The Servant’s Tale (3 page)

She felt tension flow out of the little band at her words. They had been braced to be sent on their way, and were greatly thankful for being allowed to stay. She doubted they would give trouble for whatever little while they were there.

“You have a cart and horse that need seeing to?” she asked.

“Tisbe our horse follows to heel like a dog and should be waiting in your courtyard now, and our cart behind her. There’s only the four of us. And Piers, of course.”

At mention of his name, as if on cue—and Frevisse suspected it was—the small boy she’d seen before stepped away from the woman who had been lightly holding his shoulders, and bowed very neatly. She bent her head to him in solemn return. His sweet-faced charm had probably wooed goodly pence from doting women on more than a few occasions, Frevisse thought, and hid her own amusement behind an unsmiling face.

The flaxen-haired player whom Frevisse had taken for a tall boy said, “I’ll see to Tisbe and the cart and bring in what we need for tonight.” Now, as soon as he spoke and she looked directly at him, she realized he was fully twenty years old or more, not a boy at all despite his slender, lean-hipped build and smooth face. Since his hair was so pale, his beard did not show unless it was looked for.

“Young Joliffe,” said Thomas Bassett by way of introduction, “who plays our women’s roles.”

Meeting the young man’s bold, assessing gaze, Frevisse was ready to believe that playing the woman was a skill in him, not a trait, and suspected that he probably wooed more than pence from women when he set his mind to it. With some asperity, she said, “But you will play the gentleman here, I trust.”

Joliffe made her an elegant bow. “In such an holy place as this, humbled by your kindness, surely.”

Frevisse forebore saying that she had sincere doubts about his humility, and was spared any reply at all by a raw, strangled screech behind her, as if a cat had been tossed into the fire. She swung around. The clot of people still around Dame Claire and the man Barnaby had pulled back somewhat, making room for the newly arrived woman. She was small, no more than thin flesh sunk down onto small bones, tanned and aged with years of weather and work. Frevisse had noticed her around the priory these few months past, but from her poverty had thought her a widow. Now she stood huddled and aghast, her hands pressed over her mouth and her eyes huge with fear and horror as she stared down at the hurt man. Her husband.

Dame Claire had had him moved onto the straw-filled mattress, and been cutting away what was left of his clothing to assess his injuries. Except for a cloth draped modestly over his loins, there was nothing to hide his body’s ruin.

Unable to take her eyes from him, rocking back and forth, the woman began to keen, “Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. He’ll never work again, he’ll never work again. Look at him. Look at him.”

A whey-faced boy, trying very hard not to look at the man, stood beside her. Awkwardly he put an arm around her and said, “Mam. Mam, it’s going to be all right. He’ll heal fine, you’ll see.” But he did not believe it any more than she did.

On Meg’s other side Annie Lauder made no pretense of her curiosity. “Will he live at all? He looks like to die, if you’re asking me.”

“There’s no one asked you,” said Dame Claire firmly. “So near as I can tell, there’s nothing broken inwardly beyond my reach, nothing here that will surely kill him, if I can keep sickness out of his hurts.”

“His hand,” Meg moaned. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, look at his hand. It’ll never heal. Look at it.”

Dame Claire ignored her. “What I want is someone here to help me set his shoulder back in place. It’s only twisted from its socket, not broken.”

“That I can do.” The third man among the players stepped forward. “I’ve seen it done a few times, and helped at it myself. But we’ll need some strength beyond our own to hold him down.”

He was a handsome man, not tall but boldly proportioned, with thick black hair and a self-assured swagger. Dame Claire eyed him dispassionately, judging his usefulness, and said, “Here, then. Best do it while he’s still unconscious. Someone take the woman away. And the boy. This will not be pleasant to see.”

Chapter 3

The player had not boasted. Frevisse had seen joints reset before and knew it took as much strength as skill to put a shoulder back into its socket. The sinews that allowed a man to swing a scythe all morning or wrestle a plow along a furrow were equally able to resist the effort to slide bones back into their place. Insensible though he was, Barnaby groaned while two of the priory men held him down and the player pulled and twisted with seeming brutality at his arm, until at last there was the unmistakable snap of arm bone into shoulder joint.

