The Bishop’s Tale (17 page)

She decided to go see if Master Lionel had performed another prompt, masterly trick with the book search. But to her surprise Dame Perpetua was not in Chaucer’s chamber. Frevisse paused in the doorway, looking around to be sure she was not crouched behind the desk or a stack of books. Someone had lighted a fire in the small fireplace against the day’s deepening cold; its bright flickering against the gray light falling through the windows made a slight promise of warmth, but Master Lionel was busy at his chest half the room away from it, oblivious both to its possibilities and her entering. And Sir Philip was standing at the window, staring out with a troubled frown easy to read even across the room.

The frown smoothed itself away as easily as warmed wax slips down the side of a candle, and his voice was merely its familiar neutral as he spoke. “Dame Frevisse. You expected Dame Perpetua, obviously.”

She could not bring herself to care she might be endangering her reputation by being alone with a virile man, however priestly, with only a madman for a witness. As a compromise, she left the door open a crack. She was tired from her efforts, from talking endlessly to people, from being in a once-familiar place that had become strange to her. And she was chilled. She went to sit on a stool in front of the fire. Putting her feet forward and holding her hands out to the warmth, she said, “Am I sickening for something or is the day suddenly colder?”

“The day is suddenly much colder.” Sir Philip held the flat of his hand toward the glass in front of him without quite touching it. “You can feel it pouring in as if the window were open. I’ll not be surprised if the moat is frozen by morning.”

Frevisse gave a weary sigh. There was the long ride back to St. Frideswide’s to be endured in a day or two, and she could not decide whether she preferred bitter cold and firm roads or warmer weather and endless mire.

His back still to her, Sir Philip asked, “Are you free to talk now about Bishop Beaufort’s interest in you?”

“To obey the bishop’s will, I have had to ask questions of so many people that I doubt it is any secret. He does not believe Sir Clement died by God’s hand.”

“He thought that from the very first.”

“And because my uncle told him I had a subtle intelligence, he asked me to learn whether it were indeed a miracle or not.”

Sir Philip swung from the window to stare at her. “And have you?”

“I am sure it wasn’t God who killed him.”

The priest took that with admirably contained surprise. “Then who?”

Frevisse shook her head. “That I haven’t learned. Or exactly how they did it. But it was at least begun at the feast, and as nearly as I can tell, you didn’t have the chance to do anything to him there. At least not directly.”

Sir Philip’s brows drew together as he began to gather fully what she had said. “You suspected me? On what possible grounds? Or were you just generally suspecting everyone?”

“I am suspecting anyone who had an enemy in Sir Clement. You are on the list. If Sir Clement made good his claim that you were born in villeinage, your chance to rise high in the Church could be destroyed. By coming here for a reason not connected with you, Sir Clement gave you an opportunity, perhaps, to act against him without the suspicion that might be raised if you went to him, or caused him to be summoned here. It was a chance to be rid of him that you’d not likely have again.”

“But there was no need for me to attack him, to murder him. I took care years ago to be sure the needful documents were all in order. There was no question of his having any claim over me, no matter how much he prated of it. And I made sure anyone who inquired and needed to know the futility of his insolence did know of it. He was an annoyance, not a threat.”

Frevisse believed him. It was the kind of thing a man of Sir Philip’s intelligence would have done. “But you’ve never told Bishop Beaufort that?”

“It would have been somewhat presumptuous of me to offer the information without being asked.”

“But you know he’s interested in you.”

“He suggested to Master Chaucer that I might be of service to him, and to me that I could profit by learning the ways of an important household. I accepted Master Chaucer’s offer gratefully. For one thing it simply gave me my brother’s company for this while.”

“Your brother?” The one Robert had not been sure was alive or not.

“Gallard Basing, the household usher. You didn’t know?”

“No one told me your surname was Basing.”

“I suppose there was no reason to. And we look nothing alike.” He bounced a little on the balls of his feet, and his smile, twisted as it was in the webbing of scars on his face, was nevertheless charming.

