The Bishop’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  It was not. The chapel’s chill had barely begun to be uncomfortable before Jevan straightened stiffly and rose slowly to his feet. As he bowed to the altar, Frevisse went forward so that when he turned away, she was standing beside him.

  “Master Jevan.”

  “Dame Frevisse.” He bowed again. He was tired; it showed in his face and the way he held himself.

  “I need to talk to you.” She indicated the door, and he followed her out into the antechamber.

  But when she stopped, he said, “I have duties I must needs go to.”

  “I’ll keep you only briefly. My cousin Countess Alice has asked I give her sympathies to Sir Clement’s family, since she’s nursing her mother presently, and to assure you of any help you need in your while here.”

  “The lady is very gracious. I hope Mistress Chaucer isn’t badly ill?”

  “Not ill so much as worn out with trying to be brave through everything.”

  “But she’s better?”

  “We think so.”

  “That’s well then.” Jevan clearly considered the conversation finished. He began to bow again, to leave. To forestall this, Frevisse said, “I’ve heard a great deal about your uncle and what he was like. It’s to your credit you were praying for him.”

  A dull flush spread over Jevan’s face. Was he that unused to compliments? Frevisse wondered. But he only said, “He should be prayed for by someone, and who better than I?”

  “Still, he wasn’t an easy man to be around. No one seems sorry at all that he’s dead. Are you?”

  “Not in the slightest.” The answer came with the firmness of deep conviction. “Everyone around him will be better for being rid of him.”

  “Especially Guy and Lady Anne.”

  Jevan’s jaw tightened, but he did not flinch. “They’ll have their desires now, and God give them joy of it.”

  “And you? What will you do? Go on in service to Guy? I gather you were invaluable to Sir Clement.”

  “I was his drudge,” Jevan said.

  “You could have left him, found work elsewhere.”

  Jevan shook his head. “He left me no hope of that. I tried once, took work as a wool packer for one of the merchants who bought our wool. Sir Clement hunted me down and gave neither me nor the merchant peace until finally the man had to let me go, to be rid of him. Sir Clement said he would do that whenever I tried to leave.”

  “At least Guy will be an easier master.”

  “At his first chance, Guy will have me out the door and down the road with a curse and not much else to carry with me. We don’t like each other.”

  “He still holds the marchpane trick against you.”

  Brief pleasure flickered on Jevan’s face. “There were walnut halves set in the center of each piece. Sir Clement all but foamed at the mouth when he saw them and never forgave him. He’d boil into a temper every time he saw Guy after that.”

  As if with only mild, gossiping curiosity, Frevisse asked, “But why?”

  Jevan’s face had fallen back into its settled expression of endurance. “Walnuts made Sir Clement ill. Guy didn’t know that.”

  “But after the marchpane, everyone in shouting distance of Sir Clement probably did,” Frevisse said, remembering his temper.

  “Easily,” Jevan agreed grimly.

  As if in simple commiseration, containing her satisfaction at having at last another part of what she needed to know, and wanting more, Frevisse said, “Sir Clement had a finicking stomach, I’ve heard. The milk had to be fresh. The goblet couldn’t be pewter. He didn’t like nuts. The cook was telling me. Was Sir Clement feigning or did any of that really make him ill?”

  “Some things, yes, though not as many as he pretended. Walnuts did. Even touching them—” Jevan broke off with a shake of his head. “My lady, I dislike talking about him, and I have things that need to be done. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “My pardon. Certainly. I forget myself and chatter overmuch,” Frevisse said. “Thank you for your kindness. And remember my cousin’s offer. Anything you may need while at Ewelme…”

  Jevan had retreated while she was still talking. She trailed off to silence and stood gazing at the air in front of her, considering.

  Chapter 17

  Overnight, hoarfrost had whitened the world—grass and trees and roofs prickled with it. Ice rimmed the black moat waters. A haze blurred the nearer trees; there were no distances. The cold that had crept around the window edges yesterday now thrust deeply into the parlor, so that the comfort of the fire was barely felt beyond an arm’s length from the flames.

  Warm in his ample robes of fine wool, the outermost one magnificently fur-lined, Beaufort had chosen to sit at the room’s far end, where he could watch everyone as they entered, and when they had greeted him and respectfully kissed his episcopal ring and moved away, observe them while they moved and talked among themselves.

  Dame Frevisse had come to him last night, had asked him to arrange this gathering under the guise that Countess Alice wished to ease the enforced stay of both Sir Clement’s family and the three other guests waiting to testify to the crowner. Beaufort had suggested to Dame Frevisse then that she might prefer to leave the matter now to the crowner’s hand. “Master Geoffrey is competent. He’ll make the best use of whatever you have, and thank you for it. You’ve done sufficiently, and I thank you,” he had told her.

  She had bent her head respectfully but answered, “By your leave, this is a thing I’d like to finish if I may.”

  “And you think you can by bringing them all together?”

  “All together and unsuspecting. Yes, I think so.”

