The outlaw's tale (12 page)

It was a sign of the world's degeneration that this holy division no longer held.  A fourth order of men had somehow grown into the perfection of the three: Men who neither grew nor made nor prayed beyond the ordinary, nor fought for anything but their own gains.  They bought and sold what they had not grown or made, and treated property not as something settled to a family for generations but as another thing for them to buy and sell for no more than the sake of the money it would bring.  That their lives were a corruption of God's plan was evidenced by the corruption of their living.

Or so it was claimed.

In the reality of everyday Frevisse had found neither purity of purpose nor utter corruption in anyone she had encountered, no matter in which of the orders they were supposed to belong.  So near as she could tell, the world had degenerated past purity of purpose in anyone, and the most that could be hoped for was godliness enough in whatever life one lived to save one from damnation at the end.

She and her uncle - himself one of the new order of men – had discussed such matters at length upon occasions, because they concerned him very nearly.  He lived by what he gained in a variety of ways, had wealth to live whatever life he wanted, and power enough to refuse to serve on the royal council when he chose.  He was neither priest nor knight nor simple laborer and, as he once said, “I must have some place in God's plan of things, for nothing happens by chance, only by his will.  But if I listen to the priests I'm very possibly damned for being outside their holy three.  What do you think?"

When her uncle asked her what she thought, he always truly wanted to know.  He might afterward argue with her, but was always willing for her to argue back.  Because of him, Frevisse had come to trust her mind and be bold in using it.  That time she had answered, “I think it can be said that none of God's three orders are so pure of purpose now as they were made to be.  There are those in every one of them who will not go to Heaven after the lives they've lived on Earth.  So if salvation is not assured to those, then I suppose that neither is damnation assured to those outside God's given orders."

Thomas Chaucer had large laughter when he was truly amused, and he had laughed then, reaching out to squeeze her hand as he declared, “You glad my mind as surely as you comfort my soul."

This Will Colfoot was also clearly beyond the pale of the three orders; and to judge by everyone's reaction to him – including Frevisse's – he was not among the saved.

But God saw with other eyes than those of man, Frevisse reminded herself.  She had no right to judge who was saved and who was damned.  That sort of presumption endangered her own soul.  And, aware that she had scanted too many services of late, she crossed herself and bent her head in a momentary asking for forgiveness.

Magdalen, gazing out the window, did not notice.

The serving man Jack knocked at the door, come to bid Magdalen to her brother.  She laid her sewing aside with a slight sigh and a tightening of her mouth, but went out silently.  Frevisse continued mending the rend in the knee of a boy's hosen.

Sooner than she expected, she heard Magdalen on the stairs again and looked up as she came through the door, then rose to her feet, startled by Magdalen's white, strained face.  Not looking at her, Magdalen shut the door and stood with her back against it, breathing rapidly, her mouth set in a hard line.  All the color was drained from her cheeks; her gray eyes were huge, glittering.  She was in a rage, but there was a tangle of other emotions too that Frevisse could not immediately read – fear perhaps among them.

Frevisse waited while Magdalen visibly recovered herself to the point where she could straighten from the door and say in almost her normal voice, “It seems you're to have my companionship somewhat more sternly than we intended.  My brother has asked me to stay in my room as much as may be for the time being."

“Why?" Frevisse asked incredulously.  “Because you won't marry Colfoot?"

Magdalen gave a harsh, short laugh and paced toward the window.  “No!  Oh no.  He doesn't want that either.  He will support me in that.  He must."  She wrung her clasped hands around each other, fighting some inward agony or anger.  “No.  He's right so far as he understands it.  But it will make no difference."  She knelt on the window seat and stared out toward the orchard.

“But is he going to keep you here against your will?" Frevisse asked.

“Oliver?  No, certainly not.  He's not like that."  But she did not sound completely certain.  “Besides, he has no legal authority over me.  I'm of age and widowed, with properties of my own.  I can do as I choose."  She let go of her anger; misery replaced it in both her suddenly dejected body and her voice.  “His only real hold on me lies in our affection for each other, and just now that's making pain enough.  I'm not his prisoner, no.  I can go.  If I want to."

