The Clerk’s Tale (13 page)

Frevisse closed the book and handed it to Letice, taking a chased silver goblet of warm, spiced clary in return as Domina Elisabeth said, “She’s distant kin to this Chaucer, you know.”

‘Is she?“ Lady Agnes’s interest was mild.

Preferring it stay mild, Frevisse said, “By marriage. An aunt of mine married his son.”

‘Chaucer,“ Lady Agnes repeated, her interest sharpening. ”Alice Chaucer. The earl of Suffolk’s lady. Is she your cousin?“

Frevisse took a long, deliberately slow, sip of the wine, trying not to have ill thoughts at her prioress for bringing up what need never have been mentioned, before saying as if it were a little matter, “Yes.”

‘Are you close?“

‘Dame Frevisse’s gown was a gift from her,“ Domina Elisabeth offered, proud of it as always.

‘Ah!“ Lady Agnes eyed Frevisse’s habit, her interest fully caught now.

Frevisse, sharply conscious of the wealth she wore in fine wool lined with fur, refuged in taking another long sip.

‘When Dame Frevisse visited her in London,“ Domina Elisabeth went on.

‘Several years ago,“ Frevisse said.

‘Ah.“ Lady Agnes’s tone was considering. ”Will you be visiting her again, while you’re so near? Is she at Ewelme, do you know?“

‘I don’t know,“ Frevisse said. ”I doubt it.“ And added, to put more distance between herself and Alice than there truly was, ”I’ve not seen her since then nor do we much write.“

They did not much write, not for lack of affection but because their lives lay so far apart that there was usually little to be said between them.

‘A pity,“ said Lady Agnes, sounding not so much disappointed for her as eased. ”You’ve heard nothing from her lately?“

‘No.“

Frevisse was braced for more but Domina Elisabeth, overtaken by a yawn, covered it with her hand and said when it was done, “I think we’ve overstayed our bedtime hour, Lady Agnes. By your leave, we’d best to bed.”

Lady Agnes said she had better do the same, it had been a long day, and Letice led them with a candle across the dark gallery to their own room on its other side. There she lighted a candle waiting on the fiat top of a locked chest against one wall, bade them good night, and left them.

It was a plainly furnished room, with a single, shuttered window and besides the chest a curtained bed, a joint stool, and a wooden wallpole for the hanging of clothing, with presently their cloaks hanging from either end. A thickly braided rush mat made the floor a little warmer but everything was half-lost in the shadows beyond the candle’s small reach of draught-wavering light. Not that any of that much mattered to Frevisse, since all she wanted was to say evening prayers and after that to be asleep as soon as might be. The nunnery’s hour for Compline had rung while they were still at supper and they were now well past the hour when they would have been abed in St. Frideswide’s. It was reasonable to suppose they would say the Office and then in silence ready for sleep but Domina Elisabeth, beginning to unpin her veil, said, “I think we can forgo prayers tonight. God surely understands our weariness. I should maybe ask your pardon for mentioning you were related to the Chaucers. I didn’t think until too late that Lady Agnes might take offense.”

With the thought that Lady Agnes had seemed more wary than offended and already offended herself at having Compline so lightly dismissed, Frevisse asked more sharply than she meant to, “Offended? Why should she be offended?”

Folding her black veil with great care, not seeming to hear or else not heeding the sharpness, Domina Elisabeth said, “Ysobel has been telling me about this quarrel over the grandson’s inheritance. Remember there was something about it at the inquest this morning?”

Frevisse, unpinning her own veil now, managed to answer evenly, “Oh. Yes.”

‘It isn’t just about the land, it seems. There’s some rivalry for power between my lord of Suffolk and Lord Lovell.“

Frevisse’s hands went momentarily still before she said again, “Oh?”

Domina Elisabeth turned away to lay her folded veil on the chest well away from the candle’s dripping. “Something about who will hold the most influence in this part of Oxfordshire. It’s presently Lord Lovell, I take it, but Suffolk is powerful with the king now and is using his power to make himself more powerful elsewhere.”

‘And Lord Lovell is trying to hold on to his own here,“ Frevisse ventured, pretending more interest in laying her own folded veil on the joint stool than in what she was saying but silently weighing up the possibilities inherent in a conflict between two powerful lords.

