The Maiden’s Tale (7 page)

“No. I was Master Chaucer’s niece by marriage. My mother was his wife’s sister.”

“Ah!” Lady Sibill made visible mental shift to put Frevisse where she belonged.

“If you’ll come aside, my ladies,” Herry said, backing away, to clear way for his grace because it would have been unseemly to hasten up the stairs ahead of him into the hall. There was no help for it but to bide his coming where they were, drop in low curtsies, and, on Frevisse’s part, hope to go unnoticed. A wan hope. Bishop Beaufort stopped in front of her. “Dame Frevisse?”

Behind him, his squires, pages, gentlemen, clerks came to abrupt, less than dignified stops as she straightened from her curtsy and, head still bowed, admitted, “Yes, my lord.”

“Only lately arrived,” Bishop Beaufort observed.

“Yes, my lord.” She was fully aware of her travel-wearied black woolen gown and too-long-worn wimple and veil.

“My lord,” he said to someone just joining them.

Frevisse, relieved to be taken from the center of his notice, found Abbot Gilberd was there with a cluster of his own household men, which would have pleased her, to have Bishop Beaufort’s attention drawn off her, except for the look of speculation Abbot Gilberd briefly cast her while answering Bishop Beaufort’s, “Shall we go in together, sir?” with well-mannered comments on the pleasure of seeing him again. If Abbot Gilberd had thought it worth his while to remember her cousin was the countess of Suffolk, what would he make of Bishop Beaufort knowing her?

Fluttered by Bishop Beaufort’s notice, Lady Sibill led the way up the stairs in the men’s wake and into a screens passage that opened through a broad doorway into the great hall, high-roofed, with open beams and a dais at the upper end. The tables were in the last stages of being laid for supper, and Lady Sibill led her up the hall along the wall behind the benches lining the outer sides of the tables to a doorway at the dais’s other end. It opened into a small chamber and a broad spiral stairway that they went up, and at its top, came out into a long, wide room that by day would fill with light through its southward-facing windows. Tonight the windows were shuttered, the room’s richness of furnishings and tapestries showing only fitfully in lamplight and shadows, but there was enough of embroidery frames and spill of bright-dyed skeins for Frevisse to guess it was the lady chamber where Alice and her women would spend much of their days.

“My lady will be in her bedchamber,” Lady Sibill said, going toward one of the doors across the room, bright lamplight showing under it and women’s laughter beyond it. Unable to hold it in longer, she said, “I didn’t know my lord bishop knew you.”

Frevisse, refraining from saying there was a great deal besides that Lady Sibill did not know about her, only answered, “We met at Lady Alice’s father’s funeral.” Where she had been useful to him in a difficult matter and therefore, as she had feared would happen, he had not forgotten her.

At Lady Sibill’s light scratch at the bedchamber door, one of Alice’s ladies flung it open, exclaimed over her shoulder, “They’re here!” and stood aside for them to enter. The room was large, with a well-burning fire in a stone-manteled fireplace, a high bed with embroidered curtains, and a half dozen women and girls in bright gowns all turning to stare. Then Alice was coming from among them, arms outheld, and Frevisse gladly went to meet her embrace. She was just enough Alice’s elder that they had never been close as children living together in Alice’s parents’ household, and after Frevisse had turned nun they had known each other only by way of Alice’s father, Frevisse’s guardian in her girlhood and then and afterwards her friend. She and Alice had met again at his funeral, and as grown women, complete in their very different lives, had found a friendship they kept despite the distances and differences between them.

They stood back to look at one another, Frevisse doubting much was changed about her for Alice to see and surely Alice’s thirty and some years were dealing with her kindly enough. She was as fair-skinned and fair-haired as fashion decreed. There was a daughter somewhere whose name Frevisse did not recall but if childbearing had left signs on her, Alice’s high-waisted velvet gown of winter-blue, with floor-sweeping skirts, its sleeves hanging to her knees and open to show their scarlet satin lining and her close-fitted undergown’s green damask sleeves, concealed it. Her fair hair was gathered into a thick coil atop of her head, shining pale, true gold in the lamplight as, still holding Frevisse by the hand, she drew her further into the room with “You’re tired but you look well. Oh, it’s good to have you here all unexpected, the pleasure not grown thin with waiting for it!”

