The Servant's Tale Page 12

  Hewe came and with great care built up the fire until it danced, throwing shadows and light around the room and over his face. Meg fondly watched him watching the flames, and after a while said, “Where’s your brother? Why isn’t he here helping you?”

  Hewe did not look around from the fire. “He’s at the alehouse, or near it, I’d guess.” Sym was willing to do for others the chores he neglected at home, because of the few coins he could earn to drink away at the alehouse. “And like to be out for a while.”

  The shabby cottage that served as gathering place for idle men and dishonest women had been his father’s place and he looked like making it his own, too. Then, like his father, let him take the consequences. “There’s something in the flour kist,” Meg said. “You bring it to me.”

  “Something besides flour?” Hewe asked in surprise.

  “Besides flour.” Though precious little of that there was. She must be making some deal with the miller, or finding a way to buy or barter some from Dame Alys.

  “What’s this?” Hewe asked, puzzled, holding out the orange that Barnaby had brought from Lord Lovel’s feasting.

  “A treat for us,” said Meg. She had kept it in her apron until she had come home again; and put it in the flour kist for safekeeping. “Look you.” She wiped the flour off of it with her cloak and held it out into the firelight so its color glowed and its strangeness showed.

  Hesitantly Hewe reached out a forefinger to touch it, stroked it cautiously, and then drew back. “What is it? Where did you find it?”

  “Hold it,” Meg said. “It’s not tender. Go on.”

  Hewe took it, turning it around and around in his hands while she told him where it had come from, how his father had earned it.

  “By singing for the lord?” Hewe asked.

  “Noble folk like to be entertained when they’re feasting,” Meg said. “And do you know what we’re to do with it now?” Hewe shook his head. “Eat it!” she said triumphantly.

  Hewe prodded at its hardness doubtfully, as Meg had when she first held it. But she had seen what Dame Frevisse had done, and held out her hand for it. “Give it to me. I’ll show you.”

  It proved to be more messy than she had thought. The thing was no more like an apple under its rind than it was without, but they managed it at last, pulling it into the slices already formed, once they understood how it was put together. They shared the pieces between them, laughing and delighted at the tart sweetness and juice and surprise of it all, until the orange was all gone except for its peel, and they were themselves fragrantly messy, hands and faces both.

  When they had washed the stickiness away, and Meg was on her stool again with Hewe sitting beside her, his head leaning on her knee, he sighed. “That was grand. All that, just for singing for Lord Lovel.”

  “Umm.” Meg was not much listening. Warmth and weariness were overtaking her. She had meant to think about Gilbey’s offer tonight, but thoughts did not seem to want to come.

  “I could do that,” Hewe said.

  “What?”

  “Sing for Lord Lovel. Or dance, maybe. I can dance, you’ve seen me. So they would give me things. Or pay me. Like the players did today. They did their play and then people gave them money.”

  Meg had hardly thought of this morning’s nonsense on the green since it had ended. A little sharply she said, “That’s not man’s work! Dressing up and pretending some foolish tale. And look what sort of folk they are. Not decent, wandering the roads and belonging nowhere.”

  “It looked as good a sort of work as any I’ve seen,” Hewe said warmly, sitting up away from her, his face taking on all the rebelliousness he otherwise saved for saying he did not want to be a priest.

  Meg opened her mouth, wanting a sharp reply to put sense in his head, but the door fell open from someone’s heavy thrust and in a draft of cold air and night’s blackness, Sym lurched into the room.

  He was drunk. That much was immediately clear. He staggered against the doorpost and stayed there, gaping at her as if not remembering where he was or why. And sometime he had fallen; one knee of his breeches was torn through its patch and where she would find another piece of cloth to mend it again, Meg did not know. That, added to Hewe’s foolishness, made her angry, all the contentment of hardly a moment before gone in a frustrated urge to hurt him back the way he was hurting her.

  “If you’re that drunk, Sym, take you off to someone’s sty and sleep it off,” she snapped. “You’re not to come in here to be sick.”

  He slurred, “Mam…” and swayed forward from the doorway, leaving it open behind him.

