8 The Maiden's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “Wondering of beauty?” Frevisse asked, meeting his gaze, matching his quietness. “Or wondering of love?” His love and Alice’s that had no hope and yet was beautiful to both of them.

  The faintest of smiles warmed Orleans’ eyes. “As I think I have said to you before, sometimes I talk too much. Or is it that you see too much?”

  “I saw too much. Yesterday, here. But the fault was hardly mine.”

  Orleans made a graceful, acknowledging bow of his head. “No fault in seeing what someone fails to hide. The fault yesterday was entirely mine. I failed her then.”

  “She could have stayed away.”

  “She could not have. Not given how long it had been since we were together. Not given how little time there is likely left to us. Though it would have been better for you to know nothing of it. Or for you to have only suspicion. Now you have… ?”

  He waited and Frevisse answered him with asperity, “Certainty. At least of what Alice told me when I asked her.”

  “You asked her?” Orleans sounded unsettled a little by that.

  “How better to know?”

  “And she said?”

  “That what is between you is more than friendship but less than sin.”

  “You are willing to believe that?”

  “I had her swear to it. Therefore I believe it.”

  The thing that had been pulling at a corner of Orleans’ mouth gave way to smothered laughter. “How very practical of you.”

  “Practical can be a comforting thing upon occasion.”

  “True.” His laughter faded. “Unfortunately what is between your cousin and me is far from practical.”

  “No,” Frevisse agreed gently, and they sat in mutual silence, regarding each other with noncommittal gazes, until, when the moment had drawn out toward discomfortable, Orleans said with mocking great solemnity, “Shall we discuss the weather now?”‘

  “If your grace so wishes.”

  They both gave way to smiles at that, and Orleans to soft laughter as he leaned back against the wainscotted wall at the window’s end behind him, crossed his legs, clasped his hands around one knee, and said, “Let us not.”

  Frevisse remembered something. “I should tell you that Lady Alice purposes to bring two children here this afternoon.”

  Orleans sat forward, pleased. “Edmund and Jasper?” And then pointed at her, delighted with discovery. “You are the nun!”

  “The nun?” Frevisse echoed.

  Orleans leaned back, smiling.

  “They have talked about you. Jasper has. About being in a nunnery and…” His smile faded. “… about what happened there. And so of you.”

  Remembering their time in St. Frideswide’s, Frevisse did not think she wanted to know what they had said of her and asked aside from it, “You know them well?”

  “Indeed. Their mother was my cousin. Her father and mine were brothers. They are almost the nearest kin I have and I am theirs.” Orleans spoke the least guarded, the most gladly Frevisse had yet seen him. “I have a brother and a half-brother living. They have each other and their half-brother King Henry. We were all three in Suffolk’s keeping at once for a time, before I was given over to Sir John Stourton and they were put into Barking Abbey. I write to them sometimes and they to me and sometimes Alice brings us together. I had not thought she would this time, though this is most good.”

  A light scratching at the door sent Frevisse to open it for William with their breakfast that he set out on the table, bread, wine, and a meat in a brown sauce with berries, saying while he did, “His grace said to tell you he has to go to Westminster again today and won’t see you before you leave but sends his regrets you must continue so closely kept today.”

  “I am not greatly suffering,” Orleans answered. He had come to the table and was pouring wine for himself and Frevisse. “After all, I was attended by two fair ladies yesterday and am attended by a fair lady today. Such captivity is hardly to be complained of.”

  He handed Frevisse the goblet with a charming smile and she took it with gracious thanks that acknowledged both the wine and the something of truce and an understanding set up between them that made it possible, when William had gone and they had eaten, for Orleans to take up the Confessio and Frevisse her breviary and sit by unspoken choice, the day’s cold too much for comfort at the window, on opposite ends of the settle, near the fire in reasonably easy silence, Frevisse pleased for chance to lose herself in her prayers again. Even in the nunnery, the hours and opportunity for prayer were prescribed by the Rule and usually circumscribed by other necessities; this morning there was nothing between her and them but her thoughts, and those she rigorously kept in check, absorbing herself into the intensity of the prayers and psalms so deeply that it was difficult, when William was at the door again with dinner, to draw back from their far reaches.

  Still a little lost in them, she made small conversation with Orleans over their meal, but he seemed uninclined to talk, too, and when they had finished he did not return to Confessio or take up writing but set to walking the room, more restless than he had been yesterday or yet today.

  Frevisse, for her part, found she had had enough of sitting, too, but settled for standing beside the fire until she grew too warm and went instead to stand at the window and was there, looking down at the embroidered cushions of the window bench, trying to decide if any unicorn could possibly have such very pink hooves, when movement in the garden drew her head up to see one half-grown boy chasing another along the far garden path just as the pursued turned around on his pursuer and they went down in a scuffling tumble, their laughter clear in the cold air. Orleans said, “Ah, Jasper and Edmund,” and turned toward the gardenward door as Alice opened it. Seeing him, she smiled, twitched her head for him to go out of sight behind it, and he did, while she said to Frevisse, “I met them in the yard and brought them this way,” and to the boys, “Enough! Brush yourselves off and come here.”

