The Bastard's Tale (14 page)

chapel, with barely time to catch their breath and open their breviaries before the Office began.

They had the chapel to themselves and to judge by the sparse chanting from the choir the monks had not flocked to the Office either, nor had there been many worshippers in the nave. At the Office’s end she and Dame Perpetua sat silently for a few moments, listening to the monks hurry away, before Frevisse said, “It’s hardly worth the while for me to go back to the library before dinner since I have to take Lord John to the players afterward. There’s chance I might talk to Lady Alice about our business if I go now, if you don’t mind.”

‘I was already thinking I might stay and pray awhile,“ Dame Perpetua said. ”And rest my eyes. I’ll start Boethius myself this afternoon if I can.“

Content that Dame Perpetua seemed not to mind, Frevisse left her, wishing she could stay to pray, too, but needing to take this chance to ask if Alice had learned more last night. Crossing the Great Court, keeping tight hold on her cloak against the whipping wind, she was giving small heed to the general hurry of people around her until, from somewhere beyond the abbey’s outer wall, there was the cry of a trumpet, bold in the cold air, and the next moment the word
Gloucester
was running across the yard. Heads turned, people stopped, then began to move toward the great gateway all at once.

Frevisse paused, resisting her curiosity, before giving way and going with the crowd toward and into the long arch of the abbey’s gateway tower leading to the marketplace outside the abbey walls. The push of people crowded her forward and sideways and without particularly trying she was against the leftward pillars of the outer archway when scarlet-clad foreriders rode by, but all heads on both sides of the way were turned and craning to see Gloucester and by leaning forward Frevisse saw him, too, a tall man with the good looks of his youth not gone from his long-boned Plantagenet face, straight-backed in the saddle as his tall white palfrey played to the crowd, prancing with high-arched neck under a shining fall of mane, hoofs light and quick on the paving stones, the small bells hung from its harness chiming and jinging.

There was little cheering, here among the followers of so many other lords, but Gloucester was acknowledging what there was with a raised hand and a smile to one side and the other. He was not as Frevisse had seen him in her mind these past twenty and more years of hearing what trouble he made around the king with his demands and angry wrangling for more power than other lords were willing to give him. Rather than a face harsh with failed greed, bitter with loss, taut with the verjuice of thwarted ambition, he looked simply a hale man in middle age, openly pleased by those in the crowd who were pleased to see him.

Did he also see how many men in lords’ liveries or wearing lords’ badges were there and not cheering, Frevisse wondered.

A streak of sunlight through a sudden, wind-torn rift in the clouds swept across the marketplace, caught bright for an instant on the gold lions and lilies of Gloucester’s banner wind-shifting above him, then was gone, fled away over the abbey wall, and Gloucester was gone, too, riding on with his men behind him, all wearing his white swan badge on their shoulder. The crowd, not interested in them, began to disperse but Frevisse held where she was. Curious to see if Arteys was there, she found him among the last riders. He did not see her nor had she thought he would but neither did she see what she had thought she might—some likeness to the duke of Gloucester. Arteys was simply a tall young man with golden hair riding among many other men.

When he was past, she turned away, back into the abbey, putting thought of him aside. She was somewhat looking forward to today’s last rehearsal of
Wisdom.
Last night’s work had mostly been feeling out how voices and gestures played in the different space of the King’s Hall and with another practice of the dances and everything interrupted as they went along by Toller trying out his smokes and stenches. It seemed Toller not only kept watch out the door during rehearsals but was likewise adept at what could be done with gunpowder and other things to—as Joliffe had put it—“confound a play.”

‘And please a crowd,“ Master Wilde had said, overhearing.

‘One might hope,“ Joliffe had answered, sententious as preacher in pulpit, ”a crowd such as this would be above such things.“ But added with instant grin and in chorus with Master Wilde, ”But a crowd is a crowd is a crowd. They’ll love it!“

From all Frevisse had seen of it, she agreed. The play itself dealt with solemn enough matter to please the piety of anyone inclined that way including King Henry himself, given to prayers as he was said to be, while the gorgeous garments, the bright-musiced dancing, and Toller’s surprises would satisfy the rest.

She found the outer of Alice’s three rooms unexpectedly empty save for several clerks scribbling rapidly away at small, easily shifted desks near the window, too in haste at their work to give her even a glance. A scatter of Alice’s women were more attentive in the middle room, lifting or turning their heads from their work or talk as she entered, one of them saying, “My lady thought she’d be here but the queen kept her after all. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

‘Lord John?“ Frevisse asked.

‘With his nurse. In there.“

Frevisse went into the last room, to be greeted by John looking up from a scatter of bright-painted blocks on the floor to ask eagerly, “Can we go now?”

‘Not yet, my lord,“ his nurse said from where she sat at the window with sewing in her lap. ”You must needs first eat and so must Dame Frevisse and I.“

She asked then about the trumpet they had heard, and Frevisse filled in the time with telling what she had seen of the duke of Gloucester’s going by until a servant came with the light meal supposed to suffice for two women and a child. For Frevisse, used to nunnery fare, it was more than good enough—rabbit in a plain wine sauce and a cheese tart—but Nurse complained, cutting up John’s meat for him, “This isn’t what one expects, I have to say, nor how it is when my lord and my lady are properly at home, I promise you. We dine very well then, from hall to nursery. But with so many crowded together here and it being winter, well, there’s not so much to go around as should be, I suppose, and what there is goes elsewhere first, I daresay.”

