The Reeve's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  ‘Was he?“ Dame Frevisse demanded. ”Shorter? The man who attacked Tom Hulcote?“

  ‘I don’t…“ Master Christopher stopped, frowning over all their heads toward the far wall, his mouth closed down on his thoughts until, abruptly, his gaze sharpened and shifted back to Dame Frevisse. ”He might have been. The blow wasn’t level to the side of the head. It went upward from the back. But then, that could have to do with how Tom Hulcote was holding his head at the time.“

  ‘It knocked him down, though?“

  ‘I would say so, yes.“

  ‘And when he was stabbed, was he still on his feet or down?“

  ‘Down, I would say. The wounds were close together. A man stabbed would probably have moved between the first blow and the second. They would have been more apart.“

  ‘How many times was he stabbed? And where?“

  ‘Two times. In his back between his upper and middle ribs. On the left side. One of them reached his heart. If he wasn’t already dead, it killed him.“

  Wishing he could keep from it, Simon asked, “How do you know it reached his heart? He had no hurt on the front. Neither stab went through him.”

  ‘I felt into the wounds.“

  Simon ceased to regret having waited on his dinner, but Dame Frevisse said, unmoved, “You saw what was left of Matthew Woderove’s body. What could you tell from it about how he died?”

  ‘There was little flesh left…“

  Mary made a sickened sound. Master Christopher looked at her, ready to stop, but Dame Frevisse icily prodded him on with, “Yes?”

  He seemed no more eager to say it than Simon was to hear it, but he gathered himself and continued, “There was too little flesh left to tell much. Judging by the scrape marks on the rib bones, he had been stabbed at least three times. And his head had been battered in.”

  ‘Battered,“ Dame Frevisse repeated. ”Not merely broken by a single blow like Tom Hulcote’s?“

  ‘The skull was cracked at least twice in the back and once across the right side. As if he’d been hit three different times.“

  ‘A less ’clean‘ attack than what was made on Tom Hulcote,“ Dame Frevisse said.

  ‘Far less.“

  ‘Or less skilled,“ Dame Frevisse said. ”As if maybe from killing Matthew Woderove someone learned how to do better when it came to Tom Hulcote.“

  Mary stood up with a piteous cry, turned an anguished face toward Simon, and held her hands out pleadingly.

  ‘Simon, please! I can’t bear this! I don’t want to hear it! Please let me go home!“

  As coldly as Dame Frevisse might have, Simon said, “Sit down.” He had grown hardened to her trick of turning pitiful when she wanted to. “And be quiet.”

  Mary must have read in his face how completely he meant it because abruptly her own face closed against him and, taut with anger, she snapped, all piteousness gone, “I don’t have to. I’m going home.”

  ‘You are not,“ Dame Frevisse snapped back, her voice as taut as Mary’s but with ice instead of anger. ”You will sit and you will listen and Master Christopher is here in the king’s name to see that you do.“

  For a tight-drawn moment Mary looked near to defying her, but Dame Frevisse’s stare narrowed and harshened, and Mary, against everything likely, sat and again dropped her gaze to stare at her hands gripped together in her lap. Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon looked as startled as Simon felt, while at Dame Frevisse’s gesture, Master Christopher and Dickon sat where they had been before, and she faced the table’s length again.

  In the long quiet then, as the men looked back at her, Simon heard the familiar sparrows scrabbling in the thatch outside the south window and a woman well away across the green calling laughingly to someone else, and then, careful of each word, Dame Frevisse began, “Here’s how it came about that Matthew Woderove and Tom Hulcote were murdered.”

  There was an uneasy, protesting shifting among the men except for Simon who went sitting as rigidly still as Mary, but no one spoke and Dame Frevisse went on, “To begin with Matthew Woderove. As the story runs, he lost a lease to Gilbey Dunn, quarreled with his wife, stole a horse and left here. He sold the horse in Banbury and set out on foot from there, only to be murdered near Wroxton and left to rot.”

