2 The Servant's Tale Read online

  “Dominus vobiscum,”‘ intoned Father Henry, opening his book of ritual.

  “Et cum spiritu tuo,” Frevisse and Dame Claire replied together, Meg following a half moment after them.

  Father Henry began to pray. Barnaby moaned “Amen” whenever the priest paused or hesitated, and since Father Henry’s Latin reading was only somewhat better than his remembered Latin, the amens were frequent and often inappropriate. It was unsettling to Father Henry but at last he got to the end, when he said his own amen, and gestured for the three women to withdraw while he heard Barnaby’s confession.

  Away from the fire’s small spread of warmth, the December cold slid under clothing and lay like ice along shin and forearm. Meg began to shiver violently, as much from shock as cold. Dame Claire gave the box of medicines she had been carrying to Frevisse and wrapped an arm around Meg, drawing her close for comfort and what warmth they could share. “We could go to the fire,” she offered. But Meg shook her head, and Dame Claire did not press her. As rigorous as she could be toward complaining patients or servants slow to obey, Dame Claire’s deepest trait was kindness.

  Unsurprisingly, Barnaby’s confession took a long while. When he had finished, Father Henry spoke the words of absolution, and began the ritual anointing of eyelids, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, feet, asking the Lord to forgive any evil done with each member. Frevisse watched Meg rather than the priest, saw how she forgot her body’s cold in wonder at the magic, as a man known to be sinful was cleansed of all blame and made over fresh, worthy to share eternal bliss with God. There were fresh tears on Meg’s cheeks. She stepped out of Dame Claire’s embrace without hesitating when Father Henry beckoned and there was something like enthusiasm in her voice when they said a paternoster together.

  The priest ended the rite by giving Barnaby the viaticum— food for the journey—a thin wafer of consecrated bread that ought to have melted on the tongue, though Barnaby made an eye-bulging struggle of getting it down. When he was finished, Father Henry gathered up the articles of his sacred work and blessed them all.

  When he was gone, Dame Claire took his place, to tend to Barnaby’s body now that his soul was seen to. Dame Frevisse stayed in case her help was needed, doubting how much use Meg might be if her husband became desperate with pain. But Barnaby bore the infirmarian’s handling with set-jawed patience. He grunted with pain as she felt along his bruised side and chest, and went white around the mouth when she handled his hand, but he held back from groaning or cursing.

  When Dame Claire had finished and Barnaby was lying limp and closed-eyed, she mixed a strong sleeping powder into the wine she had brought. Meg sidled close to Frevisse and whispered, “What the priest did—Barnaby’s all blessed now, his sins all forgiven and gone? He’s sure of Heaven?”

  “As sure as any man can be,” Frevisse assured her. “And until he sins again.”

  Meg’s cheeks darkened with a faint blush and her eyes dropped. “There’s blessing indeed,” she murmured.

  Dame Claire stood up from pouring the medicine into Barnaby’s willing mouth. “You’ll soon be feeling very little of the pain and then you’ll fall to sleep,” she told him. “Sleep is best for you now. I’ll have some broth sent from the kitchen for you against your wakening.” She turned to Meg. “Keep him warm. If he’s still awake when the broth comes, feed him only a little at a time. I doubt there’ll be trouble keeping him quiet.”

  She moved away to put her things back in their box. Meg went almost timidly to kneel beside her husband, wiping the last of her tears away, and said, “You’re all blessed, Barnaby. The lady said so. Better even than when you were born. All your sins are gone.”

  His eyes closed, his face gray, Barnaby said, “I’m still hurting. She said it would stop soon but I’m still hurting.”

  “She said it would take a while, Barnaby. Just a little while.”

  He grunted without moving and asked, “I don’t remember what happened. Was I fighting again? Was that it?”

  Hesitantly Meg said, “You crashed Gilbey Dunn’s cart into a ditch and wrecked it. Some travelers found you and brought you here.”

  Barnaby made a small moan. He opened his eyes and looked vaguely at the ceiling. “Where am I?”

