8 The Maiden's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “I’ve learned this much, then,” William began. But Lady Jane swayed and took hold of his arm to steady herself, and he asked, “Jane?”

  She blinked as if puzzled and startled together, let go his arm, and said, “I’m sorry. It’s so late. I’m more tired than I know.”

  William took her hand and drew her to him. “Just a little longer and then you can go to bed, my lady.”

  Frevisse was at one with Lady Jane for tiredness and wished they could all go bedward now, but this was not a thing that could be put off longer and she started again, “ T need you to tell me everything there is about Eyon’s death, everything you’ve learned whether it seems to matter or not, because with what’s happened since, something that didn’t seem to matter before might matter now.”

  Lady Jane leaned her head sideways against William’s shoulder, eyes drifting closed. “So sleepy,” she murmured.

  “Lady Jane?” Frevisse asked, beginning to go past surprised to worried.

  But William jerked away, swung Lady Jane around to grab her by the shoulders and hold her where he could see her face, saying sharply at her, “Jane!”

  Her only response was to make a vague effort to pull loose from him. Then she gave it up and swayed toward him, murmuring “… lie down…”

  William fiercely shoved her straight again. “Jane, listen to me!” and then at Frevisse, “Fetch Master Hyndstoke. The doctor. He has to come. Make him!”

  Frevisse went without asking why, Adam opening the door before she reached it while around the room heads craned on the chance of seeing into the bedroom but at best saw only the doctor, Alice, Suffolk, Bishop Beaufort, and the priest in low-voiced talk well away from the bed where Orleans lay asleep or at least drugged past pain. Frevisse spent no time on courtesy to anyone but said, “Master Hyndstoke, you’re needed in the other room. Come.”

  Master Hyndstoke, Alice, Suffolk, Bishop Beaufort, the priest all stared at her, Master Hyndstoke beginning to be angry at being ordered, but Bishop Beaufort snapped at him, “Do as she says. Whatever she says.”

  “Frevisse, what is it?” Alice asked.

  “I think Lady Jane is poisoned,” Frevisse answered. Either that or Lady Jane was very strangely drunk. But nearly the only thing Lady Jane had told her about Eyon Chesman’s death was that he had claimed to be tired, been laughed at for being drunk, and had gone to his bed and died.

  And whatever Lady Jane was, she was not drunk. “No,” Frevisse added as Alice made to go for the door, “there’s nothing you can do. Better you all stay here and keep watch over his grace. Except you.” She pointed at the priest. “Come, too.”

  She saw Alice’s stricken fear but had no time for her. Master Hyndstoke under the lash of Bishop Beaufort’s order had given orders in turn to his assistants to gather up his box of medicines and come with him, and he was going out now, his men with him. With the priest at her own heels, Frevisse followed them. In the lady chamber people had started to realize something was amiss and were closing on Lady Jane and William with questions but Master Hyndstoke swept among them, scattering them, and Frevisse swept after him, turning on them, ordering them sharply to keep back or their lord would have their names and deal with them. If nothing else, they believed her anger and drew back, taking their curiosity with them.

  But Lady Jane was now kept to her feet only by William’s determined hold on her, his arms wrapped around her, and in the sudden cluster of doctor, assistants, and priest, he was saying with desperate relief, “Master Hyndstoke, I don’t know what to do. Should I let her lie down?”

  “Keep her up. Let me see her. Bring me a lamp, someone,” the doctor snapped; and when an assistant had seized one from a table and held it high, showing Lady Jane’s face pallid, beaded with sweat, Master Hyndstoke felt her cheeks, her forehead, pressed his fingers to the side of her throat, then forced her eyelids open, one eye and then the other, peering closely at them. Jane vaguely tried to pull away, murmuring incoherently, and the priest, hovering close, said, “If she’s far along, I should hear her confession while she can still make it, give her last rites.”

  “She’s not dying!” William protested.

  “My son…” the priest began.

