The Maiden’s Tale (27 page)

“My lord of Orleans is stabbed.”

Bishop Beaufort stared at her incomprehendingly, then swore, “Blessed St. John of the bosom of Christ!” belatedly thought to cross himself and started to go past her. “How badly is he hurt?”

Frevisse moved into his way. “He’s alive and being helped. What you need do is give order for all ways out of Coldharbour to be locked and watched. Now, before whoever did it leaves. No one in or out by land or water, and blood looked for on anyone trying to leave. Blood looked for on anyone.”

Abruptly Bishop Beaufort grasped what she was telling him, said “Yes,” and began giving rapid orders around him. Leaving him to it, Frevisse headed back through the seethe of men toward Coldharbour’s hall and Alice. She encountered Suffolk in the screens passage, heading toward the outer door, saying to Master Gallard among the people crowded around him, “I’m going to stop Beaufort from leaving. He’ll listen to no one but me and we need him in this! Lady Alice will see to what needs doing here.”

Frevisse stood aside to the wall to let him pass, then overtook Master Gallard as he turned back into the great hall, asking him, “Where has Orleans been taken?”

“Lady Alice’s bedchamber,” he answered. “The stairs to there are wider than to my lord Suffolk’s. He could be carried.”

“He was walking!”

“Not when he reached here,” Master Gallard said grimly.

There was a clutter of women and servants in the lady chamber, talking and exclaiming. Frevisse wasted no time on them or on Lady Sibill guarding the doorway to Alice’s bedroom and exclaiming with the rest of them how terrible it was; willing to explain to Frevisse, too, but Frevisse pushed past and shut the door against her. Let her guard it from outside.

William and Adam were just lowering Orleans onto the bed, where the bedcovers had been stripped to the bedfoot and a thick, dark blanket laid over the sheet, to take the blood there would be. He was still conscious; he groaned despite their care, and Alice, close, hands twisted together, desperate-eyed and desperately calm, flinched but did not cease ordering her women, “Katherine, tie back the bedcurtains. We need more light there. Aneys, find Master Hyndstoke and bid him hurry, on his life. And fetch the priest. Tell him to come with what’s needful, there’s a man hurt. Jane, yes, you’re heating water, thank you. Wine,” she demanded and went herself before anyone else could, to pour a goblet full from what had been waiting for her bedtime, ordering as she did, “William, lift him so he can drink. Adam, guard outside the door. Send people away. Tell Lady Sibill to be quiet. Lady Jane, Dame Frevisse, you stay. The rest of you go. All of you.”

They went as she ordered, leaving Frevisse and Lady Jane. At the bed William with an arm behind the pillows had raised Orleans enough that he was able to drink when Alice came to him and held the goblet to his lips. He gave her the smallest of smiles when he had done, then closed his eyes again while William laid him carefully down. But when Alice had set the goblet aside and began to undo his doublet, he took her by the wrist and said gently, as if there were no one there to hear him but her, “No, sweetling. Let be. You shouldn’t see it.”

Alice began to answer, “If I can stop the bleeding…” but a man undoubtedly the doctor came hurriedly in, followed by two assistants carrying things, and on the instant, brisk with certainty, made the matter all his own, and Lady Jane went to draw Alice back from the bed, out of the way and aside to Frevisse standing beyond the fireplace.

William joined them there, going not to Lady Jane but Frevisse’s other side from Alice, to whisper in her ear, “There’s blood on your cloak and hand, my lady.”

Frevisse had forgotten there would be; now noticed it was dried and stiff on her and drew back and went to the wash basin and pitcher of water that had been waiting for Alice. With her mind clamped shut against thinking that what she washed off was blood out of a someone she knew, she cleaned her hand, took off Orleans’ cloak and laid it over a chair for someone to deal with later.

The priest came in then, carrying his box of necessaries and purple-stoled for the last rites, but Master Hyndstoke shot him a sideways look without raising his head from helping cut Orleans’ clothing away and said, “Not yet.” The priest looked to Lady Alice, the quarrel over precedence between doctors set to save the body and priests set to save the soul being an old one, and Alice hesitated before nodding in confirmation of Master Hyndstoke’s refusal.

“Pray, and be ready if the need comes,” she said, and the priest set down his gilded box on the chest at the foot of the bed with a reproachful look at her and knelt to pray.

