Beyond it was Gilbey’s, and even taken up with the tangle Montfort was making, Frevisse nearly came to a stop at full sight of it across the low withy fence between the street and its wide yard. Most villeins’ houses were serviceable but simple: of timbers, wattle, daub, and plaster, long and low, easily put up, easily taken down and shifted around in the yard as desire or need required, with thatch likely to be the greatest expense in keeping it up and nothing much changed from one generation to the next because what was the point in putting much money into something that belonged, when all was said and done, to the lord rather than the man who lived in it? But although Gilbey’s house was of timber, wattle, daub, plaster, and thatch well enough, there was nothing long and low about it. Beyond its foreyard garden, it stood square, with gable ends high enough, roof steep enough, it must have an actual upper floor instead of merely a loft tucked among rafters; there was even a small window poked out under a little gable of its own from the thatch along the side of the roof Frevisse could see and a fireplace chimney showing on the other side.
Elena was at the door, looking out over its closed lower half, either watching the chickens at work in the dust between doorstep and garden or for Gilbey, and she waited there while they came across the yard but stepped out as they came along the garden’s path and asked, her failure of other greeting betraying her worry, “How went it?”
‘Badly,“ Gilbey answered, and as they reached his doorstep turned on Frevisse with, ”You, with those questions of yours. You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days.“
‘Gilbey!“ Elena said.
Gilbey ignored her. “What if what you asked hadn’t brought the right answers? He’d have us under his arrest by now!”
‘I wasn’t asking those questions to keep you from arrest,“ Frevisse said back at him. ”I was asking them to find out what the answers were.“
She heard Perryn’s soft, hissed intake of breath as he understood she would have asked her questions whether she thought them dangerous to him and Gilbey or not.
Gilbey, realizing the same thing, started to swear, “By God’s holy…”
‘Gilbey!“ Elena said.
This time Gilbey cut off, though he looked more irked than penitent, and Elena laid a hand on his arm as she said, “If it went that badly, we’d best go in to say whatever else needs saying.” Belatedly she curtsyed to Frevisse. “If you would do us the honor, my lady?”
‘With pleasure.“
‘Here then,“ Gilbey said and led the way, with Perryn asking Elena as they went, ”How goes it with your boys?“
Belatedly in her turn, Frevisse saw that Elena looked very much the way most other of the village mothers presently looked-unkept, plainly dressed in a workaday gown of rough-woven linen, with simple cap and unstarched veil, gray-shadowed around her eyes with too little sleep and too much worry. But her fine-boned beauty was still there and woke, startling, as she smiled and said with open gladness of her sons, “Their fevers broke this morning, St. Roch be praised. Both of them. They’ve been mostly sleeping since.”
‘Agnes with them?“ Gilbey demanded.
Without apparent offense at Gilbey’s rudeness, Elena said, “Of course.” Or it might have been she was simply too tired to bother with being angry at him just now. Or else she was dangerously capable of hiding what she felt.
‘And your children?“ Elena asked of Perryn. ”I heard Colyn was past the worst. But Adam and Lucy?“
‘Lucy’s fever broke last night. Adam’s hasn’t,“ Perryn said tersely.
The quick darkening of Elena’s face showed she understood what that meant, but “Soon then,” she said kindly as Gilbey stood aside to let Frevisse go into the house ahead of him and Perryn after her.
Gilbey, following them in, said, “Hen,” at a beady-eyed red one that had taken advantage of the door Elena had left open to come in and peck for crumbs under the table.
With a soft laugh Elena took up a broom from beside the door and shooed it out in a ruffle of feathers and clucking, giving Frevisse a chance to see around the low-ceilinged room. Well-lighted by a window beside the door and another in the southward wall, it took up almost all this floor of the house, with a board wall and doorway at its far end closing off what looked to be storage space. Against one wall narrow stairs went steeply up to another room or rooms, probably where the children and Agnes must be since there was no sign anyone slept down here where most of the living and all the cooking were done. The furnishings were usual-table, benches, joint stools, chairs, chests-but all of better quality and quantity than usual in a villein’s house. That and the chimneyed hearth and that the floor was of boards instead of dirt told Frevisse much about how well off Gilbey was and something more about what Elena must have brought to their marriage because all this was more what a well-to-do townsman would have, rather than a country-bred peasant.
What if the rumor was true and there had been something between Tom Hulcote and Elena? What if she had come to choose him openly over her husband? It would have been a choice condemned by law and the Church, impossible ever to be anything but illicit, but women enough made that kind of choice. If Elena had, how much of all this would Gilbey have lost? Because Frevisse judged Elena would not have left behind anything she could take.
As Elena turned to her husband and guests-hen disposed of and the door’s bottom half shut and firmly latched against return-Frevisse clamped off that thought. All other consideration aside, Elena frankly lacked the look of a woman who had lately lost a lover for whom she might have done desperate things. That, from what Frevisse had heard, was Mary Woderove’s part; the talk among the women in the church was that she had gone wild at word of Tom Hulcote’s death, had been kept from harming herself only by quieting draughts from Mistress Margery, and had needed much counseling and consoling from Father Edmund.
And none of that was to the present need, and Frevisse said, abrupt with impatience at herself, “These jurors. Tell me about them.”
‘Tell you what?“ Gilbey asked. ”Fools, the lot of them.“
‘You’d better hope not. Perryn, tell me, how did it happen they were the ones helped you bring Tom Hulcote’s body in?“
‘They were who came to hand first, that’s all. John Rudyng and Bert Fleccher at the alehouse, Walter Hopper and Hamon Otale at Walter’s place on the way. That’s all there was to it.“
‘What sort of men are they?“
‘That’s not the problem here!“ Gilbey said.
‘It’s part of the problem,“ Frevisse said back at him. ”How long there is to find Tom Hulcote’s murderer depends on how well they can hold out against Montfort wanting it to be one or both of you.“ Elena gasped but Frevisse asked Perryn again, ”What sort of men are they? Hamon I remember from manor court. He’s not likely to be happy with you just now.“
‘No,“ Perryn agreed, ”but Walter Hopper is solid enough.“
‘He’s the one who didn’t say anything while we were there?“
‘Aye. He’s hard to push where he doesn’t want to go.“
‘And the others?“
‘Bert Fleccher…“
‘A troublemaker,“ Gilbey said.
‘He’s that,“ Perryn agreed slowly, ”but not mean-hearted about it.“
‘Nay, just a fool, and that can be as bad,“ Gilbey said. ”He’d not mind seeing us down if he could do it without hurt to himself. Then there’s John Rudyng. He’s no use either. Without his mother-in-law there to tell him what to do, he’ll go whatever way looks easiest.“