12 The Bastard's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  ‘Jesus have mercy,“ Master Needham breathed. ”There’s going to be nothing humble about his entry into Bury, is there?“

  ‘Not a thing,“ Sir Richard replied.

  Gloucester, glowing-faced with the wind, greeted them warmly when they met, shaking hands with Sir Richard and Master Needham, saying, “Sir Richard. You didn’t freeze on the way, then?”

  ‘Not yet, my lord.“

  ‘Master Needham. I take it Bury St. Edmunds still stands?“

  ‘It still stands,“ Master Needham answered. ”But Suffolk has been making trouble.“

  Gloucester dismissed Suffolk with a wave of his hand. “Suffolk is always making trouble. Let him wait until I have the king’s ear again and then we’ll see. Arteys.” He reached out in the same moment Arteys reached toward him, clasping each other’s right arm in greeting, Arteys surprised both at his own gladness and Gloucester’s open pleasure at seeing him. This was Gloucester as he had been in the best days Arteys had known him, warm with affection, wearing pride and confidence as familiarly as he wore a cloak.

  They rode on, Gloucester keeping Master Needham with him to tell how Parliament was going, Arteys and the others dropping back among the other riders, who all seemed to share their lord’s high spirits. Sir Richard, Tom, and Hal fell in with friends but Arteys dropped farther back until almost at the company’s end, keeping enough aside that no one tried to talk with him, his momentary gladness fading as abruptly as it had come. He wanted to believe with Gloucester that everything would go his way the next few days but a darkling feeling told him it would not. The feeling was so strong that when they were almost into Bury St. Edmunds, with the abbey’s sky-tall spire sharp against the gray-clouded sky above the low spread of houses outside of Southgate and Gloucester’s trumpeter ta-rahing their approach, a flurry of horsemen riding out through the gateway made him lay hand to his dagger hilt before he thought about it.

  Immediately, glad his cloak had hidden the gesture, he let go again. Alertness rippled through the rest of the company but no alarm. There were only six mounted men coming toward them, and four of them, Arteys judged by their plainer clothing, were attendant on the other two, who wore surcoats parti-colored with King Henry’s livery of white and green and were mounted on horses too good for merely servants. They drew rein beside Gloucester’s foreriders and Gloucester drew rein where he was, stopping the riders behind him while his herald rode forward to meet the newcomers. Arteys would have ridden forward to Gloucester but the street was narrow between houses and people were beginning to gather, an excited running of Gloucester’s name among them and growing louder as more folk came out to join them, happy for a diversion.

  Ahead of Arteys, a woman with a market basket on her arm called a question to Jenkin ap Rhys. Arteys heard neither what she said nor what Jenkin answered, but it was more probably his voice than his words that made her step hurriedly back from him and say something to the woman next to her and the people beyond her, because the next moment there was a rush of rising voices along the street. Arteys caught the words “Welsh” and “Wales,” saw a man spit at the ground, and remembered Sir Roger had advised Gloucester to take no Welshmen with him to Bury.

  ‘I’ve had more loyalty and better service out of them than from most Englishmen,“ Gloucester had said, stubborn.

  Sir Roger had ignored that enlarging of the truth. “You know how the Welsh are looked on in England. They’re supposed to be half wild and wholly treacherous. It’ll do you no good with anyone to have an array of Welshmen with you.”

  Arteys, used to it, had not thought about that until now but over half the riders were indeed Welsh and people were drawing back and pointing, heads coming together in quick talk. Even this far from Wales, where the Welsh wars had never come, there was dislike and distrust of Welshmen, and Sir Roger had been right. Gloucester would have been wiser not to bring them, or at least not so many.

  The herald turned his horse and came back with the two surcoated riders to Gloucester. Arteys recognized them now, Sir John Stourton and Sir Thomas Stanley, both of King Henry’s household and, according to Gloucester, self-servers of the deepest sort. “They’d serve a bunion if they thought there was profit in it for them,” he had said once. “Well, maybe not Stourton. He has some honor in him. But Stanley? The most I’d trust him with is a rabid dog and then only if it promised to bite him.”

