The Clerk's Tale

Chapter 7

With bows, Christopher and Master Gruesby left her and Dickon came forward, curiosity writ large on his young face. The weak, long-slanted light through the nave’s south windows patchily brightened the nave’s gray shadows but told Frevisse that if she were at St. Frideswide’s she would about now have been finishing her day’s tasks before Vespers. Here there was only blank time to be filled, and tucking her hands more deeply into her opposite sleeves for warmth against the church’s cold creeping into her, she said, “Thank you for waiting this while, Dickon.”

He had grown suddenly this past year, was all long bones and boyish angles and could have been awkward with it but was not. Instead, he reminded her of his father, contained and certain in both manners and movement. He was more given to smiling than Frevisse had ever seen from his father, though, and he was smiling now, a boyish grin as he made a bow to her and answered, “You’re welcome, my lady,” with a glance at the door closing behind Christopher and Master Gruesby, inviting her to tell him what it had been about.

With the thought that it was better he knew something than be left to his own devisings, she said, “We were discussing his father’s death. If anyone asks, you’re welcome to tell them that.”

Dickon brightened. “You’re going to find out who did it, aren’t you?”

“That is something you’re not welcome to say.”

“But you’re going to.”

“As God wills.”

“The way you did when-”

“I think it would be better if that’s not talked about,” she said quellingly.

Dickon sobered with quick understanding. “Better if they don’t know to watch out for you. Yes.”

That was not the way she would have said it but she let it go, saying instead, “You can go now.”

“You’re staying here?”

Frevisse suppressed a smile of her own at that. Dickon, like his father, wanted to understand what he was being told to do, rather than simply obeying. It made his father a difficult man with whom to deal but a good steward to the nunnery and she said, “I mean to pray here until Vespers. After that, I’ll be with Domina Elisabeth. You can be about your own business.”

Dickon accepted that with a grin and a bow but hesitated before he turned to go and asked, “Shall I listen for… things?”

In her turn Frevisse hesitated, then said, “Listen, but don’t ask anything. Or be caught at listening.”

Dickon nodded with quick understanding, bowed again, and headed cheerily out.

Frevisse closed her eyes, drew a deep, relieved breath at being alone again, slipped one hand from her sleeve to cross herself, then tucked the hand away and went hurriedly up the nave into the blessed quiet of the choir, into the choir stall presently hers, to kneel on the cushion there. The sacrist would come probably soon, to be sure all was in readiness for Vespers, and the bell would begin its steady calling, the nuns would come, there would be the rustle of pages turning, a pause full of waiting and then the Office, with voices raised to evening prayers and psalms; but for now there was only uncomplicated silence and softly deepening shadows, and Frevisse, resting her elbows on the book ledge in front of her, bowed her head onto her clasped hands, shut her eyes, and sank into the shelter and delight of prayer.

Or meant to. From years of daily saying of the psalms woven into each day’s Offices, the cycle of them completed every week only to be done again the next week, they were become as familiar to her as the Paternoster, their passions both guide and shelter in her own reaching toward God, that endless questing of the soul that was the only thing she had ever found worth her whole heart’s longing. Now she slipped softly into, “De caelis respicit Dominus: videt omnes filios hominum… Qui omnium eorum corda finxit, qui attendit ad omnia opera eorum… ” From heaven the Lord beholds: he sees all the sons of men… He who shaped the souls of them all, who knows all their works…

What she intended was to wind herself further and further from the world into the deeper places of heart and mind. What she found in a while was that somehow she had slid away, back to a psalm from Nones, and was whispering, “Per te adversarios nostros reppulimus, et in nomine tuo calcavimus insurgentes in nos… Eos, qui oderunt nos, confudisti. ” Through you we drove back our enemies, and in your name we trampled on the rebels against us… Those who hated us you silenced.

Worse, she was thinking of Montfort while she did and, startled and discomfited, she opened her eyes to stare down at her clasped hands without seeing anything but the dark way her thoughts had gone when she was not attending to them. At different times and places before now she had dealt with deaths of one kind and another. With ordinary deaths, come simply at the end of living, when the body was done and the soul had to move on in the natural way of things, there was sorrow to one degree or another, depending on what affection there had been for the dead. In her own life she had had some sorrows that had soon dimmed while others were with her yet and would be, even to her own death. Those were reasonable sorrows for reasonable deaths. The sorrow that came for deaths brought on violently was a different kind, because such deaths came out of the right way of things, before their time and never for sufficient reason but because of greed or lust or simply cruelty’s sake. For those there was anger as well as sorrow, that such wrong could be done by someone to anyone else.

