The Maiden’s Tale (18 page)

Frevisse refuged in humility, bowing her head to avoid his gaze. “I know my place as a woman, my lord. To listen and hold silent.”

Bishop Beaufort made a sound perilously near a snort. “I learned early that there are women who choose their places rather than ‘know’ it, my lady. My mother, God keep her soul, was one, and you, I think, are another. It’s why I trust you.”

Frevisse did not want his trust; she wanted him to forget she existed and raised her eyes not to him but away to below the dais where the first dance in its wide circle in the center of the hall was coming to an end with a flourish of drums and much bowing and curtsying and laughter among the dancers. Throughout the hall there was a flow and shift of people leaving the dancing and others going into it, and now would be a goodly time for Bishop Beaufort to leave her graciously, she thought. Hoped.

He did not, said instead, “Tell me what think you of your Abbot Gilberd. Is he as clever as he thinks he is?”

Frevisse held back from an immediate answer, trying to gauge Bishop Beaufort’s purpose in asking, then said slowly, “He’s able to choose the end he wants and has a grasp of what’s needed to attain it, I think.”

“Would he be of use to me in my matters or is all his seeing only at a surface of things?”

Bishop Beaufort had used her before to find out if someone might be useful to him; she had not liked it then, either, and said without forethinking, “I think he’s of best use as he is, seeing to his monastery and the souls in his care.”

Bishop Beaufort raised his eyebrows. “Which, if you were pushed to it, you’d probably tell me I should also do.”

Frevisse was rescued from answering that by a squire pausing in his circling through the crowd to offer them parchment-thin, crisply golden wafers from a silver plate. Frevisse refused with thanks but Bishop Beaufort took three and asked, “Is there wine?”

“I’ll have it brought, my lord,” the man said, withdrawing with a bow.

Frevisse was considering how to withdraw, too, when Bishop Beaufort’s attention went beyond her with a suddenly sharpened focus that turned her to see what he was looking at. A man in the bishop’s livery making his way purposefully toward them among the generally vague drift of guests and servants. And Bishop Beaufort murmured, “Now what is this?” and because it would have been beneath his dignity to move to meet the man, took Frevisse by the arm with, “By your leave, my lady, let me,”‘ to help her down from the dais with the appearance of doing her a courtesy rather than himself a service, and then took her with him as he went toward the man. Meeting him as the music rose to the increasing pace of another dance, Bishop Beaufort gestured the fellow out of his bow and brought him to speak close in his ear, too low for anyone, even Frevisse, to make out what he said.

Whatever it was, Bishop Beaufort was rigidly still for a moment after the man had finished, then said something rapidly back into the man’s ear, paused for the man to answer him, then spoke again, ending by giving the man’s shoulder a light slap of emphasis and dismissal. The man jerked into a brief, low bow and began to make away through the crowd while Bishop Beaufort, nothing amiss in his face except that there was too much of nothing there, turned back to Frevisse and in the turning, turned her so her back was to the hall as he said for only her to hear, “Keep your face from showing anything. Bring Lady Alice to me in the solar as quickly as may be without anyone taking note of it. Someone has tried to kill the duke of Orleans.”

Chapter
17

It took a politic manuevering and probably longer than Bishop Beaufort wanted for Frevisse to wend her way among the crowd while trying to seem more interested in watching the dancing than actually going anywhere. She even accepted a wafer from a passing servant’s tray and nibbled at it as she went, until at last she was able to sidle in among the men and a few women presently gathered around Alice. Smiling, listening, hiding her urgency, she waited until at the end of the dance the little group began to disassemble, to flow apart as people did at gatherings like this, and in the shifting managed to say for only Alice to hear, “Bishop Beaufort wants to see you in the solar privately and soon.”

Alice, her smile as unwavered as if she were merely hearing something pleasant, laid a hand on her arm and murmured, “Keep with me, please.”

Much as Frevisse had done in coming to her, she eased, indirectly and unobviously, back toward the dais without ever being either ungracious or caught too long in any conversation with almost everyone they met. She was adroit at it and not until almost to the dais did they run aground on the broad impediment of a lady who should not have been wearing the plunge-necked, tawny-orange gown trimmed in black velvet that she was and who was determined, having the chance, to hold Alice in profoundest talk about how one found and kept such unusually skilled cooks as the Suffolk household had.

