Servant’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Behind the curtain someone began to play a glad carol on a recorder. The lady reached up to St. Nicholas, who took her hand to step down from his box. Together they turned to face the crowd, and the thief came from behind the curtain to join them, grinning, as Rose came from behind the other side, playing the recorder. The three men bowed to the villagers’ ragged but cheerful applause, and Meg realized the play was done. Rose changed to another merry tune, and the saint, the lady, and the thief spread out among the crowd, the former thief holding out his cap, the saint and lady the front of their gowns to collect whatever coins might come their way. Most folk merely drew back, shaking their heads and holding up empty hands, but some dug into pouches for coins. A little glitter of halfpennies gathered in cap and skirts. Not many— coin was scarce in the village—but some; and Constance, who lived in the nearest cottage, hurried inside and hurried back with a good-sized half loaf. She gave it to the saint, who thanked her with so elegant a kiss on the hand that she giggled. Jenet of the forge, liking the look of that, hasted off to bring back an end of bacon. She offered it to the thief and was given a gallant kiss of her own.

  The players were taking whatever was offered cheerfully, though Meg noticed the saint tended to find out the older women; the thief seemed mostly to go among the girls, collecting kisses when he could not have a coin; and Joliffe, still playing the lady, teased the men into giving their coins. Gilbey Dunn, boisterously laughing at “her” flirting, tossed a whole penny in his lap and clapped Joliffe on the shoulder in such high good humor it nearly knocked him down.

  “Ho, Gilbey,” Thad the smith called out. “Is it her fair face or tiny feet you’re liking?”

  Gilbey’s grin broadened. “Mind your tongue or your face won’t be so fair, either, my lad,” he answered.

  There was general laughter for that, because Thad was years past being a lad and his face was as gnarled and knotted as an old hedge stump.

  Meanwhile Ellis had made his way to pretty Tibby, the alewife’s daughter, and gave her another kiss, not on the hand, and willingly received.

  Meg had not seen Sym until then; but now he was there, coming from somewhere to stand behind the girl, a little too closely, a little too possessively. The flush of red up his face at the player’s boldness was darker than Tibby’s pleased, laughing blush, and Meg with a sudden pang knew, from the way he looked more than ever like his father, what he was meaning to do next. She called out, “Don’t, Sym!” but it was already too late.

  Reaching over Tibby’s shoulder, he gave Ellis a hard shove and said, “There’s enough of that. Go kiss your own lady and leave mine alone.”

  That brought laughter from the villagers around them, and someone called out for Joliffe to come kiss “yon handsome thief.” Tibby, used to village ways, stepped quickly out from between Sym and Ellis, leaving them facing each other. Ellis, without taking his gaze from Sym, held his cap out sidewise.

  Joliffe, suddenly there, took it and faded backwards in one easy motion, his arm linked through Tibby’s to draw her with him further out of reach.

  Ellis, left in a suddenly opened space among the villagers, made no threatening move, only said in a peaceable voice, “I was only admiring a fair face, not seeking to take her away. No harm in that.”

  “There’s maybe harm and maybe not,” Sym said sullenly, with a slur to his voice that told Meg he had already been to the alehouse this morning. “What about the harm to my father, thief? How much harm did you do him?”

  “No harm at all except to lift him out of a frozen ditch and take him to help.”

  “But who put him in that ditch, hey? What do you know about that, that you’re not telling? Who put him there in the first place? That’s what I’m asking.”

  “I’d guess he got there the same way you’ve come here,” Ellis replied coolly. “By way of an alehouse and a few too many emptied cups.”

  Hewe pulled against Meg’s fingers digging into shoulders. She let him go and pushed past him toward Sym. If she could get her hands on him, distract him—

  She was too late. Stung and out of words, Sym lunged at Ellis. The player stepped back from him without apparent haste or fear, and abruptly Sym was sitting on the ground, looking astonished.

