The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  "He's come awake then?" Domina Elisabeth asked.

  "Twice or thrice. Never for long."

  "Has he said who he is or what happened to him?"

  "Not who he is but that he was attacked by someone, he did not know the man, miles from here, no use to send word to the sheriff."

  Frevisse wondered if anyone else noted that was a great deal for a man to say and still not give his name.

  Dame Claire went on, "He seems at some point to have poured wine into the wound. That's likely saved him from Worse infection than there is, but it will take time for him to heal. The worse trouble is likely to be that he made himself sick riding when he should not have been. He seems to have gone unfed for several days, leaving him perilously weak, but . . ."

  "Days?" Domina Elisabeth interrupted. "Has it been days since he was hurt?"

  "Several days at least. I don't know that he's sure how many. Because of the fever."

  "How very strange," Domina Elisabeth said. "Why didn't he seek help?"

  "He's not said that either. I think, though, that Dame Frevisse knows him."

  She looked at Frevisse as she said that. So did everyone else, and Domina Elisabeth asked, "Do you, Dame?"

  Frevisse had been awaiting that question, had her words already chosen, and answered carefully, "Eve known him as Master Noreys and that one time and another he's been in favor with the duchess of Suffolk." All true, so far as it went. "In matters of some confidence, Eve gathered," she added. Also true.

  It also did what she had hoped. Domina Elisabeth closed careful silence over her curiosity and said in a more straightened voice, "Then we should let her grace the duchess know that he's here and safe."

  "If he's still in her service," Frevisse said. "We don't know that he is. We should perhaps ..."

  "... find that out from him before we do more that way, yes," Domina Elisabeth said. She looked to Dame Claire. "Will he be fit to talk this morning again?"

  "If he's not sleeping, yes."

  Domina Elisabeth looked back at Frevisse. "Then after Chapter do you see him and learn what you can from him, Dame, since you somewhat know him."

  Frevisse bent her head in acceptance of that and set herself to outward quietness through the few confessions or faults since yesterday and Domina Elisabeth's giving out of penances, followed by the obedientiaries' reports of their offices, until Domina Elisabeth at last dismissed them with her blessing to the morning's duties.

  Even then Frevisse made no show of haste, going even-paced with Dame Claire and Sister Johane along the cloister walk toward the passage to the outer door, taking the chance to ask more carefully how Joliffe did, but Dame Claire had nothing more to tell.

  "We're going to the infirmary now to make a betony and yarrow poultice that should help to draw any illness there may still be in the wound and keep it cool," she said. "We'll brew something for his fever, too."

  "You said the wound hadn't sickened," Frevisse said quickly.

  "I said he'd saved himself from worse infection than there is, but there's some. With that and the hunger, he's not well, and what I fear is the fever will give us more trouble because he's too weak from hunger to fight it well. I've given word he's to be fed as much as might be, before he grows too ill to eat at all. If you can get more food into him while you talk with him, that will be to the good. Or if it's a choice of food or talk, then choose food," Dame Claire said and went on her way with Sister Johane, leaving Frevisse far less reassured than she wanted to be.

  Chapter 21

  For Joliffe the days between taking the wound and reaching St. Frideswide's had flowed into an increasingly uncertain nightmare. He had known he no longer had sure hold on his wits and toward the end had been able to do nothing but hold to the one thought that he had to reach safety. He remembered knowing he had failed at that, before he found himself lying on a bed and nuns tending to him. The older one had told him he was in St. Frideswide's and after that he had been willing to lie quietly, his eyes closed, while she saw to his hurt—had answered her questions as briefly as he could and been grateful when she had gone.

  He did not try to see the wound for himself. He had seen it more than enough when cleaning it as best he could beside a stream at dawn the first day after his escape. The storm had been hours over by then. Chilled and shivering, he had wanted warmth and a hot meal and bed and did not dare go in search of them, not knowing how wide a net of searchers his would-be killer could throw out after him. He had only stopped at all because both he and Rowan needed rest. She had grazed while he stripped to his waist and did what he could to clean the hurt with cold stream water until he could judge how bad it was. With his teeth set against his stomach's heave, he had washed away enough of his blood to see the four inches of shallow scrape along a rib, his sliced flesh gaping white and red at him.

  It would have been worse if Sire John's coins in their velvet pouch hadn't turned the man's dagger, but it was ugly enough, and with no way to close it, he had had to settle for pouring wine from the leather bottle in his saddlebag into the wound. He had then torn strips from what had been his shirt and was now bandages, tied them together and used them to bind the rest of his former shirt over the wound before struggling back into his bloodied shirt and doublet and belting on his sword and dagger again. He had then gathered up and put into his belt pouch such of Sire John's coins as hadn't been lost from the ripped velvet pouch when he had dropped it to the grass, and put on his cloak that would hide the bloodied side of his doublet. And all the while he had been planning what he must needs do next. To be sure of the letter, he had thrust the packet well down inside his tall left riding boot before he dragged himself back into his saddle, his breath coming short against the pain that cost him.

