15 The Sempster's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  While Frevisse was thinking that, Mistress Hercy’s talk had moved on to her daughter’s son by her late first husband. “A darling boy. Apprenticed to be a mercer himself. But he’s reached ‘that age.’ He’s gone off on some youthful roam these past few days with never a word to anybody. It’s never been like him to give his mother to worry, let be at a time like this. When his master has had his say, never fear so will I. But aren’t we in good fortune with the weather of late?”

  Frevisse wondered how long the boy had been gone while noting that besides the high table, a long, bare-topped one along one side of the hall was set with places for eight lesser members of the household—probably journeymen and apprentices—with a serving woman presently bringing two settings more for the Naylors. Then Master Grene was coming to greet her and Dame Juliana and bring them onto the dais to name them to the others, explaining how and why they were come to London on the duchess of Suffolk’s behalf and smoothly including praise for Mistress Blakhall’s work with, “Embroidery worthy of a duchess’ need.”

  Mistress Blakhall laughed at him in the way of longtime friends. “Don’t fail to add your own part in the matter, sir, and your hope it’s from you Dame Frevisse will buy the cloth for these vestments.”

  Master Grene made a small bow to her and Frevisse together and said with his hand on his heart, laughing, too, “But only out of hope to be of yet more service to her grace of Suffolk. Though I do have on hand a figured black damask just come into England by way of this man’s good ship.”

  He gestured to a black-haired young man in a well-made, dark green doublet and blue surcoat, who bowed to Dame Juliana and Frevisse and said, “I can only hope to have some share of honor in serving her grace,” in a warm voice with a foreign tinge to it that Frevisse could not quite place as she matched manners with him and Master Grene, saying, “We’ll be most happy to see the damask when dinner is done.” Because what else, in all courtesy, was she supposed to say?

  Master Grene went on, “This is Master Daved Weir of Bruges. He and his uncle Master Bocking, who is behind his time in joining us this noontide…” He looked questioningly at Master Weir, who slightly shook his head, showing he did not know the why of his uncle’s absence. “… are my two best suppliers of cloth out of Flanders and northern France.”

  Frevisse tried to keep her gaze from sharpening on this Master Weir out of Flanders and France, because it could well be by way of him that the gold so heavy around her neck had come into England. Then she reminded herself that was something of which she was better ignorant, and after a silent bend of her head to his bow, she turned to the priest to whom Master Grene was now naming her and Dame Juliana. He was a short, plain-faced man in a black gown of plain cut and plain cloth, solemn-faced as he slightly bent his head to her and Dame Juliana as they curtseyed to him while Master Grene said, “This is Father Tomas of our parish. He’s one of the Mass priests at our St. Swithin church.” Meaning his main duty was to celebrate endowed Masses at the various altars in the church for whatever benefactor had paid for them.

  ‘And please you to meet Brother Michael, too,“ Master Grene went on, turning to the friar. ”He’s as new among us as you are.“

  The friar had been hanging back and somewhat aside until then, so that only now did Frevisse look full at him—a man of moderate height, austerely gaunt even in the bulky grey robe of a Franciscan friar belted thick at his waist with a knotted rope but with no look of ill-health from over-fasting about him. Indeed, he was sun-browned like a man much out of doors, and his eyes were alert with the intent mind behind them, giving Frevisse the instant thought that here was someone who saw what he looked at and thought about what he saw.

  ‘Brother Michael was of late a scholar among scholars in Paris,“ Master Grene was saying, ”but presently he’s at Grey Friars here in London. If you’ve not heard him preach at St. Paul’s, you truly should. He draws a goodly crowd.“

  They had heard him, Frevisse realized. He was the friar at St. Paul’s Cross to whom they had not stayed to listen. Since it seeming better not to say that, she said nothing as she and Dame Juliana curtsied and Brother Michael said with a smile, “It was not so goodly a crowd this morning. People are more taken up with these rebels than with Lollards at present.”

  ‘It’s been years since we heard much about Lollards in Oxfordshire,“ Dame Juliana said.

