The Servant’s Tale (19 page)

“And too short,” Frevisse added. She laid the dagger on Sym’s chest to gauge how deep it would have gone. “Striking from the side, the blade has to go in a fair ways to reach the heart and this is hardly long enough. It wouldn’t reach.” She tucked the dagger out of sight again with concealed relief. Whatever had stabbed Sym, it had not been one of the players’ daggers.

Unless they had others, she forcibly reminded herself. That was still a possibility, though not one easily pursued.

But, her mind insisted, if one of them had deliberately used some other dagger than the one he usually carried to give the deathblow, then the killing had almost surely not been the mere taking advantage of a happenstance; it had been deliberately planned and purposed beforehand. Which was impossible, no one could have known Sym would go home and frighten his mother into seeking help.

So who then might have done it? Someone watching for a chance and ruthless enough to take it.

While she thought, she tucked her hands into either sleeve. It was a habitual gesture; now it warmed her hands and hid the dagger from Meg coming back. Belatedly Frevisse remembered and said, “I saw your Hewe. He’s gone back to the village to do what needs doing there. He said he would come to you later.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Meg said, looking at her feet.

The cloister bell began to ring for Nones. Meg raised startled eyes toward the band of sunlight from the nearest window. “Midday?” she asked, completely bewildered. “How did it come to be midday?”

Dame Claire laid a gentle hand on her arm. “It was the drink I gave you. It made you sleep a long while.”

And so heavily she had not even noticed what time of day she had awoken. Meg looked around a little frantically, as if to find the lost hours. “My work,” she said. “I was supposed to be in the kitchen. Dame Alys…”

Dame Claire said, “She knows what’s happened. She understands and isn’t expecting you today. Or tomorrow either. It’s all right.”

Meg began to say something, stopped, looked to Frevisse, back to Dame Claire, then seemed to collect herself and turned away to her son’s body. So low they could barely hear her, she said, “I’ll stay here and pray then, please you.”

It was probably the best thing she could do, both for herself and Sym. Leaving her to it, Frevisse and Dame Claire hurried away to church.

The service of Nones was fairly brief, consisting of a hymn, lesson, and verse in addition to three short psalms sung straight through. Frevisse’s cold had given her a headache, made worse by the way one person’s cough set off a noisy chorus of them, by the shuffling of impatient feet, and the frequent exchange of bored or exasperated glances. It was painful to hear this group of sufferers croak, “”Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing…‘“ Frevisse was startled to realize near the end that she had let Joliffe’s dagger slip down into her hand, and that she had taken it with a grip so tight her fingers were cramping.

In the original Rule, St. Benedict spoke of two meals a day, the main one at midday and a light supper in the evening, with variations, including fasts and late dinners, with never the flesh of four-footed animals to be served. The only part strictly observed at St. Frideswide’s was that they ate their main meal at midday. Today they were served mincemeat pies and cabbage boiled with caraway seed.

Sister Thomasine, whose voice alone remained clear, had volunteered to be the reader at dinner until someone else recovered enough to take her place. They were reading from a borrowed book, St. Bede’s
History of the English Church and People.
They had arrived at the late seventh century and were hearing of the death of St. Chad, Bishop of Mercia, and of miracles associated with his burial place in the Church of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles. “”Chad’s tomb is in the form of a little wooden house,“” read Thomasine slowly, “ ‘with an aperture in the side, through which those who visit it out of devotion to him may insert their hand and take out some of the dust. They mix this in water, and give it to sick men or beasts to drink, by which means their ailment is quickly relieved and they are restored to health.”“

Ugh,
thought Frevisse,
I would have to be sick indeed before I would drink anything flavored with spiderweb and dead man’s dust.

At the end of the meal, Domina Edith declared that everyone not so sick she must take to her bed was to come to the church and help Dame Fiacre sweep and dust.

The priory’s sacrist had been slowly declining for some months. Now she had caught a cold like everyone else, and though she kept to her feet, she could not perform all her duties. This afternoon she sat on a stool at the foot of the altar and pointed to what needed doing. Frevisse found the dagger’s keen edge very handy for cleaning melted wax off the altar’s two brass candlesticks, a task she performed with grim thoroughness.

When it was all done to Sister Fiacre’s satisfaction, they were dismissed. Frevisse went out to discover that Father Henry had returned from the village.

She went to find him in his little house eating a late dinner. She sat down at his table and said without preamble, “What did you learn?”

“Sym wasn’t much liked. He was given to quarreling. Little quarrels all the time, one after the other, for no real reason mostly.”

“Any great quarrels? Or new quarrels just around now?”

“There’s a girl, Tibby, whose folk weren’t happy he was showing her attentions. Nor did she care for him much either, it seems, but that wasn’t stopping him. There’d been pushing between her brother and him, and a few words, but nothing more.”

“No daggers drawn?”

“No. He was not known for daggering. All words and fists, was Sym, from what I’ve seen—from what they say.”

“But he drew on Joliffe last night.”

“Joliffe? You mean the player, in the alehouse? Yes, he did. But he was being goaded some, I guess. Too many words and the way the player was saying them and that the girl wasn’t minding. It went past what Sym would take.”

Frevisse could see Joliffe deliberately outwording him, with a mocking smile and goading tone, until Sym was past wanting anything except to silence him. “But no great particular quarrel with anyone else?” she asked.

“The talk is that there looked to be one shaping up with Gilbey Dunn. He holds the croft by theirs and has been wanting to take claim to their field strips. Talk is, Lord Lovel’s steward has been thinking maybe of letting him.”

“Could he?” To give one villein’s share of the fields to another was no little thing and not easily done.

