5 The Boy's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “We’ll be risking more if I don’t ride!” Sir Gawyn snapped.

  Will opened his mouth to say something else, but Maryon interposed, “Did you find someone to mend your shirt?”

  “Aye, one of the women here will do it.” Will shrugged the question away.

  Maryon, intent on diverting him from Sir Gawyn’s shoulder, cut off whatever next he meant to say with, “And did you tell someone that Sir Gawyn can eat a heavier meal tonight than he has been?”

  “I’ve told the cook that, yes,” Will said.

  “And—”

  He cut her off impatiently. “I’ve seen to it all. Sire—”

  Sir Gawyn cut them both off with a small sound of annoyance. “Enough, the both of you. I won’t be worried over.” And added, more to Will than Maryon, “I’m not your bone.”

  Will’s expression shut abruptly down to the blank obedience of a servant. He bowed silently and fixed his look somewhere on the far wall. Sir Gawyn gave his attention over to Frevisse, saying, “Let things stay as they are for today. But tomorrow I think there’s changes to be made. Our thanks for what you did. It will be remembered.”

  Recognizing dismissal, Frevisse curtsied, said, “Their safety is thanks enough. No other remembrance is necessary,” matching his manner, and gladly left him to Maryon and Will. He had her prayers. She wished him well, both for his own sake and because the sooner he was gone the better; the boys would go with him, cease to be so direct a threat to St. Frideswide’s and no longer her concern.

  But until then they were, and she needed to find what else could be done to keep them safe.

  Chapter 15

  Frevisse returned to the cloister and went into the church. Neglect of her duties as sacrist had not been included in Dame Claire’s permission to see to the matter of the boys. In the sacristy she took out the third best silver-plated candlesticks and set to polishing them. With even the least diligence, she should be able to occupy her mind with the necessities of duty—when silver polishing was done, there was always the need to inspect the altar cloths for frays or tears—until Vespers, unless Master Naylor sent to say he had word of something.

  What the something might be she supposed she could speculate on to no profit. Whoever had shoved Edmund and Jasper into the pool had taken care the boys not see him, even though he had not intended they live long enough for it to matter if they had. So he was probably careful enough to have left no footprints worth mentioning unless the attacker was phenomenally careless enough to walk in the mud somewhere, and even then soft shoe soles would leave nothing but an undistinguished foot-shape good only for determining if he had been generally large or small or medium.

  It would be convenient if he had left a torn bit of his clothing on a rough branch somewhere. She supposed she could hope for that much anyway. And there was still the chance he had been seen going to or coming from the woods, but there were hedges and walls enough, and nearly everyone gone to the haying anyway, that he would have to be either a dolt or unlucky to have been seen except by unlikely accident.

  Except that if he were a stranger, he would not know his way around well enough to make such good use of walls and hedges.

  But if he were a stranger, he would be more likely to be noticed even when he was well away from the stream and not bothering with concealment anymore.

  But why had he been by the stream, in the woods, at all? Surely not in the specific hope of having a chance against the boys. Their coming there by chance would have seemed too unlikely. But then again, had their going there been only chance? Was there something the children had not told her? There could in fact be a great deal they had not told her; she had given them no chance to tell her much of anything. She could talk to Lady Adela this evening and the boys tomorrow.

  But that did not solve the problem of who had lain in wait in the woods for them. Or not lain in wait? Suppose it had just been someone wanting to harm anyone who happened along and Edmund and Jasper had happened to hand. That kind of madness was not impossible. And ugly though it was, it would be less complicated than the other possibilities she had been considering.

  She wanted very much to hear that a stranger had been seen somewhere near today. Preferably a disreputable hedge-crawler who looked the sort to be up to anything mean and hurtful.

  She realized she had been polishing the same curve of candlestick past any need, and turned it over to come at a different place but found she was finished with it, so set it back into its aumbry, folded her polishing cloth, and decided she would be better off in her choir stall praying until Vespers. But as she left the sacristy, Sister Juliana approached her and gestured that she was wanted at the cloister door. Frevisse silently indicated her thanks and went.

