The outlaw's tale (16 page)

While Maud spread the cloth out again and set to cutting, and Lovie left with her pile of folded linen, Frevisse and Mistress Payne sat down to the mending.  The brief shower had passed; sunlight made fickle play among the clouds and sent random beams through the windows.  Mistress Payne sorted through her skeins of thread and passed one to Frevisse that most nearly matched Bartholomew's blue tunic.

“Not that matching colors matter, either," she said.  “He usually has his clothing covered in dirt very soon after putting them on.  But one feels obliged to try."

“Were all your sons so lively when they were young?"

“None of them so lively as Bartholomew, I must needs say."  Mistress Payne's customary fluttering uncertainty was replaced by pleasure when she spoke of her children.  “Edmund was nearest.  He was the eldest and we meant him to follow his father, but I think he would eventually have gone a-soldiering instead.  He could never hear enough of the French war.  He had the heart of a lion.  He loved adventuring.  Just like Bartholomew."  Her face shone for a moment with deeply remembered affection; then her smile quavered and she blinked rapidly and bent over her sewing.  “But one can't always win against fevers, and now Edward is our eldest."

To help her move away from memory of her loss, Frevisse said, “He seems quite scholarly.  Magdalen tells me he's to be a lawyer."

“Indeed, yes.  None of the others have his bent for learning.  He loves it.  I thought for a while he might enter the Church, but he says he has no time for playing churchmen's games, for mocking God with pretended prayers while living a worldly life."  Mistress Payne suddenly realized who she was talking to.  “Oh!  Your pardon, please!"

Frevisse smiled reassuringly, with honest amusement.  “No pardon is needed for your son's very accurate observation of all too many churchmen."

Mistress Payne gave her a friendly, puzzled little frown.  “You're far easier to talk with than I–"  She blushed again, ducked lower over her sewing, and said hastily, “Yes, Edward is very good with words.  Not that he isn't brave, mind you.  He and Edmund used to have terrible fights and neither of them would back off a step.  Sir Perys used to have to beat them apart with his rod.  I did hate that.  Thank goodness Richard is a more peaceable sort.  Nothing puts him in a temper.  Or almost nothing.  Richard will follow his father and become a steward.  He has a good head for that, though not at all for scholarship."

Led on by Frevisse's questions, Mistress Payne chatted on happily about her children and her household.  Some of it Frevisse had already learned from Magdalen or Bess or Lovie; most seemed of very little use, and when she had finished with the tunic she was thinking how to go about her business elsewhere when Mistress Payne said, “So even with times so hard this year, we can't think of turning out any of our people.  They're loyal to us and we are to them.  And of course we try to help all we can, even if they're not of the household.  Just yesterday I was out to the Wilcox cottage to see if there was anything I could do for the mother.  She's down with a flux.  I was going to send one of the women with soup, but decided I should go myself."  Mistress Payne shook her head sadly.  “I fear it's going to be the worst for her."

Keeping her voice even, Frevisse asked, “When did you go?"

“Yesterday."

“Morning or afternoon?"

“Why, just after–"  Mistress Payne broke off, her face a confusion of expressions.  “Why, just after Master Colfoot was here," she said, more slowly than she had begun.  “Oliver was so angered I thought I would go then and everything would be settled when I returned.  I must have been at the Wilcox's when Master Colfoot was - killed."

She looked as pale as if she had witnessed the murder itself.  Frevisse knew that for kindness's sake she should change the subject, but she said instead, “Did you go alone?"

“Oh no, of course not."  It was improper, as well as dangerous, for a woman to travel the roads unescorted; Iseult was vaguely surprised that Frevisse felt a need to ask such a question.  “Jack went with me.  I wanted Adam, because he's bigger and bolder, but he was gone somewhere.  Isn't it just dreadful when something like this happens?  We loathed the man, and even now none is truly sorry he's dead.  I just wish the crowner would hurry and come, so his people can take him away from our holding."

“I heard the men saying they doubt the sheriff and crowner will be here before tomorrow," Maud put in.

“Oh no!" Mistress Payne exclaimed.  And that set off a discussion of royal officials, who were underfoot when you wished they were three shires away and never to hand when you wanted them.  Since this was not to her point, Frevisse made her excuses and went away.

