The Bishop’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  The principal problem—and one Frevisse was glad fell onto the usher Master Gallard and nowhere near her—was of precedence. The family and those guests of very highest estate would sit at the high table. The tables down the hall would seat the guests of lesser rank. To seat diem in precedence, giving offense to none, was a delicate art and a diplomatic balancing act. Master Gallard, fussy and over-busy as he always seemed to be when facing far less trying tasks, managed with surprising skill. For this occasion of rigorous importance, his fussing had smoothed over into competent haste. And haste was very necessary in directing servants to guide guests to their places all around the tables before there could be impatience or open complaint. He had committed everyone’s face and place to memory. There was no order to their coming, but as they reached him at the door into the hall, he directed the servants where to lead them with a gesture and briefest word. In remarkably short while, the guests were seated along the outside of the tables, and the servers were bringing out the first course of the elaborate meal.

  Frevisse, as a member of the family, had place at the high table; but because she was not of Chaucer’s actual blood, she was at its far right end, well away from the concentration of lordliness at its center, where Bishop Beaufort, as a prince of the church and great-uncle to the king as well as Chaucer’s cousin, held pride of place next to Aunt Matilda, with Alice on her other side. Not even the duke of Norfolk, sent as the king’s representative with the royal condolences, had precedence over Bishop Beaufort, and Alice’s husband, as earl of Suffolk, was further aside, beyond the bishop of Lincoln.

  The high table was nearly the width of the hall itself, and crowded full with others almost as impressive as those at its center. But Frevisse, overly warm in the church, then chilled during the windy walk back to the manor house, and now growing too warm again in the crowded hall, was more concerned that she might have a headache coming than with conversing with any of them. She was not used to headaches and was not sure if her head’s ache was going to increase into something sickening or ease as she grew used to the crowding and noise—even at a funeral feast, the talk rose loudly with the need to be heard over the voices of so many others. But since she was at the table’s end, there was no one to her right, and the abbot on her left was far too busy talking toward the more important center of the table to pay more than passing heed to her. Except that they shared serving dishes and a goblet between them, he would probably not have acknowledged her presence at all.

  To her wry amusement, Frevisse found herself caught between annoyance at being ignored and relief that she did not have to bother with conversation more complex than, “Yes, thank you, I’ll have a little of that.” She ate meagerly, but mostly her attention wandered to the guests at the long tables below her among the bustle of servers. She saw Dame Perpetua, well down the other side of the hall, seated with another nun and Sir Philip and a man who was either bald or another priest; it was difficult to tell at this distance.

  Somewhat nearer along the tables, Frevisse recognized Sir Clement Sharpe with Lady Anne and his nephew Guy on either side of him. Keeping them apart still, Frevisse thought, and wondered how much good it would do him in die end.

  Leaning over Sir Clement’s shoulder to pour wine into the goblet he shared with Lady Anne, was Jevan Dey. Seen together with his uncle, their resemblance was marked. But where Sir Clement’s face was active, open and intent, Jevan’s was shut, without even the small animation he had had when talking to her with Robert Fenner. Sir Clement had much to answer for there.

  Because of the excess of people, a great many of the guests were being served by their own servants or, if their estate was sufficient, their own squires. There was an almost constant flow of food from the kitchen, entering from die screens’ passage and spreading out along me inner side of the U-shape the tables made. The platters and bowls of everything from wheat hulled and boiled with fruit to capons stuffed with oysters were arranged to serve people by fours, except at the high table, where in token of their place only two shared the served dishes. That meant Frevisse received some attention from the abbot beside her, as he displayed his manners by setting particularly choice bits on her plate before taking his own portion. Still unsure of her head and of how her stomach might respond to so much rich food, Frevisse ate only what she felt she absolutely must—a chicken wing, a modicum of dried fruit seethed in wine—until the oyster stuffing; she forgot herself with that and ate as much as might be. She could not remember when last she had had oysters.

  The next course was pies full of beef and currants, their juices dark with spices and orange peel. Each was surrounded by baked eggs, and Frevisse, her appetite roused now, cracked one and ate it. That left her mouth dry and she drank deeply from the goblet she shared with the abbot, wiping her lips first so that no grease might sheen the wine, wiping the rim afterwards where her lips had touched. As she set the goblet down, the abbot took it up and drank deeply enough to empty it, without bothering to wipe lip or rim; apparently thirst was more than manners with him. Frevisse averted her eyes from his lapse and refrained from comment as she let him place a share of the pie on her plate.

  While she ate, her gaze moved absently around the hall. She caught glimpse of Robert Fenner serving a little ways down the table in front of her, but did not see Sir Walter. Dame Perpetua was speaking with Sir Philip, their heads close together to be heard. Sir Clement, she saw, was shifting a fistful of bones from his plate to the voiding platter in front of him that showed he had taken the greater share of the chicken that should have been split equally among him, Lady Anne, Guy, and the man beyond him. So he was greedy as well as contentious. How many other sins did he so fully indulge in? Frevisse wondered. She watched with amusement as Lady Anne drew him into conversation over the goblet they shared while Guy drew the large custard Jevan had just set before them toward himself and gave large portions to himself and the man beside him.