  Mary shuddered. Dame Frevisse ignored her. Or seemed to, going on, “In the meantime, while her husband rotted graveless, Mary Woderove went on lusting with Tom Hulcote, probably in the comfort of her dead husband’s bed.”

  This time Mary did not move at all and no one, not even Bert, looked at her while Dame Frevisse went brutally on, “Then Matthew Woderove’s body was found and Mary Woderove set to urging her lover to claim both her husband’s holding and her. When his bid for it failed, she then urged him to flee the manor, but before he could, he was murdered, leaving Mary Woderove bereft of husband, lover, and land.”

  Mary looked up at that, her breast heaving, her eyes hot with tears. “Oh, aye,” she said through shut teeth. “And now I’m being tortured by a wicked nun, and my brother is letting her!”

  As if Mary had said nothing, giving her not even a glance, Dame Frevisse went coldly on, “Except that what we’ve all believed isn’t the way any of it was. First, Matthew Woderove was dead before ever he left Prior By-field.”

  The men stirred at that, and Bert said, “Now that’s wrong. He stole Gilbey’s horse and sold it in Banbury. He was seen there.”

  ‘A man that Mary Woderove said was Matthew when he was described to her sold the horse in Banbury,“ Dame Frevisse answered. ”That’s all we know. The body when it was found had only the tatters of a shirt and small clothes and hosen. Isn’t that right, Master Christopher?“ The crowner’s man nodded it was. ”No tunic,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”because that was something the man who bought the horse in Banbury could describe, so it couldn’t be left with the body. That way there would be only Mary Woderove’s word that the man who sold the horse in Banbury was her husband.“

  ‘That’s stupid!“ Mary hissed. ”Your brain’s withered away along with the rest of you, shut up in that nunnery there!“

  ‘Because it wasn’t Matthew who sold the horse in Banbury, was it?“ Dame Frevisse said, sharp as a whip’s crack. ”Matthew was dead before he ever left your byre, wasn’t he? It was Tom Hulcote who stole Gilbey’s horse, used it to carry Matthew’s body away to hide near Wroxton, sold the horse in Banbury, then went back to put the body out to be found and came home again while all that while you played the outraged, wronged, deserted wife.“

  ‘That’s… None of that’s true,“ Mary said, furious. ”Tom wasn’t even here when Matthew left. You remember!“ she demanded at Simon. ”He was gone before Midsummer court and didn’t come back until after Matthew was long gone.“

  ‘I mind he was gone then, yes,“ Simon said, cautious.

  ‘But how far?“ Dame Frevisse asked. ”Who’s to say he wasn’t lying up in the woods, waiting for you to quarrel with Matthew and bar him out of his house, both of you knowing Matthew would refuge in the byre as he always did, but this time for Tom Hulcote to come and kill. Or Tom and you. Did you help in your husband’s death? Or merely plan it?“

  ‘That’s filthy!“ Mary cried.

  ‘There would have been blood in the byre if he was killed there,“ Walter protested.

  ‘Was anyone looking for blood?“ Dame Frevisse retorted. ”No one even looked for Matthew, let alone his blood, and on a byre’s dirt floor, with a little shovelling and some treading down, it’d not likely to be found, especially with no one looking for it.“

  ‘I mind Tom wasn’t back until three days at least after Matthew was gone,“ Bert said consideringly. ”Three days. Four nights. Time enough for shifting Matthew’s body around and all the rest you said.“

  ‘You old fool!“ Mary snapped. ”I suppose Tom killed himself, too? Or did I kill him? The only love I had in the world, and I might as well be dead now he is?“ Her voice scaled up and broke and she hid her face in her hands.

 
; The lie of that was enough to stop Simon’s breath, but Dame Frevisse said in her hatefully cold voice, “Was it easier the second time to smash a man’s head in, Mary? From killing Matthew you knew to hit Tom from the side, didn’t you? And the stabbing. Once wasn’t enough? Were you just that angry with him because he wouldn’t leave when you wanted him to so you had to stab him and stab him again?”

