The Maiden’s Tale (6 page)

Up a stairs, she stood aside from a door for them to go in ahead of her, saying, “This is our library,” and Dame Perpetua, ahead of Frevisse, simply stopped in the doorway. Over her shoulder Frevisse could see why. At St. Frideswide’s, what books they had were kept in two chests stored among other things in the small room above the sacristy. Here was a whole room given over only to books. Along one wall were closed shelves with one of the doors standing open to piled books inside; down the room’s center a table, other books lying out on it; desks for writing; a glassed window giving light to everything.

Dame Perpetua, as if dazed, drifted in. Frevisse would have followed but Sister Clemens was coming up the stairs, calling, “Dame Elisabeth,” followed by a woman in a rose-yellow cloak and many-veiled headdress. “From the countess of Suffolk,” Sister Clemens panted as she reached them. “For Dame Frevisse.”

Frevisse stepped forward and the woman made curtsy to her, saying, “My lady has your message and asks if you would favor her by coming to supper tonight.”

“You mean now?” Frevisse asked, taken somewhat aback.

“If it please you. Her ladyship has sent escort of half a dozen men for you. And whoever has companioned you, of course.”

There was hardly a way to turn down an invitation so thoroughly offered, nor did Frevisse doubt Abbot Gilberd would approve her going. It was likely what he had hoped for. But more than that, she was pleased to know Alice so wanted to see her and said, “We’ll come with pleasure and thanks, my lady.” Then she saw Dame Perpetua casting a desperately unhappy look at the library and added, for kindness’ sake, “Unless you’d rather stay here, Dame? I doubt Abbot Gilberd would object to…”

She looked at the lady-in-waiting for her name.

“Lady Sibill, by your leave, my lady.”

“… would object to Lady Sibill being my surety in your stead.” Because it would be unacceptable for her to go out of the nunnery and through London unaccompanied by some woman.

“Yes! Please!” Dame Perpetua said, all gladness on the instant, and men because that eagerness might seem impolite, said, “It would hardly do for both of us to leave Dame Elisabeth when we’ve only just come.”

Dame Elisabeth agreed readily to all of that, and leaving her and Dame Perpetua to the library, Frevisse went with Sister Clemens and Lady Sibill away to the outer door, with a pause in the corridor there for Sister Clemens to hurry away and find wherever Frevisse’s cloak had been taken and bring
it back to her. The half dozen men Lady Sibill had spoken of, squires in the dark blue Suffolk livery with the Suffolk badge of a silver ape-clog on their shoulders, were waiting, still mounted, in the cobbled yard, and when Frevisse followed Lady Sibill out, one of them dismounted, to lift first Lady Sibill up to ride sidewise behind one of the men, and then to lift Frevisse to ride behind him, saying, “Pardon, my lady,” as he settled her to the pad there.

“No need,” Frevisse answered. She had never risen to such heights of sensibility as to be disturbed by the simple necessity of a man lifting her to behind a saddle. The man swung adroitly up in front of her, gathered his reins, and nodded at two of the men to go ahead of him toward the gateway. Lady Sibill’s rider ranged up beside Frevisse’s and the other two men dropped back to make a formal escort as they rode out of St. Helen’s into Bishopsgate.

