Frevisse gave up anything more than the pretense of eating, and with her headache did not dare drink more wine. Robert did not return, and the abbot made no more effort at conversation. Left to her thoughts, she did not like their morbid turn; God so directly manifest against someone who had tried his patience past endurance was not a comforting sight. She took her mind away from the incident, sheltering in watching other people down the hall.
Two servers were clearing away the dishes from Sir Clement’s place. One righted a goblet and dropped a towel over a wide wine stain.
Farther down the tables, Dame Perpetua had stopped eating and, very white-faced, sat with bowed head, lips moving in silent prayer. The nun sitting beside her was weeping and telling her beads. Sir Philip had not returned, and a large woman had shifted sideways to take advantage of his vacated place.
The next course, roast pork on a bed of saffron rice with apricots and mushrooms, was just being set in front of her and the abbot, when her aunt’s lady-in-waiting Joan leaned over her shoulder and said low in her ear, “My lady and Countess Alice ask if you would mind going to see how Sir Clement does, and return to tell.”
“Assuredly,” Frevisse said. She could leave the table with less disruption than anyone else, she supposed, and her report would probably be more detailed than a servant’s.
Aside from those considerations, she welcomed an excuse to leave the hall. She rose and asked, “How is it with my aunt?”
Joan shook her head and made small tch-tch-tch sounds. “She’s being very brave, despite the fright that fool gave us all. She’ll see the day through well enough, but there’ll be payment tonight and afterwards, poor lady. Valerian would help her rest if she’d take it, but she always refuses. You might speak to her about that, my lady, if you would.”
“I will,” Frevisse said as Joan curtsied and returned to her mistress. With a murmur of apology to the abbot, Frevisse excused herself, leaving the hall by a door behind the dais. She stopped a servant in the corridor who said that Sir Clement had been taken to the priest’s room above the chapel.
Among the benefits of being priest in a household as large and rich as Thomas Chaucer’s was a private room for sleep and prayer and study. It was a sensible place to have taken Sir Clement; it would not inconvenience any of the family, was well out of the way of other guests, and could easily be closed to the curious.
A narrow, dark, steep stairway went up from the chapel’s antechamber and opened directly into the priest’s room. It was the same size as the rich chapel directly below it but austere, with everything in it, even the cross above the prie-dieu against one wall, plain or old or both. There was an aumbry along one wall for storage, a bare wooden table, a single chair, one joint stool. A narrow bed was along a wall, with a servant’s truckle bed under it and gray woolen blankets on it. Only the rug underfoot gave the room any color, and it was obviously a castoff from some other part of the house, its patterns faded and muddled with wear.
This barrenness was not Chaucer’s provision for his priest. Frevisse remembered coming to make confession here when she lived at Ewelme. There had been a colorful hanging, a gaudily painted crucifix, and a far bigger bed with a bright coverlet. This austerity must be Sir Philip’s choice, but she noticed that the one fine piece of furniture was a tall desk, set to catch the best light from one of the two narrow windows, and the only sign of wealth were the books on the shelves behind the desk’s footrest. It was a scholar’s desk, meant and used for work, and had, in contrast to all else in the room, a completely superfluous and beautiful fretwork of wood deeply carved and swirled between its legs.
Frevisse absorbed all that in the first moment she reached the doorway, then focused on Sir Clement. He was not lying on the bed but seated at the table, leaning forward over it, his hands braced on its edge, and all his concentration given to his breathing, which was clearly easier than it had been when he was taken from the hall. Near the further window were Guy and Lady Anne, he standing rigidly, she close to him, one hand on his arm, the other pressed to the base of her throat as if to hold down her fear. Jevan Dey stood alone, nervously rubbing his hand on his thigh.
Sir Philip was beside the table, and behind him waited a plainly dressed man Frevisse took to be his servant. Directly opposite Sir Clement, the doctor—to judge by the cut of his dark gown—was bent down and staring broodingly into his face, concentrating on Sir Clement as if concern alone might be enough to cure him.
Suddenly Sir Clement shoved himself upright, to draw a deep, wheezing breath. The doctor and everyone else started. Frevisse smothered a gasp. The man’s normally lean features were not only bloated but viciously patterned with irregular red welts across his cheeks and down into the opened collar of his houppelande.
But in a voice still recognizably ill-tempered, though thickened, Sir Clement demanded, “A drink. Even water. Something.”
The doctor looked at Sir Philip and nodded, and the priest gestured at his servant who moved toward the aumbry as Guy turned to look in its half-open door, then reached to take out a long-necked bottle.
“That one, yes,” Sir Philip said. “And the cup, too.”
Looking annoyed at Guy’s intervening in his duties, the servant brought out a pottery cup while Guy pulled at the bottle’s loosened cork.
Sir Clement, his breathing still ragged, glared at the doctor, then shifted his gaze past him to Guy and Lady Anne. “Not yet,” he grated. “You won’t have her yet.” Lady Anne’s hand tightened on Guy’s arm, holding him back from a harsh move forward. Sir Clement looked at Jevan; his mouth quirked cruelly. “Live in hope and die in despair, boy. I’m still here.”
