The Bishop’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Her silence had drawn on too long; Sir Philip looked around and up into her face. “You didn’t come to talk to me. You came to seek refuge among your uncle’s books, didn’t you?”

  “A comfort remembered from childhood, I fear.”

  He smiled. Again Frevisse was surprised at how that, and the warm depths of his eyes, negated the ruin of the rest of his face. Perhaps it was merely that he did it so rarely. “A comfort I shall be sorry to leave,” he said, “if my lord of Suffolk decides he wants a different house-priest than me.”

  “Won’t Aunt Matilda have a say in that?”

  Sir Philip shrugged. “I think that as her grief settles into her more deeply, your aunt is going to give up most of her interest in running this house. Perhaps she will join you at St. Frideswide’s. It is not unknown for a widow to take the veil.”

  Frevisse dropped her gaze to her lap. If she did, she would make an unhappy nun, for silence, humility, and obedience were not Aunt Matilda’s strongest virtues. Anyway, Sir Philip was right, the full center and single mainstay of her life had been her husband.

  “Of course, Countess Alice may provide her with grandchildren, and give her new interest in life,” the priest said. “We can only wait and see.”

  To change to an easier subject, Frevisse said, “Did my uncle ever say to you what he planned for his books after his death?”

  “I think the best he’s willed to Bishop Beaufort. Most of the rest are for Suffolk, and the remainder will be sold.” Sir Philip’s gaze traveled across the aumbries. “Your uncle had a taste for the unusual and rare as well as the precious.”

  “He valued every book he had as a candle lit against the darkness, against the ignorance we all sink into if we know only our own minds.”

  “And we all, by our nature, seek beyond our earthly limitations for God, so it is necessary that a book be goodly, if it is to give good instruction.” He said this as if it had significance beyond the obvious.

  But Frevisse did not know what point he was moving toward. She said, “I agree that mere individual reason cannot find God alone except by the greatest difficulty. Unless God himself comes to enlighten it.”

  “He comes to whom he chooses. ”God who cannot be comprehended by any man’s intellect or by any angel’s, since we and they are all created beings.“”

  Frevisse smiled. “The Cloud of Unknowing. Uncle loved that book. He said he had no hope or inclination toward the contemplative life, but the idea of it gave him pleasure. He also said the Unknowing reminded him that ‘It will be asked of you how you have spent the time you have been given.”“

  “And we often forget that we have but one goal on earth: to earn heaven. ”Him I desire, Him I seek—‘“

  “‘Nothing but Him.”“ Frevisse said the last of the quotation with him. It was an idea to which she had given over her heart when she was young. She and Sir Philip smiled with shared understanding of something more than merely precious.

  Then he said, “Since you’ve admitted to thinking I might be a murderer, may I ask about something I’ve suspected of you?”

  “If you like.”

  “Your uncle had a psalter and gospels that isn’t here anymore. I’ve looked, Master Lionel has looked. It’s nowhere in this room, and he was always very careful to keep it here.”

  Frevisse nearly smiled, but she only raised one eyebrow and said nothing. Sir Philip went on, “I rather think you know what I speak of. You came away from your first meeting with the bishop carrying a closely wrapped bundle about the size of the missing book. I think he gave it to you, perhaps on the instructions of your uncle.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “It is a copy of the vernacular translation by John Wycliffe.”

  Over fifty years ago, John Wycliffe had presumed to translate the Bible into English, that all men might read and ponder freely on its words without the interpretation or control of the Church. Except that he had had powerful friends among the nobility, Wycliffe would have been condemned by the Church and burned as a heretic. As it was, he had died free and in his bed; not until 1417 had his bones been dug up, burned, and the ashes thrown into a river. But from the very first, his Englished Bible had been a forbidden thing, though copies turned up in some unlikely places, including nunneries. Chaucer had had the psalms and gospels kept in an obscure corner among other, unoffending books of theology, and there Frevisse had found it as a girl. She had delighted in being able to read freely what was so slow and difficult for her to follow in Latin. Chaucer had not forbidden it to her, and her faith had never been hurt by it, only her dependence on what any ignorant priest might choose to say the Bible said.

  “Do you have it?” Sir Philip asked.

  “I haven’t seen it,” she said with perfect truth. Then honesty compelled her to add, “But I haven’t opened the package Bishop Beaufort gave to me.”

  Master Lionel straightened from a sheaf of documents he held and stared down the room at her. His sudden focus on something beyond his arm’s reach drew both of them to look back at him. Not seeming to notice he had become the focus of their attention, he muttered, “Not to be trusted to know where their shoe is, when it’s right on their foot. Women.”

  Sir Philip nodded with relief. “That’s likely where it is, then. I was afraid it had gone astray, that someone had it who shouldn’t. But your uncle saw to its safety.” He looked at her and said, “I will tell no one that I know where it is. Because, in plain fact, I do not.”

  “And, if anyone asks me, I can truly say that so far as I know, I do not have the book in my possession. What I suspect can remain my own business.”