  “The priory, remember? St. Frideswide’s. They brought you here and the nuns are letting you stay until you’re well enough to be moved.”

  He grunted that he understood and shut his eyes again.

  With great softness and, Frevisse suspected, some courage, Meg leaned nearer to him and asked, “Do you remember what happened that made you crash? Do you remember that?”

  At first Frevisse thought he was not going to answer, that Dame Claire’s sleeping draught was working more quickly than usual. But he finally said, “I was coming home. From Lord Lovel’s…”

  His voice trailed off but his breathing told that he was still conscious. Meg waited but when he did not go on, she asked “Did you deliver the wine?”

  Barnaby grunted, drew a tentatively deep breath, and probably found it did not hurt. Dame Claire’s potion had begun to work against the pain, and with a little more sense he said, “Just like I was told, and never spilled a drop from Oxford to his lordship’s hall. Never a stave sprung nor a drop spilled.” He grimaced—or maybe he meant it for a smile around the pain—and opened his eyes to Meg’s anxious face. “They had wine at the manor, though. Not pot-brewed ale but real wine, like I’d never had before, a great bowl of it in the hall, for Christmas and all. I sang for them, Lord Lovel and his lady…”

  “Not that song,” Meg said, flushing with anxiety and shame.

  Rough humor tugged at the corners of Barnaby’s mouth. “Nay, not that one. The other one. About King Henry that was, God keep him, and his Agincourt battle…”

  His voice caught as he fought an urge to cough.

  Meg touched his shoulder. “Don’t talk.”

  “Nay,” he said. “It’s working, the medicine. There’s not so much hurting. And before I forget—” He fumbled his unhurt hand under the blankets, groping for something at his waist that was not there.

  Frevisse had stayed near, knowing someone should watch until he was safely into sleep. Now she said, “Here,” guessing, and reached toward the ragged pile of his belongings they had stripped from his body but not bothered with since. “Your pouch?” she asked, surprised by its weight as she held it out.

  Barnaby waved it toward his wife. “For you,” he croaked. “Said I’d bring you something. See?”

  There was a small-boy triumph in his voice and glimmering twitch of a smile on his pain-grayed face. But with more wariness than pleasure, Meg took the pouch and pulled its drawstrings open, felt inside, and cautiously drew out what had weighed so much.

  In the hall’s shadowed light, the roundness that Meg held in her hand glowed as richly as a sunset. But a sunset could never be held in anyone’s hands, and Frevisse watched Meg’s wariness turn to wonder. Plainly she had never seen such a thing, and with a delicate grace that surprised Frevisse, she bent her head and smelled of it, then looked at Barnaby with wonder still in her face and asked, “What is it?”

  “A norange,” Barnaby said, proud of his knowledge. “There was a whole big bowl of them, big as the bowl of wine, nearly, there on Lord Lovel’s high table, right in front of him and his lady. Christmas Day the hall was open to all the servants and guests or chance travelers. And food? Food like you never saw and more than comes my way from one start of winter to the next. And drink.” The drug was working in him now, or he had forgotten his hurt in the excitement of his tale.

  “Good wine, with spices in it, and hardly a let to anyone taking a taste. The steward saw me reach out a hand and nodded and smiled, like I was a proper guest. I’ll travel the breadth of England if that steward should ask me, and never a grumble about the going. I had a taste and another, and that’s when I sang my song, the one that’s fit for noble folk. And they liked it, Meg! They liked it and Lady Lovel herself said it was worth some
thing and tossed me the norange and I saved it for you. Brought it home for you for a Christmas fairing. You’ve never had the like, now have you?”

  Meg, the orange still cupped in her hands and held close to her breast, smiled a slow, spreading smile so clear and whole with pleasure that she looked years younger, and Frevisse for the first time wondered what age she really was.

  “Bamaby light, Barnaby bright,” she crooned softly. “Longest day and the shortest night.” The old rhyme for St. Barnabas’s Day that came near midsummer; a rhyme with a special meaning, Frevisse guessed, because a smile as whole as Meg’s own pulled at the deep-weathered lines of Barnaby’s face.

