The rest the page was a welter of half-written lines and deleted words, but what she had read was enough to tell her that despite the years of unfreedom there had been for him— and might yet be—he was not come to terms with it. More than that, he was someone who sought out the words to say who he was and what he felt and to ask why it was this way. Fortune—Fate—Chance—God—Life. All words that gave somewhere to ask the question Why?
A question not always safely asked or answered. A dangerous question but one that Orleans dared ask.
But he said easily, taking the paper from her, “There will be more if ever I make my rhymes come right. Which so far they have not wanted to.”
“The thought behind it is assuredly true enough. Fortune hasn’t been kind to you.”
“Not to be readily noticed,” Orleans agreed, laying the paper aside. “Still, there is the fact that I am alive, though I have written poetry about my doubts of the worth of that, too.”
He was being charming and was very good at it. She wondered if it was a skill he had always had or something he had learned while a prisoner, finding it better to charm his captors than hold himself aloof in arrogance and pride. After all, more was likely to be done for a friend than for a prisoner, and if worse came to worse friendship might serve to keep him alive when nothing else would.
Was it only friendship, or something more, he had with Alice?
Frevisse jerked her mind aside from the thought, telling herself she had no right to ask it. Or did she, since it might be the matter of her cousin’s soul was at stake in it?
At least it seemed Orleans had given up trying to find out her mind for the while. Or else, she suddenly suspicioned, he was circling around to come another way, and to forestall that, she grabbed at random for something reasonably safe to say and said, “That was kind what you did for Lady Jane this morning.”
Orleans looked momentarily puzzled, visibly reaching back in his memory before answering with an acknowledging inclination of his head, “It was also the truth. There is a loveliness to her beyond the marring.”
“It’s nonetheless a truth she needs to hear and a truth not easily said. It was good of you to say it.”
“That is one of the advantages of being prisoner so long. I have learned to make the most of what freedoms I have. Fair words to fair ladies is one of the most readily to hand and costs nothing.”
“Costs nothing if done judiciously,” Frevisse corrected.
“If done judiciously,” he agreed.
And always considering that if there did, after all, happen to be a cost, it would probably be paid especially by the lady, Frevisse did not say aloud.
But Orleans was taking their talk another way with “My Lady Alice spoke of you sometimes in the while that I was in my lord of Suffolk’s keeping. Spoke well of you.”
“As I trust I always do of her,” Frevisse answered evenly, smiling but disconcerted to hear Alice had talked of her to him.
Orleans leaned a little toward her. “And surely you always speak truly of her, too. So tell me, I pray you, how does she?”
The lightness, the play of words, were suddenly set aside; and because she could not tell where he meant to go with whatever she answered, Frevisse took the straightest way, answering as truly as she could, “She’s well. From all that I can tell these few days I’ve been with her, her life agrees with her and she with it.”
“She is happy then?” Orleans insisted. “She is… content?”
Still trying to guess what he was at, Frevisse said cautiously, “Within what anyone’s life allows for contentment, for happiness, yes, I think she is. Happy enough, content enough.”
Orleans’ gaze held to her face a little longer, as if looking to find what was there behind what showed, until, seemingly satisfied of something, he leaned back into his chair and said, “Then it is well. Thank you.”
Across the room Lady Jane rose to her feet, saying. “Your doublet is done, your grace.”
She brought it to him as he put aside his cloak and helped him on with it since it was most fashionably cut and therefore somewhat tight in the shoulders at putting on though comfortable enough afterwards to judge by how he shrugged and settled into it before bending his head to see to lacing it closed. Frevisse used the diversion to murmur, “If you’ll pardon me, my lord,” and followed Lady Jane away to the window bench. There they sat to either side of Lady Jane’s sewing box, Lady Jane taking up the wedding shirt, Frevisse turning her back as much as she could from the room, toward the window with her breviary open in her lap as if she meant to try her prayers again. The day that had had some hope of sunshine at its start was going gray under closing clouds that promised snow again but there was more than light enough to read by. Or feign reading by. Because despite her book, she was watching from the side of her eyes to see if Orleans would follow and was relieved when he did not, merely finished fastening his doublet, then went to the settle and took up Confessio Amantis again.
He had disconcerted her badly. Whatever his years as prisoner had done to him, they had not made him into someone who sat in idle waiting for his life to happen to him. Even brought to the confines of this room and such slight company as herself and Lady Jane, he was finding out in every way he could who it was he had to deal with, how much or how little they were for or against him, or if they did not matter.
But was sure enough of Alice that all he had wanted to know of her was if she was happy, if she was content.
Frevisse held to her pretence of being intent on her book while Orleans read and Lady Jane embroidered an intercurving pattern of green vines and leaves onto a cuff. A few large snowflakes fell slowly into the garden and from the hall there were occasional noises now of the tables being set up for dinner. When a log broke and fell in the fire, Orleans rose, pushed it back among its fellows with his foot, and sat again. And quietly Frevisse closed her breviary and said to Lady Jane, her voice low and carefully mild because intensity would carry where words would not, “What did you mean by your warning in the yard yesterday?”
Lady Jane paused at her sewing but neither looked up nor answered.
“That I should be careful,” Frevisse urged. “That the man whose place I’ve taken with the messages didn’t ‘simply die.” What did you mean?“
Lady Jane’s hands sank into her lap, onto the shirt, and still saying nothing, she lifted her head and looked out the window for a time before saying, as low as Frevisse, “He wasn’t a man who drank to excess. He wouldn’t have that night in particular because I’d passed a message on to him he was to take out first thing in the morning. He was too careful to be that drunk that night.”
“No one is always careful.”
Lady Jane did not answer that.
“Does Lady Alice know this, suspect this?”
Lady Jane shrugged a little. “There’s nothing to know. Everyone accepts what the doctor said except William and me. He’s asked questions, trying to learn more, but there’s no proof that points to anyone, only likelihood that it was done.” The despair of frustration in Lady Jane’s voice on the sudden changed to indignation as she looked at Frevisse angrily to say, “Of course Lady Alice doesn’t know! She’d not have made you part of it if she’d thought there was danger in it.”
That at least was good to know, Frevisse thought more soberly than she would have wished.
Lady Jane, letting go the indignation, sighed. “And anyway it hardly matters now. With his grace of Orleans here, there’ll be no messages for a while and so no danger.”
“Except that, if you’re right, there’s someone in the household willing to kill,” Frevisse pointed out.
“No one knows Orleans is here save you and me and Lady Alice, his grace of Suffolk, and William,” Lady Jane as quickly pointed back.
“And Bishop Beaufort and the men who brought him, they know, too,” Frevisse returned. “And someone besides them, besides us, knew he was at Winchester House. By now it has to be known he isn’t, and they’ll be
looking to find where he’s gone.”
“Who will be looking?” Lady Jane demanded.
“Whoever it is that wants him dead.”
“I presume it is my death we are discussing, my ladies?” Orleans inquired behind them.
Turned from the room and too concentrated on what they were saying to notice he was there until then, they startled, surely looking as guilty as they felt, then started to rise but he gestured them to stay and pulled a chair over to join them, saying as he sat, “So. Yes?”
Frevisse answered, with no help for it, as evenly as he asked it, “Your death is less the question we were wondering over than how actually safe your grace is here.”
“I doubt I have been actually much safe anywhere since I was twelve years old.” Orleans smiled. “What does it seem to be this time?”
“Lady Jane believes that a man who was one of Lady Alice’s messengers before me was murdered by someone here in the household, but the murder is unsuspected yet by anyone but her. And William.”
“And you believe what?”
“What I believe or not is beside the point that there’s nothing to suggest who might have done it but that, if it’s true, then there’s someone already part of the household who is willing to kill you if it’s found out you’re here.”
“Unless whoever it is who is willing to kill is in the employ of someone who wants me alive, rather than of someone who wants me dead,” Orleans pointed out.
“Are there so many men who want you dead?” Frevisse asked.
“What makes ‘many’?” Orleans asked back. “One man is too many if he hires someone competent at his work.”
A slight scratching at the hallward door twitched all their heads that way and for a stiffened moment they all sat looking toward the sound before Frevisse made her shoulders ease and said, “That will be William with our dinner or more wood,” and Lady Jane set her sewing aside and rose to her feet, but stopped to ask Orleans, “What happened when you were twelve years old, my lord?”
Orleans’ pause then as he looked back at her went on so long that almost it seemed he was not going to answer, before finally, quite quietly, he said, “My father was murdered, my lady.”
Chapter 19
William came in burdened with a tray heavy-loaded with dishes and a green-glazed pitcher that obscured where he walked. To help him, Lady Jane took the pitcher and came with him to the table where Orleans was come to clear his writing away and Frevisse to help set out the food. Apples baked in cinnamon syrup in thick pastry cups, a round loaf of white bread with sliced almonds striped in patterns on its crust, slices of pale meat in a yellow sauce—not, Frevisse hoped, last night’s neglected peacock reduced to anonymity…
Lady Jane, returning to lock the door they had left a little open, gasped and stopped, Frevisse looked up, William spun around, and Orleans went rigid, while in the doorway, wide-eyed and startled as they were, Master Bruneau stared past them all to Orleans, apparently no more believing his eyes than Frevisse would have liked to believe hers. But he recovered before any of them and bowed low, saying, “My lord.”
And then Lady Jane, recovering, too, crossed the few yards between them, seized him by the arm and pulled him into the room, shut the door and wrenched the key around in the lock as if that would undo what was done, while Orleans came, too, but smiling, both hands held out to clasp Master Bruneau warmly by the hand, saying, “Sir! It’s more than good to see you again!”
“And you, my lord,” Master Bruneau said with equal, welcoming warmth. “And you.”
Orleans sobered. “I heard about Jeannette and am most sorry. How do you? And do not tell me well.”
The brightness of tears unexpectedly glistened in Master Bruneau’s eyes. “No, not well, my lord. Better but not well.”
William was gone calmly back to setting out the food, leaving only Lady Jane and Frevisse not understanding as Orleans led Master Bruneau aside toward the window, saying ‘“Well’ does not come, I fear. Only ‘better.” I grieve you have had to learn that for your lady as I had to learn it for my Bonne.“
Master Bruneau made an agreeing movement of his head and quoted with a tremor in his voice, “ ‘Now hold himself from love who may. For me, I may keep no more. I must needs love despite all grief and sore. And yet…’ ” His voice broke.
“I know.” Orleans’ voice had a broken edge of grief to it, too. “ ‘My Heart began to acquaint himself the other day With beauty which so cheered him therefore That her to serve he has himself foreswore.” Remember how Jeannette laughed the evening I first read that to you all and said it was for her?“
The echo of remembered laughter took something of the grief from Master Bruneau’s answer. “I remember. You pleased her much. The copy you gave her, she kept always. Remember the poem you did for Lady Anne, how long it took everyone to see where the cleverness lay? And the one you did for Lady Eva?”
“The one I wrote without ever mentioning Love or Beauty because Lady Eva has none, inward or outward, but would not stop asking that I write a poem ‘all of her own’?”
“That one.” Controlled to quiet now, Master Bruneau asked, “But, my lord, why are you here and, I take it, in secret?”‘
Orleans told him briefly, making little of the attack, saying, “Only my doublet suffered and, see, Lady Jane has mended it to new.” Making slight, too, of his need to stay hidden but leaving no doubt of it.
And Master Bruneau fully understood. “I’ll assuredly say nothing, my lord.”
But from where he stood beside the table William asked what Frevisse had been wanting to. “Why did you come here at all, Master Bruneau?”‘
Not seeming surprised at being asked nor as if he had anything to hide, he answered, “I’m missing one of my Rouen rolls. You know?” he asked of Lady Jane. “The other day when I was in here? I knew you were to be private today but thought no harm in asking to look when I saw William bringing your dinner.”
With William and Lady Jane he made quick search under furniture but the roll was not found, and he and William left together, William taking away the remains of breakfast, Master Bruneau with a deep wish to Orleans for his safety and success.
When they were gone, the door locked behind them, Orleans, Lady Jane, and Frevisse ate their cooled dinner in mostly silence, each to their own thoughts, until near the end Frevisse looked up from the apple tart and asked Orleans, “Who was Bonne?”
Orleans’ smile curved awry between remembered pleasure and loss. “My wife.” He stirred the apples left in his pastry shell a little, then laid the spoon aside and said far away to somewhere inside himself or beyond the years, “ ‘Cursed death, why will you not make me to die, Since my sweet heart, since my good soul is gone? I would my life in someone else’s heart did lie, For now for nothing do I live this long.” “ He raised his head, forcing a smile. ”I was newly come into the earl of Suffolk’s keeping when word came that she had died. Almost seven years ago now. Master Bruneau and his wife were kind to me in my grief then. You would not believe how comforting it was to be able to talk to them of Bonne in French. That was why I tried to give what I could in return of comfort to him now, Mistress Bruneau being dead. Ah!“ He pushed the bowl with the unfinished tart away from him. ”Enough. I think I’ll sleep to pass the time the faster.“
Stretched out on the settle, he slept or seemed to well enough that Frevisse and Lady Jane kept quiet not to disturb him, sitting at the window again, Lady Jane sewing, Frevisse praying her way through None, then merely sitting, thinking as little as might be, no satisfactory way to take her thoughts. She wanted to stay clear from the one question she had of Alice and Orleans, the one she did not want to ask and was afraid to have answered. And as for Orleans’ safety and hers, there was little she could do, confined here, but hope they were both in small danger from any murderer. If there was a murderer.
Orleans sat up and returned to the Confessio Amantis. Lady Jane’s sewing and Frevisse’s quiet turning away from her thought
s went on and a while more of the afternoon slipped away before into their silences there was the sound of a key in the hallward door and Alice entered, locked the door, and turned to face them, looking like a child let off of lessons as she said, “There! I’ve told everyone I’ve had my surfeit of folk for today and will spend the rest of it with you at your prayers.” She was still dressed for being out but with her kingfisher cloak thrown back over her shoulders, showing her murrey-purple gown; and pulling off a glove as she moved toward the fireplace, she added, “I’ve given order I’m not to be disturbed until my lord comes home from Westminster. That’s one benefit of being lady rather than lord. There’s never a chance I’ll ever have to sit through any session of Parliament!”
Orleans had put aside his book and risen to his feet as she came toward the hearth and him; and Alice gave him her smile as she held her ungloved hand toward the flames with a sigh of pleasure and “Oh mercy. Warmth!” but looked away from him toward Lady Jane and Frevisse at the window to go on chatting, “I thought I’d freeze on the ride home. I swear I’m going ahead with building us a place at St. Giles Holborn, whatever Suffolk says. It will be that much nearer Westminster…”
Orleans made a half step toward her, took her outstretched hand into his own, and all her bright spatter of words ended between one and the next. For a moment she went utterly still, then with an aching slowness turned toward him, both of them ceasing to feign anything for anyone, all pretence gone that she was there for any other reason than him.
At almost the same instant as Frevisse, Lady Jane turned away to the window and barren garden and what was left of the winter day’s fading sunlight, with Frevisse heartsick at what she’d seen; but beside her, curtly, quietly, Lady Jane said, “Whatever you’re thinking, they’ve done no sin. She swore it to me.”
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