The Bishop’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  She was crying again. The tears dropped down on her folded hands, warm against her cold skin.

  But Prime wove around her its comfort and hope for the day. Her tears were done by the time they finished the office, and she pressed her eyes dry with the heel of her hand before raising her head to smile at Dame Perpetua, not in apology—there was nothing shameful in crying—but in assurance that she was ready to go on with the day. With the wry humor she had shared with Chaucer, Frevisse thought what small sense it would make if she worried over Aunt Matilda’s frailty and then fell apart herself. Simple crying was a safeguard against that; it eased the tight band of her grief and let her face the day more coherently.

  “Dame Frevisse?”

  She turned to see who was speaking to her from the parlor doorway, then rose quickly. “Robert!” She held out her hand for him to come in. The changes she had glimpsed in Robert Fenner yesterday were even more apparent now that she saw him face-to-face. He was a few inches taller than their last meeting, and his boy’s lean frame had filled out into a young man’s. But he was still Robert, with his engaging, open smile, and he came to bow to her with the same assured competence she remembered in him.

  “I was hoping to talk with you sometime before you left,” she said. “How goes it for you with Sir Walter? How have you been?”

  “He’s no worse out of the ordinary.” Robert smiled. As a dependent relation of Sir Walter Fenner, Robert was in service to him from necessity rather than choice. “Aside from the fact that he has plans for my marriage, I’m managing well enough.”

  He said it lightly, but not quite lightly enough.

  “Your marriage?” Frevisse asked. “You’re of age and you were never his ward, so how does it come about that he should be making your marriage for you?”

  “He has a well-landed cousin, a widow who has taken a fancy to me, and if I have any hope of a life above cleaning other people’s pigstys, which is what Sir Walter will break me to if I refuse, I’ll marry Blaunche the haunch when I’m told to.”

  “Oh, Robert!”

  “But—” Robert held up a hand against her commiseration. “Life isn’t doing well by him, either. Lord Fenner recovered from what was supposed to be his final illness— just when Sir Walter could all but feel the lordship in his hands—and now is looking like to live another twenty years.” Robert managed to hold his brimming laughter to a wide grin.

  Well able to imagine impatient, ambitious Sir Walter’s reaction to that turn of fate, Frevisse could not help her answering smile. “So perhaps your wife-to-be is not the worst that can happen to an ambitious man after all?” she suggested.

  “She laughs like a tickled crow. And has the brains of one.” He turned away abruptly, saying, “Pray, pardon my failed manners. Have you met Jevan Dey yet? He came with his uncle yesterday.”

  Frevisse had not noticed the quiet young man waiting in the doorway behind Robert until then. He came into the room now and bowed to her and Dame Perpetua. His movements were as angular as his build, though with a precarious grace that might have had charm if he smiled. But his long face did not look as if he ever found anything amusing. Something about his pale skin and plain brown hair and eyes reminded Frevisse of someone. “Jevan Dey,” she said. “Would your uncle be Sir Clement Sharpe?”

  “The resemblance has been often mentioned,” Jevan said shortly.

  “And he doesn’t much like to hear of it,” Robert said, with the glint of humor Jevan lacked. “Sir Clement is a bullying—” He thought better of whatever word he had had in mind and said instead, “We came to know each other the times our lords have met to abuse each other’s company. Now when we’re alone we abuse them.”

  “That’s neither wise nor charitable, since they are your lords,” Dame Perpetua said mildly.

  “My uncle is neither wise nor charitable, and never scruples to say what he thinks of me,” Jevan said. “To anyone who might be listening.”

  “And more especially to your face,” Robert added.

  “I’ve only met Sir Clement briefly twice,” Frevisse said, “but I can believe he enjoys sharpening his teeth on other people’s reputations. Robert, there are duties I must go to, but if we can speak later…”

  “At your pleasure, my lady.” Both young men bowed and stepped aside for Frevisse and Dame Perpetua to pass.

  On the stairs outside the room, Dame Perpetua said, “Unless you need me, I’d like to go to the chapel. I’ve had hardly a chance to pray for Master Chaucer’s soul, and I remember him kindly.”

  “Please go if you want. There’ll be more than enough women around Aunt Matilda by now. Even I will probably be unneeded.”

  Dame Perpetua patted her arm. “You know better than that. My prayers will be as much for you today as for your uncle.”

  Frevisse felt the warmth of tears again, and was grateful for the comfort; the living needed prayers as much as the dead. “Thank you.”

  To her surprise, there were not many people with her aunt. Only Alice and Joan and three maids of the household, and Bishop Beaufort sitting to one side, with Sir Philip behind him, an open prayer book in his hands.

  With the shutters closed and everyone dressed in black, die room seemed full of denser shadows moving in the lesser ones of the subdued lamplight. Aunt Matilda was ready except for the padded headroll and black veiling she would wear. Joan, a comb in one hand and pins in the other, had apparently been fastening up her mistress’s gray hair, but Aunt Matilda had moved away from her and was standing in the middle of the room saying in a voice thick with nervousness and grief, “How am I going to do this? I don’t know how to do this!”

