The Bishop’s Tale (19 page)

Beaufort laughed aloud. “That’s Thomas’s trick, to cut short an argument with a jest completely to the point.”

Like Beaufort’s, Dame Frevisse’s voice was warm with the shared memory of a man they both loved. “He taught me well.”

“And yet, with your learning and wit beyond the ordinary, you were willing to give over to Master Broun your solution to Sir Clement’s death.”

“There are realities that have to be accepted. I’ve learned to live within such and yet do as well as God has made me able.”

“With your God-given intellect that is the equal of a man’s.”

She acknowledged his teasing by saying with mock solemnity, “Or the better. But no matter how clever we may think I am, the crowner will take the learned evidence of how Sir Clement died far better from Master Broun than he would from me.”

Beaufort nodded agreement. “So Sir Clement’s death was an accident after all.”

“No. I think it was surely murder.”

“What?”
They had kept their voices pitched low; his immoderate exclamation made several of his clerks look up from their work, and he immediately dropped his voice to order, with no attempt to conceal that he was disconcerted, “Explain that.”

“Sir Clement may have known of his affliction. I’ve heard from several people that there were foods—or a food, I need to ask more specific questions to know exactly—that he wouldn’t eat. He sent one of his people to the kitchen here to be sure of what was being served at the feast. He may have known there was something that made him ill and would not have knowingly eaten it. Whatever it was, it had to have been secretly and deliberately put in his food during the feast.”

“So Sir Philip may be guilty after all.”

“I’m assured that someone is guilty. I doubt it is Sir Philip.”

Beaufort raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

“Because he didn’t have the opportunity. With this poisoning something would have had to be placed in Sir Clement’s food after it left the kitchen. I don’t remember that Sir Philip had the chance. And he’s told me he has documents that negate any claim Sir Clement might have made against him, so he had no reason, either.”

“You believed him when he told you of these documents?”

“It’s possible he’s lied about them, but it would be a lie too easily discovered for what it was.”

“And Sir Philip is not a stupid man. But he could be a desperate one if the documents do not indeed exist, in which case he might have conspired with someone else better able to poison Sir Clement at the feast.”

“The three most likely and most able to have done it are Sir Clement’s ward, his cousin, and his nephew. They all had opportunity and ample reasons of their own, conspiracy with Sir Philip or not. And there is Sir Philip’s brother, who was usher at the feast, if we care to consider Sir Philip did lie about the documents.”

“And how do you plan to determine which one of them it may have been, whether alone or with Sir Philip? Or would you rather leave it now to the crowner? He’ll be here tomorrow, will take what you’ve learned and make good use of it, I’m sure.”

She hesitated, then answered, “I have some of the pieces needed for an answer, and I think I know how to learn the rest. By your leave, I’d like to go on.”

He inclined his head to her gravely. “By my leave you may. And if you need my help in anything with this, ask for it freely.”

Chapter
16

The afternoon was wearing away, and Frevisse meant to talk to Guy and Lady Anne again, and to Jevan, too. Of everyone around Sir Clement he had gained the most— freedom from his uncle after a lifetime of his cruelties— and lost the most—his livelihood and his hope of Lady Anne; Guy would be taking both from him. Frevisse wanted to know how he was and what he was thinking, not simply because he was part of the question of Sir Clement’s death, but because he was a friend of Robert’s, and she was fond of Robert, no matter how rarely they saw each other.

But duty and affection took her back to her aunt’s bedchamber first. The room was shadowed, the shutters closed, the bed curtains drawn. The women silently at various tasks around the room made shushing gestures at her as she entered. Alice, seated on the window seat with one shutter set a little back so light fell on the book on her lap, beckoned Frevisse to come sit beside her. The gentle puff and pause of Aunt Matilda’s breathing came from inside the bed curtains, in token that she was deeply asleep.

“She woke a while ago,” Alice whispered, “and ate some broth and milk-soaked bread.”