  As she came out into the warm sunshine of the yard from the cool cloister shadows, Master Naylor stood up from where he had been sitting on the well edge and came down the steps toward her, his face, even for Master Naylor, grim.

  “You found something?” she asked.

  “More than you asked for. A dead man floating facedown in the pool.”

  Frevisse gasped and had to draw in new breath before she could force out, “Who?”

  “The man Colwin. Drowned, by the look of him.”

  “Colwin?” The boys’ Colwin who had cheerfully taken them into the stable yesterday? “In the pool? Drowned?” she repeated blankly.

  “Unless he drowned elsewhere and then walked himself there. He didn’t wash down that babbling stream in any flood, that’s sure.”

  “But the pool isn’t that deep. Not over his head if he stood up.”

  “Then obviously he didn’t stand up,” Master Naylor snapped.

  Frevisse sat down on one of the well steps. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “Nor did he, I suppose,” Master Naylor said acidly. But his anger was cover for his own dismay and, relenting, he said more reasonably, “But we’re maybe making too much of it. His clothing was on the bank. He might have been in to swim, had a cramp and drowned.”

  Her wits beginning to gather back, Frevisse said, “How did he happen to know about the pool? Had someone told him about it or did he happen on it himself?” And then drown there the same afternoon the boys nearly did? She could not make that seem likely.

  “The man who found him said he wondered how he came to be there,” Master Naylor said. “He wasn’t given to wandering around since he came here, apparently.”

  “Has Father Henry been told? Where’s the body now?”

  “He’s been told. He’s gone with the men I’ve sent to bring it in.”

  Frevisse stood up. “I want to see it.”

  Master Naylor hesitated. “It won’t be a goodly sight.”

  “He can’t have been in the water so long the corpse has turned awful,” Frevisse said bluntly. “It’s barely been half the afternoon since I was there.”

  At this evidence of a strong stomach, Master Naylor— who should have known better about Frevisse—closed his mouth to a tight line. He turned on his heel and walked away toward the gate to the side yard. Frevisse, assuming that was as near to agreement as she was going to have from him, rose and followed.

  The four men sent to bring Colwin in were just at the postern gate as Master Naylor and Frevisse came out, the body on a hurdle carried between them and Father Henry walking alongside, praying aloud from his prayer book. He and Latin were not so comfortable together as they might have been, but he made up for his inaccuracies with intensity, and a soul cast unexpectedly from a body was in even worse peril than usually came at the moment of death; prayers as many and rapid as possible were needed to save it and, hopefully, ease its passing. Father Henry neither paused nor glanced up from his work as Master Naylor ordered, “Bring it this way,” and the men shifted course to follow him aside to the open-sided shed where the hanks of wool were hung to dry after dying. No one was there today, nor any wool hanging, but there was a rough worktable and the men gratefully slid the piece of fencing onto it
; Colwin had not been a small man.

  Frevisse was grateful that the haying had nearly everyone out to the fields. Besides herself and Master Naylor, there were only the four men curious but saying nothing as Master Naylor ordered them to stand back, and Father Henry across the table from her, still intent in his prayers as she came near for her first clear look at the body.

  Colwin’s clothing was in a folded pile at his side, except that he still wore his short breech covering his loins, as men often did when they went in swimming. A single long look told Frevisse there were no wounds on the body’s front.

  “Turn him over, please,” she said.

  The men gave Master Naylor quick, questioning looks. He twitched his hand, bidding one of them obey her, and the fellow reluctantly did, heaving Colwin’s flaccid body onto its side, then to its belly. Water came out of the mouth. An arm flopped over the table edge. Frevisse lifted it back to beside the body. The flesh was unnaturally cool but still soft to the touch, he had been dead so little a while.

  There was no wounds on his back either.

  “Was there more water come out of him when you picked him up?” she asked.

  “Much more, my lady,” the man said.

