswide’s because, after dowering her four older sisters, her father’s purse had run thin, and he had chosen to save the remainder and increase his reward in the hereafter by offering his last daughter to St. Frideswide’s as a nun. A good daughter, she had done as bidden and taken the veil six years ago. But more than vows and veil were needed to make a nun of her. She was mostly obedient and devout at her prayers; but despite the Rule, she was given to ribbons and other pretty things her sisters brought when they came visiting, and just now she was regarding Ellis’s retreating back with far too much awareness that he was a tall, well-built, not unhandsome man.

“…Sister Amicia. I think you can go back to the cloister now, Sister, and see what we left undone in the infirmary,” Dame Claire finished, matching Frevisse’s own thought.

Frevisse, as ready as Dame Claire to see to work, said, “Annie, take that yellow cloth and set it to soak so you can scrub it clean come morning. We can do that much more for the folk who saved him. The rest of you, about your business. See there’s enough wood for both these fires, and bedding brought for our other guests. And someone tell his wife she can come back now. I’d best ask Dame Alys what food can be spared from the kitchen for our guests. Sister Amicia, come.”

Sister Amicia, all lowered eyes and humility, murmured, “Yes, Dame,” and followed Frevisse out the door.

The players’ horse and cart were waiting in the courtyard. The horse, a mare, was a raw-boned creature with a malformed forehoof, but no thinner than to be expected of a hard-worked animal that only rarely saw grain. Young Joliffe had already unloaded a few things from the cart and was now standing at the mare’s head, gentling her nose in his cupped hand and murmuring in her ear. Frevisse told Sister Amicia to go on and turned aside to speak to him.

He let loose of the horse as she came up to him, and made a bow that was as humble as Bassett’s had been theatrical. But when he straightened, his gaze was critical, and Frevisse felt again the uneasy awareness that he was far older than he looked.

“My thanks along with Master Bassett’s for letting us stay, my lady,” he said. His gratitude seemed genuine, neither forced nor false. But his speech was bold for someone so dependent on the whims of the stranger.

Frevisse kept her opinion to herself for now, and said, “It would have been poor courtesy to put you back on the road after the kindness you did. Stabling for your horse is back out through the gate to the outer yard and to your left. Someone there will show you where to put your cart.”

Joliffe began to lead Tisbe forward and around, saying casually, “Kindness is a rare commodity, true enough. It would have been a shame to pass up so plain a chance to give it where it was so sorely needed. And here, you see, we’re receiving it back again.”

“You’ve been on the road long?”

Ensuring that the back of the cart would miss the wall as he turned, Joliffe answered, “Do you mean me, or all of us together?”

“I mean, how long has it been since your group had a roof for the night?”

“We’ve managed a roof all but the last two nights. We spent-hup, Tisbe, come around now-we spent Christmas Day at Fen Harcourt manor, and we’re meaning to be in Oxford for New Year’s and stay through Twelfth Night. Master Bassett knows an innkeeper there.”

“So you’re not in need of anything but a night’s rest from us?”

Joliffe brought Tisbe to a stop and turned his full attention to Frevisse. “Why such concern?” he demanded. “We’re none of your people, that you should be particularly caring. You’ve done your duty in giving us shelter and promise of fire and food.”

Meeting his look, Frevisse answered as boldly as he asked, “I know how hard the road can be in winter, and you’ve a child and a woman with you.”

He had the grace to look almost abashed, but before he could respond, the cloister bell began to ring, calling to Vespers. Frevisse inclined her head, turning away as she said, “Pray pardon me. I’ll come again before Compline to see how all is going.”

The Vespers service went its strong, graceful way, declaring the day’s richness and hoping the blessings it had brought were unending. “Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo, salutari meo.” My spirit has found joy in God, who is my Savior, because He has looked graciously upon the lowliness of His handmaid.

But its flow and beauty were severely marred in St. Frideswide’s by a general croak-throated snuffling among the nuns.

The illness had begun before Christmas among the servants, had spread to the nuns, and had not yet run its course, though Dame Claire-busy with poultices and herb brews-assured them it would. The worst of Frevisse’s own sore throat was gone, but she still made steady use of her handkerchief and lacked her usual energy. Like most of the others, she had to be careful of her singing, that it did not turn to sudden croaking; and like them, she often failed.

And today, unfortunately, Dame Claire was still with the injured man so that her deep, rich voice, almost fully recovered from her own rheum, was not there to carry the others. Without it, the strongest singer was Sister Thomasine, whose thin, bright soprano rose now over everyone else’s broken efforts.

Despite her apparent frailty, Sister Thomasine had flourished in the year and a little more since she had joyfully taken her final vows. Her holiness was as accepted a matter in the priory as the seven daily services, and Frevisse had heard it being whispered among the nuns that it was her holiness and the answering grace of God that kept her alone from succumbing to the present pest of sneezing and wheezing.