  He did not dare return to Hunsdon. Without Sir William there, he could not count on being well enough protected should there be a "privy friend" to send word where he was to the very people who must not find him. Whoever they were.

  Nor was he going to dare Wingfield. Whoever had known to come seeking the priest could well expect him to head for Lady Alice, or at the least have watch kept there for other reasons. As he had said to Vaughn—damn spies.

  He needed somewhere not likely and not watched but where someone would know what to do with the letter if he . . . could do nothing himself.

  So to St. Frideswide's.

  He remembered little after the first day beyond the fixed need to keep moving, helped at that by seeing, whenever he closed his eyes, his would-be murderer's face as the man had thrust for the kill—the man's gloating pleasure as he had lunged with a twist to his arm that betrayed he was going not for clean kill but a gut-thrust that would have left him time to ask questions while Joliffe died.

  Or had the man simply wanted the pleasure of watching him die slowly?

  The question had been sufficient to keep Joliffe on Rowan's back and riding even as he worsened. If he was going to die, he would rather die alone than gloated over by some murderous cur; and he had been grateful beyond words for Dame Claire's drug-brought sleep last night and grateful again when he awoke this morning and could remember no dreams.

  He was fevered, though, and once awake, could not stop his mind's hot, restless roaming to places he would rather not have gone. Back to the moment of his would-be murderer's lunge at him and the dagger ripping open his side. Forward to what he still needed to do and could not, helpless here as he was. Back to the dead man lying in the charnel house in the churchyard, except sometimes in his hot wandering mind the body had his own face and then again had Vaughn's. Why had it been someone else of Lady Alice’s and not Vaughn dead there? Where was Vaughn?

  Then, without warning, his mind would twist another way, out of that run of thoughts into a half-wild homesick wishing for where he couldn't be, where he wanted to be, where he had to be, where he couldn't be . . . And he would shift on the bed, deliberately rousing the pain in his side to jerk his thoughts back to here and now.

  Until here and
now and all that went with it were finished, there could be no going there, and until he could go there, it was better not to think of it at all.

  When Dame Claire and the younger nun came to change his bandage, he asked about the coins there had been in his belt pouch.

  "They're still there. They're bloody," Dame Claire said, sounding disapproving of him for his carelessness in getting them that way.

  "Please," he said, "give some to the men who brought me in. The rest are for the priory as my gift. My thank-offering. For keeping me alive."

  She thanked him kindly and promised she would see to it.

  He was presuming, of course, that he would stay alive, but if he died, he wouldn't care who had the money and either way he did not want it for himself. Greed was one of the seven deadly sins—and deadly in more than the spiritual sense for Sire John. He must have been something less than a loving shepherd of his flock, else his flock would not have turned into wolves against him.

  Joliffe had sometime wondered what sort of view of heaven someone like Sire John had. Did they expect to set up in heaven with all their goods around them and live out eternity among their worldly comforts?

  He could not even claim Sire John had courage at the end. The priest had not so much shown courage as a fool's complete disbelief that he could be in danger. That was a belief that had brought more than one man to grief.

  Not, Joliffe thought, that his own very complete belief in his own mortality had done himself much good this time.

  When the nuns left him, a servant came in with a bowl of thin soup for him but the effort was too much. He slept instead, a hot, shallow, restless sleep from which he awoke to find Dame Frevisse standing beside his bed. There had been dreams in that sleep that he would rather forget, and he managed a smile at her, surprised at the effort of it.

  "You're not well," she said, as disapproving of that as Dame Claire had been at the bloodied coins.

  "I apologize most humbly." He saw she was holding a wooden bowl and added, "I'm not hungry."

  "But you will eat." She sat down on the bed's edge, careful not to jar him. "It's plain applemose, newly made, strained, and then cooled in the well. Dame Claire wants it in you to keep up your strength and help against the fever."

  She lifted a spoonful. Joliffe moved his head back and forth against the pillow, refusing it.

  "In you," Dame Frevisse said. She raised the spoon higher. "Or on you."

  Joliffe made a small sound toward laughter and opened his mouth, letting her feed him several spoonfuls before the effort to swallow too tired him and he moved his head again, asking her to stop. She did and he gathered strength that was frighteningly hard to find and said, "The letter." He shifted his head a little on the pillow, showing where his riding boots and saddlebag were thrust together out of the way in a corner of the room. The rest of his belongings were gone, either to be cleaned or burned, he supposed. "It should be in the bottom of one of my boots." He had felt it work down while he was riding until it had been under his foot. Leaving it there had seemed best.

  "The letter?" Dame Frevisse's eyes widened. "You have Suffolk's letter?" She set the bowl aside and stood up, then stopped to say at him sharply, "Was that where you took your hurt? In Sible Hedingham?"