  But Gloucester, when he was in the midst of a dislike, was given to over stating things that later he either unsaid or, more often, forgot he’d ever said at all. Presently he seemed, from what Arteys could see, to greet both knights cordially enough while they bowed deeply from their saddles to him. Nor did he seem disturbed by what-ever they then told him but nodded to it and answered with no sign of anger about him. Then, with more bows, they parted from him and rode back toward town, their four men parting to let them pass and falling in behind them while Gloucester signaled with a raised hand for his own men to ride on.

  With the way already cleared for them, they rode into Southgate Street. More people were coming out to see them pass, the riders jostled into an even longer line along the narrowed way, with “Welsh” and “Wales” still running through the crowd but Gloucester’s name being said more strongly, more excitedly. Despite people might well be tired of lords after all the days of them displaying through the streets, people were leaning out at upper windows into the cold, waving and calling to Gloucester as he rode by, and he was raising a hand first to one side, then to the other, acknowledging them. He would be smiling, Arteys knew, pleased and loving the people back as strongly as they loved him. Whatever his quarrels with other nobles over the years, no one had forgotten he was still the last of the great King Henry the Fifth’s brothers and part of the days of glory in France.

  The column rode into the marketplace outside the abbey gates where Arteys and the others had met Master Needham at dawn. In late morning it was far more full of people, most of them leaving off whatever they were doing to watch Gloucester ride past. More people were crowding full the abbey’s gateways, and although here among the followers of so many other lords the cheering had fallen away, a few bold voices called out, “God bless the duke!” in despite of all, and maybe in godly answer, as the head of the retinue passed the abbey’s great gateway, a narrow streak of sunlight broke slantwise through the wind-driven clouds. Pale and moving swiftly across the marketplace, it caught the lions and lilies of Gloucester’s banner to sudden gold fire before it was as suddenly gone, swept over the abbey wall and away on the sharp gray wind.

  ‘There’s some would say that was a sign of some saint’s favor on his grace,“ Sir Roger Chamberlain said at Arteys’ side.

  He had been riding back along the column, closing up the line into better order, and now swung his horse around to ride beside Arteys, who was glad of it and answered, “St. Edmund himself, maybe.”

  ‘May be, God willing. How have things been here?“

  That might have been an ordinary asking but a tightness in his voice suggested otherwise and Arteys, glad to be able to say it, answered, “Not good. Have you heard what Suffolk was at?”

  ‘Sir Richard was telling me of it just now. If I understand a-right, it came out of nowhere and went away as quickly?“

  ‘Yes. We think maybe Suffolk found out Gloucester was only bringing eighty men and saw how foolish he would look, meeting him with an army.“

  ‘The question is, why did Suffolk ever think Gloucester was bringing an army? Or was he just trying to raise dread in people?“ Sir Roger shook his head. ”Either way, he misplanned again. I wonder what else he’s maybe misplanned?“

  ‘What did Stourton and Stanley want?“

  ‘They brought King Henry’s word that, the day being so bitter cold, Gloucester need not attend on him now but should ride on to St. Saviour’s and his dinner and come to him later, at better leisure.“

  ‘That was graciously done.“

  ‘I just hope gracious is all it was,“ Sir Roger
said, then ruefully half-smiled and added, ”No. There’s no fault in the king that way. It was gracious. I’m uneasy but probably for no good reason. How have you been?“ Arteys thought about it before echoing, ”Uneasy.“ They rode on side by side in companionable silence the few minutes more to St. Saviour’s, where Gloucester was met by Master Grene with word that dinner was ready, if it so pleased his grace. Gloucester declared it pleased him very well, horses were hurriedly given over to scurrying stablehands, and Arteys sped with other squires to scrub their hands and smooth their hair and race to the great hall while Gloucester and the rest were yet being sorted to their places.

