The Bishop’s Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  “One grows use to it,” Frevisse said, amused by the girl’s complete incomprehension. “Even to the pope. That is the core trouble with giving yourself up to the will of God—it requires you also give yourself up to the will of people who are not always godlike.”

  “I suppose it makes you far more sure of heaven,” Lady Anne said doubtfully. She obviously thought she would find a better way to that goal than through so much sacrifice. She was also growing a little bored with the conversation, fretting her white fingers at her skirts.

  “Actually I’ve come from Countess Alice and her mother and husband, to express our deep sympathy for your loss and assure you of any help that they can give during your stay here.”

  Lady Anne brightened. “How very kind. He’s important at court, isn’t he? The earl of Suffolk? And much more charming than that dreadful Bishop of Winchester.”

  “I believe so, yes,” Frevisse said in general answer.

  “But have you heard when the crowner is supposed to arrive? This waiting is terribly tedious.”

  “Tomorrow for certain.”

  “And then we can go home and be married and be rid of everything that might ever remind us of Sir Clement! Won’t that be grand!”

  “My lady?” Guy asked from the doorway.

  The maidservants rose from their work to curtsy to him. Lady Anne sprang to her feet and went to him, saying gladly, “Dame Frevisse came to offer us the family’s condolences on Sir Clement’s death, and she says the crowner will be here certainly tomorrow. Then we’ll be able to go home!”

  “When he’s finished his questioning,” Frevisse reminded her.

  Lady Anne waved a dismissive hand. “There’s hardly anything to question. There’s Sir Clement dead and God did it. We all saw it.”

  Frevisse had risen at Guy’s coming. Now, smiling in her best and most modest nun wise, she sat down. Lady Anne cast her a look as if willing her to understand she could leave now and everyone would be pleased, but Frevisse feigned not to see it, and with no choice, they joined her, Lady Anne’s displeasure somewhat showing. Frevisse smiled on them both and said, “My cousin the countess of Suffolk asked me to tell you that if there is aught we can do for you, you have but to ask.”

  As she expected, the mention of her cousin brought Guy’s attention to her more respectfully. “Thank her grace for her kindness. We’re doing very well. Everything considered,” he added, remembering there should be some grief, if only for appearance’s sake. “Everything has been seen to and is ready. As soon as the crowner gives permission, we’ll be able to leave.”

  Judging by the warm glance that passed between him and Lady Anne, he would have taken her hands then in the shared pleasure of that coming freedom, if Frevisse had not been there.

  She would have gladly left them to it but she still had questions she needed answered. “Was Sir Clement’s property all entailed, so it comes directly to you, or will there be provisions in his will lessening the inheritance?”

  “It’s all entailed,” Guy said cheerfully. “He was too busy with his quarrels to spend time extending his holdings. It all comes to me.”

  “With surely some provision made for Jevan Dey as his only other relation. Jevan is his only other relative, isn’t he?”

  “He is, but there’s no provision for him. Sir Clement was clear about that all along.”

  “But he served him so well, from what I’ve heard and seen. Why, even at the funeral feast, no one but Jevan waited on him. Or did they?”

  “Only old Jevan.”

  “Except for the wine. That was somebody else,” Lady Anne said.

  “He was pouring for everyone along that part of the table,” Guy said. “But the food, only Jevan brought that. Serviceable to the last, for all the good it will do him. No, everything comes to me, and Jevan will have exactly what he’s earned all these years of licking Sir Clement’s boots.”

  “And payment in full for putting you in trouble with Sir Clement when he could,” Lady Anne added. “That beastly marchpane.”

  “That, too,” Guy agreed.

  “The marchpane?” Frevisse asked. “You mentioned that before, didn’t you?”

  “Jevan suggested he give it to Sir Clement when Guy asked him what a good gift would be. And Sir Clement was rude about it ever afterwards.”

  “But Jevan might have done it innocently, not knowing it would enrage Sir Clement,” Frevisse suggested.

  “I doubt my cousin ever does anything innocently. He meant to make trouble then as surely as Sir Clement ever did. As they say, ”Like in one way, like in more,“ and they were alike in more than looks.” Guy frowned. “No, when Jevan has shown me what I need to know of the manor’s matters, I’ll be rid of him. There’s no other way.”

  Frevisse put on a thoughtful expression. “Lady Anne and I were talking of Sir Clement’s salvation before you came in.” Guy smothered a rude noise. Frevisse pretended not to hear, but went on as if she had been considering the problem of Sir Clement’s soul. “Is there any chance he was not so far in sin as we all think he was? Had he shown any inclination of late toward repenting his ways?”

  Lady Anne answered, “I think he may have been a little less quarrelsome of late, but I also think that was simply because he was growing old and lacked the strength toward it he had had.”

  “But he hadn’t been ill? He wasn’t given to illness?”

  “Sir Clement?” Guy scoffed. “Never. Not even rheums in winter. Nothing made him ill.”

