The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) (13 page)

Alice stared at her, nakedly startled. Then she startled Frevisse in return by abruptly turning her head away and half-whispering, “Yes. All of that.”

Frevisse’s anger vanished. Suddenly uncertain what to say, she looked away, too. They had come to the orchard’s eastern edge, with clear view over the low turf bank and across the pasture to Alice’s pavilion and the servants now unloading wagon and carriage. The bright, graceful pavilion in the green pasture was beautiful to see there under the shining, cloud-cleared summer sky, and a part of Frevisse ached that mankind could make something so simply pleasing and yet spend such effort of time and thought on ugliness.

“Frevisse,” Alice said softly, regretful but still determined. “I have to have whatever it is they have.”

Curtly, wanting no part in any of this, Frevisse answered, “Then ask for it.”

I
n the late
afternoon’s westering sunlight the orchard’s shadows lay long and black across the grass, and Cristiana stood staring at her own stretched out among them, the afternoon’s warm stillness all around her, no near sound but the late summer whir of insects as Lady Alice waited for her answer. Not near were manor sounds: men’s voices calling to each other; a cow lowing in a byre, agrieved at something; a laden wagon rumbling over a rearyard’s cobbles. In the kitchen would be the heat and hurry of readying a supper worthy of the duchess of Suffolk and in the great hall the high table was by now being laid with Beth’s best linen and plate. Manor life, and all of it as familiar to Cristiana as the sunlight, because all of it had been her life when she was Edward’s wife and making their home. But none of it had to do with her here, with her now. Not now that she was Edward’s widow and had no home anymore. All she had was other people’s kindness. Or unkindness, if they chose.

With a hand pressed over the ache in her breast, she stared at her shadow laid black across the grass, and wished Edward had not done this to her. Wished with a smothering despair that Edward had not died and left her facing this. Wished Gerveys were here with her. But the nun had come for only her, not him, and it hardly mattered whether he were with her or not. There was only one answer she could make to Lady Alice’s demand.

But still she held back from giving it. Because once given, what then?

“Well?” Lady Alice asked, impatient.

She hardly needed to be impatient, Cristiana thought. She had to know Cristiana had no real choice. But with that thought, Cristiana rebelled, and turning not to her but to Dame Frevisse waiting a little aside from them both, demanded at her, “Can her grace’s word be trusted? Would you be able honestly to swear that she’ll keep her promise to me if I take it?”

Lady Alice drew in a hissing breath of displeasure, but Dame Frevisse considered the question with neither displeasure nor surprise for a long moment before she answered, “I’ve never known her to break her word. Aside from that, I think you can trust her to keep it in this because what she offers in return for you giving her what she asks will cost her very little.”

“A simple ‘yes’,” Lady Alice said tautly, “would have been enough.”

Biting the words short, Dame Frevisse said back at her, “Not in this matter.”

Cristiana had sensed Dame Frevisse’s anger when the nun fetched her from the house. She was relieved now to know the anger was not at her. That Dame Frevisse was willing to vouch for her cousin even while this angry at her, was to the good, too. But not far enough to the good, and Cristiana asked, “Flow can I know to trust
you?
You might be willing to lie to help her in this.”

“No,” Dame Frevisse said. “I would
not
be willing to lie to help her in this. I don’t care a cat’s tail about my cousin’s ambitions, or anyone else’s. If I thought she wouldn’t keep her word, I’d say it.”

Lady Alice’s sharp sound of wordless anger at that reassured Cristiana more, and trying to keep tremble from her voice, she said at her, “You swear then that if I give this paper into your hand you’ll see my daughters’ wardships and marriages are taken from Laurence Helyngton and given—“ she hesitated, took hard hold on her resolve, and said “—are given to John Say.”

“To John?” Lady Alice said. She and Dame Frevisse were both taken by surprise and showed it. “But . . . why not to you? Or to your brother?”

Committed to her choice, Cristiana said firmly, “I couldn’t save my daughters before and my brother will soon be in Ireland. John has favor with both the king and your lord husband. Mary and Jane will be safest in his care. Safer than I could hope to keep them.”