‘I gather so, and not just here in Oxfordshire,“ Domina Elisabeth agreed, unbelting her habit.

Frevisse, her wimple now off, shivered as an ice-touched draught fingered along the bare back of her neck. “But this Lengley inheritance is the present great trouble between them?”

‘From what Ysobel says. Oh mercy, I don’t want to take this gown off. It’s going to freeze tonight for certain. Has the bed been warmed at all?“

Frevisse lifted a bedcurtain aside and ran a hand under the turned-down coverlet and sheet to find there were indeed two smooth, large, warm-to-the-touch stones there, one on each side of the bed, taking something of the damp chill from the sheets, and she said, “Yes. All we need do is be fast in getting in.”

Talk stopped as they made haste then to strip off their outer and inner gowns, carefully but quickly hanging them over the wallpole, Frevisse waiting then for Domina Elisabeth to slip, chemise-clad, under the covers on the far side of the bed before blowing out the candle and going swiftly to crawl in on her own side, to reach the hot stone’s warmth before the room’s chill could reach her bones. Only then, well under the covers, did she ask, stiff with trying not to shiver but unwilling to leave off learning what she could, “How does Stephen Lengley’s inheritance come into their contention?”

‘It’s somewhere near here,“ Domina Elisabeth said through cold-clenched teeth, ”where Suffolk is looking to make one of his centers of power because he holds Wallingford for the king and his manor of Ewelme nearby is one of his great holdings. As you know.“

And as Domina Elisabeth was unlikely to forget, Frevisse thought but could not altogether blame her. A gift of money or land from Alice, Countess of Suffolk, would be very much to St. Frideswide’s good, both for the nunnery’s finances and for its fame, and Frevisse was the priory’s surest way to come by such a gift; but she held to the present point with, “So the trouble with the inheritance must be that Stephen is Lord Lovell’s man.”

‘Even so. The Lengleys have been enfeoffed to one Lord Lovell after another for generations and one reason Stephen’s father married the Bower heiress, Ysobel says, was to have this manor brought into Lord Lovell’s interests.“ Domina Elisabeth rolled onto her side away from Frevisse and curled up into a ball, much as Frevisse was on her own side. ”Oh, I do miss my own bed!“

Which would have been thoroughly warmed all over by a maidservant with coals in a covered pan just before she slipped into it. Frevisse’s bed in her cell in the dortor would not have been, would in fact have been far more chill than this one was, but she missed it anyway and the dortor’s quiet and the deep sleep she would have probably been in by now if she were there, but she turned her thoughts away from that to say, “Then Suffolk has probably put this James Champyon to claiming the manor in his wife’s right as a way to have it away from Lord Lovell’s interests into his own.”

‘Ysobel says it’s less that Master Champyon is one of Suffolk’s men than that he wants to be. Having the manor is the way he hopes to make Suffolk interested in him.“

A lesser man playing his ambitions toward a greater man’s, Frevisse thought, and all the more dangerous for that, because what might be a small gain for someone like the marquis of Suffolk would be a great gain for someone like Master James Champyon and therefore worth a greater price. Maybe even a man’s life.

Beside her, Domina Elisabeth settled deeper into her pillow with a deep, sleep-ready sigh, murmuring, “Ysobel says it’s wonderful how, now that she can go nowhere and do nothing, she hears more than she ever did when she was up and about, from all the people who come to talk to her.”

Wondering who besides Lady Agnes came, Frevisse asked before Domina Elisabeth was lost to sleep, “What does she say about the Champyons’ claim that Stephen is a bastard?”

Probably too far gone toward sleep to wonder where Frevisse had heard that, Domina Elisabeth murmured, “She says he’s been known as Sir Henry’s son and young Henry’s full brother all his life and nobody has ever questioned it before now. What can be said beyond that?”

Nothing that Frevisse could think of but she went on staring at the featureless darkness of the bedcurtain while Domina Elisabeth’s breathing evened into sleep, then set herself, alone and silently, to Compline’s prayers, asking for a safe and peaceful night and God’s blessing on all.

