12 The Bastard's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  ‘And if we’re to stop what he means to do to Arteys and the others,“ Joliffe said, ”he has to be made more frightened.“

  Wariness overtook Frevisse’s anger as she looked back and forth between him and Alice. “That’s what you’ve brought me here to do?”

  ‘I can’t let my husband do this to himself,“ said Alice. ”If he executes those men like this, it’s murder. I can’t let him put that sin on his soul.“

  Suffolk’s soul was not high among Frevisse’s concerns just now but Arteys and the men condemned with him were. She looked back to Joliffe. “What is it I’m going to do?”

  Joliffe smiled for the first time she had seen today. A wide, warm smile of deepest pleasure as he said, “What you’re going to do is lie as you’ve never lied before.”

  Chapter 25

  The day’s long end was a warm rose across the western sky above the vanished sun’s fading trail of gold. The gardens of Suffolk Place were already softening in a blue twilight that would be darkness soon, and the couples and few other people who had gone out to walk in them were drifting back toward the house as the evening damp came on. Standing high above them, at the window in the solar off Alice’s bedchamber, Frevisse watched them and the sunset’s fading and thought how far in more than miles she was from the winter-bare gardens at St. Edmund’s Abbey.

  She had gone to Bury St. Edmunds to serve Bishop Beaufort’s purposes because, even dying, he could not let go of worldly matters. Now, because of Suffolk’s worldly ambitions, she was here to keep five men alive. If she failed, Arteys would die. If she fell into trouble, there was no one who could help her in her turn. Not Joliffe, surely. He could be smashed by Suffolk as easily as Arteys had been. Nor Bishop Pecock. What slight place and power his bishopric gave were forfeit for the present and had never been enough for him to go openly against Suffolk anyway, in this or any other matter.

  And Alice? She was as bound to helplessness as any of them. She was married to Suffolk and, come good or ill, would go on being married to him, with too much to be lost—including her children—if she crossed him too openly, too deeply.

  Waiting there at the window, watching the day’s end, Frevisse looked straight at the plain fact that there was no one but herself to do what needed to be done and no one to save Arteys—or her—if she failed. For her it would be a powerful man’s displeasure and probably being shut away into an unfamiliar nunnery under strict discipline among strangers for the rest of her life. For Arteys it would be death.

  She was praying for courage and strength when, behind her, the door across the room opened. Folding her hands with feigned quiet into her opposite sleeves and settling her face deliberately to show rather than hide her strain and deep-grown unease, she turned around.

  The hope had been that Alice could persuade Suffolk to see her cousin the nun alone and Alice had succeeded. He stood in the doorway with no one in sight behind him as he looked around the chamber and said, “There’s no light. I’ll send for one.”

  He started to turn away to whoever was in the other room but Frevisse said quickly, pitching her voice a little high and unsteady, “Please, no. I’d rather…” She let her voice falter. “Please… it’s better this way.”

  Suffolk hesitated, shrugged, and came in, only half-closing the door as courtesy to her, that no one be able to say she had been shut away alone with a man. Still unsteadily, Frevisse said, “It would be better closed. Please.”

  Suffolk’s look at her was harder this time. There was still sunset light enough through the window for her to see he did not like that. But he probably disliked being here at all. Alice had said, “I’ll persuade him to it by saying it’s for no more than a quarter hour. I’ll ask it as a favor to me, for my cousin who’s distressed at something, I don’t know what. He’ll give me a quarter hour.” Now here he was and impatient to have it done with, whatever it was. In the shorter doublet that was coming into fashion, high on the leg, with wide-puffed shoulders but tightly nipped in at wrists and waist—his present one in saffron yellow velvet trimmed with black at throat and hem—he was a goodly-looking man in his full prime of life but somewhat gone to flesh in the few months since Frevisse had last seen him. From gorging on ambitions and power, Frevisse thought, and oddly that made her fear slip aside, not leaving her but letting her anger come to the fore.

  Carried by her anger, she sank toward the floor in a deep curtsy and stayed there, her head bowed in seemingly utter humility.

