The Hunter’s Tale (15 page)

At mention of her husband, Lady Elyn turned away, stifling a sob.

‘And this is Lucy,“ said Lady Anneys.

A round-faced, half-grown girl who might have dimples when she smiled, Lucy made a curtsy and sniffed on tears that were not far from being shed.

Ursula, bringing the ale to Frevisse and Sister Johane, asked, “Would you like some of the hare pie, my ladies?”

When they said they would, she returned to the table to cut it, and Frevisse asked Lady Anneys, “How does it go with you this morning, my lady?”

‘Not very well,“ Lady Anneys answered quietly. ”And it will go worse. I have to warn you the crowner will be here shortly. He arrived late yesterday and stayed the night with our priest in the village. He’ll hold his inquest here this morning, when he’s viewed Tom’s…“ Her steadiness faltered. She took hold on it again and went on, ”… when he’s viewed Tom’s body and the jurors have come.“

It was something that could not be avoided. A crowner’s inquiry must always come after any unexpected or violent death, to determine where guilt lay or if there was guilt at all; and who, if anyone, should be arrested; and whether the sheriff must needs be called in; and what fines were due to the king. All that would be far too familiar here already this summer, Frevisse thought. To go through it again was surely nightmare added to nightmare for Lady Anneys. But she also thought, as she thanked Ursula for the thick wedge of pie the girl now handed to her, that by hearing the inquest she would learn everything about this Tom’s death without need to ask questions of her own and that would be to the good, both for her curiosity’s sake and as help in giving better comfort to Lady Anneys afterward.

Lucy was rubbing at her eyes, murmuring that they hurt. They were red and swollen and probably salt-scalded with tears and Lady Elyn pressed her fingers to the outer corners of her own eyes, which looked no better, and said, “So do mine. We’ll look dreadful for the inquest.” Trembling toward a new siege of weeping, Lucy nodded agreement with that.

The unkind thought crossed Frevisse’s mind that besides their very real grief, they both were feeling very sorry for themselves at being so unhappy.

She was instantly sorry for that thought. Each person had to grieve in their own way, as best or worst, greatest or least they could; and very possibly their way was better than Lady Anneys’ stiff, braced quiet, as if she hardly dared move for fear of the hurt in her despite it would come no matter what she did or did not do.

Sister Johane, putting down her emptied ale cup and her partly eaten piece of pie, said, “Yes, your poor eyes. I have something that might help. An ointment that I brought. It’s meant exactly for soothing sore eyes. I have it with my things. If you’ll come to the bedchamber?”

Lucy nodded readily and Lady Elyn said, “Oh, please, yes,” and Frevisse felt even more contrite. Sister Johane offered needed help, while all she had were unkind thoughts that were no use to anyone.

‘Mother, you’ll come, too?“ Lady Elyn said as she and Lucy started toward the stairs with Sister Johane.

‘Miles is here,“ Lady Anneys said. ”He probably has something to tell me. You go on.“

They did; and with a word of apology to Frevisse, Lady Anneys went the other way, Ursula following her like a small shadow afraid of being lost, down the hall toward a man who had just come in, the one who looked so much like Hugh, with a tall, brindled wolfhound at his side. Frevisse, quite abruptly left to herself, took her first chance to look freely around her while finishing her breakfast. The hall was a plain one, bare-raftered and small, paved with plain stone and without even a screens passage at the far end, just the door to the yard at one side and another door opposite it, presumably to the kitchen and whatever rest of the house there might be. Just as in the bedchamber, everything was plain and well-worn, including the aged and ordinary high-backed chair meant for the lord of the manor here at the high table. The only thing beyond bare necessity was a rather poorly painted tapestry on the wall behind the table, with hunters and hounds striding stiff-legged across a green field strewn with flowers after an oddly proportioned deer leaping away from them toward a grove of scrawny trees.

Servants had come into the hall now. One of them was heading toward the high table, probably to clear the breakfast things away. The others were starting to shift benches from along the walls into rows across the middle of the hall, facing the table. Finished eating and not minded either to sit or return upstairs or join Lady Anneys still in talk at the hall’s far end, Frevisse set down her cup for the servant to take and moved away toward the tall window at one end of the dais, out of everyone’s way.

