The Maiden’s Tale (13 page)

Frevisse went to the other window where Lady Jane, without the rest of the women’s need to cluster in constant company and talk, sat alone at her sewing, the marred side of her face turned as always, from what Frevisse had seen, away from the room. She looked up as Frevisse joined her and smiled her slight, onesided smile in polite welcome. Frevisse bent her head in equally polite, mild greeting, sat down opposite her, and said by way of conversation, “At least today there’s better light for sewing by than there was yesterday, my lady.”

“And hopefully I’ll be done with this before it’s gone.”

“You’re nearly finished then?”

“With putting it together. Later I’ll embroider the cuffs and collar. You’re not enjoying being idle, are you?”

Frevisse, hands folded in her lap in what she meant to be exemplary quiet, said, “Does it show so plainly as that?”

Lady Jane laughed softly. “Aside from idleness, how do you like it here? Aren’t we a change from your nunnery?”

“A change,” Frevisse granted, “but the talk is no different from what it was in my aunt’s household twenty years ago.”

“And no different from what it will be twenty years hence, probably,” Lady Jane returned, not unkindly. “Is it any different in your nunnery? It wasn’t where I was.”

“Not one whit different,” Frevisse granted unhesitatingly. “But there I’ve other things to do than listen to it.”

Lady Jane regarded her for a moment before saying, “Your praying matters very much to you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Frevisse said and was willing to leave the matter there, but “Why?” asked Lady Jane. And though Frevisse’s first urge was to make some meaningless reply, instead she said the truth. “Because beyond all things I want to clear my soul from the world’s uses and turn it only to God’s.”

She did not say the rest: her deep longing to go beyond the world’s illusions and passing pleasures into pure reality, beyond all pretences into knowing things as they truly were. That was something she had told only two people in her life and they were dead now and she had no urge to share herself that deeply again.

Lady Jane accepted in silence as much as she’d given, then in a while asked, “Would you care to walk in the garden?”

Frevisse rose to her feet. “Yes.” At St. Frideswide’s the priory’s rooms were set around an open cloister and there was no going to church or meals or daily tasks or bed without being out of doors time and again. Since coming to Coldharbour she had only been inside and found sudden pleasure at the thought of being out for even a little while.

“You’ll find it small,” Lady Jane warned while folding her sewing to put aside, “but the walls will keep off the wind.”

Having fetched their cloaks and gone down the stairs to the small room at their foot, they went not into the great hall but rightward to a shut door, unlike the one to the hall that seemed to be always open. “We go through the solar to reach the garden,” Lady Jane said in explanation. Then in surprise and greeting as she opened the door, “Master Bruneau!”

The solar was far smaller than the lady chamber but more richly furnished with, among other things a long, cushioned settle in front of the fireplace, a carpeted floor and tapestried walls paneled in golden oak instead of merely plastered, with a long window looking out into the garden to fill the room with light. Nothing lacked for the comfort and ease of Coldharbour’s lord and lady, which made reasonable Lady Jane’s surprise at finding Master Bruneau there with some several score of parchment rolls spread across the carpeted floor and two clerks crouched on their heels, holding more rolls in their hands and others tucked in the crooks of their arms, the faces of all three and Master Bruneau’s voice tense with concentration as he pointed and said, “There, to your left, Ralph. That one, yes,” and as one of the clerks picked up a scroll from among the others, “Give it to Francis, it goes with his.”

Ralph handed it over to Francis who took it with no obvious gratitude to add to the ones he already held while Master Bruneau looked up at Lady Jane and Frevisse and said with a tired smile and a bow, “My ladies, pardon.”

“What’s happened?” Lady Jane asked in mingled curiosity and mild alarm. “What are all these?”

“The records of my lord’s properties in France for these ten years past.”

“But…” Lady Jane gestured at the disordered sprawl.

Master Bruneau nodded agreement that this was neither the usual place nor way for dealing with records. “I purposed to go over them, to compare how they all did, one year against the next. I had them laid out on the shelves of an aumbry but Geffry stumbled over something, the club-footed idiot, the misbred…” Francis and Ralph looked up to hear what Master Bruneau had to say this time about Geffry but he stopped, drew breath, and said more temporately, “He grabbed the open aumbry door to save himself and pulled it over and these fell everywhere. So.” He spread his hands out over the chaos spread in front of him. “Lady Alice gave me leave to use here to lay them all out to sort them into order again.” His eyes were roving over his scattered work and he pointed at another scroll, “There. Francis.”

