2 The Servant's Tale Read online

  “They’re gadelings.”

  “Lordless, yes, but not without a living. They were employed at Fen Harcourt over Christmas, and have work in Oxford when they reach there.”

  Domina Edith raised her hand. “Enough.”

  Naylor closed his mouth over what he was about to say. Frevisse, startled to realize how heated she had become, bowed her head, tucked her hands into her sleeves and subsided. Dame Alys trumpeted into her handkerchief, letting her red-faced glare take the place of words, while Sister Fiacre wrung her hands silently.

  “It is not our place to judge these people,” Domina Edith said. “There is no harm in keeping some small watch on them, which you may set if you so wish, Master Naylor, so long as it is done without offense to them. But we have offered them shelter and are bound by the Rule to give it so long as it is fit and they do us no wrong. Indeed, they may do us a good. This is a season when the Holy Church bids us make merry. Do you think it possible, Dame Frevisse, that they would perform for us? A play suitable to the place and season tomorrow or the next day maybe, if they stay so long?”

  “Oh, yes, please!” Sister Amicia exclaimed with a glad clap of her hands. Then she covered her mouth in shock at her breach of manners.

  “Three paternosters on your knees before the altar, Sister Amicia, before this evening’s Compline,” Domina Edith said without even looking at her. Sister Amicia’s flares of frivolous enthusiasm were familiar to all of them. “Dame Frevisse?”

  “Yes,” Frevisse said. “I think they would willingly do that. I’ll ask them and then tell you what they say.”

  “Do so. And that, I think, ends this morning’s business.” Domina Edith raised an unsteady hand in a gesture that included all of them. “Go with God’s blessing on you and your duties through the day.”

  Chapter 6

  In the cloister walk, Frevisse was overtaken by Naylor. He was not a tall man, hardly her own height, but he carried himself to the fullness of it, meeting her eyes as she turned in surprise to look at him. “Dame, you were eloquent on behalf of these players. Why are you so willing that they stay?”

  Frevisse arched her eyebrows in deliberate surprise. He knew as well as she did that the Rule forbade casual talk in the cloister. But as he had never been a casual man, if he was wanting to talk to her, he had a purpose, and she twitched her head toward the cloister door into the courtyard to show that she would speak with him outside. As they walked on, he persisted. “Men who roam the roads lordless and landless— players, beggars, jongleurs, any of that sort—are knaves at best, and more likely plain rogues. Why be so willing to risk this lot here for longer than it takes to turn them out of doors, Dame?”

  Frevisse walked faster, reaching her hand for the cloister door, but Naylor moved more quickly and was ahead of her in time to open it. Frevisse bowed her head partly in thanks, but more to hide her face from him for the moment it took to go past him. She had been half-ready for his question or something like it, but not for the surge of remembrance that came with it.

  But by the time he had shut the door and turned to her, she had both her expression and answer ready. “I wasn’t bred to die nunnery, Master Naylor. My parents were of the world. And very worldly. I’ve learned better than to believe something simply because it’s said. Nor am I so ignorant that I think a man can be condemned out of hand for being one dung instead of another. Not even for being lordless and landless. If I condemn a man because he’s a player, knowing no more of him than the tales told of players, then judging by the tales I’ve heard of stewards, I can as readily condemn a man for being one of those.”

  Roger Naylor’s eyes narrowed. Stewards were stock figures of corruption and mercilessness in too many stories for him to miss her point. He looked as if he would say something, but stopped himself and instead turned on his heel and strode silently away. Frevisse looked after his eloquently rigid back, her satisfaction at routing him stronger than any regret she should have had for her forward speaking. And she felt warmer than she had for hours.

  “That was a shrewd hit for so gentle a nun,” someone said mockingly.

  Startled, Frevisse turned to see Joliffe sitting on the step at the foot of the well on the courtyard’s near side. Wrapped in a cloak gray as the shadows, his hair pale as the well’s stone wall, he was easily unseen so long as he did not move or speak.

