The Bastard's Tale (17 page)

“Another thing about you that irks me.” Behind her, hesitantly, Dame Perpetua asked, “Dame Frevisse? Is something wrong?”

Frevisse turned with alarm to find her standing beside the desk with pen still in hand and a worried frown. “Dame Perpetua,” she said quickly. “We forgot our voices. I’m sorry.”

Dame Perpetua’s doubtful look went from her to Joliffe and back again. “But something’s wrong?” she persisted.

‘My manners, my lady,“ said Joliffe. He gave her a deep bow and a far-too-winning smile. ”Bishop Pecock— you saw him leave just now?—and I were consulting over what play he might hire our company to give as his gift to where he’s staying. I fear I drew Dame Frevisse into debate with me afterwards on whether it’s better to perform John Lydgate’s plays or burn them. I say that no matter how base or badly done the work itself—and I grant that much of Lydgate’s work is badly done“— he made a half-bow to Frevisse—”yet nonetheless and so long as they please those willing to pay to hear them, they should be played. Dame Frevisse, to the contrary, holds that there can be no excuse for playing anything so poorly made. But that’s the easier for her to say since she does not need to make her living by such paltry means, if I may say so, praying your pardons, my ladies, for my boldness.“

It was an excess of words worthy of Bishop Pecock himself and done just lightly enough that Dame Perpetua was smiling by the end of it, worry forgotten. “But what—” she started to ask, only to be interrupted by the monastery bells beginning to ring to Vespers.

Joliffe bowed to them both. “Until the play tonight, then, my ladies,” he said, slipped past Dame Perpetua, and was gone.

Chapter 13

At Vespers’ end, a servant in Suffolk’s livery was waiting outside St. Nicholas’ chapel to ask that Frevisse and Dame Perpetua come to Lady Alice. “Both of us?” Dame Perpetua asked in surprise. “Both, if it please you,” the man said, certain. “Our supper?” Dame Perpetua asked of Frevisse. “That will be seen to, please you,” the man said. “If you would come, my ladies?”

They went, following him across the nave and outside into twilight and a few snowflakes swirling down from the thickened clouds. Not many people were still in the yard or along the penticed walk, but while passing the second or third clot of them, Dame Perpetua caught enough words that she asked of Frevisse, “What are they saying about the duke of Gloucester?”

Taken up with her own worries, Frevisse had forgotten how very away from everything Dame Perpetua had been in the library. “He’s been arrested,” she answered. “Not long after he arrived today. For treason, it’s said.”

‘For treason? He’s the king’s uncle. What’s he done, to be arrested for treason?“

‘I don’t know.“ Too aware of Suffolk’s servant close ahead of them, Frevisse added, ”I was with the players all afternoon. I’ve heard almost nothing.“

‘The players. Oh my! Will the play even be done, do you think?“

The man looked back. “It’s going to be, my lady. I’ve heard that’s sure.”

‘What about the duke of Gloucester?“ Dame Perpetua asked.

‘He won’t be there.“ The man took open pleasure in his own wit. ”He’s under guard in St. Saviour’s and all his men potted in with him. There’ll be no trouble.“

‘What’s Gloucester supposed to have done?“ Dame Perpetua persisted.

‘He brought a pack of Welshmen with him and was going to throw out the lords around the king and take over for himself. That’s what’s being said.“

‘Yesterday,“ Frevisse pointed out tartly, ”it was being said he was bringing thousands of men with him.“

‘It was, wasn’t it?“ the man agreed, cheerful about it. ”Good thing he wasn’t. Or bad for him, as it’s turned out. Damn Welsh.“

The man was openly untroubled that one day’s report jarred so completely against the other’s, and while Dame Perpetua tried to learn more from him, Frevisse held silent. Considering everything into which she had somehow slipped—here for Bishop Beaufort’s purposes; asked for help by Alice; now somehow part of hiding an arrested traitor’s bastard son—silent seemed the best thing she could be.

Only one clerk was left writing away in the outer room, with men and servants around him readying for the evening. The middle room was likewise busy with women but in the bedchamber beyond it there were only two women tending to Alice, who said to Frevisse over the head of the one fussing at the front folds of her crimson damask gown, “Don’t even look like you’re going to mention Gloucester to me.”