Alone for a few moments on the stairs, Frevisse paused to consider.  Judging by the number of people who seem to have hated Colfoot, the main question of who wanted him dead had too many answers, but for just here and now, who were the possibilities?  Master Payne perhaps, because Colfoot had threatened him through Magdalen.  And because he had a temper that was feared even by his wife.  Magdalen herself, in fear of Colfoot's threat to marry or ruin her.  And most clearly Nicholas because Colfoot had come between him and Magdalen and was a danger to his pardon.  How much would her cousin dare to win his pardon, she wondered.  Or Adam, in revenge for what Colfoot had done to Beatrice.

She closed her eyes in contemplation.  Magdalen must be innocent; she had been in her room, had had no chance to strike at Colfoot.  Unless she had asked someone else to do it.  If so it would have had to have been when she returned to the house, between pulling free from Colfoot and entering her room; or else while she was on her way to her brother or returning from him when he first summoned her after Colfoot had left.  Who could she have asked?  One of the serving men surely.  Probably Adam or Jack since Tam was usually in the barn.  But possibly Tam, if he had happened to be where she could speak to him.

Frevisse could not find any of that very likely, but there were other reasons for learning where each of the men had been.  Magdalen was not the only one who could have asked them to kill Colfoot. Master Payne was much more likely and would have had more chance to speak to them, and maybe they were loyal enough to the family to do as he asked.

So she also needed to know where he had been after Colfoot had left.  And did he merely have knowledge, or did he help in Nicholas's extortions?  Or was Nicholas extorting from
him
?  And how many others in the Payne household knew what Nicholas actually was?

She would also greatly like to know where Nicholas had gone after he left Magdalen in the orchard.  Had he waited close by for some word from her?  If he had, Magdalen could have sent one of her women to tell him.  Bess had been in the room all afternoon, hadn't she?  But not Maud.  Warned by Maud, or some other of the women, Nicholas could have gone after Colfoot and killed him, for his own sake as well as Magdalen's.  Why had Magdalen been looking out the window all yesterday afternoon if not for some sign from her lover?

But there was no way short of talking to Nicholas to find most of that out.  And no chance of talking to him.  The best she could hope for was to find out where Maud had been.  But Maud was still with Mistress Payne, so that would have to wait.

She considered searching out Master Payne then, to ask him directly about his relationship with Nicholas.  But she suspected he might not approve of her interest or her questions.  So maybe she had best wait to speak with Master Payne until she had finished with everyone else.  She went on down the stairs and into the kitchen.

It was a long room, with a wide fireplace and a bake oven built into one end wall, shelved aumbries, their doors weighty with locks, and two massive work tables down its center.  Various bundles of herbs and onions hung from the rafters, and the whole room was warm with cooking heat and dinner smells.  The cook and his kitchen boy were at the farther table, the boy grinding something in a mortar, the cook brooding over his shoulder as if it were gold they were assaying.  Neither even glanced up at her.

But as she had hoped, given the drizzling day and the fact that she had seen them nowhere else around the house, Mistress Payne's other maidservant and Jack and Adam were gathered around the nearer table.  There was always something anyone could turn their hand to in a kitchen as an excuse to be warm and in company, and they were all justifiably busy.  Jack was washing rhubarb that, judging by its fresh mud and his damp feet, had just been brought in from the garden.  The maidservant was unleafing and slicing it into small bits in a large bowl.  Adam was sitting with a whetstone, sharpening an array of kitchen knives laid out on the table beside him.

They all looked up and acknowledged her coming, Adam starting to rise to his feet respectfully.  Frevisse waved him back down.

“I'm simply weary of keeping to Mistress Dow's chamber, and Mistress Payne is busy, so I thought I'd see if there were company and talk here," she said with disarming friendliness.

“Oh, aye, here's good company," Jack said cheerfully.  “Better than being out in the rain anyways."

Both he and the maidservant seemed in good humor.  They chatted with her easily about her journeying and the other nun’s health, and in low voices were mildly rude about the cook, claiming that he never thought of aught but food and, if he had the means, he'd be as wide as his own kitchen.