The shutters were open, letting in air soft with coming rain. It seemed they had been fortunate in fair weather for their traveling yesterday. She stood looking out at the manor’s foreyard, still wishing she were elsewhere, until behind her someone said, “My lady?”

She turned around to find it was the young man who had been in talk with Lady Anneys, his hound still with him. Seen close to and by daylight, he was leaner than Hugh and perhaps a little taller but with the same brown hair and eyes and general look about him, she thought, as he bowed and said, “I’m Miles Woderove, Lady Anneys’ stepgrandson. She’s gone to be sure all’s going well in the kitchen. She asked me to ask if there’s anything you need or I could do for you.”

She looked at him, trying to decide if she dared ask what she wanted to know. He seemed the most calm, least grieved, of any of the family she had so far met, but as he looked steadily back at her, she took in the tight-drawn lines around his eyes, the thin line of his mouth, and judged that his calm was a shield he was barely keeping between himself and the world. So he was someone both controlled and deeply caring, and she said, though she had not thought it out beforehand, “Tell me what you can of how things are here, if you please.”

His eyes flickered. Stiffly he asked, “About Tom’s death, you mean?”

‘No. I’ll hear enough and more than enough about that at the inquest. What I need to know… If I’m to help Lady Anneys at all, I need to have some thought of how things are, how they’ve been for her here.“

Either puzzled over what she meant or considering whether he should answer, Miles looked down at the dog beside him. From what little Frevisse knew of dogs, this was a very fine wolfhound, lean and long-legged like his master, alertly looking at her with dark, intelligent eyes, and so tall that Miles’ hand rested on his head without effort.

‘I’ve gathered,“ Frevisse said carefully, feeling her way, ”that Lady Anneys doesn’t much grieve for her husband’s death.“

Miles’ head snapped up. The calm was gone. “Nobody grieves for Sir Ralph’s death,” he said curtly. “Even his own dog doesn’t grieve for him. You want to help Lady Anneys? Help her forget my late, unlamented grandfather ever existed.”

Frevisse had not expected that much of an answer. Falling back on the obvious, she said, “He wasn’t a good man?”

Miles made a sound too harsh to be laughter. “He was the human equivalent of something you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe.”

Frevisse was so startled that she said, “He’s dead, and you still hate him that badly?”

‘That badly and three times worse, my lady.“

If he could be so open, so could she. “Why?”

‘Why? Because he had pleasure in only two things. Hunting and being cruel to everyone around him. Now that he’s gone, I enjoy being cruel about
him.“

Frevisse had recovered enough balance by now to ask without showing particular feeling about it, “You’ve come back here on visit, now that he’s dead?”

Bitter laughter bent the corners of Miles’ mouth upward into what could not be called a smile. “I’ve never left, my lady. I tried. Twice. Once, when I was ten or so, I took off into the woods. He tracked me with hounds and beat me and brought me back. I tried again when I was fifteen and made a better go of it. That time he took three days to find me but brought men with him to hold me while he beat me. He said I was his heir and, by God’s teeth, I was going to stay where he could see to me.” He shrugged, maybe to shrug off the memory and the anger, looked down at the hound, and said, his smile all bitterly twisted to one side, “You shouldn’t have set me on to this.”

She maybe should not have, but now that she had, she said, “I thought Hugh’s brother Tom was the heir.”

‘To everything Sir Ralph had purchased with his ill-taken fortune from his lawyer days in London, yes. All of that except what Sir Ralph left to Hugh and the girls went to Tom. But there’s a Leicestershire manor entailed from eldest son to eldest son to eldest son. That’s me, the only son of Sir Ralph’s only son by his first wife. Sir Ralph hated him, too.“

‘Your mother is dead?“

‘Long ago. Lady Anneys raised me.“ Miles’ voice and smile lost their bitterness when he named her.

It was good to know his hatred did not reach to everyone around him and Frevisse asked, “Was Sir Ralph cruel to her, too?”