  Suffolk crossed the room, took her by the elbow, and raised her up, saying, “There’s hardly need for that, dame. We’re kin by marriage, after all.”

  But he liked her humility before him. His voice showed how much he liked it and the chance it gave him to show his graciousness and Frevisse kept her eyes down as she said, trying to sound overwhelmed by his goodness, “You’re very kind, my lord.”

  ‘If you will remember me in your prayers, then all is even between us.“

  ‘You are remembered in them, my lord.“ And that was true; she always prayed for Alice ”and all those dear to her,“ which Suffolk was or Alice would not be in such pain for him.

  ‘Then there we are. What is it you’d ask of me?“

  His graciousness had not reached to asking her to sit. She supposed he saw it was enough he was a great lord condescending to her humble need and probably remained on his feet to remind her to be quick about her business, that he had more important matters in hand than her. That suited Frevisse very well and she raised her head, looked him directly in the face, and said, “I’ve come about the late duke of Gloucester’s will.”

  His momentary silence betrayed he had not been ready for anything like that. She watched a quick shifting in his eyes before he said evenly, “I’m afraid the duke left no will, dame. I promise you it’s been a source of trouble to us all.”

  The first part of that was probably a lie. The second part surely was. Without a will and with no legitimate heir of his body, everything that had been Gloucester’s— his fine manor at Eltham, every castle and piece of property he owned, all his offices from greatest to least, and any other wealth he had had, in whatever form—was left fair game for the taking by king, queen, lords, and anyone else able to jam a hand into the feeding trough before it emptied. The lack of a will had been no trouble.

  The claim was that there never had been a will but Alice said there surely had. She had heard Gloucester speak of it herself a few years back at some court gathering when there had been talk of books and he had said his many, well-loved books were mostly willed to the university at Oxford. Closer yet, the abbot of St. Albans Abbey, where Gloucester’s body had been taken for burial, was asking for the money he claimed Gloucester had willed for his chantry there, for prayers and Masses for his soul forever.

  ‘There was a will someplace, at some time,“ Alice had said this afternoon in the garden.

  ‘But there isn’t one now,“ said Joliffe, ”and Suffolk doubtless wants to keep it that way. That’s what brought Bishop Pecock to think of this chance.“

  And in the room’s deepening twilight, with her back to the window so she could see Suffolk’s face better than he could see hers, Frevisse said stiffly, “Of course the duke left a will and I know where there’s a copy of it.”

  Suffolk started what looked to be a sharp denial but stopped himself, paused, then said very gracefully, very firmly, “That seems unlikely, dame.”

  Looking straight into his eyes, she said, “I know there is because I have it. Signed by his grace’s own hand and sealed with his own seal.”

  Suffolk gave a short, ungracious bark of laughter. “There are easier ways to persuade me to give your nunnery a gift than by extortion.”

  That his first thought was of extortion betrayed a great deal about him, but evenly—surprisingly evenly, considering how tightly she was holding in her anger— Frevisse said back at him, “This isn’t for my nunnery. It’s for me.”

  Suffolk looked less gracious now. “Why would you
have a copy of the duke of Gloucester’s will?”

  ‘Because his grace knew no one would look for it in my keeping.“

  ‘It’s at your nunnery?“

  ‘It’s elsewhere, of course.“ Let him understand she was not stupid, that he was not the only well-witted one here. ”And there are papers with it that explain everything, should anything unexpected happen to me.“

  An old bluff, Joliffe had said, but ever a good one. She could see Suffolk assessing it before he said, “That doesn’t explain why you have it.”

  Meeting his angry gaze with feigned defiance mingled with equally feigned shame, Frevisse gave the lie on which everything depended. “I have Gloucester’s will because I was his mistress. And mother of his son.”

  She had the satisfaction of seeing Suffolk’s jaw fall, and just as Joliffe had schooled her, she waited three beats before going on, hardening her voice a little, “My lord wanted me to be assured our son was well provided for. Arteys. One of the men you mean to kill tomorrow.”

