Frevisse startled with the realization that Elena had not been talking idly this while, had understood the suspicion behind her questioning, and had set out against it. Giving answers she was willing to give so as to forestall questions more dangerous to her?
Hiding her anger at herself for being so easily led, Frevisse asked something that had only to do with her curiosity, not Tom Hulcote’s death. “Why, with all his ambition, hasn’t Gilbey bought his freedom?”
‘Because he’d lose too much by being free,“ Elena said bluntly. ”First, there’d be the cost of buying himself free, then the cost of buying land if he could but more probably leasing it, land not being that readily come by. So long as he stays Lord Lovell’s villein, he holds his land here by right. Though we’re thinking that it may be better now to give his right up and shift to copyhold, no more workdays or fees owed, just a flat yearly rent, everything to be held in survivorship between us, with the boys to inherit.“
‘Will Lord Lovell agree to that?“
‘It’s common enough anymore,“ Elena said as if she had no doubt about it. ”The lords prefer cash in hand to the bother of reckoning workdays owed and trying to collect past-due fees, and Gilbey is a good enough tenant that the steward won’t want to risk losing him. It will come to much the same as being free without the cost of buying his freedom.“
‘What about this house?“ Because whatever actual practice was, in legal fact what a villein owned belonged to his lord, and if it came to law the lord’s claim would very possibly be upheld.
‘The house and everything in it are my father’s. He leases it for a penny a year to Gilbey in return for use of the land it stands on, and it’s tied to pass to my children when he dies. That way it will never be Gilbey’s and at risk to the lord. Though if for some fool’s reason, Lord Lovell decided to make trouble over it, worse come to worse, it can be taken down and moved away if need be.“
Worse come to worse, it could be taken down and moved away, too, if-for some reason-Elena’s marriage to Gilbey failed.
Some reason such as Tom Hulcote.
How right was Elena in thinking Gilbey would never be jealous of her, when he had so much to lose if he lost her?
And how honest had she been in claiming she had no inclination to Tom Hulcote?
But those were hardly questions Frevisse could ask outright and, ready to be done with Elena for a time, she took her leave gracefully. Elena saw her to the door, making equally graceful farewell but saying in a worried voice as Frevisse started away, “My lady, is anything you’ve learned so far of any use?”
Frevisse turned back to her, paused, almost said, “I don’t know yet,” but said instead, matching Elena’s worry, “Only that there’s someone so hurting in himself with anger or unhappiness that it isn’t enough he killed a man. He wants to be sure someone else suffers for it in his place.”
Chapter 15
The last of the day’s clouds were gone, save for a few wisps strayed across the west, gold and cream and touched with scarlet, above the setting sun. The day’s warmth had thickened through the afternoon, and walking slowly away from Gilbey’s messuage, Frevisse found herself wishing for the cool shadows and deep quiet of St. Frideswide’s church and cloister walk, wanting to be enclosed and silent with nothing needed from her but prayers, even if only for a little while. Her thoughts were tired and twisted into pieces with all the different ways the day had gone-from the dark, wearing hours with the ill children to facing down Mont-fort to questioning how Tom Hulcote had come to his death. She was used to days that held together, flowing in a steady pattern from their beginnings to their ends, not sharded into pieces that jarred and grated against one another and against her peace of mind.
She did not want to be part of Prior Byfield and its troubles.
But she was, and Deus adjuvat me; et Dominus susceptor est animae meae. God helps me; and the Lord is the protector of my soul.
And if God was her help and protector, she was likewise bound to help and protect where she could, giving to others what God gave to her, and just now her help was needed here, partly because Montfort would do his worst to believe what he wanted to believe-that Perryn and Gilbey Dunn were guilty-and partly because she could not rid herself of the fear that had come to her in the churchyard-that Tom Hulcote’s death was not the first there had been in this and might not be the last.
His death and Matthew Woderove’s had been so alike.
She paused in the midst of the street, caught between returning to the church and turning toward Simon Perryn’s with the questions she wanted to ask there, now being maybe better for them than later. But she had already been gone from the church far longer than she had meant to be and the questions could wait until morning; the children’s needs could not. And nonetheless, after a moment more of hesitation, she turned toward Simon Perryn’s.
There were others seeing to the children but no one else would ask the questions that needed asking.
Perryn, his two servants, and Dickon were still at their supper when she paused on his threshold, her shadow thrown ahead of her through the open doorway telling she was there before she need knock, and in the moment until her sun-brightened eyes were used to the house’s shadows, Perryn said, “Dame Frevisse,” in surprise and then in welcome, “Come in, please you, my lady.”
By then she could see him rising from his place on a joint stool at the table’s head and Cisily and Dickon and a man who must be Watt on benches down its sides all turning to look at her, and she had a sudden sense of how comfortably crowded it would be at the table when Anne, Adam, Colyn, and Lucy were all there, too, and how empty it must be to Perryn without them, how hard the days of not knowing who would come home again and who would not must have been.
And even now they were not sure that Adam would.
She put the thought away from her. They had finished eating, she saw. The meal’s end looked to have been applemose and some sort of wafers that were probably supposed to be thin and crisp and golden but were thick and brown and somewhat blackened around the edges and Dickon had been scraping the burned part of one away with his knife, into the remains of what looked to be overcooked pease pottage in the bowl in front of him. If this was Cisily’s usual cooking, no wonder he had been eager for Elena Dunn’s, Frevisse thought. But Cisily, Watt, and Dickon were rising to their feet with Perryn, and she said quickly, “I pray you, sit, please,” as she entered at Perryn’s invitation. Watt and Dickon did but Cisily began to bustle from the table, saying, “Let me fetch you some supper, my lady, if you’d eat with us, if it please you.”
‘I thank you but no,“ Frevisse said. Besides that she was satisfied already, the smell from whatever Cisily had cooked suggested there had been scorching at the bottom of the pot.
‘Ale then?“ Cisily said.
‘Thank you, yes,“ Frevisse said though she did not much want that either.
‘Is there aught wrong, my lady?“ Perryn asked, still on his feet and worried. ”The children?“
Sorry she had not realized that would be his first thought, she said hurriedly, “Not that I know. I’ve only come with some of the questions I asked at Gilbey’s. About Monday.”
Cisily, fetching another cup to the table, grumbled, “None of us know aught about naught at Gilbey Dunn’s. They keep themselves to themselves there, they do.”
Frevisse was a little used to Cisily from her helping Anne in the church: an older woman with a sprout of gray hairs on her upper lip and grumbling ways but part of the Perryns’ household for a long while past and a good worker and good with the children, who, like their mother, never seemed to heed her grumbling. Nor did Perryn now, asking, “Will you sit, my lady?” gesturing to the joint stool at the end of the table from where he stood. To put everyone at better ease, Frevisse sat while Cisily poured ale from a pitcher already on the table and Perryn named Watt to her. Watt stood again, made an awkward bow, and sat. Frevisse thanked Cisily for the ale and said, because she could think of no subtle way around to it, “In truth it’s you I want to talk to, Cisily.”