The Squire’s Tale Read online

  But time was come—and more than come—for Benedict to have more life of his own than his mother was willing to give him, and only this morning, after some few weeks of careful wooing, had Ned managed to win Blaunche’s promise that after Easter he could take Benedict into his household for the three years more until Benedict came of age to take possession of the manor he had inherited from his father. Though he and Ned had agreed to it beforehand, Robert had kept well out of it, not certain what twist Blaunche would put upon him supporting Benedict leaving her, but was pleased for the boy, who had spent much of the rest of the day telling everyone who crossed his path—which meant almost everyone heard it several times over because Brinskep was not that big a manor—of his good fortune. Robert had watched him with an inward smile, wondering if he had been that young himself at eighteen years but unable to remember; and afterwards, this evening at supper, listening to Benedict make plans with Ned, he had thought what a pity it was that it had not been Benedict instead of him who had kept that young fool Will Hayton and his two friends from carrying Katherine off this afternoon because to have rescued a damsel in distress would have made the boy’s day complete.

  But the thought had made pain twist deeply into him somewhere behind the breastbone because, in all bitter truth, he was glad he had been there instead of anyone else, glad he had been the one Katherine had clung to when it was over…

  He jerked his mind away from that run of thought, his arm jerking, too, splashing the perry he had been pouring for himself off his bowl’s rim. He set the pitcher down quickly but beside him Ned was already wiping up the spill, saying, “Go sit. You’ve had more of a day than does you good.”

  Robert took the excuse and his bowl of perry and went to sit in his chair again, with no need to feign weariness. Coming to sit on the cushioned stool opposite him, Ned asked with a nod at his hand, low-voiced for no one else to hear, “Still hurting?” then answered for himself, “A stupid question. Of course it’s still hurting. How badly?”

  ‘Not much. Only in spasms. I just hope young Hayton’s head hurts as badly,“ Robert said, meaning it.

  ‘His head? All you had was your dagger and he never fell off his horse. How did you come to hit his head?“

  Robert grinned. “I didn’t but I saw him run it into a tree branch as they rode off.”

  ‘Not hard enough.“

  ‘Not nearly hard enough. But then again, I wouldn’t want to have him dead and on my hands so it’s probably just as well.“

  ‘He’s that thickheaded it would likely take more than an apple branch to do him much damage.“

  Robert made an assenting sound to that and took a long drink of the perry, still warm and the better for the cinnamon, ginger and touch of nutmeg Blaunche had stirred in. Among her virtues—and she did have them—was a sure way with spiced wine, ale, cider and perry.

  ‘What happened today,“ Ned said, still low-voiced, ”you know the Haytons wouldn’t have dared against a Fenner even three years ago.“

  ‘I know,“ Robert said. The certainty of it had been a grim undercurrent to his thoughts all evening, little though he wanted to think or talk about it. The Fenners had been a power in this part of the midland shires for almost fifty years now. Lord Fenner had supported Henry of Lancaster’s successful bid for the throne against King Richard, and the family in almost all its various branches had flourished ever since, never among the most powerful but always near enough to them to profit and to be left alone by lesser men such as the Haytons until now.

  Henry of Lancaster had been followed to the throne by his son King Henry V who had reopened the long war with France, won glory at Agincourt, and made in England a peace so strong that even after his death and the succession of his infant son to the throne, the high lords had mostly worked together at governing well. Only of late and for no good reason that Robert could see, with the perils of a long minority finally over and Henry VI at last come of age to take royal power into his own hands, the steady government the lords had kept so carefully balanced through the years of Henry VI’s minority was somehow beginning to uncenter and the Fenners’ secure place beginning to fray with it. Since Lord Fenner had grown too old to be active at court or parliament, Sir Walter was the busiest of the family at politics and if he was losing place and influence, then so were those connected to him, even as minorly as Robert.

  That was why young Hayton had dared the attempt against Katherine. She had been barely twelve, an orphaned heiress, when Sir Walter had given her and her wardship into Robert’s hands. “You’ve done well by Lady Blaunche,” he’d said. She had lately birthed Robin, their first son. “But if you go on doing well like this by her you’re going to need more money in hand. This Stretton girl is mine to give just now and I’m giving her to you. Put off selling her marriage until she’s nearly of age and you’ll have the profit off her properties for years and then the price of selling her marriage on top of it when she’s old enough.”

  She was old enough now, and if Will Hayton had succeeded in carrying her off and forced marriage on her, it would have been at Robert’s expense, her properties as well as Katherine going to the Haytons without their need to pay Robert anything without he undertook costly legal work against them. Will Hayton’s father had probably set him on to do it because the profit balanced out against the risk of whatever trouble the Fenners might make about it afterward and, as Ned said, three years ago that trouble would have been considerable. Now…

  ‘Sir Walter has held too long to Lord Beaumont,“ Ned said. ”Beaumont is slipping out of the center of things.“

  Ned ever had more interest in politic matters than Robert did, complained he could talk about them forever and get no more than a nod from Robert, and it was with knowing he would take Ned by surprise that Robert said, “The way things are shaping of late, Sir Walter would do better to shift to the earl of Stafford and the sooner the better.”