  They smiled widely at each other, pleased with that sophistry. A heavy wind shook the windows and a cold draught whispered across the rush matting to startle the fire into burning higher. Frevisse pushed her shoulders back and sat up straighter on the stool. “I’ve sat here too long. I still have questions to ask. The servers at the feast may be able to tell me something.”

  Sir Philip sobered, the ease leaving his face. “It isn’t something that can just be left. And yet, in some ways, I wish we could leave whoever did it to God’s judgment and mercy.” That had never entered Frevisse’s consideration, and before she could form a reply, he asked, “What made our lord bishop think there was a human rather than the divine hand in Sir Clement’s death?”

  “He said he had heard Sir Clement demand God’s judgment too many other times. He didn’t see why this time in particular God should choose to answer him. He wanted to be sure it was God who had chosen this occasion and not someone mortal.”

  “And now you agree it was someone else, not God. Why?”

  Frevisse thought before answering, because she was not sure exactly when or how she had changed her opinion, but finally said, “Partly because it seems an unreasonable way for God to kill a man. A great deal of the lesson for the rest of us was lost by not having him simply die outright at the feast.”

  “And you presume to understand God’s intent in these things?”

  Frevisse forebore to acknowledge the jibe. Instead she said, “In the Cloud of Unknowing it’s said that each person comes to God at a different pace. Today some men who knew Sir Clement said he was changing of late, that he was not so violent as he had been, nor demanded God’s judgment so often. Maybe, in his own wickedly slow way, he was coming to God. Would God take a man still deep in sin who was at least beginning to come toward grace?”

  “God might,” Sir Philip said. “In fact I know he does.” He waited and when she did not answer, added, “Those aren’t the reasons you’re going on with this.”

  Frevisse watched the fire play among the logs for a while, feeling her way among her own thoughts before saying, “No, they aren’t. I want to know what happened. What really happened, not what we imagine happened. I want to know whether there was a human hand in this, or if it was indeed God’s act against a sinning man.”

  This time she waited and Sir Philip did not answer. He did not even move but, li
ke her, sat staring into the flames.

  Frevisse rubbed her hands over her face where the skin felt dried and tight from the fire’s warmth and finally said, “I also remembered the old story of the devil and a summoner traveling together, where the devil refuses to take a cart and horses, though their driver in a bad temper is wishing them to hell. But later when the summoner is tormenting an old woman and she wishes him to hell, the devil takes him on the instant because, says the devil, he knows a true wish when he hears it. I wish we could believe that in the moment Sir Clement demanded God’s judgment yesterday, he truly wanted it, if only for that single moment, and so God gave it to him. I wish I could believe that. But I don’t.”

  She waited but Sir Philip did not answer. The fire made small sounds in the stillness, and she did not look at him because she knew he was looking at her and she did not want to see his expression.

  It was a relief when Dame Perpetua appeared from the shadows of the doorway and said eagerly, breaking the silence between them, “There you are, Dame Frevisse! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “And I came here looking for you,” Frevisse returned. She and Sir Philip were both drawn to their feet by Dame Perpetua’s obvious excitement. “You found it?”

  Smiling with triumph, Dame Perpetua held out a slender volume. “Here, in here, there’s exactly what you wanted.”

  Frevisse took the book from her excitedly. “Why, it’s Galen.” The master of all doctors, the Roman authority second only to Aesculapius himself.

  “Here.” Dame Perpetua took the book back and opened it to a place marked by a broken end of quill. “On the right side.”

  She pointed and Frevisse read. Sir Philip came around to read over her shoulder. When they had finished, he stepped back and they all three looked at one another for a silent moment, until Dame Perpetua said, “It was Master Lionel who found it actually. Found the Galen and said he remembered something was in there about rashes and all.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing as this,” Sir Philip said, indicating the book.

  “Nor I, but there it is. Some of what I needed,” Frevisse said.

  Dame Perpetua’s face fell. “Not everything?”

  “It tells me in a general way what killed him, but not precisely. Nor who gave it to him. Or how. Though I’m beginning to guess,” she added.

  Sir Philip looked at her sharply. “You have an idea of the murderer?”

  “Oh, dear. I hoped I’d done so well,” Dame Perpetua sighed.

  Frevisse patted her arm. “You’ve done wonderfully.” She raised her voice. “And so have you, Master Lionel. Thank you.”

  Dame Perpetua said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Word has come that the crowner will be here certainly by late tomorrow morning.”

  “Then the matter is out of your hands,” Sir Philip said to Frevisse.

  He was right. The crowner would take what she had learned so far and thank her and dismiss her because there was no place for her, a nun and a woman, in his investigation. Bishop Beaufort would be satisfied. She could return to her grief and to tending her aunt, and be done with Sir Clement’s death. But last spring she had used her cleverness to shield the guilty from the law. She would probably never know whether she had been right to do so, or sinfully in error. But here, now, she had chance to make reparation for that by finding out another murderer, more deeply guilty than the one she had protected.

