4 The Bishop's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Frevisse nodded briskly and followed Sir Philip and the maidservant out of the room.

  Chapter 13

  When Frevisse came into her aunt’s bedchamber she found Matilda lying in bed desperately clinging to Alice’s hands and Alice saying soothing things in a voice that told she had been saying them for a long while. Matilda’s face was ravaged with tears and hopeless crying. Frevisse went to her and laid a hand on her shaking shoulder under the covers. Still holding with one hand to Alice, Aunt Matilda reached the other to grasp Frevisse’s wrist, sobbing brokenly, “I miss him so much! I miss him so much!”

  “I know, Aunt. I know. I do, too,” Frevisse said with aching sincerity, and without warning was crying with her, huge, unbearable tears scalding down her cheeks.

  Sir Philip joined her at the bedside. His voice warmer than Frevisse had ever heard it, and calm with deep authority, he said, “My dear lady, you’ve made yourself ill with your grieving. You’ll break your heart if you go on, and think what your husband would say to see you like this.”

  Matilda choked on a sob and with the ghost of a smile trembling on her lips, said, “He… he would say… ‘N-now, Maud. Now, Maud.”“

  “Exactly so. So imagine he’s saying that to you and try to find the peace he would want you to have.” He bent over her, not to give blessing but to tuck the embroidered cover more comfortingly under her chin. “You’re over-wearied and must stay in bed all this day. You’ve been too brave for too long and need your rest to regain your strength, just as Master Chaucer would want you to. If you want anything, we’ll joyfully do or bring it.” He glanced around the room, eliciting a nod or faint murmur of agreement from everyone there. “You see? We love you, too, and want you well again. We’ve lost the head of our household; we could not bear to lose its heart.”

  Aunt Matilda sniffed tremulously and managed a watery smile. Tears still stood in her eyes but the raw edge of hysteria was gone. She had let go of Frevisse’s hand and was holding Sir Philip’s now.

  He turned to one of the women holding a goblet at the foot of the bed. “Is that for my lady?”

  “A sleeping potion, sir.”

  She held it out and he took it. Alice lifted her mother on the pillows, and, still holding her hand, Sir Philip gently held the goblet to Matilda’s lips, waiting patiently while she drank it a sip at a time, until she had taken it all. Then he handed the goblet away and took her hand in both of his.

  “You’ll stay with me?” she quavered. “Even while I sleep? You’ll stay with me and pray? For Thomas?”

  “And for you, my lady. I’ll be here when you awaken,” he promised.

  Worn-out, she did not resist whatever had been in the drink but soon slipped into a drowse, with tears still on her cheeks. Even with the drug, it was a shallow sleep, pathetic in its fragility.

  Frevisse had drawn back from the bed while Sir Philip tended to her aunt. Now, with everyone keeping very still for fear of disturbing the sleeper, and Sir Philip clearly intending to stay there for as long as he had promised, she slipped sideways to the door and out. Silently, she edged the door closed but not latched behind her, whispered, “She sleeps, but only lightly,” to the pair of serving maids hovering in the outer chamber, and gave them no time to ask her anything else, but went briskly on.

  Now, while for this once she could be sure of where he was, she meant to look through Sir Philip’s room.

  If she had met anyone in the chapel’s antechamber, she would have simply gone in, as if intent on prayers. But there was no one, and she went up the narrow stairs in soft-footed haste. Outside his door she paused to rap sharply, lest his servant be there. No one called out, and she went in.

  The bed had been made, the shutters set open to the pallid sunlight. The sparsely furnished room was neatened to the point of being utterly impersonal. There was no trace of the chaos of emotion and desperation yesterday.

  Frevisse crossed to the table. She touched her fingertips to its scrubbed top, where Sir Clement had fallen forward, as if an answer might come to her by that. Nothing did. She looked around and saw the only closed place was the aumbry, from where the bottle and goblet that had given Sir Clement his last drink had come. She opened its doors to three neatly ordered shelves. The bottle on the bottom one, beside two cups and a pewter plate was not yesterday’s; this one’s cork had not been pulled. She took up the nearest cup and found it unremarkable, of blue-glazed pottery, simple, undecorated, austere like the rest of the room. Its fellow matched it. The plate might have come from a peasant’s cottage.

