The Sempster's Tale (13 page)

Anne stared blankly at her with no thought of what to say next.

‘She was my mother,“ the woman offered.

‘That’s why… when I asked for Joanne… the porter said Alis.“

‘The porter?“ The woman was momentarily puzzled, then said, ”That would be Martin. He’s not the porter. He only sits there and watches the world go by.“

‘He’s a Jew?“ Anne blurted out.

‘A Christian,“ the woman said calmly. ”We’re all Christians here.“

‘Yes,“ Anne said. ”Of course.“ Unsure whether she had given offense or not.

‘We hardly need a porter here,“ the woman went on, mildly enough. ”We’re not much visited. The occasional churchman or a royal officer comes to make sure all is well. Or sometimes someone comes who’s merely curious to see Jews.“

Anne realized she was staring and said quickly, “I’ve come with a letter for your mother.” She fumbled in her basket for it. “I suppose you should have it.”

She held it out. Alis looked at it, not taking it. “A letter for my mother?”

‘It’s from your family, I think. Your mother’s family.“

The woman still did not take the letter. “After all this time,” she said. “And now a year too late.” She shifted her look to Anne, her voice and gaze sharpening a little. “How did you come by this?”

‘That I can’t tell you.“

The woman’s gaze returned to the letter. “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose you can.” She took it but made no move to open it, just went on looking at it. “Never a word in forty years, and now a letter.”

‘Forty years?“

The woman lifted one shoulder, as if to shrug the years away. “What else could they do, my mother’s family? And what could she have done? She was in England because she thought my father had come here.” The woman shook her head. “She didn’t find him, but she was found out to be Jewish. What could she do then but become Christian? It was that or die. I was baptized with her.” She shrugged. “I was only six. After it, we were brought here. Here we stayed. Here I am.”

Here she was. A woman staring at an unopened letter in her hands.

Anne stood up. She did not want to be here any longer. And yet, despite herself, she asked, “You could leave here, couldn’t you? If you wanted to?”

The woman looked at her. “Oh, yes. We can leave. If we want to. If we have somewhere to go. I don’t. So I stay.”

She stayed. And her mother had stayed. For forty years. And then had died.

To what Anne had not asked, the woman said, “We have our life here. We garden and cook and go to prayers. There’s a chapel here. And I have my rooms. There are only four of us here now. There are rooms enough.”

But not life enough, Anne thought. By whatever chance, this Alis of Dartmouth’s soul and her mother’s had been saved, and surely there was no greater good than that. But frighteningly, treacherously, Anne found herself wondering at the cost. A woman shut off from the world the whole of her life. A woman who had faded without ever having brightened. All for the sake of saving her soul. But what was her soul worth now? When finally freed from the flesh, how could it go to God with joy, having never known joy in life?

Anne cast that question instantly away, afraid of it. She had not meant to stay this long, and with some murmured farewell, she made to leave; but Alis of Dartmouth put out a hand and asked, “If… if I…” Faltered. Gathered herself. Tried again. “If I want to make answer to this letter, can you see to it going?”

Anne wanted only to be away and never come back, but found herself promising, “I’ll come back, yes. In a few days. To see if you have an answer. Yes.” She was retreating even as she said it; started to turn away; then turned back and asked, “In all this time, you’ve never wanted… your mother never wanted to return to… your people?”

The woman stared at her as if the question made no sense. And then, for the first time, she smiled. A small, sad, pitying smile, though whether the pity was for herself or for Anne’s ignorance, Anne could not tell as the woman said quietly, “If ever my mother had tried to be a Jew again, the Church would have burned her for a heretic. As for me…” She looked around where she was without much seeming to see it. “Where else do I know? What else can I do?”

Anne, making her escape, thought those were much the questions everyone lived with. What else do we know, besides what we’ve been told? What else can we do, besides what we’re doing?

Except she knew that she loved Daved and that he loved her—and that by everything she had ever been told, their love was wrong. Wrong beyond redemption of their souls.

And yet it was not in her not to love him. Whatever came of it.

Chapter 9

Through the door in the red gate Frevisse, Dame Juliana, and the Naylors passed into a roofed, wagon-wide passage running perhaps fifteen feet between the blank walls of buildings before opening into a small, roughly square, cobbled courtyard tightly enclosed on three sides, including that of the gate, by half-timbered buildings two storeys tall. The one toward the street was Master Grene’s shop. Others were probably storerooms and workrooms, while ahead across the yard wooden stairs led straightly up to a stone-built great hall that would be the heart of Master Grene’s house.

The servingman led them to those stairs and up, into the screens passage that separated the hall itself from doorway draughts. On the other side from the wide opening into the hall were several other doors, probably to kitchen and butlery and pantry, and a tight spiral of stairs going upward, down which was coming a brisk older woman in a fine coral-red gown and beautifully veiled wimple, saying as she came, “I saw you from the parlor window, my ladies. Welcome. I’m Mistress Grene’s mother. I fear my daughter is keeping to her chamber these days. I’m Mistress Hercy. She hopes you’ll spend an hour with her after dinner.”

‘She’s not badly ill, I hope,“ Dame Juliana said.

‘Not ill at all, St. Margaret be praised. She’s bearing, is all, and near her time. The stairs aren’t safe for her, now that she’s gone large enough not to see her feet well anymore.“

‘Is this her first?“ Dame Juliana asked with ready interest.

