Following Lucas, they turned through a plain, double gateway, one gate set open, into the foreyard they had left to enter the cloister at the first. It was quiet now, guests and their horses and baggage all sorted out and away, only two men left, cleaning the cobbles with shovel and broom. Now Lucas fell back to a few paces behind Frevisse, still following Lady Agnes and Domina Elisabeth, along the foreyard and out the nunnery’s front gateway to the street again and into the hurry of people about their end-of-day shopping or home-going. With no riders or carts coming, Lady Agnes crossed it a-slant to the right, saying to Domina Elisabeth beside her and a little over her shoulder to Frevisse, “I live just there,” pointing with her staff along the street to an overhanging housefront set, unusually, longwise rather than narrow to the street.
Like most of its neighbors, it rose two tall stories and, like them, was half-timbered, the plastering between the wide timbers scored into cross-hatched and swirling patterns, while the roof’s thick thatch was golden with newness. At street level, set back under the upper storey’s overhang and thereby protected from weather when it came, two narrow shops fronted the street, their shutters down to make counters out into the way of passersby, the better to show their goods. One of them was selling gloves ranging from plain cloth to fine leather, the other had baskets of many-colored embroidery thread set out on display and skeins of fine-dyed wool hung on a bar above them. Their keepers were both women who gave smiling greeting to Lady Agnes, who gave it smiling back and said low-voiced to Domina Elisabeth, Frevisse barely able to catch the words, “Widows, like myself, the both of them, but not so fortunate in their husbands. They don’t pay much rent to me but they make a living and that’s better than having them poor and on the parish’s hands. Besides, they’re quiet. I’d not have men loud under my solar day in and out for anything I might be paid.”
Lucas lengthened his stride to go ahead of them and open a door set in a gateway between Lady Agnes’s house and the next. They passed through into a cart-wide, cobbled, clean-swept passage leading back between the houses, chill and deep-shadowed in the fading afternoon but opening into a small, cobbled yard with a blank wall of the neighboring house down one side, the rear wing of Lady Agnes’s house down the other, the yard cut off at its far side by a head-high wattle-and-daub wall, neatly capped by thatching, and a closed gate, while the main part of the house rose between them and the street now.
That much Frevisse took in before a kerchiefed, aproned bundle of a woman flurried out of a doorway from that main part of the house and came clucking like a flustered hen toward Lady Agnes, thrusting a cloak at her while Lady Agnes fended it off, saying, “Letice, there’s no need. I’m about to be indoors, aren’t I?”
‘You shouldn’t have been out this long without it and the day’s turning colder by the minute. If you’ve taken cold, it’s no fault of mine. I saw you coming and have Emme building up the fire this very minute but this will see you warm until then.“
Still fending off the cloak and moving toward the door, Lady Agnes said, “Letice, this is Domina Elisabeth of St. Frideswide’s near Banbury, Sister Ysobel’s cousin. Remember I said she was coming? And Dame Frevisse. They’re my guests for this while. St. Mary’s is overcrowded.”
Letice made a quick, respectful curtsy their way without slacking her heed of Lady Agnes but leaving off with the cloak to go ahead of her up the stone step and open the door, saying, “I saw them crossing the street with you, my lady, and thought that might be the way of it and I’ve sent Cook word. I’ll tell Emme to see to airing Master Stephen’s room when she’s done with the fire, shall I?”
‘Yes,“ Lady Agnes agreed, adding to Domina Elisabeth, ”Stephen is my grandson. We keep his room ready even though he mostly stays with his wife’s family since he married. And here we are.“
With Letice standing aside to let them pass, she led them through the carved wooden arch of the doorway into the darkness of a wooden-walled booth that served to hold off the worst draughts from the rest of the house and through its smaller inner doorway into the house’s hall, a high-raftered room running the house’s full length, stone-floored and well-lighted by a pair of tall windows looking out into yard they had just left, with a fireplace in the wall between them and beyond them another doorway that led away into the wing along the yard. At the far end a narrow stairway made of thick oaken slabs went steeply up to an open gallery above, with shut doors at either end to private parts of the house, Frevisse supposed, the one on the left probably into the solar Lady Agnes had said was above the street-facing shops, and it was indeed to the stairs that Lady Agnes went, saying to Domina Elisabeth, “Now for it. Pray, pardon me my slowness.” For the first time the need for her staff was plain as she leaned to it heavily while gripping the stairs’ rope railing with one hand and pulling herself upward. Letice had hurried to catch up to her but the stairway was too narrow; she could not help her lady from beside her, only climbed close behind, ready to be needed, and at the top give her a push up the last step that Lady Agnes seemed not to mind, only turned, flushed with effort and a little short of breath, to say down to Domina Elisabeth, “There. I only hope your knees are better than my poor old ones.”
