Free The Clerk’s Tale by Margaret Frazer Page A

Agnes and Domina Elisabeth, neither of them looking Frevisse’s way as Christopher’s clerk finished with his thanks to Lady Agnes, bowed, and withdrew. Only Nichola looked around at her and shyly smiled while Domina Elisabeth said, seemingly continuing from something said before, “She’d surely be pleased for the courtesy of your asking her but I doubt she’ll come, things being as they are.”
     
    Lady Agnes tapped her staff on the floor. “She can’t really be cast down by being rid of him, can she? Is she that great an idiot?”
     
    ‘I’ve only talked with her hardly enough to know what she feels or how she is, only that she’s behaving seemly,“ Domina Elisabeth answered moderately. ”Was he truly as ill-mannered as everyone says he was?“
     
    ‘That and more,“ Lady Agnes said without hesitation.
     
    Domina Elisabeth had never had the mischance to encounter Montfort, probably did not even remember he was the crowner who had dealt with a death near the nunnery a few years ago, nor did Frevisse intend to be drawn into talk about him. Instead, she merely stood, head a little down, listening with Nichola while Lady Agnes detailed a few of Montfort’s rudenesses and, a few paces away, Master Haselden and Stephen discussed the likelihood that last year’s increase in wool sold abroad was going, to hold for this year, too. The servants had quickly finished setting the trestle and tabletop in the hall’s center and a maidservant was going along it laying out bread trenchers, the man Lucas following after her with a pitcher in one hand and a stack of wooden cups in the other to set a cup and fill it between every two trenchers. Emme was smoothing a white linen cloth over the high table, finishing as the maid who had laid the bread trenchers brought pewter plates from the sideboard set along one wall of the hall and laid six places along the upper side of the high table, followed again by Lucas bringing three pewter cups, one to set between each two places, with Emme in her turn coming back from the sideboard with white linen napkins and pewter spoons to set beside each plate. That done, Letice, who had been overseeing it all, came to tell Lady Agnes, “All’s ready, my lady.”
     
    ‘Then shall we sit?“ Lady Agnes said graciously to her guests, took her own place at the center of the long, high-backed bench that was the high table’s seat, and pointed everyone to their places, Domina Elisabeth and then Stephen on her right, Master Haselden on her left, and Frevisse and Nichola beyond him.
     
    ‘And no throwing of bread pellets at one another,“ Lady Agnes added with a warning look first at Stephen, then at Nichola, who smothered laughter while Stephen said, all injury, ”It’s hardly kind to mention our youngling indiscretions in front of guests, Grandmadam.“
     
    ‘Nor would I if I thought you’d outgrown them,“ Lady Agnes returned. ”Pray, be seated, all of you.“
     
    That was sign for Letice to sit at the near end of the lower table and beckon a rough-dressed man who probably saw to whatever outside work there was to come forward to a place at the lower table’s end and the first remove to be brought to the high table by Lucas, Emme, and the other woman servant—roasted quails, onions fried in egg and butter and seasonings, custard tarts with raisins, and bread still warm from the oven—while for the lower table there was a thick pottage and more bread. That much of their duty done, the three of them sat with Letice and the other man and fell to their meal along with them.
     
    Since supper had been a private thing in Lady Agnes’s solar and breakfast the same, this was Frevisse’s first chance to see Lady Agnes’s household at the full, though there was surely a cook in the kitchen. A very good cook, Frevisse amended as she tasted the quail set before her. Because conversation was expected, Master Haselden and she agreed between them that the weather was mild for this time of