10 The Squire's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  It was an expert effort to divert Lady Blaunche, Frevisse saw at once, because Lady Blaunche immediately uncovered her face and turned her head toward him. “You did, didn’t you? I remember you saying so once but not why. Was it for a lost love?”

  ‘I’ve never been fortunate enough to have a love, let be unfortunate enough to lose her. No, it was near the end of my time at Oxford—my second time at Oxford,“ he said with a smile that Lady Blaunche damply matched, showing that his Oxford time was something of a jest between them, ”but happily by then I’d grown wits enough to know that taking up the cloistered life is no little matter and that I was thinking of it more because I was a-feared over what would come to me in the world than because I desired to give myself up to God. So for God’s sake and my own, I took courage instead of vows and here I am, most content in your service, my lady.“

  He took her near hand, raised and kissed it, and Frevisse saw that there was what Lady Blaunche wanted—to be flattered and made much of, even if only by someone whose place here depended on how well he pleased her. But even more than that, what she wanted was to have her own way, and Robert for maybe the first time in their marriage was not giving it to her. That, more than childing and unbalanced humours, was what presently drove her and Frevisse was grateful Dame Claire came then with what she had been mixing and that Lady Blaunche was now sufficiently calmed to do as she was told and drank at Dame Claire’s bidding.

  She was handing the goblet back when a burst of children’s laughter from the parlor made her start. “I’ll quiet them,” Master Geoffrey said, making start for the door.

  Lady Blaunche drew herself more straightly up in the bed, said, “Yes. No. That’s Benedict I hear, isn’t it? I want to see him. Bid him come to me.”

  Master Geoffrey obeyed, quickly going to open the door a narrow way and say out in a hushed voice, “Master Benedict, your lady mother is asking for you.”

  The laughter cut off except for a final helpless giggle that might have been from John being tickled, and after a pause Master Geoffrey stepped back, opening the door wider for Benedict to come cautiously in. He was flushed and his hair a little tousled and there was still something of the delight in play with his halfling brothers and sister about him, but it left him rapidly as, plainly trying to look like he wanted to be there and equally plainly wishing he was not, he crossed to his mother, took her out-held hands in his, kissed her cheek and asked, “How is it with you, Mother?”

  Lady Blaunche faded back onto her pillows, still holding to one of his hands, answering him faint-voiced, “None so bad as it was, now you’re here. Almost everyone is being very kind but I…”

  From the solar below them there was a sudden thrum of men’s voices and Lady Blaunche stiffened, outrage tightening in her. Benedict as guiltily as if it were his fault, said, “The Allesleys have come. I was on my way to tell you.”

  Lady Blaunche sat straight up again, listening viciously. ‘And Ned and those treacherous arbiters, too? They’re all there?“

  ‘Yes,“ Benedict said. ”Of course.“

  Lady Blaunche shifted her grip from his hand to his wrist. You go, too. You join them. I want you to be there for what they’re doing.“

  ‘Robert said I wasn’t—“

  ‘Don’t you listen to him. It’s you he’s ruining as well as me. We’ll make him do it to your face. If he wants to play the coward and we can’t stop him, at least we won’t let him do it behind your back.“

  ‘Lady Blaunche…“ Frevisse started since no one else looked likely to protest, but Lady Blaunche gave her no heed at all, went on with all her will brought to bear on Benedict, ordering at him, ”You go down there now. You walk into the solar as if you belong there and make them face you while they do this thing.“

  ‘Robert said…“ Benedict tried again.

  ‘Don’t you listen to him,“ Lady Blaunche repeated fiercely, shaking his arm. ”If you walk in there now as if you belong there, Robert won’t send you away. It would look too ill if he did. He won’t.“

  ‘He said…“

  ‘You go,“ Lady Blaunche ordered and shoved his arm away from her. ”Go.“

  Benedict went—not happily; Frevisse gave him that—but he went, with a bow to his mother and a quick kiss to her cheek, and Lady Blaunche smiled bitterly after him through her tears.

