The Hunter’s Tale (3 page)

‘Home?“ Domina Elisabeth permitted quiet surprise into her voice despite she was undoubtedly—as Frevisse was—rapidly wondering why. ”So suddenly?“

Twisting the gloves in his hands, he started, “Our father—” but stopped, interrupted by a soft scratching at the door frame.

A stranger’s arrival in the cloister never went unknown for long. Frevisse’s only question had been whether Dame Emma or Sister Amicia would be first, claiming to wonder if Domina Elisabeth wished food or drink brought for him. As it happened, it was Sister Amicia, panting a little from the haste she had made, who came in at Domina Elisabeth’s rather sharp
“Benedicite,”
and curtsyed, taking an open, questioning look at their guest while asking, “Does my lady wish I bring wine and something to eat?”

‘Please, no,“ Hugh said to Domina Elisabeth before she could answer. ”We can be home early tomorrow if we leave soon.“

Accepting his pressing need without more question, Domina Elisabeth said, “Sister Amicia, please bring Ursula Woderove here and give order for her things to be packed.” She turned a questioning look to Ursula’s brother. “All of her things?”

‘What? No. She’ll be back. I hope to bring her back in a few weeks.“

‘Enough of her things for a visit,“ Domina Elisabeth said, and added crisply, ”Now, please,“ when it seemed Sister Amicia might linger in hope of hearing more. At that, Sister Amicia made a reluctant curtsy and went and Domina Elisabeth turned her heed back to Hugh, saying, ”Your sister will be here soon. Can you tell me what the trouble is? Might our prayers help?“

‘Yes. No. I mean, yes.“ Hugh paused, having lost himself among answers, drew breath, and said, smoothing his gloves over his knee, ”It’s our father. Sir Ralph. He’s dead.“

Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth both made the sign of the cross on themselves, Frevisse murmuring a brief prayer while Domina Elisabeth asked, “We knew nothing of him being ill. It came suddenly?”

‘Yes. Suddenly,“ Hugh agreed awkwardly. ”It was… he was killed. Someone killed him. We found him dead two days ago.“

‘Not… an accident?“ Domina Elisabeth asked.

‘Not an accident, no.“

‘But you don’t know who…“

Domina Elisabeth stopped, caught between a wish to know and uncertainty of how much to ask, but Hugh answered, “We don’t know who, no. It was in the woods. He’d been hunting. Whoever did it was well away before we even knew it had happened. We made search with men and dogs but to no use.”

All of which explained the young man’s unsteadiness, Frevisse thought. He had hardly had time to find his own balance and was here to tell his sister in her turn. At least he did not have to wait long; small, light footsteps were already running up the stairs, with Sister Amicia calling, “There’s no need to run, Ursula,” but too late. Ursula burst into the room. Wearing her favorite red gown, she was always startling among the nuns forever in their Benedictine black, but as Dame Claire had said last time the question had come up of dressing her in something more seemly, its boldness suited her, and besides, no one was truly willing to spoil her open pleasure in its bright color or forgo their own pleasure in seeing hers. But like her gown, she was sudden, and forgetful of manners and the courtesy due Domina Elisabeth, she cried out, “Hugh!,” and flung herself across the room at him.

Rising from his chair, he caught her and lifted her from the floor into a great hug that she returned with her arms around his neck and hearty kissing of his cheek. He kissed her as heartily back, set her to the floor, and said the inevitable, “You’ve grown!”

Ursula flashed a happy smile up at him. “You haven’t seen me since Christmastide and I turned eleven the morrow of St. Mark’s. Of course I’ve grown.” She poked at his belt buckle accusingly. “You said you’d come at Easter but you didn’t. Nobody did.”

‘I only said might and it happened I couldn’t. But I sent you a red ribbon for your birthday, didn’t I? I did do that.“

Ursula flung her arms around his waist, as high as she could reach, and hugged him again. “You did, you did. Just like I asked.”

‘But, Ursa,“ Hugh said, and the brightness was gone from his voice, warning her there was something else.

Dame Perpetua was always saying that Ursula was a quickly clever child and now she immediately read her brother’s voice and pulled back from him as far as she could without letting go of him and asked, frightened, “Has something happened to Mother?”