  “And that’s an odd place for someone to be resting,” Frevisse responded. At this hour of a winter’s morning, the well was still in shadow under its hawthorn tree; the rime of frost around its rim and step betrayed how cold a place it was to sit.

  Joliffe rose to his feet and came toward her. “Or it’s not. Depending on one thing and another. Did I hear the word ‘player’ in your talk? I take it your steward has been complaining of our existence.”

  “Of your existence here, assuredly. He’d probably not mind in the least if you existed somewhere else.”

  “So we’re to go?” He asked it lightly enough, as if it did not matter to him if they had to pack and leave within the hour. But Frevisse had long since learned the use of reading a person’s stance and face as much as their voice. And she saw that though Joliffe had learned to live with being forever sent on his way, he had not learned to like it. “No. You’re to stay as long as need be for Piers’s sake, and be welcome.”

  The almost imperceptible stiffness went out of him, and he asked, disconcertingly, “And I may take it that you championed us? That you persuaded your prioress to this over Master Naylor’s protests and were eloquent on our behalf?”

  With what she meant to be asperity, Frevisse said, “Eloquent enough, it seems.”‘

  Joliffe’s smile etched laughter lines into his face with all the roguery that Naylor suspected his kind of having. “Then St. Genesius’s blessing on you, lady, for your kindness and your golden tongue.”

  Despite herself, Frevisse warmed to his amusement. Matching his tone, she said, “I suspect St. Genesius has quite enough to do in tending to you without considering me. I’ll be satisfied with St. Frideswide’s blessings, thank you. But it will be Dame Claire you’ll be needing if you go on sitting out in the cold this way. Haven’t you better sense than that?”

  Joliffe gave her a small, respectful bow. “Alas, that’s a matter oft debated. But surely you must know quite well how tedious it is to live too closed in with people for hours into days into weeks on end? No matter one’s mutual interests, the tedium does grow.” Frevisse lifted her chin at his presumption. But Joliffe grinned at her, friendly and knowing together, and despite herself her mouth tweaked toward an answering smile. As often, truth lay in a jest; she understood exactly what he meant, especially being so newly come from chapter meeting. But Joliffe did not press the advantage of her tacit admission. Instead he said, no more seriously, “I should warn you, though, that Ellis is in a black mood. Piers being ill has waked the father in him and made him perilous to live with. Or at least direly unpleasant.”

  Suppressing an urge toward another smile, Frevisse said, “I doubt Piers’s peril is very great. Kept warm and quiet, he should mend. I didn’t realize he was Ellis’s son.” She glanced toward the courtyard gateway where a man dressed like a noble’s servant was riding in.

  Joliffe followed her look but went on with his banter. “He maybe is and maybe isn’t. Ellis is happy to think so. But he’s maybe Bassett’s. Or maybe mine. Rose won’t say, bless her for a clever wench.” He sighed and placed a dramatic hand more or less over his heart. “We’d have a happier time of it if Ellis were only like me, all dismal, my heart in tatters at a small boy’s peril, but my temper ever soft and flowing as a silken ribbon.”

  “But now and again Ellis takes his possibility of fatherhood too seriously?”

  “It comes from too much sobriety. If it goes on too long, he begins to have temper and fancies.”

  “He’s given to drink?” She hoped not. If he were, the players’ stay might be less easy than she had hoped.

  “Not of ale or w
ine. It’s emotions he craves. A few days without performing and his unused feelings build up in him, turning him tense and very… tedious.”

  Frevisse turned that thought over in her mind. Unused emotions, held in too long, were a common enough trouble in a nunnery. She might even admit that her own tolerance for tedium was thinner than it ought to be; and a volatile man could indeed be burdensome to those around him. “Then mayhap I’ve a solution for you. Our lady prioress is wondering if you would perform for us.” She caught a glint of impure mischief in Joliffe’s eyes and added, “Something suitable to the season and the place, you understand.”

  Joliffe’s expression changed to show surprise that she could imagine he would ever think anything else. “My lady, your prioress honors us by her request. Surely we have something proper to this time and place.”

