The Squire’s Tale (31 page)

Mistress Avys made a doubting sound that Master Geoffrey chose to take for agreement and turned from her to the bedchamber door, edging it slowly open the smallest fingerwidth through which he could peer. And froze, so suddenly and sharply still that Frevisse was already rising to her feet even before he gave a wordless cry, shoved wide the door, and broke across the room toward Lady Blaunche crumpled to the floor beside the prie-dieu.

Chapter 20

Mistress Avys screamed, shrill above anyone else’s outcry, but Gil, Master Skipton and Frevisse all moved more swiftly, reached Lady Blaunche barely after Master Geoffrey, Gil going down on his knees beside the clerk to help turn her carefully over, then crying out himself, his hand coming away bloody in the same moment Master Geoffrey sobbed, “Merciful God!” and held up a bloodied dagger.

Mistress Avys, clinging to the doorframe, began to scream in earnest but Dame Claire grabbed her and shoved her hard toward Mistress Dionisia, ordering, “Have her out and keep her out!”, before coming to push Frevisse, Master Skipton, and Master Geoffrey aside and kneel beside Gil who was gasping, “She’s stabbed herself. Dear God, look. She’s stabbed herself…”

‘She’s alive,“ Dame Claire said. ”Lift her to the bed,“ standing up and out of the way, gesturing to him and Master Skipton to do it because Master Geoffrey, still on his knees, had raised clasped hands and desperate eyes to the crucifix on the wall above the prie-dieu and was crying out prayers that were as surely needed as anything Dame Claire might do because Lady Blaunche might still be alive but there was dreadfully much blood soaked into the rush matting where she had lain, and as the men raised her, Frevisse went around the bed to its far side, jerked the covers away into a heap on the floor against the wall out of the way, leaving only the bottom sheet over the mattress, and was wrapping the bedcurtains out of the way around the bedposts as the men laid Lady Blaunche onto the bed in haste.

Now what she had done was plain to see. A slit in her gown below her left breast showed where she had driven the dagger in, with a wide, long soak of blood, dark on the gown’s blue, to show how much she had bled from it; and despite she was alive, she wouldn’t be for long, Frevisse judged with a sick sinking of heart, although Dame Claire was ordering at anyone, “Open the shutters. I want more light,” and rolling up her sleeves without taking her gaze from Lady Blaunche.

With Gil and Master Skipton just stepping back from the bed, and Mistress Dionisia still trying to draw Mistress Avys, wailing and useless, back from the doorway, it was Katherine who ran to pull open the shutters while Frevisse went to shove Mistress Avys fully out of the room with, “Enough. Go over there and pray,” pointing across the parlor at anywhere so long as it was away, adding, “Take her,” to Mistress Dionisia, who grimly did as Frevisse, wishing she was going with them, turned back to whatever else Dame Claire might need of her.

But even as she did, Dame Claire said with the despair that always came on her when there was no use in any of her skill, “Master Geoffrey, bring the crucifix. Quickly! Confess her.”

With a moan, the clerk lurched up from the prie-dieu and fumbled as if blind toward the crucifix on the wall.

“Quickly,”
Dame Claire cried and Frevisse ran to grab up the dagger, dropped by Master Geoffrey and kicked by someone into the middle of the floor, and flung herself to the bedside where Lady Blaunche had opened her eyes in a wide stare upward, her mouth gaping for air she was not finding. Frevisse held up the dagger by its bloodied blade above her face, where she had to see it, making blade and hilt and handguard into a cross above her, asking at her desperately, “Do you repent of all your sins and pray to God to receive your immortal soul?”

Lady Blaunche gasped, gasped again, choked with a jerking motion of her head that had to be a nod. And went still.

Mouth still gaped. Eyes still stared. But emptily. She was no longer there.

