The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  "That's mad," Vaughan protested.

  "Not so much outright mad as reason working half a step sideways from where you and I do our thinking. Now," he said on anger-shortened breath, leaning toward Vaughn, "can you think of who that might be and with the power to make all of these deaths happen and no one look his way? Because if you can't ..."

  He did not finish. Either Vaughn could see it or he could not. And either way, Joliffe was not going to say the thing aloud.

  Vaughn began to open his mouth toward saying something. Then the full weight of Joliffe's words hit. Joliffe saw his eyes widen, and his mouth snapped shut. His hands clamped tightly around the wine bowl and he said back, harsh and low, "You think that's what's in the letter?"

  Joliffe nodded.

  "If you're right, then, no, Lady Alice has no hope against him. There's only York might do it."

  "Only York. Yes," Joliffe agreed. "And even then . . ."Joliffe broke off, there being little need to finish. Because even then, how much chance did even York have?

  They finished the wine with no more said between them. Joliffe paid and they went out into the late morning's sunshine. The tavern they had happened into was in a short lane off the marketplace and busy with people coming and going. Just now five men were standing a few yards from the door, in close talk with one another and almost blocking the way. As Joliffe and Vaughn shifted to the lane's far side to pass them, the talk turned into shouting, two of the men starting to wave their arms, a third shoved another of his fellows hard and backward, between Joliffe and Vaughn, making them step apart. In that instant what had been talk erupted without warning into a quarrel with daggers and a familiarity that made Joliffe shout in sudden warning at Vaughn, "Hampden!" and draw his dagger and go for the two men nearest him, turned from their "quarrel" to go for him, spreading apart and probably meaning to take him from both sides. With a wide swing of body and arm, Joliffe slashed the dagger-arm of the man on his left open from elbow to wrist, completed his spin full around to bring himself in behind the startled other man's guard, stabbing into his side and stepping back as the man staggered, both to free his dagger and give himself room to draw his sword in time to knock aside the dagger of a third man coming for him. He followed through with his own dagger but the man stepped back from it. Joliffe caught movement from the side of his eye and slashed his sword backhanded at his first man, this time slicing him across the thigh, and bringing his sword back around in time to jam its point low into the gut of his third man well before the fellow was in dagger-strike reach. Joliffe was just enough off balance and the man just enough beyond clean reach for the blow to be too shallow for killing, but the man lurched backward, staring down in disbelief at the blood starting through his doublet.

  Joliffe could have killed him then, but did not; instead stepped back to put his back to the nearest house-wall for time to see what needed doing next. But the fight was done. Vaughn stood a few feet away from him, sword and dagger drawn, watching the two men he had faced running away for the far end of the lane, hauling Joliffe's first man limping and hopping between them, one of them limping, too, and Joliffe could not tell if the blood trailed behind them was from one or both. His third man was following, bent over and staggering a little. And beyond them, at the lane's end, watching, was . . .

  With a hot rise of the anger there had been no time for in the fight, Joliffe started forward.

  "Noreys!" Vaughn said, catching his arm. "Let them go!"

  In the moment it took to jerk loose of Vaughn's hold, the man at the lane's end stepped back, was gone around the corner, out of sight.

  "There!" Joliffe pointed furiously. "Did you see him? The man in the black cap. Watching it all. That was him. The man at Hedingham!"

  "I didn't see him, no. Come on. We have to get away from here."

  Vaughn had hold on his arm again, pulling, and Joliffe realized the man he had stabbed in the side lay close by, twisted and unmoving in the runnel down the middle of the street. There would be questions about that and not to his own good, Joliffe knew, and he gave way to Vaughn's pull on his arm, sheathing sword and dagger—they would have to be cleaned later—while following him back into the tavern. The whole business had gone so fast that only now were people starting to come out of other doors along the street, and the few men in the tavern were still getting up from their benches to go see what had happened. Vaughn and Joliffe went past them, into the tavern's rear room, past the two women there, and out the back door into a small rearyard.

  "Over the fence, I think," said Vaughn.

  "Over the fence," Joliffe agreed. It was head-high and of boards. They scaled it, came down in another yard where, happily, there was no one, but a small alley opened from it into another street. By now there was shouting behind them, but they walked away, into the marketplace and toward the abbey, and no one stopped them. Saying nothing between them, they passed through the abbey gateway into the guesthall yard and to the men's dorter, empty at this hour and the nearest thing they had to a safe-haven just now. By then Joliffe's blood had cooled. His side hurt, telling him he had done it no favors in the fight, but a cautious feel inside his doublet found the bandage dry; he'd not pulled his wound open.

