8 The Maiden's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “I don’t see why she couldn’t. Yes, certainly. I’m sure Dame Beatrix would allow it. She’s a sweet child, isn’t she?”

  That was not quite the word Frevisse would have chosen if asked to describe Lady Adela but she said nothing. Sister Clemens curtsied and bustled out, and Lady Jane sank into a chair with a heart-deep sigh. “Did the ride tire you?” Frevisse asked.

  “Not the ride. The being looked at,” Lady Jane said. “The knowing I’m being looked at differently from how people look at other people.” She did not sound hurt so much as puzzled. “Part of me wishes I could hide away and never be looked at again, but another part of me wants to say, ”Stare, if that’s what you want! I don’t care!“ and just go on with my life, ignoring them all.”

  “In the nunnery everyone was used to you. If you’d stayed there, you’d have had to deal with none of this.”

  “Do you think desire to hide is reason enough to be a nun?” Lady Jane asked mildly, a fair thrust in answer to an unfair one.

  “For some,” Frevisse said.

  “Not for you, I think. Whyever you became a nun, it wasn’t to hide from anything. Nor would I be a nun for the sake of hiding from my own face, from my own life.”

  “No matter what it brings?”

  “Isn’t that how we all have to live our lives?” Lady Jane asked with her wry, warm smile. “With no matter what it brings?”

  A brief scratch at the door was followed by Sister Clemens coming in, brightly saying, “Here she is! Make your curtsy nicely, my lady.”

  Lady Adela made a curtsy and then stood, hands folded in front of her, looking at the floor while Frevisse gave Sister Clemens thanks and Sister Clemens promised to have their dinners brought soon and left, but at the small thud of the closing door, Lady Adela’s head jerked up and she demanded at Frevisse, “Have you come back to stay? Dame Perpetua didn’t know when you’d be back or when you’d both be leaving. Are you here to leave?”

  “I’m only here to see Dame Elisabeth about something. I won’t be staying, but, no, we’re not leaving London yet. You’re making friends, aren’t you? There are other girls here.”

  Lady Adela’s lips curled to vast scorn. “They’re idiots!”

  Choosing not to ask about that or give a homily on how one should speak well of people, Frevisse said, “Will it please you meet my cousin’s niece, Lady Jane de la Pole. Lady Jane, Lord Warenne’s daughter Lady Adela.”

  Lady Adela in her own concerns had paid Lady Jane, somewhat behind Frevisse, no heed at all, and only as they both rose from their curtsies to each other, looked at her, made a small sound of surprise, and took a step toward her, staring, asking, “Does that hurt? Is it like that always? It’s not a passing rash?”

  “Lady Adela!” Frevisse snapped, but Lady Jane answered, sounding unbothered, “No, it’s not a rash. It doesn’t hurt, but yes, it’s always been and always will be this way.”

  “Always? You were born with it? May I touch it?”

  Frevisse wondered into what despair Dame Perpetua would have plunged at such outright failure of all her lessons in manners; but Lady Jane only said, “Yes,” and leaned down for Lady Adela to reach her face more easily.

  Lady Adela limped forward but paused, hand partly raised. “You really don’t mind?”

  “I don’t mind people being curious. It’s a curious thing to see,” Lady Jane said gently. “What I mind is when people act as if nothing about me mattered except this. Touch it if you want.”

  Lady Adela did, touching, then stroking it slightly before drawing back to say wonderingly, “It isn’t anything. It feels a little different from skin…”

  “Stiff,” Lady Jane said. “Thick.”

  “But it’s not anything, is it? It’s just there.” Lady Adela drew back a step, laying a hand on her hip. “I was born with this and my father put me in a nunnery when I was little.”

  “My mother put me in a nunnery when I was born because of this.” Lady Jane touched her mark.

  “But you’re not a nun,” Lady Adela protested.

  “Nor do I mean to be.”

  “They didn’t try to make you?”

  “They can’t make you,” Lady Jane said gently. “If you won’t say the words, they can’t make you a nun no matter what.”