Jevan’s eyes darkened with deep anger. Lady Anne shook her head, warning him to keep back whatever he was about to do or say. Whether for that, or out of his long habit of control, he held silent and still. But the anger remained in his eyes.
“Here.” Sir Philip took the filled cup from Guy and made to offer it to Sir Clement.
But Clement made an inarticulate noise and began to fumble frantically at the wide cuff of his houppelande’s long sleeve, loosening it and then pushing it as far up as it would go, to let him come at the red rash covering his arm. “Hell’s fire! I’m being spared none of it!” He began clawing his fingernails at the rash. The doctor put out his hand to stay him. Sir Clement left off scratching long enough to shove him in the chest, forcing him back a pace, growling, “Leave me be!” Then he seized the cup from Sir Philip, snapping, “Give me that!”
He drank all the wine down in clumsy gulps, flung the cup at the table, and began to dig at his arm again.
From a safer distance the doctor said, “You should try to lie down now, my lord. To rest. I—”
“Ass! I can’t… breathe… lying down.” Sir Clement’s breath caught and fought among the words. He struggled and it broke loose with a snoring sound. He wheezed a few deep breaths to catch up his air and sat with his head cast back, eyes shut. A thin rivulet of drool ran unheeded out of the corner of his mouth. Around him, everyone stood motionless, eyes fixed on him.
After a few moments, when nothing changed, the doctor said in a whisper, as if that would keep Sir Clement from hearing him, “He’s better than when he came from the hall. There’s that for hope.”
“But you don’t know what it is?” Sir Philip asked.
The doctor cast him a dark glance. “It’s not like anything I’ve seen, no.” In a lower whisper, almost between his teeth, he added, “It wouldn’t be, would it?” Because who among them had seen God strike down a sinning man before?
Sir Clement reared his whole body back in his chair in a sudden terrible struggle for air again. His upper lip had shaded to blue; his eyes were staring with panic at nothing—or at nothing anyone else in the room could see in front of him. Then, with his fists clenched and his forearms pressed against his ribs as if to force air out, he lurched forward to lean across the table in much the same way he had in the hall when the first attack came on hi
m.
The doctor and Sir Philip and the servant closed on him as if there was something they could do. Jevan, grabbing the wine bottle from Guy’s hand, came to snatch the cup from the table and fill it. Belatedly Guy followed but only a few steps, keeping his distance from his uncle. Lady Anne stayed where she was. her hands pressed over her mouth, looking more a child than ever in her wide-eyed fear.
Sir Philip drew back a step now and made the sign of the cross over Sir Clement, large enough to include his servant and Jevan and the doctor all together. The doctor gestured Jevan’s cup away. He was trying uselessly to straighten Sir Clement to see him better. Sir Philip crossed himself and began to pray in Latin.
Frevisse and everyone else there crossed themselves in response.
How long Sir Clement’s struggle to breathe went on Frevisse could not have said. Forever. And not long. The tortured gasping turned to a high wheezing and then guttural choking. Frevisse, raising her bowed head as she prayed aloud for mercy, for pity, saw Sir Philip turn from the table to the aumbry. He was still praying, too, his lips moving silently now while his hands did something out of her sight. Then he turned back to the table with a glass vial and a piece of bread in his hands, and Frevisse realized what he held and what he was going to do and sank to her knees.
Pushing Jevan and the doctor aside, he bent over Sir Clement and said loudly at him, “Do you repent? Do you ask for the body of your Savior and repent of all your sins?”
Belatedly everyone else in the room saw and knelt, even the doctor, though he was last, resisting the end that had to come.
Sir Clement’s body shuddered with the struggle for breath, but Frevisse was able to see his now desperate nod to the question that could mean his soul’s salvation. Sir Philip forced the small bit of bread into his mouth, poured oil—the blessed chrism—from the vial onto his own fingers, and drew a cross on Sir Clement’s reddened, swollen, shuddering forehead. His eyes staring and mouth agape with the uneaten bread in it, Sir Clement fixed his gaze on Sir Philip, who stayed bent over him, face close to face, praying at him until Sir Clement’s head fell back, his mouth now working soundlessly, his eyes suddenly fixed on the ceiling for an ugly, drawn-out moment before they went sightless and he slumped in the chair, still staring upward but his eyes empty now of anything alive.
Then Sir Philip said, “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum eum.” Into your hands, O Lord, I commend his spirit. The hoped-for last words of every Christian that Sir Clement had not been able to say for himself.
Chapter 9
The day had been longer and worse—in several ways— than Beaufort had anticipated. Seated at the table spread with work in his chamber, daylight fading to gray half-light but no lamp lighted because he had not yet given the order, he rubbed his forehead in what he knew was a habitual gesture. He was tired, but there were matters to see to so messages could go at first light tomorrow morning, matters that could not be delayed because they concerned both the government and his bishopric, and neither of those could be left to themselves for long.
