Peter, a burly-shouldered youth a little quicker in his wits than Hamon, understood. As if it were all a joke, he said, “Hoy, Sym, there’s no sport here. Let’s be off.”
Sym looked around at him, distracted. Peter swung an arm around his shoulders. “Come on, then,” he said heartily. “Let’s see what’s about at my place.” He leaned his head near to Sym’s. “There was a bit of honeycomb left the last I looked. How’s that sound? Hamon, can you lay hands on some bread?”
Hamon, not much stronger-headed than Sym, blinked and brightened. “Cor, I can that, Peter. Why didn’t you say about the honeycomb before?” He hurried off.
To Meg’s relief, Sym gave way to Peter’s friendly pulling on him. “You hurry!” he yelled after Hamon, and lurched away, leaning on Peter’s shoulder. Hewe hesitated, glancing at his mother, then trailed after them. Everyone else, now that the entertainment was fully over, began to drift away.
But Gilbey Dunn stayed a moment longer and said to Meg, low voiced, “He’s going to give you trouble, no matter what you do. Think on what I offered. You’ll be in safekeeping then, and have someone to keep an eye on him. He needs a man’s hand.”
“He doesn’t like you.”
“He’ll not be liking anyone that tries to steer him right. He’s Barnaby’s own son in making bad choices and you can see it as well as I can.”
“You shouldn’t be talking so of Barnaby, now he’s dead.”
Gilbey shrugged. “I wasn’t saying ill, only what’s true. You know it is as well as I do. You’ll never be able to manage Sym and all on your own. And you know I’ll deal fair by you. There’s none ever been able to say that I don’t deal fair.”
But Sym had just been saying exactly that; and Barnaby had said it often enough these past months while fighting to hold his own against Gilbey’s efforts to have Barnaby’s share of field strips and manor rights for himself. But Sym had been talking out of too much ale, and Barnaby out of the ills he had mostly brought on himself. Meg did not know where the truth lay so she kept quiet, looking at the ground between them until Gilbey said with a shrug, “You think on it, Meg,” and went away.
Meg stayed, looking at the dead, stiff grass in front of her feet and trying to think. Gilbey might be right about her marrying him. It would surely make things easier. And it did not much matter that she did not like him. But Sym would hate it. No matter how it might work out for the best, he would never make peace with it. Meg was sure of that, and sure that Gilbey knew it, too. But maybe it did not matter to him. Not the way it had to matter to her.
She was abruptly aware that she was cold and that the little she had had to eat was gone and she was hungry again and she had to go to work or there would be no money today. It would have been good to sit down by someone’s hearth and talk. But she had somewhere along her way lost the women who had been her friends. The other village women seemed to resent her trying so hard to make things better. They nodded and spoke when she met them, but there was none of them she talked to, and none who came to talk to her.
Her way had taken her without thinking back past the church, across the graveyard toward the field path that ran behind the hedges to St. Frideswide’s. She paused at Barnaby’s grave. Its dark earth was heaped in clods frozen too solid for the shovels’ breaking. Come spring and the rains, they would soften and slump down into a proper mound, and grow grass, and next year a hollow would mark the place instead of raw, broken earth. Meg tried to think of a prayer but nothing came. Barnaby had made confession and been shriven and given last rites. Then he had slept, and died, and no man’s soul could have gone to Abraham’s bosom more pure and cleansed than that. He was surely there now, in brightness and warmth, with angel choruses singing and the sight of the wicked tormented in Hell far below to entertain him. And someday, with God’s help, she and her boys would join him there, as pure and cleansed of sin as he had been.
Meg sank into that thought of being always warm and never hungry in place of her cold and hunger here and now; then started as she realized she was wasting time, and hurried on toward the priory.
Frevisse had come to see how matters went in the guesthall. With so few guests, and only the older hall occupied these holy days, her duties were few and easily done. She first made sure the servants were not slacking their few duties and then went to see how Piers did, left to himself while the rest of the players were at the village.
He was curled in a nest of blankets, obediently staying down, watching the small fire dance in the hearth. Hearing her coming, he twisted around to see, and showed his disappointment that it was not his mother or the others coming. Frevisse smiled at him and bent down to feel his forehead. It was only slightly warmer than it should have been and the fever brightness was out of his eyes.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Hungry, my lady,” he said, croaking only a little. He looked at her expectantly, as if she might have something edible up her sleeve or in a pocket.
Frevisse regretted she did not, but only said, “That’s a good sign. Would you like a drink?”
“Milk?” Piers asked hopefully.
Frevisse shook her head. “Water.”
Piers sighed and nodded. Frevisse fetched the cup from the bucket for him. While he drank, she asked, “Shouldn’t you be trying to sham illness a while longer, so you can all go on staying here?”
Piers looked at her scornfully as he handed the cup back. “What’s the use of that?” he asked. “There’s money to be had in Oxford, and good times at the Rose and Crown, and not much of either here. There’s better places than here to be, and not much use in staying in one place for very long.”
What Frevisse could have answered to that was forestalled by the players’ noisy return from the village. Their loud voices dropped as they crossed the threshold but their arguing went on, intense and maybe not completely cheerful, with Bassett saying, “So couldn’t you have found someone else to flirt with that didn’t have her sweetheart lowering over her shoulder, and him already angry with us?”
“Am I supposed to care about that clod-witted lout?” Ellis asked. “She was the best of the lot, as pretty a thing as I’ve seen since Michaelmas.”
“And willing as well as lovely,” Joliffe added.
Ellis grinned. “Yea, you were quick to notice that, I noticed. And left me to handle her angry clod while you looked for a chance to handle her.”
“Well, it didn’t come to handling for either of us, did it? So there’s an end of it.”
“That’s enough,” said Rose. “Here’s Dame Frevisse, who doesn’t need to hear your nonsense.”
Piers lifted his head out of his nest again and asked, “Was Ellis in a fight again?”
“Hush, pigsney,” said Rose, stooping to lift the blond thatch from his face and feel his forehead.
“I’m almost better,” Piers said, ducking from her hand. “Dame Frevisse says so. Ellis, did-”
“Look here, Piers,” Bassett interrupted deftly, holding out the half loaf of bread and end of bacon.
“Ah!” Piers’s enthusiasm quickly changed direction. “Is that for eating now?”
“No better time,” Bassett said, and broke a generous chunk from the loaf to stuff into the boy’s mouth. Then he held out a cap and jingled it under Piers’s nose. “We’re set for our journey to Oxford, too. We can have Tisbe shod.”
Piers removed the bread wad from his mouth. “Then can we leave now? I’m nearly well. Well enough. I could have gone with you to see Ellis start that fight in the village.”
“I never start fights,” Ellis said. He sat down on his heels beside the boy and pushed the hair back off his forehead, making a playful gesture of feeling for a fever.
Piers, clearly bored with being sick, pushed his hand away. Sucking on the chunk of bread, he said, “I’m thirsty.” He thrashed at his blankets, making a tangle of them. “Was it a good fight? Who did you fight?”