The Servant’s Tale (26 page)

She banged her spoon on the table beside Meg, making her jump and grow busier still, cutting the flesh of five boiled chickens into small pieces for pies. It was Sister Amicia, taking her turn helping in the kitchen by cutting up vegetables to be mixed with the chicken pieces, who burst into tears. Dame Alys stopped, hands hard on hips, to glare at her.

“And why your tears, Sister? Those are carrots, not onions, you’re slicing. And I’ve not even told you yet you’re slicing them so thin they’ll cook to nothing in the pies. Use your wits, and your time, more wisely, and stop that blubbing.”

Sister Amicia dug for a handkerchief up her sleeve. “It was your talk of butchery,” she sobbed. “It made me think of Sister Fiacre.”

Quiet spread across the kitchen. Even Dame Alys fell silent. She had never much cared for Sister Fiacre, who had flared into hysteria or crumpled into despair whenever her fumbling ways in the kitchen were pointed out to her. The nunnery had agreed long before she fell seriously ill that everyone would live more peaceably if her path no longer crossed Dame Alys’s. But not even so unhappy a spirit as Sister Fiacre deserved so ugly a death.

Sister Emma reached out to pat Sister Amicia’s arm. “Well it is to mourn her passing, but remember, she’s gone to Heaven now and everything is better for her.”

“Not Heaven yet, I’d say,” Dame Alys rumbled. “She’s her time in Purgatory to serve first and that may take her a while.”

“Oh, surely not,” Sister Emma protested. “Prepared as she was for death, and dying as she did, praying at the altar. Surely her soul is as pure as it could be.”

Dame Alys glowered. “I’ll ask your leave to doubt it. Remember, God had laid a trial on her…” Dame Alys placed a hand on her bosom with a meaningful grimace. “He’d laid a trial on her and she’d not completed it. So there’s that to answer for, at least. My guess would be she’s gone to Purgatory and her time there will be the longer, to make up for not living out her trial here on earth. And the harder maybe, too, because of it.”

“Oh, no—” Sister Emma began, but swallowed further protest quickly; Dame Alys did not bear contradiction calmly.

But beside her Meg made a protesting sound. Dame Alys swung around on her, demanding, “Now what’s your problem? If you’re about to faint, just get yourself away from that bowl so you don’t pull it over with you. And put that knife down so you don’t cut someone.”

Meg put the knife down. She was not near to fainting but trembling all through herself with a kind of fiercely suppressed anger. Through stiff lips, not quite daring to look at Dame Alys, she said, “She’s gone straight to Heaven as truly as any soul could go. She was pure in her serving God in His church, and purely praying to Him when she died, and so surely she has gone straight to Heaven to be happy and out of her pain forever. You’re the one who’s sinful—sinful to be saying otherwise!”

If one of the chicken carcasses had risen off the table and spoken to her, Dame Alys could not have been more surprised. To that moment Meg had never spoken out of turn, rarely spoken at all. They all gaped, then Dame Alys’s jaw began to work, and there was a general cringing at what was surely coming next.

But from the doorway Frevisse said in a voice all calmness, “You may have the right of it, Meg. But it’s hardly ours to say, is it? It being a matter between God and each soul as it comes to Him. And we have all been warned not to judge, in fear of our own judgment.”

The last was a direct hit on Dame Alys, who visibly swallowed her ire, clamped her fist more tightly around her spoon, and grumbled, “What brings you here? I can’t do more about Montfort than I’m already doing.”

“And what you do will be splendid,” Frevisse said, which was little more than the truth. What came from Dame Alys’s kitchen was worth eating, despite the ill temper and bad treatment that accompanied its preparation. “I only wanted to tell you the guesthall kitchen will be able to see to him and his men by supper time.”

“There’s a blessing,” Dame Alys muttered. “But excuse us if we do not continue our conversation, but go on with what needs doing now. It being the holy days, we must needs have a bit of a treat, no matter what’s toward otherwise.”

