The Bishop’s Tale Read Online Free PDF

grieving until tomorrow had to be faced. But first there was this supper to be endured, and now, amid the talk of the poor harvest, he asked her directly, “How are matters at your nunnery? Were you able to save any of the. harvest?”
     
    Careful to keep her voice neutral, revealing nothing but information and politeness, Frevisse answered, “Perhaps enough to see us through until next year if we’re very spare with it.” She should have stopped there, but honesty made her add, “And perhaps not if we need to give to the villagers, as we did last year.” Then, betrayed by the need to know, she asked, “Will there be any wheat brought in from abroad? How were the French harvests?”
     
    “France went much the way we did, except in the extreme south, which is of no use to us,” Bishop Beaufort answered readily. Below the Loire was French-held territory, where English rule did not run. “There is some dealing with the Hanse at present to bring wheat in from the Baltic east where the harvests have been good, we hear.”
     
    In the urgency of the matter—life or death for those who lacked money to buy wheat at prices inflated by the scarcity—Frevisse forgot her resolve to speak sparingly. If anyone present knew these things, it would be Bishop Beaufort. Leaning toward him, she asked, “And in the meantime will there be efforts to hold prices down here in England?”
     
    The bishop paused in spooning up his next mouthful.
     
    “Word has gone out from the Council to every town to do as much as they can toward that end.”
     
    That was a politician’s answer. Frevisse’s politeness slipped a little. She demanded rather than asked, “How much toward that end do you think they’ll do?”
     
    “Frevisse, dear, have you tried one of these cakes?” Aunt Matilda gestured for a servant to hold out to her a plate with small white cakes studded with raisins.
     
    Frevisse began to shake her head, recognizing the tactic her aunt had employed frequently whenever Frevisse and Chaucer would fall into one of their cheerful, complex arguments over some matter Aunt Matilda had thought unseemly for the occasion. With abrupt meekness, and anger at herself for being more bold than she should have, Frevisse said, “Thank you, aunt,” and turned her attention to one of the cakes. The conversation shifted to the question of how many and who would come to the funeral, set for the day after tomorrow.
     
    But when she glanced up once toward Bishop Beaufort a while later, he was gazing at her with even more of an assessing look than he had had before.
     
    Chapter 4
     
    Aunt Matilda rose the next morning still gray with grief, and Alice, who had shared her mother’s bed, showed her own weariness around her eyes. Frevisse and Dame Perpetua, with their hurried journey’s ache and weariness still in them, had slept on the servants’ truckle beds, while the servants and Alice’s lady-in-waiting slept on straw-filled mattresses, all now pushed out of the way and out of sight under the tall bed.
     
    For the two nuns, the morning preparations were simple: they were washed and dressed and their wimples and veils neatly pinned in place while Alice’s lady-in-waiting was still combing out and braiding her lady’s hair before dressing her. With hardly three words said between them, they drew aside to stand out of the way.
     
    Frevisse, watching the bustle and chatter around her cousin and unnaturally silent aunt, remembered Chaucer once saying that men who are tired grow quiet, while women grow talkative. Aunt Matilda had clearly passed weariness to the edge of exhaustion. While laying out her lady’s black gown for the day, Aunt Matilda’s woman, Joan, in a tone only a servant of long standing would dare to use, said abruptly, “You’ve no business being out and about today, my lady. No one expects it of you. There’s people enough to see to what needs doing.”
     
    “But the guests. Thomas would want—”
     
    Alice cut