The Hunter’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  ‘Kill two this year,“ said Lucy. ”So there’ll be enough for us afterwards.“

  ‘Greedy,“ he said, not meaning it, and bowed to Frevisse and Sister Johane. ”By your leave, my ladies.“

  They bent their heads to him in return and he left, leaving them with all the afternoon ahead of them. Sister Johane went to be sure Lady Anneys was sleeping quietly while Ursula and Lucy fetched their sewing and Mandeville’s Travels from the parlor, and when Sister Johane came down, the four of them went out to the arbor’s shade. This warm middle of the day, the quiet there was as thick as the sunlight save for the hum of bees. Frevisse would have willingly joined the quiet or else read, but when the girls had opened their sewing baskets and set to work on Hugh’s and Miles shirts again, Lucy began to talk of how she meant to persuade her mother to buy her some red cloth to make her a new gown this autumn.

  ‘Something very, very bright, but I don’t know yd whether I want crimson or scarlet,“ she said.

  ‘You won’t be able to wear it for almost a year,“ Ursula pointed out.

  ‘I won’t have to hurry at making it, then, will I? And I’ll have it waiting for me when I don’t have to be in mourning anymore, while you’ll have to go back to wearing your same old gowns then.“

  ‘By then Ursula will probably have outgrown anything that fits her now and need a new gown, too,“ Sister Johane said, maybe trying to head off trouble.

  But well able to see to her sister herself, Ursula retorted at Lucy, “ You’ll probably be too fat by this time next year to fit into anything you make now.”

  ‘Fat?“ Lucy protested. ”I won’t be!“

  “fatter,” Ursula said with great and insulting precision.

  ‘Shall I read?“ said Frevisse, taking up the book at the same moment that Sister Johane said, ”Would you like me to stitch this neckband together for you, Lucy?,“ picking up the pieces of cloth from the sewing basket between them.

  The distraction worked. While Lucy showed how wide a seam the neckband should have, Frevisse opened the book at the ribbon marking her place and began to read aloud about the court of the Great Khan in Cathay, her voice pitched low to match the garden’s quiet. She was reading of the Tartars’ round houses when Sister Johane cried out, “Oh!” with such sharp dismay that Frevisse, Lucy, and Ursula all looked at her. She stared back, wide-eyed with alarm. “I forgot! Lady Anneys asked if I’d make certain Helinor in the kitchen had sent the boon-ale to the field.” The lord of the manor’s expected daily gift to his people during harvest.

  ‘The workers won’t like it if she hasn’t,“ Lucy said. ”Even Father never dared stop their boon-ale. He wanted to, though.“

  “Helinor wouldn’t forget,” Ursula said scornfully.

  Sister Johane started to lay her sewing aside. “But I told Lady Anneys I’d make certain.”

  “I’ll go,” said Frevisse. She placed the ribbon where she had left off, closed the book, and stood up before Sister Johane could. “You go on with your sewing.”

  Sister Johane accepted that with willing thanks that gave some ease to Frevisse’s slight guilt, because she had offered not to be helpful but because she saw suddenly a chance to talk unsuspiciously with whoever was at work in the kitchen this afternoon.

  When she had gone inside and through the pantry into the kitchen, she found it a square and high-roofed room with a deep stone fireplace along one wall, flanked with racks of pans, kettles, grill, and skillet and hanging long-handled spoons, ladles, and forks. A long, narrow table ran along the wall beside the door from the pantry, for setting out readied dishes to be carried into the hall during a meal, while the middle of the room was filled by the solid bulk of a worktable where three people could work side by side without touching elbows and broad enough a person would have to stretch to set a bowl across it to the far edge. To Frevisse’s regret, though, there was only one person presently at work there, an aproned woman of late middle-years briskly slicing a young onion’s long green leaves to small pieces on a well-scrubbed cutting board at the table’s far end.

  She stopped when Frevisse entered and, with the knife poised over her work, gave her a quick curtsy while asking, “May I help you, my lady?”

