The Bishop’s Tale by Margaret Frazer Read Free Book Online Page B

the day. For today, all of Ewelme was shutter-closed in the darkness of mourning, and her aunt’s bedchamber and the parlor would remain so for another month at least. But for the moment Frevisse and Dame Perpetua had the parlor to themselves.
     
    In the band of chill sunlight she had let in, Frevisse sat down on a stool across from Dame Perpetua, with cushions from the window seat to kneel on, and began Prime’s prayers. Since it was Sunday, the prayers were elaborated from their everyday patterns, but the core remained the same.
     
    “Domine Deus omnipotens, qui ad principium huius diei nos pervenire fecisti: tua nos hodie salva virtute; ut in hac die ad nullum declinemus peccatum, sed semper ad tuam justitiam faciendam nostra procedant eloquia, dirigantur cogitationes et opera.”
     
    Lord God almighty, who has brought us to this day’s beginning: save us by your power, that in this day we turn aside into no sin, but always go toward your justice; turn our words, our thoughts, and works toward your will.
     
    By God’s will. For God’s will. In God’s will.
     
    But Chaucer, who had been more near to her in mind than anyone else in her life, as dear to her as her own parents, was dead. By God’s will, she would never see or hear or laugh or speak with him again in this life that might last, for her, so many more years.
     
    She was crying again. The tears dropped down on her folded hands, warm against her cold skin.
     
    But Prime wove around her its comfort and hope for the day. Her tears were done by the time they finished the office, and she pressed her eyes dry with the heel of her hand before raising her head to smile at Dame Perpetua, not in apology—there was nothing shameful in crying—but in assurance that she was ready to go on with the day. With the wry humor she had shared with Chaucer, Frevisse thought what small sense it would make if she worried over Aunt Matilda’s frailty and then fell apart herself. Simple crying was a safeguard against that; it eased the tight band of her grief and let her face the day more coherently.
     
    “Dame Frevisse?”
     
    She turned to see who was speaking to her from the parlor doorway, then rose quickly. “Robert!” She held out her hand for him to come in. The changes she had glimpsed in Robert Fenner yesterday were even more apparent now that she saw him face-to-face. He was a few inches taller than their last meeting, and his boy’s lean frame had filled out into a young man’s. But he was still Robert, with his engaging, open smile, and he came to bow to her with the same assured competence she remembered in him.
     
    “I was hoping to talk with you sometime before you left,” she said. “How goes it for you with Sir Walter? How have you been?”
     
    “He’s no worse out of the ordinary.” Robert smiled. As a dependent relation of Sir Walter Fenner, Robert was in service to him from necessity rather than choice. “Aside from the fact that he has plans for my marriage, I’m managing well enough.”
     
    He said it lightly, but not quite lightly enough.
     
    “Your marriage?” Frevisse asked. “You’re of age and you were never his ward, so how does it come about that he should be making your marriage for you?”
     
    “He has a well-landed cousin, a widow who has taken a fancy to me, and if I have any hope of a life above cleaning other people’s pigstys, which is what Sir Walter will break me to if I refuse, I’ll marry Blaunche the haunch when I’m told to.”
     
    “Oh, Robert!”
     
    “But—” Robert held up a hand against her commiseration. “Life isn’t doing well by him, either. Lord Fenner recovered from what was supposed to be his final illness— just when Sir Walter could all but feel the lordship in his hands—and now is looking like to live another twenty years.” Robert managed to hold his brimming laughter to a wide grin.
     
    Well able to imagine impatient, ambitious Sir Walter’s reaction to that turn of fate,