  Gloucester was at the high table on the dais, of course, with Sir John Cheney and Sir Roger to his right, and Master Needham and Master Grene to his left. The rest of the company had place at the two long tables facing each other down the hall’s length and, to begin, squires and servitors with linen towels over one arm carried basins of warmed rose water from man to man, for them to wash and dry their hands. Arteys’ place was at the high table and Gloucester smiled at him over the basin and made a little flip of the fingers to spatter water lightly at his face. Arteys grinned and slightly shifted the basin, as if threatening to slosh its water over the edge at him, an old game between them, then straightened his face and moved to Sir John.

  After that came the ceremony of serving the meal, something Arteys always enjoyed because however harried and harassed things might be in the kitchen, butlery, and pantry, with dishes being served forth and orders flying as to who should take what to where—and why wasn’t the venison ready—and where were the pears in wine syrup—and had someone taken the fish tart to the high table, they shouldn’t have yet—the moment he stepped over the threshold into the great hall bearing the broad serving platter or deep bowl or whatever was in his charge for each remove, everything took on order and grace, from his walk up the hall to the setting of the food before Gloucester to the serving of it to his withdrawal down the hall to bring whatever came next. For that while, everything he needed to do and be was ordered and certain, his place among everyone without question or doubt.

  Today the meal went its way through its three removes of four dishes each, with wine in plenty along the way and Gloucester’s pleasure in it so open that his laughter spread merriment along the high table to either side of him. The final dish—a petypernaunt of ginger, dates, and raisins in sweet pastry—had been served and eaten and Arteys was at one end of the high table, refilling Sir Roger’s goblet with a red wine, when a sudden rise of voices from the screens passage to the outer door to the foreyard turned everyone’s heed toward the far end of the hall, without even time to begin asking each other what was happening before perhaps a dozen men in royal livery shoved past servants and into the hall. Moving swiftly, they made a double line between the tables the hall’s length, from the door almost to the dais, ignoring the babble of questions and demands rising all around them.

  Arteys, clutching the wine pitcher to him, looked quickly to Gloucester, risen to his feet to stand straightly upright, his head lifted and eyes widened with question and wariness and the beginning of anger.

  Sir Roger clamped a hand on Arteys’ arm. “Get behind me,” he whispered harshly. “Get your back to the door there.” Meaning the one at this rear corner of the dais, leading to the master’s parlor and the stairs up to Gloucester’s rooms.

  The sharpness of Sir Roger’s order made Arteys set down the pitcher and back up just as four more men entered the far end of the hall, not liveried men this time but the duke of Buckingham, the marquis of Dorset, the earl of Salisbury, and Lord Sudeley. Arteys knew them all. With the swift certainty of authority, they came up the hall to stand below the dais two by two, with room between them for one more lord—John, Viscount Beaumont, High Constable of England—to come striding past them.

  Arteys’ stomach clenched hard with plain fear, even before Viscount Beaumont stopped with only the table between him and Gloucester and, facing him, declared in a voice raised to be heard throughout the hall, his words deliberate as hammer strokes, “Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in the king’s name I arrest you here on charges of high treason against his grace King Henry the Sixth of England, France, and Ireland. Submit you…”

  Without turning his head, Sir Roger said, low under the shouting beginning to break out from one end of the hall to the other, “Arteys, get out of here.”

  Arteys took a forward pace. “I—”

  ‘Gloucester would rather have you safe than here. You can’t help. Go!“

  Arteys took a backward step. He understood what Sir Roger was telling him. There was nothing he could do here and now, but there might be later, if he got clear. Pushed by that thought and Sir Roger’s order, he took another step, felt the door’s handle against his hip, groped one-handed behind him for it but was looking at Gloucester still standing behind the table with shoulders back and head proudly lifted, saying something at Beaumont with red-faced contempt, the words lost under the general shouting.

  Still looking at him, Arteys opened the door as slightly as might be and slid out of the hall’s bright warmth into shadows and cold.

