The Reeve's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Perryn broke stride, struggling between coming on and staying where he was, but managed finally to catch himself back, taking firm hold not only on his feelings but on both boys, to keep them where they were beside him.

  Mistress Margery, seeming untouched by the fear around her, said, “Take your tunic off, Colyn.”

  Colyn did and stood, naked to his breeks and staring blindly at nothing in front of him, eyes huge with terror, while the herbwife and Sister Thomasine looked at the bright pink-to-red rash now easily seen all over his back and chest and disappearing into the hair behind his ears. There had been no outbreak of the Great Death in this part of Oxfordshire for longer than Colyn had been alive, but all save the very youngest children had heard the thing talked of enough to know what its coming meant. Not simply death—death came often enough to any village to be familiar and accepted—but an ugly death that sometimes took so many in a village there were too few left alive to bury the dead.

  Uncertainly Sister Thomasine said, “It doesn’t look like what I’ve heard of the pestilence.”

  ‘Nay,“ Mistress Margery agreed, loudly enough to be heard across the churchyard. ”This isn’t plague rash.“

  Anne sobbed once, softly. Colyn’s shoulders sagged. A shuddering sigh passed across the churchyard and hands moved in the sign of the cross with desperate thankfulness.

  ‘See,“ Mistress Margery went on, still in a carrying voice. ”It doesn’t have the rosey rings. It isn’t the plague.“

  ‘But then what is it?“ Anne asked, after all only a little less desperate because whatever it was, her son had it.

  Mistress Margery laid hand on Colyn’s forehead. “He’s hot.” She meant by more than already came with the day. “Fevered hot. Feel.”

  Using the simplest, surest way to know if there was fever, Anne pressed her lips to Colyn’s forehead in a kiss and drew back with a trembling nod of agreement. “He’s dry-hot. He’s fevered.”

  ‘Morbilli,“ Sister Thomasine said. Meaning the ”little plague,“ rather than the great one.

  ‘We call it mesels hereabouts,“ Mistress Margery said, ”but aye, that’s what it is, I think.“

  Anne caught Colyn tightly to her, as if that would be enough to keep him safe. Colyn, knowing as well as she did that it would not, began to cry.

  Chapter 8

  Early as it was, the sunrise light still slanted honey-thick and golden across the goat-cropped grass of the village green, the morning was already heavy with heat, weighing down—along with the village’s unnatural quiet at his back—on Simon as he trudged heavy-legged along his foreyard garden’s path from the gateway to his housedoor. Wearily certain that going farther, even simply into the house, was too much trouble, he slumped down on the bench there with bowed head, hands hanging between his knees, listening to the quiet—no sounds from inside the house, no shifting of cows in the byre, no chickens busy around his feet—and told himself, wearily, not to mind it, that no one was dead, there was no need for mourning.

  Yet.

  That had been the worst of these four days since manor court—the waiting to see who would die.

  Not if but who.

  And how many.

  Simon forced himself to straighten, dragging his back and then his head up against the tiredness that came from more than having been up all the night keeping watch by Colyn and Lucy and Adam in the church. There were eighteen children sick so far. One child or more from every family with small children in the village. No, twenty—he was forgetting Gilbey’s two boys because they were being kept at home, not with the rest. Gilbey had even ridden to Banbury on Saturday and brought back a doctor to see his, at a fee Simon didn’t care to think about. Sometimes Gilbey looked to have more money than sense, Simon thought bitterly. But then, with all Gilbey had, he could afford to take leave of his senses once in a while.

  And sitting thinking about Gilbey was getting nothing done, Simon reminded himself, and there were things that desperately needed doing. Though for his very life Simon couldn’t seem to think of any of them just now and scrubbed at his face with his hands, trying to be more awake, his stubble unfamiliarly harsh. There had been no Saturday bath and shaving this week. He had made do with a swim on Sunday, the stream warm enough for it, when he’d gone round the fields to see how things did, but shaving was too much trouble.

  Or maybe it wasn’t, he thought, finding he was scratching where the hairs prickled under his jawline.

  Was it only Tuesday?

  In those first terrible moments in the churchyard four days ago, mothers had begun to look to their children, harsh with fear as they felt foreheads and searched bodies for the telltale sign of rash. There had been the pink beginnings of it on only Adam and three others there, but Mistress Margery had warned, “Spots are the surest sign but it can first show with no more than a running nose or a cough there’s no reason for, or just in an ill temper because they don’t feel well and don’t yet know why.”

  Anne had whispered, “Lucy,” left home with Cisily because she was fretful, and Simon had gone tight-throated with the same fear stark in his wife’s eyes. The last time there had been mesels in the village, Adam had been newborn and not taken them—the very youngest babies never seemed to, Mistress Margery had said, nor those who had had it before—but their Jon, their firstborn, just turned three years old, had sickened, had burned up with fever and died, and Anne had nearly lost her milk with worry and then with grief, and almost they had lost her and Adam, too, and it had taken Mistress Margery more days to bring her back to health than Jon had taken to die.