Her tone ended the conversation.  Magdalen wanted no comforting, nor to talk of what had happened.  In silence she took up her sewing and her waiting at the window.  For that was what it was, Frevisse had decided.  Magdalen was waiting.  For someone?  Someone of whom her brother strongly disapproved?  Someone certainly not Will Colfoot.

Dinner was brought to them with a broth for Sister Emma that Frevisse kept warm on the hearth.  When she woke, Sister Emma seemed a little better for her sleep, but she was still breathing with difficulty and groggy from the poppy syrup.  She ate only as much broth as Frevisse had patience to insist on, then slept again.

Mistress Payne came in after dinner with her daughter Katherine as Frevisse finished the prayers for Nones.  The resemblance between mother and daughter was even more marked as Katherine, with no childish restlessness, sat demurely with her embroidery - a cushion cover with an intricate pattern that she was working with careful stitches and great patience – while her elders talked past her to each other.

Not that their conversation was very much.  Magdalen's confinement was never mentioned, nor Master Payne, nor Colfoot, only general household matters – that Edward had enough shirts to see him through to winter but that Kate's hems were above her ankles again and there was no more to be let down and what was the point of putting hosen on Bartholomew if he was forever tearing them to pieces with his games.

They had moved on to whether the summer was going to continue as wet as it had been, and what would happen to the harvest if it did, when footsteps too heavy for one of the children and too certain for a servant crossed the room outside Magdalen's door and someone thudded in loud hurry on the door.  All three women and Katherine looked up with mingled expressions of alarm.

“Come in," said Magdalen, rising, but was barely to her feet before her brother had entered.

Without greeting, he said, “Colfoot's been found dead along the road, hardly a mile from here."

Oliver's gaze swept all of the women's faces as he spoke.

“God's pity on him!" Mistress Payne exclaimed.  In unison she and Frevisse crossed themselves, with little Katherine only slightly behind them.  Magdalen, her gaze and her brother's locked over something Frevisse could not read, was last and slowest, her hand tracing the cross across herself as if she barely knew she did.

“What happened to him?" Mistress Payne asked.  “Who found him?  Where have they taken him?"

“Adam coming back from the farther meadow came on him in the road.  There was no help for him and Adam came back with the news.  They're fetching a hurdle now to bring him here.  I'm going with them so I can testify to the crowner when he comes."

Mistress Payne hurried toward the door.  “There will be things to be readied.  Where will they put him?"

“In the feed room by the stable," Master Payne answered, still looking at Magdalen.

And almost as if he willed the words from her, she asked, so low she could barely be heard, “How did he die?"

“Stabbed to the heart."  He ignored his wife's pained exclamation.  “Or near enough that he must have been dead in minutes.  There was not much blood around him, Adam said."

With a distressed sound, Mistress Payne gathered Katherine to her and left the room.  Her husband stayed only a moment longer, his eyes locked to his sister's.  Then he turned on his heel and followed his wife.

Magdalen sagged down onto the window seat.  Frevisse went to her to lay a hand on her shoulder and ask, “What is it?"

Magdalen began to speak, then stopped; began again, shook her head against whatever she had been about to say, and finally managed, “Nothing.  He was alive and now, all suddenly, he's dead."

There had been more than that between her and her brother.  But Frevisse was not in her confidence, and, unable to press Magdalen for more, she let it drop and turned instead to the practicalities of the matter.

“The crowner will have to be sent for," she said.  “And the sheriff, too, for something like this."

Magdalen willingly picked up the shield of conversation.  “Surely.  My brother will know what to do.  He'll see to all of it."  She faltered.  Before she ducked her head, Frevisse thought tears glimmered in her eyes.  Not for Colfoot, surely.  Still looking down, Magdalen said, “Will you do me a kindness, Dame Frevisse?  A small one?"

“I owe you several great kindnesses, for my sake and Sister Emma's both," Frevisse said readily.  “What would you have me do?"