  Frevisse looked to Lady Anne. “You found that true?”

  “Oh, yes. He was always concerned over himself. Wouldn’t eat this unless it was perfectly fresh, wouldn’t eat that at all, had to have things cooked just so. But ill, no, never.”

  “What sort of foods didn’t he like?” Frevisse pressed.

  Lady Anne shrugged. “Anything that happened to go against his fancy. From one time to the next he could hate a thing or love it. There wasn’t any sense to it.”

  Guy nodded agreement. “He was impossible to please.”

  Frevisse made casual conversation awhile longer for the sake of seeming polite, but could find no way to elicit any more useful information from either of them. She made a graceful departure as soon as she was sure of that, with some hope of finding Jevan, until she realized supper time was more near than she had thought. For manners’ sake, she ought to dine in the parlor with whomever of the family came, and so she went that way instead of after Jevan.

  Aunt Matilda did not rise for the meal. “But she’s awake and, I think, better,” Alice said. “Sir Philip is with her for a while now so I could leave.”

  She was serene but wan, and the earl, elegant in his mourning black, was attentive to her at the table, seeing she had the finest and daintiest of every dish and gently insisting she eat and drink more than she might have otherwise. For the first time, in his kindness to her cousin, Frevisse found something particular about him that she liked. But it meant that, since Bishop Beaufort had chosen to dine in his own rooms, and Sir Philip was with Aunt Matilda, there were only she and Dame Perpetua to make other conversation; and since the one thing they both wished to speak of was impossible here, their conversation was slight, with many silences. In them, Frevisse followed her own thoughts.

  Despite all her questioning, she still had only pieces, like the shards of a window she had once seen outside a burned church. Slivers and cracked pieces of bright colors, with here and there a recognizable part of a face, or the fold of a robe, or the petals of a flower, but most of it making no sense at all, just pieces that might never have been part of any pattern.

  But there had to be a way here to bring all the pieces into sense. She knew Sir Clement had died from eating a food that was poison to him but to no one else around him. She did not know what the food was; or how he had come to eat it, since he seemed to have known exactly what was dangerous to him; or who had given it to him; or exactly why. The why was the least problem; there were more than enough people
with reasons for hating Sir Clement to death. But who had known exactly what to use to kill him? And how had they put it into his food at the feast? Guy, Lady Anne, and Jevan were the three best able to have done it, and they all had reasons to want him dead. Neither Guy nor Lady Anne apparently had any idea there was a food deadly to Sir Clement; or they—one or the other or both-—were feigning their innocence. If they were not, that left Jevan, except he was going to lose the most by Sir Clement’s death and so, perhaps, should have been least willing toward it.

  She realized Dame Perpetua had been talking to her, attempting to maintain at least the appearance of propriety, and that she had been nodding her head as if attending to what she said. But now something finally meshed with her own thoughts and she interrupted sharply. “What?”

  Dame Perpetua paused in mild surprise at the abruptness, then repeated patiently, “I said that I’m sorry I delayed your learning about the poison this afternoon by not staying where you expected to find me.”

  “No, that was all right,” Frevisse assured her. “It was what you said after that. About why you left.”

  “Because someone came in to see Sir Philip.”

  “No, you said who it was that came in.”

  “Why, Sir Clement’s nephew. The one who looks so like him. He seemed troubled, or maybe only tired, but he wanted to speak to Sir Philip alone. I thought it would be easier for me to go man them, so I went in search of you, with the Galen.”

  “And he stayed to talk with Sir Philip?”

  “That’s why he came,” Dame Perpetua explained again, patiently.

  Sir Philip had been talking with Jevan, then, probably not long before she had come into the library herself, but he had never mentioned Jevan being there. Why should he? she asked herself. And promptly asked back, Why hadn’t he? Especially after she had told him what she was doing at Bishop Beaufort’s behest, when he had to know that she would be interested in anything about anyone who had been around Sir Clement.

  The meal was finished. Alice and Suffolk were rising; the servants were hovering to clear dishes and table away.

  Frevisse stood up with Dame Perpetua and said, “If you’ll pardon us, we’re going to do Vespers in the chapel, to make up for the services we have somewhat scanted these few days.”

  No objection could be made to that, except perhaps by Dame Perpetua, who had had no idea of any such thing. But she remained admirably silent, made her curtsy with Frevisse, and followed her from the room. Not until they were on the stairs down to the hall did she say, “This is a good idea of yours, Dame. But what else are you about?”

  “I don’t know,” Frevisse said. “But I couldn’t stay there longer, doing nothing.”

  “It seems you’ve already done a great deal today.”

  “But none of it will matter if I don’t find out the answers that make all of it make sense.”

  “You might be better for a rest, a night’s sleep.”

  “I might be,” Frevisse agreed, and went on. With a sigh, Dame Perpetua accompanied her.