“We’ll leave you to it and wish you Godspeed,” Lady Jane said with sympathy and led Frevisse on across the room to a door opposite where they had entered. There was a third door, at the room’s far end, that must lead into some other chamber or to a stairway, but theirs was beside the window and into the garden, and they opened, went through, and closed it quickly, lest a treacherous wind gust add to Master Bruneau’s troubles.

“He’s a good man, is Master Bruneau,” Lady Jane said while making sure of the latch. “A kind man. I like him. Here’s our garden. I told you it was small.”

It was. The merest scrap of a garden tucked tightly in between the blank backs of buildings and a short stretch of wall, with a few short gravel paths between a few empty flower beds, at the far end a single winter-barren tree tied out against a building, and a brief, winter-naked arbor that in summer with its latticing and leafed vines would have hid the narrow, closed, undoubtedly locked door that Frevisse judged led through the wall there into Coldharbour’s rear courtyard. She drew a deep, satisfied breath of cuttingly cold air not even slightly thickened with smoke and too many people too closely kept together, all London’s possible smells of streets and coal smoke and river swept away by the wind today. But though the garden walls gave protection, as Lady Jane had promised, there was no protection from the cold and they both close-wrapped their cloaks around themselves and up toward their ears as they walked the first gravelled path. There was nowhere far to go and little to see but blank housewalls and dead garden, and they reached, almost as soon as they began to walk, the path’s end and turned aside into another. It did not matter; Frevisse was simply glad to be out-of-doors.

Beside her Lady Jane, following her own thoughts, said, “He’s lonely, I think, since his wife died. Master Bruneau.” She paused to poke at a root thrust out of the garden bed. “She died in the spring, not long after I’d come, and it’s only lately I’ve ever seen Master Bruneau smile.”

“Was she French?” Frevisse asked.

“From Rouen, like Master Bruneau. They came to England with my uncle Suffolk years ago, when he shifted his interest from serving in France to seeing how things would go for him here.”

“What do you think of your…” Frevisse started to ask but thought better of it.

“My uncle?” Lady Jane seemed unbothered by the question. “There’s not much to think. We’ve had little to do with one another, not even enough to come to like or dislike. To me he was my way out of the nunnery. To him I’m a trouble that my marriage will end.”

They had reached the arbor end of the garden, were turning back, with men’s voices and a barrel being rolled over cobbles confirming Frevisse’s guess that the rearyard lay beyond the wall there, when Alice, uncloaked, came out from the solar, saw them, beckoned them, and started toward them, wrapping her arms around herself as she came. “Please God, no trouble,” Lady Jane murmured, matching Frevisse’s first thought at seeing Alice there unaccompanied, and they both went toward her, hurrying, but saw, meeting her midway along the path, that nothing was very wrong.

“There’s word come for you, Frevisse,” she said. “You’re asked to visit St. Helen’s Bishopgate, today if you could.”

With sinking heart, Frevisse said, “Of course I can,” her hope ended that she need never, after all, be part of Alice’s secrets.

“I’ve ordered an escort to meet you in the rearyard. They may already be there. It took time to find where you’d gone.” Lady Jane began to offer apology for that but Alice said, un-worried, “It’s no matter. I found you and you can easily go out this way. Jane, I want you to go with her. She has to be attended and you’re here and ready.”

Lady Jane’s face went abruptly blank. “My head,” she said.

Alice had turned them back toward the arbor door but stopped, saying, “Oh, yes. You’re uncovered.” It was one thing for an unmarried woman to go bareheaded at home, another thing for her to go out that way. “Go fetch something,” Alice said and Lady Jane turned quickly back for the solar door, leaving Alice to lead Frevisse on the other way, to take a key out of a crevice between stones of the wall beside the door with, “I’ll let you out this way and lock the door behind you. Jane will come out through the hall.” But as she fitted key to lock, she stopped, faced Frevisse, and said with smothered urgency, “Remember, for the world and his brother to know, you’re simply going to St. Helen’s to talk with your new prioress over something. There’s no need to make it look like anything more. But you understand that.”

