The Clerk’s Tale (38 page)

‘And Mistress Haselden?“ Out of all of it, it seemed to Frevisse she was the one who would suffer beyond her deserving, even allowing for Juliana’s death. ”Must she be put in goal?“

‘Since there’s no likelihood she’s going to run, I’ve placed her under bond. To keep to her own house and do no violence from now until she’s brought to trial. She’ll have her own people to see to her. And Lady Agnes and Master Stephen. He’s to stay with her still. To see her through.“

‘And when she comes to trial?“

‘I’m crowner,“ Christopher said simply. ”I witnessed her murder of Lady Juliana. I’ll testify she was not in her right wits at the time. That she was driven out of them by her grief and the taunting of the woman who had killed her daughter.“

‘Which she was,“ Frevisse said.

‘Beyond doubting. And because she was, she’ll be found innocent of murder. Then it will be for her lawyer to prove she’s recovered from her madness. Once that’s done, she’ll be allowed her dower lands. She’ll have at least that much to live on. Even if all else the Haseldens hold is forfeited because of her husband’s guilt.“

Leaving Mistress Haselden with a life patched together out of the ruin other people had made around her. It was better than no life at all—but nothing could give her back her daughter.

‘And Master Haselden?“

Christopher’s voice hardened. “I’ll do all I can to see that he hangs.”

There was dark determination in that but a deeper darkness lay behind it, shadow of a thought Frevisse had already had, and she asked, “You think there’s chance Lord Lovell will plead a pardon for him?”

Christopher nodded. “In Haselden’s mind my father’s death was as much for Lord Lovell’s good as for his own. Lord Lovell, however much he’ll decry the murder, will likely see it the same way. He’s almost sure to see Haselden is pardoned.”

‘Even for outright murder?“

‘Even for anything, the way things are now. Ten years ago, five years ago, he wouldn’t have. Not for Haselden or anyone else except his own blood. But with the way things are shaping around the king, no lord is going to lose that loyal a follower. For any reason. Not if he can help it.“ Christopher straightened from the wall and leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped tightly together. ”Not that anyone will greatly care if…
when
Haselden is pardoned. Considering who he killed.“

Frevisse could only, silently, admit that that was all too likely true. Master Montfort had worked too long and hard at caring about nothing except himself for anyone to care that he was gone. So she was taken by surprise to hear herself say, very quietly, “I’ll care.”

Both Christopher and Master Gruesby straightened to stare at her and, disbelieving, Christopher asked what was on both their faces. “Why?”

Frevisse paused, searching out her answer, before saying, “Because it was an unjust death. If it isn’t answered with justice, then the unjustness grows. Once that begins— the bypassing of justice for whatever reasons we may find good in the moment—the law fails, and where will any of us be then except in chaos and danger?” She paused again, then added, “And you’ll care.”

‘Will I?“ Christopher said bitterly. ”I neither liked nor trusted my father. I don’t want him back, any more than anyone else does. I’m willing for Mistress Haselden to go free. Why should I care if my father’s murderer does too?“

‘Because Mistress Haselden truly was wrought out of her right mind by grief and pain when she killed Juliana. When Master Haselden killed your father, he did it coldly, willingly, with thought beforehand. You’ll care if he goes free because…“ Frevisse stopped, her eyes on Christopher’s face, leaving it for him to finish his answer.

And after a moment he did, simply and unbitterly. “Because, as you say, where will we be if law fails us? Truth and law. What else can we build our lives on?”

‘On love,“ Frevisse said as simply. ”Without it, what use is there in truth and law?“

‘But there’s Love and then there’s love, isn’t there?“ Christopher said back. ”That woman. Stephen’s mother. She probably said that everything she did was from love.“

She probably had, petty and ill-founded though her loves had been. Frevisse had thought of her now and again since yesterday—a nun who had broken her vows for the sake of satisfying her body’s lusts—and prayed for her, too, the more so because Frevisse doubted that even at the last the woman’s love had been unselfish. She might well have written that letter to Stephen out of either desire to leave him the truth or for love of him but equally likely she had written it because she had been dying and frightened and had not wanted to go unknown and unremembered into the dark. But despite of that and despite all the petty loves to which women and men both could sink, twisting lives out of their right shape the way Juliana had twisted her own and those around her, the Love that was more than all that, the Love that was more than the flesh, was still there.

And Christopher with an impatient, wordless, aching sound rubbed at his forehead with both hands, and said, “I’m muddled and tired. And wrong. It isn’t love that’s at fault. It’s us and all the ill uses we put love to.” And in the way of someone too tired to hold his mind to its course, he turned suddenly to Master Gruesby and demanded, “Come to that, speaking of truth, why did you hold back that letter all these days?”

