The Servant’s Tale (27 page)

“What has Gilbey said to you?”

“Only that he’s not unhappy Sym is dead. He told me that day before yesterday.” She sighed again. “I’ve saved almost enough to buy my freedom,” she remarked inappositely.

“All the more reason to be glad you’re not married to him.”

“Humph. He could be free if he wanted. But he’d have to give up his holding, and what’s the use of being free if you’re landless in the bargain? No, no, what breaks my heart is that to save his rotten hide I’m going to have to pay leyrwite, for we were together all night the night Sym Shene was killed.”

The bell for Sext was ringing as Frevisse came out of the laundry. After the shed’s heavy, damp heat, the January air cut crisply, and she paused to breathe it, then shivered in a sudden chill and hurried toward the warming room where they were worshipping now that the church was desecrated, with her hands thrust into her sleeves and her chin tucked down for warmth.

The lesson and gospel readings for the hours covered, in a year’s time, the whole of the Old Testament and three times through the New. Now, between Christmas and Epiphany, they were reading Daniel. Frevisse, with her basic Latin and familiarity with Wycliffe’s English translation of the Bible, was just able to understand and enjoy the psalms and readings. So it was with a touch of annoyance that she struggled to hear past the complaining coughs of her fellow nuns the complex prophesy of conquest from the man with a face like lightning and arms the color of polished brass.

“ ‘And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the King of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand: for they shall forecast devices against him.”“

Frevisse blew her own nose and wondered, lost in pronouns, which King should not stand because of the devices of the other. Was it important to understand that?

Was it important to try to understand
everything?

Sister Fiacre, wrapped in the deepest of all silences in her box near the altar, might at last be understanding what was important, and have dropped what was not, like a wet and filthy robe. Was that what she, Frevisse, should do? But was it not important to understand the lessons of the Bible? And to discover who among them was a murderer?

Or was it?

Was being dead a peace beyond understanding—or an understanding that, at last, brought peace?

Sext ended, Domina Edith gave her benediction over them, her eye on Frevisse the while—a look Frevisse could not return with any steadiness—and they were released to go about their tasks. Frevisse bent her will to obedience, left the cloister, and crossed the yard to the old guesthall.

Two of Montfort’s men stood just inside the door, leaning against the wall. They glanced at her but her nun’s habit put her beyond their authority; nor did she speak to them, but stood silently between them a while, watching the players.

They were well along preparing the hall for the play. What would be their stage in front of the hearth had been swept clear of rushes. Bassett and Joliffe were nearly finished setting up a framework of poles that would support the curtains while Ellis and Hewe moved the last of the gear behind it where it would be out of sight. Piers was sitting on a large basket with a mixed expression of pain and patience while Rose evened the shaggy back of his fair hair with a pair of small shears.

Hewe was the only one who turned toward the sound of the door opening and saw her. But head down, he kept busy at one of the baskets, seeming to think that if he did not look at her, she would not see him. Perhaps she should order him to stay away, but it was clear he was being useful to them, at least at present, and so she thought perhaps she would not.

Holding two poles steady while Joliffe, standing on a stool, cord whipped the cross pole to them, Bassett said, “Thank Heaven that old prioress wants us to do this. Keeping occupied will avoid bad thoughts. Next time we see Dame Frevisse, we’ll have to ask about those candles she promised. Is there anything else we need?”

“To get out of here,” Ellis growled.

Joliffe said, “Does he work at being an idiot or does it come as easily to him as it seems?”

Nearly Frevisse spoke then, alarmed at his flippancy and worried that the players’ incorrigible lack of humility could only help convict them in Montfort’s eyes.

Ellis slammed a lid on a chest. “He’s not so much of an idiot that he can’t hang us if he chooses! I would we had never seen that fellow in the ditch, or that we’d played the Pharisee and passed him by!”

“O God, I thank thee that I am not like other men—‘” began Joliffe, playing the Pharisee from a different parable, and was interrupted by Ellis flinging a small basket in his direction. He caught it and laughed, jumping off the stool, but there was nothing cheerful in the look on his face as he turned away.

