The Bastard's Tale (2 page)

Frevisse, moving to join her beside the fire, said dryly, “I suspect that by the time he reaches Lady Alice, he’ll seem to have come from you or else from Abbot Gilberd on your behalf, with no sign he’s ever had aught to do with Bishop Beaufort.” Who was a man with whom she had had dealings before now and neither liked nor trusted, the king’s great-uncle and a power in the government for something like thirty years but also a cousin to the man Frevisse had counted her greatest friend, which was how, unfortunately, she had come to his notice.

For the first time Domina Elisabeth looked other than happy. “Dame Frevisse, is this…” She hesitated. Frevisse did not help her. “Is this something I… should have doubt about?” Doubt she all too clearly did not want to have.

Frevisse held back from saying that anything to do with the bishop of Winchester was something about which to have doubt; if she could not have her own way, she could at least give way gracefully, and she said, “Would your brother agree to anything likely to be unseemly?”

Domina Elisabeth immediately said willingly to let go her worry, “Of course not.”

Frevisse slipped her hands from her sleeves to hold one out toward the letter. “May I?”

Domina Elisabeth handed it to her without hesitation, murmuring as Frevisse began to read it, “Still, it’s an odd asking.”

It was and only the more odd when Frevisse had read the letter itself, finding it more full of what Bishop Beaufort did not say than what he did. “At least he gives excuse why I’m asking Lady Alice to see her.” It was possibly even true that the grant of property needed the king’s seal to make it certain due to a long-past but resurrectable quarrel between heirs now dead but with descendents.

‘We can make another use of your going there, too,“ Domina Elisabeth said. ”St. Edmund’s Abbey has a fine library. If I send Dame Perpetua with you, she might copy out some book or two as well as take note of others the abbey might loan to us later at our asking, if she persuades the librarian of our good intent. That should be possible, yes?“

As a way to increase their income at St. Frideswide’s, Domina Elisabeth had seen to starting a small scrivening business among such of the nuns as had a fair enough hand to it, copying out books in a plain fashion to be sold at plain prices. They were doing well enough at it after these few years that, yes, to increase what they could offer made sense.

‘Lady Alice would be persuaded to put in a good word toward that,“ Frevisse said. And since some nun would have to accompany her, come what may, Dame Perpetua was a far better companion than some in St. Frideswide’s would be.

‘All’s settled then,“ Domina Elisabeth said, smiling, pleased, all doubts forgotten.

And perversely Frevisse was suddenly taken with a small, inward merriment at the foolishness of it all. In return for a substantial reward without explanation, she was to go on a cold journey to Bury St. Edmunds, impose on her cousin’s favor, and wait for she knew not whom to ask her for help—or maybe not ask her; Bishop Beaufort only said “may.” Considering that she had before now made clear to him how little she liked him or wanted anything to do with his plots, he was bold to ask it of her, even for such a bribe as he was offering.

Or else he was desperate.

That thought sobered her. Because what would it take to make a man as powerful as Henry Beaufort, Cardinal and Bishop of Winchester, desperate?

Chapter 3

The strong east wind had broken the morning’s clouds and was streaming them white across the bright, scoured sky. To Frevisse, standing small in the wide courtyard below the long, high-windowed flank and thrusting towers of St. Edmund’s Abbey church with her cloak and skirts shoved against her legs and veil fluttering over her shoulder, it was not the clouds but the church itself that looked a-drift toward the town beyond the abbey walls, like some great ship too vast to be troubled by any storm.

It unsettled her head and stomach and she lowered her gaze, but at her side small John de la Pole, holding to her hand, stood with his head flung back to sky and clouds and church and laughed aloud with delight. He was all of four years old and her cousin’s son and heir, and Frevisse smiled at his pleasure with more pleasure than she usually had toward small children.

Still watching the church, he said, “It makes me…” He whirled one of his hands at his head.

Frevisse raised her free hand to hold her flapping veil back from her face and offered, “Confused?”