  Then someone moved directly in front of her, blocking her view but bearing a welcome pitcher of wine. Frevisse glanced up in gratitude—she was thirsty again—then said with outright pleasure at the familiar and friendly face, “Robert! What are you doing?”

  “Waiting on you, my lady, and anyone else between the whiles Sir Walter needs me. He’s down the tables from you only a little way, in heavy talk with an archdeacon over the cost of masses for the dead. Look—no, you can’t see him for the fat justice of common pleas in the way, and he can’t see you—”

  “Which should help both our digestions,” Frevisse put in.

  “True,” Robert agreed. He set the goblet back on the table, filled to a neat margin from the rim and, still leaning forward, asked too low for anyone else to hear in the general loudness of the hall, “How is it with Lady Thomasine?”

  “She’s Sister Thomasine these three years,” Frevisse said gently. “And it’s very well with her. She’s happy.”

  “God keep her so,” Robert said, and went away down the tables to fill other people’s goblets.

  Frevisse said softly, “He does.” She took the goblet before the abbot’s hand reached it, to drink deeply enough both to satisfy her thirst and to leave him waiting for another server to satisfy his own. There were ways of being rude that were far more polite than his.

  But her thoughts stayed with Robert. Three years and he still remembered a love he had known barely three days, had never had any real hope of even then, and had never seen since. Was it truly love with him? Or only the longing after Love that settles for the lesser thing, fixing the heart on something of the World because to fix the heart on the Thing Invisible that was the core and creation of Love in its full reality took more courage than many wanted to give to their lives.

  Frevisse’s own choice had been made before she was Robert’s age, and she still barely had an answer for herself, let be anyone else.

  She became aware of a disturbance down the hall, heads turning toward rising voices and servers drawing back from one part of the tables.
r />   “Now, pray, what is this bother?” the abbot said in distaste.

  “Sir Clement Sharpe,” Frevisse said, seeing the center of the trouble.

  “Ah, yes. Of course,” the abbot agreed, unsurprised, and reached for the new plate just set down before them laden with minced meat shaped like pears and gilded with egg yolk touched in one place with cherry juice to heighten the illusion, with a fragment of almond for a stem. Frevisse ignored the plate to watch Sir Clement, on his feet shouting at the man on the far side of Lady Anne, who was also on his feet and shouting back at him. The general noise of the hall was too great for Frevisse to understand what they were saying, but Lady Anne was cowered down between them, while their near neighbors were crowding away along the benches from whatever was going to happen. Except Guy, who, behind Sir Clement, was rising to his own feet and reaching out to his uncle’s shoulder.

  Realization of what was happening had spread through the entire great hall now. Conversations died into a hush just as Guy gripped Sir Clement’s shoulder from behind and Sir Clement turned on him, knocking his hand away and shouting, “Keep your hand off me, you murderous young whelp!”

  Then Sir Philip was there, gesturing Guy back while interposing himself between Sir Clement and the other guest. Aware of how many were straining to hear him, he spoke low, first to Sir Clement and then to the other man. Guy had subsided onto the bench again; Frevisse saw him and Lady Anne exchange looks and Guy shake his head, all unseen by Sir Clement who was now arguing with Sir Philip.

  Or beginning to, because as Sir Clement leaned his face into the priest’s, his voice rising again, Sir Philip made a small but definite gesture past him toward the high table in forcible reminder of where they were and who was watching.

  Frevisse doubted Sir Clement needed reminding; again he gave her the impression of a man exactly aware of what he was doing, and enjoying it. But Sir Philip’s gesture gave him excuse to straighten, swing around, and make a flourishing, apologetic bow to everyone at the high table, and another to the widow and Bishop Beaufort in particular. Then he caught up the goblet from between himself and Lady Anne, held it high, and declared in a voice that carried end to end of the great hall, “But if I’m wrong in this matter, may God strike me down within the hour!”

  As dramatically as he had bowed to the high table, he downed what was in the goblet in a single toss, set it down with a defining clunk on the tablecloth, looked all around at everyone, and sat down abruptly, straight-backed with pride and enjoyment of every eye on him.

  “He’s always doing that,” me abbot observed for Frevisse’s ear alone. Through the hall a broken murmur was passing, people bending to explain something briefly to one or another, and then voices rose again in ordinary talk.

  But Frevisse, still shocked to the heart by Sir Clement’s words, turned to the abbot. “What did you say?”

  Cutting into his illusion pear, the abbot said, “He’s always doing that. Swearing he’s right and may God strike him down within the hour if he’s not. Someday God may oblige him, and he’ll be quite surprised.”

  A server set a dish of minted peas in front of them. The abbot lost interest in her again.

  Robert returned to pour more wine. “Don’t look so horrified, Dame Frevisse. Almost anyone who’s been around Sir Clement more than half a day has heard him say that.”