That was bitterly the truth and bitterly hard to say, but she was relieved when, after a moment’s pause, Lady Alice agreed, “I’ll see it done, Master Say will have their wardships and marriages.”

“Immediately,” Cristiana said.

“As immediately as I can have the necessary documents written out and sealed. Within the week.”

“Swear to it.”

Cold with anger, Lady Alice said, “God and the blessed Virgin be my witnesses, John Say will have the keeping of your daughters and their marriages if you give me this paper or whatever it is.”

“Then if my brother agrees, too, you’ll have it as soon as he can get it.”

“Get it?” Lady Alice snapped, impatient and displeased. “It isn’t here? And why does he have to have anything to do with it at all? They’re your daughters. The choice is yours, not his.”

“I can’t lay hands on this paper alone,” Cristiana snapped as sharply back at her. “It takes the both of us.”

“And it’s not here?”

“It isn’t here. My husband didn’t want it easily come by. My brother knows where it is. I know the safe-word that gives it to him.”

“So you both need to agree before I can have it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d best see to it that he agrees,” Lady Alice said coldly.

Scorning to answer that, Cristiana gathered her skirts, made a low curtsy, and left without Lady Alice’s leave to go.

Finding Mary and Jane and Beth’s little daughter Betha in the garden with Ivetta, she was for once not glad to see them. What she wanted was to find Gerveys and make an entkpf all this as soon as might be. But she smiled and held out lifer arms as they ran to her, braced herself as they threw their arms around her, and held them to her tightly despite the pain, smiling down as she said, “There, my darlings. I’ve been in talk with her grace the duchess of Suffolk and she’s promised to make everything well.”

Mary looked up without letting go of her. “We can go home and I won’t have to marry Clement?”

“There’ll be no more trouble over Clement. You’re going to be Master Say’s ward.”

“Master Say’s ward? Why can’t you keep us?”

“We’ll talk it all out later. I promise.” She began to loosen the girls from her. “But I have to talk to your Uncle Gerveys just now, to settle everything. Ivetta, do you know where he is?”

“I can find him, my lady.”

“Please. Tell him I’ll be in my chamber.”

“The girls?”

“They can go back to the nursery. Jane, don’t pull. What’s the matter?”

Mary had stepped back willingly enough, but Jane was holding to her skirts with both fists and tugging at them, distressed and frowning. Heeded, she stopped pulling but stayed frowning as she asked, “Don’t I get to go home with Aunt Ankaret anymore?”

“Ankaret is your cousin. Your father’s cousin,” Cristiana said a little curtly. “She’s not your aunt.”

Jane’s frown began to cloud to something darker. “But don’t I get to go home with her anymore?”

Before Cristiana could straightly tell her that no, she would not, Ivetta took firm hold on Jane’s wrists and loosed her from Cristiana’s skirts, saying, “There now, that’s something to be settled later, not here and now. Your mother is tired. She’s going to go lie down while I see you to the nursery and then find your Uncle Gerveys for her.”

Still talking to distract Jane, she took Mary by the hand, too, and bustled them away. Wearily, Cristiana thought that the only fault she had ever found with Ivetta was her constant wish to make things well in the moment, regardless of the trouble that might make later. This time, though, she was merely glad to be rescued and followed her daughters and Ivetta slowly, giving them time to be well ahead of her, long gone inside before she reached the top of the stairs from the yard. That left only the worry she would meet Beth in the screens passage, but she did not, only the household’s steward Master Fyncham, who bowed to her as she past. Otherwise unhindered, she dragged herself up the rear stairs to her chamber.

There, with no need to seem strong for anyone to see, she lay down on the bed with a groan she could not help and curled onto her side, weary with her fear, tired out with trying to seem brave. How much longer until she had to be neither one anymore—neither afraid nor brave? Blessed St. Anne, how long until she was free?

Despite of all, she maybe slightly slept. She found her eyes closed, anyway, and did not hear Ivetta come up the stairs, only heard her as she crossed the room and opened her eyes to ask without otherwise moving, “Where’s Gerveys?”

