The Sempster's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Still retreating, Anne said something about a new commission for vestments from a lady in Oxfordshire, avoiding mention of the duke of Suffolk and smiling as if she felt like smiling, but when her door was shut behind her the smile disappeared, and she went into kitchen where Bette was washing the dishes from their guests and the challah sat cloth-covered on the table. With no word to Bette, whose back was turned, Anne took up the challah, went out into the garden, broke it into small bits, and scattered it along the path between the garden beds. The sparrows were swooping down for it before she turned away.

  That done, and leaving Bette to the kitchen, Anne went upstairs, meaning to work on the St. Mark lion while the afternoon light held, hoping the needlework would keep her from other thoughts. From dead bishops and challah and the time to wait until Daved would be here tonight. Surely one of needlework’s comforts was that work as fine as for the lion kept her from too much thought, even of Daved. The underside couching she was using needed high skill, while to lay the gold to the lion’s shape so the beast did not simply lie flatly on the cloth but seemed about to move out from it with life of its own was another skill all of its own, and both of them requiring care rather than hurry.

  She had made good progress, was pleased with her work when time for supper came, and afterwards she and Bette sat together in the garden, talking a little about their day’s visitors and the Suffolk vestments and Bishop Ayscough’s death, before Bette asked, “What of Mistress Grene’s boy? Has he shown himself yet?”

  ‘Not that I’ve heard, no,“ Anne said, with the guilty thought that tomorrow she would have to go and see Pernell. ”But surely he’s back by now,“ she added hopefully.

  ‘Otherwise he’s been gone too long, even for a boy’s jape,“ Bette said. ”And his mother so near her time, too.“

  Anne’s guilt grew. Too taken up with Daved, she’d given neither Hal nor Pernell enough thought.

  ‘You don’t think maybe he’s gone to join the rebels, do you?“ Bette asked.

  ‘Hal?“ Anne laughed. ”Not Hal.“

  ‘Um,“ Bette said, unconvinced.

  They sat then in silence for a while longer until, with the blue evening shadows deep around them and St. Paul’s spire gold against the sky with setting sunlight, Bette said she’d go bedward now. Anne helped her lay out her mattress and blanket on the kitchen floor, undid her headkerchief for her and helped her out of her over-gown and to lie down, Bette grumbling all the way about stiff fingers and stiffer knees. Anne knew the grumbling was to cover the arthritic’s pain; knew, too, that Bette feared what would become of her when she could no longer work at all, despite Anne had promised more than once she’d always have a home with her. Bette had been part of Matthew’s life, and Anne meant never to dishonor his memory by failing Bette in her need, but she also knew how fears could be stronger than assurances and likewise knew she was failing Bette in a different way by not bringing in a girl to help her—someone young enough for Bette to train but too young to be a threat of soon succeeding her. The trouble was that someone else here would be someone else to know about Daved, and Anne did not want that. Daved. Even his name was like the beating of her own heart. She would never make more chance-ridden the little they had. Not for Bette or anyone.

  With the hearthfire covered and Bette still mumble-grumbling, Anne closed and barred the kitchen door and window, shutting the kitchen into night-darkness, and went into the equal darkness of the shut and shuttered shop, needing no light to find her way to the long-legged stool set beside the door where she could wait in quick reach of the latch. She had dressed well for the nun’s visit, had no need to change for Daved, and so was left with only the waiting. And thinking. What she most wanted to think on was Daved— to close all else but him out of her thoughts—but instead found herself thinking about the waiting.

  Waiting now made up so much of her life. But there had been other waiting, too, and in the way thoughts had of going where they would, she found herself remembering the hours of waiting and praying beside Matthew’s bed through his last illness. Praying first that he be healed, and then— when that was past hope—for his easy passing out of pain.

  That had not been given, either, and since then prayer had come less easily to her. Not because her faith was less, but because she doubted how much use her prayers were. God’s will was God’s will, and what good were prayers?

  She had not said that to anyone. Most certainly had not said it to her priest. She had bought Masses for Matthew’s soul; still went to church on Sundays and holy days and some saints’ days; still made confession and Communion at Eastertide; had even confessed her sin of lust, naming no names, and faithfully did penance for it two days a week by fasting. Since her longing for Daved was unabated and she gave way to it whenever he was here, she didn’t know how much good that penance did her soul and did not want to know, because knowing would make no difference. She would have Daved while she might and, when she could not, then make what fuller recompense she could.

  And, despite herself, she prayed that recompense would be long in coming.

  So here she sat in darkness waiting for him. Worried because he wasn’t yet here. Afraid, as always, that something had happened to him. Knowing the day would come when he would never come to her again, that time would come when even these little whiles of him would end and she would maybe never know why. Life held so many perils, and more perils for him than for most because he was a merchant and traveled, and more beyond that because of his deadly secret. And there was always illness. And he might decide he loved his wife after all, or at least owed her the duty of faithfulness.

