The Midwife's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  But before she could go on, the front door was pushed hard open and five men rushed in. Elyn, lost in her grieving until then, rose to her feet with startled cry. Ada went hastily to hold her, saying angrily, "Will! Nab! The rest of you! There's a man dying here. Where's your sense?"

  Abashed, the men crowded to a halt. Will muttered, "Sorry. We're right sorry. Only we were told to come, and -- "

  "Aye, aye," Dickon agreed. "It's hue and cry, my woman said, so which way do we go?"

  "Out the back. There. Go on." Ada pointed them out the back door. "There's footprints through the byreyard. That's your trail."

  "I'll bring the others round," Nab said and went back out, to the front where voices in the road told other men were coming. Will and the other three hastily crossed themselves as they went on past Jenkyn on his bed, their faces showing their dismay at the look and sound of him.

  Father Clement followed them out to bless their mission. The room was left to Jenkyn's harsh breathing and the muffled tangle of men's voices, in the byreyard now, until a single hard rap at the front door brought in two more men. A barrel-chested older man and a youth tall enough he had to duck below the lintel as he entered.

  "You're nigh too late, Tom Pollard," Ada said. "Haste out back, or they'll be gone."

  "No need to push, Ada," Pollard rumbled. "My regrets, Elyn," he added to the widow-to-be; but his gaze swung around the room, speculative and assessing, and that was Tom Pollard to the core, Ada knew. Always a man who looked ahead: a hand to the plow in springtime and plans for the harvest all at once. "You'd best stay here, Pers," he said. "For your uncle and to help your aunt. There's enough of the rest of us to see to what needs doing."

  Pers' broad, pleasant face under its thatch of tow hair betrayed how much he did not want to stay, and Ada did not blame him. He was hardly seventeen yet, for all that he was so well grown. Too young yet to be easy around someone's dying. But he stayed and Pollard left, as outside the men's voices rose in angry flurry, Father Clement's blessing done and the hue and cry begun in angry earnest.

  Hesitantly, Pers looked around the room, then went uncertainly to his uncle's side.

  "He's beyond us now," Dame Claire said kindly. "I doubt he's feeling anything."

  Pers nodded without looking at her, his gaze fixed on his uncle, his expression grading from wariness to increasing horror as the dying man's breathing sank through its pattern, each indrawn breath shorter than the one before, each breath rasping harshly out... Dame Claire began to explain that the breathing was something that went with a broken skull, but Father Clement entered then and, seeing Pers, went to him, to lay a hand on his arm and cut off what she was saying to offer his sympathy and add, "The men are off now. They'll do all that can be done to right this wrong."

  Pers nodded dumbly, still watching his uncle. The breathing stopped and they all waited, frozen in the silence, until Jenkyn's chest heaved upwards again, drawing in another hideous breath, and the pattern went on, perhaps more shallow now, more slow, but still remorseless.

  Elyn on her stool moaned and crouched more in on herself. Pers pulled out of Father Clement's hold and said in a strangling voice, "I'd best see to the animals. Clover needs milking sure by now. I'll be back."

  Without waiting for any answer, he escaped out the back door. Frevisse waited until Father Clement had bowed his head to pray over Jenkyn, then drifted quietly after Pers.

  The sun was above the hedgerows now, bold in a cloudless sky, the day perfect for haying but so early yet that dew still silvered wherever shadows lay. For all his haste to be away, Pers had gone no farther than the garden's end and stood there now, holding to the top of the gate, staring out. Moving slowly, careful to let him hear her coming, Frevisse joined him. He acknowledged her with a look and a low bow of his head, but when she did not speak, neither did he and they stood together looking out for a few moments, Frevisse noticing that the hue and cry had trampled out the earlier footprints with the myriad of their own, and left both the outer and garden gates open behind them. Someone had bothered to shove the garden gate almost closed behind them, though, and the spider had begun to spin her web again. So far only a single strand across the gap, but she was already dropping another down from it. Watching her, Frevisse said, "I'm sorry about your uncle. Sorry there was nothing we could do to help him."

