“This month’s end.”
“Pray, tell His Grace from me that his dear lady mother was happy and well when I left her.”
Chaucer inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Gladly. And is there aught else you might wish done over there?”
Lady Ermentrude smiled, pleased at being treated at last in the way she deserved. “Oh no, I think not. My matters are all well in hand. But thank you. And how regrettable you must go on, or we could chat the evening away.”
“He comes to see Dame Frevisse, you know,” Domina Edith said a little vaguely. “So very kind of him, I think, she being his niece and all.”
“Yes.” Lady Ermentrude’s gaze flicked between Frevisse and Chaucer intently. “I think I knew you had a niece here but had forgotten her name, Master Chaucer. By marriage, I believe?”
“Yes, but nurtured in my own household from middle childhood, and in many ways a daughter to me.” He smiled at Frevisse.
Frevisse smiled back, as perfectly aware as he was of how unwelcome Lady Ermentrude would find this piece of knowledge. Anyone so close to Master Thomas Chaucer was an unsuitable victim for her torments.
“Ah,” Lady Ermentrude said shortly. “I did not know that.” Unexpectedly her face brightened. “I remember!” She turned to Frevisse. “Your mother made that unfortunate marriage to the younger son of someone or other. Most regrettable, it was thought at the time. And so you ended up in Master Chaucer’s household when they could not keep you anymore!”
“My mother and father did not find their marriage regrettable,” Frevisse said in a level voice. “And it was my father’s death that brought me to Master Chaucer’s and my aunt’s household. Nothing else.”
The crisp, steady words must have given Lady Ermentrude sufficient warning she should go no farther that way.
“How stand matters with your family?” Chaucer put in. “Did you visit at Fen Harcourt on your way from the Queen at Hertford?”
It was another well-chosen diversion. Lady Ermentrude smiled with straight-lipped disapproval. “I paused there and meant to stay longer, but I’m not so old I need to wait on their favors. They could not find it convenient to give me due respect and I’ve come away sooner than I planned. They’ll not be happy when they find how much they’ve offended me.”
“Harvest time can be a heavy matter,” Chaucer remarked.
“So can my displeasure.” Lady Ermentrude eyed Frevisse as closely as she had eyed the cake. “My own house at Bancroft will be ready in two weeks so I’m thinking to spend a week here and then another week with Isobel. I’m minded to see the girl she had this summer. A girl child may be all right, and is no problem since they have two sons already and they’re both thriving, so I hear. Then I’ll go on to my own manor, and my relations will see how welcome they are in their turn.”
“Concerning sons,” said Chaucer, “how do your own at present?”
“My Walter has been with Lord Fenner these two months past. Lord Fenner is dying now, it seems, and since the title comes by right of blood to Sir Walter, he’s there to be sure not too much is lost when Lord Fenner makes his will, not all the property being entailed, you know. The title and its lands will be a great boon to our family, and it will be best if the wealth comes with them.”
“And Herbrand?”
“In France, in my lord of Bedford’s household still. He fights occasionally, I believe, and should have the captaining of one castle or another soon.”
“Mayhap I’ll see him while I’m there.”
“Mayhap,” Lady Ermentrude agreed with no particular interest. “If so, tell him I mean to see how his manors are doing come the spring. He’s left them to others for too long, if you ask me, and I’ve no mind to let Fenner property go to the bad by his neglect.”
“How fortunate that travel agrees with you,” Domina Edith said.
“It would if it weren’t for servants.” Lady Ermentrude took up this theme as if on cue, as Frevisse suspected Domina Edith had meant her to, and set off on a long, well-practiced dissertation concerning the inadequacies of everyone so fortunate as to be allowed into her service. It went its appointed course while Domina Edith fumbled crumbs off the single cake her conscience would allow her and Frevisse poured wine for everyone. Chaucer was finishing his third cake when Lady Ermentrude ended with “But it’s a common tale, and surely we’ve all suffered from such lowborn folk. Pray, what will you be doing for the King while you’re in France?”
