The Bastard's Tale Read online

  With Shrovetide almost come—the four days or so of holidaying before Lent’s austerity closed in on life— there would even more of everything in a day or so, spreading out through the town and even into the abbey, but there was plenty here as it was and for a time Arteys was happy with the noise and the crowd and simply looking while he wandered among the maze of booths and stalls where there looked to be everything for sale, from simply bright ribbons fluttering on a rack to swords and daggers laid out on crimson cloth to show off the sheen of their steel, to saddles gaudy with brass bosses over pommel and hindbow, to gloves both plain and fancy, high-cuffed and low, embroidered and not, to brooches and rings their seller swore were silver but Arteys doubted, to shoes and cloaks and skeins of colored wool, to a pig roasting over red coals, with slices of it for sale on thick slices of bread for a ha’penny, to maybe a dozen booths selling ale by the cup, bowl, or tankard with a bench to sit on while you drank…

  It was while he was stopped to listen with half a dozen others to a minstrel trying to make himself and his lute heard amid it all that he began to hear ripples of sharper talk around him, eddies of voices excited not over sales but something else. As he tossed a penny in the minstrel’s bowl, his ear caught Gloucester’s name mixed into something being said angrily by a man behind him and he started to turn, was slowed by the shove of two housewives, brisk with baskets and their own talk passing by him, and heard next, “… means to seize the king, Suffolk says. That’s why the council…”

  Three men were moving away from him, talking. Arteys followed, able in the press and shift of people to come up close behind them and hear, “… has them mustering at Henow Heath. If there’s need, see.”

  ‘How many is Gloucester supposed to be bringing?“

  ‘A good three thousand, at the least.“

  The third man gave a low whistle. “There’ll be…”

  A man and woman, an arm tight around each other’s waist and no heed of anyone else, cut between Arteys and what the men said next. Worse, they weren’t the only ones talking in an angry, tight-gestured way. Arteys heard Gloucester’s name from others around him now but closed on the three men again, following when they headed toward one of the shops surrounding the marketplace, a once green-leafed branch tied to an out-thrust pole above the door. What few leaves still clung there were brown and tattered but enough to tell it was an alehouse. The men went in, and because no one would think twice about one more man going in, Arteys did, too.

  The long, narrow, low-raftered room was crowded, loud, and shadowy. Even with the streetward door and window standing open, daylight did not reach far along it but neither did the day’s cold, since the benches behind narrow tables all down the length of one wall were full of men and some women, with just space in front of the tables for the aproned woman making her way with a tray, putting down full mugs of ale on tables as she came, scooping up coins in return, and all the while talking to one customer after another in a laughing voice louder than anyone’s.

  Reaching the newcomers paused at the doorway, she summed them up with a quick look and declared with a nod toward the far end of the room, “Down there, then, sirs, there’s place. Just tell Kate to shift herself along and sit up a bit. You, too, love,” she added to Arteys. “That’s all there is and you won’t find better ale in Bury today, so take it while you can.”

  The men, Arteys following, edged and shifted their way among the outstretched legs and feet to the far end of the room, to an almost empty bench beside the open doorway into a dark back room. Kate, with her head-kerchief askew and her brown gown muddled with spilled ale and other things, was somewhere between leaning on the table and sliding under it. She did not object when the men straightened her up, slid her over, and propped her into the corner of the wall but roused enough to smile at them, her smile as awry as her head-kerchief, and mumble something that made one of the men laugh and shake his head before she slipped back into her drunken slough and the men crowded onto the bench behind the table. With no room behind the table for him, Arteys fit himself into the gap left on the bench between them and the drinkers at the next table and tried to look at ease, ignored by the men, one of them saying now, “Better them than me, that’s all I can say. It’ll be devil’s-arse cold out on a heath where the wind can get at them.”

  ‘Still, twopence a day for doing nothing.“

  ‘Nothing but freezing your ears off. No thanks.“

  ‘With maybe a fight at the end of it.“

  ‘There’ll be no fighting. Not with that many against however many Gloucester is bringing.“

  ‘Three thousand, you said?“

  ‘At the least. Maybe more. Depends on how much trouble he’s expecting. He maybe doesn’t know Suffolk is on to him, likely.“

  They were not making sense to Arteys. Gloucester was bringing nothing like three thousand men and what was this muster of men at Henow Heath, wherever it was? Suffolk at least was familiar from all Gloucester’s talk against him—“If he were half so well-witted as he is charming, it wouldn’t matter he runs both Henry and the government, but he’s a short-seeing idiot and there’s going to be trouble because of him, mark me.”

  The aproned woman passed by, headed to the back, gathering empties onto her tray as she went. Arteys leaned forward, elbows on knees, and turned his head as if watching her but using the chance, now the men had thrown back their cloaks in the alehouse’s warmth, to see what lord’s badges they wore on their doublets. Not Suffolk’s ape with chain and manacle but the portcullis of Edmund Beaufort, marquis of Dorset. He was someone else too powerful around the king, according to Gloucester “a mean-spirited, grabbing fool who’d just as soon kick you in the shins as not, to prove to himself he’s the better man.”