  "It's as she said, then? There's no hope?"

  "None, I'm afraid."

  Pers drew a deep, uneven breath and let it out in a ragged sigh. "He's always been good to me. He's a kind man."

  "He's likely glad then you'll be here for your aunt, and have the holding after her, when the time comes."

  "Oh, aye," Pers said as if the thought were new to him. Unlike Pollard, he seemed not to have thought that far ahead yet.

  "But your aunt will have the rule here while she lives, no doubt of that."

  "Aye, she will!" Pers was very clear on that.

  "But you'll stay on to help her."

  "Surely. That's the right way of it." His mind was still only half on her questions and his answers, and he showed where his thoughts more strongly were by saying suddenly, "I should have gone with the hunt despite what Pollard said. I want my hands on the cur who did this!"

  "They'll bring him back here if he's taken."

  "Aye, if he's taken. But it's none so far to the forest and if he's right away to there, they'll likely never have him then. Some ditch-living cur, clean away and my uncle dead!" Remembering too late to whom he was talking, he added, "Beg pardon, my lady."

  Unoffended, Frevisse asked, "You think that's how it was? A passing stranger taking a chance at theft and murder?"

  He looked at her. "How else could it have been? There's no one here would harm my uncle. He never quarreled with anyone nor anyone with him."

  "Not even his wife?"

  "Aunt Elyn?" Pers scorned the notion. "She might quarrel with a neighbor, but not him. He never gave her cause, always did what she asked of him."

  "And will you when you're living with her? Do what you're told?"

  A blush brightened under his tan. "For a while," he said uncomfortably. "But I'm marrying at Lammastide." Despite his effort to hold it back, a shy but broadening smile tugged at his mouth. "We agreed on it last night, Kate and me." He added hastily, as if worried that Frevisse might be off to spread the word on the instant, "Only don't say so to anyone! No one knows yet. We were going to tell her Da today. Well, ask him if we could but he'll say yes to it and be glad, we know."

  His happiness shone on him, burning for the moment even stronger than his anger and grief. For him, just now, Death was a thing that happened to other people, not something that should come near him or his Kate. The thought crossed Frevisse's mind that a year ago it must have seemed just so to Martyn Fisher, grieving now for his dead young wife.

  "I'll tell no one," she said and let her questioning fall aside for a while.

  But she did not leave him, only contented herself with watching the spider at her web-weaving between the gate and gatepost. A lovely spider, mottled light brown and gold, almost as big as her thumbnail. The creature had nearly finished her web's frame. Then would come the spiral outward from its center, and she was precise but quick about her business because there was food to be caught and no telling when forces beyond her spidery comprehension would bring her work to naught again.

  The cow lowed earnestly from the byre, and Pers reached to open the gate, to go through. Frevisse put out her hand, stopping him. "Go around," she said. "Or over the fence." He stared at her as if in doubt of her senses, and she added, "I'm watching the spider."

  Pers drew back. "Oh, aye," he agreed, but plainly seeing no sense to it. "But I have to see to the animals and this is the way through."

  "Go over the fence."

  "It's too high to jump, please you, my lady, and it'll crack if I climb it," he replied, carefully, as if beginning to think she were simple. But what he said was true enough. The fence was too high to jump and its with
ies would not hold much weight beyond a very small child's.

  Patiently, Frevisse said, "Then go back through the house, out the front door and around. I'm watching the spider."

  Pers louted her a bow and went, taking his perplexity with him, because after all half the village was owned by the nunnery, maybe even the Browster's considerable holding, and that gave Frevisse authority to tell him what to do, woman though she was. Authority like no woman in the village had over any man, unless she came to it the way Elyn Browster had, simply by being the stronger in her marriage, and even that was not so very much power in the long run.

  But Elyn would have a prosperous widowhood; and maybe after her first grief eased, she would even enjoy it. Or would she, without someone over whom to wield her authority? Jenkyn would be gone and Pers would shortly go, and though she could likely find another husband if she chose, was she likely to find another as amenable to her will as Jenkyn had been?