  Chapter 13

  The morning’s promise of changed weather had built up through the early afternoon into a great black threat of storm, with the first growl of thunder an hour ago setting the servants to shuttering the hall windows while the cloud-brought twilight thickened; and when the storm had broken into pouring rain and fierce wind, Robert had said that everyone—Ned, Allesleys and arbiters alike—was welcome to stay not only to supper but the night since darkness was likely to have come on and the roads be treacherous with mud and flooding before the rain was done. No one had refused his offer and soon thereafter agreed to be done with their work for the day and now, Papers and purpose all put away, they were scattered around the solar in comfortable talk, with Robert and Sir Lewis a little apart from the rest, standing at the window, one of the few in the manor with glass, watching the rain-lashed orchard and wind-roiled, low-running clouds without much to say to one another but surprisingly easy in their silence together.

  Yesterday they and the arbiters had been feeling their way, both sides trying to judge how reasonable or unreasonable, difficult or undifficult the other side was going to be. What they had found, to their rather disbelief, was that no one on either side was looking to make great trouble and today, from there, they had gone straight into the matter’s rights and wrongs, far simpler a task than it might have been because Robert was willing to grant most of the right lay on Sir Lewis’ side and most of the wrong on his. That had let the talk come down to debate on whether returning the manor would be enough or whether compensation must needs be made, too. It had helped very little that he had been able to show the manor had gained in worth these past years. Circle and delay though he might, he had been unable to break clear of the straight fact that Sir Lewis meant to have compensation and wanted it to be Katherine.

  Worse, Robert had no strong reason he could show for not agreeing to what was so undeniably reasonable; and yet, despite that, he had more than once found himself thinking that he and Sir Lewis could have settled everything between them long since if they had been left to themselves at the outset, could even have been friends.

  If not for Blaunche.

  If not for Benedict.

  The thought slid unwanted into Robert’s mind, along with too much of the anger he had been keeping buried all day, beginning with when he had left Blaunche this morning. He had buried it then because it was not something he could afford today, then had to bury it deeper when it wanted to break out at Benedict come into the morning’s meeting uninvited, then spent the rest of the day holding it down and only partly because of Benedict. He had to blame himself as well, because like the fool he must essentially be, he had sent Benedict to Blaunche this morning with some thought that it would be a comfort to her to have his company. If nothing else, they could be bitter at him together; but Blaunche, as he should have known she would, had taken the chance to turn the boy into a weapon against him yet again.

  Not that Benedict had done much or even said much through the day. But he had been a black-browed presence at the council table, glowering at everybody and everything and at Robert most of all, hardly speaking even when spoken to, until finally everyone had simply left him to his sullen glaring. Robert had tried a while ago, at the end of the day’s talks, to be rid of him, telling him, aside, he was to go back upstairs and stay there. Benedict had gone, but he had not stayed. When Drew had asked with due courtesy if he might keep company with Mistress Katherine this while until supper, there had been no courteous reason to refuse him and Robert had sent Gil to ask if Katherine would come down. She had, attended by Mistress Dionisia as was right and with Emelye for good measure. But Benedict had
come back with them and was now standing with Katherine and Drew across the solar, supposedly companioning Emelye but with displeasure raw on his face and in every movement. The only hope Robert had was that he seemed to be saying very little, probably because Ned, after trading a look with Robert, had drifted aside from talk with Master Durant to join them, putting himself between Benedict and Drew.

  Sir Lewis, his gaze following Robert’s across the room but with different thought, said, “They make a goodly couple.”

  ‘They do,“ Robert agreed, knowing he meant Katherine and Drew and managing to sound as if he were glad of it instead of curdled halfway to ill with certainty that tomorrow he would have to give way, would have to sign her over to the Allesleys to make the peace everyone wanted. He tried to hold to the thought that when it was done, it would make an end in more ways than one, and after all Katherine had said she was willing and plainly had no aversion to young Drew. Let agreement be made and the quarrel would be settled and by not much after Easter she’d be gone, he’d not have to see her, ache for her ever again, and that he should be glad it could all be as simple as that. Glad. Not half sick with a grieving made all the worse because he must not—must not—in any way show it.