  Suffolk sputtered into laughter, choked on it, and shook his head, protesting, “You? My wife’s most-holy cousin? The blessed nun? You’re the bastard’s mother?”

  For a heart-dropping moment Frevisse thought the lie had failed but, laughing, Suffolk demanded, “Does she know? Does Alice know what you are?”

  ‘What I was,“ Frevisse said stiffly. ”Years ago.“

  ‘Yes.“ Suffolk eyed her assessingly. ”I’d suppose so.“ He laughed again. ”Gloucester’s mistress. A nun. Who would have thought it?“

  His scorn was hardly suitable, considering he had never made secret his own bastard daughter was by a nun he had seduced in France. Coldly Frevisse said, “About the will. And about a pardon for my son in exchange for my keeping it secret.”

  Suffolk’s laughter vanished, a dark anger taking its place. “Yes,” he said coldly back at her. “About this will.”

  Chapter 26

  Brought last out of the prison into the walled yard, with time to wait while they finished strapping down Sir Roger, Arteys turned his face up to the sunlight, wanting to feel its warmth against his flesh rather than the cold terror cramped in his stomach or the weight of the wide iron manacles at his wrists and ankles, the drag of chains, and the screaming at the back of his mind that this wasn’t happening, wasn’t happening, wasn’t…

  Eyes desperately closed against the courtyard full of staring people, he tilted his head back to the summer-morning sky and willed himself to feel only the sunlight, think only the sunlight.

  The clop of hoofs and the scrape of wood on cobbles told him Sir Roger was being dragged forward and he opened his eyes as the guards on either side of him took him by the upper arms and pushed him the little distance to the hurdle being horse-drawn to place in front of him. Everything was come down to that, he thought. To little and to last. To a last summer’s morning. A last few steps. A little while until he was dead.

  He pulled his mind off from that. Think of something else, he told himself. Think of here and now and what. Not the guard fumbling at the manacles around his ankles. The horse-drawn hurdle waiting in front of him. See it. Think about it. A willow-woven piece of fencing a few feet wide and a little longer than a man was tall. Hurdles were made that way, light-weight for easy shifting around pastures but this one had a wood frame under it to give somewhere to attach the horse’s harness and to give it strength, to keep it from falling apart while being dragged through London. With him on it.

  The guard pulled one manacle off his ankle, laid it aside, set to work on the other one.

  Think small things, Arteys told himself. Think little things. Cram them into the chinks in the wall across his mind that kept the terror from spilling through into his rigid calm. His mind lurched, trying to break free, but he thought desperately, Look at the horses. His was a bay, flicking its dark tail against the morning’s flies. The other four waiting in a line from here to the gateway with their burdened hurdles behind them were a black, two more bays, a dull-coated chestnut. The black was Sir Roger’s. Sir Richard and Tom had the bays. Master Needham…

  Arteys’ chest heaved, struggling to breathe against the smothering rise of his fear. It didn’t matter who had what horses. It only mattered that they were good ones, able to go strongly, get it over with, not take overlong on the way to Tyburn because why spend more time humiliating the condemned than necessary? People had their lives to get on with…

  The thought of other people’s lives turned to bile in Arteys’ throat as the guard loosed the second manacle from around his ankle, rattled the pair of them and their chain aside onto the cobbles, and stood up to help his fellow turn Arteys around, his hands still manacled so that together they had to lay him down, on his back on the hurdle. For half a breath, as the willow withies pressed into his back, he nearly gave way, nearly struggled against going tamely to his death, but one of the guards must have read his body because he said, rough-voiced, “Don’t.”

  And he didn’t, not because of the guard’s order but because there would be no use to it. Not with his hands still chained, in a walled yard full of armed men and no help for him anywhere. He willed his body to be still and held up his arms for the guards to fasten the leather strap that would hold him to the hurdle over his chest. A wide, thick, leather strap with a heavy buckle and a padlock to hold it closed against any fumbling a desperate man might try. Maybe because he did not struggle, the guards did not pull it tight enough over his ribs to hurt. For what small use there was to that, Arteys thought, when in an hour’s time or so he, Sir Roger, Sir Richard, Tom, and Master Needham would all be hung, gutted alive and, when finally dead, their bodies cut into pieces and piked up for people to stare at.

