Frevisse missed the rest, her knock at the bedchamber door immediately answered by one of Alice’s ladies, who stood aside for her to come in.
‘Go out,“ said Alice sharply from where she stood beside the bed, giving Frevisse pause until she realized the order was at Alice’s three ladies, not her.
They seemed more than ready to go, the sweep of their skirts almost tangling into each other as they crowded to be out the door. Frevisse shut it after them and said to Alice across the room, “Not a good morning?”
‘A very bad morning,“ Alice snapped. She was gowned as she had been yesterday but with her fair hair still loose down her back and an air about her of not knowing which way she would go next. ”A very bad night, a very bad morning, and probably a very bad day to come. You’ve heard about Gloucester, I suppose?“
‘There’s rumor running that he can’t be wakened. That’s all I’ve heard.“
‘It’s worse than rumor. It’s true. It happened to him sometime in the night.“
Aware of something different in the room, Frevisse asked, “Where’s John?” Neither he nor any of his toys or clothes were anywhere in sight.
‘I sent him away to Wingfield at first light this morning- He’s better out of this.“ Alice turned half around, seeming to be looking for something without being sure of what. Her voice rose. ”I wish we were all out of this!“
‘Alice…“
‘When word came last night about Gloucester, my husband hoped aloud he’d die without ever waking. Frevisse, he prayed for it.“
Had prayed for a man to die without making his soul’s final peace before God’s judgment came on it.
Hiding her horror at that, Frevisse crossed to take gentle hold on Alice’s arm, guide her to the window seat, and order, “Sit.”
Alice did, and Frevisse went to the table, finding warm, spiced wine in the silver pitcher there and pouring a goblet full while behind her Alice said in a half-whisper, the words too painful to say aloud, “Frevisse, he’s pleased beyond measure about it.”
Frevisse brought her the wine, offering with it the only other almost-comfort she could. “He was maybe thinking how there’ll be no ugliness of a trial if Gloucester dies quietly in his sleep.”
‘You mean no trial where Gloucester might prove himself innocent of all the charges against him.“ Alice paused, then added, ”No trial where maybe someone else might be proved guilty instead of him.“
‘Drink,“ Frevisse said.
Alice drank, but when she lowered the goblet, her eyes were still troubled with looking at something she did not want to see. She drank again, finishing the wine, rose sharply to her feet, and went to set the goblet back °n the table, saying as she did, “God help Gloucester. What am I going to do?”
‘What little you can. Your duty to the queen for one thing?“ Frevisse offered.
‘What am I supposed to say to her about all this? She asks questions and I don’t know what to say. And there’s something else.“ Alice returned to the window seat, sat again, and gestured Frevisse to sit with her. She had steadied, her voice level, her eyes fixed on Frevisse’s face. ”Last night it was Viscount Beaumont himself brought the word about Gloucester. He said it right out, for everyone in the room to hear, but afterwards he and Suffolk went aside.“ She pointed to a far corner of the room. ”He told him something else. I don’t know what but he was disturbed about it, and so was Suffolk after he’d been told whatever it was.“
‘Disturbed?“
‘Bothered. Angry. Thrown out of balance. I don’t know. That Gloucester was gone insensible was no trouble. It was whatever else Viscount Beaumont told him that Suffolk didn’t like.“
‘But you don’t know what it was?“
‘They kept their voices down even while they traded sharp words over it.“
‘They were angry at each other?“
‘Not at each other, I think. At whatever had happened. Then they seemed to agree on something and Beaumont left. When Suffolk and I were alone, I asked what it had been about and he…“ Alice’s face tightened with anger. ”He patted my cheek and told me not to worry, everything was going very well. I might as well have been John being told I’d have a sweetmeat at bedtime if I were good.“
‘What has he said this morning?“
Coldly Alice said, “I haven’t spoken to him since then.”
Frevisse wondered if Suffolk had any thought of how unpleasant his life would become if Alice stayed both frightened for him and angry at him, and asked cautiously, wary of swinging Alice’s anger toward her, “What are you going to do now?”
