The Bishop’s Tale (3 page)

There was no warmth in the chapel, though the many candles around the coffin gave the illusion of it. Frevisse paused in
the
doorway, shivering, remembering when Aunt Matilda had agitated for a fireplace in here… “There, along the outer wall. It would be no trouble at all to have it built.” But Chaucer had answered, “We come here for the good of our souls, not the comforting of our bodies.” And though he had had no objection to comforting his body at another time and place with all the luxuries his considerable fortune could afford, he had held firm about the chapel. There was no fireplace, and chill seemed to breathe from its stones.

But he had been lavish in its decorations. The main worshipping for the household was done in the village church, where the funeral and burial would be held. The chapel was meant solely for private family devotions, and the household priest’s daily mass, and was as gracefully complex and elegant as a saint’s reliquary. The ceiling was painted heaven’s blue and spangled with stars; the elaborately carved and gilded wood reredos behind the altar reached to them; and though now the altar was covered in black cloth rather than its usual embroidered richness, a long stretch of woven carpet in jewel-bright reds and blues and greens reached from it down the altar steps and the length of the chapel floor almost to the door. The side walls were painted with saints standing each by the other in a flowery mead, smiling benignly down on those who came to pray, while the rear wall was brilliant with the Virgin being crowned in heaven while saints and angels joyfully watched.

Seeing the Virgin, Frevisse could hear her uncle singing lightly, “Had the apple not been taken, taken been, Then would not Our Lady have been crowned heaven’s queen, heaven’s queen…” as he had done the day he had explained all the meanings in the picture to her, when she was small and newly come to Ewelme and still wary of its strangeness.

Now his coffin was set on trestles in front of the altar, with two priests and two servants of the household kneeling among the candles around it, their prayers a small, sibilant murmur in the quiet. Until he was buried, he would never be left unattended.

Frevisse went forward silently until she could see his face. The candlelight gave it a warmth it no longer truly had, and as was so usual with the peaceful dead, he looked to be only sleeping. But it would never again be any use for her to think,
Remember this, to tell him when he comes to visit next.
Or hope, in this world, to talk and argue with him, or hear his laughter.

Frevisse found the pain of her grief still too raw and unfamiliar to bear. She dropped her eyes, knelt where she was, and began her prayers for his soul’s safety and rest. She had prayed so much these past months, against her thick misery of doubts and a different kind of grief, that the prayers came with instinctive ease and no need to grope for words.

Lost in her prayers and grief, she was unaware of any movement around her until a hand briefly touched her shoulder and someone said, “You had best come to supper now. Your aunt will want to see you as soon as may be.”

She became aware that the stone under the carpet was pressing hard on her knees, and that around her there was a shifting and murmur as those who had been praying gave over their places to those come to replace them. Her face was warm and wet with tears, and she had no idea how long she had been there. There was no hope of hiding that she had been crying, and she did not try as she lifted her head to the man standing beside her.

She recognized him as one of the priests who had been praying beside the coffin when she entered. He had the drawn look of someone who had been praying for an uncomfortably long while; but there was the sheen behind his weariness that told how rich his praying had been.

She let him take her elbow and help her rise, not questioning how he knew who she was. Chaucer’s niece, the nun, had been expected. And she
was
hungry. Broken out of her prayers, she was suddenly aware of all her body’s discomforts, with hunger for food and warmth very strong among them.

“Thank you,” she said. With her hands tucked into her sleeves and her head down, she followed him not back to the great hall where most of the household would dine, but aside and up the stairs to her aunt’s parlor.

Frevisse had spent countless uncomfortable hours there in her girlhood, learning and working the intricate, eternal embroideries and stitchery considered a suitable occupation for a lady, and listening to her aunt talk. Aunt Matilda always talked, to Frevisse, to her women, sometimes to the empty air. Aunt Matilda was fond of talk, and that had been the original reason Frevisse had sought the refuge of her uncle’s relatively quiet company, among his work and books. Later, love of what those books held had been the stronger motive. Her uncle had been far better company than her aunt; he listened as much as he talked, and his mind ranged through all the learning and lessons he had gathered into his library and his life. Aunt Matilda had thought Frevisse’s choice very unladylike, of course, but since dear Thomas allowed it, she had been willing to let it be.