“Coming, mistress. He was in talk with Master Say.” Ivetta laid a gentle hand on her forehead. “Is it bad, mistress? Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m only tired.” Which was not the whole truth but as much truth as she could deal with now, and despite she wished she never had to move again, she sat up and eased herself toward the head of the bed. Ivetta hurriedly pulled a pillow up at her back. Cristiana sank gratefully against the feathered softness with, “Thank you.” Then betrayed to herself how much she still distrusted Lady Alice by adding, “When Gerveys comes, keep guard outside the door while we talk, so we won’t be overheard.”

“Of course, mistress.” Ivetta hesitated before saying, “Are you really going to be able to make all well for Jane and Mary?”

“Yes,” Cristiana said, tired and with her eyes closed again. “Gerveys and I are going to give Lady Alice something she wants and everything will be well.”

“Give her something?”

“A thing Edward left us that we have no need for except this. Lady Alice wants it, is welcome to it, and in return will give me Mary and Jane. Then . . .” Tiredness and her fears’ weight seemed dragging her very bones down into the bed. “Then I’ll be able to rest.”

Gerveys knocked and came in. Ivetta gave him a curtsy and went out. Cristiana heard her speak to someone on the stairs as she closed the door and asked Gerveys, “Pers is there?”

“Pers is there. You may lose your girls’ nurse to Ireland if this goes on.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, his voice light but his gaze worried. “You don’t look well.”

“I’m tired is all. I want all this to be over.”

“What did the nun want with you?”

“She took me to talk with Lady Alice. She knows about the Edward’s paper.”

“Lady Alice does?” Gerveys said, as alarmed as Cristiana had been. “How?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was enough she knew I had it.”

“And?”

“If we give it to her, she swears she’ll have the girls’ wardships and marriages away from Laurence.”

Gerveys held silent, his jaw set in the way that meant he was thinking fast and hard, until finally he said, “We’ve already agreed we’d use it this way. That’s no trouble. It’s how she knows about it that makes me uneasy. That, and whether we can trust her word.”

“Dame Frevisse says we can.”

“Can we trust Dame Frevisse?”

Oddly, that was one thing Cristiana had not doubted until now; but made doubtful by Gerveys’ doubt, she said, “We have to, don’t we?”

Slowly, still thinking Gerveys said, “Let me ask John if we can depend on Lady Alice’s word. He’s not kin to Lady Alice and I’m still willing to trust that his first loyalty is to the crown, not Suffolk. I’ll speak with him after supper, and if he says we can trust Lady Alice’s word, then tomorrow at first light Pers and I will ride to Ware for this damnable paper.”

“Is that where it is? Ware?”

“In the Franciscan priory. In the prior’s keeping. If Pers and I leave at first light and the weather is fair and the prior is where he should be, we’ll be back here by midday. I’ll hand the thing over to Lady Alice and all will be well.”

“The safe-word for it is—“

“Save that until we’re certain I’m going.”

Through the door Ivetta called, “They’re calling to supper and Pers is here with hot water. Should he come in?” Gerveys called, “Come,” leaned over, gave Cristiana a quick kiss on the forehead, and said with a smile, “By this time tomorrow it will all be done with. So tonight, for once, I want for you to eat a hearty meal instead of seeming like you’ve forgotten what food is for. Yes?”

Wanting both to believe him and to please him, Cristiana smiled back, agreeing “Yes.”

T
he next morning’s
light rain was already thinning away when Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth started on their way to Broxbourne’s church to say Prime there and afterward hear Mass. They had chosen to ride, not minded to be bothered with the road’s mud or to slip and slide on the long hill’s wayside grass, and as they went, Domina Elisabeth nodded over a field gate toward Alice’s pavilion and the wagon and carriage beside it and said, “I hope she slept dry. And her people.”

“Eve no doubt they did,” Frevisse answered, with the unsaid hope that the quiet pattering of rain on canvas had soothed away some of Alice’s sharp displeasure. She had been so short with Frevisse in the parlor last night after supper that Domina Elisabeth had said later, while they readied for bed, “Your cousin seemed unpleased about something.” Not quite making a question of it.

