The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14) Read online

  Firmly for both of them, Domina Elisabeth answered, “We go with her.”

  Master Say accepted that without question. Her own increasing questions Frevisse kept to herself, forced to suppose she would sometime have answers to them, gathering up her reins, too, as Master Say swung his horse around and his men drew aside for him and Cristiana side by side to ride ahead, then falling in behind Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse as Master Say urged his horse forward into a canter. They all matched him, covering ground far more quickly than they had been. There were no great steepnesses of road to slow them, only stretches of woods and fields between villages and not far until Master Say slowed their pace to a jog along the ditch and outer wall of a manor yard, then brought his horse to a walk just before they turned to go under a timber and plaster gatehouse and into the wide manor yard itself.

  The manor house was directly across it, with a stableyard away to the right, from where stablehands were coming to take the horses before they were even stopped. The house itself was neither over-large nor over-new, built over a high-walled stone cellar that set the great hall almost a full floor above ground level, with stone stairs running straight and steeply up to a penticed porch and the broad, round-arched main doorway where a woman was just coming out, to hurry down the steps, reaching their foot as Master Say drew rein there.

  She was pleasant-faced and young, much about his age, plainly dressed in a bright brown linen gown, high-waisted in the present way but simply cut, with straight sleeves and no excess of cloth, and her veil and wimple were plain, too, all meant for home-wear and work, not display, but assuredly not a servant’s. She was smiling with welcome and not a little relief as she took Cristiana’s horse by the bridle and said up at her, “Thank St. Anne you’re here! I’ve been praying all the while.” She turned to Master Say, now dismounted and coming to join her. “He made no trouble?”

  Master Say gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. “None. It all went as hoped.”

  Cristiana was making to dismount, slow with weakness, Master Say steadied her to the ground with a hold on her waist, but when she was down, it was to the woman she immediately turned, holding out her hands, saying in a voice raw with tears to which she was at last giving way, “Beth! Oh, Beth, I never thought to see you or anyone ever again!” Beth pulled her into a quick embrace. “We’ve been so afraid for you. Ever since we heard you were gone.” But she drew back before Cristiana was ready to let her go, turned her toward the stairs, and said, “Here’s someone else you thought even less to see so soon.”

  A man was standing in the sunlight at the head of the stairs, cleanly made and well featured, in a short gray doublet trimmed with green at neck and wrists and hem, a sword belted on his hip. Cristiana stared up at him for a startled, silent, disbelieving instant, and the fear crossed Frevisse’s mind that this was the man with whom Cristiana had sinned. Domina Elisabeth must have thought the same. She was beginning to dismount in haste as Cristiana unfroze, cried out with joy, and went toward the man now coming down the stairs two at a time. They met at the stairfoot, catching each other into a hard embrace, Cristiana sobbing against his shoulder, “Gerveys!”, to Frevisse’s relief, while

  Master Say stopped Domina Elisabeth with an out-held hand and, “He’s her brother. She thought he was gone to Ireland.”

  “Yes!” Cristiana cried, pulling back without letting go of him to demand, “Isn’t York gone to Ireland? Laurence said he was. How can you be here?”

  “York is gone to Ireland, yes,” Gerveys said. “I can be here because I didn’t go with him.” He gave her a small, affectionate shake. “You goose.”

  Chapter 8

  As Cristiana, her brother, Master Say, and the woman Beth all moved toward the stairs, Domina Elisabeth followed, keeping close to Cristiana as if afraid of losing her. Not that Cristiana would escape by her own effort, Frevisse thought, coming behind them all. On only the second step Cristiana stopped as if whatever strength she had been using was gone, and without asking, her brother scooped her into his arms and carried her not simply up the stairs but inside.

  Still coming last Frevisse noted the weather-worn stonework around the doorway and the feet-hollowed stone floor of the shadowed screens passage beyond it, more signs of the house’s age. Turning from the passage in the great hall, she found it open-raftered but neither high nor grand and only three bays long, with three narrow windows on each side. Only the two flanking the dais at the hall’s upper end, where the master of the house would sit at meals, were glassed, but the others’ shutters stood open to the warm day, giving light enough for Frevisse to see that everything was beautifully kept, with wood polished, plastered walls lately painted, and floor swept clean. The place was old beyond the usual and somewhat small but everything else about it accorded with what she had so far seen of Master Say, how everything about him—clothing, horses, men, and this Beth who was, hopefully, his wife—suggested better than narrow means.

