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

by Frazer, Margaret

  Alice answered, rather than Laurence, saying in a sweet lady-voice, “Of course no one’s making trouble. Save me of course, bringing the king’s visit on you, Master Helyngton, isn’t it? And Master Colles. Come, you can see for yourselves how well Sir Gerveys does. Mistress Colles?” she added to Milisent. “Will you come? And I fear I’ve forgotten your name,” she said to Ankaret.

  She drew them all away with her to Gerveys still watching from the parlor doorway. Cristiana stayed where she was, her daughters clutched to her. Frevisse saw small nods of agreement pass between Master Say and his wife, and then he followed Alice and the others away and Mistress Say went to Cristiana, put an arm around her shoulders, and guided her and her daughters out of the hall with soft words and soothing voice, gathering up her own daughter as they went.

  Frevisse stood aside, out of their way, then drifted toward the others outside the parlor but already too late. Whatever had passed among them had had been bitter as well as brief, to judge by Laurence’s face as he spun away from Sir Gerveys and started back down the hall, as oblivious of Frevisse as he passed her as black thunderclouds would have been. Lady Alice, Master Say, Milisent, and Milisent’s husband came away, too, less openly furious, but Ankaret stayed, and Frevisse was just near enough to hear her plead, soft-voiced, “Gerveys, you know I won’t let any ill come to Jane. I love Jane.”

  “What I know, Ankaret,” Sir Gerveys said unsoftly, “is that you couldn’t stop whatever Laurence might choose to do.” Ankaret opened her mouth to answer him, then sighed instead of spoke, ahd followed the others away.

  Watching Sir Gerveys’ face, Frevisse said, “She has a fondness for you.”

  “Far more fondness than I’ve ever cared to return,” Sir Gerveys replied.

  Frevisse could not tell what layers of feeling or meaning might lie behind his words, if any, and offered, “May I help you back to the settle?”

  He assessed her probable strength with a quick look before answering, “Yes. Thank you.”

  She was tall for a woman and not weak. Her shoulder to lean on made Sir Gerveys’ hobble back to the settle easier than it might have been; and when he had sat down and swung his good leg up, she helped him lift his hurt leg to lie beside it. Somewhat short of breathe with the effort, he thanked her and leaned back into the cushions with a sigh far heavier than Ankaret’s had been.

  “How does the pain?” Frevisse asked.

  “Whatever salve Beth put on it has helped. And whatever she put into the wine.”

  His eyes were closed but his face and voice were taut, showing he was nowhere near to sleep. If he had been, Frevisse would have left him to it. Since he was not, she asked, “Did the Helyngtons truly come here because of the girls, do you think?”

  “I think they came here to see how nearly dead I might be. They were surely disappointed to find me not nearly so dead as they’d like.”

  “Ankaret would seem to prefer you alive.”

  “Having few thoughts of her own, Ankaret holds hard to such as she has. Long before she was married to Master Petyt, she decided I was her knightly hero. I never gave her cause to think she was my damsel—in distress or otherwise— but she’s never grown past the hope that someday she might be.”

  “But she won’t be.”

  “She won’t be.” Sir Gerveys’ certainty sounded complete.

  “And Mistress Colles? What do you think of her?”

  Sir Gerveys’ mouth wryed, as if he had tasted something sour. “Milisent? My guess is that she’s every bit as sharp and nasty as Laurence is.”

  “How did the quarrel begin between him and Cristiana’s husband? At least, I’ve supposed there was quarrel that started all this.”

  “No outright quarrel, as such. Their fathers were brothers and the Helyngton lands were split between them. Edward’s father, as the elder brother, got the larger portion. Laurence wants the properties rejoined. That’s reasonable enough in it’s way, but neither Edward nor Cristiana would be so base as to marry a daughter of theirs to any of Laurence’s sons, whatever the gain, Laurence being what he is.”

  “What’s Milisent’s interest in it all?”

  “The trouble it makes.”

  “And her husband? What does Master Colles stand to gain?”

