Reluctantly Frevisse asked, “That’s why you thought he should have the Woderove holding and marry Mary?”
‘Mary is sharp enough and Tom works… worked well enough when he could see there was something in it for him. With a little luck, they’d have made a go of it. Between the two of them, they would have had a chance.“
And now they neither of them would. And Master Naylor, in his constrained way, was unhappy over that. Frevisse had long known that he was a skilled steward, with a keen eye to the priory’s best interests. She had not known he also would take the trouble to see past someone’s outward seeming to their possibilities, though perhaps she should have guessed it because it was a useful tool toward making him so good a steward. But all she said was, “And since he and Mary were already… linked, all they needed was for the holding to be given to them.”
Master Naylor came back to sit again. “Yes.”
Frevisse carefully set to one side of her mind that he had told her something of that when last they had talked but she had let it go and had a part in refusing them because of her ready, easy dislike for them both. She was at fault in that, she feared, and must needs take closer look at herself over it; but just now what mattered was that someone had killed Tom Hulcote, and slowly she said, “Mary Woderove’s husband was killed away from here, luckily for them, since his death was so convenient to them.”
‘Or would have been convenient,“ Master Naylor said, ”if things had fallen out for them afterwards the way they hoped.“
‘Tom’s death isn’t as obviously convenient to anyone.“ ”Particularly to Tom,“ Master Naylor said bitterly. ”But then the question is,“ Frevisse said, holding to where she was going, ”for whom was Tom Hulcote’s death convenient?“
Chapter 10
Master Naylor had had no helpful answer to her question. From all he knew, Tom Hulcote had not mattered enough in anyone’s life-except Mary Woderove’s-for anyone to want him dead-and it was not dead that Mary wanted him. “He had no enemies I’ve ever heard of,” Master Naylor had said. “Nor friends, come to that. He wasn’t a man anyone cared that much about, either way.” Except for Mary Woderove, he had not bothered to add.
‘The men who were ready to make trouble at the manor court,“ Frevisse had said. ”Weren’t they friends?“
‘From what Father Henry told me, they’re just the usual lot who make trouble because they lack the wit to make anything else. They’d take up a sick dog’s cause as fast as Tom Hulcote’s, especially against Gilbey Dunn.“
‘What about Gilbey? He had no liking for Tom.“
‘Or Tom for him. If it was Gilbey found dead, it might be Tom I’d look to first, but for Gilbey to put himself to the trouble of killing anybody-you’d have to find good reason for it.“
‘The Woderove holding?“
‘It was by far a greater matter to Tom than it was to Gilbey. It would be Gilbey I’d look for to be dead because of it, rather than Tom.“
And that had been all the help he could give her. Nor had she found out much more than that in the two days since then, because she had returned to the village to find too many of the children worsening, and almost all the hours since then had been taken up with their necessities. Last night she had been so tired that when her turn came to sleep, she had barely been able to unpin her veil and set it aside before she fell onto her mattress and was still so tired when she awoke that her fingers had fumbled at pinning it on again. But St. Roch be thanked, since dawn this morning seven more children’s fevers had broken, one after another in a welter of sweat and mothers’ tears and the need for dry sheets or blankets and turned mattresses and urging, urging the children to drink just a little more barley water, just a little, before they sank into their first deeply quiet, blessedly cool sleeps in days, often with their spent mothers stretched out asleep beside them.
With all that, she had had little time to think of questions about Tom Hulcote, let alone ask them of anyone. She only knew, from undercurrents of talk among tired women and whoever of their family and friends came to help sometimes when other work was done that the uncertainty of Tom Hulcote’s death was beginning to take its toll.
It was not that there had never been murder here before. Besides the several Frevisse knew too well it seemed, from what she half-heard and overheard, that some while back one man had done for another with a dagger in an alehouse quarrel, and ten years ago one of the Gregorys had clouted someone over the head with a shovel about a boundary stone, but those had been open killings, seen by others, the why and how and guilt known to everyone and the murderer seized while his victim’s body was still bleeding.
Tom Hulcote’s death had happened secretly. No one knew why or where or by whom he had been killed. The only certainty was that his murderer was not a passing stranger and long gone. A stranger would have killed him and left, not chanced lingering for a day and more or bothered with shifting the corpse. But if it had not been a stranger, it had been someone here, and that meant there was someone among them who was able to kill a man and show no sign of it afterwards. Someone among them was a murderer and they had no way of telling who, and therefore, when there was chance, there were tight little huddles of talk among the women and worry over more than their children when presently their children were more than enough worry; nor did Frevisse doubt there was more talk in the village, and unsure looks and unspoken wondering and distrusts and wariness growing, with no cure for any of it so long as Tom Hulcote’s murderer went unknown.
Worse-and this she hoped no one else had thought of-was that since no one knew why Tom had been killed, there was no certainty that his death would be the only one.
She straightened, sore-backed, from helping small Elyn Denton drink her barley water and managed a smile down at the child, who smiled sleepily back, rolled on her side, and burrowed into her pillow, ready to nap, Frevisse hoped, until her mother returned from seeing to her older children still at home.
‘Please you, my lady, Simon Perryn is asking if you’d come out to him,“ Joane Goddard said in a low voice beside her.
‘Me?“ Frevisse said, looking where his children were bedded near the rood screen, Anne crouched between them, leaning over Lucy, whose fever was among those that had broken this morning.
Joane’s voice dropped lower. “He doesn’t want her to know, please you.”
Frevisse feared she knew what that meant but had no way to refuse it. Mistress Margery was sleeping in the sacristy, in easy call if needed, and enough mothers were awake again and seeing to their children that Sister Thomasine was hardly being left alone to it, and when she spoke briefly to her on her way out, Sister Thomasine merely said without looking around from persuading Joane’s boy Ralph, still fevered, to drink balm water, “Of course. Take as long as need be.”
The rain that had been lightly falling since midday was drizzling to a stop, leaving behind it a thick, damp heat, but Frevisse paused inside the church porch to draw a deep breath of the heavy air with rather desperate relief. These past hot days, the church’s stone walls and thatch had held coolness in as hoped, but with so many people so closely kept and the shutters not opened during the days to protect the meseled children’s eyes from light nor after dark because of sick-making night vapors, the air was long since thickened with the smells there had to be among so many sick children as well as begun to warm, and she had not been outside since one brief time yesterday.