  Mary’s hands dropped from her face as she sprang to her feet. “You lying bitch! You don’t know anything about any of it. So shut yourself up!”

  ‘Here now!“ Walter said, but to Dame Frevisse, ”By your pardon, my lady, but it doesn’t make sense, all that you’re saying. About killing Matthew to start with. Why would Tom go to all that trouble of moving the body, stealing and selling the horse, moving the body again? If he’d killed him, why not just hide the body and be done with it?“

  ‘Because it wasn’t enough to have Matthew dead,“ Dame Frevisse answered. ”They needed it known he was dead. Otherwise Tom Hulcote couldn’t bid to have his holding and his widow.“

  Walter started to say something to that, but she cut him off, saying to Mary, “How hard was it, waiting for word that his body had been found but it never coming? You finally sent Tom Hulcote to… what? Make sure it was still there, probably, and then go into Banbury and start a rumor that someone had seen a body out Wroxton way.”

  ‘You’re mad,“ Mary scorned.

  Dame Frevisse looked to Bert. “Do you remember Tom was gone a few days at St. Swithin’s?”

  ‘Aye, I mind Gilbey was swearing that was the last he’d put up with Tom’s going off without a word.“ He elbowed John in the ribs. ”You mind that.“

  John nodded that he did, and so did Walter and Hamon, who said for good measure, “Gilbey was right angry about it, aye.”

  ‘That doesn’t mean he was in Banbury,“ Mary said, her voice daggered with fury.

  ‘Gilbey Dunn saw him there,“ Dame Frevisse answered.

  ‘You’re lying!“

  ‘The trouble was that you couldn’t wait longer for Matthew’s body to be found. There had to be enough of it left to tell who it had been. Did you tell Tom, when you sent him off, to be sure of it? Rotted as it had to be by then, you had to have been worried there wasn’t enough of it still there…“

  ‘Stop it about Matthew’s body!“ Mary slammed her fists down on the tabletop. ”I don’t want to hear about his thrice-damned body, rotted or otherwise!“

  ‘You’ll hear about it for as long as I choose to talk about it,“ Dame Frevisse said, cold with authority.

  ‘I won’t! I’m going.“

  ‘Master Christopher,“ Dame Frevisse said, and as Mary started to pull back from the table, he rose and took hold of her nearest arm. For an instant she looked about to strike him, but Dame Frevisse said, ”Sit,“ and Master Christopher pulled her down so that she sat, albeit with the gracelessness of an outraged cat who, baffled though it might be for now, is only waiting to have its own way.

  ‘But even so,“ said Bert, ”even if that’s all anything like true…“

  ‘Fool!“ Mary flung at him. ”It’s none of it true. It’s all lies she’s making up because she’s ugly and a nun and I’m not!“

  ‘… what’s Tom dead for?“ finished Bert.

  Dame Frevisse fixed her cold eyes on Mary. “Why don’t you tell us how Tom came to be dead, Mary? You struck him in the head first, to bring him down, then stabbed him. He’d not have stood there to be stabbed without fighting back. You’d never have put two knife thrusts into him if he’d been conscious. But you’d learned from killing Matthew what to do. That’s what the blow to the head was for, wasn’t it? To be sure he didn’t fight back while you finished killing him.”

  Mary was drawing sharp, shuddering breaths through her set teeth, her hot-eyed, hating glare fixed on Dame Frevisse who went on, still coldly meeting her hatred, “And after you’d killed him, in that while until you could haul him out to dump him in that ditch, where did you keep his body, Mary? Under your bed? Or maybe in your bed, for old times’ sake?”

  ‘Simon!“ Mary shrieked, finally tearing her gaze away to him. ”Make her stop!“

  But it was Walter who said, “That’s not going to work. Even if she did kill him…”

  Mary’s head whipped toward him. “I didn’t kill him!”

