The Boy's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Frevisse stood across the room while Maryon uncovered the wound. Sir Gawyn bore the necessary movement and pain in silence, but despite Maryon's great care, he was pale again when it was done, his mouth tightly shut, his chest rising and falling heavily with his effort to steady his breathing. Maryon looked around for Frevisse to come to the bedside.

  Not given to squeamishness, Frevisse inspected the hurt closely. The flesh was still ugly around it but not red or swollen or streaked with discoloration nor smelling of rot. As nearly as Frevisse could judge it looked as well as could be hoped for, and far better than it had looked four days ago.

  Sir Gawyn crooked his neck to see the gash and asked, "Does she know what she's doing? That mouse-meek nun that's come the other mornings says it's to heal from inside to out, rather than crusting over and healing to inward."

  "There're arguments for both ways," Frevisse said, "but Dame Claire and Sister Thomasine have both had good fortune with this one."

  Sir Gawyn gave a short laugh. "And how many sword gashes come your way in a nunnery?"

  "Not swords but scythes and knives and carelessness enough around the village that they've had their chance to deal with deep cuts and the like."

  "This wasn't carelessness," Sir Gawyn said bitterly.

  "It was," Maryon corrected. "The man meant to kill you and missed."

  Sir Gawyn laughed. "True enough! Careless of him to miss and more careless of him to not stop my blow in return."

  While they talked, Maryon had poured wine into one of the bowls on the table. Now, taking up the bowl and a sponge, she came back to the bedside. Sir Gawyn drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tensed for what was coming. Her own face set in a match to his, Maryon laid clean cloths along the wound and began with all the gentleness she could to soak it with wine. Despite the cost to them both, she did it thoroughly, then blotted it dry with a clean towel, put aside the bowl and sponge, and took up Dame Claire's jar of ointment. Gently, gently, her fingertips touching him as lightly as possible, she spread it over the wound, and as she set the jar aside said softly, "There. It's done for today. I only need to re-bandage it."

  Sir Gawyn had shuddered soundlessly under her touch. Now he drew a deeper breath and his hands unclenched from the bedclothes, though sweat was beaded over his face. As Maryon began to bathe his face and neck with a clean cloth and water, he opened his eyes and smiled at her. "I'll be all right."

  Maryon smiled back. "I intend you to be."

  Something more than merely tending to his hurt was going on between them, Frevisse thought. Had it begun here, or existed before?

  A sharp rap at the door was all the warning Master Montfort gave before entering the room. Without bother of greeting he stared assessingly at Sir Gawyn's shoulder and said, "There's a bad one, and you're lucky if it doesn't infect. I've seen a deal of wounds in my time, you know. I will say that one looks like it's healing, but you'll never have your strength in the arm again. In fact, I'd be very surprised if you even could lift your hand head-high when it's healed."

  Before Sir Gawyn could answer, Maryon said with sharp scorn, "Time will tell. And the infirmarian here is very skilled. It's not for you to predict doom or joy."

  "I deal in the truth, woman," Master Montfort returned, drawing up straight to display his dignity in the face of a mere woman's opinion. "I said it because I see it. People need to face the truth, no matter what it is."

  But both Frevisse and Maryon had had experience with Master Montfort's idea of truth. For him, truth tended to be what he found most convenient or enhancing of his reputation. Because Maryon looked as if she were about to tell him so to his face, Frevisse said mildly, "Have you and Master Worleston come to a conclusion yet?"

  Master Montfort swung his displeased attention to her. "That's what I came to tell these folks. That everything is settled as much to our satisfaction as we expect it to be. They were feloniously attacked by men bent on robbing them and who have paid for their stupidity with their lives. There's not even a fine in it for the Crown and probably not much profit from the felons' belongings when we sell them. A sorry business all around." He fixed a harder glare on Frevisse and added, "So I trust you don't think you've found a twist in the matter and are bent on making something other about it?"

  But Frevisse bowed her head and said quite humbly, "No, I'm content with what you and Master Worleston have discovered and declared. We're all content with it, I'm sure."

  "That's good then. That's very good." Master Montfort cast a sharp look at Sir Gawyn again. "That shoulder isn't going to do well at all, I should think," he asserted and left.

  Maryon moved swiftly behind him, shutting the door with a force she only barely kept from a slam at the last moment. "Fool! Fool, fool, fool!" she raged.

  "And that's to the good so far as we're concerned," Frevisse said. "I should be going." She had learned what Dame Claire had asked her to, and heard what she had hoped for from Master Montfort. The rest could be left between Maryon and Sir Gawyn; she wanted no part of it, and more especially since she feared—and thought Maryon did, too, by the intensity of her defending against it—that Master Montfort on one thing at least was right, that Sir Gawyn would be crippled no matter how well he healed.

  They let her go with thanks, and she crossed the hall as she had come, avoiding notice of anyone, until outside the door, at the head of the stairs down to the yard, her way was blocked by Master Worleston. She inclined her head to him respectfully and would have gone around him, but he said, "Dame . . . Frevisse, isn't it?"

  She stopped, perforce, acknowledging she was. "Is there anything you need that I can help you with?"