“Oh, maybe yes, since Barnaby was going these past years the short way along to ruining them and Lord Lovel’s steward was none too happy with him for it. Yes, there was a chance.”

“But now with Barnaby dead, Sym would have been given his chance to prove himself before anything was done about taking the land away.”

Father Henry shook his head heavily. “Maybe not. Sym has been looking to go much the way of his father already and patience was pretty well out with him. But that wasn’t the whole of it. Seems Gilbey Dunn has been at Barnaby’s widow, wanting to marry her, and the general thought is that she will since she’s a poorly little thing who’ll be needing someone to see to her and her matters. He might not have been able to talk her around with Sym in a rage about it, but now with Sym dead, he’ll have no trouble with her. That’s what they’re saying. They quarreled badly yesterday, Sym and Gilbey Dunn, in front of the whole village.”

“About the marrying?”

“Yes.”

“What did Gilbey Dunn do?”

“Nothing much.” He shrugged.

“What about the girl? I’ve heard she went off with the player after the fight with Sym.”

“And her folk are none so pleased with her about it,” Father Henry said. “She’s shut up in the house for so long as the players are here and apparently had best be thankful her father only gave her a small beating when she came home last night.”

“Can you talk with her tomorrow?” she asked.

Father Henry looked surprised and then nodded. “I should tell her to be a more dutiful daughter?”‘ he suggested.

“Surely. And ask her if she has any way of judging how long she was with Joliffe, and where they were, and—but not until you have the other answers from her—if he ever asked her where Sym lived.”

Father Henry’s mind moved at its own steady pace but had the grace of holding on to what it was given. He thought for a moment, nodded again, and repeated, “Ask her how long she was with Joliffe, where they were, and then if he asked her where Sym lived.”

“Yes. Exactly so.”

“You think he did it?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She was certain he had not, but it seemed better not to say so. “But if I can show he couldn’t have done it, then I can look elsewhere, do you see?”

Chapter
16

Sore-necked and aching, Meg raised her head from the table. Dimly, as her mind stirred back to awareness, she realized she had been sleeping. By the faint gray web of lesser darkness at the guesthall’s windows she guessed that dawn was nearing; and then she remembered where she was. And why.

Slow with stiffness, she straightened on the backless bench, forcing herself to move. She reached out her hand to Sym’s wrapped body in front of her and stroked where she knew his arm to be. Father Henry had been with her a while last night; he too had promised her that Sym’s soul was safe, so surely it did not matter that she had fallen asleep at her praying. She had not meant to, had not known she was so tired, or she would not have told Father Henry that he did not need to stay, that she and Hewe would keep the watch. She had even said that maybe someone would be coming from the village, though she had half known that was not true. Some might have come if Sym were laid out at home, but the priory was not a village place and no one was friendly enough with her or Sym anymore to come there, where he had to stay until the crowner came.

So Sym’s watching belonged to her and Hewe, and they had both slept.

Meg smiled down at the curled dark shape in the rushes by the bench that was Hewe asleep. She had not expected him to stay awake with her. He had been a good boy yesterday, going to the village and back again twice over, seeing to things there so she could stay here. And he would do it again today, so she could go back to working for Dame Alys for her halfpence. They couldn’t afford to lose any more of those, or let Dame Alys think Meg was not needed here.

Under the rough skin of her fingers the cerecloth was smooth and cool. Meg had never owned so large a piece of cloth in her life. And would never have given it away if she had, the way the nuns had simply given this one for Sym. That was a blessing, at least, because the only spare blanket had gone to wrap Barnaby for his grave. The nuns’ pity was a blessed thing.

But then, they had more cloth where this had come from. More of everything. Meg had seen what they had folded and stacked away in chests in one of their storerooms. And that had been just one storeroom. They had others. What was it like to have so much?

In her mind she heard the nuns begin their singing in the church. She had heard them singing, when working in the cloister, and the unworldly beauty of their voices had stirred her mind. Singing and praying seven times a day, even in the middle of the night, every day, all the year round, was to her mind what the angels did in Heaven, too. How wonderful to be so close to Heaven here on earth! She rubbed at her tired eyes. Sometimes the beauty of the life they led tempted her into the sin of envy.

The dim light was growing. She turned a corner of the shroud away from Sym’s face. She could not see his features yet, but remembered how they had been in the lamplight last night. A young face. Younger than he had looked for the last few years as his sullenness and temper had grown. Not a man’s face taut with tempers and desires and needs, but her sweet son’s face, all quiet and at peace.

She stroked a finger along his cheek. The stubble of his beard pricked at her flesh, but his own flesh under it was cold and strange, not Sym at all. Meg took her hand away. She did not want to touch him anymore, just look at him while the day grew slowly into light in the hall, and think of what might have been if things had been some other way.

She only knew that she was crying when a tear left a warm trail down her chill cheek.

Hewe stirred to wakefulness a while after that. He huddled against her for a while, like a little boy again, until he was awake enough for Meg to tell him to stir up die fire. One of die servants had built it for diem against die long night’s cold. It had burned down to a few coals while they slept, but enough was left mat Hewe shortly had it roused. He crouched beside it, hands out to its heat, and said, “I’m hungry, Mam. Isn’t mere food?”

“We’re not guests here,” Meg said wearily. “Just biders-by. There’ll be something you can eat at home when you go there.”

Hewe looked at her guiltily.

“Did you eat what was left from die funeral foods?” Meg asked.

Hewe nodded. “Yesterday. I was hungry.”

Meg sighed. “I’ll find something in the kitchen here today for you.”

“And come home soon?” Hewe asked hopefully.

“Tonight,” Meg said. “I’ll do my day’s work and come tonight and bake. If I can find someone to watch by Sym.”