‘You could save your knees,“ Letice muttered, laboring up the last step herself, ”if you’d have your room below instead of up here.“
‘There’s nothing to see from any room down there except the yard and there’s nothing goes on there,“ Lady Agnes answered as if this were something said between them more often than once. ”Come,“ she added to Domina Elisabeth now climbing after her. ”I’ll show you my chamber. You’ll see for yourself why I mean to keep it.“
‘They might better like to see their own,“ Letice said.
‘Before Emme has seen to it? Nonsense.“ Thudding her short staff solidly on the gallery’s wooden floor with every step, Lady Agnes headed for the nearer door, and with a well-heaved sigh Letice hustled ahead of her to open it.
Frevisse, following Domina Elisabeth up the stairs and then along the gallery, knew as soon as she entered the solar why Lady Agnes favored it. Besides being of goodly size, it had a long window set under the front eave, thrust out over the shopfronts and the street, with glass in the middle two lights so that even on days too cold to have the wooden shutters open on the unglassed ends, Lady Agnes could still look out at whatever might be passing in the street, if not over the nunnery wall. More than that, the chamber was amply furnished toward comfort, not only with Lady Agnes’s tall bed hung with cream-colored curtains embroidered in twining green vines and crimson flowers but thick rush matting underfoot to warm the floor, a wide-topped table with a bench along one side, two backed chairs, a pair of heavy chests along one wall, and painted wall-hangings of ships with wind-bellied sails and strange cities perched on rocky coasts. There were the usual joint stools, too, and the clutter of everyday living— an embroidery frame with some three-quarters finished piece of tapestry work in bold colors beside one of the chairs; three books in a pile on one end of the table; folded linen in a basket beside one of the chests, waiting to be put away—but best of all just now was the deep-hearthed fireplace where a woman in servant’s gown and apron, gray hair wisping out from under the back of the neatly wrapped linen kerchief covering her head, was presently laying kindling carefully onto an old fire’s coals, with three logs ready to join them when there was fire enough.
That was where Frevisse would have gone, for choice, but Lady Agnes was beckoning both her and Domina Elisabeth to come with her to the window where the shutters stood wide to the afternoon’s thinning light, saying as they joined her, “You see? I should sit downstairs with four walls and nothing but servants to watch when there’s this?”
She had the right of it, Frevisse silently agreed. The nunnery wall was indeed too high for her to see anything except nunnery rooftops and the church tower, but the street was all hers to watch and the nunnery’s main gate and whoever came and went through it.
But Lady Agn
es was drawing the shutter closed at one end of the window with a nod for Frevisse to do the same at the other, turning when she had finished to say, “Emme, haven’t you that fire going yet?”
‘Takes time, my lady,“ Emme said as if she had said it uncounted times before now and was resigned to saying it patiently many times more. But Frevisse was coming to suspect that Lady Agnes’s servants were probably good at patience or they’d not be her servants for long. Certainly Letice took patiently Lady Agnes’s flurry of orders to set the two chairs and a joint stool nearer the fire and that she must tell Lucas the tables needn’t be set up in the hall tonight because she and the nuns would dine here and bring some hot spiced cider as soon as might be because, ”It’s perishing cold in here. Emme!“
‘Done, my lady,“ Emme declared, standing up and back from the fire now licking up cheerily around the logs laid on the kindling she had been tending.
