The Squire’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Frevisse put out her hand, ran two fingers around the curve of the marred wood. “Who noticed this?”

  ‘Master Geoffrey.“

  ‘He showed it to you?“

  ‘When I came in.“

  ‘The dagger.“ She heard her voice dry with strain, not sounding like her own. ”Whose is it?“

  ‘It’s an old one of Robert’s. It’s kept there.“ Master Verney nodded to the chest beside the wall at the head of the bed. ”For need when another isn’t to hand, I gather.“

  ‘And anyone and everyone could know it’s there.“

  Master Verney was openly puzzled. “Yes,” he said and waited as if expecting more questions but Frevisse had answers enough. Everything was come together into a whole, and when above her, Master Verney said heavily, “How could she bring herself to such a thing? Even…”

  ‘She didn’t,“ Frevisse said curtly, braced her hands on the prie-dieu and pushed herself sharply up to her feet. With the anger she had first had at Benedict’s death scalding in her now, she turned toward where Robert and the priest were still in talk, with Master Geoffrey still standing with them, and raised her voice for everyone in the room to hear her as she said, ”She didn’t kill herself. She was murdered. By the same man who murdered her son.“

  The words rasped into a silence fully come before she had finished saying them, with everyone—the men, the women by the bed, Gil at the door—turned to look at her, but her own look only on Master Geoffrey, watching his eyes widen and the blood drain from his face as he understood what she was saying.

  Robert turned his head to stare toward the clerk, then back to Frevisse. “What?” he asked.

  Her gaze still locked to Master Geoffrey’s, Frevisse said, coldly now, “From all I’ve been able to learn, no one with cause to want Benedict dead had any way to come to him unnoticed last night or chance to put his body at the foot of the stairs except you, Robert. The other man best able to both come to Benedict and move his body is Master Geoffrey.”

  ‘Who had no cause to kill him,“ Robert said, but slowly, watching, as everyone was watching now, the slow mount of blood back into the clerk’s face and the rapid lift and fall of his heavy breathing, his stare still at Dame Frevisse still staring back at him as she said, ”No cause we know of. No more cause than we know of for him to kill Lady Blaunche. But he did, because she didn’t kill herself and there’s no one else could have done it except him.“

  From the bed Mistress Dionisia said, questioning, “But we saw her when he left the bedchamber. She was at the prie-dieu, praying.”

  ‘She was dying,“ Frevisse said. ”He made sure we saw her there, to believe she was well, but she was dying even as he left her.“

  ‘How can you say,“ Master Verney asked carefully, ”that she didn’t kill herself?“

  ‘Because no matter how great a despair she might have been in, even despair great enough to thrust herself onto a dagger, she would not then have bothered to reach back and carefully hide the dagger under her skirts. Why would she? What possible reason could she have had for doing that? But that is where it was.“ Frevisse pointed toward the narrow bloodstain on the matting. ”There’s a stain on her skirt matching that, where her skirt laid over it. Look where it is. And remember how she was lying when we found her.“ She turned that demand on the women. ”There’s a dent in the prie-dieu where she’s supposed to have braced the dagger, and we found her fallen to the left, as if she had been kneeling and crumpled down from there. Why would the dagger be behind her to the right and under her skirts where the blood shows it was? And you.“ She came fiercely back to Master Geoffrey. ”You found the dagger, showed it to us, before we’d barely begun to grasp that she was hurt, before we’d done more than turn her over, when it would have still been covered by the spread of her skirts. You knew it was there and the only way you could have known that was if you’d put it there.“

  Master Geoffrey took a gasping breath and started, “I had no reason—”

  ‘Don’t tell me you had no reason!“ Frevisse flared. ”Whyever you did it, you were the only one who could have done it. And the only one besides Robert who could have killed Benedict and moved his body. You…“

  Robert, all his grief-driven fury unleashed, went at Master Geoffrey to grab him by the front of his gown as less than a day before he had grabbed Benedict, and shove him backward, backward, backward, hard thrust after hard thrust, until they came up against the wall, there to jerk him forward and drive him back, cracking his head against the stone, yelling at him, “Why?” Jerking him forward and driving his head back again, still yelling, “Why? You bastard-get! Why?”

  Chapter 21

  Three days. No… Four.

  Four days since their deaths.

  Standing at the parlor’s window, looking out over the orchard, its branches softened with pale, opening blossoms under a gentle sky, Robert made count of the days. Four days since they died. Three since the crowner came and left. Two since their burial. One since Sir Lewis had sent message from the grange that he was going home and there need be no haste in finishing the matter between them, that it could bide until Midsummer if Robert wanted. Four days.

  And all the rest of his life ahead of him. And no desire in him to live it. An ugly stretch of time where grief, he knew, would flatten out under the burden of necessities, the way it had flattened for brief whiles these past four days. Flattened but not left him because it would never leave him, was now as much a part of him as the white scar along his right knee where he had fallen on a broken edge of a board when he was eight years old, on an afternoon that would have long since been lost to memory except for the pain there had been and the scar there was, and that was how his grief would be, with him forever from here onward, through all his days. Grief for what might have been between him and Blaunche but never was and now never would be. Grief for everything lost with Benedict’s death—beginning with the chance to have made peace with him.

