The Bastard's Tale Read online

  The Bastard’s Tale

  Margaret Frazer

  Chapter 1

  The Welsh wind moaned against the heavily shuttered windows and along the thickness of the tower’s stone walls, giving the lamp-lighted, fire-shadowed room with its tapestries, carpets, cushions, and fire on the hearth even more than its usual sense of comfort from a winter’s night, when dinner and most of the day’s duties were done and there was quietness and talk through the while until bed. Curled down among cushions piled near the hearth with the rough-coated greyhound Gelert stretched out beside him, Arteys was trying to feel the ease he should, here in his father’s Pembroke Castle, but all he had was more unease as he listened to what was being said around and above him by his father and the others—Gryffydd ap Nicholas, Sir Richard Middelton, Yevan ap Jankyn, and ridden in yesterday from England, Sir Roger Chamberlain.

  As usual, things had bettered when his father had come away into Wales, had come away from London, away from Westminster, away from the king and the men around him. If it were left to Arteys’ choice, they would never go back. Once they were away, his father always remembered how to laugh again, took up his books with pleasure, sometimes even rode out hunting. Life became almost what it was until five years ago. Almost there was forgetting.

  But not tonight. Arteys rubbed gently at the soft place behind Gelert’s left ear, and deep in contentment, the greyhound sighed, its head sinking more heavily onto Arteys’ thigh. Gelert’s was the only contentment here tonight, Arteys thought, watching the breathing rise and fall of the dog’s flank. He did not need to watch the men’s faces in their half-circle facing the firelight around him. It was enough to listen to their intent and worried voices, uncertain—or with his father, too certain—what lay behind the letter Sir Roger had brought yesterday.

  A month ago his father had replied to the official summons of all lords to Parliament that he would not come because of his health and the time of year. In truth, Arteys knew he had come into Wales particularly to have excuse not to go to Parliament, because among the things in which his father no longer took pleasure were the toil and tussle for power and favor around the king. He had lost his taste for it with Lady Eleanor’s destruction. For five years now his wife had been imprisoned, kept from her husband and her friends, if any friends were left to her, and in that while Gloucester had grown further and further away from the ways of power that had once been his life.

  Now this letter was come, sealed with the king’s own privy seal, asking that the duke of Gloucester, the king’s right well-beloved uncle, come to the present Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds, and Gloucester was of a sudden set on going, despite no one here trusted the summons except himself.

  Gryffydd was putting it most bluntly, rolling the words like gravel in his displeasure. “You’re mad if you go. Plead weather and winter. Plead your lungs are poorly and you don’t dare trust them to the wind and days of riding. Nobody can quarrel with that if you say it strong enough and often. I care not half a jot what he hints he’ll do. Don’t risk it.”

  Occupied less with worry than with cracking a walnut from the broad silver dish beside him, Gloucester returned cheerfully, “Henry more than hints. He all but says he’s ready to hear with mercy, finally, whatever I ask for Eleanor.”

  ‘There’s a long way between ’all but‘ and an open promise,“ Gryffydd growled and no one disagreed with him.

  Arteys kept silent. He was here because his father liked his company, not because he was anyone who would be listened to. Besides, he knew his father in this high humor—he would only half-hear whatever was said to him and heed none of it. These men knew it, too, but Sir Richard muttered, staring into the dark depths of wine in the goblet he held, “I don’t even see it’s certain King Henry signed it. It could come from anybody’s hand for all we know.”

  Gloucester tossed the emptied walnut shells toward the fire carelessly. They scattered on the hearthstone and Arteys reached sideways from Gelert, picked them up, and tossed them the rest of the way into the flames while Gloucester said, “Of course he signed it. I know his hand as well as I know my own. And his privy seal. You think it’s just wandering around for anyone to pick up and use?”

  ‘But who told him to write it?“ Gryffydd said.

  ‘By St. Alban’s grace, he’s a grown man, Gryffydd.“ Gloucester laughed. ”He doesn’t have to be told to do things nor do what anyone tells him.“

  ‘What I want to know is why Parliament was moved from Cambridge to Bury,“ Yevan put in. ”Why the change?“

  They all looked to Sir Roger. He had been with the royal court less than a week ago and was most like to know, but he raised a shoulder to show he did not. “One day it was set for Cambridge. The next day it was shifted to Bury. That’s all anyone told me and all I heard.”

  ‘Bury St. Edmunds is a bigger place, and there’s the abbey,“ Gloucester said.

  ‘Where King Henry is everybody’s darling and he’ll have all the abbot’s power added to the rest,“ Sir Richard said. ”You won’t find allies there, Humphrey.“

  Gloucester shook his head, working at another walnut. “Lord almighty, but you’re a glooming lot. Why not see it for what it is? A chance to have Eleanor free and with me again.”

  ‘It won’t be that simple,“ Sir Richard said. ”Mark my words.“

  ‘Of course it won’t be,“ Gloucester agreed lightly. ”I’ll have to plead, agree to terms, probably swear to never let her come near the royal court again, and whatever else that dog Suffolk can devise and persuade Henry to. But if Henry’s made up his mind she’s been punished enough, if he’s willing finally to let her go, then God forbid I hold back.“ He put a hand out over the carved arm of his chair to rumple Arteys’ hair as if Arteys were still a little boy, rather than man-grown.

