9 The Reeve's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  ‘He was frighted he’d be caught with it. He’d not thought it through when he did it, and when he did, all he wanted was to be rid of it.“ Simon grabbed at something else. ”Anyway, leave be the small chance there’d be of Father Edmund finding Matthew on the road to kill him after he left here, he’d not been out of the village even half a day since Lent. So even if the priest killed him here, there was no time he could have shifted the body all the way to Wroxton.“ He caught up to another thought and added before Dame Frevisse could ask, his mind beginning to cast the way hers did. ”Nor Mary neither. She’s not been gone anytime this year and maybe more.“

  He had a momentary hope when Dame Frevisse held silent as if thinking on that and then seemed to go another way, asking, “Did your sister know how unlikely it was you’d give Matthew Woderove’s holding to Tom Hulcote?”

  ‘She knew how little I thought of him and how I thought even less of the two of them. She knew he’d not have it from me, if the choice was mine.“

  ‘Master Naylor thought differently on it.“

  ‘He saw more in Tom than I could.“ Simon admitted it unwillingly. ”He wasn’t so set against him as I was.“

  ‘With Master Naylor removed from the decisioning, Tom had almost no chance at all of having the Woderove holding?“

  ‘Aye.“

  ‘But Mary, despite she knew better, led him on to think he had a chance. Why?“

  Flat under the weight of his anger as he understood where she was going, Simon said, “So that when he was refused and angry over it, she could bring him to leave here and leave her.” To Father Edmund. Sickness curdled in the back of Simon’s throat, because however Tom had come to his death, Mary had been at the root of it.

  ‘The trouble is,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”we’ve no proof, only guesses.“

  ‘It makes sense where there wasn’t any,“ Simon said heavily.

  ‘What about the rumors of something between him and Elena Dunn?“

  ‘She’s been named with nigh every man in the village one time or another, but nobody’s ever seen aught that I’ve heard.“ But nobody had ever seen aught between Mary and Father Edmund either, save a couple of boys who had not seen fit to say so to anyone.

  But Dame Frevisse was away along her own track of thought with, “Gilbey is gone.”

  It was like an ill echo. Matthew was gone. Tom was gone. Gilbey was gone… Sharply Simon said, “He’s cleared off to keep out of Master Montfort’s hold, is all. His wife says he’s gone to Banbury, but I’d wager he’s gone to Lord Lovell, to set him against Master Montfort’s purposes.”

  Dame Frevisse said naught for or against that possibility but went back to where she had been. “The trouble still lies in proving anything. All we have is likelihood, not proof.” She sat up more straightly and her voice changed, took on an edge. “But it can’t be left that way. I need the four jurors brought to me again. And Mary.”

  ‘What?“ Simon said. ”Why?“

  ‘And one of the crowner’s men.“ She stood up. ”I know which one. I’ll bring him.“

  Simon stood up because he should be standing if she was but asked, “Not Master Montfort?”

  ‘Never Master Montfort. Send someone to fetch the jurors back. You bring your sister, but say nothing about what we’ve learned or suspicion. May we use your house for this?“

  She had not yet told him what “this” was but he said, “Aye. But best I send someone else for Mary, please you, and go for the jurors myself. She’ll not come for my asking.”

  ‘So long as she comes.“

  ‘And Father Edmund?“

  “Not Father Edmund,” Dame Frevisse said. “Yet.”

  Walter made the most trouble over it. Stopping where he was, he stared off along what was left of yesterday’s cut of hay still needing to be turned for drying and asked, “How’s this to be done then? And you said I’m to hoe the beans this afternoon. What’s to happen to my own if I’m forever being dragged off for this juror business?”

  ‘I’ll count today’s time you’ve spent on jury against your work due Lord Lovell,“ Simon said recklessly.

  ‘And me?“ Hamon said. He was better at whining than any man ought to be. ”What’s in it for me then?“

  ‘You get to count sitting about as work,“ Simon said, and since sitting about was the sort of work Hamon did best, that satisfied him.

  John left off raking biddably enough when Simon asked him to come, and Bert was no trouble, leaving the alehouse readily enough when Simon thrust his head in at the door and said he was needed, except he started on the same questions the others had already asked and Simon didn’t answer him either, just jerked his head toward the others and said, “Ask them. They know as much as you’re going to.”

