The Squire’s Tale (23 page)

‘Benedict, stop it!“ Katherine snapped at something Robert had not heard.

‘Don’t tell me to stop it,“ Benedict snapped back at her. ”I’m not who’s making a fool of himself here.“

‘Benedict, that’s enough,“ Robert said, more sharply than he knew he should, and Benedict turned on him as if glad to be unleashed, demanding, ”Enough for who? For you?

You’re the one who’s—“

‘Benedict,“ Robert said more roughly. ”Enough. Leave now.“

“Because you say so? You spend the day fawning on them”—Benedict gestured with contempt around the room everyone, including the arbiters just drifted through the doorway from the hall—“and then expect me take orders from you?”

‘Benedict, please,“ said Katherine, laying a hand on his arm.

Benedict shoved her hand away, turning on her with equal contempt. “And you. Robert makes like he’s the Allesleys’ dog and you like you’re a bitch in…”

That Drew was nearer was the only reason his hand slapped hard into Benedict’s face before Robert’s did, hard enough to stagger him sideways, and Robert was there the second afterwards, grabbing hold of Benedict’s arm as Benedict made to draw his dagger, shoving him farther aside when he would have gone for Drew, ordering at him, “Stop it, Benedict!”

Red-faced with rage as well as from Drew’s blow, pulling against Robert’s hold, Benedict yelled, “He hit me!”

‘Half an instant before I would have,“ Robert said back, while seeing from the side of his eye that Mistress Dionisia and Dame Frevisse together were moving Katherine and Emelye away toward the wall.

‘You were in the wrong, Benedict,“ Ned said, coming to his other side, putting hand to his shoulder. ”Let it be.“

‘You saw him hit me!“ Benedict protested.

‘I saw you earn it,“ Ned returned.

Benedict jerked away from him and free of Robert, shoving between them, still intent on reaching Drew who, seemingly as ready for daggers-out as he was, moved to meet him. But Sir Lewis thrust into his son’s way and Robert, letting go the frayed hold on his anger, caught Benedict by the arm from behind and spun him around, knocked his hand away from his dagger hilt and seized him with both fists by his doublet’s front to shake him hard, once, and then again, saying furiously into his face, “Stop it. You hear me? Stop it!”

Benedict grabbed him by both wrists, trying to twist free and might have—they were not so far apart in size and strength—but Robert’s anger, outstripping even Benedict’s, made him for at least the moment the stronger, and keeping his hold, he dragged Benedict closer to him, saying between clenched teeth, “Stop it, you fool, or I’ll break your idiot neck.”

Then Ned and Gil and Master Durant were all there, Ned forcing them apart, saying low and rapidly at Robert, “Let him go. I’ll take him,” and, when Robert had loosed Benedict, Ned put himself between them, making Benedict back off a step, talking now at him as Gil and Master Durant drew Robert off, Gil saying, “Let be, sir. Let be. It’s enough for now.”

His rage already going sick and gray inside him, Robert let himself be herded aside, while assuring Gil and Master Durant he was done. Dame Claire had joined Dame Frevisse and Mistress Dionisia around Katherine and Emelye and three of the arbiters were talking at Sir Lewis and Drew, making sure with words that there would be no sudden flare of trouble from there.

And now Ned had Benedict with an arm around his shoulders friendliwise—though likely Benedict would have trouble breaking his grip if he tried—and was steering him toward the door to the hall, Benedict not resisting him, and Robert could have laughed miserably at how quickly the sudden ugliness was over. Over except for what there would be when next he and Benedict had to deal together.

Over except for when next he had to face Blaunche.

