The Reeve's Tale (29 page)

Walter gave him a narrow stare. “Might change my mind about that hood not being evidence,” he said, but it was in jest and he added easily, “This afternoon then, if that’ll serve.”

Perryn nodded, equally easy about it.

‘Why did you let Hamon go to Gilbey’s looking for work that morning?“ Frevisse asked.

‘Hamon’s been grumping on about how he’s no chance to earn money in hand. I thought Gilbey was likely to be short-handed, with Tom not working for him any more, and told Hamon to see if he could earn a bit of something there, me not needing him that day once I knew Simon didn’t want me just then.“

‘And his wife was wanting to know how things were going at Gilbey Dunn’s,“ Hamon said, ”with the sick brats and all, but didn’t want to go herself, Gilbey’s wife being the way she is. ’Have a look in the door if you can,‘ she said, so Walter said I could go.“

‘Hamon,“ Walter said with no particular heat, just a wish he would be quiet and resignation that he wouldn’t.

‘Well, that’s how it was,“ Hamon said. ”She said I was to tell her everything about it afterwards.“

‘Did you?“ Frevisse asked.

‘Wasn’t much to tell.“ Hamon sounded as wronged by that as Walter’s wife had probably felt. ”I never hardly got past the doorstep. That old thing her servant sent me off to Gilbey in the barn. He didn’t want me, and I never laid eyes on Gilbey’s wife at all.“ Which he seemed to feel was an equal wrong.

Unhopeful of learning more, Frevisse let them go with careful thanks, then sat watching them walk away while her mind tracked back through what she had found out, none of it seeming of particular use, but she nodded at Perryn to sit with her on the bench, and when he had, they both sat in silence, Frevisse staring into the distance, Perryn at the ground, with nothing to say between them until Perryn roused with a deep sigh and, “About Mary. I’m sorry for the way she was to you.”

Frevisse had let go thinking of Mary. Even the fact that, besides Gilbey Dunn, she was the only strong link between the two dead men seemed to be of no matter in finding why they were dead. But she was Perryn’s sister and mattered to him—or at least her ill manners did, and Frevisse said, “No matter. It’s forgotten.”

But not by Perryn who said, still heavily, “She’s a trouble and always has been, ever since she was little. There’s never been a halfway about her in things. When she loved Matthew, it was the only thing in the world for her, and when she stopped loving him…” He left the sentence hang, no need to finish it. “The trouble is, she’d not stopped loving Tom Hulcote yet. It’s made it worse for her than losing Matthew was.”

‘She didn’t look to be much grieving just now,“ Frevisse said, but that sounded unkind even in her own ears, especially when said to Mary’s brother, and she added, ”Though she was wild enough with grief at first, by what I’ve heard.“

‘Oh, aye,“ Perryn agreed wearily. ”Mary’s always enjoyed a good howling when she has the chance.“

As when what was left of her husband’s body had been brought back to be buried, Frevisse remembered. Back to what mattered, she said, “The question we keep coming short against is who would want Tom Hulcote dead. What happened that someone killed him? By all I’ve heard, nobody cared enough about him to mind even whether he stayed or went, let be whether he was alive or dead.”

‘Nobody but Mary,“ Perryn said.

‘And she was telling him to go,“ Frevisse said, impatient that Perryn would not leave off about what was no use to them.

But he had reason for it, it seemed, frowning at the ground between his feet as he said, “It’s not right, her doing that. Telling him to go. She’s never been one to let go a thing until she’s done with it. Not Mary. And with Tom gone, she’d have been without a man and she’s never liked that. Not since she was old enough to want one.”

‘She still has Father Edmund,“ Dickon said.

Sitting on the grass aside and a little behind them all this while, he had been out of sight and—Frevisse realized belatedly—out of mind. With a smile as rueful as her thought, Perryn gave her a side wise look, then looked past her to Dickon and said in what was very much a father’s forbearing tone, “She does and that’s good. But Father Edmund’s not the same to her as Tom was.”

Stiffly, showing he knew he was being talked down to, Dickon said, “He kisses her the same way.”

