The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  "I'm just so tired of change," Alice sighed. "I want things just to settle into one way and stay there. I get so tired of all the things I must not say aloud. Thank you for being someone I can freely say things to."

  Frevisse tried to content herself with that, but between the whiles when Alice wanted her close company and needed her to listen, the days stretched long. She read much, but she thought, too, and the longer she was at Wingfield the more there was to think on and little of it was pleasant, knowing that even if Alice said nothing more about her fears, they must still be in her, with nothing Frevisse could do to help her, save listen while she talked of lesser things.

  And then word came that the priest John Squyers was dead.

  Frevisse was in the solar with Alice and some of her women when the crowner's man brought the message. To Alice's taut questions he was able to say no more than that the priest had been killed by some of his own people, that word of it had been brought to the crowner who was sending word on to her while he readied to go to Alderton. Alice thanked him, sent him away with one of her women to see that he was fed and rested, and sent another of her women to, "Find Nicholas Vaughn and say I want to see him."

  Her order to him when he came was equally short. She told him what the crowner's messenger had said, then, "Go there and find out what happened. Take men with you."

  He answered her with a bow and left. Frevisse watched Alice watching him leave, and said, "You put a great deal of trust in him."

  "I do," Alice granted. "I can't decide if he's more the younger brother I never had, or the son there might have been if I'd had a child by Salisbury." She laughed at herself. "But if he had been either of those things, he'd not be free to serve me so well, and that would be a loss. He's a man without family or any ties except to this household. That, and that he's sharp-witted make him valuable. I've deeded him a steady income from various properties, but no lands of his own, to keep him free to go on serving me."

  Free to serve her? Or bound to it, having small other choice? Frevisse wondered.

  Three days later, in the warm evening after supper, Alice sent most of her women to walk in the gardens but chose to stay inside herself, in the solar off the great hall, playing at chess with John while Sister Margrett prompted him in ways to win. Alice laughingly protested but allowed it. Across the room, one of her women played in a small, pleasant way on a psaltery, plucking notes lightly into the quiet beyond John's laughter and Alice's feigned protests; and Frevisse, watching the game for a time, made a small prayer that this while of ease would draw out through the whole evening, for all their sakes.

  She was restless herself, though, and wandered the room. The solar was a large room, meant for the gathering of family apart from the more general life of the great hall. It was also newly made, from the glazed green and russet floor tiles to the plastered patterns of the pargetted ceiling. One tall, stone-mullioned window looked onto a wall-enclosed corner of the gardens; two others faced the foreyard and its gateway. A wide fireplace on the inner wall was carved around with the leopard heads of the de la Pole arms, and if the several chairs and various tables had been made in England the work had been by French craftsmen, Frevisse thought. There should have been tapestries on the cream-yellow walls but they would have been moved when the household last left and had not come back with Alice.

  All in all, it was a rich and gracious room, presently so at peace with quiet music and laughter that almost there might have been nothing amiss in all the wide world—nothing to weigh on the mind but the day's simple wending toward bed and a night's sound sleep. As she wandered the room, unable to settle, Frevisse deeply wished that were true.

  She paused to run her hand along the curved and polished arm of a cross-legged chair sitting between the windows overlooking the foreyard, wondering, as she had wondered before, how much of this room's pleasant wealth had been stolen out of France. An ungracious thought but not an unreasonable one. A great deal of French wealth and goods had flowed into England on the tide of victories that followed King Henry V's new-beginning of the war thirty-five years ago. Only when the profits of war had given way to the costs of peace and the hard business of governing a ruined country back to prosperity—only then had the lords begun to turn against that war. The lords who had made the most profit from it and now no longer did. Not that the war would be a problem for them much longer, given the speed at which Normandy was being lost, Frevisse thought.

  A call from the gateway, then the sudden sound of horses clattering into the yard drew her the two paces needed for her to see out the window. From across the room, Alice asked, "What is it?" but Frevisse hesitated over her answer. The evening gloaming was deep enough in the walled yard that she could make out men and horses—too many of them to be merely bringing a message—and that there were servants coming out to meet them but not who . . .

  "The man you sent to find out about the priest. I think he's returned," she said.

  "Nicholas Vaughn," Alice said. "John, I fear we must pause the game while I talk with him. It shouldn't take long." She was rising from her chair as she said that but paused to lean over the game board and add, mock-sternly, "And no moving of any pieces while I'm not looking."

  "The way she used to do when she played her father," Frevisse said.

  Alice laid a hand on her breast, humbly bowed her head, and said, with a preacher's sententiousness, the old proverb, " 'Things past may be repented but not undone.' " Then she fixed John with a stern stare and added, "So if you don't do it, you won't have to repent it."

