8 The Maiden's Tale by Frazer Margaret

Author:Frazer, Margaret [Frazer, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: __Fixed, Britain, Convent, England, Fiction, good quality scan, Great Britain, Henry VI; 1422-1461, Historical, History, Medieval, Mystery & Detective, Nuns, Traditional British, Women Sleuth, _BIG_FIXUP
ISBN: 9780709088516
Google: W_aUQQAACAAJ
Publisher: Robert Hale Limited
Published: 2009-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

It took a politic manuevering and probably longer than Bishop Beaufort wanted for Frevisse to wend her way among the crowd while trying to seem more interested in watching the dancing than actually going anywhere. She even accepted a wafer from a passing servant’s tray and nibbled at it as she went, until at last she was able to sidle in among the men and a few women presently gathered around Alice. Smiling, listening, hiding her urgency, she waited until at the end of the dance the little group began to disassemble, to flow apart as people did at gatherings like this, and in the shifting managed to say for only Alice to hear, “Bishop Beaufort wants to see you in the solar privately and soon.”

Alice, her smile as unwavered as if she were merely hearing something pleasant, laid a hand on her arm and murmured, “Keep with me, please.”

Much as Frevisse had done in coming to her, she eased, indirectly and unobviously, back toward the dais without ever being either ungracious or caught too long in any conversation with almost everyone they met. She was adroit at it and not until almost to the dais did they run aground on the broad impediment of a lady who should not have been wearing the plunge-necked, tawny-orange gown trimmed in black velvet that she was and who was determined, having the chance, to hold Alice in profoundest talk about how one found and kept such unusually skilled cooks as the Suffolk household had.

Alice listened and made answer and listened again with more patience than Frevisse wanted her to have, but there was purpose to it because as the dance ended and the floor began to clear, instead of the minstrels striking up for another dance, the tumblers from earlier in the evening came rollicking back into the lower end of the hall, gaudy and shouting and flinging themselves into their leaps, contortions, and tumbles with an abandon that startled everyone. There was no way not to notice them and, laughing and applauding, everyone did, including the broad matron, and Alice in the instant that the woman’s attention turned aside had hold of Frevisse’s arm and was drawing her away to the stairway door and through it. Nor did she pause, even to ask what this was about but, keeping Frevisse with her, went immediately on, into the solar where Bishop Beaufort was waiting for them beside a table where a single-wicked oil lamp, left burning for the evening on the chance someone would withdraw to here, spread a small brightness against the room’s crowding shadows. The little light and much shadows planed his features to a harshness that showed more openly than Frevisse had ever seen the possibilities there were in him, but Alice, perhaps already knowing that side of him well enough not to be taken aback, asked as she crossed to him, leaving Frevisse to make sure of the door, “What’s wrong?”

“Orleans,” Bishop Beaufort answered as directly. “Someone has tried to kill him.

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