  Gerveys carried Cristiana the hall’s length and through one of the doors behind the dais. Following Domina Elisabeth following all the others, Frevisse came into a room that immediately raised her assessment of Master Say’s means to well above narrow. Old the house certainly was, but here it had been gutted to the outer walls and everything made anew, from pale-boarded floor to green-painted ceiling beams to fresh-plastered walls painted with swirling vines and bright birds on three sides and on the fourth, beside the door through which they had just come, a tall figure of the goddess Fortune with her Wheel and its tumbling figures. In the leftward wall a door stood open to another room where a green-curtained bed was just to be glimpsed. Ahead, in the far wall, was a wide, stone-mullioned, glassed window with a cushioned seat built into the wall’s thickness under it, while set in the rightward wall was a broad fireplace with a deeply carved stone frame and a long, low-backed settle in front of it, facing the room since this time of year there was no fire on the hearth, only a branch of green-leaved holly. Otherwhere were several goodly chairs, several tall candle-stands with creamy beeswax candles waiting for nightfall, and a table with a book and a Venetian glazed pot with fresh flowers.

  The woman Beth went hurriedly to pile cushions against one arm of the settle, and Gerveys laid Cristiana carefully down against them. Her sigh and sudden ease as she sank back were probably reward enough for him, but she whispered,

  “Thank you,” before putting out a hand to touch the hilt of his sword and ask, “Why are you armed?”

  Most men wore a dagger most times but a sword slung from the hip was a bother and usually worn only for a purpose, and although Gerveys smiled as he said lightly, “This was if John came back without you and I had to ride to your rescue,” Frevisse thought he meant it: he would have gone to his sister’s rescue.

  The woman Beth turned to Domina Elisabeth. “Did John tell you aught of what this is about?”

  Gravely, Domina Elisabeth said, “We know his name and something of where we are and gather you’re friends of Cristiana. Nothing more.”

  “John,” the woman said, mock-chidingly at Master Say. “There’s hardly been time,” he protested.

  The woman clicked her tongue at him and turned back to Domina Elisabeth. “I’m Elizabeth Say, his wife. It may put you at better ease to know Master Say is an esquire of the king’s chamber and lately Speaker of Parliament.”

  “Beth,” Master Say said, “that’s beside this point.”

  “It is not,” Mistress Say said firmly. “They’ll feel the better knowing they’ve come into good company, not bad.”

  She was right: it did help to know something of Master Say’s place in the world, and no little place it was if, besides being an esquire to the king, he had lately been Parliament’s Speaker, too. Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse both bent their heads to Mistress and Master Say in acknowledgment before Domina Elisabeth went on, no less gravely and not yet matching Mistress Say’s friendliness.

  “We’re at your manor near Broxbourne and in Hertfordshire, that we kn
ow. But where in Hertfordshire? Are we anywhere near Hertford itself? Or Ware? Or Waltham Abbey, perhaps?”

  “Hertford is close to six miles north from here,” Mistress Say answered readily. “Ware is about the same the other side of the river, and Waltham Cross is five miles southward. If you’ve ever gone the Pilgrims’ Way from London to Walsingham, you’ve likely come near here.”

  Domina Elisabeth nodded with understanding. “We’re perhaps a day’s ride north of London, then. She looked toward Gerveys still standing beside Cristiana still clinging to his hand. “And this gentleman is . . .?”

  “Sir Gerveys Drury,” he answered for himself, bowing. “Of the duke of York’s household.” Which made him strange company for someone of the king’s household, given how things presently stood between the king and the duke of York.

  “We’ve been near neighbors here and friends to Mistress Helyngton and her late husband,” Master Say said. “Sir Gerveys asked our help in finding her after she disappeared.”

