The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14)

by Frazer, Margaret

  “It’s necessary,” Alice said curtly. She turned away and began to pace again between the apple trees. “More necessary all the time. If Suffolk should lose his place near the king, everything will come unbalanced. There’s no knowing who would take over governing the realm then.”

  “King Henry himself?” Frevisse ventured.

  Alice grabbed a low-hanging apple branch as she passed, pulled it with her, then let it snap violently back behind her as she said bitterly, “King Henry doesn’t want to govern. It’s the great secret all of us keep. Except it’s no secret to those best placed to take advantage of it. An advantage Suffolk doesn’t dare lose.”

  Behind Alice’s bitterness, Frevisse finally heard the fear. Not corroding ambition but plain, deep fear behind everything she was saying. And gently she said, “Alice, how has it been with you these two years since we last saw each other?” When Alice had only been beginning to see her husband’s willingness to treachery.

  Alice stopped. For a wordless moment she stood very still, her head bowed, then whispered toward the grass, “Worse by the month I sometimes think.” She raised her head and looked at Frevisse, not only bitterness but raw pain showing now. “My lord husband tells me next to nothing anymore. This business. He set me on to it like I was his errand-runner. ‘Go there’. ‘Do that’. Hardly a ‘because’ to it and only when I demanded some reason for it all.”

  “But you’re doing it anyway.”

  “It’s necessary.”

  “Or so Suffolk says.”

  Alice returned suddenly to impatience. “Frevisse, your prayers for me are valuable and welcome. But there in your nunnery you know nothing about how it is to be in the world, nothing of what has to be done to hold a realm and a government together.”

  Frevisse was used to people’s thought that living apart from the world was the same as being ignorant of it, but Alice at least should know far better than that and impatient in her turn at such willful simplicity she snapped back, “You mean I’m ignorant of why ‘being in the world’ requires you to spy and lie and mislead people you call your friends. Because if that’s what you mean, I’m not so ‘ignorant’ I don’t see you’re afraid of more than whatever Cristiana and Sir Gerveys have here. I’ll grant you I don’t know for certain what you fear, but there are so many possibilities. Is it you’re afraid you’ll lose Suffolk’s love if you don’t do what he tells you to do, no matter how treacherous—or that you’ve already lost his love because he no longer loves anything but his power? Or are you afraid there’s nothing left in you yourself except ambition? That friendship and kinship and any love except for power are gone out of you, too? Are those the kind of things you mean I know nothing about?”

  Alice stared at her, nakedly startled. Then she startled Frevisse in return by abruptly turning her head away and half-whispering, “Yes. All of that.”

  Frevisse’s anger vanished. Suddenly uncertain what to say, she looked away, too. They had come to the orchard’s eastern edge, with clear view over the low turf bank and across the pasture to Alice’s pavilion and the servants now unloading wagon and carriage. The bright, graceful pavilion in the green pasture was beautiful to see there under the shining, cloud-cleared summer sky, and a part of Frevisse ached that mankind could make something so simply pleasing and yet spend such effort of time and thought on ugliness.

  “Frevisse,” Alice said softly, regretful but still determined. “I have to have whatever it is they have.”

  Curtly, wanting no part in any of this, Frevisse answered, “Then ask for it.”

  Chapter 13

  In the late afternoon’s westering sunlight the orchard’s shadows lay long and black across the grass, and Cristiana stood staring at her own stretched out among them, the afternoon’s warm stillness all around her, no near sound but the late summer whir of insects as Lady Alice waited for her answer. Not near were manor sounds: men’s voices calling to each other; a cow lowing in a byre, agrieved at something; a laden wagon rumbling over a rearyard’s cobbles. In the kitchen would be the heat and hurry of readying a supper worthy of the duchess of Suffolk and in the great hall the high table was by now being laid with Beth’s best linen and plate. Manor life, and all of it as familiar to Cristiana as the sunlight, because all of it had been her life when she was Edward’s wife and making their home. But none of it had to do with her here, with her now. Not now that she was Edward’s widow and had no home anymore. All she had was other people’s kindness. Or unkindness, if they chose.

  With a hand pressed over the ache in her breast, she stared at her shadow laid black across the grass, and wished Edward had not done this to her. Wished with a smothering despair that Edward had not died and left her facing this. Wished Gerveys were here with her. But the nun had come for only her, not him, and it hardly mattered whether he were with her or not. There was only one answer she could make to Lady Alice’s demand.