Frevisse closed her mouth with a deliberate snap.

Alice laughed. “Yes, well, all right. Go on. Everyone else is. Dame Perpetua, if you will, there’s supper laid out on that table by the window. Help yourself, I pray you. And you, too, cousin.”

Dame Perpetua went to the table but Frevisse stopped, well clear of the busyness around Alice, to ask, “Exactly what treason was Gloucester planning? Is it true his men are arrested with him?”

‘No, they’re not arrested. They’ve been told not to go anywhere until this is sorted out but they’re not arrested. As for what Gloucester meant to do…“ Alice turned away to nod acceptance of the topaz-hung necklace being held out to her by one of her ladies, then turned back to Frevisse, her voice light but her gaze not as it met Frevisse’s. ”… no one has made it very clear to me what he meant to do.“

And she was not happy about that.

But with too many other ears to hear there was little they could say outright to each other, and Frevisse had to be satisfied with asking, “But the play is to go on tonight anyway?”

Head bent forward for her lady to fasten the necklace, Alice said, “Everything is to go on. The king is distressed, and the thought among the lords is that the more like usual we keep things, the easier it will be for him.”

Easier to what? Grow used to the thought that the uncle who had had the keeping of him and his crown since he was a baby was now accused of treason against him?

Alice’s look, raised to meet Frevisse’s, said their thoughts were matched as she asked, “What’s being said among people? You’ve been out and about. What have you heard?”

‘Very little. Much of the afternoon I was with John and the players at their practice and then with Dame Perpetua in the library.“ Frevisse framed her answer carefully, trying for balance among the different footholds she had to keep. ”Mostly I’ve only heard the same thing over and over. There seems to be a great deal of… surprise.“

‘Yes. Surprise. Many of us are surprised.“ Alice nodded toward the bed with its drawn curtains. ”John is asleep there. Considering how late he’ll be up tonight, a nap seemed best, but Nurse took to coughing again and I’ve sent her off to rest. That’s partly why I sent for you so well ahead of time, for you to see to him because you’ll know better than anyone about how soon or late to ready him for the play and I can’t stay. Since your play has the hall for now, the abbot is giving a feast tonight in the monks’ refectory for king and queen and lords and commons. Where the monks will eat I don’t know. Yes, it’s time, I know,“ she added to one of her ladies come to stand beside her, ready with a tall, jeweled headdress fluttered with veils. With what seemed more resignation than pleasure, Alice went to sit on a chair for the thing to be put on, hiding her fair hair and framing her face.

Considering the hours Alice would have to wear it, Frevisse hoped it was as light as it looked to be and was glad all over again for her own plain gown that did not require two hands to manage its skirts, the way Alice needed for hers as she rose and turned to say, the veils wafting on the gentle air of her movement, “With all of this, I hope this play is going to be worth our while. Is it?”

Frevisse hesitated, thinking of this afternoon, then offered, “With God’s grace.”

‘Oh dear,“ said Alice and left, her ladies taking up their cloaks and hers from a chest and following, leaving Frevisse regretfully wondering if Alice was keeping as much from her as she was keeping from Alice.

Her regrets were still with her when she and Dame Perpetua brought John—eager and wide awake—to the King’s Hall. The two men in royal livery on guard at the outer door did not question John’s assertion that he was part of the play or hinder her and Dame Perpetua from going in with him. Since afternoon the hall had been cleared of all the players’ clutter, leaving Heaven rising splendidly alone at the hall’s far end, Wisdom’s throne half lost in shadows at the top now that there was no daylight through the hall’s tall windows, only shutters closed over the black night outside. Light for the play would come from two candlestands flanking the playing place in front of Heaven; round and tiered and taller than a man, they held dozens of candles each, all unlighted for now. It was by the lesser light of smaller candle-stands set along the hall that servants were presently setting the last of several paired rows of benches in front of the playing place, a wide gap left between the pairs for three tall-backed, ornately carved chairs set side by side directly in front of the playing place. Looking at them, Dame Perpetua asked a little breathlessly, “For the king and queen?”

