We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (35 page)

During this interview, I said very little. Yet here, I felt bound to remind her that there was no more money from that source. This I did with equanimity, knowing that my dower was ample for myself and for my babe.

‘And the gentleman?’ Arrogantly sounded, this—she is of no account, likewise he is of no account, but marry, let us have his name, and see how my poor house may benefit thereby.

I thought of Elysande. I had learned my lesson well. I shook my head. I even smiled a little. Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, Knight of the Bath, Earl of Cambridge, Duke of Gloucester. Hidden from me behind the edge of war. Mine. Mine for a little space. Within my heart for ever.

I said naught, but looked pleasant, and Dame Johanna’s eyes began to slide away, as they ever did.

‘Daughter or son, I wonder?’ she said, surprisingly. I could not know what went on in her mind, and even when she mused, ‘You may bear a wench—when is your time?’ I saw naught of significance. I answered: ‘In the spring,’ and we parted from each other, both wondering and neither wise.

I went down to the scriptorium, passing by where some of the lay sisters were spinning, under the eyes of Dame Bridget. She walked among them, face vacant save for a glower, while the younger ones tittered behind her back. Madame Brygge, the old corrodian, worked industriously on a shift for herself. Deaf as a stone, she was unconscious of the maddening chirr-r that rose and fell like the wings of a giant imprisoned moth, or of Bridget’s voice. Adelysia sat numbly by the window, her fingers limp about the distaff. Misery ringed her like a nimbus. I passed on to see Dame Joan. In my departing ears I could hear Dame Bridget, strangely vigorous that day. ‘Spin! curse you all! Spin!’

So they span.

Joan was sighing over some bills.

‘Baw! I can’t read what last I writ,’ she declared mourningly.

‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing.

‘Red herrings,’ she gloomed. ‘Four kemps of oil and salt fish. Three pound, six pence.’

‘In beef and eggs,’ I read out. ‘From St Michael, to St Simon and Jude. Ten shillings and three ha’pence. That’s a lot of victuals, Joan.’

‘There speaks the Prioress!’ said she, in a rage. ‘Dame, Dame, you run me into debt! How shall my pocket feed such hearty wenches? Fat, fat you all are! Am I fat?’ she demanded. ‘Is Gertrude fat? You might play tabor on her ribs. You could stop a door-draught with Edyth. Are you fat, mistress?’

‘Yea, Joan,’ I said, with a little smile. ‘Behold me.’

Her temper died at once.

‘Do you prosper, child?’ she asked. ‘No fevers, sweatings, dreams?’ She hoisted my skirt to see my ankles, pursed her mouth and nodded judiciously. Then she prodded my belly. ‘Leaps he lively, the lusty lord?’

‘Nay,’ I said, puzzled.

‘Then, mayhap he’s a lazy lord,’ she said, passing kindly. ‘What? Weeping anon? Faugh!’ she said, dabbing at the blot I had made on her household book. ‘What a running river I have about me! That Adelysia... and you, who I thought might cheer us with tales o’ London, you’re dolorous as a bereft ewe-lamb. I’ll need to rewrite this page.’

‘I’m not always sad,’ I said, choking. ‘We’ve laughed together. When I showed you the old basse-danse, and Bridget caught us...’

‘Nay! Nay!’ said she, with a clumsy twirl. ‘I’m a cross creature.’

‘Let me repair the writing,’ I said. You are not cross, Joan, I thought. No more than is Gertrude, or Agatha. All, as Adelysia said, like little dogs barking at one another, little children quarrelling. And God has preserved you from the sin of accidia. I don’t have
l’accidie
, she had told me, grinning.
Pardieu
! I live too much in this world to be deranged by such unearthly pangs. For good Dame Joan was a businesswoman. All the convent hinds were afraid of her. She bullied one James Mustarde, supposed to be solely employed in tending the hogs. Each slaughter-day merciless Joan had him boiling up vats of lard for the tallow dips which she sold to the monks at Fountains, herself riding over the fell on an old dun mare to barter with the cellarer. It was a charitable act, she said, in expiation. It saved the good brothers much trouble, and gave them more time for prayer. None the less, she drove a sharp bargain. I often wondered what the bishop would say about it, likewise her manner of accosting travellers on the moorland road, crying: ‘Has your belly canker, good sirs? Take a root of King’s Clover. Madame, your face is yellowish. Try my Corn Campion, blessed by the Baptist. Lemon Thyme for lung-rot! And a farthing-worth of fennel seed for fasting days!’

She was totting her own secret hoard, managing all the time to keep an eye on me as I wrote, to see I did it properly.

‘A clerkly hand, yours,’ she said musingly. ‘There is a prayer that Brother Tom wants copying. Think you...’