  “No,” she said in answer to Sir Philip. “I’m not done with this matter yet.”

  Chapter 15

  Beaufort waited at the window, watching the bleak day. Below him the lead-dull waters of the moat roughened under the wind; beyond the moat, the black, weaving limbs of the elms troubled against the sky. He shivered slightly— the weather was turning more bitter by the hour—and turned back toward the room as one of his clerks ushered in Master Broun, Dame Frevisse, and her companion nun.

  Beaufort frowned and sat down in his curved-arm chair without offering his ring to them or the suggestion that they be seated, too. He had expected Dame Frevisse, with inevitably the other nun, but not Master Broun, and did not care for the presumption. Guessing it was hers rather than his, he asked curtly, “You have reason for bringing Master Broun, Dame Frevisse?”

  Master Broun showed his surprise. “My lord, I thought you wanted me, that perhaps you felt unwell. The stresses of these past days—”

  “I am, thank God, in health.” Beaufort made a point of avoiding the attentions of physicians so far as he might. Given a chance, they found things wrong that they claimed needed to be treated in expensive ways that were usually uncomfortable and, in Beaufort’s opinion, mostly inefficacious. He understood too well in himself the lure of trying things because one had the power to do so not to recognize the trait in others. “Your being here is Dame Frevisse’s doing. She asked to see me.”

  He fixed her with a look that held contained warning that his time was not to be abused. She bowed her head to him and with admirable brevity said not to him but to Master Broun, “I needed your very expert opinion on a medical matter and thought you would more readily and attentively give it if you understood his grace the cardinal was also interested.”

  Master Broun again switched his gaze from her to Beaufort. “My lord, I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I,” the cardinal answered, “but I daresay Dame Frevisse is about to enlighten us.”

  With her head bent a little, her hands neatly folded up her sleeves in front of her, she was an image of respect as she said to Master Broun, “You attended Sir Clement at his death. We spoke of it afterwards, you may remember.” Master Broun inclined his head in dignified acknowledgment and stayed silent. She continued, “By things that have been learned since then, it seems that he was poisoned.”

  Startled, Master Broun hurriedly crossed himself twice while protesting to Beaufort, “Surely, my lord, the hand of God was rarely so clearly seen.” He turned to Dame Frevisse. “You saw the red mark of a hand on his face—”

  “I didn’t,” she answered. “I saw only the welts and no pattern at all. Nor did anyone I asked about it. If it was there, only you saw it.”

  She was plainly as set in her opinion as the physician was in his, and to forestall Master Broun’s protest and what might turn to acrimonious debate, Beaufort said, “Is this matter of the hand to the point, Dame?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Then pass it by.” He made that a warning to her and added so Master Broun would equally understand, “I asked Dame Frevisse to look more nearly into the matter of Sir Clement’s death and give me her opinion on it. I pray you, heed her and answer what she asks you in your best wise.”

  His face registering his protest, Master Broun looked sideways at Dame Frevisse and waited.

  Her own expression bland and again respectful, she began, “Poison would be the most likely explanation—”

  “I assure your grace, there is no such poison,” Master Broun interjected. “I am no expert on poisons, I assure you—” His tone indicated that no doctor worth his learning would be expert in such things. “But I am thoroughly familiar with the pharmacopoeia, and there is no drug, no plant, no combination thereof that will cause such symptoms as Sir Clement had.” He switched his officiousness to Dame Frevisse. “And I did most clearly see the mark of a hand, as if God smote him on the face.” He turned back to Beaufort and assured him, “A most holy and edifying sight before it faded after his death.”

  “God moves in mysterious ways,” Beaufort murmured; and privately added that so did the minds of men. “Dame Frevisse?”

  Very mildly—but Beaufort found he was becoming wary of her mildness—Dame Frevisse said, “The Materia Medica in Master Chaucer’s library agrees completely with what Master Broun has said. I could find no poison that works as this one did.”

  Master Broun nodded, satisfied.

  “But there is this.” She withdrew her hands from her opposite sleeves where she had modestly kept them this while, w
ith a book in one of them. She held it out to Master Broun and said very humbly, “I’m not sure—my Latin is so poor—but there seems something here. Would you look at it?”

  Master Broun looked at Beaufort instead, in clear hope of being relieved of so much nonsense. Beaufort nodded toward the book, and, reluctantly, Master Broun took it. There was a marker. He opened to it, and Dame Frevisse reached out to point to a particular place, saying, “It’s there. Can you tell us what it says?”

  Master Broun instead turned back to the front of the book to find its title. “A work by Galen,” he observed.

  “Then an authority not to be trifled with,” Beaufort said, allowing a trace of his impatience to show. He did not care to be involved in other people’s games.

  Master Broun set himself promptly to the passage Dame Frevisse had indicated. Beaufort and she waited in silence while he read it through, and then reread it before finally looking up to say in a solemn voice meant to evidence his deep thought and judgment on the matter, “I remember me this passage now from my days at Oxford, but never in all my years at practice have I encountered the matter, to bring it to my mind again until this moment.”