The Bastard's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  ‘Very little. Much of the afternoon I was with John and the players at their practice and then with Dame Perpetua in the library.“ Frevisse framed her answer carefully, trying for balance among the different footholds she had to keep. ”Mostly I’ve only heard the same thing over and over. There seems to be a great deal of… surprise.“

  ‘Yes. Surprise. Many of us are surprised.“ Alice nodded toward the bed with its drawn curtains. ”John is asleep there. Considering how late he’ll be up tonight, a nap seemed best, but Nurse took to coughing again and I’ve sent her off to rest. That’s partly why I sent for you so well ahead of time, for you to see to him because you’ll know better than anyone about how soon or late to ready him for the play and I can’t stay. Since your play has the hall for now, the abbot is giving a feast tonight in the monks’ refectory for king and queen and lords and commons. Where the monks will eat I don’t know. Yes, it’s time, I know,“ she added to one of her ladies come to stand beside her, ready with a tall, jeweled headdress fluttered with veils. With what seemed more resignation than pleasure, Alice went to sit on a chair for the thing to be put on, hiding her fair hair and framing her face.

  Considering the hours Alice would have to wear it, Frevisse hoped it was as light as it looked to be and was glad all over again for her own plain gown that did not require two hands to manage its skirts, the way Alice needed for hers as she rose and turned to say, the veils wafting on the gentle air of her movement, “With all of this, I hope this play is going to be worth our while. Is it?”

  Frevisse hesitated, thinking of this afternoon, then offered, “With God’s grace.”

  ‘Oh dear,“ said Alice and left, her ladies taking up their cloaks and hers from a chest and following, leaving Frevisse regretfully wondering if Alice was keeping as much from her as she was keeping from Alice.

  Her regrets were still with her when she and Dame Perpetua brought John—eager and wide awake—to the King’s Hall. The two men in royal livery on guard at the outer door did not question John’s assertion that he was part of the play or hinder her and Dame Perpetua from going in with him. Since afternoon the hall had been cleared of all the players’ clutter, leaving Heaven rising splendidly alone at the hall’s far end, Wisdom’s throne half lost in shadows at the top now that there was no daylight through the hall’s tall windows, only shutters closed over the black night outside. Light for the play would come from two candlestands flanking the playing place in front of Heaven; round and tiered and taller than a man, they held dozens of candles each, all unlighted for now. It was by the lesser light of smaller candle-stands set along the hall that servants were presently setting the last of several paired rows of benches in front of the playing place, a wide gap left between the pairs for three tall-backed, ornately carved chairs set side by side directly in front of the playing place. Looking at them, Dame Perpetua asked a little breathlessly, “For the king and queen?”

  ‘And Abbot Babington,“ Frevisse said. She had been keeping tight hold on John and with, ”Wait here for me,“ to Dame Perpetua, she let him pull her away, around and behind the nearest frame-hung curtain to the doorway to the room beyond it. Whatever its usual use, it had been given over to the players for tonight and was crowded full with all the hampers, baskets, and boxes moved out of the hall and with the players themselves, loud with talk and taut laughter and all in various stages of dress and undress, with Joane crouched on a stool stitching swiftly at something that had torn and Mistress Wilde handing a pair of red-and-purple-striped hosen toward one of the Vices. Frevisse, before someone found something for her to do, pushed John in and took herself away.

  In the hall Dame Perpetua had gone aside to stand near the wall not far from the playing place’s right side where few heads were likely to come between them and the play. Frevisse joined her and they waited together while a man bearing a staff that marked him for a household officer paced the hall, checking what had been done, then went behind the curtains, shortly came out, gave an order to the servants, and left. The servants immediately hurried to light all the candles in the great candlestands beside the playing place, making a warm bloom of light that sent shadows away to the rafters, shone on Heaven’s stairs, and glinted across the brass stars on the hangings.

