The Maiden’s Tale (28 page)

Suffolk demurred. “Not greatly, surely. They’re only little boys.”

“They .won’t always be little boys,” Bishop Beaufort responded scathingly; then abruptly, before Suffolk could say more, “Dame Frevisse, come aside with me.”

Instead of obeying, she asked, “Alice, why did the duke of Gloucester come here today?”

Again swift looks passed among Alice and the two men before Alice answered, “He wanted to talk with me about the French peace. To ‘reason’ with me to influence my husband against it.”

The shocked question first in Frevisse’s mind was: why did the duke of Gloucester think Alice had that kind of power? The second question, close behind it and worse, was:
Did
Alice have that kind of power?

“If you please, dame,” Bishop Beaufort said impatiently and led her to the room’s far end, saying when they were sufficiently alone, “His grace of Orleans will live. That’s sure. That settled, the next matter is to find out who tried to kill him. That I want you to do.”

Frevisse opened her mouth, then shut it, found she could hold to outward courtesy at least and said with at least a show of reasonableness, “Isn’t that for London’s sheriff? Or would it be for the earl marshall, Orleans being the king’s prisoner?”

Without notice of her bridled anger, Bishop Beaufort answered, “This isn’t something we want noised abroad.”

“Noised abroad? You can’t keep secret something everyone in Coldharbour knows by now!”

“The tattle of unofficial tongues can always be denied. It’s official tongues we have to avoid. You’ve done this manner of thing for me before now. Do it again.”

She had the impression that she might as well try to shift one of the stone pillars in the nave of his cathedral church as shift him, but she tried, curbing her urge to forget courtesy entirely. “Your grace, I’m not fitted to do this.”

“I think you are. Satisfy me in this, and there’ll be ample reward for it, to you or to your nunnery, as you choose.”

“And if I try and fail?”

“If you try, I know you’ll do it to your uttermost. There’s not less in you. So if you fail, you’ll still have my gratitude. But you will try.”

There was no choice against an order as direct as that, twist against it however she might, but she said tersely, refusing to give her enforced acceptance even outward show of grace, “As you will, my lord,” wanting him to understand how little she liked it.

Not that other people’s liking or disliking had much to do with his decisions in regard to anything, she supposed as he accepted her acceptance with “I’ll leave you to it, then. Ask what you want of whomever you want, and invoke my authority freely.”

He turned back to Alice and Suffolk, but Frevisse stayed where she was, working to control her anger before she dared move. It was not against what he wanted her to do that she was angry. That would hardly have been just since she had already started to do it in questioning Lady Jane, Herry, and William. The trouble lay in having to do it for him. It was one thing to search out by her own choice who had attacked Orleans, another matter entirely to do it by Bishop Beaufort’s order.

Somewhere in that reasoning—or lack of it—there was probably the sin of Pride, she supposed. There was assuredly the sin of something, and sooner or later she would have to sort it out, confess it, and do penance for it, she knew. But that did not hold her back from wondering what sins Bishop Beaufort saw fit to confess.

And on whom he inflicted his confessions.

Chapter
25

Before leaving the bedchamber, Frevisse crossed to where William was pouring water that had been warming by the fire into a basin to take to Master Hyndstoke and said, “When you’ve finished here, I want to talk with you and Lady Jane,” accepted his agreeing nod for answer and went out.

In the lady chamber no one approached her this time, but Lady Jane was not as unattended as Frevisse had left her; Robyn Helas was with her, and Frevisse had the thought that for someone who claimed she did not welcome his companionship, Lady Jane was often enough with him. Then she saw how Lady Jane was standing flat-backed to the tapestried wall and Robyn leaning toward her, one of his arms braced out against the wall to block her sliding away from him that way while with his other hand he was slowly reaching toward the marred side of her face and watching her fight not to shrink from his touch.

They were somewhat in shadow there, perhaps unnoticed by anyone or else Lady Jane’s desperation ignored because, after all, why should she object to attentions from any man? But she surely was, and Frevisse, with all her accumulated anger, was behind Robyn before either he or Lady Jane knew she was anywhere near. With a coldness that hid her fury she said into his ear, “It has to be you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.”

