Master Christopher looked at her uncertainly, but Dame Frevisse said crisply, “The blow to his head. Where did it come from?”
‘Where?“ he repeated. ”You mean was he hit from in front or from in back?“
Dame Frevisse nodded. It was something she had asked Simon, but Master Christopher had a better answer than he had had. “I’d say from behind. The bone was more deeply broken to the back than to the front.”
‘What?“ said Walter. ”I don’t see.“
‘Show him,“ Dame Frevisse ordered.
As if unsure he should be doing this, Master Christopher stood up, stepped clear of the bench, and went to take up a length of firewood from beside the hearth while gesturing to Dickon to stand, asking him, “If you please, turn your back to me.”
Dickon, delighted, did.
‘Now see.“ Master Christopher swung the length of firewood slowly at the side of Dickon’s head, stopped short of him, and said, ”There’s enough curve to the skull that where the blow lands the force is greatest, the break will be deepest, while the blow loses force with the skull’s curve and the bone isn’t broken in so deeply.“
‘You could see that, looking at Tom’s skull?“ Walter asked.
‘I felt of the bone when I examined the body.“ Sickened distaste showed on all the men’s faces, his own with the rest, Simon feared. Mary had not looked up and still did not as Master Christopher went on, ”It was the only way to tell how badly broken the bone was. To tell if the blow had been enough to kill him.“
With as little feeling as if considering such things was an everyday part of her life, Dame Frevisse asked, “Was it?”
‘Very likely. It might have taken him a little time to die, but he would have.“
‘And been unconscious while he did?“
‘Yes.“
‘Why was he hit from the side? Wouldn’t striking down at the back of his head if you were attacking someone from behind be the more likely way?“
‘It would be.“ Master Christopher lifted the thin log and brought it down in a feigned blow at the back of Dickon’s head, again stopping short, but Dickon cringed a little anyway. ”The trouble is that the skull is thicker in the back. A blow there would stagger a man but, unless it was heavy beyond the common, not necessarily bring him down. The way a blow from the side more likely would. Particularly if the man giving the blow was shorter than the man attacked.“
‘Was he?“ Dame Frevisse demanded. ”Shorter? The man who attacked Tom Hulcote?“
‘I don’t…“ Master Christopher stopped, frowning over all their heads toward the far wall, his mouth closed down on his thoughts until, abruptly, his gaze sharpened and shifted back to Dame Frevisse. ”He might have been. The blow wasn’t level to the side of the head. It went upward from the back. But then, that could have to do with how Tom Hulcote was holding his head at the time.“
‘It knocked him down, though?“
‘I would say so, yes.“
‘And when he was stabbed, was he still on his feet or down?“
‘Down, I would say. The wounds were close together. A man stabbed would probably have moved between the first blow and the second. They would have been more apart.“
‘How many times was he stabbed? And where?“
‘Two times. In his back between his upper and middle ribs. On the left side. One of them reached his heart. If he wasn’t already dead, it killed him.“
Wishing he could keep from it, Simon asked, “How do you know it reached his heart? He had no hurt on the front. Neither stab went through him.”
‘I felt into the wounds.“
Simon ceased to regret having waited on his dinner, but Dame Frevisse said, unmoved, “You saw what was left of Matthew Woderove’s body. What could you tell from it about how he died?”
‘There was little flesh left…“
Mary made a sickened sound. Master Christopher looked at her, ready to stop, but Dame Frevisse icily prodded him on with, “Yes?”
He seemed no more eager to say it than Simon was to hear it, but he gathered himself and continued, “There was too little flesh left to tell much. Judging by the scrape marks on the rib bones, he had been stabbed at least three times. And his head had been battered in.”
‘Battered,“ Dame Frevisse repeated. ”Not merely broken by a single blow like Tom Hulcote’s?“
‘The skull was cracked at least twice in the back and once across the right side. As if he’d been hit three different times.“
‘A less ’clean‘ attack than what was made on Tom Hulcote,“ Dame Frevisse said.
‘Far less.“
‘Or less skilled,“ Dame Frevisse said. ”As if maybe from killing Matthew Woderove someone learned how to do better when it came to Tom Hulcote.“
Mary stood up with a piteous cry, turned an anguished face toward Simon, and held her hands out pleadingly.
‘Simon, please! I can’t bear this! I don’t want to hear it! Please let me go home!“
As coldly as Dame Frevisse might have, Simon said, “Sit down.” He had grown hardened to her trick of turning pitiful when she wanted to. “And be quiet.”
Mary must have read in his face how completely he meant it because abruptly her own face closed against him and, taut with anger, she snapped, all piteousness gone, “I don’t have to. I’m going home.”
‘You are not,“ Dame Frevisse snapped back, her voice as taut as Mary’s but with ice instead of anger. ”You will sit and you will listen and Master Christopher is here in the king’s name to see that you do.“
For a tight-drawn moment Mary looked near to defying her, but Dame Frevisse’s stare narrowed and harshened, and Mary, against everything likely, sat and again dropped her gaze to stare at her hands gripped together in her lap. Bert, Walter, John, and Hamon looked as startled as Simon felt, while at Dame Frevisse’s gesture, Master Christopher and Dickon sat where they had been before, and she faced the table’s length again.
In the long quiet then, as the men looked back at her, Simon heard the familiar sparrows scrabbling in the thatch outside the south window and a woman well away across the green calling laughingly to someone else, and then, careful of each word, Dame Frevisse began, “Here’s how it came about that Matthew Woderove and Tom Hulcote were murdered.”
There was an uneasy, protesting shifting among the men except for Simon who went sitting as rigidly still as Mary, but no one spoke and Dame Frevisse went on, “To begin with Matthew Woderove. As the story runs, he lost a lease to Gilbey Dunn, quarreled with his wife, stole a horse and left here. He sold the horse in Banbury and set out on foot from there, only to be murdered near Wroxton and left to rot.”
Mary shuddered. Dame Frevisse ignored her. Or seemed to, going on, “In the meantime, while her husband rotted graveless, Mary Woderove went on lusting with Tom Hulcote, probably in the comfort of her dead husband’s bed.”
This time Mary did not move at all and no one, not even Bert, looked at her while Dame Frevisse went brutally on, “Then Matthew Woderove’s body was found and Mary Woderove set to urging her lover to claim both her husband’s holding and her. When his bid for it failed, she then urged him to flee the manor, but before he could, he was murdered, leaving Mary Woderove bereft of husband, lover, and land.”
Mary looked up at that, her breast heaving, her eyes hot with tears. “Oh, aye,” she said through shut teeth. “And now I’m being tortured by a wicked nun, and my brother is letting her!”
As if Mary had said nothing, giving her not even a glance, Dame Frevisse went coldly on, “Except that what we’ve all believed isn’t the way any of it was. First, Matthew Woderove was dead before ever he left Prior By-field.”
The men stirred at that, and Bert said, “Now that’s wrong. He stole Gilbey’s horse and sold it in Banbury. He was seen there.”
‘A man that Mary Woderove said was Matthew when he was described to her sold the horse in Banbury,“ Dame Frevisse answered. ”That’s all we know. The body when it was found had only the tatters of a shirt and small clothes and hosen. Isn’t that right, Master Christopher?“ The crowner’s man nodded it was. ”No tunic,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”because that was something the man who bought the horse in Banbury could describe, so it couldn’t be left with the body. That way there would be only Mary Woderove’s word that the man who sold the horse in Banbury was her husband.“