The Maiden’s Tale (11 page)

“He bounces, I confess, but no one except maybe the duke of Gloucester’s John Russell is better at precedence and ordering a hall. And he’s utterly devoted to us. Not even his grace Bishop Beaufort has been able to bribe him away. Although,” she added grimly, “he’s tried.”

Frevisse began to laugh.

“Laugh you may,” Alice said, laughing, too, “but he’s valuable. I’ll be as quick as may be about whatever trouble he’s brought me but you go rescue Jane from those silly women and say I said she was to tell you the rest about herself.”

Chapter
9

Having made agreement between Aneys and Millicent that the hawk they were embroidering on yet another cushion cover should be in browns rather than pink, Jane was just risen to her feet when Dame Frevisse appeared beside her. Jane had hoped she was done with Dame Frevisse for at least the morning, had been trying to be done with the other women, too, to have time to consider what could be done about Robyn’s threat and how to find who had betrayed Lady Alice to him. But there was no way to fob Dame Frevisse off when she was standing there saying, “Lady Alice has had to go talk with Master Gallard over something. She said you and I should talk together,” polite to the other women but leaving small option for anything but Jane to say, “Of course,” and go aside with her.

Because it had become her particular place at Coldharbour and her sewing awaited her there, Jane led her to the farther window, to the seats facing each other in the thickness of the wall, indicating Dame Frevisse was welcome to one of the seats while she took the other and took up her sewing, saying as clouds closed across a briefness of sun and snow flurried past the window, “You’ll find it somewhat chill here, I fear.”

“Being somewhat overdressed to what I’m used to, I’ll likely do well enough.” Dame Frevisse twitched her skirts over her toes and tucked her hands into her opposite sleeves. “I understand from Lady Alice that you and I are cousins of a sort.”

Jane, readying to talk about the weather again, blurted, “What?” then steadied and said with a veneer of pleased politeness over a rapid wondering of how much and what Lady Alice had told her, “We are, aren’t we? Of a sort. By marriage.”

“I’ve sometimes thought that ‘by marriage’ is the best way to be related. How many people have you found you’d want to claim as blood kin?”

Jane smothered a laugh, knowing how even worse than a smile it suited her face, but warmed to Dame Frevisse nonetheless and said, “What was it Lady Alice told you?”

“How you’re her niece and how you were nunneried at birth, and that you’d not mind if I asked you about the rest.”

Mind? Jane did not know if she did or not mind, but what had been done to her still hurt and she said with a laughing edge, to cover the hurt from herself as well as anyone else, “To begin from there, I’m told I kept St. Osburga’s awake for three full months with my crying when I first came because I had the colic. I told them later, when anyone complained of it to me through the years, that they should be grateful I’d given them more time for prayer.”

She always told it as a jest. Better to think of the poor nuns driven out of their quiet and into a frenzy by infant cries than of that ugly, unwanted girl-child; but Dame Frevisse asked, not with pity but understanding, “And when the baby stopped crying?”

Disconcerted, Jane answered somewhat shortly, “Then the baby learned to live with things as they were.”

“But not to accept them.”

“No.” Curtly. “Never to accept them.”

“Nor does she want to talk about them.”

“No. She doesn’t.” And if that offended Lady Alice’s cousin, then let her be offended.

But Dame Frevisse accepted it without apparent offense, said lightly, “Then we won’t,” and looked out the window.

“I think the day is growing colder, don’t you? Do you think there’ll be more snow?”

Thrown off by the conversation’s turn, Jane said, “No. Yes. I mean, no, we can talk of it. I only thought that as a nun you wouldn’t approve I’d…” She trailed off.

“You thought that as a nun, I’d not approve of you not becoming one,” Dame Frevisse said easily. “But better a glad wife than a sorry nun, as they say.”

“Actually,” Jane answered carefully, aware she had been doing to Dame Frevisse what she hated done to herself—judging by her outward seeming—“what Domina said was that I’d be sorry if I didn’t become a nun, no qualifying of it.”

“They didn’t make it easy for you.”

