‘She says she’s willing.“
‘But you’re not.“
Perryn frowned at his feet, thinking before he said slowly, “The thing is, Hulcote is the priory’s villein, so it’s not my choice only. I’d hoped to speak with Master Naylor on it, but they’re not letting anyone near him, seems.”
‘That will be Master Spencer’s doing.“ In return for leaving Master Naylor at the priory, Lord Lovell’s steward had left orders with his guards to keep him strictly confined and let nearly no one in to see him. ”I meant to go to him today,“ Frevisse said. ”I’ll go now.“
‘There’s one thing more,“ Perryn said. ”It’s in manor court the final word on this will have to be and there’s not one due until Michaelmas, but if we’re agreed, we can call it sooner and it’d likely be best to have this settled soon, what with harvest so near to hand and all. Ask Master Naylor what he says to that, too, would you?“
‘Assuredly. How soon would it suit you to have answer?“
They were going toward the gateway to the outer yard now, Perryn walking respectfully well aside but not behind her as if he were a servant, while he consideringly answered, “Notice has to be given and all, so not sooner than two days but as little longer than that as may be. Mary is going on…” He broke off, probably because it was a family thing, with no need Frevisse know of it; said instead, “Is there any new word about Master Naylor, one way or other?”
‘Nothing yet. We hope to have some word from Abbot Gilberd no later than tomorrow of what he’ll do to help. Has Master Naylor ever said anything to you about where he’s from, his family?“ There had been a nephew at the priory for a while, a few years back, but he was gone, and Lord Lovell could claim family testimony to Master Naylor’s birth was useless anyway because their own free birth might be called into question if his was proved false.
‘He’s never talked much about himself,“ Perryn said, ”and never about where he came from to me.“
They were nearing the outer gateway where their ways would part. With what she trusted was reasonably good hope, Frevisse said, “Abbot Gilberd will find those enough who can swear Master Naylor is freeborn.”
‘And before too long,“ Perryn said, matching her hope.
They made their farewells and he went his way, out the gateway to the road, while she turned aside. There were three houses built side to each here, close inside the priory’s main gateway, their front doors opening directly into the priory’s outer yard, their backs to the inside of the priory wall but set forward from it with space enough for gardens at their rear. The porter, with keeping of the gateway, lived in the one nearest the gate. Beside his was Master Naylor’s while he was steward of St. Frideswide’s, and the third would have been for the priory’s bailiff if ever St. Frideswide’s had grown enough to need another man to oversee its properties and lands, but the widow who had founded it near to a hundred years ago had died before endowing it as fully as she had meant to, and there had never been a flourish of prosperity afterwards to bring it much more than she had left it, so the third house served for keeping such of the priory’s records as did not need to be directly in Domina Elisabeth’s hands or in Frevisse’s as cellarer.
The two guards presently on duty at Master Naylor’s door stood up from their bench when she came their way. She spoke to the priory man, nodded with distant politeness at Lord Lovell’s, and said to him mildly, “It would make matters easier if the reeve were allowed to talk with Master Naylor directly.”
‘It would, wouldn’t it, my lady?“ the priory man said, his glance at the man beside him thick with disgust.
The other man came not quite to shuffling with unease as he said more to the dusty ground than Frevisse, “It’s orders, my lady.”
She knew the orders Master Spencer had left: she could see Master Naylor and talk with him as much as she wanted; anyone else, in need of his immediate answer about some minor thing here inside the priory, could pass in a question by way of the priory guard and have the answer back the same way but never talk to him directly. It was cumbersome and annoying, and she hoped whoever Abbot Gilberd sent would have authority to do something about it, but she could not and settled now for knocking at the house door standing open in the day’s warmth.
Mistress Naylor came shortly from somewhere inside with floured hands and apron, unwimpled because of the heat, only a veil pinned over her dark hair. She was a small-boned woman from whom Frevisse had never had more than ten words together, with “my lady” invariably two of them. Now, to Frevisse’s greeting and request to see Master Naylor, she made a low curtsy and said, “Through here, my lady, if you please,” and led back the way she had come.
The house was much as Frevisse supposed its two neighbors must be, with two narrow ground-story rooms, the front one facing the yard, the other opening into the garden at the back, with between them a staircase hardly wider than a man’s shoulders going steeply up to whatever narrow rooms there were above. The front room served for general living, the back one as the kitchen, with today as small a fire as possible burning on the hearth under a trivet-set pot, with a griddle heating beside it for whatever Mistress Naylor was making toward dinner. Even so small a fire made the room too hot and Frevisse was glad go on, out the rear door into the garden where Master Naylor was sitting with his children in the shade of a young peach tree. The girls had been sewing what looked might be a red dress when they were done but rose to their feet as their mother and Frevisse came into the garden. They were younger than their brother Dickon and small-boned like their mother, but the boy standing beside their father was younger still, past toddling stage but not by much, and when Master Naylor stood up to bow to Frevisse, he wrapped both arms around his father’s leg and slid around behind him, to peek at Frevisse from that sure safety as Master Naylor said, “My lady,” and the girls curtsyed.
‘Master Naylor,“ Frevisse returned, bending her head to him and them in return. ”Are you free to talk?“
‘As you will, my lady,“ he answered. He was never a man much given to words or any outward warmth that Frevisse had ever seen, but when he stooped to draw his son around to in front of him and pry him loose from his leg, he did it gently enough and lifted him up to tell him, ”You go to your mother for a time.“
‘No,“ the child said positively.
‘If you stay out here,“ Master Naylor said seriously, ”you’ll try to help your sisters with their sewing. Then they’ll end up sticking needles into you. I don’t want all that yelling, so you have to go with your mother.“
‘We’ll make patty-cakes,“ Mistress Naylor promised, sufficient compensation, it seemed, because when Master Naylor handed him away, he wrapped his arms around her neck in place of his father’s leg and let himself be carried off without complaint.
The girls were beginning to gather their sewing to go, too, but Master Naylor said, “Stay. No need,” took up the joint stool where he had been sitting and with, “By your leave, my lady,” led Frevisse away to the garden’s far end.
It was a larger garden than it might have been. A high wicker fence stood between it and the porter’s yard, but because the third house was unused, the fence there had been taken down and its garden added to the steward’s; and while the beds along the narrow paths near to his rear door were filled with herbs and some flowers, the rest was table vegetables much like at the Perryns‘, with the addition of a well-strawed strawberry bed and, at the far end, green beans trellised up and over a rough-built arbor to make a shaded place to sit. That was where Master Naylor led her, setting down the joint stool and waiting until she was seated and had nodded her permission to him before he sat on the one already there.