The Bishop’s Tale (8 page)

“Now, pray, what is this bother?” the abbot said in distaste.

“Sir Clement Sharpe,” Frevisse said, seeing the center of the trouble.

“Ah, yes. Of course,” the abbot agreed, unsurprised, and reached for the new plate just set down before them laden with minced meat shaped like pears and gilded with egg yolk touched in one place with cherry juice to heighten the illusion, with a fragment of almond for a stem. Frevisse ignored the plate to watch Sir Clement, on his feet shouting at the man on the far side of Lady Anne, who was also on his feet and shouting back at him. The general noise of the hall was too great for Frevisse to understand what they were saying, but Lady Anne was cowered down between them, while their near neighbors were crowding away along the benches from whatever was going to happen. Except Guy, who, behind Sir Clement, was rising to his own feet and reaching out to his uncle’s shoulder.

Realization of what was happening had spread through the entire great hall now. Conversations died into a hush just as Guy gripped Sir Clement’s shoulder from behind and Sir Clement turned on him, knocking his hand away and shouting, “Keep your hand off me, you murderous young whelp!”

Then Sir Philip was there, gesturing Guy back while interposing himself between Sir Clement and the other guest. Aware of how many were straining to hear him, he spoke low, first to Sir Clement and then to the other man. Guy had subsided onto the bench again; Frevisse saw him and Lady Anne exchange looks and Guy shake his head, all unseen by Sir Clement who was now arguing with Sir Philip.

Or beginning to, because as Sir Clement leaned his face into the priest’s, his voice rising again, Sir Philip made a small but definite gesture past him toward the high table in forcible reminder of where they were and who was watching.

Frevisse doubted Sir Clement needed reminding; again he gave her the impression of a man exactly aware of what he was doing, and enjoying it. But Sir Philip’s gesture gave him excuse to straighten, swing around, and make a flourishing, apologetic bow to everyone at the high table, and another to the widow and Bishop Beaufort in particular. Then he caught up the goblet from between himself and Lady Anne, held it high, and declared in a voice that carried end to end of the great hall, “But if I’m wrong in this matter, may God strike me down within the hour!”

As dramatically as he had bowed to the high table, he downed what was in the goblet in a single toss, set it down with a defining clunk on the tablecloth, looked all around at everyone, and sat down abruptly, straight-backed with pride and enjoyment of every eye on him.

“He’s always doing that,” me abbot observed for Frevisse’s ear alone. Through the hall a broken murmur was passing, people bending to explain something briefly to one or another, and then voices rose again in ordinary talk.

But Frevisse, still shocked to the heart by Sir Clement’s words, turned to the abbot. “What did you say?”

Cutting into his illusion pear, the abbot said, “He’s always doing that. Swearing he’s right and may God strike him down within the hour if he’s not. Someday God may oblige him, and he’ll be quite surprised.”

A server set a dish of minted peas in front of them. The abbot lost interest in her again.

Robert returned to pour more wine. “Don’t look so horrified, Dame Frevisse. Almost anyone who’s been around Sir Clement more than half a day has heard him say that.”

“But it’s blasphemy, daring God that way! And to do it so casually—”

“But it’s dangerous only if he’s wrong, and Sir Clement never believes he’s wrong.”

“What of the poor girl, caught in the middle of all that? How long until she comes of age and is rid of him?”

“Lady Anne is as vulnerable as a hedgehog,” Robert said without malice. “All soft eyes and gentle ways and a thousand spines. Whichever of them marries her, he won’t have as lovely a time of it as he thinks he will.”

He was moving away as he said it, and gone too far for Frevisse to ask who besides Guy wanted to marry the lady. But it was hardly a difficult guess. The angry moments outside the chapel had revealed Lady Anne’s relationship with Guy; and by his fury it would be no surprise if Sir Clement were interested in marriage with her, as well. Of course he had the upper hand in the matter because while she was his ward he controlled her marriage. He could not, by law, force her to marry against her will, but the law also provided severe penalties for her if she refused a reasonable match. And there were subtler ways than the law to make her life a hell and bring her to his will, if he chose to take it that far.

