by K. E. Martin
***
When she had gone the shuffling retainer escorted me to my chamber and then left me, mumbling that supper would be served in the hall presently. Now I took stock of my accommodation.
By presenting myself as an itinerant minstrel of no account I had fully expected to be given lodging of the most basic kind. A straw pallet in a draughty loft was the best that I had hoped for, so my amazement was equal to my relief when I was ushered into a small but comfortably appointed apartment situated at the end of a wide passageway above the hall.
There was a high wooden bed, thankfully large enough so that my long legs need not dangle off the end. The coverlets were red embroidered worsted which looked worn but clean and the pillow was plump with feathers. In the grate a small fire had been made ready and a lit candle had been placed in the sconce affixed to the bed frame. Much of the floor was covered with an old rug of blue and white linsey-woolsey. At the foot of the bed stood a small painted linen coffer and on the wall was a cupboard for my few personal possessions. Peering beneath the bed I found a tin basin, intended for a pisspot, which I immediately put to good use. Across the room was a small shuttered window which overlooked the kitchen garden and fishponds at the back of the house. As I sank gratefully onto the bed I discovered that the servant had left me with a spare candle. Smiling, I gave silent thanks that Plaincourt hospitality spared even unimportant guests the weakling light of rush dips.
In truth, based on my treatment thus far I could scarce direct any complaint at Plaincourt hospitality. Before taking his leave, my shambling guide had taken care to point me in the direction of the Necessary, and then grunted that I should join ‘my lady’ for dinner once I was comfortable. Since they gave such tender care to a nobody, I wondered idly what treatment they would lavish on a person of real consequence.
That there were bigger, better appointed apartments than mine I was well aware, for we had passed several large and ornately decorated doorways on the way to my simple chamber. I had ventured to ask old Shuffler if one of them was where Sir Stephen slept but he had shaken his head and answered that the master’s solar was reached by a different staircase.
I had left the hall through an archway near the main entrance. It gave on to two passageways, one of which led to the staircase that had brought me to my chamber while the other, if I guessed correctly, led to the kitchens. Now I recalled having seen a second staircase at the top end of the hall, near the dais, and I realised that it must lead up to Sir Stephen’s private quarters. I wondered if he shared them with the delightful Mistress Blanche, or if she was playing the virtuous maiden until after her nuptials.
Mistress Blanche! Lovely as she was, the thought of her filled me with deep unease, for without doubt there was something very amiss about her. Perchance she was being forced into marriage with Sir Stephen against her will but the pride she had shown when identifying herself as his betrothed told me otherwise, as did her avowal that she had been promised to him for some time. And from her demeanour she certainly gave no sign of being a lovesick girl pining for a lover on the run from a false accusation of murder. No, what I had seen and heard led me inescapably to the conclusion that delectable Mistress Blanche had played poor Fielding false. As to why, already I had begun to comprehend and the idea of it filled me with a cold revulsion that threatened to blunt my appetite. Yet if I was to solve this mystery as my lord of Gloucester wished, I could linger no more in my chamber. Supper and Mistress Blanche awaited.
Chapter 6
Mistress Blanche
When I sat down to supper I found myself seated on the dais in company with Mistress Blanche and a pinch-faced priest who was introduced to me as Father Gregory. He tended the flock at St Oswald’s, the church I had seen as I passed through the village. From something he let slip I gathered that he was an infrequent guest at the manor table and had been greatly surprised to be summoned thence that day by Mistress Blanche. Why she wanted him there I could not say for sure, but I imagined she was aware that her earlier manner with me had been too free and mayhap she believed she would show greater decorum in the presence of a priest.
If that were the case, it was a pity for her that poor Father Gregory was so sorely afflicted with the toothache that he could scarce chew a mouthful of the salted fish set before us, such was the severity of his pain. Before much time had elapsed, Blanche became exasperated with his audible sighs and extravagant winces and tersely ordered him home to his bed. The brusqueness of her tone was softened by an offer to despatch a servant with a hog’s bean plaister of her own devising to relieve his suffering, for which Father Gregory thanked her effusively before scampering from the hall with more haste than dignity.
Now I was alone with the mysterious Mistress Blanche, save for approximately twenty household servants and retainers who sat some way distant at a lower table. Studying their faces, I saw a few I recognised including the gatekeeper’s lad, the groom who had taken my horse and the old fellow I identified to myself as Shuffler. I was sorry not to see my new friend Matthew at the tables but comprehended full well that the nature of his duties would tie him to the kitchen. Yet it would have heartened me to see his good-natured face, for despite the comfort, order and plenty of Plaincourt Manor, to me there was a sense of wrongness about the place, a feeling of something rotten creeping outwards from the hidden corners like a vast malignant shadow.
My unease came in part from the sudden realisation that thus far none save Matthew had made any mention of poor Geoffrey, even though the lad had been in his grave less than a fortnight. The boy had been master of Plaincourt, in name if not in fact, so I would have expected at least some small acknowledgement of the manor’s recent bereavement and yet there was none.