  The Woodrove household was not large but Frevisse knew more than a lone woman was needed in the kitchen and asked in return, surprised, “Where’s everyone else? Then immediately answered her own question. ”Gone to fields for the harvest, of course.“

  ‘That’s right,“ the woman agreed.

  She still stood with the knife ready over the onion and Frevisse said, “Go on, please,” looked at the basket sitting beside the cutting board, heaped with more onions and clean, slender carrots, and said, “You’ve more than enough for one woman to be doing alone, if that’s to be for supper.”

  ‘Aye.“ The woman went back to slicing, deft and quick about it. She was not unfriendly, just very busy. ”Alson will be back in time to help finish it all off, though.“

  ‘May I help?“

  The woman gave her a quick, doubting glance.

  ‘I often do it at the nunnery,“ Frevisse said. St. Frideswide’s was not so prosperous it could afford many servants nor so large that any nun could be allowed to stand on her dignity; they all had turns at what work needed to be done, including in the kitchen.

  ‘If you like, then, it would be a help, aye,“ the woman said without pausing at her work. ”There’s more knives there.“

  She nodded to the rack fastened to the table’s end and Frevisse took one, saying while reaching for a carrot, “I came to ask if Helinor had seen to the boon-ale going to the field. Are you Helinor?”

  ‘I’m Helinor and the ale has gone. I’d not be allowed to forget for long, that’s sure. Somebody would be at the kitchen door asking.“

  The kitchen door stood open to a garden far less well-kept than Lady Anneys’ but flourishing with all the different greens of herbs and summer vegetables useful to cooking. Frevisse complimented it as a way to starting talk with Helinor, who said cheerfully, “Oh, aye. It’s been a good-growing summer.”

  ‘The harvest looks to be fine, from all I’ve heard.“

  ‘Very fine. It’s going to be a happy harvest-home when it comes.“

  ‘Will it be much of a harvest-home, what with the mourning and all?“

  Aye, there’s that,“ Helinor said soberly. ”Master Tom is going to be missed. He loved harvest-home, he did. Every year he worked hard as anyone to make it happen. He would have been a good lord to have. He’ll be kindly remembered. There’s been more than a few candles lighted in the church for him.“

  ‘But not for Sir Ralph?“

  Helinor hacked with sudden, unnecessary savagery at a defenseless onion she had just put on the cutting board. “Any candles lighted will be in thanks to whoever did for the old bastard. Begging your pardon for speaking out,” she added.

  ‘No pardon needed,“ Frevisse said easily, to show she was willing to hear more. ”From what I’ve heard, he needed killing.“

  ‘He did that.“ The onion, having suffered enough, was swept aside with the knife blade to join the growing pile of its predecessors. ”At birth, if you ask me.“ Helinor began on another onion with no more mercy than she had shown the last one. ”The wonder is he lasted so long as he did.“

  Working less viciously at a carrot, Frevisse ventured, “I don’t think anyone even cares who did it.”

  ‘They don’t that. Not in the least. Except maybe we’d like to thank him. Only there’s so many likely to have done it, we’ll never know. My own guess is it was one of the men he’d driven off from here, come back to do for him and long gone again.“

  ‘He’d forced a great many men away?“

  ‘More than his fair share.“ The pieces of the onion were swept aside and another took its place. ”He didn’t care about people at all, or their rights. The manor and its folk were here long before he came, but he acted like nobody mattered aught but him and what he wanted. We weren’t even suppos
ed to keep the deer out of the fields. They come out or the woods into the fields to graze and we were supposed to let them, because then they’d be near to hand for hunting. ’Eaten by the deer‘ is what we say about someone when they can’t bear it anymore and leave. Half a dozen men in the past ten years. And women, too. It’s been bad.“

  ‘What sort of lord do you think Master Hugh will be?“

  Helinor paused to consider that, then set at the onion again. “Not so bad as Sir Ralph, that’s sure. He has a kinder heart.”

