The Hunter’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Tom couldn’t be far ahead. He’d know by now he was bleeding. He’d have stopped to deal with it. Over the first rise of the road he’d surely be in sight.

  He wasn’t. And beyond the rise the road curved and the forest came down to its edge, cutting off longer view, and Hugh, leaned low over Foix’s neck, dug his heels harder into the horse’s sides to set him faster. But Tom must have ridden with an anger that more than equaled Hugh’s desperation because it was beyond there, after another rise of the road, that Hugh finally saw…

  … not Tom. His horse. A bay, like Hugh’s. Riderless. Grazing on the grassy verge beside Woodrim’s wheatfield near a spreading oak tree that in harvest served the workers for shade when they broke for their dinner or rest times. But it was barley harvest now. There was no one in sight here. Not even Tom. Only his bay horse.

  Confused, Hugh drew rein, bringing Foix to a halt beside the other horse. And only then saw Tom. Lying on his stomach in the long grass at the edge of the oak’s deep shade, his head pillowed on one arm as if he might be sleeping, his face turned away from Hugh, who suddenly wanted to go no nearer.

  But he slid from Foix’s back and went toward him, saying unsteadily, “Tom? What are you doing?”

  He knelt and touched Tom’s shoulder; said, “Tom?” again; and then—all unwillingly—took hold of his shoulder and started to turn him over.

  And knew by the body’s utter slackness, even before he saw the dulled, empty-staring eyes, that Tom was no longer there.

  Chapter 8

  In the warm, clear-skied evening the nuns were come into the walled garden for their hour of recreation before Compline and bed. The sun was not yet set, Frevisse supposed, but it was gone below the cloister’s roofs, leaving the garden in gentle evening shadows, the day’s warmth lingering with the mingled scents of the summer fields beyond the nunnery walls and the garden’s herbs and flowers.

  Most of the younger nuns and Dame Emma were clustered on the turf benches near one another, heads together in busy talk. Dame Juliana, ever in love with flowers, was drifting from bed to bed, humming happily under her breath, touching her more treasured blooms, stooping now and again to smell one or another, sometimes plucking out a daring, doomed weed.

  Dame Claire as infirmarian cared more for the herbs from which she made the nunnery’s medicines than for merely flowers but this evening she was simply walking slowly, alone, back and forth along the path beside their beds, a sprig of some plant between her fingers and a thoughtful look on her face. She had been in talk with Margery, the village herbwife, today, Frevisse knew, and was maybe considering something newly learned from her. The powdered cinnamon and pepper mixed with honey they had tried last year against Dame Emma’s toothache had not been a success but a vervain poultice they had devised two winters ago had worked well against an ulcerating sore on a villagers leg.

  Tired from a day spent mostly at her copying work, Frevisse was pacing quietly back and forth along a different path, at the garden’s far end and well away from the talking, Dame Juliana, and even Dame Claire. Oddly, Sister Thomasine was there, too, pacing the same path rather than at her prayers in the church, her pace and Frevisses so nearly the same that they passed each other at almost the same point every time, never speaking or ever looking at one another. Over the years, Frevisse had come to trust Sister Thomasine’s silences. Like Frevisse, she had no need for constant talk to reassure herself that she was real. Her intense piety was more than Frevisse could match, but for Frevisse the quiet of her own thoughts was company enough for now. Some people withdrew from the world into nunnery or monastery because either they had no other choices or they could not face what choices they had. Frevisse had become a nun not so much in withdrawal from the world as in a glad going toward God.

  What had surprised her was how much, even in the nunnery, a day’s necessities and duties got in the way of that going. She found herself, sometimes, regretting she did not have Sister Thomasine’s gift for making a prayer of almost everything she did, but at least in little whiles like this, when she was alone and silent, she could go a small way toward where she wanted to be in her mind and heart.

