Free The Reeve's Tale by Margaret Frazer Page B

Terce, the day was already far warmer than other days had been of late, and Sister Amicia, slipping a finger inside her wimple to loosen it and let in a little air, murmured, “It’s going to be hot before it’s done,” while Dame Juliana looked up from the cloister garth’s garden of herbs and flowers to the narrowness of blue sky, naked of clouds, that was all that could be seen of the world from there and said, “We need rain.” Domina Elisabeth, having led the way out of the church, was already well away, headed back toward her rooms and whatever work awaited her there. Dame Perpetua and Sister Johane were returning to their scribe’s desks, set against the church wall here along the walk for best light on their copying. There were no commissions in hand just now, but Domina Elisabeth had set them to the
Revelations of St. Birgitta
on the expectation that something so popular could be sold to someone when it was finished. The other nuns, and now Sister Amicia and Dame Juliana, were straying their various ways away along the cloister walk, in no haste to be back to what they had been doing before the bell called them to Terce, while Frevisse stood undecided between going to her own scribal work, as she would have to do sometime today, or else to talk with Master Naylor since she had not yesterday.
     
    The question was resolved by a guesthall servant coming into the cloister walk from the passage to the outer door and guesthall yard. Frevisse, having been hosteler, in charge of St. Frideswide’s guesthalls more than once through the years, knew her and started toward her, saying, “Ela,” and the woman turned her way with a relieved smile, making a quick curtsy as they met at the corner of the cloister walk and saying, “There’s someone come as wants to see you, my lady. Can you come out to him?”
     
    ‘Who?“
     
    ‘Simon Perryn, the reeve.“
     
    ‘Where is he?“ Frevisse asked, already on her way to the outer door.
     
    ‘By the well in the yard,“ Ela answered, following her, but in the yard veered away, back toward the guesthall, as Perryn rose from where he had sat down on one of the well’s steps, hood in hand and looking uncertain whether he should be here, but he bowed and said, ”Good day, my lady. I hope it’s no trouble I’ve come without asking leave but I didn’t know when you’d be back and there’s something happened I thought you ought to know as soon as might be.“
     
    ‘When there’s need, better you come than not. What’s happened?“
     
    ‘That body up Wroxton way that those men came about yesterday, you remember?“
     
    She nodded that she did, though after saying a prayer for the fellow’s soul on her way back to St. Frideswide’s, she had not thought of him again until now.
     
    ‘Seems, by what the crowner’s man brought, it’s Matthew Woderove.“
     
    ‘The man who ran off a few weeks ago?“
     
    ‘Aye. His wife knew his shirt and says the bit of hair they’d brought along matches his. I’d say the same,“ Perryn added unhappily. ”She’s my sister, see, and taking it hard.“
     
    ‘Do they know how he died?“
     
    ‘There wasn’t much left to tell by from the body, what there was of it. By the look of it, he’s been dead most of the time he’s been gone and was lying out in a ditch the while.“
     
    And the weather had been warm, and birds and other things would have been at him.
     
    ‘But it’s sure his skull was broken,“ Perryn went on, ”and it looks like he was stabbed twice at least. There were knife-scrapes on his ribs.“
     
    Probably killed for the horse he’d stolen, then robbed of whatever little else he’d had and left to rot, Frevisse supposed and shook her head against the waste and ugliness of it.
     
    ‘It’s Wroxton folk are in trouble,“ Perryn said. ”They knew the body was there but said naught about it to anyone since he wasn’t one of their own.“
     
    By law, any untimely deaths had to be reported to