  Meg stopped, cowed by fright, not understanding what had happened, only that it was uncanny. But the villagers were laughing, especially the men and even Hewe. It had all come too suddenly, and now before Sym could rise, the player saint had his hand on Ellis’s shoulder, drawing him away. Joliffe was already well out of it, to the side of the crowd with Tibby, whispering something in her ear that was making her smile and flirt her eyes at him, not heeding Ellis, or Sym, anymore at all. Rose had gathered up the box and chest and was going behind the curtain. It was over, except for the laughter.

  But Sym gave a gutteral grunt and began to scramble to his feet, clearly intent on continuing the fight. Meg pushed her way between the useless village men and flung herself at him, meaning to shove him down again if she could. “Stop it!” she exclaimed. “You’ll not be brawling like a lout with their kind! And on the green in front of everyone. Stop it!”

  Sym pushed back at her, too deep in his anger to care. “They’re thieves!” he yelled. “Thieves and murderers! Da’d be alive except for them and you’re going to let them go their ways, them and their indecent woman and their bastard brat, leaving Da dead in his grave!”

  Meg clutched his arm and was dragged around as he tried to shove past her. It was Rose’s white, rigid face she saw first, standing beside the curtains beyond the crowd. And then she saw Ellis, wrenched free from Thomas Bassett, coming for Sym with murder in his furious eyes.

  Chapter 12

  Thomas Bassett moved more quickly than seemed possible for one his age and weight. Bursting from among the villagers, he shouldered in front of Ellis, pushed him back one-handed and thundered in St. Nicholas’s rich voice, “That’s enough! Back off, the two of you! Ellis, there’s the frame to take down and Piers waiting back at the nunnery for us. Come on.”

  Meg, still clinging to Sym, with Hewe now hanging on his other arm, saw the fury drain out of Ellis. His face and then his fists slacked. Keeping an eye on Sym, he drew back, then turned away, snapping at Joliffe to come help. And now some of the village men elbowed in around Sym, clapping him on the back and jibing at him friendliwise, trying to draw him off, too. Sym resisted more than Ellis had, shrugging their hands away and swearing, but Meg knew the fighting anger was gone out of him, and let him go. He was drunk enough not to be sure where his quarrel was gone, and they would have it out of his mind altogether in a minute.

  But lurching against Hamon’s and Peter’s pulling on him, he blundered face to face with Gilbey Dunn who held his ground and said, grinning, “Homeward bound, Sym? Making an early day of it?”

  Sym knew an old quarrel when it came his way. He jerked loose from his two friends. “You’d be knowing about early days, wouldn’t you? And late nights, sneaking out and sneaking in, looking to grab what isn’t yours and nipping to the steward every chance you find to tell him how much better our holding would be in your foul-fingered keeping. And now Da’s gone, you’re nipping after his widow, thinking that’s a warmer way to have it. Only you’ll not be getting it that way either. You’ll be dead first, Gilbey Dunn. Mark me on it! Cold in a grave like Da before you lay hands on anything of his!”

  “Sym!” Meg cried in anguished warning. Everyone’s attention was swung to Sym and Gilbey, and clearly Gilbey’s temper was come up now to match Sym’s. His face was dark with it, his eyes gone small and hard, his mouth tight. But all he said was, “You’ve a bad mouth on you when it’s wet with ale. Hamon, Peter, take him home or somewhere else until his head’s clear.”

  Peter, a burly-shouldered youth a little quicker in his wits than Hamon, understood. As if it were all a joke, he said, “Hoy, Sym, there’s no sport here. Let’s be off.”

  Sym looked around at him, distracted. Peter swung an arm around his shoulders. “
Come on, then,” he said heartily. “Let’s see what’s about at my place.” He leaned his head near to Sym’s. “There was a bit of honeycomb left the last I looked. How’s that sound? Hamon, can you lay hands on some bread?”

