8 The Maiden's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “No need,” Frevisse answered. She had never risen to such heights of sensibility as to be disturbed by the simple necessity of a man lifting her to behind a saddle. The man swung adroitly up in front of her, gathered his reins, and nodded at two of the men to go ahead of him toward the gateway. Lady Sibill’s rider ranged up beside Frevisse’s and the other two men dropped back to make a formal escort as they rode out of St. Helen’s into Bishopsgate.

  A thin sunset was draining down the westward sky in a wash of yellows and faded salmon, the street already gone in shadows but the last of the sunlight glittering on the windows high in west-facing housefronts. Hurriers-home from errands, shopping, visiting, or sport crowded and jostled, the street not so thronged as it would have been at the height of the day but with people enough that the riders good-naturedly gave way their ranks and were strung out in single file well before they reached where Bishopsgate swung away from Threadneedle Street and then narrowed into Grasschurch. Past St. Bennet’s church the street widened to make Grasschurch marketplace. By now there were rapidly fewer people about: wives and servants from belated shopping, journeymen from wherever they were presently employed, masters from business, children late from play, all eager to be indoors soon, as what little warmth the day had had faded with the light. On her own part Frevisse found she was enjoying everything there was to see too much to care about the creep of cold through her cloak and clothing. She had forgotten London’s rich variety, with the tall housefronts overhanging themselves into the streets, some of them made of stone below, all of them timbered and plastered above and roofed in multicolored slates and tiles, with here and there the beam ends carved and painted so that gawdy, cheerful faces, grotesques, and beasts peered down and frolicked above the passersby; with sometimes a sudden church along the way, its churchyard opening among the houses and its tower or spire reaching high up in reminder of the way to heaven. And whoever was presently alderman here in Bridge Ward was seeing that the scavangers kept to their work: the street’s paving was swept mostly clear and only the day’s waste was gathered by house doorways.

  The street drew in a little on itself again, became Fish Street, and Frevisse silently laughed at herself for remembering that because there was no change in its straight run toward the Thames, its name shifted only because most of the houses along it here belonged to fishmongers, and while in summer there could be no doubting, from the smells of fish, what was sold along here, tonight the air was only sharp with winter cold.

  Ahead of her Lady Sibill was mostly occupied with telling her rider to make haste, it was growing dark, adding now and again to Frevisse that they were almost there, she need not worry, until as they were passing St. Margaret’s church Frevisse’s squire said over his shoulder, low, for Lady Sibill not to hear, “Don’t be worried by all her telling you not to worry. She’s frighted of her own back stairs after dark.”

  “I heard that, Herry Elham!” Lady Sibill turned to shake a finger at him. “These are London streets, not my back stairs!”

  “Yes, my lady,” Herry Elham said respectfully and surely Lady Sibill did not hear the underlay of mockery because she gave a quick, satisfied nod and faced forward again.

  Frevisse leaned a little toward his ear and said, “My thanks but I wasn’t worrying. I haven’t heard London is grown so bad that six mounted men are considered thieves’ prey.”

  “Only to Lady Sibill,” Herry returned. “The aldermen like their wealth too well to let things come to that pass.”

  Frevisse laughed, remembering London aldermen she had seen. Befurred, bejeweled, and better than well-fed, every one of them.

  “Have you ever been to London before this, my lady?”

  “A few times. A long while back.” Since before she had become a nun, when their last King Henry, God keep his soul, had still been king, with his French marriage yet unmade. And now his son had been King Henry VI these sixteen years and King Henry and his French queen Katherine were both long dead and buried.

  They had reached the crossing with Thames Street, no mistaking its broad way or how ahead Fish Street dropped steeply toward the river. If they did not turn here, they would be on London Bridge in very few more dozen yards; but even as Frevisse thought it, they were swinging rightward into Thames Street, and as they did, a peal of bells began from somewhere away across the rooftops, flinging their joy of sound into the still air and almost as they started were joined by other peals, nearer, farther, all around, deep, sweet, asking, demanding, calling from church towers all over London, with St. Magnus nearest, almost overhead across the way, throbbing deep-voiced into the waterfalling of bells from one end of the city to the other.