  Patiently -- could it be called patience and a virtue when done simply out of a creature's blind nature? -- the spider crept on around her strands, beginning her webbed spiral in the morning sunlight.

  Ada would not have thought that Jenkyn could have gone on breathing for so long. The huge gasping lasted less long between the nerve-jerking silences but always it came back again. Father Clement stood at the foot of the bed, praying of course, but his hands clenched together as if holding himself there by force of will. More quietly, Dame Claire stood at Jenkyn's head. Neither Pers nor Dame Frevisse had returned; and Elyn still sat on the stool by the hearth, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, eyes fixed on her lap. Half a dozen other women had come after the men had gone, roused to Elyn's need, but she had taken no comfort from them. Though occasionally one or another patted her shoulder, whispered something kind to her, she seemed beyond noticing them.

  It was relief to hear the men's voices coming along the road out front. Though by the sound of them the hue and cry had had no luck, at least it was change from their own miserable waiting and the sound of Jenkyn's breathing. As Ada went quickly to open the front door to them, Dame Frevisse returned through the back. She went to stand beside Dame Claire. Pers came in almost immediately behind her, his feet unwiped from the byre so that he stopped just inside the back door as Ada opened the front.

  Most of the men there were standing away, in the road, some of them already trailing on toward their homes. It was Pollard who came to the door and started, "We're back then but -- "

  "Come in with it, man," Father Clement called. "We all want to hear."

  Pollard looked back at his fellows. They waved him on, willing to leave it to him, so he came in, glanced at the bed and immediately away, looked at Elyn for some notice he was there and when she gave none, went on with, "It wasn't any use. There was no trail to follow once we were out of the yard. And we were tired to start with and it's growing hot -- " He was half-apologizing as well as explaining. " -- and the reeve expects us to the haying soon. We did what we could but there was no use to it, truly."

  Father Clement said, "You did what you could. That will be enough for the sheriff and crowner." Enough to save the village a fine, anyway. "But we'd best send someone around to the near villages to warn them there's a murdering thief at large."

  "There's no need for that," Dame Frevisse said quietly. "Whoever did this didn't run away."

  Father Clement frowned at her. "We know that he did, dame."

  "Ran out the back when he heard Elyn coming in," Pollard said. "Through the byreyard. We all saw his prints. They show clear what he did."

  Dame Frevisse shook her head. "The footprints in the yard mud are a lie. No one went out that way at dawn today."

  Sternly, letting his disapproval of her show, Father Clement said, "That's a foolish thought, dame. Leave this to those who know."

  Ada listened amazed to such talk between nun and priest. Nuns were more bold than she had thought. Or at least this one was. And even now, faced with Father Clement's reproof, Dame Frevisse said, "There's more to know than that, I think." She turned from him to Dame Claire and asked, "May I lift Jenkyn's head? Will it cause him any harm?"

  "Dame, this is hardly -- " Father Clement began to protest.

  Ignoring him, Dame Claire answered, "He's past more harm. May I help? What do you want?"

  "To take off his coif."

  "Don't," Elyn whispered. "Don't hurt him more."

  Neither of the nuns paid her heed. Instead Dame Claire carefully lifted Jenkyn's head and held it while Dame Frevisse carefully untied and took off his coif, laid it aside, and then felt at the back of his head with her long fingers.

  "Yes," she murmured to herself. And to Father Clement, "Come here, if it please you, Father. And you." She included Ada; and Ada, more eagerly than the priest, went to her. As gently as if Jenkyn might feel it, Dame Frevisse took hold of his head from Dame Claire and turned it sideways so they could see the back of it. "You see there's blood here, matted in his hair."

  Father Clement, managing not to look too closely at skull or blood, snapped, "As well there might be." Elyn moaned and covered her ears with her hands, her head sinking lower.

  "But no blood on the coif," Dame Frevisse said. She set Jenkyn's head down on the pillow again and picked up the cloth hat. "See. There's blood in plenty dried into his hair but none on his coif."

  "And there should be," said Ada, grasping what she meant.

