The Maiden’s Tale (8 page)

Now the evening was over and they were all come upstairs again, a crowding and laughing of women and girls. Frevisse, weary among them after far too much food and wine and company, hours past when she was usually in bed, was thinking of not much but falling into whatever bed she would be given and still grateful that except for a slight conversation on the condition of roads from Oxfordshire to London, Bishop Beaufort had ignored her all evening, and Abbot Gilberd had been too busy renewing or making acquaintance among the other guests to say anything to her beyond congratulation on her cousin’s attention and gift.

Alice, too, had been too busy as lady and hostess to spend much time with her, giving her over to the company of various of her ladies through the evening; but now, in the bedchamber doorway she turned to say to them in light dismissal, “I won’t need you more tonight. My cousin and I want chance to talk together and we’ll be late at it. Go to your beds.”

“But, my lady,” one of the women protested, gesturing toward Alice’s headdress, not something easily dealt with alone.

“Lady Jane will see to Dame Frevisse and me,” Alice said, and they went, while beside Alice, Frevisse hoped she hid her dismay. She had no desire for anything more tonight than the chance to say her prayers in quiet and then lie down and sleep for as many hours as possible.

But the women left and Lady Jane came to close the door after them while Alice led Frevisse across to the chair and cushioned bench beside the fire, Frevisse taking it as a poor sign that the fire instead of being allowed to burn down for the night was dancing high along freshly laid wood. How long a talk did Alice think to have? Because with all the best will in the world, Frevisse doubted she could keep awake for very long. But they sat, and Lady Jane came to remove her headdress, deftly finding and plucking out its pins despite that she had only wavering firelight to work by, none of the lamps around the room lighted, until she was able to lift free the headdress and all its veils. Alice sighed with relief and leaned her head against the high back of the chair, eyes closed. “That’s so much better.” Lady Jane returned, unpinned and took her wimple, waited while Alice loosed her hair from its careful coil, and took those pins away, too.

Alice, looking at Frevisse now all that was over, said with sympathy, “You must be more tired than I am. I’m sorry to keep you up longer but I need to talk with you. I don’t know how much you gleaned among the talk tonight of how things stand just now. With England. With this parliament we’re about to have.”

With effort Frevisse called up wit enough to answer, “I gather feelings are running high.” Something too usual to mean much. Parliament was called when there was need to deal with some great matter concerning the realm or else when the king required money, and besides that, every man came to every parliament with concerns of his own, so that feelings always ran high and Frevisse had taken small notice of what tonight’s were. But Alice said, as if surely she must want to know, “Here’s how matters stand. Parliament will be opened three days from now by our reverend bishop of Bath and Wells, presently chancellor of England for reasons past understanding. His speech will be, as usual, on a biblical verse, this time
‘Adaperiat Dominus cor nostrum in lege sua et in praeceptis suis et faciat pacem.”’

Lady Jane returned with a silver dish with dried apricots, dates, raisins, and strips of sugared lemon laid in careful, curving patterns around a small silver bowl of almonds. Frevisse refused with a slight shake of her head. Alice chose some of the dates, an apricot slice, a few of the almonds while going on, “The good bishop will stress at length that the important points are
Dominus
and
faciat pacem.
God and making peace. With those two things rooted in their minds, the Commons will elect a speaker, the king will accept him, and Parliament will set to granting various subsidies and enacting on a few matters of no pressing importance, with no word spoken at all in Parliament about the making of any peace, either godly or otherwise.”

“ ‘In Parliament’ being the point to take?” Frevisse asked.

Alice smiled her approval. “Precisely.”

Frevisse covered a yawn that, once started, seemed unwilling to stop, and said, when finally it was done, “I really…”

“I know,” Alice said quickly. “You’re tired and so am I, but there’s a point to this. Bishop Beaufort…”

Frevisse lifted a hand in refusal of the wine Lady Jane had just brought in silver goblets, and so did Alice, saying, “We’ll need nothing else, Jane. Go to bed.”