  There had been various arguments he could have raised, or he could have simply refused, but her firmness of purpose and cleverness in the matter so far had both amused and interested him. He wanted to know how much more she could do, and had seen to Countess Alice’s agreement without explaining to her why he had asked the favor.

  So they were all here now, with Dame Frevisse sitting quietly to one side with the other nun, both of them drawn into the anonymity of their habits and veils. Beaufort carefully cast them no more than a rare glance, but he judged that Dame Frevisse was watching the others around the room as carefully as he was. And with more knowledge of them than he had, for she had not fully explained either what she had learned with her questioning or what she intended to do this morning. He had begun to find her intelligence and her strong, carefully controlled will disconcerting, as he had always found Thomas’s.

  The two knights and lady who were there simply because they had sat too near Sir Clement at the feast, were talking with Suffolk. Beaufort gave them scant attention; he had gathered that neither they nor Suffolk had any part in Dame Frevisse’s suspicions.

  Countess Alice, her mourning black becoming to her fairness, was standing with Lady Anne, their two heads leaned close together, the girl listening and nodding wide-eyed to what Countess Alice was saying. She was a pretty child, but Beaufort was not much moved by prettiness. It was a fleeting thing; hers would probably not outlast her youth, a fact that had undoubtedly escaped the young fool who intended to marry her. He was standing beside her now, clearly proud that she was his.

  The nephew who would have nothing out of Sir Clement’s death stood apart from everyone else, Beaufort noted. He held a goblet of the warmed, spiced wine the servants were passing around and was watching one person and then another in the talk around him. It was a pity that he looked so like his uncle; that alone would be enough to set people against him. Though he looked like his mother, too, come to that. Beaufort had known her slightly, and how a long-jawed woman with a temper that matched her brother’s had ever managed to marry for love was beyond Beaufort’s understanding, but she had. And in the long run fairly well ruined her son’s life by doing so. The only thing young Dey had brought out of the wreck others had made of his life so far was his apparent dispassion.

  Which was more than that usher fellow had, standing there by the d
oor, bustling servants in and out. Beaufort wished it were possible to put something heavy on his head to hold him flat on his feet for a while. Why had Matilda chosen such a creature?

  At least she was not here. She showed no sign yet of rising from her bed, and no one had suggested that she should.

  Sir Philip came in behind another servant bringing a tray of small tarts—if nothing else, they’d be well-fed when this was done. Yesterday Dame Frevisse had seemed sure Sir Philip was clear of the murder. She had seemed less sure last evening, to Beaufort’s concealed annoyance. Sir Philip was too clever and too potentially useful a man to lose if it could be helped.

  Beaufort watched as the priest paused to speak to young Dey, too low to be heard, and then came on to make his obeisance. Beaufort received it absently, noting over his shoulder that whatever he had said to young Dey, it brought no change to Dey’s face. The young man had not even nodded or answered, only taken a tart from the servant waiting beside him with the absent gesture of someone hoping to be left alone.

  With Sir Philip’s arrival, everyone expected was here. Beaufort looked toward Dame Frevisse. She raised her head to meet his gaze and with the slightest downward twitch of it told him she was ready for him to begin. Hoping she indeed knew what she was about, Beaufort rose.

  Everyone’s attention came around to him, their conversations falling away to silence. He waited until the quiet was complete and even a little drawn-out, then said, “You have not wondered why you were all asked here, thinking it was only for courtesy’s sake. But there was other purpose in it. I pray you, give heed to Dame Frevisse.”

  He sat down again, and every head turned toward her. Rising in turn, hands folded into her sleeves, her expression mild, she said in a clear, carrying voice to all of them together, “His grace the cardinal bishop of Winchester has believed from the very first that Sir Clement did not die by God’s hand but was murdered.”

  Various degrees of consternation and surprise showed on every face, but Dame Frevisse went steadily on and no one spoke out.

  “He asked me to learn what I could of how he was killed and by whom. In some ways, I’ve learned a great deal. In others, not enough. There were very many people who disliked Sir Clement, and some who hated him, who probably hate him even now. But of those, only a few had chance to strike at him during the feast, and all of those who had that chance are here now.”

  While the others mostly glanced around at each other with rousing alarm, Suffolk took a step toward her and said with authority suitably edged with indignation, “You’re saying that you accuse one of us of killing him?”

  “Yes.”

  Suffolk opened his mouth to respond, but Beaufort quietly raised the fingers of his right hand from the curve of the chair arm, and Suffolk subsided. Dame Frevisse continued, “It had to be someone well aware of Sir Clement’s penchant for asking God to strike him down. That could be anyone who had ever been around him any length of time. But it also had to have been someone able to poison him at the feast.”

  The word “poison” whispered around the room from one to another. Dame Frevisse’s gaze traveled impartially over everyone there, taking in their varied expressions. Beaufort could not tell if she lingered on one longer than the others. “I considered that he might have been actually ill or even touched by God at the feast, and only poisoned later in the room where he was taken to recover. But from what I’ve learned, he was surely poisoned at the feast, in front of all of us, by someone able to take advantage of the moment when he would almost certainly demand God’s judgment. Someone who knew about a poison so specific to Sir Clement that no one else would be harmed by it, whoever ate with him.”

