The Reeve's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  No one held all of any but almost everyone in the village held some of each, and there was meadow, too, for grazing cattle along the stream in the low places that too often flooded with the spring and autumn rains to be worth planting; and rough pasture beyond the fields, poorer soil cleared by men in want of more land before the Great Death of almost a hundred years ago had made such a dearth of people that there was, even now, no longer need to plough or plant those acres anymore. And of course on a green hillock well out of the village the windmill for grinding of the village’s grain spread its sailed arms against the sky. And downstream was the marsh with its rushes for so many uses, and here and there a hedgerow, and the road that ran through the village and away to north and south and places for the most part too far away to be bothered over by Prior Byfield folk. But it was the fields that were Prior Byfield’s life. If there was to be food in the village, then month in, month out, the fields had to be ploughed, harrowed, seeded, tended, harvested, ploughed again, harrowed again, seeded, tended… year around to year, no end to it, come what may, if Prior Byfield was to live.

  Knowing that, Frevisse could only wonder how had it been for Simon Perryn and the others these past three years of ill weather. To watch their hoped-for harvests rot in the fields and then live with the hunger that came afterwards, and everything to do again—the ploughing, harrowing, seeding—days into weeks into months of work with no surety that the next year would be any better.

  The field of grain beyond the churchyard wall, only weeks away from ripeness, gave evidence of their courage and hope that they would win their gamble this year at least.

  Domina Elisabeth had had the right of it, Frevisse thought—and not about Sister Thomasine alone. Her own prayers would hereafter have a different weight to them, now that the village folk had names and faces for her.

  She looked for Sister Thomasine and found her drawn aside into the lee of the church porch, alone again and in no seeming distress. When Frevisse approached her, she looked up calmly enough, and asked, “Is it settled?”

  ‘The reeve and jurors have decided to keep the holding in Lord Lovell’‘s hands for the time being, rather than give it to either man,“ Frevisse answered; and then did not resist asking, ”What do you think of it all?“

  ‘Of it all?“ Sister Thomasine asked, puzzled.

  Frevisse made a small gesture to the gathered clumps of people scattered around the churchyard. “Of all this. Of everyone.”

  With the slightest of thoughtful frowns, Sister Thomasine looked around at the clusters of men and women, all of them busy in talk, and the children everywhere, most of the older ones playing at some kind of walking-tag among their elders, just short of running so no one could say at them, “Don’t run,” but managing to annoy their elders with it anyway while the younger ones were mostly, oddly enough, keeping with their mothers, sitting on the grass beside them or leaning against them, their mothers’ hands absently resting on heads or shoulders or patting at fretful ones wanting to be heeded or go home. Frevisse only wished someone would take Mary Woderove home. She was near the wall beside the gateway pentice, being talked to by Anne, Perryn’s wife, and three other women, and though she seemed quieted out of her anger, she was standing with her head down, refusing to look at them. Anne’s younger boy was there, too, pushing restlessly against his mother, scratching behind one ear at some idle itch, although his brother and Dickon had found a perch further along the wall with some other boys who were listening wide-eared to Father Edmund and Father Henry talking again with Tom Hulcote and some other men. Faced with both priests, they were all subdued enough, though Tom kept shaking his head again and again against whatever was being said at him.

  Sister Thomasine sighed and turned her mild gaze back to Frevisse, the slight frown softened to puzzlement as she said gently, “I don’t see why so many choose to make such trouble for themselves, to care so much for worldly things that at the end all come to nothing. Why care so much for things that always end, when there’s God instead?”

  It was what a nun, a bride of Christ, should say, but Frevisse knew Sister Thomasine well enough to know that the should and ought that guarded and guided most people’s tongues had nothing to do with her answer. She truly did not see what there was in the World that could possibly be preferred to God.

  Frevisse had made the same choice, had given her life over to God and prayer, but knew she had carried with her into her nun’s life an understanding of the other choices and why people made them. She was unsure— and unsettled by her unsurety—whether Sister Thomasine’s lack of that understanding was a weakness or a strength.

  The clot of men around Tom Hulcote was breaking up, dispersing at the priests’ urging, Frevisse guessed, with Father Edmund keeping a hand on Tom’s shoulder and going with him toward Mary, still among the women, while Father Henry came toward Frevisse and Sister Thomasine with half his heed still on Tom’s friends, watching to be sure they wandered off rather than clustered into talk again. As he joined them, Frevisse asked, “Did you talk him out of his anger?”

  ‘I don’t know. Our best hope is that the worst of it is past. But Tom is as much hurt as angered over it, and the sore of the hurt will keep rubbing the anger awake, I’m afraid. He wants very much to have Mary Woderove to wife.“

  ‘They could marry, even without the holding,“ Frevisse said.

  ‘They neither of them want to live that poorly, I fear,“ Father Henry said gravely.

  Frevisse was saved from struggling to hold back from her answer to that by a shout, “Hai! Look!” from one of the boys atop the wall that turned heads first toward him and then where he was pointing, away toward a rider leading a packhorse just coming into view from the Banbury road beyond the priest’s house.