  She glanced over to see that a servant was taking care of the new visitor. Frevisse judged that he was probably someone’s messenger seeking brief respite from the cold. Any of the guesthall servants could see to him; he did not need to concern her.

  Joliffe had begun to walk toward the guesthall. Frevisse fell into step beside him, her own long stride matching his as she said, with due consideration, “If there’s chance that Piers is yours, you set to the business very young.” She gave Joliffe a slantwise look to match his own at her and added, with an eyebrow raised in caustic questioning, “Or are you perhaps trying to shock me?”‘

  Joliffe laughed out loud delightedly, delightfully, and paused to flourish her a bow. “You are a very Solomon!” More soberly he added, “It’s Rose’s way of keeping us together. She shares his fatherhood among us, and because none of us wants to lose his claim on him, our band stays together. And has stayed together so long now that we’ve grown into something better than the usual ragtag miscellany of road folk banded together for a season or a year or two.”

  The servant who had been talking to the newcomer crossed the yard to intercept them. He bowed and said, “If it please you, my lady, there is a man with a letter for you.”

  Frevisse looked over to see that the messenger was waiting while another servant led his horse away toward the stable. Now that she looked closer, something about him was familiar. For a moment she hesitated, then went toward him, and he responded by eagerly coming to meet her. He bowed low to her and as he straightened, she exclaimed, “Hobden! It is you, then?”

  “Aye, lady. It’s me.” He grinned all across his broad face. “And I was thinking it was you. Even all dressed like that, you’re still you and no mistaking. When were you last on a horse, is my question?”

  “A good long while, I promise you. But I’ve not forgotten. I could still give you a race if we came to it.”

  “There’s no doubting that. You had a way in the saddle that lasts longer than lessons.”

  “Is May well? And your girls?”

  “May is well, thank you for asking. And the girls have made me a grandfather thrice over now.”

  “Have I been gone that long?” Hobden’s daughters had only begun to look at boys when she had left her uncle’s keeping to enter St. Frideswide’s. “Yes,” she added before he could answer. “I suppose I have.”

  “Long and long, lady,” Hobden agreed.

  He was, indeed, now that she looked at him, far older in his face than he had been when he was one of her uncle’s main stable hands. And so must she be, too, she thought, though lack of mirrors in St. Frideswide’s spared her too detailed knowledge of the fact.

  “But that’s the way of things.” He was cheerful enough about it. “If you don’t grow older, it’s because you’re dead, and I’m not ready for that yet.”

  “And my uncle. How does he?” she asked eagerly, and then belatedly, “And my lady aunt?” Aunt Matilda was her mother’s sister, and Thomas Chaucer her uncle only by marriage, but it was with him she had been closest while growing up in their household. Their friendship, begun when she came at age eleven, had lasted the years despite how rarely they saw each other anymore.

  “Well, lady. Both of them very well. And here”—Hobden drew a packet from his belt pouch—“is a letter from him for you.”

  Frevisse took it with delight, recognizing both her uncle’s clear script and his seal. “Hobden, much thanks. Will you be here a while, that I’ll have time to write an answer?”

  “Surely. Master Chaucer gave me leave for that if you wished. And I’d rather sit by a good fire than travel the road this bitter day.”

  “Then let me see you to the guesthall and assure the servants you’re to have their special care.”

  She took him to the greater guesthall and gave him into the keeping of one of the kitchen servants there with orders that he was to be made comfortable and well fed. She looked at the letter, but thought she would like a leisurely time over it, and instead of opening it, tucked it up her sleeve.

  As she went down the steps and turned toward the lesser guesthall, she realized her pleasure in seeing old Hobden had been much like her pleasure in bantering with Joliffe; and that was odd, because she had known Hobden for years of her life, and Joliffe hardly a few hours, and yet felt the same fellowship with him.

  Actually, it was not just with Joliffe, it was with all of the players. She liked them, she trusted them, they brightened her day with their presence. Why?

