The Reeve's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Master Montfort seemed to like it, though. He tapped rapid fingers on the tabletop and asked a little less bale-fully, “Your prioress’ brother. He’s the abbot of St. Bartholomew’s, Northampton, yes?”

  ‘If it please you, sir,“ Dame Frevisse agreed, her eyes still downward, as subdued a picture of womanhood as could be found.

  Master Montfort tapped a little harder, thinking, then snapped, “Stay if you will, Dame. But it’s a favor to your prioress. You’re to stand aside and keep your mouth shut. You’re allowed to listen, nothing more. You understand?”

  For answer, Dame Frevisse made him another small curtsy and, head still bowed, drew well aside and back toward the wall beside the door. Master Montfort leaned to say something else, low-voiced again, to his clerk, who dipped pen tip in his inkpot, ducked low over a scrap of paper, and began to scribble. Simon used the chance to trade a nod with the priest and give Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon another look, not quite happy they were there and he was here. When he’d sought help to bring in Tom’s body, he had simply taken the first four fit men he had found, routing John Rudyng and Bert Fleccher out of the alehouse where John was hiding out from his mother-in-law and Bert just lying low from life on the whole, then found Walter Hopper at his messuage and collected him and Hamon and a hurdle for carrying the body. Father Edmund, fetched by Dickon on Simon’s order, had caught up to them as they’d left Walter’s, and Dickon had shown the way to Tom’s body. They were seen as they went by the field lane, of course, and followed by folk leaving their work to see what was toward, but they reached the body well ahead of anyone else, with time for Simon to see how Tom was lying all sprawled at the bottom of the ditch, looking like he’d rolled to where he was, his arms and legs loosely out. There was something over his face, something Dickon had said he’d put there before he left him, to keep the birds off, and it had, though there were five crows gathered to the body again, glossy black against the high-summer green of hedge and grassy ditch, and two of them had been trying to pluck the cloth away. Bert had yelled at them but Dickon, steadied down until then, had given a high, furious cry and grabbed up dirt clods from the field edge and rushed at them, throwing wildly after them as they rose on their wide black wings. They’d cawed offense at him and he’d yelled after them and been crying again, and Simon had gone and caught hold of him, turned him, and taken him well aside away from Tom’s body that he’d seen more than enough of already, holding him while he sobbed it all out again.

  It was never good, seeing a man’s face that birds had been at, and worse when it was someone you’d known.

  Meanwhile, the other men had seen to lifting Tom’s body onto the hurdle. Father Edmund had covered it with a blanket he’d thought to bring, and then with Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon doing the carrying and Father Edmund the praying, they’d headed back, Simon and Dickon trailing behind, Simon’s arm around Dickon’s shoulders.

  By then all those who should have been doing something better had caught up to them and seen them all the way back the village, to Tom’s house, but when all was said and done, there were only the seven of them who had “found” it and brought it in; and with Dickon too young to be a juror and Father Edmund a priest, that had left Simon, Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon to be jurors when the time came, like it or not.

  Simon hadn’t liked it. But he liked being left out of it even less, and his unease grew as he watched Bert and John shifting their bottoms on the bench and their feet on the floor, looking everywhere except at him, while Hamon gave him a short glance and snatched it away. Only Walter met his eyes but with a frowning worry that told Simon nothing except that there looked to be something to worry over, and that much he had begun to guess already.

  He looked away to Dickon standing with his half-grown boy’s awkwardness between the jurors’ bench and the table and found the boy’s eyes fixed on him much like Walter’s, save that instead of only worry, there was fear.

  At what? Simon wondered but just then Gilbey Dunn came in, brought by another of Master Montfort’s men and looking none too pleased about it. As the crowner’s man made his bow and stood aside, Gilbey gave a quick, assessing look at everyone, then stalked forward to Simon’s side, gave Master Montfort an ungracious bow, and demanded, “Yes? So? I’m here.”