  Beside him Sir Lewis said, “I confess I’m surprised you hadn’t married her to Master Benedict long before this.”

  Surprised at how easily even he kept his voice, Robert answered, “It would have suited neither of them, I’m afraid.”

  ‘You’d let that influence you?“ Sir Lewis asked, with interest more than disbelief.

  ‘I would,“ Robert said simply.

  Even before his own feeling for Katherine had arisen and without ever saying clearly to himself why not, he had known he would never marry her to Benedict. Only now, unsettled through these past days to find how thoroughly Benedict was his mother’s, had he realized it was more because of Blaunche than because of Benedict. She was not someone he would wish on anyone, as mother-in-law or otherwise, and although when he had first put it to himself so bluntly, it had hurt, the hurt had changed nothing. Naked truth was still truth.

  ‘What then if she had objected to Drew after they met? Sir Lewis asked. “Or you had found objection to him-Would you have refused their marriage?”

  ‘Yes,“ Robert said, again simply but watching to see how Sir Lewis would react.

  Sir Lewis rumbled a laugh. “And so would I if Drew had objected to her. But what would we have done for a settlement then, in place of the marriage?”

  Robert smiled. “Talked longer.”

  ‘And been called fools by everyone who couldn’t see why we weren’t taking the short way to the end.“

  ‘Better the long way around and no one in pain at the end of it.“

  Sir Lewis sobered. “As to that, how badly off is this going to leave you when all’s said and done?”

  That Sir Lewis even thought to ask paused Robert, made him want to make his answer as right as possible, so that it was a moment before he was able to say evenly, “I’ll be no worse off than if the wrong had never been done and I’d never had the lands at all.”

  ‘You’ll be out, too, what you could have had for Mistress Katherine’s marriage.“

  ‘I will,“ Robert agreed.

  ‘You would have been able to get a good price for it.“

  ‘I would have. Now I won’t. That’s all.“

  It was Sir Lewis paused then, before saying soberly, “There’s not many could stand so aside from it as that.”

  ‘Then there’s many who would double their losses by Paying out to lawyers by the dozen,“ Robert returned, and Sir Lewis laughed aloud and again Robert thought how very easy it would be to be friends with him.

  They were called to supper then, and at Robert’s nod, Gil went upstairs to ask Dame Frevisse and the other nun to it. “ Blaunche felt hard done by, left only to Mistress Avys’ company, so be it, Robert thought sorely. She could have had Benedict with her if she hadn’t chosen to make trouble instead.

  While everyone was sorting themselves to their places, Gil returned with Dame Frevisse and Dame Claire and saw them to the place they had had before, at the near end of a lower table. Robert briefly wished for Dame Frevisse’s company for himself at the high table; her cool, sometimes tart reasoning at things was surprisingly comforting more often than not; but tonight the best he could hope for was chance to talk with her afterwards and his worry went away to how well the cook had managed with over a score of unexpected men to feed.

  There at least he proved to have small need for concern. Despite it must have been chaos in the kitchen for a while and there was only one remove instead of a more formal several, the food was plentiful, with a thick soup of onions, bread and wine and the saltfish that followed well-disguised under a ginger sauce, with greens of some sort (from the kitchen garden already, or from along a handy hedgerow? Robert wondered) with vinegar to dress them, and at the end ginger cakes still warm from the ovens.

  They started the meal in torchlit twilight, but by its end the storm and its thunder were growling away into the distance, and when they rose from the high table, the hall loud with the scrape of benches being shoved back and men’s voices rising, servants were beginning to set some of the window-tall shutters open to let out the torch smoke. Sir Lewis half-questioningly suggested there was no need after all for him and his men to stay the night, but Robert nodded to the blue-black twilight with, “Dark is coming on early and the roads will still be foul.” He smiled and added, “Besides, by now my steward has found bedding and places to sleep for everyone. You wouldn’t want him to have gone to the trouble for naught, would you?”

  Sir Lewis snorted. “If he’s being turned out of his own bed by our staying, he might not mind our going.”

