The priory’s sacrist had been slowly declining for some months. Now she had caught a cold like everyone else, and though she kept to her feet, she could not perform all her duties. This afternoon she sat on a stool at the foot of the altar and pointed to what needed doing. Frevisse found the dagger’s keen edge very handy for cleaning melted wax off the altar’s two brass candlesticks, a task she performed with grim thoroughness.
When it was all done to Sister Fiacre’s satisfaction, they were dismissed. Frevisse went out to discover that Father Henry had returned from the village.
She went to find him in his little house eating a late dinner. She sat down at his table and said without preamble, “What did you learn?”
“Sym wasn’t much liked. He was given to quarreling. Little quarrels all the time, one after the other, for no real reason mostly.”
“Any great quarrels? Or new quarrels just around now?”
“There’s a girl, Tibby, whose folk weren’t happy he was showing her attentions. Nor did she care for him much either, it seems, but that wasn’t stopping him. There’d been pushing between her brother and him, and a few words, but nothing more.”
“No daggers drawn?”
“No. He was not known for daggering. All words and fists, was Sym, from what I’ve seen-from what they say.”
“But he drew on Joliffe last night.”
“Joliffe? You mean the player, in the alehouse? Yes, he did. But he was being goaded some, I guess. Too many words and the way the player was saying them and that the girl wasn’t minding. It went past what Sym would take.”
Frevisse could see Joliffe deliberately outwording him, with a mocking smile and goading tone, until Sym was past wanting anything except to silence him. “But no great particular quarrel with anyone else?” she asked.
“The talk is that there looked to be one shaping up with Gilbey Dunn. He holds the croft by theirs and has been wanting to take claim to their field strips. Talk is, Lord Lovel’s steward has been thinking maybe of letting him.”
“Could he?” To give one villein’s share of the fields to another was no little thing and not easily done.
“Oh, maybe yes, since Barnaby was going these past years the short way along to ruining them and Lord Lovel’s steward was none too happy with him for it. Yes, there was a chance.”
“But now with Barnaby dead, Sym would have been given his chance to prove himself before anything was done about taking the land away.”
Father Henry shook his head heavily. “Maybe not. Sym has been looking to go much the way of his father already and patience was pretty well out with him. But that wasn’t the whole of it. Seems Gilbey Dunn has been at Barnaby’s widow, wanting to marry her, and the general thought is that she will since she’s a poorly little thing who’ll be needing someone to see to her and her matters. He might not have been able to talk her around with Sym in a rage about it, but now with Sym dead, he’ll have no trouble with her. That’s what they’re saying. They quarreled badly yesterday, Sym and Gilbey Dunn, in front of the whole village.”
“About the marrying?”
“Yes.”
“What did Gilbey Dunn do?”
“Nothing much.” He shrugged.
“What about the girl? I’ve heard she went off with the player after the fight with Sym.”
“And her folk are none so pleased with her about it,” Father Henry said. “She’s shut up in the house for so long as the players are here and apparently had best be thankful her father only gave her a small beating when she came home last night.”
“Can you talk with her tomorrow?” she asked.
Father Henry looked surprised and then nodded. “I should tell her to be a more dutiful daughter?” he suggested.
“Surely. And ask her if she has any way of judging how long she was with Joliffe, and where they were, and-but not until you have the other answers from her-if he ever asked her where Sym lived.”
Father Henry’s mind moved at its own steady pace but had the grace of holding on to what it was given. He thought for a moment, nodded again, and repeated, “Ask her how long she was with Joliffe, where they were, and then if he asked her where Sym lived.”
“Yes. Exactly so.”
“You think he did it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She was certain he had not, but it seemed better not to say so. “But if I can show he couldn’t have done it, then I can look elsewhere, do you see?”
16
SORE-NECKED AND ACHING, Meg raised her head from the table. Dimly, as her mind stirred back to awareness, she realized she had been sleeping. By the faint gray web of lesser darkness at the guesthall’s windows she guessed that dawn was nearing; and then she remembered where she was. And why.
Slow with stiffness, she straightened on the backless bench, forcing herself to move. She reached out her hand to Sym’s wrapped body in front of her and stroked where she knew his arm to be. Father Henry had been with her a while last night; he too had promised her that Sym’s soul was safe, so surely it did not matter that she had fallen asleep at her praying. She had not meant to, had not known she was so tired, or she would not have told Father Henry that he did not need to stay, that she and Hewe would keep the watch. She had even said that maybe someone would be coming from the village, though she had half known that was not true. Some might have come if Sym were laid out at home, but the priory was not a village place and no one was friendly enough with her or Sym anymore to come there, where he had to stay until the crowner came.
So Sym’s watching belonged to her and Hewe, and they had both slept.
Meg smiled down at the curled dark shape in the rushes by the bench that was Hewe asleep. She had not expected him to stay awake with her. He had been a good boy yesterday, going to the village and back again twice over, seeing to things there so she could stay here. And he would do it again today, so she could go back to working for Dame Alys for her halfpence. They couldn’t afford to lose any more of those, or let Dame Alys think Meg was not needed here.
Under the rough skin of her fingers the cerecloth was smooth and cool. Meg had never owned so large a piece of cloth in her life. And would never have given it away if she had, the way the nuns had simply given this one for Sym. That was a blessing, at least, because the only spare blanket had gone to wrap Barnaby for his grave. The nuns’ pity was a blessed thing.
But then, they had more cloth where this had come from. More of everything. Meg had seen what they had folded and stacked away in chests in one of their storerooms. And that had been just one storeroom. They had others. What was it like to have so much?
In her mind she heard the nuns begin their singing in the church. She had heard them singing, when working in the cloister, and the unworldly beauty of their voices had stirred her mind. Singing and praying seven times a day, even in the middle of the night, every day, all the year round, was to her mind what the angels did in Heaven, too. How wonderful to be so close to Heaven here on earth! She rubbed at her tired eyes. Sometimes the beauty of the life they led tempted her into the sin of envy.
The dim light was growing. She turned a corner of the shroud away from Sym’s face. She could not see his features yet, but remembered how they had been in the lamplight last night. A young face. Younger than he had looked for the last few years as his sullenness and temper had grown. Not a man’s face taut with tempers and desires and needs, but her sweet son’s face, all quiet and at peace.
She stroked a finger along his cheek. The stubble of his beard pricked at her flesh, but his own flesh under it was cold and strange, not Sym at all. Meg took her hand away. She did not want to touch him anymore, just look at him while the day grew slowly into light in the hall, and think of what might have been if things had been some other way.