Dame Frevisse’s understanding, since it was not pity, was something Jane could accept and she answered slowly, discovering the thought, “I don’t suppose I made it easy for them either.”

Memory came of Domina the day she had finally been convinced Jane meant to go on refusing to take her vows, how in red-faced temper she had turned on Dame Idany, demanding, “Just what have you been teaching this girl all the years you were supposed to be turning her into a nun?” and Dame Idany answering with hand-flapping desperation, “I taught her everything! She just never listened!” Domina’s fury had been so great that Sister Felice had had to bleed her afterwards to relieve the pressure, and Dame Idany had accused, “You see what you’ve done, with your selfishness about your vows?” To which Jane had answered, “She did it to herself,” and had been put on bread and ale for three days and given one hundred paternosters to say, in punishment.

“How long did it take you to win free?”

All of my life, Jane did not say. But as far back as memory went, she had known she was expected to become a nun when she was old enough, and for nearly as long she had known she did not want to. Year by year she had put off her vows while pressure grew for her to take them, until finally all pretence that she would ever be willing had come to an end. But all she said now was, “There were six very bad months at the last and then I was allowed to write my uncle, to tell him I wanted out.”

Though “allowed” had not been quite the way of it. There had been weeks into months of everyone being angry at her or, worse, grieved to the heart and telling her so while she went on refusing her vows no matter what was said or done to her, until, afraid she was near the end of her strength to hold out, she had gone uninvited into chapter meeting and in front of all the nuns demanded of Domina with an arrogance she meant to be unpardonable that she be allowed to write her uncle and make an end of all of this. Confronted, challenged, insulted, Domina had given her leave, and when the letter was gone, had put her on bread and ale again, ordered she keep on her knees in the church for most of every day, and forbidden anyone speak to her except of necessity until her uncle’s answer came. The hope being that if he refused or put her off, she would be too broken to continue obdurate.

“And he agreed you shouldn’t take your vows if you didn’t wish to,” Dame Frevisse said.

“Lady Alice did, at least.” The reply to her letter had come with merciful quickness and had been less her uncle’s than Lady Alice’s, her unknown aunt-by-marriage who had not trifled with questionings as to what it was all about but sent an escort to have her out of the nunnery as answer. Remembering her mingled fear, relief, and joy that day, when she had walked out of St. Osburga’s free, but knowing what she knew now, Jane said wryly, “I doubt my esteemed uncle could care a halfpenny less whether I’m a nun or not, so long as I laid claim to no more than my dowry from his earldom.”

“When in truth,” Lady Alice said, joining them, “she wanted out so badly, she would probably have paid us for it if we’d only thought to ask.”

That was a well-used jest between them and Jane smiled, agreeing, “Yes, I probably would have,” as she shifted herself and her sewing sideways for Lady Alice to sit beside her. “The thing was, I was so fearful the day the escort came for me and I was faced with what I’d brought on myself and all those strangers, I nearly settled after all for veil and vows and hiding inside cloister walls forever.”

“But all inadvertently,” Lady Alice said, “I forestalled that.”

“She’d taken thought that all I’d have to wear were nunnery clothes, and so she sent a gown and undergown and riding cloak and shoes and everything for me.”

“All very plain,” Lady Alice said.

“Dame Frevisse and I know your thought of plain,” Jane mocked her fondly. “The gown is green, there’s fur edging on the cloak’s hood, and the shoes had cut work. If I’d stayed in St. Osburga’s after all, I could never have had them. So I came out.”

“Worldly child,” Lady Alice said, mocking her back. “They’re well rid of you, if they only knew.”

“At least you were wise enough to know your own heart,” Dame Frevisse with a warm smile.

“And brave enough to follow it,” Alice added.

Jane, unused to so much approval of herself, ducked her head to hide her confusion, saying softly, pleased, “At least I was that.”