Mildly, as if both unworried and uninformed, Frevisse had said, “She must have some worry on her mind,” and Domina Elisabeth had let it lie.

Frevisse’s own worry was less obliging and still with her. Alice was not shallow, not governed by each moment’s passing humour. Frevisse had seen her put on a smiling, gracious front in seemingly worse times than this. For her to be as she had been yesterday told that something was far more wrong than anything to which she had admitted. Set as high in royal favor as Suffolk was, and holding the power that he did, what threat would be sufficient to unsteady Alice this badly?

Frevisse did not think she wanted to know the answer to that and she was grateful that she and Domina Elisabeth had left the house this morning early enough to see no one but servants, early enough that they finished saying Prime together well before Father Richard came for the Mass, so that Domina Elisabeth went to sit on the stone bench along the nave’s wall and fall into low-voiced talk with the several elderly village women already waiting there, leaving Frevisse alone on her knees before the rood screen, her head bowed over her clasped hands.

Her knees would not be pleased with her but she was in need of the quieting that prayer usually brought to her mind, especially in somewhere like this. St. Augustine’s was an old church, its nave plain and unpillared, with small, round-headed windows set high in the side walls and a short, round-ended chancel beyond the wooden rood screen. The nave’s white-plastered walls were boldly painted with Christ’s Passion along one side and a more-than-life-size line of saints along the other, while the Virgin and Child looked down from the chancel. The quiet of the centuries since it was built lay deep between its thick stone walls: the women’s murmuring talk was only the ongoing murmuring talk of other women on uncounted other mornings through unnoticed other years—just as all the prayers of the Offices and the Mass had gone on, day around into day, for centuries before St. Augustine’s stood here and would go on for centuries more, God willing. But that everlasting did not lessen the needs of everyday and Frevisse slipped back to part of this morning’s Prime.
Respice in servos tuos, Domine, et in opera tua. . . Et sit splendor Domini Dei nostri super nos, et opera manuum nostrarum dirige super nos, et opus manuum nostrarum dirige . . .
Look at your servants, Lord, and at your workmen . . . And let the brightness of our Lord God come upon us, and guide the work of our hands . . .
Skut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum.
As it was in the beginning, and now, and always, and forever.

There was deep comfort in that blending of the eternal and the now; and when the time came, she was able to give herself to the Mass with its far-reaching into otherness, its going into the mystery of Beyond that was greater than the passing passions of the world. And after it that release and pleasure stayed with her while she and Domina Elisabeth exchanged a few mild comments on the weather with Father Richard, a small, balding, quiet-mannered man who had never yet asked intrusive questions about why they were there and asked none now about Lady Alice though word of her coming was surely all through the neighborhood by now.

Frevisse could not decide whether he was so content with his small corner of the world that he had no curiosity, or if he simply had a servant who informed him of everything, leaving him no need of questions.

The church lay at the east end of Broxbourne’s wide green, well away from the broad highway beyond the houses at its far end. It was a road that never lacked for travelers: southward it led to London, hardly a day’s ride away; northward it went by way of Ware and a number of other towns to, eventually, the great shrine at Walsingham. Already this morning it was well-flowing with people on foot and horseback when Frevisse and Domina Elizabeth rode onto it and saw Master Say and two servants coming toward them at a jogging trot.

For a moment Frevisse thought that he was come to meet them for some reason, but he only made a small bow of his head as he rode past, and Domina Elisabeth turned in her saddle to watch them away, murmuring, “How odd.”

They rode on, shortly leaving the highway for the deserted, steeper road to the manor. The morning was still cool but the early clouds and rain were gone, promising a fair and shining late summer day. Frevisse let herself hope that it might be an even fairer day—that today Abbot Gilberd’s release would come and she and Domina Elisabeth could leave.

Was it cowardice to want to be away from Alice and her trouble?

She decided it probably was, but she saw no way she was any use here to anyone, and so—cowardice aside—wouldn’t it be better to be gone and out of everyone’s way?