Chapter 14

Frevisse had gone through supper with the unease of watching a dogfight about to happen and hoping very much she would be somewhere else when it finally did. That Benedict would be the cause she had little doubt from watching him through the meal, seeing an edge of rancor behind his sullenness that had not been there before, must have grown through the day spent too close to everything he was hating and probably only made the worse by seeing Katherine and Drew together and apparently glad to be. So when finally his anger broke into the open and he looked likely to come to daggers out with Drew, she moved at almost the same moment as Mistress Dionisia to have Katherine and Emelye out of the way; and then it was over, almost as suddenly as it had started, with no more than snarls and snapping and a sudden backing off, like a dogfight where the dogs decided they didn’t want it after all, except that Benedict, being guided toward the hallward door by Master Verney, turned to say venomously back at Robert, “Give her away then, you coward! But if you think I’m ever going to apologize for any—”

‘Your apology,“ Robert cut him off, ”is the last thing anyone thinks worth the having.“

It was too angrily said. Benedict started a step back toward him but Master Verney said, warning, “Benedict,” and Frevisse saw by the flinch of Benedict’s eyes that he suddenly realized how many men—and Katherine—were looking at him; saw him start to wish that he was out of there and that he did not know how to do it well, so that all he could manage was to draw himself up straight, shake off Master Verney’s hand, and leave with what she guessed he meant to be a proud, stalking walk but was only stiff with offended youth.

Master Verney followed him out, leaving behind them an awkward silence that first one man and then another and then the rest set to filling with talk about anything except what had just past, their voices a little too loud, their words a little jumbled. Emelye began to gabble, too, but Mistress Dionisia shushed her and said to her and Katherine both, “We’ll go upstairs now.”

But Katherine said back, “Not yet,” and, smiling, went forward to join Robert, Sir Lewis and Drew where they were beginning to share regrets and apologies all around. They broke off for Drew to begin offering the same to Katherine who, smiling, thanked him while gracefully making little of the need for it.

Beside Frevisse, Dame Claire murmured, “I’m away to Lady Blaunche,” and Frevisse nodded, wondering if she should go, too, but Mistress Dionisia was telling Emelye with a pinch on the arm to make it clear, “Go make talk, too. Help Katherine.”

Rubbing her arm offendedly, Emelye tried, “But Benedict might need me,” casting her eyes the way he had gone, looking like a sick doe.

Mistress Dionisia, taking none of that from her, said tartly, “What Master Benedict needs is the flat of a hand hard along the side of his head, and if you mention him again tonight I’ll use the brush on more than your hair come bedtime.” But at the same time she looked to Frevisse for help and, less for Emelye’s sake than Katherine’s, Frevisse gave a nod of understanding and took Emelye by the arm and with her to Robert’s other side as Dame Claire slipped away to the parlor stairs. Not that Frevisse envied her going. If the choice was between being with Lady Blaunche and staying here, here was the better. By a very little.

Katherine was telling a story about a quarrel she and Benedict had had when they were younger—something that led to thorns in his shoes and honey in her hair—as if what had just passed was nothing more than that, and before she had done, she had brought even Robert to laughter, leaving little Frevisse need do but follow her lead in keeping the talk in easy ways, until the evening was at last seemingly back to where it should have been, not much before Mistress Avys came at her best silent servant’s glide into the room, made her way with downcast eyes to Mistress Dionisia standing aside near the stairway and whispered something in her ear. Mistress Dionisia in her turn came to Katherine and from behind whispered to her, to which Katherine briefly nodded and said a moment later to Robert, Sir Lewis and Drew, “I pray your pardon. I’m asked for. By your leave, I’ll withdraw?”

They gave their leave with assurances that they regretted doing so, she curtsied to them, they bowed to her, and with a warm smile particularly to Drew, she left, taking Frevisse and Emelye with her, Mistress Dionisia and Mistress Avys following after, out of the solar and up the stairs. Only when they were in the parlor, with Mistress Dionisia closing the stairway door behind them, did Katherine give way, flinging her hands out violently to either side as if to shove unseen things away from her, before grabbing up her too-full skirts and fleeing across the room to the far side of the settle, to turn at bay and declare, pointing a fierce finger at the bedchamber door, “I won’t go in there. Not tonight. I won’t!”

Mistress Avys hurried toward her, making hushing gestures and saying, “No need. She hasn’t asked for you. She didn’t even have the children brought to her tonight. It was Dame Claire said you might want rescuing. She said to use Lady Blaunche for an excuse.”

Katherine’s defiance dropped away into an open, aching wish to believe her. “Truly?” she asked. And began to cry.