  ‘Hai, Arteys. We’ll be glad to have her back, won’t we?“

  Arteys looked up, making despite his misgivings the smile he knew his father wanted from him but his warmth unfeigned as he answered, “We will.” Because if it ever happened, he would be glad. Lady Eleanor had been always kind to him, loving and giving and never grudging him a place in her husband’s household despite he was her husband’s bastard. Even after it had become certain she would never have any sons or daughters of her own to inherit Gloucester’s royal dukedom, she had been good to him. Arteys had asked her once, at the surly end of his boyhood, if she would have been as good to him if he had been begotten after she had married Gloucester instead of before, and she had answered with her merry laugh, her eyes dancing with mirth and mischief, “Your begetting was none of your doing. Why should I hold it against you? Mind you, what I’d do to Gloucester is another matter.”

  She had said it easily, secure in her love. For all the feckless youth that Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, son and brother of kings, had led—and Arteys had heard stories in plenty over the years, including from Gloucester himself—only his follies in politics had continued into his middle years. Many people would include among those follies his marriage to Eleanor Cobham against the will, it seemed, of the whole realm of England, because a royal duke should marry for power and wealth, and all that Lady Eleanor, a mere knight’s daughter, had been able to bring to their marriage had been her loveliness and love. But in return for those, Gloucester had given her his heart and faithfulness, and from everything Arteys had ever seen between them, they had been happy in each other. Only in two things had she ever failed Gloucester. First, in bearing him no children and then in seeking to learn unlawfully by sorcery whether he would succeed his childless nephew King Henry VI to the throne. She had been caught in the very act, and three of her accomplices had been hung, drawn, and quartered for their treason, the fourth burned for witchcraft, while she had been
imprisoned, cut off from anyone ever dear to her for five years now, leaving Gloucester grieving at his own helplessness to help her.

  Now here was come this letter, offering hope, and Arteys knew how little likely Gloucester would see trouble where he did not want to see it. Arteys had been brought into his father’s household at eight years old, fetched from among the welter of small children being raised like a tumble of puppies in the household of one of Gryffydd’s sons in a mountain-sided Welsh valley. All he had ever known about his mother was from the woman who had been his nurse—or keeper or whatever she might be best called—on the day his father’s men had come for him, and all she had told him then as she bundled him into his cloak to be taken away was that his mother had been someone’s younger daughter and her name Nan. “And if it ever matters who else she was, you’ll be told. She had more lust than sense, God keep her soul, and an eye for a handsome man, for all the good that does her in her grave, and don’t you go asking his grace your father anything more either. She was a long time ago and you can count yourself lucky he bothers to remember you’re alive.”

  So Arteys had never asked and had found as the years went by, almost twenty of them now, that what mattered was not his never-known mother but that he had come to love his father and his father to love him; and if Gloucester was set on going to Bury St. Edmunds, then he would go with him.

  Chapter 2

  The high-walled, cobbled yard between the cloister and the guesthalls’ gateway to the nunnery’s outer yard was quiet and golden in the slant of late-afternoon sunlight. Looking down from the prioress’ window into its sun-filled stillness, Dame Frevisse wished she believed in the sunlight’s seeming warmth but cold was seeping in around the stone-framed window and she had her hands thrust well up either sleeve of her black Benedictine habit’s wool outer gown and her arms crossed and pressed to her to keep to herself what warmth she had. This far across the parlor from the small hiss of flames among the careful coals on the prioress’ hearth there was no pretense of anything but cold—the deep February cold that through these past weeks in this year of God’s grace 1447, the twenty-fifth of King Henry VI’s reign, had crept deep into everything and everyone not near a fire.

  Not that anyone in St. Frideswide’s lingered away from a fire if they could help it. For most of most days the soft tread and sweep of skirts along the cloister walk came only when the Offices of prayer called the nuns to the church, to huddle in clouds of their own breath over the prayer books.

  Frevisse wished she was there now, in her own choir seat or kneeling below the altar, lost in prayer and quietness. Better to be there and cold rather than here with no quietness in her at all, only a strangled urge to curse his reverend grace the bishop of Winchester, while Domina Elisabeth stood waiting, beside the fire, for her answer. Because an answer could not be avoided, Frevisse set her face to show nothing of her race of thoughts and feelings and turned from the window toward her prioress, dressed like herself in black, from the long veils down their backs to their floor-reaching gowns and undergowns, relieved only by the white wimples encircling their faces and necks. With sleeves to hide the hands and layers of cloth to conceal the body, only face and voice were left to betray what was thought or felt, and very careful to betray nothing, Frevisse asked, “You want that I should go?”

  Domina Elisabeth lifted the letter she held in her hand. “I want that St. Frideswide’s not lose this chance.”

  Frevisse understood all too well Domina Elisabeth’s barely held-in eagerness. St. Frideswide’s was too small a nunnery with too many troubles and debts left from the last prioress’ ill-managing even to think of refusing what the letter offered. The messenger who had brought it less than an hour ago had probably been hardly settled beside the guesthall fire before Domina Elisabeth had summoned Frevisse to her, and now, reluctantly, Frevisse agreed, “No, we shouldn’t lose this chance.”

