The Servant's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  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.

  “Joliffe, I want to speak with you,” she said.

  He started and looked toward her, rising. She had forgotten how clear and light a blue his eyes were, and how easily they saw the foolishness of others.

  She turned from him and said abruptly to Bassett, “Bassett, Montfort knows about your quarrel with Sister Fiacre. Has he asked you about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That we had quarreled and Lord Warenne had turned us out of his service.”

  “What did you say when he asked you why?”

  Bassett did not answer. Only Ellis, just come from behind the curtain, was looking at her. The others were staring at the floor in front of them. “Domina Edith has given me leave to ask the questions Master Montfort won’t think of, to try to find out what has truly happened here. I need truths, not silences.”

  “Tell her,” said Rose.

  They all looked at her, surprised. “Lord Warenne—” Bassett began.

  “Is going to be telling his side of it to the crowner if the matter isn’t settled soon. Tell her. I don’t see how it can help but she won’t use it to hurt us either. Tell her.”

  Bassett questioned Ellis and Joliffe with a silent look. Darkly brooding, Ellis tersely nodded his agreement. Joliffe, anger clamped behind the tight set of his face, shrugged as if it had ceased to matter to him. Bassett returned to Frevisse. “We were the late Lord Warenne’s players for three years. You know what that means to our kind, I think.” Frevisse nodded. A skilled, well-traveled troop could sing a patron’s praises over a wide area. And they did, for patronage gave them protection, and was such a guarantee of their good behavior that they could be sure of welcome everywhere, so long as he was pleased with them. To find a patron and then lose him was normally a quick road to ruin.

  “We were a larger company then. Six of us to act, so better plays could be done. When Lord Warenne died, he commended us to his son, your Sister Fiacre’s brother. He was willing to continue our patronage but the first spring we came to perform our season’s work for him, as we had every spring for his father, he gave us to understand that he knew the ways of players and that he wanted us, as we traveled, to now and again—’collect’ was his word—an occasional young woman on our way. We were welcome to our sport with her but he would be appreciative in monetary ways if we brought her to him eventually. He said he knew our ways and that we could woo them to it easily enough.” Bassett’s flat tone and the stony set of his face stripped away any lightness the words might have had. “He said village girls were easily come by and sweet enough if gathered young.”

  “He also said,” Joliffe added with mocking bitterness, “that he would pay more for any we delivered to him with their maidenhood intact.”

  “Joliffe,” Bassett said quellingly. “Good lady, pardon our words but there’s no way to say this less offensively.”

  Frevisse did not need the apology but accepted it with a small nod. “You refused him.”

  Bassett gestured at Ellis and Joliffe. “As you see. There are only three of us now, and the boy, and Rose, and we journey without a lord’s name.”

  “Rose would have taken our heads from us if we’d accepted,” Joliffe said.

&nbs
p; Rose’s wry, downcast smile agreed with him. Bassett went on. “As importantly, he threatened that if we said aught to anyone about the matter, he’d spread word we had made the offer to him and he’d turned us away in disgust.”

  “His word would be more readily taken than ours,” Ellis said. “And since he can have us all into prison and no way out, we keep our mouths shut and swing well clear of Lord Warenne. Those of us that are left.”

  Frevisse, looking from one to another of their set faces, was sure they were telling her the truth.

  Rose said, “You see this does not help in our present trouble? If we defend ourselves by defaming Lord Warenne, we put ourselves in more peril and do not clear ourselves of this present suspicion of murder.”

  Frevisse nodded slowly. “But I must go on asking questions. I have to go on asking questions.”

  “We’ll answer those that we can.”

  Frevisse said, “Then I would speak out of your hearing with Joliffe.”

  Joliffe sketched a bow and went with her to the other hearth. Frevisse said, “I have a report that you were seen going toward our church about four of the clock yesterday.”

  “Lady, that I was not.” This was said readily, with what might have been no more than an actor’s smoothness.

