The Hunter’s Tale (16 page)

Philippa had stayed where she was, standing alone; but now Miles came into sight, likewise crossing the yard toward the crowner and his men, and he paused by her to say something. His anger toward Sir William seemed not to include her. Whatever he said, she answered with a nod, and when he reached to touch her shoulder briefly, she briefly raised her own hand to touch his before Miles went onward to the men and Philippa toward the hall.

Having seen how much anger was in Miles, his gentleness toward the girl surprised Frevisse, and surprised her the more because it was toward someone linked to the loathed Sir William. But Hugh had appeared from somewhere beyond the hall, crossing the yard to join the crowner and Sir William, reaching them at the same time as Miles and putting himself with what looked like purpose between Miles and Sir William as they all greeted the crowner. It might have been by chance but Frevisse thought it was deliberate. From where she stood she could not tell if Hugh had the same anger toward Sir William that Miles did, though Miles’ rigid back was clear enough even from here.

The men spoke together for a few moments, then walked on toward the hall. Frevisse moved away from the window. Sister Johane, Lady Elyn, and Lucy were just returning to the hall. At its far end Lady Anneys, with Ursula still beside her, was in talk with a maidservant but finished and dismissed her as her daughters and Sister Johane approached her, Frevisse following behind them. But it was to Frevisse and Sister Johane she said, “My ladies, you’d do well to take a place on one of the benches before more people come, I think. Besides our own folk there’ll be neighbors surely, and whoever Sir William has brought, and the crowner’s men and jurors. There are to be ten jurors, I’m told. Five men of ours and five from Sir William’s manor. But…” Her flood of words suddenly stopped. She paused, bewildered, seemingly trying to remember why she had been saying any of that and why it mattered.

Frevisse, understanding the need to flee from overwhelming grief by clinging to practical things and how easy it was to stumble in that flight and be overtaken, hoped there was a strong quieting draught included in whatever Dame Claire had provided Sister Johane and that Lady Anneys could be persuaded to take it when this day was done; but for now she only said, “There’s no need to think about us, my lady. We’ll do well,” and went away with Sister Johane to the last of the three bench-rows facing the dais. For the ease of whoever came later, she and Sister Johane sat in the middle of the bench they chose so it could fill in to either side of them. Two other long benches—for the jurors, Frevisse supposed— had been set at an angle between the dais with its high table and the bench-rows, and presently two manservants were wrestling a long settle through a door behind the dais that Frevisse presumed led to the parlor since the other door there led to the stairs to the bedchambers. Once through the door, the men brought the settle down from the dais, lurching a little with its weight, and set it behind the jurors’ benches, facing the high table where the crowner would sit. That would be for Lady Anneys and her daughters, Frevisse guessed.

Not interested in benches, Sister Johane had twisted around to watch the outer door and said excitedly, “Someone’s arrived.”

‘Sir William and the crowner,“ Frevisse said. ”I saw them from the window.“

Sister Johane twisted back to say low-voiced and close to her, “He’s Lady Elyn’s husband, did you know? Sir William, I mean. They’ve been married about two years and his daughter Philippa was going to marry this Tom who’s dead. That’s why he was at Sir William’s. To talk about the marriage. Only they quarreled and Sir William killed him by mistake, Lady Elyn says.”

‘Is that why Lady Elyn is here instead of with her husband? Because he killed her brother?“

‘Oh, no, not at all. She says nobody blames Sir William. It was a mistake. She’s here because, well, she was needed here more than there, with her mother being gone and all.“ Sister Johane broke off and twisted around again to see what was happening.

Frevisse somewhat turned, too. The crowner, companioned with Miles, was greeting Lady Anneys where she stood with her daughters beside her not far inside the hall door. She gave him her hand and he bowed over it and spoke briefly to her before going on toward the dais with Miles, followed by a man who was probably his clerk, carrying a leather bundle of probably papers.

