The Maiden’s Tale (26 page)

And that, Frevisse saw, was what Orleans had hoped for in bringing them; but she only said, because neither that nor the matter that had actually brought Orleans here could be freely spoken of in front of the guards, “And now?”

“Now we go back to Coldharbour.”

It was going to be a cold, dark journey. If moonrise had happened, there was no sign of it; the night had clouded over and the wind risen, shoving the torch flames sideways, and beyond their reach there was only unremitting darkness. But the barge’s crew had been summoned, were gathering to their places hurriedly, nor did she and Orleans waste time in taking theirs under the tilt, where someone had had the forethought to let down the curtains all around, tying tightly all but the one by which to enter, and the cushions had been piled to the sides, making room in the middle for a wide, short-legged, metal stand holding a small pottery brazier of burning charcoal. Whether it would give warmth enough was problematical; the wind drew and shoved at the canvas cover around them and the night-deepened cold was already fingering in for Frevisse’s spine as she settled among the cushions and pulled one of the furred robes around her. Outside, the steersman was giving orders for casting off as Orleans tied the door-curtain closed, shutting them into shadows and the brazier’s small red fireglow through the trefoil holes in its lid; and the barge was moving as he pulled the other furred robe around himself, saying, “They’ll waste no time having us back.”

They held their hands out to the brazier, flinging black moth-shadows around and over them, so that Frevisse could not read Orleans’ face well as she asked, now there was chance, watching him across the brazier’s glow, “How went it for you? Will there be peace?”

“By spring, if all goes well.”

He said it so evenly that for a moment Frevisse was not sure she had heard him rightly.

“By spring,” she repeated. “You’ll go free by spring?”

“Yes.”

“This time it’s sure? Despite the duke of Gloucester?”

“Despite of Gloucester.” For the first time a fierce triumph showed behind Orleans’ voice. “His grace the king wants peace, for the sake of his soul, he said, and if France’s price for peace is my freedom, then he’s willing I should go free.”

“Will he be able to abide by that?”

“With Bishop Beaufort and all the lords and commons he is gathering in support of it, and believing his soul’s health depends on making peace, yes, King Henry will abide by that. This time he’ll let it happen.”

Frevisse tucked her warmed hands back under the furred robe, sank her chin down and huddled her shoulders up, to let as little of the cold come at her as might be, while facing squarely a thought she did not want to have: How wise, how safe was it to let Orleans go free and back to France? The graciousness and courtesy he always showed were real enough, but so was a silken-covered sheath over a steel blade, with the blade none the less deadly for the silk that hid it. Orleans had spent more than twenty years in England, much of it in the company of great lords. How much had he come to know, to understand about them, about their rivalries, their ambitions, even how they thought? How much knowledge of England and her lords’ ways would he take back to France? And to what uses would he put his knowledge? Because he was not someone who idly let life happen to him. Were the lords right, including Bishop Beaufort, who thought only good would be gained by returning him to France? Or was the duke of Gloucester, who thought Orleans free and in France too dangerous a thing to risk?

With that in her mind and Orleans silent with his own thoughts, they huddled to the smallness of warmth and light between them, Frevisse aware of the darkness and river all around and listening to the creaking of the oars and the water’s whisper along the barge’s sides without knowing how far they had come or how far they had to go. Not that she needed to know, she supposed. However far or little there was to go, the time it took would have to be lived through no matter what. Like life.

Unexpectedly Orleans made a small sound like laughter that had taken him by surprise and said, “In my sleep of nights, I dream of France, of places and people there I have not seen in twenty and more years. But do you know, I think when I am there again, I will dream of places and of people in England.”

It was probably tiredness betrayed him into giving that much of himself away. It was assuredly tiredness that betrayed Frevisse into saying back, “Will you dream of Alice, too?”

To which Orleans did not answer except to look at her from vastly farther away than the few feet between them, his face empty of everything but a shadowed shape of grief.

