The Servant's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “She’d left his brother with him and come looking for help?”

  “The other boy was gone. She’d had to leave Sym there alone. That was part of her fear. That she had left him all alone. She kept saying we had to hurry so he wouldn’t be alone.”

  Dame Claire raised her eyes from the body. “He must have died almost immediately. With hardly any pain.”

  Frevisse lifted the boy’s hand. Or had he been old enough to be called a man? she wondered. In the quiescence of death his face was younger and more vulnerable than she remembered it being in life. Not that it much mattered now, she supposed. Young or old or in between, he had been murdered. That at least was certain. She went to his doublet and shirt lying at the far end of the table, turned them over, held them up. A ragged tear on the right side showed where one dagger blow had slid in and torn out. There was no other rend.

  “His mother must have pulled these up from his chest and side, to better see how he was hurt. And left them open when she went for help.”

  “Then someone came in after she was gone,” Dame Claire said.

  “Someone he didn’t fear. Or didn’t fear enough to be wary of. He was lying flat and quiet when the dagger went in the second time. Or would he have lost enough blood to be unconscious, do you think?”

  Dame Claire shook her head. “No. That first wound is messy but shallow. Even bleeding, it took so long to soak through his doublet, he was home before he knew he was bleeding, didn’t Meg say? There wasn’t enough lost for him to faint. Unless he was the sort who does when they see blood.”

  “He was aware enough to be afraid and plead for help. His mother said so. And ask for absolution and the rest.”

  “How do you know he was lying down when he was struck?” Dame Claire asked.

  “The angle of the blow. In a fight a dagger coming into someone’s side like this one seemingly did has to be held underhanded, and comes almost always in at an upward slant. But this one went straight in. I’d guess the person had to have been standing directly at his side when they did it, and Sym not expecting it at all.” Frevisse turned to Father Henry. “How was he lying when you came in?”

  The priest had been looking from one to the other of them while they talked, his large features registering his bewilderment. Now, glad of something plain that he understood, he said, “On a bed by the far wall, on his back, his hands folded on his chest. Like he was asleep and peaceful. I thought he was until I touched him.”

  “Was he covered?” Frevisse asked. Father Henry nodded, and she prodded, “How? With what and how much?”

  “A blanket. It was pulled up to his chin.”

  “And his hands were outside of it, folded on his chest?”

  “Yes.”

  Frevisse came back to the corpse and carefully folded the arms so the hands rested one on top of the other on his chest. “Like this?”

  Father Henry nodded.

  Dame Claire met Frevisse’s look. In that position Sym’s arm completely covered the fatal wound in his side.

  “Oh, no,” Dame Claire said.

  “Oh, yes,” Frevisse answered. “A murderer not only sure of his blow but very considerate and respectful afterwards.”

  “Murderer?” Father Henry asked. “It was accident. That’s what was being said last night.”

  “What happened in the alehouse was an accident. It wasn’t that wound he died from. It was this second wound, here, directly into his heart, that killed him. At home, while he was lying on his bed.”

  That seeped with some degree of slowness into Father Henry’s understanding, but as it did, his eyes widened. “Someone killed him while he lay there hurt and needing help?”

  “It seems so, yes.”

  Father Henry crossed himself. “That’s horrible.”

  “Maybe more horrible is the fact that we don’t have any idea who might have done it. Or why.”

  Dame Claire wrung out a cloth in the cooling water. “He was quarrelsome, I gather, from what his mother said.”

  “And by what the men said last night,” Frevisse agreed. She watched as Dame Claire began to wash the body.

  She knew Roger Naylor had already sent for the crowner. The messenger had gone that morning; but there was no certainty as to where Master Montfort might be at this holiday season or of how long it would take the messenger to find him, and so no way of knowing when he would come.

  Nor any assurance that his coming would aid in finding the truth. Master Montfort had been to St. Frideswide’s before, and to Frevisse’s mind he was an arrogant fool who resisted any help anyone tried to give him, especially women, and most especially cloistered nuns.

  Frevisse said, “There’s no one knows this is murder except us. Can we keep it so?”