  ‘And it’s going to spread,“ Mistress Margery had said in the churchyard. ”Be sure of it. When it reaches one, it’s like to reach all, it spreads so easy and fast, if they’ve been near each other at all of late,“ which they likely had been, always at play together at most days’ ends when their work was done.

  In the silence then, with the only sound the whimpering of Emma Millwarde’s baby against her neck, everyone had stood staring at nothing or at their children, facing what was come on them with probably the same thought: How many children would it be this time who didn’t live? Last time it had been three, all well on one day, all dead before a week was gone.

  Into that stricken quiet, Sister Thomasine had said, “If so many are going to be ill and badly fevered, might it be well to keep them all together and in the church here in this hot weather?”

  The few who heard her—Simon and Anne, Mistress Margery and Dame Frevisse—had momentarily stared blankly at her. Then understanding had bloomed in Mistress Margery’s face and she’d said, “Yes! There’ll be no place stay cooler than the church these hot days.” With its stone walls and thickly thatched roof. “And if they’re kept together, I can see to them far better, all at once, instead of running from village end to village end.” And maybe coming too late, the way it had been during the throat-sickness three winters back, when Mistress Margery had been saving Martin Fisher’s daughter, clearing her throat of the slime that was like to choke her, when word had come that John Gregory’s boy was in like case at the village’s other end but by the time she’d run the length of the village green to reach him, she was too late and he was dead, no fault of hers, just the way it was. She had saved others enough in her time for folk to know she knew her herbs and that there was power in her spells. She had even killed a man once with a spell, but only that once and only to save her own life, nor was she like some healers who only valued their skill for the money it brought them and cared naught about what they did or who they did it to. So folk had listened to her there in the churchyard while she told them why she wanted the sick children kept in the church, and the two nuns and Father Henry had explained to Father Edmund, to have his permission for it.

  He’d given it readily, saying, “Where better for them to be than in here where we can best pray for them while we tend them?” and his willingness had helped talk around to it such as might have not seen the point, though even then Gilbey and h
is wife would have none of it. But there was none as missed them anyway and the nave was fair cramped as it was, with straw-stuffed mattresses brought from homes laid out in rows along both its sides for the children and barely space between for those who tended them to move and sit and sometimes lie down themselves.

  How did the women take it, Simon wondered? The children’s fevered restlessness and crying. The smells.

  The men came and went, seeing how things were, giving what help they could, which never seemed to be much; and such women as didn’t have sick children were in and out, bringing food and drink and taking fouled bedding away and bringing it back clean. That was what Cisily did when she wasn’t helping nurse his three, but Anne and others never seemed to leave. Nor the nuns either. That was something Simon wouldn’t have expected but there they were, the two of them, as tireless as the other women.

  And today Colyn’s fever had broken just ere dawn. Simon made the sign of the cross on himself at the thankful thought. The boy would better now, and Anne had been able to fall asleep beside him, leaving Cisily to watch over Adam and Lucy, still dangerously deep in their own fevers but somewhat quieted from some brew Mistress Margery had given them, and Simon had dragged himself up from the joint stool where he had sat most of the night and come home because things there could not be left to Watt and Dickon without he at least see how they did and do some of his share, too.

  But nonetheless here he sat, doing nothing, and with a heavy sigh for his own weakness, he braced hands on knees, readying to force himself up and on with the day.

  And found, in a little while, that he hadn’t moved at all, was simply sitting with his eyes closed, nigh to drowsing.

  He was that tired he couldn’t trust himself, seemingly.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to face everything there was to do because whenever he did that these past few days, he started to be afraid in different ways than simply for the children. There was the haying, first of all. The weather could not be better for it. Save for a little rain at early morning yesterday, there had only been hot, dry skies since manor court, even the nights bringing little ease from the heat and the dew drying fast off the grass in the mornings—but here they were, like to lose more of the last haying than they kept because with so many of the women seeing to the sick and others having to do double work at home because of it and Matthew gone, they were short of folk to go to the fields, even for the weeding that needed doing, let be the haying. And workdays owed the lord came before their own work so it would be his hay that was done first anyway and already it was less than two weeks to when Simon hoped to start the harvest. The first fine harvest there had looked to be after the string of bad years, and if they lost it, there would be dying in the village from more than mesels, and he was reeve, with it laid on him to make things come out well despite of everything, and he was afraid…

  Simon slapped his hands down hard on his thighs, stinging himself to better wits. He was tired. That was all. Things were better than they had been for years, and they had seen their way through those and would through this.

  And after all and come what may, none were dead yet.