‘What can I do?“ Alice sounded suddenly more weary than angry. ”What you said, I suppose. What little I can, beginning with going to the queen.“ She stood up. ”Thank you for letting me talk at you. Saying it out helps.“
Frevisse stood up with her, hesitated, then asked anyway, “Alice, if somehow I find out anything and it’s against Suffolk, do you want to know of it?”
Alice hesitated, too, then said with hard certainty, “Yes.”
Chapter 17
Frevisse had no doubt that what Alice had said, Alice meant. What she did doubt, after leaving her to her women again and going out into the sun-filled morning, was what she herself would do about it. Or to the more immediate point, what she could do about it. To wander, listening to people talk on the chance of overhearing something useful, seemed likely to be a waste of time and she had no way of coming to where she might hear more.
Standing on the walkway at the foot of the stairs, trying to decide what was best to do, she was suddenly impatient at Joliffe. Where was he? And what of Arteys? Did he know about his father yet? Surely Bishop Pecock would see he did as soon as might be. Then what?
Come to that, “then what” about anything?
At her elbow a boy said, “Please, my lady,” and she looked around and down to find Giles Wilde there. “Master Giles,” she said, the more welcoming because she thought he was from Joliffe. “You’re out and about early enough today.”
He took off his hat and made her a deep bow, better at it than many a lord she had seen, then looked up at her, earnest with hope. “Please, my lady, is Lord John up yet, do you know?”
Disappointed of her own hope, she was sorry to disappoint him in return. “Lord John was taken off to home first thing today, I fear.”
Giles’ face fell. “Oh.”
‘I doubt he’s happy about it,“ Frevisse offered. ”He was talking yesterday about seeing you today.“
Giles brightened a little. “So he hadn’t forgotten.”
‘Assuredly not. He was looking forward to it gladly.“ In the hope of bringing him around to saying something of Joliffe, she went on, ”I heard you did another play last night. It went well?“
‘We were laughed at like anything! There’s talk we’re maybe to do it for the king before Lent starts.“
‘I wish it for you.“ Frevisse’s pleasure on their behalf was unfeigned, but it was still for Joliffe she asked, ”Where did you play last night?“
‘At St. Saviour’s,“ Giles said blithely, but must have seen her face change because he immediately added, greatly earnest, ”Not for the duke of Gloucester, though. He kept to his room. Or was kept. But everybody else in the place was there in the hall to see us.“
‘Nothing was wrong with the duke then, or there Would have been more upset, I suppose.“ Frevisse kept her voice light.
‘I suppose.“ Giles shrugged, not much interested. ”John really won’t be back, then?“
‘I fear not.“
Giles’ face quirked all over with a sudden big smile. “I’ll bet he’s mad about it. I’ll bet he’s really mad.”
Frevisse gave him a smile back. “I’ll bet he is, too.”
With that thought—unsatisfying to her but cheering to Giles—they parted, Giles giving her another bow before skipping backward and turning to run off across the yard, dodging and disappearing among men and horses, leaving Frevisse with the worr
isome thought that Joliffe had been at St. Saviour’s last night. It was only happenstance, she knew, and nothing to do with Gloucester, and yet…
Knowing the nothing she knew, there was small use in thinking about it, and putting it firmly from her, she made up her mind that until she heard from Joliffe or Bishop Pecock, she would follow her own desire. The church and the library were the two places where Joliffe and Bishop Pecock—and Arteys, come to that—would most readily think to find her, and because she doubted she would pray well at present, she went libraryward. If nothing else, she could at least be useful to Dame Perpetua.