“You should sit, my lady,” Lady Jane said, but Alice shook her head in refusal and stayed where she was, where she was able to watch whatever was done to Orleans while the men unclothed him to the waist and then eased him to his unhurt side for better view of the wound. Suffolk and Bishop Beaufort entered during that, would have gone to the bed but were waved back by the doctor, so that Bishop Beaufort settled for demanding from where he was, “How is it? How bad?” And when Master Hyndstoke gave him only a grunt for an answer, asked “Orleans?”

Breathing unevenly, riding the pain of whatever was being done to him, Orleans answered tersely, “I’m here.”

“See that you stay that way,” Bishop Beaufort ordered and Orleans gave him a half choked laugh for answer as Master Hyndstoke straightened and stepped back from the bed, dropping the bloodied cloth he had been using into the bloodied water of the basin one of his assistants was holding ready to hand. “There now, my lord.” He looked to Bishop Beaufort and Suffolk. “It’s none so bad as might be. Not dangerously deep. A long scrape between the lower left ribs but nothing vital touched, nothing that won’t mend if we keep infection out.”

There was a general crossing of breasts, the priest bowed his head more intensely to his praying, and Orleans twisted his neck a little to see the rended flesh between his ribs.

“More expertly done than the last attempt,” he said. “But you would think whoever wants me dead would hire men more skilled at it.”

Frevisse’s hand heavy on Alice’s shoulder reminded her to hold quiet; it was Suffolk who exclaimed, “Thank God they haven’t! Someone wants you dead, man. Don’t talk of it so lightly.”

Closing his eyes, Orleans said wearily, “Good my lord, I have lived a long time knowing there are men who want me dead. Lightly is the only way I dare to take it.”

As Master Hyndstoke and his men closed in on Orleans again. Bishop Beaufort moved up the far side of the bed and leaned over, saying something to Orleans but neither his words nor the duke’s audible beyond the bed, while Suffolk came to Alice, took her hands, and said comfortingly, “There, love. You shouldn’t be here for this. We’ll see to him now. Go to my bed for tonight.”

“I’ll stay,” Alice said quietly. “You may need me.”

“My brave lady,” Suffolk put his arm around her waist and drew her to lean against him, facing the bed.

Behind them, Frevisse reached out to touch Lady Jane’s arm, drew her attention, beckoned for her to come away. With wary puzzlement Lady Jane did, and except William took a step to follow them, changed his mind, and stayed where he was, they left unnoticed. Outside the door Adam let them pass without comment, but in the lady chamber several of Alice’s ladies hurried forward with questions, and other people who Frevisse doubted had reason other than curiosity to be there followed them, so that in her most preemptory voice she said, “Lady Sibill, isn’t it time you should see these ladies to bed?” deliberately making it more order than suggestion.

But Lady Sibill, ever fond of having charge of anyone, took it readily and set to bustling the other ladies away from the door and toward their own room. It did not clear the lady chamber of everyone but those left drew off warily. It had to be far past the hour when Coldharbour’s folk should all have been in bed and sleeping but first Bishop Beaufort’s long stay through the evening and then the upset of the attempt on Orleans—though of that, so far, there were probably only rumors and uncertain reports of what had happened and to whom— had been enough to keep people up and interested and far too many of them—servants and household officers and folk in Bishop Beaufort’s livery—were gathered here, hoping to know more. There was even a squire with goblets of something to drink on a tray passing among them, but no one presumed to approach as Frevisse drew Lady Jane aside to a corner and asked, “How is it with you?”

Surprise widened Lady Jane’s eyes. “I’m well,” she said, then repeated it, as if to be sure, “I’m well.” And added, as if only just now realizing it, “But I’m frightened.”

So was Frevisse but she did not say so, only, “With reason. You were right in your worry for Orleans and likely you’re right that Eyon’s death wasn’t chance and now I want to know everything you know of it, everything you’ve learned about when and how he died.”

The things she should have made effort to learn before.

“My ladies?” The squire who had been serving wine around the room appeared from behind her, holding out his tray, offering the two goblets left on it. “Wine?”

“Herry,” Frevisse said, recognizing him, remembering his name as she and Lady Jane each took a goblet, welcoming the wine but asking, “By whose orders?”