There should be at least that much sorrow and something of anger in her for Montfort’s death, and in a way there was-sorrow at least for a soul gone unprepared and violently to judgment. But that Montfort was gone from the world… no. For that she felt no sorrow at all. His never-swerving greed, his ever-unmindful cruelty made the loss of him more benefit than pain.

Eos, qui oderunt nos, confudisti. Those who hated us you silenced.

And yet…

… it had been wrong. However good it was to have Montfort gone, it was not by God’s will he had died. It was by murder, and Christopher had asked her help in finding out the murderer and she had committed herself to it because, by God’s grace, the finding out of things was a skill she had. Somewhere, probably near, there was a murderer freely moving among men, his corruption a taint to those around him, and with the deep sigh of taking up a burden she knew would be both heavy and unwieldy, Frevisse closed her eyes and set to praying again-Dirigatur, Domine, oratio mea. Exaudi nos in die qua invocaverimus te. Guide, Lord, my prayer. Hear us in the day that we call to you-and this time held her mind to it better, only breaking off when she heard the sacrist moving among the choir stalls. She was late to her task, it seemed, because overhead the bell began to call to Vespers and with relief Frevisse settled back into her seat and bowed her head, to wait silent-minded for the in-gathering of nuns.

The Office’s prayers for peace of soul and mind through yet another night gave to her the comfort and quieting they always did but at their end she and Domina Elisabeth were, as it were, cast out from the nunnery’s quiet and peace to return through the gathering gray darkness of the overcast sunset to Lady Agnes’s, hurried on with more haste than grace by a nipping wind into Lady Agnes’s candle-lighted hall, where the maidservant said Lady Agnes would dine in her solar tonight, would they be pleased to join her or be served in their own chamber or the hall?

“With Lady Agnes, surely,” Domina Elisabeth said for both of them, which was well enough with Frevisse. For the sake of somewhere to start, she was going to suppose that Montfort’s death had to do with Stephen’s inheritance and surely Lady Agnes could be supposed someone from whom things might best be learned.

What was talked of first, though, over spiced pork cooked with apples in a thick crust, was the matter of Montfort’s widow staying longer than expected. Domina Elisabeth had heard of it from her cousin and so had Lady Agnes by way of servants’ talk brought to her by Letice. “So you’re welcome here,” she said, “for however long until she goes and longer if you like. You make a change for me. Now, tell me how Sister Ysobel does.”

From there the talk went to whether both nuns were recovered from their journey and how well Lady Agnes had rested that afternoon, with Frevisse finding no way to lead away to where she wanted to go until, as they finished the baked apples stuffed with raisins and walnuts, Domina Elisabeth asked lightly, “But what was that at the inquest this morning about trouble over your grandson’s inheritance?”

“Peascods and sour grapes,” Lady Agnes said with a dismissing wave of one hand. “Stephen’s greedy aunt on his mother’s side is claiming Stephen isn’t her sister’s son. It’s all so she can lay hold of what isn’t hers.” One of the windows rattled heavily in its frame, shaken by a wind gust, and Lady Agnes looked away to it, clucking her tongue. “The weather is changing and not for the better, I fear. Will it be rain or snow tomorrow, do you think?”

Domina Elisabeth thought icy rain was likely but snow if it turned any colder, and Lady Agnes began to tell how difficult the ferry crossing was when the Thames ran high and how she preferred to cross by the bridge at Wallingford whenever she had had to visit the more northward Lengley manors.

“Not that I’ve had to trouble with those or any other for a while now. We traveled something much, my husband and I, seeing to them while he lived, and I did the like again after my son died, God keep his soul, until his young Henry came of age. Thank St. Paul they’re all Stephen’s to see to now and I needn’t anymore.”

Frevisse swept quickly through ways to turn that toward a question about Stephen but Lady Agnes was gone on to, “Let’s go sit by the fire, shall we, and Letice will bring us warmed clary. Will you read to us over it, Dame Frevisse? You have such a soothing voice.”

Frevisse was surprised to hear that, not remembering any other time she had ever been called “soothing” by anyone, but leaving the two chairs to Dame Agnes and Domina Elisabeth, she settled on a floor cushion rather than a stool, took the book Letice brought from a chest at the bedfoot, and found herself with a large, leather-bound Canterbury Tales and a slight sinking of her heart. But her uncle, from whom she had learned the pleasure there could be in the sound of words themselves as well as in their meanings when they were well set together, had also taught her, “Read true to the words, and let the rest fall as it may,” and if she followed that, she could not do badly by Geoffrey Chaucer’s work and very mildly she asked, “Where would you have me begin, my lady?”

