But from the doorway Frevisse said in a voice all calmness, “You may have the right of it, Meg. But it’s hardly ours to say, is it? It being a matter between God and each soul as it comes to Him. And we have all been warned not to judge, in fear of our own judgment.”
The last was a direct hit on Dame Alys, who visibly swallowed her ire, clamped her fist more tightly around her spoon, and grumbled, “What brings you here? I can’t do more about Montfort than I’m already doing.”
“And what you do will be splendid,” Frevisse said, which was little more than the truth. What came from Dame Alys’s kitchen was worth eating, despite the ill temper and bad treatment that accompanied its preparation. “I only wanted to tell you the guesthall kitchen will be able to see to him and his men by supper time.”
“There’s a blessing,” Dame Alys muttered. “But excuse us if we do not continue our conversation, but go on with what needs doing now. It being the holy days, we must needs have a bit of a treat, no matter what’s toward otherwise.”
Frevisse let that go by. Like a dog that barks all the time, most of what Dame Alys said could be safely ignored. Instead she said, “May I ask questions of your folk here if I don’t interfere with their work? It’s about Sister Fiacre. Domina has directed me to ask questions.”
Thus forestalled of further complaint, Dame Alys grunted and gestured permission.
Frevisse knew that, if she were strict in her obedience, she would be in the guesthall. But she told herself that the truth must be sought where it might be found, which was everywhere, and went quietly from servant to servant, asking if they had seen anything yesterday afternoon, heard anything then or later that might matter. She was careful to keep her voice low, which encouraged the servants to do likewise, seemingly to placate Dame Alys, but actually to keep them from hearing one another’s answers. But each said only that she had been busy in the kitchen, and none had been anywhere near the church yesterday, to see or hear anything that might matter.
Then she came to Meg, and asked, “Have you seen Gilbey Dunn lately?”
Without looking up from her work, Meg answered in a voice hardly above a whisper, “When I went home this morning, yes. He came over when he saw I was there.”
“What did he want to say?”
“To tell me he’d seen to my animals since Hewe hadn’t come home last night.”
“Is he still wanting to marry you?”
Dull color covered Meg’s cheeks, but she did not ask how Frevisse knew of that, only said, “Yes.”
“Have you seen Hewe yet today?”
“He came home a little after I did. He’d been with friends. He’d forgotten the animals. That’s what he said. That he’d been with friends and forgotten the animals.” She went on dicing the cooked chickens while she spoke. “He’s not interested in tending the animals, which is as it should be. He’s not meant to be a villager. He’s to be a priest.”
That was a matter Hewe and his mother would have to fight out between them, so Frevisse offered no opinion. She asked, “You knew Sister Fiacre?”
That startled Meg into looking up at her. “Yes,” she breathed, her voice catching a little on the word. “She was kind to me in the church yesterday morning.” She looked back down at her work. “But I’m glad she’s dead. She’s in no more pain now. She’s gone to Heaven and won’t be crying anymore with hurting.” She cast a resentful little glance toward Dame Alys’s back.
“That’s true enough. The only pity is she did not die in God’s time for her.”
Meg looked up at her directly then. “But she did die in God’s time. We’re in God’s hands in everything, so Father Clement used to say. Everything is His.”
“Except evil,” Frevisse said.
Meg’s eyes widened, and she looked fearfully around, crossing herself, before returning doggedly to her work.
“Were you in the church yesterday afternoon?” Frevisse asked.
“For a little while. I went to pray again. Prayers feel better there.”
“Was Sister Fiacre there then?”
“She was kneeling on the altar steps when I came in.” Meg swallowed thickly. “She’d told me that was her favorite place to pray.”
“Did you talk with her?”
Meg shook her head dumbly.
“Was there anyone else there? Did you see anyone else in the church?”
Meg shook her head again, hesitated, looked from side to side and down and then finally at Frevisse again, bringing herself to say, “But afterwards I saw one of the travelers— one of the players—the fair-haired one—going toward the church.”
Frevisse felt a hard knotting somewhere near her stomach. Careful of her voice, she managed to ask, “How soon after?”
Having started, Meg seemed less shy of saying more. “Soon. I was coming back here. I saw him going toward the church then.”
“Do you know what time it was?”
Meg hesitated, thinking, then held up three of her fingers side by side and parallel to the floor. “The sun was that much above the horizon.”
“Did he go into the church?”
Meg hesitated before saying, “I didn’t watch. But he was going that way.”
“And you know it was one of the players. You saw his face? Where were you when you saw him?”
Meg hesitated, uncertain which question to answer first. “I didn’t see his face, he was going away from me. But his hair, so fair, I saw. And they dress differently, the players do. And he’s tall. It was him.”
Joliffe. Or someone dressed to look like him, Frevisse’s mind determinedly offered.
Frevisse went on to Dame Alys, who was brooding over a pot bubbling with dark broth on one of the fires. Frevisse breathed in the rich smell of its steam and said, “Rabbit?”
“Rabbit,” Dame Alys agreed grudgingly, as if it were meant to be a secret. “For Domina’s especial New Year’s treat—if the meat ever cooks to tender enough to go into a pie. It’s taking its while, let me tell you. Every rabbit that’s come to me from him this year has been tough as tanned leather.”
