15 The Sempster's Tale Page 9

  With that thought, she suggested to Dame Juliana after breakfast that they forego Nones this morning to go book-buying before dinner at Master Grene’s. “Then that much at least will be done and off our minds,” she said.

  Dame Juliana willingly agreed, a servant was sent to inform Master Naylor, and he and Dickon were waiting at the gatehouse for them after Tierce, Master Naylor looking less than happy and saying, when he and Dickon had straightened from their bows, “You might want to think again about going out today, my ladies.”

  ‘Is there new trouble?“ Dame Juliana asked.

  ‘Not since yesterday, no. That’s not saying more isn’t on the way.“

  ‘Better we see to our business before it comes, then,“ Frevisse said and went out the gateway before more could be said by anyone. Both Dame Juliana and Dickon followed readily and Frevisse wished she was more of their mind and less of Master Naylor’s; and before they had gone much along Bishopsgate she was even more of his mind. There seemed less buying and selling today than talk even louder and more angry than yesterday’s. London seemed like a seething pot on hot coals, ready to roil into full boiling trouble if the fire rose under it even a little.

  At the Gilded Quill the handling of books and making choices somewhat eased her mind away from all of that and even from Master Naylor’s silent disapproval looming solid as a stone-built wall outside the shop door where he and Dickon waited. Still, in all conscience, she could not buy Regiment of Princes, but with an inward defiance—and an outward assurance to Dame Juliana that Lady Alice would pay for most of it—she purchased not only the children’s abece and Capgrave’s Life of St. Katherine but the fables and the Siege of Troy, then bargained with Master Colop first on a price that satisfied them both, then that the books be delivered to St. Helen’s not only wrapped in waxed cloth but with a solid, lidded, wooden box to be provided by Master Colop.

  ‘Because we’ll be going so far with them,“ she said firmly enough to prevent any questions; and added, ”Master Naylor,“ for him to come forward to count out coins into Master Colop’s hand.

  He did, grimly and silently, and with Master Colop’s promise that the books in their box would be at St. Helen’s before Vespers today, they left, Frevisse saying when they were in the street again, “We should be away to Master Grene’s now. He’s at the sign of the Red Swan in St. Swithins Lane off Lombard Street, not much beyond the Stocks Market.”

  With people drawn homeward to their dinners, the streets were somewhat less crowded; they went easily back to the market place where London’s stocks stood and from there along Lombard Street, Master Naylor needing only to ask which corner was St. Swithins Lane. It proved to be a narrow street but with goodly houses on each side, some of them with courtyards closed from the street by gates, most of them with street-facing shops mostly displaying mercers’ wares, but there was a jeweler’s, too, with gold and silver chains and a few gems laid out on black velvet to show their beauty the better, and a cordwainer’s with particularly fine shoes and boots of cordovan leather on show.

  Master Grene’s place, with its painted sign of a Red Swan hanging out above its door, was one of the larger places, set on the right-hand side of the street with both a shop fronting the street and a wide, red-painted gate into a yard behind it. Master Naylor had been leading, but he slowed, probably uncertain whether to go to gate or shop, until a servant wearing a plain-cut red tabard over his tunic, stepped forward from beside the gate, and asked, “You’re here to dine with Master Grene?”

  ‘These ladies are, yes,“ Master Naylor answered, and the man, moving toward the narrow door cut into one wing of the gate, said, ”I’m here to see you in then, if you please.“ And went on over his shoulder as he opened the door, ”Have you heard the latest talk about the rebels? There was a man just come past with the news. They’re on the move again.“

  Master Naylor, about to stand aside for Frevisse and Dame Juliana to go ahead of him, stopped short. “Away, I hope?”

  ‘Nay, not away. Why should they go away, now the king has shown his back to them?“ the man said almost gleefully.

  Not gleefully at all, Master Naylor said, “You mean they’re coming this way.”

