"Where are they?" Frevisse asked.
Master Wyndford shook his head, refusing that. "They're sleeping. Leave them. They'll never know. They'll sleep away and never find out all the ugliness that comes afterward, never have to live through all the years after this love they think they're in is gone. They'll just sleep. They'll just..." A man who had worked more with his hands than words through his life, he gestured outward with his hands, groping for words, needing to make someone, anyone, understand. "They'll sleep and go free and never know..."
Frevisse grabbed him by one wrist and wrenched his hand over to have clear look at what she had glimpsed as he gestured. Across his palm the flesh was scraped red and raw.
As Master Wyndford jerked loose from her, Nicol grabbed him by his other wrist, dragged his arm out, fighting him for it, forcing his hand palm-upward. The same fresh wound was there, too, and Nicol said as if only half-believing it, "Rope-burn!" And together, in the same rush of understanding, he and Frevisse looked toward the crane with its ropes and pulleys still straddling Lady Alice's tomb; and Frevisse with the horror of certainty said, "No," as Nicol flung his father's hand away from him and bolted toward the gap in the wall to the stone-yard, yelling, "I need men here! All of you! Hurry!"
For Master Wyndford, working alone and in the dark last night, the work of lifting the stone slab with its alabaster figure from its place atop the tomb chest must have been brutal work, and lowering it into place again no easier, the pulley-ropes leaving raw testament of that on his hands.
The workmen who came at Nicol's call made quicker business of it, and when the slab was lifted and swung aside, Simon and Elyn were there, still sleeping. A little longer and they would have slept away to death, smothered in the sealed darkness without ever – if God were merciful – rousing.
If the summer night had been longer, so that Master Wyndford could have set to his work at the tomb sooner; or if Frevisse had been less willing to question the twists in what at first seemed straight; or Nicol had refused his uncertain, half-dreamed memory of something that seemed to make no sense, that was the end to which they would have come.
Instead, they were lifted out of the stone darkness and carried from the church, into sunlight and wide air and life again.
And Master Wyndford stood in the church's stone-pillared shadows, tears sliding down his face, and Nicol went to him, leaving Simon and Elyn to the exclaims and care of Alice's women, and put an arm around his shoulders and stood with him, waiting for what would come next; and Alice, once she had given all the necessary orders, came to Frevisse, still standing beside the angels, and said softly, "They likely wouldn't have been found until the time came to bury me there. Thank you."
Frevisse, her eyes on the stone-carved angels smiling as they gazed into eternity, said softly back to her, "And now you shall have the rest of your angels."
"And thank you for that, too," said Alice.
THE END
The Lost Tale of Dame Frevisse
What you're about to read is a Lost Tale of Dame Frevisse... sort of.
By the late 1990's several of my Dame Frevisse novels had been translated into German. As a result, I was asked to write a short mystery story for a German-language Swiss magazine. And when I say “short”, I mean short: It could only be 800 words long. The magazine, sold mainly in railway stations, was publishing stories of this length with the idea they would be short enough for readers to complete during a commuter train ride.
To help me understand what they were looking for, my agent kindly sent me a sample story provided by the magazine. Being in German, this was not as helpful as it might have been: I don’t read German. A teacher of German at my son’s school kindly looked it over and gave me the gist of it, which did help insofar as it confirmed that, yes, it was a short murder mystery. I gave him a copy of one of my books in a German edition in return for his help and buckled down to the unusual challenge.
Fortunately, I didn't have to actually write it in German. (It would be translated by the magazine publishers.) The tricky part (besides the fact that I tend to be verbose) was less the story itself (although that had to be tricksy, too) but the fact that in a history mystery a sense of a different time and place have to be established along with everything else. Creating time and place take up a lot of words, and then there has to be some presentation of characters and a mystery and a solution, altogether making for a rather intricate challenge.
But when it was done and shipped off to Switzerland, the story continued dancing in my mind. It felt too short in some ways. The first rush of notes I had made for it had far more in the way of characters and relationships than were possible to use in the given word-count, and even after the necessary ruthless cutting the itch to further explore those characters and relationships stayed with me. A few years later, when Mike Ashley asked me for a story for one of his anthologies, I took the chance to expand the tale to its full and proper length. Hence "The Stone-Worker's Tale".
"The Sculptor's Tale", on the other hand, has remained unpublished in its original form since it first appeared in that Swiss magazine. But here it is, available in English for the very first time...
* * * * *
The Sculptor's Tale
The ordered peace there had been in Ewelme church when Frevisse was last here was now given over to scaffolding, stone dust and workmen, the chancel's south aisle raw with being enlarged for my Lady Alice's tomb. The summer afternoon's heavy sunlight poured unobstructed through the unglazed holes that would someday be stone-mullioned windows of richly stained glass, and the crane with its ropes and pullies still straddled the tomb chest from yesterday when the slab that sealed it shut had been lowered into place for final carving. But work was paused just now, the workmen standing silently while Lady Alice questioned the master sculptor on the loss of Simon Grene, his best journeyman, here yesterday and now, with no warning, "Just gone?" she demanded. Master Atwell uncomfortably agreed to what he had already admitted. "And my woman Elyn with him," Lady Alice complained. The youngest of her waiting women. "Which is all very well for them, but what about my angels? Who's going to finish them?"
