Servant’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  The players were gathered around their hearth. Hewe was with them, leaning forward on a bench to listen to something Bassett was saying while Ellis and Joliffe, working at a piece of leather harness, sat across from them, looking amused. Rose was on a cushion near the fire, sewing at something bright and threaded through with gold on her lap, with Piers wrapped to his ears in blankets and looking pallid but unfevered, leaning against her. He was the first to look up at Frevisse’s coming, and he smiled as brightly as a young angel. Rose, following his look, made a reserved greeting. It appeared, Frevisse thought, that the warmth and strength of her affections were saved for her menfolk.

  “Mending?” Frevisse asked, gesturing to the sewing.

  Rose held up a pennon whose hem was ripped. “We use it for St. George. Bought from a town’s pageant when they decided they needed something better, but it does well enough for us, although travel is hard on it.”

  “And on people?” Frevisse asked.

  Rose smiled. “Travel is hard on everything, one way or another.”

  She was a strong-featured woman, her mouth and eye-brows and nose drawn in bold strokes, but she was not grown coarse with spending her days on the roads and in uncertainty. Except that her skin was marked by being out in too many sorts of weather and her hands showed that they did hard work, she might almost have been a lady in her bower sitting there, deft at her sewing. And her voice, though not nobility’s, had not come from a peasant’s cottage.

  Frevisse wondered about her, and asked, “How does Piers?”

  Rose left her sewing long enough to stroke the boy’s gold hair back from his forehead. “He’s mending.”

  Piers ducked out from under her hand. “I’m bored.”

  “But you’re better,” Rose said, and retucked his blankets.

  “Well enough to sing, say, tomorrow?” asked Frevisse.

  “Easily!” Piers declared.

  “Quite probably,” his mother corrected. Piers smiled up at her and snuggled closer.

  The men and Hewe had acknowledged Frevisse’s coming with brief looks and nods. Now Frevisse moved toward them to draw their attention. “Hewe has been no trouble?” she asked.

  “A grievous pain and unending trouble,” Bassett declared, then relented at Hewe’s startled, stricken look, and rumpled his hair casually. “No. None at all. He slept, and we’ve fed him, and told him he could stay until someone came looking for him, if he wanted.”

  “And he’s one reason I’ve come,” Frevisse said.

  Hewe already knew that. And he was remembering why he was here, and that he was supposed to be in grief. But it was an effort.

  Had life with Sym been so unpleasant, Frevisse wondered, that his own brother had trouble grieving for him? But all she said was, “Your mother says you should go home to see to your animals for her. Later she wants to see you here.”

  “But not now?” Hewe asked.

  “Not now. She’s tending to your brother’s body and will want you afterwards. Is there anyone in the village who can come help her?” she asked as an afterthought.

  Hewe, gathering up his cloak from the far side of the bench, shook his head. “She doesn’t have any friends to mention. Someone will likely come if she asks, but she won’t.”

  He seemed to take that as a simple given of life, ducked a bow to her and to the players, but added a suddenly shy smile for all of them and said, especially to Bassett, “Thank you.”

  Bassett inclined his head in acceptance. “And to you, youngling. You have been both a good guest and a good companion.”

  Hewe flushed with pleasure, ducked another bow, and quickly left.

  Bassett grinned after him. “A likely enough lad and as different from his brother as cheese from chalk.”

  Joliffe leaned toward Ellis and said in mocking conspiracy, “He says that because the boy listened to all his stories and thought they were wonderful.”

  “Well, they are,” Ellis said indignantly. “Until you’ve heard them three dozen times. Or four. Or more.”

  Bassett pulled a face at them, unoffended.

  Frevisse put down her rising amusement at their banter, and came to the heart of her reason for this visit. But she kept her tone light. “Joliffe, may I see your dagger?”

  With a slight puzzlement, he drew and held it out to her hilt first. She took it, appreciating the good weight and easy balance of it in her hand. “Yours, too?” she asked Bassett and Ellis.

  They drew and held out their own, not questioning what she wanted but with an undertone of wariness that Rose’s sudden watchfulness reflected. Frevisse did not take their daggers, but contented herself with comparing them to Joliffe’s. As they had said, and she remembered, they were all of a kind, perfectly matched. She nodded them away, but said to Joliffe, “I need yours for a while,” not asking his permission, simply telling him.

  Quite still, he met her gaze with a knowing she could not read. In stillness his face was older, the boyishness gone out of it. Frevisse turned and left, taking the dagger with her, feeling their silence at her back.

  * * *

  Dame Claire and Meg were still beside Sym’s body. With Dame Claire at his feet and his mother at his head and shoulders, they were lifting him sideways onto the white cerecloth he would be wrapped in for his burial, moving him as tenderly and smoothly as if afraid of waking him. It being New Year’s Day and Feast of the Circumcision, there would be no coffin made until tomorrow, but there was no need for haste. He could lie here until it could be made; the body could not be buried in any case until the crowner had seen it, and would keep in the unheated hall.