  “That’s our part in all of this,” Mistress Say said. “Now, my lady, who are you, and why are you here?”

  That was a fair turnaround of questioning but Domina Elisabeth’s beginning of a gracious answer was interrupted by a quick knock at the room’s door and the bursting in of a woman in a gentlewoman’s kerchief and apron. Her glance took in all of them but it was at Cristiana she gave a wordlessly cry and immediately rushed toward her at the same moment Cristiana cried out in return, starting to rise, “Ivetta! Why aren’t you with the girls?”

  Sir Gerveys put a hand on Cristiana’s shoulder, holding her where she was, saying, “Milisent threw her out, but only yesterday. She was with Mary until then. She came here because she didn’t know where else to go and found me here as well.”

  Ivetta was on her knees beside Cristiana by then, gripping her hand and searching her face, mourning, “You’re so wasted away. What have they been doing to you?”

  Gripping Ivetta’s hand in return, Cristiana said, “How is it with Mary?” while Sir Gerveys went on, “It was because of her we knew Laurence had gone for you, was expected back, would probably be somewhere on the road near here by now, and John went out in hope of finding you before they had you locked up again.”

  “But Mary,” Cristiana said, caring more for that than how she had been rescued. “And what about Jane? Laurence said Ankaret has her.”

  “Jane is surely well enough,” Ivetta assured her. “Being spoiled and fed too many sweets, like as not. That Ankaret dotes on her that much. But Mary, aye, she’s been having a hard go of it, the darling.”

  “Laurence said she wasn’t eating.” Cristiana let go of Gerveys to grip Ivetta’s hands with both her own, her fear showing. “He said she’s made herself sick with refusing to be married to that Clement.”

  “That’s right so far as he knows,” Ivetta said scornfully. “But it’s not so desperate as all that. She’s refusing that young louter Clement, right enough, and prettier furies you’ve never seen than what she has when they’ve tried to drive her into it.”

  “But if she’s starving …”

  “She’s not. She hardly eats what she’s given, no, but I was taking food to her that they didn’t know about. They’ve kept most of the servants on, too, and they’ve helped, not liking what’s been done any better than we do. Mary’s not starving by any means. That Milisent and Laurence just think she is. We did hope that if Mary seemed desperate enough they might be forced to fetch you back from wherever you’d been taken. And here you are!” Ivetta finished triumphantly.

  “But you’re not with her now!” Cristiana protested.

  “If Mary isn’t here by late afternoon,” Master Say said, “I’ll go for her myself.”

  “Will he let you have her?” Cristiana asked.

  Master Say smiled, but there was hard-edged assurance in his voice as he said, “I don’t think he’ll choose to thwart my asking, friendliwise, for this ‘favor’. Not when it was made in the duchess of Suffolk’s name. I’m considerably higher in my lord of Suffolk’s favor than Laurence is, and Laurence knows it.”

  Frevisse held her face from showing the sudden shift of her thoughts at that. In the plays for power around the king, the dukes of Suffolk and York were absolute enemies to each other. If Master Say stood so high in Suffolk’s favor as he claimed, how did he and Sir Gerveys come to be so friendly together? Was one of them a traitor to his lord, a spy working against the man he claimed to serve? Were they together in some sort of power-game wound around with treachery, no matter how much simply friends they seemed to be?

  “The trick is,” Master Say was going on, “I don’t actually have the duchess’ word that you’re to have the girls. I made that up, but Helyngton is unlikely to find it out, and once we have Mary safe and hopefully Jane soon after, he’ll have a hard time getting them back, I promise you.”

  “John, there’s not thanks enough in the world for this,” Cristiana said.

  “It will be thanks enough if you tell us everything that’s happened to you,” he answered. “We know next to nothing. Please, let’s all be seated. And here’s Pers to make the telling go more easily,” he added as a man carrying a pewter pitcher and goblets on a tray came through the doorway Ivetta had left open.