Robyn startled and turned, his hand dropping away from Lady Jane’s face. “I’m not drunk” he protested in surprise.

“You haven’t even that excuse?” Frevisse demanded.

He smiled a beautiful smile that had surely served him well on many occasions and said silkily, “You mistake the matter. Lady Jane and I are friends. We’re enjoying each other’s company, is all.”

Frevisse smiled back and said with no shading of politeness, “Go away.”

Robyn’s voice and smile both hardened. “I’m talking to her.”

“Not anymore,” Frevisse said with cold certainty. She was tired, she was angry at people her anger could not touch, but Robyn was in reach of her authority and she let him see he would not like to learn what she would do to him if he refused to leave, clearly enough that although nothing changed in Robyn’s stance or the arrogant cock of his head, he inwardly drew back from her, something of retreat in his look that he shifted to Lady Jane, then back to Frevisse before casually, arrogantly, as if it was all his own choice to go, he took a step back, made a mockery of a bow at them both, said, “Later,” and left.

Frevisse watched him to the stairs before she looked to Jane and said, “So much for him.”

Sounding near to tears, Lady Jane said, “For now.”

Even in the little light there was her face showed pale and she was trembling, and in pity for her, Frevisse said gently, “He’s a cruel fool, granted, but not worth so much hurting, surely. Whatever he said to you…”

“He has Orleans’ poems to Lady Alice.”

Frevisse went still, absorbing that before she said, “From you?”‘ And when Lady Jane stared at her as if not understanding, repeated, more harshly, “Did he have them from you?”

Lady Jane recoiled. “No! That… creature… that… No!”

Frevisse reached out and closed a hand onto her wrist, stopping her. “Not from you then. Drink your wine, steady yourself, tell me how he came by them then.”

Lady Jane drank from the goblet she still held, steadied, and told how Robyn first encountered her in the chapel, his threats then and through the other times he had trapped her into talk with him, an ugly telling, uglier for the implications, and sometimes Lady Jane looked away as if ashamed, so that when she finished, Frevisse said, “If that’s how it’s been, there’s no shame to you in any of it. You’ve served Lady Alice as bravely as might be. But there has to be more to it than his merely wanting you to talk to him.”

With a surprising steadiness, Lady Jane agreed, “Yes.”

“But as yet he’s asked nothing of you except that.”

“And to tell him about you,” Lady Jane reminded.

Frevisse nodded in slow consideration of that. “He went to some deal of trouble—however much he probably enjoyed it— to have those poems. That, and his questioning about me, makes this look like more than only a young man’s sport.”

“He’s someone’s spy,” Lady Jane whispered.

“But whose?” Frevisse asked. “And has he kept these poems for himself or already passed them on to his master?”

“If he’s given them…”

Lady Jane could not make an end to that but Frevisse had less scruple. “If he’s already given them over, we’re finished before we begin, but I suspicion he’s too much enjoying his little game to have shared it yet with anyone else. He’s only made his first moves in it. So long as he has the poems all to himself, the game is his to play as he likes and I don’t think he’ll have parted with his power yet. Not him.”

Lady Jane looked toward the bedchamber door. “What if it were Robyn struck at his grace of Orleans?”‘ she breathed.

“I don’t remember he was there at the gateway.” Though that meant little; she had been concentrating more on keeping Orleans unseen than seeing anyone herself.

“But if he’s someone’s spy,” Lady Jane said fiercely, “he may know something of who did stab Orleans if they’re together in who they serve.”

Yes, Frevisse thought; with that possibility and because of the poems, Robyn would surely have to be talked to again.

“William,” Lady Jane said, looking past Frevisse who turned her head to see him leaving the bedchamber. But she also saw Master Bruneau sitting alone among the few clusters of people still left around the room, on a stool near the fireplace with its low-burned fire, staring down into a goblet clamped in both his hands and between his knees, with tiredness and desolation in the line of his stooped shoulders and bent head, probably fearing that besides the grief he and Orleans already shared, he might soon need to grieve for Orleans, too.

William reached them, made a bow to Frevisse, and put out a hand to Lady Jane who took it and moved trustingly toward him while he said to Frevisse, “You wanted to see me, my lady.”