“Come from whom?” Frevisse asked. If a villein managed to snare a rabbit he generally kept it for himself and his family, and few of the servants had time enough to course rabbits. So who was responsible for bringing Dame Alys rabbits?
“Father Henry. He and that little hound of his can’t ever seem to catch aught but the oldest rabbit in the warren. It’s wearisome, it is. He brought one in yesterday that will have to hang a few days, or it might do. But this one hung a week and is tough as fresh killed. And it’s not so big as the one he brought me at harvest time. Why, it was big as a shoat and likely twenty years old.”
She would have gone on comparing rabbits until the meat boiled to invisible fragments in the broth, but Frevisse made her escape. The cold air of the cloister made her nose and head ache, and she paused a moment, leaning against one of the pillars to steady herself while she collected her thoughts. Meg had seen Joliffe near the church yesterday afternoon. And probably told someone else besides Frevisse about it. Which meant that eventually Montfort would know of it.
But worse, Joliffe had lied to her. She felt betrayed. She had trusted these people, and one—all of them?—had lied to her.
She was so angry she dared not go directly to the guest-hall; it would not do to let them see her angry. But she also wanted to talk to Gilbey Dunn again. And to Father Henry about what he might have learned. And to Annie Lauder.
Annie was alone in the laundry today, elbow deep in a suds-crested washtub, with a pile of soaking tablecloths heaped white beside her. Well muscled from her years of carrying buckets of water and baskets of wet laundry, she did not look as tall as she was. She looked around as Frevisse came in, nodded to her, but went on mauling another tablecloth in the water. “No holidays for laundresses,” she said in rhythm to her movements. “They just come clean in time to be dirtied again come Twelfth Night. A daft occupation, laundering, but God wills I must earn my pence an
d I obey. Is there aught I can do for you, Dame?”
“Maybe,” said Frevisse. “And certainly something I can do for you.”
“That’s a fair trade then,” Annie grinned.
“The crowner has come to look into Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s murder.”
“Aye. That word was all over the priory long since.” Apparently her work did not keep her separate from whatever news might be going through St. Frideswide’s.
“Can you tell me where Gilbey Dunn was the night that Sym died?”
Annie paused just two beats in her movements, then continued. “How should I know?”
“Was he with you?”
“In here?” Annie looked around grimly. “I’ve never thought he’d be one for taking much interest in laundry.” Frevisse thought that no answer at all and her face said so. Annie said, less flippantly, “I’m not much of one for following after him, or any man. I’ve trouble enough with aprons and napkins. At least they don’t go sneaking off getting themselves dirty after I’ve washed them.”
But Frevisse did not consider that an answer, either. She continued to wait.
Finally, defiantly, Annie said, “What would I be doing with him? I know when I’m well off, and living at some man’s beck and call while he spends my good silver pence is not my notion of well off. I have what I want and I’ll keep what I have, and if this crowner says he’s found things that any fool knows aren’t there to be found, well, we all know the fool’s word never hanged nobody.”
“I have a witness who can swear you and Gilbey Dunn had sexual concourse in this very shed, and that your conversation made it clear this was a regular occupation for the two of you.”
Annie resumed scrubbing in her tub. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Annie, I think it possible that Gilbey murdered Sym, whom he considered an obstacle to his proposed marriage to Meg Shene. You should be careful of giving your affections too easily. You are breaking the law of God and man, and putting yourself in danger of a charge of helping a murderer.”
“He didn’t! He never did!”
“So you say. But can you prove it?”
Annie threw the tablecloth into the water and sat down on the wet bench beside her tub. “Lord have mercy,” she sighed.
“What has Gilbey said to you?”
“Only that he’s not unhappy Sym is dead. He told me that day before yesterday.” She sighed again. “I’ve saved almost enough to buy my freedom,” she remarked inappositely.
“All the more reason to be glad you’re not married to him.”
“Humph. He could be free if he wanted. But he’d have to give up his holding, and what’s the use of being free if you’re landless in the bargain? No, no, what breaks my heart is that to save his rotten hide I’m going to have to pay leyrwite, for we were together all night the night Sym Shene was killed.”
The bell for Sext was ringing as Frevisse came out of the laundry. After the shed’s heavy, damp heat, the January air cut crisply, and she paused to breathe it, then shivered in a sudden chill and hurried toward the warming room where they were worshipping now that the church was desecrated, with her hands thrust into her sleeves and her chin tucked down for warmth.
The lesson and gospel readings for the hours covered, in a year’s time, the whole of the Old Testament and three times through the New. Now, between Christmas and Epiphany, they were reading Daniel. Frevisse, with her basic Latin and familiarity with Wycliffe’s English translation of the Bible, was just able to understand and enjoy the psalms and readings. So it was with a touch of annoyance that she struggled to hear past the complaining coughs of her fellow nuns the complex prophesy of conquest from the man with a face like lightning and arms the color of polished brass.
“ ‘And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the King of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.”“
Frevisse blew her own nose and wondered, lost in pronouns, which King should not stand because of the devices of the other. Was it important to understand that?