  Dame Claire paused. Like Frevisse, she felt that Montfort could be a menace to the truth. She nodded.

  Father Henry, a worried frown of thinking between his eyes, worked at it a little longer before saying, “You mean keep secret that he was murdered?”

  “Until the crowner comes. To give us time to question and learn things before the murderer knows we know and are looking for him.” She picked up one of the cloths, dipped it into the water, and wrung it out. “It was someone that knew Sym was hurt and where to find him.”

  “It may be just as well his mother was gone,” Dame Claire said.

  Frevisse joined her in the task of cleansing Sym’s body. It was not hard to think that whoever had killed Sym and coolly taken the time afterward to arrange his body, might well have killed Meg, too, if she had been there.

  “Father Henry, are you free this morning to go down to the village and spend time in the alehouse asking questions? And to listen to what’s being said? For surely the talk will be rife about last night.”

  Father Henry did not need to consider on that. He nodded readily. “I can spend the whole day if need be, until I’m sure I’ve heard everything there is to hear.”

  “And remember it all and bring it back here to me,” Frevisse said. “Can you go now?”

  Father Henry looked doubtfully at the body.

  “We’ll see he’s not left,” Frevisse assured him. “He’ll be well prayed for. And finding his murderer is a service to him, too.”

  Father Henry nodded agreement with that. “I can go now.”

  “Try to learn who he’s fought or argued with lately. And where they were after he left the alehouse last night if that’s possible. But don’t let people know you’re after more than only gossip,” Frevisse warned.

  Father Henry nodded. “They’re used to me gossiping. That will be no problem.”

  When he was gone, Frevisse put down the cloth. “I’m going to bring Joliffe’s dagger and see if it matches the wound. He’s still going to be the first suspected when word of this is out.”

  “And the other player’s, too. The one who fought with Sym.”

  “Their daggers are all the same.” But she would check to see if they had other knives beside the daggers they had shown her. She would need to have the players cleared beyond any doubt before Montfort arrived; he was ever willing to take the easiest path to a solution, and the players were a very obvious choice.

  It did not signify, for example, that Ellis had said he’d never left the priory last night. She would need to find out that no one saw him leave, or, better, that someone, not Bassett or Rose, saw him asleep in the guesthouse at the right time. And Bassett and Rose would have to be proven innocent as well. And Joliffe. She hoped Father Henry had the wit to seek out the girl Tibby.

  “What if…” she began, thinking out loud.

  Dame Claire, looking past her, shook her head.

  Meg was coming into the hall. Her hours of sleep from Dame Claire’s drink seemed to have brought a little more life back into her body and mind. She looked less shrunken, less bewildered as she came to stand beside Sym’s body. She gazed at his face, then tenderly laid a hand over his own resting on his chest and looked up at Dame Claire.

  “
He’s gone to Heaven,” she said. “He’s not hurting nor angry anymore. Never angry anymore again.”

  “Never again,” Dame Claire agreed gently.

  A single tear moved down the lines of Meg’s face. “He’s better where he’s gone.”

  “It’s what we pray for, each of us,” Dame Claire said.

  Meg turned her look to Frevisse. “You said you’d seen to my other boy? He needs to go home to see to things there, if he hasn’t already. Has he, do you know? He doesn’t always remember the stock needs tending, come what may.”

  “I’ll see if he’s gone,” Frevisse said, “and send him to you if he hasn’t.”

  “Nay, then. This is women’s work here and none of his,” said Meg as she reached for the cloth Frevisse had laid down. “We’ll see to Sym. Just tell him to go on home, pray you, but I want to see him later.”

  “I will,” Frevisse said, thinking as she went that Meg was on the body’s right side and that Dame Claire could be trusted to keep her from seeing his left side and the second wound if it were at all possible.

  The cold had a crisper edge to it as she crossed the yard but the sky was still shining, barely wisped with far-off clouds. Frevisse huddled her habit around her as she hurried and indulged in a moment of covetousness, wishing for Domina Edith’s fur-lined cloak.

