The Boy's Tale Page 13

  He was in time to see his brother pitch sprawling into the water. As Jasper stared, he disappeared in a great splash, surfaced flailing desperately, too choked to cry out again, and Jasper realized he had to do something. But before he could, he was hit a great blow in his back by two hands, sending him over the edge after his brother.

  Once she had determined the children were nowhere in the cloister and made sure the gate into the orchard was locked and the key still hidden and had snapped at Jenet for being useless and set her to look through the cloister all over again, Frevisse crossed the yard to the guesthall, learned by quiet questioning of one of the servants that the children were not with Sir Gawyn or Maryon, and returned to stand angrily at the top of the guesthall steps while trying to decide what best to do next.

  They were not in the cloister, she was sure of that, and they had not gone out the orchard gate. They were unlikely to have all three fallen down the well together and made no sound while they did it, and someone would have seen them if they had gone out the kitchen door or gotten as far as the outer yard. That left only the side yard and the postern gate. It was quite possible that three small, determined children could have skulked out that way unnoticed.

  She should go back to Dame Claire for permission to go out, Frevisse knew, but that would take time and the sooner and more quietly the children could be brought back, the better. If she did not find them very soon, then Master Naylor would have to be asked for men to look for them, but it was too soon to raise that much alarm. She doubted they had gone far.

  At the postern, looking out over the gardens and sun-bright fields, her hand shading her eyes, she tried to guess where the children might have gone; and saw the trees along the stream and knew where, as a child, she would have gone on such a warm afternoon.

  The two servant women hoeing in the kitchen garden straightened as she passed them but to her question said they had only just now come out and had seen no children go by. Frevisse went on, still sure of where they most likely were, and at the wood edge came on Lady Adela sitting in the long grass trying to weave fading sweet cecily flowers into a wreath.

  Relieved to see her, certain Edmund and Jasper must be nearby, Frevisse said, "Their stalks are too stiff to work well for that."

  Unaware of her until then, Lady Adela dropped her work and scrambled to her feet to curtsy and gasp, "I didn't hear you come, Dame."

  "I could tell that," Frevisse said, standing very straight and staring down at her sternly.

  Lady Adela gulped, scooped the ragged wreath from the ground, and held it out to her. "For you, Dame," she suggested hopefully.

  "I don't think so. Where are Edmund and Jasper?"

  Lady Adela dropped the wreath again and pointed into the trees. "There. At the stream. They were mean to me," she added.

  "Show me where."

  Lady Adela hesitated. "Are we in trouble?"

  "You know the answer to that. And in worse trouble the longer people are worried over you. Show me where they are."

  Lady Adela sighed at the inevitable and turned to lead the way in among the trees.

  From somewhere not far away there was a cry and a great splash, followed an instant later by another splash.

  "They've fallen in!" Lady Adela exclaimed. "Into the pool, and it's deep!"

  Frevisse pushed her aside and ran. Hampered by the underbrush and her skirts and veil, she fought her way through and, following the sounds, came out onto a path above the wide curve of a pool. Well out in the water, beating madly at it, sinking and fighting their way to air again, were Edmund and Jasper. There was no hope at all that they could reach the bank on their own, and Frevisse looked desperately around for a stick large enough to thrust out to them. There was nothing and with no choice she moved to where the bank was less steep, reached down to grab the back hem of her gown and pull it forward and up between her legs, bundling the skirts to above her knees. There was too much of it to tuck under her belt, she was forced to hold it with one hand, leaving her other hand free for balance as she waded into the water.

  The bottom dropped steeply and was breast-high on her by the time she was in reach of Jasper. Stretching, she grabbed his out-flung hand and dragged him toward her, ordering, "Don't kick, don't fight me, or we'll both drown!"

  She did not expect him, in his terror, to understand her but he did; he went limp and let her pull him to her. She swung him around to behind her, ordering, "Hold on to me!" and reached for Edmund just sinking out of sight. Only barely she managed to clutch his hair before he disappeared. Ruthlessly she dragged his head back up out of the water and toward her. He was conscious but gagging for air. He had swallowed too much water and needed help, but there was nothing she could do for him here. Shifting her hold to under his chin to pull him through the water with his face above it, and weighed down now with Jasper clinging to her gown in the back, she struggled back toward the bank.

  Halfway there, she was unsure that she would make it. Her soaked clothing and the children were too heavy. They dragged her down and her legs no longer wanted to hold her up. But Lady Adela was weeping on the bank hard enough to break her own heart and anyone's who heard her, and Jasper was gasping his way through every prayer he had ever learned in English and French and Latin, and Edmund was so utterly at the mercy of her strength that she struggled against her own aching need to collapse the few yards more to water shallow enough that Jasper's trailing legs touched bottom and he stood up, releasing her from his weight. From there she was able to wrestle Edmund and her skirts to the bank, Jasper splashing beside her.

