12 The Bastard's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  There was little cheering, here among the followers of so many other lords, but Gloucester was acknowledging what there was with a raised hand and a smile to one side and the other. He was not as Frevisse had seen him in her mind these past twenty and more years of hearing what trouble he made around the king with his demands and angry wrangling for more power than other lords were willing to give him. Rather than a face harsh with failed greed, bitter with loss, taut with the verjuice of thwarted ambition, he looked simply a hale man in middle age, openly pleased by those in the crowd who were pleased to see him.

  Did he also see how many men in lords’ liveries or wearing lords’ badges were there and not cheering, Frevisse wondered.

  A streak of sunlight through a sudden, wind-torn rift in the clouds swept across the marketplace, caught bright for an instant on the gold lions and lilies of Gloucester’s banner wind-shifting above him, then was gone, fled away over the abbey wall, and Gloucester was gone, too, riding on with his men behind him, all wearing his white swan badge on their shoulder. The crowd, not interested in them, began to disperse but Frevisse held where she was. Curious to see if Arteys was there, she found him among the last riders. He did not see her nor had she thought he would but neither did she see what she had thought she might—some likeness to the duke of Gloucester. Arteys was simply a tall young man with golden hair riding among many other men.

  When he was past, she turned away, back into the abbey, putting thought of him aside. She was somewhat looking forward to today’s last rehearsal of Wisdom. Last night’s work had mostly been feeling out how voices and gestures played in the different space of the King’s Hall and with another practice of the dances and everything interrupted as they went along by Toller trying out his smokes and stenches. It seemed Toller not only kept watch out the door during rehearsals but was likewise adept at what could be done with gunpowder and other things to—as Joliffe had put it—“confound a play.”

  ‘And please a crowd,“ Master Wilde had said, overhearing.

  ‘One might hope,“ Joliffe had answered, sententious as preacher in pulpit, ”a crowd such as this would be above such things.“ But added with instant grin and in chorus with Master Wilde, ”But a crowd is a crowd is a crowd. They’ll love it!“

  From all Frevisse had seen of it, she agreed. The play itself dealt with solemn enough matter to please the piety of anyone inclined that way including King Henry himself, given to prayers as he was said to be, while the gorgeous garments, the bright-musiced dancing, and Toller’s surprises would satisfy the rest.

  She found the outer of Alice’s three rooms unexpectedly empty save for several clerks scribbling rapidly away at small, easily shifted desks near the window, too in haste at their work to give her even a glance. A scatter of Alice’s women were more attentive in the middle room, lifting or turning their heads from their work or talk as she entered, one of them saying, “My lady thought she’d be here but the queen kept her after all. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  ‘Lord John?“ Frevisse asked.

  ‘With his nurse. In there.“

  Frevisse went into the last room, to be greeted by John looking up from a scatter of bright-painted blocks on the floor to ask eagerly, “Can we go now?”

  ‘Not yet, my lord,“ his nurse said from where she sat at the window with sewing in her lap. ”You must needs first eat and so must Dame Frevisse and I.“

  She asked then about the trumpet they had heard, and Frevisse filled in the time with telling what she had seen of the duke of Gloucester’s going by until a servant came with the light meal supposed to suffice for two women and a child. For Frevisse, used to nunnery fare, it was more than good enough—rabbit in a plain wine sauce and a cheese tart—but Nurse complained, cutting up John’s meat for him, “This isn’t what one expects, I have to say, nor how it is when my lord and my lady are properly at home, I promise you. We dine very well then, from hall to nursery. But with so many crowded together here and it being winter, well, there’s not so much to go around as should be, I suppose, and what there is goes elsewhere first, I daresay.”

  Frevisse agreed it very likely did and kept up her side of the conversation with telling she had heard in the guesthall refectory that the abbey’s brewhouse was barely keeping ahead of the demands for ale but the wine merchants at least seemed to have unstinted supply of their wares.

  ‘My lord and lady bring their own wine with them,“ Nurse sniffed.