‘Off with you, then, and see to airing my ladies’ bed. A pan of hot coals now and another at bedtime, I’d say, to be sure of it. Go on.“
Letice and Emme both went, and Lady Agnes, settling herself into one of the chairs, gestured Domina Elisabeth to the other and Frevisse to the joint stool which, being nearest to the warmth spreading out from the fire, suited her very well. Left to herself, she would have been content simply to sit and be warm, but Lady Agnes, hands folded on the rounded top of her staff, leaned forward in her chair and said to Domina Elisabeth, “So. You’ve heard how this widow comes to be in your way. You’ve heard about our murder?”
‘Only that there had been one.“
‘Ah. Well, then.“ With no doubt that Domina Elisabeth would be as eager to hear as she was to tell, Lady Agnes started in again on all that Frevisse had already heard of Montfort’s death. Not interested in hearing it again, Frevisse turned her gaze and mind to the fire, watching the flames at their dance and play and the slow settling of the logs into a bed of coals that had been kindling and in a while would be only ashes, just as the logs would be before the evening was done, with new logs brought to take their place, to burn to ashes in their turn. Like human lives. A brief, bright flourishing and then an end.
She ought to feel more for Montfort’s death than she did.
She prodded at her feelings but nothing stirred. There was no regret in her that he was dead, only that he had died so badly, a mean-minded man come to a mean end. She would pray for his damned soul but that was the most she could do and even then with no eagerness, only duty. If anything, she would pray more readily for his murderer. Whatever reason he had had for killing Montfort—and knowing Montfort, he could well have had a great one— murder was among the worst sins and the murderer as much in need of prayer as Montfort was.
The bell from St. Mary’s church tower began to sound its clear calling to Vespers. Lady Agnes broke off her telling of the clerk raising an outcry at finding the body and Domina Elisabeth paused her dismay to cross themselves, but to Frevisse starting to rise to her feet in answer to the bell’s summons, Domina Elisabeth raised a hand and said, “We needn’t go tonight. We’ve had a long day,” and turned back to Lady Agnes, leaving Frevisse caught all unexpectedly into anger that Domina Elisabeth so lightly dismissed the Office as if it were something to be bothered over or not, as one chose.
But anger was a sin, too, and Frevisse quenched it, instead slid around on the joint stool to face the fire and put her back as much as possible to the other women, leaving Lady Agnes to go on, “Still, the inquest is to be here in my hall tomorrow, did I tell you? When that’s done, we’ll know as much as almost anyone about it all, but in the meanwhile people are saying…” while she silently began Vespers for herself.
Chapter 3
The morning was wearing on at too fast a pace for all that must be done, and Master Gruesby with an untidy bundle of papers clasped to his chest with one arm, a cushion tucked under the other, and quills and ink bottle in his hands shuffled more quickly than was his wont up the hall toward the table at its head, slowed by his left shoe having come undone while he crossed the street and no way to refasten it until he could set everything down and that he could not do until he reached the table. He had been here earlier, to be sure the table would be where it was needed and to learn how many benches there would be. Most of those who would crowd in to the inquest would be there just to gawk. They could stand and be welcome to it but for the jury and the witnesses there must be places to sit. And for Mistress Montfort, too. Master Christopher had urged against her being there but she had insisted, in her quiet way. That she would be.
She was always quiet, was Mistress Montfort. That was something Master Gruesby had always liked about her because a quiet woman was a seemly woman. Or so it was said. On his own account, he rather thought it was not the seemliness of it he liked so much as the relief it had always been from Master Montfort’s ceaseless unquiet He wondered, as he had before, if she had made any unquiet grieving over Master Montfort’s death but could not imagine that she had. No one seemed much grieved over it really. Even this morning, all she had been was quietly firm when telling Master Christopher she would come to the inquest and Master Christopher had given way and so Master Gruesby had this cushion from the nunnery, both to save a place for her on one of the benches and to make that place more comfortable.