  On the middle shelf was a golden casket. Even before she opened it, Frevisse knew that it must contain the essentials for the last sacrament. She crossed herself, took it down, and reverently opened it. Everything appeared exactly as it ought to, with the tiny jars of chrism and holy water, a gilt crucifix, a small wax candle, and a pyx. She closed the box and rubbed her fingers with her thumb, to remove any trace of holy particles.

  Feeling guilty for her intrusiveness, she reached among and behind the few pieces of folded clothing on the upper shelf for anything hastily put out of sight and found nothing.

  She went to the bed. The straw-filled mattress rustled at her prodding. She stooped to look underneath. There were only the ropes laced through a plain wooden frame and his servant’s more narrow truckle bed. Careful even in her haste, she felt all through the coverings of Sir Philip’s bed and then pulled out the servant’s and did the same. Finding nothing, she unmade them, to inspect the mattresses. Neither showed any sign of having been cut open and sewn shut again and, hoping she did it identically to how they had been, she remade both beds.

  She tried the prie-dieu next, running her hands along its sides and tilting the bench to look at its underside. As nearly as she could tell, there was nowhere for a hidden place in it. The cushion on the kneeler was firmly tacked down along all its edges and though she kneaded the cushion thoroughly with both hands she could detect nothing odd about its stuffing.

  The desk remained. Like the prie-dieu it seemed to have no secret places, and the books were commonplace ones. A worn psalter, an Oculus Sacerdotis with a carved leather cover, the ubiquitous Lay Folks Catechism, from which Frevisse and nearly everyone she knew had been taught their prayers in childhood, and a handsome copy of Stimulus Amoris, written to stir the reader’s love of God. Frevisse riffled through the pages of each one, finding the first three to be plain copies of indifferent craftsmanship, heavily annotated in all their margins in firm, dark writing. The Stimulus Amoris was another matter. Its script had been done in a clear, steady hand meant to make the words as lovely in their seeming as in their meaning; what notes there were, were lightly done, as if to distract from the beauty of the pages as little as might be. And it was illuminated as the other books were not, painted throughout with pictures in bright, exquisite detail, shining among the pages. Despite where she was, and why, Frevisse lingered over the book.

  When she put it back at last and looked around the room, she could find nothing else to question. There was nothing here to suggest murder.

  But why should there be? Sir Philip had had all night to dispose of anything dangerous to himself. A trip to the necessarium, a bottle, a packet, a screw of paper dropped down the hole, and he was rid of evidence that he had killed a man. But aside from that, it was difficult to imagine that he had had some sort of poison in his room at all. Why would he? On the chance he might someday have occasion, desire, or chance to use it? If he were indeed a man who kept poison to hand that purposefully, he was far different and more dangerous than he seemed.

  Or had he had poison to hand especially for Sir Clement? Knowing for weeks that Chaucer would die, and that almost surely Sir Clement would come to the funeral, had he prepared for the chance? But then how had he given him the poison at the feast and again in the room? For surely it had to have been a double dose of the same poison for the symptoms to be the same?

  She had the why Sir Philip might have done it: Sir Clemen
t was a threat to his advancement in the Church. But the how eluded her. In the room, yes, there might have been chance, but in the hall Sir Philip had been seated far down the table from Sir Clement and not come near him until after Sir Clement had been stricken.

  Wait. Yes, he had.

  He had gone to Sir Clement on the occasion of Sir Clement’s outburst, had spoken with him. Had there been chance then to put something in his food? Frevisse shut her eyes, trying to remember the scene. He had come up behind Sir Clement, but she could not recall that he had ever bent over the table or even come close to it. Dishes and drink had been well out of his easy reach; anything he might have done that way would have been obvious to someone.

  Then had he had help? An accomplice from among other victims of Sir Clement’s tormenting, willing to share the risk and not likely to become a greater threat to Sir Philip than Sir Clement was? Who had been in a position to do what needed to be done at the table in the hall?

