The Sempster's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Chapter 12

  The Naylors and Master Weir saw Frevisse and Mistress Blakhall through the people still waiting in the churchyard, Master Naylor clearing the way, looking more grim than usual, Master Weir keeping himself between Mistress Blakhall and everyone, a steadying hand on her elbow, while Dickon shoved people away on Frevisse’s other side. Questions were being called at them, and to someone who called her by name Mistress Blakhall answered, “It’s Hal, yes. He was stabbed.”

  Her few words spread through the crowd, turning people to exclaim to one another, and with most of the gawkers choosing to stay at the church, they went faster once out of the churchyard, Frevisse and Mistress Blakhall with their heads down, answering nothing, Master Naylor and Master Weir merely telling people there was nothing else to tell. At the house, when the servant keeping guard at the gate had let them in and shut the door hard behind them, Master Weir asked, “Wyett, you’ve let in no one else?”

  ‘None, Master Weir. Is it Hal?“

  ‘It’s Hal, yes.“

  As the man crossed himself, Mistress Blakhall said, “We have to go to Pernell.”

  But Master Naylor said to Frevisse, “Your pardon, my lady. With the rebels into Southwark, it would be well for you and Dame Juliana to be back in St. Helen’s as soon as might be, until we see how things are going to go.”

  ‘James and Rafe have been down to Hay Wharf,“ Wyett said eagerly. ”They say there’s nothing happening across river. No burning or anything.“ He was near to sounding disappointed.

  Still directly at Frevisse, Master Naylor repeated, “It would be well for you to be back in St. Helen’s. Whatever needs doing here, others can do.”

  And was none of her business anyway, he did not add aloud, but she heard it clearly enough. Heard, too, that he was past arguing over the matter. He would have her and Dame Juliana back in St. Helen’s or make enough trouble over it she would wish she had gone. But she meant to make no argument—not so much because of the rebels, but because the day had been long and she was tiring and others could better do what would have to be done here.

  Besides that, Mistress Blakhall was saying, “You’ve already done beyond measure, going with me to the church as you did. Wait here, and I’ll send Dame Juliana out to you.”

  More than willing not to see Mistress Grene in her grief, Frevisse thanked her, and when Mistress Blakhall and Master Weir were gone away across the yard beyond hearing him— and not caring that the man Wyett could—Master Naylor turned on Frevisse and said, “The rebels are too close now.

  We should be more than at St. Helen’s. We should be out of London.“

  Trying to appease both him and her own worry, she said, “The rebels can’t cross the river, and surely the king will have to do something now it’s come to this.”

  ‘We’ll have to wait for time to prove the truth of ’they can’t‘ and ’he will‘,“ Master Naylor snapped. ”For myself, I’d rather not be here to see how it plays out.“

  Neither would she, but the best she could offer was, “I promise you, the instant we can leave, we will.”

  ‘Supposing we can when that time comes,“ Master Naylor said back at her.

  The more stiffly because her own feelings so nearly matched his, she answered, “We’ll simply have to see how things go this next day and so.” And was greatly thankful to see Dame Juliana hurrying from the house.

  She joined them at the gate with, “Was it her son? Mistress Blakhall said you were waiting, and I didn’t stay to ask anything.”

  ‘It was,“ Frevisse said, and Dame Juliana signed herself with the cross, but Master Naylor was already herding them out the gate. He then set a pace back to St. Helen’s that had them nigh to breathless but at the nunnery’s gateway as the bells began to ring for Vespers. Dame Juliana thanked Master Naylor, who bade her welcome and good evening with a bow to them both but no look at all at Frevisse. Too wise to go against his father’s humour, Dickon had been quiet the while, but as he straightened from his own bow to them, he gave Frevisse a quick smile before turning to follow his father away. For him the rebels were an unlooked-for adventure, and because nothing and no one about the dead boy was known to him, Frevisse did not begrudge him his somewhat lighter heart. She only envied him for it.

  She hoped to find refuge in Vespers, but did not. Even in the first psalm her mind was going too many ways other than into quiet. Around her and with her the voices rose: “Beatus, quicumque times Dominum, qui ambulas in vüs ejus… beatus eris et bene tibi erit…” Happy, all you that fear the Lord, who walk in his ways… Happy will you be and good will be to you…

  But neither happiness nor good had come to the boy Hal, and surely he had never done anything so far out of the Lord’s ways to deserve that death and what came afterward. It did not matter that she knew full well that what came to someone too often seemed to match nothing in their life to earn it. It didn’t matter that she knew the psalm’s promised happiness and goodness were the happiness and goodness given by God after this world. Knowing a thing and being at peace with it were too often two different things, and today most certainly she could not reconcile them. For now, as the Office neared its end and the nuns chanted from one side of the choir, “Oremus pro fidelibus defunctis”—We entreat for the faithful dead.—and the other side answered, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis,”—Give eternal rest to them, Lord, and perpetual light shine on them—pray for the dead boy’s soul was all she could do.

