The Outlaw's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries)

by Margaret Frazer

  They all looked up and acknowledged her coming, Adam starting to rise to his feet respectfully. Frevisse waved him back down.

  “I'm simply weary of keeping to Mistress Dow's chamber, and Mistress Payne is busy, so I thought I'd see if there were company and talk here," she said with disarming friendliness.

  “Oh, aye, here's good company," Jack said cheerfully. “Better than being out in the rain anyways."

  Both he and the maidservant seemed in good humor. They chatted with her easily about her journeying and the other nun’s health, and in low voices were mildly rude about the cook, claiming that he never thought of aught but food and, if he had the means, he'd be as wide as his own kitchen.

  “But it never looks good to a master to have too fat a cook – it means the cook is eating more and better than he is," Jack said. “I'd have been a cook if my family could have apprenticed me anywhere."

  “You'd not," the maidservant protested. “What would you want to do that for?"

  “Why would I want to be warm and dry and with all I want to eat? Occasionally greasy and yelled at maybe, but I'm yelled at anyway. And mud's as bad as grease." He gestured at his boots. He had wiped them off, but they were still well along to be being ruined with old mud as well as new. “Just try in this weather to keep them clean," he grumbled. “Yesterday I'd just come back with Mistress Payne and cleaned them off and had to turn around to go fetch bastard Colfoot's body - asking your pardon, my lady – and mire myself to the knees again. Pity he couldn't have found a drier place to die."

  “You're not the only one," Adam said. He had hardly spoken. The steady whet-wheet of his knives sharpening had made a background to their talk. Now he spoke bitterly. “And you're not the one who's had to clean not only your own but Master Payne's and young master’s boots as well."

  “You'd not have had to clean yours so much if you'd not gone off daft to the village in the morning and put yourself in such a stomping temper," Jack returned. “And for a broken-nosed whore at that. Begging your pardon, my lady," he added as Adam rose up from his chair with clenched fists and reddening face.

  “Mind your tongue about Beatrice!" he growled.

  "How does she?" Frevisse interposed. “I heard she was fearfully hurt."

  Adam fought between his anger at Jack and the need to give her a civil reply. Civility and his desire to talk of Beatrice won. He rubbed a rough hand over his blunt face and sent a last glare at Jack. “She looks worse than she is, Old Nan hopes. We thought maybe she was broken inside as well as battered all over her face and ribs, but seems not. She's hurting less today anyway."

  “You were there again this morning?" the maidservant asked disbelievingly.

  Adam cast her a warning look. “I had to know. No one else but me and Old Nan care a farthing for her."

  “And she's doing better?" Frevisse prompted.

  “We think so. The bruises look fearful but the cuts are likely to heal clean. Only..." He was caught between need to talk about her and the pain of what he had seen. “Only he did things to her that aren't going to mend back to where she was."

  “They say her beauty's gone," the maidservant said gently.

  Adam bent over whetstone and knife again. “Her looks won't be what they were. But she'll still be Beatrice."

  Frevisse saw Jack's face twist toward a rude comment before he thought better of it. Adam looked up at her across the table. “She's had a bad life, my lady, but her heart is good. She's been as good as life would let her. Now, if she'll let me, I'll make it better for her."

  Jack could not hold himself in on that one. “You dafter! You haven't gone and promised her anything, have you?"

  Adam's heavy features thickened with sullen stubbornness. “We talked yesterday. She was all crying after that forester fellow left her. Much he cares. He browbeat her into telling who'd done it to her and then went off in a rage without so much as a kind word to her. But I listened to her, and then she listened to me. Right through to dinner time I sat with her. And I'm glad Colfoot's killed or I'd have to do it myself. But he's maybe done a good turn in his life after all, not meaning to." He transferred his glare from his work to Jack and said, “So at least I came by my morning mud honestly walking somewhere. You rode with Mistress Payne and had no business being mired past the ankles the way you were when you came home."