  Compline? Frevisse wondered. No, it had to be Vespers. They must keep their hours later in London than at St. Frideswide’s. At home the nuns were done with Vespers’ prayers by now, were probably at supper, gathered around the refectory table, with Sister Emma fumbling her way through this week’s reading while everyone else worked their way through the vegetable pottage and the bread with too much bran in it— the harvest had not been good this year. Then afterwards they would go hurrying in the cold together along the cloister walk, to the warming room, and in an hour’s time say Compline’s prayers and then go up to bed in the chill, familiar-shadowed dormitory, to rouse at midnight for Matins and Lauds and go back to bed again until Prime’s prayers at dawn and another day’s beginning.

  Piercingly, Frevisse was aware of how far away she was from everything and everyone familiar, and for just a moment a thing rose in her throat that could be fear if she gave way to it. But fear would be no help. There was not even good reason for it. What she really was, was cold and hungry and ready to be wherever they were going. The bells had ceased and the last of sunset was nearly gone, the steep-peaked housetops and St. Paul’s great spire in sharp black shapes against the fading trace of colors in the west. All along Thames Street lamplight spilled to the pavement from brightly lit upper windows and spread out from the lanterns the law required householders to keep lighted by their doors from dusk. The riders, in their double line again, had picked up their horses’ pace, and as Lady Sibill said, “We’re almost there, my lady,” the two lead riders went leftward between a pair of the largest hanging lanterns yet, out of Thames Street into a lane that was hardly two wagons’ width. It slanted down toward the Thames with buildings on either side, the sky narrow between their rooftops and the lane in a darkness that would have been utter except for the lanterns behind them and a flaring of torches ahead, flanking a gateway on the left where people were coming out, going in, standing around. “Coldharbour House, my lady,” Lady Sibill said, with an undertone that indicated she expected Frevisse to be impressed by the name alone.

  “Called Poultney’s Inn by the common folk,” Herry Elham said, “to show Sir John who built it he was not that much above them. But Sir John’s been dead a hundred years and so has anybody who knew him and you think they’d be over it by now.”

  “Herry,” Lady Sibill said reprovingly, and then, on a little rising note of alarm, “There’s someone behind us.”

  More than someone, Frevisse saw, looking back. A crowding of mounted men. “More guests,” Herry said, unconcerned. “Come down St. Laurence Lane or we’d have seen them. Likely it’s Ely.”

  “The last I heard, he wasn’t among the invited for tonight,” another squire said, equally unconcerned.

  Frevisse had not counted on being part of a company of guests but should have, she realized. London must be presently full of lords, both lay and church, and gentry from all over the country, and elected men from every town and city from end to end of England, all come for Parliament and most of them worth influencing by someone with ambitions, which she knew Alice and she supposed the earl of Suffolk had.

  The gateway opened into a wide, long, groin-vaulted passage, with double gates at either end, all standing open tonight, lighted by torches, with more torchlight around the yard beyond them, narrow compared to its length, runn
ing long away from the gate, with buildings ranged around all its sides, mostly of two storeys but on the left rising in a stone-built great hall whose mullioned windows glowed yellow with steady lamplight in the darkness above the reach of the torches. A wide stone stairway, penticed to give cover from ill weather, went up from the yard to its broad doorway a full storey above the ground, and Frevisse’s rider and Lady Sibill’s turned their horses that way while the others swung toward probably the stables, out of the way of the riders and horses coming down the lane behind them. At the stairs’ foot, smooth pavement replaced the cobbles of the rest of the yard, and Herry Elham and the other man drew up, dismounted, and lifted Frevisse and Lady Sibill down, the other squire taking both horses’ reins to lead them away while Herry gestured toward the stairs with, “If it please you, my ladies.”

  Then his gaze went past them, gone sharply alert, and they turned to look where he was, across the yard to where another gateway opened under a range of buildings, a glitter of torchlight on water beyond it telling Frevisse it must open to a landing on the Thames. There was a bustle of liveried servants there, some dressed in the Suffolk blue, others in another lord’s crimson but too far for Frevisse to see their badges, all of them drawing swiftly back from someone’s way. A tall man moving with pride and certainty, in a dark gown so full and long it would have swept the ground except he had it lifted in one hand to clear the stones, sable-dark fur sheened at his throat and around his high-set hat, and now in the torchlit yard his well-fleshed face was plain to see and Frevisse with a sinking below her breastbone recognized him.

