9 The Reeve's Tale Read online

  Rushes covered the nave floor for cleanliness and, in the winter, for warmth and besides what the priest and altar needed, there were no furnishings except the baptismal font and a few benches for those who came early enough to services, with no need for a pew because no lord lived in the village to warrant one. Today, the shutters open to give what light there was from the overcast day, the benches had been shifted end-on to the rood screen to serve the court and everyone else was left to stand and the villagers, not much damp from the softly falling rain, were gathered in clumps and clusters of family and friends, busy in talk, though heads turned and the hum of voices fell as Frevisse, Sister Thomasine, and Father Henry entered, only to take up again, a little lower and maybe faster, to have all said before they had to stop when court began.

  Sister Thomasine, wordless since leaving St. Frideswide’s, her eyes lowered, her hands tucked into her habit’s opposite sleeves, went silently across the little width of the church to the corner beyond the baptismal font, raised on its single stone step, where no one else was, withdrawing as much as might be from everything and everyone around her. Frevisse, with people shifting, bowing, curtsying out of her way, went to the front of the nave, Father Henry following more slowly, pausing to speak to various folk. Simon Perryn and six men Frevisse took to be the jurors were waiting beside the benches. They bowed to her as she joined them, no need to remove their hoods or hats that were already off in God’s house, and she bent her head to them in return, no one bothering with giving names because Father Edmund entered then and passed up the nave with smiles and words to various folk, to take a seat at a table set ready with paper, ink, pens, and several closed scrolls behind the jurors’ bench.

  ‘By your leave, we’ll begin then?“ Perryn asked her, and Frevisse agreed with a slight nod. To be to the fore of so many people, all of them looking at her, was not something she liked, but Perryn, seeming to have no mind of it at all, said easily to the jurors, ”We’ll start then,“ and bowed her to a place on the bench facing the jurors on theirs across the space between them left for the court’s business to be done but angled enough to the nave that she could watch the people watching her.

  While Perryn, the jurors, and Father Edmund took their places, she noticed Father Henry had shifted away to the nave’s north wall, from where he could come readily into the midst of things if there was need, though thus far there was no sign there would be, only the expected shift and shuffle of people making themselves comfortable on their feet. She glimpsed Anne well back and near the door, Dickon Naylor and her sons beside her. Of little Lucy there was no sign but there were other children in plenty, including a baby carried on its mother’s hip, fretfully rubbing its eyes and trying to burrow its head into the side of its mother’s neck while she talked with the women around her. Frevisse thought the woman with a face like a wizened apple might be Ada Bychurch, Prior Byfield’s midwife, but it had been years since Frevisse had seen her and she was not certain and none of the others were familiar at all, save Elena, Gilbey’s wife, standing to the side and fore of the crowd not far from the jurors, her hands folded quietly into each other at the waist of her rose-colored gown, her fair loveliness encircled by soft wimple and starched veil shiningly white in the nave’s gray shadows. Graceful even in her quietness, she looked what she was, a wealthy villein’s wife who had servants to see to such things as having her veil starched and smooth-pressed when she went out. Standing squarely beside her, his thumbs hooked into his wide, finely wrought leather belt, Gilbey was no balder than when Frevisse had seen him last—how many years ago was that?—with only a little more flesh on his stocky frame and nothing softened in his blunt face. To Frevisse’s eye he looked like what he was, too—someone bound to the world by the gold and silver circles of coins and—unless he was greatly changed from when Frevisse had last encountered him—by the lusts of the flesh.

  The rest of the upwards of two score other folk crowded into the nave were only faces to her. Young faces fresh-fleshed and little touched by living yet. Older faces marked, less and more, by their years and their lives’ happenings and, especially for the men, by weather lived in day in, day out, no matter what it was. Old faces seamed and etched by all their years of living. Worried faces, wondering how much trouble there would be. Dull faces here to stare at whatever happened because they’d stare at anything. Faces eager with wanting trouble, a few faces angry, meaning to make it. They all lived through their days a scant half-mile, if that much, from where she lived her own, year in, year out, and she knew no more of them than they did of her and she was come here to help make decisions that would shape some of their lives and, that done, would go back to her own and leave them to theirs as utterly as she had left them to it until now.

