The Reeve's Tale (16 page)

With all that, she had had little time to think of questions about Tom Hulcote, let alone ask them of anyone. She only knew, from undercurrents of talk among tired women and whoever of their family and friends came to help sometimes when other work was done that the uncertainty of Tom Hulcote’s death was beginning to take its toll.

It was not that there had never been murder here before. Besides the several Frevisse knew too well it seemed, from what she half-heard and overheard, that some while back one man had done for another with a dagger in an alehouse quarrel, and ten years ago one of the Gregorys had clouted someone over the head with a shovel about a boundary stone, but those had been open killings, seen by others, the why and how and guilt known to everyone and the murderer seized while his victim’s body was still bleeding.

Tom Hulcote’s death had happened secretly. No one knew why or where or by whom he had been killed. The only certainty was that his murderer was not a passing stranger and long gone. A stranger would have killed him and left, not chanced lingering for a day and more or bothered with shifting the corpse. But if it had not been a stranger, it had been someone here, and that meant there was someone among them who was able to kill a man and show no sign of it afterwards. Someone among them was a murderer and they had no way of telling who, and therefore, when there was chance, there were tight little huddles of talk among the women and worry over more than their children when presently their children were more than enough worry; nor did Frevisse doubt there was more talk in the village, and unsure looks and unspoken wondering and distrusts and wariness growing, with no cure for any of it so long as Tom Hulcote’s murderer went unknown.

Worse—and this she hoped no one else had thought of—was that since no one knew why Tom had been killed, there was no certainty that his death would be the only one.

She straightened, sore-backed, from helping small Elyn Denton drink her barley water and managed a smile down at the child, who smiled sleepily back, rolled on her side, and burrowed into her pillow, ready to nap, Frevisse hoped, until her mother returned from seeing to her older children still at home.

‘Please you, my lady, Simon Perryn is asking if you’d come out to him,“ Joane Goddard said in a low voice beside her.

‘Me?“ Frevisse said, looking where his children were bedded near the rood screen, Anne crouched between them, leaning over Lucy, whose fever was among those that had broken this morning.

Joane’s voice dropped lower. “He doesn’t want her to know, please you.”

Frevisse feared she knew what that meant but had no way to refuse it. Mistress Margery was sleeping in the sacristy, in easy call if needed, and enough mothers were awake again and seeing to their children that Sister Thomasine was hardly being left alone to it, and when she spoke briefly to her on her way out, Sister Thomasine merely said without looking around from persuading Joane’s boy Ralph, still fevered, to drink balm water, “Of course. Take as long as need be.”

The rain that had been lightly falling since midday was drizzling to a stop, leaving behind it a thick, damp heat, but Frevisse paused inside the church porch to draw a deep breath of the heavy air with rather desperate relief. These past hot days, the church’s stone walls and thatch had held coolness in as hoped, but with so many people so closely kept and the shutters not opened during the days to protect the meseled children’s eyes from light nor after dark because of sick-making night vapors, the air was long since thickened with the smells there had to be among so many sick children as well as begun to warm, and she had not been outside since one brief time yesterday.

But Perryn was waiting at the churchyard gate, leaning against one of the pentice posts, looking as weary as she felt, but he straightened as she joined him, bowed, gave her greeting that she returned, then asked him with a nod at the last slow dripping of the rain off the edges of the pentice roof, “Will this set the haying back?”

‘Most of the last cut was stacked before it started, and what’s left lying will dry without much hurt from this,“ he said. ”It’s what we couldn’t cut today we won’t make up.“ He nodded past her, toward the village green. ”The crowner’s come.“

Frevisse turned to see two men in brown livery strolling across the green toward the alehouse. “When?” she asked, surprised no one had brought word of it into the church yet.

‘About an hour ago.“

‘Who?“ she asked.