The aged monk was no better pleased than ever to see her but let her pass unchallenged. Dame Perpetua’s welcome was better, a mixture of pleasure and happy guilt. “I’ve unstitched the book, you see,” she whispered, openly pleased with herself. “I can put it back together without trouble when I’m done, but it’s easier to copy with the pages apart. If you’ll take these…”
Provided with Dame Perpetua’s spare pens and inkpot, Frevisse took the pages and blank paper to another of the desks, hoping no one would arrive and protest her being there. She expected to settle gladly to Boethius and simply writing and for a while she did, then found herself staring out the window at the sky’s clear blue, her pen unmoving and dry over the paper. When she found herself doing it a third time and looked down to see she had reached “Then evil is not among the things that ought to be desired,” hardly five lines on from where she had been when last she stopped, she cleaned the pen, closed the inkpot, and went to tell Dame Perpetua they were both going for a walk in the abbot’s garden.
Dame Perpetua started to protest but Frevisse said firmly, “God has given us the gift of a warm day and a clear sky. We should accept his gift graciously.” One of the abbey bells and then another began to ring from the church’s tower. “Right after Sext,” she amended.
At Sext’s end they returned through the passageway into the abbot’s garden, but rather than toward the prior’s yard and the library, they took one of the paths laid square-cornered among the ordered beds. Enclosed by a high wall on two sides and abbey buildings on two other, it was far larger than the nuns’ walled garden at St. Frideswide’s but also far less private, with monastery windows overlooking it on two sides. With so much of the abbot’s palace presently given over to the royal household, it was lately not private at all and today the turn in the weather had brought out others besides them to walk its paths—a scattering of gentlemen walking in pairs and threes, a few ladies companioned together or with a gentleman, a few dark-clad churchmen. Frevisse and Dame Perpetua were able to keep mostly to themselves as they paced the paths much as they would have St. Frideswide’s cloister walk or garden, their hands tucked into their opposite sleeves, their heads slightly lowered, exchanging only nods with those they encountered and no words between themselves, comfortable with silence.
Only when they had woven their way back and forth through the garden and were beginning to cover the same paths again, did Dame Perpetua say, “Do you know when we’ll be going home?”
In honesty Frevisse could only answer, with just about truth, “With everything that’s going on, I don’t, I’m afraid. I gather clerks and officers and suchlike have to see the deed first and I don’t know what else before it’s done. You know.” She ended vaguely, telling herself she must remember to ask Alice about the grant, if only to keep up the appearance that it was her reason for being here.
‘Yes,“ Dame Perpetua murmured, sounding as unclear about it as Frevisse had deliberately been but not in the least cast down. ”Then very likely I’ll have time for all of Boece.“
‘I’ll try to help you more, now that Lord John is gone,“ Frevisse said contritely.
‘He’s gone?“ Dame Perpetua asked in surprise. ”Gone where?“
Frevisse explained that with so much happening, Alice had made things a little simpler by sending him away.
Dame Perpetua made a small tching sound of pity. “I suppose it is more troubling for her than many, with how worried her husband must be by it all. Everyone around the king must be worried. Still, if it was treason the duke had planned, this fading away might be best, both for him and everyone else.”
It would certainly be best for Suffolk, Frevisse did not say.
Dame Perpetua peered forward. “Is that Bishop Pecock ahead of us?”
To Frevisse’s relief, it was. He was walking toward them in company with another man who was neither Joliffe or Arteys, merely someone she did not know, cleric-dressed in plain black with none of the signs of rank about him and therefore probably a minor priest or lesser clerk, not another bishop. Her first thought was that Bishop Pecock had deliberately made this meeting, but deep in talk with the other man, he seemed unaware of them, looking downward at the path and saying intently as they neared each other, “Simply because St. Jerome wrote a thing doesn’t make it unquestionably true. He didn’t hold the keys to heaven or hell, you know. He…”
It took a touch on his arm from the man beside him to make him aware two nuns had stepped to the side of the path to let him pass. He vaguely sketched a cross in the air in blessing toward them and would have gone on, still talking, except Frevisse said firmly, “My lord bishop.”
At that he actually looked at them and said with open pleasure, as if they had just arrived unexpectedly and from far away—which, into his awareness, they had, “Dame Perpetua. Dame Frevisse. Well met.” To the man with him he added, “I’ve spoken of meeting these nuns, I believe?” And by way of introduction added, “Master Orle, my chaplain and sometimes clerk, who attempts to keep me from wandering so far away in the fields of thought that I forget my duties.”
