The Maiden’s Tale (30 page)

Awkwardly wrapping himself in the blanket, Robyn gasped out, low-voice, “Have you gone moon-mad? What…”

William closed on him again, hand to throat, dagger to ribs. “Where are the poems?”

Robyn gaped, recovered, stuttered, “P—poems? W— what?”

“Poems,” William said and banged the back of his head against the wall. “The poems. All the poems. Where are they?”

Robyn started a protest. William banged his head again, harder, “The poems.”

“My room,” Robyn gulped with pain. “Cloth-wrapped. Tied to the ropes under my mattress. And one in my belt pouch. With a ribbon.”

William cast a look at Frevisse, who nodded and went.

Robyn’s fellows did not stir at all as she pulled up his mattress, found the packet, went through his neatly folded clothing on the stool by his bed for his pouch, and took the parchment sheet and ribbon from it.

Robyn, William’s hold not shifted on him while she was gone, croaked at her return, “You have them?” and when she said, “Yes,” closed his fear-glittering eyes in gratitude.

“You’d better pray it’s all of them,” William said.

“It is. I swear it!”

Frevisse did not think he was only playing the coward. There was no spine in Robyn, and while, for their purposes, it was good to have someone who broke so completely to pressure, that unfortunately meant that when William demanded, “Now, what about the poison?” and Robyn croaked, “What poison?” she believed him. But William dug his dagger point through the blanket and into him anyway, saying viciously, “The poison you used on Eyon and Lady Jane.”

Robyn squeaked in fear and pain. “I’ve never poisoned anyone! The poems is all I did. Just the poems.”

“Why the poems?” Frevisse said.

A different fear came into his eyes but William’s dagger made him babble again. “Bishop Beaufort!”

“Bishop Beaufort?” Frevisse asked carefully.

Robyn put up a hand to pry at William’s fingers on his throat, trying for a little bravery. “I’m Bishop Beaufort’s man. You’d best be careful how you handle me.”

“I’m being careful,” William said, unimpressed. “What do you mean, you’re Bishop Beaufort’s man?”

“He means he’s a spy here,” Frevisse answered. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Robyn croaked.

“Why? Suffolk and Lady Alice are his allies.”

“He wanted to be sure of her, to know if she had any other love…”

“Be careful what you say, who you name,” Frevisse warned.

Robyn gulped and stopped but he had said enough for her to guess more—that Bishop Beaufort, already knowing of Orleans, had wanted to have more hold on Alice than he did and had set Robyn to find out that more for him. “Bishop Beaufort told you of the poems and you gained them to force Lady Jane to talk to you. You must have failed at seducing any of Lady Alice’s women into telling you anything of use so you resorted to the poems and Lady Jane and then tormented her while you were at it.”

“You…” William drove Robyn’s head against the wall again. “… bastard.”

Frevisse laid a hand on William’s arm. “Don’t finish with him yet. We need to know about the poison, too.”

“I don’t know anything about poison!” Robyn choked out frantically.

“But two people have been poisoned,” Frevisse said. “William, was he among those with Eyon the night he died?”

“Eyon?” Robyn said wildly. “What about Eyon?”

“No one has said so,” William answered regretfully.

“What are you talking about?” Robyn wailed. Too loudly. William choked him off again and Frevisse, ignoring his question, said, “You were the last person with Lady Jane tonight before she fell ill with poison.”

“I don’t know anything about poison!” Robyn croaked.

Frevisse suspected there was too much real ignorance in him for him to feign false ignorance that well but she said, “Her wine was poisoned and you were there with her when it was.”

“I didn’t do anything with her wine!” Hope glistened in his desperate eyes above William’s unrelenting grip and he babbled out, “Herry! He brought her wine!”

“I was there when he did,” Frevisse said. “He brought me wine as well.”

“No, you weren’t there! You’d gone into Lady Alice’s bedchamber. Lady Jane was by herself. Herry brought her wine. I didn’t go over to her until he left her. I hadn’t anything to do with wine!”

Herry.

Could he have overheard her asking Lady Jane to tell her about Eyon being murdered?

Sickeningly, Frevisse thought it very well possible and said, “Let him go, William.”

“We can’t just let him go!”