  ‘… she’d not be able to move Tom’s body far, and we know it was moved. And even if she could have moved it, where’s the sense in her killing him anyway? I can see her doing for Matthew…“

  Mary made a sound like a spitting cat.

  ‘… and I can see Tom helping her at it,“ Walter went on despite a startled glance at her, ”because he stood to gain by Matthew being dead. He was counting on having Matthew’s holding…“

  ‘By marrying her,“ Dame Frevisse agreed. ”Because he didn’t know she was Father Edmund’s paramour as well as his.“

  Mary sprang up again at that, screaming, “Liar! You liar!” And at Simon, at all of them, “Make her stop! Shut her up! Make her stop it!”

  Surprised how far he was from having any feeling for her except disgust, Simon said, “I can’t. She’s only saying what someone else has said.”

  Mary swept a look of derision around the table. “Who?

  Someone of you who couldn’t have me, so you’re making up lies about me instead?“

  ‘No.“ Dame Frevisse made a small hand movement toward Dickon without taking her eyes from Mary and, as he stood up, said, ”He saw you with Father Edmund and so did other boys, more than once and in ways they couldn’t mistake.“

  A distant part of Simon willed Mary to answer that— deny it, disprove it, show it wasn’t true, say something to change her back into a sister he need neither fear nor be ashamed of.

  Instead she stood staring at Dickon, struck to silence, and into her frozen failure to say anything, Dame Frevisse said remorselessly, “It was the one thing needed to make sense of everything else. You used Tom Hulcote to rid you of Matthew, and meant to be rid of Tom after that, to leave you free to your other lover. To Father Edmund.”

  ‘You don’t believe her, do you?“ Mary whispered, turning a hunted look to Simon.

  ‘I believe Dickon.“ All feeling was dead in his voice. ”I believe Adam. I doubt there’s anyone who’ll believe you.“

  Mary drew sharp breath through her teeth, flung back her head with an angry cry, and bent to pound her fists on the tabletop, crying out, her voice scaling up to break with cornered fury, “Damn Tom! Damn him! If he’d just left…”

  ‘Mary,“ Father Edmund said from the doorway.

  Chapter 21

  Fear and dismay twisted tightly together inside of Frevisse. Her carefully used cold anger’s purpose and her desperate hope had been to break past Mary’s lies before she need deal with Father Edmund. Because whatever Mary was, he was worse.

  But Mary was already crying out to him, “They know!” And he was crossing the room, saying back to her, “They only know what you’ve been telling them,” his voice and look warning her to silence. “I haven’t told them aught!”

  ‘Then they know nothing.“ Circling the table to her, sure of himself, he was set on making sure of her.

  ‘We know you’re lovers,“ Frevisse said with the ice-edge scorn she had been using against Mary, not able to think of better weapon against him.

  Father Edmund faltered slightly, lost a margin of his smile as he made a swift look around the table at the other men’s faces, but took Mary’s out-held hand anyway and said, “Are we?” Matching Frevisse’s scorn. Daring her to prove it.

  Guessing desperately from that that he had heard nearly nothing before he came in, she jibed back, “You were seen. In the woods and other places. You’ve been careless with your lovemaking.”

  She twisted the word to ugliness and his smile left him. He looked longer at the men around the table this time, taking in that they believed her, and with disregard for the shame he should have shown, he laid his hand over Mary’s
clinging to his arm, scorning them all as he said, “So our sin is known and you’re offended. What pity you’re such cowards you couldn’t face us both with it.”

  Mary started to say something. His hold on her tightened, silencing her as he readied to say more, showing his displeasure at them, but Frevisse, her anger rising past her cold control, said back at him, returning his disgust, “The worse pity is that your sins of the flesh are the least of what you’ve done.”

  ‘The least?“ Father Edmund put a quantity of scorn into that, too sure of himself to think he could lose ground. ”There’s more?“