Frevisse let that go by. Like a dog that barks all the time, most of what Dame Alys said could be safely ignored. Instead she said, “May I ask questions of your folk here if I don’t interfere with their work? It’s about Sister Fiacre. Domina has directed me to ask questions.”

Thus forestalled of further complaint, Dame Alys grunted and gestured permission.

Frevisse knew that, if she were strict in her obedience, she would be in the guesthall. But she told herself that the truth must be sought where it might be found, which was everywhere, and went quietly from servant to servant, asking if they had seen anything yesterday afternoon, heard anything then or later that might matter. She was careful to keep her voice low, which encouraged the servants to do likewise, seemingly to placate Dame Alys, but actually to keep them from hearing one another’s answers. But each said only that she had been busy in the kitchen, and none had been anywhere near the church yesterday, to see or hear anything that might matter.

Then she came to Meg, and asked, “Have you seen Gilbey Dunn lately?”

Without looking up from her work, Meg answered in a voice hardly above a whisper, “When I went home this morning, yes. He came over when he saw I was there.”

“What did he want to say?”

“To tell me he’d seen to my animals since Hewe hadn’t come home last night.”

“Is he still wanting to marry you?”

Dull color covered Meg’s cheeks, but she did not ask how Frevisse knew of that, only said, “Yes.”

“Have you seen Hewe yet today?”

“He came home a little after I did. He’d been with friends. He’d forgotten the animals. That’s what he said. That he’d been with friends and forgotten the animals.” She went on dicing the cooked chickens while she spoke. “He’s not interested in tending the animals, which is as it should be. He’s not meant to be a villager. He’s to be a priest.”

That was a matter Hewe and his mother would have to fight out between them, so Frevisse offered no opinion. She asked, “You knew Sister Fiacre?”

That startled Meg into looking up at her. “Yes,” she breathed, her voice catching a little on the word. “She was kind to me in the church yesterday morning.” She looked back down at her work. “But I’m glad she’s dead. She’s in no more pain now. She’s gone to Heaven and won’t be crying anymore with hurting.” She cast a resentful little glance toward Dame Alys’s back.

“That’s true enough. The only pity is she did not die in God’s time for her.”

Meg looked up at her directly then. “But she did die in God’s time. We’re in God’s hands in everything, so Father Clement used to say. Everything is His.”

“Except evil,” Frevisse said.

Meg’s eyes widened, and she looked fearfully around, crossing herself, before returning doggedly to her work.

“Were you in the church yesterday afternoon?” Frevisse asked.

“For a little while. I went to pray again. Prayers feel better there.”

“Was Sister Fiacre there then?”

“She was kneeling on the altar steps when I came in.” Meg swallowed thickly. “She’d told me that was her favorite place to pray.”

“Did you talk with her?”

Meg shook her head dumbly.

“Was there anyone else there? Did you see anyone else in the church?”

Meg shook her head again, hesitated, looked from side to side and down and then finally at Frevisse again, bringing herself to say, “But afterwards I saw one of the travelers— one of the players—the fair-haired one—going toward the church.”

Frevisse felt a hard knotting somewhere near her stomach. Careful of her voice, she managed to ask, “How soon after?”

Having started, Meg seemed less shy of saying more. “Soon. I was coming back here. I saw him going toward the church then.”

“Do you know what time it was?”

Meg hesitated, thinking, then held up three of her fingers side by side and parallel to the floor. “The sun was that much above the horizon.”

“Did he go into the church?”

Meg hesitated before saying, “I didn’t watch. But he was going that way.”

“And you know it was one of the players. You saw his face? Where were you when you saw him?”

Meg hesitated, uncertain which question to answer first. “I didn’t see his face, he was going away from me. But his hair, so fair, I saw. And they dress differently, the players do. And he’s tall. It was him.”

Joliffe. Or someone dressed to look like him, Frevisse’s mind determinedly offered.

Frevisse went on to Dame Alys, who was brooding over a pot bubbling with dark broth on one of the fires. Frevisse breathed in the rich smell of its steam and said, “Rabbit?”