The servants I could excuse since I had spoken little to those with whom I had thus far come into contact, but Sir Stephen’s lovely betrothed was a different matter. It struck me that when she had allowed me to shelter at Plaincourt, she should have informed me that her intended’s nephew was recently deceased, believed murdered, if only to ensure I conducted myself with sombre respect. Already more than half convinced that she had played a role in the poor lad’s demise, I found that her failure to speak of him only served to stoke the flames of my suspicion.
Further study of the servants revealed that there were scarcely any women amongst their number. This was not in itself surprising since houses such as Plaincourt were often exclusively male preserves apart from the lady of the manor and her attendants. Therefore the current unmarried status of Sir Stephen explained the dearth of females about the place but it did not explain why Mistress Blanche had come to be there in the first place. It struck me as a most unusual state of affairs.
Excepting Blanche, the only other woman present at supper was a pale, thin serving girl with hair the colour of bleached straw. The timidity of her manner as she proffered dishes told me she was unaccustomed to serving in the hall. In fact, the greasiness of her garb led me to suspect that she must be some sort of kitchen skivvy, summoned to the hall so that Blanche should not be alone among the menfolk.
Despite the pallor of the wench she was pretty enough for me to throw an admiring glance her way, which she noticed and responded to with a small gratified smile. Blanche noticed too and bridled somewhat, from which I guessed that she was not pleased to be sharing my attention with another. Yet though Blanche was ten, nay twenty times fairer than the serving wench, if what I suspected of her was correct I should sooner lie with my old nurse than with such as she.
For now though, it was important that she should think me smitten so I removed my gaze from the serving girl and began to ply Mistress Blanche liberally with flattery and wine. Thanks to our earlier conversation I already knew she had a weakness for the former and from the greedy way she kept gulping from her cup, it became clear that she had a strong liking for the latter. Seeing my opportunity, I feigned a desire to repay some of the kindness she had shown me by waiting on her myself. This simple device permitted me to r
efill her cup far more often and more fully than the serving girl would have done.
“But surely you shall repay me later, Master Cranley,” she whispered, inclining provocatively towards me and allowing her velvet-clad shoulder to brush against my arm.
“I shall?” I questioned, uncertain of her meaning but willing my eyes to look meaningfully into hers all the same.
“Why of a certainty,” she laughed, “for when we have done here you shall play for me. I am all eagerness to hear you sing and see how you handle your lute.”
“Then I shall still be in your debt,” I countered, “for it will be my great honour and pleasure to play for you, fairest lady. How could it not be so? But now,” I leaned forward and once again poured a generous measure of the ruby liquid into her cup, “will you not tell me something of yourself?”
“What would you know?” she asked, raising the wine to her lips and drinking deeply. When she wasn’t holding her cup, she had a habit of rubbing one of the glossy amber beads of her necklace between her fingers.
“I would know everything about you,” I ventured, flicking my gaze from her violet eyes to her flushed cheeks and then down to her bosom which, though concealed by the high, v-shaped neck of her gown, could be seen rising and falling with delightful rapidity.
“For now though, dearest lady, I implore you to tell me where you come from. Since you, alas, are betrothed to another I feel I must hasten without delay to your home town in hope of discovering others possessed of similar beauty in the vicinity.”
As the words left my mouth I was sure that in my eagerness for information I had overdone the fulsome adulation. By lucky chance, however, Blanche was already too far gone in wine and vanity to notice my clumsiness.
“You’ll find none like me in St Honorine du Flers,” she chuckled and then, responding to the questioning tilt of my head, explained that this was the name of the rural French backwater from whence she came.
“You are wondering that the name of my home town is also my own name. Well, it is easily enough explained. You see, I consider it a sight prettier than the vulgar name with which I was born. And when my mother placed me in the care of a noble English lady prior to taking the veil, I decided that since I was having a new life and family forced upon me, I might as well take a new name as well.”
She stopped abruptly, as if faintly embarrassed by her own candour, but I was intrigued by her words and begged her to continue. It was all the prompting she needed to pour out to me an account of her childhood, a story that might have touched my heart with pity had I not already been convinced she was a cold-hearted whore.
I learned that the exquisite Blanche St Honorine du Flers was born Blanche Le Taverne, the only child of a lovely, pious woman called Fayette and Claud, a fat, good-humoured innkeeper who owned the biggest and best tavern in the town of St Honorine du Flers. Located in a remote corner of Normandy, the town though undistinguished was prosperous enough and pretty too, in a general way. In any case, when Blanche was a small child she thought it the centre of the world. Her father was uncouth and smelt of ale and sweat, she confessed to me, while her mother was refined and lavender-scented. Yet it was only from her father that she received the affection and attention she craved. Though usually busy with tavern affairs he always had time to stroke her under the chin as he passed by, or scoop her up so that she could ride in splendour on his shoulders. Sometimes - the best times, as Blanche recalled - he would sit her on a barrel in the backroom of the tavern and tell her fantastical stories as he worked.