“He can’t leave Coldharbour. He’s locked in with the rest of us. Let him go. We have someone else to find.”

Reluctantly, unfully convinced, William freed him and Robyn slumped against the wall, hands to his throat, careful over the marks of William’s fingers that were likely to stay there a while, Frevisse saw with satisfaction as she said coldly at him, “I suggest that when this is done and Coldharbour’s unclosed again, you take yourself out of here before Lady Alice has chance to deal with you. For now, just go away.”

He gaped at her until she stood aside and William grabbed him by the arm, dragged him from the wall, and thrust him out the door toward his room. That done, William said, “The cur didn’t even ask if Jane were living or dead.”

“He wouldn’t. He’s one of those who never have wit enough to care for anyone but themselves. Now we have to find this Herry. Elham I think his name is.”

“Herry Elham?” William paused “Why?”

“Because the wine he served both Lady Jane and me was plain, but what he later served to her alone was spiced. She sickened. I didn’t. Was he with Eyon the night he died?”

William’s anger was her answer as he said, “Wait here. I’ll see if he’s in his room,” and went away but came back in only a moment with, “He’s not there.”

The day had had too many hours in it; Frevisse was tired, thinking was not coming easily, but she said, “He was at all three places. With Eyon. At the river gate. With Lady Jane.”

“I’ll find him,” William said, curt with anger and understanding.

“He’s a different matter than Robyn,” Frevisse warned. “If he’s not quickly found, a hunt will have to be set for him.”

They were returning toward the screens passage while they spoke, William nodding unwilling agreement to her as they came into it to find that instead of the settled quiet there had been, a crowd of men in Bishop Beaufort’s livery were straggling disorderedly out the door to the rearyard, a cold wind shoving inward past them to chill the place. William moved quickly to catch one of the last of them on the threshold and ask, “Is his grace going?”

“And none too soon,” the man answered, pulling loose, fighting down a yawn, keeping going.

Frevisse, with the cold air cutting at her own weariness after the hours of heavy indoor air, moved past William into the open doorway. Why was Bishop Beaufort going? What had changed his purpose? Had a messenger come? Or, improbably, had he quarreled with Suffolk? It was a hurried going, that was certain. Some men were already strung out across the yard toward the river gate, others were still going down the steps, most of them no more than shapes and shadows in the darkness between the guttering torches at the head and foot of the stairs and the lanterns flanking the river gate. Bishop Beaufort at the stairfoot, briefly in the failing torchlight there, would have been recognizable anyway, with his height and ample robes…

Frevisse jerked upright, staring, certain but frozen for the moment needed for her certainty to jar her mind to working before she snapped at William, “Come,” grabbed her skirts from under her feet and went down the stairs, threading among men who did not understand she wanted them out of her way, her going slowed her by their confusion so that Bishop Beaufort and those closest around him were across the yard into the yellow edge of lantern light at the gateway before she overtook him, shoving in between the men nearest him and into his way.

Pulled up short by her in front of him, he demanded, “Dame, what do you here?”‘ and it flickered through her mind that he must be tired, too, if he could put no better front on it than that.

It gave her confidence to say boldly back, “The better question is, my lord bishop, what do you do here?”

His visible displeasure increased and his answer was tense. “The hour is late and I’m going home.”

In equal terseness she answered back, “I thought no one was to leave Coldharbour tonight.”

“Choices can be changed and without your leave, dame.”

His tone was as cold as the wind slicing through her layers of gown and undergown, and the surrounding men shifted and drew back a little, as if his displeasure might too easily spread from her to them, but Frevisse held where she was, wrapped her arms around herself to hold off the shivering, and said back at him, “It was agreed no one would go. Not with things as they are.”

“Things as they are do not include me or my household men. The hour is late and I am going, dame.”

He made to move on but, careless with anger, Frevisse stayed in his way. “One of the men you’re taking with you isn’t of your household. More than that, he…”

“That will suffice, dame!” Bishop Beaufort made a sharp gesture at the men around them to stand back. “Away. This matter must needs be dealt with now, I see.”

But as they obeyed, Frevisse pointed and said, “Not him. Let him stay where I can see him.”

Bishop Beaufort twitched a look at Herry Elham trying to be lost among the other men and Herry stopped where he was, a half dozen paces away, while the others drew off twenty paces more, except William, come against good sense to stand close behind her.