  ‘Nor is it something we can well refuse,“ Domina Elisabeth said.

  ‘No. It isn’t.“ Much though Frevisse wanted to. Not that her refusal would be of any use. Obedience was among the vows she had taken upon becoming a nun. If she did not give agreement, Domina Elisabeth would surely order it. And with good reason. His lordship Bishop Beaufort of Winchester had favored St. Frideswide’s with the grant of a very profitable property in Oxford town, its profits to be the nunnery’s own forever. In return he asked the small favor of ”your Dame Frevisse attending on her cousin, Lady Alice of Suffolk, at Bury St. Edmunds during this present Parliament, to note what passes and do such service there as may be asked of her by one of my people, should there be need.“

  His request was made pardonable by his gift of the property and acceptable because it had come by way of Domina Elisabeth’s brother, Abbot Gilberd of St. Bartholomew’s near Northampton. That had been skillful of the bishop, Frevisse granted; it saved Domina Elisabeth from need of any hesitating scrupleness and equally forestalled delay, since St. Frideswide’s was merely a priory, not an abbey, and therefore officially under Abbot Gilberd’s guidance. Distant though he usually kept his hand, his permission would have been needed for this, but as it was, the letter had come with his word added to Bishop Beaufort’s.

  Left without recourse and hoping her anger did not show in face or voice, Frevisse said evenly, “Of course I’ll go, if you so will it, my lady.”

  Domina Elisabeth smiled her approval. “Very good. My thanks, dame.”

  For not making Domina Elisabeth order her to go, Frevisse supposed, and asked, “Does my lord bishop say how to go about telling Lady Alice I want to ‘attend’ on her?”

  ‘Oh, yes.“ Domina Elisabeth consulted the letter. ”His messenger who brought this will go on your behalf to Lady Alice with your request.“ She frowned slightly. ”Won’t she wonder why it comes by way of Bishop Beaufort?“

  Frevisse, moving to join her beside the fire, said dryly, “I suspect that by the time he reaches Lady Alice, he’ll seem to have come from you or else from Abbot Gilberd on your behalf, with no sign he’s ever had aught to do with Bishop Beaufort.” Who was a man with whom she had had dealings before now and neither liked nor trusted, the king’s great-uncle and a power in the government for something like thirty years but also a cousin to the man Frevisse had counted her greatest friend, which was how, unfortunately, she had come to his notice.

  For the first time Domina Elisabeth looked other than happy. “Dame Frevisse, is this…” She hesitated. Frevisse did not help her. “Is this something I… should have doubt about?” Doubt she all too clearly did not want to have.

  Frevisse held back from saying that anything to do with the bishop of Winchester was something about which to have doubt; if she could not have her own way, she could at least give way gracefully, and she said, “Would your brother agree to anything likely to be unseemly?”

  Domina Elisabeth immediately said willingly to let go her worry, “Of course not.”

  Frevisse slipped her hands from her sleeves to hold one out toward the letter. “May I?”

  Domina Elisabeth handed it to her without hesitation, murmuring as Frevisse began to read it, “Still, it’s an odd asking.”

  It was and only the more odd when Frevisse had read the letter itself, finding it more full of what Bishop Beaufort did not say than what he did. “At least he gives excuse why I’m asking Lady Alice to see her.” It was possibly even true that the grant of property needed the king’s seal to make it certain due to a long-past but resurrectable quarrel between heirs now dead but with descendents.

  ‘We can make another use of your going there, too,“ Domina Elisabeth said. ”St. Edmund’s Abbey has a fine library. If I send Dame Perpetua with you, she might copy out some book or two as well as take note of others the abbey might loan to us later at our asking, if she persuades the librarian of our good intent. That should be possible, yes?“

  As a way to increase their income at St. Frideswide’s, Domina Elisabeth had seen to starting a small scrivening business among su
ch of the nuns as had a fair enough hand to it, copying out books in a plain fashion to be sold at plain prices. They were doing well enough at it after these few years that, yes, to increase what they could offer made sense.

  ‘Lady Alice would be persuaded to put in a good word toward that,“ Frevisse said. And since some nun would have to accompany her, come what may, Dame Perpetua was a far better companion than some in St. Frideswide’s would be.

  ‘All’s settled then,“ Domina Elisabeth said, smiling, pleased, all doubts forgotten.

  And perversely Frevisse was suddenly taken with a small, inward merriment at the foolishness of it all. In return for a substantial reward without explanation, she was to go on a cold journey to Bury St. Edmunds, impose on her cousin’s favor, and wait for she knew not whom to ask her for help—or maybe not ask her; Bishop Beaufort only said “may.” Considering that she had before now made clear to him how little she liked him or wanted anything to do with his plots, he was bold to ask it of her, even for such a bribe as he was offering.

  Or else he was desperate.

  That thought sobered her. Because what would it take to make a man as powerful as Henry Beaufort, Cardinal and Bishop of Winchester, desperate?