Her beautiful mother did none of these things. Although Fayette was a dutiful parent and far from unkind, she always maintained an emotional distance from Blanche, never enfolding her child in motherly embraces or giving her kisses, even when she hurt herself in childish accidents or fell sick from eating too many cherries. The child took this lack of maternal affection in her stride, accepting it as her lot to have an undemonstrative mother even though she knew, from observing other families about the town, that this was a far from normal state of affairs.
What was also unusual, Blanche noticed, was the freezing hostility with which her mother treated her father. Much of the time she behaved as if he didn’t exist but when she was compelled to notice him, she spoke to him as though he were the meanest of her servants rather than her spouse. The observant child also noticed how her mother shunned the day-to-day running of the tavern, choosing instead to spend her hours working on her embroidery in the pleasant courtyard garden behind the tavern or on her knees at the prie dieu in her bedchamber.
Curiously, Claud never seemed to resent his wife’s coldness or her refusal to set her dainty foot in his tavern, and he seemed well content to clothe her in costly silk and velvet while he himself wore the serge and fustian suited to his rank. At the time Blanche never thought to question why her mother had such fine ways but in later years, she told me, she had come to believe that Fayette had been a highborn lady forced through some ill circumstance to marry the rough tavern-keeper against her will.
When Blanche was aged five or six her father suffered a seizure in the tavern; one moment he was making a ribald jest as he served a customer, the next his face turned puce and he fell to the ground with a hairy hand clutching at his chest. He died minutes later, expiring on the muddy rushes of the tavern floor.
Though her father was dead, for some time Blanche’s life remained much the same as before save for the absence of the rough, good-natured man who used to pluck her from her feet and plant onion-scented kisses on her cheek as he swung her around. Unwilling to allow the inconvenient death of her husband to interfere with her daily routine, Fayette promptly hired a capable man to manage the day-to-day running of the tavern. Thereafter, she continued to spend her days in the garden or on her knees.
Blanche blithely assumed that this way of life pleased her mother and she therefore expected it to continue indefinitely. Thus she was in no way prepared for the drastic way in which her life changed when she was eight years old. It started with a summons to attend Fayette in her chamber. There, she received the news that her mother could no longer tolerate living in the world and intended to retire to the cloisters. Before Blanche could utter a word, her mother announced that she had sold the tavern in order to pay for her life of comfortable seclusion.
“But what about me, Maman?” the startled child had asked. “Must I also live with nuns?”
Even at that tender age, said Blanche, she had known she was a thoroughly worldly creature. A life of prayer and contemplation was far from the exciting future she imagined for herself so when she learned that she would not be sharing her mother’s religious seclusion she had been shocked yet deeply thankful.
“I know you, my child,” Fayette had told her, “I know how you love gaiety and music and food and laughter. Indeed, how could it be otherwise, my pretty greedy one, when you have grown up in a tavern such as this? So I know that the abbey is no place for you. You would be miserable and in your misery my peace would be destroyed.
“So this is what I have arranged for you. Before I turn my back on the world I am taking you to Calais. There I will deliver you into the care of Mistress Cecile. Her aunt is the Abbess of the religious house in Caen I have chosen to enter.
“Mistress Cecile is waiting woman to a fine English noblewoman who has been residing these last few weeks at Calais Castle. Now the lady is about to return to her home in England and at Cecile’s request - and in return for a handsome stipend, for this lady currently has great need of funds - she has graciously agreed to take you into her household.
“Attend me well, my daughter! This is a wonderful opportunity for you. You will be brought up in the household of a great noblewoman where you will learn to be genteel. Cecile will keep an eye on you, and ensure that your new mistress keeps her word to raise you as she would a high born maid-in-waiting.
“You must be willing and obedient, of course, but there will be no rough work for you, for you are to be more than a common
servant. You will meet many important people and if you are always virtuous and clever, who knows but you may find a husband far above your station. Yes Blanche, I pray you will always remember that your mother has done well for you in securing Jacquetta, Dowager Duchess of Bedfordshire as your mentor.”
Throughout her story, Blanche had shot occasional glances at my face in order to see how I was reacting to her words. She did so again when she came to name Jacquetta of Bedford as her noble benefactress but this time she paused, placed her dainty white hands flat upon the table and gave a slight but perceptible toss of her head before fixing me with her startling violet eyes.
Clearly she expected me to register some kind of amazement at the auspicious company she had been keeping and I was in no mind to disappoint. For one thing, I wanted to keep her sweet as I was eager to hear the rest of her story. For another, I was every bit as astonished to discover her connection to the Dowager Duchess as she had hoped I would be.
Jacquetta of Bedford was an exalted personage indeed. Her daughter Elizabeth was now the crowned consort of our liege lord King Edward but even before this illustrious marriage had taken place, Jacquetta had been an extremely high-ranking and well-connected woman with the blood of several European royal houses flowing through her veins. It was extraordinarily advantageous for a young woman from a lowly tavern background to have been given a place in her household, and Blanche’s animated manner told me she was well aware of the fact.
Look at me, I fancied her eyes were commanding me, I was a tavern-keeper’s daughter but see how far I have risen, and how much further I might yet rise. In the face of such desperate eagerness, I easily found the eloquence required to express my surprise and admiration at her good fortune. Satisfied, she continued with her tale.