On the whole, his bishopric was the lesser problem—and the more profitable—since he had appointed men that he could—not trust; trust left one too vulnerable—but men he could depend on to see that things were done the way he wanted them done, and to let him know if for any reason they could not.
England’s government, being less under his personal control, was far less well-ordered. The reasons for that were almost as numerous as the men who felt they had a claim to the right to advise young King Henry VI, men who could never be brought to see that “claim” and “ability” were not necessarily the same thing. His deservedly detested, much deplored nephew Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, came first to mind. For the present the duke was as circumvented as could be managed, though the complete cessation of his interference in the government was not even to be hoped for.
Blast Thomas! He had been one of the few men Gloucester respected enough to listen to. Not necessarily heed but at least be slowed on whatever half-brained scheme he might have at the time.
But Thomas, except for brief occasions, had refused to be dragged into the coil around the King. And now he was beyond any part in it at all.
Beaufort made a prayer for Thomas’s soul. He had kept as emotionally distant from thinking about Thomas as he could today; it was easier to deal with matters competently if emotions were kept out of them. He would pay for that restraint later, he knew, with probably a week’s ill temper, but it had seen him through the day’s necessity. Now he put Gloucester firmly out of his mind, too. Even merely thinking about Gloucester was a profitless, aggravating waste of time. What needed to be dealt with here and now was a far lesser matter than the King’s royal uncle, but at least it was one about which something could be done, Beaufort hoped.
One of his secretaries knocked once at the open door across the chamber. Beaufort nodded for him to come in and, seeing Dame Frevisse and the nun who had traveled with her behind him, rose to his feet. “Dame Frevisse. Thank you for coming so promptly.”
He held out his hand. The two women crossed to him, curtsied, and kissed his ring. Then the second nun withdrew to stand near the door, head down, hands folded into her opposite sleeves. It would be unseemly for any nun to be alone with a man, but she was politely removing herself as much as might be. Beaufort glanced around at the two clerks working at tables along the far wall; they were out of earshot if he and Dame Frevisse kept their voices low.
He indicated she should sit on a stool beside the table. “I hope my summons was not too inconvenient. You are undoubtedly tired after such a day.”
“At your pleasure, my lord bishop. There is no inconvenience.” She sat straight without stiffness, her hands, like her companion’s, tucked into her sleeves, her voice pleasant, mild in the middle range.
Beaufort studied her face in its surround of white wimple and black veil and learned no more about her. She was here, obedient to his summons, as anyone would be. Whatever she felt or thought about it did not show. That in itself told something about her: not many lesser people came into his presence without showing something of unease or overeagerness, depending on what they feared or wanted from him. Did she fear nothing? Want nothing? He remembered her sudden push for information about the availability of affordable grain the evening their paths had first crossed— and how that one sign of interest in his power had, at the mildest possible rebuke from her aunt, been withdrawn completely. But even in that brief exchange he had sensed her strength of will. Thomas had been right; she was an unusual woman, intelligent and controlled, no matter how meekly she sat here beside him, eyes modestly downcast, waiting for him to speak. Very well.
“Your uncle charged me with a message for you as he lay dying.”
Her head came up, confronting him with a look that was neither meek nor modest but sharp as a hunting hawk’s. But her voice was steady as she said, “Yes, my lord?”
Watching her carefully, Beaufort said, “He said to tell you he would miss you.”
She bent her head too swiftly from him to read her reaction, and for perhaps a dozen heartbeats she was silent, then said softly, her face still lowered, “Thank you, my lord.”
“I believe you will miss him?” He made it a question, so she would have to answer.
She lifted her head. There were tears in her eyes, but she said steadily, clearly not caring that he saw, “He was my friend. I have no other like him. And never will.”
Beaufort looked away, reached out and drew a bundle toward him across the table. “He also left you this, a bequest outside his will, to do with as you choose.”
He held it out to her. As she took it, he noticed how long and fine her fingers were, and though she was too strong-featured to be commonly beautiful, her face was not unattractive. Thomas had said she had freely chosen to be a nun and never shown herself discontented with her choice, but still the bishop wondered why she had made it when certainly she could have married well enough. Thomas wou
ld surely have given her a dower, fond of her as he was. Beaufort had had occasion to wonder about other nuns’ choices through the years, choices that, like Dame Frevisse’s, puzzled him.
She set the bundle on her lap and placed her hands over it. Though the gesture was quiet, her hands seemingly at ease, Beaufort had the intuition that it would cost a battle to take it back from her, should anyone be so foolish as to try.
“You’re not going to open it?” he asked.
“Not now,” she said, her composure complete, her look directly into his eyes asking what concern it was of his. When he did not respond, she dropped her eyes, waiting to be dismissed.
Pleased to disconcert her, Beaufort leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, I have a request of my own for you.”
He thought he detected a wary stiffening in the pause before she looked at him again. But her voice was as even as before. “Yes, my lord?”
“There was a death here today. You witnessed it, I believe.”
“Yes, my lord.”
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