  The evening’s quiet was stirred—not disturbed—by Ursula’s laughter from the orchard beyond the garden’s wall. Domina Elisabeth only sometimes spent the recreation hour in her nuns’ company, preferring to be in solitude for the one hour of the day when no one was likely to need her for anything; but this evening, as often of late, she was with Lady Anneys and Ursula, and whatever their pastime in the orchard was, Ursula was very happy with it. Indeed, as the days had drawn on since Master Selenger’s visit, Lady Anneys seemed happier, and a few times her own laughter rose from the orchard.

  But in the garden, at its other end from Frevisse, the nuns’ talk stopped and heads turned at sound of someone coming at a hurry along the slype from the cloister. A servant surely, but this far toward the day’s end, with all business done, they were almost surely bringing trouble, and Sister Amicia and Sister Margrett sprang up and ran to the gate to meet whoever was there. By the uneven pad of the footsteps Frevisse had guessed it was lame Ela from the guesthall and was not surprised to see her at the gateway; but she only briefly asked something of Sister Amicia and Sister Margrett and immediately disappeared again. The rap a moment later on the orchard’s gate told where she had gone, and Sister Amicia turned back to the other nuns to say, disappointed, “Just old Ela wanting Domina Elisabeth. Probably somebody’s arrived she ought to know about.” But no one likely to divert them, her disappointment said.

  Not needing to be diverted, Frevisse continued her slow pacing, content with her own thoughts about nothing in particular until the bell rang to Compline.

  It was at next morning’s chapter meeting they learned that, after all, it had been trouble that brought Ela into the cloister. After Father Henry had given his blessing and left them, Domina Elisabeth said with no other beginning, “There was ill news came to Lady Anneys yesterday evening. Her older son was killed two days ago.”

  While making the sign of the cross and murmuring a quick prayer for his soul, Frevisse tried to remember if the son she had met had been the older or younger one. Or had she ever known which he was?

  ‘Her younger son brought word of it,“ Domina Elisabeth was going on. ”He’s here to take her and Ursula home again today.“

  ‘How was he killed?“ Dame Emma asked, more eagerly than seemly.

  Domina Elisabeth fixed her with a look that warned her to silence, said crisply, “That is something for later, dame,” and returned to the rest of them. “They would be gone already except Lady Anneys has asked for one of us to go with her. That being the only comfort besides our prayers that we can offer her, Eve agreed. Dame Frevisse, it was you she asked for. Sister Johane will go with you.” Because no nun should go from the nunnery uncompanioned by another nun. “You are both excused to ready what you’ll need and meet Lady Anneys in the guesthall yard in as few minutes as possible. Sister Johane, be guided by Dame Frevisse in this and on your journeying.”

  Sister Johane, already eagerly on her feet, bobbed a deep, quick curtsy, ready to be out the door and not minding the hard looks turned her way by Sister Amicia and Sister Margrett, who probably felt that if Domina Elisabeth wanted a younger nun to go, they might equally well—nay, better—have been chosen. Frevisse, nothing like so ready to go out into the world for whatever reason, rose more slowly, her eyes down to keep her prioress from reading her unwillingness, and curtsied as deeply.

  Domina Elisabeth made the sign of the cross toward them and said, “My blessing on you both. Father Henry and I will be in the yard to see you away.”

  Despite bishops’ best efforts that nuns be kept strictly enclosed, they were not. Now and again some family matter or other reason—even simply fishing—would take them out of their cloister. As lately as last Martinmas Sister Margrett had gone, companioned with Dame Emma, to her sister’s lying-in with a fourth child, stayed for the christening becau
se she was to be godmother, and returned to St. Frideswide’s barely in time for Advent. Now, safely out of Domina Elisabeth’s sight, Sister Johane all but bounced up the stairs to the dorter ahead of Frevisse. Only the sad reason for their going out probably kept her from outright singing, Frevisse suspected, while they gathered a change of clothing and what little else they would need; and she remembered to be at least outwardly subdued when she followed Frevisse out the cloister door into the guesthall’s cobbled yard and with lowered eyes gave her bag to a servant to be strapped behind the saddle of one of the nunnery horses waiting for them.