  Chapter 5

  “His grace Cardinal Bishop Beaufort!” Lady Sibill breathed. She laid a hand on Frevisse’s arm in warning and restraint. “We call him Bishop Beaufort, of course. That trouble over him becoming cardinal and things being as they are around the king, he makes no great display of it except when necessary, you understand. He was cousin to Lady Alice’s father.” A thought caught up to Lady Sibill’s tongue. “Oh, so were you!”

  “No. I was Master Chaucer’s niece by marriage. My mother was his wife’s sister.”

  “Ah!” Lady Sibill made visible mental shift to put Frevisse where she belonged.

  “If you’ll come aside, my ladies,” Herry said, backing away, to clear way for his grace because it would have been unseemly to hasten up the stairs ahead of him into the hall. There was no help for it but to bide his coming where they were, drop in low curtsies, and, on Frevisse’s part, hope to go unnoticed. A wan hope. Bishop Beaufort stopped in front of her. “Dame Frevisse?”

  Behind him, his squires, pages, gentlemen, clerks came to abrupt, less than dignified stops as she straightened from her curtsy and, head still bowed, admitted, “Yes, my lord.”

  “Only lately arrived,” Bishop Beaufort observed.

  “Yes, my lord.” She was fully aware of her travel-wearied black woolen gown and too-long-worn wimple and veil.

  “My lord,” he said to someone just joining them.

  Frevisse, relieved to be taken from the center of his notice, found Abbot Gilberd was there with a cluster of his own household men, which would have pleased her, to have Bishop Beaufort’s attention drawn off her, except for the look of speculation Abbot Gilberd briefly cast her while answering Bishop Beaufort’s, “Shall we go in together, sir?” with well-mannered comments on the pleasure of seeing him again. If Abbot Gilberd had thought it worth his while to remember her cousin was the countess of Suffolk, what would he make of Bishop Beaufort knowing her?

  Fluttered by Bishop Beaufort’s notice, Lady Sibill led the way up the stairs in the men’s wake and into a screens passage that opened through a broad doorway into the great hall, high-roofed, with open beams and a dais at the upper end. The tables were in the last stages of being laid for supper, and Lady Sibill led her up the hall along the wall behind the benches lining the outer sides of the tables to a doorway at the dais’s other end. It opened into a small chamber and a broad spiral stairway that they went up, and at its top, came out into a long, wide room that by day would fill with light through its southward-facing windows. Tonight the windows were shuttered, the room’s richness of furnishings and tapestries showing only fitfully in lamplight and shadows, but there was enough of embroidery frames and spill of bright-dyed skeins for Frevisse to guess it was the lady chamber where Alice and her women would spend much of their days.

  “My lady will be in her bedchamber,” Lady Sibill said, going toward one of the doors across the room, bright lamplight showing under it and women’s laughter beyond it. Unable to hold it in longer, she said, “I didn’t know my lord bishop knew you.”

  Frevisse, refraining from saying there was a great deal besides that Lady Sibill did not know about her, only answered, “We met at Lady Alice’s father’s funeral.” Where she had been useful to him in a difficult matter and therefore, as she had feared would happen, he had not forgotten her.

  At Lady Sibill’s light scratch at the bedchamber door, one of Alice’s ladies flung it open, exclaimed over her shoulder, “They’re here!” and stood aside for them to enter. The room was large, with a well-burning fire in a stone-manteled fireplace, a high bed with embroidered curtains, and a half dozen women and girls in bright gowns all turning to stare. Then Alice was coming from among them, arms outheld, and Frevisse gladly went to meet her embrace. She was just enough Alice’s elder that they had never been close as children living together in Alice’s parents’ household, and after Frevisse had turned nun they had known each other only by way of Alice’s father, Frevisse’s guardian in her girlhood and then and afterwards her friend. She and Alice had met again at his funeral, and as grown women, complete in their very different lives, had found a friendship they kept despite the distances and differences between them.