Alice listened and made answer and listened again with more patience than Frevisse wanted her to have, but there was purpose to it because as the dance ended and the floor began to clear, instead of the minstrels striking up for another dance, the tumblers from earlier in the evening came rollicking back into the lower end of the hall, gaudy and shouting and flinging themselves into their leaps, contortions, and tumbles with an abandon that startled everyone. There was no way not to notice them and, laughing and applauding, everyone did, including the broad matron, and Alice in the instant that the woman’s attention turned aside had hold of Frevisse’s arm and was drawing her away to the stairway door and through it. Nor did she pause, even to ask what this was about but, keeping Frevisse with her, went immediately on, into the solar where Bishop Beaufort was waiting for them beside a table where a single-wicked oil lamp, left burning for the evening on the chance someone would withdraw to here, spread a small brightness against the room’s crowding shadows. The little light and much shadows planed his features to a harshness that showed more openly than Frevisse had ever seen the possibilities there were in him, but Alice, perhaps already knowing that side of him well enough not to be taken aback, asked as she crossed to him, leaving Frevisse to make sure of the door, “What’s wrong?”

“Orleans,” Bishop Beaufort answered as directly. “Someone has tried to kill him.”

In the room’s shadowed quiet Alice’s gasp was audible, and then she thrust out her hands toward him, asking “How badly is he hurt?”

Bishop Beaufort took her hands, steadying her as he answered, “The man missed his blow. Orleans’ not hurt at all. A torn doublet is the worst. No wound.”

Alice let out a thankful breath with a prayer in it and took back her hands. “They have the man who tried it?”

“He’s taken. He’s being held.”

“By whom?”

“My people.”

“How many know of this?”

“I don’t know. Very few. The three men attending on Orleans were the ones who stopped him. Two of them are holding the man, the other came to tell me of it. There’s likely no one else knows.”

“So it’s still a secret Orleans is here.” Alice had recovered enough to assess how things stood. “Except to whoever sent the assassin,” she added grimly.

“Yes,” Bishop Beaufort agreed with equal grimness. “And that we will find out. The man will be questioned.” He made it sound an unpleasant prospect for the man. “But even more immediately we have to decide what’s to be done with Orleans. If it’s known he’s at Winchester House, I can’t assure his safety. That only lay in no one knowing he was there. There’s too much come-and-go of people day in and out that can’t be helped.”

“Have him brought here.”

“Here?” Bishop Beaufort questioned.

“Here. Here in this room. The door toward the hall can be locked. That door,” she nodded into the shadows at the far end of the room, “leads to the stairs to Suffolk’s chambers. No one unknown can come through there unnoticed and unstopped. The outer door,” she pointed to it, “goes only into the garden and can be locked, too. So can the garden door into the rearyard. Orleans can stay here and no one would know or be able to reach him except as we choose.”

“It would soon be obvious someone was being kept here,” Bishop Beaufort said.

“It doesn’t have to be obvious. If I don’t choose to use the solar—and mostly I don’t—who’s to wonder? What I do or don’t do is my concern.”

“He would have to be fed, attended. Something of that would cause comment sooner or later.”

“Some might come to wonder but so long as no one was certain who’s here and no one sees him but who we know is safe, it won’t matter if they wonder. Not for the little time he has to be here. A few days at most, surely. When is he to see the king?”

“In three days’ time.”

“Can it be sooner?”

Their shadowed, lamp-lit faces mirrored each other’s deep purposing as Bishop Beaufort answered, beginning to sound as if he believed her plan might work, “I don’t know. Possibly. Because of this, yes, very likely Henry will see him sooner. He no more wants Orleans dead or hurt than we do.” And then, “Suffolk will have to be asked about bringing him here.”

“We need to move on this sooner than he can be told. He’ll accept it when he knows but Orleans should be brought now, without delay, before whoever set the attack on him has time to know it failed and sets another.”