Frevisse did. It was Alice’s intensity about it that puzzled her. Was Alice’s ambition grown so great the messages mattered that much to her? But despite all their fondness for each other, they were not close enough for Frevisse to ask her anything like that and so said only, “You’d best go in before you take a chill and have to be put to bed with hot mustard plasters.”

Those had been a favorite remedy of Frevisse’s Aunt Matilda and a horror of Alice’s childhood, and she cried out with mock disgust, “Frevisse! How vile of you to remember that!”

“Of course if I take a chill,” Frevisse offered, “you can always order one for me.”

“And I will!” Alice promised, laughing, and turned the key.

Chapter 12

It being not yet None and the day’s trade still at its height, the streets were far more crowded than when Frevisse had come from St. Helen’s, with not only London’s folk but all those come early into the city to do their business, whether selling or buying. The shop fronts were open, their shutters swung down to make their counters and their goods displayed to the crowd and jostle of people going by, much hurried against the wind’s busy tangling of their skirts, cloaks, veils, but making way for Frevisse’s escort of six mounted squires good-humoredly enough, or her escort making way for them, whichever was best from one time to the next. As they rode out of Thames Street Frevisse leaned toward Lady Jane riding beside her and asked, voice raised to be heard, “Have you seen much of London?”

“Only when we first rode in. Not since.” She was wearing a wimple and simple veil now, the wimple covering much of the blemished side of her face and her cloak’s hood pulled well up and forward hiding more of it though she had to ride one-handed to hold the hood in place against the wind.

Frevisse began to name and tell her about places they passed, and Lady Jane responded with quick interest and questions until they rode into St. Helen’s yard, where squires and horses went one way, Frevisse and Lady Jane to the cloister door, to be told by Sister Clemens, who remembered Frevisse, that the nuns were at None and would be going to dinner afterwards but they were expected—or Frevisse was, at least— and they were welcome to wait in the parlor and their own dinner would be brought for them if they liked. “And hot, spiced wine, too,” Sister Clemens said happily. “We’re all having it at dinner today against this cold. Isn’t the wind fierce just now?”

Lady Jane had put back her hood once she was inside. The red, raised mark along her face showed the more boldly against the white edge of her wimple, and Sister Clemens’ eyes kept straying to it, so that with a sudden thought Frevisse asked, “Might Lady Adela join us? Would it be allowed her to dine with us, do you think?” A belated consideration; she had not thought of the child since leaving her here, but Sister Clemens’ straying attention diverted fully back to her.

“I don’t see why she couldn’t. Yes, certainly. I’m sure Dame Beatrix would allow it. She’s a sweet child, isn’t she?”

That was not quite the word Frevisse would have chosen if asked to describe Lady Adela but she said nothing. Sister Clemens curtsied and bustled out, and Lady Jane sank into a chair with a heart-deep sigh. “Did the ride tire you?” Frevisse asked.

“Not the ride. The being looked at,” Lady Jane said. “The knowing I’m being looked at differently from how people look at other people.” She did not sound hurt so much as puzzled. “Part of me wishes I could hide away and never be looked at again, but another part of me wants to say, ”Stare, if that’s what you want! I don’t care!“ and just go on with my life, ignoring them all.”

“In the nunnery everyone was used to you. If you’d stayed there, you’d have had to deal with none of this.”

“Do you think desire to hide is reason enough to be a nun?” Lady Jane asked mildly, a fair thrust in answer to an unfair one.

“For some,” Frevisse said.

“Not for you, I think. Whyever you became a nun, it wasn’t to hide from anything. Nor would I be a nun for the sake of hiding from my own face, from my own life.”

“No matter what it brings?”

“Isn’t that how we all have to live our lives?” Lady Jane asked with her wry, warm smile. “With no matter what it brings?”

A brief scratch at the door was followed by Sister Clemens coming in, brightly saying, “Here she is! Make your curtsy nicely, my lady.”

Lady Adela made a curtsy and then stood, hands folded in front of her, looking at the floor while Frevisse gave Sister Clemens thanks and Sister Clemens promised to have their dinners brought soon and left, but at the small thud of the closing door, Lady Adela’s head jerked up and she demanded at Frevisse, “Have you come back to stay? Dame Perpetua didn’t know when you’d be back or when you’d both be leaving. Are you here to leave?”