  He nodded and said, “It’s to eat. I saw them doing that with them. Eating noranges.”

  Meg looked doubtfully at the orange’s thick, tough skin and then at him.

  “Like this,” Frevisse offered, holding out her hand. There had sometimes been oranges in her uncle’s household, and she knew how they could be peeled to reach the sweetness.

  Hesitantly Meg handed over her treasure, but cried out when Frevisse dug a fingernail in at its crest, and jerked as if to snatch it away. She barely stopped herself, and clutched her hands together, her face raw with distress.

  Frevisse looked at her with surprise. “You have to peel it. The peel comes off and then you eat what’s inside.”

  Meg shook her head mutely, her mouth closed tightly over any spoken protest but her hands betraying how much she wanted the orange back in her keeping. Understanding, Frevisse held it out to her.

  Meg took it back, clasping it with both hands to her breast again.

  “It won’t keep long,” Frevisse warned. “Not like an apple.”

  “Nothing keeps long,” Meg answered. “But for a little while?”

  That was a plea and Frevisse answered it gently with a nod. “For a little while. A week or two. And if you save the peel and dry it, it keeps its scent a long while after.”

  Meg did not answer but bent her head to smell the sweetness again.

  Barnaby quieted as evening came on. In fact, Dame Claire, seeing to him after Compline, had been pleased. “He’s strong. His body seems to have steadied from the shock. I’ll be best able to tell tomorrow, but his chances are better with every hour.” She nodded toward one of the servants. “Eda knows where I sleep if you need me in the night.” Meg, hunched against falling asleep, glanced at the woman and nodded. Frevisse had thought a strong dose of Dame Claire’s potion for Meg, and a long sleep afterwards, would have been a good thing, but it was not possible and they had gone back to the cloister and bed and their own sleep.

  But now she was awake. The night was sunken into the cold, dead time between Matins and dawn; the dormitory was long since settled out of the restlessness that always came after midnight prayers. There had been the expected coughing, snuffling, smothered sneezing, and finally silence except for the sounds of sleep. But Frevisse was still uncomfortably awake, propped up as best she could manage with her thin pillow.

  She knew her wakefulness was partly because of her own cold’s misery, but there was something else, too, and the prayers and meditations that usually soothed her and kept her company when these wakeful hours came on her had neither done that nor helped her find why she was uneasy. The stark fact was that she was awake. She was awake and something was wrong and she did not know what or where the trouble was.

  She had tried feeling it in the dormitory’s silence, listening for anything that should not be there; but everything was as it always was, from Dame Alys’s erratic snoring farther along the aisle to the gurgle of water through the necessarium. Nor could she remember anything left undone that could be troubling her. The only thing uneasy and wrong seemed to be her own mind and now, deliberately, Frevisse let it loose. Stopped trying to search out the trouble and let her thoughts drift in the night’s deep cold and darkness. If nothing else they might finally drift her back to sleep.

  She found she was thinking of Meg’s orange.

  Disconcerted, Frevisse circled the thought. Meg’s orange. She had held it only briefly but could still feel it. Could remember its smell and her knowing of how sweet it was inside. The pleasure of it in her hand.

  Oranges.

  Oranges on a tree. Where you could reach up and pick them if you were tall enough.

  She had been too short, too young. It had been her father who had lifted her up gloriously high so she could pick her very own. She could still feel his strong hands around her ribs, hear his laughter, see his blue eyes in his tanned face smiling up at her when she held out the orange to show him before he put her down.

  That was in Spain.

  She had forgotten Spain.

  Well, not actually forgotten it. If anyone had asked, she would have said she had been there, yes. There was even a cast-lead seashell in the chest at the foot of her bed to show that she had been to the great pilgrimage church at Compostela.

  She did not remember her visit as a pilgrim; she remembered Compostela with a small child’s memories. Inside the church it had been sweating hot and crowded, and so reeking with incense that she had started to sneeze and could not stop and finally her parents had had to take her outside into the blazing sunlight where she had gone on sneezing until all three of them were helpless with laughter.

  She had forgotten that sunshine. And the laughter.