  His worry that Mary might not obey wasn’t reassured by sight of Geva leaving his house with close-clapped mouth and a glare, but when he asked, “Did she come?” Geva answered tartly, “Oh, aye,” stalking past and saying over her shoulder as she went, “She’s in there. Her and that nun and they’re welcome to each other, they are, and you, too, Simon Perryn.”

  Today the shutters at the windows on both sides of the house were let down to the day’s warm brightness and what little air was moving, sweet with the scent of drying hay, and there was light enough that Simon’s pause on the threshold was from habit more than need to usen to the shadows, but it gave him time to take in Dame Frevisse standing at the far side of the table and Mary at its far end with between them a prickling silence and a fox-haired, uneasy young man in the crowner’s livery. Cisily at the hearth was bent to stir whatever simmered in the pot there, and Dickon was standing across from her holding a bowl. As the savory smell reminded Simon’s belly of how long ago breakfast had been, Cisily looked along the room toward him and said, tipping her head toward Dame Frevisse, “She says you’re none of you going to eat now. Is that so?”

  Simon cast Dame Frevisse a look of his own but already had answer ready, because despite his hunger, he was afraid his gorge would rise if he sat down to eat with Mary as things were now, and he said, “Aye. We’ll wait.”

  Cisily grumbled, “Well, then,” as if he’d taken leave of his senses and turned back to Dickon. “You can take what’s going to the church then.”

  ‘Dickon will be needed here,“ Dame Frevisse said with cold command. ”Best you take it yourself.“

  Cisily’s mouth, halfway to being open in protest, closed. She settled for giving Dame Frevisse a hard stare, then set to gathering up wooden bowls, spoons, a loaf of bread, and a knife into a basket and took up the pot from the fire with a towel wrapped around its handle for carrying, all in a stiff-backed, offended silence to which Dame Frevisse gave no heed, going on standing with bowed head, looking at no one in a silence no one cared to break, though Bert, Walter, John and Hamon shared looks with each other and toward Simon that Simon gave no sign of seeing, trying to be as apart as Dame Frevisse. The crowner’s man kept likewise warily still. Only Mary gave open, restless show of her impatience, casting displeased looks around at everyone and, as Cisily was leaving, managed to catch Simon’s eye and mouth at him, “What?”, but Simon looked away and kept on looking away until Cisily was gone and Dame Frevisse raised her head to say cold voiced into the silence, “Sit down.”

  It was a general command, not a request, and no one questioned it, not even Mary. The crowner’s man moved first, sitting on the bench along the far side of the table with the slight, tense frown of someone trusting her but not sure if he should. Simon went to his own place at the table’s head while Bert, Walter and John took the near bench, leaving Hamon to go to the other side, to sit a wary distance from the crowner’s man. The stool that was usually Anne’s was across the room, near to the hearth, and Dickon claimed it, so that Mary made shift to sit at the crowner’s man’s other side with a displeased sweep of her skirts and a glare at Simon.

  Dame Frevisse waited where she was until they were settled, then went to stand at the table’s end opposi
te to Simon. Her black nun’s garb gave her an authority she might otherwise have lacked, but as it was, her silence held them to silence as she gave them each a slow, long look before she said, still cold and clipped, “There are new questions about Tom Hulcote’s murder. You’re here to hear them and find out what answers there may be.”

  ‘What about Master Montfort?“ Walter asked, not challenging her so much as worried.

  ‘Master Christopher takes his part.“ She gave no time for other questions. ”Master Christopher, did you take close look at Tom Hulcote’s body yesterday?“

  Not quite covering his uneasiness, the man answered, “Yes.”

  ‘What do you say killed him?“

  ‘His skull was broken and he was stabbed twice. In the back.“

  Mary made a small choking noise and bowed her head to hide her face, her hands clenched together in her lap.

  Master Christopher looked at her uncertainly, but Dame Frevisse said crisply, “The blow to his head. Where did it come from?”

