The Maiden’s Tale (23 page)

Fulk was handing the filled goblets around now. Suffolk took his and raised it toward Orleans. “To your freedom, my lord, and peace with France! Which may be sooner even than we’re hoping.” He smiled widely. “You’re to see the king tomorrow, my lord! You’re to go on the last of the afternoon tide upriver to him at Kennington, with Gloucester none the wiser, taken up as he is with wooing this present crop of commoners. Not that it will do him any good; we’ve sewn up Tresham to be elected Speaker like a pig in a poke. You’ll be free by Easter. Mark my words and drink to it!”

They did, all of them, and maybe it was only the firelight made the seeming-mocking glint in Orleans’ eyes over the silver rim of his goblet while he did.

Chapter 20

Through all the talking, eating, Suffolk’s jesting over Orleans’ poem when the duke read it after supper with an exaggerated acting out of his grief at Fortune’s unfavor, bringing them all to laughter, nothing showed between Alice and Orleans, of what had been between them that afternoon. Nothing passed between them that should not, and somehow that made it the worse for Frevisse, because if they could hide that so well, what else were they able to hide? And now she was part of their deception and saw neither way she could remain so or escape it without great harm done where least she wanted any.

So she held quiet and apart all through the evening and through the evening’s end when she and Lady Jane followed Alice up to her bedchamber, Lady Jane locking the solar’s hallward door behind them, leaving Orleans and Suffolk in talk. Alice on her part made no conversation as they went up the stairs, and then her women were waiting to see her to bed, giving no chance for talk out of the ordinary until finally the women left and Lady Jane went to pull out the truckle bed and Alice to kneel at her prie-dieu at the room’s far end.

The prie-dieu, like all else she had, was beautifully made, with its embroidered kneeling cushion worked with gold thread and the crucifix on the wall above it both gilded and painted, the prayer book on its rest illuminated on every page with, at the very least, brightly wrought flowers, birds, and beasts. Alice, kneeling there in her miniver-trimmed bedgown, her shiningly fair hair brushed down her back to her waist, her head bent to her prayers, was equally as beautifully, as expensively made but with the difference, Frevisse thought as she stood waiting to one side for her to finish, that Alice had an immortal soul that could be damned or saved and was in danger now.

Her own readying for bed had been simpler than Alice’s. Used, as a nun, to dress and undress herself, all she had needed do tonight was ungown down to her chemise, wash, then wrap her cloak around her for warmth against the room’s creeping cold as the fire sank. She had left her soft shoes on, too, and her feet had only begun to chill when Alice finished with her prayers, made the sign of the cross over her breast, stood up, and turned toward Frevisse without surprise, as if expecting she would be there, and to what Frevisse had not said agreed, “Yes. We must needs talk.” Calm about it, only betrayed by a stiffness in how she stood. “You saw too much this afternoon.”

“I saw enough,” Frevisse answered, careful to match her calm.

“And would have been better pleased if you had not,” Alice said.

“Much better pleased.”

“And now?”

Now, Frevisse knew, was when she had to say she would be no more part of it, that the most she would do was withdraw from it quietly, saying nothing to anyone.

But to withdraw from all of it because of the wrong there was between Alice and Orleans, when she had promised to help in the matter of the French peace, would make a second wrong without solving theirs; and while she held silent with the problem of it, the color rose in Alice’s face. “Frevisse, about Orleans and me…”

Frevisse cut her off. “Alice, I don’t want to know more than I already do of what’s between you and Orleans. If I’m to…” To what? “… I must not know.”

“Frevisse, there’s nothing more to know than what you’ve seen. There’s love between us, yes, but nothing beyond what you saw today. Nothing.”

“Alice…”

“Frevisse, you know the distance there always has to be between desire and doing in any but the most holy of lives. We either desire a virtue beyond our easy reach or have to fight against sins attained all too easily. It’s the latter way with Orleans and me, I swear it. Our minds delight in each other. We take pleasure in each other’s company. We’ve touched. We’ve even kissed. But nothing more. Nothing with shame in it. Nothing…” Alice paused, eyes closed, hands clenched while she fought something that desperately hurt before she was able to say on a sobbing breath of regret, “Nothing of the body.”

Forcing her own voice to a steadiness she did not feel, Frevisse said, “Swear it. By the Virgin, by Mary Magdalene, by your hope of heaven, swear that it’s as you say between you.”