  Frevisse had hidden the dagger up her wide sleeve as she came. She waited while Dame Claire and Meg wrapped the cloth over the body. When they were done, Dame Claire asked Meg to take the wash water away, to dump it before it could be spilled. Eyes down, Meg took the basin without questioning and disappeared toward the garderobe.

  Frevisse stepped quickly to the table, drawing the dagger from her sleeve to compare it to the wound.

  “The blade is too broad,” Dame Claire said. The neat-edged hole between Sym’s ribs was too narrow by the width of her widest finger for the dagger’s blade.

  “And too short,” Frevisse added. She laid the dagger on Sym’s chest to gauge how deep it would have gone. “Striking from the side, the blade has to go in a fair ways to reach the heart and this is hardly long enough. It wouldn’t reach.” She tucked the dagger out of sight again with concealed relief. Whatever had stabbed Sym, it had not been one of the players’ daggers.

  Unless they had others, she forcibly reminded herself. That was still a possibility, though not one easily pursued.

  But, her mind insisted, if one of them had deliberately used some other dagger than the one he usually carried to give the deathblow, then the killing had almost surely not been the mere taking advantage of a happenstance; it had been deliberately planned and purposed beforehand. Which was impossible, no one could have known Sym would go home and frighten his mother into seeking help.

  So who then might have done it? Someone watching for a chance and ruthless enough to take it.

  While she thought, she tucked her hands into either sleeve. It was a habitual gesture; now it warmed her hands and hid the dagger from Meg coming back. Belatedly Frevisse remembered and said, “I saw your Hewe. He’s gone back to the village to do what needs doing there. He said he would come to you later.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” Meg said, looking at her feet.

  The cloister bell began to ring for Nones. Meg raised startled eyes toward the band of sunlight from the nearest window. “Midday?” she asked, completely bewildered. “How did it come to be midday?”

  Dame Claire laid a gentle hand on her arm. “It was the drink I gave you. It made you sleep a long while.”

  And so heavily she had not even noticed what time of day she had awoken. Meg looked around a little frantically, as if to find the lost hours. “My work,” she said. “I was supposed to be
in the kitchen. Dame Alys…”

  Dame Claire said, “She knows what’s happened. She understands and isn’t expecting you today. Or tomorrow either. It’s all right.”

  Meg began to say something, stopped, looked to Frevisse, back to Dame Claire, then seemed to collect herself and turned away to her son’s body. So low they could barely hear her, she said, “I’ll stay here and pray then, please you.”

  It was probably the best thing she could do, both for herself and Sym. Leaving her to it, Frevisse and Dame Claire hurried away to church.

  The service of Nones was fairly brief, consisting of a hymn, lesson, and verse in addition to three short psalms sung straight through. Frevisse’s cold had given her a headache, made worse by the way one person’s cough set off a noisy chorus of them, by the shuffling of impatient feet, and the frequent exchange of bored or exasperated glances. It was painful to hear this group of sufferers croak, “”Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing…‘“ Frevisse was startled to realize near the end that she had let Joliffe’s dagger slip down into her hand, and that she had taken it with a grip so tight her fingers were cramping.

  In the original Rule, St. Benedict spoke of two meals a day, the main one at midday and a light supper in the evening, with variations, including fasts and late dinners, with never the flesh of four-footed animals to be served. The only part strictly observed at St. Frideswide’s was that they ate their main meal at midday. Today they were served mincemeat pies and cabbage boiled with caraway seed.

  Sister Thomasine, whose voice alone remained clear, had volunteered to be the reader at dinner until someone else recovered enough to take her place. They were reading from a borrowed book, St. Bede’s History of the English Church and People. They had arrived at the late seventh century and were hearing of the death of St. Chad, Bishop of Mercia, and of miracles associated with his burial place in the Church of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles. “”Chad’s tomb is in the form of a little wooden house,“” read Thomasine slowly, “ ‘with an aperture in the side, through which those who visit it out of devotion to him may insert their hand and take out some of the dust. They mix this in water, and give it to sick men or beasts to drink, by which means their ailment is quickly relieved and they are restored to health.”“

  Ugh, thought Frevisse, I would have to be sick indeed before I would drink anything flavored with spiderweb and dead man’s dust.

  At the end of the meal, Domina Edith declared that everyone not so sick she must take to her bed was to come to the church and help Dame Fiacre sweep and dust.

  The priory’s sacrist had been slowly declining for some months. Now she had caught a cold like everyone else, and though she kept to her feet, she could not perform all her duties. This afternoon she sat on a stool at the foot of the altar and pointed to what needed doing. Frevisse found the dagger’s keen edge very handy for cleaning melted wax off the altar’s two brass candlesticks, a task she performed with grim thoroughness.

  When it was all done to Sister Fiacre’s satisfaction, they were dismissed. Frevisse went out to discover that Father Henry had returned from the village.