  ‘Little heard about them means only that they’ve learned to lie more low and keep the quieter at their work,“ Brother Michael said. ”Their poison is still here and only the worse for being subtle. I was ordered here from Paris particularly to work against them.“

  From almost their beginnings, the Franciscan and Dominican friars’ place in the Church had been to wander and preach, to reach the common people in common ways and live by daily charity rather than settled endowments. That latter ideal had much failed over the years; friaries were now often rich enough to rival any monastery, and while some friars still wandered, others were known as fierce scholars defending the Church against heretics of whatever kind, a driving force of the Inquisition.

  ‘The household is in place,“ Mistress Hercy murmured to her son-in-law, with a small nod toward the servants and Naylors standing along the lower table.

  Master Grene immediately said, smiling, “By your leave, my ladies, sirs, we’d best be seated or else risk the cook’s ire.”

  With a reasonably correct eye to precedence, Mistress Hercy saw everyone to their proper places behind the high table, with Master Grene at the center and on his left Brother Michael, then Frevisse, Master Weir, and Mistress Blakhall, while Mistress Hercy had place at Master Grene’s right where otherwise her daughter would have sat, with Father Tomas beside her, Dame Juliana beyond him, and an empty place at the end for Master Weir’s missing uncle.

  Like the hall, the high table displayed Master Grene’s prosperity, its tablecloth of spotless white linen, the goblets of silver, the plates of pewter polished to near silver’s gleam. As everyone along both tables sat, servants brought the first remove, a green salad and a roasted fish in a sauce that looked to be of onions, wine, and cinnamon, setting the platters on the table between each pair of guests and family, for each man to serve the woman next to him. Frevisse wondered in passing if seating Mistress Blakhall beside the well-favored Master Weir was doing the young widow no favor. How willing to a man’s blandishments was she likely to be?

  But Brother Michael was politely asking where in Oxfordshire her nunnery was, and she turned her thoughts to him and her food, answering graciously while finding the fish was very good.

  ‘Is it true that there’s no overt trouble from Lollards there?“ he asked. ”No stirrings of heresy heard from… it’s Banbury you’re near?“

  ‘None that I’ve heard, no,“ Frevisse said, and took the talk elsewhere with, ”Master Grene said you’re lately come from Paris. But you’re English.“

  ‘I did indeed grow up near Ely in the fens, and first went to school in the monastery there. The monks sent me to Cambridge.“

  ‘But you became a Franciscan. A friar and not a monk.“

  ‘The abbot saw my God-given gifts lay not only in learning but in preaching. The latter gift would have been wasted in a monastery, and he blessed me when we parted.“

  ‘It was the Franciscans, then, who sent you to the university in Paris?“

  ‘They did, and there I’ve been these past ten years.“

  Cutting a morsel of fish, Frevisse asked, “Your work was with the Inquisition there?”

  From the side of her eye, she saw Brother Michael pause with a piece of fish partway to his mouth and give her a sharp look. “Yes,” he said. “Is that talked of here?”

  ‘I only reasoned that, given you’re a Franciscan blessed with learning and a skill at preaching and that your interest here is plainly in Lollards and their heresy, you were probably continuing work you had done in France. Not against Lollards, certainly.“ Those being peculiarly English. ”But such others a
s there might be there.“

  Brother Michael nodded in firm approval. “You have it. Well reasoned. Is your priory of St. Frideswide’s particularly given over to learning?”

  ‘By no means. We live a plain life of prayers and work, as we’re vowed to do.“ She made it sound more perfect than any nunnery’s life ever was, wanting to keep him from un-needed interest in St. Frideswide’s because the less the Inquisition looked at something, the better, to her mind. The Inquisition was to the Church what a surgeon was to a man’s body. When disease was found in the body that could not be cured, a surgeon must needs cut it out. When corrupting beliefs were found in the body of the Church, they either had to be removed by curing those who held them or else by removing the diseased persons before they corrupted others. So the Inquisition was a necessary thing. But it could also bring out the worst in men—hatred where there should only have been regret against error, a delight in pain rather than in Christ’s love. Brother Michael was probably not one of those but she was glad when he said, as if satisfied, ”You lead a goodly life there, then. Prayer and work. Would all were so wise.“

  Master Grene spoke to him on his other side then, and she was left to her food, Master Weir and Mistress Blakhall being in easy talk together about whether it were better that raw silk be brought into England for spinsters here to turn into thread and then dye for English use, or if the quality of silk thread brought in already made and dyed was too high to challenge. But when the dishes were being cleared at the remove’s end, Master Weir turned to Frevisse and said, “I neglect courtesy to you, my lady. I pray your pardon.”