  Lady Adela’s eyes widened. “Truly? And they let you out if you don’t?”

  “They let you out if you don’t.”

  It was maybe fortunate that Sister Clemens returned just then with servants bringing dinner. By the time they had served and gone away, Lady Jane and Lady Adela were exchanging stories as if they were longtime friends, and Frevisse found several matters made clear that at one time and another had puzzled St. Frideswide’s. Such as how the mouse had come to be in the covered kettle in the kitchen, not noticed until after the cut vegetables had been dumped in and a pot of broth poured over them, at which point the creature was found swimming, and mouse and broth and vegetables had been swilled out to the pigs.

  “But how did you come by a mouse?” Lady Jane asked.

  “I put some cheese in my sewing basket with the lid a little propped up, and when the mouse went in, he knocked the lid closed and there he was. You can always catch mice that way.” Which went some way to explaining why Dame Perpetua had so often had complaint of Lady Adela’s soiled and tangled sewing.

  Lady Jane offered, “I once put crayfish in the cloister fountain to see if I could set Sister Anne to shrieking. She was always good for shrieking but no one noticed them and I finally took them back to the stream.”

  “Did you ever make Sister Anne shriek?” Lady Adela asked.

  “Oh yes! There was a time…”

  Sister Clemens scratched at the door, come to take Frevisse to Dame Elisabeth. Wondering what Lady Jane had done to Sister Anne and what use Lady Adela might put it to here in St. Helen’s, Frevisse followed Sister Clemens out, to be left at the door to the library where Dame Perpetua was seated with parchment, ink, and pen, and Dame Elisabeth was saying, “Then add Mirk’s Festial, too.” And added in welcome to Frevisse, “We’re listing what books I’m going to ask to be copied for St. Frideswide’s. Dame Perpetua has told me how few you have. And there’s something else, the reason I asked if you could come here.”

  Frevisse hid her slight stir of alarm that Dame Elisabeth was about to say something she should not in Dame Perpetua’s hearing, but Dame Elisabeth only went on, “By all I’ve heard from my brother and Dame Perpetua, it’s needful we increase St. Frideswide’s income somehow for a time, to offset the dearth your last prioress made. But it also seems there’s naught more to be had from your properties at present.”

  “Less than usual even, because of the poor harvest,” Frevisse agreed, “and some of our rents were deeded away and must needs be recovered.” Deeding rents away to her relatives at rates unfavorable to the priory had been among their former prioress’ practices that the nuns had learned of far too late.

  “And that will mean legal expenses,” Dame Elisabeth said. “So I’ve had a thought I wanted to ask you both about together.”

  Dame Perpetua eagerly, obligingly asked, “Yes?”

  “You’re all literate, of course? All the nuns in St. Frideswide’s?”

  Dame Perpetua readily nodded yes. Frevisse more cautiously offered, “Some more than others.”

  “They can learn,” Dame Elisabeth said with more assurance than Frevisse had. “How if we took on the copying of books to sell? It would take very small investment to begin. My brother would help with what we needed, I’m sure, even loan us from his abbey’s library if I asked, and so will St. Helen’s.”

  “Oh!” Dame Perpetua exclaimed, delighted. “That’s surely something we could do!” She would be glad of any plan that brought more books her way, but even Frevisse, considering the possibilities more cautiously, could see the plan’s possibility. Scrivening was within the capabilities of most of the nuns and there was always need for books, particularly ones as relatively inexpensive—pl
ain-copied and plain-bound, with no illumination or flourishes because no one in St. Frideswide’s had the skill for that—as these would be.

  “And your cousin the countess of Suffolk has a notable library, too, I think?” Dame Elisabeth asked.

  Somewhat irked not to have seen that coming, Frevisse said, “Yes, she has. And would loan some, yes,” she added, to save Dame Elisabeth the trouble of asking.

  “So we’ll have books in plenty to copy,” Dame Elisabeth said and added, turning to a shelf behind Dame Perpetua, “But come here and tell me your opinion of this, if you would.” As Frevisse came to stand beside her, she went on, “Now here’s a Bartholomew Anglicus but that’s overmuch to begin with, I think. Perhaps one of Albertus Magnus’ shorter treatises?”