  “He stinks,” Hewe said disgustedly, moving away from him. “He stinks like Da did.”

  “You stink, brat!” Sym snarled. “Of mother’s milk, baby. I’m going to rub your head with knuckles till it bleeds, you come in reach of me!”

  “Hewe, close the door. There’s no need we have to freeze because he’s drunk.”

  Hewe circled his brother to obey. Sym lurched for him but Hewe was too used to that to be caught. He deftly avoided him and in the doorway said over his shoulder to Meg, “I’m off to Peter’s for the night. When I see Sym’s sober I’ll be back.”

  Meg cried out, “Hewe!” but he was gone, pulling the door shut behind him, leaving her alone with Sym, whose lurch had carried him on sidewise to fetch up against the table where he leaned, resting his weight on one arm, his head bent down. His other arm had been wrapped across his stomach. He moved it, held out his hand in front of him and frowned at the dark gleam of it in the firelight. “Mam.” He sounded bewildered. “I’m bleeding.”

  Chapter

  13

  FOR THE DAY’S last prayers at Compline, St. Frideswide’s nuns were spared the cold rigors of the church. At the bell’s ringing of the hour, they laid aside their reading and handwork in the warming room, Dame Alys put out the candles, and in the gentle glow of the firelight Domina Edith led them in their prayers.

  Frevisse enjoyed this brief while between the ending of each day’s tasks and the going to bed by twilight in summer, in darkness in winter. Even marred this evening by coughing and snuffling, the prayers held their promised peace for a day done and a night of rest to come, and ended as they always did with, “The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen.”

  As they finished, Sister Lucy sneezed heavily, Dame Perpetua coughed until it seemed she must suffocate, Dame Alys trumpeted into her handkerchief, and Frevisse thought with a private sigh that a quiet night did not seem likely. But two women from the kitchen bustled in with a pitcher of hot spiced wine and cups and such bread as was left over from supper, and Frevisse let go future woe for the present pleasure of that warmth before the cold walk through the cloister to bed.

  By rights, when the time came to make their soft-footed, skirt-whispering way along the dark cloister walk, Domina Edith should have led them, and left them at the foot of the dormitory stairs to go with her servant on around the cloister to her own rooms. But the prioress was well aware of how slowly she moved these days, and of how cold the nights were. So tonight she gave her nuns leave to go on ahead of her, smiling gently and bowing her head to their curtsies before they hurried out the door into the darkness between the warming-room door and the lantern left lighted by the dormitory steps.

  They were already on the stairs when they heard the rabble of sound from the courtyard. Where there should have been only the night’s thick black silence, there were voices rising in anger. Raggedly, losing their haste, the nuns stopped, turning toward the noise, startled.

  “Outlaws!” Sister Amicia whispered. “They’re breaking in! We’ll all be raped!”

  This might have started a panic among the nuns, except that Dame Alys likewise broke the rule of silence. “Hold!” she bellowed, and such was her authority, and volume, that the nuns froze in place.

  Sister Fiacre made the sign for church and began to push herself feebly against the nuns in her way. But one of them was Dame Alys, an
d she was not to be moved. Her large, steadfast presence was a rock against which the tide of frightened women broke uselessly.

  Dame Claire raised her hand in signal to Frevisse, who nodded, and the two stepped the other way down the cloister walk toward the gate that led to the courtyard. Dame Alys watched them go with such concentration that the others began to notice the direction of her gaze and, seeing two nuns who were not afraid—who were in fact moving toward the danger—their own courage was restored. Only then did Dame Alys begin to lead them toward the church in a silent, orderly procession.

  As Frevisse and Dame Claire reached the outer door, it was clear from the noise that whatever was happening was directed at the older guesthall, not at the cloister door. As Frevisse reached for the latch, the voices rose in a kind of animal triumph. Dame Claire crossed herself. By the sound of it, there were going to be people hurt. Frevisse lifted the latch and went out.

