The Maiden’s Tale (32 page)

“Yes.”

“Then what are we going to do next?”

The simplicity of the question, coming from someone far from simple, hurt with the depth of its trust. Hurt the worse because all Frevisse could offer was, “We go on asking questions.”

“And presently the questions are?”

Frevisse held back from sighing and answered, trying to match Alice’s even tone, “Was it a planned attempt on Orleans, by someone deliberately there to do it, or was it a chance taken because it happened to hand by someone who didn’t hope to have a better one? If it was planned, how did the man know Orleans would be there? How many people knew the whole business at the river gate was for no other purpose but to cover his return?”‘ She paused, sorting through what she had said to find a core question, and said, “I suppose what we need to know first is who was there when Orleans was stabbed. The guards on duty, of course. The boatmen— Bishop Beaufort’s and yours. All Bishop Beaufort’s men and your household folk sent out with him, chosen at random, William says, but anyone who wanted to be there could have joined in unnoticed, either while they were inside or crossing the yard. There were maybe two score men there, one way and another.”

Saying it aloud helped sort it into shape, helped draw out of her memory how it had been there in the gateway in those otherwise unmemorable moments before Orleans was stabbed, and so she went on, more for her own sake than Alice’s. “William was there. And Herry. And Master Bruneau because you’d sent him to tell us the garden door was open. There was Adam.” Sleeping on guard outside Orleans’ door now. “And someone named Andrew.”

Strange-voiced, Alice said, “I never sent Master Bruneau to you.”

The forward movement of Frevisse’s mind came to a frozen halt. In a stillness of things she did not want to say, she looked at Alice until slowly, wanting the words to come out differently, wanting Alice’s answer to be different than it was going to be, she said, “You didn’t bid Master Bruneau be there, to tell me the garden door would be unlocked?”

“Why would I?” Alice said, with much of the same wish not to say the words, but “What other way could you reasonably come but through the garden? I went myself to make certain it was unlocked. That was all. I said nothing about it to Master Bruneau.”

Who had therefore been at the gateway for no reason but his own. And had lied about it.

Chapter
28

Frevisse and Alice waited at the stairward end of the lady chamber, a single lamp lit on the table between them giving no comfort to the darkness of their unshared thoughts while the hunt for Master Bruneau spread through Coldharbour, done quietly by William and five other yeomen he awoke to the task so they could work in pairs, with not even Suffolk, at Alice’s order, told yet. “If he’s not readily found,” she had said, “then we’ll wake everyone and do more.”

But the wait was not long before William and another yeoman were returned with Master Bruneau between them, held by his arms, though not roughly because he was not resisting them. Was not anything except letting himself be brought to face Alice across the table and even then he only stood mere, head bowed, shoulders slumped, as if it did not matter to him where he was.

“Where did you find him?” Frevisse asked, when Alice seemed unable to say anything,

“In the church,” William answered. “On his knees in front of the altar. We asked him to come with us and he did.”

“Did he ask why?” Frevisse asked.

“He knows,” William answered.

If it could have been Herry there, or that fool Robyn, there would have been no trouble to it. But for it to be Master Bruneau… “Where’s his dagger?” she asked.

“Here.” In his free hand William held up a belt with a dagger in its sheath still hanging from it. “He hasn’t any other weapon on him.”

“Let him go,” Alice said.

They did, and Master Bruneau sank to one knee in front of her, head still bowed.

“Why?”‘ Alice asked, not angrily or in accusation but only with a deep, sorrowing need to know.

Master Bruneau neither moved nor answered.

With a trace of anger now, she demanded, “Why, Master Bruneau?” And then, “Look at me!”

He raised his head. In the soft, defining shadows of the lamplight his face was grieved and sorrowing and hopeless as he made as if to answer her, then shook his head wordlessly and looked down again.

“You don’t deny you did it?” Alice asked.

That he managed to answer. “No.”

“Then why?”

But that seemed to be a thing he could not say, and more angrily she asked, “Who set you on to do it? How much were you paid?”

Master Bruneau flinched up his head to that. “No one! This was never done for pay or at anyone’s bidding but my own, my lady!”

“But why?” Alice begged.