  There was no mistaking Otes, the Banbury carrier. Frevisse had had dealings with him when she was hosteler and again lately as the priory’s cellarer, because he came this way every few weeks on his rounds, carrying letters sometimes, and bringing things ordered by those lacking time or else the wish to go all the way to Banbury market for something not to be had otherwise—needles, say, or spices—and taking orders for things to be brought next time he came. Old Bet, the dun mare he rode, and Splotch, his strong-backed, brown-and-white spotted packhorse, were as well known as he was, and children were tearing off handfuls of the rich churchyard grass before running to meet him. His usual place was likely the village alehouse or else the oak tree on the green, but since most of the village looked to be gathered here, he turned churchward, to draw rein at the gateway, returning greetings but not so cheerfully as Frevisse was used to seeing him, his eyes running among the folk gathering to him until he found out Mary Woderove and said to her over the heads between them, with a twitch of his head toward his pack-horse, burdened with the usual packs and hampers on either side but between them this time a wooden box maybe two feet long, barely a foot wide or deep, “It’s your husband, Mary. I’ve brought him home.”

  Frevisse understood immediately and started a prayer. It was a moment longer before Mary, understanding at last, cried out shrilly and flung her hands over her face as Anne and the other women closed on her and Tom Hulcote drew hurriedly back with the look on his face of most men confronted by a crying woman and almost everyone else looked merely uncertain what to do, except the horses, who were reaching soft-lipped for the children’s offerings of fresh grasses, mouthing them carefully out of one small hand after another while the children stared at their parents and everyone else behaving suddenly so strangely. Father Edmund made the sign of the cross in the air toward what was earthly left of Matthew Woderove as he and Father Henry both began to pray aloud for the man’s soul. Sister Thomasine bent her head, joining Frevisse in the Office of the Dead: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Give eternal rest to them, Lord. And perpetual light shine on them… A porte inferi Erue, Domine, animas eorum. From the gate of hell Rescue, Lord, their souls. But Frevisse was also watching Mary sobbing
in Anne’s arms, and Tom Hulcote caught awkwardly apart, alone, looking uneasily from Mary to the wooden box with her husband’s bones to Mary again; and at Gilbey and Elena Dunn even more apart from everyone than Tom Hulcote but close to each other.

  Four ambitious people, Frevisse thought. All with hope for gain because of Matthew Woderove’s death.

  And there was Matthew Woderove, dead.

  She pushed the thought away. It was prayers for the man’s soul that were needed—Delicta juventutis meae et ignorantias meas ne memineris, Domine. The offenses of my youth and my weaknesses do not think on, Lord…

  Still on Old Bet and looking faintly embarrassed by all he had unleashed, Otes said pleadingly to Father Edmund, “What should I be doing with him, eh?”

  The priest ended a prayer and crossed himself, the gesture echoed by everyone, even the children, before he said, “Take him to his house, I suppose. That’s where the wake…”

  Mary cried out and jerked back from Anne. “No!” She flailed a hand toward the box. “No! I won’t have it in my house! It can stay in the church! I don’t want it near me! Leave it here.”

  ‘Mary, dear,“ Anne protested, trying to cover scandal with pity. ”It’s Matthew. You have to…“

  ‘It isn’t Matthew!“ Mary cried at her, shoving Anne and another woman’s hands away from her. ”Whatever is in there, it isn’t Matthew and I don’t want it in my house!“

  ‘Mary,“ Perryn said with plain disgust and no pity at all. ”Don’t be more of a fool than you are. It’s in his own house Matthew should be tonight.“

  ‘Matthew is dead, and it’s my house until you throw me out of it and I don’t want that… that…“ Driven past words with passion, Mary gestured again at the box.

  Her brother began again, “Mary,” but she cried out at him, flung away from Anne and the other women and everyone else into Tom Hulcote’s arms, sobbing shrilly through wild tears, “Don’t let him make me, Tom! Don’t let him make me!”

  Tom caught her, held her, his arms as tightly around her, saying down to the top of her head, “No, sweeting, no. I won’t let him, no.” Kissing the top of her head, then glaring over her at Perryn, all his anger came back, the more fierce for being for Mary’s sake instead of his own. “You let her be, Simon Perryn. You’ve done enough to break her heart. You let her be with this.”

  Equally angry, Perryn returned, “Look you here, Tom Hulcote, it’s Matthew whose heart was broken and by her, and he went off to his death because of it. Now he’ll have his last right, to lie in his own house the last night his body is on earth instead of under it, and she’s going to have to live with that.”