The men stood back, grinning at one another in shared triumph, and Barnaby subsided into low moaning.

“My thanks to you,” Dame Claire said. “Your name, that I may properly thank God who sent you to us when we were in need of you?”

The black-haired man bowed to her. “Ellis, my lady,” he said.

He returned to the others, still smiling.

Dame Claire said to the gathered gawkers, “You can go back to your duties or your rest, except you and you and…” Her gaze fell on Sister Amicia the same moment that Frevisse’s did.

Sister Amicia had come to St. Frideswide’s because, after dowering her four older sisters, her father’s purse had run thin, and he had chosen to save the remainder and increase his reward in the hereafter by offering his last daughter to St. Frideswide’s as a nun. A good daughter, she had done as bidden and taken the veil six years ago. But more than vows and veil were needed to make a nun of her. She was mostly obedient and devout at her prayers; but despite the Rule, she was given to ribbons and other pretty things her sisters brought when they came visiting, and just now she was regarding Ellis’s retreating back with far too much awareness that he was a tall, well-built, not unhandsome man.

“… Sister Amicia. I think you can go back to the cloister now, Sister, and see what we left undone in the infirmary,” Dame Claire finished, matching Frevisse’s own thought.

Frevisse, as ready as Dame Claire to see to work, said, “Annie, take that yellow cloth and set it to soak so you can scrub it clean come morning. We can do that much more for the folk who saved him. The rest of you, about your business. See there’s enough wood for both these fires, and bedding brought for our other guests. And someone tell his wife she can come back now. I’d best ask Dame Alys what food can be spared from the kitchen for our guests. Sister Amicia, come.”

Sister Amicia, all lowered eyes and humility, murmured, “Yes, Dame,” and followed Frevisse out the door.

The players’ horse and cart were waiting in the courtyard. The horse, a mare, was a raw-boned creature with a malformed forehoof, but no thinner than to be expected of a hard-worked animal that only rarely saw grain. Young Joliffe had already unloaded a few things from the cart and was now standing at the mare’s head, gentling her nose in his cupped hand and murmuring in her ear. Frevisse told Sister Amicia to go on and turned aside to speak to him.

He let loose of the horse as she came up to him, and made a bow that was as humble as Bassett’s had been theatrical. But when he straightened, his gaze was critical, and Frevisse felt again the uneasy awareness that he was far older than he looked.

“My thanks along with Master Bassett’s for letting us stay, my lady,” he said. His gratitude seemed genuine, neither forced nor false. But his speech was bold for someone so dependent on the whims of the stranger.

Frevisse kept her opinion to herself for now, and said, “It would have been poor courtesy to put you back on the road after the kindness you did. Stabling for your horse is back out through the gate to the outer yard and to your left. Someone there will show you where to put your cart.”

Joliffe began to lead Tisbe forward and around, saying casually, “Kindness is a rare commodity, true enough. It would have been a shame to pass up so plain a chance to give it where it was so sorely needed. And here, you see, we’re receiving it back again.”

“You’ve been on the road long?”

Ensuring that the back of the cart would miss the wall as he turned, Joliffe answered, “Do you mean me, or all of us together?”

“I mean, how long has it been since your group had a roof for the night?”

“We’ve managed a roof all but the last two nights. We spent—hup, Tisbe, come around now—we spent Christmas Day at Fen Harcourt manor, and we’re meaning to be in Oxford for New Year’s and stay through Twelfth Night. Master Bassett knows an innkeeper there.”

“So you’re not in need of anything but a night’s rest from us?”

Joliffe brought Tisbe to a stop and turned his full attention to Frevisse. “Why such concern?” he demanded. “We’re none of your people, that you should be particularly caring. You’ve done your duty in giving us shelter and promise of fire and food.”

Meeting his look, Frevisse answered as boldly as he asked, “I know how hard the road can be in winter, and you’ve a child and a woman with you.”