Lady Jane made her a slight curtsy and withdrew, and Alice leaned toward Frevisse to continue, “No, I’ll come to Bishop Beaufort in his place. It’s the chance for peace you have to understand first. We’re this near to it.” She held up a hand with thumb and forefinger a scant inch apart. “This near.”

Carefully Frevisse said, “From the little I’ve heard, peace has been ‘this near’ more than a few times over the years.”

“How well I know that! The hours of talk and talk and talk I’ve listened to whenever there’s an embassy! And then it all comes to nothing for one politic reason or another. You’d think the cost of the embassies alone would put a stop to it, but they do it all again and again nothing comes of it but talk and talk.”

“But this time it’s different,” Frevisse suggested.

Alice clasped her hands. “This time it’s very different. The duke of Burgundy is taking interest again in making peace.”

“So I understand,” Frevisse said.

“And that means everyone has to take the matter more seriously than they otherwise might,” Alice said. Frevisse refrained from asking just how “unseriously” they had been taking it, while Alice went on, “The profit has gone out of the war, you see. It costs and costs and returns little. Nothing we’ve tried toward peace has worked. Now there’s this new possibility.”

Cautiously, remembering Bishop Beaufort was in it somewhere, Frevisse asked, “And this something new is?”

“The duke of Orleans.”

“I’ve heard the French want him freed as part of the peace?”

“As part of the peace and to help make the peace.” Alice rose and moved nearer the fire, her back to Frevisse. “You know we had the keeping of him for a few years, Suffolk and I?”

“No.” Frevisse in fact knew very little of her cousin’s life and just now mostly wondered at what hour she went to bed.

“As the king’s prisoner he was at first kept in the Tower but over the years various lords have had the keeping of him. He was with us for some several years, time enough for us to come to know him well enough to believe with the French that a better peace can be made with him than without him.”

“Yes. I see. So the French want him freed and we want him freed. But somewhere there’s trouble?”

Alice swung around to her. “The duke of Gloucester.”

“The duke of Gloucester,” Frevisse repeated. The king’s uncle, heir to the throne if King Henry died without issue and therefore a man who could not be ignored but a trouble in the government ever since his royal brother had died and left the realm in charge of a council of lords while King Henry was a child, rather than giving the government into Gloucester’s hands, where Gloucester had very loudly said it ought to be.

Alice sat down again. “It’s because our late king, God keep his soul, gave order on his deathbed that Orleans was never to be set free until we held all of France. For Gloucester, his brother’s word is the last word there can be on it. No matter it’s become clear that we’re never going to take all of France and that peace is the only way to ensure we keep what we do hold. No matter that the French have made it clear that the duke of Orleans has to be part of the negotiations and his freedom part of the price for peace or they won’t deal in it. Gloucester holds that his long-dead brother said Orleans wasn’t to go free until we held all of France and so he’ll have nothing to do with any peace that requires Orleans go free.”

Across the room Jane had rolled a truckle bed from under the far side of Alice’s great bed, undressed, prayed, and now slipped into the bed with a whispering of sheets that made Frevisse painfully wish she were that close to sleep, too. “Alice…”

Alice raised a hand to forestall her plea. “I know. But there’s a point to telling you all this. Bishop Beaufort says you’ll more likely help if you understand why we’re asking.”

Frevisse tried to cover her alarm. “Bishop Beaufort?”

“He and Gloucester hate each other,” Alice said. That was no secret. They were uncle and nephew and enemies, both wanting the same power around the king, both so set against each other that their followers had once made open war in London’s streets. The royal council had forced peace on them then but had never been able to end the loathing between them. “That Bishop Beaufort favors peace is one more reason Gloucester is against it.”

“Does the king want peace?” Frevisse asked. He was seventeen years old and surely had both opinion and influence.

“Yes, but because of Gloucester he’s held back from coming out for it openly and that hinders everything.”

“Therefore,” Frevisse summed up, “Bishop Beaufort is looking for a way around Gloucester and the king’s hesitance through to freeing Orleans and having the peace.” She paused, then asked, afraid of the answer, “So how are you part of all this and what does Bishop Beaufort want from me?”

“Gloucester blocks every move toward peace as best he can, and King Henry still hesitates to offend him by supporting any moves toward it openly.”