  “So he was alive when he went into the water,” Master Naylor said.

  “Alive enough to breathe awhile,” Frevisse agreed.

  She touched his head, feeling to be sure the skull was intact. It was; no bones shifted under her probing. But …

  She hesitated, felt again along the back curve of the skull, and then asked Master Naylor, “Do you feel anything here?”

  Master Naylor felt, felt again, and said, “There’s a lump.” He parted Colwin’s dark hair. “A large lump and new, I’d guess, but the skin wasn’t broken. It didn’t bleed.”

  “Big enough he could have been knocked unconscious by it?” Frevisse asked.

  “He might have been,” Master Naylor agreed. “He fell, likely.”

  But where in the pool or beside the pool could he have fallen hard enough to knock himself out? There were no rocks that Frevisse remembered. A heavy tree branch? Not overhanging the pool so that he would have fallen after striking it. And besides … She felt the lump again. It was a round lump, very localized, not oblong as it would have been if he had fallen against a branch or anything more than a small, round rock.

  “When was he last seen?” she asked.

  The men looked among themselves. The one who had rolled the body over suggested, “Dinner maybe? Midday?” There were nods of vague agreement from the others. “Then he went off. Don’t know where?” he asked and the others shook their heads, agreeing they did not know.

  “Will you ask around, to see if anyone saw him after that?” she requested Master Naylor.

  “There’re not many others here just now. All we can spare are out to the haying. But I’ll ask.”

  Frevisse nodded. It was the same in the guesthalls and in the cloister itself. Only the most absolutely needed servants remained; this time of year the needs of haying came first in almost everything.

  “Roll him back over,” she said. The man did and she stood looking into the dead face. Someone had closed his eyes but with the handling his jaw had dropped in death’s slackness. His hair had begun to dry on the way up from the stream but lay lank and formless around his head. He had not been particularly prepossessing in life and was less so now; but he had been alive and someone had taken his life from him, without chance of confession or absolution. Had taken more than his life: had taken his surety of salvation. For what?

  She prodded through his clothing and pulled out his belt with his purse and dagger still hanging from it. The dagger was not especially fine but good enough to steal if one was out for theft. She looked in the purse. A silver penny, a bent halfpenny, and a well-used pair of dice. His money, such as it was, had not been wanted, either.

  She put money and dice back into the purse and gathered up it and the belt and dagger. “I’ll take these to his knight,” she said.

  “Is there anything more?” Master Naylor asked.

  “No.”

  He told the men to go on with the body. They went, Father Henry with them still audibly praying, but Frevisse stayed where she was. She had more to ask Master Naylor, but he asked first, “So it looks like a drowning. Was it?”

  “He drowned,” Frevisse agreed. “But I’d guess he was hit on the head first and dumped in to drown afterward.”

  “Unless he was already in the water, swimming, when he was struck.”

  “The effect was the same,” Frevisse said. “Was he the sort to go off by himself?”

  “No. He settled himself among our folk almost as soon as he came here and has been fellow-well-met ever since. Generally liked so far as I could tell. The only reason he wasn’t to the haying with most of the rest was he’d been told to keep close here in case he was needed.”

  “Needed? For what?”

  “You’re the one who knows what’s toward here, not I,” Master Naylor said. “You tell me.”

  “Apparently I don’t know as much of what’s toward as I need to,” Frevisse returned. “I can’t even guess whether he was more likely to have been killed by chance or to a purpose, by a stranger or someone here who knew him. Had he had quarrels since he came here with anyone at all?”

  “So near as I could tell, he was easy tempered and easily gotten on with. No, that’s not all true. He was in heavy words this morning sometime with that other fellow who came with him. The squire.”

  “Will? Sir Gawyn’s squire? They were quarreling?” That might make things simpler, though she had not thought Will the ill-tempered sort to quarrel and then stalk and kill a man.

  But Master Naylor shook his head. “Not an outright argument, I’d judge. A disagreement maybe, with Will— that’s the name?—frowning and trying to make a point that Colwin just grinned at and shook his head against.”