  “Are you accusing my witness of lying?” asked Frevisse.

  “I cannot accuse anyone of anything, since I know nothing about him. Or her. I can only say what I know. I was in the church with Ellis and Bassett in the morning to see where we would perform. But not since.” This sounded more like the rough truth.

  “Where were you then at that hour?”

  For a wonder, his clear blue look did not see that she was only guessing he was not here in the guesthall. “I went walking after our rehearsal and was gone several hours.”

  “Alone?” Frevisse asked, remembering the girl in the village.

  “Alone,” Joliffe agreed.

  “Not meeting anyone?”

  “Not anyone.” He gave her a mocking grin. “Unless you count a small spotted hound, but I doubt he’ll speak on my behalf. He seemed to be somewhat occupied with coursing a rabbit at the time. Careless of me to be so solitary, but there it is.”

  Discouraged and her head aching again, Frevisse turned on her heel and walked away, weighted with her thoughts.

  Chapter

  21

  THROUGH THE REST of the morning, Frevisse saw to her guesthall duties, leaving her thoughts to work themselves out without her conscious help. The servants were well trained to her ways, but there was never harm in letting her people see that she was paying heed to them. As always there were small matters that needed her word or advice, and with one thing and another, she was kept busy until the bell called her to Nones. She finished agreeing with Eda in the old guesthall over who should see to scrubbing out the water buckets and excused herself to go to the service, a little delayed and so intent on hurrying through the hall without seeing the players that she nearly blundered into two men coming in the guesthall door as she was going out. She did not know them and vaguely supposed them Montfort’s without thinking about it.

  Her apologies and theirs mingled and she went on until, halfway across the courtyard she realized why they were there, and spun around to see them coming out again, Joliffe between them now, his arms firmly in their grasp and no gentleness in their hold on him.

  Nearly she started back toward them. But the bell was still demanding that she come to prayers. And there was nothing she could do to change what was coming. All she had were unanswered or ill-answered questions, and none of them would do Joliffe any good.

  Helpless, her feelings at war against her thoughts, she watched Montfort’s men drag Joliffe up the steps to the new guesthall. He kept his feet, but only barely, having to fight against their hold to do it. She saw them twist his arms, hurting him to keep their hold. Answering anger and fear surged in her. Fiercely, she did not want Joliffe hurt.

  And that very fierceness was a warning, set against Domina Edith’s earlier one. She was caring too much about Joliffe, instead of about the truth. She was supposed to find the truth, let the guilt lie where it might. The players should be no concern of hers beyond that.

  Finally, fully, she faced it. Domina Edith was right, these people had roused in her a long-dormant love for the endless journeying of her youth. They had brought alive again a part of herself she had loved and never fully left. She wanted them free to go their way, as she was no longer free to go.

  But Joliffe had lied to her.

  Grimly, she turned away to hurry into the cloister, away from Joliffe and the rest, if not away from her thoughts.

  Crowded with the other nuns in the warming room, her head bent in what was supposed to be prayer, she stared down at her thick black gown, and felt her wimple’s tightness along her temples and under her chin. In the years she had worn them, they had become too familiar to be noticed; they were a part of herself. But now she felt their constriction and their meaning. Knew what they gave her. And what they denied her.

  No, she said in her mind. No, this is where I belong, and this is what I should be doing. Here. Now is when I’m living, not in some memory of my childhood.

  Forcing out of her mind her remembrance of Joliffe dragged between Montfort’s men, she gave herself to the service beginning around her, losing herself in the chanted repetition of the psalms, soaking in the words with her mind and soul, listening with a novice’s fervor for answers that had to be there.

  And found a part of them in the New Testament lesson: “‘Wherefore…give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if you do these things, you shall never fall.’”

  And she had been near to falling. Not from her vows, surely, but from her devotion to her life. From her obedience and her acceptance.