  But still she held back from giving it. Because once given, what then?

  “Well?” Lady Alice asked, impatient.

  She hardly needed to be impatient, Cristiana thought. She had to know Cristiana had no real choice. But with that thought, Cristiana rebelled, and turning not to her but to Dame Frevisse waiting a little aside from them both, demanded at her, “Can her grace’s word be trusted? Would you be able honestly to swear that she’ll keep her promise to me if I take it?”

  Lady Alice drew in a hissing breath of displeasure, but Dame Frevisse considered the question with neither displeasure nor surprise for a long moment before she answered, “I’ve never known her to break her word. Aside from that, I think you can trust her to keep it in this because what she offers in return for you giving her what she asks will cost her very little.”

  “A simple ‘yes’,” Lady Alice said tautly, “would have been enough.”

  Biting the words short, Dame Frevisse said back at her, “Not in this matter.”

  Cristiana had sensed Dame Frevisse’s anger when the nun fetched her from the house. She was relieved now to know the anger was not at her. That Dame Frevisse was willing to vouch for her cousin even while this angry at her, was to the good, too. But not far enough to the good, and Cristiana asked, “Flow can I know to trust you? You might be willing to lie to help her in this.”

  “No,” Dame Frevisse said. “I would not be willing to lie to help her in this. I don’t care a cat’s tail about my cousin’s ambitions, or anyone else’s. If I thought she wouldn’t keep her word, I’d say it.”

  Lady Alice’s sharp sound of wordless anger at that reassured Cristiana more, and trying to keep tremble from her voice, she said at her, “You swear then that if I give this paper into your hand you’ll see my daughters’ wardships and marriages are taken from Laurence Helyngton and given—“ she hesitated, took hard hold on her resolve, and said “—are given to John Say.”

  “To John?” Lady Alice said. She and Dame Frevisse were both taken by surprise and showed it. “But . . . why not to you? Or to your brother?”

  Committed to her choice, Cristiana said firmly, “I couldn’t save my daughters before and my brother will soon be in Ireland. John has favor with both the king and your lord husband. Mary and Jane will be safest in his care. Safer than I could hope to keep them.”

  That was bitterly the truth and bitterly hard to say, but she was relieved when, after a moment’s pause, Lady Alice agreed, “I’ll see it done, Master Say will have their wardships and marriages.”

  “Immediately,” Cristiana said.

  “As immediately as I can have the necessary documents written out and sealed. Within the week.”

  “Swear to it.”

  Cold with anger, Lady Alice said, “God and the blessed Virgin be my witnesses, John Say will have the keeping of your daughters and their marriages if you give me this paper or whatever it is.”

  “Then if my brother agrees, too, you’ll have it as soon as he can get it.”

  “Get it?” Lady Alice snapped, impatient and displeased. “It is
n’t here? And why does he have to have anything to do with it at all? They’re your daughters. The choice is yours, not his.”

  “I can’t lay hands on this paper alone,” Cristiana snapped as sharply back at her. “It takes the both of us.”

  “And it’s not here?”

  “It isn’t here. My husband didn’t want it easily come by. My brother knows where it is. I know the safe-word that gives it to him.”

  “So you both need to agree before I can have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’d best see to it that he agrees,” Lady Alice said coldly.

  Scorning to answer that, Cristiana gathered her skirts, made a low curtsy, and left without Lady Alice’s leave to go.

  Finding Mary and Jane and Beth’s little daughter Betha in the garden with Ivetta, she was for once not glad to see them. What she wanted was to find Gerveys and make an entkpf all this as soon as might be. But she smiled and held out lifer arms as they ran to her, braced herself as they threw their arms around her, and held them to her tightly despite the pain, smiling down as she said, “There, my darlings. I’ve been in talk with her grace the duchess of Suffolk and she’s promised to make everything well.”

  Mary looked up without letting go of her. “We can go home and I won’t have to marry Clement?”

  “There’ll be no more trouble over Clement. You’re going to be Master Say’s ward.”

  “Master Say’s ward? Why can’t you keep us?”