  “Be quiet!” Master Hyndstoke ordered, drew back a pace, and stared at Lady Jane with narrowed eyes. “She has something in her that’s smothering all her organs. Keep her conscious and on her feet and moving. Talk to her. Don’t let her mind go away while I’m mixing what’s needed.”

  His box of medicines was already open on a table, waiting for him. As he headed for it, the priest began, “I should…” but Master Hyndstoke snapped back at him, “If we stop for you, we’ll lose her, sure!” Still the old quarrel, with Master Hyndstoke ready to risk the imperishable soul in trying to save the perishable body; and despite which side she should take, Frevisse drew the flustered priest toward William and Lady Jane, ordering, “Help him keep her on her feet. Make her walk between you. Take her confession while you do.”

  “But he’ll hear,” the priest protested, meaning William.

  “No, he won’t,” Frevisse said as definitely as if it were true. And, “Risk it.”

  But rather than that, it came to all three of them helping to keep Lady Jane on her feet and moving, with no time for aught but hurried prayers and urging her to stay awake, until Master Hyndstoke swung around from where he and his assistants had been grabbing things from his box of medicines and said, “It’s ready. Is she still conscious?”

  The priest said, “I don’t think so,” but William took Lady Jane by the chin, holding her face toward him, saying with forceful calm, “Jane. Hear me. My lady.” Her head tried to drift heavily out of his hold and he jerked it roughly up. “Jane! I need you here! Don’t go!” His voice breaking with desperation and pleading. And somehow Lady Jane came back a little way from wherever she was going, opened her eyes, whispered, “William.”

  Master Hyndstoke thrust partly between them with a glass full of a murky white liquid and, “Here. She has to drink this. All of it.” And to one of his assistants, “Bring a basin.”

  What followed then was unpleasant, for them as well as for Lady Jane, but when it was over and she was lying on the floor, propped against William’s shoulder, with Frevisse wiping her face clean with cool water and William murmuring to her that she was going to be well, Master Hyndstoke, standing over them, said with satisfaction, “As much of the poison as can be is out of her. She’ll do. Her heart’s strong. Let her sleep off the last of it, and when she wakes, let her eat only gentle things for two days and that should end the matter.” His face went harsh. “Except to know who did this thing.”

  Frevisse handed the cloth to William and stood up. “What was used on her? Do you know?”

  “Only in most general terms. Something meant to bring on sleep but given in so great a dose as to subdue all her organs to the point they would shortly have ceased to function if we had not had as much out of her as we did.”

  Two goblets—the goblet Frevisse had long since left behind and presumably the one that Lady Jane had had—sat on the table beyond the doctor’s box. Frevisse went to take up both of them, found them both nearly empty, only the slightest wine left in them, but one smelled faintly of mixed spices and the other did not. She and Lady Jane had taken at random the last two goblets from the tray Herry had been carrying around the room and hers had had no spices. Why would Lady Jane’s?

  Frevisse looked assessingly around the room. There seemed no fewer folk there than had been; no one had gone off to “sleep,” which would mean no one else’s wine had been tainted. Only Lady Jane’s. How? And aside from why hadn’t she noticed her wine’s changed taste, who had been with her when Frevisse was not, to put into it the spices and whatever they had masked?

  Robyn was the ready, obvious answer. But so was William. But it had been William who had recognized that she was ill and saved her. Unless he had risked losing his marriage to her for the sake of hiding something he despera
tely needed to hide.

  Of the two choices, she by far preferred Robyn.

  “Dame Frevisse,” Lady Jane whispered.

  Frevisse immediately returned to her and knelt, saying, “I’m here,” and caught and held the hand Lady Jane fumbled toward her, leaning near to hear Lady Jane whisper, pleading, “The poems.”

  “Don’t worry on them. I’ll see them safe,” Frevisse promised.

  And see to Robyn Helas while she did.