  After Vespers and supper came the hour of recreation in the nunnery’s garden before Compline. Dame Juliana walked in talk with some of the nuns along the paths between the summer-flourishing beds of flowers and herbs, but Frevisse knew she would better let her thoughts run now than later and went aside to one of the turf-topped benches, to sit with a book laid open on her lap, hoping that if she looked to be reading she’d be left alone. Not that her thoughts did more than circle, she soon found. What bedeviled her was knowing too much and yet not enough. The questions she wanted to ask were Sir Richard’s and Master Crane’s to do because the places and people of young Hal’s life were all beyond her reach, and she might as well set her mind to accepting the whole matter was over and done for her. She told herself she was willing enough to that. She told herself she would even succeed at letting it go. That she might as well let it go because there was nothing she could do.

  And instead found herself thinking about Brother Michael.

  There in the garden’s peace, she could almost not believe in the ugly fears he had conjured with his talk of secret Jews and ritual murder. Fears not of Jews and what he charged against them, but of what might come if the Inquisition was set strongly going in England. Granted, heresy must not be allowed to thrive, destroying souls, but Frevisse in her childhood spent wandering with her parents had seen a little of the Inquisition’s work. Had understood, even as a child, that despite what good the Inquisition might do, there were men among the inquisitors for whom the love of wielding power of life and death over others was stronger than their desire toward the salvation of souls. To save a soul meant less to them than their pleasure in decreeing men’s destruction. “And the death-wielders’ numbers are growing,” her father had said once, when the small band of players with whom he and her mother and she were presently traveling were sheltering through a rainy night in a barn somewhere in France, having left a town by one gateway as the Inquisition in the form of five Dominican friars rode in through another. Frevisse still remembered the firelight on tired faces, the rustle of rain on the roof, the warmth of her mother’s arms around her. Remembered what her father had said because the word “death-wielders” had stayed with her.

  She did not like how readily Brother Michael had accused Jews of the boy Hal’s death. She was willing—barely—to grant there might be Jews secretly living in London, pretending to be Christian. There had been the bread she had seen on Mistress Blakhall’s table, for one thing. But a braided bread-loaf was too little to bu
ild long thoughts on. Worth more thought was Father Tomas. He had very possibly earned the friar’s dislike and certainly opened himself to the friar’s questions if Brother Michael kept eager to his Jew-hunt. What she had protested in the crypt was true—popes had steadily decreed, one after another, that the accusations of ritual murder by Jews were false—but those repeated decrees had stopped neither the belief nor the butcheries, and Frevisse doubted they would stop Brother Michael. His ambition to find out heretics and Jews looked to be too strong. And whatever the friar did or didn’t do, there would be those who saw Father Tomas differently now that his Jewish parentage was known. She welcomed the small bell ringing to Compline and obeyed it with the hope she would succeed in Compline’s prayers where she had failed at Vespers, that she would sink deep enough into their peace to quiet all her thoughts and let her sleep deep tonight and without dreams.

  Chapter 13

  For Anne, the day’s one mercy was that Mistress Hercy had given order that no neighbor was to be let in until certain word came back from the church; and when Anne returned to say it was Hal, Mistress Hercy gave the order anew without Anne told her more. Then the ill news had to be given to Pernell, and after that there was nothing Anne could do but wrap her arms around her and hold her and weep with her as she sat rocking her body back and forth, wringing her hands, crying out through streaming tears, “Why? He never hurt anyone! Why?”, while Mistress Hercy and Lucie held each other and cried with them.

  Only finally did Mistress Hercy force a drugged wine on her daughter, saying, “Drink it. For the baby’s sake, if nothing else,” and after that at last they got her to bed. When the restless twisting of her head on the pillow quieted at last, they left her, and in the parlor Mistress Hercy, with her own and Lucie’s tears worn out for a while, held her granddaughter in a brief, tight embrace, then told her, “Wash your face and afterward fetch my box of herbs from my chamber and some warm water from the kitchen. We’ll put lavender in it and bathe your mother’s face to ease her if she rouses again and help her back to sleep. There’s a good girl.” But, when Lucie was gone, she turned to Anne and said, “Tell me the worst about his death. So I’ll know from what I have to protect them. Because there is worse, isn’t there?”

  ‘There is,“ Anne said, and told her as briefly as might be—not what Brother Michael had said against Jews and most certainly not how Daved’s arms had tightened around her and his face become a rigid mask in the odd-thrown lantern-shadows—but all the rest, sparing nothing. At the end Mistress Hercy signed herself with the cross and said, ”Thank you. Now I know and will speak to the servants,“ with a grimness that boded ill for anyone who let a word of any of that horror slip to Pernell.

  ‘Lucie, too,“ Anne said. ”If it can be kept from her…“

  ‘Lucie, too,“ Mistress Hercy said.

  Anne made her escape soon afterward, pausing only to bathe her own face clean of its tears and ashamed of how relieved she was to be away, though she soon lost that relief as she made her way home. Used though she was to London in all its humours, this afternoon there was everywhere a such seethe of loud and angry talk—and even now more against the king and his lords than at Jack Cade and his Kentishmen—that she was thankful beyond measure to reach Kerie Lane and close her own door behind her.