‘The baby,“ Dame Claire said and grabbed the dagger from Frevisse so quickly that only barely she let go in time not to be cut but she understood the frantic haste. With Lady Blaunche dead, the baby she was bearing would very soon, if not already, be dead, too, and if it was not baptized before it died, its immortal soul would be doomed to that outermost ring of Hell where souls unsaved but not greatly sinful were left for eternity untormented by anything but the worst torment of all—of never having hope of seeing the face of God. The Church’s law and all pity demanded attempt be made, since there was no hope of the unborn’s body, to save its soul, and that could only be done by…

With swift, brutal force Dame Claire grabbed up the front of Lady Blaunche’s gown, thrust the dagger through and ripped the cloth open in a wide gash to Lady Blaunche’s knees.

‘Water,“ she ordered, setting to do the same to the undergown. ”And towels.“

Gil and Master Skipton stayed standing as they were, not yet comprehending anymore than that Lady Blaunche was dead. Even Master Geoffrey, turned back from the wall without the crucifix, made no move. Only Frevisse did, going to the nearby table where pitcher and basin stood and a towel hung, ordering at Master Skipton on the way, “We need more water, more towels. Fetch them.” It was best to have men out of the way for this anyway. “Gil, guard the door that no one comes in here. Master Geoffrey, pray some more.”

Only when she had towel, basin and pitcher in hand and the men were obeying her did she realize Katherine was standing beside the window, frozen and staring at Lady Blaunche; and Frevisse, frightened for her because what was coming was something she should not see, snapped, “Katherine, go tend to Mistress Avys so Mistress Dionisia can come in here. We need her.”

Katherine turned a blank stare with horror to her instead of moving.

‘Go!“ Frevisse ordered more harshly and Katherine did, following Master Skipton and Gil out of the room, and she went on to Dame Claire who paused with dagger poised over Lady Blaunche’s bared belly and looked at her with sickened, fearing eyes, to which Frevisse, equally sickened and in fear, said, ”You have to.“

And Dame Claire turned back to Lady Blaunche’s body and did.

Made a long, sure-handed slice with the dagger point down the belly just left of the center line, the white flesh parting, opening to show the red flesh underneath. And made another dagger stroke, slicing through that…

A bare few minutes—that seemed to go on forever— later, it was over, the thing done.

Mistress Dionisia was there by then, tight-faced with the same effort not to be sick that Frevisse was fighting down but taking up a share of what needed doing, the three of them working together in grim silence, each of them knowing what was needed. There was nothing to be done about the smell of blood and filth except wait until the mattress could be taken away and herbs burned to purify the air, but Mistress Dionisia brought towels from a chest along one wall to sop up and wipe away as much blood as could be. Then Frevisse and Dame Claire lifted Lady Blaunche’s body and Mistress Dionisia brought a blanket from a chest at the foot of the bed to spread over the ruined mattress and, when Lady Blaunche was laid down again and straightened, they put more towels over the great wound to take whatever after-seepage there would be, pulled her gown closed over it, and bound another towel tightly around her belly to keep it as together as might be until needle and thread could be brought to stitch it closed and her body altogether cleaned and readied for burial.

By then there was a clutter of voices beyond the closed door to the parlor—Mistress Avys crying out things, men asking questions, Gil gruffly answering and still holding off anyone from coming in. But Robert and the priest must be let in soon, and Mistress Dionisia quickly brought another sheet to cover Lady Blaunche from neck to feet, hiding all that had been done, and then a pillow slip of fine linen that Dame Claire used to wrap up what there had been of the baby as tenderly as if it still lived and laid it—him—for now in the emptied basin that was all the cradle he would ever have.

But he would be buried with his mother and the both of them in consecrated ground because Frevisse and Dame Claire could testify that Lady Blaunche with her last breath had repented of her self-murder and that the baby had moved as Dame Claire lifted him free of his mother’s body for Frevisse to baptize with plain water and the necessary words—
In nomine Patre, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit— enough, in such desperate need, for his salvation before he ceased to be alive.

That was all the comfort they would have to offer Robert, Frevisse was afraid.

She could hear his voice among those outside the door now, questioning and frightened, and despite she could not hear the words, she knew there was no mercy in keeping him out any longer. They had made things as well as could be for him to see and she said to Mistress Dionisia, “Best you let Master Fenner and the priest come in now,” and to Dame Claire, stepped back from the bed after setting the basin beside Lady Blaunche’s body, “Best you sit, before you fall,” with a nod toward the chest at the foot of the bed, and wished she could say more—Dame Claire never took well the losing of someone in her care, whatever the cause— but Mistress Dionisia was opening the door to Robert.

