The men spoke together for a few moments, then walked on toward the hall. Frevisse moved away from the window. Sister Johane, Lady Elyn, and Lucy were just returning to the hall. At its far end Lady Anneys, with Ursula still beside her, was in talk with a maidservant but finished and dismissed her as her daughters and Sister Johane approached her, Frevisse following behind them. But it was to Frevisse and Sister Johane she said, “My ladies, you’d do well to take a place on one of the benches before more people come, I think. Besides our own folk there’ll be neighbors surely, and whoever Sir William has brought, and the crowner’s men and jurors. There are to be ten jurors, I’m told. Five men of ours and five from Sir William’s manor. But…” Her flood of words suddenly stopped. She paused, bewildered, seemingly trying to remember why she had been saying any of that and why it mattered.
Frevisse, understanding the need to flee from overwhelming grief by clinging to practical things and how easy it was to stumble in that flight and be overtaken, hoped there was a strong quieting draught included in whatever Dame Claire had provided Sister Johane and that Lady Anneys could be persuaded to take it when this day was done; but for now she only said, “There’s no need to think about us, my lady. We’ll do well,” and went away with Sister Johane to the last of the three bench-rows facing the dais. For the ease of whoever came later, she and Sister Johane sat in the middle of the bench they chose so it could fill in to either side of them. Two other long benches—for the jurors, Frevisse supposed— had been set at an angle between the dais with its high table and the bench-rows, and presently two manservants were wrestling a long settle through a door behind the dais that Frevisse presumed led to the parlor since the other door there led to the stairs to the bedchambers. Once through the door, the men brought the settle down from the dais, lurching a little with its weight, and set it behind the jurors’ benches, facing the high table where the crowner would sit. That would be for Lady Anneys and her daughters, Frevisse guessed.
Not interested in benches, Sister Johane had twisted around to watch the outer door and said excitedly, “Someone’s arrived.”
‘Sir William and the crowner,“ Frevisse said. ”I saw them from the window.“
Sister Johane twisted back to say low-voiced and close to her, “He’s Lady Elyn’s husband, did you know? Sir William, I mean. They’ve been married about two years and his daughter Philippa was going to marry this Tom who’s dead. That’s why he was at Sir William’s. To talk about the marriage. Only they quarreled and Sir William killed him by mistake, Lady Elyn says.”
‘Is that why Lady Elyn is here instead of with her husband? Because he killed her brother?“
‘Oh, no, not at all. She says nobody blames Sir William. It was a mistake. She’s here because, well, she was needed here more than there, with her mother being gone and all.“ Sister Johane broke off and twisted around again to see what was happening.
Frevisse somewhat turned, too. The crowner, companioned with Miles, was greeting Lady Anneys where she stood with her daughters beside her not far inside the hall door. She gave him her hand and he bowed over it and spoke briefly to her before going on toward the dais with Miles, followed by a man who was probably his clerk, carrying a leather bundle of probably papers.
Sir William had come in behind them and now stepped forward, his hands held out to Lady Anneys, his voice carrying as he said, “Lady Anneys, I’m sorry beyond words for this. It was all…”
Lady Anneys, rigid, snatched her hands away from him and pressed them together over her heart. Sir William, his own hands still out, pleaded, “Lady Anneys, please. For Elyn’s sake if nothing else, don’t turn this to a quarrel between us. I never meant—”
She interrupted, her voice carrying as clearly as his. “It isn’t a quarrel between us, Sir William. All the anger in this world won’t bring Tom back to me. But I can’t… I won’t take the hand that held the knife that killed my son.”
Sir William looked down at his out-held right hand with the surprise of a man seeing a thing in a way he never had until now. Then he withdrew it, took a step back from her, and stiffly bowed. Lady Anneys as stiffly bowed her head to him in return and stood staring over his shoulder at nothing, waiting for him to go away. He looked at Lady Elyn and held out his hand to her. After a bare moment of hesitation and a flicker of her eyes toward her mother, she took it and he led her up the hall to the front bench.
In Frevisse’s ear, Sister Johane whispered, “Lady Elyn said her mother told her she must go with Sir William when the time came. She said Lady Anneys said there wasn’t choice to make between her husband and family. That they were wed and that was what she had to do.”
To Frevisse that spoke well of Lady Anneys, but now she was faced by Master Selenger and the girl Philippa, come in together behind Sir William. Master Selenger looked ready to speak to Lady Anneys but Philippa was hesitating, uncertain whether to she should do that or go immediately after her father. Lady Anneys, paying Master Selenger no heed at all, held out both her hands to the girl and said tenderly and smiling, “Philippa,” and with a grateful gasp Philippa moved quickly to take her hands, holding tightly to them and saying something too low to be heard. Lady Anneys answered quietly, too, then let her go, with a crisp nod and nothing else at Master Selenger, letting him know to keep his distance. He bowed silently and moved off with Philippa, taking her to sit on her father’s other side from her stepmother before seating himself on the bench directly behind them.
