The Bastard's Tale (35 page)

But it didn’t. It was Master Orle who was there, not the executioners or guards, not dragging him to his feet and to one of the waiting slaughter boards but helping him to sit up with an arm around his shoulders, saying in his ear, “It’s over. You’re pardoned. You’re not going to die. It’s over.”

‘Sir Roger. Tom,“ Arteys croaked.

‘They’re pardoned. You’re all pardoned. You’re going to live.“

Arteys’ shaking hands could not hold the bottle Master Orle held to his mouth but he drank despite the swallowing hurt. Around him there was a glad babble of other voices, and when Master Orle lowered the bottle, he turned his head to find the scaffold was crowded with laughing people. He glimpsed Tom being held by his brother, both of them choking on tears; could hear Sir Richard praying aloud and fervently to seemingly every saint he could think of; saw Sir Roger and Master Need-ham being helped away…

The hangmen and their helpers and the guards were all gone.

‘You’re pardoned,“ Master Orle insisted. ”Do you understand?“

Arteys nodded, although somewhere in him a voice was crying out that he couldn’t be pardoned for a thing he hadn’t done. But more of him was sobbing with thankfulness that he was alive. Alive and not in pain. Not dying. But it was an inward sobbing, he realized. Outwardly he seemed only frozen, unable to help himself as Master Orle and another man, a stranger, helped him to his feet and to the scaffold’s edge opposite to where the others were being helped down the ladder into the cheering crowd.

‘How?“ he asked of Master Orle. ”How are we still alive?“

‘Suffolk was here. He had your pardons ready. From the king. You’re free. Go on. With these men. Go with them.“

Arteys tried to ask, “Where…” but Master Orle and the man with him were urging him off the scaffold’s edge. There was no ladder here but two men were waiting below with hands raised to take him. He didn’t know either of them but let them lower him to the ground, let them hold him up when his legs tried to buckle while the other man he did not know swung down from the scaffold, leaving Master Orle behind. One of the men was pulling a doublet up Arteys’ arms and around him, vaguely fastening it as all three of them began making a way for him through the crowd with elbows and shoulders. Some people close to hand were cheering him— for what? for not being dead?—and reaching to touch him, but most were surging away around the scaffold to where the others were being led away among more cheering. The three men guiding Arteys went sideways through the surge, then turned around and went backward, letting the crowd flow around and away from them, losing themselves and Arteys until there, in the midst of everyone, no one around them knew who he was; and when they came clear of the crowd, the men hurried him away among the trees.

Four horses were waiting there, held by a fourth man. One of the men with Arteys took a horse’s reins from him and mounted. The other two moved to help Arteys up behind him, one of them saying, “We didn’t think you’d be fit to ride alone. Can you hold on, though?”

‘Yes,“ Arteys croaked. ”Where am I going?“

‘Away from here.“

‘Whose men…“ are you? he wanted to ask but the words wouldn’t come from his aching throat.

The man answered anyway. “The duke of York’s.”

Chapter 27

Outside another long summer’s evening was gold behind London’s rooftops but the hour was past for guests to be received in St. Helen’s nunnery, Bishopsgate. Only because she was wife to the marquis of Suffolk had Alice been allowed in and Frevisse allowed to see her after Compline, but the parlor’s shutters were closed and barred and only by the light of the small-cupped oil lamp on the table beside them were they able to see each other’s faces.

With no one else to hear them and no need of other greeting between them, Frevisse asked, “He’s safe?”

‘He’s safe. York’s men had him away within minutes. He was at York’s house long enough to be fed and re-clothed and seen by a doctor. He’s said to be unharmed.“

Frevisse could only hope that was fully true; but there were harms that went beyond the body, harms that went deep into the heart and mind.

‘Yes,“ Alice agreed, though Frevisse had not said it. ”But bodily is something, considering.“

Frevisse granted that with a small gesture. “And then?”

‘By now he’s with a few of York’s household knights somewhere well away up the Thames in the duke’s own twelve-oared barge. They’ll take to horse at Abingdon or Oxford. Arteys will be in Wales within a week.“

And as safe as they could hope to have him.

‘And Joliffe?“ Frevisse asked.

‘Gone as soon as he brought me that word. I don’t know where.“

Yesterday, after Frevisse had agreed to the lies she was to tell, Alice had written a brief message to the duke of York, asking him to give heed to the bearer of it. That night, after Frevisse had won her ugly bargaining with Suffolk—promising that, in return for Arteys and the others being pardoned and set free, no one would ever see Gloucester’s will by her doing—Joliffe had gone with the message to the duke.

‘Tell him,“ Frevisse had said before he went, ”that the pardon won’t come until they’re on the scaffold. That’s what Suffolk swore. That he’d have that much out of it.“

Suffolk had sworn other things, too, mostly at her, and given his promise angrily, grudgingly, ungraciously. He had threatened her, too, although Frevisse told neither Alice nor Joliffe that. She did not tell them, either, how black-angry at him she had grown in return, so that at the end she had been viciously glad to drag the promise out of him and wished she could have rubbed his face with it afterward. He had attempted Gloucester’s murder, was attempting five more, and all he felt was anger at being thwarted of them. Nor was he ever likely, this side of his own death, to be called to account for any of it so long as he held the king’s favor.

She, on the other hand, had penance ahead of her, both for lying and her anger, but what had been worse burden then was having to go to bed not knowing how Joliffe had fared with York. Only in the morning had she been able to meet him briefly in the garden, with him saying without greeting, “York will do it.”