  ‘I confess I’ve listened to your talk with Mistress Blakhall and enjoyed it. I gather you’ve met before this.“

  ‘She does me the favor of buying such thread and sometimes cloth as I offer her now and again.“

  ‘Your English is very good.“

  ‘Thank you, my lady. I served a time in a mercer’s household here in London when I was my uncle’s apprentice, both to better my English and learn English ways. With things as they have been these past years we have not come so often as we might, but when we do, my young years spent here serve me well.“

  The second remove began and Master Weir turned to serve Mistress Blakhall. Brother Michael did the same for Frevisse but over his shoulder continued his talk to Master Grene, saying, “With any heresy, Lollard or otherwise, the less it’s seen, the worse it is, like a secret rot in wood, unknown until too late.”

  ‘You’re saying the more secretly someone is a heretic, the more dangerous he is?“ Master Grene asked, serving Mistress Hercy but likewise turned more to his talk than his task.

  Brother Michael thumped the spoon dangerously back into the dish of apple tart and custard, declaring, “Any heretic is dangerous. Secret or otherwise. Rot is no less dangerous for being known. The Church must be cleansed of any and all! Another crusade against the Hussites is long past due, nor have the Waldenses been hunted as they should be. Like Lollards, they’ve become subtle, harder to be found out, but found out they must be. And then there are the Jews.” Brother Michael tapped a stiff forefinger against the table-top, his voice rising, food and polite talk forgotten. “Look at them! Openly defiant in their heresy. A beacon and flame for all others who would deny Christ. Until the Church has dealt with them…”

  Frevisse knew this was a fine time to keep her thoughts to herself, but with outward mild demur she said, “Doesn’t someone has to have held a faith before they can be heretic to it? Having never been Christian, how can Jews be heretics?”

  Brother Michael swung around to her. “They’re heretics to their own alleged faith! For centuries they’ve lived under the Church’s protection, allowed to dwell among Christians to serve as dread example of what comes to those who choose to live in darkness. For that reason only have they been allowed to exist among Christians.”

  ‘For that,“ said Master Weir quietly, ”and because they’re profitable to Christians. Because they traded widely across Europe when few others did, they brought money into the reach of kings, princes, bishops, and lords. Money both to be loaned because Jews were allowed usury when no Christians were, and money to be taxed away into the coffers of those kings, princes, bishops, and lords. At least so I’ve understood it, and that therefore Jews were allowed to live among Christians. Now, because matters have changed and we Christians can do much of what only Jews did before, they’re no longer needed. So—“

  ‘That is not where the trouble lies,“ Brother Michael snapped. ”Those are worldly matters. I’m talking of the heresy the Jews have brewed in their secret teachings. Among themselves they’ve corrupted the faith of their forefathers into something else than what it was. By that they’ve broken their covenant with the Church that kept them safe in Christ’s care and become heretics!“

  ‘But the Christian faith has changed with the centuries,“ Master Weir said mildly. ”Why—“

  ‘The Church has never changed! It is the same now and for all Eternity,“ Brother Michael interrupted vehemently. ”Forever true to—“

  ‘Until St. Gregory the Great declared otherwise, the bishop of Rome was seen only as a bishop among bishops. Not head of all the churches of Christendom,“ Master Weir said, his voice level. ”It was an even later pope that claimed to hold sway over all earthly rulers, and…“

  ‘Everything taught by the Church is contained in Christ’s teachings.“ Brother Michael tapped the table again. ”Only the working out of time was needed to make them known and clear.“

