The Squire’s Tale (2 page)

Ned, like Robert, was a minor member of widespread family, the Verneys in his case, but unlike Robert, he had inherited a manor from his father just to the north of Brinskep and made a quietly profitable marriage of his own choosing with a Coventry merchant’s daughter. Meeting during Robert’s first year of marriage, while settling a quarrel between their bailiffs over a fishing place in the stream between their manors, they had fallen easily into friendship, with much going to and fro between their manors and Ned presently here for a few days together, his wife gone to Coventry to her sister’s lying-in and his company welcomed by Robert who paused to put Tacine’s doll under his chair with Robin’s horse, wondering as Ned followed Benedict through the narrow stairway door why Katherine was not come back, too, but only asking as he moved to the table to pour them some perry, “You saw them into bed?”

‘We saw them into bed,“ Ned agreed, ”and they nearly saw me into my grave.“

‘You’re too indulgent with them, Ned,“ Blaunche said. The woman who would send them to bed every night with too many sweets in their stomachs if she was given the chance, Robert thought. ”They need a firm hand, believe me.“

‘It’s not indulgence,“ Ned protested, taking the bowl Robert held out to him. ”It’s survival. My ungodly godson demanded three stories ere he’d let me leave or he’d not go to sleep, he said.“

‘Extortion, plain and simple,“ Benedict said and added, ”Thank you“ as he took the perry Robert next poured for him.

‘It’s Robert’s doing,“ Blaunche said. ”He too often spoils them at bedtime.“

‘What made it worse was that I’ve but two stories in my head,“ Ned went on, ”and it would have been desperate with me except Benedict had a third.“

‘John protested they already knew that one,“ Benedict said, ”but Ned pointed out that Robin had asked for three stories, not three new ones.“

‘You didn’t!“ Robert said at Ned. ”You teach him to see things that way, he’ll turn into a lawyer.“

‘There are worse things to be than a lawyer,“ Ned answered.

‘Not at bedtime,“ Robert returned.

‘Even if my brother is one,“ Ned added thoughtfully as Emelye asked, ”Where’s Katherine?“

‘Gone to brew something for Robert,“ said Benedict. He looked to his stepfather with belated concern. ”How’s your hand hurting now? Badly?“

‘It aches is all and that will pass.“

‘Benedict, come sit here with us,“ Blaunche said, tapping at a floor cushion with her foot. ”Geoffrey has just reached where they’re killing the child to make the empress seem adulterous.“

Benedict went to fold his long legs under him and sit on the cushion beside Emelye’s who smiled on him and he obligingly smiled back. Above them, Master Geoffrey took up reading again and Blaunche held up her own bowl to let Robert know he could refill it. Robert did but was thinking more of Benedict who had been old enough when Robert and Blaunche had married seven years ago to go into someone else’s household for training as was the usual way, but Blaunche had claimed his stepfather could train him as readily as anyone else, indeed should train him so they could come to know each other. Despite she also claimed she gave way to her husband in everything, Robert had even then known better than to refuse her desires and after all it had worked out none so ill. He and Benedict liked each other, as it happened, and Benedict delighted in his small half brothers and half sister who in return delighted in him and that could only be to the good in future time.

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 brother 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.