  “We’ll talk it all out later. I promise.” She began to loosen the girls from her. “But I have to talk to your Uncle Gerveys just now, to settle everything. Ivetta, do you know where he is?”

  “I can find him, my lady.”

  “Please. Tell him I’ll be in my chamber.”

  “The girls?”

  “They can go back to the nursery. Jane, don’t pull. What’s the matter?”

  Mary had stepped back willingly enough, but Jane was holding to her skirts with both fists and tugging at them, distressed and frowning. Heeded, she stopped pulling but stayed frowning as she asked, “Don’t I get to go home with Aunt Ankaret anymore?”

  “Ankaret is your cousin. Your father’s cousin,” Cristiana said a little curtly. “She’s not your aunt.”

  Jane’s frown began to cloud to something darker. “But don’t I get to go home with her anymore?”

  Before Cristiana could straightly tell her that no, she would not, Ivetta took firm hold on Jane’s wrists and loosed her from Cristiana’s skirts, saying, “There now, that’s something to be settled later, not here and now. Your mother is tired. She’s going to go lie down while I see you to the nursery and then find your Uncle Gerveys for her.”

  Still talking to distract Jane, she took Mary by the hand, too, and bustled them away. Wearily, Cristiana thought that the only fault she had ever found with Ivetta was her constant wish to make things well in the moment, regardless of the trouble that might make later. This time, though, she was merely glad to be rescued and followed her daughters and Ivetta slowly, giving them time to be well ahead of her, long gone inside before she reached the top of the stairs from the yard. That left only the worry she would meet Beth in the screens passage, but she did not, only the household’s steward Master Fyncham, who bowed to her as she past. Otherwise unhindered, she dragged herself up the rear stairs to her chamber.

  There, with no need to seem strong for anyone to see, she lay down on the bed with a groan she could not help and curled onto her side, weary with her fear, tired out with trying to seem brave. How much longer until she had to be neither one anymore—neither afraid nor brave? Blessed St. Anne, how long until she was free?

  Despite of all, she maybe slightly slept. She found her eyes closed, anyway, and did not hear Ivetta come up the stairs, only heard her as she crossed the room and opened her eyes to ask without otherwise moving, “Where’s Gerveys?”

  “Coming, mistress. He was in talk with Master Say.” Ivetta laid a gentle hand on her forehead. “Is it bad, mistress? Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m only tired.” Which was not the whole truth but as much truth as she could deal with now, and despite she wished she never had to move again, she sat up and eased herself toward the head of the bed. Ivetta hurriedly pulled a pillow up at her back. Cristiana sank gratefully against the feathered softness with, “Thank you.” Then betrayed to herself how much she still distrusted Lady Alice by adding, “When Gerveys comes, keep guard outside the door while we talk, so we won’t be overheard.”

  “Of course, mistress.” Ivetta hesitated before saying, “Are you really going to be able to make all well for Jane and Mary?”

  “Yes,” Cristiana said, tired and with her eyes closed again. “Gerveys and I are going to give Lady Alice something she wants and everything will be well.”

  “Give her something?”

  “A thing Edward left us that we have no need for except this. Lady Alice wants it, is welcome to it, and in return will give me Mary and Jane. Then . . .” Tiredness and her fears’ weight seemed dragging her very bones down into the bed. “Then I’ll be able to rest.”

  Gerveys knocked and came in. Ivetta gave him a curtsy and went out. Cristiana heard her speak to someone on the stairs as she closed the door and asked Gerveys, “Pers is there?”

  “Pers is there. You may lose your girls’ nurse to Ireland if this goes on.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, his voice light but his gaze worried. “You don’t look well.”

  “I’m tired is all. I want all this to be over.”

  “What did the nun want with you?”

  “She took me to talk with Lady Alice. She knows about the Edward’s paper.”

  “Lady Alice does?” Gerveys said, as alarmed as Cristiana had been. “How?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was enough she knew I had it.”

  “And?”

  “If we give it to her, she swears she’ll have the girls’ wardships and marriages away from Laurence.”

  Gerveys held silent, his jaw set in the way that meant he was thinking fast and hard, until finally he said, “We’ve already agreed we’d use it this way. That’s no trouble. It’s how she knows about it that makes me uneasy. That, and whether we can trust her word.”

  “Dame Frevisse says we can.”

  “Can we trust Dame Frevisse?”