  Hung, drawn, quartered.

  Terror heaved up from Arteys’ stomach, clamped on his heart, rose into his throat, as it had every time the thought of it came into his mind since Suffolk, seated in judgment after that farce of a trial, had stared above their heads, refusing even to look them in the face as he sentenced them to die as traitors.

  And again, as he had every time so far, Arteys fought the terror down, knowing that if ever he gave way to it, he would go to his death screaming and sobbing. For his own sake and for what pride of blood he owed his father and to refuse that extra sport to everyone who came to watch him die, he meant to go on fighting it, not to give way until he had to, not begin to scream until the knife was in his belly and the pain more than he could hold against.

  He supposed that by then he’d be past caring what sport he was for anyone.

  The guards were pulling his feet to either side now, to the straps waiting for them at the hurdle’s lower corners. He closed his eyes again. Yesterday he had said farewell to his last sunset, such of its gold and rose as he could see through the high slit of window in his cell. Had made farewell to his last night and to his last dawn before the guards had come, roused—not wakened, they had none of them slept—the five of them to go to a room where they had been allowed to wash themselves—not shave; not given anything that could be a weapon—and dress in the clothing they had worn to their trial. Clean hosen and shirts and good doublets that Sir Roger’s wife had brought them. Arteys’ was dark blue. That was a small, pointless thing to be pleased with but he had been. He had found himself these past days trying very hard to be pleased with small things. There were, after all, no great things left in his life. Except death.

  That they were to go clean and clothed to their deaths, rather than dirty, bare-legged and in prison shirts, might have been seen as a favor, but Sir Roger had said while they dressed themselves, “Suffolk doesn’t want anyone’s pity on us. He wants everyone to remember it’s Gloucester’s ‘treason’ we’re dying for. That’s why he’s letting us go grand to our dying.”

  Close to his ear someone said, “Master Arteys.”

  He flinched his eyes open and turned his head to find a priest kneeling beside the hurdle. For a moment that was all he saw, then said uncertainly, “Master Orle?”<
br />
  ‘Master Orle,“ the priest agreed. ”Bishop Pecock sends his regret at not being here himself.“

  ‘I heard he was in trouble,“ Arteys said, surprised at how his voice croaked.

  ‘He is indeed.“ Master Orle fumbled under his scapular and brought out a leather bottle. ”Otherwise he’d be here. But we found a way for me to be assigned with the other priests to this.“ He held the bottle to Arteys’ mouth. ”Wine,“ he said.

  ‘Drugged?“ Arteys asked, half-hopefully. He wouldn’t mind not being altogether here for any of what was to come.

  ‘I fear not.“

  Arteys drank gratefully anyway when Master Orle held the bottle to his mouth, the slant of the hurdle enough that swallowing was only difficult, not impossible. He had not known how thirsty he was. Breakfast had been only a little ale and a piece of dry bread, with something said about a full stomach making matters harder for the hangman.

  ‘Thank you,“ he said as Master Orle took the bottle away.

  ‘You all made confession last night, I understand. Everything else was seen to this morning?“

  ‘Yes.“ Arteys shut his eyes against the memory of how terrible it had been to have the last rites said over him when he was neither ill nor wounded and yet assured he would be dead before the morning was done.

  There was the scrape of the first hurdle beginning to move across the courtyard paving and Arteys opened his eyes, seeking for Master Orle’s face, for something good in the midst of nightmare. Master Orle, putting the bottle quickly away, brought out a gold cross, perhaps a hand’s length long and plainly made but beautiful. “Bishop Pecock sent you this. It’s his own.”

  Arteys reached out and took it between his manacled hands, grateful for it.

  The priest touched his shoulder. “I’ll walk beside you if you want. It’s allowed.”