4 The Bishop's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “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 in 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 emotio
ns 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.

  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.