Was it important to try to understand everything?
Sister Fiacre, wrapped in the deepest of all silences in her box near the altar, might at last be understanding what was important, and have dropped what was not, like a wet and filthy robe. Was that what she, Frevisse, should do? But was it not important to understand the lessons of the Bible? And to discover who among them was a murderer?
Or was it?
Was being dead a peace beyond understanding—or an understanding that, at last, brought peace?
Sext ended, Domina Edith gave her benediction over them, her eye on Frevisse the while—a look Frevisse could not return with any steadiness—and they were released to go about their tasks. Frevisse bent her will to obedience, left the cloister, and crossed the yard to the old guesthall.
Two of Montfort’s men stood just inside the door, leaning against the wall. They glanced at her but her nun’s habit put her beyond their authority; nor did she speak to them, but stood silently between them a while, watching the players.
They were well along preparing the hall for the play. What would be their stage in front of the hearth had been swept clear of rushes. Bassett and Joliffe were nearly finished setting up a framework of poles that would support the curtains while Ellis and Hewe moved the last of the gear behind it where it would be out of sight. Piers was sitting on a large basket with a mixed expression of pain and patience while Rose evened the shaggy back of his fair hair with a pair of small shears.
Hewe was the only one who turned toward the sound of the door opening and saw her. But head down, he kept busy at one of the baskets, seeming to think that if he did not look at her, she would not see him. Perhaps she should order him to stay away, but it was clear he was being useful to them, at least at present, and so she thought perhaps she would not.
Holding two poles steady while Joliffe, standing on a stool, cord whipped the cross pole to them, Bassett said, “Thank Heaven that old prioress wants us to do this. Keeping occupied will avoid bad thoughts. Next time we see Dame Frevisse, we’ll have to ask about those candles she promised. Is there anything else we need?”
“To get out of here,” Ellis growled.
Joliffe said, “Does he work at being an idiot or does it come as easily to him as it seems?”
Nearly Frevisse spoke then, alarmed at his flippancy and worried that the players’ incorrigible lack of humility could only help convict them in Montfort’s eyes.
Ellis slammed a lid on a chest. “He’s not so much of an idiot that he can’t hang us if he chooses! I would we had never seen that fellow in the ditch, or that we’d played the Pharisee and passed him by!”
“O God, I thank thee that I am not like other men—‘” began Joliffe, playing the Pharisee from a different parable, and was interrupted by Ellis flinging a small basket in his direction. He caught it and laughed, jumping off the stool, but there was nothing cheerful in the look on his face as he turned away.
“One of our problems is that you are so little like other men that bailiffs and sheriffs and crowners yearn to take you by the hand and make you explain yourself,” Bassett rumbled, but without rancor. “But you aren’t a murderer, nor is any of us. What worries me is getting to Oxford by Twelfth Night.”
“Hush, Thomas,” said Rose. “There’s no sense lathering yourself over that. We either make Oxford by Twelfth Night or we don’t, and likely the world won’t end if we don’t. And the rest of you, stop playing the fool and start trying to think like the holy Kings.”
Ellis growled wordlessly. Rose pointed him to a place across the hearth from her and said, “Sit. Eat something. You haven’t eaten enough today to keep a sparrow alive. And that goes for the two of you, as well,” she added to Bassett and Joliffe. “And you, Hewe, come here and share a bite with them.”
The
boy looked at her, startled, then at Frevisse warily. When she still gave no sign of saying anything, he came.
Rose ignored his hesitation, running her fingers through Piers’s hair, tangling his gold curls and smoothing them again. “As for me, I’m content to stay awhile longer; there’s no harm in Piers being out of the cold another day.”
“And the day after that and the day after that,” Ellis muttered. He had come not to eat but to pace restlessly around the curtain-hung poles. They ignored him, Bassett and Joliffe and Hewe busy with their bread and cheese, Rose slicing cheese for Piers.
Frevisse, watching her, sensed in the controlled force of her movements how much the child mattered to her—as much and maybe more than the survival of their group. Or maybe the child and the group were one to her.
Frevisse had never had that kind of affection turned on her. Her parents’ fierce loving had been mostly for each other, with herself a happy adjunct, and she had come into Thomas Chaucer’s household as a pleasant addition to an established order. She probed briefly at her feelings to see how much that mattered to her and found hardly any regret. There had been love, and kindness, and freedom to be herself. These were good things. They contented her.
Joliffe said in a bold, dramatic tone, “ ‘I ride wandering in ways wide. King of all Kings, send me such guide that I may—’ no.” He cleared his throat and began again, this time in dreamy, gentle voice, “ ‘I ride wandering in ways wide—’” Piers giggled. Joliffe cleared his throat again and intoned, “Eggs and beer, be of good cheer, ho, ho, ho. ”King of all Kings, send me such guide, such guide, such guide . . .“” and subsided, thinking.
“If you could only be a little more convincing,” said Ellis from behind the curtain, “perhaps the fool crowner will release us to follow our star.”
Frevisse took a deep breath and started for them. Further delay would only continue to weaken her resolve; it was time to ask the important questions.
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