Servant’s Tale Read online

  “ ‘Welcome, wife, into this boat,”“ Frevisse quoted. ”And then she hits him. No, I don’t recall that from the Bible.“

  “Ah!” Ellis pointed an accusing finger. “That’s from the Chester plays. You’ve mixed your sources, scholar!”

  “Only after one of you did!” Frevisse returned. They all laughed, a friendly exchange that swept away any last constraints.

  “A well-traveled lady,” Bassett said with interest. “Unless you’ve somehow come by copies of the plays?”

  “No copy but mine own memory, I fear,” Frevisse answered.

  “And how did you come by that, pray tell?” Joliffe asked.

  “I wasn’t born a cloistered nun. There was a time when St. Christopher was of more use to me than St. Simon Stylites.” Frevisse had meant to say it blithely, to match Joliffe’s tone, and was a little disconcerted to hear a sad edge to her voice.

  “So what brought you into the cloister after all?” Joliffe asked.

  “There are less fleas here than in other places I could name.”‘ A flippant answer because a serious one did not seem appropriate.

  They laughed again, and Bassett said, “You must have stayed in some of the same inns we have.”

  “There was one inn,” Ellis offered, “where the guests were crowded so many to a bed that the fleas had perforce to sleep on the floor.”

  “And since that wasn’t comfortable for them, they stayed awake all night, biting us,” Joliffe added. He had pulled an apple from a bag beside his stool and cut a slice from it. He held the piece out to Frevisse. “But such talk can’t be seemly for a nun, however well traveled.”

  “Perhaps the lady came to a nunnery to escape the roads,” suggested Bassett. “The English roads are a shame to a Christian country.”

  “The worst road I ever traveled,” Frevisse said, suddenly remembering, “was in Yorkshire, I think. Or thereabouts. It had been raining…”

  “It’s weather more than the inns giving sorrow to us who travel,” said Ellis.

  But Frevisse was not to be turned from her reminiscence. “It was raining enough that the road was puddled from one side to the other in places, and ahead of us as we came riding along was a larger puddle than most. It had a large hump in the middle of it, like an island, and a man squatted down on the edge, looking all discouraged. Only when we reached him did we realize the hump in the puddle was his horse. They’d fallen into a hole so deep the horse could not stand but must swim to exhaustion, and the edges were so slippery it could not climb out, and there we found them, disconsolate rider and drowned horse.”

  “Brickmakers,” Bassett said. “Digging their clay out of the high road.” Frevisse nodded. “Was your road maybe in Lincolnshire? That’s where it’s bad right now, with Lord Cromwell set to have his place all made of bricks.”

  “And nobody able to make complaint because who around there is going to gainsay Lord Cromwell.” Ellis said.

  “Nobody between there and the royal court,” Bassett said. “And probably nobody even there.”

  “‘When even gold will rust, what then will iron do?”’ Joliffe sighed. “Ah, for the good old days when law was law and men obeyed it.”

  “From what I’ve heard of times back even to Adam and Eve, there was many a man who dared disobey the law,” Bassett said comfortably. “So sing all you like, I won’t play fiddle to that tune.”

  Joliffe made a rude gesture at him, which Bassett would not dignify with any notice.

  Ellis said, “Has it been so long since you were a traveler, my lady? Could you still tell London ale if you tasted it?”

  “There was a time I could tell it from the ale of King Arthur’s Inn near Bristol, if both were fresh. But now I think the ale we make right here is very suitable to me.”

  “Bristol is outside our circuit so I wouldn’t be knowing about King Arthur’s ale,” Bassett said, “but I mind me there’s an inn near Nottingham…”

  And they were away. Inns, abbeys, priories, towns. Time might change some things—there was some talk before they agreed that what Frevisse remembered as The Archer between Northampton and Stony Stratford was now The Green Man, though the food was still the best in the county, even though the fat man who owned it when Frevisse was there had to be the father of the fat man who owned it now—but it seemed traveling the old roads did not change that much, or travelers’ stories.

  Good days’ travel to remember—“So warm and the road so easy, I fell asleep walking behind the cart and bumped my nose into it when it stopped,” Rose said.

  “And wouldn’t speak to us the rest of the day because we all laughed at her,”‘ said Joliffe, laughing all over again.

  “Hush, you’ll wake Piers,” said Rose, stifling her own laughter.

  They dropped their voices but went on talking, of other roads, other inns, other towns.

  “We’d have been no wetter under a tree than in that barn.”

  “And there wouldn’t have been the rats.”

  “That manor’s owner is so mean he grudges you the use of the dust you walk on as you pass his gate.”