  Lady Anneys and Ursula were already on theirs, ready to leave, and Frevisse, giving over her bag in turn, saw with relief that the young man waiting with them was the same son who had come for Ursula those few weeks ago. The death of either of Lady Anneys’ sons was a sorrow, but Frevisse knew this one a little while the dead man was no one to her, without even a face she could put to him in her prayers unless the chance came to see him unshrouded in his coffin. With no particular feelings of her own about him, no burden of personal sorrow, she would be more free to pay heed to curbing Sister Johane—should it come to that— and in giving what comfort she could to Lady Anneys and Ursula, she supposed. Just now, though, they both looked beyond comforting, and Hugh—that was his name, Frevisse remembered—looked no better. Ursula was mounted behind him, leaning against his back, the side of her face pressed to him, her arms tightly around his waist. Lady Anneys had her own horse but was close enough to her son that they were reached out to each other, holding hands as if that were their last hold on life. They had both been crying, that was plain, and Ursula still was, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks shiny with tears. All the grief that Frevisse had not seen in Lady Anneys or her for their husband and father was terribly there now. That death had not hurt. This one did, and Frevisse foresaw that despite the golden sunshine of yet another perfect summer’s day, today’s riding was going to be dark with their pain.

  She and Sister Johane had just swung astride their horses and were settling their skirts, neither of them interested in fashionable side-riding in box saddles, when Domina Elisabeth and Father Henry came from the cloister into the yard. The priest went to say something to Lady Anneys and the others. Domina Elisabeth came instead to Sister Johane, spoke too low to her for Frevisse to hear, then handed her a fair-sized, cloth-wrapped parcel that Sister Johane, nodding agreement to something, turned to tuck into the bag tied behind her saddle. Coming to Frevisse, Domina Elisabeth said, still in a low voice, “Eve given some herbs to Sister Johane that Dame Claire thought might be useful if Lady Anneys or anyone is too uncalm to sleep or rest.”

  Domina Elisabeth’s choice of Sister Johane to come with her suddenly made sense to Frevisse. All of the nuns helped Dame Claire, turn and turn again, at her infirmarian tasks, but of them all, Sister Johane had so far proved the most apt to the work. Very probably the comfort she could offer by way of soothing herbs would be worth as much or more than Frevisse’s these following days, and Frevisse nodded to Domina Elisabeth with brisk understanding.

  Domina Elisabeth gave a brisk nod in return and stepped back as Father Henry raised his hand to bless their journeying.

  It proved to be a long, hard day’s journeying. Frevisse remembered that when Hugh had come for Ursula, he had said that by rights it should take a day and a little more of reasonable riding to reach their manor. Today they did not ride reasonably. Rather than an easy, steady pace of no great haste, they went at trot or even canter more than half the time, easing the horses only when necessary and themselves hardly at all.

  The choice did not seem to be Hugh’s. More than a few times Frevisse saw him speak to Lady Anneys with concern on his face, but each time Lady Anneys shook her head against whatever he was asking her. Even when they stopped for a midday meal of sorts at some village’s alehouse, Frevisse thought Lady Anneys would have stayed in the saddle to eat, except her son dismounted, lifted Ursula down, and came to help her so firmly that, although she hesitated, she did not refuse and, when she was dismounted, let him lead her to a bench in the shade by the alehouse door.

  But if Lady Anneys did not want the respite, Frevisse most definitely did. She rode well but not often enough to be ready for this kind of riding and was willing to admit that her years were telling on her. It was only pride that kept her from groaning even more than Sister Johane did at the effort of pulling themselves back into their saddles when time came to ride on.