A thin sunset was draining down the westward sky in a wash of yellows and faded salmon, the street already gone in shadows but the last of the sunlight glittering on the windows high in west-facing housefronts. Hurriers-home from errands, shopping, visiting, or sport crowded and jostled, the street not so thronged as it would have been at the height of the day but with people enough that the riders good-naturedly gave way their ranks and were strung out in single file well before they reached where Bishopsgate swung away from Threadneedle Street and then narrowed into Grasschurch. Past St. Bennet’s church the street widened to make Grasschurch marketplace. By now there were rapidly fewer people about: wives and servants from belated shopping, journeymen from wherever they were presently employed, masters from business, children late from play, all eager to be indoors soon, as what little warmth the day had had faded with the light. On her own part Frevisse found she was enjoying everything there was to see too much to care about the creep of cold through her cloak and clothing. She had forgotten London’s rich variety, with the tall housefronts overhanging themselves into the streets, some of them made of stone below, all of them timbered and plastered above and roofed in multicolored slates and tiles, with here and there the beam ends carved and painted so that gawdy, cheerful faces, grotesques, and beasts peered down and frolicked above the passersby; with sometimes a sudden church along the way, its churchyard opening among the houses and its tower or spire reaching high up in reminder of the way to heaven. And whoever was presently alderman here in Bridge Ward was seeing that the scavangers kept to their work: the street’s paving was swept mostly clear and only the day’s waste was gathered by house doorways.

The street drew in a little on itself again, became Fish Street, and Frevisse silently laughed at herself for remembering that because there was no change in its straight run toward the Thames, its name shifted only because most of the houses along it here belonged to fishmongers, and while in summer there could be no doubting, from the smells of fish, what was sold along here, tonight the air was only sharp with winter cold.

Ahead of her Lady Sibill was mostly occupied with telling her rider to make haste, it was growing dark, adding now and again to Frevisse that they were almost there, she need not worry, until as they were passing St. Margaret’s church Frevisse’s squire said over his shoulder, low, for Lady Sibill not to hear, “Don’t be worried by all her telling you not to worry. She’s frighted of her own back stairs after dark.”

“I heard that, Herry Elham!” Lady Sibill turned to shake a finger at him. “These are London streets, not my back stairs!”

“Yes, my lady,” Herry Elham said respectfully and surely Lady Sibill did not hear the underlay of mockery because she gave a quick, satisfied nod and faced forward again.

Frevisse leaned a little toward his ear and said, “My thanks but I wasn’t worrying. I haven’t heard London is grown so bad that six mounted men are considered thieves’ prey.”

“Only to Lady Sibill,” Herry returned. “The aldermen like their wealth too well to let things come to that pass.”

Frevisse laughed, remembering London aldermen she had seen. Befurred, bejeweled, and better than well-fed, every one of them.

“Have you ever been to London before this, my lady?”

“A few times. A long while back.” Since before she had become a nun, when their last King Henry, God keep his soul, had still been king, with his French marriage yet unmade. And now his son had been King Henry VI these sixteen years and King Henry and his French queen Katherine were both long dead and buried.

They had reached the crossing with Thames Street, no mistaking its broad way or how ahead Fish Street dropped steeply toward the river. If they did not turn here, they would be on London Bridge in very few more dozen yards; but even as Frevisse thought it, they were swinging rightward into Thames Street, and as they did, a peal of bells began from somewhere away across the rooftops, flinging their joy of sound into the still air and almost as they started were joined by other peals, nearer, farther, all around, deep, sweet, asking, demanding, calling from church towers all over London, with St. Magnus nearest, almost overhead across the way, throbbing deep-voiced into the waterfalling of bells from one end of the city to the other.

Compline? Frevisse wondered. No, it had to be Vespers. They must keep their hours later in London than at St. Frideswide’s. At home the nuns were done with Vespers’ prayers by now, were probably at supper, gathered around the refectory table, with Sister Emma fumbling her way through this week’s reading while everyone else worked their way through the vegetable pottage and the bread with too much bran in it— the harvest had not been good this year. Then afterwards they would go hurrying in the cold together along the cloister walk, to the warming room, and in an hour’s time say Compline’s prayers and then go up to bed in the chill, familiar-shadowed dormitory, to rouse at midnight for Matins and Lauds and go back to bed again until Prime’s prayers at dawn and another day’s beginning.