Master Orle was a young man with a wide, clever face and sandy-brown hair whose neatly shaven tonsure showed as he took off his hat and bowed to them, while Bishop Pecock asked, “You‘ re out to enjoy the pleasant weather while it’s with us, my ladies?”
As you are, my lord,“ Dame Perpetua answered.
Not so much out for the pleasure of the day as for “the pleasure of avoiding my fellow lords, I fear.”
Parliament isn’t meeting today?“ Frevisse said.
‘Parliament is assembled, both lords and lay, but chattering away like a dray of squirrels and about as sensible.“
‘Squirrels may well make sense to each other,“ Frevisse suggested, ”even if they don’t to anyone else.“
‘Then I can assume that I am not a squirrel, I suppose, because my fellows in Parliament don’t make sense to me. Or perhaps, to be fair, I should say that they do somewhat make sense but go on at too great length while doing so and in too many circles while they’re at it. I stayed long enough to see that no one is willing to commit to anything regarding the duke of Gloucester until everyone knows to what the king means to commit, and then I came away. Dame Perpetua, I trust you’re not going in circles with your work?“
‘Indeed not, my lord. I go well forward, though more slowly than I’d like. But Dame Frevisse has said she’ll perhaps be able to help me since her cousin’s boy is gone home.“
Bishop Pecock turned with mild interest to Frevisse. “Has he?”
‘With all that’s happening, Lady Alice thought it best, my lord.“
‘One can see why. But how are you coming with Boethius, Dame Perpetua?“
‘Not nearly quickly enough but enjoying it greatly.“
They shifted to the side of the path to let several ladies pass. Bishop Pecock looked around and said, “Would you care to walk farther abroad, while the day is so fair? There’s a way between the prior’s house and the infirmary to the monks’ walk along the river.”
Except Bishop Pecock suggested it, Dame Perpetua might not have gone but said when they had come out from among the cloister buildings and across the small bridge over the ditch dug to bring water to the abbey’s mill into the meadow running long and narrow between there and the river, “It’s so good to be out from walls. Is that a vineyard?” Pointing across the r
iver to ordered rows upon rows of bare vines waiting for spring and summer’s flourish.
Bishop Pecock confirmed they were.
Behind them, clear in the quiet morning, one bell and then another began to call to Tierce. Dame Perpetua immediately drew back a step, ready to make farewell curtsy and go back, but Bishop Pecock quickly signed the cross at them both and said, “I absolve you of the need to go.” He was very pleased with himself. “There. There are advantages to being a bishop. I must remember to make use of them more often.”
Master Orle rolled his eyes heavenward, as if in silent prayer.
‘I saw that, John,“ Bishop Pecock reproved. ”You’ll come to no good end, mocking your bishop.“
‘I wasn’t mocking, my lord. I was making an honest prayer to heaven for your increase in wisdom and strength. Surely that’s something to be hoped for, for you and every man.“
‘You hope a little too fervently sometimes. And a little too often, come to that. As if heaven were insufficiently answering your prayers.“
Master Orle made a small bow. “As your grace says.”
They were both solemn at it, but the laughter of friends underlay their words and, “Come,” said Bishop Pecock. “We look like a clustering of crows, standing here all in black and talking to each other. Let’s walk on.”
They did, taking the well-used path across the meadow to the river’s bank, Bishop Pecock walking ahead with Dame Perpetua, talking of Boethius, leaving Frevisse to Master Orle’s company. For form’s sake, he and she traded a few remarks but were both more interested in the scholarly talk ahead of them. They reached the riverbank, where the path split to run upstream to the bridge where Frevisse and John had played yesterday and downstream to another bridge at the very edge of the abbey’s walled grounds. It was possible, by way of the bridges, to cross from the meadow where they were to the river’s far bank and around, past the vineyard, to the meadow again, which Bishop Pecock suggested, then said, “Dame Frevisse, if you’ll walk with me? I would hear if you think there’s anything I might do for Lady Alice.”
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