  ‘And good thing, too,“ Master Montfort returned as ungraciously. ”Otherwise I’d have had you dragged in by your heels.“

  Cockerel meeting cockerel, Simon thought, and no sense to it, just matching dislikes, left over from when they had last dealt together, once though it had been and years ago, Simon recalled.

  He braced himself for whatever was next, ready when Master Montfort spread his glare and bristling displeasure to include him. “You’re both here because I have evidence that says you had to do with this Tom Hulcote’s death. This is your chance to confess and be done with it. Do you?”

  Simon felt his mouth drop open, snapped it shut on a gulp, and said hotly, “What?” as Gilbey after an equally startled pause exclaimed angrily, “Are you crazed? We’re not confessing to anything. I’m not, anyway. Are you. Perryn?”

  ‘Of course not!“

  ‘You may as well. The evidence says you were both there when this fellow was killed and so either you killed him yourselves or you know who did.“

  ‘Says we were there when he was killed?“ Simon said. ”No one knows where he was killed!“

  ‘Don’t play cunning with me,“ Master Montfort snapped.

  ‘What’s cunning about that?“ Simon demanded. ”He…“

  Quietly from where she stood aside, Dame Frevisse said, “If it please you, master crowner.”

  ‘I said you weren’t to speak, Dame,“ Master Montfort snarled.

  Dame Frevisse bowed her head, acknowledging that with all possible outward humility but said anyway, “Mightn’t they be better willing to admit their guilt if they knew the evidence?”

  Master Montfort glared at her. “I’m crowner here, not you. This business is mine and you’ll keep quiet or you’ll not be here. Do you understand?”

  Dame Frevisse made a small curtsy and a slight backward step, and Master Montfort faced Simon and Gilbey again, ready to go on, but Gilbey said, “She’s right, though. What’s this evidence you’re claiming?”

  Master Montfort sneered at him. “First, you both quarreled with him more than once and the latest time was not long before he died.”

  ‘Better to say he quarreled with us,“ Simon returned.

  ‘There was quarrel and threats were made,“ Master Montfort declared.

  ‘He made the threats,“ Gilbey said.

  ‘Threats were made,“ Master Montfort repeated stubbornly. ”Now the fellow is dead, and a belt of yours, Gilbey Dunn, and a hood of yours, Simon Perryn, were found with the body.“

  ‘You said they were found where he was killed,“ Simon cut it. ”He wasn’t killed where his body was found.“

  ‘Ahha!“ The crowner pointed a triumphant finger at him. ”How do you know that if you didn’t kill him?“

  ‘Because there wasn’t any blood where the body was found,“ Simon returned angrily. ”If he’d been killed there, there would have been blood from those stab wounds he had. Any fool can reckon that well enough.“

  ‘This belt,“ Gilbey bulled in. ”Who says it’s mine?“

  The crowner jerked his head toward the jurors. “They do.”

  ‘Oh, aye,“ Gilbey scoffed, with a scorning look at them. ”Like that lot would know one strip of leather from another.“

  ‘Here!“ Bert Fleccher stood up, definite as always in his dislike of Gilbey, despite one of his own sons working for him. Or maybe because of that. ”It don’t take much to know that gilt buckle like no one else around here has except you, let be your belt is all stamped and patterned and painted and twice as long as a man rightfully needs except he’s prideful as sin and that’s you right enough, Gilbey Dunn!“

  ‘If it’s sin you’re talking of, you might have a look at yourself bef
ore starting in on others, Bert Fleccher,“ Gilbey shot back.

  With no need to hear what he had heard often enough before, Simon put in, “Belt or not, how do you go about knowing it’s my hood? There’s no telling one piece of cloth from another that easily.”

  ‘It’s green,“ Hamon said. ”Yours is green.“

  ‘So are a few other men’s hereabouts,“ Simon retorted.

  ‘But not so new, or near to, as yours,“ Bert said, sitting down.

