The Hunter’s Tale (13 page)

‘That doesn’t mean I lie down and roll over and take what I’m given. Because Sir Ralph wanted me to marry Philippa doesn’t mean I
have
to marry Philippa and no more than gamble that I’ll gain more than I lose by it.“

Sir William took a deep drink of his wine, maybe hoping to wash down the anger tightening his face. Hugh guessed he had not counted on argument from Tom, while Tom was suddenly feeling the freedom Sir Ralph’s death had given him; and Hugh said, hoping to forestall trouble, “Wouldn’t this better wait until Mother is here to have say in it?”

Sir William dismissed that with a flick of one hand. “We don’t need a woman’s dealing in this. Besides, she’s put herself away into that nunnery.”

‘Not forever,“ Hugh said. ”She—“

‘She’ll accept what I decide,“ Tom cut in impatiently.

Sir William looked back and forth between them and— to give himself somewhere else
to look,
Hugh guessed— restlessly picked up the small-bladed penknife and one
of
the untrimmed quills lying on the table and began to work a point onto it, saying while he did, “Besides, it’s doubtful she’ll much longer have any say at all in these matters, what with this uncommon interest she’s taking in John Selenger. Not that he isn’t worth her interest but—”

‘Its Selenger who’s shown uncommon interest in her,“ Hugh said. ”She went into the nunnery
to
get away from him.“

Tom gave him a surprised look. He clearly had never connected the
two,
despite what Miles had said yesterday.

With a slight and maybe scornful smile at one corner of his mouth, Sir William said, trimming more intently at the quill, “It’s odd, then, that she sent him a letter asking for him to come see her there.” He looked up, first at Hugh, now as surprised as Tom, and then at Tom. “Or didn’t you know that? Sent for him and was not at all ungiving of her… company, shall we say?”

Tom and Hugh traded looks. Hugh shook his head, not believing it. Nor did Tom, who said angrily at Sir William, “I doubt both the letter and that she welcomed him. I think Miles is right. I think you’ve set him on to her.”

‘John needs no ’setting on‘ to have interest in a comely woman. And why shouldn’t she have an interest in him?

Their marrying would give her protection and the pleasures 0f a husband and—“

‘And give him her property to use as he chooses,“ Tom snapped, ”while she loses all say in my marriage and in Hugh’s and the girls’.
You’d
have say over all our marriages. You’d make them to suit yourself and take the profits of them for good measure. You knew what was in Sir Ralph’s will. You wanted to keep it from us long enough for Selenger to have a clear run at her.“ Tom swung around to Hugh. ”Miles was right!“

Red-faced with open anger, still clutching the quill in one hand, Sir William pointed at Tom with the penknife and said furiously, “Miles has nothing to do with this. Now listen, Tom…”

Tom stood up so sharply he knocked over the stool behind him. “If Selenger wants a wife, he can have Lucy. She’s ready for marriage and it’ll save the bother of searching out someone else for her. But if all he wants is to make trouble for Mother so you can have the profit of it, then be damned to you both!”

The quill bent and broke in Sir William’s grasp. He drew in breath for an angry answer but Tom stepped around the corner of the table and leaned over him, one hand on the table, the other braced on the back of Sir William’s chair. Thrusting his face close at Sir William, he said, “As for Philippa, the next time you want to talk marriage with me…”

Sir William, crowded back into his chair, swept a hand at him like warding off a fly too close to his face. Tom jerked away, enough that Sir William was able to shove himself out of his chair and swing around to put it between them, saying angrily, “Listen, you young fool…”

But by then Hugh was across the room and gripping Tom by the arm, pleading, “Tom. Let it go. Let’s go home. You’re both too angry for this. Let’s go.” Tom shook him off.

Hugh moved in front of him, between him and Sir William, insisting, “It’s wrong, Tom. Let it go for now. The day’s too hot for talking. This isn’t the time. Let’s go home for now. We can all talk later.” Spilling words the way he would have spilled water on a fire to stop it.