They were almost laughing together, Frevisse surprised at her pleasure in seeing Alice and at how pleased Alice seemed to be, guiding her toward the cushioned bench beside the fire, saying, “Sit. You’ll want to sit. Or maybe not. You’ve been sitting all those days from Oxfordshire! But this will be softer. I’m sorry I have to go on dressing. Pray, forgive me, but I have to betake myself to the hall and be charming to people. I invited your Abbot Gilberd after I had your message. Was that a good thing?”

“I suspect it’s what he hoped for,” Frevisse said wryly.

“Ah.” There was a wealth of understanding in the word. Alice had moved among the ways of men since girlhood with a discerning eye and ambitions of her own. “Should I know something more than that before I go down?”

“We’ve had trouble with our prioress at St. Frideswide’s. He’s removed her from office, intends to put his sister in her place, and has taken all our properties into his hands until matters are settled.”

Alice drew a deep, hissing breath in sympathy and understanding of the seriousness of all that. One of her ladies came carrying a wide construction of cauls and veils that would cover Alice’s hair this evening, and Alice sat in the room’s chair, asking, “Have you met this sister of his?”

“It’s why Dame Perpetua and I’ve come to London. To meet her and escort her back to St. Frideswide’s.”

Another of her women slipped a sheened length of silk under Alice’s chin and up around her face, securing it to her hair with long pins and Alice having to wait until she was done before saying, “Have you seen enough of her to know if this is good? Or is it something you might want me to… discourage?”

She could do that, Frevisse was certain, but slowly, giving it thought, she answered, “By what I’ve seen I think there’s good chance she’ll do well enough.”

Alice was perforce still while her headdress was eased down over her hair, the satin-lined, gold-wired cauls positioned carefully to frame her already lovely face to greater perfection, but saying while her lady saw to it, “Then all I’ll do is impress your Abbot Gilberd with how dear a cousin you are to me.”

“Don’t impress him too much or I’ll find myself enjoined to persuade you how much your soul would benefit by gifts to St. Frideswide’s and his abbey, too.” Frevisse matched Alice’s light tone but in deepest truth did not want to be in that position. Gifts should be given freely, of the giver’s own desire, not drawn from them by offers of God’s favor and reward.

“Ah!” Alice exclaimed, made startled movement, caught herself because her lady was still placing pins to fasten headdress to hair, and said instead, “I’m going feeble-witted. Letice, the gown. It’s there on the chest at the bedfoot.” One of the women moved to obey while Alice went on, “I was going to send it to you for a New Year’s gift but it will be better for you to have it now.”

She twisted her head slightly to watch Letice bring it, ignoring the small protesting sound from the lady working over her headdress, and Frevisse stood up, hiding her mix of feelings as she took the gown from Letice. It was a Benedictine nun’s habit in cut and color and cloth, black and of wool as it should be, but at the first touch of it Frevisse knew the wool was of the most costly sort, spun and woven to fall in folds as fine as heavy silk. More than that, it was lined—Letice, smiling, turned back a sleeve and lifted the hem to show her— with dark fur. It was a gown worth almost a gentleman’s ransom, and Frevisse, appalled, could only breathe, “Oh, Alice.”

Alice laughed aloud, pleased. “You won’t shiver even at midwinter Matins in that. I want an occasional prayer in return!”

The gown was too fine. Aside from the trouble it would make among the other nuns, it was totally against her vow of poverty. But at the same time she knew how poorly what she otherwise had compared to everyone around her. Neither of the habits she had brought had been new for years; Coldharbour’s kitchen scullions probably wore better. For herself it did not matter but it would reflect poorly on Alice to have so poorly dressed a cousin, here, where poverty was only in theory a virtue. And it would serve St. Frideswide’s ill to have its poverty—a thing apart from Holy Poverty—so openly known. The priory was in need, but the wealthy preferred to give where they were comfortable and poverty made them uncomfortable, so that oddly enough, she might do the priory more good in Alice’s gown than in her own. And Abbot Gilberd would have no objection. More likely he would be pleased beyond measure her cousin showed her so much courtesy.

But more than all of that was Alice’s delight in the giving of it, and more for that than any other reason, Frevisse said, smiling back at her, “My thanks and more of my prayers than you already have. It’s wonderful.”

“Hardly that!” Alice laughed. “I tried to keep it plain enough you’d take it.”