  ‘That’s it,“ the man said happily. He bowed to Frevisse and Dame Juliana going past him through the door, but went on, ”Things are happening, right enough. There’s going to be changes finally, whether the lords running the king want it or not.“

  ‘Yes,“ Master Naylor agreed grimly. ”There’ll be changes, surely.“ But he did not sound as if he thought they would be good ones.

  Chapter 8

  Anne had gone back to her bed after Daved was gone, had lain with her arms around his pillow and her body wanting him, but had not slept but lain listening to the birdsong thicken from garden to garden behind the houses and the first rattle of early carts along Foster Lane until one of St. Paul’s booming bells rang out for Prime and the lesser bells of London’s parish churches followed it. She willingly gave up bed then, wanting the small flurry of every day’s early tasks to fill her mind.

  Over breakfast Bette complained the day was going to be over-warm before it was done. “But my arthritics are enough better today, I’ll go out to the morning marketing, if you like.”

  ‘What you want is to hear the talk,“ Anne teased.

  ‘Well, you’re not the best at bringing it home,“ Bette mock-grumbled. ”You with your head all full of that Master Weir and not much else.“ She gave Anne a sly smile. ”No need to ask if he was here last night, is there?“

  ‘You just go marketing and don’t worry yourself about whether Master Weir was here or not,“ Anne said. She set to clearing the plate and cups from the table. ”I’ll see to this.“

  Bette, chuckling, shuffled away with the market basket, leaving Anne with only herself for very poor company. Unable to settle to her work, she wandered the chamber restlessly, shifting the cushions on the window seat and shaking the bedcurtains to hang straighter from their rings, knowing all the while what she was trying to avoid. She had sent yesterday to see if Pernell would welcome a visit but instead had been invited to dinner by a hastily penned note from Raulyn that ended, “Dame Frevisse will be here, but Pernell is keeping to her chamber. If you could be another woman at the table, it would help.”

  And very likely Daved would be there, and the letter she had promised to take to Joanne of Dartmouth was lying on the chest, with no reason not to be rid of it this morning. Except she did not want to go to this House of Converts.

  She would rather have spent the morning with her needlework and remembering last night with him, but worry about the gold locked into the chest and all the fears and all the questions about him that she tried never to have were circling and circling in her mind. She did not trust herself to sew when she was like this, and because the letter, at least, she could do something about, she made up her mind, put the letter in the bottom of the rush-woven basket lined with linen in which she carried her lesser finished work when delivering it herself to her better customers, and laid over it folded cloth she had already cut to make into a shirt for Daved. If anyone asked why she was there, she would pretend she had heard Joanne of Dartmouth was a sempster and that she hoped to hire her for some slight work.

  She had never been wont to find ways around the truth, but so often now she did it easily because of Daved. They loved each other, but that was almost the only truth their love could afford. Beyond their love, everything had to be lies. And fear.

  Lies, because that was the only way their love would be allowed to live.

  Fear, because of all those lies and the even greater lie in which Daved lived when he was not with her.

  Once, when they were lying side by side in the dark, satisfied of each other but unready yet for sleep, she had murmured something of her fear, and he had stroked her hair and told her, “There’s hardly more need to fear for me than if I was any other merchant. The only difference is the time when I go from Jew to seeming Ch
ristian. And back again. Through the several long days of travel between where I’m known as a Christian and where I’m known as a Jew, I have to take care to be seen by no one who knows me as one or the other. Otherwise I’m safe enough.”

  Except that a Jew never lived safely. All the time he lived as Jew, Daved lived in danger because any Christian flare of anger against any Jew could lead on almost the instant to a hunting and killing of any Jews that could be found. And when he seemed a Christian there was the danger he would be found out. And now she knew he had even more secrets and so there were more reasons for fear.