  He laughed, and she laughed with him and turned toward the door to answer the knock there with the order to come in. Her steward did, bowed, and said, "My lady, Nicholas Vaughn is returned with someone he says he would have you . . . talk with."

  The pause was small but there. So was Alice's, before she ordered, "Let them come in."

  Master Thorpe paused again, as if wanting to say more but uncertain if he should.

  "What?" Alice asked.

  Master Thorpe flickered his gaze toward John and the other women. "You might want to do this ..."

  He hesitated, not sure how far beyond bounds he ought to go but Alice said, "Without others here?"

  "It might be best, my lady."

  With every trace of ease and pleasure gone, Alice said, her words quick and clipped, "Sister Margrett, would you take John to his chamber, please. Agnes, you may go, too. The other women should come in from the garden now. See to it."

  They all stood up, Sister Margrett and Agnes curtsying, John making a small bow, his disappointment all over his face though he said nothing as Sister Margrett took his hand. Master Thorpe stood aside to let them leave, gave a glance at Frevisse still standing beside the window because she had been given no leave to go with the others, then withdrew himself.

  "Alice," Frevisse began.

  But curtly, crisply Alice said, "Just be here with me."

  There was a momentary silence then that ended with the scuffle of men outside the door, not in struggle but as if too many were there and trying to sort themselves out, until Nicholas Vaughn came in, followed by two other men shoving a fourth one roughly between them, his arms tied behind his back and his wrists together. When he stumbled from their last hard shove, they made no attempt to catch him, and he went to his knees as Vaughn bowed to Alice, saying, "This fellow was at Flint after Hampden was killed, my lady. Now he was at Alderton, asking questions. I thought you might want to ask him some in return."

  By then the bound man, still on his knees, had straightened himself and raised his head, and Frevisse only barely caught herself back from an exclaim. He was dirty and disheveled, with several days' worth of beard and altogether more ill-kept than she had ever seen him, but she knew him.

  So did Alice, because after an instant that Frevisse suspected was as startled as her own, she ordered, "Nicholas, you stay. You others may go. Leave him and go. My thanks."

  The men, clearly confused by her sudden order,
bowed and withdrew, and when the door was closed behind them, Vaughn said, sounding uncertain, "My lady?"

  Rather than answering him, Alice said, "Master Noreys."

  "My lady," Joliffe returned in dry-throated echo of Vaughn. He looked past her to Frevisse. "Dame Frevisse."

  "What were you doing in Alderton?" Alice demanded.

  Joliffe tilted his head toward Vaughn. "As he said. Asking questions."

  "Why?"

  Joliffe shrugged one shoulder and gave a smile made somewhat uneven by a scab-stiffened cut on one side of his mouth. "To learn things?" he offered. "Why was your man there?"

  "My priest had been killed. I wanted to know more about it."

  "There you are. The first thing I heard when I rode into this Alderton was that a priest had been killed. How could I not be curious and ask questions?"

  "Why were you in Alderton at all?" Vaughn demanded. And added to Alice, "He won't say, despite I've asked him."

  "Which is hardly reason," Joliffe said, mockingly aggrieved, "to handle me as if I were guilty of something. If I'd killed the priest, I'd not have been there asking questions about it, would I? Could I have these ropes off now?"

  Vaughn looked at Alice. He openly wanted her refusal, but she nodded for him to do it, and he moved behind Joliffe to obey. Apparently not minded to waste good rope by cutting it, he took his time undoing the knots. Alice did not tell him to hurry, and Joliffe kept quiet until he had done. That was notable, Frevisse thought, knowing his fondness for words.

  Vaughn pulled the rope away and Joliffe s arms fell free. He stiffly made to rise, but Vaughn put a heavy hand on his shoulder, keeping him to his knees. Cradling one arm in the other, tenderly rubbing a rope-grazed wrist, Joliffe shrugged from under his hand and said at Alice, "May I get off my aching knees? Your men have already used me somewhat roughly."

  "When I told my men to take him, he decided to make a fight of it," Vaughn said.

  "That wasn't well-bethought, Joliffe," Frevisse said dryly.

  "My lady, he didn't say please."

  Vaughn drew sharp breath to make reply, caught himself, and instead said at Alice, "Gyllam and Bowen have bruises that match his. Symond has a cut cheek. He handled us no worse than we handled him."

  And far less worse than Vaughn wanted to handle him, Frevisse guessed.

  "Besides," said Joliffe, "he didn't order me killed, so I shouldn't complain too much. Of course if he had ordered me killed, I'd not be able to complain at all." He took on a cheerful tone. "So maybe I've no grounds to complain at all."

  "Get up," Alice snapped.

  While he did, slowly, as if he did truly ache, Frevisse said, "Joliffe, this is gone past playing games. You aren't going to talk your way out of this. Why not simply answer straightly?"

