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Authors: Margaret Frazer

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BOOK: The Hunter’s Tale
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And there was the terrible truth. That was what Sir Ralph’s life had been and it was what he had made of all their lives while he lived. A waste. His life had been a waste, and Tom’s death was a waste, and the grief of both those truths suddenly choked Hugh. “So let his death go, my lady,” he forced out. “We’ve grief enough and don’t need more.” And because he could not trust himself beyond that, he turned away from her and the other nun and Miles. Turned away from them and everyone and everything except his grief and tangled thoughts. Turned and went out of the churchyard and across the road, blindly headed toward the forest’s edge across the pasture there, wanting the sanctuary the forest always gave him. Sanctuary and time to think. Sir Ralph’s life had been a waste of all of their lives and none of them talked of his death because no one wanted to know… who among them had done it.

 

Because, very surely, one of them had.

 

And Dame Frevisse knew it as well as he did.

 

Chapter 20

 

With Hugh almost to the woods, Miles broke the startled silence left behind him, saying, “If you’ll pardon me, too, my ladies,” and went the other way, across the churchyard, not even to the gate but bracing one hand on the low wall when he came to it and swinging over. His hound cleared it in an easy leap after him and they disappeared together into the village.

 

When Frevisse looked back toward the woods, Hugh was out of sight. Beside her, Sister Johane said softly, “Oh my,” and when Frevisse looked at her, her eyes were large with pity and unease.

 

‘Oh my indeed,“ Frevisse agreed.

 

‘Do you think one of them did it?“ Sister Johane almost whispered, though there was no one to overhear them.

 

Slowly Frevisse answered, “There’s nothing that says so.”

 

‘Nor anything that says not,“ Sister Johane said, her gaze fixed on Frevisse’s face.

 

‘No. There’s nothing to say that either. In truth“—and the truth came hard—”I’ve not yet learned anything that tells against anyone more than another. Anyone at all.“

 

Hopefully, Sister Johane asked, “Then you’re going to let it go?”

 

Staring downward at the grassy edge of the graveled path, Frevisse said slowly, “I don’t know what else I can ask or where else I can look for answers. But to leave it like this…”

 

‘If it’s the only place you can leave it, you have to,“ Sister Johane said.

 

Frevisse lifted her head with a sigh somewhere between accepting that and impatient at herself, her heart and mind heavy with more than the day’s growing heat.

 

Hugh was afraid and Miles was angry, and she understood Miles’ anger. Sir Ralph had done enough to him to fuel a lifetime’s anger. But what was Hugh afraid of?

 

Of being found out for his father’s murder?

 

Or of finding out who
had done
it?

 

Or did he know who had done it and was afraid for them?

 

Or afraid of them.

 

She stood staring at the woodshore where Hugh had disappeared. It was the weather, she told herself. It was too hot for her to think clearly. But the woods’ rich greens of high summer were already dulled toward the dusty beginnings of autumn. The year was on the turn.

 

‘This weather can’t hold,“ she said. ”There’ll be a storm before long.“

 

‘Shall we stay here for Tierce and say it in the church?“ asked Sister Johane.

 

‘No,“ Frevisse said, finding she did not want to meet Father Leonel again just yet, with his burden of knowledge about the Woderoves. Had Sir Ralph’s murderer confessed to him yet? Did he know who it was? Or maybe, with his deeper knowledge of everyone here, did he at least have too true a suspicion? ”No,“ she said again to Sister Johane’s question. ”Let’s go back to the manor for it.“

 

The day passed somehow. The heat grew worse, weighing on everyone, stilling even Lucy’s chatter. Neither Hugh nor Miles came in to midday dinner and for once Lady Anneys was impatient at them, saying, “They could at least say when they’re not going to be here.”

 

At her order, a double share of ale was sent out to the fields for the harvesters’ midafternoon rest-time. Later, Helinor came into the garden to tell her, “Alson brought back word Master Hugh and Master Miles are both in the field, helping to harvest. Thought you’d want to know,” and afterward Lady Anneys was a little farther away from the edge of her ill-humour. She even had supper delayed until nearly dark, waiting for their return, and buckets of water set on the bench outside the hall door to the foreyard to warm in the afternoon sun, with towels and a bowl of soap and clean tunics laid beside them, so that when Hugh and Miles finally walked wearily into the yard, they were able to wash there, stripped to the waist and scrubbing each other’s backs, Ursula reported, hanging out the tall window to watch them.