  Arteys, his own cloak kept over Gloucester’s white swan badge above his heart, was turning to join in the men’s talk to find out what else he could, but a man making his way along the tables reached there at that moment and slid, hardly giving Arteys time to shift, into the gap that was barely there between Arteys and the nearest of Dorset’s men. Wiggling to make space for himself, he said toward Arteys, “Packed in like salt fish in a barrel, aren’t we? Keeps the draught off, though.”

  Arteys made a small, assenting sound because, yes, this far back in the room no draught had a chance; the air hung thick with the mingled smells of warm bodies and ale-laden breath, of which the man had both.

  ‘Anything that keeps the cold off is welcome this time of year, though, isn’t it?“ the man went on. His eyes were too small and set too close to a thin nose above a mouth too full of teeth. He looked more as if he were in search of prey than talk and Arteys was trying to shift away from him when the aproned woman returned with a tray of new-filled tankards and a hand out for money.

  Arteys and the other men perforce all elbowed each other while digging coins from their belt pouches, but before Arteys could lay his on the table, a fair-haired, lean-made man squeezed past the woman, said cheerfully, “Here you are, then,” laid coins on the tray, and took two tankards, handing one to Arteys while asking “Been waiting long?,” adding to the small-eyed man, “You don’t mind taking off, do you, since that’s my place?”

  The man rose, not as if he were happy about it, muttering what might have been “Sorry” or might not as he moved away. The newcomer sat, somehow crowding Dorset’s men even more against each other without making an insult of it, and said with a smile at the woman and a nod at Arteys, “See to it he pays for the next ones, right?”

  She laughed and moved on, leaving Arteys trying to remember if he knew him. He was well-spoken but wore no lord’s badge and his plain clothing—dark green surcoat over dark blue doublet and black hosen—gave nothing away except that he was no churchman. Arteys was puzzling out what was familiar about him as the man, frowning thoughtfully past him, said, “Why do they almost always look like that?”

  ‘Who? Like what?“ Arteys turned his head in time to see the small-eyed man going out the door.<
br />
  ‘Like rats. Pointy faces and noses that almost twitch. Spies.“

  ‘Spies?“ Arteys, startled, looked back to him.

  ‘The bad ones, at least. I suppose there must be good ones.“

  ‘But we don’t know them because they don’t look like rats?“ Arteys suggested, amused.

  ‘You have it.“ The man drank from his mug and nodded appreciatively. ”Good ale. You’d think Suffolk could afford better.“

  ‘Ale?“

  ‘Spies. Or maybe the fellow was Dorset’s.“ He twitched his head slightly toward the men to whom he now mostly had his back. With his voice pitched under the alehouse’s general noise, he was safe from being heard by them. ”Dorset is the cheap-souled sort of bastard who’d hire a rat-faced spy instead of better. It was with that kind of idiot-wittedness he and his brother, God stomp his soul a bit before saving it, made fools of themselves all over France. You don’t remember me, do you?“

  Until that moment Arteys had not but said suddenly, “Joliffe. You were in my father’s household awhile.” About the time of Lady Eleanor’s disgrace, and like much else from then, had disappeared soon afterward. “I don’t remember your last name but you’re a minstrel.”

  ‘Only when I can’t survive as a player. That’s why I’m here now. I’m one of the players doing Abbot Babington’s play for the king.“

  Arteys, having given up hope of hearing anything more from Dorset’s men, took a long drink, then asked, “That man just now, why do you say he’s a spy?”

  Joliffe leaned slightly toward him and half-whispered, as if giving away a deep secret, “Because he is.”

  That was so overplayed that Arteys laughed and remembered another thing about him—he had always been able to make Lady Eleanor laugh. But, “How do you know that?”

  ‘Because he’s a very poor spy. He’s been hanging at people’s elbows ever since the lords started gathering into Bury St. Edmunds, listening to talk or else saying things he hopes will lead someone into saying something he can go tale-telling back to his master, whoever that is. Someone in the little clot around the king who wants to be sure no one is a step ahead of them. It doesn’t matter who. They’re almost all against your father.“

  Arteys hadn’t known ale could curdle in the belly. “My father. What about my father?”

  ‘Hold your voice down,“ Joliffe said evenly, his voice still smiling but his eyes not. ”Hold steady. Take a drink. And if you’re wearing a badge, go on keeping your cloak over it.“

  Arteys drank without tasting the ale before he asked with his voice down and the slightest nod at Dorset’s men, “They were saying something about a Henow Heath.”

  ‘Our good marquis of Suffolk has gathered in a few thousand men from his manors around here to Henow Heath just north of Bury on the claim that Gloucester is coming with an army against the king.“ Joliffe clamped his free hand on Arteys’ arm in a friendly-looking grip hard enough to stop what Arteys had been going to protest while he went on, ”By tomorrow, hopefully, someone will have pointed out to Suffolk how much a fool he’s going to look when Gloucester rides into Bury with his eighty or so men. Then, before you know it, there’ll be a few thousand very displeased fellows making their ways back home from Henow Heath.“

  Face and voice controlled, Arteys asked, “Why does Suffolk have them there at all? He has to know Gloucester isn’t coming with any army.”

