The Maiden’s Tale (16 page)

William’s expression had gone odd, an unbalanced mixture of things she could not read. “You’ve had a falling out?” he asked.

“We never had a falling in. Just how stupid do you think I am? And why would you want to marry a woman that stupid!”

“I don’t,” he said. “I want to marry you.”

Off-balanced by that, Jane said, confused, “My face…”

“Your face isn’t you. How stupid do you think I am? Your face is part of you but it isn’t you, and it’s you I want to marry.”

His admittance seemed to disconcert him as much as it did her, and while she was still sorting out what he had said, he moved away down the room, saying with his back to her, “But I followed you because we need to talk about Eyon’s death.”

More than a little willing to turn their talk another, any way, Jane said, “I’ve thought on it more.” Thought, among other things, that she might as well confirm what she thought William had already fully guessed. “He was passing messages I gave him from Lady Alice on to someone else and having messages back from him for her. I can’t tell you to whom or from whom they went but I think that’s why he was killed.”

William turned to her. “I can guess who the messages were to and from. I don’t need to know. The questions stay the same, regardless. How did whoever killed him know Eyon was doing this? Who else do they know of? How do we find out who they are? How did they kill him? And the last is easy. It had to have been a very quiet poison, not even noticeable while it worked on him.”

“But from whom?” Jane asked.

“That part is less easy. I’ve been talking to the men who were with him that night before he died.”

“Talking with them?”

“Asking questions.”

“William, that could be… unsafe.”

“So is sharing a household with someone willing to kill.”

There was no argument to make against that. “What sort of questions?”

“About who was there that night. What everyone did. About Eyon.”

“You know who was with him that night?”

“Mostly but not certainly. Eyon had set up one of his carding, dicing, drinking nights in our room because I wasn’t going to be there. There were men coming and going all evening. Some were there the whole time, others came and went and sometimes came back. I’m trying to talk to all of them, on the chance one of them noticed something.”

“But one of them probably killed him. If you’re asking questions and he understands what you’re doing…”

“That’s why I haven’t managed to learn much. I’m having to be so careful at it.”

“Be sure you’re careful enough,” Jane said.

“I will be.”

They had come near to each other while they spoke, to keep their voices low and the small silence between them then was strangely unawkward, despite that, even if betrothed to him, she was in the wrong to be alone with him. Less wrong than being alone with Robyn but nonetheless… She moved aside from him, as if following a thought that would not let her stand still, snatching at random from among the questions there were. “If we knew what poison was used, it might tell us who was likely to have had it and how they gave it to him.”

William turned but did not follow her. “It looks to have been a sleeping draught.”

“He more than slept,” Jane said.

“Given heavily enough, a sleeping draught will stop the heart. The one thing everyone says when I talk with them is that late in the evening Eyon was so sleepy it was laughable to watch him. He lurched around the room, couldn’t keep his eyes open, and finally passed full out on his bed and wouldn’t rouse even when someone prodded him and despite that they went on gaming and loud an hour or so more. He was dying and they were laughing at him.”

No fault of theirs but ugly to think on.

“Would his murderer have stayed to watch that happen?” Jane asked. “To be certain of him?”

“Very likely. That’s what I’m going to try next, at any rate. To learn just who was there at the end, when Eyon went down.”

“William,” Jane said but stopped, uncertain what she had been going to say, and finally said what she had said before. “Be careful.”

Chapter
15

With mutual assurances that they must talk again while she was at Coldharbour and every hope on her side that they would not, Frevisse left Master Gallard to a servant in frantic need of his attention, turned to look for Lady Jane and was surprised at her own flare of small displeasure to see her in talk with Robyn Helas. In the church yesterday morning, in the hall last evening—Frevisse had been in talk with Lady Sibill and some of the other ladies then and one of them had remarked with smothered laughter that young Robyn’s tastes were changing, weren’t they?—and now again today. And those were only the times she knew of. There were likely others, and given how thoroughly things were overnoticed and overtalked of in any household, Lady Jane’s betrothed was going to hear of it sooner more likely than later and what would he make of it when he did?