  “Suppose Mary becomes wife to Laurence’s son Clement? In a year or two she’ll be old enough to give him a child.

  With that child the Helyngton lands become joined for once and all again. The baby doesn’t even have to live much beyond birth. That it’s been born and lived at all gives Clement a claim to the land that will be hard to break, supposing there’s anyone interested in doing so. You see?”

  He was watching her, to see how much she understood. Frevisse nodded. That was the way the law stood: once a living child was born to a marriage, the husband had claim to the wife’s land for his life.

  “Suppose then that Mary dies,” Sir Gerveys went on. “Clement would be a wealthy widower, not yet of full age, his lands and himself still controlled by his father. Milisent has a daughter who by then will be marriageable age. Let her be married to Clement, and eventually Milisent’s dower lands will be rejoined to the rest of the Helyngton inheritance, leaving only Ankaret’s portion still apart.”

  “That only works if Mary dies.”

  “Yes. It does,” Sir Gerveys said steadily. “But I suspect she would.”

  He was ascribing a cold calculation to Laurence Helyngton and Milisent that chilled Frevisse. “I suppose Jane,” she said slowly, “would be put into a nunnery.”

  “As soon as Mary bears a living child it would be the nunnery for Jane,” Sir Gerveys agreed. “Until then, they’ll keep her, on the chance Mary fails to produce that living child. Whichever way it goes, Laurence and Milisent mean to have enough wealth, before it’s done, to fund their ambitions.”

  “And Ankaret? What does she get from it all?”

  “Probably nothing. No matter what they’ve promised her, that’s what she’ll get.”

  “You’re crediting them with a great deal of villainy.”

  “Laurence and Milisent had Cristiana declared mad, seized her children by force, put her away where they never meant her to be found, and tried to force Mary into an ugly marriage. What do you think they won’t do, having done all that?”

  “Do you think it was Laurence who set up the attack on you?”

  “I haven’t yet thought of anyone else it might have been.”

  “It would means Laurence has a spy in this household.” Maybe the same spy as Suffolk had, selling his services several ways.

  “If Laurence had a spy here, he wouldn’t have had to come himself to see how I did. More likely would be he had someone set nearby to watch for me.”

  “Someone who saw you and Pers leave here and took word to Laurence? How far is it from here to Mistress Helyngton’s manor?”

  “Not above two miles if you take one of the forest paths across country.”

  An easy walk for a fit man. Even an easy run. Laurence could have heard in a half hour or less that Sir Gerveys had ridden out.

  “It would have to be two men watching,” Sir Gerveys said. He sounded as if he had been thinking about it. “One to go to Laurence. One to follow us to know which way we went once we reached the main way.”

  “That wouldn’t explain how they knew you were only going to Ware and would be coming back, to have the ambush ready for you.”

  “True,” Sir Gerveys granted.

  Which brought them back to someone here who knew where they were going and that they would return. In silence she and Sir Gerveys looked at that thought for a time before she said, “It would be comforting to think it was no more than a chance attack by thieves or outlaws.” And added, before Sir Gerveys could, “Except that thieves or outlaws would have chosen a plain traveler, not two armed and well-horsed men.”

  “One of whom died anyway, despite he was armed and well-horsed,” Sir Gerveys said. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back i
nto the cushions. Talking had distracted him a while. Now his face was taut and drawn again, and Frevisse, knowing how grief ebbed and flowed with tidal strength, guessed grief for his lost squire and friend was back in full flow of hurt worse than his leg’s pain and with a murmured apology for having tired him, she rose and left.

  Chapter 17

  Frevisse wanted next to talk to Alice but met Master Say in the screens passage, returning alone from seeing Laurence and the others away. Neither his face, voice, nor manner showed what he might be thinking about them, and Frevisse did not ask. To her question about Alice, he said, “My lady is returning to her pavilion.” And added before Frevisse could ask, “Not alone. I’ve sent a man of mine with her and one of her women was waiting in the garden, she said.”