  Anne’s hands in her lap clutched tightly to each other. Mostly she kept away from thought of Daved’s wife. Like her own marriage to Matthew, Daved’s marriage had been made for him, but he had been hardly fifteen at the time and not even met his wife before their wedding but, “There’s nothing against her,” he had said the one time he had talked of her. That had been before he and Anne first came together, when he had been warning her about himself. “She sees well to everything that’s ours when I’m gone. When I’m with her, she sees well to me. But for no one’s fault, except maybe mine for being gone so often and long, there’s never been more than duty between us.”

  Because she and Daved had both known where their talk was going, what they both intended before they were done, Anne had been able to ask, “Do you… bed her?”

  Gently, steadily, Daved had answered, “I do all a husband’s duties. It’s her right.”

  ‘Will she know about me?“

  ‘I will not tell her, no.“

  But this woman whose name he had never said would be the one told if anything befell him. She would be the one able to grieve for him as his widow if, God forbid, he died. And Anne—whether she ever learned his fate or he simply never came back to her—would never be able openly to grieve at all. No matter what their love, all she could ever be was one of the secrets in his life. And the secrets in his life were beginning to frighten her more, the more she knew of them. This secret shifting of gold for one. He was very at ease with the secrecy of it. How much of such things did he do? That Raulyn was part of it still a little surprised her but…

  Sitting there in the dark, able to look at nothing but her thoughts, she looked inward for her surprise that Daved did such a thing and found no surprise at all. Why not? But she knew. Had known from the first that there was more to him than his outward seeming.

  Or did she tell herself that to ease the new fears that came with knowing yet more of how deep that other part of his life must run, how much besides “merchant” he was?

  How many seemings—how many lies—did Daved live with?

  The question came unbidden and unwanted. He seemed to be only a merchant but he was more. He seemed to be a Christian and he was not. He seemed to love her…

  Was that another lie among the rest?

  With a certainty that went beyond thought, Anne refused that. Their love was no l
ie. And if it came to lying, what of herself? She seemed a chaste widow and that was a lie as deep as any in which Daved lived. She was anything but chaste, and at that moment she heard his footfall and was on her feet before his first soft knock. She had not barred the door, only needed to lift the latch, slightly open the door, and he was there, slipping past her, briefly a blackness against the light of the lanterns hung at either end of the street, then simply a felt shape behind her while she shut the door and swung the bar down across it.

  With all the world and its fears shut out, she turned to him, put her arms around him, drew him to her even as he pressed her back against the door, his body to hers, their mouths finding each other in the darkness. With fiercely matched need, they took each other there against the door; and later, naked then, in her bed; and then again, until finally they lay quiet in each other’s arms, satiate and tired at last.

  She slept a little, her head on his shoulder, and awakened to his hand slowly stroking down her spine. She shivered with pleasure and lifted her head to smile into his eyes, able to see him in the starlight through the open gardenward window. She had always slept with windows closed until one warm night Daved had said he spent many a night, shipboard and otherwise, without a window to shut and had never suffered for it, so would she risk the night vapors or did he have to smother here? She had laughed and set the shutters wide, and often did now, even when alone. That Daved brought her to dare things and see things in ways she would not have without him were among the reasons she loved him.

  Whether, at the last, that would be to the good or bad she mostly kept from wondering—most carefully kept from wondering it when they were together, because in those brief whiles she wanted no thought of anything but him, no thought of otherwise or afterwards, and now she smiled into his eyes, and he smiled into hers, said softly, “My love,” and touched her cheek with the gentleness that always came to them after their desperate need of each other was eased. “My very love.”

  “My very love,” Anne softly echoed, kissed him gently, and settled her head into the curve of his shoulder again. They lay content to be with one another; but before long the night’s deep silence and their peace was stirred by, first, a bird’s twittering under the house eaves and then a cautious bird-trill from the garden. Dawn was nearing and Anne’s arm tightened across Daved, both of them knowing he should leave in darkness the way he had come in darkness. But for a little longer…

  Daved sighed and stirred and Anne let him go. Careful not to touch each other, they slid from the bed and dressed. Hers was the easier. She only slipped on her chemise, and Daved, sitting on the bed-edge to pull on his hosen, glanced at her and whispered, “That’s unkind.”

  ‘Sir?“ Anne asked innocently.

  He reached out and cupped a hand over one of her breasts. “To put so little over your loveliness that I want to strip you naked again.”

  Anne laughed softly and reached toward him in return; but Daved stood abruptly up and away from her, saying, “Oh, no you don’t.”