How had matters come to change from what she had first seen between him and Lady Jane, Frevisse wondered again but said, that being beside the present matter, “I want to know what you’ve learned about your cousin’s death, but first I must needs say something to Master Bruneau.”

“I’ve learned very little, I’m afraid,” William said. “Nothing that’s given me a final answer.”

“Something you’ve learned may mean more now, matched up with what’s happened tonight. I want to hear it. But first, by your leave.”

William bowed as she left, and Lady Jane made a small curtsy. Master Bruneau at her approach raised his head, then rose to his feet and bowed, in his turn, saying while he did, “My lady, you were in there. How is it with him?”

“He’s bled much but nothing vital was touched. He’ll likely live.”

Master Bruneau crossed himself, his face shifting through the confusion of letting go of fears, of trying to give way to relief as he said, “I’m sorry. I feared…”

“I know,” Frevisse interposed to save him from trying for words that plainly came hard. “But this is the second time someone has tried for him and the danger isn’t gone. He won’t be safe until we know who did this.”

Master Bruneau was controlled now to his usual competence. “What’s to be done?”

“Bishop Beaufort has given me charge to learn what I can and I’m asking questions. Did you see anyone at the gateway who shouldn’t have been there, or anything that, looking back, was strange or seems wrong now? Did you see a dagger drawn or blood on anyone? Anything.”

Master Bruneau had begun to shake his head while she talked and went on shaking it. “No, no one, nothing like that, no.”

It had been a thin hope. Like Herry, he would surely have said something ere now if he had seen anything like that, but, “Something may come to you later. If it does, tell me.” That was the only real hope she had in questioning anyone who had been there: that they’d be stirred to remember something. “There’s another thing I’d ask of you, though.”

Master Bruneau straightened a little. “Yes? Something?”

“On Bishop Beaufort’s order there’s been,” she hoped, “a guard set on every way out of Coldharbour. Would you go around to everywhere and ask if anyone has tried to leave and who they were? Ask, too, if anyone was seen going out just before word went around to keep everyone in. We can’t have all the answers tonight but we can begin. You understand?”

“I’m to find if the man who did this has tried to leave or if it’s likely he’s still here,” Master Bruneau said.

His conciseness reassured her he fully had his wits about him again and she answered as concisely, “Yes. But be careful at it. This is someone willing to kill.”

Master Bruneau bowed both his respect and that he understood, set down the goblet he had held on the stool behind him, and left. Frevisse, returning to Lady Jane and William, found them mostly turned from the room, their heads close in talk, but as she joined them, they faced her, William saying, “Dame Frevisse, has anyone thought to have everyone searched for blood on them?”

“Because surely whoever stabbed him would be bloodied,” Lady Jane put in. “There was blood on you. On your cloak.”

“I’ve thought of it but there’s likely little use to it. How much blood is on you, William?” Frevisse said in return.

He held out his left arm, his doublet’s sleeve darkened and stiff with dried blood. “It’s what set us to think of it.”

“There’s likely more blood on you and the other man who helped bring Orleans in than there was on the man who stabbed him. Whoever did it wasn’t pressed against him when stabbing him and was away before the blood had time to soak through his shirt, jerkin, doublet, surcoat. There was so much on me because his grace fell against me and I tried to hold him up. The only blood the murderer probably had to deal with was on his dagger.”

“And that he could have let fall into the Thames,” Lady Jane said, taking the point.

“With no one likely to notice,” William added.

“It wouldn’t have been noticed then,” Frevisse answered, “but afterwards someone without a dagger they should have would need to explain where his had gone. At this point anyone without his dagger will need to do as much explaining about that as if he had a bloody one. He’s probably simply cleaned and kept it.”

“Or he had one just for this, carried hidden and not missed,” William said, “one that he could drop in the Thames.”

“Another possibility,” Frevisse agreed. Or he could have taken a knife from the kitchen. Another thing she would have to ask about. “All in all, I doubt blood will be of much use in this, nor have I much hope in asking who saw what tonight. I need more than only tonight. That’s why I want to hear what you’ve learned about Eyon’s death, to see if there’s anything, anyone who can be linked from it to this.”