He stood for a moment, not coming in. There was a crowd of people behind him that were probably not so many as they seemed to Frevisse but they somehow drew back from the opened door, suddenly silent and leaving him alone to this, and carefully, maybe wary of what he was going to see, surely wary with pain, he came in, with a look to Mistress Dionisia to shut the door behind him.

‘Until Father Laurence comes,“ he whispered as if his voice would rise to nothing more, and while she did, stood where he was before, slowly, slowly, he crossed to the bedside and stood looking down at the stillness that had been his wife. Stood looking with the numbness of someone looking at too much grief too suddenly, the numbness of someone taken so great a blow that there was no pain yet, no feeling at all.

But that would not save him even a little when finally the numbness went and the pain came in full force, and carefully, into his silence, Frevisse said, “She was aware enough, at the very last, to ask forgiveness.”

‘So Gil said.“ Robert drew a deep, shaken breath. ”The baby?“

‘Safe. Baptized. A son, if you want to name him.“

Robert took his eyes from Lady Blaunche’s death-smoothed face for the first time, to look at the small, carefully wrapped bundle beside her, and a little blankly said, “We hadn’t talked yet about… I’ll have to think. I…”

That was the moment pain began to awake in him. His eyes widened with it and his breath shortened as he turned to Frevisse to ask on a rising note of dread, “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell the children? How am I going to bring them to understand?”

‘It was despair,“ Frevisse said quickly. ”Benedict’s death was more than she could bear. She gave way.“

Robert’s face hardened. “Whoever killed Benedict just as surely killed her, killed the baby. Someone…”

A cautious rap at the door silenced him and there was a distracted time as Father Laurence came in and Dame Claire went to assure him Lady Blaunche had died in grace and Mistress Avys came held up between Katherine and Emelye, all of them tear-marred but Mistress Avys’ screaming worn out to wracking sobs. They circled to the bed’s far side and knelt across from Robert sinking to his knees at Lady Blaunche’s near side while Frevisse, nearer the bed’s foot and Dame Claire joined him, with Mistress Dionisia kneeling a little farther off as Father Laurence at the foot of the bed began prayers.

From beyond the open door to the parlor came the heavy sounds of a great many other people going down to their knees, too. Household folk with a right to be there, Frevisse supposed, but Gil had rightly kept anyone else from entering the bedchamber. Only those nearest Lady Blaunche in her life were here, save for her children—her living children and Benedict; but she would be with Benedict soon enough, leaving her living children to their grief because her own grief for their half brother had killed her.

Frevisse realized she was following her thoughts instead of praying and, startled, opened her eyes. Above her the priest was praying,
“Ne recorderis peccata mea, Domine, Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. ”
Do not remember my sins, Lord, When you will come to judge the age by fire. And with Dame Claire she responded,
“Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meaum.”
Guide, Lord, my God, in your sight my way. But she said it only by form. There was nothing of her mind behind it, she realized, a poor way of prayer at the best of times and worse now when there was such deep need.

But even as she thought that, while saying with the others,
“Requiem aeternam,”
she found she was looking at the long, bright swathe of Lady Blaunche’s blue gown trailing over the edge of the bed in front of her. There had not been time to undress the body. That was something her women would do with all else that would be needed to ready her for burial; for now, no one had even taken time to gather up her skirt fully out of sight under the sheet and so it was draped there, a graceful richness of fabric.

With a bloodstain in the wrong place.

Frevisse paused, took a backward step in her mind and looked at that thought again as intently as she was now staring at the bloodstain.

It was in the wrong place.

There had already been a great ruining of the gown with blood all down Lady Blaunche’s left side from where she had fallen after stabbing herself, and there had been more afterwards with what Dame Claire had had to do, but all that had been higher on the gown and more on its left side than anywhere. This blood was on the right side, near to the gown’s hem.