  But Bette was brimming over with the same talk if not the anger, exclaiming while Anne was taking off her veil and wimple, baring her head to welcome coolness, “Mistress Upton is just gone. She’s been down at Queenhithe and Vintry wharf with other folk, looking to see what they could across Thames.”

  Turning to the waiting basin of water, Anne asked, “Was she?” Ready to welcome anything that would take her mind from everything else.

  ‘She didn’t see all that much,“ Bette complained. ”Some men staring back from the Southwark side is all, but she made the most of seeing them, swearing they had to be rebels. No sign they’re doing any harm to anybody, though. No rioting or burning or anything. It’s just as folk have been saying. That Jack Cade is keeping everything right because they’re only out to be rid of those around the king as shouldn’t be there.“ Bette dropped her voice. ”She said some are saying we should let them into London, let them get on with things.“

  Anne, who had been washing her face and throat, glad of the cool water, straightened and stared at her. “Let them into London? That would be mad.”

  ‘Still, it would make plain we mean to have changes or else,“ Bette said. ”How did your dinner at Master Grene’s go? How goes it with Mistress Grene?“

  So Anne had to tell the half-truths all over again, but Bette’s exclaims were easier to endure than Pernell’s tears, and because there was only so much to be said about the pity and wickedness of the murder, over supper Bette’s talk went back to the rebels, where Anne willingly kept it until her time for going up to bed.

  Unhappily, bed proved to be neither comfort nor shelter. In a darkness made darker by her thoughts, she lay awake a long while, aching to have Daved with her, half-hoping he would somehow know her need and come to her, at the same time knowing she did not want him out in London’s streets tonight, able to guess from the number of times the Watch went along the streets warning that all good men should be in their beds that too many men were not. So, no, it was better Daved be safe at Raulyn’s.

  But how safe was he even there now? She rolled over, pulled the other pillow to her, and wrapped her arms around it, holding it the way she wanted Daved to be holding her. London had been safest of anywhere for him because no one looked to find Jews here. Now Brother Michael would be looking. Would start with Father Tomas and then…

  Anne sat upright in bed, staring into the darkness, remembering her morning errand. Daved had said he and his uncle sometimes brought letters to London. Other Jewish letters? Until now she had thought only herself and Raulyn knew Daved’s secret. But if there were others, he was even less safe.

  And how far was Raulyn to be trusted if worse came to worse?

  Startled by the question, she reassured herself quickly that of course he could be trusted to the end. Aside from his friendship with them, Daved and Master Bocking brought him profit and he’d not endanger his profit.

  Anne lay down slowly, staring at that thought.

  Was that where she put Raulyn’s friendship? At no higher worth than his own profit? What of his friendship with her then? Until this commission of the Suffolk vestments, their friendship had been more to her profit than to his, so profit wasn’t his only reason for friendship.

  Or was it a different sort of profit he hoped from her? There was the sometimes half-wantonness in things he said or half-said to her in jest. Or that was what she had always told herself. That he was only jesting…

  Anne sat up again and threw the pillow across the room, wanting to throw her thought away with it. Raulyn was her friend and there was the end of it. Anything else was only her own wantonness speaking. And angry at herself, angry at Raulyn, angry at Daved, angry because she was awake and wanted to be asleep, she flung herself down again, closed her eyes… and found herself staring at the thought that among the dangers to Daved was herself.

  She had said she would go back to the House of Converts, to see if the woman Alis had a letter for her family. Now she must not, because if Brother Michael turned his heed that way and she was found out, she would be a link to Daved.

  Blessed St. Anne. If once Brother Michael began to look for Jews, how many ways were there he could be led to Daved?

  But she should not be crying out for comfort to St. Anne, faithful wife and holy mother. Her better hope lay with St. Mary Magdalene. But the Magdalene had repented her sins, and Anne repented not at all her desire for Daved. She wanted him now, here, with her.

  But he was not here, and he did not come, and sometime after the passing Watch had cried, “One of the clock”— without the usual “and all’s well”—she finally slid into a dream-ridden, restless sleep, to awaken late and unrested in a morning already warm be
fore the sun was fully up. Tired with her thoughts and lack of sleep, she put on her lightest undergown, bound her hair up uncovered, and went downstairs to find Bette and the market basket gone.

  Before Anne could begin to worry, Bette shuffled in at the front door, laden market basket over her arm, and Anne hurried to take the basket, chiding, “I’m not that late up that you had to go.”

  Readily giving up the basket, Bette sank onto her stool beside the hearth but waved aside Anne’s protest, saying, “I wanted to hear for myself all that’s going on. You never have enough to tell.”

  Beginning to empty the basket onto the table, Anne asked, “What did you hear?”

  ‘Nothing about Hal’s death, for one.“

  Anne stopped, a breadloaf in her hands. “Nothing?”

  ‘Not with bigger things to take folks’ tongues wagging.“ Bette rubbed at her knees. ”There’s report there’s more rebels coming.“

  Taking a second loaf from the basket, Anne said, “We’ve still the bridge between them and us. The king will have to come sometime to deal with them.”