looks, wishes herself elsewhere. Sir John has not yet come.'
'Nor likely to,' replied Joanna. 'I left the matter to his discretion. If he is premature in condolence it might be thought over-zealous on his part, and his sister Lady Ferrers will be the first to make mischief out of it.'
'She is making mischief already,' replied the steward.
'I'm aware of it. The sooner the business is over the better for all of us.'
Roger crossed to the foot of the bed and looked down upon the helpless occupant. 'How long now?' he asked the monk.
'He will not wake again. You may touch him if you will, he cannot feel it. We are only waiting for the heart to cease, and then my lady can announce his death.'
Roger shifted his gaze from the bed to the small bowls on the trestle table. 'What did you give him?'
'The same as before, meconium, the juice of the whole plant, in equal parts with henbane to the strength of a dram.'
Roger looked at Joanna. 'It would be as well if I removed these, lest there should be discussion as to the treatment. Lady Ferrers spoke of her own surgeon. They hardly dare go against your wishes, but there could be trouble.'
Joanna, still employing herself with her skeins of silk, shrugged her shoulders.
'Take the ingredients if you will,' she said, 'though we have disposed of the liquids down the drain. The vessels you may remove if you consider it safer, but I hardly think Brother Jean has anything to fear. His discretion has been absolute.'
She smiled at the young monk, who responded with one glance from his expressive eyes, and I wondered if he too, like the absent Sir John, had found favour during the weeks of her husband's illness. Between them, Roger and the monk, they made a package of the bowls, wrapping them in sacking, and all the while I could hear the murmur of voices from the hall below, suggesting that Lady Ferrers had recovered from her fit of crying and was in full spate again.
'How is my brother Otto taking it?' asked Joanna.
'He made no comment when Sir William suggested that interment in Bodrugan chapel would be preferable to the Priory. I think he is hardly likely to interfere. Sir William proposed his own church at Bere as an alternative.'
'To what purpose?'
'For self-aggrandisement, perhaps — who knows? I would not recommend it. Once they had Sir Henry's body in their hands there could be meddling. Whereas in the Priory Chapel—'
'All would be well. Sir Henry's wishes observed, and ourselves at peace. I look to you to see there is no trouble with the tenants, Roger. The people have no great love of the Priory.'
'There'll be no trouble if they are treated well at the funeral feast,' he answered. 'A promise of mitigation of fines at the next court and a pardon for all misdemeanours. That should content them.'
'Let us hope so.' She pushed aside her frame and, rising from her chair, went to the bed. 'Is he living still?' she asked. The monk took the lifeless wrist in his hand and felt the pulse, then lowered his head to listen to his patient's heart.
'Barely,' he answered. 'You may light the candles if you will, and by the time the family has been summoned he will have gone.'
They might have been talking of some wornout piece of furniture that had lost its use, instead of a woman's husband on the point of death. Joanna returned to her chair, took up a piece of black veiling, and began to drape it round her head and shoulders. Then she seized a looking-glass made of silver from the table near at hand.
'Should I wear it thus', she asked the steward, 'or covering my face?'
'More fitting to be covered,' he told her, 'unless you can weep at will.'
'I have not wept since my wedding-day,' she answered. The monk Jean crossed the dying man's hands upon his breast and fastened a linen bandage about his jaw. He stood back to observe his work, and as a finishing touch placed a crucifix between the folded hands. Meanwhile Roger was rearranging the trestle table. 'How many candles do you require?' he asked.
'Five on the day of death,' replied the monk,' in honour of the five wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you a black coverlet for the bed?'
'In the chest yonder,' said Joanna, and while monk and steward draped the bed with its black pall she looked in the mirror for the last time, before covering her face with the veil.
'If I may presume,' murmured the monk, 'it would make the better impression if my lady knelt beside the bed and I stationed myself at the foot. Then when the family comes into the chamber I can recite the Prayers for the Dead. Unless you prefer the parish priest to do so?'
'He is too drunk to mount the stairs,' said Roger. 'If Lady Ferrers has one glimpse of him it will be his finish.'
'Then leave him alone,' said Joanna, 'and let us proceed. Roger, will you descend and summon them? William first, for he is the heir.' She knelt beside the bed, head bowed in grief, but raised it before we left the room, saying over her shoulder to the steward, 'It cost my brother Sir Otto near on fifty marks at Bodrugan when my father died, not counting the beasts that were slaughtered for the funeral feast. We must not be out-done. Spare no expense.'
Roger drew aside the hangings by the door, and I followed him on to the steps outside. The contrast between the bright day without and the murky atmosphere within must have struck him as forcibly as it did me, for he paused at the top of the steps and looked down over the surrounding walls to the gleaming waters of the estuary below. The sails of Bodrugan's ship were furled loosely on the yard as she lay at anchor, and a fellow in a small boat astern skulled to and fro in search of fish. The youngsters from the house had wandered down the hillside to stare at their uncle's boat. Henry, Bodrugan's son, was pointing out something to his cousin William, and the dogs leapt about them, barking once again.
I realised at that moment, more strongly than hitherto, how fantastic, even macabre, was my presence amongst them, unseen, unborn, a freak in time, witness to events that had happened centuries past, unremembered, unrecorded; and I wondered how it was that standing here on the steps, watching yet invisible, I could so feel myself involved, troubled, by these loves and deaths. The man who was dying might have been a relative from my own lost world of youth — my father, even, who had died in spring when I was about the age of young William down there in the field. The cable from the Far East — he had been killed fighting the Japanese — arrived just as my mother and I had finished lunch, staying in an hotel in Wales for the Easter holidays. She went up to her bedroom and shut the door, and I hung about the hotel drive, aware of loss but unable to cry, dreading the sympathetic glance of the girl at the reception desk if I went indoors.
Roger, carrying the piece of sacking containing the bowls stained by herb-juices, descended to the court, and went through an archway at the further end leading to a stable-yard. What servants made up the household seemed to be gathered there, but at the steward's approach they broke up their gossip and scattered, all but one lad whom I had seen that first day and recognised, by his likeness to the horseman, as Roger's brother. Roger summoned him to his side with a jerk of his head.
'It is over,' he said. 'Ride to the Priory at once and inform the Prior, that he may give orders for tolling the bell. Work will cease when the men hear the summons, and they will start to come in from the fields, and assemble on the green. Directly you have delivered your message to the Prior ride on home and place this package in the cellar, then wait for my return. I have much to do, and may not be back tonight.' The boy nodded, and disappeared into the stables. Roger passed through the archway into the court once more. Otto Bodrugan was standing at the entrance to the house. Roger hesitated a moment, then crossed the court to him.
'My lady asks you to go to her,' he said, 'with Sir William and Lady Ferrers and the lady Isolda. I will call William and the children.'
'Is Sir Henry worse?' asked Bodrugan.
'He is dead, Sir Otto. Not five minutes since, without recovering consciousness, peacefully, in his sleep.'
'I am sorry,' said Bodrugan, 'but it is better so. I pray God we may both go as peacefully when our time comes, though undeservedly.' Both men crossed themselves. Automatically I did the same. 'I will tell the others,' he continued. 'Lady Ferrers may go into hysterics, but no matter. How is my sister?'
'Calm, Sir Otto.'
'I expected it.'