“Choose as you wish,” Lady Agnes granted graciously.

Frevisse began uncertainly to turn pages but then with her regrettable (she had been sometimes told) tendency toward the perverse turned deliberately to the “Tale of Sir Thopas” and launched forth with solemn vigor into its deliberately thumping verse and equally thumping action. Her uncle Thomas had used to say, about his father who had written it, “He found it quite down-heartening the number of people who did not see the jest. But then they’re likely the same who do not see the jest in his retraction at the Tales’ end, so what can one do?”

At least this time the jest went over, with laughter from Lady Agnes and Domina Elisabeth and even from Letice across the chamber, and when Frevisse had ended the tale with The Host’s irked interruption-

“Mine ears ache…

Now such a rhyme to the devil I give!

This is rhyme doggerel… ”

– Lady Agnes clapped, saying, “That was most-I don’t think ‘beautifully’ is a word to be used here-most happily done. Thank you, my dear.”

Frevisse closed the book and handed it to Letice, taking a chased silver goblet of warm, spiced clary in return as Domina Elisabeth said, “She’s distant kin to this Chaucer, you know.”

“Is she?” Lady Agnes’s interest was mild.

Preferring it stay mild, Frevisse said, “By marriage. An aunt of mine married his son.”

“Chaucer,” Lady Agnes repeated, her interest sharpening. “Alice Chaucer. The earl of Suffolk’s lady. Is she your cousin?”

Frevisse took a long, deliberately slow, sip of the wine, trying not to have ill thoughts at her prioress for bringing up what need never have been mentioned, before saying as if it were a little matter, “Yes.”

“Are you close?”

“Dame Frevisse’s gown was a gift from her,” Domina Elisabeth offered, proud of it as always.

“Ah!” Lady Agnes eyed Frevisse’s habit, her interest fully caught now.

Frevisse, sharply conscious of the wealth she wore in fine wool lined with fur, refuged in taking another long sip.

“When Dame Frevisse visited her in London,” Domina Elisabeth went on.

“Several years ago,” Frevisse said.

“Ah.” Lady Agnes’s tone was considering. “Will you be visiting her again, while you’re so near? Is she at Ewelme, do you know?”

“I don’t know,” Frevisse said. “I doubt it.” And added, to put more distance between herself and Alice than there truly was, “I’ve not seen her since then nor do we much write.”

They did not much write, not for lack of affection but because their lives lay so far apart that there was usually little to be said between them.

“A pity,” said Lady Agnes, sounding not so much disappointed for her as eased. “You’ve heard nothing from her lately?”

“No.”

Frevisse was braced for more but Domina Elisabeth, overtaken by a yawn, covered it with her hand and said when it was done, “I think we’ve overstayed our bedtime hour, Lady Agnes. By your leave, we’d best to bed.”

Lady Agnes said she had better do the same, it had been a long day, and Letice led them with a candle across the dark gallery to their own room on its other side. There she lighted a candle waiting on the flat top of a locked chest against one wall, bade them good night, and left them.

It was a plainly furnished room, with a single, shuttered window and besides the chest a curtained bed, a joint stool, and a wooden wallpole for the hanging of clothing, with presently their cloaks hanging from either end. A thickly braided rush mat made the floor a little warmer but everything was half-lost in the shadows beyond the candle’s small reach of draught-wavering light. Not that any of that much mattered to Frevisse, since all she wanted was to say evening prayers and after that to be asleep as soon as might be. The nunnery’s hour for Compline had rung while they were still at supper and they were now well past the hour when they would have been abed in St. Frideswide’s. It was reasonable to suppose they would say the Office and then in silence ready for sleep but Domina Elisabeth, beginning to unpin her veil, said, “I think we can forgo prayers tonight. God surely understands our weariness. I should maybe ask your pardon for mentioning you were related to the Chaucers. I didn’t think until too late that Lady Agnes might take offense.”

With the thought that Lady Agnes had seemed more wary than offended and already offended herself at having Compline so lightly dismissed, Frevisse asked more sharply than she meant to, “Offended? Why should she be offended?”

Folding her black veil with great care, not seeming to hear or else not heeding the sharpness, Domina Elisabeth said, “Ysobel has been telling me about this quarrel over the grandson’s inheritance. Remember there was something about it at the inquest this morning?”

Frevisse, unpinning her own veil now, managed to answer evenly, “Oh. Yes.”

“It isn’t just about the land, it seems. There’s some rivalry for power between my lord of Suffolk and Lord Lovell.”