  The servants finished and were withdrawing to stand beside the lesser candlestands along the hall as a tide of lords and ladies bright with rich gowns, jewels, and talk swept into the hall, spreading through it on the wave of their own excited pleasure. Behind them came men and women more quietly dressed only by contrast, with rich fabrics and glint of gold enough among them—the members of Parliament and their wives and some of the more important citizens of Bury St. Edmunds, Frevisse supposed.

  She had found Alice among those first in, when Dame Perpetua said, hushed with wonder, “There’s the king.”

  He was mere yards away, his Plantagenet height making him taller than almost everyone around him, a thin, dark-haired man looking younger than his twenty-five years—hardly older than the girl beside him, her golden-fair hair loose to below her waist. They wore matching narrow circlets of gold around their heads and were both dressed in green velvet patterned on purple silk, his houpelande three-quarter length and furred with ermine at throat and hem, her gown trailing on the floor behind her, its ermined collar plunging to her high-belted waist to show an underdress of blue damask.

  ‘And Queen Margaret,“ Dame Perpetua breathed. ”Oh, isn’t she lovely?“

  Frevisse murmured agreement, able to see why a man might think her worth the cost of no dowry and a weak truce when so much more should have been had for a king’s marriage. But yes, at seventeen years old, with the grace of girlhood still on her, she was lovely, Frevisse acknowledged. God grant she was also fertile, and soon.

  Abbot Babington, a gray-haired man in dark, elaborate robes, bowed the royal couple to their chairs, then sat himself in the chair at King Henry’s right hand and leaned over to say something to him. Meanwhile, two staff-bearing household officers were sorting favored lords and ladies to their places on the benches, leaving everyone else to spread through the hall as they would. A lady of some girth made to crowd in on Frevisse, who braced an elbow sideways, holding her off while watching the duke of York be ushered to a place on the bench on Abbot Babington’s other side from the king. That would have been Gloucester’s place if he had been there, Frevisse supposed, and briefly she wondered what was in York’s mind as he took it. It was no one’s secret that he was as unfavored by the lords around the king as Gloucester was, and if the king’s own uncle could be falsely charged with treason, why not his cousin?

  Frevisse stopped that thought short and looked at it. When had she turned from only assuming the charge against Gloucester was false to fully believing it was? She did not know. Another question then: Why had she?

  Straightly asked, the question had straight answer: because she disliked Suffolk.

  Disliked and, more to the point, distrusted him. Or even more to the point, disliked him because she distrusted him.

  Dame Perpetua was craning from side to side, looking around heads to watch the king and queen. Frevisse, taller, was able to see beyond them, to where Suffolk was gracefully bowing Alice to a place on the bench beside Queen Margaret’s chair. The queen immediately turned and spoke to Alice while Suffolk, after bowing to her but not yet sitting down, leaned—gracious, smiling, confident—to say something to William Tresham and his wife on the next bench back.

  Why did she distrust him so completely?

  Once asked, the question had ready answer.

  Because of Henow Heath.

  Because of those thousands of men gathered against an army Gloucester wasn’t bringing.

  Because, of the several possible reasons Suffolk might have gathered them, none were good. Either he had done it by mistake, having trusted someone who badly misinformed him—deliberately or because they were too stupid to count straight—or else he had been hoping to stir fear and anger against Glouce
ster, to cut short questions when the accusation and arrest were made. Whichever had been the reason, neither was acceptable in a man said to have more power than anyone else in the realm. If the first, then he used bad sources who corrupted his actions. If the second, he was corrupt himself.

  She wished she had better sight of King Henry. He was not likely to show much here with so many eyes to see him, but surely he must be affected somehow, whether he actually believed in this betrayal by a man who had been loyal to him all his life or if he did not.