 

‘Well, tell them to hurry. I’m starved,“ Lucy said irritably from the table.

 

‘Not so starved as they surely are,“ Lady Anneys said curtly. ”You’ve done nothing all day except moan about the heat while they’ve been out working in it. Ursula, come here and sit down. They don’t need your help to wash themselves.“

 

They came in, in their clean tunics and with their hair slick to their heads from dunking in a bucket. Baude, wide with her whelps, heaved up from beside the hearth and waddled to meet them, she and Bevis circling each other with waving tails. Talk through the meal was of how the harvest went and whether the weather would break in a storm sooner rather than later.

 

‘Gefori says sooner,“ Hugh said. ”Late tomorrow maybe. If it holds off to late afternoon, we’ll have most of the wheat safe.“

 

‘What of the beans and peas?“ Lady Anneys asked. A storm that battered them into the ground when they should be drying on their plants could ruin the crop and mean much of the manor’s food for the next year was gone.

 

‘Father Leonel is praying,“ Hugh said.

 

‘Do you still mean to hunt tomorrow?“ Lady Anneys asked.

 

‘The hounds need it, if nothing else,“ Hugh said. ”But I’ll make it short and be done early.“ Taking great care at spreading butter on a piece of bread, probably so he did not have to look at her, he added, ”I asked Sir William if he’d join me.“

 

Suddenly no one except Lucy was looking at anyone else, until after a moment Lady Anneys said with careful quiet, “And is he going
to
?”

 

‘He sent back his thanks but said he’d not.“

 

‘Another time, then.“

 

Lady Anneys spoke as if hardly interested one way or the other; and Hugh with relief said, “Yes. Likely later.”

 

The message had been passed between them that, when the time came, she would accept it.

 

Because they had dined so late, there was little time for staying up and by the last fade of twilight they all went to their beds, before there was need to light candles to see their way. Shut into Lady Anneys’ bedchamber, Frevisse freed her head from veil and wimple with a relief matched by Sister Johane’s sigh of pleasure as she rubbed at her bared neck. While Sister Johane settled onto their truckle bed, Frevisse moved to close the window shutter but Lady Anneys said, “Pray, leave it open.” She was sitting on one of the chests with her hair already loosed and falling to her waist, Ursula combing it with long, slow strokes in which both she and her mother seemed to be taking pleasure. “I’d rather risk the night vapors,” Lady Anneys said, smiling, “than smother the way we surely will with the window shut.”

 

So would Frevisse and she willingly left it open, but it made small difference. The hoped-for evening coolness did not come and sleep was hard to reach, no matter how much it was wanted. And Frevisse wanted it very much, because otherwise she lay thinking when there was far too much she did not want to think about because there was far too little she knew.

 

But without sleep, she found herself considering, in the quiet darkness after Lady Anneys had gone to her bed and Lucy and Ursula to theirs, how comforting it would be to believe Tom Woderove had killed his father.

 

Found herself likewise thinking how unfortunate it was that she believed Father Leonel when he said Tom had been with him.

 

If she believed that and refused to believe there had been an unknown someone there or that one of the women or girls could have done it without being bloodstained, she was down to the four men and Degory for the murderer. Or three men if she accepted that Miles and Philippa had been together—and hadn’t themselves killed Sir Ralph. Because it might have been planned between them, to go off together but Philippa wait somewhere alone while Miles stalked Sir Ralph and killed him, with her to claim afterward that they had never been apart. It would have been a very quickly made plan, though, and if they were going to kill someone, wouldn’t Sir William have been the better choice? His death would have made Philippa sure of her inheritance, setting her and Miles free to marry in despite of whatever rage Sir Ralph might have against it.

 

Perhaps Philippa had balked at plotting her father’s murder. But killing Sir Ralph was purposeless for them. Or maybe not so very purposeless, because Sir Ralph’s death freed everyone from him. Which was the trouble. Everyone had that reason to want him dead.