  Grief for all the things there would never be chance for now.

  Ned and Gil had pulled him off Geoffrey Hannys before he had managed to kill him, there in the bedchamber four days ago. Robert supposed he was glad of that but he had not been at the time. At the time he had wanted the man as dead as Blaunche and Benedict and the unnamed baby were, but Ned and Gil had dragged him back, Ned saying, “Let be. We’ll see to him. Leave it, Robert!” But when Geoffrey had made a clumsy try for the door then, sidling away along the wall, it had been Ned who had turned to backhand him across the face, driving his head against the wall again; and when Geoffrey had started to slump toward the floor, it had been Ned who gave him a hard shove down, to be sure he made it.

  Gil had taken Robert to sit on the chest at the foot of the bed then, and Katherine had brought him wine, and Ned had made him drink it, until finally, still sick and shaken inwardly but outwardly quieted, he had been able to look across to Geoffrey dragging himself up to sit back against the wall, blood at the corner of his mouth, and ask him without the outward rage this time, “Why?”

  Geoffrey had wiped blood from his mouth and held out his hand to show it, saying bitterly, “Look.”

  No one had, except at him, and what he must have seen on all their faces made him drop his hand into this lap, lean his head back tenderly against the wall, and set his gaze disgustedly toward the room’s far side rather than to any of them while he said, sullen, “At evening’s end yesterday, I went to Benedict in his room, to tell him how his mother did and see how he was. He was still angry. Mostly at ‘Master’ Fenner.”

  Robert had wondered briefly from where the black scorn Geoffrey put into his name came.

  ‘I thought he was angry enough he’d take well to the thought of how much better it would be to have me married to his mother instead.“

  Gil had sworn at that and Ned had demanded, incredulous, “This was something you’d thought on?”

  ‘Of course I’d thought on it.“ Geoffrey had been still full of scorn. ”Almost sin
ce I’d first come into the household I’d been thinking on it. There was Lady Blaunche, ripe and ready for anything a man could give her, and there he was— ’Master‘ Fenner—tucked into as soft a place as a man could hope for and too stupid to make the most of it. All I needed was time enough to bring her around to seeing how much better I would be to her than he was, and then if it happened he died, I’d be here to hand to be first her comfort and then her next husband.“

  ‘And if Robert didn’t ’happen‘ to die one way,“ Ned had said in a dangerously level voice, ”you would have seen he ’happened‘ to another?“

  ‘Why not? He wasn’t anybody. He’d have had nothing, been nothing, except she married him. Why shouldn’t she do as much for me?“

  ‘You said that to Benedict?“ Robert had asked and been surprised by how evenly he said it, not realizing until later how numb he was.

  Geoffrey’s scorn had only deepened. “Of course I didn’t. I started something about how you were failing his mother. He agreed to that readily enough. He said you were a fool who didn’t understand anything. I said that at least I could quiet her, could keep her happier than he did and added, as if half-jesting, that it would be better all around if she had married me instead of him. The young idiot…” Geoffrey’s bitterness had been immense. “… he laughed in my face. He said he’d rather quarrel with Master Fenner about anything, anytime, than ever even try to think of me married to his mother. The whelp. He laughed and turned away from me, still laughing. He made me so angry, laughing like I was some sort of jest…” Geoffrey put out his hands and made a quick, small twisting gesture, as if he held a neck and to break it was a simple thing; and shrugged, dropping his hands into his lap again. “I learned about necks in France, for when there was a guard that needed to be quietly dead. I didn’t even think about it, just did it, and afterwards sorry was no use, so why bother? Besides, I knew, when I came to think about it, that he would have poisoned his mother against me if he’d lived. This way, with him dead, I could better my chances with Lady Blaunche by ‘comforting’ her in her grief. I waited until everything was quiet, took him out, and dumped him at the foot of the stairs, hoping it would be taken for chance he was dead. It was only later, when questions were being asked, I realized there was chance I could make Master Fenner look guilty of the killing and be rid of him, too, and that was all the better.” Geoffrey touched the sore corner of his mouth where the blood was drying. “It would have worked, too. It only all went wrong because of her, the stupid bitch.”

  With a hand bearing down on Robert’s shoulder to keep him from rising, Ned had asked, “Lady Blaunche?”

  ‘Who else?“ Geoffrey had been too lost in angry memory to notice anything besides himself. ”There she was. She’d wanted no one with her but me and we were alone together. I’d quieted her out of crying, was holding her by the hands, flattering her with hope and suchlike, telling her anything I thought she might want to hear, and she was all grateful and warming to me so I told her I loved her and that I wished I was her husband, how different everything would have been if I was. And you know what the bitch did? She looked at me as if I’d never had a wit in my head, as if there was nothing between us and never had been, and said, all scorn, ’Ha!‘ and started to turn her back on me, just like her cur of a son had done. Turned away like I wasn’t even worth the looking at. She made me that angry, I hit her.“

  Robert had groaned and bowed his head into his hands. If Geoffrey heard him, it had not mattered; the man had been deaf to everything but his own grievance, going on, “Harder maybe than I meant to. It knocked her sideways. She hit the side of her head there, on the corner of that chest.” He had pointed to the one beside the bed. “Hard enough it half stunned her. She slumped down without even a sound and left me standing here knowing I’d lost my chance at everything. I’d have no chance with her after that and she’d ruin me for life into the bargain if she had the chance. So I took the dagger…”

  ‘How did you know it was there?“ Ned asked.