Chapter
10

The afternoon went its way pleasantly enough after dinner. Lady Alice was drawn away to household matters, and with their lady gone, others of the women drew Dame Frevisse into their company. A new face and new talk were always welcome diversions, made more interesting because this nun-cousin might prove a way to come to Lady Alice’s particular notice, being so markedly in their lady’s favor, but by what Jane heard from her window seat where she was gone back to her sewing, Dame Frevisse’s conversation was a bland assortment of mild recollections of Lady Alice as a girl, comments on her ride from Oxfordshire, and commonplaces about the weather, as if she were bent on giving no one anything about her to remark other than how unremarkable she was. That, Jane was sure from talking with her, was a false impression, and she worried a little over how well she had actually persuaded Dame Frevisse about Robyn, or if it was more a matter that Dame Frevisse had persuaded her that she believed?

Unhappily, the greater problem was not Dame Frevisse, who would likely be discreet whatever she did, but what could be done about Robyn, other than wait to see what he would do. Who had betrayed Lady Alice to him was a lesser matter, one that could lie by for a while. If a woman had been fool enough to give way to Robyn’s wooing, she was probably fool enough to give herself away if questioned rightly, but to stir up trouble over her just now would give away too much that shouldn’t be known. Robyn was the more immediate threat, and Jane twisted the problem of him around through much of the afternoon, unhappily coming to no answer but that he must be played for time while she tried to find out what he truly wanted and where the rest of the poems were. How to play him was unfortunately another question to which she had no good answer. The only thing of which she remained certain was that Lady Alice had to be protected from knowing the danger she was in until she had to know.

Time for supper came, but not with its usual relief. Neither Jane nor her uncle enjoyed her being seen by strangers and having to be explained. Without need to talk of it between them—as the understanding she would marry and make no trouble over it had needed no overt agreement—so far as they cared, she would never have dined in the hall when there was much company or any great occasion; but Lady Alice had made it clear that Jane would be trained up in all the ways of a lady and treated as one while she was with them, not shuffled off into a corner, even one to which Jane would have willingly retreated, given the choice. So tonight Jane was to wait on Lady Alice at the high table, an honor to them both and practice for Jane for when she would be waited on as lady at her own high table, because how better to learn what service to expect for oneself than by serving another? But while that reconciled Jane to the necessity, it was insufficient to make her take pleasure in it through tonight’s three removes with lengthy entertainments between and a final subtlety carried in with great fanfare by escort of squires: a tall marzipan display of four English knights protecting a king—representing England—wooing a lady with France’s fleur-de-lis on her gown—representing Peace—to come down to him from atop a tower.

Jane wondered why they called it a subtlety.

She held the silver basin of warm, almond-scented water and the towel for Lady Alice to wash and dry her hands and then for Dame Frevisse seated beside her, and at last her part in the evening was over. Aneys and Katherine were to attend Lady Alice through the rest of it, through the talk and dancing and seeking to influence people that seemed to be the real reason for these evenings, and she was free to escape upstairs as soon as she had handed off basin and towel to a servant to take away. With all the servants presently busy with clearing away the tables, she withdrew to the dais end to wait while Lady Alice and Suffolk with their guests from the high table went down to join the some several score of other guests, thinking as she sometimes did on how she must have missed her chance while in the nunnery to develop a liking for so much merriment, talk, and noise.

Her chance came and she had just handed basin and towel away to a passing servant and was about to slip away through the door to the stairs when behind her Robyn said pleasantly, “Good evening, my lady.”

Jane turned enough to cast him a sideways look devoid of delight. He had covered his approach among the crowd and shift of servants and guests, giving her no chance to avoid him, and now she did not dare leave because he would all too probably follow her and she would be alone with him.

Robyn came to in front of her, saying, “You should try to look more happy to see me. Otherwise people will wonder what I’ve done to displease you.”

“If you go away there’ll be no cause for anyone to wonder anything,” Jane returned stiffly.

“But I’m not going away. So smile on me, fair lady.”

She gave him a smile with too many teeth in it and “There.”

“A gift from my lady,” Robyn said and grabbed her hand.

Jane curbed her urge to snatch it back and slap his face, instead removed it from him with outward seeming of graciousness, and said, “What do you want of me?”

“To talk. Simply to talk. Is that so hard?”

“If I believed you, it might be easier.”

“Sweet lady, how can you not believe?”