  The players were gathered around their hearth. Hewe was with them, leaning forward on a bench to listen to something Bassett was saying while Ellis and Joliffe, working at a piece of leather harness, sat across from them, looking amused. Rose was on a cushion near the fire, sewing at something bright and threaded through with gold on her lap, with Piers wrapped to his ears in blankets and looking pallid but unfevered, leaning against her. He was the first to look up at Frevisse’s coming, and he smiled as brightly as a young angel. Rose, following his look, made a reserved greeting. It appeared, Frevisse thought, that the warmth and strength of her affections were saved for her menfolk.

  “Mending?” Frevisse asked, gesturing to the sewing.

  Rose held up a pennon whose hem was ripped. “We use it for St. George. Bought from a town’s pageant when they decided they needed something better, but it does well enough for us, although travel is hard on it.”

  “And on people?” Frevisse asked.

  Rose smiled. “Travel is hard on everything, one way or another.”

  She was a strong-featured woman, her mouth and eyebrows and nose drawn in bold strokes, but she was not grown coarse with spending her days on the roads and in uncertainty. Except that her skin was marked by being out in too many sorts of weather and her hands showed that they did hard work, she might almost have been a lady in her bower sitting there, deft at her sewing. And her voice, though not nobility’s, had not come from a peasant’s cottage.

  Frevisse wondered about her, and asked, “How does Piers?”

  Rose left her sewing long enough to stroke the boy’s gold hair back from his forehead. “He’s mending.”

  Piers ducked out from under her hand. “I’m bored.”

  “But you’re better,” Rose said, and retucked his blankets.

  “Well enough to sing, say, tomorrow?” asked Frevisse.

  “Easily!” Piers declared.

  “Quite probably,” his mother corrected. Piers smiled up at her and snuggled closer.

  The men and Hewe had acknowledged Frevisse’s coming with brief looks and nods. Now Frevisse moved toward them to draw their attention. “Hewe has been no trouble?” she asked.

  “A grievous pain and unending trouble,” Bassett declared, then relented at Hewe’s startled, stricken look, and rumpled his hair casually. “No. None at all. He slept, and we’ve fed him, and told him he could stay until someone came looking for him, if he wanted.”

  “And he’s one reason I’ve come,” Frevisse said.

  Hewe already knew that. And he was remembering why he was here, and that he was supposed to be in grief. But it was an effort.

  Had life with Sym been so unpleasant, Frevisse wondered, that his own brother had trouble grieving for him? But all she said was, “Your mother says you should go home to see to your animals for her. Later she wants to see you here.”

  “But not now?” Hewe asked.

  “Not now. She’s tending to your brother’s body and will want you afterwards. Is there anyone in the village who can come help her?” she asked as an afterthought.

  Hewe, gathering up his cloak from the far side of the bench, shook his head. “She doesn’t have any friends to mention. Someone will likely come if she asks, but she won’t.”

  He seemed to take that as a simple given of life, ducked a bow to her and to the players, but added a suddenly shy smile for all of them and said, especially to Bassett, “Thank you.”

  Bassett inclined his head in acceptance. “And to you, youngling. You have been both a good guest and a good companion.”

  Hewe flushed with pleasure, ducked another bow, and quickly left.

  Bassett grinned after him. “A likely enough lad and as different from his brother as cheese from chalk.”

  Joliffe leaned toward Ellis and said in mocking conspiracy, “He says that because the boy listened to all his stories and thought they were wonderful.”

  “Well, they are,” Ellis said indignantly. “Until you’ve heard them three dozen times. Or four. Or more.”

  Bassett pulled a face at them, unoffended.

  Frevisse put down her rising amusement at their banter, and came to the heart of her reason for this visit. But she kept her tone light. “Joliffe, may I see your dagger?”

  With a slight puzzlement, he drew and held it out to her hilt first. She took it, appreciating the good weight and easy balance of it in her hand. “Yours, too?” she asked Bassett and Ellis.