  Untangled and on their feet, the two boys came, happily hitting at each other under pretence of brushing off the snow, the taller one with his hat fallen off him, baring his dark red hair, his brother matching him in coloring and slender build, trying to unmuffle himself from his twisted and rucked up cloak. The orphaned sons of the late Dowager Queen Katherine, half brothers to his grace King Henry, nephews to the king of France, cousins to the duke of Orleans, and an embarrassment to the royal council because their father was no more than a Welshman whose secret marriage to a widowed queen had been his downfall and hers. On their mother’s side they were of twice royal blood, on their father’s they were nothing, and no one in power had yet decided what was best done with them except keep them out of the way as much as might be.

  Alice had them inside now, turning them to face Frevisse, and Jasper, the younger, unmuffled now, exclaimed, “The nun!” and bent his head to her in greeting.

  Edmund, not yet so clear that he knew her, copied him his more restrained courtesy gradated neatly between his own rank and her being older than he was and a nun, letting Frevisse judge that whoever was seeing to their upbringing was training them to their royal side rather than their father’s. She wondered how the world would go with them because of that as Jasper, working to be shed of his cloak, asked, “Did that Lady Adela ever stop getting into trouble?”

  Reaching out to help him untangle his cloak clasp from the folds of his cloak, Frevisse asked back, “Have you?” and Jasper laughed while behind him and Edmund, Alice said, “There’s someone else here for you, too.”

  Frevisse was pleased to see they turned without wariness. Enough had happened to them in their few years that they might well have learned to be nothing but wary of the unexpected; it was good to know they could still trust. And more than trust: when they saw Orleans smiling and with his arms out to them, they flung toward him, into his arms with pleased cries, dignity and courtesies forgotten in their very obvious joy at seeing him.

  While Alice explained that Orleans was secretly here and t
hey must be quiet, they and Orleans were on the floor in a happy tangle of tickling that ended with Orleans on the bottom and the boys astride him. Only the fact their giggling and cries stayed smothered showed they heard her, until in the panting pause after they all sat up, still on the floor, Edmund asked, “Is it the duke of Gloucester isn’t to know you’re here?”

  “His grace of Gloucester among others,” Orleans said easily. “Mostly it is to keep tongues from wagging.” He poked Jasper in the ribs. “Do you still have that ball I gave you?”

  “He lost it,” Edmund said, disgusted.

  “I didn’t!” Jasper dug into his belt pouch.

  “You said you couldn’t find it after I’d thrown it over the roof that time!” Edmund said indignantly.

  “If I’d told you I’d found it, you would have gone on throwing it until you did lose it. So I told you I hadn’t. You always lose my things.”

  “You lied!”

  Edmund launched himself at his brother but Orleans intercepted him and the wrestling was on again.

  The rest of the afternoon passed briskly enough. Alice could not stay and Frevisse mostly only watched, but Orleans and the boys filled the time happily, giving over wrestling in favor of games of rolling the ball, followed by regrets they had no marbles but making do with pitching sugared almonds into an emptied wine goblet and eating them afterwards. Then Orleans claimed he was tired and brought the boys to sit with him on the settle, one on either side, cuddled confidently against him while he read to them from the Confessio Amantis about how the witch Medea restored her lord’s father, old Aeson, with a potion so that “… his youth again he caught, His head, his heart, and face, Like to twenty winters’ age…” and ended as Alice let herself in at the hallward door with, “And thereupon they lived happily for all their years afterwards,” which was not quite how Frevisse remembered the story went on from there, but Orleans closed the book and looked up smiling to meet Alice’s smile, both of them, for just that moment, seeming simply happy.

  Then Alice said, “The tide is almost to the turn. It’s time you went.”

  Edmund sat up hopefully. “We’re going somewhere else?”

  “You, my lords, are going back to Barking,” Alice said and chose to save time against their protests by adding, “while his grace of Orleans is going to see your brother.”

  Jasper, who had begun to rouse with Edmund, sagged back with his brother in acknowledgment that although sometimes appeals were possible, this was not a time. It was Orleans who, looking from one unhappy face to the other, said of a sudden, “Why not have them come with me?”

  Edmund and Jasper sat sharply up, looking at him, burgeoning hope mixed with disbelief they had heard aright.

  Alice began, “I hardly think that possible…”

  But “Of course it is possible!” Orleans declared, plainly liking the thought more by the moment. “They never see their brother without a half dozen lords of the royal council there to be sure nothing untoward happens, such as they learn to like each other. How much better to go now, when no one knows they’ll be there.”

  “Including the king!” Alice protested. “With what you have in hand, is this the time to take them there?”