  "There should be," Dame Frevisse agreed. "Elyn, when did you leave your husband last night?"

  "Last night?" Elyn repeated vaguely, lifting her head. She made the effort to gather her wits. "We went to the bonfire on the green and watched the dancing. He wouldn't dance, he hasn't for years, but we watched. And then we came home and he went to bed." The effort to think was steadying her; she became more certain. "He went to bed but I stayed up a little and was about to cover the fire when Ada came because of Cisily and I left him sleeping and went out with her."

  Ada nodded readily. "That's right. I came for her when it began to look bad for Cisily and I didn't come in because Elyn feared I'd wake Jenkyn."

  "But you didn't see him?"

  "Well, no. Not from outside, would I?"

  A little more roused, Elyn said, "He was sleeping when I left. He meant to be out at dawn to cut those thistles. He was in bed and when I came home at dawn I found him like that." Her eyes flinched toward the bed and away again. "On the floor and all dressed but like that." Her voice quavered toward tears. "I swear it!"

  Ada and the other women closed around her, Ada murmuring, "It's all right, love. It's all right." It was Pollard who said indignantly, "A thief came in while he was readying to go out this morning, killed him, and then ran out the back way when he heard Elyn coming. That's plain."

  "It isn't plain," Dame Frevisse snapped. "If it happened that way, there should be blood on the coif and there isn't. And when I first went into the garden, before anyone else did, there was a spider's web across the open garden gateway. An unbroken spider's web all hung with dew. No one went through that gateway this dawn."

  "Then he went over the fence," Pollard said impatiently.

  With a glance at Dame Frevisse and the air of someone accurately repeating a lesson, Pers put in, "The fence is too high to be jumped and too weak to be climbed." Then he flushed as Pollard looked angrily at him.

  "And aside from that," Dame Frevisse said, "the footprints show he went through the gateway, not over the fence."

  "You just said he didn't go through the gateway!" Pollard quickly pointed out.

  "Not at dawn," Dame Frevisse answered back. "Whoever did this to Jenkyn didn't run through that gate at dawn. He would have broken the spider's web, and it wasn't broken. This was done last night." To Father Clement she asked, "Among the men Jenkyn knew, who had reason to want him dead? Or will have the most from his death?"

  With shock, Ada found that she had looked without thinking at Pers. And that so had everyone else in the room. He gaped back at them, speechless, b
ut Elyn exclaimed, "No! He'd not harm a hair of Jenkyn's head! There'd be no point. Everything comes to me. Everyone knows that."

  "But he'd be the man here," Dame Frevisse said. "Just you and he to run things and no Jenkyn in the way."

  Elyn flushed a dark, shamed red at what was implied behind the words. Furiously indignant for both of them, Father Clement cut in. "Here now! No one's ever thought of any such thing!"

  "There's nothing between us," Elyn whispered. "There's nothing and never has been."

  More loudly and more definitely, Pers declared, "That's right!"

  Pollard, more outraged than either of them, said, "It's flat stupid to think there is. He's to marry my girl!"

  Ignoring their combined indignation, Dame Frevisse asked Pers, "Did you dance with Pollard's Kate at the bonfire last night?"

  "Aye. Of course." Defiantly.

  "And spent the night with her?

  Angrily Pollard put in, with an uneasy glance at Father Clement -- fathers had to pay fines for girls who were wayward before their marriage -- "That he did, but in my house with all the rest of us. So we know where he was all last night and he had no chance of doing anything to his uncle."

  Dame Frevisse turned to Ada, and Ada found her direct, demanding gaze disconcerting even before she asked, "Did Elyn come out with you right away when you came last night? Or did you have to wait a while?"

  "She said she had to cover the fire and I should go back to Cisily," Ada answered, trying to see why it mattered. This was all going too quickly for her. "She said she'd be there just after me and she was."

  "A little after? Or longer?"

  Beginning to understand but unwilling to, Ada answered slowly, "I was busy with Cisily. I don't know. A little while. Not much."

  "Enough while that she could have put on Jenkyn's shoes and made those footprints on the doorstep and across the byreyard?"