  ‘He’s keeping his bed,“ Ned said from Sir Lewis’ other side. ”It’s his servant is being turned out for me to have his.“

  They made jesting talk about who would be sleeping where, moving back toward the solar while they did. Robert thought briefly of excusing himself to go aside to speak to Dame Frevisse but she and Dame Claire were still below the dais, beyond a clot of arbiters and he let the chance go, standing aside to let Sir Lewis pass from the hall ahead of him into the solar where the shutters had been closed across the window now that with the dark there was nothing to see. The fire and lamps had been lighted during supper, making the room welcoming. Later it would be Sir Lewis‘, Drew’s, and the arbiters’ bedchamber but for now it was where they would spend the evening in company, and he and Ned and Sir Lewis drifted, still talking, toward the fireplace, followed by Katherine with Drew on her one side and Benedict on the other, Emelye trailing a little behind and Mistress Dionisia not far off. Robert wondered what chance there was that Benedict would leave quietly if told to go. The trick would be to tell him aside, no one else hearing, so as not to shame him worse than he already thought he was, but soon, before he found a way to make trouble…

  ‘Benedict, stop it!“ Katherine snapped at something Robert had not heard.

  ‘Don’t tell me to stop it,“ Benedict snapped back at her. ”I’m not who’s making a fool of himself here.“

  ‘Benedict, that’s enough,“ Robert said, more sharply than he knew he should, and Benedict turned on him as if glad to be unleashed, demanding, ”Enough for who? For you?

  You’re the one who’s—“

  ‘Benedict,“ Robert said more roughly. ”Enough. Leave now.“

  “Because you say so? You spend the day fawning on them”—Benedict gestured with contempt around the room everyone, including the arbiters just drifted through the doorway from the hall—“and then expect me take orders from you?”

  ‘Benedict, please,“ said Katherine, laying a hand on his arm.

  Benedict shoved her hand away, turning on her with equal contempt. “And you. Robert makes like he’s the Allesleys’ dog and you like you’re a bitch in…”

  That Drew was nearer was the only reason his hand slapped hard into Benedict�
�s face before Robert’s did, hard enough to stagger him sideways, and Robert was there the second afterwards, grabbing hold of Benedict’s arm as Benedict made to draw his dagger, shoving him farther aside when he would have gone for Drew, ordering at him, “Stop it, Benedict!”

  Red-faced with rage as well as from Drew’s blow, pulling against Robert’s hold, Benedict yelled, “He hit me!”

  ‘Half an instant before I would have,“ Robert said back, while seeing from the side of his eye that Mistress Dionisia and Dame Frevisse together were moving Katherine and Emelye away toward the wall.

  ‘You were in the wrong, Benedict,“ Ned said, coming to his other side, putting hand to his shoulder. ”Let it be.“

  ‘You saw him hit me!“ Benedict protested.

  ‘I saw you earn it,“ Ned returned.

  Benedict jerked away from him and free of Robert, shoving between them, still intent on reaching Drew who, seemingly as ready for daggers-out as he was, moved to meet him. But Sir Lewis thrust into his son’s way and Robert, letting go the frayed hold on his anger, caught Benedict by the arm from behind and spun him around, knocked his hand away from his dagger hilt and seized him with both fists by his doublet’s front to shake him hard, once, and then again, saying furiously into his face, “Stop it. You hear me? Stop it!”

  Benedict grabbed him by both wrists, trying to twist free and might have—they were not so far apart in size and strength—but Robert’s anger, outstripping even Benedict’s, made him for at least the moment the stronger, and keeping his hold, he dragged Benedict closer to him, saying between clenched teeth, “Stop it, you fool, or I’ll break your idiot neck.”

  Then Ned and Gil and Master Durant were all there, Ned forcing them apart, saying low and rapidly at Robert, “Let him go. I’ll take him,” and, when Robert had loosed Benedict, Ned put himself between them, making Benedict back off a step, talking now at him as Gil and Master Durant drew Robert off, Gil saying, “Let be, sir. Let be. It’s enough for now.”