“Very little, likely. Mostly my own necessities draw me there, with some few other matters friends have asked of me.”
“I suppose there’ll be his French coronation soon so he’ll be able to come back to England and be done with it? Is it the coronation you’re going for?”
“There’s no date set for it yet and a great deal of France still to recover. The Witch and her rebellion cost us men and money as well as territory, and even though she’s burned, Bedford reports he can hardly be sure of passage to Paris yet, let alone to Rheims.”
“A French coronation.” Lady Ermentrude shook her head. “You’d think his English crown would be enough.”
“Not for the French,” Chaucer said dryly. “But among other things I’m bound for collecting Lord Moleyns’ heiress. I’ve bought her wardship and marriage rights from the crown and her mother has asked I fetch her myself if possible.”
Lady Ermentrude looked well impressed. “That’s a wealthy wardship to lay hold of! You’ve a choice for her husband? I’ve possibilities if you’d be interested. How old is she now? She was born in France, I think?”
“Six years or nearly. Yes.”
Frevisse turned to set the wine pitcher on the table and hide her face from Lady Ermentrude. It was not like her uncle to stay long after he had said he must be .going. But now he settled back and went on easily. “And that reminds me that there’s word, too, of someone you might remember. A youth named William Vaughan. He squired in your household, I think.”
Lady Ermentrude frowned with thought before nodding. “I remember him, though his family was no one in particular. He went to France to make his fortune and died years back.”
“Not so many years. Just two. At Orleans, during the siege.”
Domina Edith made a sound of regret. The loss of Orleans to the witch-girl Jeanne d’Arc and the English disasters in battles afterward had brought much tears and praying at St. Frideswide’s. Chaucer turned to include her as he talked. “Lady Moleyns is very taken with his story. He was part of her husband’s meinie, one of his household men, I gather. In the fighting at Orleans, when Moleyns went down wounded, young Vaughan fought his way to his side before any of his other men and stood above him fighting off the French like a champion from Froissart. He was on his knees and bloodied in a dozen places before help came.”
“A blessing on his courage,” Frevisse said admiringly.
Lady Ermentrude, apparently unmoved by a tale of courage without a Fenner name attached to it, picked a fragment off the edge of her cake.
Domina Edith murmured, “But he did not save his lord?”
“No, alas. It would be a better tale if he had, but they both died of their wounds. Lady Moleyns, as the only reward she could make to him, took Vaughan’s son into her household and has been raising him.”
“A blessing on his courage and her piety,” Domina Edith said. “Vaughan married over there then? Surely not a French woman?”
Chaucer shrugged. “The boy bears his name. That’s all I know. Nor has Lady Moleyns been able to find any English relatives of his father, but she remembers Vaughan talking of your household, Lady Ermentrude, and asked if I would make inquiries. Do you know if he has any family who might want the boy?”
Lady Ermentrude shrugged carelessly. She thought, then mused, “There was a sister, a nun at Godstow, but she died long ago.” She frowned, running her large list of names and connections through her mind. “No, I’m sure there’s no one to be telling he’s dead.” The cake continued to crumble between h
er fingers. “God give him good rest,” she added perfunctorily. “At Orleans, you say.” She dusted crumbs from her fingers and turned the talk to a subject more to her liking. “One of my sumpter horses has gone lame, Domina. I want your groom of the stable to look at him.”
“As you wish.” Domina Edith nodded.
Chaucer rose, gathering up his hood and beginning to fold it into a coxcomb hat, using the long liripipe to bind it in place. “Ah then, I suppose Lady Moleyns will have to go on keeping the boy.”
“Hm?” said Lady Ermentrude. “Oh, yes, I suppose so.”
“And I, to judge by the slant of sunlight through this window had best take my leave. I’ve some few miles to go yet today.” He turned to Domina Edith. “Thank you for your hospitality, as always good and gracious.”
Domina Edith inclined her head to him and held out her hand for him to kiss. “You are always welcome, whenever you choose to come. Pray, make it often.”
“As often as I may.”