He came to sit on his heels on the other side of the hearth, rubbing his hands as he held them out to the flames. The gesture reminded Frevisse of something—someone—but the half-memory slipped away behind the realization that Gallard Basing had had free movement through the hall all through the feast, and probably access to the food before it was served. Was Gallard protected by the same documents that protected Sir Philip? Did Gallard even know about the documents? How much did the brothers love one another? Trust one another? Use one another?

Her silence had drawn on too long; Sir Philip looked around and up into her face. “You didn’t come to talk to me. You came to seek refuge among your uncle’s books, didn’t you?”

“A comfort remembered from childhood, I fear.”

He smiled. Again Frevisse was surprised at how that, and the warm depths of his eyes, negated the ruin of the rest of his face. Perhaps it was merely that he did it so rarely. “A comfort I shall be sorry to leave,” he said, “if my lord of Suffolk decides he wants a different house-priest than me.”

“Won’t Aunt Matilda have a say in that?”

Sir Philip shrugged. “I think that as her grief settles into her more deeply, your aunt is going to give up most of her interest in running this house. Perhaps she will join you at St. Frideswide’s. It is not unknown for a widow to take the veil.”

Frevisse dropped her gaze to her lap. If she did, she would make an unhappy nun, for silence, humility, and obedience were not Aunt Matilda’s strongest virtues. Anyway, Sir Philip was right, the full center and single mainstay of her life had been her husband.

“Of course, Countess Alice may provide her with grandchildren, and give her new interest in life,” the priest said. “We can only wait and see.”

To change to an easier subject, Frevisse said, “Did my uncle ever say to you what he planned for his books after his death?”

“I think the best he’s willed to Bishop Beaufort. Most of the rest are for Suffolk, and the remainder will be sold.” Sir Philip’s gaze traveled across the aumbries. “Your uncle had a taste for the unusual and rare as well as the precious.”

“He valued every book he had as a candle lit against the darkness, against the ignorance we all sink into if we know only our own minds.”

“And we all, by our nature, seek beyond our earthly limitations for God, so it is necessary that a book be goodly, if it is to give good instruction.” He said this as if it had significance beyond the obvious.

But Frevisse did not know what point he was moving toward. She said, “I agree that mere individual reason cannot find God alone except by the greatest difficulty. Unless God himself comes to enlighten it.”

“He comes to whom he chooses. ”God who cannot be comprehended by any man’s intellect or by any angel’s, since we and they are all created beings.“”

Frevisse smiled. “The
Cloud of Unknowing.
Uncle loved that book. He said he had no hope or inclination toward the contemplative life, but the idea of it gave him pleasure. He also said the
Unknowing
reminded him that ‘It will be asked of you how you have spent the time you have been given.”“

“And we often forget that we have but one goal on earth: to earn heaven. ”Him I desire, Him I seek—‘“

“‘Nothing but Him.”“ Frevisse said the last of the quotation with him. It was an idea to which she had given over her heart when she was young. She and Sir Philip smiled with shared understanding of something more than merely precious.

Then he said, “Since you’ve admitted to thinking I might be a murderer, may I ask about something I’ve suspected of you?”

“If you like.”

“Your uncle had a psalter and gospels that isn’t here anymore. I’ve looked, Master Lionel has looked. It’s nowhere in this room, and he was always very careful to keep it here.”

Frevisse nearly smiled, but she only raised one eyebrow and said nothing. Sir Philip went on, “I rather think you know what I speak of. You came away from your first meeting with the bishop carrying a closely wrapped bundle about the size of the missing book. I think he gave it to you, perhaps on the instructions of your uncle.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. “It is a copy of the vernacular translation by John Wycliffe.”