  ‘No one’s afraid he’ll be like his father about the deer?“

  ‘He’s let Master Tom’s order stand that we could keep them out of the fields this year. That’s enough to satisfy everyone for now.“

  Finishing one carrot and starting another, Frevisse said thoughtfully, “What I’ve found odd is that no one ever says how Sir Ralph died. They say he was found dead in the forest but not how he was killed. It must have been terrible?”

  ‘Terrible enough that nobody will ever talk of it around Lady Anneys or her daughters if they’ve any kindness toward them at all.“

  ‘You saw his body?“ Frevisse prompted.

  ‘Ha. I was one of them that had to clean it and ready it for burial. Nobody was going to let Lady Anneys see it, let alone do any of that. His head was all smashed in. Someone took a rock to it and smashed it to bits.“

  Because it was expected of her, Frevisse made a wordless sound of horror.

  ‘Aye, it was bad.“ Memory of it subdued even Helinor. She paused, staring down at the half-chopped onion on the cutting board. ”His head was broken so bad I don’t even know if all the pieces were there. We had to wrap it in waxed cloth to hold together what there was, then pad it around with more cloth to give it a head-shape before we trapped it in the shroud. So it would look right.“ She shook her head and started cutting again. ”It was bad, aye.“

  ‘There weren’t any other wounds on the body? Just his head all smashed?“

  ‘That’s all. He’d not been stabbed or beaten or anything else. Just his head smashed to bone-bits and bloody pulp. That’s why I say it was someone he’d wronged and they’d come back to do for him. It was revenge, not simple killing, if you see what I mean.“

  Frevisse saw and went back to carefully slicing the carrot she had in hand before she said, “Well, Lady Anneys is better off, from all I hear.”

  ‘She is that. But Master Tom’s death is a grief she didn’t need. Nor none of us. Still, she’s rid of Sir Ralph and that’s more than a little to the good. I just hope she doesn’t make haste over marrying that Master Selenger.“

  ‘Is she likely to? Are people saying it’s likely?“

  ‘Well, he’s here as often as not, isn’t he? Started a few days after Sir Ralph was buried and it’s not for the sake of anyone else’s company he comes.“ Helinor smiled at her present onion, going at it less brutally with her knife. ”He’s a good-looking man and well-mannered. He could do with a wife and she could do worse. Besides, what’s she to do with herself after Lady Philippa marries Master Hugh? She’s too good a lady to think there can be two mistresses in one house or want to keep Master Hugh’s wife from her rights.“

  So the provisions of Sir Ralph’s will concerning Lady Anneys’ remarrying were still as secret as Lady Anneys supposed, Frevisse thought, and there seemed to be no suspicions about Hugh marrying Philippa. Knowing she must go back to the garden soon but hoping for more, she said mildly, “Things will be different around here when all that has happened. Master Miles will be leaving soon, too, I gather.”

  ‘So we hear. Poor lad. It’s time he had a life of his own but he’s going to be lonely at it, I fear.“

  ‘He could well marry, now he had his own manor.“

  ‘Not from what I hear about that manor. Run-down and neglected. He’d need a wife who’d bring money with her, and what woman with money would marry someone with no more to offer than a ruined manor?“ Helinor had finished the last onion and began on the carrots, their pile already much lessened by Frevisse. ”But you have the right of it about things here. They’ll be different and God be praised for that. The sorry thing is that it was hardest on Master Miles, maybe, when that old devil Sir Ralph was alive, but now that everything’s changed, it’s still Master Miles who’s going to have it hardest. Those three boys were good at guarding each other’s backs. They worked together and now Master Hugh has the manor and will have a wife, while Master Miles must go off on his own to somewhere he’s never been before and make a whole new life for himself. That’s going to be hard for him. Hard, too, for Master Hugh,“ she added after a thoughtful moment. ”Being left alone when for so long there’s been the three of them.“

  Frevisse thought the same, now she came to think of it at all. But she was also thinking of what else Helinor had said. Hugh, Miles, and Tom had worked together; but Hugh hadn’t known about Tom’s and Father Leonel’s twisting of the accounts. Had Miles? Who had been keeping secrets from whom? And what other secrets might there be?

