Dickon squirmed and said with sudden interest in his kneecap, “I saw her and Tom at it a couple of weeks ago.” He looked up quickly. “But they were right out in the open, and it was daytime when they did. They didn’t care if anybody saw them. I wasn’t looking for it, either time. It just happened. Nor I’m not the only one who’s seen them. Her and Tom, and her and Father Edmund. Adam even saw…”
He stopped, his mouth open, his eyes shifting widely aside in search of something else to say.
Gently but too firmly to let him think she would let him off, Frevisse said, “This matters, Dickon. You’ve listened to enough of what’s passed here to understand how much we’re in need of answers. What else has been seen between Mary Woderove and Father Edmund and Tom Hulcote, by you or anyone else?”
Dickon looked to Perryn who nodded he should go on, and Dickon took a deep breath and said, “Once Adam happened on her and Father Edmund. They were out beyond that field her husband lost to Gilbey. In among the trees. They were…”
There was small likelihood a boy his age did not know what happened between men and women, but he also knew the limits of what was properly not said aloud and, embarrassed, he stopped.
‘You mean,“ Perryn said quietly, ”they were doing what only man and wife should do together.“
Dickon nodded gratefully.
‘They never knew Adam was there, did they?“ Frevisse said to set him going again.
Dickon shook his head. “He drew off and went away, and they never knew he’d seen. But he told me about it afterwards. And some of the other boys.”
And, being boys, they had probably laughed over it.
Very far from laughter but holding her anger out of her voice, Frevisse asked, “When was it he saw them?”
‘Before Midsummer. A little before. He said the next time he saw Father Edmund and Mary was at the court then, and he kept wanting to laugh because he kept remembering…“
Dickon broke off, embarrassed again, and Frevisse pushed him for no more. He had said enough, and still keeping her feelings from her voice, she told him, “Thank you, Dickon. You’ve done well, telling us this. Can you keep it to yourself a while longer? Both what you know and that you’ve told us?”
‘Of course,“ he said, sounding in his certainty very like his father.
Chapter 20
Dame Frevisse sent Dickon off to the church, to help Anne and keep the children company, she said. He went willingly enough, leaving Simon to wish he could go with him, wish he could go to Anne and hold her and be held by her and for just a little while be done with all of this. Because he was afraid. Afraid of what they had learned and afraid of where it might lead. So afraid that he was cold with it.
And in a voice as cold as he felt, Dame Frevisse said, staring away down the green at nothing, “Tell me about Tom Hulcote’s wounds.”
‘His wounds?“ Simon groped to find why she would ask that. ”What about his wounds?“
‘What way was his skull was broken? You said his head was broken in on the side. The right side, I think.“ She might have been asking which way the street ran for all the feeling she showed. ”Was it from top to bottom? From front to back?“
‘From front to back,“ Simon said, understanding that much of what she wanted. As one of the ”finders“ of the body, he had had to look it over with Bert, Walter, John and Hamon, to be able to witness later to the crowner if asked, but that did not mean he liked thinking about it. ”Or back to front. Could have been either way.“
‘Was it done with something blunt or edged?“
‘It wasn’t sliced into, like with an ax. More battered, like.“
‘Then it might be crushed in more near the hand-end of whatever he was hit with, where there’d be more force,“ Dame Frevisse said.
A little thick in the throat with trying not to remember too clearly how Tom’s head had looked, wondering how a nun came to think on something like that, Simon answered, “I didn’t look that closely.”
‘Has he been buried already?“
‘Yesterday, soon as Master Montfort had done with him.“ And Simon prayed she would not want him dug up.
‘Where was he stabbed?“
‘In the back.“
‘On the right side or left?“
‘The right.“
‘High or low or in the middle?“
‘Low. Below the ribs.“
‘Did the blade go in upward, straight, or down?“
‘I never looked! Nor anyone else either, that I know of. He was stabbed and dead and that was enough.“
‘With a knife, a dagger, a sword?“
‘Not a sword,“ Simon said. ”The wound was too narrow for a sword blade. I don’t know there’s anyone in the village even has a sword.“
But Dame Frevisse was gone into some thought of her own again, leaving him to his own, and that was no pleasure. Knowing Mary had betrayed Matthew had been bad enough but to know she’d betrayed Tom, too-at the same time she’d been betraying Matthew-and with a priest. Their own priest. With Father Edmund, who in the ten months he’d been here had baptized four babies into the Church’s grace, given the Last Rite at their dying to Gil Jardyn’s boy and little Jack Gregory, old Peter Whit-lock and Joan Cufley to bring them to God’s mercy. The man who at every Mass held Christ’s Body in his hands. Hands that between whiles held Mary. Another man’s wife. Another man’s paramour.
These past days, when they’d had neither husband nor other lover to worry over, how “comforting” had Father Edmund been?
Beside him Dame Frevisse said, “It’s why she was urging Tom Hulcote to leave here. Not for his sake but to clear the way between her and Father Edmund.”
Bitter with certainty, Simon agreed, “Aye. She knew Tom’d not bear it if he found out. He’d have killed her.”
‘Only it was Tom who was killed,“ Dame Frevisse said very quietly, leaving Simon to see what lay between his thought and hers.
He did and tried to answer her but could make no word come out before she went on carefully, “If Tom came on them together and went into a rage, Father Edmund could well have had to kill him.”
‘Aye,“ Simon forced out. ”And then tried to hide he’d done it.“ By making him and Gilbey look guilty in his stead.
‘And then there’s the matter of Mary’s husband’s death,“ Dame Frevisse said in that same cold, level voice.
‘What? Nay, it was some thief off Wroxton way did for Matthew.“
‘Was it? Matthew’s death was as convenient to their ends as Tom’s leaving was supposed to be. She needed to be rid of both of them.“
‘She drove Matthew off, that’s all. Same as she was trying to drive Tom off. It worked with one, not with the other, that’s all.“
‘Miserable though she’d made him, was Matthew all that likely to strike out on his own? And why would he sell the horse he’d stolen before he’d gone even a dozen miles on his way?“
‘He was frighted he’d be caught with it. He’d not thought it through when he did it, and when he did, all he wanted was to be rid of it.“ Simon grabbed at something else. ”Anyway, leave be the small chance there’d be of Father Edmund finding Matthew on the road to kill him after he left here, he’d not been out of the village even half a day since Lent. So even if the priest killed him here, there was no time he could have shifted the body all the way to Wroxton.“ He caught up to another thought and added before Dame Frevisse could ask, his mind beginning to cast the way hers did. ”Nor Mary neither. She’s not been gone anytime this year and maybe more.“
He had a momentary hope when Dame Frevisse held silent as if thinking on that and then seemed to go another way, asking, “Did your sister know how unlikely it was you’d give Matthew Woderove’s holding to Tom Hulcote?”
‘She knew how little I thought of him and how I thought even less of the two of them. She knew he’d not have it from me, if the choice was mine.“