  ‘Where?“ he repeated. ”You mean was he hit from in front or from in back?“

  Dame Frevisse nodded. It was something she had asked Simon, but Master Christopher had a better answer than he had had. “I’d say from behind. The bone was more deeply broken to the back than to the front.”

  ‘What?“ said Walter. ”I don’t see.“

  ‘Show him,“ Dame Frevisse ordered.

  As if unsure he should be doing this, Master Christopher stood up, stepped clear of the bench, and went to take up a length of firewood from beside the hearth while gesturing to Dickon to stand, asking him, “If you please, turn your back to me.”

  Dickon, delighted, did.

  ‘Now see.“ Master Christopher swung the length of firewood slowly at the side of Dickon’s head, stopped short of him, and said, ”There’s enough curve to the skull that where the blow lands the force is greatest, the break will be deepest, while the blow loses force with the skull’s curve and the bone isn’t broken in so deeply.“

  ‘You could see that, looking at Tom’s skull?“ Walter asked.

  ‘I felt of the bone when I examined the body.“ Sickened distaste showed on all the men’s faces, his own with the rest, Simon feared. Mary had not looked up and still did not as Master Christopher went on, ”It was the only way to tell how badly broken the bone was. To tell if the blow had been enough to kill him.“

  With as little feeling as if considering such things was an everyday part of her life, Dame Frevisse asked, “Was it?”

  ‘Very likely. It might have taken him a little time to die, but he would have.“

  ‘And been unconscious while he did?“

  ‘Yes.“

  ‘Why was he hit from the side? Wouldn’t striking down at the back of his head if you were attacking someone from behind be the more likely way?“

  ‘It would be.“ Master Christopher lifted the thin log and brought it down in a feigned blow at the back of Dickon’s head, again stopping short, but Dickon cringed a little anyway. ”The trouble is that the skull is thicker in the back. A blow there would stagger a man but, unless it was heavy beyond the common, not necessarily bring him down. The way a blow from the side more likely would. Particularly if the man giving the blow was shorter than the man attacked.“

  ‘Was he?“ Dame Frevisse demanded. ”Shorter? The man who attacked Tom Hulcote?“

  ‘I don’t…“ Master Christopher stopped, frowning over all their heads toward the far wall, his mouth closed down on his thoughts until, abruptly, his gaze sharpened and shifted back to Dame Frevisse. ”He might have been. The blow wasn’t level to the side of the head. It went upward from the back. But then, that could have to do with how Tom Hulcote was holding his head at the time.“

  ‘It knocked him down, though?“

  ‘I would say so, yes.“

  ‘And when he was stabbed, was he still on his feet or down?“

  ‘Down, I would say. The wounds were close together. A man stabbed would probably have moved between the first blow and the second. They would have been more apart.“

  ‘How many times was he stabbed? And where?“

  ‘Two times. In his back between his upper and middle ribs. On the left side. One of them reached his heart. If he wasn’t already dead, it killed him.“

  Wishing he could keep from it, Simon asked, “How do you know it reached his heart? He had no hurt on the front. Neither stab went through him.”

  ‘I felt into the wounds.“

  Simon ceased to regret having waited on his dinner, but Dame Frevisse said, unmoved, “You saw what was left of Matthew Woderove’s body. What could you tell from it about how he died?”

  ‘There was little flesh left…“

  Mary made a sickened sound. Master Christopher looked at her, ready to stop, but Dame Frevisse icily prodded him on with, “Yes?”

  He seemed no more eager to say it than Simon was to hear it, but he gathered himself and continued, “There was too little flesh left to tell much. Judging by the scrape marks on the rib bones, he had been stabbed at least three times. And his head had been battered in.”

  ‘Battered,“ Dame Frevisse repeated. ”Not merely broken by a single blow like Tom Hulcote’s?“

  ‘The skull was cracked at least twice in the back and once across the right side. As if he’d been hit three different times.“

  ‘A less ’clean‘ attack than what was made on Tom Hulcote,“ Dame Frevisse said.

  ‘Far less.“

  ‘Or less skilled,“ Dame Frevisse said. ”As if maybe from killing Matthew Woderove someone learned how to do better when it came to Tom Hulcote.“

  Mary stood up with a piteous cry, turned an anguished face toward Simon, and held her hands out pleadingly.