  “I remember the time we took a shortcut through a field of wheat, and the hayward caught us, and fined us our hoods for trespassing—”

  Rose joined in the least, and her comments were brief, but Frevisse noticed she listened closely all the while and smiled the deep and private smile of someone happy where she was, though her hand never left her son’s chest, resting there lightly, as if counting his breaths. The rest of them were deep into comparing palmers they had met—the good, the bad, the improbable—when Rose said quietly, “I think his fever has broken.”‘

  She immediately had all the men’s attention. Frevisse was only barely ahead of Bassett in reaching to feel the boy’s forehead. It was damp to her touch, his hair dark along the edge with sweat and little beads of moisture on his upper lip. “Yes,” she agreed. “It’s broken. God be thanked.”

  And suddenly Rose, who had been sitting erect the while, slumped, pale with the exhaustion she had been holding at bay for her boy’s sake. Before even Frevisse understood, Ellis was beside her, an arm around her shoulders, saying, “There, now. Are you satisfied? We’ll have you sick next and you don’t want us trying to care for you, that’s sure. Come lie down and leave the watching to us. You’ll hear if he rouses. Come.”

  Rose gave way to him without protest, let him half lift her to her feet and take her to the straw mattress and blankets that were her bed. He gentled her down into their comfort and covered her. Frevisse thought she was asleep before he had finished.

  Frevisse was suddenly tired herself. How long had they been sitting here talking?

  As if in answer, the cloister bell began to ring, distant but clear. It was time to welcome the dawn with the prayers of Prime. The corpse by the dead hearth on the other end of the room had chilled alone, with no one to watch, no one to pray.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “We thank you for your company. It made our watching easier,” Bassert said.

  Frevisse rose, tucking her hands into her sleeves. She would not admit to these people her sin of neglect. “God’s blessing on you. I’ll return later.”

  As she crossed the room, the outer door opened. By the gray dawn light that came in with the cold draft, she recognized young Hewe. Telling him his father was dead was a task she had not anticipated, but there was no avoiding it now. She went toward him as he closed the door, and reached him before he had moved toward his father’s body.

  He bent his head to her respectfully as she came but then craned his neck to see around her, asking, “Where’s my mam? Isn’t she here? Where’s Da gone?”

  Frevisse started to tell him but he realized what he was seeing before she had the words out.

  “Da?” he asked. His voice was doubtful but as Frevisse took his hand, she knew he knew.

  “He’s dead,” she said gently. “Quietly, in his sleep, a few hours ago.”

  Hewe went on staring
at the blanket-covered body. “Where’s Mam?”

  “I sent her to have some sleep. I’m glad you’re here. I have to go to Prime. You stay here with him until I can come back, or your mother does.” Hewe nodded.

  “And pray by him. You know your prayers?” Hewe nodded again. Tears were beginning to swell in his eyes, and he turned his head away so she wouldn’t see them fall. Frevisse patted his shoulder by way of comfort, and left.

  Chapter 10

  For Meg the day was a thick movement through gray unreality. She knew the things that needed to be done before the wake that night and did them or saw to other people doing them with an efficiency in which her mind and feelings took very little part. At the very start she had sent Hewe to the village to tell his brother and ask some of the men for help in taking Barnaby’s body home. She had known the word would spread then without her needing to say more, and she was ready as she and Hewe and Sym came with the slow procession of Barnaby’s body to her house for the women waiting to help her with the rest. She had helped often enough at other deaths—her parents’ and her children’s and her neighbors‘—to know she would not be left alone to the work of washing and readying Barnaby’s body.

  Her only hesitation had been over what would be his shroud, and then decided the older blanket would be enough. Ada Bychurch sewed up its two holes willingly, and then they wrapped him in it before laying him out on the bed for his last rest at home before he would go to his grave. They left his face uncovered and set the customary little bowl of salt on his chest.

  The women helped her clean the house. They would have insisted that she simply sit and let them do it, but knew that time to sit and think was not the best thing for her just now.

  She took the task of scrubbing and scouring the table; food and drink would have to be set out on it for the wake, and it must not be a disgrace to her neighbors’ kindness.

  Besides that, there was sympathy to be received, and the telling over to everyone who asked about the accident and Barnaby’s hurts and how quiet his dying had been.

  “And there’s a mercy,” more than one woman said, nodding knowledgeably.

  The food came, as she had known it would. There was never much to spare at this time of year and after the autumn’s bad harvest there was less than usual, but it came. A few withered apples. Two half loaves of bread. Some small cheeses. A pan of roasted turnips. Little by little the gifts came, until at the last there was enough.

  While the daylight lasted the men had been busy digging the grave. The winter’s cold had been set in the ground for so long that there was trouble breaking the frozen soil; and when that was done, down to below the frost line, the men were among the bones of earlier burials that had to be picked out and saved for putting in the half-derelict shed that served as the churchyard’s charnel house. It was warming work but hard, and Sym came in from it cursing his sore shoulders and the cold, then saw the gathering of women around the fire, and went to sulk and rub Nankin on her hard head.

  The men followed soon after, and settled themselves around Sym, talking of death dues to the lord and the poor harvest and of how old Austin had drunk himself to a stupor night before last and never made it home, and it was lucky he’d not frozen to death in the ditch.