Large-eyed behind his spectacles, Master Gruesby stared at him, then dropped his gaze, fumbled at and slipped loose their ribbons from around his ears, took the spectacles off, looked surprised to find he was holding them, put them back on, and said toward his knees, “Master Montfort ordered me to leave it where it had been until he asked for it again.”

‘But when he was dead,“ Christopher said, ”why didn’t you give it over? To me or to anyone?“

Master Gruesby looked from one side to the other as if the answer might be lying on the floor there, huddled his shoulders in a shrug, and said nothing. It was Frevisse who answered for him, impatient at Christopher for not seeing it and at Master Gruesby for not saying it. “Because Master Montfort had told him to keep it until he asked for it again, and he’s been so used to obeying what Master Montfort ordered at him for years that even with Montfort dead, he went on obeying him. What Montfort had told him to do, he did.”

Christopher turned to Master Gruesby. “Was that it?”

‘I was his clerk,“ Master Gruesby said softly, as if that were answer enough; and for him it probably was.

‘Then why give the letter to Master Stephen after all?“

Master Gruesby looked past him to Frevisse, maybe hoping she would save him again from having to answer it himself, but she could not. She had guessed at this unreasoning obedience to Montfort from what little she had ever noticed about Master Gruesby over the years and seen of him lately, but as to why he had given the letter to Stephen…

And then, suddenly, briefly but for long enough, she saw not the differences there were between herself and Master Gruesby but where they were near to alike—two people who lived more inside themselves than out and had found their ways to the place they needed to be and held to it as strongly as they could. And although it was Christopher she answered, it was at Master Gruesby she said, “I think the answer to that is Master Gruesby’s matter and none of ours. But partly it was because he’s done being your father’s clerk and is ready to be yours.”

‘Mine?“ Christopher looked sharply around at Master Gruesby, who looked back at him, steady for once, and after a moment Christopher said again, ”Mine,“ but without question now.

And something lighted in Master Gruesby’s eyes that was as near to a smile as Frevisse ever expected to see from him, before he bent his head and said toward the floor. “Yes, sir.”

Frevisse stood up and, perforce, so did both men, as she said, “By your leave, I have a promise to keep elsewhere.”

They bowed to her, Christopher saying, “Of course, my lady,” Master Gruesby saying nothing, his eyes down as she turned away from them toward the door through the rood screen, into the choir. Domina Elisabeth was with Sister Ysobel and both of them were waiting for her to tell them what she could of these past few days and soon she would go to them, but first there were prayers she must say. At Montfort’s grave.

Author’s Note

Some degree of circumlocution in describing Master Gruesby’s behavior has been necessary because in medieval English “nerves” referred to ligaments and sinews and to say someone was “nervous” meant they were strong-bodied. Therefore, Master Gruesby is never “nervous,” except on one occasion when, in the medieval sense, he is actually unnerved.

Although the fine grinding of lenses had not been perfected by the 1400s, spectacles—“eyeglasses” and “glasses” are later terms—can be seen in paintings of the time and at least one will of the 1400s refers to silver-rimmed spectacles.

As for using a plea of insanity to clear someone of murder, such a plea was indeed recognized in medieval English law, though in the thirteenth century’s
On the Laws and Customs of England,
Bracton warns that careful ward should be made against people claiming madness in order to take advantage of the law. Ah, yes, some things do stay the same.

The type of dagger used to kill Master Montfort tends to appear in modern reference books as a “kidney dagger.” It seems that Victorian scholars were uncomfortable with the actual medieval name and changed it.

Concerning Lady Agnes’s obvious independence and control of her household and business interests, something should be said about the myth of medieval women as helpless pawns in a male-dominated society structure. By the 1400s, before the Renaissance came to England, women had more legal and economic rights than at any time afterward until the late twentieth century. What uses were made of their possibilities varied according to the individual, just as now, but a competent, well-off widow was expected to run her own life and properties and she expected to have no more interference at it than a man would have. For pleasure as well as information there is
Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages
by ffiona Swaby.

For an actual medieval legal case concerning bastard (or not) heirs there is
The Armburgh Papers,
ed. by Christine Carpenter.

That there are differences between this story and modern Goring in regard to street names and some river topography is accounted for by the passage of over five hundred years and the recent replacing of the medieval ferry by a bridge.

My particular thanks go to Eleanor Simpson of the Goring and Streatley Local History Society and Mary Carr of Goring (website:
[email protected]
), who provided me information about medieval Goring and its nunnery that I would not have come by otherwise.