Miles slightly frowned, almost as if considering a riddle. “Sir Ralph would hit anyone else in his reach, even the girls—-though rarely them and not Tom or Hugh or I since we grew big enough to hit back hard enough to make it count. But none of us ever saw him raise a hand against her. No, he never struck her. He never had much to do with her at all. She left him alone and he left her.”

But there were other ways than blows to hurt and ways of “leaving alone” that could cut to the heart, Frevisse thought. Aloud, she only asked, “There’s been no word of who killed him?”

‘None,“ Miles said sharply. ”Nor no more searching either, I think. I hope they never catch who did it.“

‘What about Tom? Was he like his father?“

‘No.“ Miles harshly refused that. ”Tom hated him, too. We all did. But Tom…“ Miles broke off. There seemed easily enough hatred in him to include the man who had inherited so much that might have been his if Sir Ralph had been other than he was, but rather than anger, it was grief that twisted Mile’s voice as he recovered and said, ”After Hugh, Tom was my best friend. I could strangle Sir William with my own hands for killing him.“

‘Sir William?“ She had just heard of a Sir William here, she thought.

Miles’ spasm of grief was gone, the bitterness and anger back. “Our near neighbor. Lady Elyn’s husband.”

Yesterday, on the long ride to here, there had been no talk about Tom’s death. Frevisse had supposed everything had been said the night before between Lady Anneys and Hugh and to Ursula, leaving them with only the grim need to reach home. Faced with that, neither she nor Sister Johane had asked anything. Now Frevisse wished they had, because there seemed to be far too many things she ought to know— and no chance to ask them because Miles was turning away from her to look out the window into the yard where harness-jangle and the thudding of hoofs warned riders had arrived. Three men and a girl, Frevisse saw when she looked out, too, as Miles drew in a hissing breath and stepped back, saying, “St. Anne help us. He’s brought Philippa. My lady,
that
is Sir William and I doubt he has the good grace to wait in the yard until the crowner comes. Pray, excuse me.”

With a curt bow and not waiting for Frevisse’s answer, he went away toward the outer door, the hound beside him. Left on her own, Frevisse watched the newcomers, more accepting of Lady Elyn’s tears if her husband was indeed her brother’s murderer but wondering why, if he was known to be Tom Woderove’s murderer, this Sir William was riding free.

At least she could easily tell which of the three men he was. If his richer clothing—a long, high-collared, black houppelande and dark blue, brimless hat with a glinting, silver-set jewel pinned to it—and better horse—a black palfrey—had not told her, the speed with which one of the men with him, servant-dressed in simple doublet and hosen, dismounted and went to hold his bridle would have. And the girl, who must be Philippa, would be his daughter, Frevisse guessed. Not someone’s wife, anyway, because her long, fair hair was bound back but covered by only a black veil pinned to a small hat’s padded roll. A married woman or a widow like Lady Anneys would have worn a wimple that circled her face and hid her hair and been finished with a starched veil.

But the next moment Frevisse’s heed went from the girl to the man now lifting her down from her side-saddle. The other man who had ridden in with Sir William.

Master Selenger.

What did Master Selenger have to do with Sir William? He looked to be in attendance on Philippa but was too well dressed to be only servant.

Frevisse was suddenly deeply annoyed to be so ignorant of everything and everyone here.

The newcomers’ horses were being led away toward the stables and Master Selenger had led Philippa to Sir William, who was saying something to her. Though Frevisse could not see the doorway from where she stood, she guessed Miles was standing there, in their way, instead of going out to them, but if he meant some challenge to Sir William, he was forestalled by a half dozen more horsemen riding into the yard. Frevisse immediately judged them likely to be the crowner with his clerk and men, all dressed in a plain business way with loose surcoats over doublets and hosen and riding boots, and was disappointed that none of them was the one Oxfordshire crowner she knew. It would have been good to have a friend here.

Sir William and Master Selenger moved to meet them as they dismounted; or rather, they moved to meet the man who dismounted and stepped forward from among them, leaving his horse for someone else to hold. He wore authority as openly as he wore his fullsomely cut surcoat of deep-dyed dark green and seemed to greet both Sir William and Master Selenger familiarly.