Sir William had come in behind them and now stepped forward, his hands held out to Lady Anneys, his voice carrying as he said, “Lady Anneys, I’m sorry beyond words for this. It was all…”

Lady Anneys, rigid, snatched her hands away from him and pressed them together over her heart. Sir William, his own hands still out, pleaded, “Lady Anneys, please. For Elyn’s sake if nothing else, don’t turn this to a quarrel between us. I never meant—”

She interrupted, her voice carrying as clearly as his. “It isn’t a quarrel between us, Sir William. All the anger in this world won’t bring Tom back to me. But I can’t… I won’t take the hand that held the knife that killed my son.”

Sir William looked down at his out-held right hand with the surprise of a man seeing a thing in a way he never had until now. Then he withdrew it, took a step back from her, and stiffly bowed. Lady Anneys as stiffly bowed her head to him in return and stood staring over his shoulder at nothing, waiting for him to go away. He looked at Lady Elyn and held out his hand to her. After a bare moment of hesitation and a flicker of her eyes toward her mother, she took it and he led her up the hall to the front bench.

In Frevisse’s ear, Sister Johane whispered, “Lady Elyn said her mother told her she must go with Sir William when the time came. She said Lady Anneys said there wasn’t choice to make between her husband and family. That they were wed and that was what she had to do.”

To Frevisse that spoke well of Lady Anneys, but now she was faced by Master Selenger and the girl Philippa, come in together behind Sir William. Master Selenger looked ready to speak to Lady Anneys but Philippa was hesitating, uncertain whether to she should do that or go immediately after her father. Lady Anneys, paying Master Selenger no heed at all, held out both her hands to the girl and said tenderly and smiling, “Philippa,” and with a grateful gasp Philippa moved quickly to take her hands, holding tightly to them and saying something too low to be heard. Lady Anneys answered quietly, too, then let her go, with a crisp nod and nothing else at Master Selenger, letting him know to keep his distance. He bowed silently and moved off with Philippa, taking her to sit on her father’s other side from her stepmother before seating himself on the bench directly behind them.

Since Sister Johane seemed to have learned a great deal in the while she was tending to Lady Elyn and Lucy, Frevisse whispered to her, “Who is Master Selenger?”

‘Who?“

‘The man who came in with Philippa just now?“

‘Oh. I don’t know.“

‘What does Lady Elyn say about having a stepdaughter not much younger than she is?“

‘Not anything to me. They all grew up together, I think. Philippa and Lady Elyn and the others. So they know each other and all.“

Frevisse wondered whether that would make it harder or easier among them. And how difficult was it for Philippa to sit there beside her father, who had killed the man she was supposed to marry?

‘The two families were close until now?“ she asked.

‘I gather so. Sir William and Sir Ralph were friends, from what Lucy was saying. They both loved hunting. Sir William and Lady Anneys are both executors of her husband’s will and that makes all this even worse because how are they ever going to deal together now?“ She broke off as Hugh entered beside a shuffling old man in a priest’s black gown, then said, ”That will be Father Leonel. Lady Elyn says he’s useless as a priest but that was what her father wanted, not somebody who’d try to change him. Lucy said she shouldn’t talk like that about their father or priests but Elyn said it’s the truth and she’ll say it if she wants to.“

Miles returned to Lady Anneys from seeing the crowner to the dais just as Hugh and the priest joined her. They all spoke low-voiced together and seemed to agree on something before Hugh went back outside and Miles, with Lady Anneys, Lucy, and Ursula following, led Father Leonel to the end of a bench near the settle. While the priest seated himself with the carefulness of stiff joints, Lady Anneys took her place on the settle with Lucy on one side of her and Ursula on the other and Miles took his place standing at the settle’s end, looking ready to do whatever Lady Anneys might need but also able from there to see whatever else went on in the hall.