  “He was burrowed so deep into the leaves there, his boy Thad nearly didn’t find him even by daylight come the next morning.”

  “It was his snores told me where he was,” Thad grunted. “Nearly cost me my back to haul him home, he was still so thick with ale.”

  There was laughter at that. Thad, being the smith, was as well muscled as a man could be. The women shushed at the men, reminding them why they were there, and talk lapsed to murmuring again. Sometimes one woman or another would come take a turn at sitting beside Meg on the bench, to pat her hand and murmur well-worn, familiar words; but there were no tears, not from Meg or anyone else. Then four or five men addressed the others about Barnaby in words as kind as they were lying, for the sake of the widow.

  And finally it was over. First one woman and then another came to say a final comfort to Meg, collected her man, and went to stand a respectful moment beside the bed before leaving. The smoky light of the rush candles set at head and foot of the bed jerked and flared to the opening and closing of the cottage door. Meg watched as the twitch of light and shadow across Barnaby’s face made his dull features seem to move. It was disquieting to see, as if somehow he had begun to breathe again. When the last guest had gone she rose stiffly from the bench and went to blow out the candles, leaving nothing but the low firelight, which did not reach his face.

  Tomorrow she would have the bed to herself, but tonight it was Barnaby’s, and for an unsettled moment she did not know where she was going to sleep. But then Hewe moved close to her, the blankets rolled under his arm, took hold of her shoulder, and said with uncertain gentleness, “Come on, Mam. It’s late and tomorrow will be as hard. Come on up to the loft with us.”

  She nearly said no, that she would sleep on the floor beside the fire. But it would be warmer in the loft, there in the straw, and her boys nearby.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  The sky was a lowering dark gray. A teethed wind rattled the bare twigs of the ash tree overhanging the churchyard wall near the open grave as Barnaby was carried in his wooden coffin around the churchyard by six of the men. The bell’s flat tolling sounded like a tired housewife banging on a pot bottom as the funeral circled its way properly sunwise from the gateway to the new grave. Father Henry, shivering and hasty, began the words proper to the lowering of the coffin.

  All of this was for the comfort of those left behind to earth’s gray pains and cold, but Meg was not comforted at all, only so tired that she had made Sym walk beside her from the cottage so she could lean on his arm. He had liked that, it made a show of his new place as head of the family. But she also made Hewe walk on her other side, and held his hand all the way.

  So far as Meg knew, Hewe had not cried since his first tears beside his father’s body, but she was sure he was grieving. He had burrowed against her shoulder in his sleep last night and stayed near her all day today, quiet and seeming deep in thought. He was seeing the way the world went, she thought. His father’s dying might be the good thing needed to make him see his way toward the priesthood after all, without her having to fight him on it anymore.

  She was distracted from her thought by Sym’s sudden tensing. She looked up at him to see that he was staring away from the grave and Father Henry toward the far edge of the little group of mourners. Meg looked, too, and saw their neighbor Gilbey Dunn standing there no differently from the rest, his hood in his hands, his head bare and bowed respectfully.

  “Turd-hearted cur!” Sym snarled under his breath.

  He made as if to move toward him but Meg’s fingers clamped onto his arm. “You stand fast!” she hissed. “This is your father’s funeral, not a brawl!”

  “Showing his face here! After the trouble he was to Da, and all!”

  Sym jerked to pull free of her but Meg’s strength was desperate. Heads were beginning to lift to look at them and she said with all the viciousness she could manage, “You stand and you be quiet! Let the sin of it fall on him and don’t go bringing more on yourself! Stand still! Think of your father, not of Gilbey Dunn!”

  Sym fell silent, but Meg felt how tense his arm stayed and knew he kept glancing across to Gilbey instead of heeding what Father Henry had to say.

  Afterward was the funeral feast in the cottage. There was a little more to eat than there had been last night: Domina Edith had sent down a meat pasty from the priory, and Bess from the alehouse brought a bucket of her latest brewing to warm the gathering. With Barnaby safely under ground, the talk became more cheerful.

  But it came to an end soon enough and as they made their farewells and went away, Meg found she was as glad of their going as she suspected they were. She did not even mind Sym and Hewe going away with some of their friends. “For only a little,�
�� Hewe said anxiously, but Meg only nodded at him, letting him go without complaint or bidding them come back soon.

  Then there was no one else. Meg looked around the cottage, a little bemused to find there was nothing that needed doing. There was even leftover food enough that she would not have to bother with cooking supper. Nothing at all to do except rest.

  She lowered herself onto one of the stools. Elbows propped on the table, she leaned her forehead into her hands and shut her eyes. It being winter and the steward elsewhere about his business with Lord Lovel’s properties, it might be weeks before they would know whether Sym was going to be allowed his inheritance. Meg guessed that he would be; the faults had all been his father’s and no matter what she saw in Sym, he had done his share in the village tithing and in the fields since he was twelve years old. He was well grown for his years. With her to help, and Hewe—