2 The Servant's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Frevisse went out the door and saw Roger Naylor across the courtyard speaking with a man standing in a wagon burdened with a hogshead barrel.

  Naylor looked around and saw her coming. “My lady,” he said with a broad smile, “Thomas Chaucer has sent you a gift of cider, though I think it wicked of him to think you suffer from a thirst so great as this.”

  Frevisse lifted her chin at his impertinence. “I believe it is the priory’s thirst he caters to, Master Naylor. He asked me if I had a Christmas wish, and this was it. Would you have this taken to the priory kitchen? I’ll go to Dame Alys and warn her of its coming.”

  But as she came within hearing of the kitchen, she knew Dame Alys had another matter in hand at present.

  “Gone again! I turn around and the woman is gone again! What’s the use of giving any of you leave to do anything if you never see fit to bother doing it after I’ve told you? Where’s she gone, I ask you?”

  One of the women, scouring with full-armed strength at a frypan on a table near the door, said in the subdued tone the kitchen staff found best to use around Dame Alys, “Maybe to see her son again. The dead one, you know. There’s his wake this afternoon.”

  “And about time. Maybe then she’ll stop wearing herself to the bone with all this flitting about. In the door, out the door. She might have said she wasn’t staying when she came in. I’d not have told her to see to the onions otherwise and now we’re behindhand on them because I thought she was doing it.” Dame Alys, parading the length of the kitchen and back, rapping her heavy spoon on each of the thick tables as she passed, turned and saw Frevisse. “And you, Dame,” she croaked. “Don’t be asking for more cider for anything whatsoever, I’m telling you.” She rounded on another kitchen worker before Frevisse could reply. “And why aren’t you chopping the kindling like I said? Are you expecting me to do that, too, as well as think for you into the bargain? That fire goes out and it will be your hide they’ll be writing next year’s accounts on, I’ll see to it myself.”

  The woman standing by the wood stack in the near corner spread out her empty hands. “The ax is gone. I’m looking for it.”

  “The ax is gone. Your wits are gone. My patience went a long, long time ago. You couldn’t find it two days ago. Meg had it out killing chickens for the pies and you couldn’t figure that out. So who has it today? Nobody. Nobody is killing anything today and the fool thing is here somewhere, so look for it, you daft-wit. Pick up something and look. What do you want here, Dame Frevisse?”

  Before the chance to answer disappeared, Frevisse replied, “Only to tell you, Dame Alys, that my uncle Thomas Chaucer has sent us a hogshead of cider. Master Naylor is having it moved from the courtyard to your storeroom. So that’s one grief and worry off your mind.”

  Since grief and worry—transposed to temper and nagging—were Dame Alys’s main pleasure in life, she was maybe not so happy with the news as she might have been. Her brows drew down heavily, but before she could find something wrong about an excess of cider, one of the women held up the ax and said, “Here! I’ve found it!” and Dame Alys turned on her.

  “Not a minute too soon, I’d be saying. And you,” she snapped at another woman. “Why aren’t you chopping the onions?”

  “I can’t find a knife for it.”

  Dame Alys threw up her hands with an inarticulate cry. Frevisse decided this was not the time to twit Dame Alys further about the cider and left. The hapless kitchen workers would have to endure without her.

  The watch over Sister Fiacre’s body, two by two, had come round again to Frevisse this afternoon. She had time to put on her warm nighttime shoes, the ones lined with woolly sheepskin, before going to the church.

  Sister Emma came in soon after her, and the two nuns ending their watch flashed them grateful nods as they rose, genuflected toward the altar, and left.

  Before kneeling, Frevisse looked briefly at Sister Fiacre’s face. It was waxy now, and faintly mottled, the color too false to mistake its stillness for sleeping, but the expression was serene. There was no evidence, lying as she was, positioned with Dame Claire’s great care, of the terrible destruction to her skull. She might have simply died, Frevisse thought as she knelt and bent her head over her clasped hands.

