10 The Squire's Tale Read online

  Mistress Avys, more direct, with a hard stare at the hapless man, muttered, “Let Mistress Katherine have her way, my lady.”

  To Frevisse it looked that Lady Blaunche gave way then more because longer delay would be ungracious than because she wanted to but give way she did, with a curt nod at Katherine but a brief smile and kind word at the man who only looked much relieved at being spared his ordeal and more than happy to be left to seeing to only his master and mistress.

  They all sat then, with Frevisse on the bailiff’s other side and Dame Claire beyond his wife, and Mistress Avys and Mistress Dionisia at the head of the “lower” table with some of the manor’s other folk and Lady Blaunche’s four men beyond them. The first remove was brought promptly and warm from the kitchen, and Frevisse guessed that meals here did not usually run to more than one remove but Mistress Humphrey had managed this one into two by accompanying fish cooked with a thick pepper sauce with a salad of very young greens, probably the first her garden had given this year, to make the first and created a second by following the gourd pie with apples cooked in wine and cinnamon, so that all in all the meal was both well done and filling and Frevisse more than satisfied to be left alone to enjoy it, which she was because Master Humphrey spent the meal giving almost all his heed to Lady Blaunche.

  So did his wife and so did Katherine who hovered at Lady Blaunche’s shoulder even when it put her in the way of the manservant’s serving the rest of them, to the point where Frevisse found herself watching the girl, wondering if it was only chance she seemed most particularly there whenever Lady Blaunche turned to talk with Master Humphrey. But if she was, why?

  Nor did the meal’s end bring an end to Katherine’s close attending. Instead, in the little while Lady Blaunche stood in talk with Master and Mistress Humphrey before pleading weariness and withdrawing to her chamber, Katherine was never more than a few paces behind her, still attending though Mistress Avys hovered not far off, more than ready to take her place, and Mistress Dionisia’s occasional look toward her was puzzled.

  Lady Blaunche ignored her as if she was not there at all, until talk with Master and Mistress Humphrey was done and thanks again given and good nights said. Then Lady Blaunche led Katherine and the other four of them into the bedchamber with a fine sweep of skirts, Frevisse happening to come last, turning from shutting the door between them and the world in time to see Lady Blaunche across the room turn on Katherine, all graciousness gone as she snapped, “Enough! Back off and leave me alone!”

  Katherine flinched from the suddenness, bobbed the slightest of curtsies, and swung sharply away from her without an answering word.

  Servants had been in since supper to pull out the truckle bed and make up both it and the other with the fresh sheets and aired blankets Mistress Humphrey had earlier ordered, leaving the room smelling faintly of lavender. The window had been shuttered, too, and two lamps lighted, and with all that and the promise of a comfortable night after a very good supper, things should have been pleasant enough but having started with Katherine, Lady Blaunche went on giving sharp orders she did not need to, impatient when there was no need for impatience, and at the last bursting into tears and flinging herself into the bed, telling everyone to leave her alone.

  The two waiting-women exchanged looks with each other, all but saying aloud that this was just how it so often was with childing women, while Dame Claire, standing tight-lipped by the bed with a cup of warmed ale mixed with soothing herbs, had the air of someone making a slow count before saying anything, and Frevisse, before she could think not to, looked across the room to Katherine.

  Since Lady Blaunche’s ungraciousness had begun, the girl had kept aside nor made a move now to come near but stood where she was, coldly staring at Lady Blaunche’s sobbing. As if angry at her, Frevisse thought. And afraid. Because there was fear as surely as anger in her look.

  Fear of what? Anger at what?

  Neither made sense.

  But then neither did Lady Blaunche’s flaring out at her for nothing more than keeping close attendance through the evening.

  Too close attendance?

  Frevisse carefully took her mind away from wherever next her thoughts might have gone. Whatever trouble Katherine was making between herself and Lady Blaunche, there was no need to let it become a trouble for her, too, and firmly not thinking about anything except going to bed, she stripped down to her undergown, slipped into the far side of the truckle bed that indeed she was to share with the two waiting-women, pulled up her share of the blankets, shut her eyes, and set to saying Compline’s prayers in hope that sleep would soon come, leaving the others to sort things out as they would.

  Chapter 6

  The shutters had been set wide open from the narrow, tall windows down both sides of Brinskep’s great hall to let in the cool wash of the overcast day’s lean light and the warming day’s spring-scented air—not being from the pigsty side of the manor today, Robert thought wryly. The windows were too high in the walls for anything to be seen from them but pale sky with thin clouds instead of thickly gray and raining ones. Without the rain, even with the roads still mudded, travel should have gone well enough today and even while he agreed aloud with Master Durant that the weather looked likely to clear, he was thinking that they should have been here by now, Katherine and the others. But aloud, to keep up his share of the talk, he said, “If the weather holds dry for a few days, we might be plowing by next week’s end,” because after all Master Durant was one of the six arbiters who were to help sort out matters with the Allesleys and it was better they liked each other than not, and from the little he had seen so far of Master Durant and his fellow Master Hotoft in the hour or so they had been here, he liked them both well enough. It was simply that he was not as ready as he could wish for all that was happening. The matter of arbitration had moved forward more swiftly than he would ever have deemed possible in the scant weeks since he had no more than raised the possibility with the attorney’s clerk who had come with Sir Lewis Allesley’s latest demands. Sir Lewis had answered back by swift messenger that he was more than willing to it, and after that, among the possible ways arbitration might be done and the difference in place and power between himself and Sir Lewis, they had settled on each bringing three arbiters to the dealing, rather than on trying to find a neutral lord who might after all have interests one way or the other; and because Sir Lewis Allesley as the earl of Stafford’s man would draw his arbiters from the earl’s council, Ned had advised Robert he should ask Lord Grey of Groby’s help in providing his own.