“One of our problems is that you are so little like other men that bailiffs and sheriffs and crowners yearn to take you by the hand and make you explain yourself,” Bassett rumbled, but without rancor. “But you aren’t a murderer, nor is any of us. What worries me is getting to Oxford by Twelfth Night.”

“Hush, Thomas,” said Rose. “There’s no sense lathering yourself over that. We either make Oxford by Twelfth Night or we don’t, and likely the world won’t end if we don’t. And the rest of you, stop playing the fool and start trying to think like the holy Kings.”

Ellis growled wordlessly. Rose pointed him to a place across the hearth from her and said, “Sit. Eat something. You haven’t eaten enough today to keep a sparrow alive. And that goes for the two of you, as well,” she added to Bassett and Joliffe. “And you, Hewe, come here and share a bite with them.”

The boy looked at her, startled, then at Frevisse warily. When she still gave no sign of saying anything, he came.

Rose ignored his hesitation, running her fingers through Piers’s hair, tangling his gold curls and smoothing them again. “As for me, I’m content to stay awhile longer; there’s no harm in Piers being out of the cold another day.”

“And the day after that and the day after that,” Ellis muttered. He had come not to eat but to pace restlessly around the curtain-hung poles. They ignored him, Bassett and Joliffe and Hewe busy with their bread and cheese, Rose slicing cheese for Piers.

Frevisse, watching her, sensed in the controlled force of her movements how much the child mattered to her—as much and maybe more than the survival of their group. Or maybe the child and the group were one to her.

Frevisse had never had that kind of affection turned on her. Her parents’ fierce loving had been mostly for each other, with herself a happy adjunct, and she had come into Thomas Chaucer’s household as a pleasant addition to an established order. She probed briefly at her feelings to see how much that mattered to her and found hardly any regret. There had been love, and kindness, and freedom to be herself. These were good things. They contented her.

Joliffe said in a bold, dramatic tone, “ ‘I ride wandering in ways wide. King of all Kings, send me such guide that I may—’ no.” He cleared his throat and began again, this time in dreamy, gentle voice, “ ‘I ride wandering in ways wide—’” Piers giggled. Joliffe cleared his throat again and intoned, “Eggs and beer, be of good cheer, ho, ho, ho. ”King of all Kings, send me such guide,
such
guide, such
guide . .
.“” and subsided, thinking.

“If you could only be a little more convincing,” said Ellis from behind the curtain, “perhaps the fool crowner will release us to follow our star.”

Frevisse took a deep breath and started for them. Further delay would only continue to weaken her resolve; it was time to ask the important questions.

“Joliffe, I want to speak with you,” she said.

He started and looked toward her, rising. She had forgotten how clear and light a blue his eyes were, and how easily they saw the foolishness of others.

She turned from him and said abruptly to Bassett, “Bassett, Montfort knows about your quarrel with Sister Fiacre. Has he asked you about it?”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That we had quarreled and Lord Warenne had turned us out of his service.”

“What did you say when he asked you why?”

Bassett did not answer. Only Ellis, just come from behind the curtain, was looking at her. The others were staring at the floor in front of them. “Domina Edith has given me leave to ask the questions Master Montfort won’t think of, to try to find out what has truly happened here. I need truths, not silences.”

“Tell her,” said Rose.

They all looked at her, surprised. “Lord Warenne—” Bassett began.

“Is going to be telling his side of it to the crowner if the matter isn’t settled soon. Tell her. I don’t see how it can help but she won’t use it to hurt us either. Tell her.”

Bassett questioned Ellis and Joliffe with a silent look. Darkly brooding, Ellis tersely nodded his agreement. Joliffe, anger clamped behind the tight set of his face, shrugged as if it had ceased to matter to him. Bassett returned to Frevisse. “We were the late Lord Warenne’s players for three years. You know what that means to our kind, I think.” Frevisse nodded. A skilled, well-traveled troop could sing a patron’s praises over a wide area. And they did, for patronage gave them protection, and was such a guarantee of their good behavior that they could be sure of welcome everywhere, so long as he was pleased with them. To find a patron and then lose him was normally a quick road to ruin.