  ‘I’ll not!“ Mary wrenched around in Tom’s arms to face her brother, her rage equal to either man’s. ”He cheated me every way while he was alive. He’s not going to cheat me out of a little peace now he’s dead! That box isn’t coming into my house except over my own dead bones!“

  ‘It’s not your house, Mary Woderove!“ Perryn returned. ”It’s forfeit to the lord and you’re there on sufferance and my sufferance has near to worn out. If Matthew doesn’t lie there tonight, neither will you, ever again!“

  He meant it, and as reeve, he could make it happen. Even Mary in her extremity of anger saw he would if she pushed him farther and froze halfway to another shout at him, her angry blood draining out of her face to leave her pale. Her breast heaved twice with great breaths as she struggled to hold herself back. Then she turned in the circle of Tom’s arms, pulled back against his hold for room enough between them to grab his tunic’s front, and cried up at him, “They hate us, Tom! He hates us! He hates vow! He’d rather we both died in a ditch than marry! Leave here or it’ll be too late and they’ll kill you, too!”

  People were drawing back from her, even Anne. Only Father Edmund came forward, to put one hand on Tom’s shoulder, the other on hers, saying gently, as if comforting a miserable child, “Mary. Mary. Stop this before you make yourself sick and your brother more angry. Mary, heed me.”

  With her face huddled down to hide its weeping ruin, she shook her head, denying his comfort; but after a look at Tom to ask permission that Tom gave with a small nod back at him, the priest took Mary by both shoulders and gently turned her toward him, saying, “All’s in God’s hands, whatever comes, Mary. Believe me. It’s going to be well, one way or another.”

  Mary gave a hiccuping sob and crumpled into the priest’s arms with the simple brokenheartedness of a small child wanting comfort. Holding her carefully while she cried against his shoulder, he patted her back, saying things into her ear, and from relief or because the best of the show seemed over, depending on how they saw it, people began to turn away, find somewhere else to look, something else to do. Father Henry went to talk to Otes still waiting outside the gate, and so did Perryn, but Anne came away toward Frevisse and Sister Thomasine, bringing her younger son with her and calling her other boy and Dickon down from the wall for the sake of asserting herself over something.

  Sister Thomasine had returned to looking at the ground in front of her, so it was to Frevisse that Anne made a rueful shake of the head and said, “I don’t know if Mary has ever understood the world isn’t here simply to make her happy, or if she knows it and the problem is that she blackly resents it.” She glanced back at her sister-in-law, now standing a little back from Father Edmund, gulping on the last of her sobs, her head hanging. “If only her bad temper was as little as she is, we’d all live the happier. And so would she. Colyn, stop that.” Colyn had been scratching under his hair where it grew raggedly toward his tunic neck. Anne pulled his hand away. “Leave be, bad boy. You’ve been around John Upham’s dogs again, and caught their fleas, haven’t you?” She pushed his head forward so that she could part his hair to see his neck. “A good rubbing down with tansy when we get home is what you’re going to…”

  She broke off, staring at the back of his neck with something in the way she stood there that made Frevisse lean to see, too, but Colyn fidgeted, protesting, “Maaammm,” and Anne let go his head to clamp her hands down on his shoulders, not with anger, Frevisse saw by her face, but in something near to… was it fear?

  ‘What is it?“ Frevisse asked sharply.

  ‘I…“ Anne was looking rapidly through the crowd for someone, not her husband, still in plain sight with Otes, but, ”Mistress Margery!“

  Her urgency drew people to look toward her and some began to come her way but a bone-thin woman in a faded green gown moved more quickly and with more purpose than the rest, to her before anyone else, Anne saying before she could ask anything, “Look,” pushing Colyn’s head forward again and his hair up from his neck. The boy squirmed but only from his hips down, knowing better than to make more protest while Mistress Margery bent to see. Frevisse shifted enough to see, too, and so did Sister Thomasine on the other side, come out of her withdrawal into curiosity.

  ‘A rash,“ Mistress Margery said and pulled the boy’s tunic away from his neck to see down inside. ”It goes down his back, too.“

  ‘It itches,“ Colyn complained, squirming harder. Mistress Margery loosed him and he scratched at his chest. ”Here, too.“

  ‘You look,“ Mistress Margery said over him to Sister Thomasine, and without hesitating Sister Thomasine did, putting his hand aside and opening his tunic’s front at the neck. She worked more often than any of the other nuns with Dame Claire in the infirmary, and now Frevisse realized why Mistress Margery seemed familiar to her. She was the village’s herbwife, who came sometimes to the priory to exchange the herbs she gathered from the fields and hedgerows and woods for ones Dame Claire grew in the priory’s gardens, and that would be how she and Sister Thomasine were confident of one other.

  ‘He has a rash here, too,“ Sister Thomasine said.

  From among the little crowd gathering around them a woman with a small girl beside her said, her voice scaling up, “What kind of rash? Plague rash?” She was drawing back even as she asked, shoving the little girl behind her as she went.
Nor was she alone. Everyone else was pulling away, too. Only Anne, Mistress Margery, Sister Thomasine and Frevisse stayed where they were around Colyn— Frevisse by plain force of will, not denying to herself her sudden terror—and only Perryn, with his other son and Dickon behind him, started toward them, but Anne cried out, “Stay away, Simon! Don’t come near! There’s Adam and Lucy will need you!” Because if it was plague, then likely it was too late for Colyn or her, but if their father lived, Adam and Lucy would still have someone. If they lived.