The Clerk’s Tale (32 page)

‘Then you are thanked for your service and dismissed,“ Christopher said.

And there was an end to it. Nichola could now be buried and the bereaved left to somehow pick up their lives and go on.

Lady Agnes made to rise then and did not object when Domina Elisabeth on one side and Letice on her other helped her. Once on her feet, she ordered Letice, “Tell anyone who wants to come up that I’m seeing no one today. Only Stephen. And Philip if he’s minded to come. None else. You mind that. None else.”

She leaned all her weight to Domina Elisabeth’s arm, gestured Letice away toward the stairs, and turned toward her solar. Frevisse went to open the solar’s door ahead of them, then stood aside, letting them enter first.

Emme was waiting, with the fire built high and the b«d turned down, and she hurried to take Lady Agnes’s other arm, but Lady Agnes balked at sight of the bed.

‘I’m not sick,“ she snapped. ”When I’m dead or dying, you’ll find me in bed in daytime and not before. When I’m dead…“ She started to cry again and Emme with her.

Leaving them to it, Frevisse silently shut the door and returned along the gallery to the head of the stairs. Letice was on guard below, deep in talk and unhappy exclaims with three townswomen. Around the hall other low-voiced people were likewise still in talk, Master Haselden among them, bracketed in talk with four men; while others were drifting toward the outer door, including Juliana and Rowland, heads-together with the other woman from the hunt. Frevisse’s swift look did not find Stephen anywhere but, more to her present purpose, she saw Christopher just leaving, followed by his young clerk and Master Gruesby, and she gathered her skirts aside from her feet and went down the stairs far more quickly than was safe, passed Letice and the women with her with lowered eyes to avoid being caught into talk with them, and keeping wide of Juliana, made her way the hall’s length as swiftly as she could without openly running. If she had to follow Christopher back to the nunnery, she would but would rather overtake him here.

Her haste served her well. She came out of the hall and into the yard in time to see him going not toward the street but through the gateway into Lady Agnes’s garden, Master Gruesby and Stephen with him. The young clerk was left behind at the gate and he stepped into her way as she approached, to stop her going in, but she called past him to Christopher, “Master… Montfort,” sticking only a little over the name.

Already well away along the path, Christopher turned and, seeing her, raised a hand to tell his clerk to let her pass and she joined the three of them as Christopher was saying to Stephen in apparent answer to a question or protest, “Anything you would say to me you can say with her here to hear it.”

Stephen cast her a look, openly uncertain what to make of that, but driven by something else too twisted tight inside him to be held back, he let it go and demanded at Christopher, “At the inquest, you ruled on how Nichola died but didn’t rule her death was accidental. Why not?”

That was the question that had brought Frevisse after Christopher and she nodded agreement with it. Christopher gave a slight sideways look toward her but asked at Stephen, sharp with demand of his own, “How did your wife’s gloves come to be on the floor of her father’s hall?”

‘Her gloves?“ Stephen asked back, blankly.

‘Your wife’s riding gloves. When her body was lying in her father’s great hall, the gloves were on the floor beside her. At least they were a woman’s riding gloves. Of fine doeskin. Patterned blue and green. But your wife was still wrapped in her cloak. How did her gloves come to be on the floor?“

‘Her gloves,“ Stephen repeated, groping backward in his memory. ”Her gloves.“ He struggled and finally said, ”Yes. Her father took them off her when we first found her. I was… I was holding her and he was calling to her and pulled her gloves off to rub her hands. He was trying…“ Stephen stopped, his head twisted aside and eyes tightly shut, struggling again before he was able to say with strangled control, ”He was trying to wake her. When finally the others… took her away from us, while they were wrapping her in her cloak, the gloves were lying there and I picked them up and tucked them through my belt. They’d been her New Year’s present. She… took great care of them. I couldn’t leave them. But when we were home again, there in the hall, it suddenly was stupid to have them when she was…“ He shook his head, as if to escape the tears rising in his eyes. ”I pulled them out of my belt and threw them down and kicked them aside.’

He went abruptly angry. “She shouldn’t have been on the hunt at all! She only went because we didn’t want to anger her father. I should have… angered him and be damned. But I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t.”

That was something with which both Master Haselden and Stephen were going to have to live ever after. Just as Nichola was going to be ever after dead because of it.

But Christopher said, “Everyone says she hated riding. That she was afraid of it. What does that mean?”

‘Mean?“

‘Was she a poor rider?“

‘No. No, she rode well enough. She just didn’t… didn’t like it. She was always afraid… something would happen.“

‘She kept well behind the other riders the whole hunt. That’s what everyone is agreed on. Was that always her way?“

‘Always. Sometimes I tried to stay back with her but in a hunt you don’t… you don’t hang back. You ride as hell after the hounds as you can.“

‘But Nichola didn’t. She always kept well away from other riders.“

‘Yes,“ Stephen answered, his gaze fixed on Christopher’s face as he tried to follow where the other man was going.

‘Always?“ Christopher insisted.

‘Always.“

‘And carefully? Never ’hell after the hounds‘?“

‘Never.“ Even the thought of it made bitter laughter rise in Stephen.

‘Then how did she come by that cut across her face?“

The laughter died out of Stephen, leaving only a bitterness that was mostly pain. “A branch,” he said flatly. “A branch caught her across the face.”