  But she had not. She had died in a way that made no sense, and that lack of sense bothered Frevisse as much as the murder itself. They did not even know what she had been killed with. Something heavy, and therefore perhaps large, not easy to hide surely. Or two weapons, one blunt, one sharp. But no one seemed to have seen anything. It was as blank as the reason for Sister Fiacre being killed at all, if revenge by the players was discounted.

  And was she wrong in discounting that, Frevisse wondered?

  Because they were the one link between Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s. Had she let her own feelings interfere?

  Yes.

  She had cared more about proving that Joliffe was innocent than in finding the killer. She almost cared more that the players not be arrested than that the murderer be discovered. Even that she could admit if she faced it. And that was dangerous because what if they were guilty after all? Not just one of them, but all of them together, which looked like the way it had to be if any of them were.

  Frevisse pressed her folded hands against her lips until they hurt against her teeth. She had learned as much as she could about the murders and had solved nothing. She was here to pray for Sister Fiacre. She would.

  After all, Sister Fiacre’s death was maybe some sort of mercy, wracked as she had been by the cancer in her breast, with nothing but months of cruel and growing pain ahead of her. It was a death as merciful, in its cruel way, as maybe the man Barnaby’s had been, with only a crippled life ahead of him.

  Frevisse realized the ugliness of her own thoughts even as she thought them. It was the basest wrong to take God’s place in choosing what was mercy and what was not, in choosing what was right and what was not. She bent her head lower, humiliated by her mind’s treachery, and pressed her knuckles against her forehead, making a new pain to draw her mind away from crippled judgment and crippled lives.

  Her mind paused for a frozen moment, then felt that thought again.

  Crippled lives. Sister Fiacre and Barnaby had both been crippled, hurting in their different ways.

  So many lives were crippled if looked at from a certain angled way. Barnaby. Sister Fiacre. And Sym. And if you looked at it a certain way, so was…

  Without realizing it, she had risen to her feet. What she was thinking had a kind of sense to it, no matter how much her mind recoiled from it. Had a kind of sense that explained the unexplained about Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s. Explained in a way that was close to madness.

  “Dame Frevisse?” Sister Emma asked uncertainly.

  Frevisse shook her head once, sharply, shaking off anything that would break the way her thoughts were now running at full, frightening pitch.

  Sister Emma insisted, “Dame Frevisse, what is it?”

  Frevisse spun around, grabbed her arm, cried, “Find Dame Claire!” and pushed past her.

  “Dame Frevisse!” Sister Emma cried after her but Frevisse was past heeding. She ran the length of the church and out the western door into the yard and wan sunlight. There was no one there but as she ran on, across the yard and through the arched gateway into the outer yard, she saw Naylor talking to two servants in a stable doorway. Her suddenness brought him quickly around, and he started toward her, his mouth opening to question her, but she did not stop. “Come with me!” she cried.

  He came after her, catching her urgency.

  “Oh, God,” she prayed as she ran, “don’t let it be,” and kept on running.

  She smelled it as she reached the closed door of the calving shed. Recognized its warm, coppery smell in the clear cold of the day. She hesitated, unwilling to see what she knew the smell meant.

  Naylor reached past her and opened the door.

  Meg had killed him beside his brother’s coffin. H
is blood was there in a spread pool where she must have held him until it finished. But when the bleeding was done, she had moved him to a clean pile of straw. They were there together now, Meg sitting with her legs curled under her, Hewe with his head on her lap, his hands folded on his chest over the embroidered front of Father Henry’s surplice. She must have put it on him afterwards because the only blood on it was a little around the neck, soaked through the cloth she had wound there to cover the gash that let out his life.

  With the things she had taken from the sacristry Meg had made Sym’s coffin into as near an altar as she could, covered by one of the white altar cloths, set with the paten and the chalice, all brought from the sacristy. A lamp, in lieu of the candles she did not dare take off the altar, shed its light over the quiet scene. In the moment before others came and the yelling began, Meg looked at Frevisse and Naylor and said serenely, as if she could not see their horror, “He’s gone to Heaven now. He’s safe.”