‘Somewhere near the front, that people can’t turn around to stare at her,“ Master Christopher had said. ”But not at the very front. Nor directly in front of me. Well to the side and a little back would be best.“
But first there were the papers and quills and ink with which to deal and there was no one to ask for help because just for the moment Lady Agnes Lengley’s hall was empty, even of her servants. But they had set up the six benches just as he’d told them, facing up the hall toward the table, three and three, and Master Gruesby supposed it did not matter that none of them was there because Master Christopher already had one of his own men guarding the door, to keep out anyone who shouldn’t come in yet. Still, there was no one to help… With a sidewise lean and twist, Master Gruesby laid the quills down without damage to their neatly trimmed points; was able then to set down the ink bottle; laid the cushion to one side on the table; stacked the papers at Master Christopher’s place; took up the cushion again; and after a careful moment to choose, went to the far end of the second right-hand bench and laid it there for Mistress Montfort.
Only then, after a long look around to be sure everything was to satisfaction for now, did he sit down himself to see to tying his shoelace, first pulling up his shoe’s soft leather top to around his ankle, then wrapping the leather lace around it twice before neatly tying a bow. A double knot would be more sure, he knew, but he was never able to bring himself to it, because what if the lace should become wet and swell? He’d not be able to undo it easily, might even have to cut it and what a waste that would be. No. Better to make a simple knot and hope for the best.
Pleased, as usual, with his decision, he wiggled his foot, to be sure the knot was tight enough but not too tight, and stood up. One of his own little jests—kept to himself because he never presumed to be so bold as to make them aloud—was that he had given up any thought of becoming a monk or friar because his feet chilled too easily and so he could not have endured wearing sandals.
Of course it was only a jest because no monk or friar was expected to go only sandaled in England’s bitter weather. Nor had he ever thought at all of becoming a monk or friar. But then, he’d never really thought much about becoming anything, really. He’d come to be a clerk because he was good with ink and paper and writing down words and liked doing it. If that wasn’t what God had wanted of him, well, God had not yet seen fit to tell him otherwise. Clerking agreed with him and that was the sum of it. Or he agreed with clerking. But it came to the same, he supposed. Or did it? He wasn’t certain. But then he was certain of so few things. Or at least not deeply certain. He managed to be reasonably certain about a great many things, yes, but not deeply certain because there were so
many questions in life and so few reasonable answers.
Answers, yes. Somebody was always ready with answers. It was reasonable answers that seemed in short supply. Such as… such as why did the sky change color at sunrise and sunset? Nobody seemed even to wonder about that but there had to be a reason. God’s will, of course, was supposed to be answer enough, but it wasn’t, was it? Or maybe it was. When Roger Bacon had sought answers beyond that, he’d put himself into all manner of trouble, hadn’t he? So maybe, Master Gruesby thought, now that he thought about it, he was fortunate that he seemed only good at questions, not at answers. And fortunate in that he liked clerking, liked keeping order where otherwise there would be disorder, liked taking care of small matters that otherwise would have no care taken of them.
He looked to the table again and realized he’d done it wrong. The pens and ink, those were right, they belonged there, but the papers… Those were his and should not be there and he hurried back and gathered them together quickly, before anyone could come in and see what he’d done. Trying to make them somewhat more orderly, he tapped them edge-on to the table, but the pieces were too many sizes and rough-torn shapes ever to be tidy and having done what he could, he looked around for somewhere to put them and found himself at a loss. For too many years his place at a crowner’s inquest had been here, at a table’s end or somewhere equally aside but close to the main way of things, taking notes and reading out things when they were demanded of him. He was used to being a part of everything, though not a part that anyone noticed, and that had changed not at all when Master Montfort became escheator. It was unsettling that today would be different. Today he wasn’t anyone’s clerk but had merely offered to help Master Christopher’s young Denys, had brought things here and set them up for him while he and Master Christopher went over today’s regrettable business. His own place wouldn’t be here at the table but there—he looked sideways at the left-hand benches where the jury would sit—because this time he was a witness, of all things, because he had found Master Montfort’s body and would therefore have to give evidence and answer questions. Instead of being out of the way, he was going to be noticed and he didn’t know he really didn’t know how he was going to bear that.
The Clerk’s Tale Page 3