  And riding in the basket.

  How had she forgotten that? The days’ journeyings had been so long that she could not walk with the others, but had ridden in a basket strapped on the side of an ambling donkey. Shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat and lulled to dreaming and sometimes sleep by the donkey’s rocking gait along hours and hours of dusty roads to… where? To where there had been oranges for her father to pick for her.

  She had gone on no journeyings for a long while now. And that, yes, that was what she wanted, more than an orange. Perhaps, come the spring, she could ask leave to go on pilgrimage.

  To where?

  The possibilities, like memories, rose up in her mind.

  Canterbury, with its flint wall and the tall glories of its cathedral’s nave. Walsingham, waiting green and quiet at the end of miles of gentle riding. St. Denis and the exciting bustle of Paris. Compostela again, to be visited with true understanding of the grace it could bestow, sitting beyond the mountains and near the orange groves…

  Reality slid between Frevisse and her dreaming. No nun from St. Frideswide’s would ever go so far as Compostela. Or even St. Denis. Oxford, maybe, to St. Frideswide’s tomb; that might be possible. Or Canterbury, if Domina Edith felt that St. Thomas had granted a particularly desperate prayer. But Frevisse had no desperate prayer—except that she wanted… wanted…

  Unworded discontent pulled at her while she fought to leave the thought unfinished. She wanted… Sleep, she said firmly to herself. A good, deep sleep and no rheum left in her head when she awakened.

  “Dame Frevisse?”

  Frevisse realized her thoughts had taken her further away than she had known; the soft voice and the chink of the rings as the curtain closing her cubicle was pushed aside startled her into sitting up abruptly. She had heard no one moving, and whispered a little sharply, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Eda, my lady. About the man Barnaby. He’s dying, seems like. I’ve told Dame Claire and she said to ask if you would come.”

  Why, Frevisse peevishly wondered, did people always choose to die in the middle of the night? But she immediately pushed the idea away. It was not her place to question; it was her place to serve those who came to the priory, whether to travel on or to die there. And if she told herself that often enough, maybe she would come to remember it first instead of second.

  “I will come at once,” she said, matching Eda’s humble tone.

  Chapter 9

  Frevisse shivered and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. There was nothing she could do to help Barnaby, and the hall was as cold as the night was black beyond the dimly lit windows,
or even the corners of the hall beyond the reach of the small lamp Dame Claire had set beside the body while she checked it.

  The servant Eda, anxious not to be idle, lifted the lamp in an attempt to give Dame Claire a better light, but was shivering so hard that Dame Claire bid her with an impatient gesture to put it down again. Obeying, she moved beyond Barnaby’s corpse to put both arms around Meg, and both of them stood shivering and looking everywhere but at Dame Claire. Frevisse wished she had thought to step down from her own dignity of office to comfort Meg. Now, instead, she was left to shiver alone.

  Dame Claire sighed with a weariness that had nothing to do with waking before dawn. “It was something torn inside of him, maybe. Or something broken that I didn’t find. The foam at the corner of his mouth says it was likely a hurt to his lungs.” She drew one of the blankets over Barnaby’s face.

  Meg moaned and turned her face into Eda’s shoulder.

  Taking another of the blankets, Dame Claire rose, went to put it around Meg’s shoulders, and asked, “What happened at the last? When did you realize he was dying?”

  “I didn’t,” Meg whispered without raising her head. “He was sleeping. I went to sleep, and woke to see he was so still…”

  “He never struggled or stirred or… ?” Dame Claire pressed.

  “No.” Meg shook her head.

  “But there must have been something. What woke you? Did he make a noise?”

  Frevisse put out a hand to stop her. She knew how boldly Dame Claire fought against anyone’s dying, and how sternly she sought for reasons when she lost; but this was neither time nor place to make Barnaby’s widow more wretched than she was. “Eda,” Frevisse said, “take her with you. Let her sleep next to you. It isn’t good for her to be alone for the rest of the night.”

  “Surely, my lady. That’s no trouble at all. Come now, we’ll find you a place.” Eda moved to lead Meg away.