  Heart-felt and unbidden, the prayer that began so many of the daily Offices came to her. Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. God, come to my aid. And then the antiphon that was part of today’s Terce. Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, ut salvos facias nos. Rouse, Lord, your power, that you make us safe.

  And suddenly she was sure which of the men standing to the fore of the crowd was Tom Hulcote. His uneasiness, different from the men’s around him, gave him away as, restless-footed in the rushes, with both smothered anger and deep unease shadowing his face, he kept shifting his look toward and away from Gilbey who never bothered with so much as a glance his way.

  Or it was maybe Elena, Gilbey’s wife, he was looking at? From where she sat, Frevisse could not tell.

  He was younger than Frevisse had thought he would be. Not beyond his twenties. Why had she thought he would be older? Because Simon Perryn was of middle years and therefore likely his sister was, too, and so would be the man she was sinning with? But he was not, nor was he the surly, heavy-built bully with a rough face and rougher ways that had somehow been in her mind. Except for the in-held anger and open unease, he was simply a young man with nothing particular about him, plainly dressed in what was surely his best—though they were none too good—tunic and hosen and hood, with his brown hair trimmed and clean.

  And now Frevisse noted the woman standing close behind him, her hand laid on his forearm as she rose on her toes to whisper in his ear. Mary Woderove, surely. A small-boned, child-pretty woman whose head came hardly to her lover’s shoulder, though he was not over-tall, until she tiptoed. She looked all the younger for the black veil she wore in token of her widowhood instead of the married woman’s usual white one, but the veil seemed to be all she gave to her widowhood, Frevisse thought uncharitably, watching as Mary leaned nearer, pressing her breasts against Tom Hulcote’s back while she went on whispering to him, smiling up at him until as Simon Perryn gave word to the jurors for the court to start, Tom Hulcote frowned, shook his head, and urged her away with a small twitch of his arm. Mary whispered something else, still smiling, and drew back, leaving her lover with a dark flush reddening his face.

  Along with word of where court would be and warning there might be trouble, Perryn had asked if another matter besides the Woderove holding could be seen to, too. Frevisse had sent back word it could and now settled to listen while Alson Bonde and Martin Fisher were called forward. There was a stirring through the crowd, with whispering between those who knew what it was about and those who did not, but it seemed that Perryn had dealt in the matter as he had purposed, because agreement on the lease between them was smoothly made and written into the court records, and a man who must be Alson’s son was waiting at the crowd’s fore-edge, to lay an arm around her shoulders when it was done and nod friendliwise to Martin Fisher, too, who nodded back the same, as Perryn said low in Frevisse’s ear, “The betrothal’s agreed on and everybody happy…”

  He was interrupted by a bull-shouldered youth shoving out into the court’s open space, pulling an older man after him by a hard grip on his sleeve, and Perryn stood up and demanded, “Hamon? Walter? What is this?”

  ‘It’s him,“ the younger man said, jerking his head back at the other man. ”He won’t leave off bo
thering me. I want the court to tell him to leave off, he’s got no right.“

  ‘Walter?“ Perryn asked, not seeming greatly disturbed.

  The older man twitched his sleeve from Hamon’s hold and answered, equally calm, “He’s on about how I’ve told him he’s to work for me, to pay back what he cost me on that surety.”

  ‘There was naught said about paying back!“ Hamon protested.

  ‘There was, while Father Edmund was writing out the agreement, and there were those heard you say it,“ Walter said.

  ‘But it weren’t in the agreement! I never signed naught that said I’d have to pay back!“

  ‘But you gave your word to it. Before witnesses,“ Walter said.

  ‘But I never swore…“ The younger man’s voice was rising.

  ‘Steady, Hamon,“ Perryn said.

  Hamon tucked in his chin, like a bull baffled by baiting. “I never…” he stubbornly began again.