And Tom fell back a step and then another, threw up his hands in surrender, and said, “Yes. Fine. Good enough.” Forcing himself back from his anger, he slapped the side of Hugh’s shoulder. “You’re right. Let’s go.” And before Hugh could answer that, he swung around and stalked from the room.

Still churned with the suddenness of it all, Hugh turned around to Sir William, trying desperately to think of some apology that was not betrayal of Tom, saying, “He’ll settle. I’m sorry. We’ll be back. Or you can come to Woodrim next time.”

‘Supposing there is a next time,“ Sir William snapped; but like Tom, he was forcing his anger back into control and said a little less tersely, ”Yes. Next time I’ll come to Woodrim maybe. I’m sorry, too.“

He made to lay the penknife still clutched in his fist onto the table beside him, then went rigid, staring at it so that Hugh looked, too. And saw the short, sharp blade was bloodied. He and Sir William raised their eyes from it together, looking at each other with mutual unbelief before Sir William half-whispered, “I forgot I was even holding it.”

‘You must have… when you swung at him… you must have…“

‘I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know… I didn’t mean…“

‘He didn’t know either.“ Hugh was already away from the table, leaving. ”It’s so sharp he must not even have felt it.“ And with the high, crimson collar of his doublet and no one looking for blood…

By the time he was out of the parlor, Hugh was running. Running, he passed through the great hall without seeing it, ran out of it into the yard where no one was, and crossed it, still at a run, into the stableyard, where a stableman leading Hugh’s unsaddled and unbridled Foix away from the watering trough startled to a stop, staring.

‘My brother,“ Hugh demanded. ”Where is he?“

‘Gone,“ the man said. ”Stormed in and rode out. He’s gone.“

‘You couldn’t have saddled his horse in the time.“

‘I hadn’t unsaddled it yet. I was tending
to
this one. I’d just finished wiping him down and was coming out for the other one. It was tied there.“ He nodded to a ring in the stable wall. ”Sir William said you’d be here a longish while so I was making no hurry about it…“

Hugh grabbed the lead rope from him. “My bridle. Get it. Fast.”

The man went—not fast enough—into the stable and came out with both saddle and bridle. Hugh grabbed the bridle from him, flung a rein around Foix’s neck to hold him where he was, stripped off the halter, and bridled Foix as fast as his suddenly clumsy fingers would let him. Foix shook his head and tried to back away and Hugh cursed him. The stableman, still not fast enough, made to throw the saddle on Foix but Hugh said, “No, I haven’t time,” and flung himself up and astride Foix’s bare back, gathered the reins, swung him around, and set him into a gallop out of the yard.

Tom couldn’t be far ahead. He’d know by now he was bleeding. He’d have stopped to deal with it. Over the first rise of the road he’d surely be in sight.

He wasn’t. And beyond the rise the road curved and the forest came down to its edge, cutting off longer view, and Hugh, leaned low over Foix’s neck, dug his heels harder into the horse’s sides to set him faster. But Tom must have ridden with an anger that more than equaled Hugh’s desperation because it was beyond there, after another rise of the road, that Hugh finally saw…

… not Tom. His horse. A bay, like Hugh’s. Riderless. Grazing on the grassy verge beside Woodrim’s wheatfield near a spreading oak tree that in harvest served the workers for shade when they broke for their dinner or rest times. But it was barley harvest now. There was no one in sight here. Not even Tom. Only his bay horse.

Confused, Hugh drew rein, bringing Foix to a halt beside the other horse. And only then saw Tom. Lying on his stomach in the long grass at the edge of the oak’s deep shade, his head pillowed on one arm as if he might be sleeping, his face turned away from Hugh, who suddenly wanted
to
go no nearer.

But he slid from Foix’s back and went toward him, saying unsteadily, “Tom? What are you doing?”

He knelt and touched Tom’s shoulder; said, “Tom?” again; and then—all unwillingly—took hold of his shoulder and started to turn him over.

And knew by the body’s utter slackness, even before he saw the dulled, empty-staring
eyes,
that Tom was no longer there.