Piercingly, Frevisse was aware of how far away she was from everything and everyone familiar, and for just a moment a thing rose in her throat that could be fear if she gave way to it. But fear would be no help. There was not even good reason for it. What she really was, was cold and hungry and ready to be wherever they were going. The bells had ceased and the last of sunset was nearly gone, the steep-peaked housetops and St. Paul’s great spire in sharp black shapes against the fading trace of colors in the west. All along Thames Street lamplight spilled to the pavement from brightly lit upper windows and spread out from the lanterns the law required householders to keep lighted by their doors from dusk. The riders, in their double line again, had picked up their horses’ pace, and as Lady Sibill said, “We’re almost there, my lady,” the two lead riders went leftward between a pair of the largest hanging lanterns yet, out of Thames Street into a lane that was hardly two wagons’ width. It slanted down toward the Thames with buildings on either side, the sky narrow between their rooftops and the lane in a darkness that would have been utter except for the lanterns behind them and a flaring of torches ahead, flanking a gateway on the left where people were coming out, going in, standing around. “Coldharbour House, my lady,” Lady Sibill said, with an undertone that indicated she expected Frevisse to be impressed by the name alone.

“Called Poultney’s Inn by the common folk,” Herry Elham said, “to show Sir John who built it he was not that much above them. But Sir John’s been dead a hundred years and so has anybody who knew him and you think they’d be over it by now.”

“Herry,” Lady Sibill said reprovingly, and then, on a little rising note of alarm, “There’s someone behind us.”

More than someone, Frevisse saw, looking back. A crowding of mounted men. “More guests,” Herry said, unconcerned. “Come down St. Laurence Lane or we’d have seen them. Likely it’s Ely.”

“The last I heard, he wasn’t among the invited for tonight,” another squire said, equally unconcerned.

Frevisse had not counted on being part of a company of guests but should have, she realized. London must be presently full of lords, both lay and church, and gentry from all over the country, and elected men from every town and city from end to end of England, all come for Parliament and most of them worth influencing by someone with ambitions, which she knew Alice and she supposed the earl of Suffolk had.

The gateway opened into a wide, long, groin-vaulted passage, with double gates at either end, all standing open tonight, lighted by torches, with more torchlight around the yard beyond them, narrow compared to its length, running long away from the gate, with buildings ranged around all its sides, mostly of two storeys but on the left rising in a stone-built great hall whose mullioned windows glowed yellow with steady lamplight in the darkness above the reach of the torches. A wide stone stairway, penticed to give cover from ill weather, went up from the yard to its broad doorway a full storey above the ground, and Frevisse’s rider and Lady Sibill’s turned their horses that way while the others swung toward probably the stables, out of the way of the riders and horses coming down the lane behind them. At the stairs’ foot, smooth pavement replaced the cobbles of the rest of the yard, and Herry Elham and the other man drew up, dismounted, and lifted Frevisse and Lady Sibill down, the other squire taking both horses’ reins to lead them away while Herry gestured toward the stairs with, “If it please you, my ladies.”

Then his gaze went past them, gone sharply alert, and they turned to look where he was, across the yard to where another gateway opened under a range of buildings, a glitter of torchlight on water beyond it telling Frevisse it must open to a landing on the Thames. There was a bustle of liveried servants there, some dressed in the Suffolk blue, others in another lord’s crimson but too far for Frevisse to see their badges, all of them drawing swiftly back from someone’s way. A tall man moving with pride and certainty, in a dark gown so full and long it would have swept the ground except he had it lifted in one hand to clear the stones, sable-dark fur sheened at his throat and around his high-set hat, and now in the torchlit yard his well-fleshed face was plain to see and Frevisse with a sinking below her breastbone recognized him.

Chapter
5

“His grace Cardinal Bishop Beaufort!” Lady Sibill breathed. She laid a hand on Frevisse’s arm in warning and restraint. “We call him Bishop Beaufort, of course. That trouble over him becoming cardinal and things being as they are around the king, he makes no great display of it except when necessary, you understand. He was cousin to Lady Alice’s father.” A thought caught up to Lady Sibill’s tongue. “Oh, so were you!”