Unlike her sister with her quivering meekness in the presence of the wine merchant? Maybe he was being unfair to Mistress Jhone. She might have deeply loved her husband and had worries enough to add lines to her face: a business to keep prosperous and a strong-willed daughter to marry off. Perhaps Mistress Drifa found more strength because she did not grieve as profoundly for her dead Wulfstan.
The widow was standing in front of him, a wooden cup filled with cool ale. Her hand trembled briefly. When he accepted the drink with courteous thanks, she abruptly turned away and went to stir the pottage.
"When you return to the priory, would you please tell Sister Beatrice that I am grateful for her kindness. She sent word that my husband may now be buried in sanctified ground and that she will pray for his soul."
"She wished to know if there was anything you might need…"
"My eldest has employment there. A cooper has taken on my next, and the lad you saw outside has his father's capable hand with the earth. As for my little girls, I may have a mother's blindness, but I think they will be pretty enough to win the hearts of worthy men." She gestured around the house. "As you see, I have sufficient land for a garden, keep chickens for eggs, and I own both a young cow and two goats for those who find their milk easier to digest. God has been merciful to me, Brother. My living children have health. My sons have wit enough to earn their own bread, and my daughters already show the cleverness needed to make excellent wives. When I am old, one of them will care for me."
"Yet the death of your husband…"
"Shall I weep until blind, Brother, or curse God because Wulfstan died, a fate that must come to us all?" She stood and faced him, hands on hips.
"Surely you grieve?"
"Aye. I shall miss his snoring at night and his grumpiness in the morning." Her lips curled into a trembling smile.
Thomas remained silent.
"Forgive me, Brother. I did not mean to speak with such discourtesy to one of your chaste vocation." Drifa tapped one breast. "Seeing these sagging paps and his headless body, you may not understand how Wulfstan and I did burn for each other in our youth. I had almost carried Sayer to term when we married, and I suffered the agonies of Mother Eve on his birth. Yet we continued to couple without moderation, until lust burned out as must any raging fire. If a couple is fortunate, the ash remains warm. If they are not, it turns bitter as well as cold. My husband had his mortal failings, as do I, but we knew comfort in each other beyond the payment of the marriage debt. He will always have the heart he won when he was a smooth-skinned, handsome lad. I miss him and am grateful that I need not marry another to feed my family."
Thomas listened to the laughter and voices of the children outside. Considering the range of their ages, he concluded that the ashes in her marriage must have remained quite warm for some time.
He looked back at the widow. Her blunt tongue was comforting. After all, his own mother had been a serving woman. When she had died, women like this had raised him. As a girl, Drifa may have longed for pretty speeches and love songs, as young women do, but there was little time for softness when babes came. Then work was hard, and earthly grief built a permanent hovel in the heart.
"As you say, death must come to us all," he said, proceeding with the same frankness she had shown, "but your husband's soul was sent to God by some mortal hand. I cannot help but wonder what man could have hated him so much…"
Her eyes narrowed. "Do not take common gossip to heart, Brother."
"I would never do so, mistress," Thomas carefully replied. "Yet might there not be some truth in the tales?"
"The ghost has been blamed." Her tone was artificially light as if she hoped he might believe this. Her look said that she herself most definitely did not.
"A ghost with a man's hand, I fear." The ghost was clearly not the gossip he was supposed to have heard. Thomas prayed he would not have to ask what the stories were, for he suspected she might not tell him if he revealed his ignorance.
Drifa's shoulders sagged. "For all their differences, Sayer would never slay his father. Nor is my son capable of beheading any man in that heinous fashion."
Thomas felt his stomach clench. He controlled his voice with care as he continued. "I did not think the rumors true, yet I could only wonder why anyone would suggest he had."
Drifa waved one hand as if swatting a fly. Color returned to her face. "You were once a lad yourself, Brother. Do not all sons fight with their fathers when they reach a certain age? Sayer is a reliable lad and a hard worker, but he has his ways and Wulfstan had some quarrel with them. They cannot see how alike they are, equally stubborn and wild in their youth. Nonetheless, both are good men in their hearts."
Thomas blinked at her poignant use of the present tense but continued. "Their differences were well-known, of course." A safe enough observation, he thought.
The widow threw her hands up in a gesture of disgust. "Both had had more drink than was right for any man, and they were fools to fight at the inn. When I heard each one pissing outside the door that night as if he had hail in his bladder, I knew Satan had had his fun with them even before they staggered inside and passed out alongside the cow." A flash of loving amusement passed over her face. "The next day, the innkeeper told me what had occurred. I was horrified and begged Sayer to make peace with his father, and a public one at that, for no son should ever threaten to kill his sire."
"Surely your son was right to be angry," he continued, hoping his voice did not betray either his ignorance of what had happened or his discomfort with what she had just told him about the argument.
Drifa offered the monk more ale. This time her hand was steady as she gave him the filled cup. "He is a boy still and unsettled in his ways. I reminded my husband that he had been engaged in enough questionable things himself as a youth, situations that put his life in danger although they brought enough coin to pay for this plot of land. Nor, I told him, had he changed until our third child was born. Only then had he seen that working on priory land was a wiser way to earn the bread we ate and a path less likely to lead him to a hanging. He must show patience with Sayer, I said, since he himself had come so late to manhood."
Thomas decided he did not want to learn what Wulfstan had done since it was obviously against the king's law. "Surely your husband must have seen that your son had done nothing that different from what he had in his own time." Perhaps this question would lead her into further explanations?
Drifa's eyes widened and she exhaled, the act evoking relief rather than resignation.
What had he said that was amiss? Silently, Thomas chastised himself. Hadn't he but rephrased her own words?
"You have the right of that," she said quickly. "My greatest grief is that Sayer and his father did not make peace before my Wulfstan died. They would have, you know, but there was not enough time for two such stiff necks to bend. Not knowing what was to come, I laughed at how alike they were in that. Now I weep, for they did most truly love each other."
From the easy manner of Drifa's last words, Thomas knew she was either lying or hiding some dark truth, but it mattered not which. The expression on the widow's face told him that he would learn nothing more no matter what or how he asked.
Chapter Nineteen