  Chapter 23

  It had all been so simple.

  Meg thought they understood. She had explained it very carefully to Dame Frevisse, to them all, and they were being kind to her so they must understand how simple it all was.

  If Barnaby had lived, he would have gone back into his bad ways and, more than that, kept anything good from ever happening to Sym or Hewe or her. But for just that little while he had been good. He had been kind, and made confession, and had suffered terribly, a penance for his sins. Just in that little while he had behaved like a good Christian, one worthy of Heaven. It would have been wrong to have allowed that to be wasted. And it had not been hard. She had held the pillow over his face only a little while and then he had died and been free to be good for always, never bad or hurting again.

  And Sym. Poor Sym, who never understood anything really. He had been so frightened by his blood from that little wound in his side that he had lain down and done everything she told him: said the Act of Contrition, promising to amend his life, and kissed the little cross of tied sticks that was the only holy thing she had in the cottage, and wished to go to Heaven—all the things Father Clement had said were enough to cleanse a soul if there were no priest ready to do it with holy words and oil and the wafer. Then the knife had gone in so easily—it had to be kept always sharp for cutting bread and the rare rabbit or chicken—he had hardly seemed to know it, just looked at her with more surprise than pain and then twisted a little when she had pulled it out, and gone to sleep, sweetly as the baby he had once been, never to hurt himself or anyone else anymore.

  Sister Fiacre had been a dangerous chance-taking. But Meg had watched a woman die of a cancerous breast and knew how long the dying went on. Sister Fiacre was a holy woman, dealing with holy objects every day and saying how sometimes when praying she could feel herself surrounded by the love of God and His holy saints. She had never hurt anyone or sinned very deeply; surely God had not meant for her to suffer so hard for very long. And by showing herself holy and kind to Meg, God’s plan for her dying was made clear to Meg. Surely God would not have put Sister Fiacre so plainly in her path if He hadn’t meant her to ease her dying.

  It had been no difficulty getting the ax. It was there in the kitchen, and she had been using it for killing chickens for the priory’s pies—she had never learned the knack of wringing their necks, she had always had need of the ax. A single stunning blow with the blunt end, and then two with the sharp, to make sure. No one had thought a thing when they had seen her washing it off, after.

  And Hewe. She was sorry he had been so afraid. She hadn’t wanted him afraid but her fear for him had been greater. If he had gone away with the players, they would have corrupted him and he would have ended damned forever. She knew God wanted him for a priest, but he seemed set on wandering from his appointed path into sinfulness. There had been only the one way to save him, to make him safe despite himself.

  She had taken him to his brother and left him there to pray, and gone to the kitchen for the knife and to the church for the priest things. Hewe had not understood, not even when he saw the altar things and vestments. Not understood until she had explained it to him, and made him kneel and swear he was God’s servant before anyone else’s, and pray in contrition for absolution, there at the altar she had made. She had brought all the proper things to make it a true altar. He had understood then that she was saving him. He had understood and was glad of it. She knew he was glad, because she had seen his repenting tears falling when she bent to be sure of her stroke across his throat.

  So much worrying about her family, for so very long. And now, so simply, it was done and they were safe.

  Meg looked up at the sky, tilting her head to feel the soft snow fall on her cheek. It was odd to be so warm out in the cold, but they had given her a cloak, heavy wool and double weight, because it was a long ride to Banbury, Dame Frevisse had said.

  Meg had never been there, of course, but it did not seem to matter now that she was going. She knew why she had to go, and that she would not be coming back. She was quite clear on that, but it hardly mattered. She had done what needed doing. She was tired; they could take her where they wanted, it no longer mattered. Everything was settled and there would be a priest there for her. The angry, fox-faced man, the crowner, had promised her that. So, with one thing and another, it would not be so very long, she thought, until she was safe, too.