  "The letter," Joliffe said.

  She understood necessity, left her questions where they were, and went to feel inside one boot, then the other, and from that one brought out the packet. Joliffe let his breath out with relief. "Best you have it now," he said. "Take it into your keeping and into the cloister."

  She returned to the bed, sat down with the packet hidden under the spread of her skirts, took up the applesauce, and fed him more. He ate only because he knew he should and because she would not ask him questions while he did; but when he had to rest again, she asked again, "Was it in getting the letter you were hurt?"

  He made a small nod in answer.

  "You came this far without seeking help?" she said. "Have you no good sense at all?"

  Joliffe closed his eyes. "Very possibly. But they wouldn't know to look for me here. And if I reached here and then died, you'd know to tell Sir William Oldhall."

  "Eat," Dame Frevisse said.

  He did, but after a few mouthfuls could feel himself fading toward sleep again, turned his head away from the next spoonful, and said, "One other thing. If it does come to the worst with me and you have to send Sir William Oldhall word of it, the name he knows me by is Simon Joliffe."

  "And that one your own?" she asked sharply.

  Joliffe quirked up one corner of his mouth into half a smile. "No."

  She held quiet long enough that he hoped she was done with questions, until she asked, very gently, "Do you even remember, for a certainty, what your true name is?"

  His eyes were so heavily closed he did not try to open them but met the challenge under her question by saying softly, "Aren't names simply tools? To give us something to call each other? If it's sometimes better to use a knife than a spoon, why not sometimes use one name instead of another, "it better matches a present need?"

  "What I wonder," Dame Frevisse said softly back to him, is whether, behind all the names you've been, you remember who you truly are."

  Eyes still shut and sleep rising in a welcome tide, he whispered, "I remember." Low enough that maybe she did not hear him.

  Frevisse was not sure he meant her to hear that last but she did and watched him either slip into sleep or make so good a feigning of it that she could not tell the difference. How much of his life was feigned, she wondered. Had she ever known him when he was not pretending to be someone he was not? Or was it that he was all the men he sometimes and another seemed to be?

  Among the reasons she had become a nun had been the hope she could pare away all the different guises that came with living in the world, rid herself of them to find out who she truly was, so that then she could give herself, freed of the world, to God. Time and life had taught her she was unlikely ever to have that pure of a self to give. The taints of the world went deep and the cloister was not so perfect a place to be rid of them as she could wish, but she was grown free, much of the time, of the confusions that came with passions and counter-running desires and needs. She was, blessedly, nearer to a single self than Joliffe was.

  Or was she? A crystal threw out rainbows of light and yet was single and whole in itself, made by God to make those rainbows. Was that how it was with Joliffe? Did he throw out all these different seemings of himself while somewhere behind them he was whole, was unbrokenly himself?

  She had no way of knowing. She could only pray it was so, because he would surely never tell her.

  Joliffe's fever did not worsen but it held him in its burning grip through that day and much of the next. It finally broke late in the afternoon, leaving him far weaker than he panted to be. Through that night and the next day sleep came with disconcerting ease, and he welcomed it both for its healing and its oblivion. His body's necessities now were sleep and food and time to lie quietly and heal, and he knew that if he did not heed that need, he would likely be dead after all. Knowing that at least made his choice straight-forward, and his weakness made the choice even easier. Simply sitting up long enough to be fed or rising long enough to tend to what could not be done lying down left him wanting nothing so much as to be flat and quiet again.

  It was his mind that proved troublesome. In the three-part division of the Self—body, mind, and soul—he had, over the years, done with and for his body as he chose and it needed, and given his soul such tending as he could toward what the Church said it needed for its salvation; but his mind had been his best companion. He had enjoyed letting it go where it would and as it would, had taken pleasure in most of its roamings; but as he lay on the straw-stiff mattress, he found his thoughts running along too many paths at once and none of them pleasant.

  At best, there was simply worry about his wound—that it might turn poisonous despite Dame Claire's care and kill him after all. Worry over tha
t was useless, since he could do no more than what he was, and the same was true at worry over whether he had truly shaken pursuit or would be found here after all, because there was nothing he could do about that either. Likewise worry that in his fever he might have said things he never meant to say. If he had, they were said and that was that. But sometimes his thoughts went a-drift without warning into that heart-aching flood of longing for where he could not be, not yet, and against that pain when it came, he grabbed at anything to stuff into the breach— songs, lines from plays, stray bits of poems, anything to turn his mind and take it elsewhere. Even prayer. Salve nos, Dotnine, vigilantes, custodi nos dormientes . . . Save us, Lord while we are awake, guard us while we sleep . . .

  But more than anything and beyond his wish to stop it, his mind went searching and circling through the past few weeks, trying to pry straight answers out of the tangle of all the questions there were and failing at it so badly he began to think there were no straight answers to be had.