‘What did you say to move him to it?“

‘York knows Suffolk well enough he needed little convincing that even with the pardon Arteys won’t be safe, being Gloucester’s son.“

‘How did you explain the pardons?“

‘I said someone showed Suffolk he had more to lose by killing Gloucester’s men than letting them live.“

‘That was enough for York?“

Joliffe’s smile had been grimly humoured. “I told you—he knows Suffolk.”

She had given way then to another fear that had come to her and asked, “And you. What if Suffolk finds out your part in this?”

Joliffe’s smile had deepened. “I doubt I’ll wait around to find out if he finds out. When he has time to think all this over, he may come to be suspicious and especially suspicious if he learns by household spies that Master Noreys was in close talk with Lady Alice and her depraved cousin in the afternoon and at the duke of York’s at an odd hour of that night. I’ll stay until Arteys is safe. Then I’m gone.”

Because she might never have other chance to ask him, she had said, “Why are you risking all this? Arteys was no friend of yours before now, was he?”

‘At Bury he trusted me. Worse, without telling me, he left three rings that must have been his father’s hidden among my things. For safekeeping, I suppose, if anything happened to him. Which it did. I found them later and… I hate being trusted.“

He was so grim about it that Frevisse said, deliberately to irk him, “You know I trust you.”

He had given her a hard look and half a smile and said, “I know. I try not to hold it against you.” Then he had left.

Frevisse had wished she could leave, too, but until this was over she could not, the fear unspoken between her and Alice that Suffolk might be treacherous at the last. He had gone off the night before—to the king to get the pardons, he had said—and not returned. With no way to know his mind or how he meant to play the day, she and Alice had withdrawn to the walled garden to wait, no one with them but order given that any news about the executions should be brought immediately. For too long they sat, they paced, they hardly spoke, and heard the crowd on the road before a servant came running, excited with word the prisoners were being dragged past and could be seen from an upper window if Lady Alice hurried.

Alice had sent him away and they had sat side by side, silent, staring at the grass in front of them, listening, while the crowd passed; and when it was quiet again, Alice had whispered, “Tell me again that he promised.”

‘He promised,“ Frevisse had said back. But there had been no way to get word to Arteys of it. Which might be as well. If Suffolk went back on his promise, it would be more merciful that Arteys had not been betrayed into hope.

Alice had bowed her head into her hands and wept and it was forever until another servant brought word of how Suffolk had kept his promise. How he had been at Tyburn, waiting, when the prisoners were dragged up. How he had sat his horse at the rear edge of the crowd while they were made ready and brought to the scaffold. How he had waited while the nooses were put around their necks and the strangling began and how only then he had finally ridden forward into the crowd, holding up the pardons and calling out to let the prisoners down, they were freed by the king’s good mercy.

‘They’re alive?“ Alice had demanded at the man.

‘They’re alive, my lady. They’re free.“

Alice had waved him away. Not until he was gone did she say with the same cold rage that Frevisse felt, “Damn Suffolk.
Damn
him.”

Frevisse and Sister Amicia had left within the hour, removing to St. Helen’s nunnery because, Frevisse told her, they would be better out of the way with so much happening in Suffolk’s household. Sister Amicia had been enjoying all that was happening but been too happy at going into London to question it; but it meant Frevisse had had to leave without knowing whether Arteys was safely away to York or not, and so Alice was come this evening to tell her, it not being a message to trust to anyone else now Joliffe was gone.

Knowing all else was well, Frevisse asked, half wanting not to, “How is it with Suffolk?”

‘I saw him only briefly before he was away to Greenwich and the king. He looks to be keeping a good face to the world, but when there was only me to see it, he was raging.“

‘At you?“

‘No. At the crowd. At all of London. He actually thought…“ Alice faltered, then started over, holding out her right hand, palm upward. ”On the one hand, he really thought the crowd would believe Gloucester’s men were traitors and hate them for it.“ She held out her other hand, as if making the other side of a balance scale. ”On the other hand, he thought the crowd—stinking-bodied idiots, he calls them—would see him as a hero for bringing out the men’s pardons at the last possible of moments.“ She dropped her hands. ”He’s furious that London was on the men’s side instead of believing him. He’s furious at the men for being alive when he wanted them dead. He’s furious at the crowd for being mad at him for waiting so long to give the pardons. Everything wrong is everybody else’s fault.“

‘And mine,“ Frevisse said ruefully.

‘Oh, his fury at you is all but lost under his fury at everyone else. He doesn’t see what he tried to do was murder. He doesn’t see… anything.“ Even the soft glow of lamplight, kind with shadows, could not gentle the pain in Alice’s face. ”Frevisse, I swear he wasn’t like this when I married him. It’s a thing that’s grown on him with time. With the power that’s come to him. It’s as if what I best loved in him has shriveled while his ambition grew. It’s as if…“ Alice turned away, pressing her hands to the sides of her face as if to hold in the force of her grief. ”It’s as if his ambition is the most real thing in the world to him. Everything else barely matters, is hardly real.“ She turned around. ”Is that possible? Can it really be like that for him?“

Frevisse tried to find words that would not hurt. That she could not, could only shake her head in helpless silence, was answer enough.

Alice drew a deep breath, put her grief out of sight again, and said, “Well. Things are as they are and we must do what we must do, as Father used to say. Do you need anything? Will you want to go back to St. Frideswide’s soon?”

‘We’ll stay a few days. For Sister Amicia’s sake and while I purchase things from Domina Elisabeth’s list. Will his grace allow you to give us escort back when the time comes?“