  ‘He knows, but he’s maybe thinking that if he yells loud enough that the duke of Gloucester is dangerous, no one will listen when Gloucester declares Suffolk’s sins aloud.“

  ‘Suffolk’s sins?“

  ‘Or however one sees his stupidities.“

  ‘Gloucester isn’t coming against Suffolk. All he wants is pardon for Lady Eleanor.“

  ‘And let’s pray he gets it. But in the meanwhile you might want to find somewhere else to be today besides out and about in Bury St. Edmunds.“

  Chapter 5

  Years ago Frevisse had chance to watch players at their rehearsing and had enjoyed it. Skilled craftsmen at work were almost always a pleasure to watch and at their best players were very skilled craftsmen, able to weave words and pretense into something that could bring their audience to laughter, anger, even grief. Since Master Wilde’s company had been chosen to perform for the king, she had presumed they were not merely good but among the best and from watching them the past few days judged she was right; nor was she surprised that Joliffe was among the best of them.

  But she had not been simply a looker-on for even the first day. When her presence was explained to Master Wilde, he had warned her to keep secret anything she saw here and after that ignored her, but Mistress Wilde had come to where she sat and asked if she could sew. Frevisse had admitted to simple stitches and so this cold afternoon, with the thin sunlight through the hall’s high windows giving light but no warmth, she was again on the bench along the hall’s wall alternately breathing on her fingers and hemming a green gown, three yards around the hem and taking forever. The measure of Mistress Wilde’s need was that, even after seeing Frevisse sew, she had let her go on with it, because the play was in two days’ time and there were a great many hems and trimmings yet to be stitched if all the players—heavenly Wisdom and Lady Soul, the devil Lucifer, three Mights of Virtue, three Devils, and a pair of small demons who were John and Giles—were to be clothed by the night after tomorrow. The cost of it all was no trouble, even to Wisdom’s grand robe of cloth-of-gold, since Abbot Babington was paying, and the hiring of sufficient seamstresses should have been no problem, except Master Wilde was determined to have as little as possible known about the play ahead of time.

  ‘I won’t have talk,“ he had said to Frevisse. ”I want there to be surprise and wonder when we do it for the court. I won’t have everything driveled away to the world and its cousin beforetime. So your promise, please you, my lady.“

  Frevisse had promised, more out of understanding for his passion than from belief in its necessity. Abbey and town were taken up with the business and bother that always encircled the king wherever he was. Lords, lawyers, officers, and clerks deep in trying to carry on the government and pursuing their own ends while they did were mixed in with the knights, gentry, and common men of Parliament all with ends of their own and far more interested in making demands than agreeing to the king’s desires. There were undoubtedly cross-purposes and dealings everywhere, made worse by the private passions and cares that people always had. The play when it was performed would provide a welcome pleasure, but until then Frevisse doubted that anyone not in it or of it had more than a passing thought about it at all.

  For Master Wilde, however, it was all and everything, and so there was a desperate stitching by anyone with hands to spare who could be trusted with a needle. At least Wisdom and Lady Soul would be fully clothed and surely splendid. Near to Frevisse now, the woman Joane was sitting with her lap draped in fold upon fold of Lady Soul’s white cloth-of-gold gown, stitching gold-threaded trim around its far more yards of hem than Frevisse presently worked at, while a little farther down the hall Mistress Wilde had a little while ago folded Wisdom’s yards upon yards of gown away into a hamper and now sat with small John standing for her to mark the sleeve-length on his black demon’s tunic.

  But sewing was not the only work in hand in the hall. Master Wilde was not yet come to start the afternoon’s practice but the six men who would be the Mights and Devils were walking through their dance at the hall’s upper end to the tapping of a small drum by another of Master Wilde’s sons, in front of the tower that in two days’ time would be Heaven but was presently being painted blue by young Giles and the older of the company’s two musicians in grimy tunics and hosen, with charcoal-burning braziers set around to hurry the paint’s drying because Master Wilde meant to run through the whole play this afternoon. “From beginning to end without stopping no matter how rough it goes,” he had said yesterday. “We’ve need to see how the whole thing hangs together, and woe to anyone who d
oesn’t have his lines down pat by then.”

  Joliffe, standing next to small John sitting on the bench beside Frevisse, had leaned over and asked the boy, low-voiced in his ear, “You have your words all learned, haven’t you?”

  Swinging his feet happily, John had said back, “I know mine better than you know yours!” An ongoing jest between them because John had no lines. His part, with Giles, was to slither from beneath Lady Soul’s befouled and ugly mantle after she had fallen prey to Lucifer’s lures, dragging black, twisted ropes and dirty ribbons behind them and around her in an ugly little dance to show her vileness. He only had to know when to move and where, while Joliffe, as Lucifer tempting Lady Soul to her foolishness and sin, had a great many lines, and at John’s challenge he had laid a tragical hand to his forehead, said, “Too true, my lord, too true. I’d best go practice,” and after a bow to John and Frevisse, had taken himself away.