The Reeve's Tale (33 page)

Frevisse found she was standing at the far end of one of the garden paths, staring down into a cabbage plant, noting with rather desperate care the particular cabbage-shade of its green, the fine patterning of its heavy leaves…

‘My lady?“

Too deep in contemplation of the cabbage, she had not heard Perryn come and looked around to find him standing a respectful distance away along the path behind her, and said the only greeting she could think of between them. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

‘I’ve been sorry about her a long while more than you have,“ Perryn said steadily. ”You did what needed doing. She couldn’t be let go. Neither of them could.“

Frevisse nodded, grateful he understood, and moved away, out of the path and toward the apple tree at the garden’s edge, plucking a tall-grown basil plant’s leaf as she passed, crushing it between her fingers, breathing in its spicy richness, something that blessedly would never change, no matter what vileness happened in the world.

Perryn followed her under the burdened branches, out of the sun into the apple shade, and as she sat on the bench there, gesturing him to join her, she asked, “Master Montfort was willing to believe what you told him?”

‘Not gladly,“ Perryn said. ”It was Master Christopher he listened to. Master Christopher’s his son, as happens.“

‘I know.“

‘I reckoned that you did. He listened to him right enough, and believed him. He’s furious at losing his grip on Gilbey’s goods, though.“

‘He would be.“ For Montfort this whole misery of lives put to waste undoubtedly came down at the last to the single hateful fact that he would make no profit from it.

Perryn looked up through the apple branches into a distance of sky, the silence stretching out between them before he said, still gazing away, “They’ll hang her, won’t they?”

Frevisse nodded.

They neither of them mentioned Father Edmund. Mary would be tried at county court, found guilty, and hanged, but Father Edmund’s priesthood put him beyond sentence of death. He would be tried, as Mary would be, and found guilty, but then be given over to his bishop to be kept in the bishop’s prison under penance until, inevitably, he was pardoned. There would be no hope of any great preferment in the Church for him afterwards but he would have his life. And Mary, Matthew Woderove, and Tom Hulcote would be long dead.

Bitterly, Frevisse hoped his penance would be hard beyond the ordinary.

Beside her, Perryn said, “One thing. I had the priest write out a confession of his lie against Master Naylor while we were there and Master Montfort witnessed it. Dickon has taken it off to the priory.”

‘Did you? Has he?“ Frevisse said, her heaviness suddenly lightened.

‘Will it be enough to have him loosed, do you think?“

‘With that in hand, Domina Elisabeth will have him out of guard by this afternoon’s end.“

Perryn gave a satisfied sigh. “That’s all right then. It’ll be good to have things back the way they should be. Not,” he added as if it was something that surprised him, “that it’s been all that bad to work with you.”

‘Nor with you,“ Frevisse said and meant it but had to add, ”No matter how glad I’ll be to give Master Naylor back all his duties.“

Perryn made a half-laugh at that. “Aye. Each to his own.” He stood up. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Now I’m off to the church, to see how it is with Anne and the children.”

‘Please, tell Sister Thomasine I’ll be there soon.“

Perryn slightly bowed, started away, stopped, turned back to her, and said, “I wonder, my lady, if Father Edmund ever thought ahead.”

‘Ahead?“

Unlikely though it was, what looked to be laughter seemed trying to happen at the corners of Perryn’s mouth. “Aye. Ahead.”

Frevisse caught his thought. “You mean ahead to…” she began but broke off, fighting down laughter of her own.

‘Aye,“ Perryn said. ”Ahead to what would likely happen when Mary tired of
him.’“

And despite of everything, they both began to laugh, laughter serving, for now, along with prayer, against the ache of mourning.

Epilogue

There was done and autumn come and Frevisse was standing with Master Naylor, with Sister Thomasine to hand for propriety’s sake, to watch the cutting of the last grain in the last priory field. In the weeks since she and Sister Thomasine had returned to the nunnery, she had seen no one from the village and not even Master Naylor until today. He had taken his duties back from her as soon as he was freed, and for the few days between then and when it had been judged safe for her and Sister Thomasine to return into the nunnery, she had simply tended to the children in the church, more than willing to leave all other matters to anyone who wanted them, except for a single harsh exchange with Master Montfort, who had made it plain that her intrusion into business not her own was tolerated only because note of it could be shifted to his son. Master Christopher had sought her out to apologize for that, but she had told him truthfully he was welcome to anything of worth it brought him, so long as he made good use of it.

But today she had had an urge to see something of an end to what she had been part of in the summer, had sought and been given Domina Elisabeth’s leave to come out to here, the edge of East Field, to watch, warm in the afternoon sun, the last of the wheat being sickled down by the bent-backed men, to be gathered up in armfuls by women, the larger children, other men, everyone careful to jar loose as little as might be of the grain from the heavy-hanging heads as they piled the stalks on the last waiting cart. This year they had a harvest that made up for the starvation ones, and when this last cart lumbered away to the granary yard and barn, it was harvest-home and feasting for all at the priory’s expense on bread, ale, roast meats, savories, and pies at the long trestle tables being set up presently in the priory’s outer yard.