  For the first time, Simon began to be alarmed at more than being stupidly accused. Anne had indeed made him a green hood for his New Year’s gift this winter just past, from her last year’s weaving. But as discomfiting as that was his sudden feeling that Bert, John, and Hamon at least were going to this like terriers to a hunt, seeming to enjoy he was the quarry.

  That they could so much dislike him jarred him out of swift use of his wits, but Gilbey—probably too used to being disliked to be put off—shoved in with, “Let’s see this belt and hood, eh? Do you have them? Or are you just making will-o‘-the-wisps to see who you can lose in the bog?”

  ‘You want to see them?“ Master Montfort slapped the table with an open hand in front of his clerk’s nose bent low over paper and scratching pen. ”Show him!“

  The clerk straightened, laid down his pen, bent over to take a bag from the floor beside his chair, and with great care—as if the things might break unless he went slow about it—took out first a green hood and laid it on the table beyond his inkpot, then brought out and laid beside it a long, embossed, painted leather belt with gilded buckle. Still with great care, he set the bag back onto the floor and took up his pen again, all without raising his head, while Simon stared glumly at both belt and hood. The belt was beyond doubt Gilbey’s; most days he wore one like everyone else, enough to keep his tunic cinched in and hang purse and dagger from when need be, but a few years back, for his marriage, he’d bought a “gentleman’s” belt such as no one else in the village had—trust Gilbey to that—and wore it holidays and holydays and to Sunday church, and there was no question but that this was it. Nor could Simon deny the hood, either, worse luck. It was his own, dyed a particular dark green from a dye batch Anne had made last fall for the summer’s wool-weave; Adam and Colyn had tunics and Lucy a dress all the same green, there would be no trouble matching the hood to any of those even if he denied it was his. And belatedly, too late to make a difference, he realized that what he had seen laid over Tom’s face in the ditch and paid no heed, taken up with Dickon’s need, and forgotten ever since had been his hood. How had it come to be there? And why had no one said aught to him about it until now? Or about Gilbey’s belt, come to that, since it had to have been there, too, from what was being said.

  ‘How likely is it, I wonder,“ Dame Frevisse murmured, seemingly to no one in particular, ”that they’d both be so careless to leave belt and hood there with a man they’d killed?“

  The crowner broke off his pleased smiling. “Dame, I said I didn’t want to hear from you!”

  ‘But it’s a good point,“ Gilbey said sharply.

  ‘And whatever are Lord Lovell and Abbot Gilberd going to say if all this ends up hindering the harvest?“ Dame Frevisse murmured, still seemingly more to herself than anyone.

  ‘I told you, Dame…“

  ‘Oh, aye,“ Simon said quickly. ”There’s that, isn’t there? Lord Lovell and Abbot Gilbert, they’ll neither of them like having the harvest messed the way it will be if Gilbey and I be arrested, that’s sure.“

  With a harried edge that had not been there before, Master Montfort snapped, “There’s been no talk of arresting anyone!” The surprise on the jurors’ faces said that was not what they had thought. “I’m making inquiries, assessing facts. That’s what I’m supposed to do, you dolts. I’ve begun with you, that’s all. There are plenty of others I’ll question before I’m done.”

  With a mildness that Simon was more wary of all the time, Dame Frevisse murmured, “Since it’s certain Tom Hulcote was killed somewhere else and his body was only a little while where it was found, it must have been moved in the night before?”

  The clerk laid down his pen and began sifting among the bits of paper scattered in front of him, apparently looking for the one that recorded what had been said, while Master Montfort blustered, “Yes. Well. Yes. That seems to have been the way of it. Yes.”

  The clerk left off shuffling the papers and took up his pen again, writing down that, Simon supposed, while Dame Frevisse asked, slightly raising her head toward him and Gilbey, “Where were you that night?”