“Openly.”

“He’s nonetheless sometimes met with the duke of Orleans quietly, likes him, trusts him, believes, along with Bishop Beaufort and others of us, that Orleans is the key to a French peace. You know of the talks there were at Calais this autumn?”

“Only that they happened.”

“Bishop Beaufort headed them, but Orleans was there and was allowed to talk with the Burgundian ambassadors. Because of it, we’re nearer now than we’ve ever been to peace. A little more and it can probably be made despite Gloucester.”

“But?”

“But for right now it all has to be done as secretly as possible.”

Frevisse sat still, thoroughly awake now and wishing she were not.

Alice, uncharacteristically, hesitated, then went on, “To keep it moving forward without Gloucester knowing about it, Bishop Beaufort has set up a way for Orleans to keep in contact with the duke of Burgundy.”

“A secret way. And you have part in it.”

“Frevisse, understand this could bring on peace despite Gloucester. The king wants this peace, and whoever helps him to it will gain such influence with him as no one else has.”

“And you want that.”

“Suffolk and I want that, yes,” Alice said quietly. “It’s how things are. If we want more than we have, we have to risk something to gain it. Not that it’s a great risk. The danger lies in Gloucester finding out. He still has power enough to make trouble. But if we can go on with what we’re doing, keeping Burgundy convinced of how much he’ll gain by this, keeping him interested in the peace while bringing King Henry so far toward it, even Gloucester won’t be able to stop it. Toward that, Orleans and Burgundy write to one another. The messages go secretly by several ways, not always the same one, from Orleans by way of someone to Bishop Beaufort and from him by way of one of several persons to either my lord husband or to me. We each have several separate ways to see them on to Burgundy and his messages come back by like ways. Never the same way twice in a row, to keep it difficult to suspect or detect.”

Increasingly wary, Frevisse asked, “What help of mine is Bishop Beaufort hoping for, that you’ve told me all this?”

“One of the men we used to pass messages has died. Not because he was our messenger,” Alice said hastily. “He drank too much one night and died of it. But part of our secrecy lies in having a number of ways to send the messages, so nothing becomes a pattern. We need someone to replace the link this man was. Bishop Beaufort thinks that you would serve for a time.”

The urge to outright refuse was so great Frevisse had to fight to hold it back, to say reasonably, “I don’t see how I can be expected to pass messages quietly to Bishop Beaufort. Or have them from him.”

“You’ll have nothing to do with him. Your abbot will. They’ll be meeting at Parliament. No one will think anything about it. Your abbot will be the link between Bishop Beaufort and you. My lord bishop meant to speak to him tonight, before they left here, and thought he’d agree readily enough.”

Frevisse didn’t doubt he would. Abbot Gilberd would agree on his own behalf and hers, glad of the chance to be of service to the powerful bishop of Winchester. Unfortunately that left her with small choice of refusal herself but she said, with small hope it would do any good, “I may not be in London long.”

“Oh, your abbot can give you leave to stay as long as need be and you’ll stay here with me,” Alice said happily, “and you and I will have more time together than we would have otherwise.”

That was the one thing in favor of it and not sufficient, to Frevisse’s mind. But neither did she see a way out that would not put her in great disfavor not only with Alice but with Abbot Gilberd at the least. Bowing her head to hide how much she disliked it, she began to give way, asking, “How do I meet with Abbot Gilberd? Do you invite him to supper here again?”

“Frevisse, please,” Alice said, answering her overt displeasure rather than her question. “If there were another way as readily to hand, as likely to go unnoticed…”

“I know,” Frevisse said, tempering her voice. If there was no way out of this, she could at least seem gracious over it, for both their sakes. “It’s just I’m so tired tonight.”

“It won’t be difficult,” Alice said encouragingly. “He’ll have occasion to visit his sister in St. Helen’s while he’s here in London, and so will you. Any message by way of me for Bishop Beaufort to hand on to Orleans, you can leave with her for her brother to collect. Any coming the other way, through him, he can leave for you to collect. At word from him, she surely won’t ask questions over anything he leaves there for you or you leave for him.”