  ‘Hamon,“ Perryn said warningly.

  Hamon dropped to sullen silence.

  ‘Now,“ Perryn said, ”we’ll tell Dame Frevisse what’s toward here, you both being priory villeins and in her rule.“

  None so happy to hear that, Frevisse sat up straighter, to pay closer heed as Perryn detailed a loan made to Hamon by Jenet atte Forge—a broad woman in a yellow dress took a step forward from the women around Ada Bychurch to make curtsy to the court—with Walter Hopper here and Dick Blakeman—a narrow-framed man moved forward a step from the north wall, made a quick, awkward bow, and stepped hurriedly back beside a wide-hipped, sweet-faced woman holding a swaddled baby— as surety it be repaid, which it hadn’t been, and Walter had seen to Jenet atte Forge being satisfied with use of one of his cows in milk for the summer, in place of him and Dick paying outright money, which they did not have.

  ‘And now?“ Frevisse asked at Walter.

  He bowed with more assurance than Dick Blakeman had and said to her, “Now I’ve been telling Hamon here that he owes me work until I’m paid back for paying off his debt.”

  ‘And I say I don’t! I never signed to any such thing and I’m off two days hence to work over Bloxham way where they’ll be paying me something and you say you won’t!“

  ‘I’m not going to pay you because you’re working to pay me back what you owe me,“ Walter said as if it were something he had already said more than a few times before.

  ‘I don’t owe you aught!“

  ‘Hamon,“ Perryn said, ”hush.“

  Hamon hushed. Perryn looked to Frevisse who realized he was giving the problem over to her and gathered her wits to say to Walter, “You said there were witnesses heard him agree to pay you back.”

  ‘Aye.“

  Perryn put up a hand, stopping Hamon from saying anything to that, and Frevisse asked of Walter, “Who?”

  ‘Father Edmund, for one.“

  Frevisse looked to the priest.

  He met her look. “It’s even as Walter says. He said to Hamon, ‘If I have to pay this in your place, you’ll work it out on my land for me, yes?’ And Hamon said, ‘Surely.’ ”

  ‘But I didn’t…“ Hamon started.

  ‘Hamon,“ Perryn said.

  Hamon huffed and held quiet.

  ‘Who else?“ Frevisse asked.

  Walter named two other men, one of them a juror, the other raising his hand from the far end of the nave to show he was there. To Frevisse’s question, they both agreed that Walter and Hamon had said what Father Edmund said they had said. “Walter even asked Hamon twice,” the juror said. “Twice he said it, and twice Hamon answered he would.”

  Both the other man and Father Edmund agreed to that, and Frevisse looked to Hamon. He looked down at his feet. He was not as young as he had seemed to her at first sight, and she thought now it was not lack of years but lack of good sense that made his face so soft as she said with curbed impatience, “Well, Hamon? Three men besides Walter Hopper say they heard you say you’d work for him if you failed the debt. Have you answer to that?”

  Hamon started to scuff his right foot at the floor without looking up. “I might have said it. I was that glad he was going surety for me, I’d likely have said anything. But I never signed…”

  ‘But you said it,“ Frevisse interrupted.

  Hamon tucked his chin down more sullenly. “I said it,” he granted.

  ‘Before witnesses.“

  ‘Aye.“ Grudgingly.

  ‘Then it would seem to me it’s an agreement you must keep.“ From the side of her eye she saw by a small nod of Perryn’s head that he agreed with that. She looked to the jurors. ”Yes?“

  They equally agreed, and while Father Edmund wrote it into the record, Walter clapped a hand on Hamon’s shoulder, saying, “There now. That’s done and it’ll be none so bad, you’ll see. Come on. I’ll stand you a drink when we’re done here,” drawing him away into the crowd.

  Perryn turned to the jurors and said, “It’s Woderove’s holding we have to deal with now,” and if he regretted that as much as Frevisse did, he gave no sign of it. Ignoring both the jurors’ uneasy shifting on their bench and the ripple of talk and movement through the crowd, he looked to Father Edmund. “You have the records for it ready?”