  Dame Perpetua’s back was to them and their backs were to her and to the door, no one there to see the folded paper Dame Elisabeth brought from her sleeve and held aside to Frevisse who, with no need to question and while answering, “Or else an extract of Anglicus. That might do well,” took the paper and slipped it into the tight sleeve of her own black under-gown, with no look or word between Dame Elisabeth and her to show either of them was thinking anything beyond what they were saying.

  Chapter 13

  Lady Jane was alone when Frevisse returned to her, standing in front of the tapestry of the Wise Virgins, studying it as if in hope of learning something of great value. “Lady Adela had to go back to her lessons. She said to give you her farewells.”

  “She knows her manners when she thinks about them,” Frevisse answered. “Or rather, she knows them when she chooses to think about them. May I say I think the nuns are fortunate not to have you both here as girls together?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything she might not have thought of for herself,” Lady Jane said with excessively feigned virtue.

  “Only she might not have thought of it, left to herself,” Frevisse pointed out.

  “Or she might have thought of something worse.”

  “And still may,” Frevisse said.

  “Still,” Lady Jane said pensively, “I may have repaid with Lady Adela what Dame Elianor did for me in my childhood.”

  “Someone in your nunnery you cared for, despite all?”

  “She was one of the oldest nuns, not able to do much around the nunnery anymore and so given me to tend. With a servant and two to help, of course, but they came and went while Dame Elianor was always there for my first eleven years, first caring for me and then toward the end I was the one who cared for her.”

  “Did she come to know you’d never be a nun?”

  “I think she knew as soon as I did and never tried to turn me from it.” Lady Jane paused and Frevisse waited until she had sorted through something and went on. “She even told me, toward the end, how she was forced into nunhood. Let herself be forced, was what she said, and that it was years after she had taken her vows before she came to terms with it. That she had had to come to terms or go mad. The odd thing was, she said, that after that she’d found happiness in it, that if she had known how happy she would come to be in it, she would have chosen nunhood to begin with. But…” Lady Jane paused, uncertain.

  “But she always wondered who she would have been without it?” Frevisse offered gently.

  “That was it. She wondered and I think she always mourned a little for the person she was never given chance to be.”

  “That’s a thing that happens to others besides nuns,” Frevisse said even more gently.

  Surprisingly, Lady Jane’s wry, bright smile flew into being. “Too true,” she agreed. “When I’m a few years into marriage and motherhood and managing a manor, you may find me wondering whatever I found so terrible about the thought of being a nun!”

  They were laughing together, putting on their cloaks, as Sister Clemens came in to see them to the door, curtsying them out and wishing them safe journey as if it were Wales instead of Thames Street to which they were going. A squire in the stable doorway saw them emerge into the yard, spoke over his shoulder to someone, and very shortly all the squires were coming out, bringing the horses, the squire in charge today the same man Frevisse had ridden behind from St. Helen’s two days ago, and she asked him, when everyone was mounted, ready to ride out, “Herry, might we go back to Coldharbour a different way? To see more of the city. Westward along Cornhill perhaps.”

  “To St. Paul’s, you mean, my lady?”

  “The afternoon is too far along for that, I think. But to the Stocks Market maybe and then south by Walbrook to Thames Street and back to Coldharbour?”

  “No reason not,” Herry said easily. “We should still be back well in time for you to ready for tonight.”

  Frevisse would have more gladly avoided the great feast there was to be at Coldharbour tonight, the last before Parliament opened on the morrow, but she had kept her preference to herself and still kept it, saying merely, “Yes. Good. Lady Jane, you’ll take this chance to see more of London?”

  Lady Jane took visible resolve before saying, “Of course,” and did not put her hood back up to hide in.

  Their way lay back down Bishopsgate again but short of Grasschurch market they turned rightward into Cornhill, broad, paved, and this far along in the afternoon not overly crowded, most of the day’s merchanting done, so with no need for clearing their way, three of the squires rode easily in front, two others behind, and Herry Elham on Frevisse’s other side from Lady Jane, pointing out places as they went, knowledgeable enough that Frevisse asked along the way, “You’re London-born, are you?”