Aside from her boredom, Frevisse remembered her aunt’s parlor as a lovely room, well-proportioned and high-ceilinged, with ample windows to fill it with light even on cloudy days. It looked out on the moat with its swans and, in summer, the green reaches of the park. With her own inherited wealth and her husband’s constantly growing fortune, Aunt Matilda had furnished it with every comfort. And though tonight the shutters were closed across the windows, top and bottom, shadows were banished to the lowest, farthest corners by lamps burning on every flat surface, all around the room. Their rich, steady light gleamed on the painted patterns of the shutters and ceiling beams, and caught among the bright threads of the wall-hung tapestries. Braziers glowed in the corners, warming the room, and it was so crowded with people that in the first moments of her arrival, Frevisse failed to recognize anyone.

Then she saw her aunt. Richly gowned and veiled in black, she was seated at the room’s far end, in front of the brightest tapestry. On her right, in another chair, sat a younger woman in equally rich black whom Frevisse guessed was her daughter Alice, so mat the man seated beyond her was undoubtedly Alice’s latest husband, William de la Pole, the earl of Suffolk.

The identity of the man seated to Aunt Matilda’s left was more problematical. For a moment, unable to have clear view of him among the crowded shift of people in the room, Frevisse could not even guess who he might be. But then she saw him clearly. A churchman by the severe cut of his floor-length black gown and the priest’s cap he wore to cover his tonsure. But even the length of the room away, she knew he was anything but a plain churchman; he held himself like a prince, and quite abruptly she realized who he was, though she had seen him no more than twice in her girlhood. Cardinal Bishop Beaufort of Winchester. A prince of the Church indeed, and doing the family great honor by his presence.

Then Aunt Matilda, whose eye was ever as busy as her tongue, saw her, broke off whatever condolences she had been receiving, and, rising from her chair with an exclamation, surged toward her, arms extended. “Frevisse, my dear! My precious dear!” She was a tall woman, comfortably plump in her middle age. Her black veiling, enough for half a dozen women, drifted and fell about them both as she wrapped her arms around Frevisse and held her close. “I knew you would be too late; he went so suddenly at the end, almost as soon as the letter was sent. I don’t know what I shall do without him, what any of us shall do without him. But you’re here. Bless you, my dear.”

Enveloped in her aunt’s embrace and overflow of words, Frevisse murmured only, “Dear aunt,” which seemed to be sufficient.

But then there was the necessity of being introduced, first to the room at large: “My very dear niece, Dame Frevisse of St. Frideswide’s Priory. Dear Thomas was so fond of her, and she’s come too late to bid him farewell, but she’s here to my comfort, and I’m so glad.” Then to the three people still seated in front of the tapestry on the room’s only chairs: “My lord of Winchester, may I present my dear niece Dame Frevisse.” Aunt Matilda drew Frevisse directly in front of him. “Frevisse, this is the Cardinal Bishop Henry Beaufort. He came all the way from Westminster—imagine that—to be with Thomas at the end. He and Thomas are cousins. You remember him, surely.”

Frevisse sank in a deep curtsy. “My lord bishop,” she said, and took the hand he held out to her, to kiss the proper ring among the many that he wore. All of them were ornate, most set with red stones shaded from ruby to garnet. To go with his cardinal’s robes, she supposed, noting that his gown was of the richest wool and lined with black fur. The jewels and sable showed he was undoubtedly as wealthy as rumor said. And that was only one of the many things rumor said about him.

But apart from what little Chaucer had said of him to her, rumor was all she knew about him. She was disconcerted, as she straightened and met his gaze, to find him regarding her with a speculative assessment deeper than the commonplace nature of their meeting.

But all he said, in most formal wise, was, “Your loss is as mine in this.”