It was not her concern, Frevisse told herself firmly, leaving Jane to it and making her way up the hall among the swarming servants. None of it was her concern. Lady Jane had shown herself to be capable of gaining her own ends against the odds. She surely had wit enough not to make a fool of herself with Robyn Helas.

Or rather, Frevisse amended, Lady Jane should have wit enough, but “should,” on the whole, was a feeble word. There were a great many things that “should” not be but very definitely were, and women in plenty, from Eve onward, had let their wits be turned by someone saying what they wanted to hear. Very likely Robyn said things Lady Jane wanted to hear, things that probably no one else had ever said to her or ever would, certainly not Master Chesman who was marrying her only for what the marriage would bring him.

What was her concern was the warning in the yard just now. Why had Lady Jane suddenly felt need to give it? Because it had been sudden, not thought on beforehand, Frevisse was sure. What had brought it on and how seriously she had meant it were two things Frevisse meant to find out as soon as she could talk alone with Lady Jane, and then Alice must needs be told, if there was a danger here she did not know of. Not tonight, when there was already too much on her mind, but soon; and that, Frevisse thought with unguilty gladness, going up the stairs, might well mean the end of her being messenger and free to leave Coldharbour when she chose. Alice was making her most welcome but she by far preferred the pleasure of prayers, of reaching beyond the confines of the world into the unending wonders of the spirit, a thing difficult to keep up among so much ease and worldly plenty.

But first matters first. The message to Lady Alice was still in her sleeve and should be delivered; and setting herself to look as outwardly quiet as if nothing more than a pleasant ride through London and a visit to St. Helen’s had happened, Frevisse entered the lady chamber, only to find it nearly empty of people. Two pages still flanked the door, bored and waiting to be given something to do, but rather than the usual gathering of ladies and damsels, there were only two maidservants sitting widely apart on the bench near the fire with the winter-blue gown Alice had worn the night Frevisse first came to Coldharbour spread carefully out between them, each with a long hanging sleeve in her lap, stitching with skilled haste to fasten around them a wide band of fur so dark and dense it could only be sable. Alice, in a simply cut russet gown, was standing idly by to watch them, and Frevisse asked in surprise as she crossed toward her, “What have you done with everyone?”

“Sent them away to ready one another for tonight.” Alice answered lightly, coming to meet her, casually linking her arm in Frevisse’s and turning them both away to cross the room toward the window. “I’ve found that if they’re all gowned and ready beforetimes, they pay better heed to helping me in my turn, and I don’t have to sit about in headdress and veils and gown and all for an hour more than need be, waiting for them after they’ve finished with me. Were you all this while at St. Helen’s? Has Jane become homesick for her old life?”

She asked it laughing and Frevisse answered the same. “Not in the slightest! No, I had your men bring us back by way of the Stocks Market, for her to see more of London. That’s what kept us longer.” She sobered. “Alice, we encountered some of the duke of Gloucester’s men there.”

Alice looked at her sharply. “Was there trouble?” Her tone said she fully expected there could have been.

“They were shaping to it but your squire Herry bluffed them out of it.”

Alice’s face cleared. “There were only words then?”

“Only words. He did it well.”

“Clever Herry,” Alice said with relief and satisfaction. “I’ve had reason to think well of him before this and I’ll think better now. You don’t think, then, it had aught to do with…” Even between themselves she put the question roundabout. “… your going to St. Helen’s?”

“It seems not.”

Alice drew and let out a breath of deep relief. “That’s all well then. I don’t suppose you saw any peacock feathers for sale anywhere today?”

“Peacock feathers? No,” Frevisse answered. “Why?”

“Someone dropped the feathers for tonight’s peacock into something that soaked them. They’re unusable and I’m sending all over London to find more. With no success so far.”

Not doubting that the feast would survive the lack of a roast peacock with its feathers restored, carried in splendor on a gold platter up the hall to the high table between the ranked, admiring guests, Frevisse suggested, “Refeathered peacocks are so usual at feasts. Why not serve this one naked and claim you’re beginning a new fashion?”