  Jevan, of course, with access to every dish he had served to his uncle there. He could have easily introduced poison to some dish before serving it. And Guy and Lady Anne had both been there, in reach of the dishes after they were served. It had been Guy who took the bottle and cup from the aumbry here in Sir Philip’s room, before Sir Clement’s final attack. Had they planned that far ahead, to have poison to hand here if Sir Clement failed to die in the hall?

  It would surely have been best if he had died at the table, saving the peril of giving him more poison. That brought her back to the continuing question of how he could have been poisoned there and no one else affected. Unless… she had read somewhere that a poison taken in small doses long enough would be rendered harmless to the person taking it.

  That was too complicated. Surely that was too complicated, involving too many people—Sir Philip, Guy, Anne, possibly Jevan—over too long a time. Unless she could find they were acquainted before now and had been in contact with each other months ago.

  Frevisse realized she had lingered a dangerously long time in a room where she had no right to be. Belatedly she realized there was one last place to look, and brought the stool from the table to stand on so she could see the aumbry’s top. Nothing was there, not even an appreciable accumulation of dust; Sir Philip’s servant was thorough at his work.

  Careful to replace the stool exactly, she went to open the door enough to look out. There was no one there, and she slipped out and down the stairs, still thinking. It would be simplest if God had indeed struck Sir Clement in the hall, meaning to give an awful but not fatal warning, and then a human hand had taken advantage of the moment to poison him in Sir Philip’s room. Only Guy and Sir Philip had handled the cup of wine. Guy had opened the bottle—and by its cork it had been opened before. Had there been chance for someone else to put something into the cup as it went from the aumbry to Sir Clement’s hand? She had not been watching. She did not remember. It was possible, though it would have been far easier to have put the poison in the bottle beforehand. And it needn’t have been Sir Philip, though it was his bottle and his chamber. Anyone might have chosen his—or her—time and come in to do that, just as Frevisse had chosen hers. Though that carried the risk of someone other than Sir Clement being poisoned.

  Who was desperate enough to do any of this?

  Sir Philip, who might have had no better chance to be rid of Sir Clement’s threat. Lady Anne, who was in love with Guy but threatened with marriage to Sir Clement whom she openly detested, according to Robert. Guy, Sir Clement’s heir, wanting Lady Anne for himself, hating his uncle. Jevan Dey, tired of Sir Clement’s insults and torments.

  They had all been there. And the physician, but he at least had no reason to want Sir Clement dead. Or no reason that Frevisse knew of, she amended.

  She had reached the bottom of the stairs and was crossing the antechamber to return to her aunt when the chapel door began to open behind her. Instantly, because it was easier than having someone wonder why she had been up to Sir Philip’s room, Frevisse swung around, to seem that she was just coming toward the chapel.

  Lady Anne, coming out, bent her head in slight, silent greeting, and would have gone past except Frevisse said, “Please accept my sympathy on Sir Clement’s death.”

  The girl’s face had been quiet, her summer-blue eyes down after her glance at Frevisse. Now she looked up, a corner of her cupid mouth slightly awry, as if something amused her that she knew should not. “Thank you.”

  Frevisse asked, “Is Sir Philip in the chapel?”

  “Sir Philip?” Lady Anne’s puzzlement was clear. “Who… ?”

  “The priest who was with Sir Clement at… the end, yesterday.” Frevisse dropped her voice and eyes as if not wishing to intrude on or add to Lady Anne’s grief.

  “Oh. I didn’t know his name. No, I haven’t seen him today.”

  She walked on. Frevisse went with her, asking with seeming casualness, “Will you be leaving soon, as soon as…” She paused over the words, delicately short of mentioning matters that might be distressing to the girl.

  With no apparent distress, Lady Anne said, “As soon as the crowner says we may, yes.”

  “And you’ll take Sir Clement’s body with you?”

  “Oh, no. Some of our people will follow after with it. With the cold, we’ll ride on as fast as may be.”

  Frevisse said in a discreet tone, slightly changing the subject, “He wasn’t a well-liked man, was he?”