  And then there were the provisions against Lady Anneys remarrying. Both Hugh and Miles knew about those but neither her daughters nor the servants did. Come to that, Lady Anneys did not know whether Master Selenger did or not, and on that hung the question of whether or not Sir William was playing some sort of double game of marriage—his daughter’s and Lady Anneys‘—to his own advantage.

  How many layers of secrets were here? Frevisse wondered. when she had first come to Woodrim, she had assumed that with a family torn by the grief of two deaths, there would be sorrow in plenty but a straightforward sorrow, straightly dealt with. Instead, she was finding almost nothing was straightforward here at all.

  She worked awhile longer, leading Helinor to talk about Lucy, Ursula, and Lady Elyn but learning nothing she did not already know except that, “Oh, aye, Elyn was ready to be married, she was. Couldn’t wait to be Lady Elyn and away from here. Took to that marriage from the moment it was offered her and who could blame her?” Helinor said. “Anything to be away from here. Another one on the run from Sir Ralph.”

  ‘She wanted it more to be away from Sir Ralph than for love of Sir William, you mean?“

  ‘Very much more.“ About that Helinor had no doubts.

  ‘But now Sir Ralph is dead and no one was counting on that.“

  ‘She took her chance when it came,“ Helinor said, unconcerned. ”She made her bed and must go on lying in it, just like everyone else does.“

  Chapter 17

  As Frevisse passed through the garden, returning to the arbor, she saw over the garden’s back gate a manservant sitting on the grassy edge of the far side of the cart-track, holding the reins of two grazing horses. She knew neither the man nor the horses and for a moment did not know the girl, either, seated in the arbor between Lucy and Ursula, turning the pages of Mandeville’s Travels, then realized she was Sir William’s daughter, the talked-of Philippa, as the girl stood up and curtsied to her, saying, “My lady.”

  Frevisse bent her head in return and they both sat, Frevisse beside Sister Johane on the bench facing her and taking the chance for a long look as Lucy went on saying, “… didn’t come with you only because it’s too hot? She’s feeling well, isn’t she? She’s not, um, not…”

  ‘Breeding?“ Ursula asked brightly, looking up from her sewing.

  “Ursula,” Lucy said, sending quick looks toward Sister Johane and Frevisse, probably to warn against talking about such things in front of nuns.

  But Ursula had spent enough time among nuns not to think their living out of the world meant they were unworldly, and said, still brightly, “But that’s what we all want to know, isn’t it? Is Elyn going to have a baby and spoil Philippa’s chance to marry Hugh?”

  ‘That won’t spoil her chance to marry Hugh. She just won’t bring as much to the marriage,“ Lucy snapped.

  ‘How far have you gone with Mandeville?“ Philippa asked somewhat quickly, opening the book again. She was an even-featured girl, nothing
particular about her and her hair simply brown, but she knew when and how to change the course of a conversation. ”I like the part about the dog-headed people the best. What about you, Lucy?“

  ‘There are too many dog-heads around here as it is,“ said Lucy. ”I like to hear about all the riches in Cathay. When is Master Selenger coming to visit Mother again?“

  ‘I don’t know,“ Philippa said with a lightness that failed to ring completely true to Frevisse. ”He probably wouldn’t be good company if he did. He had angry words with Father this morning.“

  ‘About what?“ Lucy asked eagerly.

  “Lucy,” Ursula said.

  But Philippa answered, “I don’t know. I could hear that they were angry, but not about what.”

  ‘It’s because of Mother,“ said Lucy certainly. ”He’s pining and angry because she won’t say she’ll marry him.“