Walter regarded her blankly a moment, the question taking him by surprise, before he answered, “To find out when Simon would want my work this week.”
‘A half-day’s weeding of the lord’s beans yesterday,“ Perryn said, ”that you still owe, what with being a juror instead.“
Walter gave him a narrow stare. “Might change my mind about that hood not being evidence,” he said, but it was in jest and he added easily, “This afternoon then, if that’ll serve.”
Perryn nodded, equally easy about it.
‘Why did you let Hamon go to Gilbey’s looking for work that morning?“ Frevisse asked.
‘Hamon’s been grumping on about how he’s no chance to earn money in hand. I thought Gilbey was likely to be short-handed, with Tom not working for him any more, and told Hamon to see if he could earn a bit of something there, me not needing him that day once I knew Simon didn’t want me just then.“
‘And his wife was wanting to know how things were going at Gilbey Dunn’s,“ Hamon said, ”with the sick brats and all, but didn’t want to go herself, Gilbey’s wife being the way she is. ’Have a look in the door if you can,‘ she said, so Walter said I could go.“
‘Hamon,“ Walter said with no particular heat, just a wish he would be quiet and resignation that he wouldn’t.
‘Well, that’s how it was,“ Hamon said. ”She said I was to tell her everything about it afterwards.“
‘Did you?“ Frevisse asked.
‘Wasn’t much to tell.“ Hamon sounded as wronged by that as Walter’s wife had probably felt. ”I never hardly got past the doorstep. That old thing her servant sent me off to Gilbey in the barn. He didn’t want me, and I never laid eyes on Gilbey’s wife at all.“ Which he seemed to feel was an equal wrong.
Unhopeful of learning more, Frevisse let them go with careful thanks, then sat watching them walk away while her mind tracked back through what she had found out, none of it seeming of particular use, but she nodded at Perryn to sit with her on the bench, and when he had, they both sat in silence, Frevisse staring into the distance, Perryn at the ground, with nothing to say between them until Perryn roused with a deep sigh and, “About Mary. I’m sorry for the way she was to you.”
Frevisse had let go thinking of Mary. Even the fact that, besides Gilbey Dunn, she was the only strong link between the two dead men seemed to be of no matter in finding why they were dead. But she was Perryn’s sister and mattered to him-or at least her ill manners did, and Frevisse said, “No matter. It’s forgotten.”
But not by Perryn who said, still heavily, “She’s a trouble and always has been, ever since she was little. There’s never been a halfway about her in things. When she loved Matthew, it was the only thing in the world for her, and when she stopped loving him…” He left the sentence hang, no need to finish it. “The trouble is, she’d not stopped loving Tom Hulcote yet. It’s made it worse for her than losing Matthew was.”
‘She didn’t look to be much grieving just now,“ Frevisse said, but that sounded unkind even in her own ears, especially when said to Mary’s brother, and she added, ”Though she was wild enough with grief at first, by what I’ve heard.“
‘Oh, aye,“ Perryn agreed wearily. ”Mary’s always enjoyed a good howling when she has the chance.“
As when what was left of her husband’s body had been brought back to be buried, Frevisse remembered. Back to what mattered, she said, “The question we keep coming short against is who would want Tom Hulcote dead. What happened that someone killed him? By all I’ve heard, nobody cared enough about him to mind even whether he stayed or went, let be whether he was alive or dead.”
‘Nobody but Mary,“ Perryn said.
‘And she was telling him to go,“ Frevisse said, impatient that Perryn would not leave off about what was no use to them.
But he had reason for it, it seemed, frowning at the ground between his feet as he said, “It’s not right, her doing that. Telling him to go. She’s never been one to let go a thing until she’s done with it. Not Mary. And with Tom gone, she’d have been without a man and she’s never liked that. Not since she was old enough to want one.”
‘She still has Father Edmund,“ Dickon said.
Sitting on the grass aside and a little behind them all this while, he had been out of sight and-Frevisse realized belatedly-out of mind. With a smile as rueful as her thought, Perryn gave her a side wise look, then looked past her to Dickon and said in what was very much a father’s forbearing tone, “She does and that’s good. But Father Edmund’s not the same to her as Tom was.”
Stiffly, showing he knew he was being talked down to, Dickon said, “He kisses her the same way.”
Perryn’s gaze met Frevisse’s, the same, sudden, harsh question in both before Frevisse slowly turned to Dickon and asked, carefully keeping feelings out of her voice, “Does he? How do you know?”
Dickon shifted a little, suddenly uneased, looking from her to Perryn and back again before he said, with equal care, “There’s a place up on the wood edge.” He pointed vaguely toward where Crossfield made a low rise into woods. “It ridges out some and you can see…” He gestured along all the north side of the green.
‘I know the place,“ Perryn said. ”Every boy knows it. Its the best place along the woodshore for…“ He reconsidered what he was going to say. ”… not snaring rabbits.“ Because any kind of hunting in the lord’s woodland was mostly a forbidden thing. ”My grandfather used to not snare rabbits up there, too. And my father and me. None of us ever used to set snares there when we were your age, nor eat the rabbits we never caught neither.“
Frevisse saw what he was at and left him to it as Dickon began to grin with a shared understanding that had everything to do with Perryn having been a boy and nothing at all to do with him being the reeve and answerable for keeping village laws.
‘That’s it,“ Dickon agreed. ”Adam showed me.“
‘From up there you can see most of the back way that runs behind the messuages that side of the green, and into some of their byre yards, too,“ Perryn explained to Frevisse. ”You saw them from up there, did you?“ he asked Dickon.
Dickon nodded. “They didn’t think anyone could because there’s a shed angled between the byre and the back gate, and the byre in the next yard has its back to there, and even if they’d looked, they’d not have seen me because I was down in the long grass.”
‘Dawn this would have been?“ Perryn asked.
He made no more of it than he had of the snaring so that Dickon went on easily, “Half light, maybe. No more. They came out of the byre together, her and Father Edmund, and they… kissed.” And something more than kissed, guessing from Dickon’s sudden hesitation and then the way he went on quickly as if he did not want to be asked more about it. “Then she went to see out the back gate that everything was clear, nobody about, and there wasn’t and he left, back to his own place.”
‘It’d be not far to go,“ Perryn said to Frevisse. ”There’s maybe two messuages between her place and the back way into his.“
‘When was this you saw them?“ Frevisse asked.
Dickon was well into enjoying himself now and answered eagerly, “Two mornings ago. Just after I’d taken the cows to pasture. You have to go out early to snares, before the crows find them, if you’ve caught anything,” he explained to her.
Frevisse forebore to tell him she had known how to snare rabbits and what to do with them afterwards when she was half his age.
‘That was careless of them,“ Perryn said grimly. ”To be out like that when it was light.“
But Frevisse had thought of more than that and asked, “Dickon, how is it you know she and Father Edmund kissed the same way she and Tom Hulcote did?”