Then behind them the steersman called out something and forward one of the rowers answered him and a moment later the rhythm of the rowing broke off. The barge lost way, swayed with what felt like the shifting of one of the rowers to his feet, and Orleans leaned to push the forward curtain slightly aside, looked out, let it fall, and leaned the other way to pull aside the rear curtain and demand of the steersman, “Why is he signaling with the prow lantern? What is that for?”

“My lord of Suffolk’s orders, my lord,” the steersman said, looking ahead, over the tilt, as he spoke. He gave two small nods and then a large one, and the rowing began again. “For signal that we’re coming.”

“We are too far from Coldharbour for that,” Orleans said curtly, “and your man was signaling the Southwark shore.”

“Yes, my lord,” the steersman agreed.

“Then what was it for?” Orleans insisted.

“You weren’t told, my lord?” The man answered his own question, “No, or you’d not have asked. It’s signal for word to be passed on to Winchester House that we’re coming so a wherry can put out from there for Coldharbour with word his grace the bishop needs to come back. The thought is that what with the wherry’s men and Coldharbour folk and the bishop’s men and the bishop himself all milling about at the rivergate and landing just as we come in, you’ll maybe go unnoticed in the bustle. That’s the thought on it anyway.”

“How did you come by these orders? Are they the earl’s?”

“His grace’s by way of some yeoman, yes, though I think, from something as was said, the plan was Bishop Beaufort’s, my lord.”

Orleans nodded he was satisfied and let fall the curtain but looked less than satisfied as he turned back to the brazier’s broken light. “So how many men know now that I have been at Coldharbour and gone to the king?” he wondered aloud.

“The yeoman was probably William,” Frevisse offered.

“Ah. Likely. And anyone else used in it, the bishop’s men as well as Suffolk’s, will only know what they have been told to do, not why they are doing it. And Bishop Beaufort will have had some probable reason for being so late at Coldharbour and another for being called home. So it may not be so bad.”

But Orleans did not quite settle again; and when, a while later the barge began a leftward swing across the current, the rowers stroking harder, he held the forward curtain aside to look out again. Wind and snow leaped in the gap together, but Frevisse caught brief sight of London Bridge ahead, a thicker blackness pricked out with lights at windows here and there above the brighter darkness of the Thames, before a snow veil blurred it, lost it, and the barge was swinging further toward Coldharbour’s landing where torches and wall-hung lanterns showed considerable number of men—a great many men for this time of night—moving around another barge and a smaller wherry, both moored below the landing stairs.

Their steersman was bringing the barge in above landing stairs on the river’s flow, having to shout his orders over a wind gust, but the barge glided in against the stonework with no more than a solid thud and minor shudder, and as the ropes were tossed to tie it up, Orleans and Frevisse disentangled themselves from the furred robes and rose, Frevisse at least finding herself stiffened with the sitting and cold and grateful when Orleans held out his hand to help her, saying, “My thanks for coming as you did, my lady.”

“Your grace is welcome.” Though it had been more for Alice’s sake than his.

Another snow squall swept down on them as they left the tilt, and still holding her hand, Orleans drew her close, coming between her and it and saying into her ear while he did, “If you could possibly be helpless, it might serve to help hide me.”

She understood what he wanted, let him keep hold of her hand and grabbed hold of his arm with her other so that he had to back along the walkway to where they could mount to the landing. Above them, the steersman was making trouble over tying up the barge, moving back and forth, distractingly sending one man one way, another man another. To go on giving Orleans reason to keep his back to the light when he stepped up onto the landing in the midst of the steersman’s fussing, Frevisse made her own trouble with skirts and cloak and her balance, keeping hold on Orleans even when she was safely up. The steersman crowded past them one last time, a coin passed from Orleans to his hand, he bowed and touched his cap in thanks, and they were on their own, Frevisse thinking it was a pity she was so nearly Orleans’ height; if she had been smaller, he could have bent over her as he had the boys, but as it was, the cold and snow and wind were helping to confuse and hurry things; no one was lingering, everyone was moving head down and quickly, and Orleans managed to walk half a step ahead of her, head turned sideways and a little down and back toward her, as if he were worried over her and watching her every step. In return, she clung to his arm as if she needed it and guided him a little among the scattering of men between them and the gateway where what had to be the first foam of people preceding Bishop Beaufort from the hall were just coming. With even the least luck, if she and Orleans were noticed at all, it would be only vaguely and with no interest compared to the surge of men around Bishop Beaufort as he now moved into view. Or if there was interest, it would be in her, a probably lewd wondering at why a nun was out at night in company with a man, rather than particular curiosity at Orleans, so long as he was not recognized.