  Ignoring Lady Adela's sobbing and leaving Jasper to help himself, she pulled Edmund out of the water, rolled him onto his belly, and pounded on his back. He retched and gagged, water came out of his mouth, and he began to cry. Satisfied he was breathing sufficiently, Frevisse sank down in the soaking mess of her gown, fixed her gaze on Jasper's white but unwailing face, and demanded, "How could you be such fools as to both fall in?"

  He began to shudder, sank down on the ground, drew his knees up against his chest, and wrapped his arms around them, holding tightly to himself. "We didn't fall," he whispered. "Someone pushed us."

  Chapter 14

  The two women working in the kitchen garden spied them as they straggled out from among the trees and came running with exclaims to help. Without answering their questions, Frevisse ordered, "Take the boys to Jenet. I'll bring Lady Adela."

  She had already told Jasper and then Edmund when he was more recovered that they were not to say to anyone else that they had been pushed. "Nor you either, my lady," she had added fiercely to Lady Adela, goaded by fear as much as by anger. "And after this when you're told to stay where you've been put, maybe you'll do it!"

  Edmund and Jasper had nodded miserable, dripping agreement. Now they clung to her hands, one on either side of her, resisting being given over to the women, but Frevisse handed them firmly away. "You need to be dry and put to bed as soon as may be." And inside the cloister walls in safety. "I can't walk fast with these soaked skirts. Go on. I'll be there when I may."

  They let the women pick them up then, Edmund's head drooping down onto Joan's shoulder.

  With a belated thought, Frevisse asked the women, "Have you seen anybody else while you've been out here? Has anyone else come by?"

  "No, my lady. There's been no one, not nearby, save you. Most everyone's gone to the haying," Joan said readily. The other woman nodded agreement.

  Frevisse gestured them to go on. Edmund had closed his eyes, but Jasper looked back at Frevisse all the way out of sight.

  Seeming not to notice but with a small ache for him in her heart where she did not want it to be, Frevisse took Lady Adela's hand, kicked her soaked skirts away from her legs—even wrung out, they were a burden and bother— and followed, wishing there were someone to carry her, she was so exhausted. But there was not and she said a prayer for strength and kept on, one bare foot after another. Her shoes were somewhere in the bottom of the po
ol. One each in exchange for the boys' lives, she reminded herself, but the charity of the thought was forced. What she wanted was to spank them and Lady Adela very hard for their foolishness, and she dwelt on that thought because until she had them all, including herself, back inside the nunnery walls, she did not want to think about the possibility that whoever had pushed them into the water had almost surely still been there, hidden among the trees, watching, while she dragged them out.

  But he was surely gone now, knowing the alarm would be raised. He would be somewhere else long before she could tell Master Naylor to send searchers. All the same, some sort of search would have to be made and soon. She would have to talk to Master Naylor quickly. No, she would have to talk to Dame Claire first. To explain what had happened, and to consult over what had to be done both to better protect the boys and to find whomever had attacked them.

  No, she amended, pulling her skirts away from her legs again; first she had to change into dry clothing.

  By St. Benedict's Rule, the dorter was supposed to be a large room where all the nuns slept communally, but in the centuries since St. Benedict wrote it, the Rule had eased in certain areas. The large dorter was divided into wooden-walled cells for each nun, where she slept and kept her personal belongings.

  The curtain drawn across her cell's open end, Frevisse took off her wet, muddy gown and undergown and from the chest beside her bed took her only change of clothing, a gown and undergown identical to the first except they were clean and dry. She had meant to put them on after her weekly bath but there was no help for it now.

  She concentrated on drying herself and re-dressing, but her mind was not interested in that problem. As she fussed at the row of buttons from the black undergown's elbow to wrist, the one thought that pushed at her was that someone wanted the boys dead.

  A chance attempt against them by a killer passing casually by? Too unlikely to bother considering. There had to be a particular reason someone wanted them dead. Who? And for what reason?

  It was hard to imagine it was someone of the nunnery or the village. So far as nearly everyone knew, they were only boys who had had misfortune on a journey. One of their own people? Why? Or someone else, from outside, who knew who they were and had somehow found them here? But again, why kill them?

  Their mother was in danger, not of death but certainly censure and probably polite but ruthless imprisonment, for her imprudent marriage. The late king had imprisoned his stepmother for years for no better reason than that he disliked her. But how did their mother's indiscretion put Edmund and Jasper in danger?

  Did someone want revenge against Queen Katherine and was willing to take her sons' lives to have it? There was a possibility, Frevisse supposed. Or it could even be revenge against their father. A Welsh feud and nothing to do with royalty at all?

  No. If it had been as simple as that, Maryon would have said so.

  Frevisse tugged impatiently at her sleeve, fighting the last button closed.