  Hamon, not much stronger-headed than Sym, blinked and brightened. “Cor, I can that, Peter. Why didn’t you say about the honeycomb before?” He hurried off.

  To Meg’s relief, Sym gave way to Peter’s friendly pulling on him. “You hurry!” he yelled after Hamon, and lurched away, leaning on Peter’s shoulder. Hewe hesitated, glancing at his mother, then trailed after them. Everyone else, now that the entertainment was fully over, began to drift away.

  But Gilbey Dunn stayed a moment longer and said to Meg, low voiced, “He’s going to give you trouble, no matter what you do. Think on what I offered. You’ll be in safekeeping then, and have someone to keep an eye on him. He needs a man’s hand.”

  “He doesn’t like you.”

  “He’ll not be liking anyone that tries to steer him right.

  He’s Barnaby’s own son in making bad choices and you can see it as well as I can.“

  “You shouldn’t be talking so of Bamaby, now he’s dead.”

  Gilbey shrugged. “I wasn’t saying ill, only what’s true. You know it is as well as I do. You’ll never be able to manage Sym and all on your own. And you know I’ll deal fair by you. There’s none ever been able to say that I don’t deal fair.”

  But Sym had just been saying exactly that; and Barnaby had said it often enough these past months while fighting to hold his own against Gilbey’s efforts to have Barnaby’s share of field strips and manor rights for himself. But Sym had been talking out of too much ale, and Barnaby out of the ills he had mostly brought on himself. Meg did not know where the truth lay so she kept quiet, looking at the ground between them until Gilbey said with a shrug, “You think on it, Meg,” and went away.

  Meg stayed, looking at the dead, stiff grass in front of her feet and trying to think. Gilbey might be right about her marrying him. It would surely make things easier. And it did not much matter that she did not like him. But Sym would hate it. No matter how it might work out for the best, he would never make peace with it. Meg was sure of that, and sure that Gilbey knew it, too. But maybe it did not matter to him. Not the way it had to matter to her.

  She was abruptly aware that she was cold and that the little she had had to eat was gone and she was hungry again and she had to go to work or there would be no money today. It would have been good to sit down by someone’s hearth and talk. But she had somewhere along her way lost the women who had been her friends. The other village women seemed to resent her trying so hard to make things better. They nodded and spoke when she met them, but there was none of them she talked to, and none who came to talk to her.

  Her way had taken her without thinking back past the church, across the graveyard toward the field path that ran behind the hedges to St. Frideswide’s. She paused at Barnaby’s grave. Its dark earth was heaped in clods frozen too solid for the shovels’ breaking. Come spring and the rains, they would soften and slump down into a proper mound, and grow grass, and next year a hollow would mark the place instead of raw, broken earth. Meg tried to think of a prayer but nothing came. Barnaby had made confession and been shriven and given last rites. Then he had slept, and died, and no man’s soul could have gone to Abraham’s bosom more pure and cleansed than that. He was surely there now, in brightness and warmth, with angel choruses singing and the sight of the wicked tormented in Hell far below to entertain him. And someday, with God’s help, she and her boys would join him there, as pure and cleansed of sin as he had been.

  Meg sank into that thought of being always warm and never hungry in place of her cold and hunger here and now; then started as she realized she was wasting time, and hurried on toward the priory.

  Frevisse had come to see how matters went in the guest-hall. With so few guests, and only the older hall occupied these holy days, her duties were few and easily done. She first made sure the servants were not slacking their few duties and then went to see how Piers did, left to himself while the rest of the players were at the village.

  He was curled in a nest of blankets, obediently staying down, watching the small fire dance in the hearth. Hearing her coming, he twisted around to see, and showed his disappointment that it was not his mother or the others coming. Frevisse smiled at him and bent down to feel his forehead. It was only slightly warmer than it should have been and the fever brightness was out of his eyes.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Hungry, my lady,” he said, croaking only a little. He looked at her expectantly, as if she might have something edible up her sleeve or in a pocket.

