The Sempster's Tale (9 page)

Frevisse had quick sight of the kitchen beyond the shop— a cleanly kept room with a wide-hearthed fireplace against one wall, a well-scrubbed wooden table, several stools, and a window and back door opening to a garden’s greenery— before she gathered her skirts away from her feet and followed Mistress Blakhall up the steep stairs into a pleasant chamber that was plainly where Mistress Blakhall mostly lived.

Frevisse guessed she much worked here, too. An embroidery frame stood near the wide southward window, and while Mistress Blakhall crossed toward a small table set with a pewter pitcher, pewter cups, and a cloth-covered plate, Frevisse went to see what work she had on the frame. Her soft exclaim, though, was for what she saw beyond the window, and Mistress Blakhall, coming with a filled cup in one hand and a plate with sugared borage petals and small ginger cakes in the other, said, “It does startle, doesn’t it?”

‘It does,“ Frevisse agreed. She leaned outward to look up and farther up at St. Paul cathedral’s central tower and soaring spire, huge and graceful against the sky, with no clutter of buildings between to lessen the power of the sight.

‘In winter,“ Mistress Blakhall said, ”when the sun rides low, the spire’s shadow slides across the roofs like a sundial’s shadow across the hours.“

And when the cathedral’s bells rang out for any reason, the glory of their ringing must crash down over the rooftops louder than thinking, Frevisse thought.

But today, at this early afternoon hour, they were quiet, and at Mistress Blakhall’s gesture, Frevisse sat on the seat below the window, took the offered plate and cup, and then, while Mistress Blakhall returned to the table for her own, leaned over to see the work on the embroidery frame. On the square of heavy linen held flat and taut by a strong cord laced back and forth through its edges and to the frame was lightly drawn St. Mark’s winged lion in a ten-inch roundel. The background was complete, done with a stitch that Frevisse knew was quick and easy. But she also knew, from sorry experience the misguided times she had tried to learn needlework, that however quick and easy a stitch might be, whoever plied the needle and thread could still do it badly and this work was done very well. Besides that, the lion was outlined with a thin black backstitch and the first gold thread curved into the flare of its mane, held in place by stitches of linen thread brought through from the underside to catch a small loop of the gold and hold it in place invisibly. Nothing more than the first curl of the mane was done but it was enough, and Frevisse looked up with willing respect at Mistress Blakhall waiting on the other side of the frame and said, “It’s beautiful work. Were you taught in France?” Because the
opus anglicanum
—English needlework so beautiful it had for centuries been desired by popes and given as royal gifts among kings—had lessened over the years into barely more than ordinary, and this was not.

Mistress Blakhall’s eyes brightened. “You’ve seen French needlework?”

‘I was twice at school in French nunneries, and I’ve seen Parisian work.“

Smiling, Mistress Blakhall sat down beside her. “My teacher was from Paris. She married someone of the duke of Exeter’s household and ended here, teaching girls who—” Mistress Blakhall tried for a French way of speaking. “—‘have the fingers of pigs and the eyes crossed, they see so poorly what they do so badly.’ ”

Frevisse laughed, then nodded at St. Mark’s lion. “You at least must have pleased her.”

‘She did finally say she’d not mind admitting I was her student.“

‘It was praise truly earned.“ Frevisse looked around the room, and thinking of the little-used shop downstairs, asked, ”Do you have your workshop elsewhere? Or do your women work at their homes?“

‘Save for another woman I sometimes hire to work plain repeating patterns for borders, I do all my own work.“

‘You’ve no apprentices?“

‘None at present. When my husband died, he had none because we were still working to establish ourselves as makers of church vestments and altar cloths and banners and such.“

‘His skill as a tailor joined to yours,“ Frevisse said.

‘Just so.“ Mistress Blakhall’s smile was tender with remembrance. She was young but had lived enough to have lost youth’s blandness; her face was the more comely for having years of life and love and memories behind it, and her husband must hold a dear place in those memories because she still smiled as she said, ”Matthew always said he was only a plain tailor doing plain work, and I’d laugh at him because his ’plain‘ work was so far beyond only ’good.‘ Near the end he even had a commission from as far off as Lincoln, from a canon willing to pay for an excess of gold thread to have what he wanted.“

‘That he might outshine his fellows when saying Mass,“ Frevisse suggested.

Mistress Blakhall laughed. “Without doubt. But we loved doing lesser commissions, too, for poorer priests and less wealthy folk. Matthew would tell me to work some gold thread into a halo and not charge. ‘It will be our gift to the saint,’ he’d say. He was a very good man, was Matthew.”

And his wife had loved him dearly. Was that why she had not married again, Frevisse wondered.

But maybe thinking she had gone too far from business, Mistress Blakhall said more crisply, “I was the more able to carry on the work after he died because I was already a femme sole and in the Broiderers Guild.” Not one of the great guilds of London nor wielding any power worth mention in the city’s government, but giving her place and rights in the city and some warrant of her work, because like other guilds, the Broiderers protected its members by overseeing the quality of work done under their name.

Frevisse nodded, understanding all of that, but asked, “If you work almost alone, this commission from her grace of Suffolk will take a lengthy time, won’t it?”

‘If done well, yes. But then this is work over which time may be taken.“

‘There being no great haste, I suppose,“ Frevisse said. Since his grace the duke was going to be dead for some time to come.

But that brought thought of why else Frevisse was here and she added quietly, “There’s the other matter, too.”