“Rabbit,” Dame Alys agreed grudgingly, as if it were meant to be a secret. “For Domina’s especial New Year’s treat—if the meat ever cooks to tender enough to go into a pie. It’s taking its while, let me tell you. Every rabbit that’s come to me from him this year has been tough as tanned leather.”

“Come from whom?” Frevisse asked. If a villein managed to snare a rabbit he generally kept it for himself and his family, and few of the servants had time enough to course rabbits. So who was responsible for bringing Dame Alys rabbits?

“Father Henry. He and that little hound of his can’t ever seem to catch aught but the oldest rabbit in the warren. It’s wearisome, it is. He brought one in yesterday that will have to hang a few days, or it might do. But this one hung a week and is tough as fresh killed. And it’s not so big as the one he brought me at harvest time. Why, it was big as a shoat and likely twenty years old.”

She would have gone on comparing rabbits until the meat boiled to invisible fragments in the broth, but Frevisse made her escape. The cold air of the cloister made her nose and head ache, and she paused a moment, leaning against one of the pillars to steady herself while she collected her thoughts. Meg had seen Joliffe near the church yesterday afternoon. And probably told someone else besides Frevisse about it. Which meant that eventually Montfort would know of it.

But worse, Joliffe had lied to her. She felt betrayed. She had trusted these people, and one—all of them?—had lied to her.

She was so angry she dared not go directly to the guest-hall; it would not do to let them see her angry. But she also wanted to talk to Gilbey Dunn again. And to Father Henry about what he might have learned. And to Annie Lauder.

Annie was alone in the laundry today, elbow deep in a suds-crested washtub, with a pile of soaking tablecloths heaped white beside her. Well muscled from her years of carrying buckets of water and baskets of wet laundry, she did not look as tall as she was. She looked around as Frevisse came in, nodded to her, but went on mauling another tablecloth in the water. “No holidays for laundresses,” she said in rhythm to her movements. “They just come clean in time to be dirtied again come Twelfth Night. A daft occupation, laundering, but God wills I must earn my pence and I obey. Is there aught I can do for you, Dame?”

“Maybe,” said Frevisse. “And certainly something I can do for you.”

“That’s a fair trade then,” Annie grinned.

“The crowner has come to look into Sym’s death and Sister Fiacre’s murder.”

“Aye. That word was all over the priory long since.” Apparently her work did not keep her separate from whatever news might be going through St. Frideswide’s.

“Can you tell me where Gilbey Dunn was the night that Sym died?”

Annie paused just two beats in her movements, then continued. “How should I know?”

“Was he with you?”

“In here?” Annie looked around grimly. “I’ve never thought he’d be one for taking much interest in laundry.” Frevisse thought that no answer at all and her face said so. Annie said, less flippantly, “I’m not much of one for following after him, or any man. I’ve trouble enough with aprons and napkins. At least they don’t go sneaking off getting themselves dirty after I’ve washed them.”

But Frevisse did not consider that an answer, either. She continued to wait.

Finally, defiantly, Annie said, “What would I be doing with him? I know when I’m well off, and living at some man’s beck and call while he spends my good silver pence is not my notion of well off. I have what I want and I’ll keep what I have, and if this crowner says he’s found things that any fool knows aren’t there to be found, well, we all know the fool’s word never hanged nobody.”

“I have a witness who can swear you and Gilbey Dunn had sexual concourse in this very shed, and that your conversation made it clear this was a regular occupation for the two of you.”

Annie resumed scrubbing in her tub. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Annie, I think it possible that Gilbey murdered Sym, whom he considered an obstacle to his proposed marriage to Meg Shene. You should be careful of giving your affections too easily. You are breaking the law of God and man, and putting yourself in danger of a charge of helping a murderer.”

“He didn’t! He never did!”

“So you say. But can you prove it?”

Annie threw the tablecloth into the water and sat down on the wet bench beside her tub. “Lord have mercy,” she sighed.