  ‘It was one of those idiot things she was pleased about.“ Geoffrey shrilled his voice like an unlikely woman’s with, ” ’Robert keeps a dagger in the chest by our bed, for better safety, he’s that careful for me.‘ As if we all lived in constant peril of attack.“ Geoffrey’s contempt was open.

  ‘It was my father’s,“ Robert said thickly. ”The only thing of his I have. That’s why I keep it there.“

  ‘Well, she’d gone on about it enough that I knew where it was. She was still so dazed from the blow to her head, she was just lying there, didn’t see me take the dagger from the chest, was hardly aware when I dragged her to her feet and over to the prie-dieu. She was even holding on to me while I did, moaning a little. She managed to ask, ’What?‘ like she wasn’t sure what had happened, and I said it was the baby, there was something wrong with the baby, she had to pray while I went for Dame Claire, and forced her down to her knees at the prie-dieu like she was praying while she was still trying to understand what I’d said. Then I ran the dagger into her without her ever seeing it was even in my hand. All she felt was the pain when I pulled it out. Her eyes widened at it and she gasped, ’The baby,‘ thinking that was what it was, and I grabbed her hands before she could feel at her side, wrapped her fingers around the edges of the prie-dieu and told her to pray while I went for help. She was already past speaking, in pain so bad she could only gasp and nod at what I told her. I knew she wouldn’t last long, not with where I’d stabbed her. All I had to do was get out of there while she was still upright. It took hardly an instant to make the dent in the wood and put the dagger under the edge of her skirt.“ He cast an angry look at Dame Frevisse. ”Just as you guessed. And I made sure some of you saw her when I came out the door so you could say she was alive when I left her. All I had to do then was wait until someone wanted to go see how she did and be sure I reached her first, to ’find‘ the dagger that proved she’d killed herself. It all went right, except for you,“ he had said at Dame Frevisse. ”Except for you, nobody would have thought anything but what I meant them to.“

  She had not answered him, and only finally had something of the cold stares and silence all around him begun to pierce his self-concern about his cleverness and wrongs, and he had stiffened, had looked around at all of them, and said angrily, as if anger would make them understand where his reasons had not, “They asked for what happened to them. Both of them. They shouldn’t have made me angry the way they did. They were stupid with pride, the both of them.”

  ‘And what are you,“ Dame Frevisse had said back coldly, ”but stupid with even worse pride? They were guilty of scorn because of theirs. You’re guilty of murder because of yours. That makes your pride by far more stupid and damning than ever theirs was.“

  Geoffrey had opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, confusion briefly on his face before Ned took hold on his arm, wrenched him to his feet, and shoved him out of the room to find somewhere to keep him until the crowner came and took him away.

  And now…

  Robert had carefully done what needed doing through these past four days and held to thoughts of Robin and John and Tacine while he did because they were all that was left to him out of what had been his life.

  He had spent as much time as he could with them, had done what he could to help them understand what had happened, had comforted them, had cried with them, been grateful for the comfort that being with them gave. Been grateful, too, that much of the time when he could not be with them, Katherine had been.

  But Katherine was among the things he did not want to think on anymore. The settlement with Sir Lewis was postponed, that was all, and all that meant was that he had more days to be gone through until she was safely married and out of his life.

  More days of more despair before he could even begin to hope the sharp-edged pain of finally losing her would begin to dull.

  A spring wind, fresh with the greening promise of the world, eased through the window, gentle on his face, and only
because he was for the moment out of tears did he not cry with weary grief for everything that was and was not and would never be.

  ‘Robert,“ Dame Frevisse said behind him with the gentleness of these past days that had at first seemed to him odd, until he had realized that gentleness was a true part of her, seldom seen because she seldom felt there was need to give it. That she was giving it to him told him how much his pain must be showing but he was past being able to hide it and he turned from the window to her and said the one thing to which his mind kept returning. ”They’re dead.“

  Dame Frevisse’s agreement was blessedly simple. “They’re dead. And part of you will never cease to grieve for it.” She paused, then added, “But you’ll go on living nonetheless. Katherine wishes to speak with you, with me to listen while she does.”

  From the moment he had turned around, Robert had been aware that Katherine was there, standing a little beyond Dame Frevisse, and had kept his eyes from her. He had been too much aware of Katherine all these four days; knew how much she had taken on herself besides the children; had wanted to comfort her the times he had seen she had been crying but had kept away from her because comforting her belonged to Drew Allesley; had kept away from ever looking directly at her and did not want to now, but Dame Frevisse was there, waiting, and he turned his gaze toward her.