  So suppose it was not against anyone else but simply a direct desire to have them dead. Because on their mother's side at least they were of royal blood? But not full blood. They were young King Henry's half brothers, and what royal blood they had was French, not English; they were no threat to his throne.

  She slipped her gown over her head, with its open-hanging sleeves and full fall of black fabric from her shoulders to her feet, shook it straight, and reached for her belt; and stopped, the belt in her hands, as another thought came to her.

  Young King Henry, their half brother and almost all of fifteen years old, was king of France as well as king of England. He held England by right of blood through his father. He held France through his mother, through the treaty her French royal father had made with England, naming her his last legitimate child and her husband and their children heirs of the French throne.

  Did that mean that somehow Edmund and Jasper could be used as pawns against their brother, could be made to serve in some sort of French claim against England's hold on France?

  Frevisse did not see how, but that did not mean it was not possible. St. Frideswide's was too removed from the world in general by site and purpose and inclination—rumors from Banbury sometimes seemed as remote as anything heard from London or France—for her to be able to accurately judge what might or might not be likely in that regard. There was no way she could hope to understand the intricacies of court politics. And this particular guess might be wide of the mark. But somebody, for some reason, wanted possession of the boys very badly. That was why they had been sent on their way to Wales: to keep them out of someone's hands. And now it was certain that someone wanted them dead. The same someone? Another someone?

  She buckled the belt into place around her waist and took up her wimple and veil. They at least had stayed dry enough to be put back on, and she did so absently, feeling to make sure her hair was completely covered by the white wimple before pinning the black veil into place over it while her mind went on with her questions.

  Someone wanted the boys, either alive and in his power or else dead and beyond anyone's use. Of that much she could be sure. As for who that someone could be . . . She stood completely still, staring at the floor without seeing it, frozen by the certainty of her thought. It was said King Henry would come of age this year, be given his royal power, and the men who had formed factions around him all these years of his minority would now have to contend not only with each other but for the King's favor if they hoped to share in power. And of those men the two greatest were Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and Humphrey Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester. The King's great-uncle and uncle, both ambitious men who had believed all through the royal minority that each should have had more power in the government than they did. Who knew what either of them might make of such untoward inconveniences as royal half brothers with a putative claim to the French throne? For a surety, either of them could make something of it; they had the necessary power.

  Frevisse had briefly had—much against her will—some dealings with the bishop of Winchester. He had not seemed the sort of man who would order children killed. He would undoubtedly be willing to have them in his power, yes, but dead? She did not believe that of him.

  The duke of Gloucester, on the other hand, was said to be out of all proportion ambitious, proud even beyond his exalted place. And if King Henry died without fathering a child, the duke would succeed him on the throne.

  Her legs gone weak, Frevisse sank down to sit on the edge of her bed. What sort of power could a man like that turn against St. Frideswide's if he chose? She slid forward onto her knees on the floor below the crucifix hung on her wall. Kyrie, eleison, Christe, eleison . . . Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy . . .

  She wished her uncle Thomas Chaucer were still alive. He had known both how to use power and how to protect himself from it. But he was dead and she had already written to his daughter Alice, which now seemed as if it might have been a foolish thing to do for the same reason it had seemed sensible before: her husband was one of the men maneuvering for power around the young King, the men among whom almost certainly was someone who wanted Edmund and Jasper dead.

  Agnus dei, eleison . . . Lamb of god, have mercy . . .

  Frevisse's breath caught. Lambs were what they were here in St. Frideswide's. Not simply the boys but everyone. Innocent lambs who had no way to struggle against the kind of power that might be turned against them.

  But not lambs for the slaughter. Not if they were innocent enough. So long as no one of the priory knew who the boys were, so long as everyone here could claim they had not known the boys were sought by powerful men, then even if the boys were eventually discovered and retribution was demanded for having sheltered them, Dame Claire could claim on the priory's behalf that it had been done in innocence, in simple obedience to the Rule to give shelter and comfort to those in need. So long as that were true, the chance was very good that no punishment would fall on St. Frideswide's.

  Only on Frevisse, if h
er part in it were known.

  But better on only her than on everyone. What mattered was to keep both the boys and the priory safe, and therefore the boys' secret to herself alone so that whatever the cost might eventually be, it would fall on only her.

  She raised her head from her clasped hands, drew a deep, steadying breath, and stood up to go in search of Dame Claire.

  When she understood that Frevisse's matter was urgent beyond the ordinary, Dame Claire brought her into the infirmary for greater privacy, and though the infirmary was no longer her domain, she went to the shelves of herbs, her hands moving among them familiarly because Sister Thomasine had changed nothing she could help changing since she became infirmarian, until she found what she wanted, took a few sprigs of last summer's dried lavender from one of the boxes, and handed it to Frevisse, saying, "Smell them. They'll quiet your nerves."