  ‘It would obligate me to him,“ Robert had protested.

  ‘You’re going to have to be obligated to someone to balance the Allesleys or else you’ll have no chance in this at all. Grey is the coming power this end of Warwickshire. You’ll likely have to align with him soon or late. Why not now and have some good out of it right off?“ Then, knowing perfectly well the answer, Ned had added, ”Unless you’d rather ask Sir Walter’s help?“

  Because any Fenner help would reach no further than flat refusal to consider parting with any land, Robert had turned away from that possibility without second thought, had sent word to Lord Grey of his need, been promptly assured of Lord Grey’s willingness to help, and now here were Master Durant and Master Hotoft, with Master Fielding due to arrive tomorrow when the Allesleys and their arbiters were likewise expected, with the talks among them to begin the day after that.

  And all Robert found he was truly mindful of was that Blaunche should have been here with Katherine by midday and it was now late afternoon and neither they nor word of them had come.

  Beside him, Ned had been keeping Master Hotoft in talk but they had moved on from weather to other things and Master Hotoft now turned to Master Durant to ask, “Tom, do you remember the name of that family in my lord’s Coventry case last year?”

  ‘The Coventry case? Last year?“ Master Durant pursed his lips in thought. ”Wasn’t it Godyng?“

  ‘Was it? That doe
sn’t sound right.“

  As Robert understood it, both men were attorneys, with Master Durant on Lord Grey’s council for good measure and Master Hotoft frequently in Lord Grey’s service. Gowned soberly in three-quarter-length black houppelandes and dark hosen, with velvet caps that differed only in the garnet-set jewel Master Durant wore on his, they were a matched pair of men confident of their skills, at ease already with where they were, Master Hotoft turning to ask across the hall toward the clerks who had come with him and Master Durant, “John, do you remember my lord’s case in Coventry last year?”

  Clumped in talk of their own with Geoffrey Hannys, the men all looked toward him and one offered, “Boteller, wasn’t it?”

  ‘That was the grazing case on the Leicestershire border two years ago.“

  ‘Was it?“ The clerks drifted across the hall to join their masters, the talk turning complicated over whether Master Durant meant the Coventry case at all or another one, while several servants circled with pitchers, offering more wine where it was needed. Robert, refusing with a small shake of his head, drew backward from among the clustered men to answer a question Master Skipton brought him from the kitchen about tonight’s supper and made no effort to rejoin the talk when the steward went off again but simply stayed close to hand as if paying heed.

  Ned, turning aside to hold his goblet out to be filled, took the chance to say low into Robert’s ear, for no one else to hear in the general talk around them, “They’ll be here. It’s naught more than that the rains have made the roads slower going than we thought they’d be.”

  Robert nodded agreement he wished he felt. Even when the matter of arbitration was fully in hand and going forward, Blaunche had gone on opposing any dealing at all with the Allesleys as fiercely as she had from the first, only adding bitterness to her anger. Then suddenly, giving it all up, she had agreed there was no help for satisfying the Allesleys’ desire to see Katherine. “If it has to be, it has to,” she had said, still bitter but finally near to accepting that the arbitration was going to happen. More near than Robert was to accepting that Katherine’s marriage to Sir Lewis’ heir was likely the price the Allesleys would demand for settlement.

  Even so, with already too much to hand and everything happening too quickly, he had been simply grateful when Blaunche—to make amends for having made him so much trouble, she’d said—had offered to see to fetching her back, and blind and dull-witted he must have been, he thought bitterly now, to have trusted her change of heart without a second thought. Not until the day after she had gone, when Benedict was suddenly gone, too, had his first doubt stirred. There was no reason Benedict should not come and go at his choice and he had taken two yeomen with him, as was right, and left word that no one need expect him back until they saw him. It was so ordinary a thing that no one had seen reason to say anything to Robert about it and, busy at accounts that day, he had known nothing until suppertime.

  His first thought then had been that if Benedict was not back before Blaunche was, she would be fierce when she found out. Then on that thought’s heels there had come a worse one: that Blaunche already knew where Benedict was gone because she had sent him.

  Robert, despite that he knew too well how stubborn Blaunche could be toward having her own will, had seen too late this time that if she could not have Katherine for Benedict one way, she might well mean to have her for him by another. And what way would be more certain than to hand Katherine over to him herself, leaving Robert nothing but his anger once the marriage was forced and done?

