She only knew that she was crying when a tear left a warm trail down her chill cheek.
Hewe stirred to wakefulness a while after that. He huddled against her for a while, like a little boy again, until he was awake enough for Meg to tell him to stir up the fire. One of the servants had built it for them against the long night’s cold. It had burned down to a few coals while they slept, but enough was left that Hewe shortly had it roused. He crouched beside it, hands out to its heat, and said, “I’m hungry, Mam. Isn’t there food?”
“We’re not guests here,” Meg said wearily. “Just bidersby. There’ll be something you can eat at home when you go there.”
Hewe looked at her guiltily.
“Did you eat what was left from the funeral foods?” Meg asked.
Hewe nodded. “Yesterday. I was hungry.”
Meg sighed. “I’ll find something in the kitchen here today for you.”
“And come home soon?” Hewe asked hopefully.
“Tonight,” Meg said. “I’ll do my day’s work and come tonight and bake. If I can find someone to watch by Sym.”
“Father Henry will, if you ask. Or he’ll find someone. Then you can come.”
“Then I can come,” Meg agreed, and added, “He’s a good man. A holy man.”
Hewe faced the fire again with a calculatedly indifferent shrug. Meg patted absentmindedly at Sym’s shrouded arm, wondering why Hewe would not see what she saw in his becoming a priest, why he did not understand how right it would make everything.
Dame Frevisse came a little while after that. Meg and Hewe both rose to their feet and Meg curtsied, saying, “My lady.”
“Good morrow, Meg.” Dame Frevisse swept a sharp look around the hall. “You have wood enough. Has anyone brought you food?”
Meg was surprised. “No, my lady.”
Hewe made an eager movement and Dame Frevisse turned a smile toward him. “I’ll see that someone does,” she said.
“Thank you, my lady,” Hewe said with undisguised grateful eagerness. Emboldened, he moved a little toward her and asked, “The players, my lady. Are they leaving today?”
“Not today. They’re to do a play for us tonight. Nor I don’t think they can go until the crowner has come and talked with them.”
Meg wondered at Hewe being so plainly pleased with that, but was distracted by someone else entering the hall; and more distracted to see it was Gilbey Dunn, with Peter and Hamon at his back.
So far as she knew, Gilbey had never been so far into the priory before. Certainly Peter and Hamon had not; they were gawking to one side and another and up at the wide-beamed roof and at the glassed windows; and when they realized Dame Frevisse was there, they dragged off their hoods with clumsy haste and bowed at her nervously.
Gilbey on the other hand, drew off his own hood smoothly and bowed as if well sure of himself, first to Dame Frevisse and then to Meg. Nor did he gawk; his look around the hall was quick and assessing, and when he spoke to Dame Frevisse his tone was confident behind its respect. “Asking your ladyship’s pardon, is it allowed I speak with Mistress Meg here, by your leave?”
“Assuredly,” Dame Frevisse said. “She’s welcome to speak to whom she will. And I’m just leaving, so you may speak freely.”
“And I’ve brought two friends of Sym to watch by him so young Hewe needn’t stay,” Gilbey added. “And you can step aside, Meg, so we can talk more private.”
Meg wanted to deny him, to tell Hewe to stay and Dame Frevisse to make Gilbey go. But she lacked the nerve to be so bold and only watched helplessly as Dame Frevisse said, “That’s kindly done. Come, Hewe. I’ll see to your being fed. Meg, if you need aught, have one of the servants tell me.”
“Thank you, my lady. And Hewe-” She caught at his attention as he went willingly away. “Don’t be biding here. You go on home and see to things.”
He jerked his head in a grudging nod and left behind Dame Frevisse.
Outside, at the head of the stairs leading down to the yard, Frevisse stopped and turned to Hewe. “That man. Who is he?”
“Gilbey Dunn. He’s our neighbor and he’s been making trouble, and now I think he wants to marry Mam.”
He said it so readily, with no particular caring one way or the other, that Frevisse was taken a little off stride. “Indeed,” she said. “And what do you think of that?”
Hewe shrugged as if it did not matter much. “He’d treat her better than Da did, and so long as I stayed out of his way he’d not bother me.”
“Your mother wants you to be a priest.”
Hewe made a face like sipping vinegar. “And that I won’t be doing. But she won’t listen to me.” He brightened and pressed a hand over his belly. “Do you think I could eat with the players and save you the trouble of getting me something? I’m fair growled with hunger and it’s a long walk home.”
Frevisse repressed a smile. “Yes. I’d think that would be all right.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
He remembered to bow and then was gone, leaping down the stairs and running across the yard to the other guesthall with far more eagerness than he had shown at any word from his mother.
Frevisse watched him go and then the yard was empty. No one was out in the cold and deliberately she stepped backward, nearer to the closed door behind her. Its thickness muffled what was being said but close to it inside-well away from Peter and Hamon, she suspected-Gilbey Dunn was in earnest talk with Meg. At least she assumed it was Meg. She could only be certain of Gilbey’s voice, going on at length and strongly. If Meg was answering him in the occasional pauses, her voice was too low to be heard at all.
Because she was not learning anything beyond the fact that Gilbey Dunn was come well out of his way to talk to Meg, and because she did not want to be caught eavesdropping, Frevisse left, not hurrying, but descending the stairs and crossing the yard with the outward purpose of seeing how matters were in the old guesthall but going as slowly as she might without actually stopping. She had finally stopped near the door of the old guesthall and was, in desperation, bending to check her shoe strap when Gilbey came out at last.
To her surprise he did not go to the gate but across the yard diagonally, to the small wicket gate into the walled way that hid the storage and work sheds built along the inside of the priory’s wall between the guesthalls and the priory’s kitchen and back gate. Hidden from the courtyard but handy to the main life of the nunnery, it was usually busy with servants, but these were the Christmas holidays and not much in the way of usual work was being done. Frevisse, following Gilbey through the gateway at what she meant to be a discreet distance, found the area deserted. She paused. Gilbey was out of sight and there was no one to ask which way he had gone. The only movement was a white drift of smoke from the laundry’s roof hole, showing that someone was there at least, and that cleanliness-like prayers-went on no matter what.
So, too, did human anger, to judge by the roused voices Frevisse heard as she approached the laundry door. And one of the voices was Gilbey Dunn’s.
The other’s, unsurprisingly, was Annie Lauder’s.
Frevisse smiled narrowly. Gilbey was a bold man if he chose to quarrel with the priory’s laundress. Her will was as strong as her arms and she brooked no interference in her work or her life from anyone.
Not needing to go too near the door to hear them, Frevisse stopped at the corner of the building. It helped that the door stood partly open, the laundry’s escaping hot, damp air roiling into a cloud as it met the outside’s chill.
Annie was saying loudly, “Don’t go honeying to me, Gilbey Dunn! All the village knows you’ve asked her to marry you. You’re as great a fool as that son of hers was, God keep him, if you think I want to hear you wooing me again.”
“What’s marriage got to do with us, girl? You know as well as I do that I’m not asking her for love. There’s sense to our marrying and that’s all there is to it.”