  Quickly, Frevisse shut the door. Alice cast her a grateful glance on her way to take her mother’s hands that were wringing and twisting at each other. “Mother,” she said in a golden, winning tone, “it will be all right. I’ll be there with you. And so will Suffolk. You know you can do this. For Father’s sake.”

  “Everything I ever did was for his sake,” Aunt Matilda moaned. “And he left me anyway. I can’t face his being gone!”

  “You can, Aunt,” Frevisse said soothingly. “Of course you can.”

  “I won’t!” She was clinging now to Alice as tightly as Alice was holding her, but blindly. She was falling into utter panic, and if she did there might be no reaching her for no one knew how long. There was nothing wrong in the widow weeping through the funeral, and surely Aunt Matilda needed the release of tears—she had shed too few of them so far—but for her own sake as well as everyone else’s she should not be in hysterics.

  “Matilda,” Bishop Beaufort said in the deep, rich voice that could fill the reaches of a cathedral but here only spread warmth and assurance through the room, “God is with you. And so are we.”

  Aunt Matilda caught her breath in the middle of another rising cry, gasped into silence, and stared at him. Bishop Beaufort rose to his feet in a contained and graceful movement and came to her. He took her hands from Alice, engulfing them in his own.

  Again, Frevisse was surprised at how large he was and at his control. She suspected his anger was a thing to be avoided at nearly any cost, but he was all gentle strength now as he told Matilda, “You must do this thing, this last, hard thing, for Thomas. He loved you, Maud. He trusted you to show the great lady that you are. We know you’ll not disgrace him now.”

  Aunt Matilda gulped and sniffed and looked up at him, her courage visibly returning to her. Sir Philip came to her side and spoke too low to her for Frevisse to hear, but Aunt Matilda’s back straightened further and her face regained its firm shape.

  “Of course,” she said, and withdrew one hand from Bishop Beaufort’s to take hold of the priest’s arm. Supported by them, she nodded to her women to complete her for what needed to be done.

  Quickly, Joan pinned up the last of her hair, and the maidservants brought first her black wimple, then the padded roll and veil. When they were done, her round, white face was surrounded in the black lineaments of mourning i
n which her red-rimmed eyes were the only color.

  Alice came forward to kiss her cheek, and Frevisse was about to add comfort of her own by saying she was an honor to Thomas, when there was a questioning knock at the door.

  Perhaps the marshal, come to say everything was ready in the yard, Frevisse thought, though it seemed too soon for that.

  One of the maidservants went to open it, and Frevisse was surprised to see Jevan Dey, his face even more rigid than when he had been with Robert. He bowed stiffly and said without entering the room, “Mistress Chaucer, my apology for disturbing you, but Sir Clement Sharpe asks leave to speak with you now.”

  “Speak with me?” Aunt Matilda let her disbelief in such a request show. “Now?”

  “Surely he knows this isn’t the time!” Alice was already past her mother’s disbelief into anger.

  “He’d speak with you before the burdens of the day accumulate,” Jevan persisted.

  Frevisse doubted the words were his; he seemed to dislike even the taste of them in his mouth.

  “To give his personal condolences on your loss,” he continued, “and to assure you he will not ask settlement in the land dispute until your mourning is less fresh, and to ask you speak well of him to the earl of Suffolk in all matters they will have to deal in, now that Master Chaucer is dead.”

  The impertinence of the words brought everyone but Aunt Matilda to a complete standstill. She clutched at Sir Philip with renewing panic and cried to Bishop Beaufort, “I can’t… not this morning… how… how can he ask me… how does he think I—”

  “Send him away,” Alice demanded, hugging her mother around the shoulders. “You don’t have to deal with this now. Not ever! Suffolk will see to him!”

  “This is nothing you have to endure right now,” Frevisse agreed angrily, though not at Jevan, who had plainly wanted nothing to do with what he had had to say.

  Bishop Beaufort placed himself between Jevan and Matilda and said, his voice hard with dismissal, “You’ve done your duty in bringing your master’s request. Now you may go. Mistress Chaucer is not free for this matter this morning, as your master well knows. Tell him from me—” Bishop Beaufort stopped. His face went smooth as oil on water, and he turned his attention from Jevan, pale but still facing him, to Sir Philip. Almost genially, he said, “Sir Philip, go with this young man, I pray you, and give Sir Clement this message from me: ‘You are a mannerless knave, and if you cannot at least feign some decency in a house of mourning, you are more than cordially welcomed by all here to leave at your earliest possibility.”“

  Sir Philip’s usually impassive face registered several emotions rapidly Refusal was perhaps first, but if so he buried it as it was born. Frevisse thought the last was a residue of wry humor for the unpleasantness to come, but even that she could not be sure of before his face became a smooth match of the bishop’s. He leaned reassuringly nearer to Aunt Matilda, still desperately clutching his arm. “I’ll be gone only a little while, my lady, and be back before you need to go out. But I must obey the bishop in this matter.”

  With an unsteady sniff, Matilda gathered herself, nodded, and let him go. When he and Jevan had left, and the maidservant had closed the chamber door, Aunt Matilda looked around at all of them and said with something of her old dignity and urge to manage, “Well, I see no point in our all standing about when we could sit. There’ll be standing enough today before we’re done, I’m sure. Is it very cold out? But never mind, it doesn’t matter. Dear Thomas never minded the cold like the rest of us did.”

