The Stone-Worker's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries) Read Free Page B

gesture at the figure below the tomb chest.
    Frevisse could acknowledge that in its ghastly way that figure of decay was as much a masterwork as the angels.  Every detail of a rotting body – the arch of the barely fleshed ribs, the gaunt thrust of the hipbones past the sunken belly – was done with exacting care.  There was no pleasure in looking at it, but there was not meant to be, reminding as it did of where all worldly pride and riches came at last.  That end was certain, though, and Frevisse felt no need to be reminded of it.  The thing ever in doubt was the soul's salvation, and rather than the corpse's reassertion of death, she preferred the angels' promise of hope beyond death and of love stronger than decay.
    "They were Simon’s masterwork," Master Wyndford said broodingly at the angels.  "When they were done, he would have been his own man, a master in his own right, not a journeyman anymore."
    "And now?" Frevisse asked.  "Now that he's broken his contract and gone off?"
    Master Wyndford pulled his shoulders a little straighter – the broad shoulders of a man who had worked with stone all of his life – and said, as if trying to straighten his thoughts along with his shoulders, "Eh, well, he may come back.  There's no saying.  Once the lust has gone out of him.  If he's any sense he'll come craving pardon then and to have his work back."
    "Will you give it to him?"
    Master Wyndford held silent, seeming to brood on his answer before finally saying, with a nod toward the angels.  "There's little I'd not forgive a man who does that kind of work."
    Frevisse would not have thought his face could go more bitter than it was, but it did as he went on with open anger and frustration, "I warned him.  I warned him well no good would come of wanting a woman instead of his work.  I told him that letting her turn his head would only bring him to grief.  I warned him marriage would be his ruin."
    "You're married," Frevisse said.  "Or you were.  You have a son.  Surely you..."
    Master Wyndford interrupted her with raw bitterness.  "Oh, aye, I was married.  I was warned against it but I was set on her and married her anyway.” 
    While he was speaking, Nicol Wyndford stepped through the gap in the wall.  He was very much like his father in face and build and made to look older than he was by the stone dust whitening his hair.  Master Wyndford turned a glower on him and went on, as if at him in particular, “But the young don't listen.  They think it will be different for them, no matter what's said to them.  They won't hear."
    Nicol Wyndford bent his head respectfully to Frevisse as he came toward them, but said, sounding as resentful as his father, "I listened.  Haven’t I listened every time?  I left Elyn to Simon, and now he has her and I don't.  Can't that be enough to satisfy you?"
    Frevisse sharpened her look on him.  It was easy enough to believe there was a craftmen’s rivalry between Nicol Wyndford and Simon Maye.  Now it was plain there was another rivalry, too.  Rivalry and jealousy and Master Wyndford doing nothing to ease either as he said angrily, "Satisfy me?  No!  To see Simon fail himself because of a woman?  Watch him ruin his life with a marriage he didn't need?  Watch him lose everything he could have been.  Watch him–"
    He started a sharp gesture with both hands but curtailed it as Nicol said sharply at him, "It wasn't marriage that ruined your hands.  Mother was dead before that ever started."
    "It was started before she died," his father said back at him with old, embedded anger.  "It only became the worse after I was rid of her, that's all.  What she did was keep me from what I could have done before they went to the bad.  She needed this and she wanted that.  She wouldn't let me go where the best work was to be had or give me peace enough to give my mind to what work I had.  She clung and nagged through every unblessed hour I was married to her.  The