  Suffolk exclaimed, “That’s nonsense! There’s no poison that specific!”

  “There is,” interposed Beaufort. “We have authority for it. And she has my authority to continue.”

  They exchanged glances, and Dame Frevisse said, “For a great many people, Sir Clement was only an annoyance, to be tolerated when he couldn’t be avoided. For others, he was a very real danger. Sir Philip—” Startled gazes turned on the priest where he stood to one side of the room. He met them with a slight bow of his head and a calm expression. “—was threatened by Sir Clement’s assertion that he was born unfree. And so was his brother, Master Gallard, and while Sir Philip seems to have had no way to come at Sir Clement’s food during the feast, Master Gallard very definitely did.”

  Master Gallard gaped at her from the doorway, switched his shocked look to his brother, and returned his stare to Dame Frevisse, his mouth working at unvoiced protests.

  “Then there is Jevan Dey, who served Sir Clement all through the feast, handled every dish that went to him, and hated him perhaps more fully than anyone.”

  Jevan met the looks turned his way with the same dispassion he had shown before.

  “Lady Anne, who sat next to Sir Clement at the feast, had every dish within her reach once it was served. And the goblet they both drank from. She loathed Sir Clement—”

  “And still do,” Lady Anne said fiercely. Guy took hold of her hand, warning her to silence, but she went on, “I hope he’s burning deep in hell!”

  Beaufort said, “That’s as may be, but not the question here.”

  Dame Frevisse continued relentlessly. “If she went against Sir Clement’s will in her choice of marriage while still in his wardship, he could have ruined her with all the fines the law allows in such a matter. Worse, if he forced her to marry him, she could never marry Guy, her own choice. She had compelling reason to want Sir Clement dead as soon as might be.”

  “Then so did T!” Guy put his arm possessively, protectively, around Lady Anne’s waist.

  “Yes,” Dame Frevisse agreed. “And seated as you both were, on either side of him, you could have worked together, one of you distracting him while the other put the walnuts in—what? The meat pie? Finely ground, they would have gone unnoticed—”

  Sir Philip’s sharp movement broke across her words. He closed the distance between himself and Jevan in a single stride, seized Jevan’s wrist and jerked it down, away from his mouth. In rigid, silent struggle, Jevan pulled against his hold. But Dame Frevisse must have seen him move nearly as soon as Sir Philip had; she was there, taking the unbitten tart out of Jevan’s hand.

  “No,” she said gently. “No more, Jevan. Not sin added to sin.”

  With a deep, shuddering breath, Jevan went slack in Sir Philip’s hold. His eyes were no longer expressionless but bitter and exhausted and hopeless all together as he looked at her and said, “Don’t you suppose it might be a mercy? To die as he did could be expiation of a kind.”

  “To die by your own hand is damnation,” Sir Philip returned, still holding on to him.

  Jevan threw back his head, like a runner at race’s end trying to draw breath enough to steady himself. His chest heaved with his effort, and then he said in a voice cruelly edged with pain, “I was born in the wane of the moon, when everything goes ass ward!”

  He looked across the little distance to Lady Anne, and the cruelty was gone into great gentleness. “I’ve bought your happiness for you. May you live gladly in it.”

  “Oh, Jevan!” Lady Anne cried out. “You killed him!” Her words broke the blank incomprehension on Guy’s face. He started for Jevan with clenched fists rising. “You killed him and meant to make it seem I did it! You belly-crawling cur, I—”

  Master Gallard came in front of him, stopping him with a hold on his arm that Guy, with his first angry tug against it, discovered he could not break.

  “No.” Dame Frevisse cut her voice across Guy’s. “That’s exactly what he never meant to happen.” She was still looking only at Jevan, with a sadness Beaufort did not understand. And Jevan was looking back at her, the two of them alone with what she had to say, despite the people all around them. “You took great trouble and waited a long while, I’d guess, for the chance to kill Sir Clement in a way that would keep suspicion away from everyone. A great feast wi
th many people present, where Sir Clement would inevitably find occasion to stand up and demand God’s judgment on himself, and no one suspected of his death when it came because how likely was it any of us had seen a man die the way Sir Clement did? Isn’t that how you meant it to be? And when you realized here that you’d failed, that we knew it was murder after all, you meant to eat that tart full of walnuts, and die the way he did.”

  To her and no one else, Jevan said, “When I was small, he ate some once by accident. I saw what they did to him. It made him angry, both that it happened and that I saw him that way. So he made me eat some, forced them down me, and laughed when I broke out in the rash and itching. His was worse, but he said it was like that, that it had happened to him before and each time it was worse. It happened one other time, later. He nearly died of it then, so I hoped that if it happened again, it would kill him.”