John tried the word and liked it. “Confused. Confused, confused.” He was merry as a sparrow and bright as a finch in his cherry red cloak and hosen, short green gown, and blue roll-rimmed cap. He gave a small, hopeful tug on her hand. “Can we see where it all fell down?”

‘It didn’t all fall down,“ Frevisse corrected. ”Only the west tower, and now they’re building it up again.“

‘Build it up and fall it down. My fair laaydee,“ John sang with another hopeful tug and she gave way, letting him lead her toward his favorite place in all of St. Edmund’s Abbey. His mother had suggested they had set out early to do just that anyway this afternoon. Accompanying him should have been his nurse’s task, or maybe his schoolmaster’s, but both were laid low with heavy rheums and sent to stay somewhere away from the household. ”Because with all else there is, I don’t need coughs and running noses added in for all of us,“ Alice had said.

For her part, Frevisse was glad enough of something different to do. Time had been hanging heavy on her these two idle days since she and Dame Perpetua had come to Bury. After a little trouble, Dame Perpetua had settled to work in the abbey’s library, and Frevisse would contentedly have joined her, except that she could not well “observe” things while hid away among books and desks and inkpots, nor be readily found by Bishop Beaufort’s person if she were needed. So she was here instead, going from the Great Court through the broad Cellarer’s Gate into the smaller guesthall yard toward the church, John skipping beside her, wanting to run but held back by stern order to keep hold on her hand while they were out. That was the only hindrance to his pleasure, though. From what Frevisse had so far seen of him, he was both a biddable child and, as the marquis of Suffolk’s heir, always companioned, either by his nurse or his schoolmaster or else with his mother and her ladies. Therefore Frevisse suspected that much of his present joy was at being free from them all, nor did she feel like curbing him, happy herself to be out and away from too many people and so much talk.

Not that she was really away from people. Within its walls the abbey probably covered more acres than the whole village of Prior Byfield near St. Frideswide’s. It was a warren of courtyards, gardens, and buildings ranging from stables to kitchens to halls to chambers to chapels, all crowded around and spread out from the great abbey church that towered above them all, hugely visible for miles whichever way someone might come to Bury. In the usual way of things, the place would be busy enough with the perhaps fifty monks of the monastery itself, all the household officials, craftsmen, and servants necessary to the abbey’s life, the constantly shifting tide of pilgrims to St. Edmund’s shrine, and the daily come and go of Bury St. Edmunds townsfolk in and out and around on business if not worship, but to all of that was presently added the royal household, with King Henry himself and his Queen Margaret—as yet not even glimpsed by Frevisse—with all the many attendants and officers necessary both to their comfort and such governing of the realm as daily needed the king’s own hand upon it, with all the servants and attendants required by all those royal officers for their own care and comfort. And added to all of them was Parliament, a tidy name for an untidy gather and sprawl of not only the ninety and more royally summoned lords and high churchmen, Alice had said, and
their
servants and attendants but also the almost three hundred knights and commoners elected from counties, cities, towns, and boroughs through all of England and all
their
servants and advisors and even wives come with them.

The town had perforce taken the overflow of them, to the undoubted great joy of innkeepers, foodsellers, and merchants, but the abbey was swarming full, too, the hum and bustle remindful to Frevisse of a beehive as she and John passed out of the guesthall yard, between the octagonal bulk of the abbey church’s northwest tower and the east end of St. James parish church that served the townsfolk, into the broad foreyard between the abbey church’s west front and a stone-towered gateway to the town’s marketplace. This was the way that pilgrims were supposed to come, entering through the gateway to be confronted across the open yard by the wide, high west front of the abbey church.

Unhappily, the west tower’s fall more than ten years ago had brought down much of the west front with it, and presently the yard was crowded and cluttered by piles of worked and unworked stones, stacks of timber, and the sheds of the stonemasons and other craftsmen who were slowly rebuilding tower and front. Because there was no trusting mortar laid in freezing weather, the yard and scaffolding were empty of workmen until spring, only the clink and clunk of tools on stone from one of the sheds telling that some of the more finely carved stonework was being done, to be ready when the rest of the workers returned.