  “Here now," Jack exclaimed, slapping down a wet rhubarb stalk on the tabletop. “You think I spent my time kicking my heels in the doorway there? The place stank of bowels - God save the woman–" He crossed himself. So did Frevisse and the others; the flux could kill as quickly as fevers did. “–so I went off to see if the rain had drowned out the winter wheat in Over Field yet."

  “Has it?" the maid servant asked. How well they ate next winter would depend on how well the crops grew.

  “Not yet. But we'd better have more dry weather soon, and for longer than two days at a stretch."

  “Which way is that from here?" Frevisse asked casually.

  “Go to the village and turn right between Tompson's and Lame Bet's, south on that track you come to Wilcox's. Over Field's beyond there a way."

  No one seemed to wonder why she asked. Frevisse had long since noticed that most folk felt what interested them surely should interest everyone else. “Opposite the way Colfoot went and was killed," she said.

  “Not really so far," Jack said. “The way the track curves around, you could cut across only two fields from Over Field and be on the road he took."

  He said it with such openness that it would have been difficult to believe he had crossed those fields, met Colfoot, killed him, and crossed back; some shade of guilt should have been in his answer. And the timing seemed wrong; if he had ridden with Mistress Payne before following after Colfoot, Colfoot would have been further along the road from the manor than Frevisse had the impression he had been. But perhaps she should have something better than an impression.

  “You both went to fetch Colfoot's body?" she asked.

  Jack and Adam nodded together. “Us and Master Payne. We took a hurdle and a horse and hauled it home," Adam said. “And it wasn't easy, with the mud and him no bird-weight. Grown fat on other people's famine, may he be sizzling in Hell."

  “It was a half mile or more. That must have been hard indeed, wasn't it?" Frevisse asked.

  “Hard enough but, nay, not nearly so far. A quarter mile maybe," Adam said.

  “It was you found him dead, wasn't it?"

  Adam laid the knife he was now sharpening a little harder against the whetstone. His tone was grim with things he did not want to remember as he answered, “Aye. Lying there like a bled pig. A big lump in the road."

  “There was much blood?" the maidservant asked with fascinated horror.

  “Not so much," Adam granted grudgingly. “Just some. It was mostly a great smear on his gown."

  “And you didn't see anyone?" Frevisse asked.

  “Nobody at all. But I was coming from the manor. Whoever did it would have been headed t'other way, I'd guess, away from the place. They'd not be daft enough to stand about gabbing once they'd done it."

  With a sudden thought concerning time, Frevisse said, “You were going to check a pasture when you found him, I think you said. But you'd been to the village first, seeing Beatrice. Did you come back here and then go on to the pasture, or right from the village?"

  Adam gave her a suspicious look from under his brows before answering grudgingly, “Nay, I went straight from the village, not stopping here. I was supposed to see to the pasture and thought I'd best do it before I came back, behindhand as I was with going to see Beatrice."

  “And saw no one on the road between the village and Colfoot's body?" Frevisse asked, to allay the suspicion he was clearly beginning to form about her questions.

  “Saw nobody until I saw Colfoot. Anybody who'd done it wouldn't be larking along the road. They'd be off behind the hedges or into the woods. Came that way, too, and was lying in wait for Colfoot, is what we've g
uessed."

  The maid servant shivered. “It was someone as meant to kill him, not just finding a chance but coming after him from somewhere else. That's what Master Payne says. It wasn't anyone from here, killing him on our own doorstep nearly."

  “Could it have been outlaws maybe?" Frevisse suggested. “Aren't there outlaws around here?"

  Glances passed among the three servants before Jack answered, “If there are, they've made no trouble in a while and a while."

  “They haven't?" Frevisse said with strong surprise. “That seems odd for outlaws."

  Jack laid a finger aside of his nose to show there was something near enough to smell but that he was too wise to mention it.

  Adam was feeling less discrete. “Well, someone robbed old Colfoot, didn't they? He didn't break his own yeoman's skull and cut his own purse the other day."

  “Knowing old Colfoot, I'd not put it past him if it meant some sort of profit down the way," Jack answered.

  “And you're probably going to claim he stabbed himself, too," Adam mocked.