Without hesitation, Alice put out her hand to the crucifix. “By the Virgin Mary, by St. Mary Magdalene, by my hope of heaven, I swear there’s been no wrong done between us, that there is love but nothing more, nothing of shame, nothing of sin between me and his grace the duke of Orleans.”

Quarrel could be made over what was shame and sin and what was not, but to Frevisse’s mind, time came, too, for not judging another, lest one be judged in turn. She had asked Alice’s oath and Alice had given it. She accepted it. But that did not preclude knowing more, and she asked, “Why does it happen Lady Jane knows of you and Orleans?”

“She doesn’t…” Alice began.

“She gave it away this afternoon, defending you to me.”

They had been keeping their voices low but across the room Lady Jane, waiting to be needed, lifted her head at that. She might not have heard much but she likely guessed and Alice said at her, “No, it’s well. Go to bed, please, Jane,” and waited while she slipped into the shadows beyond the bed, the ropes holding the truckle mattress creaking a little with her settling before Alice went on, very low now, “What did she tell you?”

“That you had sworn to her there was no shame between you and Orleans, and when I pressed her for why you had need to swear it, that she holds a secret for you.”

“That’s all she gave away? And only in defending me?” Alice sounded warmed by it. “All the saints keep her.”

“What’s the secret?” Frevisse asked, not diverted.

Alice regarded her gravely for a moment, then answered, “Everyone knows that Orleans writes poetry. He makes a jest of it, does it to pass his time and amuse people. Mostly courtly laments in praise of someone’s beauty and complaint that she does not love him. He’s written to any number of ladies he’s met and to Dame Fortune and even once to one of our dogs ‘so dark of eye and warm of heart,” and mostly they’re for us to laugh at. But there are others that he shares with nearly no one. The ones to his wife, for instance, especially those after her death. Some he’s let me read. They hurt.“

“And then there are the ones he’s written to you, for only you to read,” Frevisse said quietly.

Alice tried to answer, failed, and finally managed, “Yes.”

“The ones you’ve been foolish enough to keep.”

“They’re locked away with the best of my jewelry, where no one can come to them. Jane is bid to destroy them if anything happens to me, rather than have them found out and used against Orleans if he’s still prisoner.” By someone such as her husband.

“Surely neither you nor Orleans is named?”

“No, but they’re in his handwriting and have been kept secretly. There’d be no trouble guessing and surely too much made of it.”

Frevisse shook her head. “What would Bishop Beaufort make of such a danger to his calculations toward peace?”

“He knows,” Alice said flatly. “One of the reasons I’m a link in passing messages between Charles and the duke of Burgundy is so that sometimes we can write each other.”

“You serve Bishop Beaufort to further the ambitions you and Suffolk share, and at the same time to write and hear from Orleans. Beaufort keeps your secret, lets your letters pass, and thereby has a hold on both of you that he can use as he chooses, when and if he chooses to use it. Oh, Alice.” But the thing was past reproof at the foolish danger of it. “You have to have had at least some of these poems for longer than the while Lady Jane has been with you. What did you do about them before now?”

“Mistress Bruneau held my secret before Jane did. She’d been one of my ladies since before I married Suffolk. She knew how it was between Charles and me, and about the poems. When she died this spring, Jane was to hand and so grateful to me as well as being kin, I turned to her with the secret.”

“And when Jane marries and leaves you?”

“I’ll have thought of something, of someone, by then,” Alice answered in a way that told she was worried but would not answer more.

So instead Frevisse asked gently, “Alice, when Orleans is free, when he returns to France and no one in England has control over him anymore, what then?”

“Then nothing,” Alice answered levelly.

“Nothing?”

“You mean, do I run away and join him there and we live together in our love and joy in despite of everyone?” Alice’s voice was curt with pain and she was straining to hold back tears as past a grief she knew she would never be rid of, she said bitterly, “Neither of us is so fool-ridden as to think that possible. No, when he goes free and back to France, that will be the end of everything between us. We’ve always known that.”

“And nonetheless you’ll help it happen, help him go free?”

“How can I not?” On the sob of a deep breath. And then on a feint of laughter, “Besides, part of the duke of Burgundy’s price for helping Charles go free is that he marry Burgundy’s niece. I hardly think it would be politic for me to show up to be his mistress after that.”

Gently, because all else aside, Alice was in pain, Frevisse said, “If it goes as you hope, he’ll be free and he’ll be gone and he’ll be married. What of you then? How will it be with you?”

