‘Not yet, but I have more questions, if you’d be willing to answer them.“
‘About Tom Hulcote?“
‘Yes.“
Elena sighed. “He’s proving as much a trouble dead as he was alive. Yes, of course I’ll answer what I can. Best come in and sit down.”
She went first, to open the half-door and let Frevisse enter first, while she fended off the red hen with skilled skirts, warning it, “There’s nothing in here for you, you ninny. You’re going to find yourself as Sunday dinner you keep this up.”
Inside, an eastward window let in the morning light and Agnes was busy at the table chopping vegetables. Elena asked, “May she go on, or is this only between us?”
‘There’s no reason she can’t stay,“ Frevisse said, keeping to herself the thought that Agnes might have answers, too.
Agnes nodded greeting and, deft of knife, wrist, and fingers, went on slicing carrots while at Elena’s invitation, Frevisse sat, accepted an offer of cider, and waited while Elena poured three goblets full, handed her one, set one in Agnes’s reach and, taking the third, pulled a chair around to sit facing her, asking as she did, “Questions about Tom Hulcote, you said?”
Agnes made a harumphing noise and slammed the knife through an onion with unnecessary force. “Worthless man.”
‘Not in the eyes of God,“ Elena said.
‘Unfortunately what I want to know,“ said Frevisse, ”is how he was in the eyes of men. You said he quit at St. Swithin’s.“
‘The day after.“
‘Why had you kept him on so long when he was forever going off for days at a time?“
‘Forever going off for days at a time?“ Elena repeated as if puzzled. ”His going off like that only began this summer. Until then, he’d go for a day now and again, no word to anyone, but show up the next day.“
‘With no excuse, and it’s not as if he did much of his work when he was here,“ Agnes said. Having reduced the onion to small bits, she reached for another.
‘It was only lately that he’d started taking off for three and four and more days at a time. It’s what finished it for us. He wasn’t worth the bother.“
‘But I thought…“ Frevisse stopped. Yesterday Elena had only said he was gone too much. It had been Cisily who said he was forever being gone for days at a time, and Cisily had been enjoying herself and likely as not had gone to excess with it. Frevisse shifted her question to, ”When did he begin this?“
‘Being gone for days at a time, you mean? About Whitsuntide.“ Elena looked at Agnes to confirm that. Agnes shrugged. Elena thought a moment, then said, certain, ”That would be when. It was early haying the first time he went off and didn’t come back for three days, I think it was, that time. It was the worse surprise because he’d never done that until then and we were haying.“
‘Hiding in Mary Woderove’s bed most likely,“ Agnes said.
‘That was before her husband left,“ Elena pointed out.
‘As if Matthew’d notice. Or say anything if he did,“ Agnes said. ”He…“
Elena cut her off, going on, “He-Tom-was back for the most of the haying, I remember, so Gilbey held off being over-angry at him that time. But then he was gone again just before the sheep-washing and shearing, and we were feared he wouldn’t be back in time at all.”
‘Just past Midsummer,“ Frevisse said.
‘He was gone Midsummer Day, and we didn’t see him again until…“ Elena looked to Agnes. ”How long was it?“
‘He was off nigh to a week that time.“ Agnes was definite. ”Was here Midsummer’s eve but gone Midsummer’s morning. He wasn’t here for all the going on when Matthew Woderove ran off a few days after that, I mind, and he didn’t come dragging home for…“ Agnes paused, tapping the knife tip on the table as if counting something. ”… for four more days. A week and a bit more, I’d say.“
‘Were those the only times he was gone for long?“ Frevisse asked.
‘He did his usual gone-a-day at least twice after that,“ Elena said, ”but there was only once more he was gone three days together.“
‘When?“
‘St. Swithin’s day,“ Agnes said.
‘He came back on St. Swithin’s,“ Elena clarified.
‘And had a fiend’s quarrel with Gilbey the next day, and that’s when he quit. Half a word before Gilbey would have told him to…“
‘Dame Frevisse isn’t here for talk of private matters,“ Elena said.
Private matters were precisely what Frevisse was there for, but since she could hardly say so, she settled for mildly commenting, “What I wonder at is why you hadn’t been done with him long since.”
While Agnes savaged into a summer squash, Elena answered easily, “We have need of two men besides Gilbey here. When Tom worked, he was good enough at what he did.”
‘When he worked,“ Agnes muttered at the squash.
‘Mostly it was that there aren’t many who can put up with my husband for very long. Tom Hulcote did. At least better than most we’ve had.“
Probably by leaving those days when he had had enough of Gilbey and could bear no more, Frevisse thought, but only said, “It was the quarrel at St. Swithin’s that finished things?”
‘There would have been an end soon anyway,“ Elena said. ”Besides being gone so much that last month or more, he’d taken to being churlish in the bargain, angry more often than not or else ill-humored.“
‘He hadn’t always been that way?“
‘No.“ Elena frowned a little, as if thinking on it for the first time. ”No, he wasn’t. What he was, was lazy when he could be. Slack at his work unless he was watched. But not ill-humored, no. Not until around Whitsuntide?“ she asked of Agnes, who left off assaulting the squash, thought about it, too, and agreed, ”From around then, aye. From then on and growing worse.“
About Whitsuntide, when he had first gone off for longer than a single day.
‘You never knew where he went those days he was gone? Those times he was gone longer than usual?“
Agnes mumbled something under her breath that might have been, “Mary Woderove’s bed,” but Elena considered before saying, “The last time at least, he was in Banbury. Gilbey saw him there.”
‘In Banbury?“ Frevisse echoed, surprised. ”What was he about in Banbury?“
‘Gilbey didn’t know. It was a market day, crowds and all, and Tom was on the other side of a street and didn’t see Gilbey nor Gilbey let on he’d seen him either.“
‘Not until they were quarreling after Tom came back,“ Agnes said. She paused in scraping the squash off the cutting board into a pot to relish the memory. ”In the midst of their yelling, Gilbey twitted him with being in Banbury when he ought to have been here, and Tom went up like a scalded cat.“
‘Agnes,“ Elena said quellingly. ”That’s more than Dame Frevisse needs to know.“
It was not, and Frevisse asked, “What did Tom say?”
‘Nothing to the point,“ Elena said. ”As Agnes said, he just went angrier.“
But anger could be cover for so many things. Frevisse looked for another question, but before she found one, there was a bustle of noise in the yard. Both she and Elena rose to their feet and Agnes put down her knife, all of them turning toward the door, in time to see one of Mont-fort’s guards looking in, and past him Frevisse could see another.
Chapter 18
Stiffly, as if her throat were suddenly too tight, too dry, Elena said, “No, Agnes. I’ll go,” but as she started forward herself, Frevisse held out a hand into her way and asked, too low for the guard at the door to hear, “Where’s Gilbey?”
With a twist of fear across her loveliness, Elena answered, equally low, “Gone to Banbury. I couldn’t talk him from it.”
‘Mistress,“ said the man at the door.
With her face suddenly all smiling for him, Elena said, “Coming, sir,” and went, graceful with her skirts and prettily hurrying. Agnes, as bid, stayed at the table but Frevisse followed, keeping distance and to the side as Elena said across the door to the man, smiling upon him with no trace of trouble and deliberate charm, “Yes? Is there something I can do for you?”