The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Beyond the third gateway and its guards the castle's great yard opened in front of them, with all the many buildings needed to serve the castle's many needs—stables, storerooms, workshops, lodgings for lesser servants and workmen—and the great come-and-go of the many people to meet those needs. Ahead, the stone tower of the keep bulked high above it all beyond yet another wall that Frevisse supposed closed off an inner yard and royal chambers. As they neared the plain, untowered gateway through that wall, their man that Vaughn had sent ahead came forward to meet them from where he had been waiting on a bench in a stretch of shade along one building, and to Vaughn's, "All's well?" he answered, "No trouble. I've told the chamberlain you'd be here. He says the queen will likely see them sometime this afternoon."

  "Good. We'll leave the horses to you and Symond, then. When they're stabled, you can bring our bags. My ladies."

  The gateguard here nodded them through without a question, into a courtyard surrounded on three sides by long buildings of the same red stone as the rest of the castle. The solid square of the keep with its narrow windows bulked against the sky to their right, but the other buildings were lower, graceful with tall, stone-traceried windows and steep blue-slate roofs. Ahead was the great hall, its wide doorway framed in deeply carved stone at the head of a wide stone stairway. At one end a tall oriel window curved outward into the yard, while beyond it the other buildings curved around the yard. Vaughn's question to a passing servant in a livery doublet of green and white turned him and the nuns toward the keep and up an outer wooden stairway to go through a doorway set deep in the eight-foot thickness of the wall to a long room with tables and an array of men busy at writing on scrolls and papers or carrying other scrolls and papers from one place to another. This, Frevisse could see, was where the business of running the queen's household was done—the records kept and decisions made that let the queen and her people live in comfort and ease.

  Vaughn clearly knew his way here. He and the man to whom he gave them over greeted each other by name before Vaughn left and Master Faber began to apologize there was nowhere near the queen's own chambers in the royal wing where they could be accommodated as they should in honor be, since that they came from the duchess of Suffolk. Still, there was a very good chamber here in the Strong Tower. If they would be pleased to come this way . . .

  A stairway in the thickness of the wall took them another story higher in the keep to where several chambers were wood-partitioned out of what had been a single large space in the keep's younger days. "These are where the queen's gentlewomen stay," the man murmured. And the serving-women who wait on the gentlewomen, Frevisse thought. No, they were not being accommodated as they might have been, coming from the duchess of Suffolk; and although the plain, small chamber into which she and Sister Margrett were shown suited her own needs very well, she had to wonder how much it reflected a lessening of Alice's place at court that those who came in her name weren't given better than this. Was it truly that they "couldn't be"? Or was it something else?

  Master Faber pointed out that the beds were freshly made for them and there was water for washing in the pitcher there and a clean towel apiece. He said he would have their bags brought up as soon as they came and there were women in and out all day if they had questions or needed help with anything.

  "You'll be summoned when her grace is ready to see you and taken there when the time comes," he finished and bowed and left them.

  Sister Margrett, looking somewhat overwhelmed, sat down on one of the two beds and said, "Oh, my." With which Frevisse, sitting down on the other bed, could only agree.

  As it was, they had barely time to brush their habits clean, wash their faces and hands, and—after their saddlebags were brought—put on fresh wimples before a woman came to fetch them. They were as ready as they could be and followed the woman from the keep and across the courtyard to one of the other, newer buildings. Up a wide stairway, they came into an upper chamber, where the woman turned rightward through a doorway framed in ornately carved stone, opening into a broad chamber that was clearly a great lord's—or lady's—reception room. Richly dressed men and women were crowded around it in talking clusters. On both sides rows of ceiling-tall windows rose stone-traceried into arches set with heraldicly painted glass in strong colors above, fully glazed with clear glass below to let in a plenitude of light and give view, on one side, into the courtyard, and over the surrounding lake and countryside on the other, between the windows, the walls were a deep green painted over with patterns of yellow vines and bright-feathered birds, except at the chamber's far end where, ceiling to floor, hung a wide tapestry showing the royal arms of England— gold lions and lilies quartered on crimson and blue— against a sky of paler blue above white castle towers and green trees across the tapestry's lower half.

  Centered below the tapestry was a wide and high-backed chair, painted and gilded and raised on the several steps of a square dais. It had all the seeming of a throne, and there could be no doubt that the young woman sitting upon it was surely the queen.

  Margaret of Anjou had been sixteen years old when she came to England as King Henry's queen without either o£ them having ever seen the other. She was twenty-one now, and all the reasons for which the marriage had been made were failed. The truce with France that had come with her marriage was not only broken but the war it had stopped was lost, and doubt was growing by the month that she would ever produce the needed heir to the throne.

  Frevisse could only hope there was a deep affection between her and her husband, to make the marriage worth the otherwise wasted cost of it.