At the manor, she and Domina Elisabeth gave their horses to a stableman in the yard and went up the stairs and inside, were still in the screens passage when they heard Alice in the great hall demanding with raised voice, “. . . gone where? How long until he’s back?”

Frevisse followed Domina Elisabeth into the hall, to find Alice, Mistress Say, and Cristiana were standing in the middle of it, with a scatter of servants frozen and staring at them and Mistress Say taking Cristiana by the arm and beginning to draw her away, saying to Alice, “My lady, wouldn’t this better be done in the parlor?”

“It would be, yes,” Alice snapped and went past them both, leading the way.

From maybe no more than plain curiosity Domina Elisabeth followed them, and Frevisse went with her, less from curiosity than with thought of somehow curbing Alice’s too-open anger. At what?

She did not see that Cristiana was as angry until they were into the parlor when, with the door shut against the servants’ watching, she pulled free of Mistress Say, spun on Alice, and said in plain rage, “He had to go to Ware. He’ll be back when he gets back.”

“To Ware?” Alice said as sharply. “No farther? Only to Ware? That’s, what, five miles?”

“Six from here,” said Mistress Say.

“Twelve miles to go and come,” Alice said. “When did he go?”

“At first light, I’m told,” Mistress Say said in a calming voice. “Even if Sir Gerveys’ business takes a while in Ware—“

“It shouldn’t,” Cristiana snapped, still glaring at Alice.

“—he could well be back by dinnertime,” Mistress Say ended soothingly.

Unsoothed, Alice said, “If he’d hurried, he could be back now. If he’s decided to take it for himself…”

Furious and contemptuous together, Cristiana cried, “My brother’s not treacherous.”

Before Alice could worsen things by answering that, Frevisse broke in, deliberately bland-voiced, “Has Sir Gerveys gone somewhere?”

“To Ware, it seems,” Alicg-snapped. “He and his squire. Early this morning without telling anyone but the man who helped to saddle their horses.”

“And you’re helping them return here sooner by raging about it?” Frevisse asked evenly.

Alice turned on her, an angry answer ready, but maybe read in Frevisse’s look that she had gone far enough—or too far—because instead of saying more, she made a sharp casting-away gesture with one hand and went away to the window. From there, her back to the room, she said stiffvoiced, “If you’d be so good as to join me, Dame Frevisse.” The others all shared quick looks before Frevisse went to Alice’s side, where Alice neither looked nor spoke to her but went on staring out the window. Behind them, Domina Elisabeth moved to the settle and began murmured talk about Broxbourne’s church being very old. Mistress Say drew Cristiana to sit, too, commenting that the roof was poorly, and under their voices, for only Frevisse to hear but still steadfastly looking out the window rather than at her, Alice said, “Tell me I’ve done well to trust these people, Sir Gerveys and his sister.”

Before Frevisse could answer, the door was flung open to the headlong entry of Cristiana’s Jane, with somewhere behind her Ivetta calling, “No! You knock first!” But Jane was already in the room, running to her mother’s out-held arms as Ivetta, with a firm hold on Mary with one hand and Mistress Say’s daughter with the other, reached the doorway. “If you want me to take them away …” Ivetta said breathlessly.

“Of course not,” Mistress Say said before Cristiana could answer. “Betha, Mary, come here, my dears. Give courtesy to my lady duchess.”

She was making deliberate use of the children for distraction, Frevisse thought. Alice had to turn around and smile and bend her head to their curtsys that were only a little spoiled by small Betha needing Ivetta’s hand to steady her. Courtesy satisfied on both sides, Alice returned to looking out the window, and under Betha loudly explaining to her mother that she was sharing her dolls with Jane, asked again,
“Have
I done well to trust them?”

Frevisse took time to consider her answer, then said carefully, “Cristiana wants her daughters safe. I doubt anything in the world matters to her as much as that. Nor do I think her brother will betray her. I’ve seen nothing but love and loyalty between them.”

Alice jerked one hand in sharp dismissal of that.