  “Not London-born but mostly London-bred. Now here what we’re riding into is the Stocks Market. Cornhill, Lombard, Threadneedle, Poultry, Bucklersbury, and Walbrook streets all come together here and such a noise you’ve never heard as on high market day when the market’s full of folk.”

  Frevisse remembered how the Stocks Market on a hot summer day, being one the main places for sale of fresh meat and fish inside the city, could be raucous to nose as well as ears. Today, with the cold and wind and the last of the sellers packing their wares to go home, it was only a great widening of the ways where the wind came too easily at them, and the squires did not linger at turning leftward, slantwise across the market toward Walbrook that would take them down to Thames Street.

  Herry was explaining across Frevisse to Lady Jane about the Market; and Lady Jane, either forgetful of her face or else choosing to ignore it, was leaned a little toward him, listening; so it was Frevisse and the three leading squires who saw when trouble rode into the Market out of Walbrook Street ahead of them.

  A half dozen squires in green livery.

  They had passed squires and other liveried servants more than once today among the crowds and it had been no matter, but these wore the antelope and ostrich plume badge of the duke of Gloucester, and as easily as Frevisse knew theirs, they knew Suffolk’s badge on the squires around her, together both groups drew rein, staring at each other, and if they had been dogs their hackles would have risen.

  But that was all there should have been. London’s government turned viciously on anyone fighting in London’s streets, lords’ men or otherwise; but that wasn’t always enough to keep men from skirmishing, and to judge by the grins spreading across the faces of the Gloucester squires and the hands settling to dagger-hilts among both them and Suffolk’s, the promise of a present fight maybe meant more to them than future trouble from mayor and aldermen.

  Only barely, Frevisse kept from clamping a hand over the folded paper still in her sleeve. This was a chance meeting. It had nothing to do with what she carried. Instead, not sure how well Lady Jane handled a horse, she reached to take hold of her reins, aware of Herry, brought to alert, making quick assessment both of the squires ahead of them and, judging by the quick turn of his head from one side to the other, their own chance of going another way, away from them. But St. Mary Woolchurch bulked in their way to the left and rightward Poultry and Bucklersbury streets weren’t near enough, and apparently Herr
y came to the same judgment because abruptly he spurred his horse forward, between his fellow squires and toward Gloucester’s just beginning to move forward not on anyone’s particular command but with the simple, united purpose of intending a fight. Surely thinking that was what Herry meant, too, one of them spurred out to meet him, and behind them both the others bunched forward, closing ranks while Frevisse held back, intending at the first glint of unsheathed steel to pull Lady Jane’s horse and hers around and away. But Herry instead of drawing his dagger closed fast enough on the man coming for him to grab him by the wrist and hold him from drawing his, too, and as the man tried to wrench back from him, leaned over and said something into his ear, fiercely it looked, freezing the man in the midst of his jerking away.

  Herry said something else, too low to carry beyond the two of them, and Gloucester’s man flung out his free arm to stop the men behind him, saying, “That’s enough!” and at that Herry let him go, twisted in his own saddle, and said back at the Suffolk squires, “Hold where you are!”

  Not happy about it, all held on both sides and Frevisse and Lady Jane where they were, until warily, like dogs who had decided to live and let live, the squires began to circle past each other, Gloucester’s men on into the Stocks Market, Suffolk’s around them into Walbrook, with Herry and one of the foreriders falling back to join the two already in rearguard, while onlookers who had drawn back against walls to be out of the way of what had looked to be coming went on their ways with ill looks and mutterings, some of disappointment.

  Frevisse, releasing Lady Jane’s reins, asked over her shoulder to Herry, “What did you say to him?”

  “I asked him if he knew for certain where the king was. That gave him pause long enough for his wits to kick in.” Because to draw weapons within ten miles of the king’s presence was treason; it could cost a man his weapon hand, if not more.