  "We've been most well seen to and will be leaving after dinner. I knew your uncle. He spoke of you sometimes and I thought to take this chance to meet you."

  Frevisse smiled at him. Now that the cruel early edge of grief that had come with her uncle's death was gone, it was good to hear him spoken of. But, "How did you know I was his niece?"

  "Master Montfort spoke of it last night."

  "Ah." Frevisse could imagine in what unflattering content Master Montfort had spoken of her.

  Master Worleston had a straight-mouthed way of smiling, as if he found amusement where he knew he should not but nevertheless could not resist. "He was warning me against you, of course."

  "Of course," she agreed. "And whose opinion do you favor? My uncle's or Master Montfort's?"

  Master Worleston drew in his brows in mock deep consideration and said solemnly, "On the whole, and weighing what I know of each man, what do you think?"

  "That Master Montfort must be a severe trial to you."

  "One might say so," the sheriff agreed.

  "But at least you've concluded this trouble quickly enough."

  "So it seems."

  With a qualm, Frevisse heard a hint of qualification in Master Worleston's voice. "Seems?" she asked.

  "A simple matter of failed robbery. Rather too many dead but that can happen. Everything explained and accounted for." Master Worleston rolled off the points as they would probably go in the record of the incident. But his tone was dissatisfied as he added, "And not so well accounted for."

  "In what way?" Frevisse kept her own tone no more than casually interested.

  "For such incompetent outlaws, they were very well accoutered. And there've been no reports of a band of outlaws anywhere near here."

  "They could easily be from somewhere farther off, somewhere become too dangerous for them. Some other shire," Frevisse offered. "Or they might have lately been turned out of some lord's service and gone to robbery only now."

  Master Worleston shook his head, not refusing her ideas but in dissatisfaction. "There are going to have to be more questions asked."

  "You're not leaving then?"

  "We're done here, right enough. I doubt there's more to be learned from these folk. But I'd like to know more about the men who were killed." He shook his head to clear his concerns away, smiled and slightly bo
wed to her. "My pleasure to meet you, Dame Frevisse. Your uncle always spoke praisingly of you."

  Frevisse curtsied in reply. "My thanks for your kind words. I hope we meet again, sir. God be with you until then."

  "And with you."

  Another time, Frevisse would have been pleased to have made Master Worleston's acquaintance. He was both intelligent and personable. But just now Master Montfort's stupidity was more desirable, and Master Worleston's acute-ness made her uncomfortably aware of how thin was the screen of untold truths she had agreed to help Maryon maintain.

  And what other untold truths and possibly lies did Maryon have that Frevisse did not know of?

  She did not like that thought, nor the fact that there was nothing she could do about it.

  But because there was nothing to be done, she pushed it away and began to consider what the boys could do this afternoon while Jenet was gone to the burying of Hery and the others.

  Chapter 10

  Master Worleston, Master Montfort, and their entourage rode out of St. Frideswide's in early afternoon. From the cloister walk, Frevisse heard the clatter of their horses on the cobbles of the inner yard and then the quiet afterwards and drew a deep breath of relief. Master Worleston's inquiries, if he went on with them, might bring him back here later but for now the priory was clear of him and Master Montfort.

  She went to the boys' room, knowing they and Lady Adela were at lessons with Dame Perpetua in the chapter house but in search of Jenet. As expected, she was there, sitting on a joint stool mending the torn heel of a boy's hose. When Frevisse knocked, she rose quickly to her feet with, "Come in, please you," and a-curtsy. She was a plump young woman with a pleasant face and probably pretty enough when she was not red-eyed and tear-puffed from too much crying.

  Nodding at the hose still in her hands, Frevisse said, "The children are hard on their clothing?"

  Jenet twitched a small smile. "Not so very hard. They're good boys." She seemed unable to make up her mind whether to put the hose down or go on holding it. She dithered it from hand to hand instead, and when Frevisse asked, "You're going to the funeral this afternoon?" she pressed it over her mouth to stop a sob before gasping, "Yes, please you." She hiccuped on a dry sob despite her efforts and blurted, "He's to be buried this afternoon, Hery is, and someone ought to be there. He was a good man. I'm sorry about yesterday, about not being here." Tears brimmed in her eyes and started to spill over. "But I really must go this afternoon. I really must."

  "Of course you must," Frevisse said soothingly, though she did not feel particularly soothing. She regretted the woman's grief but did not want to be soaked by it. "I've only come to tell you the boys will be seen to, you don't have to worry about them while you're away."

  She had also come to make sure Jenet was still there and not so hopelessly unreliable as to have slipped away again even after yesterday's reprimand. It was all very well for her to be grieving, but it was Frevisse who would be doing a fortnight's penance on water for her carelessness.

  Jenet, all gratitude and tears, sobbed, "You're kind. You're so very, very kind. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you . . ."

  Frevisse left her gratefully weeping into the hose. She had arranged with Dame Claire that Dame Perpetua and Sister Lucy would spend much of the afternoon in the orchard with the children. They were Dame Claire's choice—Dame Perpetua because the children were most used to her, Sister Lucy because Dame Claire felt she needed respite from her almost constant care of Domina Edith. Though it was by her own wish and with her whole heart that she did it, Sister Lucy was not so very much younger than Domina Edith herself; the long effort was wearing on her, and an afternoon's quiet in the orchard would be good for her. Frevisse was to take her place with Domina Edith for the while.