Frevisse agreed it very likely did and kept up her side of the conversation with telling she had heard in the guesthall refectory that the abbey’s brewhouse was barely keeping ahead of the demands for ale but the wine merchants at least seemed to have unstinted supply of their wares.

‘My lord and lady bring their own wine with them,“ Nurse sniffed.

When it was time to go, Frevisse wished her well and bundled John into his cloak and away. The clerks were still scribbling in the outer room but an older clerk had come in, was standing beside one of the desks with one hand full of papers and the other out to take another as soon as it was done and dried. He gave her and John a brief look and then a bow and Frevisse forgot him, helping John down the stairs too steep and deep for his short legs until, safe at the stairfoot, John said, “They’ve been doing that all day.”

‘What?“ Frevisse asked, busy with tucking his cloak more closely around his throat.

‘Writing, and that man coming for everything. He’s the king’s clerk.“ Because she was bent over, dealing with his cloak, her ear was near him and he leaned closer to whisper, ”Momma is angry about it.“

Frevisse straightened and looked down at him. “Angry? Why?”

‘Just angry. You know.“ He took hold of her hand and tugged, dismissing the strangeness of parents and other creatures. ”Can we go?“

They went but not far. King’s Hall was only a little way along the penticed walk toward the abbey church. Because the abbot’s rooms were at present mostly given over to royal use, there was much coming and going of servants, clerks, churchmen, lords, and others along the walkway, and Frevisse took herself and John aside from it, into the yard where the cobbles made the going no worse and they were in fewer people’s way. The clouds had tattered a little since Gloucester had ridden by. Gray shadows and bright sunlight were fleeting across the Great Court on a wind that flapped at any loose cloak edge and made reaching the shelter of the doorway to the King’s Hall a pleasure.

Toller was keeping the door again, sitting inside away from the worst draught but where he could stop anyone well before they saw through the inner doorway into the great hall. He was working a thick cord through his hands and John immediately wanted to know about it.

‘I’m checking it over, my lord, to be sure it’ll burn true come tonight.“

‘Boom!“ said John joyfully.

‘Fizz and smoke,“ Toller responded. ”That’s what we’re after this time. No booms. But maybe later, when the play’s done, we’ll find a far corner of a field and have a go at some booms.“

He winked at Frevisse, who smiled back and privately thought she might do well to forewarn Alice. But Toller was saying to her, with a sideways nod of his head toward the hall and his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “You’ll want to keep your head down in there today. Master Wilde has his hair on end and his tail twitching.”

Frevisse had already been warned by Mistress Wilde that Master Wilde tended to be over wrought in the hours before a play was finally performed and she promised easily, “I’ll mind that. Thank you.”

Behind her, the outer door was flung open, then slammed by someone in haste. “Whoops, young Ned,” Toller said. “Caught the wind in your cloak, did you, coming in like that?”

Frevisse looked over her shoulder to see Ned Wilde coming toward them, looking indeed as if the wind and something worse had caught him, his cloak thrown back from his shoulders, his hat in his hands and his hair tossed about. Forgetting any greeting or respect nor even slowing his pace, he burst out, “The duke of Gloucester has been arrested!” and hurried past, into the great hall.

Frevisse stared after him. Toller, shaking his head, said with heavy regret, “Master Wilde isn’t going to like that.”

‘For what?“ Frevisse asked at the empty air. ”For
what
was he arrested?“

“Treason?”
roared Master Wilde from the hall.

‘Seven devils out of hell! What do you mean—
treason?“

Keeping firm hold on John, Frevisse went in and aside to where Mistress Wilde and Joane were seated among the garment baskets, both of them paused at darning someone’s hose while at the head of the hall Master Wilde was going up much like one of Toller’s “effects,” loud and fuming, pacing distracted back and forth in front of the Heaven steps with hands gripping his head as if to keep it from bursting while he cried out against idiot lords bent on ruining him.

Around him such players as were already there were demanding more from Ned, who was exclaiming back at them that all he knew was that word was running everywhere that half a score of lords or more had gone with men to arrest the duke of Gloucester for treason. That was what he’d heard and that was all he knew and did his father want him to go out again to find out more?

‘No!“ Master Wilde roared at him. ”I want everybody here. Where is everybody? There’s only half of you here…“

Giles, with a solid sense of when to be out of the way, slipped between the baskets to his mother’s side. She smiled comfortingly at him without ceasing her sewing and Frevisse went with John to join them. She was taking John’s cloak from him a moment later when Master Wilde came raging down the hall, crying out at his wife, “The play will never go on now. Not tonight, not tomorrow. Not with all this…”

Mistress Wilde smiled at him just as she had at Giles. “Of course it will go on. The abbot isn’t going to let his money go to waste.”

Master Wilde stopped, face blank, mouth open, then said, “Oh,” stood frowning but thinking and finally said, “Right. The king will want distracting, that’s certain, and
here we are, ready to hand. Or almost ready. Right.” Thunder and storm vanished, he swung around with a loud clap of his hands, and called at full voice, “That’s enough, then. Dukes can come and dukes can go but we’ve a play to do. Get your garments on. We haven’t all day. You!” He pointed an accusing finger at two of the players just coming in. “Where’ve you been?”

A monastery bell was just striking the hour, telling they were on time, not late, and Master Wilde waved away whatever they started to say, saying, “Get on with things, then. Go. Go.”

Mistress Wilde snipped her thread, said, “There. Done. Lord John, Giles, come. I’ll help you dress,” and went calmly away, a boy on either side of her.