  Above the noise and talk of people, a trumpet called out high and clear from the open gallery above the screens passage. Talk cut off and every head turned toward the trumpeter standing above them there, his horn glinting in the upcast candlelight. At the same moment the servants waiting beside the candlestands along the hall put out all the candles almost as one, sweeping the hall into shadows, so that as the trumpeter flourished to an end, swung down his trumpet, and stepped back out of sight, everyone turned back toward the only light still in the hall, the candles flanking the playing place, and saw, high on Heaven’s throne, Wisdom seated in all his majesty, glowing golden in the candlelight, with Lady Soul kneeling and lovely at the foot of the heavenly stairs.

  Clear and fine, Wisdom’s voice rang out in his opening speech. Sweet and strong, Lady Soul answered him. And against all the likelihood everything that had been slack, stumbling, and wrong this afternoon was gone. The play sang with beauty, first between Wisdom and beloved Lady Soul, then between her and her virtuous Mights, before they went away behind the curtains and Lucifer appeared out of a burst of roof-high red sparks.

  More often than not, devils were played for laughter but Joliffe had chosen smooth, warm charm, with only gradually his underdarkness breaking through in all its ugliness before the Mights returned and he set to wooing them to sin. When they were corrupted, he unleashed a set of his Devils to them for a lewd and ugly dance complete with stinking smoke from Hell. When Lady Soul returned, corrupted by her Mights’ fall and companioned by two small Demons, Wisdom charged her with her wrongs to him, she and her Mights repented, Devils and Demons fled, and all ended with a prayer, and on Wisdom’s last word, angel voices (of those who had been Devils a few minutes ago) rose from behind Heaven in a joyously sung Deo gracias, with Lady Soul and her Mights dancing with glad grace away to out of sight behind the curtains while Wisdom rose with immense dignity from his throne, descended the stairs, and followed after them.

  With his going, the hall seemed suddenly far more empty than one man’s leaving should have made it. But then, it was not a man but Wisdom itself that had gone, the illusion powerful enough that silence held for a long-drawn breath after the playing place was empty before well-pleased clapping broke out, led by the king.

  Unwillingly released from wonder, Frevisse joined in. Clapping, too, Dame Perpetua leaned to ask in her ear, “The young man we talked with in the library this afternoon, was he Lucifer here?”

  ‘He was.“

  Puzzled, maybe a little worried about it, Dame Perpetua said, “He was more… pleasant then.”

  ‘He can be,“ Frevisse granted.

  A drum’s cheerful roll signaled the players’ return, coming in a line from either side to meet in the middle of the playing place. All the clapping doubled with the pleasure of seeing them again and they bowed or curtsied, depending on their garments, first to the king and queen and Abbot Babington, then to the hall at large. Master Wilde had not returned, a sensible choice, it being hardly seemly for Wisdom to bow to anyone, nor did the players make the error of trying to hold too long to what they had but, while the acclaim was at its height, bowed one more time and disappeared the way they had come, all except John, who ran forward to his parents. Frevisse saw Suffolk scoop him up, laughing and pleased. Servants were relighting the other candles, talk was starting up all over the hall, and the crowd beginning to mill, and when Dame Perpetua asked, “Shouldn’t we go?” Frevisse was willing, abruptly aware of how tired she was and feeling no need to take John off his parents’ hands. Let them see to him for tonight. For tonight at least she simply wanted to be done with any duties or troubles and began to lead their way along the wall toward the door.

  They had reached the screens passage and were almost out the door among other people leaving when rising voices and a stir ahead of them warned something had happened. Dame Perpetua, far less used to crowds and beginning to be frightened, gripped her arm and asked, “What? What is it?”

  The rush of excited words reached and swept past them from one person to another and into the hall and Frevisse answered Dame Perpetua’s fear quickly with, “Nothing. It’s all right for us,” urging Dame Perpetua onward to the door and out into the cold, torchlit night before adding, “It’s just that some of the duke of Gloucester’s men have been arrested now for treason, too.”

  Chapter 14

  In the hours since he had been left alone, Arteys had found that the chamber was too small for sufficient pacing to wear out his thoughts, but neither could he sit still nor hold his mind to the book he had tried to read by the gray daylight through the window. Since Bishop Pecock had left him alone, his mind would not hold still, had been squirreling up one thought, scurrying to another, going back to the first or on to others, settling nowhere because he only knew enough to worry and wasn’t likely to know more until Bishop Pecock returned.