The woman who had been setting Alice’s headdress shifted around her to be sure how the veil looked from the front as well as from back and sides, then said, “It’s done, my lady.”

Alice moved her head to make certain all was secure, thanked her, and stood up. Another of the women quickly moved the chair back and another woman stepped close to arrange the train of Alice’s gown. Standing poised under the weight of gown and headdress as if they were as light as her floating silken veil, Alice met Frevisse’s eyes with a light mockery remindful of her father and said, “Men wear armor into their battles. Women wear their velvet, silk, and jewels.”

“Are you going into battle?”

“Only a minor skirmish tonight.” Around them her ladies were helping each other finish readying for going down. They were all wives or else unmarried daughters of knights, esquires, gentlemen in Suffolk’s service. Some of the girls were combing out each other’s already shining hair that fell loose down their backs to their waists at worst and to their knees for the luckiest, while the women took turns at straightening one another’s headdresses and making certain the gold- and silverwork buckles of their ornately woven belts were centered in their backs and the belts’ long trailing ends not tangled. Alice, sure of her own readiness, went on, “Now, you’ll stay at least tonight. That was why I asked your abbot to come to supper. One of the reasons. So he could give his agreement.”

Neither she nor Frevisse doubted that he would and Frevisse was glad. Besides avoiding a late ride back through cold streets her staying would give them more chance to talk together.

“I have to go down now, to keep company before supper.” Alice made a small face to show she expected that to be of doubtful pleasure. “But I’m going to leave you to Jane. She’ll see to everything for you, and when you choose, you can join us.” She slapped her fingers lightly together, and her ladies ceased the varied things they had been doing, to flow in a whisper of skirts across the carpeting to gather beside the door. Alice embraced Frevisse who, still holding the fur-lined gown, leaned into the gesture with her head bent well aside to avoid Alice’s veils or cauls before stepping back, leaving Alice clear to catch her skirts and swing them aside with practiced skill, out of her way as she turned toward the door that one of her women opened for her to sweep through, going to “battle,” as she said. And expecting to enjoy it, Frevisse thought.

Chapter
6

As the last lady leaving behind Alice closed the door, Frevisse momentarily wondered if she was left alone after all despite what Alice had said, but someone moved in the shadows beyond the bed, and a girl, unnoticed until now, came forward, her dark green gown too richly made for her to be a servant; nor did she curtsy as a servant would have but said simply, “I’m Lady Jane,” and despite her hair loose down her back like an unmarried girl’s, her light and pleasant voice was a woman’s. And then she came fully into the light. Came deliberately, Frevisse realized and wondered how often in her life had she done that, deliberately shown the great disfiguring of her face to someone who had never seen it to be done with the first shocked stare, the revulsion, undoubtedly even sometimes a sign against the devil who must have marred her?

Frevisse, her own stare gone inevitably to it, shifted her gaze away from it to Lady Jane’s and said quietly, “That’s a great misfortune to you, my lady.”

Evenly, as if by rote, Lady Jane said, “There are worse afflictions others have to bear.”

“True,” Frevisse agreed dryly. “Unfortunately, I’ve never found that makes our own any the lighter to carry.”

Unexpected laughter lightened in Lady Jane’s face. “It doesn’t, does it?” Only the right side of her mouth could smile but the merriment in her eyes made up the lack. “Lady Alice ordered a bath be readied for you, on chance you might want it after your travelling and the cold.”

Frevisse realized that she would. Once winter set in, neither rooms nor bath water could be kept warm enough in St. Frideswide’s for baths to be safe. They became an invitation to heavy rheums at best, lung sicknesses at worst, and everyone had to make do with simple ablutions, the body washed bit by bit and in shivering haste. The thought of a bath to soak away the troubles of travel appealed more to Frevisse than she would have imagined before this one was offered and she said more readily than mere manners needed, “Yes! Thank you.”

The elaborate dealings of servants bearing the large bath tub, the kettles and ewers of hot water, the towels and soap took time. When they withdrew, Lady Jane left her to bathe, busying herself across the room with laying out the black gown and the rest of Alice’s gift: a new linen chemise, a black-dyed light wool undergown, new white wimple and black veil, and black leather wool-lined slippers. Washed and warmed, Frevisse felt almost a stranger to herself in so much new clothing as she finally went down to the hall and supper, wishing she could stay upstairs like Lady Jane who said smilingly, seeing her on her way, “I avoid it when I can.”