Perryn’s gaze met Frevisse’s, the same, sudden, harsh question in both before Frevisse slowly turned to Dickon and asked, carefully keeping feelings out of her voice, “Does he? How do you know?”

Dickon shifted a little, suddenly uneased, looking from her to Perryn and back again before he said, with equal care, “There’s a place up on the wood edge.” He pointed vaguely toward where Crossfield made a low rise into woods. “It ridges out some and you can see…” He gestured along all the north side of the green.

‘I know the place,“ Perryn said. ”Every boy knows it. Its the best place along the woodshore for…“ He reconsidered what he was going to say. ”…
not
snaring rabbits.“ Because any kind of hunting in the lord’s woodland was mostly a forbidden thing. ”My grandfather used to not snare rabbits up there, too. And my father and me. None of us ever used to set snares there when we were your age, nor eat the rabbits we never caught neither.“

Frevisse saw what he was at and left him to it as Dickon began to grin with a shared understanding that had everything to do with Perryn having been a boy and nothing at all to do with him being the reeve and answerable for keeping village laws.

‘That’s it,“ Dickon agreed. ”Adam showed me.“

‘From up there you can see most of the back way that runs behind the messuages that side of the green, and into some of their byre yards, too,“ Perryn explained to Frevisse. ”You saw them from up there, did you?“ he asked Dickon.

Dickon nodded. “They didn’t think anyone could because there’s a shed angled between the byre and the back gate, and the byre in the next yard has its back to there, and even if they’d looked, they’d not have seen me because I was down in the long grass.”

‘Dawn this would have been?“ Perryn asked.

He made no more of it than he had of the snaring so that Dickon went on easily, “Half light, maybe. No more. They came out of the byre together, her and Father Edmund, and they… kissed.” And something more than kissed, guessing from Dickon’s sudden hesitation and then the way he went on quickly as if he did not want to be asked more about it. “Then she went to see out the back gate that everything was clear, nobody about, and there wasn’t and he left, back to his own place.”

‘It’d be not far to go,“ Perryn said to Frevisse. ”There’s maybe two messuages between her place and the back way into his.“

‘When was this you saw them?“ Frevisse asked.

Dickon was well into enjoying himself now and answered eagerly, “Two mornings ago. Just after I’d taken the cows to pasture. You have to go out early to snares, before the crows find them, if you’ve caught anything,” he explained to her.

Frevisse forebore to tell him she had known how to snare rabbits and what to do with them afterwards when she was half his age.

‘That was careless of them,“ Perryn said grimly. ”To be out like that when it was light.“

But Frevisse had thought of more than that and asked, “Dickon, how is it you know she and Father Edmund kissed the same way she and Tom Hulcote did?”

Dickon squirmed and said with sudden interest in his kneecap, “I saw her and Tom at it a couple of weeks ago.” He looked up quickly. “But they were right out in the open, and it was daytime when they did. They didn’t care if anybody saw them. I wasn’t looking for it, either time. It just happened. Nor I’m not the only one who’s seen them. Her and Tom, and her and Father Edmund. Adam even saw…”

He stopped, his mouth open, his eyes shifting widely aside in search of something else to say.

Gently but too firmly to let him think she would let him off, Frevisse said, “This matters, Dickon. You’ve listened to enough of what’s passed here to understand how much we’re in need of answers. What else has been seen between Mary Woderove and Father Edmund and Tom Hulcote, by you or anyone else?”

Dickon looked to Perryn who nodded he should go on, and Dickon took a deep breath and said, “Once Adam happened on her and Father Edmund. They were out beyond that field her husband lost to Gilbey. In among the trees. They were…”

There was small likelihood a boy his age did not know what happened between men and women, but he also knew the limits of what was properly not said aloud and, embarrassed, he stopped.

‘You mean,“ Perryn said quietly, ”they were doing what only man and wife should do together.“

Dickon nodded gratefully.

‘They never knew Adam was there, did they?“ Frevisse said to set him going again.