  “Oh, aye," Jack returned. “He maybe found he'd cheated himself over something and was so ired he killed himself in revenge."

  “Likely it was the fellow bothering Mistress Dow in the orchard who did it," the maidservant said soothingly. “A stranger and long gone. That's who it surely was."

  The talk began circling over the same ground, so Frevisse excused herself and left. Adam at least had begun to be suspicious of her questions, so she had better leave them for a while. She sought Master Payne, but he was not in the parlor. Overhead in the solar she could hear lessons ending – Sir Perys loudly directing the children to put their slates away and be careful while they did it – so she retreated across the hall, having no desire to be caught in the flood of children she heard starting down the stairs from the solar to the parlor.

  She momentarily considered going out to the barn to talk with Tam, but decided she should return to Magdalen's room. On the stairs she met Maud coming down. Maud stood aside in the narrow space to let her pass but Frevisse paused and said conversationally, “That wool will make a beautiful cloak for Mistress Payne. Mistress Dow says you're an excellent seamstress."

  Maud smiled, pleased. “I do seem to have a hand for it."

  “You don't mind serving both women at once? Doesn't it become burdensome for you?"

  “Oh no, never at all. They're both kind beyond words. And there's little Mistress Dow needs me for these days."

  “Everyone is talking about the murder," Frevisse said. “Everyone seems to remember where they were when it happened. I think I must have been feeding Sister Emma broth. Isn't it odd to think of doing something so ordinary–" she had no idea at all what she had been doing "–when someone was dying just down the road?"

  Warmed to conversation by talk of her two ladies, Maud said readily, “Haven't I thought of that, too? I was measuring little Kate for a new gown in the solar when it must have happened. Something I've done so often, and now every time I do it again, I'll think of Master Colfoot being killed. Isn't it odd?"

  Frevisse agreed and asked, “Does Kate stand still for being measured?"

  “Not her!" Maud laughed. “I was just persuading her to it when we heard the shouting in the hall that was Master Colfoot come to argue with Master Payne. Then I had a job of it to keep her from slipping down the stairs to listen at the parlor door after they went in there! She wouldn't stand still and pay heed until they'd finished."

  “Could you really hear what they were saying?" Frevisse asked with encouraging awe.

  Maud made a disgruntled face. “No. I could hear they were angry, but they kept their voices too low for us to hear the words. And don't think Kate didn't try. But they remembered walls can have ears and we didn't hear a thing. But I didn't finish measuring the child until they'd finished, she wouldn't heed me until then. She can be a little beast." But Maud said it fondly, smiling, and Frevisse smiled with her and went on up the stairs.

  So Maud had been busy with Kate and could not have spoken to Magdalen when Magdalen was going to her brother. Frevisse had the weary feeling she had learned a great deal that morning and solved nothing.

  And then at the top of the stairs she saw Sir Perys bowing his way out of the Paynes's bedroom. She waited while he closed the door and, when he turned around, curtsied to him with a pleasant smile and said, “Were you reporting to Mistress Payne on how your young scholars are doing?"

  “The only scholar in this household is Master Edward," he answered tiredly. “The others learn what little they learn only when pressed to it by my rod."

  He looked as much harassed as fatigued, and Frevisse reflected that his lot might well be the hardest in the household. He was both cleric and tutor, with probably small time for his religious devotions and much time given over to pupils who wanted none of his learning. But as she started to say something encouraging, Edward pushed back the curtain that closed off the room he shared with Richard and said, “Sir Perys?" He was still dressed plainly in a dark blue gown of modest cut, belted with an ordinary black belt. He bowed to Frevisse, but before he could speak, Sir Perys took the open book Edward had in his hands and peered nearsightedly at the page.

  “You want help with this? This is not difficult!" He read in rapid, fluent Latin, “Improperium exspectavit cor meum et miseriam, et sustinui qui simul mecum contristaretur, et non fuit; consolantem me quaesivi, et non inveni. There's a fine text for you, I must say. Very appropriate for me, as well!" He gave the book back. “Foolish boy!"