“We were a larger company then. Six of us to act, so better plays could be done. When Lord Warenne died, he commended us to his son, your Sister Fiacre’s brother. He was willing to continue our patronage but the first spring we came to perform our season’s work for him, as we had every spring for his father, he gave us to understand that he knew the ways of players and that he wanted us, as we traveled, to now and again—‘collect’ was his word—an occasional young woman on our way. We were welcome to our sport with her but he would be appreciative in monetary ways if we brought her to him eventually. He said he knew our ways and that we could woo them to it easily enough,” Bassett’s flat tone and the stony set of his face stripped away any lightness the words might have had. “He said village girls were easily come by and sweet enough if gathered young.”

“He also said,” Joliffe added with mocking bitterness, “that he would pay more for any we delivered to him with their maidenhood intact.”

“Joliffe,” Bassett said quellingly. “Good lady, pardon our words but there’s no way to say this less offensively.”

Frevisse did not need the apology but accepted it with a small nod. “You refused him.”

Bassett gestured at Ellis and Joliffe. “As you see. There are only three of us now, and the boy, and Rose, and we journey without a lord’s name.”

“Rose would have taken our heads from us if we’d accepted,”‘ Joliffe said.

Rose’s wry, downcast smile agreed with him. Bassett went on. “As importantly, he threatened that if we said aught to anyone about the matter, he’d spread word we had made the offer to him and he’d turned us away in disgust.”

“His word would be more readily taken than ours,” Ellis said. “And since he can have us all into prison and no way out, we keep our mouths shut and swing well clear of Lord Warenne. Those of us that are left.”

Frevisse, looking from one to another of their set faces, was sure they were telling her the truth.

Rose said, “You see this does not help in our present trouble? If we defend ourselves by defaming Lord Warenne, we put ourselves in more peril and do not clear ourselves of this present suspicion of murder.”

Frevisse nodded slowly. “But I must go on asking questions. I have to go on asking questions.”

“We’ll answer those that we can.”

Frevisse said, “Then I would speak out of your hearing with Joliffe.”

Joliffe sketched a bow and went with her to the other hearth. Frevisse said, “I have a report that you were seen going toward our church about four of the clock yesterday.”

“Lady, that I was not.” This was said readily, with what might have been no more than an actor’s smoothness.

“Are you accusing my witness of lying?” asked Frevisse.

“I cannot accuse anyone of anything, since I know nothing about him. Or her. I can only say what I know. I was in the church with Ellis and Bassett in the morning to see where we would perform. But not since.” This sounded more like the rough truth.

“Where were you then at that hour?”

For a wonder, his clear blue look did not see that she was only guessing he was not here in the guesthall. “I went walking after our rehearsal and was gone several hours.”

“Alone?” Frevisse asked, remembering the girl in the village.

“Alone,” Joliffe agreed.

“Not meeting anyone?”

“Not anyone.” He gave her a mocking grin. “Unless you count a small spotted hound, but I doubt he’ll speak on my behalf. He seemed to be somewhat occupied with coursing a rabbit at the time. Careless of me to be so solitary, but there it is.”

Discouraged and her head aching again, Frevisse turned on her heel and walked away, weighted with her thoughts.

Chapter
21

Through the rest of the morning, Frevisse saw to her guesthall duties, leaving her thoughts to work themselves out without her conscious help. The servants were well trained to her ways, but there was never harm in letting her people see that she was paying heed to them. As always there were small matters that needed her word or advice, and with one thing and another, she was kept busy until the bell called her to Nones. She finished agreeing with Eda in the old guesthall over who should see to scrubbing out the water buckets and excused herself to go to the service, a little delayed and so intent on hurrying through the hall without seeing the players that she nearly blundered into two men coming in the guesthall door as she was going out. She did not know them and vaguely supposed them Montfort’s without thinking about it.