The Clerk’s Tale (31 page)

Master Haselden began shaking his head, refusing that, insisting as he had insisted before, “She rode careful. She always rode careful…”

‘Hated it,“ Mistress Haselden whispered again, beginning to clean the mud from her daughter’s forehead now.

‘… always kept behind everyone else,“ Master Haselden said. ”That’s why we didn’t know she was down. We none of us saw…“

From what he had said and said again, the four men had come back and found her dead. The horse had been still alive but lying half in the stream and half out with a broken hind leg and someone had cut its throat to end its misery. Nichola had been more than broken, she had been crushed from her chest downward and Master Gruesby was glad it would not be his duty to pay heed when time came for Master Christopher to view the body. It was a crowner’s duty to view a body before bringing the matter of the death before an inquest and it was his clerk’s duty to write down what the crowner saw. Master Gruesby had always been careful to sit well apart from Master Mont-fort’s viewing and kept his gaze to his pen and paper as much as might be, satisfied to write, not see. He wondered if Denys, trying just now to handle his writing box and its small inkpot and pens and paper suitable for carrying from place to place to use at awkward times like now, had learned the value of writing without seeing.

If he hadn’t, he had better because there were so many ugly ways to die and, after seeing them, so many nights of nightmares about them.

Though for Stephen Lengley, by the look of him, the nightmare was here, no need to wait for night. What lay in front of him was mercifully mostly hidden in the folds of cloak wrapped and doubled around it but he had seen her freshly dead, had held the ruin of her in his arms, and by the look of him he was remembering that. Or what might be worse in this moment, how she had been and never would be again.

Master Gruesby had lived too far from closeness to anyone to understand fully what grief there could be in that much loss but knew he did not understand, knew he did not want to understand, and slid his gaze away Troni everyone, down to a pair of riding gloves lying beside the table on the floor that was, he determinedly noted, of good stone flagging under its clean scatter of rushes…

Far kinder at it than his father would have been, Master Christopher was disentangling himself from Master Haselden’s half-unwitted, grieving circling of words by laying a hand on the man’s shoulder to silence him long enough to say himself, “I understand. I’m sorry beyond words for your loss.” And then, more to Mistress Haselden than her husband, “I’m sorry, too, but I have to view her body. Once I’ve done that, I’ll go away.”

He—and Master Gruesby with him—clearly expected she would give trouble over that but she only went on washing her daughter’s face while she answered, her voice dead behind her soft sobbing, “I won’t unclothe her here for everyone to see. We’ll take her into my chamber. I’ll ready her there and then you can see her.”

‘Thank you.“ Master Christopher matched her quietness and added to Master Haselden, ”I’ll speak to the other men while we wait.“

‘Yes,“ Master Haselden said vaguely, as if he had not been listening, did not know to what he was answering. ”I’ll…“ He lost whatever he had been going to say and stopped, baffled by his grief.

It was his wife who said in her dead voice to the maid beside her, “I’ll need hot water. A great deal of it. And the best kitchen knife. To cut her clothing off her. And some of the men to bring her to the room.”

‘I’ll…“ Master Haselden started again.

‘Not you,“ his wife said. ”Nor Stephen.“ To the sobbing maidservant she added, ”See that someone gives Stephen something strong to drink. And that he sits down. I’ll…“ Her voice finally faltered, but as Master Gruesby looked up from the floor to her, she recovered it and said steadily on, turning away from the table, ”I’ll find clean sheets to lay her on.“

Master Christopher turned his own uneasy look from her to Stephen back to Master Haselden and said, to no one in particular this time, “I’ll question the other men now,” and started to withdraw, with a gesture at Denys and a look at Master Gruesby telling them to follow him. But Master Gruesby met his look with a stare so strong that Master Christopher paused, surprised, and deliberately Master Gruesby lowered his gaze towards the gloves lying on the floor, then raised his eyes to Master Christopher. Just raising his own gaze from them, Master Christopher met his silent asking and after only the barest pause answered him with a quick, agreeing jerk of his head.