  Hoofbeats of Montfort’s departing horse were muffled by the thin snow lying on the yard. Arms wrapped about herself as if for warmth, though Domina Edith’s parlor was as warm as might be, Frevisse stood watching from the window as they went out through the gateway, dark shapes formless in cloaks, only Meg’s white headcloth making her different from the men around her, and then all of them gone and the yard empty.

  Everyone was gone now. The players had left at daybreak, with hope of making Oxford tomorrow in time for the Twelfth Night revels. The guesthalls were empty and she had no duties there until more guests came. Frevisse felt hollow and cold, and no thoughts or fire seemed likely to fill or warm her anytime soon.

  “But how did she get those things out of the church without being seen?” asked Dame Claire.

  “Who notices servants?” asked Domina Edith.

  Dame Frevisse nodded. “And the only people in the church were Dame Perpetua and Sister Amicia, concentrating on their prayers over Sister Fiacre. At most, they noticed it was Meg, not what she was doing.”

  Domina Edith, standing beside her, turned away shaking her head. “All that happening inside the woman and we never knew it.”

  “Until too late,” Frevisse said. Her words sounded dull in her ears, hollow like the rest of her. “I was too late.”

  Domina Edith had accepted Dame Claire’s arm and begun moving toward her chair, but she paused and reached out to lay her thin, veined hand on Frevisse’s arm. “You were sooner than any of us,” she said gently.

  “I should have—” Known something. Seen something. Guessed something. Not been so involved with proving one man innocent or in scoring against Montfort that she did not see the pattern behind it all. “I should have known,” she insisted.

  “That’s pride, Dame, and a sin. How would you have known?”

  Frevisse met Domina Edith’s aged eyes and was held silent by them, trying to see into herself the way the prioress seemed to. She finally said, “I don’t know.”

  “Nor does anyone else but God. What’s in your hand?”

  Frevisse had forgotten she was holding anything. Now at Domina Edith’s gentle question she brought her hand in front of her and opened her fingers to show a few pieces of dried orange peel. “Father Henry found them on the hearthstones by Meg’s fire when he went to her cottage to bring what few things she might need in Banbury. He wasn’t sure what they were but brought them to her, and she gave some to me when I last spoke with her. She said—”

  Domina Edith and Dame Claire waited but Frevisse shook her head. Later she might be able to repeat Meg’s saying, “Take some for a rem
embrance of me.” But not now.

  Domina Edith moved away to her chair, leaning on Dame Claire’s arm. “She spoke with Father Henry, too?” she asked.

  Dame Claire answered that. “She confessed to him last night. She was very insistent that she must.”

  “I would suppose so,” Domina Edith sighed, sinking down into her chair.

  “But not about the deaths,” Dame Claire said.

  “And how would you be knowing that?” Domina Edith asked.

  “Because she told me when I took her the sleeping draught to give her one night’s rest before we gave her over into Master Montfort’s keeping.”

  “She seemed to want everyone to be very sure no trouble came from her one sin,” Frevisse said. “She told me, too.”

  “Her one sin?” Disbelief and questioning were in Domina Edith’s voice.

  Frevisse nodded. “She lied about seeing Joliffe near the church the day Sister Fiacre died. She said it because she wanted him to suffer something for hurting Sym. But lying is a sin and she wished to confess it. Father Henry refused her absolution, of course, because she is not penitent over the murders.”

  Domina Edith sighed and looked down at her lap. “They’ll hang her in Banbury, shriven or not.”

  “They will,” Frevisse agreed, looking down at her own folded hands.

  Meg’s holding would probably go to Gilbey Dunn, her cottage and goods to someone in the village.

  And the only words Frevisse had had with the players before they left for Oxford were of cheerful thanks and farewells and half a promise to come this way again sometime.

  Meanwhile… She raised her head and said, “Sister Thomasine was coughing in the cloister walk this morning. I think she’s taken the rheum.”