Mistress Blakhall immediately rose, left her cup and plate on the table, and went to a chest standing against the wall beside the door while taking a key from the small purse hung from her narrow belt. Frevisse rose to her feet, too, went to set down her own cup and plate on the table, then waited there while Mistress Blakhall unlocked the chest, opened the lid, took something out, and came back to the table carrying a leather pouch in a close-fitted net bag hung from a long loop of stout cord. The pouch was not large but large enough that Frevisse wondered with dismay how she was supposed to hide it on herself between now and giving it to Alice. Her dismay deepened when she took the pouch from Mistress Blakhall. It was heavy, and weighing it in her hand, she asked, “Do you know what this is?”

Mistress Blakhall hesitated, then said, “I was told it’s gold coins that you’re to take secretly to her grace of Suffolk. The rest will be here later. That’s all I know.”

Sharply, too surprised to hide her surprise, Frevisse said, “What rest?”

‘He didn’t want to risk bringing all of it at once.“ Mistress Blakhall sounded as suddenly doubtful as Frevisse was surprised. ”You didn’t know there was going to be more?“

‘I didn’t, no.“

They stared at each other, and Frevisse sensed that Mistress Blakhall was no happier than she was at the business. They were both being used to other people’s purposes, and Frevisse decided that whomever she was angry at, it was not Mistress Blakhall, who now said hesitantly, “I put the pouch in that net bag and added the cord so you could wear it around your neck and hidden down your gown. I thought it would help.”

No, she was not angry at Mistress Blakhall at all, Frevisse decided. Her plain, practical help was welcome in the midst of this nonsense of someone else’s making; and Frevisse smiled and said, “Will you help me, so I needn’t unwimple altogether?”

Between them, they got the cord around Frevisse’s neck, under her wimple, and the pouch slipped inside her gowns, hidden by the heavy layers of cloth. Mistress Blakhall stepped back, studied her, and said, “There’s no sign of it. No one will wonder anything.”

How she would keep it concealed at St. Helen’s Frevisse did not know, but sufficient unto the moment was the trouble thereof and she only said, “You have patterns to show me, I think?”

They spent a pleasant while then with a gathering of patterns Mistress Blakhall kept. All were of the expected angels and saints, various beasts and birds, twining vines with leaves and flowers or fruit. Most were usual, but some had a grace the others lacked—a turn of a head, a body’s curve, the lift of an angel’s wing that just a little more pleased the eye. At Frevisse’s question, Mistress Blakhall said those were her own, and Frevisse’s opinion of her as a craftswoman rose more.

On the last of the papers were drawings of the duke of Suffolk’s heraldic arms—a shield with a bar across its middle, two leopards’ heads above and one leopard’s head below. On the paper around the shield Mistress Blakhall had been trying variations of the leopards’ heads. By the laws of heraldry they could be presented only one way: a neckless head facing straight outward. Although there was no choice about that, she had been planning with pen and ink how to lay the stitches when the time came and trying different shapes for their eyes. There were pairs of eyes narrowed, pairs of eyes wide; pairs of eyes very round; pairs of eyes half-shut; and in a lower corner, eyes very crossed.

‘I made a start on the arms,“ Mistress Blakhall said, ”on the chance my lady of Suffolk wants them on the cope.“

‘She does, but not boldly.“ Not for humility’s sake, Frevisse suspected, but because it would be safer, given the general hatred there was for Suffolk, even dead. ”The choice of saints has been left to me, though. I was thinking, in keeping with Suffolk’s death, they should maybe be saints who had been beheaded.“ She had also been thinking how they would look across the great curve of the cope: an array of saints all holding their particular symbol in one hand— St. Paul with the sword that had beheaded him; St. Denis with his stake; St. Winifred with her pastoral staff, St. Urban with a scourge, St. Osyth with her crown and keys… while their other hand held their head in the crook of their other arm.

The thought was only a jest and a poor one at that, and before Mistress Blakhall might start to take her seriously, she said, “Perhaps one beheaded saint, anyway. St. Denis, I think, since Suffolk had such ties with France. But since I must needs come see you again, perhaps we’d best not decide everything this time.”

‘There’s still much deciding to do,“ Mistress Blakhall assured her. ”We’ve hardly made a beginning. Not least will be choosing the cloth, though Master Grene can help with that, if you like. Would you care for something more to eat and drink before you leave? Bette will have something ready in the garden. It’s cooler there than here by now in the afternoon.“

‘Something to drink would be welcome,“ Frevisse said, and they went downstairs and through the kitchen, into the garden where it was indeed cooler. Like the house, the garden was long and narrow, with a board fence down either side and across the end to give some privacy from its neighbors. Its beds looked to be mostly herbs and vegetables—the peas were in full flourish, ready to be picked—but an iris grew in a blue-glazed pot the other side of the doorway and something boldly yellow was flowering in one corner.

A small roof built out from the house wall beside the kitchen door gave sheltered sitting, and Master Naylor rose to his feet from one of the kitchen stools set in its shade.

Bette was there, too, and the pottery cup in Master Naylor’s hand showed he had not been neglected. By the time Frevisse and Mistress Blakhall had sat down on other stools and Frevisse had bade Master Naylor sit again, Bette had hobbled into the kitchen and out again with more cups and a loaf of bread on a cutting board to set on the little table there. The bread surprised Frevisse. Rather than a plain loaf, it was made of several thick strands of dough—four, she counted—braided over and under one another in a complicated way she had only ever seen…

She looked across the table at Mistress Blakhall and found her staring at the loaf as if startled to see it. The next moment Mistress Blakhall’s look flashed up, first at Frevisse, then to Master Naylor, with worry and question in her eyes. Master Naylor seemed to have no especial thought about it, or if he did, he had it as hidden as Frevisse had hers; and Mistress Blakhall looked to Bette and asked lightly about butter.