‘Certes, Joan, I’ll do it,’ I said, smiling again.

“I shall but take a quarter fee,’ she said, all hasty. ‘By St Loy! I was forgetting.’ She fumbled among a dozen great rusted keys for her waist pouch. I felt the press of cold coin in my hand.

‘For your threadwork,’ she said, almost apologetically. ‘The Abbot was well pleased. He had never seen Our Lady’s monogram wrought so fine. Had it not been for the one slipped stitch he would have hung it in his own Chapel.’

I was warmed, more than I could say. Proud, too, to think of my work at Fountains, acknowledged by those grim, quiet men. I thought of all the good linen swaddlings I might buy for the babe. Loyalty’s blue, a princely hue...

‘Mayhap your lord will come soon to see you,’ she said slyly. ‘For I fancy he
is
a lord, and you a lady, once, at court.’

Did she taunt me? Nay, not Joan. Did she expect an answer? Did she think me mad, never to speak of him? to have no pittance from him, the father of my child? Did she deem him dead? And with that thought, the snow started again, silently swirling, each flake a ghost, a white flame in the greyness. Did she deem him dead, in truth?

‘God’s nails!’ cried Joan, and clapped a hand over her mouth, slipped gabbling down her beads in swift penitence. ‘I pray you, Madame, cease that crying!’

‘It’s Christmas,’ I said.

‘Holy and joyous season!’ she cried. She marched me to the window. ‘Here! Watch for the minstrels!’

I stood against the glass. Cold wind eddied about my face. And in the embrasure, with carven grin, was a little stone monk, his features rugged under my hand. The chill, carved faces, and music in the wind, a cold song ringing, rising high, an ice that burned as it froze. He was dancing, dancing with Katherine of Desmond. So agile and gracious, so light in the dance. The velvet of his doublet was a dark fire. His sombre eyes gleamed. Once, I saw him laugh—it pleased her, she looked at him as if she thought him pleasing indeed, and I was not jealous, for she was his good friend, and widowed, and used cruelly—a husband headed, and two little knaves, ah, what, what had he said, all white and red? The shedding of infants’ blood? Those who do such... what then? For my life, I could not remember, though all his words lurked ever on the lip of my mind. I could only watch him, hearing the plangent lute, feeling again the gallery’s icy cold which turned to such heat, such flowering warmth, such madness, at one touch of my lord’s hand. I saw the sway and shimmer of gay Edward’s poisonous court, far below me on the rose-painted floor. And eyes looked on me from the darkness, eyes like no other eyes in the world, and there was the feel of velvet cloth, the bruise of a heavy jewel crushed on my breast. And Richard’s arms, and the Blessed Mass of Christ, holy and joyous season. And despair, to ring me round. The music fell faster, and the snow sang full strongly, I could distinguish each instrument now, rebec and reed, tambourin and harsh cromorne, but he was gone, and so was Countess Katherine, and the rose-decked floor laid waste, a white wilderness, and he was gone, I knew him gone, and felt Joan’s arm, blacksmith-brawny, about my shoulder, red drink roaring down my gullet.

‘Don’t spill it,’ she said. ‘’Tis of my best. Good Clary wine.’

‘They gave his mother that,’ I heard myself say. ‘Each night before sleep. A cure for childbed vapours.’

‘Whose mother?’ said Joan crossly. ‘Drink.’

‘He’s dead,’ I cried. ‘Hear you the music?’

They were playing, strong and sprightly.

Beauty, who keeps my heart,

Captive within thine eyes.

I rolled my head in my hands. The music was within.

‘You hear it, Dame?’

‘Yea, the music,’ she said, releasing her grip, moving away. ‘They must have crept through the snow. Now Madame has them at their craft, wet clothes and all. Good fellows, too,’ she said, tapping her foot. ‘
Belle, qui tiens ma vie
!’ She sang, out of tune. ‘How I love Christmas!’ she said..

I was reeling. ‘I must lie down,’ I said. The words drifted away, unheard.

‘Two moons ago, you promised me the receipt for hypocras.’ She had her roll ready, pen poised, saying we might as well pleasure ourselves at Christmas, if ever. It would do Gertrude good, Gertrude who was frail and old, and I must lie down, and weep, fully, without the fear of chiding.

‘Later, later, Dame.’

‘Hypocras, child,’ she said firmly. ‘Haven’t I given you of my best Clary?’ A bargain was a bargain to Joan.

‘
Aqua vitae
, 5 ounces.’ How slow she wrote, while he lay dead by sword or bludgeon! ‘Pepper, two ounces.’ There was poison in the knot garden, swift and sure.

‘Two ounces ginger.’ The dreadful unknowing, not daring to know.