His kiss was warmer than the one he next dealt to Lady Ermentrude, though his leave-taking was as graceful. Her reply was formal but disinterested. Frevisse moved to the door to accompany him to the yard. At his gesture she preceded him down the stairs, until in the lower corridor they could walk side by side, not speaking, their silence companionable. In the eight years she had grown to womanhood in his household, they had become friends enough to simply enjoy each other’s company without words, while in the years since she had entered St. Frideswide’s, their worlds had grown so far apart there was now little to be said between them. But their friendship held.
Not until they were nearly to the outer door into the yard, in hearing of Lady Ermentrude’s people still unpacking, did Chaucer say, “My deepest sympathies on your current guest. Will you be able to survive her?”
Frevisse’s smile was wry. “I think between you and Domina Edith, she’s impressed enough to be a little cautious. Now that she’s quite perfectly aware that I’m closely connected to your wealth and royal relations, she may even want to make a friend of me.”
“My deeper sympathies for doing you such a disservice. You know she’d treat me badly if matters were only slightly different.”
“If things were slightly different she’d never speak to you at all except to give you orders. Your father was a vintner’s son who happened to write stories and your mother’s sister had no more decency than to be a royal duke’s mistress. I would despair of anyone ever making a respectable figure from that.”
“The disgrace sits deep within my soul,” Chaucer said cheerfully. “All those impressive half-royal relations of mine but not a single drop of noble blood to be found in my own veins. It’s a shock to know that all this wealth and power I’m supposed to have comes from naught but my own wits and skill. Regrettable, I’m sure.”
Frevisse tempered her urge to laugh into a wider smile. Chaucer smiled back at her and asked with quiet seriousness, “You’re still contented here?”
“Most of the time. Would it be simplest to say that I’m content with being content?”‘
“If it’s true, it’s more than most people manage with their lives.”
“It’s true,” said Frevisse simply.
They had reached the outer door. Chaucer took her hand in his. “We’ve come, one way and another, by the turning of Fortune’s wheel and our own wills, to the places we want to be.” He kissed her cheek. “God’s blessing on you, my dear.”
“And on you, too, Uncle. Keep safe and come again when you may.”
“Be assured.”
From the doorway Frevisse watched him cross the yard to where his own escort was waiting, collected neatly aside from the disorder of Lady Ermentrude’s people. Not until he had swung into his saddle and was riding out the gateway did she turn away, aware belatedly of someone bearing down on her from behind and surprised past words to find it was Lady Ermentrude, in full flow of veils and gown, striding toward her like a lord set on battle.
Frevisse had not anticipated facing the full rigors of her attention so soon. She sank quickly in a curtsey, bracing herself for whatever was coming. But Lady Ermentrude waved a dismissive hand at her and said briskly, “My plans have changed. I’m riding on to my great-niece Lady Isobel’s today. It’s hardly a three-hour ride. I’ll be there before full dark if I leave now.”
“But–” A variety of protests went through Frevisse’s mind. She chose the simplest of them and said, “Your people are half unpacked by now and settling in. Surely–”
Lady Ermentrude was already going out the door, forcing Frevisse to follow her. “And they can go on unpacking. I want haste, not a clutter of idiots slowing me down. A few men-at-arms, two of my women, that will do. I expect to be back tomorrow. You there!” She beckoned demandingly at a groom nearby.
Frevisse, with the thought that Lady Ermentrude’s going would leave her free to set straight certain matters concerning the guest halls and dogs and monkeys, contented herself with murmuring, “As you think best, my lady. We’ll await your return.”
“And have all in readiness, I’m sure,” Lady Ermentrude agreed sharply. To the groom now bowing in front of her she said peremptorily, “I want my horse saddled. At once. Go on.” Smothering a look of bewilderment, the man ran off. “Sheep-face,” Lady Ermentrude snapped, and began shouting, “Maryon! Bess! Bertram!”
The courtyard shifted from disorder to chaos, but more quickly than Frevisse had thought possible, Lady Ermentrude was mounted and riding out the gateway with a small cluster of her people behind her.