Frevisse took a deep draught of the wine. Her head was surely tightening itself into a headache, and there was at least another hour left to this feast. She regarded her illusion pear and the dish of peas with distaste; she was used to far simpler food at St. Frideswide’s and had already eaten more meat than would usually come her way in a week. Later her stomach would certainly have something to say about the rich assault she had made on it.

There was another commotion from where Sir Clement sat, and people were again drawing rapidly away from him, this time Guy and Lady Anne among them, so that very suddenly Sir Clement was alone, still seated but bent forward toward the table with both hands clutching at its edge as, red-faced with effort, he strangled for breath.

“Well!” said the abbot. “Perhaps God’s grown as tired of him as the rest of us have and decided to judge him after all.”

Chapter 8

After the first moment of shock, the hall seethed into chaos, with some shouting, a few screams, and much exclaiming. People rose to their feet, some trying to pull farther away from Sir Clement, others crowding toward him. A few climbed onto benches, craning for a chance to see, and fragments of prayers rose among the exclamations, inquiries, and frenzied chatter. Sir Clement was blocked from Frevisse’s view, but like the abbot, she kept her seat, knowing futility when she saw it; even with the added height the dais gave to the high table, she would see nothing if she stood. There was nothing she could do at this distance, no way to get through the turmoil to Sir Clement. But she crossed herself and began a fervent prayer for him, because he was clearly in God’s hands now and for him especially that must be a terrifying place. Very rarely was God’s judgment seen so clearly, swift and sure, in this world. With that fear on her, she added a prayer of acceptance of his will, because God forbid she contradict him in his judgment, lest in another way she be as guilty as Sir Clement.

Beside her, she noticed, the abbot was deep into passionate prayer of his own.

Down the hall some sort of order was being forced. People shifted back so that a few men—mostly servants, but Sir Philip among them—could help Sir Clement to his feet and away from the table. He was bent far over, still strangling for breath, his fists pressed hard against his chest. Crying, “Make way!” the men holding him up half led, half carried him from the hall. A momentary silence followed them, but when they were gone the babble of wonder and alarm began to rise again.

Bishop Beaufort rose in his place to his full, impressive height and, with his hands held wide to include everyone in front of him, declared in his strong voice, “Good people! We’ve seen a wonder here with our own eyes. May God, having made his will manifest, have mercy on this man. Let us pray for him. And for ourselves, who may be as near and unknowing as Sir Clement was to God’s great judgment. Return to your places, I bid you. Sit, that we may pray.”

He was so completely sure of their obedience that— scared or awed or wary—people complied, the guests subsiding onto their benches, the servers to their places near their lords or along the screen to the kitchen. The gap where Sir Clement, his ward, and his nephew had sat remained eloquently empty; people glanced at it and nervously away, or kept their eyes averted entirely.

Bishop Beaufort waited until the hall was still and all their eyes on him. Then he brought his hands together, said,
“Oremus”
and bent his head. Every head in the hall bent with him, and in a voice that carried all through the hall, meant to reach everyone as well as God, he said, “Lord of power and might, may we—dust in your wind—learn not to tempt your wrath. If it be your will, spare Sir Clement Sharpe, that he may be a better servant in your sight to the end of his appointed days, if these be not they.
Sed fiat voluntas tua.
And may we all come to the ends you have appointed and find your mercy at the last, through Christ our lord, who lives and reigns forever. Amen.”

He lifted his head and said in a more common voice, “Now let us remember that we came to honor our friend Thomas Chaucer and go on with this meal in remembrance of him, may he rest in God.”

A murmurous response ran through the hall. Hands moved, making the cross from head to breast, left shoulder to right. Some heads remained briefly lowered in personal prayers. Much subdued and in deep order, the meal continued. Bishop Beaufort sat down and turned to comfort Matilda, pale and shaken beside him.