  Except poor old Matthew, who’d had naught but his burial after all, with Simon and some others digging a hasty hole—hardly big enough to be called a grave to Simon’s mind—in a corner of the churchyard that same day he’d come home, and a few people—and Mary’d at least not grudged Matthew that much of her time—had gathered for Father Edmund’s prayers over the box before the dirt had been shoveled back in. No wake or aught else, but Simon had vowed to buy his soul some Masses later, when there was time. But what in the name of St. Chad had Tom Hulcote been thinking of, coming up to him before they’d even cleaned the dirt off the shovels, to demand whether Simon was going to decide in his favor or not over the Woderove holding? Later, with time to think, Simon had reckoned it was Mary had put him up to it, but at the time all he had been was furious at him. Even now, Simon felt a hot shadow of that anger stir in him, along with the irk of knowing he was going to have to confess and do penance for it when confession time came round again.

  Simon realized he had gone off on his thoughts again and pulled himself upright on the bench and then to his feet, to stand with fists planted on hips while he looked around the yard, trying to convince himself he was ready to get on with things. Thanks be to St. Roch that Dickon had been meseled years ago and so was safe from it this time and was doing all his share and more around the place with Watt.

  But where were the two of them? Simon wondered, unable to bear the yard’s quiet now he was full awake again. Lucy wasn’t raising her voice somewhere around the place nor Cisily clattering a spoon against the morning porridge pot nor Anne telling someone to wash their hands if they thought they were going to eat at her table nor one of the boys teasing the other into mischief instead of to the morning milking. There was just this… terrible… quiet.

  But it was past milking time, Simon told himself sternly, grabbing hold to something that didn’t make misery course through him. That was why there was no stamping or lowing from the byre; Watt and Dickon had already done the milking and Dickon taken the cows to pasture while Watt carried the milk to Ienet Comber who was seeing to it for Anne in return for a tithe of it, which was better than letting it go to waste for lack of anyone doing anything with it at all. But had they done the mucking out yet? If not, he would. See to his own and then to rest, he reckoned and started for the barn, only to almost be run into by Dickon flinging at full run from around the house corner. The boy swerved and stumbled, and Simon reached out and caught him back to balance. In return, Dickon, gasping, caught hold on him, as Simon said, “Hai, hold up,” and held him steady on his feet, seeing he was gray-faced under a sheen of sweat. “Are you gone daft, boy, running in this heat? You’ll make yourself sick and then where’ll we be, eh?”

  Still clinging to him, Dickon panted out, “It’s Tom Hulcote! You have to come!”

  ‘Tom Hulcote be damned. You come over here and sit while I fetch you something to drink.“

  ‘He’s up by Oxfall Field,“ Dickon gasped, desperate to say the words. ”In the ditch there. Dead.“

  ‘Drunk, you mean,“ Simon said. ”Or down with the heat, maybe.“

  “Dead,” Dickon sobbed. “All broken in. His head. All… all…” He couldn’t make the words come fast enough around his need to breathe and his tears, now it was safe to cry. “His head… it’s all… smashed in.”

  Chapter 9

  Frevisse returned to the priory in company with Ienet Comber bringing curded cheese to the nunnery kitchen. They parted in the kitchen yard with Ienet’s promise that when her business with the curded cheese was done, she would wait there to keep Frevisse company back to the village, and Frevisse cut through the priory’s side yard, meeting only servants, to a small gate into the inner yard, the shortest way to Master Naylor’s house. She had intended no pause along the way but as she latched the small gate closed behind her the bell beyond the cloister walls began to ring to Sext and she stopped, her hand on the latch, her throat tightening with longing for the nunnery church’s deep, familiar quiet, her own place in the choir stalls, the weaving of nun’s voices through the Offices’ prayers and psalms…

  But that was all forbidden to her for this while. She could not even enter the cloister, and she bowed her head, whispering some of the words from today’s Sext… Deus, Qui temperas rerum vices… Confer salutem corporum, Veramque pacem cordium… God, Who governs time and fortune… Give health to the body, And true peace to the soul. Turning it from a prayer for herself into a prayer for others far more desperately in need than she was, she drew a deep, steadying breath and turned toward the gateway to the outer yard.

  But to have been brought to this because of Sister Thomasine…

  That day in the village churchyard, while Mistress Margery and Father Edmund and Father Henry were talking the women around to keeping the ill children together in the church, she and Sister Thomasine
had been left in the lee of things, aside and quiet, on the verge of going home, Frevisse had thought until Sister Thomasine had said, “We’ll have to send word to Domina Elisabeth we’re staying.”

  Frevisse’s immediate response was that no, they weren’t, but years of nunhood had given her some governance over her tongue, making her hesitate, when this time she should not have, before saying carefully, “We’ll have to ask her permission.”

  ‘Father Henry can ask for it when he goes back for Dame Claire,“ Sister Thomasine had said.

  More to Frevisse’s mind had been withdrawal to the nunnery themselves and a brief explanation to Domina Elisabeth followed by her refusal, but it hardly mattered and she had let it happen Sister Thomasine’s way because Domina Elisabeth would never give permission for them to stay, however she was asked.

  But from what Father Henry said when he returned, it seemed that their prioress had never had the mesels, nor had Dame Juliana or Sister Cecely, and so she had forbidden them to return for this while, in fear they would bring the infection with them. Moreover, she had refused Dame Claire to come, only given her leave to send all the advice and herbs she would.