  “But you don’t know what it was about?”

  “It was no concern of mine. I didn’t ask. Maybe someone else knows.”

  “Was Colwin after women any?”

  “Not that I saw or heard of.”

  “Could you ask around and see what’s said of him? And if anyone knows what he and Will talked of that time?”

  “That I’ll do. And send a man I shouldn’t have to spare this time of year to Montfort again. And tell people to keep an eye out for strangers. And hope this is the end of it. Is there aught else I should see to?”

  “No. I’ll go myself to tell Sir Gawyn and Mistress Maryon about this.” The bell began to ring inside the wall. “After Vespers,” she added with resignation.

  “I’ll go tell them, if you like. They should know as soon as may be.”

  “I’d be grateful if you did,” she said. And then changed her mind. “No, I’d rather do it myself.” To see their reactions as they heard of the death. “So I should do it now.”

  Chapter 16

  When Frevisse came in, Sir Gawyn was across the room from his bed, leaning on Will, Maryon close on his other side in case of need, but upright and walking. Barely walking and obviously weak but moving mostly on his own.

  The window, kept so definitely closed until now, was open, letting in the warm day’s fresh air and the late afternoon sunlight to shine high against the wall above the bed.

  They all looked up as Frevisse paused in the open doorway, their expressions glad with Sir Gawyn’s triumph changing to surprise. Maryon glanced toward the sound of the bell as if it were something she could see and started to say, “Shouldn’t you—” then froze, the gladness of the moment going out of her. “The boys. What’s happened?”

  “Nothing to them. They’re in bed and probably sleeping. It’s Colwin. He’s dead.”

  She wanted particularly Will’s reaction, but at her words he bent his head until his bright hair fell like a curtain, and she could not see his face. Letting loose of Sir Gawyn with his right hand, he crossed himself as Maryon and Sir Gawyn, their expressions st
ricken, also did, Sir Gawyn asking as he did, “How?”

  “Drowned in the stream below the nunnery. There’s a pool there in the woods. He was found in the water.”

  “Drowned?” Sir Gawyn repeated. “How? Why didn’t someone help him?”

  “Apparently he was swimming alone. Was that usual for him?”

  “Not Colwin,” Sir Gawyn said. “He liked companions, whatever he did.”

  Will nodded agreement.

  “Or he may not have been swimming,” Frevisse said. “There’s evidence he was struck on the back of the head. He was maybe unconscious when he went into the water.”

  Sir Gawyn made a wide gesture of a grief stronger than Frevisse had yet seen in him. And with the frustration of helplessness and anger.

  But it was Maryon who put into words the fear surely growing in all of them. “They’ve found us and they won’t stop until there are none of us left! Until there’s no one to come between them and the children!”

  Will raised his head, color flooding his cheeks. “No one is going to hurt the children,” he said. “We swore it to their lady mother.”

  He looked at Sir Gawyn, and the knight met his gaze, their faces matched in rigid determination.

  “We can’t keep our oaths if we’re dead!” Maryon said with angry fear.

  “So we must stay alive,” Sir Gawyn answered. A sweat was breaking out over his pallor. He sagged on his squire’s arm. “I have to lie down again.”

  Maryon caught him around the waist, careful of his hurt shoulder, but it was on sturdy Will that most of his weight leaned as they helped him back to bed and laid him down on it, Will lifting his feet up and swinging them around to stretch him out flat. Sir Gawyn lay with his eyes closed, breathing as if after great effort; but when he had steadied, he said, eyes still closed, “We have to bring the children here. Where we can guard them.”

  “They’re better kept in the nunnery,” Will said flatly. “They’re harder to come at there.”

  Sir Gawyn made a derogatory sound. “Simple walls, unguarded doors, no men—” he started, but Mary on interrupted. With a sharp look meant to silence both men, she said, “We can talk of it in a while. Dame Frevisse needs to go to Vespers.”