The Clerk’s Tale (4 page)

That was where Frevisse would have gone, for choice, but Lady Agnes was beckoning both her and Domina Elisabeth to come with her to the window where the shutters stood wide to the afternoon’s thinning light, saying as they joined her, “You see? I should sit downstairs with four walls and nothing but servants to watch when there’s this?”

She had the right of it, Frevisse silently agreed. The nunnery wall was indeed too high for her to see anything except nunnery rooftops and the church tower, but the street was all hers to watch and the nunnery’s main gate and whoever came and went through it.

But Lady Agnes was drawing the shutter closed at one end of the window with a nod for Frevisse to do the same at the other, turning when she had finished to say, “Emme, haven’t you that fire going yet?”

‘Takes time, my lady,“ Emme said as if she had said it uncounted times before now and was resigned to saying it patiently many times more. But Frevisse was coming to suspect that Lady Agnes’s servants were probably good at patience or they’d not be her servants for long. Certainly Letice took patiently Lady Agnes’s flurry of orders to set the two chairs and a joint stool nearer the fire and that she must tell Lucas the tables needn’t be set up in the hall tonight because she and the nuns would dine here and bring some hot spiced cider as soon as might be because, ”It’s perishing cold in here. Emme!“

‘Done, my lady,“ Emme declared, standing up and back from the fire now licking up cheerily around the logs laid on the kindling she had been tending.

‘Off with you, then, and see to airing my ladies’ bed. A pan of hot coals now and another at bedtime, I’d say, to be sure of it. Go on.“

Letice and Emme both went, and Lady Agnes, settling herself into one of the chairs, gestured Domina Elisabeth to the other and Frevisse to the joint stool which, being nearest to the warmth spreading out from the fire, suited her very well. Left to herself, she would have been content simply to sit and be warm, but Lady Agnes, hands folded on the rounded top of her staff, leaned forward in her chair and said to Domina Elisabeth, “So. You’ve heard how this widow comes to be in your way. You’ve heard about our murder?”

‘Only that there had been one.“

‘Ah. Well, then.“ With no doubt that Domina Elisabeth would be as eager to hear as she was to tell, Lady Agnes started in again on all that Frevisse had already heard of Montfort’s death. Not interested in hearing it again, Frevisse turned her gaze and mind to the fire, watching the flames at their dance and play and the slow settling of the logs into a bed of coals that had been kindling and in a while would be only ashes, just as the logs would be before the evening was done, with new logs brought to take their place, to burn to ashes in their turn. Like human lives. A brief, bright flourishing and then an end.

She ought to feel more for Montfort’s death than she did.

She prodded at her feelings but nothing stirred. There was no regret in her that he was dead, only that he had died so badly, a mean-minded man come to a mean end. She would pray for his damned soul but that was the most she could do and even then with no eagerness, only duty. If anything, she would pray more readily for his murderer. Whatever reason he had had for killing Montfort—and knowing Montfort, he could well have had a great one— murder was among the worst sins and the murderer as much in need of prayer as Montfort was.

The bell from St. Mary’s church tower began to sound its clear calling to Vespers. Lady Agnes broke off her telling of the clerk raising an outcry at finding the body and Domina Elisabeth paused her dismay to cross themselves, but to Frevisse starting to rise to her feet in answer to the bell’s summons, Domina Elisabeth raised a hand and said, “We needn’t go tonight. We’ve had a long day,” and turned back to Lady Agnes, leaving Frevisse caught all unexpectedly into anger that Domina Elisabeth so lightly dismissed the Office as if it were something to be bothered over or not, as one chose.

But anger was a sin, too, and Frevisse quenched it, instead slid around on the joint stool to face the fire and put her back as much as possible to the other women, leaving Lady Agnes to go on, “Still, the inquest is to be here in my hall tomorrow, did I tell you? When that’s done, we’ll know as much as almost anyone about it all, but in the meanwhile people are saying…” while she silently began Vespers for herself.

Chapter 3

The morning was wearing on at too fast a pace for all that must be done, and Master Gruesby with an untidy bundle of papers clasped to his chest with one arm, a cushion tucked under the other, and quills and ink bottle in his hands shuffled more quickly than was his wont up the hall toward the table at its head, slowed by his left shoe having come undone while he crossed the street and no way to refasten it until he could set everything down and that he could not do until he reached the table. He had been here earlier, to be sure the table would be where it was needed and to learn how many benches there would be. Most of those who would crowd in to the inquest would be there just to gawk. They could stand and be welcome to it but for the jury and the witnesses there must be places to sit. And for Mistress Montfort, too. Master Christopher had urged against her being there but she had insisted, in her quiet way. That she would be.

She was always quiet, was Mistress Montfort. That was something Master Gruesby had always liked about her because a quiet woman was a seemly woman. Or so it was said. On his own account, he rather thought it was not the seemliness of it he liked so much as the relief it had always been from Master Montfort’s ceaseless
unquiet
He wondered, as he had before, if she had made any unquiet grieving over Master Montfort’s death but could not imagine that she had. No one seemed much grieved over it really. Even this morning, all she had been was quietly firm when telling Master Christopher she would come to the inquest and Master Christopher had given way and so Master Gruesby had this cushion from the nunnery, both to save a place for her on one of the benches and to make that place more comfortable.