  ‘The night the body was moved?“ Simon thought back rapidly. ”In the church. All night. So Anne could sleep some. There’ll be witnesses enough to it and to say I never went out at all.“

  ‘And I was at home with my wife and servants,“ Gilbey said, ”and they’ll all say so.“

  ‘For what that’s worth,“ Master Montfort returned. ”Their word in the matter is no good at all and you know it.“

  ‘But he was gone from the village when Tom Hulcote was killed,“ Dame Frevisse said.

  ‘How do you know when he was killed, Dame?“ Montfort pounced.

  Seeming to see no possible threat to herself in that, Dame Frevisse answered gently, “Everyone knows he was last seen alive on Saturday, near to sundown. He wasn’t seen again, that anyone admits to, until his body was found Tuesday dawn. From how far gone it was then, he must have died closer to Saturday night than Tuesday morning. But you know that,” she added softly to the floor. “You’ve viewed the body.”

  ‘Of course I have,“ Master Montfort said ungraciously. View of the body was the first thing a crowner was supposed to do at any murder inquest. View it, study it for cause of death, then give the order that it could now be buried. In Tom Hulcote’s case, with the days of hot weather since he had died, the order to bury him was come none too soon, and Simon guessed Master Montfort had taken none too close a look before ordering the burial.

  ‘So where were you,“ Dame Frevisse asked Gilbey Dunn, ”between Saturday afternoon and Tuesday morning?“

  ‘Midday Saturday I left for Banbury, to fetch a doctor for my sons.“ Gilbey’s voice had a hard, self-satisfied edge. ”I brought him back with me on Sunday, and he was in my house until Monday morning and can say I was there the while.“

  ‘Who saw to your livestock then?“ Master Montfort demanded.

  ‘My man,“ Gilbey returned as sharply.

  ‘I thought this Tom Hulcote was your man.“

  ‘He wasn’t my only one, and God help me if he had been. He was worthless most of this past quarter year, gone as much as he was here half the spring and all this summer and besides I’d let him go as useless more than a week before he was killed. It’s Jack Fleccher still works for me, and it doesn’t matter anyway because I wasn’t here to kill Hulcote.“

  ‘And I couldn’t have moved the body,“ Simon said. ”That means we’re both clear, and belt and hood be damned.“

  ‘All it means is that you worked together at his death!“ Master Montfort snarled. He pointed at Gilbey. ”The reeve killed him while you were gone, kept the body hidden until you came back, and then you moved it while he was safe in the church, all to confuse that you were together in it all along. But you’ve been caught out at it and may as well confess!“

  ‘That’s daft!“ Simon burst out as Gilbey exclaimed, ”You’re mad!“

  ‘You watch your tongues, or there’ll be fines on you both!“ Master Montfort shot back.

  ‘But if that was the way of it,“ Dame Frevisse asked softly of no one in particular, ”if only one of them could have been there when the body was moved, how did the belt of one of them and the hood of the other come to be left there together?“

  ‘Come to that,“ Gilbey said, ”why would I be so idiot as to be moving a body about while wearing my best belt, eh?“

  Master Montfort slammed a fist onto the table, jarring it, making his clerk’s pen skitter on the paper. “That�
��s enough from you! From both of you. From all of you! You’ve my leave to go. All of you. You, too, Dame. Out!”

  Chapter 12

  Hoping her bowed head and hidden hands concealed her fine shuddering of anger, Frevisse followed Perryn and Gilbey out of the house and across the foreyard to the street. Montfort had always brought her to anger and, at his worst, fear, because he was an arrogant and dangerous fool, disliking anyone and anything that came between him and whatever his present purpose was, and what she saw of his present purpose here frightened her.

  Ahead of her, at the green’s edge, Gilbey turned on Perryn and said angrily, “He wants us guilty.”

  They were well away from any of Montfort’s men but not out of their sight and maybe not out of their hearing, and Perryn said back, “Not here.”

  ‘My house then,“ Gilbey said, and Perryn nodded terse agreement.