Chapter 8

In the warm, clear-skied evening the nuns were come into the walled garden for their hour of recreation before Compline and bed. The sun was not yet set, Frevisse supposed, but it was gone below the cloister’s roofs, leaving the garden in gentle evening shadows, the day’s warmth lingering with the mingled scents of the summer fields beyond the nunnery walls and the garden’s herbs and flowers.

Most of the younger nuns and Dame Emma were clustered on the turf benches near one another, heads together in busy talk. Dame Juliana, ever in love with flowers, was drifting from bed to bed, humming happily under her breath, touching her more treasured blooms, stooping now and again to smell one or another, sometimes plucking out a daring, doomed weed.

Dame Claire as infirmarian cared more for the herbs from which she made the nunnery’s medicines than for merely flowers but this evening she was simply walking slowly, alone, back and forth along the path beside their beds, a sprig of some plant between her fingers and a thoughtful look on her face. She had been in talk with Margery, the village herbwife, today, Frevisse knew, and was maybe considering something newly learned from her. The powdered cinnamon and pepper mixed with honey they had tried last year against Dame Emma’s toothache had not been a
success
but a vervain poultice they had devised two winters ago had worked well against an ulcerating sore on a villagers leg.

Tired from a day spent mostly at her copying work, Frevisse was pacing quietly back and forth along a different path, at the garden’s far end and well away from the talking, Dame Juliana, and even Dame Claire. Oddly, Sister Thomasine was there, too, pacing the same path rather than at her prayers in the church, her pace and Frevisses so nearly the same that they passed each other at almost the same point every time, never speaking or ever looking at one another. Over the years, Frevisse had come to trust Sister Thomasine’s silences. Like Frevisse, she had no need for constant talk to reassure herself that she was real. Her intense piety was more than Frevisse could match, but for Frevisse the quiet of her own thoughts was company enough for now. Some people withdrew from the world into nunnery or monastery because either they had no other choices or they could not face what choices they had. Frevisse had become a nun not so much in withdrawal from the world as in a glad going toward God.

What had surprised her was how much, even in the nunnery, a day’s necessities and duties got in the way of that going. She found herself, sometimes, regretting she did not have Sister Thomasine’s gift for making a prayer of almost everything she did, but at least in little whiles like this, when she was alone and silent, she could go a small way toward where she wanted to be in her mind and heart.

The evening’s quiet was stirred—not disturbed—by Ursula’s laughter from the orchard beyond the garden’s wall. Domina Elisabeth only sometimes spent the recreation hour in her nuns’ company, preferring to be in solitude for the one hour of the day when no one was likely to need her for anything; but this evening, as often of late, she was with Lady Anneys and Ursula, and whatever their pastime in the orchard was, Ursula was very happy with it. Indeed, as the days had drawn on since Master Selenger’s visit, Lady Anneys seemed happier, and a few times her own laughter rose from the orchard.

But in the garden, at its other end from Frevisse, the nuns’ talk stopped and heads turned at sound of someone coming at a hurry along the slype from the cloister. A servant surely, but this far toward the day’s end, with all business done, they were almost surely bringing trouble, and Sister Amicia and Sister Margrett sprang up and ran to the gate to meet whoever was there. By the uneven pad of the footsteps Frevisse had guessed it was lame Ela from the guesthall and was not surprised to see her at the gateway; but she only briefly asked something of Sister Amicia and Sister Margrett and immediately disappeared again. The rap a moment later on the orchard’s gate told where she had gone, and Sister Amicia turned back to the other nuns to say, disappointed, “Just old Ela wanting Domina Elisabeth. Probably somebody’s arrived she ought to know about.” But no one likely to divert them, her disappointment said.

Not needing to be diverted, Frevisse continued her slow pacing, content with her own thoughts about nothing in particular until the bell rang to Compline.

It was at next morning’s chapter meeting they learned that, after all, it had been trouble that brought Ela into the cloister. After Father Henry had given his blessing and left them, Domina Elisabeth said with no other beginning, “There was ill news came to Lady Anneys yesterday evening. Her older son was killed two days ago.”

While making the sign of the cross and murmuring a quick prayer for his soul, Frevisse tried to remember if the son she had met had been the older or younger one. Or had she ever known which he was?