  When it was time to go, Frevisse wished her well and bundled John into his cloak and away. The clerks were still scribbling in the outer room but an older clerk had come in, was standing beside one of the desks with one hand full of papers and the other out to take another as soon as it was done and dried. He gave her and John a brief look and then a bow and Frevisse forgot him, helping John down the stairs too steep and deep for his short legs until, safe at the stairfoot, John said, “They’ve been doing that all day.”

  ‘What?“ Frevisse asked, busy with tucking his cloak more closely around his throat.

  ‘Writing, and that man coming for everything. He’s the king’s clerk.“ Because she was bent over, dealing with his cloak, her ear was near him and he leaned closer to whisper, ”Momma is angry about it.“

  Frevisse straightened and looked down at him. “Angry? Why?”

  ‘Just angry. You know.“ He took hold of her hand and tugged, dismissing the strangeness of parents and other creatures. ”Can we go?“

  They went but not far. King’s Hall was only a little way along the penticed walk toward the abbey church. Because the abbot’s rooms were at present mostly given over to royal use, there was much coming and going of servants, clerks, churchmen, lords, and others along the walkway, and Frevisse took herself and John aside from it, into the yard where the cobbles made the going no worse and they were in fewer people’s way. The clouds had tattered a little since Gloucester had ridden by. Gray shadows and bright sunlight were fleeting across the Great Court on a wind that flapped at any loose cloak edge and made reaching the shelter of the doorway to the King’s Hall a pleasure.

  Toller was keeping the door again, sitting inside away from the worst draught but where he could stop anyone well before they saw through the inner doorway into the great hall. He was working a thick cord through his hands and John immediately wanted to know about it.

  ‘I’m checking it over, my lord, to be sure it’ll burn true come tonight.“

  ‘Boom!“ said John joyfully.

  ‘Fizz and smoke,“ Toller responded. ”That’s what we’re after this time. No booms. But maybe later, when the play’s done, we’ll find a far corner of a field and have a go at some booms.“

  He winked at Frevisse, who smiled back and privately thought she might do well to forewarn Alice. But Toller was saying to her, with a sideways nod of his head toward the hall and his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “You’ll want to keep your head down in there today. Master Wilde has his hair on end and his tail twitching.”

  Frevisse had already been warned by Mistress Wilde that Master Wilde tended to be over wrought in the hours before a play was finally performed and she promised easily, “I’ll mind that. Thank you.”

  Behind her, the outer door was flung open, then slammed by someone in haste. “Whoops, young Ned,” Toller said. “Caught the wind in your cloak, did you, coming in like that?”

  Frevisse looked over her shoulder to see Ned Wilde coming toward them, looking indeed as if the wind and something worse had caught him, his cloak thrown back from his shoulders, his hat in his hands and his hair tossed about. Forgetting any greeting or respect nor even slowing his pace, he burst out, “The duke of Gloucester has been arrested!” and hurried past, into the great hall.

  Frevisse stared after him. Toller, shaking his head, said with heavy regret, “Master Wilde isn’t going to like that.”

  ‘For what?“ Frevisse asked at the empty air. ”For what was he arrested?“

  “Treason?” roared
Master Wilde from the hall.

  ‘Seven devils out of hell! What do you mean—treason?“

  Keeping firm hold on John, Frevisse went in and aside to where Mistress Wilde and Joane were seated among the garment baskets, both of them paused at darning someone’s hose while at the head of the hall Master Wilde was going up much like one of Toller’s “effects,” loud and fuming, pacing distracted back and forth in front of the Heaven steps with hands gripping his head as if to keep it from bursting while he cried out against idiot lords bent on ruining him.

  Around him such players as were already there were demanding more from Ned, who was exclaiming back at them that all he knew was that word was running everywhere that half a score of lords or more had gone with men to arrest the duke of Gloucester for treason. That was what he’d heard and that was all he knew and did his father want him to go out again to find out more?