  Ned, satisfactorily startled, set his bowl down on the table beside him and leaned toward Robert with a sudden, shrewd glint in his eyes. “You’ve been thinking about it after all, have you?”

  ‘After you wouldn’t shut up about it last year while I was here, how could I not?“

  ‘Why Buckingham?“

  ‘He has a sound place in the royal council and power in this part of the country.“

  ‘North of here. Most of his power is in the north of the shire and over into Staffordshire. This side of the shire, I’d say it’s Grey of Groby we should go with.“

  ‘His holdings are much in north Warwickshire, too.“

  ‘And Leicestershire,“ Ned quickly pointed out. Just over the Warwickshire border eastward. ”But he’s looking for a wider foothold and there’s no great lord hereabouts in Warwickshire to block him. Just minor families like us with enough land to matter who ought to be looking for a lord to ally with before things go worse.“

  Robert frowned. “You really think it’s going to worsen? This shifting apart of power?”

  ‘What’s to stop it?“ Ned asked back. ”King Henry?“

  ‘He’s young yet. He’s still feeling his way. We have to wait it out, is all. He’ll steady to things soon.“

  ‘He’s twenty years old this year. By then his father had fought and won the Welsh war.“

  ‘That was a different time. Nor it’s not fair to judge a man by what his father did, for good or ill.“ And before Ned could make answer to that, Robert added, ”Besides, young Warwick will be coming into his own soon and take up the slack his father left hereabouts.“

  ‘I’ve heard stories about our young earl of Warwick,“ Ned said glumly, reaching for the perry again.

  ‘From Ralph?“ Ned’s younger brother was a lawyer in the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, and taking the chance to divert the talk, Robert asked, ”How are things going for him?“

  ‘He still spends more than he makes and wants me to make up the difference,“ Ned grumbled without sounding either worried about it or angry. He and his broth
er had an easy trust between them that showed itself in casual scoffs that cast Ralph as the spendthrift younger brother thrust adrift to make his way in the hard world as best he could while Ned as the elder and heir worked himself to death, according to Ned’s version, or was bogged so far down in country mud he could hardly see over his sheep’s backs, according to Ralph’s. ”He says he has a likely marriage shaping, though,“ Ned said.

  ‘Another one?“ Robert asked. These past few years Ralph had been on the verge of making a marriage rather more times than Robert had bothered to keep count of.

  ‘One of them has to actually happen one of these times,“ Ned returned cheerfully. ”This time it’s a London draper’s daughter.“

  Robert formed a soundless whistle. “That would be to the good, if the father’s unindebted.”

  ‘He is, or Ralph wouldn’t be looking at her. I gather there’s a house in Cheapside, a partner in Calais, and some land out Holborn way. The girl would have the Holborn land for dowry and some money with it.“

  ‘Any brothers? Sisters?“ Who would have share in whatever eventual inheritance there might be.

  ‘Two sons, no sisters.“

  The stairway door opened to Gil’s back coming in, his voice following after because he was talking to someone below him on the stairs. Despite his claim that Blaunche’s waiting-woman Mistress Avys ran him to rags with idiot errands and snored at night into the bargain, he was growing plump with wooing Mariena in the kitchen and was just now explaining the virtues of a walnut-garlic-pepper sauce for stockfish over a sauce of vinegar and pepper while not paying enough heed to the covered goblet he was carrying, and as Katherine followed him into the solar she put out a hand to steady it upright.

  ‘Thanks, my lady,“ said Gil. ”You see, it’s because the walnuts and garlic work with the fish, while the vinegar only works at it…“

  ‘Gil,“ Katherine said, with a small nod toward the room still behind him.

  Reminded he was there for more than talk, Gil broke off, turned, and bowed to the room in general though mostly to Robert. When Robert after his marriage to Blaunche had found himself in need of his own manservant to see to him, he had taken Gil out of a place in Sir Walter’s household even lowlier than his own had been. More used to serving than being served, Robert had been awkward over the change for longer than Gil had been but Gil had finally trained him to where Robert knew he would be fairly lost without Gil’s cheerful overseeing of his needs and wants, even ones he did not know he had until Gil had seen to them. Now, to Robert’s questioning look at the covered goblet he carried, Gil said, “Something to help you sleep, sir.”

  And added before Robert could protest he did not want it, “My lady Katherine brewed it, sir.”

  Headed off from refusing the drink, Robert looked to Katherine come to stand beside Gil, smiling at him as if she knew what he had not said as she held up a fist-sized, towel-wrapped bundle and said, “A poultice.”

  There had been no reason to turn down the offer of her wardship when Sir Walter had made it and perfectly good ones for taking it, nor had the little scrap of a girl who had been delivered to them one early summer day given any trouble to make either Blaunche or him regret having the raising of her. Reasonably biddable, she had learned what she was supposed to learn and moreover been glad of the learning, unlike Emelye, taken on because her mother and Blaunche were great good friends and who learned anything only perforce and forgot most of it soon afterwards. Katherine both learned and remembered and for extra measure was patient with Blaunche’s headaches, kind with the children, liked by the household, and good company at almost any time.