His mouth opened, closed, as if he could not make words come, and Frevisse before Alice’s anger could grow said, “Master Bruneau, would it be something you could say to his grace of Orleans?”

The secretary raised his head to that but across whatever he might have answered, Alice exclaimed, “To what purpose? No, Orleans shouldn’t have to see him.”

Ignoring her, eyes locked to Master Bruneau’s, Frevisse asked, “Would you?”

And he answered, “Yes. For his grace’s sake and mine, yes.”

“He’s sleeping,” Alice said, still refusing. “He’s probably sleeping.”

“He may be. We can go and see,” Frevisse answered, refusing her refusal.

Somewhere away in the darkness that seemed to have gone on forever, with dawn fated never to come, London bells began to ring to Prime; and wearily, as if resistance were suddenly beyond her, Alice agreed, “We can see. And if his grace is awake, we’ll ask him. Let it be his choice.”

Master Hyndstoke, continuing in attendance on so noble a patient, was not inclined to let even Alice in, let alone others. Only Orleans asking from the bed who was there and then saying he would see them brought Master Hyndstoke to allow it, but it took Alice’s direct order to send him and the two squires set there for guard out of the room, and not until they were gone and the door shut, did she and Frevisse approach Orleans, lying near the edge of the wide bed, half raised on pillows, the bedcoverings drawn up to his waist, unclothed above them save for bandages, his left arm stretched out from his hurt side, his other hand lying on his chest, with the careful stillness of someone wary against pain. Even in the warm light of the oil lamps burning on either side of the bed he was pale, but it was not the gray-white of a corpse and he greeted them with something of a smile and slightly moved his near hand toward Alice, who took hold of it and knelt beside the bed, laying her free hand against his cheek as she asked, “How is it with you, my lord?”

“I am drugged enough that presently there is very little pain and it is wonder I’m awake at all. But I am glad I am, for the pleasure of seeing you, my lady.” He raised and kissed her hand.

“Alice,” Frevisse said gently, and regretfully Alice said, “Dame Frevisse has something you must needs be told.”

Orleans looked past Alice to her; and hating what she had to do, Frevisse told him of Master Bruneau and watched all feeling drain out of Orleans’ face while she did until he was as barren of emotion as an alabaster tomb effigy except his face held none of the peace such carven faces usually had, only the polished stone’s rigidity as she finished with “He wants to speak to you before this… goes further.” Before it went to a trial that would be brief, Master Bruneau’s guilt already admitted to, and then to his hanging if he were fortunate, or to his being hanged and drawn and quartered if he were not.

His eyes unreadable, unwavering, Orleans said, “I’m here.”

It was permission of a kind, and feeling much as Orleans looked—pale and rigid and in pain—Frevisse went to the door to bid William and the other yeoman bring Master Bruneau in. They did, keeping him well away from the bed but to where he and Orleans could see each other, while Frevisse joined Alice where she had withdrawn a few paces from the bedside. Orleans, gathering strength for it, asked, much as Alice had done, “Why?” And then more strongly, with grief showing raw around the anger,
“Why”?
What have I done, for you to want me dead?“

Master Bruneau flinched and, strained by a grief to match Orleans’ own, answered without anger, only pain, “It wasn’t for what you’ve done. It was for what you’re going to do.”

Blankly, Orleans echoed, “For what I’m going to do?” And as if breath to say it was hard to come by, Master Bruneau forced out, “If you live, if you go free and this peace is made with France, then everything England has there will be lost.”

“The purpose of the peace,” Orleans said carefully, slowly, his face returned to stone-still, “is to keep that from happening.”

Master Bruneau looked at him unflinching now. “If you go free, we will lose France. Our late King Henry, God keep his soul, knew you and he said on his deathbed you were never to be set free until England held all of France. If you go free with France only partly taken, as it is now, everything English in France will be lost.”

“So you would have had my death to keep it from happening,” Orleans said, not, Frevisse noted, making any denial of what Master Bruneau had said.

Because it was too false to bother to deny?

Or because it was too much the truth?