  "I don't remember the question?"

  Vaughn still held the ropes in one hand. His other hand closed into a fist that he looked as if he'd very much like to use. Alice, her impatience growing, snapped, "Master Noreys!" Frevisse, impatient at all of them, took up her own half-drunk goblet of wine from a nearby table and crossed the room to hand it to Joliffe, deliberately putting herself between him and Vaughn while she did.

  "Drink," she ordered.

  He took the goblet, needing both hands to hold it, swollen and clumsy as they were from being bound, and drank with a readiness that told his need. Finished, he gave the emptied goblet back to her and said, unmocking, "My thanks, my lady."

  Frevisse turned to Alice. Carefully, quietly, hoping to keep angers down, she said, "We've trusted Master Noreys before this. Let him sit. Let's all sit and talk this through as if we still trusted him, until we know we can't."

  Before Alice could answer that, Vaughn said, insisting, "The thing is, my lady, he was at Flint, too."

  "After Hampden's death," Joliffe returned. "As were you. Or were you there before his death? And why would I be hanging about if I'd had anything to do with his death? Or this priest's?"

  "Because you hadn't found out whatever you wanted."

  "And I was more likely to find it out after they were dead than before and therefore I killed them?" Joliffe said back.

  For all his tongue was quick as ever, he looked ready to drop where he stood, but Alice did not offer to let him sit and without her leave he could not. Frevisse asked, "How were these men killed?"

  Vaughn looked to Alice. She nodded for him to answer and he said, "Hampden is said to have been killed by accident by brawlers outside a tavern. The priest was killed by a rout of his own people. They pulled him out of his house, beat him, and cut off his head. I'm sorry, my lady," he added to Alice as she and Frevisse crossed themselves. "I learned little else. I wanted to have him ..." He jerked his head at Joliffe. "... away before the crowner came. Please you, my lady, may I know when have you had cause to trust him?"

  Alice hesitated, then said, "Three years ago. At the time of the duke of Gloucester's death. He helped me in a matter then. Helped us," she amended, including Frevisse with a nod.

  "It would help," Joliffe said quietly, "if you trusted me now. And let me go."

  "It would likewise help," Alice returned, "if you trusted me and told me why you're interested in these men's deaths."

  "I wasn't. I was interested in the men alive."

  "Why?"

  Joliffe gave her a crooked smile but no answer.

  Alice's face tightened with anger. She glanced toward Vaughn standing tautly ready for whatever she might order. It said something to the good about him that he had held back from doing worse to Joliffe than he had, but he looked more than willing to change that if Alice gave him leave, and Alice looked near enough to doing that. Frevisse, unsure how much her presence would hold Alice back if Joliffe irked her further, said with a calm she did not feel, "May we all at least agree that none of us are pleased to have these men dead?"

  They all three looked at her. "What?" said Alice.

  "It would be a common ground we could begin on," Frevisse said. "That none of us wanted these men dead."

  "Of course I didn't want them dead," Alice snapped.

  "Nor I," Joliffe said.

  "And neither of you are satisfied their deaths are only from mischance?"

  "If there was only the one death or the other," Alice said. "I could accept mischance was all it was. But both? I have to doubt."

  "And you, Master Noreys?"

  "I have my doubts, yes."

  "So if we are willing to consider they may have been murdered—"

  Vaughn interrupted, "It was the priest's own people who killed him."

  Saying it almost before she thought it, Frevisse asked, "But was it all by their own doing? Or did someone goad them on to do it?" That was almost-past-belief unlikely, but if it served to keep Alice, Joliffe, and Vaughn talking, then she was willing to sound a fool, and she went on to Alice and Joliffe both, "But if neither of you wanted them dead, then who did? If you didn't send to have them killed, my lady, and if it wasn't by your doing, either, Master Noreys, then who would have interest enough in them being dead to have them killed?"

  Alice and Joliffe exchanged questioning looks. Each seemed to hope the other had answer to that. Having drawn them a step off from being open adversaries, Frevisse went on, grasping at possibilities, "Or if you've no thought of who, then why would someone want them dead? Joliffe, you're unwilling to tell us why you were both places. If it wasn't because of the men's deaths—or to cause their deaths—it was because you hoped to learn something, yes? From them?"

  Slowly, probably considering how much his answer might give away, he granted, "Yes."

  "Will you tell me what?" she asked.

  "No."

  But she had known that before she asked it, and she turned to Alice with, "You have two men from your household lately dead and a third man missing . . ."

  "Missing?" Joliffe said. "You don't know where Burgate is either?"

  "No," Alice answered tersely. "What do you know about him?

  "That he was
Suffolk's secretary and he's missing. That's all."

  Before Alice could ask more that way, Frevisse asked, "Besides they were all of your household, these men, did they have anything else in common among them?"