‘Not to Mother, no. She’s well.“ Hugh moved to sit again, drawing Ursula to stand in front of him so they were face to face. ”It’s Father. He’s dead. He was killed while he was out hunting. Two days ago.“

Ursula’s face went blank and her color drained away. With widened eyes, she echoed faintly, “He’s dead? He’s really dead?”

‘Two days ago. I’m here to take you home for the funeral.“

Belatedly Domina Elisabeth rose to her feet. “We’ll leave you together for now. Take as long as need be. Your things will be waiting for you when you’re ready to leave, Ursula.”

Ursula vaguely thanked her without looking away from her brother or loosing her hold on him. Frevisse, following Domina Elisabeth out of the room, heard her ask again, “He’s really dead?” with what sounded oddly more like unbelieving hope than grief, but Frevisse rid herself of that thought by the time she reached the stairfoot, where Domina Elisabeth was sending Sister Amicia to ask Father Henry, the nunnery’s priest, to meet her in the church.

‘Sir Ralph Woderove was not overgenerous to us but he did send that haunch of venison when Ursula returned to us at Christmastide, and he was her father. For her sake he shall have a Mass and prayers from us,“ she said.

Frevisse agreed that would be well and, her part in it finished, retrieved her inkpot and was at her desk on the cloister walk’s north side, bent over her work, when Domina Elisabeth saw Ursula and her brother out. Keeping her eyes on her copying, Frevisse did not see them actually leave but heard, when they were gone and Domina Elisabeth was come back into the cloister, the soft rush of skirts and feet along the walk and Dame Emma eagerly asking Domina Elisabeth where Ursula was going and would she be back and who was that who’d come for her and what had happened. Domina Elisabeth told her, briefly, and sent her back to whatever she should have been doing.

Frevisse missed whatever talk came after that among the other nuns, keeping at her copying through the rest of the day save for the Offices and dinner when no talking was allowed. Only in the hour’s recreation allowed each day before Compline’s final prayers and bed did she hear more, when the nuns went after supper to the high-walled garden behind the cloister. The fading day was warm under a sky soft with westering sunlight, and in the usual way of things, they would have sat on the benches or strolled alone or a few together, talking and at ease, along the graveled paths between the carefully kept beds of herbs and flowers. This evening, though, while Frevisse walked slowly in company with Dame Claire, and Sister Thomasine went her usual way to the church to pray, the other nuns hurried ahead along the narrow slype that led out of the cloister walk, crowding on each other’s heels into the garden and immediately clustering just inside the gateway with heads together and tongues going. There was no way for Frevisse not to hear, as she and Dame Claire made to go past them, Dame Juliana saying excitedly, “Yes! I asked the servant who came with him.” Presently hosteler, with the duty of seeing to the nunnery’s guests, Dame Juliana had plainly used her duty today as a chance to learn what she could from Hugh Woderove’s servant. “He told me everything.”

‘It truly was murder?“ Sister Johane asked. ”Someone did kill him?“

‘They did. Very much killed him.“ Dame Juliana was as eager to tell as her listeners were to hear. ”Someone bashed his head in with a stone. They’d been hunting and he went into the woods after a dog, I think, and when he didn’t come back, they went looking for him and found him
dead.“

‘They don’t know who did it?“ Dame Emma asked.

‘Well, they think it must have been a poacher and Sir Ralph surprised him and the man killed him. Whoever it was, he escaped clean away and that’s why they think a poacher, because a poacher would know the woods well enough to
get
away and how to lose the hounds when they tried to trail him.“

Frevisse’s own thought was that it must have been a singularly stupid poacher if he chose to be there in the woods when a hunt was going on, but Dame Claire asked as they moved away, neither of them interested in spending their hour in fervent talk over a murder that had nothing to do with them, “How was it with Ursula when her brother told her, poor child?”

Cautious with her own uncertainty, Frevisse said, “I was there only at first, before she’d had time to fully feel it, I think.”

Dame Claire bent to run her fingers through a tall clump of lavender. “We’ll have a goodly harvest of this, it seems.”

Frevisse agreed, and leaving the dead man forgotten, they strolled on.