  Confused for a moment in the suddenness of torchlight, she paused. There were perhaps a dozen men struggling in a knot outside the old guesthall door. Some were carrying torches whose spasmed light jerked and flared and hid almost as much as it showed as the men wrestled and struck at something in their midst. Only one of them she recognized surely—Roger Naylor, the steward. At the edge of the melee, he was trying to drag men back, yelling at them to stop.

  Frevisse grabbed her skirts out of her way and crossed the courtyard at a deft-footed run, adding her voice to Naylor’s. “Stop this! You’ve no right here! Stop it!”

  She was unheeded, but as if spurred on by her presence, Naylor shoved in among the men, dragging first one and then another back from their violence until he was wedged well in among them, still shouting for them to stop. Frevisse tried to follow. These were village men; once they knew she and Naylor were there, they would stop. But they were too furious to notice anything but their goal, struggling against each other toward the center where more men were bent down holding and striking at someone under them.

  Naylor drove a hard fist sideways into the ribs of a man to his left. The man, clutching a torch, reeled backwards. Frevisse caught at his elbow, shoving it up to keep the fire from her face, and shook him, demanding, “How dare you come here like this?”

  The man gaped at her, seeing in a single glance who and what she was, then jerked free and backed off, throwing the torch to the cobbles before he turned and ran blundering off into the darkness.

  “Naylor!” she called. “Are you all right?”

  Naylor was too busy to reply. He dragged another man back by his tunic neck, pushed him aside, and grabbed for a third. The first man, staggering to balance, went snarling at Naylor’s back. Frevisse stepped forward and kicked hard at his knee. Her swing, shortened by her skirt, staggered him without bringing him down and he swung around on her furiously, fist rising. Frevisse flung up her arm but fright doused his anger before he struck. He pushed back from her, mumbling, “Pardon, lady, pardon.” He turned to run, shouting, “Look, men! The nuns are come!”

  “And you might take note of Master Naylor, too,” Frevisse said acidly, unheard.

  Distracted, the men began pulling back from their victim, helped by Naylor’s final shoves and curses. “It’s enough, damn you,” he snarled. “Pull back. You’ve done enough.”

  “More than enough,” Dame Claire said. Frevisse was suddenly aware that Dame Claire was directly behind her. Now with a reined anger and unshaken nerves, the infirmarian went in among the men. They readily yielded to her passing, and she went to her knees beside the man they had been pummeling.

  At her voice he warily uncurled from the ball he had made of himself. Naylor grabbed a torch from someone and held it for Dame Claire to see him better.

  Frevisse, with dismay, recognized Ellis.

  But he seemed little hurt. A smear of blood from some cut hidden in his hair was trailing down his cheek in front of his ear, and he was holding one hand to the back of his head and the other to his ribs, but he looked up at Dame Claire with a grimace and said, “Thank God there were so many of them. They might have made a competent job of it otherwise.”

  “Let me feel,” Dame Claire ordered, pulling his hand away from his side.

  Frevisse, leaving her to it, turned savagely on the men around her. “So what do you mean, coming like this, laying hands on a guest of the priory?”

  The man who had nearly hit her, squarely built, with a blunt face and blunter manners, said, “He’s stabbed young Sym. We come to get him ’fore he can be away.”

  “You pursued him even into here?”

  “Pursued be damned,” Ellis said. He winced from Dame Claire’s probing at his ribs. “They dragged me out of the guesthall. Where I’ve been since well before sundown and nowhere near this Sym.”

  “It were a player done it. His mam said so. Said he said so. And it’s you he fought with this morning,” the man said.

  “That doesn’t mean I did it.” Ellis flinched as Dame Claire parted his hair to find his wound. “I haven’t left here tonight and I’ve not been stabbing anyone.”

  “No,” Joliffe said with dispassionate arrogance. “But I probably did.”

  He was standing in the guesthall doorway, with darkness behind him and the red flare of torchlight in front, catching and losing his finally drawn features as he added, as if lightly amused, “But you all came in so sudden and grabbed so quick without saying why, you never gave me chance to say, did you?”

  “You bench-bred cur—” the blunt-faced man said, starting to move toward him.