  ‘Can’t the same be claimed for the ’changes’ you allege the Jews have made in their understanding of God’s word?“ Master Weir asked. ”That in the working out of time, they’ve come to understand better what was always there for them to know?“

  Brother Michael cast that aside with a sharp gesture. “When they clung to the Old Law, refusing the New Law of Christ, Jews forfeited all right to change. Having nonetheless changed and been found out in their vile corruption, they’ve voided their right to the Church’s protection and laid themselves open to the same fate as any heretic. They—”

  Mistress Hercy, in the clear, calm voice of someone taking control of her guests, broke in with, “Here comes Master Bocking at last. Master Bocking, we pray all is well?”

  Master Bocking, striding vigorously up the hall, was a man of hale middle years, his black hair well-greyed. He bowed deeply to both Mistress Hercy and Master Grene at once and said, “All’s well enough with me and mine. Not so good otherwise.” His English was not so clear as his nephew’s but clear enough. “The rebels are into Southwark, and the bridge’s gates have been shut against them.”

  Master Grene thumped a fist onto the table. “Where, by all that’s holy, is the king? Or least his lords?”

  ‘What matters,“ Mistress Hercy said firmly, gesturing Master Bocking toward his place at the table’s end, ”is that you’re here and they’re not, nor likely to interrupt our dinner.“

  ‘Or our supper, either,“ Father Tomas said, trying for lightness. ”Not with the river still between us and them.“

  That brought approving laughter along the table, even from Master Bocking, and talk went on around him while he ate, not about the rebels but in complaints against the king’s failures, until Father Tomas asked if anyone had heard more about the rumored rebel stirrings, in Essex now, rather than in Kent.

  ‘I hadn’t heard of them at all,“ Mistress Blakhall said.

  ‘It’s no more than another of the rumors we’ve heard a hundred of this year,“ Master Grene said, dismissing them.

  Which was true, Frevisse thought. Except that Essex was very near to London—and on the same side of the Thames. The meal finishing then, Mistress Hercy asked if the ladies would go up with her now to keep her daughter company a while. “Leaving the men to make what they will of the world and all,” she said.

  There being little choice, Frevisse, with what outward good grace she could, followed the other women from the hall and up the
stairs into the expectedly rich parlor of a wealthy London mercer in what looked to be a range of rooms running along the south side of the courtyard. Well-windowed to north and south, it was filled with the afternoon’s warm light, with beautifully braided reed matting on the polished wooden floor, bright cushions along the window benches, several backed chairs and carved joint stools and floor cushions. On a square-topped table in the room’s middle was a silver bowl holding white roses and blue love-in-a-mist, and on the far wall, beside a door that probably opened into a bedchamber was a woven tapestry showing Dido and Aeneas on the shores of Carthage.

  Mistress Grene was seated in one of the chairs, the spread of her yellow loose gown of fine linen over the wide curve of her child-swollen belly leaving no doubt how near to birthing she was. She did not try to rise from her chair, only held out her hand to Mistress Blakhall, who went to take it while a half-grown girl stood up from the nearer window bench and made a deep curtsy to them all.

  ‘Mistress Grene and her daughter Lucie,“ Mistress Hercy said, smiling on the girl with a grandmother’s deep affection. ”Show the nuns what you’re embroidering for your brother-to-be, Lucie.“

  Everyone duly praised the small cap Lucie was embroidering with a cross-stitched pattern of tiny flowers, and Frevisse supposed that next they would all sit and fall into talk, and that in a while servants would bring something to drink, and sometime Master Grene would come and wonder if she and Dame Juliana would care to see his damask, and somewhere in the house Master Naylor was fuming because the rebels were in Southwark at the far end of London bridge, and only finally would she and Dame Juliana be able to return to St. Helen’s. The best she could hope for was a quiet word with Mistress Blakhall on when they might meet again at her house.

  But they had only just sat down when Master Grene came in, all his smiling graciousness gone. Giving no one else any heed, he crossed to kneel in front of his wife, taking both her hands as he said, “Pernell, my love, Father Walter has just sent from St. Swithin’s to say there’s been a body found in the church. He wants…”