  And despite everything and worried though Queen Margaret surely was at the troubles presently tearing England, she sat with outward calm enough, her head bent slightly to one side as she listened to two lords in earnest talk with each other beside her. Because she was a queen, her fair hair, instead of caught up and covered out of sight like all other married women, was uncovered, swept back in smooth wings from her face and spread smooth and gleaming behind her shoulders, bound only by the thin circlet of a simply crown. She was dressed simply, too, in a green, open-sided surcoat over a fitted gown of soft rose . . . silk, Frevisse thought as the light slid sleekly along the cloth as Queen Margaret lifted an arm to draw the lords' heed to her. Both men turned to hear what she had to say, and the woman leading Frevisse and Sister Margrett stopped and said quietly, "She's with the duke of Buckingham and Sir Thomas Stanley just now. We'll have to wait."

  She adroitly balanced her pronouncement of the noble and knightly names between a lightness that showed she was familiar with saying them and weight enough to impress these nuns with their good luck in seeing such men. Frevisse, having seen greater, was unimpressed, nor did Sister Margrett look to be over-set with awe. The daughter of a wealthy town merchant might well have had occasion to see and even meet lords before this, and certainly knights. And who was Sir Thomas Stanley, anyway? Because she truly did not know, Frevisse asked their guide who looked startled at her ignorance, then said in a quick, low voice and maybe with pity, "Oh, but of course you wouldn't know. He's an officer in the king's household and chamberlain of North Wales, too. And the duke of Buckingham. He's very close to the king, and wealthy. A very great lord."

  In the same low voice, Sister Margrett asked, "Does it fret them that they're here instead with the king, seeing to rebels?"

  "It's really my lord of Buckingham who has her grace in keeping. He's mindful of the honor," the woman said, much like a teacher delivering a lesson to a pupil. "There's no saying there won't be trouble hereabouts, you know. He has patrols out every day, keeping an eye on the countryside.'

  Queen Margaret laughed at something one of the men had said. Sir Thomas was laughing with her, but Buckingham was somewhat frowning, looking as if he had been left behind by their laughter.

  "Sir Thomas Stanley isn't usually here, then?" Frevisse murmured.

  "He's only just come. He's been with the king at Westminster and is on his way back
to be sure of things in Wales."

  "There's not report of rebellion there, too?" Frevisse asked. To have that at the king's back while he was facing down rebels in the south would not be good.

  But the woman said easily, "Oh, there's nothing stirring there beyond the usual brawling among the Welsh. Not that I've heard anyway. Sir Thomas says the Welsh haven't the wits for more than that and sheep-thievery."

  Then Sir Thomas Stanley was a fool, Frevisse thought. It wasn't that long since Owen Glendower's great rebellion had nearly thrown the English for well and good out of all their Welsh fortresses and lands in a rebellion that had taken a king, a royal prince, several thousands of men, and too many years to put down.

  The two men moved to in front of the queen and bowed to her.

  "They're done," the woman said as, smiling, Queen Margaret held out her hand to Sir Thomas, who bowed again to kiss it. Then they backed three steps away from her, slightly bowed again, turned, and started toward the doorway where Frevisse, Sister Margrett, and the woman stood. The woman quickly shooed Frevisse and Sister Margrett aside, but Frevisse took the chance to have close look at both men as they came. The duke of Buckingham was the older of the two, with a long, heavily boned face and every seeming of someone who would go solidly forward with his duty but hardly be a lighthearted companion to a queen young enough to be his daughter.

  If so, that was to the good, because with the power that fight be in her hands, a queen—and especially a young one—needed advice and guidance more than she needed merry companions.

  Of course, for the health of mind and spirit, diversion in right measure and of right kind was likewise needed, and for that Sir Thomas looked a more likely source. Like Buckingham, he was some years older than the queen but there was a soft-fleshed ease to him that promised readier merriment than looked likely from the duke. He might do his duty as it came, but Frevisse suspected he would have more high-hearted sport about it while he did.

  Or low-hearted, if he were a baser sort of man.

  She found she suddenly felt old and very possibly dull under the burden of such heavy thoughts. She was in danger of becoming nothing but tedious, she thought.

  The two men passed, in talk to each other and through the doorway without giving any heed to the women's curtsies, and their guide said as they straightened from them, "We can go forward now. She's beckoning."

  Approaching the dais, Frevisse expected to see sign of the summer's worries on Queen Margaret when they were nearer, but her youth served her well. Her fair-and-rose face was un-marred by frown or worry, and when Frevisse and Sister Margrett and their guide had risen from deep curtsies in front of her, she waved the woman aside and leaned forward with a welcoming smile, saying eagerly, "You're from my very dear Lady Alice? Her cousin, yes?"

  She looked rapidly back and forth between them, and Sister Margrett faded back half a step as Frevisse moved forward and said, with another deep, acknowledging curtsy, "I am, your grace."

  "We have met ..." Queen Margaret lightly frowned, then said, delighted probably more at her remembrance than over the meeting itself. "Bury St. Edmunds. Yes."

  "Indeed, your grace," Frevisse agreed. There had been another time, too, but it had been very brief and full of blood and deaths, and if Queen Margaret had never heard her named as part of it, Frevisse was more than content to keep it that way.

  "How is it with my Lady Alice?" Queen Margaret asked with true concern. "She grieves, I know."

  "She does, but sends her most good wishes for your health and happiness, your grace, and bade me say she greatly misses your company."