  Roger Naylor stepped in front of the man, facing Joliffe, and said the same thing that was in Frevisse’s mind. “So what do you mean, saying a fool thing like it was ‘probably’ you who stabbed him? You don’t look drunk enough to not know whether you knifed a man or not.”

  “I’m not drunk at all,” Joliffe answered. Frevisse had seen his mouth tighten at the villager’s insult but his voice was still as casual as before. Only the glint in his eyes was dangerous, telling her he knew exactly what he was doing in drawing the men off Ellis to himself. “I went to that little rathole of an alehouse but I’d hardly sat myself down when this Sym of yours decided he didn’t want me there. I never had chance to drink.”

  “And why would he be minding you there, if it was this fellow here he fought with today?” Naylor demanded, gesturing at Ellis.

  “Maybe because of the girl I was sitting by. She didn’t mind but he did.”

  Ellis, ducking away from Dame Claire’s probing fingers, said indignantly, “That’s why you were so set on going? That’s what you did while I was laying him out this morning? Arranged to meet her there?”

  Joliffe shrugged. “She said she’d be there. Said she’d not mind if I came. So I went.”

  “But Sym objected,” Frevisse said.

  “Very much.” Joliffe matched her dry tone. “And he’d had ale enough to make up for what I never had a chance to drink. He wouldn’t take talking to, not by me or the girl, and when I went to leave he came for me.”

  “So you drew your dagger in defense,” Naylor said.

  “I never drew my dagger at all. There wasn’t time. He had his knife out when he came for me, and I grabbed his wrist and kept hold if it, that’s all. We lurched around and fell over a bench, twisting as we went so he was on the bottom. I sprang clear, told some of his friends they’d best hold him there until I was gone, and I left.”

  “And came back here,” Naylor said.

  Joliffe hesitated, then agreed, “And came back here.”

  “Or lay in wait to knife him in the dark!” someone yelled from the crowd.

  “I could have,” Joliffe returned as loudly. “Only I didn’t.”

  “Easy to say!” someone else yelled. Drawn off Ellis, they were stilling wanting vengeance and Joliffe would do as well as any other stranger. Frevisse eased sideways around someone, meaning to put herself between them and Joliffe. But Naylor moved more openly, stepping directly out into the space between him and the villa
gers, and said in a voice as roused with anger as their own, “And understand that talk is all that’s going to happen until we’ve had a chance to ask Sym himself. Were any of you at the alehouse, to say if what he’s said so far is true?”

  With a grumble and shuffle, six of the men showed they had been there.

  “So,” Naylor demanded, “did it happen the way he says? Sym drew on him and they fought and fell and then he left?”

  The men shifted and looked at one another, twitched elbows at each other’s ribs, until finally one of them said, “Aye. That was the way of it. Just like he says.”

  Frevisse was at Naylor’s side now, between the crowd and Joliffe, a naked place to be, the small torch-glared space between one man and the crowding, anger-harshened faces, but she set her voice bold as Naylor’s to ask, “So was Sym’s knife still in Sym’s hand when he got up?”

  One of the three men caught her thought. “That’s right. He still had it. He put it back in its sheath. I remember.”

  General nods from the others agreed with him.

  “So whatever happened, if he was hurt then, it was an accident,” Frevisse said, “and of Sym’s making.”

  There was nodding to that, too, through the whole crowd; but then the blunt-faced man said, “So it was maybe afterwards, in the dark outside, he did it.”

  The crowd readily grumbled back toward anger. Frevisse swiftly turned to Joliffe and said, “So tell us where you truly were after you left the alehouse. You didn’t come straight here.”

  She was guessing but already knew Joliffe’s face well enough to read, despite his control of it, that she had guessed right. Knowing only he could see her own expression, she willed him to understand it might be his life to answer her rightly; and maybe Naylor’s and Ellis’s lives, too. She and Dame Claire were almost surely safe enough; they would only be dragged aside if it came to fighting again; but she thought Naylor was not the kind of man to leave him to the crowd unfought for, and Ellis was already in the middle of it.