John cared about none of that. His delight was the great wooden tread wheel high and higher yet on the scaffolding. Large enough for a man to walk inside of it to make it turn, it served for the raising of stones and mortar and whatever else was needed from the yard to the high walkways around the unfinished tower, and he tugged Frevisse into the open middle of the yard to see it better.

‘He wants one of his own,“ Alice had said to Frevisse.

‘You’ll surely not deny him?“ Frevisse had solemnly mocked.

‘And give him a few masons and a stock of stone and timber all his own to go with it?“ Alice had mocked back, smiling. She mostly smiled when she talked of John, the son who had finally come to her after two barren marriages and several daughters. ”I think not. What I’ve promised is that if he does just as he ought in the play and makes no trouble while we’re here in Bury, he’ll have a toy of it afterward. I’ve already sent word to the carpenter at Wingfield to start one for him.“ Fond of her daughters though she seemed to be—she spoke of them affectionately the few times she spoke of them at all—John was openly her joy and Frevisse thought that only Alice’s prevailing strong good wit kept him from being unredeemably marred. Thus far.

While John happily pointed out one thing after another about how the tread wheel worked, Frevisse nodded and murmured, taking pleasure in his pleasure. Someone among the workers or guards left here must have been brought out into the cold to talk with him about it and he, clever child, seemed to have remembered it all, but his interest was insufficient to keep her thoughts away from worry about Alice. Everything about coming here had gone as simply as might be hoped. Alice had returned prompt word that she would be glad of Frevisse’s company and that by this same messenger she was sending word to Thomas Stonor, one of Oxfordshire’s members to Parliament, that he should offer Frevisse and Dame Perpetua escort to Bury. “Since after all he is, in some way, my son-in-law,” Alice had written, “being married to my lord husband’s daughter, and as you are my cousin, it is therefore a matter of family. Whether you will thank me for this, I do not know. Master Stonor is of somewhat a strong nature.”

From that, Frevisse had sorted that Master Stonor’s wife was Suffolk’s illegitimate daughter since she was not Alice’s child and Suffolk had had no other marriages, and was probably from Suffolk’s bachelor days since she was old enough to be married. And Master Stonor had proved to be as Alice had said. Though he had welcomed her and Dame Perpetua to join with his company and been courteous throughout the days of riding to Bury St. Edmunds, there had been a grudging beneath his graciousness, coupled with far too much awareness that Frevisse was cousin to Lady Alice and therefore, possibly, important. At journey’s end Frevisse had parted from him with thanks and promise of prayers on his behalf and the thought that very likely Mistress Stonor had stayed at home for the pleasure of being without his company.

Or perhaps Mistress Stonor had simply foreseen the trouble of where to stay plaguing almost everyone here. Even Alice, provided by Suffolk’s high place in the realm with three rooms together in the buildings that closed in the east side of the Great Court, part of the abbot’s palace, had been full of regret that she could not have Frevisse and Dame Perpetua with her there. “But we’re already sleeping six in our own bedchamber as it is. My ladies and some of the servants share what serves during the day as Suffolk’s council chamber and the men lie wall to wall in the outer room. There simply isn’t anywhere.”

Frevisse had answered that she and Dame Perpetua had already supposed they would stay in the abbey’s guesthall kept especially for Benedictine monks and nuns come to Bury St. Edmunds for pilgrimage or whatever other reason.

Alice had been relieved. “That’s good, and I’ve bespoken you both a place there. Otherwise, I don’t know there’d be a bed even there. What’s supposed to be the nuns’ dorter is full of the overflow of everyone’s waiting women and ladies. I only wish you could be here. I was afraid you’d mind. I was afraid you’d be…” Alice had hesitated.

‘Foolish?“ Frevisse had offered.

‘Foolish,“ Alice had agreed, from the heart. ”You wouldn’t believe the foolishness there is here over who stays where and why and is it according to their dignity and…“

Words failed her, and Frevisse had said, meaning it, “There’s no need to worry over us. Let me be what help I can to you and otherwise we’ll fend for ourselves very well. You’ve enough and enough in hand without taking us on, too.”