‘In faith, it’s her fourth, all of them living, God be thanked. Only her second for Master Grene, though. She’s given him a son already and, God willing, will soon give him another.“

She had waved the servingman to see to the Naylors and was leading the nuns into the hall while she talked. The place was not so large as a nobleman’s hall but fair enough for a merchant’s London home, with two tall, narrow windows toward the courtyard, set too high for seeing anything but sky through them. The white-plastered walls along both sides were covered from the spring of the rafters to almost the floor with hangings of bright red cloths printed with twining patterns of green vines and blue cloths printed with yellow stars, while behind the long table set on the low dais at the hall’s upper end there was a painted hanging with round-bottomed ships sailing a wave-tossed blue sea between towered cities on green-cragged shores. Master Grene was standing at one end of the table on the dais, in talk with three other men, two of them churchmen—a priest and a grey-robed Franciscan friar—and a woman whom Frevisse saw with surprise was Mistress Blakhall.

She had been hoping her promise to visit Mistress Blakhall today would serve as excuse not to linger here longer than need be. Escape might not be so easy now.

While Frevisse was thinking that, Mistress Hercy’s talk had moved on to her daughter’s son by her late first husband. “A darling boy. Apprenticed to be a mercer himself. But he’s reached ‘that age.’ He’s gone off on some youthful roam these past few days with never a word to anybody. It’s never been like him to give his mother to worry, let be at a time like this. When his master has had his say, never fear so will I. But aren’t we in good fortune with the weather of late?”

Frevisse wondered how long the boy had been gone while noting that besides the high table, a long, bare-topped one along one side of the hall was set with places for eight lesser members of the household—probably journeymen and apprentices—with a serving woman presently bringing two settings more for the Naylors. Then Master Grene was coming to greet her and Dame Juliana and bring them onto the dais to name them to the others, explaining how and why they were come to London on the duchess of Suffolk’s behalf and smoothly including praise for Mistress Blakhall’s work with, “Embroidery worthy of a duchess’ need.”

Mistress Blakhall laughed at him in the way of longtime friends. “Don’t fail to add your own part in the matter, sir, and your hope it’s from you Dame Frevisse will buy the cloth for these vestments.”

Master Grene made a small bow to her and Frevisse together and said with his hand on his heart, laughing, too, “But only out of hope to be of yet more service to her grace of Suffolk. Though I do have on hand a figured black damask just come into England by way of this man’s good ship.”

He gestured to a black-haired young man in a well-made, dark green doublet and blue surcoat, who bowed to Dame Juliana and Frevisse and said, “I can only hope to have some share of honor in serving her grace,” in a warm voice with a foreign tinge to it that Frevisse could not quite place as she matched manners with him and Master Grene, saying, “We’ll be most happy to see the damask when dinner is done.” Because what else, in all courtesy, was she supposed to say?

Master Grene went on, “This is Master Daved Weir of Bruges. He and his uncle Master Bocking, who is behind his time in joining us this noontide…” He looked questioningly at Master Weir, who slightly shook his head, showing he did not know the why of his uncle’s absence. “… are my two best suppliers of cloth out of Flanders and northern France.”

Frevisse tried to keep her gaze from sharpening on this Master Weir out of Flanders and France, because it could well be by way of him that the gold so heavy around her neck had come into England. Then she reminded herself that was something of which she was better ignorant, and after a silent bend of her head to his bow, she turned to the priest to whom Master Grene was now naming her and Dame Juliana. He was a short, plain-faced man in a black gown of plain cut and plain cloth, solemn-faced as he slightly bent his head to her and Dame Juliana as they curtseyed to him while Master Grene said, “This is Father Tomas of our parish. He’s one of the Mass priests at our St. Swithin church.” Meaning his main duty was to celebrate endowed Masses at the various altars in the church for whatever benefactor had paid for them.

‘And please you to meet Brother Michael, too,“ Master Grene went on, turning to the friar. ”He’s as new among us as you are.“

The friar had been hanging back and somewhat aside until then, so that only now did Frevisse look full at him—a man of moderate height, austerely gaunt even in the bulky grey robe of a Franciscan friar belted thick at his waist with a knotted rope but with no look of ill-health from over-fasting about him. Indeed, he was sun-browned like a man much out of doors, and his eyes were alert with the intent mind behind them, giving Frevisse the instant thought that here was someone who saw what he looked at and thought about what he saw.

‘Brother Michael was of late a scholar among scholars in Paris,“ Master Grene was saying, ”but presently he’s at Grey Friars here in London. If you’ve not heard him preach at St. Paul’s, you truly should. He draws a goodly crowd.“

They had heard him, Frevisse realized. He was the friar at St. Paul’s Cross to whom they had not stayed to listen. Since it seeming better not to say that, she said nothing as she and Dame Juliana curtsied and Brother Michael said with a smile, “It was not so goodly a crowd this morning. People are more taken up with these rebels than with Lollards at present.”

‘It’s been years since we heard much about Lollards in Oxfordshire,“ Dame Juliana said.

‘Little heard about them means only that they’ve learned to lie more low and keep the quieter at their work,“ Brother Michael said. ”Their poison is still here and only the worse for being subtle. I was ordered here from Paris particularly to work against them.“

From almost their beginnings, the Franciscan and Dominican friars’ place in the Church had been to wander and preach, to reach the common people in common ways and live by daily charity rather than settled endowments. That latter ideal had much failed over the years; friaries were now often rich enough to rival any monastery, and while some friars still wandered, others were known as fierce scholars defending the Church against heretics of whatever kind, a driving force of the Inquisition.