  While Sir Gerveys sat on the settle at Cristiana’s feet and Mistress Say gestured the nuns to the windowseat and went herself to sit on one of the chairs her husband drew toward Cristiana, the man Pers poured wine and Ivetta carried the goblets one by one to everyone. While they did, Cristiana— her hands white-knuckled together in her lap, her eyes going from face to face—told the same tale she had told Frevisse at St. Frideswide’s but added things unsaid before and with all her bitterness, anger, and fears laid open now that she could safely give way to them.

  Neither Ivetta nor Pers had been explained, but Frevisse guessed she was Cristiana’s waiting-woman or else the daughters’ nurse. Pers, by the long dagger at his side and the way he had taken up a place near Sir Gerveys, was most probably Sir Gerveys’ squire, rather than merely a servant. Having to guess so much about everyone and everything made Frevisse uncomfortable; there were too many gaps in what she knew, too many pieces that went together strangely, leaving her not understanding enough, even with all that Cristiana was now telling.

  Save for wordless, distressed exclaims from Ivetta, everyone was listening to her in increasingly grim silence; and when she had finished at Laurence’s return to St. Frideswide’s and why Domina Elisabeth and Frevisse were still with her, everyone looked to Domina Elisabeth as Master Say asked like a judge willing to weigh all sides, “What have you to say to this?”

  Calmly certain of her ground, Domina Elisabeth answered, “I knew only what Master Helyngton said about her and what was in the letter from Abbot Gilberd. I did as Abbot Gilberd bade me - and no more. I have his letter here. If you care to read it?”

  She took it from her belt pouch. Pers came for it and handed it to Master Say while Sir Gerveys and Mistress Say both rose and went to read over his shoulder and Cristiana wearily shut her eyes. In the brief silence then, Frevisse caught the look that passed between Pers and Ivetta, warm enough for her to guess at affection between them. Was that something else she had to add to the mix of everything else she was trying to understand here?

  Finished with the letter, Master Say folded it closed. Domina Elisabeth held out her hand for it, and while Sir Gerveys brought it to her, Master Say said, “We can easily see you’ve done no more than you were bid and no blame lies on you for it. But now?”

  “Now that Cristiana …” Domina Elisabeth paused, then began again. “Now that Mistress Helyngton has been given into your care, it’s well and good she’s here with you. Unfortunately, I have not been released of my responsibility by Abbot Gilberd.”

  Sharp with bitterness, Cristiana said, “You’ll surely grant that my brother and the Says are good enough guardians of me.”

  “It matters not at all what I grant or do not grant,” Do
mina Elisabeth said at her most formal and firm. “What matters is that I was given a charge to keep and have not been relieved of that charge.” She looked to Master Say. “You said that Abbot Gilberd was at Eltham, yes?”

  “I saw him there two days ago, yes. If you wish to let him know how things have changed and ask him for your release, I can have a letter taken to him from you as soon as you’ve written it, my lady.”

  “Thank you. That would serve well. I fear, though, that until my release we must ask your hospitality.”

  “No!” Cristiana said fiercely. “I don’t want them anywhere near me.”

  Sir Gerveys, at her side again, put a quieting hand on her shoulder. “Given she was ordered to it, she has no more choice in it than you do.”

  Cristiana gathered herself to answer that, but Mistress Say began an efficient, distracting bustle, saying briskly, “That can all be settled later, after dinner. Cook is not going to be best pleased if we put it off longer. Ivetta, you know the chamber we’ve readied for Cristiana, Sir Gerveys …” He was already picking Cristiana up again.

  “I can walk!” she protested.

  “You maybe can,” he said. “But you don’t look as if you should. Lead on, Ivetta.”

  Ivetta did, with Pers following behind Sir Gerveys while Mistress Say said to Domina Elisabeth, “I’ll see to ordering a room readied for you and …” She hesitated, looking at Frevisse, ignored by everyone until then.

  “Dame Frevisse,” Domina Elisabeth supplied.

  “Dame Frevisse.” She and Frevisse bowed their heads to each other, even as Beth went on, “John, you’ll see to my lady having what she needs to her writing?” Adding, “Dinner will be served soon,” as she swept from the parlor, a lady sure of her household, her duties, and her husband.

  Frevisse wondered if Cristiana had been thus before her husband died and everything went wrong around her.