  “When better? They will be reminder to King Henry of his mother and how she would have wanted this peace.”

  The boys, turning their heads from Orleans to Alice to Orleans, fixed now on Alice with burning eagerness, and she looked back at them with perhaps the same thought Frevisse had: that with their dark red heads, they maybe more resembled their Welsh father than their French mother. And doubtfully she began, “He gave her promise to be a good and loving brother to them. If he ever actually saw them without lords around to make it difficult…”

  “There’s our answer then.” Orleans slapped a hand down on each boy’s knee. “Up, boys. We are away.”

  They leaped to their feet and he rose with them, taking their hands, all three of them smiling upon Alice, who still looked unconvinced but was distracted by a hard rap at the door behind her and shifted aside, clear of it only in time as someone there tried the handle, found it unlocked as she had left it when she entered, and burst into the room, bringing her to protest, “Master Bruneau!”

  But the secretary, shoving the door closed behind him, exclaimed, “The duke of Gloucester is here! He’s in the yard.” And Alice gasped, forgetting all else, and swung around to Orleans.

  “Someone has given you away. The barge is ready at the river gate. Go, before he can have any of his people between you and there.”

  Orleans was grabbing up his cloak from the back of the settle and telling Edmund and Jasper, “Your cloaks. You’re still coming with me,” before Master Bruneau cut in, “Gloucester came by river! His barge is at the river gate, his people are there and in the rearyard already!”

  “Are they on guard,” Orleans demanded, “or simply there?”

  “I only saw them from the lady chamber window,” Master Bruneau answered. “I don’t know.”

  “On guard or not, mere visit or not, it makes no odds,” Alice said. “They only have to see you, recognize you, and Gloucester will know you’re here and guess why! You can’t go. You’ll have to stay here, take another tide.” She made to leave the solar. “I have to go greet his grace.”

  But Frevisse moved into the midst of the confusion, saying “Master Bruneau, give Orleans your surcoat.”

  Master Bruneau stared but Orleans understood almost on the instant, was already going toward him as Frevisse asked, “Alice, where are the boys’ escort?”

  “In the hall.”

  “Then they won’t see and interfere if Orleans and the boys go out by way of the garden and rearyard,” Frevisse said rapidly. “In Master Bruneau’s surcoat, he can pass as the boys’ tutor, taking them to the barge and away. With the excitement of Gloucester’s coming, no one will likely notice him if that’s all he seems to be.”

  Master Bruneau had off his long, plain, black surcoat and was helping Orleans on with it, its ample folds and full sleeves more than enough to hide Orleans’s own rich clothing. “Yes,” Alice said and “Hurry. Boys, put your cloaks on.” And then with a despairing cry, “No! They came with two nuns from their abbey! Someone in the yard will notice, may say something, if they leave with only a man.”

  She swung toward Frevisse. “You’ll have to go with them!”

  Refusal was Frevisse’s first thought, but a presumptive rap at the door spun Alice that way with, “That’s someone come to tell me he’s here. Out! Quickly!” and Orleans was gathering the bewildered boys from where they stood, herding them out the garden door while Frevisse stood where she was, not certain what she was going to do until Alice begged, “Please!” and to the desperation in that plea, grabbed up Orleans’ cloak from the settle and followed him out of the solar, into the cold and ending afternoon.

  Chapter 22

  He was waiting in the arbor, fastening the boys into their cloaks when she joined them, and while he finished, she found the key where Alice had rehidden it and unlocked the door, annoyingly unsteady in her haste, then having to wait while Orleans crouched down to ask the boys, eye to eye, “You understand? I am your tutor. Dame Frevisse is your nun. We are going to cross the yard to the river gate without making anyone notice us at all. Yes?”

  Both boys nodded, two children who had been asked to play deceptions so often in their lives already that they did not question another one; and Orleans stood up and looked at Frevisse who was waiting now with her hand on the door latch, the key returned to its hiding place, and she nodded to his unspoken question that she was ready. The door would have to stay unlocked behind them but that was the least of worries at present as Orleans said, “Dame Frevisse will lead. You two will follow her. I will come last, hurrying you like a fretful hen.”

  He did exactly that: saw them out into the yard, Frevisse first, shut the door behind them, and then began to shoo them across the yard toward the river gateway, his head down to talk at th
e boys all the way, thereby hiding his face as best he could while Frevisse, her eyes lowered as a modest nun’s should be, went briskly ahead, able to tell little of who was around them, only that the yard seemed more crowded than she had yet seen it, which gave hope no one would bother to remark on a nun and a man in a servitor’s surcoat escorting two well-dressed boys. The boys had surely been noticed coming in, but people were always coming and going at Coldharbour; now they were going, and since little notice had probably been given to who had brought them—servants and nuns being generally unimportant enough to be invisible—no one should notice who was seeing them out. She hoped.