  Chapter 11

  Not needed for more sewing nor by Alice who was, as usual, with the queen, Frevisse spent much of that gray-skied morning in the abbey’s library. The elderly, somewhat deaf monk in charge accepted her presence with ill-grace but no refusal, and at Dame Perpetua’s suggestion, she searched the list of books that were supposed to be in the library for any that might be profitably copied for St. Frideswide’s. Then, when she and Dame Perpetua returned from Tierce, she began to look for them through the library’s shelves and chests, unexpectedly finding after Sext a copy of Boece, Geoffrey Chaucer’s translation of the ancient philosopher Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. The list made no mention of it, but she forgot the life of St. Bartholomew for which she had been looking when she realized what she held.

  The Boece she had first read, in her uncle’s library when she was a half-grown girl, had been on fine parchment, bound in crimson-dyed leather, the first initial of each part flourished in red and blue ink. The copy she now held had been written out in a fair enough hand but on cheap paper with never a colored letter anywhere nor even bound, the pages merely stitched together, but Boethius’ worth was in his words, not in their binding. He had written that Evil was not a reality but only a misperception by the human mind, flawed as that mind was by sin. Frevisse remembered being both discomfited and comforted by the thought that there was vast difference between the world’s seeming-real and Reality, but as Boethius said, in the person of Lady Philosophy, “Withstand then and give over your vices; worship and love your virtues; raise your courage to rightful hopes; yield your humble prayers to God on high.”

  She took the book to Dame Perpetua, who exclaimed in a delighted whisper, “I read that before ever I came into St. Frideswide’s. Yes, let’s copy it out. Can you begin while I finish these poems I have in hand?”

  Frevisse was willing but the bell began to ring for Nones and they had to leave their work and hurry. The library was above the monastery’s novice school in the prior’s courtyard, close to the abbey church’s east end, and the short way from library to church was through the cloister, forbidden to women, so they had to go the opposite way, along the back of buildings and into the abbot’s garden to a passage through the buildings into the Great Court, across which they went at a long angle to the gateway into the guesthall yard and from there, at last, into the church, then up the nave with its pairs of massive pillars to the south transept and St. Nicholas‘

  chapel, with barely time to catch their breath and open their breviaries before the Office began.

  They had the chapel to themselves and to judge by the sparse chanting from the choir the monks had not flocked to the Office either, nor had there been many worshippers in the nave. At the Office’s end she and Dame Perpetua sat silently for a few moments, listening to the monks hurry away, before Frevisse
said, “It’s hardly worth the while for me to go back to the library before dinner since I have to take Lord John to the players afterward. There’s chance I might talk to Lady Alice about our business if I go now, if you don’t mind.”

  ‘I was already thinking I might stay and pray awhile,“ Dame Perpetua said. ”And rest my eyes. I’ll start Boethius myself this afternoon if I can.“

  Content that Dame Perpetua seemed not to mind, Frevisse left her, wishing she could stay to pray, too, but needing to take this chance to ask if Alice had learned more last night. Crossing the Great Court, keeping tight hold on her cloak against the whipping wind, she was giving small heed to the general hurry of people around her until, from somewhere beyond the abbey’s outer wall, there was the cry of a trumpet, bold in the cold air, and the next moment the word Gloucester was running across the yard. Heads turned, people stopped, then began to move toward the great gateway all at once.

  Frevisse paused, resisting her curiosity, before giving way and going with the crowd toward and into the long arch of the abbey’s gateway tower leading to the marketplace outside the abbey walls. The push of people crowded her forward and sideways and without particularly trying she was against the leftward pillars of the outer archway when scarlet-clad foreriders rode by, but all heads on both sides of the way were turned and craning to see Gloucester and by leaning forward Frevisse saw him, too, a tall man with the good looks of his youth not gone from his long-boned Plantagenet face, straight-backed in the saddle as his tall white palfrey played to the crowd, prancing with high-arched neck under a shining fall of mane, hoofs light and quick on the paving stones, the small bells hung from its harness chiming and jinging.