“And you were able to persuade her to sleep again?”

Alice smiled. “Not so much persuaded as gave her no choice. There was a sleeping draught in the wine she drank afterwards. Master Broun says the more she sleeps just now, the better she’ll be.”

On that at least Frevisse agreed with him. “What of you? If you want to go out for a while, I can watch by her.”

Alice shook her head. “This is where I want to be, with Mother and my praying. I’m well enough.”

Aware that she had scanted her own prayers all day today, Frevisse glanced down and saw the book her cousin held was indeed a prayer book, opened to the psalms in Latin. That reminded her of the Wycliffe book in its bundle somewhere among her things across the room. Taking her mind quickly away from the mingled guilt and pleasure of that thought, she asked, “Is there anything you need done that I can do for you?”

“Mother was worrying over Sir Clement’s family, anxious that someone express our formal sympathy for their loss. Would you go to them, to give them our sympathy, and explain why neither Mother nor I came instead? I’d ask William to go but he won’t. He simply wants anything to do with Sir Clement out from under his way.”

“I’ll do it gladly.” Frevisse forbore to add that she had been going to them anyway. “Though I fear that neither they nor anyone else are overwhelmed by grief. Sir Clement wasn’t loved.”

“God keep us from a like end,” said Alice. “It was a fearful thing to see, and to know he’d called it down upon himself.”

They both crossed themselves. But Frevisse added, to lighten Alice’s mood, “Still, he’d worked long and hard for it, setting everyone else against him along the way.”

“That’s true,” Alice agreed with a trace of amusement. “He even managed between Father’s death and his own to set my lord husband against him with no great difficulty.”

“How?” Frevisse asked, surprised.

“By bringing up that property dispute he had with Father. He wouldn’t let it rest even this little while of the funeral. William was furious over the rudeness, and because even though there’s no matter in it, the lawyers’ fees would mount nonetheless, if it went that far.”

“I doubt there’s anyone who’s sorry he’s dead.”

“Certainly not William. Well, the crowner will be here tomorrow, I hear, and that will be the end of it. I trust Sir Clement’s family will leave with his body immediately once they’re allowed to?”

“I understand so.”

“I’ve told Master Gallard to tell them we’ll give any help we can.”

“And please ask me for anything I can do, at any time.”

“Your prayers,” Alice said, smiling. “Surely your prayers are what I want most. And your friendship,” she added to her own evident surprise as much as Frevisse’s.

Frevisse smiled back at her, aware of growing affection for this cousin she hardly knew. “You’ll have both, without fail. I think I should like to have your friendship, now that I’m not forever being annoyed by you,” she added teasingly.

“Annoyed by me? How?” Alice demanded, amused as Frevisse had meant for her to be.

“Because you could sit for hours at your sewing or whatever other task your mother gave you and never make the least bother about it. You always seemed very content with yourself, while I was ever wishing I was being or doing something else.”

“Except when you were reading,” Alice said shrewdly.

“Except when I was reading,” Frevisse agreed, and they both laughed. They were quickly shushed by Aunt Matilda’s women and ducked their heads to hide more laughter behind their hands.

Then Alice confessed in a whisper, “I was always annoyed by you, too. You’d been everywhere and seen everything, it seemed, and Father never seemed to mind how much time you spent among his books. It wasn’t until after you were gone that I dared begin to press him as you did for books.”

“I never knew you were interested.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be. I was my mother’s daughter and there was the end of it.”

“But you didn’t let it be the end of it.”

“No,” Alice said firmly. “I did not.”

Frevisse’s smile widened. “Oh, yes, I think we can be very good friends indeed.”

Frevisse found Lady Anne alone in her room, except for her two maids, and like Alice, she was seated at the window, a book open on her lap, while her maids sorted through belongings in her traveling chest. The cold gray daylight gave her usual blond loveliness an ashen appearance, but even allowing for that, she looked pale, delicately shadowed under her eyes as if she had not slept so well as could be wished.