“But it never looks good to a master to have too fat a cook – it means the cook is eating more and better than he is," Jack said.  “I'd have been a cook if my family could have apprenticed me anywhere."

“You'd not," the maidservant protested.  “What would you want to do that for?"

“Why would I want to be warm and dry and with all I want to eat?  Occasionally greasy and yelled at maybe, but I'm yelled at anyway.  And mud's as bad as grease."  He gestured at his boots.  He had wiped them off, but they were still well along to be being ruined with old mud as well as new.  “Just try in this weather to keep them clean," he grumbled.  “Yesterday I'd just come back with Mistress Payne and cleaned them off and had to turn around to go fetch bastard Colfoot's body - asking your pardon, my lady – and mire myself to the knees again.  Pity he couldn't have found a drier place to die."

“You're not the only one," Adam said.  He had hardly spoken.  The steady whet-wheet of his knives sharpening had made a background to their talk.  Now he spoke bitterly.  “And you're not the one who's had to clean not only your own but Master Payne's and young master’s boots as well."

“You'd not have had to clean yours so much if you'd not gone off daft to the village in the morning and put yourself in such a stomping temper," Jack returned.  “And for a broken-nosed whore at that.  Begging your pardon, my lady," he added as Adam rose up from his chair with clenched fists and reddening face.

“Mind your tongue about Beatrice!" he growled.

"How does she?" Frevisse interposed.  “I heard she was fearfully hurt."

Adam fought between his anger at Jack and the need to give her a civil reply.  Civility and his desire to talk of Beatrice won.  He rubbed a rough hand over his blunt face and sent a last glare at Jack.  “She looks worse than she is, Old Nan hopes.  We thought maybe she was broken inside as well as battered all over her face and ribs, but seems not.  She's hurting less today anyway."

“You were there again this morning?" the maidservant asked disbelievingly.

Adam cast her a warning look.  “I had to know.  No one else but me and Old Nan care a farthing for her."

“And she's doing better?" Frevisse prompted.

“We think so.  The bruises look fearful but the cuts are likely to heal clean.  Only..."  He was caught between need to talk about her and the pain of what he had seen.  “Only he did things to her that aren't going to mend back to where she was."

“They say her beauty's gone," the maidservant said gently.

Adam bent over whetstone and knife again.  “Her looks won't be what they were.  But she'll still be Beatrice."

Frevisse saw Jack's face twist toward a rude comment before he thought better of it.  Adam looked up at her across the table.  “She's had a bad life, my lady, but her heart is good.  She's been as good as life would let her.  Now, if she'll let me, I'll make it better for her."

Jack could not hold himself in on that one.  “You dafter!  You haven't gone and promised her anything, have you?"

Adam's heavy features thickened with sullen stubbornness.  “We talked yesterday.  She was all crying after that forester fellow left her.  Much he cares.  He browbeat her into telling who'd done it to her and then went off in a rage without so much as a kind word to her.  But I listened to her, and then she listened to me.  Right through to dinner time I sat with her.  And I'm glad Colfoot's killed or I'd have to do it myself.  But he's maybe done a good turn in his life after all, not meaning to."  He transferred his glare from his work to Jack and said, “So at least I came by my morning mud honestly walking somewhere.  You rode with Mistress Payne and had no business being mired past the ankles the way you were when you came home."

“Here now," Jack exclaimed, slapping down a wet rhubarb stalk on the tabletop.  “You think I spent my time kicking my heels in the doorway there?  The place stank of bowels - God save the woman–"  He crossed himself.  So did Frevisse and the others; the flux could kill as quickly as fevers did.  “–so I went off to see if the rain had drowned out the winter wheat in Over Field yet."

“Has it?" the maid servant asked.  How well they ate next winter would depend on how well the crops grew.

“Not yet.  But we'd better have more dry weather soon, and for longer than two days at a stretch."

“Which way is that from here?" Frevisse asked casually.

“Go to the village and turn right between Tompson's and Lame Bet's, south on that track you come to Wilcox's.  Over Field's beyond there a way."

No one seemed to wonder why she asked.  Frevisse had long since noticed that most folk felt what interested them surely should interest everyone else.  “Opposite the way Colfoot went and was killed," she said.