  When bringing him here to St. Petronilla’s yesterday, Bishop Pecock had explained him in passing to the master as an old friend’s son who needed somewhere to stay until a certain trouble with his father was worked out. “Nor is that a lie,” Bishop Pecock had said when he and Arteys had reached his chamber. “A misdirection of the truth perhaps and to be regretted, but we might presently have regretted outright truth more.”

  His chamber was a large room at the top of stairs off the hospital’s cloister walk, with a small fireplace in one wall, thick-woven reed matting on the floor, a plain chair, a single joint stool, a long table untidy with books and papers, the bishop’s traveling chest along one wall, and a large bed with dark red coverlet and curtains. The room’s simplicity and one small window with a slight view of a thatched roof and a lean bit of sky told this was not Petronilla’s best chamber. Or even second best, probably. “Which comes of being so minor a bishop as St. Asaph’s,” Bishop Pecock had said, “but that is all to the better, isn’t it? No one pays much heed to what I do and therefore is unlikely to pay much heed to your being here.”

  His explanation to Master Orle, his chaplain, and Run-man, his servant, was simply that Arteys would be spending at least the night and probably tomorrow, possibly longer, and was to be fed but not talked of.

  They had both said, “Yes, my lord,” and Runman, whose accent was deeply London, had asked, “You’ll want supper for both of you here, my lord?”

  ‘If you would, Runman.“

  Runman had bowed again, said, “Of course, my lord.”

  ‘They both my-lord me overmuch,“ Bishop Pecock had said when they were gone. ”They say I tend to forget who I am if I’m not reminded. Take off your cloak. Sit.“

  Confused with hunger and the day’s bludgeoning, Arteys had obeyed and, searching for something to say, asked, “You’ve no one else waiting on you?”

  ‘Not when I can help it. Have you any thought on how tedious it is to have people following you everywhere you go?“

  Betrayed by his tiredness, Arteys said, “I know how tedious it is to follow.” And came up short, hearing himself. Was it only this morning, going to meet Gloucester, he’d been thinking that?

  ‘The same problem from a different side,“ Bishop Pecock answered, pouring wine. ”And it’s not as if I can’t find my own way to places. I was a priest in London for thirteen years and went here and there and everywhere without clerks and servants and other miscellaneous folk at my heels.“ He handed a filled goblet to Arteys. ”If I’m bishop long enough, I’ll likely grow used to it but it’s hardly fair for St. Asaph’s to bear t
he expense of my hauling servants with me to no good purpose, and since I prefer not to be dogged at the heels by people I don’t need there, I therefore have only Master Orle and Run-man to serve me here, who have heretofore never evidenced desire to betray me or any of my business to anyone else and are unlikely to begin now, and a groom who sleeps in the stables and is probably up to no good since he’s had nothing to do since we arrived.“

  Arteys had realized that the flow of words was deliberately meant to distract him and he let it, both then and through supper. Not until Bishop Pecock had sent Run-man out to find if the play was to go on because, “If it is, I’d best go, on the chance I’ll hear something to our purpose,” had Arteys leaned forward on the cleared table and asked, not much hiding his fear and desperation. “What am I going to do?”

  ‘Nothing for now. At present we know too little, and ignorance is never a good tool to work with. Why don’t you go to bed?“

  Exhausted by the ill-turned day and his fears, Arteys did, and had slept most of the time Bishop Pecock was gone, which was as well because after Bishop Pecock had brought back word of the arrests, he had not slept well the rest of the night. Worse, word had been all that Bishop Pecock brought back, no names or certainty of how many or anything about Gloucester at all. He had gone out this morning, taking Master Orle with him, to find out if more was being said, leaving Arteys alone except when Runman brought him a cheese-egg potage and bread for his midday dinner.