He had the grace to look almost abashed, but before he could respond, the cloister bell began to ring, calling to Vespers. Frevisse inclined her head, turning away as she said, “Pray pardon me. I’ll come again before Compline to see how all is going.”

The Vespers service went its strong, graceful way, declaring the day’s richness and hoping the blessings it had brought were unending. “
Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo, salutari meo.”‘
My spirit has found joy in God, who is my Savior, because He has looked graciously upon the lowliness of His handmaid.

But its flow and beauty were severely marred in St. Frideswide’s by a general croak-throated snuffling among the nuns.

The illness had begun before Christmas among the servants, had spread to the nuns, and had not yet run its course, though Dame Claire—busy with poultices and herb brews— assured them it would. The worst of Frevisse’s own sore throat was gone, but she still made steady use of her handkerchief and lacked her usual energy. Like most of the others, she had to be careful of her singing, that it did not turn to sudden croaking; and like them, she often failed.

And today, unfortunately, Dame Claire was still with the injured man so that her deep, rich voice, almost fully recovered from her own rheum, was not there to carry the others. Without it, the strongest singer was Sister Thomasine, whose thin, bright soprano rose now over everyone else’s broken efforts.

Despite her apparent frailty, Sister Thomasine had flourished in the year and a little more since she had joyfully taken her final vows. Her holiness was as accepted a matter in the priory as the seven daily services, and Frevisse had heard it being whispered among the nuns that it was her holiness and the answering grace of God that kept her alone from succumbing to the present pest of sneezing and wheezing.

About that, Frevisse worked very hard to have no opinion, for if she had allowed herself one, it might have been that Sister Thomasine was kept free of disease to test Frevisse’s patience.

After Vespers most of the nuns had their period of rest and reflection before supper. But today Frevisse, feeling her duties to the priory’s guests were unfinished, returned to the guesthall. There she found the players had gathered around the farther hearth and were settled in with their belongings around them. The woman among them was stirring a pot set close to the flames, her thin features flattered almost into beauty by the shifting orange light. The boy Piers was curled up near her, asleep on someone’s cloak, even more sweet-faced asleep than when he was awake. The three men were sitting across from them in close talk that dissolved frequently into laughter. Ellis tossed the small pieces of the stick he had been breaking between his hands into the fire with a casual, relaxed gesture.

There was no ease in the gathering beside the other hearth. Only Dame Claire, the hurt man, Meg and her son, and an older boy were left. Another son, Frevisse thought. That was good; even if her husband died, poor Meg would still have her sons, and the older boy looked old enough to inherit. Lord Lovel’s steward was a fair-minded man; if they could keep up their duties and rents they would keep the holding even if Barnaby died.

She went to stand where she knew Dame Claire would be aware of her, not intruding, willing to wait until there was pause for the infirmarian to tell her if there was anything she could do. The man’s hurts had been cleaned and the worst of them bandaged, including the gash along his head. Closely covered in blankets, with his shoulder in place, he did not look so hopeless a matter as he had at first. He was still unconscious, or asleep, his head rolled to one side and his mouth slacked open, though he was breathing with such heavy effort through his nose that it was probably broken, too.

Dame Claire, with great care, was picking up his injured hand. Barnaby moved his head toward her, but his eyes did not open until, tentatively, she moved his forefinger. Then he made a wordless cry and opened his eyes wide. They were glazed and bloodshot and seemed to see nothing. She let go of his finger and he subsided to silence, his eyes closing again.

“Please don’t do that!” whispered Meg hoarsely. “It’s no good. His hand’s no good and never will be anymore.”

The first horror was gone from her now, if not the shock. She was sunk down on the floor on her husband’s other side, one hand clenched into a fist and pressed between her meager breasts, her other hand holding tightly to her younger son’s arm as he sat leaning against her. Her strained, haunted eyes stared at the ruin of her husband’s hand as Dame Claire gently put it down, and she did not seem to notice her older son, hunched down on his heels behind her, reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder.