8 The Maiden's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  The great hall was deep in slumbers again after whatever disturbance Bishop Beaufort’s passing had made; no one roused at her and William going through more than they had before, and when they had climbed the steepened-with-weariness stairs to the lady chamber, all there was slumber and mostly darkness, too, only one lamp left burning and the last of those who had had no business there finally gone, leaving only a squire drowsing in a chair beside the stairway door who woke enough to look up and lose interest in them and be asleep again all in the same moment, and Adam asleep sitting on the floor with his back to the bedchamber doorjamb, and the two maids left to watch over Lady Jane curled asleep on cushions piled on the floor at her head and feet, blankets over them, and Master Hyndstoke’s man in a high-backed chair nearby, slumped down and lightly snoring.

  In wordless agreement, Frevisse and William went to Lady Jane, still lying on her back, her arms along her sides, the blankets unrumpled over her as if she had not moved at all since they had left her. The fire, instead of being banked for the night, was burning low among its logs, casting warmth and a red glow that showed the slow, steady rise and fall of her breathing and her face in a repose it never had when she was awake; showed, too, William’s face, almost as unguarded as Lady Jane’s, gentle with concern and longing and… love?

  Frevisse did not know what other name to give his look but turned from the question of how it could have happened, with nothing between them yet except their marriage sensibly arranged for their profit. It was something aside from everything that needed to be dealt with just now, first and foremost being the question of where she was to sleep. On more of die cushions here in the lady chamber, she supposed, past being particular, just so she could lie down and sleep. And despite of that heard herself instead say softly, “William,” drawing first his attention and then him away from the sleepers beside the fire into the colder shadows across the room, to ask him there, “Your cousin. What Bishop Beaufort said about him. That he was going to betray things to Gloucester. Is that possible?”

  William paused before answering slowly, “I’d rather not believe it but, yes, it’s likely, once it’s thought on. Eyon was steady in all things but his judgment didn’t run very deep and he very much liked money. The hope of more coins in hand might have brought him to think it no great matter to sell away a little information.” That admittance hurt him but he gave it and then asked, “What of Herry? Does his grace have the right of it there? That Herry is fully his creature and didn’t make the attempt on Orleans?”

  “I fear so. Otherwise Herry would likely have let Eyon give away to Gloucester what he meant to, with Beaufort none the wiser. And, too, I think that if it had been Herry who struck at Orleans, he would have struck true and Orleans would be dead.”

  “And Robyn?”

  “God forgive me, I wouldn’t mind finding that mean-spirited fool guilty of everything,” Frevisse said, with unashamed bitterness, “but he wasn’t among the men named as being with Eyon and you said he wasn’t at the gateway either.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “How did it happen who would go with Bishop Beaufort and who wouldn’t?”

  “My lord of Suffolk just pointed at some of us to give him escort. Robyn wasn’t even in the room.”

  “It was random, who Suffolk chose to go?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  Frevisse stood considering what very little she yet knew to any purpose and wished she would stop asking questions and settle for sleep. Rid of her weariness, she might be able to be rid of the sick feelings of anger and defeat that were driving her and probably confusing her thinking as much as her weariness surely was.

  The trouble was that even rest was unlikely to rid her of her anger. Anger most at Bishop Beaufort because he had put together everything that had made tonight happen but angry, too, at herself for being helpless against it and unable to find the one more answer that she needed—who wanted Orleans dead and was probably still at hand to try again?

  She felt as if something nasty had been dabbling in every corner of her mind. A nasty something with a bishop’s name.

  “You should go to bed, my lady,” William said gently into her thoughts’ turmoil. “We’ll think the better when we’ve rested. You’ve done what could be done tonight.”

  He was right but that made none of it better. What she might have answered him was stopped by the bedchamber door opening, swathing yellow lamplight across a little of the lady chamber, rousing Adam to start a scramble to his feet but Alice, coming out, laid hand on his shoulder, spoke softly to him so that he subsided as she closed the door and went quiet-footed to stand over Lady Jane. In the shadows and firelight, in her damask bedgown, with her fair hair loose down her back, she looked no older than the sleeping girl; and quietly, not to startle her, Frevisse said, “Alice.”

  Alice, unstartled, looked into the shadows, found her and William, and came to join them, saying with a faint, tired smile, “Master Hyndstoke says it’s the remains of the drug in her that has her so deeply asleep but that her heart is beating evenly and strong and that when she awakes, she’ll be weak a while but well.”

  “May I?” William motioned toward Lady Jane.

  “Go to her? Be with her? By all means, yes,” Alice granted.

  And when he was gone, Frevisse asked quietly, “How is it with Orleans?”

  Alice tried to smile. “He’s well. Weak from so much blood gone but well, taken all in all. Word will be given out he fell ill directly he came to London, is too ill to see anyone. When he’s well enough, he’ll return to Stourton’s keeping, Gloucester none the wiser he ever saw the king. If we can keep him safe. What have you learned?”

  Leaving out about Robyn and the poems for now, and that the first attack on Orleans had been feigned, Frevisse told her the rest. Of Eyon’s death and Herry’s treachery, of why he had thought Lady Jane should die and as much as she could of what had past in the yard just now.

  Part way through the telling Alice sat down on a nearby chair, her head bent as if under the weight of what she was learning but saying nothing even when Frevisse had finished, the silence stretching between them, Frevisse leaving it there until Alice looked up and said evenly over a deep anger, “Then Eyon was about to betray us but Herry, who is after all actually my lord of Winchester’s creature while pretending to be Gloucester’s, killed him for it, to stop him and to punish him. Jane he wanted to kill because she looked to be a danger to him and probably he would have killed William if he’d known his part in it. But Bishop Beaufort has taken him away, is protecting him, presumably so Herry can continue to serve him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Herry.” Alice shook her head slowly, her disbelief at so much treachery and easy willingness to kill mingled with anger that she could see no way of doing to him what he deserved. But of Bishop Beaufort she said nothing, Frevisse noticed. Because nothing he had done came as surprise to her?

  “So Jane is safe but not Orleans, since it wasn’t Herry who attacked him. Is that the way of it?”‘ Alice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are we going to do next?”

  The simplicity of the question, coming from someone far from simple, hurt with the depth of its trust. Hurt the worse because all Frevisse could offer was, “We go on asking questions.”

  “And presently the questions are?”

  Frevisse held back from sighing and answered, trying to match Alice’s even tone, “Was it a planned attempt on Orleans, by someone deliberately there to do it, or was it a chance taken because it happened to hand by someone who didn’t hope to have a better one? If it was planned, how did the man know Orleans would be there? How many people knew the whole business at the river gate was for no other purpose but to cover his return?”‘ She paused, sorting through what she had said to find a core question, and said, “I suppose what we need to know first is who was there when Orleans was stabbed. The guards on duty, of course. The boatmen— Bishop Beaufort’s and yours. All
Bishop Beaufort’s men and your household folk sent out with him, chosen at random, William says, but anyone who wanted to be there could have joined in unnoticed, either while they were inside or crossing the yard. There were maybe two score men there, one way and another.”

  Saying it aloud helped sort it into shape, helped draw out of her memory how it had been there in the gateway in those otherwise unmemorable moments before Orleans was stabbed, and so she went on, more for her own sake than Alice’s. “William was there. And Herry. And Master Bruneau because you’d sent him to tell us the garden door was open. There was Adam.” Sleeping on guard outside Orleans’ door now. “And someone named Andrew.”

  Strange-voiced, Alice said, “I never sent Master Bruneau to you.”

  The forward movement of Frevisse’s mind came to a frozen halt. In a stillness of things she did not want to say, she looked at Alice until slowly, wanting the words to come out differently, wanting Alice’s answer to be different than it was going to be, she said, “You didn’t bid Master Bruneau be there, to tell me the garden door would be unlocked?”

  “Why would I?” Alice said, with much of the same wish not to say the words, but “What other way could you reasonably come but through the garden? I went myself to make certain it was unlocked. That was all. I said nothing about it to Master Bruneau.”

  Who had therefore been at the gateway for no reason but his own. And had lied about it.

  Chapter 28

  Frevisse and Alice waited at the stairward end of the lady chamber, a single lamp lit on the table between them giving no comfort to the darkness of their unshared thoughts while the hunt for Master Bruneau spread through Coldharbour, done quietly by William and five other yeomen he awoke to the task so they could work in pairs, with not even Suffolk, at Alice’s order, told yet. “If he’s not readily found,” she had said, “then we’ll wake everyone and do more.”

  But the wait was not long before William and another yeoman were returned with Master Bruneau between them, held by his arms, though not roughly because he was not resisting them. Was not anything except letting himself be brought to face Alice across the table and even then he only stood mere, head bowed, shoulders slumped, as if it did not matter to him where he was.

  “Where did you find him?” Frevisse asked, when Alice seemed unable to say anything,

  “In the church,” William answered. “On his knees in front of the altar. We asked him to come with us and he did.”

  “Did he ask why?” Frevisse asked.

  “He knows,” William answered.

  If it could have been Herry there, or that fool Robyn, there would have been no trouble to it. But for it to be Master Bruneau… “Where’s his dagger?” she asked.

  “Here.” In his free hand William held up a belt with a dagger in its sheath still hanging from it. “He hasn’t any other weapon on him.”

  “Let him go,” Alice said.

  They did, and Master Bruneau sank to one knee in front of her, head still bowed.

  “Why?”‘ Alice asked, not angrily or in accusation but only with a deep, sorrowing need to know.

  Master Bruneau neither moved nor answered.

  With a trace of anger now, she demanded, “Why, Master Bruneau?” And then, “Look at me!”

  He raised his head. In the soft, defining shadows of the lamplight his face was grieved and sorrowing and hopeless as he made as if to answer her, then shook his head wordlessly and looked down again.

  “You don’t deny you did it?” Alice asked.

  That he managed to answer. “No.”

  “Then why?”

  But that seemed to be a thing he could not say, and more angrily she asked, “Who set you on to do it? How much were you paid?”

  Master Bruneau flinched up his head to that. “No one! This was never done for pay or at anyone’s bidding but my own, my lady!”

  “But why?” Alice begged.

  His mouth opened, closed, as if he could not make words come, and Frevisse before Alice’s anger could grow said, “Master Bruneau, would it be something you could say to his grace of Orleans?”

  The secretary raised his head to that but across whatever he might have answered, Alice exclaimed, “To what purpose? No, Orleans shouldn’t have to see him.”

  Ignoring her, eyes locked to Master Bruneau’s, Frevisse asked, “Would you?”

  And he answered, “Yes. For his grace’s sake and mine, yes.”

  “He’s sleeping,” Alice said, still refusing. “He’s probably sleeping.”

  “He may be. We can go and see,” Frevisse answered, refusing her refusal.

  Somewhere away in the darkness that seemed to have gone on forever, with dawn fated never to come, London bells began to ring to Prime; and wearily, as if resistance were suddenly beyond her, Alice agreed, “We can see. And if his grace is awake, we’ll ask him. Let it be his choice.”

  Master Hyndstoke, continuing in attendance on so noble a patient, was not inclined to let even Alice in, let alone others. Only Orleans asking from the bed who was there and then saying he would see them brought Master Hyndstoke to allow it, but it took Alice’s direct order to send him and the two squires set there for guard out of the room, and not until they were gone and the door shut, did she and Frevisse approach Orleans, lying near the edge of the wide bed, half raised on pillows, the bedcoverings drawn up to his waist, unclothed above them save for bandages, his left arm stretched out from his hurt side, his other hand lying on his chest, with the careful stillness of someone wary against pain. Even in the warm light of the oil lamps burning on either side of the bed he was pale, but it was not the gray-white of a corpse and he greeted them with something of a smile and slightly moved his near hand toward Alice, who took hold of it and knelt beside the bed, laying her free hand against his cheek as she asked, “How is it with you, my lord?”

  “I am drugged enough that presently there is very little pain and it is wonder I’m awake at all. But I am glad I am, for the pleasure of seeing you, my lady.” He raised and kissed her hand.

  “Alice,” Frevisse said gently, and regretfully Alice said, “Dame Frevisse has something you must needs be told.”

  Orleans looked past Alice to her; and hating what she had to do, Frevisse told him of Master Bruneau and watched all feeling drain out of Orleans’ face while she did until he was as barren of emotion as an alabaster tomb effigy except his face held none of the peace such carven faces usually had, only the polished stone’s rigidity as she finished with “He wants to speak to you before this… goes further.” Before it went to a trial that would be brief, Master Bruneau’s guilt already admitted to, and then to his hanging if he were fortunate, or to his being hanged and drawn and quartered if he were not.

  His eyes unreadable, unwavering, Orleans said, “I’m here.”

  It was permission of a kind, and feeling much as Orleans looked—pale and rigid and in pain—Frevisse went to the door to bid William and the other yeoman bring Master Bruneau in. They did, keeping him well away from the bed but to where he and Orleans could see each other, while Frevisse joined Alice where she had withdrawn a few paces from the bedside. Orleans, gathering strength for it, asked, much as Alice had done, “Why?” And then more strongly, with grief showing raw around the anger, “Why”? What have I done, for you to want me dead?“

  Master Bruneau flinched and, strained by a grief to match Orleans’ own, answered without anger, only pain, “It wasn’t for what you’ve done. It was for what you’re going to do.”

  Blankly, Orleans echoed, “For what I’m going to do?” And as if breath to say it was hard to come by, Master Bruneau forced out, “If you live, if you go free and this peace is made with France, then everything England has there will be lost.”

  “The purpose of the peace,” Orleans said carefully, slowly, his face returned to stone-still, “is to keep that from happening.”

  Master Bruneau looked at him unflinching now. “If you go free, we will lose France. Our late King Henry,
God keep his soul, knew you and he said on his deathbed you were never to be set free until England held all of France. If you go free with France only partly taken, as it is now, everything English in France will be lost.”

  “So you would have had my death to keep it from happening,” Orleans said, not, Frevisse noted, making any denial of what Master Bruneau had said.

  Because it was too false to bother to deny?

  Or because it was too much the truth?

  Master Bruneau, meeting Orleans’ gaze this while, now lowered his eyes again as he said, miserable with defeat or shame or a mingling of both, “Only I couldn’t kill you. When I came to it, I pulled aside instead of striking true.” He sank to his knees, striking at his chest with his fisted hand, eyes shut, rocking under a weight of shame and grief, “God forgive me that I wanted to do it. God forgive me that I tried. God forgive me that I failed.”

  “Master Bruneau,” Frevisse said across his grieving, needing to know something more. “You’re French. Why would you care so grievously if everything went back to France?”

  Master Bruneau let his hand fall and sank down on his heels as he answered dully, “I’m Norman French. I was the duke of Bedford’s man all the years he was governor there. I could have served no better lord. Now I serve my lord of Suffolk. My loyalties have all been given toward England, and so have thousands of other men’s in Normandy, in Gascony. What use have we for being taken over by a French king we’ve never given oath or service to? And if I could stop it, how could I let it happen?”

  “The peace won’t give Normandy over to France,” Alice said.

  Master Bruneau did not answer her. No one did. Only, after a pause, Orleans asked, “You have lands in Normandy? Family?”