‘Somewhere near the front, that people can’t turn around to stare at her,“ Master Christopher had said. ”But not at the very front. Nor directly in front of me. Well to the side and a little back would be best.“

But first there were the papers and quills and ink with which to deal and there was no one to ask for help because just for the moment Lady Agnes Lengley’s hall was empty, even of her servants. But they had set up the six benches just as he’d told them, facing up the hall toward the table, three and three, and Master Gruesby supposed it did not matter that none of them was there because Master Christopher already had one of his own men guarding the door, to keep out anyone who shouldn’t come in yet. Still, there was no one to help… With a sidewise lean and twist, Master Gruesby laid the quills down without damage to their neatly trimmed points; was able then to set down the ink bottle; laid the cushion to one side on the table; stacked the papers at Master Christopher’s place; took up the cushion again; and after a careful moment to choose, went to the far end of the second right-hand bench and laid it there for Mistress Montfort.

Only then, after a long look around to be sure everything was to satisfaction for now, did he sit down himself to see to tying his shoelace, first pulling up his shoe’s soft leather top to around his ankle, then wrapping the leather lace around it twice before neatly tying a bow. A double knot would be more sure, he knew, but he was never able to bring himself to it, because what if the lace should become wet and swell? He’d not be able to undo it easily, might even have to cut it and what a waste that would be. No. Better to make a simple knot and hope for the best.

Pleased, as usual, with his decision, he wiggled his foot, to be sure the knot was tight enough but not too tight, and stood up. One of his own little jests—kept to himself because he never presumed to be so bold as to make them aloud—was that he had given up any thought of becoming a monk or friar because his feet chilled too easily and so he could not have endured wearing sandals.

Of course it was only a jest because no monk or friar was expected to go only sandaled in England’s bitter weather. Nor had he ever thought at all of becoming a monk or friar. But then, he’d never really thought much about becoming anything, really. He’d come to be a clerk because he was good with ink and paper and writing down words and liked doing it. If that wasn’t what God had wanted of him, well, God had not yet seen fit to tell him otherwise. Clerking agreed with him and that was the sum of it. Or he agreed with clerking. But it came to the same, he supposed. Or did it? He wasn’t certain. But then he was certain of so few things. Or at least not deeply certain. He managed to be reasonably certain about a great many things, yes, but not deeply certain because there were so many questions in life and so few reasonable answers.

Answers, yes. Somebody was always ready with answers. It was reasonable answers that seemed in short supply. Such as… such as why did the sky change color at sunrise and sunset? Nobody seemed even to wonder about that but there had to be a reason. God’s will, of course, was supposed to be answer enough, but it wasn’t, was it? Or maybe it was. When Roger Bacon had sought answers beyond that, he’d put himself into all manner of trouble, hadn’t he? So maybe, Master Gruesby thought, now that he thought about it, he was fortunate that he seemed only good at questions, not at answers. And fortunate in that he liked clerking, liked keeping order where otherwise there would be disorder, liked taking care of small matters that otherwise would have no care taken of them.

He looked to the table again and realized he’d done it wrong. The pens and ink, those were right, they belonged there, but the papers… Those were his and should not be there and he hurried back and gathered them together quickly, before anyone could come in and see what he’d done. Trying to make them somewhat more orderly, he tapped them edge-on to the table, but the pieces were too many sizes and rough-torn shapes ever to be tidy and having done what he could, he looked around for somewhere to put them and found himself at a loss. For too many years his place at a crowner’s inquest had been here, at a table’s end or somewhere equally aside but close to the main way of things, taking notes and reading out things when they were demanded of him. He was used to being a part of everything, though not a part that anyone noticed, and that had changed not at all when Master Montfort became escheator. It was unsettling that today would be different. Today he wasn’t anyone’s clerk but had merely offered to help Master Christopher’s young Denys, had brought things here and set them up for him while he and Master Christopher went over today’s regrettable business. His own place wouldn’t be here at the table but there—he looked sideways at the left-hand benches where the jury would sit—because this time he was a witness, of all things, because he had found Master Montfort’s body and would therefore have to give evidence and answer questions. Instead of being out of the way, he was going to be noticed and he didn’t know he really didn’t know how he was going to bear that.

And what did he do with his notes between now and then if he couldn’t have them on the table? He had made them as soon as might be after Master Montfort’s death. It was important to do that; to set things down before the mind began to change things. He knew how that happened from the years he’d spent making record of everything people said when questioned by Master Montfort as crowner and lately as escheator. Most people’s minds and memories were very unsteady, so at the very first chance he’d had, he’d written down everything. Not that there was much. He’d added some other papers to his few to give him more to hold. If he couldn’t be writing, he liked having papers to hold. It gave his hands something to do.

Now, as if some of his papers might have lost themselves in the little while they’d been lying on the table, he ruffled through them. Then, for lack of anywhere else to put them, he rolled them tightly together and tucked them into his close-cinched belt with unsteady fingers. It always made him uneasy when things weren’t as they’d always been. He liked things to be as they’d always been. He wanted—he admitted it to himself—he wanted to be safely behind a pen at the end of the table or off in a corner, unnoticed, hardly looked at. Today people were going to be looking at him. Not only looking at him but
seeing
him. He wasn’t used to being seen. He was used to not being seen. He liked not being seen. It was safer.

But like and unlike had nothing to do with duty. He knew that as well as he knew anything, and with a bracing little sigh he gave a last look around to be certain yet again that everything was as it should be for now, then made to leave the hall, quickly before any servants should come back and maybe want to talk to him, only to be brought up short at the doorway by the need to step aside from a woman coming in. With his eyes down, as usual, he saw only the hem of her black gown—of good-quality wool, he noted; a lady, not a servant, surely—and murmured, eyes still down, “Pardon, my lady.”