  Frevisse thanked him and by hurrying overtook Alice as she was about to go out the garden’s far gate, held open for her and her lady-in-waiting by Master Say’s man. Frevisse called out and Alice looked back, said something to the woman and man, and leaving them there, came back toward Frevisse, meeting her in the middle of the garden and asking without other greeting, “You’ve learned something?”

  Voice pitched for no one else to hear, Frevisse said, “Nothing that answers very much. You were in talk with Sir Gerveys when the Helyngtons came. Did you learn anything from him that might help?”

  Alice turned away. Not merely aside but with her back to Frevisse, as if suddenly, deeply interested in the tall purple bellflowers in the garden bed there. “No,” she said.

  But there had been something and Frevissed asked, “Then what?”

  Alice drew in a deep breath, let it out, and said, her back still turned, “We were talking around our two sides of the same problem.”

  “Cristiana?” Frevisse asked, supposing it had to be her. Or else Laurence.

  “The king,” Alice said.

  When that made no more sense after a moment’s thought than it did before, Frevisse said, “I don’t understand. Why the king?”

  Alice hesitated, then said, “Among the talk you’ve heard, surely you’ve heard some against the king?”

  Frevisse hesitated in her turn before saying slowly, “I’ve heard displeasure at how costly his household has become. And some displeasure against the lords around him.” A great deal of displeasure, and most particularly against the duke of Suffolk, she did not add.

  “There’s that being said, yes. But there are other things, too. One is that he’s childish as well as childless.”

  Foregoing protest at that thought, Frevisse asked, “Is he?” Alice paused, then said slowly, “I’m not sure what he is.” From Alice, who had surely spent as much time at the royal court as anybody, that came strangely; and when she said nothing more, Frevisse only waited. Too much of a land’s safety and its people’s well-being depended on how strongly a king ruled. She didn’t want to hear there were widespread deep doubts about King Henry.

  But slowly Alice went on, very plainly feeling her way among the words. “It’s not that he’s truly childish. He understands very well, I think, what’s happening in the government and with his household and in England and Normandy. The thing is … I don’t know that he cares.”

  “But . . . he’s the king,” Frevisse said. He has to care. It was the duty he’d been born to.

  Alice, who understood that as well as she did, turned around and said steadily, as if she had thought through the words long before now, “I think caring was worn out of him years ago. He’s been king since he was nine months old. I remember Father saying that the lords around Henry from the time he was small were working to bring him up to be the king they wanted him to be. They didn’t care about the man he might have been. They wanted him to be the king his father was. The trouble is that he’s nothing like his father. He was king before he was ever anything else and I think in some way it’s made him not anything at all.”

  “Alice,” Frevisse said, warning she had become careless of her voice.

  Alice lowered her voice but went on, in need of saying a thing she had kept to herself too long. “He gives grants and favors to anyone who asks for them and doesn’t care whether he’s already given the same grant or favor to someone else or that he can’t afford to give more away. He lets happen around him whatever happens. He’s careless of what the men around him do to his government or about France or about . . . anything. He’s careless of the queen and she’s just a girl and doesn’t understand why. He hides in his chapel or whatever church is nearest. He—“

  “He hides?” Frevisse asked. The one unargued thing about King Henry the Sixth was his piety, his devotion to his prayers.

  “He hides,” Alice said flatly. “There’s nearly no one dares disturb a king when he’s kneeling before an altar. Or even just sitting there. And Henry sits before altars a great deal. On the floor or on a cushion, his hands folded in his lap, sometimes his head bowed, sometimes his gaze on the crucifix. Maybe he’s praying all that time. There are those who think so. I think he’s hiding from everything people are forever asking of him.”

  She said it bitterly, harshly, with the certainty of long thought, nor did Frevisse have anything to set against it except her own unwillingness to believe it. Because if the king was not governing the realm . . . “Who governs then?” she asked slowly. “Your husband?”

  “My husband and some several other lords with him. The duke of Somerset. The bishop of Salisbury. The bishop of Chichester. But Suffolk mainly, yes.”

