Four ambitious people, Frevisse thought. All with hope for gain because of Matthew Woderove’s death.
And there was Matthew Woderove, dead.
She pushed the thought away. It was prayers for the man’s soul that were needed-Delicta juventutis meae et ignorantias meas ne memineris, Domine. The offenses of my youth and my weaknesses do not think on, Lord…
Still on Old Bet and looking faintly embarrassed by all he had unleashed, Otes said pleadingly to Father Edmund, “What should I be doing with him, eh?”
The priest ended a prayer and crossed himself, the gesture echoed by everyone, even the children, before he said, “Take him to his house, I suppose. That’s where the wake…”
Mary cried out and jerked back from Anne. “No!” She flailed a hand toward the box. “No! I won’t have it in my house! It can stay in the church! I don’t want it near me! Leave it here.”
‘Mary, dear,“ Anne protested, trying to cover scandal with pity. ”It’s Matthew. You have to…“
‘It isn’t Matthew!“ Mary cried at her, shoving Anne and another woman’s hands away from her. ”Whatever is in there, it isn’t Matthew and I don’t want it in my house!“
‘Mary,“ Perryn said with plain disgust and no pity at all. ”Don’t be more of a fool than you are. It’s in his own house Matthew should be tonight.“
‘Matthew is dead, and it’s my house until you throw me out of it and I don’t want that… that…“ Driven past words with passion, Mary gestured again at the box.
Her brother began again, “Mary,” but she cried out at him, flung away from Anne and the other women and everyone else into Tom Hulcote’s arms, sobbing shrilly through wild tears, “Don’t let him make me, Tom! Don’t let him make me!”
Tom caught her, held her, his arms as tightly around her, saying down to the top of her head, “No, sweeting, no. I won’t let him, no.” Kissing the top of her head, then glaring over her at Perryn, all his anger came back, the more fierce for being for Mary’s sake instead of his own. “You let her be, Simon Perryn. You’ve done enough to break her heart. You let her be with this.”
Equally angry, Perryn returned, “Look you here, Tom Hulcote, it’s Matthew whose heart was broken and by her, and he went off to his death because of it. Now he’ll have his last right, to lie in his own house the last night his body is on earth instead of under it, and she’s going to have to live with that.”
‘I’ll not!“ Mary wrenched around in Tom’s arms to face her brother, her rage equal to either man’s. ”He cheated me every way while he was alive. He’s not going to cheat me out of a little peace now he’s dead! That box isn’t coming into my house except over my own dead bones!“
‘It’s not your house, Mary Woderove!“ Perryn returned. ”It’s forfeit to the lord and you’re there on sufferance and my sufferance has near to worn out. If Matthew doesn’t lie there tonight, neither will you, ever again!“
He meant it, and as reeve, he could make it happen. Even Mary in her extremity of anger saw he would if she pushed him farther and froze halfway to another shout at him, her angry blood draining out of her face to leave her pale. Her breast heaved twice with great breaths as she struggled to hold herself back. Then she turned in the circle of Tom’s arms, pulled back against his hold for room enough between them to grab his tunic’s front, and cried up at him, “They hate us, Tom! He hates us! He hates vow! He’d rather we both died in a ditch than marry! Leave here or it’ll be too late and they’ll kill you, too!”
People were drawing back from her, even Anne. Only Father Edmund came forward, to put one hand on Tom’s shoulder, the other on hers, saying gently, as if comforting a miserable child, “Mary. Mary. Stop this before you make yourself sick and your brother more angry. Mary, heed me.”
With her face huddled down to hide its weeping ruin, she shook her head, denying his comfort; but after a look at Tom to ask permission that Tom gave with a small nod back at him, the priest took Mary by both shoulders and gently turned her toward him, saying, “All’s in God’s hands, whatever comes, Mary. Believe me. It’s going to be well, one way or another.”
Mary gave a hiccuping sob and crumpled into the priest’s arms with the simple brokenheartedness of a small child wanting comfort. Holding her carefully while she cried against his shoulder, he patted her back, saying things into her ear, and from relief or because the best of the show seemed over, depending on how they saw it, people began to turn away, find somewhere else to look, something else to do. Father Henry went to talk to Otes still waiting outside the gate, and so did Perryn, but Anne came away toward Frevisse and Sister Thomasine, bringing her younger son with her and calling her other boy and Dickon down from the wall for the sake of asserting herself over something.
Sister Thomasine had returned to looking at the ground in front of her, so it was to Frevisse that Anne made a rueful shake of the head and said, “I don’t know if Mary has ever understood the world isn’t here simply to make her happy, or if she knows it and the problem is that she blackly resents it.” She glanced back at her sister-in-law, now standing a little back from Father Edmund, gulping on the last of her sobs, her head hanging. “If only her bad temper was as little as she is, we’d all live the happier. And so would she. Colyn, stop that.” Colyn had been scratching under his hair where it grew raggedly toward his tunic neck. Anne pulled his hand away. “Leave be, bad boy. You’ve been around John Upham’s dogs again, and caught their fleas, haven’t you?” She pushed his head forward so that she could part his hair to see his neck. “A good rubbing down with tansy when we get home is what you’re going to…”
She broke off, staring at the back of his neck with something in the way she stood there that made Frevisse lean to see, too, but Colyn fidgeted, protesting, “Maaammm,” and Anne let go his head to clamp her hands down on his shoulders, not with anger, Frevisse saw by her face, but in something near to… was it fear?
‘What is it?“ Frevisse asked sharply.
‘I…“ Anne was looking rapidly through the crowd for someone, not her husband, still in plain sight with Otes, but, ”Mistress Margery!“
Her urgency drew people to look toward her and some began to come her way but a bone-thin woman in a faded green gown moved more quickly and with more purpose than the rest, to her before anyone else, Anne saying before she could ask anything, “Look,” pushing Colyn’s head forward again and his hair up from his neck. The boy squirmed but only from his hips down, knowing better than to make more protest while Mistress Margery bent to see. Frevisse shifted enough to see, too, and so did Sister Thomasine on the other side, come out of her withdrawal into curiosity.
‘A rash,“ Mistress Margery said and pulled the boy’s tunic away from his neck to see down inside. ”It goes down his back, too.“
‘It itches,“ Colyn complained, squirming harder. Mistress Margery loosed him and he scratched at his chest. ”Here, too.“
‘You look,“ Mistress Margery said over him to Sister Thomasine, and without hesitating Sister Thomasine did, putting his hand aside and opening his tunic’s front at the neck. She worked more often than any of the other nuns with Dame Claire in the infirmary, and now Frevisse realized why Mistress Margery seemed familiar to her. She was the village’s herbwife, who came sometimes to the priory to exchange the herbs she gathered from the fields and hedgerows and woods for ones Dame Claire grew in the priory’s gardens, and that would be how she and Sister Thomasine were confident of one other.