“Go down to supper tonight with the family and tell me afterwards everything that was said.  About Will Colfoot and... anything else."

Frevisse had no trouble making the promise, confessing to herself that it was for more than a service to Magdalen:  Her own curiosity was among the worldly things she had not yet sufficiently curbed in her nunnery life.

On the heels of her promise, both Bess and Maud returned.  Bess was promptly sent to say that Dame Frevisse would dine with the family tonight, but Maud remained, full of what little was known and eager to talk it around and about for as long as she could make it last.  Bess's return let them start all over again.  Magdalen did not try to curb them; their chatter filled the time and covered her own silence the short while until they were summoned to fetch Magdalen's supper.  As Frevisse went with them from the chamber, she heard Sister Emma's querulous voice from the bed, asking sleepily why there was all this talk.  Frevisse did not turn back.

Downstairs in the screens passage the two women went into the kitchen and she continued to the hall.  There the trestle tables had been brought out and set up in U-shape, the opening toward this kitchen end of the hall to make serving easier.

Master Payne was returned from fetching Colfoot's body.  He saw her as she entered the hall and came to bring her to the head of the table, where Mistress Payne and Sir Perys were already seated to his right and left.  There was an empty place on Mistress Payne's other side where Frevisse presumed Magdalen usually sat; this evening it was to be hers.  Master Payne brought her to it; she sat with a gracious thanks and turned to wash her hands in the basin of warmed water Edward came forward to offer her.

He and Richard, as sons of the house, would serve their parents and elders at the head table.  It was a gracious custom, and Edward performed it graciously.  But when Frevisse, to make conversation, said lightly, “If cleanliness is next to godliness, do you suppose washing could be considered a form of prayer?" he did not make the light, scholarly response she expected, but raised his head as if he had forgotten what he was doing until she spoke.  With pity Frevisse realized he must have gone with his father to bring back Colfoot's body and seen violent death for the first time.

“Y- yes," he stammered, clearly not sure to what he was answering.  “I suppose so."

Frevisse smiled comfortingly at him as she dried her hands on the towel over his arm.

The three younger children were at the lower table to the right with two women servants sitting with them.  On a usual evening, Magadalen's women would undoubtedly have joined them but tonight would dine with their mistress in her room.  Three menservants sat at the leftward table.  There would also be a cook and at least one helper in the kitchen, but otherwise all the family was present.  Frevisse noted with approval that the Paynes kept a reasonably sized household: enough for their needs but not excessive, and all of them well-kept and quiet-mannered.  Even the children Kate and Bartholomew, sat quietly here under their father's eye.

They all rose while Sir Perys said grace.  His dry, quick voice dealt with all the necessities of the matter briefly, and they sat again to their food.

Inevitably, talk passed with the first platter to Colfoot's death.  Frevisse contented herself with listening while she ate.  A salad of garden greens was excellent, subtly mixed and seasoned.  The sauce for the meat was somewhat thin; Mistress Payne, aware of it, murmured to her under the flow of conversation among the tables, “The flour is running so low, you know, and there's none to be bought around here.  We hope for some from London, but our man's not returned yet.  And even then - the cost – after last year's harvest – you know how it is."

Frevisse, well aware of how lean last year's harvest had left everyone's stores, and also aware that at St. Frideswide's they rarely had meat from one great holy day to the next, nodded.  “It's delicious nonetheless.  And I'm sure our cook would love to know what yours has done with the salad.  It's quite good."

Mistress Payne flushed a soft pink with pleasure.  Her gentle nature seemed to respond to even the most modest compliment.

But it was the murder and Colfoot that Frevisse wanted most to hear about.  It was easily clear from the general conversation that the man was disliked.

“He's earned many a man's hatred with his ways," one of the menservants said.  “The wonder is he wasn't killed before."

“And he kept his ways to the very end," one of the women put in.  “They say he beat a woman in the village last night.  The one who's at the inn."

The man named Jack made a sound that was the start of a rude comment, but Mistress Payne's glance stopped him short.  Another of the men said, “And it was yesterday he was robbed and his yeoman hurt, just outside the village."