Alice spoke with complete assurance that Bishop Beaufort accepted with, “I’ll send word for him to be brought immediately. All the coming and going tonight will likely cover his coming here.”

“Frevisse,” Alice said.

Frevisse, listening intently but apart from it all, startled at being noticed and said, “Yes?”

“You understand what we mean to do?”

“Yes.”

“You remember where the key to the garden door is kept? You saw me take it out this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Go and be sure and put it in the lock while you’re there.”

“And the key to this door?” Frevisse asked, going toward the solar’s outer door.

“It should be in its lock.”

It was and Frevisse let herself out into the blackness and cold of the garden, unwillingly shutting the door between her and the slight lamplight, needing to stand for a moment while her eyes accepted the darkness and finding while she did that there was enough torchlight from the rearyard flung over the wall to help her make her way along the path to the garden door. In the unrelieved shadows under the barren arbor she had to fumble to find the key in its crack between stones but it was there and by feel she slipped it into the unseen lock, as Alice wanted, then, with the cold beginning to cut even through her furred gown, hurried back along the path to the solar where Alice and Bishop Beaufort had not moved from beside the table but were in heavy talk that they broke off for Alice to turn to her and ask, “It’s there?”

“It’s there and in the lock.” Frevisse joined them at the table to hold her stiffened fingers into the warmth above the lamp flame.

“Will you wait here,” Alice asked, “for Orleans?”

Frevisse gave a swift look first to her, then to Bishop Beaufort, and asked in return, “Why?”

Instead of Alice, Bishop Beaufort answered, “What we purpose is this. I’ll send word that Orleans is to be brought secretly across from Winchester House to Coldharbour’s river gate and across the rearyard to that garden door. You’ll be there to let him in and bring him into the solar, and you’ll keep with him until Lady Alice or my lord of Suffolk come to him.”

“And you?” Frevisse asked.

“I spend the evening here as I intended to and go back to Winchester House at its end as if nothing were untoward. What else we’ll do will have to be decided later.” He looked to Alice. “Agreed?”

She nodded that it was.

“Then we had best both be returning to the hall before we’re more noticeably missed,” Bishop Beaufort said. “I’ll go by way of your husband’s chamber, by your leave,” he added but did not wait for any leave, just went away into the shadows toward the door at the far end of the solar, silent moving for so large a man except for the heavy satin rustle of his crimson robes.

When a small snick of the door’s latch falling into place told he was gone, Alice turned to seize hold of both Frevisse’s hands and ask, “You understand how necessary this is? That my lord of Orleans be kept safe? You understand? Both France and Burgundy have said they won’t deal in peace without the duke of Orleans is part of it. He has to be kept safe.”

Remembering Alice at the window this afternoon, looking out across the Thames to Winchester House where Orleans was, Frevisse was afraid that something other than peace was at stake in this for her and started to ask something, thought the better of it, and said instead, “Don’t fear. I’ll do all I can here. But you’d better go.”

Alice squeezed her hands, let her go, and was gone.

Left alone with the shadows and her thoughts, Frevisse found neither of them comfort or good company. She did not know how long she would have to wait for Orleans to come. A while and a while, she feared, and even longer if the tide was running strong, slowing the crossing. But at least she was alone, and glad of that, she sat down in one of the cushioned chairs, folded her hands in her lap, and because there was no use in thinking about what would or wouldn’t happen with Orleans coming here, resolutely turned her mind to Compline, the last office of any day, the evening prayers before bed. At St. Frideswide’s, it would be long past, the nuns asleep in their cells until midnight, when they would wake and go to the church for Matins and Lauds. For her here in Coldharbour there had been scant chance for any of the day’s offices, let be the pleasure of going to sleep with hope of waking in time for the midnight prayers. As things were, tonight she was likely to be still awake for them without sleep at all; but in compensation she had pause now for at least some of the prayers she had missed and she bowed her head to them with, “
Jube, domne, benedicere. Noctem quietam etfinem perfectum concedat nobis Dominus omnipotens.”‘
Pray, lord, a blessing. May the almighty Lord give to us a quiet night and a perfect end.

A quiet night, with what they were purposing to do simply done and Orleans as safe, as hidden here, as might be managed.