  Because of the way they were with one another. That was what made her like and trust them beyond the ordinary. They were bound to one another not only by the needs of their work, but by a strong tie of caring deliberately made and kept by Rose around her son. Frevisse knew full well how strong a tie that could be, and what a shield against the troubles of the road, no matter how unblessed its basis was.

  Raised voices startled her as she entered the other guesthall. Her first thought was that the man Barnaby had roused and was complaining loudly. But as she thought it, she saw that Meg, sitting beside her husband’s body, was looking not at him but, dry-eyed and tense, down the hall toward her sons in close and obviously angry talk with Bassett, Ellis, and Joliffe. Or rather, Sym was talking, shoving himself into Bassett’s face while Hewe, like a fair shadow, was poised behind him, clearly ready for whatever was going to happen. Frevisse started toward them, but before she reached them, Ellis said something that brought Sym around to face him, his voice rising for Frevisse to hear. “And I say my father was never so drunk in his life he couldn’t keep a cart on the road!”

  With insultingly deep indifference, Ellis said, “Then yesterday he was drunker than he’s ever been before. When he drove past us, he’d beaten that nag into a mockery of a gallop and was standing up in the cart waving his goad and singing—” He turned to Bassett. “What was he singing, Thomas?”

  Bassett for answer began in a mellow baritone, “I have a noble cock, whose crowing starts my day, he makes me rise up early—my prayers for to say!”

  Joliffe, grinning, joined in harmony, “I have a noble cock, his eye is set in amber; and every night he perches—in my lady’s chamber!”

  Ellis was opening his mouth to join them when Bassett caught sight of Frevisse and cut him and Joliffe both off with a sharp, embarrassed gesture. “And that’s the truth of it, lad,” he said more courteously. “It was no surprise to us, only a grief, when we found him smashed up a while after that.”

  “So you’re saying. But there was no one else than you to see it, was there? I say it’s more likely you forced him off the road and into that crash, for a chance to dip into his pockets!”

  “Boy, a glance would’ve told a simpleton there was nothing about the man, or his cart, worth taking,” said Joliffe. Before Sym could respond, Frevisse moved between the two sides and said, keeping her tone level, “They’ve already told us this. What’s brought you to questioning it now?”

  Jerked out of his anger’s stride, Sym fumbled for the humility expected toward his betters, his eyes shifting hotly between her and the players. He finally burst out resentfully, “I asked the use of their mare. I’ve need of her to fe
tch in what’s left of Gilbey Dunn’s cart but they think her too good for the likes of me to use.”‘

  “And so you’re trying to make other trouble,” Frevisse said coldly. “Saying things for which there’s neither proof nor likelihood. Better you put your passion into praying for your father than accusing the men who helped him.”

  “Helped him into the ditch, most likely!” Sym burst out.

  “Helped him to here rather than leaving him to die in the ditch where he’d put himself,” Frevisse snapped back. Sym was far beyond his bounds in speaking back at her and she cut off whatever else he meant to say. “Enough! They are the priory’s guests and this is no place for quarreling.”

  Sym glared at her, his hands twitching halfway toward fists while he fought for control, until finally he dropped his eyes away and shoved his hands behind his back.

  To smooth the matter, Bassett said, “Tisbe is as tired as the rest of us. And our own need of her is too great to be chancing her to a stranger’s hands, no matter what reason. There must be horses in your village you can borrow.”

  Sullen and unconvinced, Sym avoided looking at Frevisse but swung his look from one to the other of the players, wanting to hit someone and knowing he could not. “Pah!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I don’t want to use your nag after all, you and it being no more than plain dirt off the road!” Unable to unleash his temper into action, he jerked away from them, nearly blundered into Hewe as he swung away, and took his revenge by swinging at him. But Hewe was clearly used to that and ducked the blow easily, backing toward their mother who still sat beside Barnaby, her anguish plain on her face. Sym, seeing Meg, ducked his head again, away from her, and lumbered into a heavy, swift walk, to go slamming out the door. Hewe stood where he was, unsure what to do until his mother, not meeting anyone else’s gaze, gestured for him to come to her and, when he had, pulled him down beside her to go on with the vigil over his father.