  “You surely weren’t saying any of this to Sir Gerveys.” Whose lord was presently King Henry’s heir to the crown and sent to Ireland, as away from the king and out of power as possible.

  “He probably knows it well enough,” Alice said. “And so does York. But, no, I was saying none of that to him. What we were doing, without ever saying it outright, was feeling out if we both feared the same thing.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that is?”

  Rather than answering, Alice plucked a nearby leaf of balm and stood rubbing it between her fingers, as if taking more interest in its sweet smell than in her answer, until finally she said slowly, answering only indirectly, “I promise you I would help Mistress Helyngton to keep her children even if this paper were no part of it. I’d see to it she recovered keeping of her lands and all her widow rights. What I fear . . . What I fear is that my lord husband will think Laurence Helyngton and whatever use can be made of him is worth more than justice to Mistress Helyngton, no matter what promises I’ve made.”

  Able to imagine only distantly the pain of being married to someone you no longer trusted, but certain of the pain nonetheless, Frevisse hid her twist of anger at Suffolk and said with open and utter pity, “Alice, I’m sorry beyond words.”

  But Alice’s pain was of no use to Cristiana, and after a moment Frevisse asked gently, “What are you going to do?”

  All Alice’s pride and force of will showed as she straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. “I’m going to do all I can to convince my lord husband, first, that Helyngton is a worthless little man and of no use to him. Then, that my word was given on his behalf and had better be kept.”

  Or Alice would not being the only one unhappy in their marriage.

  She did not say that but it was in the long look she shared with Frevisse before abruptly leaving with no word of parting.

  Left with her thoughts and worry, Frevisse slowly returned to the house. Uncertain what to do next, she was saved from decision when she came into the great hall where the trestle tables were being set up for supper and Master Fyncham, the household’s steward, came toward her. He was an older man, always quietly dressed in a plain doublet and surcoat. His duty, under Mistress Say’s direction, was to oversee all the varied servants’ work that went on in the house, from everything done in the great hall to the keeping of the other rooms to work in the kitchen and bakehouse. In a larger household he would have had various officers under him, each seeing to their own people’s d
uties and reporting to him before he reported to Mistress Say; nor did Frevisse doubt that the Says would come to a household of that size before long. By what she knew and had seen of John Say, she did not think he had reached the end of either his ambitions or abilities.

  Of Master Fyncham she knew less, but his bow was respectful as he said, “Mistress Say has bid me help you in any way I can, my lady. I’m told you have questions for me.”

  Still worried for Alice, Frevisse tried to remember what questions she had while asking, “Is there somewhere we can talk alone?”

  “You mean unheard?” Master Fyncham asked. “Nor overheard?”

  “Nor overheard,” Frevisse agreed, appreciating the distinction. To be unheard meant no one else could hear them. To be not overheard meant no one could listen unseen and unknown.

  “May I suggest here?” Master Fyncham said. He pointed at a place along the hall’s wall not far from where they stood.

  Frevisse nodded her acceptance. The servants had finished setting up the tables there, were gone across the hall to set up the others. With the noise of that and their own talk, they’d not hear anything said quietly on this side of the hall, and when she and Master Fyncham were there she asked without hesitation, “Did Mistress Say tell you what my questions would be about?”

  “I understand her grace the duchess of Suffolk has asked that you find out what you can about this regrettable trouble that’s come on Mistress Helyngton and Sir Gerveys. I’m to answer whatever you ask.”

  Frevisse hoped his readiness to oblige was matched by his readiness to observe what went on around him and she said, “From the attack on Sir Gerveys today, it’s certain that someone here in the household spied on him and betrayed him. I want to find out whom.”

  Master Fyncham slightly bent his head to show he understood and was ready for her questions. Ready with answers, too, she found as she asked him about the household servants: how many there were; how long they had been in the Says’ service; what Master Fyncham thought of each of them. There were nine in all—six men and three women.