  The servants were just finishing with clearing the hall after supper. Frevisse saw Lady Anne and Guy, Sir Ralph, Sir Edward, and Lady Eleanor clustered in front of the fireplace, but her attention went to Master Gallard, busy at setting servants to make the rushes even where they had been scrabbled by table legs and people’s feet. For all his apparent fluster, he was efficient about it, just as he had been efficient at everything these past few days. But even now that she knew he was Sir Philip’s brother, she could find no family resemblance, either in looks or manner.

  He saw her before she could turn away, and hurried over, to make his eager, bobbing bow and ask, “Is there aught I can do for you? How does Mistress Chaucer? Better, I hope. This has been a very heavy business for her, poor lady.”

  “She’s resting quietly and that’s the best thing for her just now.”

  “Very certainly. But is there anything I can do for you?”

  She had been intending to ask Guy and Lady Anne where Jevan might be, since he was not in the hall, but now she said, “I’m looking for Jevan Dey.”

  Master Gallard puckered his lips thoughtfully, then said, “I think I saw him going to the chapel before supper. He never came to eat, you know. He should. He’s far too thin. Unless he’s gone somewhere else, he’s in the chapel, surely.”

  “There’s very little that you miss, is there, Master Gallard?”

  Frevisse said it as a compliment, and he took it so. “No, no, not if I can help it.”

  “I didn’t know you were Sir Philip’s brother.”

  Master Gallard looked surprised. “There was no call for you to know, certainly. And there’s very little like between us, is there?”

  “But you’re glad to be serving together this while?”

  “Most certainly. We were apart for many years, but have a fondness for each other. It’s good to be together while we can, before—” He broke off with a sudden intake of breath, as if he had nearly committed an indiscretion.

  “Until Bishop Beaufort takes him into his service,” Frevisse finished for him.

  Master Gallard looked relieved. “You know his expectations then? Yes, he has good hope of it. And well he should. He’s very clever.”

  “And ambitious?” She said it as a mild joke about something of which they both knew and approved.

  Master Gallard bobbed on his feet as he answered archly, “Within the limits he deserves to be, surely.”

  “Wasn’t he bothered by Sir Clement’s insistence he could prove you weren’t freeborn?”

  “It was all nonsense. Pigeon traps in water.” Master Gallard waved his hands airily to show the foolishness. “There are papers. Philip has them all. Sir Clement had no claim, even on me. Philip would be safe, of course, being a priest, but I’d have no protection at all, and can you see me in a village, doing day work for anyone? But there were no grounds for it. Sir Clement was only being odious.”

  “But you’re nonetheless not sorry that he’s dead.”

  “There’s no one sorry, I fear.” Master Gallard dropped his voice to emphasize the solemnity of his answer. “And few pretending they are. Though after a death like that we should all consider our place in God’s eye and amend our ways.”

  “You were in the hall when it happened?” Frevisse could not remember whether she had seen him then or not.

  “No, no. My feet, you know”—Master Gallard bobbed slightly—“they grow sore when I’m on them too long, or if I stand too still. They’re very tender, and that morning by the time we’d finished with the funeral and seeing everyone into their places, well, I was in desperate need of sitting down, and I did, in the kitchen where I could still be sure of what went on, of course, in case of need. But when the outcry over Sir Clement began, it took me too long to reach the hall, with the servants in the way and all, so I only saw him being taken out. But there was talk of it afterward. More than enough talk. A terrible business, terrible. You’ve recovered from the shock of seeing it, my ladies?”

  “Quite recovered, yes,” Frevisse assured him. “If you’ll excuse us?”

  Master Gallard assured them that he would, and while he was busy at it, Frevisse deftly extricated herself and Dame Perpetua and they went on their way.

  “Did you learn anything from that?” Dame Perpetua asked when they were well away from being overheard.

  “I learned Master Gallard agrees with Sir Philip’s story that Sir Clement was no threat to them. It would be better if he’d said he’d actually seen the papers that insure that. So far, I have only Sir Philip’s word that they exist.”

  “And you couldn’t very well ask Master Gallard.”

  “No. That’s something I’ll have to leave to the crowner. He has a right to ask and be answered, where I might be refused for impertinence. But I also learned Master Gallard was in the kitchen and so had access to Sir Clement’s food.” Which was useless unless she found some way he could have known which dishes Jevan would take
to Sir Clement, because surely he could not have put the poison food into every dish or even remove one without someone in the kitchen noticing what he was doing, and that would have been too large a risk to run.

  The chapel was as it had been the first evening, when Frevisse had come to pray beside Chaucer’s corpse, except that there were fewer candles around the bier and only two men kneeled beside the coffin. One of them was Jevan.

  Not willing to disturb him at his prayers, Frevisse beckoned Dame Perpetua to the other end of the chapel, and by a single candle’s light, their heads close together over Dame Perpetua’s prayer book, they whispered through Vespers. When they were done, Dame Perpetua looked questioningly from Frevisse to Jevan’s back, and back again. Frevisse shrugged, not knowing what to do except wait and hope it would not be too long.