Since Sister Johane seemed to have learned a great deal in the while she was tending to Lady Elyn and Lucy, Frevisse whispered to her, “Who is Master Selenger?”
‘Who?“
‘The man who came in with Philippa just now?“
‘Oh. I don’t know.“
‘What does Lady Elyn say about having a stepdaughter not much younger than she is?“
‘Not anything to me. They all grew up together, I think. Philippa and Lady Elyn and the others. So they know each other and all.“
Frevisse wondered whether that would make it harder or easier among them. And how difficult was it for Philippa to sit there beside her father, who had killed the man she was supposed to marry?
‘The two families were close until now?“ she asked.
‘I gather so. Sir William and Sir Ralph were friends, from what Lucy was saying. They both loved hunting. Sir William and Lady Anneys are both executors of her husband’s will and that makes all this even worse because how are they ever going to deal together now?“ She broke off as Hugh entered beside a shuffling old man in a priest’s black gown, then said, ”That will be Father Leonel. Lady Elyn says he’s useless as a priest but that was what her father wanted, not somebody who’d try to change him. Lucy said she shouldn’t talk like that about their father or priests but Elyn said it’s the truth and she’ll say it if she wants to.“
Miles returned to Lady Anneys from seeing the crowner to the dais just as Hugh and the priest joined her. They all spoke low-voiced together and seemed to agree on something before Hugh went back outside and Miles, with Lady Anneys, Lucy, and Ursula following, led Father Leonel to the end of a bench near the settle. While the priest seated himself with the carefulness of stiff joints, Lady Anneys took her place on the settle with Lucy on one side of her and Ursula on the other and Miles took his place standing at the settle’s end, looking ready to do whatever Lady Anneys might need but also able from there to see whatever else went on in the hall.
Hugh and one of the crowner’s men came in with ten men. The inquest’s jurors. Five men from each manor, Lady Anneys said. They were all solemn and well-scrubbed, well-combed, and wearing their best clothes—plain, belted tunics in dull reds, blues, greens, browns, and loose hosen. They bowed to the crowner seated behind the high table where his clerk was laying out papers in front of him, and took their places on the benches set for them. Watching them, Frevisse saw there was no mistaking which five went together against the other five. Cold shoulders and wary looks told more than e
nough and for the first time Frevisse thought beyond the grief of the young man’s family to the raw possibility of open enmity between one manor’s folk and the other’s because of it. It was not usual for lesser folk to serve on a jury against someone like Sir William but here it might well be best because a decision reached among them would more likely be accepted on both manors.
Once they were sitting, however grudgingly with each other, the crowner looked down the hall and nodded to someone and a moment later people in quantity began to enter. They must have been gathering in the yard ever since Frevisse left the window. Neighbors, she judged—other gentry like Sir William and the Woderoves; mostly men, a few women. They filled the benches quickly. Two men with polite bows took the place to Frevisse’s right; a husband and wife sat to Sister Johane’s left. Later comers were directed by some of the crowner’s men to places along the side of the hall across from Lady Anneys and her daughters, and then the common folk were let in. They crowded quietly in, filling the hall’s end behind the benches. Manor folk, Frevisse decided with a quick look back at them. There were both sorrow and in-held anger in their faces. They were here to know for certain what had happened to their young lord and ready to make trouble over his death if things came to that. And that told Frevisse much more about Tom Woderove than the little she knew, because while it was one thing for his family to grieve his death, it was something more for people whose lives had been under his rule for ill or good to grieve for him, too.
From what she had so far heard, she doubted they had grieved for his father.
The crowner’s clerk, a solid, middle-aged man, stood up at the end of the high table and announced the inquest would now begin, bowed to the crowner with “Master Hampden,” sat down, took up a quill pen, and waited with it poised over an inkpot, paper ready in front of him.
The inquest went the usual way, with statements as to where it was and why and whose death was in question. It was established that Sir William Trensal and Hugh Woderove— now Master Woderove since his brother’s death—were the only witnesses, besides the deceased, to the actual occasion of the death. Master Hampden averred that he had viewed the body and that the only wound on it was a small cut to the right side of the neck that had been sufficient to sever a blood vessel. The deceased had then bled to death.
Lady Anneys, her head already bowed, shuddered. Ursula buried her face against her mother’s shoulder and Lucy openly sobbed. Lady Anneys put her arms around them.
There were no other marks or wounds upon the body, Master Hampden said, and Hugh was called forward to describe what had happened.
Frevisse, listening while Hugh told what had passed between his brother and Sir William, watched Lady Anneys and her daughters listening, too, and ached with how pointless the death had been. Pointless and, it would seem, never intended.