  ‘No!“ Master Wilde roared at him. ”I want everybody here. Where is everybody? There’s only half of you here…“

  Giles, with a solid sense of when to be out of the way, slipped between the baskets to his mother’s side. She smiled comfortingly at him without ceasing her sewing and Frevisse went with John to join them. She was taking John’s cloak from him a moment later when Master Wilde came raging down the hall, crying out at his wife, “The play will never go on now. Not tonight, not tomorrow. Not with all this…”

  Mistress Wilde smiled at him just as she had at Giles. “Of course it will go on. The abbot isn’t going to let his money go to waste.”

  Master Wilde stopped, face blank, mouth open, then said, “Oh,” stood frowning but thinking and finally said, “Right. The king will want distracting, that’s certain, and here we are, ready to hand. Or almost ready. Right.” Thunder and storm vanished, he swung around with a loud clap of his hands, and called at full voice, “That’s enough, then. Dukes can come and dukes can go but we’ve a play to do. Get your garments on. We haven’t all day. You!” He pointed an accusing finger at two of the players just coming in. “Where’ve you been?”

  A monastery bell was just striking the hour, telling they were on time, not late, and Master Wilde waved away whatever they started to say, saying, “Get on with things, then. Go. Go.”

  Mistress Wilde snipped her thread, said, “There. Done. Lord John, Giles, come. I’ll help you dress,” and went calmly away, a boy on either side of her.

  Frevisse, left to herself, stayed where she was, thoughts racing. No matter how out of favor and out of power Gloucester had been these past years, he was still heir to the throne. Could he even be brought to trial? Whether he was or not, every political balance must already be shifting. Remove him as someone to be considered in the pattern of things and what happened? She didn’t know. And perhaps more to the immediate point was the question, Who was removing him? Who had laid this charge of treason against him?

  She realized she was thinking about it as if the charge was false. What if it was not? But why, after almost twenty-five years of loyalty, would Gloucester try treason now? And if it wasn’t treason, who had prompted King Henry to such a dark move?

  Unwillingly she remembered the clerks scribbling away in Suffolk’s outer room where there had never been scribes before and John saying his mother was angry…

  The players were nearly done dressing, save for Lady Soul being helped by Giles to find her hands’ way through her gown’s elaborate, floor-trailing sleeves, but of a sudden Master Wilde, long-bearded and wigged in gold now, holding a scepter and standing at the foot of Heaven in Wisdom’s spreading robes, bellowed, “Where in all Hell’s rings is Joliffe?”

  Frevisse was just wondering that, looking around for him while the questions rushed through her mind. Despite his well-kept air of fecklessness, feckless was probably the last thing Joliffe was—at least with his work, she amended. Why wasn’t he here?

  ‘And my crown,“ Master Wilde said angrily. ”Someone has stolen my crown.“ Mistress Wilde went calmly to open a basket sitting along the wall, lifted out the tall, tiered hat with its rising series of brass crowns circling the cloth-of-gold covering the buckrammed form made to fit firmly to Wisdom’s head, and carried it to her husband. Grumbling that if people would just put things where they belonged, he wouldn’t have to worry about it, Master Wilde let her put it on him, and by the time she stepped back, the change that usually came over the best players when the time came was coming over him. From being a hard-driven master of players, he lifted his head, set back his shoulders, and seemed to grow taller with taking on the massive dignity and certainty of Creation’s Wisdom. Even Joliffe finally entering the hall did not stir him. He only pointed the scepter at him and demanded in Wisdom’s deep voice, ”You. Where have you been?“

  A little breathlessly, throwing off his cloak while he answered, Joliffe said, “The streets are madness. Everyone is thronging and talking. You’ve heard?”

  ‘About the duke? Yes.“ But the duke of Gloucester was clearly irrelevant to Master Wilde at the moment. ”Get clothed. We’re going to start. Everyone, take your places. Let’s get on with it.“

  Joliffe disappeared behind the frame-hung blue curtains with their spangling of stars now flanking the heavenly stairs, the musicians signaled the play’s beginning, Wisdom and Lady Soul set to their talk together in Heaven, and from the very first something was wrong. Even Wisdom’s speeches lacked their usual force, and Lady Soul stumbled twice on her words and once on her skirts and, further on, the Mights and Devils were not vigorously, only flatly, sinful, and their dance a shambling disaster. Even Joliffe drove forward at his lines as if to have them done as soon as might be. Only John and Giles played their parts well, without stumble or shambling, but the play was nearly done by then and, somehow never having to stop but never rising above painful to watch, it limped and bobbled through to its end.