Over fifty years ago, John Wycliffe had presumed to translate the Bible into English, that all men might read and ponder freely on its words without the interpretation or control of the Church. Except that he had had powerful friends among the nobility, Wycliffe would have been condemned by the Church and burned as a heretic. As it was, he had died free and in his bed; not until 1417 had his bones been dug up, burned, and the ashes thrown into a river. But from the very first, his Englished Bible had been a forbidden thing, though copies turned up in some unlikely places, including nunneries. Chaucer had had the psalms and gospels kept in an obscure corner among other, unoffending books of theology, and there Frevisse had found it as a girl. She had delighted in being able to read freely what was so slow and difficult for her to follow in Latin. Chaucer had not forbidden it to her, and her faith had never been hurt by it, only her dependence on what any ignorant priest might choose to say the Bible said.

“Do you have it?” Sir Philip asked.

“I haven’t seen it,” she said with perfect truth. Then honesty compelled her to add, “But I haven’t opened the package Bishop Beaufort gave to me.”

Master Lionel straightened from a sheaf of documents he held and stared down the room at her. His sudden focus on something beyond his arm’s reach drew both of them to look back at him. Not seeming to notice he had become the focus of their attention, he muttered, “Not to be trusted to know where their shoe is, when it’s right on their foot. Women.”

Sir Philip nodded with relief. “That’s likely where it is, then. I was afraid it had gone astray, that someone had it who shouldn’t. But your uncle saw to its safety.” He looked at her and said, “I will tell no one that I know where it is. Because, in plain fact, I do not.”

“And, if anyone asks me, I can truly say that so far as I know, I do not have the book in my possession. What I suspect can remain my own business.”

They smiled widely at each other, pleased with that sophistry. A heavy wind shook the windows and a cold draught whispered across the rush matting to startle the fire into burning higher. Frevisse pushed her shoulders back and sat up straighter on the stool. “I’ve sat here too long. I still have questions to ask. The servers at the feast may be able to tell me something.”

Sir Philip sobered, the ease leaving his face. “It isn’t something that can just be left. And yet, in some ways, I wish we could leave whoever did it to God’s judgment and mercy.” That had never entered Frevisse’s consideration, and before she could form a reply, he asked, “What made our lord bishop think there was a human rather than the divine hand in Sir Clement’s death?”

“He said he had heard Sir Clement demand God’s judgment too many other times. He didn’t see why this time in particular God should choose to answer him. He wanted to be sure it was God who had chosen this occasion and not someone mortal.”

“And now you agree it was someone else, not God. Why?”

Frevisse thought before answering, because she was not sure exactly when or how she had changed her opinion, but finally said, “Partly because it seems an unreasonable way for God to kill a man. A great deal of the lesson for the rest of us was lost by not having him simply die outright at the feast.”

“And you presume to understand God’s intent in these things?”

Frevisse forebore to acknowledge the jibe. Instead she said, “In the
Cloud of Unknowing
it’s said that each person comes to God at a different pace. Today some men who knew Sir Clement said he was changing of late, that he was not so violent as he had been, nor demanded God’s judgment so often. Maybe, in his own wickedly slow way, he was coming to God. Would God take a man still deep in sin who was at least beginning to come toward grace?”

“God might,” Sir Philip said. “In fact I know he does.” He waited and when she did not answer, added, “Those aren’t the reasons you’re going on with this.”

Frevisse watched the fire play among the logs for a while, feeling her way among her own thoughts before saying, “No, they aren’t. I want to know what happened. What really happened, not what we imagine happened. I want to know whether there
was
a human hand in this, or if it was indeed God’s act against a sinning man.”

This time she waited and Sir Philip did not answer. He did not even move but, like her, sat staring into the flames.

Frevisse rubbed her hands over her face where the skin felt dried and tight from the fire’s warmth and finally said, “I also remembered the old story of the devil and a summoner traveling together, where the devil refuses to take a cart and horses, though their driver in a bad temper is wishing them to hell. But later when the summoner is tormenting an old woman and she wishes
him
to hell, the devil takes him on the instant because, says the devil, he knows a true wish when he hears it. I wish we could believe that in the moment Sir Clement demanded God’s judgment yesterday, he truly wanted it, if only for that single moment, and so God gave it to him. I wish I could believe that. But I don’t.”