Herry twitched his head toward the room behind him where most of those left were in Bishop Beaufort’s livery, with merely a scattering of Suffolk’s people. “Master Gallard says that if we can’t be rid of them, we must act as if they’re welcome.” He sounded as unpleased with it as could be expected, set to serving at an hour when he could otherwise hope to be to bed.

He started to draw back but Frevisse said, “A moment, please. I need to ask you something.”

He stopped, looking at her questioningly. “My lady?”

“You were there when the duke of Orleans was stabbed.”

“Yes, my lady.” The answer was a little wary, showing he had sense enough to know that being where a murder had been attempted was not the best of places to have been, but she needed him to use his wit free of suspicion and kept her voice easy as she asked, “I was wondering what you saw. Who you saw. Did you know the duke of Orleans was there?”

“No,” he answered, openly enough. “Not until William was ordering me away and I saw his face in the torchlight.”

“You saw no one with a drawn dagger?”

“I’d have said by now if I had. I’d have said then.”

“Was there anyone there, at the landing, in the gateway or the yard, you didn’t know or who shouldn’t have been there, now that you think back on it?”

Herry’s brow drew down with thought before he answered, “It was cold. We were all hurrying. I wasn’t taking much note of anything but being done with it so I could go back inside.”

“Why were you there?”

“My lord the earl sent some of us to see his grace of Winchester to his barge, as courtesy.” Why else? his tone asked.

“But my lord of Suffolk didn’t go himself.”

“It was cold,” Herry observed. Too cold for the earl to go out but not too cold for him to send others, he did not say, but she heard it. Herry had a well-governed tongue in a clever head.

“So you took no actual notice of who was there. Because of the cold and hurry,” she said.

“I noticed but there was nothing to note about anyone I saw. There were men I didn’t know but I don’t know all of Bishop Beaufort’s people. There was no one who looked wrong. But then they wouldn’t, would they, if they were good at… this kind of thing.”

Altogether too true. “You never saw a drawn dagger?”

“No, my lady.”

“Or blood on anyone, then or later?”

“No.”

She wished she could think of more questions to ask him, but these were the ones she ought to ask of everyone who had been at the gate if she could. But even if she could, very likely no one had seen any more than Herry had. They would have said so by now if they had. Or maybe they had seen more but didn’t realize what they’d seen but would if they were questioned. If she could think of the right questions, more questions, and find the right men to ask them of.

With that turning around in her mind, she nodded to Herry that he could go and said to Lady Jane as he bowed and withdrew, “Now, about Eyon’s death. What do you know?”

Before Lady Jane could answer, William joined them, bowing, and Frevisse, quick to alarm, asked, “Has something happened?”

“No, my lady, but his grace the bishop wants to see you.”

Frevisse chilled at the unpleasant thought of what that might mean, but Lady Jane said, “It’s better William you talk to than me about Eyon’s death. He’s asked questions about the night Eyon died.”

“And you’ve learned things?” Frevisse asked him.

“A little. I don’t know of how much worth.”

“I’ll want to have all you know,” she said, then added without pleasure, “but his grace the bishop first, I suppose.”

“Yes, my lady,” William agreed.

“If you’ll wait here, please, Lady Jane,” she said.

“I should go back to Lady Alice…”

“I need to talk with you as soon as may be and it might be too hard to have you out again. Please wait.”

With a regretful, uneasy look, Lady Jane accepted that and William saw Frevisse into the bedchamber where little was changed. Only Bishop Beaufort had much shifted, from the far side of the bed to near Alice and Suffolk, not in talk with them but waiting, and when he saw her, gestured her to come to him. She did but before he could speak, Alice reached out to take her hand and asked with warm concern, “Frevisse, how is it with you? No one has even asked.”

Disconcerted, not used to anyone being concerned for her, Frevisse answered, “I’m well.”

“And besides that,” Suffolk put in, “what have you done with Edmund and Jasper?”

What she had done was forget them; keeping that to herself, she said mildly, despite her dislike of Suffolk’s tone, “King Henry decided they should stay with him, be in his household from now on, he so enjoyed their company.”

Unsettled, speculative looks passed rapidly among Alice, Suffolk, and Bishop Beaufort.

“That,” Bishop Beaufort said, “may change some things.”