“Alice,” Frevisse said with forced gentleness, “there
are
people to whom love matters more than worldly power.” Her cousin’s stillness then was, in its way, worse than any answer, because Frevisse could not tell what she was thinking behind it, until very quietly Alice said, “I know that.”

“But do you believe it?” Frevisse asked quietly back.

And this time the answer was worse than the silence: barely above a whisper, Alice said, “I used to.”

Frevisse had no answer to that, and the silence drew out between them until Alice said, “I know I’ve helped nothing by making show of my thoughts, my fears, just now. Believe me, I’d hide them if I could. Talk to me about something else, please. Just keep me company and take my mind away from this waiting. Because if Sir Gerveys has gone to York with this thing …”

Frevisse started in on the first thing that came into her mind, which—strangely—was Domina Elisabeth’s cat and its constant interest in the birds Dame Perpetua fed with bread crumbs in the cloister’s garden. Dame Perpetua resented the cat’s threat to the birds, the cat resented her interference with its business, and more than once protest had been made in Chapter meetings about Dame Perpetua’s sudden outcries of “Shoo! Shoo!” making unseemly disturbance of the cloister’s quiet. Frevisse did not greatly care one way or the other about cat, birds, or Dame Perpetua’s outcries, and assuredly Alice did not, but it was something to say, something to draw Alice’s mind a little aside from other thoughts, and from there Frevisse moved on to the coming marriage between the priory steward’s older daughter and the village reeve’s younger son, making more a story of it than there truly was until interrupted by a suddeness of raised voices and running footsteps in the great hall.

She and Alice and everyone else looked that way just as someone knocked hard at the parlor door. Starting to rise, Mistress Say called, “Come in,” even as a maidservant flung open the door and cried, “The master is back. And Sir Gerveys. There’s been a fight! He’s hurt!”

Cristiana pushed her daughters away from her and sprang to her feet, only barely behind Mistress Say out of the parlor, with Ivetta on her heels and Alice close behind them. Startled into fright, Jane and little Betha began to cry but Mary would have gone after her mother except Domina Elisabeth caught her by the skirt and pulled her back onto the settle, at the same time putting out an arm to draw Jane and little Betha to her. With no thought of helping Domina Elisabeth, Frevisse went after Alice.

At the hall’s far end a fuss of servants were crowding, shifting, falling back, making way for Master Say and one of his men carrying Sir Gerveys between them on their linked arms, his own arms around their necks, his right leg bound around above the knee by a thick, bloodied cloth, his eyes shut, and his teeth set against pain.

To everyone Master Say was declaring loudly, “A cut with a sword, yes. Get out of the way. Beth!”

Less desperate now that she saw her husband unhurt, Mistress Say caught Cristiana’s arm, holding her aside and beginning to give orders, sorting her servants to usefulness with, “Master Fyncham, my medicines. Kate, fresh yarrow from the garden. You know it. Nol, two basins and a pitcher of hot water, with more hot water after that until I say I need no more. Alice, clean cloths. And wine. The rest of you . . .”

“Pers!” Ivetta shrieked, craning her neck, looking among the crowding servants. “Where’s Pers?”

Nearly to the parlor with Sir Gerveys, Master Say said over his shoulder at her, “Pers took a blow to the side. He’s at the inn in Broxbourne. They’re seeing to him there.” With a. wordless cry, Ivetta started toward the outer door. Behind her, Mistress Say ordered, “Edmund, go with her. Get her a horse and ride with her.”

One of the servants bowed and ran after Ivetta. The others were scattering to their tasks, Master Say and his man had slowed, going carefully through the parlor doorway, watchful of Sir Gerveys’ leg, while Cristiana, free of Mistress Say, kept close behind them, silently desperate. In the parlor Domina Elisabeth was guiding the staring girls to the room’s other side, away from the settle. Mistress Say circled the men and Cristiana to reach the settle ahead of them, quickly piled up cushions at one end, and stepped aside for the men to set Sir Gerveys carefully down. Not carefully enough. As Frevisse followed Alice back into the parlor, he sank against the cushions with a groan he could not help, and Mary gave a frightened sob.