The Clerk’s Tale (2 page)

She was openly bewildered at all of it and behind her the maidservant wringing hands in apron was going to be of no help either, it seemed, but with something of the matter explained, Domina Elisabeth let go of her impatience, her skill at smoothing where there was trouble coming to the fore as she said, soothingly now, “What you mean to say is that the widow is to have the guest chamber that was to be mine. Is that it?”

The girl was grateful for the help. “Yes, please you. With her husband being dead here, that seemed the kindest thing to do. But please, I beg your pardon for it, my lady.”

‘No need of pardon. She should have what comfort she may at a time like this. Your hosteler“—the nun in charge of the nunnery’s guests and guesthall—”surely has somewhere for Dame Frevisse and myself to be, once she has chance to see to us. In the meanwhile is there somewhere we can wait besides on horseback and here in the yard?“

‘Oh!“ The girl’s pink flourished into embarrassed red. ”I’m sorry. Of course there is.“ But the turning of her head from side to side betrayed she had no thought where it might be, until she abruptly brightened and offered, ”Your cousin. Would you like to see your cousin? I can take you to her. She’s in the infirmary. You could be at ease and in quiet and with her while everything is settled.“

‘That would do very well.“ Domina Elisabeth smiled on the girl. ”And our men and horses may go to the stable. Bartelme, see to everything here.“

The yard was still a confusion of people, horses, and baggage being sorted out, no hope of easily riding through them; dismounting, leaving their men and horses to be seen to the stable by the maidservant, Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse followed the girl through the crowding and past the steps to a further door that, opened by the novice, let them into a low-ceilinged, stone-floored passageway beyond it. Frevisse paused to swing the door closed behind them, shutting out beyond the thick oak planking the fluster of noise from the yard and with a murmured prayer of thanks for the cloister-quiet, followed the other two through the passage and into the square cloister walk that, just as at St. Frideswide’s, was surrounded on three sides by nunnery buildings, on the fourth by the church, and opened on its inner side over a low stone wall into a winter-barren garden that in spring, summer, and autumn would surely be bright with flowers and herbs, a haven of color and scents in the heart of the nunnery but for now merely part of the gray-brown winter-world. Two nuns hurried past with arms full of folded linens and sidelong looks to which the novice gave a nod as she led Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse the other way along the walk. The savory waft of cooking smells told the kitchen was nearby and through an open doorway Frevisse caught brief sight of long tables in a room that must be the refectory.

It was past there, at the next turning of the walk, that the novice turned aside into another low passageway and, partway along it, knocked slightly at a door and went in without waiting for an answer that would not have come because, following her in, they found no one there, only all the signs that this was the infirmarian’s workroom, familiar and aromatic with hanging bundles of dried herbs and shelves of boxed and stopper-potted medicines, like St. Frideswide’s even to the battered wooden worktable in its middle where the work of making medicines for the nunnery’s needs was mostly done.

‘Sister Joane?“ the novice asked but not as if she expected an answer, adding immediately over her shoulder, ”She’s probably gone to see if the widow is in need of anything.“ She pointed toward a shut door across the room. ”Sister Ysobel is there. I’ll see how she is, tell her you’re here. Then you can go in. You and…“ She looked at Frevisse, hesitating, as if uncertain what was best to do with her.

Feeling the same about herself, Frevisse offered with a nod toward a stool beside the table, “I can wait here. Or…” She looked toward the room’s third door and the bit of sky seen through the small window set high in the wall beside it, suggesting it must lead outside, and she guessed, “Is there a garden? I could walk there, if it’s allowed.”

‘Oh,“ the girl said with relief. ”Yes. You could.“ But they both looked to Domina Elisabeth for final permission and only when she had given it with a nod did the girl add, ”The key is there on that hook just by the door. Mind you leave it there, though. Sister Joane twitches otherwise.“

Frevisse took the thought of an unknown but twitching Sister Joane into the garden with her, the key left carefully behind. She was careful of the door, too, closing it silently, unsure how troubled by noise the dying Sister Ysobel might be, and only when it was safely latched, turned to take a full look at where she was.