Master Bruneau, meeting Orleans’ gaze this while, now lowered his eyes again as he said, miserable with defeat or shame or a mingling of both, “Only I couldn’t kill you. When I came to it, I pulled aside instead of striking true.” He sank to his knees, striking at his chest with his fisted hand, eyes shut, rocking under a weight of shame and grief, “God forgive me that I wanted to do it. God forgive me that I tried. God forgive me that I failed.”

“Master Bruneau,” Frevisse said across his grieving, needing to know something more. “You’re French. Why would you care so grievously if everything went back to France?”

Master Bruneau let his hand fall and sank down on his heels as he answered dully, “I’m Norman French. I was the duke of Bedford’s man all the years he was governor there. I could have served no better lord. Now I serve my lord of Suffolk. My loyalties have all been given toward England, and so have thousands of other men’s in Normandy, in Gascony. What use have we for being taken over by a French king we’ve never given oath or service to? And if I could stop it, how could I let it happen?”

“The peace won’t give Normandy over to France,” Alice said.

Master Bruneau did not answer her. No one did. Only, after a pause, Orleans asked, “You have lands in Normandy? Family?”

“A manor,” Master Bruneau said wearily. “A brother. Cousins. Some of my wife’s family.” Not that it mattered. He was going to die here in England and very soon.

Orleans turned his head aside on the pillow to find Alice with his eyes and said slowly, as if considering the words while he said them, “I want him sent home. To Normandy. I want him set free and sent home.”

As if slapped, Master Bruneau spasmed to his feet, and Frevisse, William, and the other yeoman startled where they stood, while Alice gasped in protest, “Let him go? Unpunished?”

“I mean dismiss him from your service and send him away. Yes. Unpunished.”

“How can I do that? I won’t! He tried to kill you.”

Carefully, holding her with his eyes, Orleans said, “Would you have him arrested, give him over to the sheriffs of London or to the earl marshall, and have him brought to trial? Can we afford to have that happen? And if we cannot, what would you do with him otherwise?”

There were possibilities, but they were as abrupt and ugly as what Master Bruneau had tried to do. Alice’s silence acknowledged that without need to say so, and Orleans said, still carefully, “This thing is between him and me. It is for me to decide how much I have been wronged, how much he must pay for it, and what I want is for him to be set free and sent home.”

“My lord…” Master Bruneau began hoarsely.

Orleans flicked up a hand, silencing him without looking away from Alice. She was trembling, and he said gently to her, “Alice.”

As if unable to bear more, she spun away from him to order, “See to it, William. Let him gather his things from his chamber and have him on the first ship you can find going to Normandy. Or Gascony. Or Burgundy, Calais, or Ireland, come to that. I don’t care, just see to it he’s on it and stays on it and goes when it does.”

The other yeoman laid hold of Master Bruneau’s arm but William said, “My lady, there’s Lady Jane.”

Alice pressed a hand to her forehead. “Yes. You want to be with her. She’ll want you. Find someone to take your place in seeing him to a ship, then come back. But have him out of here!”

To keep one faith Master Bruneau had betrayed another, and even though he was given his life back despite it, everything that had been his life until now was lost; and both for his sins and for his grief, Frevisse would have him in her prayers. But even as she thought that, she was following William and the other yeoman as they took him from the room, reaching the door as they went out and Master Hyndstoke started, with a questioning look over his shoulder at them, to come in, only to find Frevisse in his way; and before he could recover or make protest, she said, “By your leave, sir, we need a while longer,” and closed the door in his face, then turned to Alice asking “Frevisse?”

Wishing this did not have to be now but when might come a better time? she said careful of her own tiredness, praying this would go well, “There’s one thing more we needs must deal with.”

Coming back to the bed, she took the small bundle of poems and the blue and gold ribbon from her belt pouch and held them toward Alice.

Orleans did not immediately understand but Alice did and with a sharp-drawn breath and a rapid look across the room to a chest against the wall, seized them and pressed them to her breast with both hands, gasping, “Where… how did you…”

Frevisse told her. Told both of them. Of what Robyn had done and how he had been “persuaded” to give them up, and that he was gone with Bishop Beaufort, though probably not to any reward.

“The treacherous cur!” Alice spat. “And I mean Beaufort along with Robyn. And my poor Jane. When I find out who it was among my women, I’ll see to it she’s far the worse for it far longer than Jane has suffered, I promise you.”