  She went to find him in his little house eating a late dinner. She sat down at his table and said without preamble, “What did you learn?”

  “Sym wasn’t much liked. He was given to quarreling. Little quarrels all the time, one after the other, for no real reason mostly.”

  “Any great quarrels? Or new quarrels just around now?”

  “There’s a girl, Tibby, whose folk weren’t happy he was showing her attentions. Nor did she care for him much either, it seems, but that wasn’t stopping him. There’d been pushing between her brother and him, and a few words, but nothing more.”

  “No daggers drawn?”

  “No. He was not known for daggering. All words and fists, was Sym, from what I’ve seen—from what they say.”

  “But he drew on Joliffe last night.”

  “Joliffe? You mean the player, in the alehouse? Yes, he did. But he was being goaded some, I guess. Too many words and the way the player was saying them and that the girl wasn’t minding. It went past what Sym would take.”

  Frevisse could see Joliffe deliberately outwording him, with a mocking smile and goading tone, until Sym was past wanting anything except to silence him. “But no great particular quarrel with anyone else?” she asked.

  “The talk is that there looked to be one shaping up with Gilbey Dunn. He holds the croft by theirs and has been wanting to take claim to their field strips. Talk is, Lord Lovel’s steward has been thinking maybe of letting him.”

  “Could he?” To give one villein’s share of the fields to another was no little thing and not easily done.

  “Oh, maybe yes, since Barnaby was going these past years the short way along to ruining them and Lord Lovel’s steward was none too happy with him for it. Yes, there was a chance.”

  “But now with Barnaby dead, Sym would have been given his chance to prove himself before anything was done about taking the land away.”

  Father Henry shook his head heavily. “Maybe not. Sym has been looking to go much the way of his father already and patience was pretty well out with him. But that wasn’t the whole of it. Seems Gilbey Dunn has been at Barnaby’s widow, wanting to marry her, and the general thought is that she will since she’s a poorly little thing who’ll be needing someone to see to her and her matters. He might not have been able to talk her around with Sym in a rage about it, but now with Sym dead, he’ll have no trouble with her. That’s what they’re saying. They quarreled badly yesterday, Sym and Gilbey Dunn, in front of the whole village.”

  “About the marrying?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Gilbey Dunn do?”

  “Nothing much.” He shrugged.

  “What about the girl? I’ve heard she went off with the player after the fight with Sym.”

  “And her folk are none so pleased with her about it,” Father Henry said. “She’s shut up in the house for so long as the players are here and apparently had best be thankful her father only gave her a small beating when she came home last night.”

  “Can you talk with her tomorrow?” she asked.

  Father Henry looked surprised and then nodded. “I should tell her to be a more dutiful daughter?”‘ he suggested.

  “Surely. And ask her if she has any way of judging how long she was with Joliffe, and where they were, and—but not until you have the other answers from her—if he ever asked her where Sym lived.”

  Father Henry’s mind moved at its own steady pace but had the grace of holding on to what it was given. He thought for a moment, nodded again, and repeated, “Ask her how long she was with Joliffe, where they were, and then if he asked her where Sym lived.”

  “Yes. Exactly so.”

  “You think he did it?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” She was certain he had not, but it seemed better not to say so. “But if I can show he couldn’t have done it, then I can look elsewhere, do you see?”

  Chapter 16

  Sore-necked and aching, Meg raised her head from the table. Dimly, as her mind stirred back to awareness, she realized she had been sleeping. By the faint gray web of lesser darkness at the guesthall’s windows she guessed that dawn was nearing; and then she remembered where she was. And why.

  Slow with stiffness, she straightened on the backless bench, forcing herself to move. She reached out her hand to Sym’s wrapped body in front of her and stroked where she knew his arm to be. Father Henry had been with her a while last night; he too had promised her that Sym’s soul was safe, so surely it did not matter that she had fallen asleep at her praying. She had not meant to, had not known she was so tired, or she would not have told Father Henry that he did not need to stay, that she and Hewe would keep the watch. She had even said that maybe someone would be coming from the village, though she had half known that was not true. Some might have come if Sym were laid out at home, but the pri
ory was not a village place and no one was friendly enough with her or Sym anymore to come there, where he had to stay until the crowner came.

  So Sym’s watching belonged to her and Hewe, and they had both slept.

  Meg smiled down at the curled dark shape in the rushes by the bench that was Hewe asleep. She had not expected him to stay awake with her. He had been a good boy yesterday, going to the village and back again twice over, seeing to things there so she could stay here. And he would do it again today, so she could go back to working for Dame Alys for her halfpence. They couldn’t afford to lose any more of those, or let Dame Alys think Meg was not needed here.

  Under the rough skin of her fingers the cerecloth was smooth and cool. Meg had never owned so large a piece of cloth in her life. And would never have given it away if she had, the way the nuns had simply given this one for Sym. That was a blessing, at least, because the only spare blanket had gone to wrap Barnaby for his grave. The nuns’ pity was a blessed thing.