‘You believe, from what you saw,“ Master Hampden asked when Hugh had told of seeing the blood on Sir William’s penknife, ”that Sir William was surprised to see the blood? That he had had no knowledge until then that he had stabbed your brother?“
‘I believe that, yes,“ Hugh said. ”He looked surprised to find he was still holding the knife. Nor did he stab Tom. He…“ Hugh made a gesture. ”He just swept a hand at him like that. To make him back off.“
‘Which Master Woderove did.“
‘Yes.“
‘Did he show any sign of knowing he was hurt?“
‘No.“
‘You saw no blood on him at the time?“
‘No. He was wearing a dark red doublet. It must have hid that he was bleeding, and I was standing on the other side of him anyway. And he wasn’t there long. He said an angry thing or two more at Sir William and stormed out.“
‘What happened then?“
‘Sir William and I said a few things at each other. Then he saw the blood on his penknife and I knew Tom was hurt and went after him.“
‘You overtook him before he reached home?“
‘I saw his horse grazing at the roadside maybe a quarter mile from the yard here.“
‘And your brother? When did you see him?“
‘Not until I was nearly to him. He was stretched out in the shade of a tree there. He was lying down, face down, his head resting on one crooked arm. I thought he was sleeping. I thought…“ For the first time the young man’s stiff attempt to say what he knew but feel nothing while he said it broke down. ”I don’t know… what I thought,“ he fumbled. ”Then I turned him over and saw he was… dead.“
Lady Elyn broke into open sobs. Lucy in the circle of her mother’s arm and Ursula huddled against Lady Anneys’ other side could cry no harder than they were, but Lady Anneys sat with lifted head, looking dry-eyed at her son. Only the pleading in her haunted eyes begged for it to be over soon. Frevisse saw Master Hampden glance toward her before going on to ask what Hugh had done next.
‘I cried out. I stood up and I shouted for help.“
‘Who were you shouting to?“
‘No one. Anyone who could hear me.“
‘There was no one there who might have seen your brother fall?“
‘I didn’t see anybody.“
‘But somebody came?“
‘Finally. From one of the further fields where they were barley-harvesting. Somebody heard me and some of the men came and we carried Tom home.“
‘But they hadn’t heard or seen anything before then?“
‘No.“
‘Are those men here?“
Hugh moved one hand toward the jurors. “There. In front.”
The five men on the nearest bench acknowledged that with nods.
‘So you were first-finder of the body but they came immediately afterwards.“
‘Yes.“
‘What did you do then?“
The questions and answering went on, through sending one of the men running for Father Leonel while the others carried the body to the hall, to sending one of the manor men to Sir William to tell him Tom was dead and to bring Lucy and Lady Elyn back to Woodrim to sending another manor man away to find out and tell the crowner he was needed.
‘You didn’t send or go yourself to seize Sir William,“ Master Hampden said. ”Why?“
Hugh had to have known that question would come. By law and under penalty of fine, the first-finder of a body, when the murderer was known, had to raise the hue and cry and, joined by everyone who heard him, pursue the murderer. If taken, the murderer was then to be held until the crowner came and claimed him into custody. But firmly Hugh said, “I saw no likelihood Sir William would seek escape. He knew and I knew that he never meant harm to Tom. It was chance and nothing else that Tom… died.” He choked on the word and for the first time bent his head, tears thick in his voice.
Master Hampden drew a penknife from under the papers in front of him, laid it on the open palm of his hand, and held it out for Hugh to see. “Is this the penknife you saw in Sir William’s hand when your brother was wounded?”
Hugh raised his head and looked. “Yes.”
Master Hampden asked the jurors if they had any questions of their own for him. They did not and Master Hampden thanked him and bade him sit down.
Sir William was next. He was solemn, as well he should be, but he carried himself assuredly. To the crowner’s questions he said much the same things as Hugh had. That he had asked Master Woderove to come to him in order to discuss the planned marriage. That they had somehow fallen into a quarrel, Sir William was not sure how. “One nothing thing leading to another. That was all. He had his father’s hot humour and Sir Ralph could go into a fury over things most men would not.”
There was general head-nodding agreement from the Woodrim manor men of the jury and among the onlookers. Master Hampden noted it. It was his task to learn as much as he could about what had happened and where blame should be laid, if blame there should be, and because he had the right of inquest, he had the power to ask all the questions he could think to ask and to expect answers for them under oath; but he
was also expected to make use of anyone who best knew the accused and victim, to better understand what might lie behind and around the actual crime itself. So the jury was made of local men and a competent crowner gave them heed.
Frevisse had known a crowner who, unless forced to it, never bothered with more than his own opinion of who the guilty should be. He had been a dangerous man in his narrow way and she was thankful to find that Master Hampden was a different sort.
He was come now to the moment Sir William had struck at Tom. “He leaned toward you and you swept your hand with the penknife in it at him. Is that what you say?”
The Hunter’s Tale Page 13