Frevisse, as she approached her, was surprised to see the book was another prayer book, and opened to the Office of the Dead. Lady Anne, catching her glance and the surprise in it, said, “I found myself wondering if there might be hope of Sir Clement’s salvation after all. I thought how unpleasant it would be to eventually arrive in purgatory and find him waiting for us.”

“I suspect that if Sir Clement manages to go so far as purgatory, he’ll be far too busy with his own redemption to trouble yours.”

Frevisse’s irony was lost on Lady Anne. She merely considered the thought for a moment, then answered, “I suppose you’re right.” She closed the book and tossed it toward one of her maidservants. “Sit down, if you please.”

Frevisse suspected that Lady Anne’s manners depended on her mood and possibly on the importance of whom she was talking to, because no matter how young and vulnerable she looked, seated there pale in the winter light with the tender shadows under her eyes, she clearly had a strong core of self-will and self-interest that had small consideration for others beyond how they affected her directly.

Frevisse sat, folded her hands into her sleeves, and said mildly, “I trust there is always hope of heaven for all of us, even someone so outwardly without grace as Sir Clement.”

“It wasn’t merely outwardly. He delighted in the sorrows of others. Besides, God wouldn’t have struck him down like that if he weren’t deserving of it.” Lady Anne said it flatly, with no particular venom. Sir Clement was no longer a problem to her; she would shortly have dismissed him completely from her life. But in consideration of Frevisse, she added, “Though, of course, we should hope the best for him. You’ve probably been praying for him. You’ve given your life over to such charity of spirit.”

“To the will of God, rather,” Frevisse said.

Lady Anne drew her delicate brows together in a pretty frown. “It must be very strange to give yourself up so completely. To the will of your prioress, the will of your abbott, the will of your bishop. I suppose you even have to listen to the pope. You have no life of your own at all!”

“One grows use to it,” Frevisse said, amused by the girl’s complete incomprehension. “Even to the pope. That is the core trouble with giving yourself up to the will of God—it requires you also give yourself up to the will of people who are not always godlike.”

“I suppose it makes you far more sure of heaven,” Lady Anne said doubtfully. She obviously thought she would find a better way to that goal than through so much sacrifice. She was also growing a little bored with the conversation, fretting her white fingers at her skirts.

“Actually I’ve come from Countess Alice and her mother and husband, to express our deep sympathy for your loss and assure you of any help that they can give during your stay here.”

Lady Anne brightened. “How very kind. He’s important at court, isn’t he? The earl of Suffolk? And much more charming than that dreadful Bishop of Winchester.”

“I believe so, yes,” Frevisse said in general answer.

“But have you heard when the crowner is supposed to arrive? This waiting is terribly tedious.”

“Tomorrow for certain.”

“And then we can go home and be married and be rid of everything that might ever remind us of Sir Clement! Won’t that be grand!”

“My lady?” Guy asked from the doorway.

The maidservants rose from their work to curtsy to him. Lady Anne sprang to her feet and went to him, saying gladly, “Dame Frevisse came to offer us the family’s condolences on Sir Clement’s death, and she says the crowner will be here certainly tomorrow. Then we’ll be able to go home!”

“When he’s finished his questioning,” Frevisse reminded her.

Lady Anne waved a dismissive hand. “There’s hardly anything to question. There’s Sir Clement dead and God did it. We all saw it.”

Frevisse had risen at Guy’s coming. Now, smiling in her best and most modest nun wise, she sat down. Lady Anne cast her a look as if willing her to understand she could leave now and everyone would be pleased, but Frevisse feigned not to see it, and with no choice, they joined her, Lady Anne’s displeasure somewhat showing. Frevisse smiled on them both and said, “My cousin the countess of Suffolk asked me to tell you that if there is aught we can do for you, you have but to ask.”