  They stood back to look at one another, Frevisse doubting much was changed about her for Alice to see and surely Alice’s thirty and some years were dealing with her kindly enough. She was as fair-skinned and fair-haired as fashion decreed. There was a daughter somewhere whose name Frevisse did not recall but if childbearing had left signs on her, Alice’s high-waisted velvet gown of winter-blue, with floor-sweeping skirts, its sleeves hanging to her knees and open to show their scarlet satin lining and her close-fitted undergown’s green damask sleeves, concealed it. Her fair hair was gathered into a thick coil atop of her head, shining pale, true gold in the lamplight as, still holding Frevisse by the hand, she drew her further into the room with “You’re tired but you look well. Oh, it’s good to have you here all unexpected, the pleasure not grown thin with waiting for it!”

  They were almost laughing together, Frevisse surprised at her pleasure in seeing Alice and at how pleased Alice seemed to be, guiding her toward the cushioned bench beside the fire, saying, “Sit. You’ll want to sit. Or maybe not. You’ve been sitting all those days from Oxfordshire! But this will be softer. I’m sorry I have to go on dressing. Pray, forgive me, but I have to betake myself to the hall and be charming to people. I invited your Abbot Gilberd after I had your message. Was that a good thing?”

  “I suspect it’s what he hoped for,” Frevisse said wryly.

  “Ah.” There was a wealth of understanding in the word. Alice had moved among the ways of men since girlhood with a discerning eye and ambitions of her own. “Should I know something more than that before I go down?”

  “We’ve had trouble with our prioress at St. Frideswide’s. He’s removed her from office, intends to put his sister in her place, and has taken all our properties into his hands until matters are settled.”

  Alice drew a deep, hissing breath in sympathy and understanding of the seriousness of all that. One of her ladies came carrying a wide construction of cauls and veils that would cover Alice’s hair this evening, and Alice sat in the room’s chair, asking, “Have you met this sister of his?”

  “It’s why Dame Perpetua and I’ve come to London. To meet her and escort her back to St. Frideswide’s.”

  Another of her
women slipped a sheened length of silk under Alice’s chin and up around her face, securing it to her hair with long pins and Alice having to wait until she was done before saying, “Have you seen enough of her to know if this is good? Or is it something you might want me to… discourage?”

  She could do that, Frevisse was certain, but slowly, giving it thought, she answered, “By what I’ve seen I think there’s good chance she’ll do well enough.”

  Alice was perforce still while her headdress was eased down over her hair, the satin-lined, gold-wired cauls positioned carefully to frame her already lovely face to greater perfection, but saying while her lady saw to it, “Then all I’ll do is impress your Abbot Gilberd with how dear a cousin you are to me.”

  “Don’t impress him too much or I’ll find myself enjoined to persuade you how much your soul would benefit by gifts to St. Frideswide’s and his abbey, too.” Frevisse matched Alice’s light tone but in deepest truth did not want to be in that position. Gifts should be given freely, of the giver’s own desire, not drawn from them by offers of God’s favor and reward.

  “Ah!” Alice exclaimed, made startled movement, caught herself because her lady was still placing pins to fasten headdress to hair, and said instead, “I’m going feeble-witted. Letice, the gown. It’s there on the chest at the bedfoot.” One of the women moved to obey while Alice went on, “I was going to send it to you for a New Year’s gift but it will be better for you to have it now.”

  She twisted her head slightly to watch Letice bring it, ignoring the small protesting sound from the lady working over her headdress, and Frevisse stood up, hiding her mix of feelings as she took the gown from Letice. It was a Benedictine nun’s habit in cut and color and cloth, black and of wool as it should be, but at the first touch of it Frevisse knew the wool was of the most costly sort, spun and woven to fall in folds as fine as heavy silk. More than that, it was lined—Letice, smiling, turned back a sleeve and lifted the hem to show her— with dark fur. It was a gown worth almost a gentleman’s ransom, and Frevisse, appalled, could only breathe, “Oh, Alice.”