  ‘Simon, please! I can’t bear this! I don’t want to hear it! Please let me go home!“

  As coldly as Dame Frevisse might have, Simon said, “Sit down.” He had grown hardened to her trick of turning pitiful when she wanted to. “And be quiet.”

  Mary must have read in his face how completely he meant it because abruptly her own face closed against him and, taut with anger, she snapped, all piteousness gone, “I don’t have to. I’m going home.”

  ‘You are not,“ Dame Frevisse snapped back, her voice as taut as Mary’s but with ice instead of anger. ”You will sit and you will listen and Master Christopher is here in the king’s name to see that you do.“

  For a tight-drawn moment Mary looked near to defying her, but Dame Frevisse’s stare narrowed and harshened, and Mary, against everything likely, sat and again dropped her gaze to stare at her hands gripped together in her lap. Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon looked as startled as Simon felt, while at Dame Frevisse’s gesture, Master Christopher and Dickon sat where they had been before, and she faced the table’s length again.

  In the long quiet then, as the men looked back at her, Simon heard the familiar sparrows scrabbling in the thatch outside the south window and a woman well away across the green calling laughingly to someone else, and then, careful of each word, Dame Frevisse began, “Here’s how it came about that Matthew Woderove and Tom Hulcote were murdered.”

  There was an uneasy, protesting shifting among the men except for Simon who went sitting as rigidly still as Mary, but no one spoke and Dame Frevisse went on, “To begin with Matthew Woderove. As the story runs, he lost a lease to Gilbey Dunn, quarreled with his wife, stole a horse and left here. He sold the horse in Banbury and set out on foot from there, only to be murdered near Wroxton and left to rot.”

  Mary shuddered. Dame Frevisse ignored her. Or seemed to, going on, “In the meantime, while her husband rotted graveless, Mary Woderove went on lusting with Tom Hulcote, probably in the comfort of her dead husband’s bed.”

  This time Mary did not move at all and no one, not even Bert, looked at her while Dame Frevisse went brutally on, “Then Matthew Woderove’s body was found and Mary Woderove set to urging her lover to claim both her husband’s holding and her.
When his bid for it failed, she then urged him to flee the manor, but before he could, he was murdered, leaving Mary Woderove bereft of husband, lover, and land.”

  Mary looked up at that, her breast heaving, her eyes hot with tears. “Oh, aye,” she said through shut teeth. “And now I’m being tortured by a wicked nun, and my brother is letting her!”

  As if Mary had said nothing, giving her not even a glance, Dame Frevisse went coldly on, “Except that what we’ve all believed isn’t the way any of it was. First, Matthew Woderove was dead before ever he left Prior By-field.”

  The men stirred at that, and Bert said, “Now that’s wrong. He stole Gilbey’s horse and sold it in Banbury. He was seen there.”

  ‘A man that Mary Woderove said was Matthew when he was described to her sold the horse in Banbury,“ Dame Frevisse answered. ”That’s all we know. The body when it was found had only the tatters of a shirt and small clothes and hosen. Isn’t that right, Master Christopher?“ The crowner’s man nodded it was. ”No tunic,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”because that was something the man who bought the horse in Banbury could describe, so it couldn’t be left with the body. That way there would be only Mary Woderove’s word that the man who sold the horse in Banbury was her husband.“

  ‘That’s stupid!“ Mary hissed. ”Your brain’s withered away along with the rest of you, shut up in that nunnery there!“

  ‘Because it wasn’t Matthew who sold the horse in Banbury, was it?“ Dame Frevisse said, sharp as a whip’s crack. ”Matthew was dead before he ever left your byre, wasn’t he? It was Tom Hulcote who stole Gilbey’s horse, used it to carry Matthew’s body away to hide near Wroxton, sold the horse in Banbury, then went back to put the body out to be found and came home again while all that while you played the outraged, wronged, deserted wife.“

  ‘That’s… None of that’s true,“ Mary said, furious. ”Tom wasn’t even here when Matthew left. You remember!“ she demanded at Simon. ”He was gone before Midsummer court and didn’t come back until after Matthew was long gone.“

  ‘I mind he was gone then, yes,“ Simon said, cautious.