  But the day was not yet too warm for walking, and doing anything rather than only thinking helped. Anne found her dark humour lifting as she passed out of Ludgate beyond St. Paul’s into Fleet Street. The House of Converts was somewhere this way, she knew, and paused at a market stall to buy some apples and ask the way. She need only turn right at Temple Bar into Chancery Lane and it was along there, the market woman told her. That was simple enough, and then Anne asked a young clerk with a bundle of papers under one arm which of the places along the street was the House, and he pointed her to a low, stone-built gateway and went on his way without anything like curiosity at her. At the gateway itself, an elderly man was sitting on a short-backed chair at his ease in the sunshine, talking with another elderly man leaning on a cane. They both looked at her with the open curiosity of men with nothing better to do, but when she asked for Mistress Joanne of Dartmouth, the porter said courteously enough, waving her through the gateway, “That would be Alis you want. She’ll be in the garden.”

  The gateway opened into a small yard surrounded by low buildings. Across it, a passageway looked Anne’s best way to go to find a garden, and indeed at its far end it opened into a square garth enclosed by buildings on two sides and by a high, gateless stone wall on its two others. As with her own garden, the way in was the way out, but here the sense of being shut away was heavy, the stone walls high enough there was only sky to see beyond them. In a far corner, beyond the beds of vegetables and herbs, was a wooden bench under an apple tree, with a woman was seated there, and there being no one else in the garden, Anne went toward her. She was older than Anne, well into her late middle years, with a quiet face to which not much had happened except those years. She had been shelling peas from a basket at her side into a wooden bowl on her lap but she set the bowl aside as Anne neared her, and when Anne asked, “Mistress Joanne?”, she answered courteously enough, “She’s dead, I fear. She died last year.”

  Anne stared blankly at her with no thought of what to say next.

  ‘She was my mother,“ the woman offered.

  ‘That’s why… when I asked for Joanne… the porter said Alis.“

  ‘The porter?“ The woman was momentarily puzzled, then said, ”That would be Martin. He’s not the porter. He only sits there and watches the world go by.“

  ‘He’s a Jew?“ Anne blurted out.

  ‘A Christian,“ the woman said calmly. ”We’re all Christians here.“

  ‘Yes,“ Anne said. ”Of course.“ Unsure whether she had given offense or not.

  ‘We hardly need a porter here,“ the woman went on, mildly enough. ”We’re not much visited. The occasional churchman or a royal officer comes to make sure all is well. Or sometimes someone comes who’s merely curious to see Jews.“

  Anne realized she was staring and said quickly, “I’ve come with a letter for your mother.” She fumbled in her basket for it. “I suppose you should have it.”

  She held it out. Alis looked at it, not taking it. “A letter for my mother?”

  ‘It’s from your family, I think. Your mother’s family.“

  The woman still did not take the letter. “After all this time,” she said. “And now a year too late.” She shifted her look to Anne, her voice and gaze sharpening a little. “How did you come by this?”

  ‘That I can’t tell you.“

  The woman’s gaze returned to the letter. “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose you can.” She took it but made no move to open it, just went on looking at it. “Never a word in forty years, and now a letter.”

  ‘Forty years?“

  The woman lifted one shoulder, as if to shrug the years away. “What else could they do, my mother’s family? And what could she have done? She was in England because she thought my father had come here.” The woman shook her head. “She didn’t find him, but she was found out to be Jewish. What could she do then but become Christian? It was that or die. I was baptized with her.” She shrugged. “I was only six. After it, we were brought here. Here we stayed. Here I am.”

  Here she was. A woman staring at an unopened letter in her hands.

  Anne stood up. She did not want to be here any longer. And yet, despite herself, she asked, “You could leave here, couldn’t you? If you wanted to?”

  The woman looked at her. “Oh, yes. We can leave. If we want to. If we have somewhere to go. I don’t. So I stay.”

  She stayed. And her mother had stayed. For forty years. And then had died.

  To what Anne had not asked, the woman said, “We have our life here. We garden and cook and go to prayers. There’s a chapel here. And I have my rooms. There are only four of us here now. There are rooms enough.”