‘Master Montfort.“

The way Perryn said it told her that, like her, he had dealt with the crowner before and felt no better about him than she did. That Montfort might not come himself was something she and Master Naylor had discussed, with her own hope being, “He might not. It being ‘only’ a villein’s death, he might send one of his Sergeants rather than come himself.”

‘We can but hope,“ Master Naylor had replied.

But hope had failed and he had come.

‘He’s at Father Edmund’s,“ Perryn said, ”and giving orders like no one had wit in the world but him.“

‘Has he called for the jurors yet?“

‘Almost as soon as he was off his horse. They’re there now.“

Frevisse looked sharply away from the green to him. “Already? Why aren’t you there? You were one of the finders of the body.”

‘He said I wasn’t needed.“

Frevisse saw now the hard set of Perryn’s mouth, the rigidness behind his face’s tired lines as he stared broodingly at the two men going into the alehouse, and she echoed with the beginning of alarm, “Not needed?”

The jury inquiring into a death was made of the men who first found the body because they were ones most likely to know the closest details concerning the death. Or if the matter were complicated enough, the jury was made of them and men from neighboring villages, and even though Montfort’s usual way was to ask questions enough to have his mind made up before he had to deal with a jury, if this time he had already called a jury, then Perryn should have been on it, as one of the men who had brought in Tom Hulcote’s body.

‘He’s sent for Dickon, though,“ Perryn said. ”To witness. And ordered I wasn’t to go far.“

Worse, thought Frevisse. Montfort was moving as if he already had answers, and if he did, she did not like what she was seeing of the shape of them.

‘It was to ask about Adam, though, I wanted to see you,“ Perryn said. ”He’s not bettering, is he?“

That had been the question Frevisse had feared and she tried to find another answer than the only one there was but had to say, “No. Not yet.”

‘Will he?“ Perryn asked, his bluntness giving away more than Frevisse wanted to share of his fear. Colyn had bettered steadily since his fever had broken and Lucy had taken the mesels only lightly. But Adam…

This past day and more he seemed hardly to know even his mother and still his fever refused to break despite everything they did. If it did not break soon…

Low enough she hardly heard her own voice, Frevisse said, “We’re praying for him.”

Perryn stepped away from her, past her where she could not see his face, but not quite quickly enough she did not see the pain there. He knew as well as she did that the answers to prayers were not always the answers sought for. And although she believed that whatever came, came by God’s will and therefore for a greater good than men could see, she had rarely found that to be much comfort against hurt or the harsh, present edge of grief, and for now she gave Perryn the only thing she could— her silence—looking the other way from him until behind her, he said tautly, “Here’s trouble coming.”

Chapter 11

A last few drops of the finished rain were falling off the thatch edge, sparkling in the thick sunlight, as Dame Frevisse drew aside and Simon stepped forward to meet the crowner’s man in the gateway.

None too mannerly, the man asked, “You’re the reeve, right?”

‘I am, aye,“ Simon agreed. ”Master Montfort wants you.“

There was no question but that he meant “now,” and although Simon already knew the crowner’s men followed their master’s manners, he still gave way to a smoulder of anger at the rudeness, said, “Oh, aye,” and would have added he’d be there just as soon as he had shifted a manure pile or two, but Dame Frevisse put in mildly, “Of course. Show us the way, why don’t you, fellow?” with somehow an edge on “fellow” that made the man flick an uneasy glance toward her.

He had obviously had no order concerning a nun; nor had Simon had any thought but that she would go back to the church, but she stood staring, waiting for the man to go, and after a bare moment’s hesitation, he gave her the slight bow he should have given earlier and turned away, back toward Father Edmund’s.

Dame Frevisse followed, and Simon as he fell into stride beside her, asked low-voiced, “Is this something you should be doing?” Because if he had had choice, he would have stayed as far from Master Montfort as he could, not sought him out.

‘This is manor business and therefore mine,“ she said, still seeming mildly but with more of an edge under the words and her wimple and veil making it hard to read her face from the side.