  What he had done was kill a man. If not two men, depending on how badly the third fellow was hurt. Or three, if the first man bled too much.

  It did not feel good to have brought death. It never felt good.

  But it felt better than being dead himself.

  He sat down on his side of the bed and took from his saddlebag the cloth he kept for cleaning blades.

  Sitting down heavily on the bed's other side, Vaughn demanded, "What in all the teeth of hell was that about?"

  "They were set up to kill us the way they killed Hampden."

  "Yes, I got that. But how did they know it was us they wanted?"

  "The man from Hedingham was there." With his sword unsheathed and laid across his knees, Joliffe began to rub it clean of blood. "At the end of the street. Watching. He must have set them on."

  "You yelled about a man in a black cap. That's who you meant?"

  "That's who I meant."

  "But what's he doing here, and why set them on to kill us?"

  "I don't know why he's here, unless it's for York." There was a dark thought. But . . . "If he was, that's likely off, now he knows he's been seen and we'll give warning. It was our vile luck that we crossed with him sometime today and he saw me without me seeing him first. Of course it's his vile luck we're still alive. As for why bothering to have us killed—if we're dead, we can't give that letter to anyone."

  "He can't know we still have the letter. It could be long gone to York. Or to anyone."

  "I'd say he was hedging his bets. If we still have it and we're dead, we won't be giving it to anyone. If we've already rid ourselves of it, well, what's two more men dead in a good cause?"

  "Having me dead is not a good cause," Vaughn said with indignation.

  Joliffe laughed. "Alas, there are always others who don't see the world as we do." He laid his sword on the floor, pulled out his dagger and set to cleaning it. "Besides, I think he just likes seeing men killed."

  When Vaughn said nothing to that, Joliffe looked up from his work to find him staring at the floor as if far off in some thought of his own. Joliffe asked, "Doesn't your sword or dagger need cleaning? One of those men I never fought was limping as they ran."

  Vaughn shook his head. "He turned an ankle in that runnel in the lane's middle. His good luck. It threw him off-balance and aside from my sword just as I thrust at him." He looked up from the floor and around at Joliffe. "That's an ugly thought. That he enjoys the killing."

  "It is. But I've had a lot of ugly thoughts lately."

  "You have that." Vaughn lay down and laid his arm across his eyes. Like Joliffe, he seemed ready to rest whenever the chance came.

  Joliffe finished with the dagger and lay down in his turn, closed his eyes and folded one hand peacefully onto his chest. Th
e other he kept along his side, resting on his unsheathed dagger laid beside his leg. He was of two minds about Vaughn having stopped him from following Black-cap. From one way of seeing it, Vaughn had done right to turn him from pursuit to escape. But seen another way—had Vaughn stopped him not for the sake of their own escape but to be sure of Black-cap's?

  Another ugly thought to add to all the rest.

  Chapter 27

  Frevisse and Sister Margrett began the day with going to Prime in the abbey church. Because they were forbidden the cloister here, they entered the nave by the west door along with the few other pilgrims and such townsfolk as were moved to piety at dawn; and because they had no place in the monks' choir beyond the rood screen, they drew aside into one of the side chapels and shared in the Office from there.

  At that hour, save for a few candles burning, the nave was mostly lost in shadows. Even dawn's coming while they prayed little changed that before the Office ended and they went back to the guesthall to break their fast. They saw Joliffe and Vaughn there but did not speak with them, and both men went out of the hall first, apparently with plans of their own for how they were going to spend the time until the duke of York arrived.

  Breakfast done, she and Sister Margrett returned to the church, leaving the guesthall yard to cross the abbey's now-busy outer yard to the west door again and into the church's hush, with the sun risen enough now to strike through some of the stained-glass windows, spreading color-patterned light— ruby and saffron and sapphire and emerald—along one long wall of the nave that was lined down either side with stone pillars like giant tree trunks.