  But not life enough, Anne thought. By whatever chance, this Alis of Dartmouth’s soul and her mother’s had been saved, and surely there was no greater good than that. But frighteningly, treacherously, Anne found herself wondering at the cost. A woman shut off from the world the whole of her life. A woman who had faded without ever having brightened. All for the sake of saving her soul. But what was her soul worth now? When finally freed from the flesh, how could it go to God with joy, having never known joy in life?

  Anne cast that question instantly away, afraid of it. She had not meant to stay this long, and with some murmured farewell, she made to leave; but Alis of Dartmouth put out a hand and asked, “If… if I…” Faltered. Gathered herself. Tried again. “If I want to make answer to this letter, can you see to it going?”

  Anne wanted only to be away and never come back, but found herself promising, “I’ll come back, yes. In a few days. To see if you have an answer. Yes.” She was retreating even as she said it; started to turn away; then turned back and asked, “In all this time, you’ve never wanted… your mother never wanted to return to… your people?”

  The woman stared at her as if the question made no sense. And then, for the first time, she smiled. A small, sad, pitying smile, though whether the pity was for herself or for Anne’s ignorance, Anne could not tell as the woman said quietly, “If ever my mother had tried to be a Jew again, the Church would have burned her for a heretic. As for me…” She looked around where she was without much seeming to see it. “Where else do I know? What else can I do?”

  Anne, making her escape, thought those were much the questions everyone lived with. What else do we know, besides what we’ve been told? What else can we do, besides what we’re doing?

  Except she knew that she loved Daved and that he loved her—and that by everything she had ever been told, their love was wrong. Wrong beyond redemption of their souls.

  And yet it was not in her not to love him. Whatever came of it.

  Chapter 9

  Through the door in the red gate Frevisse, Dame Juliana, and the Naylors passed into a roofed, wagon-wide passage running perhaps fifteen feet between the blank walls of buildings before opening into a small, roughly square, cobbled courtyard tightly enclosed on three sides, including that of the gate, by half-timbered buildings two storeys tall. The one toward the street was Master Grene’s shop. Others were probably storerooms and workrooms, while ahead across the yard wooden stairs led straightly up to a stone-built great hall that would be the heart of Master Grene’s house.

  The servingman led them to those stairs and up, into the screens passage that separated the hall itself from doorway draughts. On the other side from the wide opening into the hall were several other doo
rs, probably to kitchen and butlery and pantry, and a tight spiral of stairs going upward, down which was coming a brisk older woman in a fine coral-red gown and beautifully veiled wimple, saying as she came, “I saw you from the parlor window, my ladies. Welcome. I’m Mistress Grene’s mother. I fear my daughter is keeping to her chamber these days. I’m Mistress Hercy. She hopes you’ll spend an hour with her after dinner.”

  ‘She’s not badly ill, I hope,“ Dame Juliana said.

  ‘Not ill at all, St. Margaret be praised. She’s bearing, is all, and near her time. The stairs aren’t safe for her, now that she’s gone large enough not to see her feet well anymore.“

  ‘Is this her first?“ Dame Juliana asked with ready interest.

  ‘In faith, it’s her fourth, all of them living, God be thanked. Only her second for Master Grene, though. She’s given him a son already and, God willing, will soon give him another.“

  She had waved the servingman to see to the Naylors and was leading the nuns into the hall while she talked. The place was not so large as a nobleman’s hall but fair enough for a merchant’s London home, with two tall, narrow windows toward the courtyard, set too high for seeing anything but sky through them. The white-plastered walls along both sides were covered from the spring of the rafters to almost the floor with hangings of bright red cloths printed with twining patterns of green vines and blue cloths printed with yellow stars, while behind the long table set on the low dais at the hall’s upper end there was a painted hanging with round-bottomed ships sailing a wave-tossed blue sea between towered cities on green-cragged shores. Master Grene was standing at one end of the table on the dais, in talk with three other men, two of them churchmen—a priest and a grey-robed Franciscan friar—and a woman whom Frevisse saw with surprise was Mistress Blakhall.

  She had been hoping her promise to visit Mistress Blakhall today would serve as excuse not to linger here longer than need be. Escape might not be so easy now.