  Alice burst into tears.

  And Frevisse thought that was the most useful thing any of them could have done, as Aunt Matilda turned from her own grieving to comfort her.

  Chapter 7

  “Subvenita, Sancti Dei, occuritte, Angeli Domini. Suscipientes animan ejus: Offerentes eam in conspectu Altissimi.” Come to his aid, Saints of God; hurry to meet him, Angels of the Lord. Take up his soul: Bring it into the sight of the Most High.

  The service was making its dark and eloquent way through the Mass for the Dead. The day’s sunlight through the bright windows added richness to the elaborate vestments of the priests and Cardinal Bishop Beaufort and strewed jewel colors over the darkly dressed mourners crowded in the nave. Under the growing cloud of incense, the church grew warm with the many people, a warmth welcome after the slow, cold procession behind the coffin from the manor house.

  “In quo nobis spes beatae resurrectionis effulsit…” In whom the hope of a blessed resurrection dawned for us…

  Drained, Frevisse let the service carry her as it would. Elegant, complex, the Mass comforted sorrow with the divinely given hope that death was not the end. Even weeping seemed irrelevant for the while.

  “Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere …” Truly it is fitting and just, reasonable and good, for us to give thanks to you always and everywhere…

  But in some way none of this solemnity seemed anything to do with Thomas Chaucer as she knew him, the man who had always challenged her to think, a man full of laughter and sometimes teasing and often kindness.

  But then, in essence, the Mass for the Dead had nothing to do with that part of Chaucer that had been his earthly self, but with the part of him that would live for eternity. The part of him that was now purged of earthly matters and emotions. The part of him she did not know and had not yet learned to love in place of the other who had gone forever.

  The pastor of Ewelme began his sermon with the customary reminder, “Behold this coffin containing its dead burden as you would a mirror, for surely you will come to this in your turn…”

  Frevisse turned her mind to prayers of her own until the Mass continued.

  “Et ideo cum Angelis et Archangelis, cum Thronis et Dominationibus, comque omni militia caelistis exercitus, hymnum gloria tuae canimus, sine fine dicentes: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus …” And so, with angels and archangels, with thrones and dominions and all the assembly of the heavenly host, we sing hymns to your glory, without end saying: Holy, holy, holy…

  Around the altar the priests and deacons moved in their ritual patterns, Bishop Beaufort foremost among them, perfect in every movement and gesture, as if what he did was infinitely precious. As truly it was. But he made it seem as outwardly so as it was inwardly, a rare and beautiful thing to watch and listen to.

  Chaucer would have appreciated that, Frevisse thought. He had loved beautiful things, from a delicately swirled and tinted Venetian glass goblet brought from overseas with infinite care and cost, to the subtleties of a sunset over his own hills.

  Was there anything like that in heaven for him to love?

  Or was heaven all love, with no need or desire distinguishing one soul from another? What was it like, to be pure spirit? And how, without throats, did the angels endlessly sing, Holy, holy, holy? And how did the saints hear them without ears?

  “Circumdabo altare tuun, Domine… enarrem universa mirabilia tua.” I will go about your altar, Lord… describing all your wonders.

  Chaucer’s body was blessed and censed and given at last to its tomb. The last prayers were said, for all the dead, past and to come. The prayers felt as real as a comforting arm, and Frevisse wrapped the words around herself. “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.” Eternal rest give to them, Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

  The mourners eased their way out of the church, into the bright day and cold wind. The sky that had been clear when they entered the church was now streaked with high, thin clouds, and to Frevisse’s mind there was the smell of snow to come, or very bitter frost. The villagers were crowded around the church porch, waiting for the funeral alms and to bless the widow and Countess Alice as they came by. Frevisse, behind her aunt, was bemused to find she was expected to walk with Suffolk, an unlikely occurrence under any other circumstances, but at least there was no need to speak to one another, and they
did not. She had no good opinion of him, not much opinion at all, though she remembered Chaucer had once said, on a visit to St. Frideswide’s after their betrothal, “They’re well-matched in wealth and affection, and he has power and she has sense. They should do well enough.”

  She half expected Sir Clement Sharpe might take the chance between the church and manor house to approach Aunt Matilda. His gall and lack of manners apparently did not preclude such rudeness. But she only saw him distantly among the crowd as they slowed to cross the bridge from the outer yard. His nephew Guy was to one side and there was a glimpse of Lady Anne’s fair hair to his other. Let them keep their troubles to themselves today, Frevisse thought, and tomorrow they would be gone with the rest of the guests.

  Once inside the manor house, they came into the hands of Master Gallard. Today the usher’s main task was to oversee the sorting of everyone into their proper places along the outer sides of the long trestle tables set facing each other in a double row the length of the great hall, from the high table on die dais at the hall’s upper end to the screens’ passage at its foot. Among the matters Aunt Matilda had fretted over yesterday had been the question of whether there would be enough room for everyone, but the time of year, and the weather, had held back the number who came. There was room enough, though barely.