  "As I miss hers. And that of my lord of Suffolk. He was a good man. Her grief is ours. She has not been troubled by these Jacques? These peasants?"

  "There's been no rising where she is. But good watch is being kept."

  The queen nodded firmly to that. "So must it be. These little troubles must not be let to grow to big ones. Peasants." She put scorn into the word. "This happens in France and they are put down. So." She made a wiping away gesture with one hand. "It is well and makes small difference, so long as it is not the lords who do it. There was our fall in France. Not the fools of peasants but when the lords turned on each other and fought. You see?"

  "I do, your grace."

  Frevisse had the feeling the queen had said this often of late—a lesson she wanted to be sure the English did not learn the hard way that France had. The quarreling and warfare among the lords of France was what had given the English their chance there. But who were the greater fools, Frevisse wondered—the peasants who made demands for justice they were unlikely to get or the lords who tore their country apart for the sake of their hatreds and ambitions?

  That was not a question to say aloud here, and fortunately Queen Margaret, having given her speech, was ask-mg again, "My Lady Alice, she does well? She is not broken with her grief? She will come back to me?"

  "She surely will," Frevisse said. "She is grieved but not broken." A possibility suddenly opened. Trying not to let her voice quicken, she went on, "There's so much to be done, with all her household upset and disordered by it all. The worst now may be . . ." Lightly, making almost a jest of it, "... that her husband's secretary is vanished. Besides the worry of where he's gone to, he would be useful to her, knowing so much of the duke's business and all."

  Immediate distress crossed Queen Margaret's face. "Oh. I had not thought of that. But of course. She needs him and I am sorry." Unexpectedly, she laughed. "All this while he's here. I did not know she did not know. I shall send someone to tell her."

  Trying to have the words out calmly, Frevisse said quickly, "After seeing us on to our nunnery, the men who accompanied us here will be going back to her. They'll gladly take word to her. But may I see him? I know what particular things Lady Alice was worried about. He might be able to tell me and her men could take her that word, too. If I see him, I can likewise hope to reassure her grace of Suffolk that he's well."

  "But of course," Queen Margaret granted lightly. "Would you like to see him now?"

  Her readiness to send Frevisse on her way probably meant she had decided Frevisse was unlikely to divert her more; nor had she troubled herself with Sister Margrett at all. Frevisse was too off balance at how quickly and easily it was gone, too busy hiding her surprise, to say more than, "I would, if it's possible and you please, your grace."

  "Certainly." She waved one of the waiting yeomen- of-the-royal-chamber standing along the wall in green and white livery to come to her.

  Only barely Frevisse remembered to say, "Lady Alice sent several brace of Suffolk rabbits to your pleasure, my lady They've likely been given over to your cook by now."

  Queen Margaret brightened with pleasure. "Ah. Please, I will see her men take something from me to her in return, Powle," she said to the liveried man now bowing to her and briefly, briskly gave him orders that Frevisse mostly did not hear, only, "Tell the captain so," at the end, before making a graceful gesture that gave leave for him to go, and the nuns with him.

  He made his bow, they their curtsies, and he led them out of the chamber, down the stairs to the courtyard, across it, and through a passageway beside the keep to a graveled path along a head-high hedge beyond which was a garden that looked to be—by the glimpses Frevisse had through gateways and along crossing paths—as gracious as Alice's at Wingfield but far larger, with the sound of a fountain playing somewhere. Rather than into it, they went around and then along other buildings built just inside the castle's surrounding outer wall along the lake. Servants and other folk they passed on their way gave them mildly curious looks but that was all until they came to a tower at the far corner of the wall. Even there, when they had gone up a half-flight of stairs and into a room just inside the doorway, the two men seated at a table playing at dice and the man sitting idly sharpening a dagger on a stone window edge with blue sight of the lake outside it showed no particular interest in them. By the men's matching good leather jerkins over dark green dou
blets, and the weapons-racks of spears and halberds around the room, and the dozen or so helmets sitting aligned on shelves beside the door, Frevisse guessed this was a guards' tower and that these were men at ease, not on duty. Why would a secretary be here?

  The yeoman Powle said, "These ladies are come to see the man Burgate."

  One of the men at the table asked, "Whose order?"

  "The queen.

  The man made a grunt that could have meant anything and rose from the table. There were several doors from the room. Going to a narrow one hung with a heavy lock, he took a broad key from a peg in the wooden frame around it and unlocked the lock, saying as he re-hung the key, "This way, my ladies."

  Frevisse and Sister Margrett had already traded startled looks. Staying where she was, Frevisse now asked, "He's a prisoner?" Nothing Queen Margaret had said suggested it so easy she had been at mention of him.

  The man in his turn looked surprised. "Aye. Didn't you know that?"

  "No. Why is he a prisoner?"

  The man shrugged, unconcerned. "The duke of Buckingham ordered he was to be kept. So he's kept. That's all we know." And plainly he did not care. "Sometimes somebody comes to question him. We feed him. That's it." He opened the door. There were shoulder-narrow, steep, stone stairs going down into shadows. Leading the way, the man said, "Mind your skirts, my ladies. It's wet at the bottom."