The Servant's Tale by Margaret Frazer

Author:Margaret Frazer [Frazer, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101651483
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 1993-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

14

FLATLY TURNING TO business in the face of death, Naylor said, “We can put him in the outer cowshed. It’s empty and he’ll keep there until the crowner comes.”

It became the King’s business whenever any of his subjects died in an unexplained or violent way. His representative in such matters, the crowner, must come to look and question and collect evidence until he was satisfied he had the facts of the case. If there was guilt, he made an arrest. If the death had been by accident or from natural causes, everyone was released to go about his business. Sym’s body could not be buried until it had been viewed by the crowner.

By custom, the body should go to lie in the village church, but there was no priest there now; and the priory’s church was not the place for one of Lord Lovel’s peasants. Indeed, the matter should have belonged altogether to Lord Lovel’s steward, but there was no telling where he was among his lord’s properties just now; it would take time to contact him, and he and Naylor had long since fallen into helping each other when either was in need or gone.

So for the time being the priory was the place for Sym’s body. But Frevisse said with quiet authority equal to Naylor’s, “Rather, put him in the new guesthall. It’s readier to hand for what needs to be done.” And better the guesthall than a cowshed.

Dame Claire had gone to Meg and was murmuring to her with the deep, ready sympathy she had for anyone in any kind of pain. But the blunt-faced man was not done yet and said loudly, still ready for trouble, “So it’s murder now maybe.”

“Ah, Jankyn, let it go for now,” someone said. But others rumbled.

Ellis and Joliffe still stood together in the doorway. Frevisse prayed they would have sense enough to fall back inside and throw down the bar across the door if the crowd turned ugly again.

But the ugliness was past. There was only the grumbled certainty of wrongs and a wanting of explanations. Frevisse, careful to seem unhurried, moved to Meg’s other side, took her hand—dry, callused, limp in her own—and asked, “What did your son say about his hurt? Did he say who did it to him?”

Meg did not raise her head. In a remote, weary voice, she answered, “He said the player stabbed him. In the alehouse. That’s all he said. It was another useless fight. Like Barnaby used to get into. Sym was always starting fights, like his father.”

Her voice trailed off, but it had been enough. Naylor raised his own voice to say, “There. You’ve heard it. It happened in the alehouse, in the fight, and enough of you saw what happened there to know there’s no one to blame but Sym himself. There’s naught else for any of you to be doing now until the crowner comes. Go on home. It’s a cold night to be standing about.”

Unpurposed now and aware of the hour and the cold, the men began to drift away out the priory gateway.

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