Dickon shook his head. “He drew off and went away, and they never knew he’d seen. But he told me about it afterwards. And some of the other boys.”

And, being boys, they had probably laughed over it.

Very far from laughter but holding her anger out of her voice, Frevisse asked, “When was it he saw them?”

‘Before Midsummer. A little before. He said the next time he saw Father Edmund and Mary was at the court then, and he kept wanting to laugh because he kept remembering…“

Dickon broke off, embarrassed again, and Frevisse pushed him for no more. He had said enough, and still keeping her feelings from her voice, she told him, “Thank you, Dickon. You’ve done well, telling us this. Can you keep it to yourself a while longer? Both what you know and that you’ve told us?”

‘Of course,“ he said, sounding in his certainty very like his father.

Chapter 20

Dame Frevisse sent Dickon off to the church, to help Anne and keep the children company, she said. He went willingly enough, leaving Simon to wish he could go with him, wish he could go to Anne and hold her and be held by her and for just a little while be done with all of this. Because he was afraid. Afraid of what they had learned and afraid of where it might lead. So afraid that he was cold with it.

And in a voice as cold as he felt, Dame Frevisse said, staring away down the green at nothing, “Tell me about Tom Hulcote’s wounds.”

‘His wounds?“ Simon groped to find why she would ask that. ”What about his wounds?“

‘What way was his skull was broken? You said his head was broken in on the side. The right side, I think.“ She might have been asking which way the street ran for all the feeling she showed. ”Was it from top to bottom? From front to back?“

‘From front to back,“ Simon said, understanding that much of what she wanted. As one of the ”finders“ of the body, he had had to look it over with Bert, Walter, John and Hamon, to be able to witness later to the crowner if asked, but that did not mean he liked thinking about it. ”Or back to front. Could have been either way.“

‘Was it done with something blunt or edged?“

‘It wasn’t sliced into, like with an ax. More battered, like.“

‘Then it might be crushed in more near the hand-end of whatever he was hit with, where there’d be more force,“ Dame Frevisse said.

A little thick in the throat with trying not to remember too clearly how Tom’s head had looked, wondering how a nun came to think on something like that, Simon answered, “I didn’t look that closely.”

‘Has he been buried already?“

‘Yesterday, soon as Master Montfort had done with him.“ And Simon prayed she would not want him dug up.

‘Where was he stabbed?“

‘In the back.“

‘On the right side or left?“

‘The right.“

‘High or low or in the middle?“

‘Low. Below the ribs.“

‘Did the blade go in upward, straight, or down?“

‘I never looked! Nor anyone else either, that I know of. He was stabbed and dead and that was enough.“

‘With a knife, a dagger, a sword?“

‘Not a sword,“ Simon said. ”The wound was too narrow for a sword blade. I don’t know there’s anyone in the village even has a sword.“

But Dame Frevisse was gone into some thought of her own again, leaving him to his own, and that was no pleasure. Knowing Mary had betrayed Matthew had been bad enough but to know she’d betrayed Tom, too—at the same time she’d been betraying Matthew—and with a priest. Their own priest. With Father Edmund, who in the ten months he’d been here had baptized four babies into the Church’s grace, given the Last Rite at their dying to Gil Jardyn’s boy and little Jack Gregory, old Peter Whit-lock and Joan Cufley to bring them to God’s mercy. The man who at every Mass held Christ’s Body in his hands. Hands that between whiles held Mary. Another man’s wife. Another man’s paramour.

These past days, when they’d had neither husband nor other lover to worry over, how “comforting” had Father Edmund been?

Beside him Dame Frevisse said, “It’s why she was urging Tom Hulcote to leave here. Not for his sake but to clear the way between her and Father Edmund.”

Bitter with certainty, Simon agreed, “Aye. She knew Tom’d not bear it if he found out. He’d have killed her.”

‘Only it was Tom who was killed,“ Dame Frevisse said very quietly, leaving Simon to see what lay between his thought and hers.

He did and tried to answer her but could make no word come out before she went on carefully, “If Tom came on them together and went into a rage, Father Edmund could well have had to kill him.”