Nor was there time to pry more out of her, even if Simon had thought it possible. The priest’s messuage was only the other side of the churchyard. If Simon had cared to, he could have shown the crowner’s man the shorter way, through the narrow stile in the churchyard’s low stone wall for the priest’s use in going to the church and home again, but he was in no haste to come to Master Montfort. Around by the street and in through the fore-yard would be soon enough.

There wasn’t even that much of a foreyard, since the priest’s place had garden, byre and barns all to the back, though the barn was larger than most since whoever was priest in the village collected tithes in kind from all Lord Lovell’s folk here and added church-gifts from the priory’s villeins to that for his services to them, all in all setting him up to rival Gilbey Dunn for wealth here and his profits going farther than most men’s because he had nor kith nor kin to see to, only sometimes a housekeeper, unless he was a priest who failed to keep to his vows, but the last lax priest had been in Simon’s grandam’s young years and a hard time he must have had of it, according to her, with himself to support and a woman he called his wife and their six children, and “If ever a man perished by surfeit rather than the sword, it was him, sure,” Simon’s grandam had always said when telling the story. “He sowed thick, as they say, but reaped thin. There wasn’t a brat worth breeding up in the lot.”

Simon wished it was his grandam going to face Master Montfort, rather than him.

He likewise wished he thought some good were like to come of the crowner being here because the unease there had been ever since Tom’s body was found was only worsening, too many folk uncertain of too many other folk and folk uncertain of them in return because someone among them was surely a murderer.

And from what he knew of Master Montfort he had small hope that things were going to better with him here. He had last had dealing with him six years back, when old Eva Mewes had slipped into the stream and drowned while doing Joane Goddard’s laundry. That time Master Montfort had complained bitterly all the while he was here, it being a wet, chill March, over the weather and having to come to nowhere over nothing more than a villager’s death, and had in the end ruled it an accident, as it had been, and taken the clothing old Eva had been washing as deodand—the cause of her death, and therefore taken to the king’s profit. Master Montfort’s complaints had been nothing to Joane Goddard’s at having to buy her own clothing back to satisfy the fine, and she had at least had cause to complain, none of the trouble being of her own doing, while the crowner was there because it was his business to be there and why did he have to make it a misery for everyone?

This time he had not even been off his horse before he was demanding lodging and stabling as if they would have been denied him if he did not force the matter, though they were his by right of his being the king’s officer and on the king’s business. Nor did it matter that his needs that way had already been forethought and Father Edmund’s house and yard and byre readied for him, his men, and horses.

At least he was wasting no time over what had brought him here. Simon would give him that. He’d still been stripping off his gloves when he demanded the jurors to be brought to him and said at Simon in the same breath, “Except you, reeve. I don’t want you on the jury, but keep where I can find you when I want you.”

He had added the same to Father Edmund, somewhat more graciously though not much, then asked, “The whelp who found the body. I want him here, too.”

Simon had used that for reason to leave, found Dickon helping Watt hoe the onions at home, brought him back and given him over to one of the crowner’s guards at Father Edmund’s gateway, then gone off to the alehouse, looking for something else to do than think but found no company, everyone off to the fields for weeding while the rain delayed the haying. Even the old men who usually found naught to do but sit around with their talking had jounced off in Will Cufley’s cart that morning, old Tod Denton saying he could hack a hoe well enough if he had to but don’t expect him to do it often-like. There had only been Bess and she had gone on about Tom’s death, the way everybody had been going on about it, one way or another, to no profit or useful end that Simon could see, since they knew what they knew and no more, no matter how much they talked, and what they knew was not enough. When he’d shown no interest in that, Bess had shifted to what might come of the crowner being here, another thing Simon had not wanted to think about, and he had put his halfpence on the table and gone out, with nowhere else to go but home, where Watt would only go on at him about the same things, so he’d gone to the church instead, wishing he could go to Anne, but that would have meant seeing Adam and he could not bear to see Adam.