And now the cadence of cut-and-gather had ended, Frevisse saw, with all the wheat down, the last armload being laid onto the cart, save for a last golden stand at the field’s center. In a slow but unhesitating drift the harvesters were gathering to it, encircling it in a tight cluster of men, women, children so that there was no way for Frevisse to see what was happening in the midst of them, but from all the years of her childhood when she had seen its like in other fields at the end of other harvests, she knew that the oldest man there—the village’s oldest man of all if he could be brought out to it—was plaiting the last of the wheat into a simple woman’s shape of skirts and arms and head, and when that was done, one of the girls old enough to marry but not wed yet would come forward and with a sickle cut the wheat free from its life. There would be a cheer then and shouting, and harvest would be over and feasting-time come.

But, “Now here’s odd,” Master Naylor said as the circle of folk parted, and Simon Perryn came from among them and toward Frevisse, Master Naylor and Sister Thomasine.

As Lord Lovell’s reeve and holding nothing from the priory, Perryn needed to have naught to do with the priory’s harvest, but Master Naylor had hired him to be the priory’s harvest lord, in charge of all the priory’s harvest work and the workers when Lord Lovell’s harvest was done. “Because there’s none better,” Master Naylor had told Domina Elisabeth. “Whether all goes well or aught goes wrong, Simon Perryn sees to making the best of it.”

There was assuredly now no sign of anything wrong in Perryn’s stride as he came toward them, nor among the folk left waiting behind him, nor among the boys trailing after him, Dickon and Adam among them, shoving at each other friendliwise as they followed Perryn across the field. Her last particular memory of Adam was of him sitting weakly up for the first time to feed himself but stopping with the broth-filled spoon poised above his bowl to look at Sister Thomasine beside him and say, solemn with certainty, “I’m going to be a priest, you know.” Sister Thomasine had said back, simply, “I know,” and Adam had nodded as if satisfied and gone on eating. But today the only seeming difference between him and Dickon, scuffling with each other and the other boys as they followed Perryn, was that he was less brown, having lost too many hours of the summer.

At a word from Perryn they stopped, and the reeve came on alone the last dozen yards to make a deep bow equally to the nuns as well as Master Naylor, saying, “My ladies. Master Naylor. A boon, if you would be so good.”

‘A boon?“ Master Naylor did not try to hide his surprise. ”For what?“

‘The folk want that Sister Thomasine be the one to cut the harvest home.“

Master Naylor made a startled movement. To cut the last of the harvest was an honor vied for among the girls. For it to be offered away… He and Perryn both looked to Frevisse, Master Naylor slightly shrugging to show he left the say of it to her, Perryn saying, “By your leave, of course, my lady.”

But it was not her leave they needed, and she turned to Sister Thomasine to ask, “Would you do this?”

Sister Thomasine gazed away from them toward the waiting villagers, seemed to consider, and then said softly, “If they want it and you see no reason I shouldn’t, then yes, in God’s great mercy, I’ll do it.”

Watching her go away across the stubbled field at Simon Perryn’s side, a slender, dark-clad figure beside his broad one, the children gathering to her as she went, Master Naylor said, “That’s never been done before.”

Nor would it likely be done again, God granting there not be another year when so many mercies were needed. Mercy from plague, mercy from hunger, mercy from the corruption of secret murders. But given the mercies there had been, it was a gesture of thankfulness to choose one of God’s virgins for this.

Across the harvest-cut field, hazed golden in the long slant of setting sunlight, Perryn, Sister Thomasine, the boys all merged into the waiting villagers. There was a breathing silence, poised with waiting, and then, at last, the cheer and the triumphant shouting and the flash of sickles thrown high and caught as they came down, flashing, in the sun, and the harvest done. There would be no famine this year and maybe with God’s grace the next year would be as good, too, and the year after that and…

Author’s Note

For the curious (or the doubtful), yes, English village government was much as it’s shown here, only far more complex. The villagers themselves ran daily matters, governing themselves in much the way of New England town meetings (whose self-governing skills probably developed from these medieval roots) while dealing with the complex bureaucracies of lord, church, and central government. The cases that come before the village court in Chapter One are all taken directly or derived from actual cases in medieval village court records, down to some of the names remaining the same.

Two books I cheerfully recommend if you want a more detailed, nonfiction look at everyday village life are the scholarly but readable
Life on the English Manor,
by H. S. Bennett, and
The Ties That Bound,
by Barbara Hanawalt.

The mesels are of course today’s measles, though the word was not applied exclusively that way until well after the 1400s but was used for several different ailments, ranging from measles to leprosy. Mesels as we think of it was considered a children’s version of smallpox, less devastating than the adult kind but potentially lethal nonetheless. My own memory of being horribly sick with them in prevaccine days stayed with me darkling enough to be used here—as well as inspiring me to have my own children inoculated against them as early as I could.

Since rashes were—and still are—difficult to tell apart, it was useful that the rash that went with some of the worst forms of plague did indeed form rosy rings, as Mistress Margery observes, and the next time you hear “Ring around the rosy, A pocket full of posy, Atchoo, atchoo, All fall down,” know the sweet little game in a circle with everyone collapsing at the end is hypothesized to be a reenacting of the Black Death. Apparently the familiar “Ashes, ashes…” is a variant that came in when the meaning of the whole thing was being generally forgotten, but sneezing was one of the possible symptoms of the plague, and the posies were herbs and flowers hoped to give protection against it. Children, being devastatingly realistic, showed how effective they thought
that
to be.

And by the way, to be pedantic, no one ever died of the Black Death in the Middle Ages. They died of the Great Pestilence, the Great Death, the Great Plague, but the term “Black Death” seems not to have been used until several centuries later.