So it was sufficient for her to answer, with an acknowledging bow of her head, “A great loss and a deep grief to us both.” Then she was free to move away from him to meet her cousin Alice.

She had seen her uncle fairly often and her aunt occasionally since she had entered St. Frideswide’s. But she had last seen Alice seventeen years ago, when Alice had been thirteen and already two years widowed from her first husband. Since then, she had grown into womanhood, married the earl of Salisbury, been widowed again by his death at the siege of Orleans, and a few years ago married the earl of Suffolk.

When Frevisse had known her, she had been a quiet, mannered child, neither unsatisfactorily plain nor noticeably lovely, and much better at her sewing than Frevisse had ever hoped to be. Remembering her then, Frevisse was disconcerted now to be confronted by a woman as tall as herself and quite lovely, her blue eyes perfect almond shapes and brilliant with warmth and intelligence as she rose from her chair and took Frevisse’s hand. “It’s been a long while, cousin, and now a sad occasion to meet again,” she said, her voice as gracious as her movements.

Frevisse murmured a reply, trying to reconcile her memories of her little cousin to this poised, grown woman. She was not perfectly beautiful; her face and nose and upper lip were all somewhat long, but they were in proportion with each other, and to judge by her eyebrows and rose-sweet complexion, she was still pale-fair. It was not difficult to see how she had married twice into the high nobility, even putting her father’s wealth aside.

Alice’s husband, William, the earl of Suffolk, had also risen to be introduced. He was taller than Alice, his brown hair attractively graying at the temples, his demeanor suitably grave. But he had a merry mouth, given to laughter at other times, Frevisse supposed. He was handsome in the expected ways—his strong features even, his jaw firm, his brow broad, his nose well-shaped. He made a striking mate to Alice; their children should be good to look on. But he patted Frevisse’s hand with condescending comfort after he had bowed to kiss it, and as he spoke a few sentences perfectly suited to the occasion, he was more aware of how well he said them than whether they were a comfort to her. Frevisse decided she would avoid him as much as possible.

The arrival of servants with supper freed Frevisse from receiving other condolences. Alice and Suffolk and most of the others were going down to dine in the hall with the household, but Aunt Matilda was to dine in the parlor with Bishop Beaufort. “And I’d have you dine here, too, my dear. With your—Dame Perpetua? You’re both exhausted, I’m sure, and this will be so much easier than the hall.”

Frevisse readily agreed. As the small table was set up, she went aside to where Dame Perpetua had fallen into quiet conversation with the priest who had brought Frevisse from the chapel. He was apparently staying to dine, too, and acknowledged her approach with a slight inclination of his head.

Dame Perpetua made the introductions. “This is Sir Philip. He’s been priest here—” She looked at him questioningly. “Three years now?”

“Come Advent,” he agreed.

Frevisse bowed her head slightly in return. “Sir Philip.”

“Dame Frevisse.”

His voice was pleasant, even and well-modulated, matching the good bones of a face that would have been handsome except for the deep pitting and white webbing of smallpox scars from chin to cheeks to temples. His black hair was a smooth cap clipped fashionably short above the ears, and his black priest’s gown, like the bishop’s, was of rich wool despite its conservative cut. Unlike the bishop, he wore no jewels except a single, deeply etched gold ring, but it was plain he was no poor priest eking out a living on the margins of the Church; his manners were as smooth as any courtier’s. The three of them made polite talk concerning the weather and the discomforts of travel until they were called to the table.

Conversation at the meal was strange in its normalcy, as if they had come together for the pleasure of each other’s company. It began predictably with Aunt Matilda’s comments on the bad weather. She was kind to include Dame Perpetua in her questions and comments, and Dame Perpetua was careful never to presume too much familiarity in her answers. She had been brought up in a home much like this, had learned to be both gentle and detailed in her manners. That was one of the reasons Domina Edith had chosen her for Dame Frevisse’s companion. “She will not add to your troubles, nor disgrace the nunnery with forward ways,” the prioress had said.