  Father Edmund laid a hand on the scrolls on the table in front of him. “Here.”

  ‘Then read them aloud, if you please, Father.“

  Mary Woderove stepped forward past Tom Hulcote, into the space between jurors and crowd and said angrily at her brother, “You know full well what they say! Everyone knows. That the holding goes to the firstborn son and down the line of sons, and if there are no sons, then to the daughters. You know that and that Matthew and I had nobody, no sons or daughters either, and now you want to take what’s mine away from me because of it and everyone knows that, too!”

  Steadily, looking straightly back at her, Perryn said, “If that’s the right of it, that the custom and law is for the Woderove holding to go by blood from heir to heir, and you say it is, then you say, too, that there being no heir by blood, the holding is in Lord Lovell’s hands for the while, yes?”

  ‘No!“ Mary cried. ”It naught matters what your foul custom says! The holding’s mine! Matthew meant for me to have it!“

  Steadily, as if repeating a thing that he had said before and known he would have to say again to no better end, Perryn said with heavy patience, “If Matthew had, as he sometimes talked of doing, given up the holding to Lord Lovell and taken it back on lease and in the lease given reversion of the holding to you at his death, then, yes, the holding would be yours. But Matthew never did that, and so the holding is not yours.”

  ‘But it can be,“ Mary said sharply. ”It’s for you to say who has it. You’re the reeve. You can give it to me.“

  ‘I’m the reeve,“ Perryn agreed, ”but last say in this is Master Spencer’s, or else even Master Holt’s.“ Lord Lovell’s high steward.

  ‘But the first say is yours,“ Mary flung back, her pretty face all taut with anger, ”and they listen to you!“

  ‘And since they listen to me, I cannot say to them that you should have the holding, because the holding is too much for you to manage on your own.“

  ‘You gave Avice Millwarde her widow’s holding two years ago. Why not me now?“

  ‘Because Avice Millwarde can run a holding and everyone knows it. Everyone likewise knows that you could not.“

  Mary took a step toward her brother and pointed an angry finger up toward his face. “What everybody knows is that I’m your sister and you hate me!”

  Perryn looked down at her with no outward feeling, answering after a moment, “Are you going to let Father Edmund read the custom concerning the holding or not?”

  Mary’s face worked, unlovely for the moment, toward answering that, but before she found it, Father Edmund said quietly from behind his table, “Mary.”

  She jerked her head toward him, looking as ready to snap at him as at her brother.

  Unheeding her anger, Father Edmund said with
simple quietness, “Let things go on as you know they have to, Mary. All will be well, I promise you.”

  Mary opened her mouth to say something. Father Edmund cocked his head at her, more in question than rebuke, and she seemed to think better of whatever she had been about to say, closed her mouth, made him a curt curtsy that pointedly ignored her brother, crossed her arms tightly across herself below her breasts, and bowed her head to stare at the floor in a fierce silence that gave up nothing except words.

  Perryn looked near to telling her to step back among the onlookers, but Father Edmund warned him off that with a small shake of his head and, before anything else could happen, began to read from the scroll he had been holding partly unrolled this while. What he read said much the same as what had passed between Mary and her brother concerning the Woderove holding, and when Father Edmund had finished, Perryn looked to the jurors and asked, “Is that how you remember it being in time past?”

  They agreed that it was.

  ‘Does anyone remember otherwise?“ he asked of the onlookers at large.

  No one said they did.

  ‘Then the Woderove holding is in Lord Lovell’s hands, to be kept or given as is seen fit,“ Perryn said. ”Yes?“

  The jurors nodded silent agreement, but Mary said sullenly at the floor, “Then you can give it to me.”

  Ignoring he had heard her, though he must have, Perryn said, “Is there anyone here makes bid to have the holding?”

  Tom Hulcote was stepping forward even as he said it, with an angry glance across to Gilbey Dunn. “I do. I bid for it at the terms Woderove held it and another workday to the lord into the bargain.” He put an arm around Mary’s shoulders. “And I’ll marry the widow with it for good measure.”