In the intense gap of quiet left by her going, Frevisse drew a deep breath and turned away to the tasks next to hand.
Chapter Three
The next day was as fair as the days before had been, mild with September warmth and quiet in its familiar pattern of prayers at dawn, then breakfast and Mass, and afterward the varied, repetitious business that was the form and shelter of everyday security for Thomasine.
But she had stayed in the church after the long midnight prayers of Matins and Lauds, kneeling alone at St. Frideswide’s altar in the small fall of lamplight, meaning only to give thanks for yesterday’s gift of courage against Lady Ermentrude and then return to bed, but she had lost herself in the pleasure of repetition, murmuring Aves and Paters and simple expressions of praise over and over until all knowledge of Self melted away, and suddenly there was the sharp ring of the bell, startling her, because it meant the whole night had fled. She went as quickly as stiff knees and sticky mind allowed to the church’s cloister door, there to join the nuns in procession to their places in the choir to greet the sunrise with the prayers of Prime.
Now, as the warm day wore away, she was finding her temper uneven and her frequent yawns a distracting nuisance. There seemed to be constant errands to be run, few chances of just sitting at a table in the kitchen pretending to peel apples, and every time she went out into the cloister the sound of her great-aunt’s people lofted over the wall. Heavy male laughter and the higher pitch of chattering women’s voices had no place in St. Frideswide’s cloister. They bruised the quiet and made Thomasine wish for a way to bundle them into silence.
As she hurried along the cloister walk to fetch ink for Dame Perpetua, the little bell by the door to the courtyard jangled at her, saying someone wanted in. Thomasine halted, irked, and looked around with impatient anger for a servant to signal to the door – then caught herself and offered a swift prayer of penitence. Anger was one of the seven Deadly Sins, and its appearance marked a severe lack of the holiness she was so desperate to attain.
The bell rang again, there was no servant in sight, and misery replaced her anger. Why were patience and courage always called for when supply of them was smallest? She went to the door and opened the shutter that closed the small window at eye level. Peering through its bars, she saw no one, and the ends of her temper unraveled a little further. Then the curly top of a head bounced barely into view, and a child’s voice cried, “Oh, please! Open, please
open! I need help!”
The cry was piteous and Thomasine’s annoyance dissolved into her quick sympathy. She unlatched and opened the door. The little girl standing there wore a less-than-clean dress in Lady Ermentrude’s livery of brown and cream and was near to tears as she pleaded, “Please, m’lady, is Dame Claire within? I must s-speak to her!”
Dame Claire was the priory’s infirmarian, tending not only to the nunnery’s sick but anyone who came there asking help. Thomasine tilted her head inquiringly, asking to be told more without breaking the silence that properly held her.
“Please, it’s little Jacques!” the child cried. Her tears had begun to spill now that there was someone to hear her. “He’s s-sick like to die, and oh, m’lady, you don’t know, it’s my life if something happens to him! Dame Frevisse said to ask for Dame Claire.”
Thomasine had had no idea there was a baby traveling with Lady Ermentrude. Or perhaps her great-aunt had acquired a dwarf since she was last here. Poor unhappy thing, to be sick in a strange place. Her sympathy for anyone hurting was as swift as her urge to pray for them, and she signed the child to follow her.
Dame Claire was, as nearly always, in her small workroom-storeroom off the infirmary, this morning counting sheets. She looked up as Thomasine tapped on the door frame, began to smile at seeing her, then saw the child’s tearful face beside her and came quickly. Dame Claire was small and neatly made, precise in all her movements, with a quiet dignity that belied her scant inches, as deeply quiet in her ways as her voice was when she asked, bending down to the child, “What is it, lamb?”
“It’s little Jacques,” the girl sobbed. Met with such open kindness, she felt free to cry as fiercely as her fear demanded. “I fell asleep and he fooled his way into a box of my lady’s sweetmeats and overate them and now he’s sick and he’s going to die and if he does, I will too, because my lady will kill me!”
“We have very good things for bellyaches,” Dame Claire said soothingly. “I doubt he’ll die. Come tell me about him.”
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