  When at last it was over and the actors came straggling from behind the curtains to stand before Heaven with shamed, discouraged faces, Master Wilde, taking off Wisdom’s crown and wig and beard, simply gazed down at them with a sorrow too deep for any trace of anger before he pointed at John and Giles and said, “You. You two were good. The rest of you…” He shook his head. “The rest of you were unspeakably bad. Go away. All of you. Be back here when the bell calls to Vespers. By then we’ll know if we’re—St. Genesius, take pity on us—to perform tonight. In the mean time, do not get drunk. Do not fall to brawling. Eat something. Pray St. Genesius gives us better wits than we showed this afternoon. Now go away. I want to weep.”

  Subdued and mostly silent, the players set about getting out of their garments. Frevisse in equal silence helped John back into his own clothing, wrapped him well into his cloak and herself into hers, and left before anyone else was ready to go, since there was no chance she could talk to Joliffe here.

  The walkway was more crowded than before, men and some women standing in clusters talking intensely, shifting from one group to another to talk more and sometimes one or another of them going off across the yard to other clustered, talking groups. Frevisse skirted as close as she could to them along her way but overheard nothing of any use or interest. What was known—and apparently all that was known for certain—was that the duke of Gloucester was accused of treason, arrested, and under guard at St. Saviour’s. But not any of his men, despite many of them were said to be Welsh.

  Unsurprisingly, Alice was not returned. Frevisse gave John back into his nurse’s keeping and immediately left, could have gone to the church to pray, she supposed, but equally supposed she would not pray well, her mind twisting around the question of Gloucester and wanting to talk to Joliffe. Instead, she went to the library, with the hope she might distract herself by being of some use to Dame Perpetua until supper and time to face the play again.

  The abbey library was a long room with all along one side high-set windows above shelves, closed aumbries, and chests of books. Facing them across the room were taller windows spaced so that daylight fell on the desks set endwise to
the wall between each one, with each desk almost a small room in itself, enclosed on three sides, open to the room only on the fourth and raised on a dais half a step up from the floor to protect against feet-chilling draughts. In front of each desk was a slanted shelf for resting books at an angle best for reading and copying, with another slant-backed shelf above that upon which to lean other open or closed books and along the wall and below the desk flat shelves for piling more. For good measure, each desk had a smaller slanted desktop mounted on a swivel arm that the scholar could position to the light as best suited him and a cushion on each chair for better sitting through hours of work. Because of each study stall’s head-high walls, Frevisse standing in the doorway could not tell if Dame Perpetua was at her desk or not—or for that matter, whether anyone else was in the library save for the elderly monk bent over an open book at the table beside the door, his cowl pulled up against draughts and his hands tucked into his sleeves. Resigned to nuns in his library and too deaf to bother with idle talk, he hardly looked up and said nothing as she passed him.

  As she had expected, Dame Perpetua was at her desk, writing briskly. She paused when Frevisse softly said her name, her pen ready over her work, and said, “I’ve started the Boethius. You haven’t come to say all’s done and we’re to go home soon?”

  ‘No,“ Frevisse said, much though she wished that were true and despite it would hardly have suited Bishop Beaufort’s purpose to have her lose her excuse and leave.

  ‘I’ll work on, then. Unless you need me for something?“

  ‘No. I don’t. I just thought…“

  Frevisse momentarily forgot what she thought because at the far end of the line of study stalls Bishop Pecock had leaned into sight and was beckoning to her. She blinked, as if seeing him were a mistake and he might go away, but he did not and she regathered her thoughts enough to say, a little faintly, to Dame Perpetua, “I thought I’d read awhile here. Where it’s quiet.”