This time he had not even been off his horse before he was demanding lodging and stabling as if they would have been denied him if he did not force the matter, though they were his by right of his being the king’s officer and on the king’s business. Nor did it matter that his needs that way had already been forethought and Father Edmund’s house and yard and byre readied for him, his men, and horses.
At least he was wasting no time over what had brought him here. Simon would give him that. He’d still been stripping off his gloves when he demanded the jurors to be brought to him and said at Simon in the same breath, “Except you, reeve. I don’t want you on the jury, but keep where I can find you when I want you.”
He had added the same to Father Edmund, somewhat more graciously though not much, then asked, “The whelp who found the body. I want him here, too.”
Simon had used that for reason to leave, found Dickon helping Watt hoe the onions at home, brought him back and given him over to one of the crowner’s guards at Father Edmund’s gateway, then gone off to the alehouse, looking for something else to do than think but found no company, everyone off to the fields for weeding while the rain delayed the haying. Even the old men who usually found naught to do but sit around with their talking had jounced off in Will Cufley’s cart that morning, old Tod Denton saying he could hack a hoe well enough if he had to but don’t expect him to do it often-like. There had only been Bess and she had gone on about Tom’s death, the way everybody had been going on about it, one way or another, to no profit or useful end that Simon could see, since they knew what they knew and no more, no matter how much they talked, and what they knew was not enough. When he’d shown no interest in that, Bess had shifted to what might come of the crowner being here, another thing Simon had not wanted to think about, and he had put his halfpence on the table and gone out, with nowhere else to go but home, where Watt would only go on at him about the same things, so he’d gone to the church instead, wishing he could go to Anne, but that would have meant seeing Adam and he could not bear to see Adam.
Nor bear not knowing how he was, and he’d asked for Dame Frevisse to come out, for all the good that had done him.
God and the Blessed Virgin, but he wished all of this were over with.
Two of the crowner’s men were sitting at ease on the bench beside the priest’s housedoor, one of them whittling, a pile of wood chips growing between his feet, the other leaned back, arms crossed on his chest, looking ready to doze if there was a chance. They both cocked eyes toward their fellow bringing Simon and the nun but said nothing, letting him lead them inside.
The priest’s main room was open to the rafters and ran long to right and left of the door and the full width of the house, with one end walled off into a second room that was even ceilinged and walled above to make a third with stairs up to it. Most folk in the village had only the one room on the ground, serving for kitchen and most other living, and a loft where the children slept and goods were stored, but then the priest’s place was often used for lesser manor courts and village meetings and was where Lord Loveil’s bailiff stayed when he was here and, for this while, Master Montfort, worse luck for Father Edmund.
The crowner was seated on the far side of the broad table set in the room’s center, his beringed hands clasped on the polished tabletop, ignoring his guard’s bow, going on speaking toward his clerk at the table’s end, a drab-clad man on a stool, hunched over inkpot and papers, blinking owlishly behind thick glasses held on by loops of dark ribbon around his ears.
Simon took a quick look around, taking in Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon as jurors, crowded together on a bench to the left end of the room, and Dickon standing between them and the table, and Father Edmund at the room’s other end beside his fireplace that Father Clement had had built, the first there had ever been in the village though of late Anne was pressing for one, too, since now Gilbey had one…
Simon caught himself back from trying to be somewhere else by not thinking about being here as Master Montfort swung around to dismiss the guard with a wave. The man bowed, moved aside, retreated, and Master Montfort fixed his small, hard eyes on Simon who made a quick, low bow in his turn, but when he straightened, Master Montfort was looking past him, eyes narrowed with displeasure.
‘You, Dame?“ he snapped. ”On the gad again, are you?“
Dame Frevisse had fallen behind as they entered. Now she came forward to Simon’s side, her eyes toward the floor, her hands tucked humbly nunwise into her opposite sleeves, and said hardly above a whisper, making a deep curtsy, “If it please you, sir.”
‘It doesn’t,“ Master Montfort retorted.
‘She’s taken Master Naylor’s place this while, sir,“ said Simon, to come between her and the crowner’s open displeasure.
‘Ah!“ Satisfaction glowed suddenly on Master Mont-fort’s face. He was a fox-haired man and florid-faced to match it, always in or about to be in ill humour, but Master Naylor’s trouble brought him to an open smile. ”Yes, that fool has finally come to grief, I hear, and none too soon, either. I’ve seen for years he was above his place, even if no one else could.“ And the worse fools, they, his tone said. ”You’re taking his place, is that it, Dame? Your prioress can’t do better?“
‘She’s asked her brother’s help,“ Dame Frevisse said so gently despite the roughness of his asking, that butter, as the saying went, would not have melted in her mouth, Simon thought. And then thought that if she had taken to talking to him that way, he would have been as wary as of the devil.
Master Montfort seemed to like it, though. He tapped rapid fingers on the tabletop and asked a little less bale-fully, “Your prioress’ brother. He’s the abbot of St. Bartholomew’s, Northampton, yes?”
‘If it please you, sir,“ Dame Frevisse agreed, her eyes still downward, as subdued a picture of womanhood as could be found.
Master Montfort tapped a little harder, thinking, then snapped, “Stay if you will, Dame. But it’s a favor to your prioress. You’re to stand aside and keep your mouth shut. You’re allowed to listen, nothing more. You understand?”
For answer, Dame Frevisse made him another small curtsy and, head still bowed, drew well aside and back toward the wall beside the door. Master Montfort leaned to say something else, low-voiced again, to his clerk, who dipped pen tip in his inkpot, ducked low over a scrap of paper, and began to scribble. Simon used the chance to trade a nod with the priest and give Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon another look, not quite happy they were there and he was here. When he’d sought help to bring in Tom’s body, he had simply taken the first four fit men he had found, routing John Rudyng and Bert Fleccher out of the alehouse where John was hiding out from his mother-in-law and Bert just lying low from life on the whole, then found Walter Hopper at his messuage and collected him and Hamon and a hurdle for carrying the body. Father Edmund, fetched by Dickon on Simon’s order, had caught up to them as they’d left Walter’s, and Dickon had shown the way to Tom’s body. They were seen as they went by the field lane, of course, and followed by folk leaving their work to see what was toward, but they reached the body well ahead of anyone else, with time for Simon to see how Tom was lying all sprawled at the bottom of the ditch, looking like he’d rolled to where he was, his arms and legs loosely out. There was something over his face, something Dickon had said he’d put there before he left him, to keep the birds off, and it had, though there were five crows gathered to the body again, glossy black against the high-summer green of hedge and grassy ditch, and two of them had been trying to pluck the cloth away. Bert had yelled at them but Dickon, steadied down until then, had given a high, furious cry and grabbed up dirt clods from the field edge and rushed at them, throwing wildly after them as they rose on their wide black wings. They’d cawed offense at him and he’d yelled after them and been crying again, and Simon had gone and caught hold of him, turned him, and taken him well aside away from Tom’s body that he’d seen more than enough of already, holding him while he sobbed it all out again.