“With me?” Alice tried again for laughter. “With me it will be as it always is, since ever I came to love two men at once. I’ll go on as countess of Suffolk, torn in two directly through my heart.”

Chapter 21

The next morning, as she and Alice had agreed the night before, Frevisse again parted company from her before breakfast, to spend the day with Orleans but this time alone because, as Alice said, “It would be noticeably strange if Jane withdrew for another day but it won’t be much remarked on if you do.” And added, knowing as well as Frevisse did that the Rule forbade a nun to be alone with a man, “Bishop Beaufort will give you dispensation for it. Or pardon. Whatever best meets the need afterward.”

It was an answer that had to serve because there was no better, things being as they were, so as the other women gathered to go downstairs, Frevisse went aside to take up her breviary and wait for them to go; but Alice came after her and said, not bothering to make a secret of it from anyone who might hear her, “I know you asked to be left to your prayers again today, but I had the thought you might like to see Edmund and Jasper. If you wanted, I could send for them. They could spend the afternoon.”

For several sufficient reasons Frevisse remembered the two very little boys who had sheltered in St. Frideswide’s three years ago, in flight from someone who wanted them dead. They would be seven and eight years old now? She had kept them in her prayers without ever a particular desire to see them but she knew a cue when she heard it and said for the benefit of anyone listening, “Yes, please, how lovely.”

Alice and her women went, Lady Jane among them with never chance since yesterday for Frevisse to question her more, and Frevisse went down to the solar. Alice had given her the key to the solar that Lady Jane had used yesterday, and after scratching at the door to warn Orleans she was coming, she unlocked it, slipped in and locked it again before turning to make courtesy to Orleans seated at the window. As he had done yesterday, he had set open a shutter to the morning light and now rose to his feet saying, “My lady, join me if you will,” and Frevisse, though she would rather have not, crossed the room to him, noticing as she went that the fire was burning high and that a used basin and shaving things sat by the door at the room’s far end, showing his needs had already been somewhat seen to this morning.

Answering her glance, Orleans said, “William.” He sat and gestured her to do the same. “No Lady Jane? You are to keep me company alone today?”

Frevisse sat and opened another of the shutters to the bright morning light and cloudless sky. The night must have been colder; a thick frost covered much of the lower windowpanes. “Lady Alice thought Lady Jane’s absence two days together, even for piety’s sake, might cause comment.”

“Your absence will not? Even for piety’s sake?”

“I’m too lately come to Coldharbour for anyone to know what’s likely or unlikely with me. My desire for prayer may be a curiosity but, so far as anyone knows me, not remarkable.”

“You have not long been with your cousin?”

“Only since this Monday past.”

“Ah,” Orleans said and left the word there between them.

They had been making conversation out of the obvious, but the obvious had kept at bay many an awkward silence, and taking her turn at it, Frevisse said, “I should have thought to bring you a new occupation. You’ve wearied of the
Confessio!”

“Not in the slightest. I was simply otherwise engaged.” Orleans indicated the window’s thick rime of frost, its cold white patterning of ice ferns and stars presently fired to a brilliance of crystal and gold by the slanted rays of the just-rising sun striking through them. “I was looking at beauty. Considering it. Whether it has value or only the illusion of value, and on what that value or its illusion depends.” He moved his right hand so that the ring he wore caught the sunlight in its unflawed emerald, played with the green flare of light, catching and letting it go, before he said, “I have had, now and again in my life, a great many jewels. Owned them, as it is said. But when I am long since less than dust, they will all, like this one…” He made the fire come and go again in the emerald. “… still be beautiful. Beautiful now, beautiful tomorrow, beautiful for eternity. Or at least until Doomsday and the end of everything.” He ceased to play with the ring, instead put out his hand toward the window’s glowing frost but did not touch it, knowing as surely as Frevisse did that it would melt from his merest finger’s warmth if he did, its beauty as utterly gone as if it had never been, as he said quietly. “Yet here and now this patterning of frost that no one but you and I will see and soon forget we ever did—this patterning of frost with the sunlight blazing through it is more beautiful than any jewel I have ever seen, more beautiful than anything that I could ever dream. Beauty in something almost as perishable as breath. Beauty there is no hope or future for. Is it worth less because of that? Or worth more? Or worth nothing?” He turned his gaze to Frevisse. “That was what I was wondering when you came in.”