Frevisse’s hands went momentarily still before she said again, “Oh?”

Domina Elisabeth turned away to lay her folded veil on the chest well away from the candle’s dripping. “Something about who will hold the most influence in this part of Oxfordshire. It’s presently Lord Lovell, I take it, but Suffolk is powerful with the king now and is using his power to make himself more powerful elsewhere.”

“And Lord Lovell is trying to hold on to his own here,” Frevisse ventured, pretending more interest in laying her own folded veil on the joint stool than in what she was saying but silently weighing up the possibilities inherent in a conflict between two powerful lords.

“I gather so, and not just here in Oxfordshire,” Domina Elisabeth agreed, unbelting her habit.

Frevisse, her wimple now off, shivered as an ice-touched draught fingered along the bare back of her neck. “But this Lengley inheritance is the present great trouble between them?”

“From what Ysobel says. Oh mercy, I don’t want to take this gown off. It’s going to freeze tonight for certain. Has the bed been warmed at all?”

Frevisse lifted a bedcurtain aside and ran a hand under the turned-down coverlet and sheet to find there were indeed two smooth, large, warm-to-the-touch stones there, one on each side of the bed, taking something of the damp chill from the sheets, and she said, “Yes. All we need do is be fast in getting in.”

Talk stopped as they made haste then to strip off their outer and inner gowns, carefully but quickly hanging them over the wallpole, Frevisse waiting then for Domina Elisabeth to slip, chemise-clad, under the covers on the far side of the bed before blowing out the candle and going swiftly to crawl in on her own side, to reach the hot stone’s warmth before the room’s chill could reach her bones. Only then, well under the covers, did she ask, stiff with trying not to shiver but unwilling to leave off learning what she could, “How does Stephen Lengley’s inheritance come into their contention?”

“It’s somewhere near here,” Domina Elisabeth said through cold-clenched teeth, “where Suffolk is looking to make one of his centers of power because he holds Wallingford for the king and his manor of Ewelme nearby is one of his great holdings. As you know.”

And as Domina Elisabeth was unlikely to forget, Frevisse thought but could not altogether blame her. A gift of money or land from Alice, Countess of Suffolk, would be very much to St. Frideswide’s good, both for the nunnery’s finances and for its fame, and Frevisse was the priory’s surest way to come by such a gift; but she held to the present point with, “So the trouble with the inheritance must be that Stephen is Lord Lovell’s man.”

“Even so. The Lengleys have been enfeoffed to one Lord Lovell after another for generations and one reason Stephen’s father married the Bower heiress, Ysobel says, was to have this manor brought into Lord Lovell’s interests.” Domina Elisabeth rolled onto her side away from Frevisse and curled up into a ball, much as Frevisse was on her own side. “Oh, I do miss my own bed!”

Which would have been thoroughly warmed all over by a maidservant with coals in a covered pan just before she slipped into it. Frevisse’s bed in her cell in the dorter would not have been, would in fact have been far more chill than this one was, but she missed it anyway and the dorter’s quiet and the deep sleep she would have probably been in by now if she were there, but she turned her thoughts away from that to say, “Then Suffolk has probably put this James Champyon to claiming the manor in his wife’s right as a way to have it away from Lord Lovell’s interests into his own.”

“Ysobel says it’s less that Master Champyon is one of Suffolk’s men than that he wants to be. Having the manor is the way he hopes to make Suffolk interested in him.”

A lesser man playing his ambitions toward a greater man’s, Frevisse thought, and all the more dangerous for that, because what might be a small gain for someone like the marquis of Suffolk would be a great gain for someone like Master James Champyon and therefore worth a greater price. Maybe even a man’s life.

Beside her, Domina Elisabeth settled deeper into her pillow with a deep, sleep-ready sigh, murmuring, “Ysobel says it’s wonderful how, now that she can go nowhere and do nothing, she hears more than she ever did when she was up and about, from all the people who come to talk to her.”

Wondering who besides Lady Agnes came, Frevisse asked before Domina Elisabeth was lost to sleep, “What does she say about the Champyons’ claim that Stephen is a bastard?”

Probably too far gone toward sleep to wonder where Frevisse had heard that, Domina Elisabeth murmured, “She says he’s been known as Sir Henry’s son and young Henry’s full brother all his life and nobody has ever questioned it before now. What can be said beyond that?”

Nothing that Frevisse could think of but she went on staring at the featureless darkness of the bed curtain while Domina Elisabeth’s breathing evened into sleep, then set herself, alone and silently, to Compline’s prayers, asking for a safe and peaceful night and God’s blessing on all.