  But there, with the thought in clear words, she knew that danger was past. Feelings came and went, but her surety of why she was here was in her mind and in her heart deeper than feelings or a day’s passing inclination.

  At the office’s end, she felt as cleansed and clear as if she was come from Easter Mass and communion, her thoughts no longer warring against her inclinations, but set and settled on what she had to do.

  Dinner came after Nones. Frevisse said grace with the others in the refectory, sat in her place on the bench, and determined to heed the day’s reading rather than her own thoughts for a while. They were still hearing the history of the English people as written by St. Bede and still read poorly by Sister Thomasine.

  “‘In Northumbria, there was a head of a family,’” Thomasine intoned, “‘who led a devout life, with all his household. He fell ill, his condition steadily deteriorating until the crisis came, and he died in the early hours of the night. But at daybreak he returned to life and sat up, to the consternation of those weeping about his body.’”

  As was to be expected, thought Frevisse, dipping her bread in her mutton stew to soften and flavor it. We would be shocked and frightened if Sister Fiacre sat up and spoke to us. It would be hours before we’d have our wits about us enough to rejoice at the miracle.

  Thomasine droned on. The Northumbrian divided his property into three parts and gave a third to his wife, a third to his sons, and a third to the poor before going off to become a monk.

  What would a resurrected Fiacre do, being already a nun? Frevisse wondered.

  Visitors came to the man, to hear stories of his experience in the world beyond the grave, and he told of seeing damned souls leaping from flame to bitter frost and back again in a fruitless search for comfort, and of a wonderful, fragrant countryside for the saved. “‘“I was most reluctant to return to my body, for I was entranced by the pleasantness and beauty of the place.”’” Sister Thomasine read, Bede quoting the man. “‘“But I did not dare to question my guide, and I suddenly found myself alive among men once more.”’”

  Sister Fiacre, too, might be unhappy at her return, weeping and wringing her hands to find herself among
ordinary people again.

  The man was described as living in great severity in his monastery, breaking ice to plunge himself into a wintertime river, standing up to his neck in the flowing water, reciting psalms, until he could no longer bear it and must climb out, but refusing to change his wet clothes, saying to those who questioned him that he had seen it worse in another place.

  Here Sister Thomasine stopped, not to savor the grim joke, but to say, “Tu autem, Domine, miserere nobis,” meaning that she had finished the reading.

  Frevisse responded with the rest of the nuns, “Deo gracias,” but dinner was not quite over. The meal continued in silence, and without a voice to listen to, Frevisse’s thoughts went on their own way. Had that man truly been right and good in what he did? She had seen it happen—a person resolutely using punishment and privation to drive out the ability to enjoy life’s good things. Though didn’t that also make it impossible to enjoy the pleasures of the fragrant meadow promised to the saved? Having set their heart on earth to miseries, might not such people be happier in the rigors of Hell?

  Frevisse caught the thought and suppressed its strangeness sternly. There was no doubt that strict disciplines could lead to sainthood, all authority agreed on that.

  Unable to meditate on the reading to any purpose, she found her mind wandering to the murders. Was Domina Edith right? Could there be two murderers about, one with a knife and the other with a club?

  And wandering past the murders to what Montfort was doing to Joliffe now.

  Harshly, she jerked away from that thought. She had to find an answer—answers—to these murders and soon.

  The need for immediate answers tightened in her. She laid her bread down, unable to swallow.

  One of the murderers must be Gilbey Dunn. He hated Sym, who stood between him and his gain. Would Annie Lauder lie to save him if he promised to pay her leyrwite? And where was Father Henry, he with the answers to questions she needed to ask? He had been gone all morning. Out rabbiting again, she thought bitterly, while I’m trapped here. Almost always St. Frideswide’s walls were shelter and boundary to her, not limitations, but now she had a wild longing to leap clear of them, to follow where her questioning wanted to go, to the village, to Lord Warenne’s, to anywhere rather than going on circling here helplessly, blocked by the Rule.