“Now, dame.” Anger replaced by weary patience, Bishop Beaufort pitched his voice for only her and perforce William and maybe Herry to hear. “You’ve gone far and fast in a direction I didn’t think you’d take. Much of it is Herry’s fault.” He gave Herry a harsh look to which Herry bent his head in agreement. “He overstepped in poisoning Suffolk’s niece, I grant you that. However awry the blood has gone in her, she should be above such meddling as Herry did. But he’d overheard her warn you the other day that there was danger and then tonight heard you ask her what she’d learned about a man’s death. A murder no one was supposed to think was murder. He thought to protect himself by silencing her before she said more to you. Herry very rarely makes a foolish move but that was one of them and all it’s done is bring on what he was trying to avoid, his removal from Suffolk’s household.”

Trying to govern her voice to match his reasonableness, however little she felt it, and appreciating William’s strength in holding quiet, Frevisse said, “He did kill Eyon Chesman then?”

“He did, and did well to do it. The man had come to know too much about what passed through his hands concerning Orleans. He purposed to sell what he knew to Gloucester.”

William stirred at that. Bishop Beaufort gave him a hostile glance, deigning to notice him openly for the first time, but Frevisse said, “Eyon Chesman was his cousin and he’s betrothed to Lady Jane and he’s helping me in this.”

“Then I trust he can keep his mouth shut as well as I know you keep yours. No, this Chesman’s death was necessary. There’s proof of what he meant to do, a message he sent to Gloucester saying he had something to sell. The message was passed back to one of Gloucester’s men in Suffolk’s household, to find out from Chesman what he had.”

“One of Gloucester’s men?” Frevisse asked. “He has more spies here and you know it?”

Bishop Beaufort raised his eyebrows as if in wonder at her innocence. “I know he has—he had—one. I presume he has more. I do in his household and he probably has in mine.

Unfortunately for Chesman, Gloucester’s man in Suffolk’s household who had the message is also my man.“ He made a slight sideways inclination of his head toward Herry. ”Him. That’s one reason I’m displeased he’s lost his place here. He’s been very useful. Tonight when he came to tell me what he’d done, I told him you would find him out and he suggested I persuade you to be quiet on the matter. I told him I didn’t think it likely. Was I wrong?“

“No.”

“So I thought and decided it best to have him out of here before the matter came into the open.”

“And knew the only way to do that was go yourself, taking him with you. But there’s still the question of who attacked the duke of Orleans. Was that your Herry, too?”

Untouched by either the dislike or the contempt she put in that, Bishop Beaufort answered simply, “No. That problem still remains, unhappily enough. And now what?” he added, swinging to face a disturbance and shifting among the men behind him, in time for Robyn Helas, his doublet only half fastened, one hose unstrapped, his cloak trailing over an arm, to shove out from among the men, stumble forward, and fall to one knee in front of him. Gabbling even before his knee hit the cobbles, Robyn cried, “She found me out! I can’t stay here. She’s threatened to have me killed. Her.” He threw Frevisse a hating look. “You have to take me with you.” Bishop Beaufort jerked up a hand, silencing him, and looked to Frevisse. “What,” he asked rather wearily, “have you found out about him?”

Briefly but sparing nothing, Frevisse told him. Part way through, Bishop Beaufort closed his eyes as if the burden of listening had become too much, and only asked, when she finished, “You have the poems safe now?” and when she answered, “Yes,”—they were presently in her own belt pouch—turned an unpleasant eye on Robyn to say, “She has them all? You haven’t tried to do anything else clever, have you?”

“No, my lord! She has them all. I swear it! Take me with you!”

“I gave you a simple thing to do. Seduce a woman into talking to you about things she shouldn’t. But it seems you did it all as ill as might be, I’m not greatly interested in men who play games as badly as it seems you played this one. And now you want me to rescue you?”

“It wasn’t my doing, my lord! It went that way despite me!” There would probably never be way to make him understand that if things went ill for him, it was quite probably as much, if not more, his fault than anyone’s.

For Robyn, whatever went wrong for him would always be because of someone else, not him: a comforting if inefficient way to look at life, Frevisse thought, and said, “I pray you, take him with you.”