St. Frideswide’s did not have the pleasure of a separate infirmary garden; this one would have delighted Dame Claire, their infirmarian. Enclosed on three sides by the nunnery buildings, the fourth side a turf bank topped by a high withy-woven fence, it was shut away from any sight of the world and the world from any sight of it, though somewhere nearby a stream was running with pleasant watery murmur. A graveled walk flanked with herb beds with the clipped skeletons of plants showing above their careful bedding-in of leaves ran around the garden’s four sides, with in the middle of each side a short walk running in toward the center, joining a smaller walk around a little grassy square at the garden’s very center where a young ash tree’s winter-bare branches made a dark fretwork against the pale sky. The intersecting paths divided other herb beds equally closed down for the winter but in the frost-weary grass around the tree were a cheerful scattering of bold and very early snowdrops, their shining white a promise that sometime spring would happen.

Very likely these particular snowdrops would come to grief before long in a seasonable freeze, Frevisse thought, but that only meant they were to be the more enjoyed now, along with the peek of a primrose’s determinedly green leaves at the edge of a bed and the dark swell of buds on the end of the ash tree’s twigs. A January spring might be worth nothing but she could not help preferring it to the bitter cold there might have been and nonetheless did not choose to sit on any of the benches set along the paths but for warmth’s sake and to work out the weariness of riding took her way at much the measured pace she would have used if circling St. Frideswide’s cloister walk, around and through the garden, along one path and into another and back by a different way and around again, making no haste because where was there to haste to?

She was paused to watch the ash tree’s highest branches moving against the sky in a wind that did not reach the garden, when from the unseen tower of the church a bell began to call bright-toned and clear, surely a summons to Nones’ prayers, and she half turned in answer to it before she caught herself. If she had known her way well enough to slip into the church unnoticed, she would have gone but she wasn’t even sure of how to reach the church from where she was, and with the other upsets to the nunnery’s life today, the nuns did not need a strange Benedictine wandering about when their minds should be turned to prayer. When there was time for Domina Elisabeth and her to be made known properly, they would slip into life here easily enough, the differences none so great between life under St. Benedict’s Rule and that of St. Augustine’s that St. Mary’s followed, but in the meanwhile she was better kept out of the way, and as the bell ceased its clear calling began the Office to herself, softly aloud,
“Deus in adjutorium.”
God be my helper. A shortened Office was allowed when out of the nunnery and, her head bowed, she began to walk again while she said it, had finished but was still walking with her head down, still enwrapped in the soul-easing pleasure of prayer, when on the path in front of her a woman said, “There was a man murdered here lately, you know.”

Chapter 2

Frevisse stopped short and raised her head but kept her surprise to herself as she answered, level-voiced, “No, I didn’t know.” The woman in front of her nodded as if pleased to hear it. Elderly but standing straightly, her age-faded eyes bright amongst the deep-set wrinkles of her long-boned face, she pointed with a short, leaf-carved walking staff of polished oak toward the ash tree.

‘Over there. Stabbed to the heart. Four days ago. His clerk found him.“

‘Indeed?“ Frevisse ventured.

‘Indeed. Though I doubt the clerk did it, if that’s what you’re thinking.“ ”I wasn’t.“

‘Ah.“ The woman apparently found that both a surprise and a lack. Though white-wimpled and black-veiled, she was no nun; her gown of dark-dyed green wool with darker-dyed high-standing collar and wide cuffs told that, but while Frevisse had no guess who she might be—not the grieving widow, assuredly—the woman said with complete certainty, ”You’re Sister Ysobel’s cousin. The prioress. Domina Elisabeth.“

Her certainty made Frevisse pleased to answer, “No. She’s with Sister Ysobel.”

‘Ah. Then you are… ?“

‘Dame Frevisse. I companied her here. And you?“ Since questions could go both ways.