  They rode through the afternoon and into the long, pale twilight, paused for a slight supper at another alehouse, then rode on into the darkening blue of evening. A rising moon gave light enough they hardly slowed their pace, but the servant who had come with Hugh rode on ahead to warn of their coming, and when they finally rode into the manor yard, there were people waiting and lighted torches flaring in the darkness. Hugh had long since moved Ursula to ride in front of him, cradled in the curve of his arm, and she must have been asleep because as the torchlight fell on her face, she startled upright with a small cry. Hugh said something to her and she answered, “Home?,” then leaned against him, softly crying again.

  A young man, who had gone first to Lady Anneys, turned to them and took Ursula from Hugh into his own arms. In the torchlight and Frevisse’s tiredness, he looked so much like Hugh that he could have been his brother. But Lady Anneys had only two sons and one of them was dead, she thought a little confusedly. But whoever he was, Ursula clung to him as readily as she had to Hugh as he carried her away, into the house, leaving Hugh to dismount and help Lady Anneys from her saddle while two girls—as dressed in black as Lady Anneys and crying—hovered close, waiting only until Hugh stepped aside before they flung themselves at her, crying harder.

  More daughters, Frevisse supposed.

  Wearily, she dragged herself from her own saddle, lowering herself carefully to the ground and not letting go of the horse until she had convinced her legs that they not only had to hold her up but were going to walk, too. But now, please God, this day was nearly ended and soon there would be somewhere she could lie down and sleep.

  As she followed Sister Johane following a servant toward the hall, she heard Lady Anneys say to someone in a tired and aching voice, “Where’s Tom? I want to see him.”

  Chapter 9

  In the morning Frevisse remembered, as she awoke, where she was and wished herself asleep again. She and Sister Johane had shared a truckle bed rolled from under Lady Anneys’ own in an upper bedchamber, and although she had stayed awake and upright long enough to undress down to her undergown and fold her clothing onto a nearby stool, she had noticed nothing beyond that, simply lain down and fallen to sleep. She had awakened when Lady Anneys came in with her daughters but only enough to realize that beyond the bedchamber there was a room that must be theirs. Then she had slept again. Now it was morning, with nothing she looked forward to about the day.

  Wary of her aches and stiffness, she sat up. Lady Anneys’ bed had been slept in but she was not there now, and to judge by the open door and the quiet from the farther room, the girls were gone, too. That she had not heard them at all, as well as slept through her usual hours of prayer, told Frevisse how tired and deeply sleeping she must have been. Beside her, Sister Johane was still deeply sleeping and Frevisse took the chance to see better where they were. Someone had unshuttered the bedchamber’s one, unglassed window before they left, letting in the gray light of an overcast day, letting her see not only the wide bed that nearly filled the room but its faded, plain green curtains and the two large, flat-topped chests set along one wall with a hunting dagger in its sheath lying on one of them. There was a small table beside the door with a pottery pitcher and basin and a white towel on it. A man’s brown doublet and white shirt hung somewhat carelessly over the single wall-pole. Her own and Sister Johane’s travel bags were leaning against the wall beside the truckle bed. That was all.

  It was not so much a bare room, Frevisse thought, as a barren room. As
if someone had been here but not lived in it. Except for the man’s clothing and the dagger—the dead son’s, she realized; he would have slept here as the manor’s new lord, when his mother was gone—it was a room curiously empty of anyone. Even empty, a room usually carried some sense of who lived in it. This room was no one’s. Admittedly the young man had maybe had too little time to make it fully his own, but even though Lady Anneys must have lived and slept here for years and very probably birthed her children here, there was nothing of her either and there should be. Embroidered cushions on the chests for softer sitting. A plant on the windowsill. Bright painted patterns on the plaster walls or on the roof beams. A woven mat on the floor. Something that said someone belonged here. But there was nothing. As if she had never been here at all.

  Frevisse made to crawl out of the bed, deliberately clumsy at it so that Sister Johane awoke, mumbled, rolled over, awoke a little more, enough to open her eyes and say, pleased, “We slept in. Wonderful. If we haven’t missed breakfast.”

  ‘We’re late for Prime,“ Frevisse answered.

  ‘This morning?“ Sister Johane protested. ”Now?“