No one else saw it. Mistress Haselden and the maid were already gone. Master Haselden had turned away. A manservant was persuading Stephen aside. Young Denys was closing his scribe’s box.

Nor did any of them seem to notice Master Gruesby bend and take up the gloves and tuck them, carefully folded together, away from sight in the folds of his gown as he followed Master Christopher out of the hall.

Chapter 20

Lady Agnes’s grief was fierce nor could the people best able to comfort her come to her need. Domina Matilda was dealing with her nuns’ distress and prayers for Nichola’s soul, Goring’s priest was gone to the Haseldens, and Lady Agnes flailed out against anyone seeing her broken down and weeping— “I won’t give them the pleasure!”—so that friends were turned back at the door and it was left to Letice and Domina Elisabeth to do what they could with her while Frevisse helped them as best she might, keeping her own grieving to herself. Not until late morning did Lady Agnes, with tears running down her cheeks along wrinkles that seemed to have sunken deeper since the ill word came, say suddenly, “There’ll be some sort of inquest. I want it here. Send word.”

‘My lady,“ Letice started, ”the crowner may have already chosen—“

‘Then he can choose again. He knows the place. There’s no reason Mistress Haselden should have the burden now and the nunnery’s put up with enough these past few days. Here is where it should be. Send that louter Lucas to tell him so.“ Lady Agnes’s fierceness broke, too much of her strength worn out of her with grief. Pitifully, a hand over her eyes, she said, ”If it’s not here, I won’t be able to go. I can’t… I can’t…“ She broke off, Oars flooding again, and Letice fled, crying, too, to do her bidding while Domina Elisabeth set, again, to persuading Lady Agnes to drink more of the latest soothing drink Emme, weeping, had brought for her.

Whether for Lady Agnes’s need or because it made best sense, Christopher sent word back, with thanks, that he would hold the inquest there, and that since there was no need for delay and something of a mercy in haste, it would be next morning.

‘Good. Good. God be thanked,“ Lady Agnes said. She was by then enough tired out that Emme’s drinks had begun to take hold. Domina Elisabeth was able to persuade her to lie down awhile, and once down, she slept a merciful part of the day away, to awaken in late afternoon too tired for more weeping until in the evening Stephen came to her, gray-faced and weary with his own grief but wanting her to hear from him what had happened. Domina Elisabeth made to leave the room when he came in, taking Frevisse with her, but Lady Agnes bade them stay as well as Letice. ”This is something you’ll know sooner or later and it might as well be sooner.“

Frevisse trusted neither Lady Agnes’s calm nor Stephen’s but he pulled a chair close to his grandmother, took hold of her hands, and began steadily to tell her about the hunt and finding Nichola. There his tears began to come again but he struggled a few words more before he broke, let go Lady Agnes’s hands, and slid from his chair to his knees, his arms around her waist, his face in her lap. Her own tears streaming, Lady Agnes bent over him, trying to give comfort where there was no comfort to be had until, probably more worn out than anything like comforted, Stephen ceased to cry and, sitting on the floor, leaning against his grandmother’s knees, finished the dark telling while she stroked his hair.

Lady Agnes wanted him to stay the night but, looking worse than when he had come, he said, “Nichola is there. I have to be, too,” and left.

It was a long while before Lady Agnes finally slept but in the morning she seemed done with crying for a while, calm outwardly at least, giving firm orders for what needed to be done before the inquest, including having her chair carried out to the gallery, admitting she would not have the strength to stand as she had through Montfort’s inquest. But after sight of herself in her mirror as Letice readied her, she had the chair moved well back into the shadows where she would be able to see much without being easily seen herself. “Not looking like this,” she said.

Whatever else might die, it seemed vanity did not.