  Oddly, that was one thing Cristiana had not doubted until now; but made doubtful by Gerveys’ doubt, she said, “We have to, don’t we?”

  Slowly, still thinking Gerveys said, “Let me ask John if we can depend on Lady Alice’s word. He’s not kin to Lady Alice and I’m still willing to trust that his first loyalty is to the crown, not Suffolk. I’ll speak with him after supper, and if he says we can trust Lady Alice’s word, then tomorrow at first light Pers and I will ride to Ware for this damnable paper.”

  “Is that where it is? Ware?”

  “In the Franciscan priory. In the prior’s keeping. If Pers and I leave at first light and the weather is fair and the prior is where he should be, we’ll be back here by midday. I’ll hand the thing over to Lady Alice and all will be well.”

  “The safe-word for it is—“

  “Save that until we’re certain I’m going.”

  Through the door Ivetta called, “They’re calling to supper and Pers is here with hot water. Should he come in?” Gerveys called, “Come,” leaned over, gave Cristiana a quick kiss on the forehead, and said with a smile, “By this time tomorrow it will all be done with. So tonight, for once, I want for you to eat a hearty meal instead of seeming like you’ve forgotten what food is for. Yes?”

  Wanting both to believe him and to please him, Cristiana smiled back, agreeing “Yes.”

  Chapter 14

  The next morning’s light rain was already thinning away when Frevisse and Domina Elisabeth started on their way to Broxbourne’s church to say Prime there and afterward hear Mass. They had chosen to ride, not minded to be bothered with the road’s mud or to slip and
slide on the long hill’s wayside grass, and as they went, Domina Elisabeth nodded over a field gate toward Alice’s pavilion and the wagon and carriage beside it and said, “I hope she slept dry. And her people.”

  “Eve no doubt they did,” Frevisse answered, with the unsaid hope that the quiet pattering of rain on canvas had soothed away some of Alice’s sharp displeasure. She had been so short with Frevisse in the parlor last night after supper that Domina Elisabeth had said later, while they readied for bed, “Your cousin seemed unpleased about something.” Not quite making a question of it.

  Mildly, as if both unworried and uninformed, Frevisse had said, “She must have some worry on her mind,” and Domina Elisabeth had let it lie.

  Frevisse’s own worry was less obliging and still with her. Alice was not shallow, not governed by each moment’s passing humour. Frevisse had seen her put on a smiling, gracious front in seemingly worse times than this. For her to be as she had been yesterday told that something was far more wrong than anything to which she had admitted. Set as high in royal favor as Suffolk was, and holding the power that he did, what threat would be sufficient to unsteady Alice this badly?

  Frevisse did not think she wanted to know the answer to that and she was grateful that she and Domina Elisabeth had left the house this morning early enough to see no one but servants, early enough that they finished saying Prime together well before Father Richard came for the Mass, so that Domina Elisabeth went to sit on the stone bench along the nave’s wall and fall into low-voiced talk with the several elderly village women already waiting there, leaving Frevisse alone on her knees before the rood screen, her head bowed over her clasped hands.

  Her knees would not be pleased with her but she was in need of the quieting that prayer usually brought to her mind, especially in somewhere like this. St. Augustine’s was an old church, its nave plain and unpillared, with small, round-headed windows set high in the side walls and a short, round-ended chancel beyond the wooden rood screen. The nave’s white-plastered walls were boldly painted with Christ’s Passion along one side and a more-than-life-size line of saints along the other, while the Virgin and Child looked down from the chancel. The quiet of the centuries since it was built lay deep between its thick stone walls: the women’s murmuring talk was only the ongoing murmuring talk of other women on uncounted other mornings through unnoticed other years—just as all the prayers of the Offices and the Mass had gone on, day around into day, for centuries before St. Augustine’s stood here and would go on for centuries more, God willing. But that everlasting did not lessen the needs of everyday and Frevisse slipped back to part of this morning’s Prime. Respice in servos tuos, Domine, et in opera tua. . . Et sit splendor Domini Dei nostri super nos, et opera manuum nostrarum dirige super nos, et opus manuum nostrarum dirige . . . Look at your servants, Lord, and at your workmen . . . And let the brightness of our Lord God come upon us, and guide the work of our hands . . . Skut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. As it was in the beginning, and now, and always, and forever.