  Anne laughed again and stayed where she was, admiring his legs while he took his shirt from the floor where it had fallen. With it, he took up the narrow length of soft-woven wool, tasseled at each corner, that he wore under his shirt, wrapped around his waist and always out of sight. She knew the thing had something to do with being a Jew and that was all, and she turned her eyes away until it was hidden under his shirt and he was putting on his doublet. While he buttoned the doublet’s front, she picked up his belt and its purse and sheathed dagger from the floor where they had dropped when she had undone the belt from his waist in her eagerness to have him. She held them ready while he tied his hosen to his doublet’s lower edge, sat on the bed again, groped for his shoes, and put them on. Standing, he took the belt, buckled it on, settled the purse on one hip, his dagger on the other, and paused, one hand on the purse as if he had remembered something. Not the gold. The one thing they had done between coming upstairs and reaching the bed was he had given her another pouch that she had already locked away. But with apology in his voice, Daved said, “There’s one more thing I’d ask of you. I’ve lacked the chance to do it myself and don’t know, now, if I’ll have the chance.” He brought out a folded, sealed paper from his purse. “This is a letter that needs go to Joanne of Dartmouth in the House of Converts outside Ludgate. Do you know it? Could you take it to her?”

  ‘Of course,“ Anne said and held out a hand as if her mind had not paused and jerked at his words. What had Daved to do with the House of Converts? The place had been founded, when there were still Jews in England, by a long-gone king as somewhere for Jews to live after they had become Christians. Because by Christian law every Jew in Christendom was the property of one lord or another, with each lord free to make what profit he could from them, and because no lord relished his loss of profit when one of his Jews turned Christian, a Jew who converted forfeited all that he held—land, house, all lesser goods, even his clothing and the tools of his trade—to his lord. The House of Converts had been endowed to shelter and support Jews impoverished by their baptism, and through all the years since Jews were gone from England it had sheltered Jews who came from abroad to its safety. Anne could remember at least twice when prayers were asked in London’s churches for the soul of a Jew newly come to Christ and England. But what business did Daved have with anyone there?

  ‘It’s a thing my uncle and I sometimes do,“ he said. ”We bring letters that can’t come into England any other way.“

  Letters. Another thing about him she hadn’t known, and a small corner of her mind went cold with wondering yet again how much else there was in his life secret from her. But she only said, “Joanne of Dartmouth. Yes. I’ll take it to her.”

  Still with apology, Daved said, “She may not be there anymore. I don’t know how long ago it was she converted. Her family disowned her when she did. Or her brother did as head of her family and no one else had a choice. He’s lately dead, and there are some who want to know how she does and to tell her how they do. But that’s a thing best not done openly, for her good and theirs. If you can find a way to give this to her with no one else the wiser, that would be good. Anne, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask this if so much else wasn’t happening.”

  She went to him, as if closing the distance between their bodies might close the distance her thoughts were making between him and her. Since she had known from the first the necessity of secrecy in his life, should it make difference there was more secrecy than she had ever guessed at? With a quick, firm kiss she resealed their never-spoken bargain against questions between them, and Daved held her tightly to him, his face pressed against her hair.

  But there was ever more birdsong in the garden, and Anne drew back. He had to go while darkness held and they both knew it, and he turned from her, gathered his loose, open-fronted surcoat from the chair, and went down the stairs, Anne following him. In the shop he shrugged into the surcoat while she unbarred the door, and when she turned from doing that, he gathered her to him for a last kiss. Then he was gone, slipped out through the barely opened door and away into London’s dawn-darkness.

  Silently, with the great care of wanting to think of nothing else, Anne shut the door behind him, barred it again, and stood listening for any outside sound that might mean trouble but heard only Bette’s even breathing from the kitchen. Staying where she was, Anne prayed him safely away through the streets. Their small whiles together were all they had— were all they were ever likely to have—and in those whiles she wanted no question in her heart or mind about what had gone before or would come afterward. It was when he was gone from her that questions came. Questions and grief for all they would never have, all she must never hope for.

  Pressing her hands flat to the door and leaning her forehead against the wood between them, she let the hot, slow tears slide down her cheeks.

  Chapter 7

  The clear dawn was slowly blooming into a spread of gold, greens, reds, and blues through the painted gl
ass of St. Helen’s church’s east window above the choir stalls where the nuns were making their way through the sunrise-welcoming Office of Prime with psalms and prayers of hope for a good and godly day to come.

  Frevisse, too wryly aware of how often that hope was unfulfilled, especially doubted today would be either good or godly. Nor were her feelings helped by being in an unfamiliar church among unfamiliar nuns. The Offices of prayer were the same across Christendom, but each nunnery was its own place, and the differences of pace and blended voices through the prayers and psalms might be slight but it was like the slight stubbing of a toe when walking a familiar way—it threw off the stride.

  Besides that, the midnight Offices had come, as always, in the middle of the night, with afterward return to bed until time to rise for Prime, and summer nights were shorter than winter ones. This near to midsummer, dawn came far too soon after midnight and last night Frevisse had slept little even in that little time meant for sleep. After Lauds, her thoughts had started up and refused to be quelled, and though she had hoped to weave her worries into Prime’s psalms and prayers and leave them there, this morning worry was stronger than intent.

  ‘… in Domino confisus, non vacillavi. Scrutare me, Domine, et proba me… Non sedeo cum viris iniquis… Odi conventum male agentium et cum impüs non consido.“ … in the Lord I trust, I have not wavered. Search me, Lord, and prove me… I do not sit with unjust men… I hate a gathering of evildoers and with the impious I do not sit down.