But even vanity was no armor against grief. When time came to take her place in the gallery, Lady Agnes was grim-faced and unaccustomedly silent, maybe thinking, just as Frevisse was, of what sorry contrast there was between Montfort’s inquest and today, with only Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse there to keep her company and Letice hovering behind, waiting to be needed. Given her own choice, Frevisse would have preferred to be somewhere else. She had heard enough from Stephen’s telling last night, wanted to hear no more, and most certainly did not want to hear the kind of details that would come out at an inquest; but the choice was Domina Elisabeth’s, not hers, and Domina Elisabeth would not leave Lady Agnes, to Letice’s great relief. It was the necessary choice and the better one, Frevisse knew, and she made the best of it by watching the people in-gathering below her. Many of them were the same who had come to Montfort’s inquest, but they were far more subdued for this one. Nichola must have been known to most of them all of her life and there were red-rimmed eyes and muffled sobbing among the women, no loud talk or jostling among the men.

Stephen and Master Haselden came in together, to be escorted by one of Christopher’s men to a forward bench where two other men were already seated. If Stephen had slept at all, it had done him little good. He looked hardly better than his grandmother, and Master Haselden matched him, both of them dry-eyed at present but stiff with strain and looking to have been shaved and combed and dressed by force of someone else’s will rather than their own. But while Master Haselden made effort to answer the men and few women who came forward to speak to him and Stephen before taking their places elsewhere in the hall, Stephen said almost nothing, looked at no one, sitting with his hands clutched to each other in his lap as if only by holding tightly to them could he hold together at all.

Of Nichola’s mother there was no sign, but that was reasonable. Why would she want to be here to hear over what she already terribly knew?

The hall was nearly full when Juliana entered, followed by her brother, and Frevisse’s displeasure was nothing to Lady Agnes’s, who leaned forward with an inward hiss of breath and a movement toward rising to her feet but Letice stepped hurriedly to her side and said, low-voiced, “They’re here as witnesses. They were on the hunt.”

‘What were they doing on the hunt?“ Lady Agnes demanded, hardly less displeased. ”It was no matter of theirs.“

‘Master Haselden gave out word it was open to everyone. He supposed some of Mistress Montfort’s people might want a change and come along. He never thought
those
would dare. It’s said he wasn’t happy when they did.“

‘He should have turned them back at the start!“

But at that moment Christopher entered. What little talk there had been in the hall dropped away and perforce Lady Agnes sat back in her chair, everyone watching while he took his place behind the table and nodded to his clerk, who stood up from his place at the table’s end, cleared his throat, and said, “All those present who were on the hunt with Nichola Lengley yesterday, please stand.”

Besides Master Haselden and Stephen and the two men sharing their bench, three other men, a woman Frevisse did not know, Juliana, and her brother all stood up from the two benches behind them. The young clerk looked to Christopher who, very much Master Montfort the Crowner at that moment, said at them, “Those of you who were at the finding of the body will be sworn as jurors. The rest of you, who were on the hunt but not at the finding of the body, know you are charged to speak out if you hear aught testified here that is not truth as you think it to be. So swear.”

With some glances among themselves, the men behind Master Haselden and Stephen and the woman and Juliana and Rowland gave their oaths. Christopher nodded for them to sit, his clerk gave the jurors’ oath to Stephen, Master Haselden, and the two men with them, said, “Be seated,” and set them example by sitting down himself.

After that Christopher made mercifully short business of the inquest, there being small question about what had happened. Step by official step, he took the juror-witnesses through their finding of Nichola’s body and the viewing of it with him afterwards. They were more knowledgeable than their fellows had been for Montfort’s inquest but nothing any of them had to say was new from what Stephen had told Lady Agnes last night, nor was what Christopher’s young clerk read about the body unexpected—that it was neither marked nor marred beyond what would be likely from having fallen from a steep bank and been rolled on by a horse, save for a narrow cut across her face where probably a branch had caught her in riding down through the thicket on the stream’s other side.

When all that had been testified to, Christopher asked, “Are you willing, the four of you, to rule that Nichola Lengley died of being crushed under her horse, fallen during the hunt yesterday?”

The juror-sworn men nodded, Master Haselden with his head bowed too low for his face to be seen, Stephen sitting so tautly upright he seemed barely able to move his head.