Master Gruesby cleared his throat, startling at least Frevisse, who had yet again forgotten him standing aside and silent, until he said now toward his feet, “It was a very precise branch. If branch it was.”

‘What?“ Stephen said at him.

Master Gruesby huddled his shoulders a little higher as if asking pardon for having spoken, leaving it to Christopher to answer, “It was something Master Gruesby pointed out. The cut was laid straight across her brow. Straight and even. A branch might have done it. Equally, a branch might well have not. If, as you and everyone says, she didn’t ride fast or ever close to other riders, how did it happen a branch came whipping back into her face that sharply? It didn’t happen in her fall.”

‘No,“ Stephen agreed. ”No. Where she fell it was open. There was nothing there that could have done it.“

But something had.

Very quietly Frevisse asked Christopher, “Why did you want to know about her gloves?”

Christopher turned to Master Gruesby, “You saw it. You showed it to me. Tell them.”

Frevisse thought Master Gruesby would rather have walked on hot coals—if he could have done it unnoticed—than obey that. As it was, he answered without raising his head, firmly toward the ground, “There were the long hairs of a horse’s mane or tail caught in the bead-work of her left glove. Her horse was a bay. With a black mane and tail. The hairs caught on her glove were chestnut. A bright chestnut.”

Stephen was no fool. He saw as quickly as Frevisse what that could mean and color rose in his face as he said at Christopher, “You mean you think her fall wasn’t an accident.”

‘I have to have a doubt.“

‘You think someone crowded her there on the stream bank and she went over the edge because of it,“ Stephen pressed.

‘There’s nothing to say she couldn’t have brushed against someone else’s horse at any time during the hunt,“ Christopher answered.

‘Except she wouldn’t have. She
always
kept clear of other riders. Even me.“

‘This time she might not have.“

‘She would have. It’s someone else who didn’t keep clear. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? That maybe it was because of someone else her horse went down that bank and they’re keeping quiet about it.“

‘That’s more than can be safely said.“ Christopher refused to shift from caution. ”It’s something that has to be thought on, but it’s nothing more than that. As yet.“

Stephen began to be angry. “Why didn’t you say anything about it at the inquest?”

Without anger Christopher said back at him, “Because there’s nothing can be proved from those horsehairs. There are only four of them. How many chestnut horses were on the hunt?”

‘I don’t know. Four. Maybe five.“ Stephen abruptly stopped, as if he saw the difficulty.

‘With not much difference between one chestnut and another,“ Frevisse said. ”Unless you’re looking for a difference. You
are
looking for that difference, aren’t you, Master Montfort?“

‘Master Gruesby has been, yes,“ Christopher said. ”That’s one reason I held the inquest so quickly. To keep everyone’s horses here and give him chance to see them all on the quiet. Since some of the people on the hunt are not of Goring and could leave.“

‘Why bother looking if nothing can be proved from what you have?“ Stephen demanded, vehement with frustration and anger together.

Both Christopher’s voice and look at Stephen were level. “Because I want to know.”

‘Why tell me about it if nothing can be done!“

‘Because you asked.“

Stephen stared at him, tried to say something and failed, then made a sudden flinging movement of his hands and spun around and walked away.

Frevisse, Christopher, and Master Gruesby watched him go in silence, back toward the house, letting him leave the garden before Christopher said, “Master Gruesby.”

Without needing more, Master Gruesby gave a quick bob of his head and left them, too.

‘To do what?“ Frevisse asked of Christopher.

‘To see where Master Lengley goes.“

Trying to keep buried the sick feeling that went with the thought that Stephen could have had part in Nichola’s death, she asked, “Does he have a chestnut horse?”

‘No. His father-in-law does but it wasn’t ridden yesterday.“

‘You really think Nichola didn’t die by accident?“

‘I think I’d like to know more certainly than I do that she did die by accident.“

‘Someone could have crowded her accidentally and not want to admit it.“

But Christopher answered that with the objection already in her own mind. “How could someone accidentally crowd a rider who always rode behind the hunt?”

‘And by having Stephen followed?“ she asked.

‘He has to know better than I do who might want his wife dead,“ Christopher said grimly. ”If he had no part in it, I hope at least to find out whom he might suspect.“

‘Who on the hunt had chestnut horses?“

Christopher named three men whose names meant nothing to her, then, “Rowland Englefield and his sister.”

Cold down her spine, Frevisse said, “Both of them?”

‘An almost matched pair, I understand.“

‘And Master Gruesby has seen them?“

‘Today, he intends.“

‘You know there’s more than friendship between Stephen and Lady Juliana?“

Christopher’s eyes narrowed. “No. I don’t know that.”

Keeping her own feelings to herself as much as might be, Frevisse told him what she had seen and heard said, both between them and about them. Christopher listened without comment and when she had finished said, “I’ll make sure Master Gruesby looks especially close at her horse. And her brother’s. For all the good it will do. Four horsehairs aren’t enough to prove anything.”

‘If naught else, at least the suspicion will go with Juliana hereafter.“

‘You think she’s more likely than her brother to have done it?“

‘Would you kill a girl to help your sister more easily satisfy her lust?“ But there could be more than lust to it now, she realized.

With Nichola dead, Stephen was free to marry again.

But if Juliana married him, her interests would then be completely opposite to her mother’s hopes of proving him baseborn.