  Chapter 25

  At Master Hyndstoke’s direction, Lady Jane, now soundly asleep, was bedded for best warmth near the hearth in the lady chamber with mattress and bedding brought from someone’s bed, and two of the maids and one of his assistants to watch by her for what was left of the night. William had lifted and carried and carefully laid her down there and showed no intention of leaving her, kneeling over her, stroking her hair back from her forehead, watching her sleeping face, until Frevisse said, “I need you to come with me.” His swift look at her then was one of refusal, before he rose, maybe because of something in her voice, and went aside with her, down the room almost to the stairway door, asking as she turned to face him there, “What do we do now?”

  Frevisse held out her hand. “First, you give me your belt pouch.”

  William stared. “What?”

  “Give it to me. Now.”

  Not understanding yet, he fumbled to unfasten it from his belt, still staring at her as she took it from him, upended it on the seat of a chair near to hand, and sorted through the spill of coins, a key, and other things, nothing that could have held a poison that must have been liquid, something dissolved in a solution, able to disappear immediately into Lady Jane’s wine. That meant a vial of some kind, small enough to hide in a hand but not easily disposed of, not here in a room so constantly in use. Nor had he had chance to leave. She glanced toward Master Hyndstoke’s box of medicines where there were vials enough, but he would surely notice, sooner or later, an unfamiliar one or one too many. And besides, Frevisse could not remember William had been near enough to it to leave anything.

  She bent a finger to summon two of the men—yeomen like William to judge by their livery—who had not yet had sense enough to go to their beds. They came, and she ordered, “Search him to see if he has aught that a poison could have been in.”

  William gasped, started to protest, cut it off, while one of the yeomen gaped at her and the swifter-witted one said, “I can’t do that.”

  “I’ve the bishop of Winchester’s leave to do what needs to be done,” Frevisse said curtly. “I want him searched.”

  William held his arms out from his sides. “Do it, Jankin.”

  They did, beginning by taking off his belt with its dagger, setting it aside and unfastening his doublet to feel around his waist and below, finding nothing.

  “His arms, too,” Frevisse said because his doublet with full-cut sleeves gathered into the wrists had room enough for something small to be carried inside them, but nothing was. Without being asked, William slid off his low leather shoes, kicked them aside for Jankin to pick up, turn over, shake, again finding nothing; and while William put them back on, Frevisse took up his belt, slipped his dagger free from its sheath, turned and studied it but found no sign it had been used of late, nor could she think when, from Orleans’ stabbing until now, he would have had a chance to clean it. She slid it back into the sheath and dismissed the yeomen with, “That’s enough. Thank you.”

  They left and while William refastened his clothing, Frevisse said, “I’m sorry. I had to be certain.”

  Not angrily, William answered, “You’re right to trust no one in this. Someone who’s trusted here is a murderer.” He straightened his weaponed belt over his hips. “Now what?”

  There might be possibilities concerning him that she had overlooked or he had forethought her on but something needed to be risked and she thought he was the least of risks to take and said, “You heard what Lady Jane asked of me? About poems?”

  “I heard but didn’t understand.”

  “Come with me.” And going for the stairs and down, Frevisse told him all that she could, except for naming Orleans, about the poems—of how they were a danger to Alice and how Lady Jane came to be entrusted with their secret—and at the stairfoot, in the foreroom to the great hall, paused to face him while she told him of Robyn, what he had done and how he had been using the poems to torment Lady Jane, watching rage gather and darken in William’s face, while she did, the worse for him saying nothing until, when she had finished, he bypassed all else to go to the present heart of the matter with, “So he could have very likely put the poison in her drink, to be rid of some danger he saw in her.”

  “Except that I can’t see what that danger would be,” Frevisse said, “nor why just now he’d want to lose his use of her.”

  “I’ll use him,” William said grimly. “Poison or not, he’s done enough I’ll make him sorry he ever thought even to speak to her. I know where he sleeps.”

  He started away and Frevisse followed, warning, “We need him alive, William.”

  “He’ll be alive,” William promised, but did not make it sound a good thing for Robyn.