Chapter 8

The trouble, Frevisse realized upon awakening near dawn, roused by sounds of the household starting to stir, was that asking questions of Lady Agnes about the Lengley inheritance and other things would be awkward now that she knew Frevisse was, however distantly, kin to my lord of Suffolk. At this time yesterday it had seemed the stay with her would be simple and brief. Now it was become a tangle of lordly ambitions and questions that were not going to be easy to ask.

Someone rattled the latch, then came in, light from a carried candle showing through the drawn bed curtains before the maidservant said, “Good morning, my ladies. There’s snow come at last,” as she crossed the room to light their candle on the chest. Briefly Frevisse gave way to hope that it was maybe early enough there was chance of being dressed and across to the priory for Prime, but even as she thought it, the priory bell began to call to the Office and Domina Elisabeth stirred toward awake with a slow unwillingness that told there would be no hurrying to prayers this morning.

In truth, the only hurrying was into their cold clothing and down to the hall where a fire was built up and burning high on the hearth. Bread and ale and some of last night’s meat pie were brought to them there and a bench pulled close for them to sit with their feet toward the fire. With its welcome heat on their faces and gradually warming through their gowns, they said something of Prime’s prayers and psalms, but for Frevisse it was heavy going, the day all out of order with breaking their fast before they prayed and no Mass afterward and servants coming and going behind them…

She brought her thoughts up short, took a firm hold on them, and set them to where they should be—
Scrutare me, Domine, et proba me; explora renes meos et cor meum.
Search me, Lord, and try me; test my soul and my heart—deliberately unknotting her thoughts and weaving them into prayer.

When they had finished, she judged it likely near the time Lady Agnes, up by now and dressed and breakfasted, would ask for their company and they would not escape her until they went to Tierce. Then Domina Elisabeth would go to her cousin and Frevisse would… what?

Before she had found answer to that there came a rapping at the hall’s outer door. Lady Agnes’s manservant, just come from kitchenward with an armload of logs for the fire, dumped them on the hearth and went to find out who was there, shutting the inner door behind him to close off the draught when he opened the outer so that it was a few moments more before Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse saw who was come, as he hurried in ahead of the servant following him with equal hurry away from the cold.

‘Master Gruesby?“ said Frevisse in surprise and stood up as the clerk, bundled deep into a cloak, his hands buried in its folds and snow dusted over his dark hat and shoulders, went hesitant between one step and the next, slowed, but managed to come the rest of the way and bow to them both while the manservant went to his task of adding logs to the fire.

‘My… my ladies,“ Master Gruesby said unevenly, whether from chattering cold or uneasiness. He made another bow to Domina Elisabeth. ”By… by your leave, please, may I speak with Dame Frevisse?“

‘Of course.“ Domina Elisabeth gestured him closer to the fire. ”Here, move nearer the warmth, pray.“

That seemed to unsettle him worse but he obeyed, pulling off his gloves and putting his hands out toward the flames while saying at Frevisse, with little, uneasy looks at Domina Elisabeth, “My lady asks pardon for asking anyone out into the cold but since you’d be coming to church anyway, she supposed, she was wondering, if you would come to see her this morning. If it please you. If you would do her the courtesy.”

‘Your lady?“ Frevisse was momentarily puzzled, then understood. ”Mistress Montfort?“

‘Mistress Montfort, yes.“ Master Gruesby rushed at his words, as if to have them done as soon as might be. ”It was Master Christopher’s thought. He’s been called away to another death. At Moulsford. Word came late yesterday. He rode out at first light.“

‘What happened?“ Domina Elisabeth asked.

Looking anywhere but at either of the women, Master Gruesby managed, “It seems someone dropped a tree on himself. Likely an accident but there was no one there to see it and Master Christopher must serve as crowner to say whether that’s all it was or no.”

‘God have mercy on their soul,“ Domina Elisabeth said.

She crossed herself, and Frevisse, Master Gruesby, and the manservant just standing up from the fire did likewise before Master Gruesby went on, still at a rush, “Master Montfort’s funeral won’t be delayed because of it, he thinks. He’ll be back tomorrow. But if you’d give a little time to his mother, Dame Frevisse, it would divert her, Master Christopher thought. He thought that with him gone, it would be well for her to be… diverted.”