  As he had realized all that, his first urge had been to take horse and set out to overtake Benedict, but almost as quickly he had seen there was nothing he could do except wait it out. Neither he nor anyone he sent could reach St. Frideswide’s before Blaunche had Katherine out of there and after that there was no way of knowing which way they might go because if Blaunche’s purpose was not to bring Katherine home but to give her over to Benedict she might go any way but the direct one. The men he had sent with her had had their orders to keep with her, but that only meant they would go the way she told them to, riding Katherine into Benedict’s hands.

  So helplessness and hidden anger had curdled in Robert’s guts these two days past while he had gone on with everything needed to make the arbitration work, able to tell no one, not even Ned, only knowing that if he was right and Blaunche had done this thing…

  With his back to the wooden screens that hid the hall’s door toward the yard and his attention trying to be on the talk going on around him, he did not see Gil had come in until from just behind his shoulder Gil said low-voiced, “They’re back, sir. Lady Blaunche and the rest. Eudo’s just called out he’s seen them.”

  Eudo had been set to keep the watch on the gatehouse roof for these few days when there would be so much come and go, and holding in his mingled rush of relief and fear, Robert said with outward ease to the two attorneys, “By your leave, my lady wife is returned,” bowed to them, received their bows in return and assurances they would do well while he was gone, and left them, saying to Gil as they headed together for the door, “Everything looks well? No sign of trouble?”

  ‘Not that Eudo said. That it was Lady Blaunche coming and it looks to be two nuns with her is all he yelled down.“

  Robert’s stride shortened with surprise. “Two nuns? And Katherine, too, yes?”

  ‘Lady Blaunche and two nuns, that’s all Eudo yelled. I didn’t wait for more.“

  Robert could have cursed both him and Eudo but he would know for himself in bare moments and bit back the words. The screens passage shielded the hall from draughts when the outer door to the yard was opened in ill weather but today the door stood wide to the afternoon’s soft air and Robert came out of the passage’s shadows onto the top of the stone stairs down to the cobbled yard without need to break stride. From there he had clear view over the yard and crowding of people there. Some were his own men, some were Ned’s, others were Masters Durant’s and Hotoft’s and would have nothing much to do these days but be there. He remembered too well that idle hanging about from his own days as Sir Walter’s squire, and because he had never had great inclination to drinking, games of chance, or wenching, the tediousness between the times he had been needed for something had sometimes been nigh to unbearable. Remembering all of that, he had already given the maidservants word they were to keep clear of the yard this while and warned his men they could game with the newcomers but anyone who either got into a fight because of it or drunk enough to make trouble of any kind would be in need of a new master come quarter day.

  As it was, Eudo must have been dozing at his watch because as Robert paused at the top of the stairs, Jack and Matthew rode through the gateway arch, followed by Blaunche, with Katherine beside her and no sign there had been any trouble.

  Fear drained from Robert, leaving him half-sick and with nothing between him and the anger that had been building these two days under the fear. More quickly than was wise on the stairs’ stone steepness he went down to the yard, was waiting at their foot for Jack and Matthew to draw rein, bowing to him from their saddles as he demanded, “All went well?”

  ‘There was a bridge washed away north of Banbury,“ Jack said. ”It was going around to another set us back. Otherwise, no trouble.“

  ‘Well done. My thanks,“ Robert said, dismissing them, leaving them to bow to his back and turn their horses aside, out of his way to Blaunche through the momentary crowding and sorting out of men and horses as other household men hurried forward to take hold of the women’s bridles and help them dismount. Courtesy would have taken him to his wife first anyway, in the usual way of things, but this time it was his anger that needed to see her, even if he could not give way to it here or yet. Nor did sight of her white face lined with tiredness touch him in the least. He knew too well how willfully she pushed herself against her strength; if she was overtired, it was by her own choice and he was in no humour to pity her for it.

  Maybe she read that in his loo
k before ever he spoke because she gave him no more greeting than he gave her, only leaned over into his hands to let him lift her from the saddle and down. It was something she had begun with their marriage, a little feigned helplessness she saw as womanly, but today Robert was in no humour for it either and clamped hold of her waist and lifted her down with more force than grace, setting her on her feet so ungently that she tightened hold of his arms to keep her balance and said at him, “I’m not a grain bag, thank you.”

  Brittle with his anger, Robert snapped back, “No. A grain bag doesn’t have sons. Where’s Benedict?”

  He had not loosed her, felt her stiffen between his hands and saw thoughts shift rapidly behind her eyes before she returned curtly after too long a pause, “He’s here for all I know,” and pulled roughly free from him.

  Robert caught her by the arm, determined to have more out of her, but a short, brisk nun ducked around the man beginning to lead Blaunche’s horse away and took hold of Blaunche’s other arm with, “Master Fenner? I’m Dame Claire from St. Frideswide’s. Your lady wife needs her bed now. By your leave,” but already drawing Blaunche away from him toward the stairs, Mistress Avys hurrying after them from among the horses.