About that, Frevisse worked very hard to have no opinion, for if she had allowed herself one, it might have been that Sister Thomasine was kept free of disease to test Frevisse’s patience.

After Vespers most of the nuns had their period of rest and reflection before supper. But today Frevisse, feeling her duties to the priory’s guests were unfinished, returned to the guesthall. There she found the players had gathered around the farther hearth and were settled in with their belongings around them. The woman among them was stirring a pot set close to the flames, her thin features flattered almost into beauty by the shifting orange light. The boy Piers was curled up near her, asleep on someone’s cloak, even more sweet-faced asleep than when he was awake. The three men were sitting across from them in close talk that dissolved frequently into laughter. Ellis tossed the small pieces of the stick he had been breaking between his hands into the fire with a casual, relaxed gesture.

There was no ease in the gathering beside the other hearth. Only Dame Claire, the hurt man, Meg and her son, and an older boy were left. Another son, Frevisse thought. That was good; even if her husband died, poor Meg would still have her sons, and the older boy looked old enough to inherit. Lord Lovel’s steward was a fair-minded man; if they could keep up their duties and rents they would keep the holding even if Barnaby died.

She went to stand where she knew Dame Claire would be aware of her, not intruding, willing to wait until there was pause for the infirmarian to tell her if there was anything she could do. The man’s hurts had been cleaned and the worst of them bandaged, including the gash along his head. Closely covered in blankets, with his shoulder in place, he did not look so hopeless a matter as he had at first. He was still unconscious, or asleep, his head rolled to one side and his mouth slacked open, though he was breathing with such heavy effort through his nose that it was probably broken, too.

Dame Claire, with great care, was picking up his injured hand. Barnaby moved his head toward her, but his eyes did not open until, tentatively, she moved his forefinger. Then he made a wordless cry and opened his eyes wide. They were glazed and bloodshot and seemed to see nothing. She let go of his finger and he subsided to silence, his eyes closing again.

“Please don’t do that!” whispered Meg hoarsely. “It’s no good. His hand’s no good and never will be anymore.”

The first horror was gone from her now, if not the shock. She was sunk down on the floor on her husband’s other side, one hand clenched into a fist and pressed between her meager breasts, her other hand holding tightly to her younger son’s arm as he sat leaning against her. Her strained, haunted eyes stared at the ruin of her husband’s hand as Dame Claire gently put it down, and she did not seem to notice her older son, hunched down on his heels behind her, reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder.

As often is with brothers, the two boys were not much alike. The younger had his mother’s small bones, the fair skin and blond hair she might have had when she was young, though she was years past showing either of them now. The older boy was more like his father, tall and big in bone, with coarse dark hair, his boy’s face already beginning to flesh out in what would be heavy-jowled manhood. A manhood that was going to come on him sooner than it should have even if his father lived.

“Now, Mam,” he said, “let her be. Maybe she can mend it.”

“Nothing can mend him, Sym. Hush you,” Meg said without emotion, not looking around at him.

Dame Claire touched the first two fingers of the swollen hand laid on Barnaby’s stomach. “By some wonder,” she said, “these bones right here seem to be the only ones broken, but they’re broken right back to his wrist, and they’re not bones I can set, being so small and many jointed. All I can do is wrap his hand close to its proper shape, and pray it mends so he can use it.”

“He’s going to live?” asked the younger boy.

“I don’t know. If he’s taken hurt inside, if there’s something broken where I can’t tell it, or he’s bleeding where it doesn’t show…” She drew a deep breath and said more firmly, looking at Meg, “We just won’t know for a while and a while yet. If he lasts the night and recovers his wits, then there’s hope. Do you mean to stay here or would you rather go home? Dame Frevisse or I will watch by him all night if you would rather go home and rest.”

“We’ll watch by him,” Meg said without hesitation. “He’s ours and we’ll keep the watch. Better there’s faces he knows when he awakes. Or when he goes,” she added in a lowered voice, her gaze returning to his face.

“I’ll see to their bedding,” said Frevisse. “Tell me what I should watch for, then go to your supper and Compline. I’ll manage here.”

“You haven’t eaten, either,” Dame Claire said. “I’ll bring your supper along with what he’s going to need to cover the pain when he wakens.”

Meg stood up. “I can fetch the lady’s supper, by your leave,” she said. “I work in the kitchen and know my way.”

“That’s where I know you from,” Dame Claire said. “You brought the posset I wanted for Domina Edith when her cold was so bad two days ago.”

“And I fixed it myself,” Meg said a little eagerly.

“It was excellent and served her well. Yes, bring Dame Frevisse’s supper. I’ll see to the medicine.”