Chapter 3

The trouble with summer days was how long they lasted, Hugh thought wearily, watching almost the last of the funeral guests ride out of sight around the far curve of the road along the woodshore beyond the church. Today had stretched out forever from sunrise until finally now when dusk had set the last guests homeward. Master and Mistress Drayton had a four-mile ride to go but twilight this near past Midsummer went on forever; they would be home before full dark. Hugh lowered his hand from a last wave after them and turned back through the gateway into the manor’s foreyard, trying to hold his shoulders straight against his weariness. Long summer days and their drawn-out twilight had always been pleasure for him, but today he had found himself wanting a brief winter’s day that would be done with and over, with a long night to follow when he could go to bed and not be anything except—with luck—asleep for hours upon hours and no need to say or do any of all the things he had had to do and say these past five days.

As it was, having no need for haste to be home before dark, the guests had lingered over the funeral feast. Not that there had been that many guests. “And most of them are here simply for the pleasure of seeing him dead,” Miles had said low-voiced to Hugh as they came out of the uncrowded church after the funeral Mass. Nor was anyone there who had to take much trouble over coming except Master Wyck from Banbury and that was more because he had been Sir Ralph’s attorney than for respect. Certainly there had been no great grieving from anyone, unless Elyn and Lucy’s tears meant much, which Hugh doubted. That his sisters’ weeping seemed more from duty—they owed it to themselves to weep—than from feeling was among the thoughts weighing on Hugh all day. Another heavy thought was that despite Sir Ralph had lived a goodly number of years, been married, had children, known a fair number of people along the way, at the end of it all he was buried with no one much caring and only duty-tears over his grave.

If anyone is going to miss him, Hugh thought as he crossed the foreyard, back toward the hall, his shadow stretching out black ahead of him, it will be me and the hounds. And I don’t think we do. Except maybe Bevis. The brindled wolfhound had been Sir Ralph’s present favorite, taken with him almost everywhere, even into church, where Father Leonel had frowned but not dared say anything. These days since Sir Ralph’s death, Bevis had limped restlessly through the hall and foreyard or else lain beside the hall hearth, long muzzle on paws, eyes fixed on the outer door as if awaiting Sir Ralph’s return. Yet when Tom had brought him to lie beside the bier, he would not, and today was tied in the kitchen yard, out of the way. Hugh had wondered before now how things would have gone that last day if Bevis had been with Sir Ralph. Assuredly not the way they had.

But Bevis had cut a forepaw on a stone the day before and the morning of the hunt Sir Ralph had rumpled his ears and said, “Best you lie up today, old fellow. It’s only hare-hunting anyway.” But a very good hare-hunting, as it happened; the best there had been that summer. Only fallow and roedeer bucks and hare were allowable to the hunt through the summer months and early autumn, between St. John’s Day and Holy Rood, and since Sir Ralph had hunted roedeer a few days earlier, he had been in the humour for hare-hunting, and so Hugh had been out in the green-gold dawn that day, a-foot and without dogs, to quarter the rough pastureland beyond the village fields, looking for the best place to bring the hunt. He had been glad the signs for likely best hunting looked to be in the farthest of the pastures, well away from the fields where the grain was ripening toward harvest. Sir Ralph had no care if his hounds coursed through the standing grain, but it set the villagers to fury to see their work and hope of winter bread trampled by hounds and hunters for the sake of sport. Sir Ralph’s answer to their protests when they came into the manor court about it was always, “I have to live with your poaching my game out of my forest whenever you’ve a mind to it and stealing my wood whenever my back is turned. You can live with my trampling a little of your fields in return. Now get out.”

A year ago Hary Gefori, the hay ward’s grown son and shaping well to take his father’s place when the time came, had dared say angrily back, “Aye, we poach, and when we’re caught at it, we’re beaten and fined for it. So, in like, when you and your hounds and horses have robbed us of our grain, why shouldn’t you pay?”

Sir Ralph had half-risen from his chair, his hands gripping its arms so his knuckles stood out white, his face purpled with fury and his words almost throttled by his anger. “Pay for what’s mine? I own all this manor and everything on it, including you and every stalk of wheat and rye and barley and plain pasture grass. If anyone’s going to pay, it’ll be you—with half the teeth in your head and the skin off your back. Tom and you there, Duff, take him. Hugh, fetch my dog whip. I’ll show…”