‘Cloves, of the same.’ He was dead. Dead, yet dancing?

‘Grains of Paradise.’ The quill broke, she fumbled and clicked her tongue.

‘Ambergris, five grains.’ Costly, costly. Was the King dead too?

‘Musk, two grains.’ To perdition with the King.

‘Infuse for a night and a day.’

Joan sighed. ‘How much sugar? How well they play! London lads were ever best, yet these were trained in France, that I warrant. By St Loy! I can’t afford this drink. Not unless I teach young Mustarde threadwork too. How say you, mistress, if we...’

‘You say they’re from London?’ Trembling breath, and hands gone witless, flying to my throat, my heart.

‘Fresh from London, gossip-choked,’ she said, and may have laughed at me a little, I did not stay to see.

There was one tall curly-haired boy, and the only one who did not snigger behind hands at the sight of me, young, unwed, swelling with child in a nunnery. I knew that they made songs about such as I. He was however kind, polite, and winked only once towards the ribald cheer that rose from his fellows as I, unthinkingly shameless, pulled him into an alcove, pleading, begging.

‘Worth a kiss, is it?’ he asked agreeably.

‘I would hear of his Grace the King,’ I said, trembling hard, and, so that there should be no confusion: ‘His Grace King Edward Fourth, and his family.’

He gazed at me frankly. ‘Stands the case so?’ he said, with a little more respect, and I knew that he thought me one of Edward’s lemen, and I wanted to laugh at the incredible thought, but checked myself, for the words from this young lutanist’s tongue were more priceless than all the jewels round Elizabeth Woodville’s throat, more precious than any of Joan’s costly hypocras, and yet, my wits knew not how to mine for them. I looked up at him, saw his blond curls dabbled with melted snow, his merry, shining eyes, saw him not. His mouth took mine then, cool, ale-fresh, hearty. The kiss marked me, emboldened me, like the opening phrase of a song. Softly I asked him: ‘How should Earl Warwick loose so royal a captive?’

He laughed, his contempt veiled in kind sadness.

‘Dame, I would not for the Kingdom of Heaven,’ he said, and stopped and laughed anew. ‘Nay, that’s too high a price. For Heaven’s estate, and that only, would I trade my condition for yours. ’Tis passing sad. To dwell here at the world’s end. To have September’s news for Christmas!’

O God! We were interrupted then by the nuns. They came into the frater with a great commotion, Dame Bridget harrying them. The minstrels watched, grinning covertly.

‘Accursed, accursed. To leave off spinning thus!’

‘I’ve spun enough,’ said Agatha rudely. ‘’Tis Christmas. I’ll hear Vespers, then I’ll enjoy myself.’

Fiercely gay, she tripped on by, touched the lute in passing as one might stroke a baby’s face. Its owner stood splay-legged and watched Bridget, reflectively chewing his top lip.

‘She’s poison, that one,’ he remarked. He plucked a chord.

‘Like marsh grass is my lady’s countenance,
Both wild and sour...’

‘I kissed you,’ I said desperately. ‘The news now. The London news, for Jesu’s love.’

He was looking this time at Adelysia, who came tapping, beads swinging to that light, quick tread.

‘A special tune for you, holy fair,’ he cried.

She smiled wanly. The chaplain had gone to York for Christmas, to the house of his benefactor, a wealthy merchant taylor, leaving the fat gabbler to say all the offices alone, much to his displeasure. Adelysia therefore could have flung herself into devotion; should have been merry, heart-free. She was not, however. Tortured, heretic, solitary, Adelysia loved. I could have spared her a thought. I, who had once comforted the lonely, the tormented—yea, dear Lord! could have halved her burden. I have often been sorry.

‘The King does well, then?
And
all his henchmen?’ Mad, I was willing to buy news with another kiss, but his eyes were straying again, this time over my shoulder. I felt a grasping at my gown and had no need to turn, but saw the minstrel’s face, a little taken aback. Edyth, so thin and green, could shake one’s soul at times, with her unearthliness. And she wanted something.

‘Yea, what is it?’

‘’Tis hard,’ she said, her usual fashion. Hard it is, I thought, to bend to your prattling while news of my love is so near. But the well was solid ice, she said. She was strong but not that strong. Dame Joan was roaring for water. Edyth had been prodding for an hour.

‘I’ll do it,’ the minstrel said. We went out into the snow. Black ice lay on the lake. The stream was patched over with the same. Here and there a trout, dark and sullen, rose thrustingly to the brittle surface. White and silver the reeds, and stiff as swords. Was he safe? happy? alive? I stood mute while the minstrel drove his staff at the well’s hard depths. Edyth held his legs as he leaned dangerously over the side.