‘And Abbot Babington,“ Frevisse said. She had been keeping tight hold on John and with, ”Wait here for me,“ to Dame Perpetua, she let him pull her away, around and behind the nearest frame-hung curtain to the doorway to the room beyond it. Whatever its usual use, it had been given over to the players for tonight and was crowded full with all the hampers, baskets, and boxes moved out of the hall and with the players themselves, loud with talk and taut laughter and all in various stages of dress and undress, with Joane crouched on a stool stitching swiftly at something that had torn and Mistress Wilde handing a pair of red-and-purple-striped hosen toward one of the Vices. Frevisse, before someone found something for her to do, pushed John in and took herself away.

In the hall Dame Perpetua had gone aside to stand near the wall not far from the playing place’s right side where few heads were likely to come between them and the play. Frevisse joined her and they waited together while a man bearing a staff that marked him for a household officer paced the hall, checking what had been done, then went behind the curtains, shortly came out, gave an order to the servants, and left. The servants immediately hurried to light all the candles in the great candlestands beside the playing place, making a warm bloom of light that sent shadows away to the rafters, shone on Heaven’s stairs, and glinted across the brass stars on the hangings.

The servants finished and were withdrawing to stand beside the lesser candlestands along the hall as a tide of lords and ladies bright with rich gowns, jewels, and talk swept into the hall, spreading through it on the wave of their own excited pleasure. Behind them came men and women more quietly dressed only by contrast, with rich fabrics and glint of gold enough among them—the members of Parliament and their wives and some of the more important citizens of Bury St. Edmunds, Frevisse supposed.

She had found Alice among those first in, when Dame Perpetua said, hushed with wonder, “There’s the king.”

He was mere yards away, his Plantagenet height making him taller than almost everyone around him, a thin, dark-haired man looking younger than his twenty-five years—hardly older than the girl beside him, her golden-fair hair loose to below her waist. They wore matching narrow circlets of gold around their heads and were both dressed in green velvet patterned on purple silk, his houpelande three-quarter length and furred with ermine at throat and hem, her gown trailing on the floor behind her, its ermined collar plunging to her high-belted waist to show an underdress of blue damask.

‘And Queen Margaret,“ Dame Perpetua breathed. ”Oh, isn’t she lovely?“

Frevisse murmured agreement, able to see why a man might think her worth the cost of no dowry and a weak truce when so much more should have been had for a king’s marriage. But yes, at seventeen years old, with the grace of girlhood still on her, she was lovely, Frevisse acknowledged. God grant she was also fertile, and soon.

Abbot Babington, a gray-haired man in dark, elaborate robes, bowed the royal couple to their chairs, then sat himself in the chair at King Henry’s right hand and leaned over to say something to him. Meanwhile, two staff-bearing household officers were sorting favored lords and ladies to their places on the benches, leaving everyone else to spread through the hall as they would. A lady of some girth made to crowd in on Frevisse, who braced an elbow sideways, holding her off while watching the duke of York be ushered to a place on the bench on Abbot Babington’s other side from the king. That would have been Gloucester’s place if he had been there, Frevisse supposed, and briefly she wondered what was in York’s mind as he took it. It was no one’s secret that he was as unfavored by the lords around the king as Gloucester was, and if the king’s own uncle could be falsely charged with treason, why not his cousin?

Frevisse stopped that thought short and looked at it. When had she turned from only assuming the charge against Gloucester was false to fully believing it was? She did not know. Another question then: Why had she?

Straightly asked, the question had straight answer: because she disliked Suffolk.

Disliked and, more to the point, distrusted him. Or even more to the point, disliked him
because
she distrusted him.

Dame Perpetua was craning from side to side, looking around heads to watch the king and queen. Frevisse, taller, was able to see beyond them, to where Suffolk was gracefully bowing Alice to a place on the bench beside Queen Margaret’s chair. The queen immediately turned and spoke to Alice while Suffolk, after bowing to her but not yet sitting down, leaned—gracious, smiling, confident—to say something to William Tresham and his wife on the next bench back.