They slipped aside from the bishop’s approach, away from the crowding around him and the strongest torch and lantern light, into the thicker shadows of the gateway arch, Frevisse to the wall, Orleans still turned to her, his back as much as might be to everyone else. Bishop Beaufort was passing them, striding in a cleared space all his own, no one presuming to press in on him but the score and more men around him elbowing among themselves for place, even here and at this hour hoping for his notice. Crowded to the wall but looking ahead, Frevisse could see that when they were past, the flurry of men would be less, a handful scattered across the yard and most of them hurrying heads down from the wind to anyplace else but there. Once she and Orleans were clear of the gateway, it was going to be small matter to cross the yard to the garden door that should still be unlocked or else Alice or someone else there waiting to let them in…

Orleans lurched against her, stumbled she thought, pushed by the crowding maybe. But instead of recovering, he clutched with bruising force into her arm, his other hand fumbling for hold on her cloak as he started to sag to the ground. Confused, Frevisse caught at him, tried to hold him up but was carried down with him to her knees, Orleans sagging further over so that she shifted her hold on him, trying for a better one, then jerked her hand away from a wet warmth, thrust her hand out into the torchlight, and found it dark with the gleaming redness of bright blood.

Chapter
24

Orleans sank further, curling into pain, and Frevisse grabbed hold of him again. Around them, a milling awareness of something wrong had started and “Help me!” she demanded of the faces turning her way but was only stared at until William came shoving between men and stooped to her and Orleans, asking, “What is it?”

“He’s been stabbed,” she said harshly.

William started to make protest against that but caught himself and came to Orleans’ other side from her, bent to put an arm around his shoulders, asking, “My lord, can you stand?”‘

For answer Orleans struggled to rise with short, heaved breaths that were a fight against pain. Between them, Frevisse and William helped him until, on his feet, eyes shut, body clenched in on the hurting, Orleans said, “I can walk. Get me inside.”

William, ignoring voices beginning to rise with questions around them, ordered at near men he knew, “Adam, help me here. Take Dame Frevisse’s place. Andrew, John, clear us a way. Herry, run ahead, find Master Hyndstoke, tell him he’s needed, there’s a man hurt. Tell my lord and lady, too. Run!”

Frevisse saw recognition dawn on Herry as he looked at Orleans and then with a sharp nod he was gone, shoving back through the gawking men. Adam, an older man in yeoman’s livery with no need to understand more than that he was needed, was taking Orleans away from Frevisse, leaving her free to swing back toward the landing with thought that Bishop Beaufort had to be told; but she came up short against Master Bruneau just pushing out from among the men there, looking past her confusedly toward William and Adam and Orleans. Too bewildered yet to be alarmed, he asked, “What’s happened? My lady sent me to tell you come in through the garden. I’m late. Is that…”

Frevisse clamped her unbloodied hand onto his arm. “Don’t say him. Yes. He’s hurt, stabbed. You have to go tell Lady Alice he’s hurt but alive before anyone else does. Understand?”

“She sent me to tell you…” he began again but took hold on his wits, cut himself short, and was away, shoving through the sheep-milling men aside from where two squires were clearing way for William, Adam, and Orleans while Frevisse turned back through the gateway, pushing among the men there with angry force, out onto the landing again, where Bishop Beaufort, poised to step down into his barge, was turned questioningly back. At the sight of her as she came from the gateway’s shadows his questioning sharpened to alarm, and scattering startled men, he came back toward her, met her in the middle of the landing with the wind shoving at his robes, at her cloak and veil and skirts as he demanded at her without courtesy, “What is it?”