  But when Robert had not been noticing, she had grown past being a little girl into the beginnings of womanhood, and when he had noticed, seeing her dancing in the hall one evening at Christmastide last past, with ribbons in her hair and bells tied to her sleeves, laughing up at Benedict, he must have made a sound or movement because beside him Blaunche, sitting the dancing out because she was queasy in her first month of another childing, had asked him what was the matter.

  Still a little blank with surprise, he had answered, “Katherine. She’s grown.”

  Blaunche had laughed at him. “Of course she’s grown. That’s why I’ve been saying these six months past that it’s time we looked out a husband for her.”

  In all fairness, she had indeed been saying that but Robert had not been listening, certain it was surely too soon to be thinking of Katherine’s marriage. Only that Christmas evening, seeing her laughing, dancing, for once forgetful of duties, with Benedict’s admiring gaze on her, had he realized she was no longer a little girl but a young woman, a lovely young woman, and since then had spent bitter time trying to forget she was because he had no business thinking and feeling what he thought and felt when he remembered it.

  But now she had drawn a stool close to his chair, was sitting beside him, the poultice in her lap, reaching for his hand, and he asked, “Where’s your Mistress Dionisia gone to?” Katherine’s own waiting-woman who, like Emelye, had been in the orchard with Katherine at the attempt to seize her but, unlike Emelye for whom screaming had sufficed, had joined with Katherine in making trouble enough to keep Will Hayton from laying hands on her until Robert reached them. Since then she had followed close on Katherine wherever she went, as if another attempt inside the manor’s very walls was likely, and Katherine smiled as she began deftly to unwrap the bindings holding the splints to Robert’s fingers. “She’s gone to make certain Master Skipton has seen to all the doors being locked.”

  ‘Oh-oh,“ Robert said because Brinskep’s long-time, much-trusted steward would take ill that doubting of his duty.

  ‘Oh-oh, indeed,“ Katherine agreed. ”She’s already reminded him thrice this evening to be sure it was done.“ But Katherine was more concerned with Robert’s bared hand lifting it to have close look at its bruised swelling.

  Robert, preferring not to have close look, looked at the top of her head instead. Because she was unmarried, her braided hair, falling to below her waist, was uncovered, the lamplight finding chestnut sheens in its darkness, and from when she had been in his arms this afternoon he knew it smelled of camomile and was grateful now to be distracted from his thoughts as she said, “Pray, pardon me for being quick with this, but I want to put the poultice on while it’s still warm. It’s mostly artemisia to lessen the swelling and bruisewort against the bruising.”

  ‘And when, pray tell, did you learn about poultices?“ Robert asked, deliberately teasing her the way he had since she was small and came to tell him of any newly learned skill.

  ‘Mistress Avys says every woman should know herbs and how best to use them.“ Katherine paused, to look up at him from under her lashes as she added sweetly, ”On chance there’s ever need to poison someone.“

  ‘Mistress Avys never said anything of the kind,“ Robert returned with pretended sternness.

  ‘No,“ Katherine granted, returning to her task. ”Not about the poisoning. Still, it’s a thought.“

  Robert tried to bend his hurt fingers and winced with the pain.

  Katherine clicked her tongue at him and Ned said unsympathetically, “What did you think it would do, Robert?”

  ‘I’d like a little more pity here, please,“ Robert complained.

  Gil, waiting patiently the while, took the cover off the goblet and held it out. “Here. This’ll be better than pity. The wine’s strong enough, you hardly taste the herbs or whatever she’s put in.”

  ‘And how would you know that?“ asked Robert.

  ‘I had a sip to be sure it was safe. Better safe than sorry, sir.“

  ‘Better drunk than dry,“ Ned murmured into his own drink.

  Gil, who was never drunk except at holidays and Ned and everyone else knew it, ignored him with great dignity.

  Robert, holding in a smile, took the goblet and drank a little. The poultice—a greenish-gray mess on a strip of waxed cloth—was laid open on Katherine’s lap now, and tend
erly, the way he had seen her tend to one of the children when they had a scrape or were ill, she lifted his hurt hand, saying, “I’m wrapping your whole hand for the night and that will keep it rigid enough. The splint can go on again in the morning.”

  As she set his hand carefully into the herbs, he made a small grunt of pain but when she looked up at him, concerned, he gave a slight shake of his head. “The warmth surprised me, that’s all.”

  She looked into his face as if doubting him but then bent to her work again and was winding the last binding strip around the poultice as across the room Master Geoffrey neared the end of the story, “He wedded that lady as his wife, With joy and mirth they led their life twenty year and three, / And between them children had fifteen…”

  Blaunche broke out in her loud, raw laughter again. “Mirth for someone!” she said. “But I doubt the lady was laughing much after the first five or so!”

  Benedict, Mistress Avys and Emelye laughed with her. Katherine, with no sign of listening, tied the binding in place while Master Geoffrey finished with, “Here ends the tale of the Earl of Toulous,” and closed the book.