Hugh and one of the crowner’s men came in with ten men. The inquest’s jurors. Five men from each manor, Lady Anneys said. They were all solemn and well-scrubbed, well-combed, and wearing their best clothes—plain, belted tunics in dull reds, blues, greens, browns, and loose hosen. They bowed to the crowner seated behind the high table where his clerk was laying out papers in front of him, and took their places on the benches set for them. Watching them, Frevisse saw there was no mistaking which five went together against the other five. Cold shoulders and wary looks told more than enough and for the first time Frevisse thought beyond the grief of the young man’s family to the raw possibility of open enmity between one manor’s folk and the other’s because of it. It was not usual for lesser folk to serve on a jury against someone like Sir William but here it might well be best because a decision reached among them would more likely be accepted on both manors.

Once they were sitting, however grudgingly with each other, the crowner looked down the hall and nodded to someone and a moment later people in quantity began to enter. They must have been gathering in the yard ever since Frevisse left the window. Neighbors, she judged—other gentry like Sir William and the Woderoves; mostly men, a few women. They filled the benches quickly. Two men with polite bows took the place to Frevisse’s right; a husband and wife sat to Sister Johane’s left. Later comers were directed by some of the crowner’s men to places along the side of the hall across from Lady Anneys and her daughters, and then the common folk were let in. They crowded quietly in, filling the hall’s end behind the benches. Manor folk, Frevisse decided with a quick look back at them. There were both sorrow and in-held anger in their faces. They were here to know for certain what had happened to their young lord and ready to make trouble over his death if things came to that. And that told Frevisse much more about Tom Woderove than the little she knew, because while it was one thing for his family to grieve his death, it was something more for people whose lives had been under his rule for ill or good to grieve for him, too.

From what she had so far heard, she doubted they had grieved for his father.

The crowner’s clerk, a solid, middle-aged man, stood up at the end of the high table and announced the inquest would now begin, bowed to the crowner with “Master Hampden,” sat down, took up a quill pen, and waited with it poised over an inkpot, paper ready in front of him.

The inquest went the usual way, with statements as to where it was and why and whose death was in question. It was established that Sir William Trensal and Hugh Woderove— now Master Woderove since his brother’s death—were the only witnesses, besides the deceased, to the actual occasion of the death. Master Hampden averred that he had viewed the body and that the only wound on it was a small cut to the right side of the neck that had been sufficient to sever a blood vessel. The deceased had then bled to death.

Lady Anneys, her head already bowed, shuddered. Ursula buried her face against her mother’s shoulder and Lucy openly sobbed. Lady Anneys put her arms around them.

There were no other marks or wounds upon the body, Master Hampden said, and Hugh was called forward to describe what had happened.

Frevisse, listening while Hugh told what had passed between his brother and Sir William, watched Lady Anneys and her daughters listening, too, and ached with how pointless the death had been. Pointless and, it would seem, never intended.

‘You believe, from what you saw,“ Master Hampden asked when Hugh had told of seeing the blood on Sir William’s penknife, ”that Sir William was surprised to see the blood? That he had had no knowledge until then that he had stabbed your brother?“

‘I believe that, yes,“ Hugh said. ”He looked surprised to find he was still holding the knife. Nor did he stab Tom. He…“ Hugh made a gesture. ”He just swept a hand at him like that. To make him back off.“

‘Which Master Woderove did.“

‘Yes.“

‘Did he show any sign of knowing he was hurt?“

‘No.“

‘You saw no blood on him at the time?“

‘No. He was wearing a dark red doublet. It must have hid that he was bleeding, and I was standing on the other side of him anyway. And he wasn’t there long. He said an angry thing or two more at Sir William and stormed out.“

‘What happened then?“

‘Sir William and I said a few things at each other. Then he saw the blood on his penknife and I knew Tom was hurt and went after him.“

‘You overtook him before he reached home?“

‘I saw his horse grazing at the roadside maybe a quarter mile from the yard here.“

‘And your brother? When did you see him?“

‘Not until I was nearly to him. He was stretched out in the shade of a tree there. He was lying down, face down, his head resting on one crooked arm. I thought he was sleeping. I thought…“ For the first time the young man’s stiff attempt to say what he knew but feel nothing while he said it broke down. ”I don’t know… what I thought,“ he fumbled. ”Then I turned him over and saw he was… dead.“