What sleep Frevisse managed that night was broken sometime by another storm, lightning-driven and thunderous, rolling over the rooftops in the darkness and, later, near to dawn, by another one that was still rumbling away into the distance when she arose and went to set back one of the shutters to the coming day.

Dawn was barely at its gray beginning but the morning air to her deep-drawn breath smelled wonderfully of wet earth and young growing things and she leaned on the windowsill, beginning Prime silently without thought of waking Dame Claire to join her. They had not gone to pray in the chapel last night before bed and had agreed then they would not go this morning, either, the manor being so crowded full °f men. It was Sunday and there would surely be Mass said in the chapel by the village priest that they could go to with the family and meanwhile Frevisse’s private thought was that a little more sleep would do Dame Claire no harm. The brunt of Lady Blaunche’s misery had fallen on her yesterday and last night and there would have been worse if Lady Blaunche had come to hear of what had passed between Robert and Benedict but Dame Claire had forestalled that— for everyone’s sake as well as Lady Blaunche’s—by mixing a three-times-potent dose of valerian and borage into undiluted wine and insisting that she drink it all swiftly, at almost a single draught.

Even with that, Lady Blaunche had staved off sleep awhile, but when it finally came Dame Claire had assured Mistress Avys that she would sleep the night through. “And I wish half the morning, too,” she had added to Frevisse later, on their own way to bed, passing through the solar again where the men were still in talk. “But that’s too much to hope for.”

Frevisse’s own thought had been that at least Lady Blaunche’s drugged sleep would give Robert chance of a good sleep, too. For herself, she surely felt the better for her own rest, disturbed though it had been by the storms; but she was not ready—never ready—for another day of Lady Blaunche’s miseries and tried for now to hold her mind only to the simplicity of the spring dawn and Prime’s early prayers until behind her the rustle of mattresses told her Dame Claire and Nurse were waking, with the murmur of a prayer from Dame Claire and then Nurse saying with impatient surprise, “Here. What are you doing there?”

Frevisse swung around, with light enough now from the growing day to see Anabilla, the nurserymaid, sitting up from a huddle of blankets on the floor beside Nurse’s bed, rubbing her eyes and answering Nurse’s question sleepily with, “Master Fenner told me to.”

‘Master Fenner?“ Nurse threw back her covers and rose, reaching for her shift hung from the wall rail above her bed. ”What do you mean Master Fenner told you to?“ She dropped her shift swiftly over her head and reached for her gown on the same rail. ”He’d not want the children left alone all night. Get up.“

She prodded Anabilla with her foot and the girl shifted out of her blankets and to her feet in one deft movement, away from the foot, protesting the while, “He did!” She was fully dressed except for her apron folded neatly on top of a nearby stool and her shoes set under it. “After you’d gone to bed and the children were asleep but I wasn’t yet, he came in and said he’d…”

Outside, in the yard, a man yelled, harsh with alarm, whirling Frevisse back to the window. Dawn was swelling over the clear sky but much of the yard was still in shadow and in the time it took her to find the man in the darkness at the foot of the stairs down from the hall, Nurse and Anabilla with Dame Claire only a little behind them joined her in looking out. Even then she could not tell what the fellow was yelling for. There was nothing and no one else in sight…

Other men came spilling out the hall door above him, most less than half dressed, their shirttails loose, some without their hosen up, but all of them with some weapon in hand, mostly daggers…

Unless that was a shape at his feet that, yes, he was pointing at while he yelled too garbled and away from her for her to make out much of what he was saying but…

Frevisse pushed away from the window, past the other women and toward and out the door to their own stairs to the yard, meeting Robert coming from the children’s room, his hair disheveled, shrugging into his doublet as he came, his belt with its sheathed dagger in his hand. “What is it?” he demanded of her, starting down the stairs without waiting *°r answer. “All I could see was someone yelling.”

‘I don’t know,“ she answered, following. Her unthinking Pattern of dressing as soon as she rose from bed had her already gowned and veiled, able to go out, and she did, catching up her skirts and running well enough she was able to keep close at Robert’s back as he shoved in among the men crowded around whatever was the matter and therefore saw almost as soon as he did that it was someone lying sprawled on the cobbles. Saw, in the next moment, that it was Benedict. And that he was dead.