That was the sorest point in the matter, Frevisse thought, standing a little aside, listening to her cousin's indignation. Come from her nunnery on visit, she had quickly seen that Lady Alice's present interest was all for the making of her tomb and most particularly for the angels carved around it, each standing elegantly in its own niche, their faces proud, serene, the curve of their wings matching the arches of the arcading above and below them. They should have been of Master Atwell's making, as master sculptor, but his hands were beginning to distort with arthritis, no longer capable of such carving, so the angels were all young Simon Grene's – his masterwork that would leave him a master sculptor in his own right. But he was gone, with the last two angels unfinished, and Lady Alice said impatiently, "The need for work and wages lasts longer than young love. He and Elyn will return eventually, I suppose, but I don't like having to wait on them. I want my tomb finished."
Looking at the angels, Frevisse thought there was as much love given to their carving as could be given to a woman and she asked, "Master Atwell, when did you last see Simon and Elyn?"
"Last evening. They came to ask me how long they should wait to marry."
"And you told them?"
"I told them never," Master Atwell said darkly. He was holding his right hand in his left, the way he so often did, usually rubbing his left thumb in slow circles into his right palm to ease what must be a constant aching there. Today the aching must have shifted; his fingers were closed and it was his wrist he rubbed while he went on, "Marriage would waste Simon, steal his chances from him. The way it stole mine. I told him to forget her. I told her that if she loved him, she would let him go."
"But they didn't listen," Frevisse suggested quietly.
"No," Master Atwell agreed, but distantly, as if explaining now to something far inside himself rather than to her. "It wasn't what
they wanted to hear. So we sat. We talked. I gave them wine. They didn't listen. They never would have listened."
"And so you poisoned them," Frevisse said, still quietly. "You poisoned their wine, didn't you? You killed them while they sat there, trusting you."
Master Atwell roused. "No! I gave them sleep, that's all! How could I bear to see them dead? Death is so... empty. It was only poppy syrup in the wine. I have it for the pain in my hands. I left them sleeping."
"Where?"
Master Atwell refused that. "Let them sleep. Now they'll never lose their love, not live through all the years of ugliness and hatred that come after it's gone. They'll sleep away to death and never know. Just leave them. Let them be done with it. Let them..." He had always used his hands, not words, to bring his visions to others' seeing. He gestured now as if reaching for a word the way he would have reached for a chisel. And Frevisse glimpsed his hand and grabbed his wrist to turn it palm upward, demanding at the red, raw rope burn there, "How did you come by that?" But let him go without waiting for answer and ordered at the workmen standing by, "The tomb chest! Open it!"
To lift and lower again the tomb's stone cover with the ropes and pulleys left from yesterday had been brutally hard for Master Atwell alone in the dark as he must have done it. The workmen made quicker work of it and Simon and Elyn were there, still sleeping. A little longer and they would have slept away to death, smothered in the sealed darkness without ever rousing, if God were merciful. Now, instead, they were lifted out, carried outside to waken in sunlight and wide air, given back to life, given a different mercy.
Unless, of course, Master Atwell had been right.
THE END
Margaret Frazer
Margaret Frazer is the award-winning author of more than twenty historical murder mysteries and novels. She makes her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, surrounded by her books, but she lives her life in the 1400s. In writing her Edgar-nominated Sister Frevisse (The Novice's Tale) and Player Joliffe (A Play of Isaac) novels she delves far inside medieval perceptions, seeking to look at medieval England more from its point of view than ours. "Because the pleasure of going thoroughly into otherwhen as well as otherwhere is one of the great pleasures in reading."
She can be visited online at http://www.margaretfrazer.com.
Sister Frevisse Mysteries
Beginning in the year of Our Lord's grace 1431, the Sister Frevisse mysteries are an epic journey of murder and mayhem in 15th century England.
The Novice's Tale
The Servant's Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)
The Outlaw's Tale
The Bishop's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)
The Boy's Tale
The Murderer's Tale
The Prioress' Tale (Edgar-Award Nominee)
The Maiden's Tale
The Reeve's Tale (Minnesota Book Award Nominee)
The Squire's Tale
The Clerk's Tale
The Bastard's Tale
The Hunter's Tale
The Widow's Tale
The Sempster's Tale
The Traitor's Tale
The Apostate's Tale
Player Joliffe Mysteries
In the pages of Margaret Frazer's national bestselling Dame Frevisse Mysteries the player Joliffe has assumed many roles on the stage to the delight of those he entertains. Now, in the company of a troupe of traveling performers, he finds himself double cast in the roles of sleuth and spy...
A Play of Isaac
A Play of Dux Moraud
A Play of Knaves
A Play of Lords
A Play of Treachery
A Play of Piety
Margaret Frazer Tales
Neither Pity, Love, Nor Fear (Herodotus Award Winner)
Strange Gods, Strange Men
The Simple Logic of It (A Bishop Pecock Tale)
The Witch's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
The Midwife's Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Volo te Habere...
This World's Eternity
Shakespeare's Mousetrap
The Death of Kings
The Stone-Worker’s Tale (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Winter Heart (Sister Frevisse Mystery)
Cover Art: Gustave Courbet - Der verlezte Mann, 1844-1854.
Cover Design: Justin Alexander
The Stone-Worker's Tale Page 3