  They drew and held out their own, not questioning what she wanted but with an undertone of wariness that Rose’s sudden watchfulness reflected. Frevisse did not take their daggers, but contented herself with comparing them to Joliffe’s. As they had said, and she remembered, they were all of a kind, perfectly matched. She nodded them away, but said to Joliffe, “I need yours for a while,” not asking his permission, simply telling him.

  Quite still, he met her gaze with a knowing she could not read. In stillness his face was older, the boyishness gone out of it. Frevisse turned and left, taking the dagger with her, feeling their silence at her back.

  Dame Claire and Meg were still beside Sym’s body. With Dame Claire at his feet and his mother at his head and shoulders, they were lifting him sideways onto the white cerecloth he would be wrapped in for his burial, moving him as tenderly and smoothly as if afraid of waking him. It being New Year’s Day and Feast of the Circumcision, there would be no coffin made until tomorrow, but there was no need for haste. He could lie here until it could be made; the body could not be buried in any case until the crowner had seen it, and would keep in the unheated hall.

  Frevisse had hidden the dagger up her wide sleeve as she came. She waited while Dame Claire and Meg wrapped the cloth over the body. When they were done, Dame Claire asked Meg to take the wash water away, to dump it before it could be spilled. Eyes down, Meg took the basin without questioning and disappeared toward the garderobe.

  Frevisse stepped quickly to the table, drawing the dagger from her sleeve to compare it to the wound.

  “The blade is too broad,” Dame Claire said. The neat-edged hole between Sym’s ribs was too narrow by the width of her widest finger for the dagger’s blade.

  “And too short,” Frevisse added. She laid the dagger on Sym’s chest to gauge how deep it would have gone. “Striking from the side, the blade has to go in a fair ways to reach the heart and this is hardly long enough. It wouldn’t reach.” She tucked the dagger out of sight again with concealed relief. Whatever had stabbed Sym, it had not been one of the players’ daggers.

  Unless they had others, she forcibly reminded herself. That was still a possibility, though not one easily pursued.

  But, her mind insi
sted, if one of them had deliberately used some other dagger than the one he usually carried to give the deathblow, then the killing had almost surely not been the mere taking advantage of a happenstance; it had been deliberately planned and purposed beforehand. Which was impossible, no one could have known Sym would go home and frighten his mother into seeking help.

  So who then might have done it? Someone watching for a chance and ruthless enough to take it.

  While she thought, she tucked her hands into either sleeve. It was a habitual gesture; now it warmed her hands and hid the dagger from Meg coming back. Belatedly Frevisse remembered and said, “I saw your Hewe. He’s gone back to the village to do what needs doing there. He said he would come to you later.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” Meg said, looking at her feet.

  The cloister bell began to ring for Nones. Meg raised startled eyes toward the band of sunlight from the nearest window. “Midday?” she asked, completely bewildered. “How did it come to be midday?”

  Dame Claire laid a gentle hand on her arm. “It was the drink I gave you. It made you sleep a long while.”

  And so heavily she had not even noticed what time of day she had awoken. Meg looked around a little frantically, as if to find the lost hours. “My work,” she said. “I was supposed to be in the kitchen. Dame Alys…”

  Dame Claire said, “She knows what’s happened. She understands and isn’t expecting you today. Or tomorrow either. It’s all right.”

  Meg began to say something, stopped, looked to Frevisse, back to Dame Claire, then seemed to collect herself and turned away to her son’s body. So low they could barely hear her, she said, “I’ll stay here and pray then, please you.”

  It was probably the best thing she could do, both for herself and Sym. Leaving her to it, Frevisse and Dame Claire hurried away to church.

  The service of Nones was fairly brief, consisting of a hymn, lesson, and verse in addition to three short psalms sung straight through. Frevisse’s cold had given her a headache, made worse by the way one person’s cough set off a noisy chorus of them, by the shuffling of impatient feet, and the frequent exchange of bored or exasperated glances. It was painful to hear this group of sufferers croak, “‘Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing….’” Frevisse was startled to realize near the end that she had let Joliffe’s dagger slip down into her hand, and that she had taken it with a grip so tight her fingers were cramping.