Alice stared at her a startled moment, then broke into laughter that made the maidservants across the room look up from their sewing. “Oh, Frevisse! A naked peacock in the third remove!” she said with delight. “I need reminding sometimes not everything’s as world-ending serious as I come to think it is. What have you done with Lady Jane?”

“Left her in close talk in the hall with the squire named Robyn Helas.”

Alice’s carefully plucked brows drew toward each other with either annoyance or worry. “He was talking with her last night, too, until William interrupted them.”

“He’s most good looking,” Frevisse murmured mildly.

“He’s indeed that,” Alice agreed but not as if it were to his favor. “And overly fond of himself in the bargain. Why do some women lose what wits they have when a man notices them? And lose them the worse if he’s handsome? Think of the duke of Bedford’s widow with young Woodville three years ago. She’ll live out her life with the consequence of that.”

Frevisse instead thought of Alice who, although her own latest husband was goodly enough to look on, had never married any of her husbands on account of how they looked.

“As for this Robyn,” Alice was going on, “I’ve variously had two of my ladies and three of my maids silly over him. Why is he trying his hand with Jane? She’s too newly out of the nunnery to understand these games. And… well…” Too newly’out of a nunnery and so soon bound into a marriage and surely unused to any man heeding her at all. The perils in all of that were too plain to need speaking of.

“You might speak to her about it,” Frevisse suggested.

“I would except we know how that can go the wrong way.”

Frevisse knew. There was an odd alchemy in the mind that too often transmuted a warning into a desire to do the thing warned against. If it went that way with Lady Jane, warning her would be the worst way of protecting her.

“And warning Robyn off might be no better.” Alice said the rest of what Frevisse was thinking. “But she has so good a marriage coming, I don’t want to see her spoil it.”

“Is it that good?” Frevisse asked, giving way to her curiosity. “A duke’s daughter to a yeoman?” A marriage surely more disparaging by far than that of the duke of Bedford’s widow to a knight’s son.

“Considering her circumstances, yes,” Alice said. “A third-born daughter whose inheritance was mostly signed away by her mother before she was born and marred as she is. There are better bargains enough in the marriage market we didn’t think she’d go easily. Or else not highly. My lord husband let it be known he was seeking a marriage for her and what her marriage portion would be and when William Chesman offered for her there was no reason to turn him away. We told her of it, I recommended she take him, she accepted. There was no reason for her not to.”

Not after having been made to understand all her life how little she could ever hope for.

“We’ll not be alone much longer,” Alice said quietly, letting the matter of Lady Jane go. “You’d best give it to me now.”

Frevisse had been standing with her hands tucked up her opposite sleeves in her usual way, using their fullness to hide how she had worked the paper down from her undergown’s sleeve to have it ready. The small movement of passing it from her hand to Alice’s was hidden from the rest of the room by their gowns and sleeves and the way they stood, while Alice said, “I doubt it’s more than simply something to be sent on but it’s well to know and this is as private as I’m likely to be this evening.” She slipped a finger to loosen the blank wax seal, asking, “You’ll pardon me? And be so good as to go on talking?”

Knowing it would not matter what she said, no one near enough to hear it, so long as the sound of a voice went on rather than a silence settling between them, Frevisse obligingly began to discourse on how cold it was, wasn’t it, tonight would be freezing, wouldn’t it, but at least the wind had dropped, did Alice suppose tomorrow would be as cold—gazing out the window while her tongue rambled, giving Alice what privacy she could. The short winter’s afternoon was slipping rapidly away, the cloudless, crystal-brittle sky pale with the thinning light of the westering sun, the lady chamber darkening. Behind them, one of the maids was rising to her feet to light a lamp. “… and if it stays this cold all winter…” Frevisse murmured on but saw sideways, without turning her head, that her cousin was no longer reading, had raised her head and was staring out the window at the failing day, her face gone still and inward; and carefully she asked, “Alice?”