  “But it’s blasphemy, daring God that way! And to do it so casually—”

  “But it’s dangerous only if he’s wrong, and Sir Clement never believes he’s wrong.”

  “What of the poor girl, caught in the middle of all that? How long until she comes of age and is rid of him?”

  “Lady Anne is as vulnerable as a hedgehog,” Robert said without malice. “All soft eyes and gentle ways and a thousand spines. Whichever of them marries her, he won’t have as lovely a time of it as he thinks he will.”

  He was moving away as he said it, and gone too far for Frevisse to ask who besides Guy wanted to marry the lady. But it was hardly a difficult guess. The angry moments outside the chapel had revealed Lady Anne’s relationship with Guy; and by his fury it would be no surprise if Sir Clement were interested in marriage with her, as well. Of course he had the upper hand in the matter because while she was his ward he controlled her marriage. He could not, by law, force her to marry against her will, but the law also provided severe penalties for her if she refused a reasonable match. And there were subtler ways than the law to make her life a hell and bring her to his will, if he chose to take it that far.

  Frevisse took a deep draught of the wine. Her head was surely tightening itself into a headache, and there was at least another hour left to this feast. She regarded her illusion pear and the dish of peas with distaste; she was used to far simpler food at St. Frideswide’s and had already eaten more meat than would usually come her way in a week. Later her stomach would certainly have something to say about the rich assault she had made on it.

  There was another commotion from where Sir Clement sat, and people were again drawing rapidly away from him, this time Guy and Lady Anne among them, so that very suddenly Sir Clement was alone, still seated but bent forward toward the table with both hands clutching at its edge as, red-faced with effort, he strangled for breath.

  “Well!” said the abbot. “Perhaps God’s grown as tired of him as the rest of us have and decided to judge him after all.”

  Chapter 8

  After the first moment of shock, the hall seethed into chaos, with some shouting, a few screams, and much exclaiming. People rose to their feet, some trying to pull farther away from Sir Clement, others crowding toward him. A few climbed onto benches, craning for a chance to see, and fragments of prayers rose among the exclamations, inquiries, and frenzied chatter. Sir Clement was blocked from Frevisse’s view, but like the abbot, she kept her seat, knowing futility when she saw it; even with the added height the dais gave to the high table, she would see nothing if she stood. There was nothing she could do at this distance, no way to get through the turmoil to Sir Clement. But she crossed herself and began a fervent prayer for him, because he was clearly in God’s hands now and for him especially that must be a terrifying place. Very rarely was God’s judgment seen so clearly, swift and sure, in this world. With that fear on her, she added a prayer of acceptance of his will, because God forbid she contradict him in his judgment, lest in another way she be as guilty as Sir Clement.

  Beside her, she noticed, the abbot was deep into passionate prayer of his own.

  Down the hall some sort of order was being forced. People shifted back so that a few men—mostly servants, but Sir Philip among them—could help Sir Clement to his feet and away from the table. He was bent far over, still strangling for breath, his fists pressed hard against his chest. Crying, “Make way!” the men holding him up half led, half carried him from the hall. A momentary silence followed them, but when they were gone the babble of wonder and alarm began to rise again.

  Bishop Beaufort rose in his place to his full, impressive height and, with his hands held wide to include everyone in front of him, declared in his strong voice, “Good people! We’ve seen a wonder here with our own eyes. May God, having made his will manifest, have mercy on this man. Let us pray for him. And for ourselves, who may be as near and unknowing as Sir Clement was to God’s great judgment. Return to your places, I bid you. Sit, that we may pray.”

  He was so completely sure of their obedience that— scared or awed or wary—people complied, the guests subsiding onto their benches, the servers to their places near their lords or along the screen to the kitchen. The gap where Sir Clement, his ward, and his nephew had sat remained eloquently empty; people glanced at it and nervously away, or kept their eyes averted entirely.

  Bishop Beaufort waited until the hall was still and all their eyes on him. Then he brought his hands together, said, “Oremus” and bent his head. Every head in the hall bent with him, and in a voice that carried all through the hall, meant to reach everyone as well as God, he sa
id, “Lord of power and might, may we—dust in your wind—learn not to tempt your wrath. If it be your will, spare Sir Clement Sharpe, that he may be a better servant in your sight to the end of his appointed days, if these be not they. Sed fiat voluntas tua. And may we all come to the ends you have appointed and find your mercy at the last, through Christ our lord, who lives and reigns forever. Amen.”

  He lifted his head and said in a more common voice, “Now let us remember that we came to honor our friend Thomas Chaucer and go on with this meal in remembrance of him, may he rest in God.”

  A murmurous response ran through the hall. Hands moved, making the cross from head to breast, left shoulder to right. Some heads remained briefly lowered in personal prayers. Much subdued and in deep order, the meal continued. Bishop Beaufort sat down and turned to comfort Matilda, pale and shaken beside him.