Frevisse gave up anything more than the pretense of eating, and with her headache did not dare drink more wine. Robert did not return, and the abbot made no more effort at conversation. Left to her thoughts, she did not like their morbid turn; God so directly manifest against someone who had tried his patience past endurance was not a comforting sight. She took her mind away from the incident, sheltering in watching other people down the hall.

Two servers were clearing away the dishes from Sir Clement’s place. One righted a goblet and dropped a towel over a wide wine stain.

Farther down the tables, Dame Perpetua had stopped eating and, very white-faced, sat with bowed head, lips moving in silent prayer. The nun sitting beside her was weeping and telling her beads. Sir Philip had not returned, and a large woman had shifted sideways to take advantage of his vacated place.

The next course, roast pork on a bed of saffron rice with apricots and mushrooms, was just being set in front of her and the abbot, when her aunt’s lady-in-waiting Joan leaned over her shoulder and said low in her ear, “My lady and Countess Alice ask if you would mind going to see how Sir Clement does, and return to tell.”

“Assuredly,” Frevisse said. She could leave the table with less disruption than anyone else, she supposed, and her report would probably be more detailed than a servant’s.

Aside from those considerations, she welcomed an excuse to leave the hall. She rose and asked, “How is it with my aunt?”

Joan shook her head and made small tch-tch-tch sounds. “She’s being very brave, despite the fright that fool gave us all. She’ll see the day through well enough, but there’ll be payment tonight and afterwards, poor lady. Valerian would help her rest if she’d take it, but she always refuses. You might speak to her about that, my lady, if you would.”

“I will,” Frevisse said as Joan curtsied and returned to her mistress. With a murmur of apology to the abbot, Frevisse excused herself, leaving the hall by a door behind the dais. She stopped a servant in the corridor who said that Sir Clement had been taken to the priest’s room above the chapel.

Among the benefits of being priest in a household as large and rich as Thomas Chaucer’s was a private room for sleep and prayer and study. It was a sensible place to have taken Sir Clement; it would not inconvenience any of the family, was well out of the way of other guests, and could easily be closed to the curious.

A narrow, dark, steep stairway went up from the chapel’s antechamber and opened directly into the priest’s room. It was the same size as the rich chapel directly below it but austere, with everything in it, even the cross above the prie-dieu against one wall, plain or old or both. There was an aumbry along one wall for storage, a bare wooden table, a single chair, one joint stool. A narrow bed was along a wall, with a servant’s truckle bed under it and gray woolen blankets on it. Only the rug underfoot gave the room any color, and it was obviously a castoff from some other part of the house, its patterns faded and muddled with wear.

This barrenness was not Chaucer’s provision for his priest. Frevisse remembered coming to make confession here when she lived at Ewelme. There had been a colorful hanging, a gaudily painted crucifix, and a far bigger bed with a bright coverlet. This austerity must be Sir Philip’s choice, but she noticed that the one fine piece of furniture was a tall desk, set to catch the best light from one of the two narrow windows, and the only sign of wealth were the books on the shelves behind the desk’s footrest. It was a scholar’s desk, meant and used for work, and had, in contrast to all else in the room, a completely superfluous and beautiful fretwork of wood deeply carved and swirled between its legs.

Frevisse absorbed all that in the first moment she reached the doorway, then focused on Sir Clement. He was not lying on the bed but seated at the table, leaning forward over it, his hands braced on its edge, and all his concentration given to his breathing, which was clearly easier than it had been when he was taken from the hall. Near the further window were Guy and Lady Anne, he standing rigidly, she close to him, one hand on his arm, the other pressed to the base of her throat as if to hold down her fear. Jevan Dey stood alone, nervously rubbing his hand on his thigh.

Sir Philip was beside the table, and behind him waited a plainly dressed man Frevisse took to be his servant. Directly opposite Sir Clement, the doctor—to judge by the cut of his dark gown—was bent down and staring broodingly into his face, concentrating on Sir Clement as if concern alone might be enough to cure him.