  She went now up the stairs to Domina Edith's rooms. Sister Lucy was waiting at the parlor door, to forestall her knocking. To Frevisse's inquiring look, she made gestures that Domina Edith was sleeping and that all was well. Frevisse nodded that she understood and, smiling, gestured that Sister Lucy could go. After a last careful look into the bedroom, she did, and when the shuffle of her slippers had faded down the stairs, the pleasant quiet of the summer's afternoon settled over the parlor.

  Briefly, Frevisse went to the windows overlooking the yard. It was too early in the afternoon for any new travelers to come seeking the priory's hospitality for the night, and with the sheriff and crowner gone with their men it was presently a quiet scene. While Frevisse watched, Dame Claire, recognizable even from the back and above by her short height and firm step, appeared below and crossed to enter the new guesthall. Going to look in on Sir Gawyn for herself, Frevisse supposed.

  She raised her gaze past the roofs to the sky, adrift with white clouds across the blue of a perfect summer's afternoon that promised no more rain for a while. The haying had begun this morning. After three famine years of harvests spoiled by cold and wet, this looked to be a good year.

  But for St. Frideswide's there would be the sorrow of losing their prioress.

  Frevisse left the window and crossed the parlor to stand in Domina Edith's bedroom doorway. The prioress lay small beneath her sheet and so quiet that Frevisse took an anxious step nearer, looking to be sure she still breathed.

  Slightly, steadily, the sheet rose and fell. Obscurely ashamed of the momentary clutch of fear around her heart, Frevisse went silent-footed to kneel at the prie-dieu against the wall and pray, not for Domina Edith's continued life but for ease of passing when it had to come and, for herself, the grace to accept it. Willing acceptance of what had to be was among the lessons Frevisse had set herself to learn here in St. Frideswide's, but she was aware it was something in which she was as yet imperfect.

  At least she had learned to go deeply into prayer, and as always when her praying went best, she lost awareness of time. It was Domina Edith who drew her back with a whispered, "Dame Frevisse?"

  Frevisse hastily ended her prayer and rose to go to the bedside. "Yes, Domina. Dame Claire thought it would be well if Sister Lucy was outside awhile in the lovely day."

  "That was good of her. I'm glad of it. And glad to see you." She lifted her hand off the sheet, barely. Frevisse reached out to take its age-thinned flesh and fragile bones gently in her own. Domina Edith's fingers closed around hers, and the prioress murmured, eyes shutting, "That's better." And after a pause, "I drift, and it helps to have someone to hold to." She opened her eyes and looked directly into Frevisse's face. "You won't be prioress after me, you know."

  Without thought, Frevisse hurriedly crossed herself and fervently exclaimed, "God forfend I should be!"

  Domina Edith smiled. "You would have been my choice, you know."

  Frevisse did not try to hide how appalled she was at the idea. "No, I didn't know. I don't want the office."

  "That is among the reasons that would make you best for it. But you won't be elected. Don't fear it."

  Caught between the desire to ask why she would not be and the sudden confused realization that until this moment she had been refusing even to consider what would happen after Domina Edith's death, Frevisse held silent. Domina Edith's eyes closed again but she went on, "My hope is that it goes to Dame Claire. That's why I made her cellarer."

  Because so many duties fell to the cellarer, it was usual for whoever had done well in the office to be elected the one step higher to prioress when the need came.

  "I don't think she wants it either," Frevisse said.

  Softly, from some distance of memory, Domina Edith said, "Nor did I. But one learns. God's will is wiser than ours, and one learns." She sighed and was silent. Frevisse waited, and in a while, as if unaware there had been a gap in their conversation, Domina Edith went on. "It's that you are so very much yourself. It makes you uncomfortable to so many people. You show too well how impatient you are of their silliness and carelessness and the lies they want to believe to make themselves comfortable. That's why they will not want you for their prioress. As if a prioress's
purpose was to make them comfortable." The notion amused her. "But I'm sorry for it. You would do well."

  There did not seem to be anything to say to that so Frevisse said nothing. The quiet drew out between them then. In the afternoon's pleasant warmth and the comfort of Domina Edith's presence, fading though it was, Frevisse came near to drowse herself and was unready when Domina Edith said, "It's quite all right, you know. It will be a great freedom. To be quit of the body."

  Again without thinking, Frevisse said, "But not easy."

  "Oh no, not easy." Domina Edith was gazing at the ceiling, serenity in her eyes, her voice soft with the drift of her thoughts. "Not easy at all. Nor as simple as it probably ought to be. But then nothing is so simple as it ought to be. Not love or hate or fear or even hope." She made a small, negative move of her head on the pillow. "No, hope is the least simple of all, I've sometimes thought. It requires so much of so many other things, including courage. And courage isn't simple either." Her eyes closed. The sheet rose slightly and fell deeply with the effort of her breathing; and in a while she said, quite clearly, "Only God is uncomplicated."