‘Lady Agnes Lengley,“ she answered readily enough, with a pause to see if Frevisse found that significant. Frevisse did not and Lady Agnes went on a little more briskly, ”I come sometimes to sit with Sister Ysobel but she’ll enjoy fresh company and I’ll leave them to it for today.“ She jerked the tip of her walking staff toward the ash tree again. ”So if you didn’t know about him, you weren’t praying for him just now?“

‘No.“

‘Pity. He was an unpleasant man. He’s probably in need of prayers.“

She started forward, needing her walking staff a little but not much and clearly expecting Frevisse to join her.

As much for curiosity as courtesy, Frevisse did, tucking her hands up her opposite sleeves and shortening her steps to match the older woman’s, saying, “His widow rode in a little while ago with a great many people.”

‘Ah, yes. I saw that. And probably none of them much caring he’s dead but not about to miss for anything the funeral and the sport of mourning him.“

Dryly Frevisse asked, “He wasn’t much liked?”

‘Liked? Morys Montfort? Not by anyone who knew him as far as I’ve ever heard.“

‘Montfort?“ Frevisse stopped, startled and not hiding it. ”The crowner Montfort? Is that who’s dead?“

Lady Agnes, gone a step onward, stopped and looked back over her shoulder, surprised in her turn. “Yes. That’s him. You knew him?”

‘Somewhat.“ And had not liked him. As crowner he was a royal officer, charged with looking into any sudden deaths, to learn if they were accident or if there was blame, and if there was blame, then to call in the sheriff and collect any fines there might be due to the king. The office carried both power to do good or ill and the chance for profits both just and unjust, and the few times, too many, that Frevisse had had dealings with Master Montfort had not been pleasant. That he was violently dead was neither a surprise nor a distress but she asked, ”Who’s thought to have killed him?“

‘There’s never even a good guess, so far as I’ve heard. Or maybe I mean there are too many guesses.“ Lady Agnes walked on, prodding her walking staff into the gravel. ”He made enough men angry at him over the years he was crowner. Or it was maybe something he’s done since he became escheator. Much good that’s done him.“

‘Escheator?“ Frevisse was again in step at Lady Agnes’s side. ”When did he leave off being crowner?“

‘Last Michaelmas. Well, he was serving under Walter Wythill, who’s properly escheator, but Wythill has been none so well, as Montfort well knew when he agreed to serve him, and so Montfort was seeing to much of his duties these few months past. With an eye to succeeding him, I’d warrant, and hope of going on to be sheriff afterwards, surely. That’s the way it goes, often enough. But that’s all it got him.“ She pointed her staff toward the tree.

Escheator was another royal office, its main duty to determine the lawful heir or heirs of inheritances and see to them having their properties—with due fines paid to the king. As with the crowner, there were profits to be had from the work, but as Lady Agnes said, it was also often a man’s last step to becoming sheriff of a shire, with such wide-reaching power that the thought that Montfort might someday have ranged so high made Frevisse slightly ill, and to cut off the half-made thought that it was better he was dead, she asked, “But what was he doing here in this garden at all?” An unlikely place for any man to be, let alone Montfort.

‘Now that’s a question that’s been asked,“ Lady Agnes said. ”No one knows. As a place to kill someone, it’s private enough, that’s sure.“ She gave a brief look around the garden, as Frevisse already had. To one side there was only the blank, windowless back wall of what Frevisse guessed was a barn or byre. To the other side a single narrow window looked down from high in the gable-end of some cloister building, while from the infirmary there were only two small windows set well up under the eaves, too high for easy looking out of. As for ways into the garden, there was only the door from the infirmary and another through a tall wooden wall across the gap between the infirmary and what she supposed was barn or byre, which raised a question…

‘But who he met here and why he was killed…“ Lady Agnes sniffed disdainfully, as if being killed was an ill-mannered thing to do. ”… no one knows.“

‘He likely had enemies enough,“ Frevisse suggested.

‘In plenty, I’d guess. Nor had he made any friends lately around here, either.“

‘He was in Goring as escheator, then?“

‘He was.“

Lady Agnes’s answer was clipped short enough that Frevisse held back from asking more that way; asked instead, “The inquest is tomorrow, I think I heard. Has the crowner learned anything, do you know?” Whoever was crowner now.