  Frevisse read and spoke both English and French with ease, but though her Latin was slight, yet this sounded familiar. One of the psalms, she thought.

  Edward was looking at her, embarrassed, apparently, to be scolded in front of her. “I- I beg your pardon, my lady," he stammered. “I would not–“

  “Edward, dear, are you still at your studies?" It was Mistress Payne, standing in her bedroom doorway, concern on her face and in her voice. “Shouldn't you do something else for a while?"

  Before Edward could answer, Sir Perys said officiously, “Now, I pray you, my lady, trust me in this."

  “But he looks so tired."

  “If he's tired, it's from being hither and yon all the time, wearing himself out at fruitless pastimes."

  Mistress Payne came to feel Edward's forehead. “You're not fevered are you, dear?"

  “I'm very well," Edward said, pulling himself away. “I'm not tired. I'm quite well."

  He was taller than his mother by almost a full head. It was amusing to see her worrying up at him like a hen whose chick had overgrown her. He caught her hand and kissed it, summoning a smile. “Mother, how can I become the finest scholar in England and a lawyer to make you all proud if I don't work hard?"

  She looked back to Sir Perys. “But you will be careful not to over-burden him? Must he study as hard at home as he does in Oxford?"

  Sir Perys huffed up. “I am quite capable of judging his needs in this, I assure you, my lady–"

  Frevisse, with the impression that this was a well-worn matter among mother, tutor, and son, retreated to Magdalen's room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Frevisse found that Magdalen’s room looked almost like sanctuary to her after having to deal with so many people in so short a while.

  Unfortunately, Sister Emma was wide awake, propped up on pillows and trying to chatter around the imposition of her cough. It had worsened again, but she was endeavoring to ignore it for the sake of bright conversation with Bess beside the bed and Magdalen sitting again on the window seat where the light was best for her embroidery.

  “Yes, you should see my brother’s place. Not so new as this, of course. Well, of course not; our family has been there for generations."

  Three, Frevisse happened to know. A grandfather had made his fortune out of plunder in the French war and bought property to go with his new-made knighthood.

  “But very pleasant. My room when I was a child was so large and all
my very own. After my sisters married and left, of course. Or it seemed very large to me, then. I was scarcely more than a child when I entered the nunnery, my faith came to me very young and I’ve never regretted–"

  Sister Emma’s father, having spent most of his father’s riches without making any of his own, had found the dowering of his third daughter into a nunnery cheaper than a marriage settlement.

  Frevisse caught herself short on that uncharitable thought, and for penance went to succor Bess.

  Sister Emma was delighted to see her. “Dame Frevisse," she began, “We’ve been having such a talk!"

  By the glaze in Bess’ eyes, Frevisse could imagine who had been talking. But Sister Emma’s enthusiasm was cut off by a spasm of coughing, and Frevisse picked up a goblet from the table and held it for her while she drank. Taking it back from her, she surreptitiously felt her hand. It was still hot.

  Subdued and flushed, Sister Emma sank back into the pillows. “That does take the strength right out of me," she sighed. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, you know. Now what was I saying? What have you learned about this murder?"

  Magdalen stood up abruptly, dropping her embroidery in a careless heap on the window seat. “I’m going out to walk for a while. I’ve been in too long."

  “Mistress, your brother said..." Bess began.

  “My brother is not my master! I’m going no farther than the orchard," Magdalen answered and left.

  Frevisse and Beth exchanged sympathetic glances with each other, and then, in mutual comprehension, looked at Sister Emma, who stared with unblemished surprise at the door. “My goodness," she said. “Such haste makes waste, I’ve always said. But about the murder, Dame Frevisse. I’ve been thinking–"

  They let her talk on with the hope she would exhaust herself and sleep again. But whenever she seemed easing toward drowse, another spasm of coughing would bring her fully awake and talking again.

  Frevisse was beginning to think she would fall asleep before Sister Emma would, from sheer tedium, when the afternoon’s quiet was pierced by a scream that rose and broke from somewhere outside, followed by a shout and then more shouting, now from the manor yard itself.