 

But if Tom was left out of it, who had had best hope of profit from Sir Ralph’s death? Sir William if he thought he could take control of her children’s marriages from Lady Anneys. Master Selenger if he wanted Lady Anneys and thought he could win her once she was widowed. Hugh if it mattered enough to him to have the hounds all for himself…

 

Sleep was finally starting to come, her mind drifting loose of connected thought… and into the thought that maybe they were all lying. That they had all killed him and were all lying. That Hugh and Miles and Sir William and Master Selenger and even Degory had all planned his death and done it, and everything any of them said was lies for the sake of protecting each other…

 

Frevisse found she was stark awake again, staring angrily at her thoughts.

 

She was like a hen scratching in the dust, throwing bits of everything around at random in hopes of finding a stray fact to feed on, she told herself. And if that was all she could do, she would be better putting her efforts into prayer for peace for the souls of everyone here, that they might come to God’s mercy, since it looked unlikely anyone would come to Man’s judgment.

 

The familiar ways of prayer brought her slowly toward sleep; but when it finally came, she found herself in a troublous dream where a man that she knew—in the way one knew things in dreams—was Sir Ralph was struck down and killed and stood up to be killed again, first by Tom— again, in the way of dreams, Frevisse knew who he was, though she had never seen him—and then by Hugh, and then by Miles, and then by Sir William and Master Selenger together, and finally by Lady Anneys, who— unlike the others—beat and beat and beat on him after he was down, making sure of his death and that he did not rise again.

 

Frevisse awoke from that with a start that wrenched her upright in bed, gasping for breath, certain something terrible was happening. And heard, not in any dream, the high-pitched scream of someone in mortal agony or fear.

 

Beside her, wrenched equally awake, Sister Johane sobbed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, protect us now and in the hour of our death!” But from the bed above them Lady Anneys said, “It’s Baude. She’s begun to whelp and is frighted by it. She always does this.”

 

‘Are you sure?“ Sister Johane gasped.

 

‘I’m sure,“ Lady Anneys said with a calm that could only come from complete assurance. A plaintive voice called from the girls’ room and Lady Anneys called back, ”It’s only Baude. Go back to sleep.“

 

Reassured along with Lucy and Ursula, Sister Johane lay down with a relieved sigh. Frevisse lay down less quickly, her mind still tainted by her dream. Baude gave one more agonized howl before Hugh must have reached her and begun to soothe her because the night’s quiet came back and in it Frevisse tried to say some of the prayers she should have awakened to do at midnight. A slight stir of air had cooled the room a little and she soon slept again, but not deeply. The ugly tendrils of her dream still strayed through her mind and she was fully awake sometime later when Lady Anneys rose restlessly from her bed.

 

The darkness beyond the window had thinned to the blue-gray of coming dawn. In the dimness Lady Anneys groped for her bedgown where she had laid it aside before going to bed, found it, and slipped it on before—so quiet-footed that she must have had every squeaking floorboard held in her memory—she went out and down the stairs. Frevisse, having pretended to be as asleep as Sister Johane was, settled herself determinedly for a last small sleep before the household stirred awake and the day began, but there seemed
to
be no more sleep in her and impatience took over, and rather than resort to pillow-pummeling in the hope of finding a shape both cool and sleep-inducing, she rolled warily off the bed. The ropes stretched under the mattress squeaked slightly the way ropes stretched under mattresses always did, but Sister Johane did not stir, and Frevisse dressed by feel and pinned on her wimple and veil blindly but with practiced fingers before going down the stairs. Lady Anneys had probably gone to the garden for the early morning’s coolness. So would she.

 

Faint lamplight shining around the shut door at the stairfoot somewhat surprised her, and she was more surprised when she opened it to find Hugh and Miles and Degory all there in the hall, crouched near the hearth around a heap of straw where Baude lay on her side, looking far flatter than she had last evening. Hugh and Degory barely glanced up as Frevisse circled them, careful not to come too near. It was Miles who looked up, a wholehearted smile on his tired face, to explain, “She was too frantic. We didn’t want to move her to the whelping shed. So Degory brought straw and we’ve done it here.”

BOOK: The Hunter’s Tale
6.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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