  Frevisse regretted she did not, but only said, “That’s a good sign. Would you like a drink?”

  “Milk?” Piers asked hopefully.

  Frevisse shook her head. “Water.”

  Piers sighed and nodded. Frevisse fetched the cup from the bucket for him. While he drank, she asked, “Shouldn’t you be trying to sham illness a while longer, so you can all go on staying here?”

  Piers looked at her scornfully as he handed the cup back. “What’s the use of that?” he asked. “There’s money to be had in Oxford, and good times at the Rose and Crown, and not much of either here. There’s better places than here to be, and not much use in staying in one place for very long.”

  What Frevisse could have answered to that was forestalled by the players’ noisy return from the village. Their loud voices dropped as they crossed the threshold but their arguing went on, intense and maybe not completely cheerful, with Bassett saying, “So couldn’t you have found someone else to flirt with that didn’t have her sweetheart lowering over her shoulder, and him already angry with us?”

  “Am I supposed to care about that clod-witted lout?” Ellis asked. “She was the best of the lot, as pretty a thing as I’ve seen since Michaelmas.”

  “And willing as well as lovely,” Joliffe added.

  Ellis grinned. “Yea, you were quick to notice that, I noticed. And left me to handle her angry clod while you looked for a chance to handle her.”

  “Well, it didn’t come to handling for either of us, did it? So there’s an end of it.”

  “That’s enough,” said Rose. “Here’s Dame Frevisse, who doesn’t need to hear your nonsense.”

  Piers lifted his head out of his nest again and asked, “Was Ellis in a fight again?”

  “Hush, pigsney,” said Rose, stooping to lift the blond thatch from his face and feel his forehead.

  “I’m almost better,” Piers said, ducking from her hand. “Dame Frevisse says so. Ellis, did—”

  “Look here, Piers,” Bassett interrupted deftly, holding out the half loaf of bread and end of bacon.

  “Ah!” Piers’s enthusiasm quickly changed direction. “Is that for eating now?”

  “No better time,” Bassett said, and broke a generous chunk from the loaf to stuff into the boy’s mouth. Then he held out a cap and jingled it under Piers’s nose. “We’re set for our journey to Oxford, too. We can have Tisbe shod.”

  Piers removed the bread wad from his mouth. “Then can we leave now? I’m nearly well. Well enough. I could have gone with you to see Ellis start that fight in the village.”

  “I never start fights,” Ellis said. He sat down on his heels beside the boy and pushed the hair back off his forehead, making a playful gesture of feeling for a fever.

  Piers, clearly bored with being sick, pushed his hand away. Sucking on the chunk of bread, he said, “I’m thirsty.” He thrashed at his blankets, making a tangle of them. “Was it a good fight? Who did you fight?”

  Rose handed him a cup of water while Ellis patiently untangled him and said, “Nobody. I just sat this villein down on the ground to think about the error of his ways. It’s Joliffe I’m going to fight with if he doesn’t stop stealing my girls.”

  “I can’t steal what isn’t yours,” Joliffe said. He
had taken the bread from Bassett and was slicing it into five equal pieces. His dagger sliced through the thick crust and tough brown bread effortlessly, Frevisse noticed; and when Ellis drew his own to reach across the distance and spear his share, Frevisse said in surprise, “Your knives match, yours and Joliffe’s.”

  Bassett drew his own and held it out for her to see. “And mine, as well,” he said.

  The blades were an identical shape and the handles, of wood with copper wire inserts, also matched.

  “And my mother’s,” Piers added around a mouthful of bread. “And mine, too. Only they won’t let me have it yet. They say I’m too young.” His tone scorned that notion.

  “We played at a wedding up Sheffield way,” Bassett said. “We were a little larger company then and did one of our better plays—”

  “Not,” said Joliffe, pressing a hand over his face and shaking his head in mock shame, “The Statue of St. Nicholas. ”‘