  “He was a hated man,” Lady Anne said without qualm. “By a great many people.”

  “And now you’ll be free to marry Guy, won’t you?”

  Lady Anne stopped to look at her wide-eyed. “How do you know that?”

  Frevisse made a light gesture. “People gossip and I can’t always help hearing them.” More to see Lady Anne’s response than because it was her own opinion, she added, “He seems a goodly young man.”

  Lady Anne’s smile brightened her eyes to dazzling. “He is! Oh, indeed he is!” A little mischievously, she asked, “Did the gossips also know we’re to be married as soon as the banns have been cried?”

  “They didn’t know that, no.” Frevisse found the girl’s smile infectious, and was glad Lady Anne’s slender body precluded suspicion that desperate need more than desire was behind her eagerness to marry.

  But such great love, long thwarted by Sir Clement as it had been, could have grown desperate for that reason alone. Was Guy’s desire for her as great as hers for him?

  But Lady Anne was going on about his virtues with all the certainty of youth that they would be enough to bring them happiness. “He’s handsome. Anyone can see that. And brave. You should see him on the tourney field. And Sir Clement’s heir. He’ll have everything now that Sir Clement is dead. I think that’s why Sir Clement hated him. Sir Clement never wanted anyone to have anything of his. How disappointed he must be to find himself dead and everything gone into Guy’s hands.” She was clearly delighted with the idea.

  “I actually heard him call Guy murderous during that quarrel in the great hall.”

  “He was always saying things like that! Miserable man.”

  “But Guy never fought him over it?”

  Lady Anne’s pretty face tightened into an expression of deep disgust. “He never would. He said he owed Sir Clement duty as head of the family. But that whole business of him trying to murder Sir Clement always made me so angry.”

  “Guy tried to murder him?”

  “No, of course not.” Lady Anne laughed. “Sometime before I was his ward, for Christmas or Michaelmas or Lady Day or some such, Guy brought him marchpane for a gift. Sir Clement had a greedy tooth for sweets and should have been well-pleased. Rude, as always, of course, but pleased. Instead he raged that Guy was trying to poison him and even threw the marchpane—all of it—on the floor!” The waste of so much sugar, butter, almonds, and whatever else delicious might have been in the expensive treat clearly appalled her.

  “Why? Did the marchpane make him ill?”

 
“He didn’t even taste it! He just looked at it and threw it down! Afterwards he was forever calling Guy a murderous whelp or something like, but Guy never heeded and neither did anyone else. Everyone knew what Sir Clement was like.”

  “Then it was very good of you to have been in the chapel praying for him.”

  Lady Anne made the expression of amused exasperation used by women indulging the man they love. “Guy says it will be best to show what courtesy we can toward him, now that we won’t have to do it much longer. But I doubt prayers will do Sir Clement any good, do you? I think he went straight to hell and there’s the end of it.” They had reached the door to the series of rooms the women guests had shared; by now Lady Anne and her women would be nearly the only ones left. Lady Anne, letting Frevisse see she was ready to be done with her company, made her a pretty little curtsy and said, “If you will excuse me, Dame.”

  Frevisse bent her head in acceptance and farewell, but before she could go her own way, Guy came from the room as if in haste to somewhere else.

  “Guy!” Lady Anne exclaimed, moving eagerly toward him and holding out her hands to him.

  He caught and kissed them, right and left. “I came to see if you were back from prayers yet and you weren’t. Are you all right?”

  Lady Anne made a face of distaste. “I’ve prayed all I can stomach for him and I’m not doing any more. You didn’t come. You said you would.”

  “I said I might. I’ve been seeing to what can be done so we can leave as soon as the crowner finishes with us.”

  “Has he come yet?”

  “Not yet, but soon, I should think.”

  “He shouldn’t even be needed. Everyone saw what happened. It was an act of God. The bishop’s word alone should be enough for it. Shouldn’t it?” she appealed to Frevisse.

  “You would think so, but the law has its own way about these things.” To Guy she added, “Lady Anne and I have been talking of your uncle.”