  As every night, servants were sleeping throughout the hall on their pallets, with tonight a cluster of Bishop Beaufort’s men trying to be comfortable on benches along the walls. William passed among them without rousing anyone, Frevisse at almost a run to keep up with him, into the screens passage and through it to the range of rooms toward the chapel shared by squires and yeomen where, as in the hall, there were only sounds of sleep. William, sure of where he was going, did not slow, nor did Frevisse, on his heels as he went into Robyn’s small chamber, lifted him out of bed and out of his blankets in a single jerk so sudden that Robyn had not time for squeak enough to waken either of the other squires there before William had him out the door and shoved to a wall, one hand clamped on his throat, the other tucking a drawn dagger against his ribs.

  “No sound,” William said, saw Robyn understood, and jerked him away. Like everyone who was able to sleep warm enough, Robyn slept stripped to his small clothes and because he was grabbing to keep them in place against William’s rough handling, Frevisse seized one of his fallen blankets before she followed to where William was shoving him into another room. “Mine,” William explained as she came in. “And Eyon’s.” He pushed Robyn away, took the blanket and as Robyn stumbled around to face them, threw it at him, saying, “Cover yourself. Neither of us wants to see more of you than we have to.”

  Awkwardly wrapping himself in the blanket, Robyn gasped out, low-voice, “Have you gone moon-mad? What…”

  William closed on him again, hand to throat, dagger to ribs. “Where are the poems?”

  Robyn gaped, recovered, stuttered, “P—poems? W— what?”

  “Poems,” William said and banged the back of his head against the wall. “The poems. All the poems. Where are they?”

  Robyn started a protest. William banged his head again, harder, “The poems.”

  “My room,” Robyn gulped with pain. “Cloth-wrapped. Tied to the ropes under my mattress. And one in my belt pouch. With a ribbon.”

  William cast a look at Frevisse, who nodded and went.

  Robyn’s fellows did not stir at all as she pulled up his mattress, found the packet, went through his neatly folded clothing on the stool by his bed for his pouch, and took the parchment sheet and ribbon from it.

  Robyn, William’s hold not shifted on him while she was gone, croaked at her return, “You have them?” and when she said, “Yes,” closed his fear-glittering eyes in gratitude.

  “You’d better pray it’s all of them,” William said.

  “It is. I swear it!”

  Frevisse did not think he was only playing the coward. There was no spine in Robyn, and while, for their purposes, it was good to have someone who broke so completely to pressure, that unfortunately meant that when William demanded, “Now, what about the poison?” and Robyn croaked, “Wha
t poison?” she believed him. But William dug his dagger point through the blanket and into him anyway, saying viciously, “The poison you used on Eyon and Lady Jane.”

  Robyn squeaked in fear and pain. “I’ve never poisoned anyone! The poems is all I did. Just the poems.”

  “Why the poems?” Frevisse said.

  A different fear came into his eyes but William’s dagger made him babble again. “Bishop Beaufort!”

  “Bishop Beaufort?” Frevisse asked carefully.

  Robyn put up a hand to pry at William’s fingers on his throat, trying for a little bravery. “I’m Bishop Beaufort’s man. You’d best be careful how you handle me.”

  “I’m being careful,” William said, unimpressed. “What do you mean, you’re Bishop Beaufort’s man?”

  “He means he’s a spy here,” Frevisse answered. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Robyn croaked.

  “Why? Suffolk and Lady Alice are his allies.”

  “He wanted to be sure of her, to know if she had any other love…”

  “Be careful what you say, who you name,” Frevisse warned.

  Robyn gulped and stopped but he had said enough for her to guess more—that Bishop Beaufort, already knowing of Orleans, had wanted to have more hold on Alice than he did and had set Robyn to find out that more for him. “Bishop Beaufort told you of the poems and you gained them to force Lady Jane to talk to you. You must have failed at seducing any of Lady Alice’s women into telling you anything of use so you resorted to the poems and Lady Jane and then tormented her while you were at it.”

  “You…” William drove Robyn’s head against the wall again. “… bastard.”

  Frevisse laid a hand on William’s arm. “Don’t finish with him yet. We need to know about the poison, too.”