  In St. Frideswide's church nowhere was distant from anywhere else. Here, St. Alban's nave alone looked to be longer than all the nunnery's cloister buildings put together. Its ceiling was so high the paintings there were almost lost to view. The carved stone rood screen at the nave's far end was maybe higher than St. Frideswide's church roof-beams; and beyond the rood screen with its ranks of statued saints painted in greens and golds and reds and blues, the rest of the church, reserved to the monks and St. Alban's shrine, stretched onward.

  While Frevisse and Sister Margrett stood still, taking in the awe of it, a monk came at them from beyond one of the pillars. He began a protest that now was not a time the shrine was available to pilgrims, that too much else was happening, that in a day or two perhaps . . .

  Frevisse had expected him. She held up a coin from her belt-purse. It was one of Alice's, given back to her by Dom-ina Elisabeth for this journey, and it was gold. The monk changed his discourse in midstream to an interest in showing them what he could of the church. Frevisse let him work himself around to an offer of after all showing them to St. Alban's shrine. She graciously accepted that but kept the coin for now, and with a patter of words well-used on other pilgrims, he led them along one of the nave's side aisles. As they neared the rood screen, the transepts opened to either side, giving the church the shape of Christ's cross. One of them would almost have held St. Frideswide's whole church with ease, and still the church stretched onward.

  Their way was briefly blocked by a screen of open-worked iron across the foot of a broad rise of stone steps, but heir monk opened the gate in it and they passed through and up, and now Frevisse sought to let go other thoughts, to ring her mind to bear on the here, the now. Chances to be in such a place were rare, were to be fully lived in, not thinned to nothing by thoughts of other things. They were coming to St. Alban's shrine, the heart within the body of this place. There, with the saint's earthly remains, the earthly and the divine came visibly together. At a saint's shrine, mankind could come closer to the holy than anywhere in life besides the sacraments. A saint's shrine was something that could be touched, hands laid upon it while prayers were made for the saint to ask God for grace and favor and rescue from earthly trials. Here, St. Alban's shrine was the reason for all else. The building's awe and beauty were nothing when matched to it.

  Nor did anything in the church match the splendor of the shrine itself. It stood in the center of its holy place beyond the high altar's screen. Higher than a tall man, it was made of varied-colored, polished stone inlaid to patterns, was gold-gilded and set with jewels that shone with otherworldly richness in the clear, steady light of scores of burning candles set all around on stands among stands of votive offerings given along with past pleas for favor or in thanks for prayers answered.

  Frevisse and Sister Margrett both went to their knees beside it. With head bowed and hands clasped, Frevisse lost heed of all else but her prayers. She had never had a particular devotion to St. Alban that would have brought her here otherwise, but now that she was here, with his holiness all around her, prayer to him came readily. Deep prayer that what she was doing would come to the end that God best desired. Prayer that if God's end went against her own desire, she might bear it with quiet acceptance and good trust.

  She came back from the far place of her praying to awareness of Sister Margrett rising to her feet and that the monk was restless behind them, probably wanting to get on with his day. Frevisse rose, too, reached out to lay the gold coin on a ledge of the shrine, where the monk would surely collect it later, and was stepping back when she heard the monk saying to Sister Margrett behind her, "This now you'll want to see, too. Duke Humphrey's tomb. The duke of Gloucester who was murdered, you know."

  Frevisse turned somewhat too quickly. It was usual for the wealthy and highborn to have tombs made for themselves in churches as near to high altars and saints' shrines as they could, so it was no surprise to see one here, towering with stone-vaulted canopy richly painted in heraldic reds and gold and blues. She had given it no look at all as she passed it, but saw it now, and past and present clamped together in a double fist around her heart.

  Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, had been a man in the way of other men's ambitions. Three years ago he had been suddenly charged with treason and then, before any trial, had been suddenly dead. Of natural causes the men around the king had said. Murdered, said too many other people, and so the monk was saying now to Sister Margrett, making a tale of it, but Frevisse's thoughts were gone beyond his words. She was thinking that if someone as highborn to power as the duke of Gloucester could be called traitor and then be dead, what could happen to people as nothing as she and Joliffe were if what they were attempting went to the wrong?

  The rest of the morning and into the afternoon she and Sister Margrett spent going from one to another of the many chapels around the church and in doing the Offices. Sister Margrett seemed happy with all of that. Only as they were returning to the church from the midday meal in the guesthall did she say anything of why they were here, asking very quietly, "Does why we're here have to do with the duke of York?"

  Sister Margrett deserved to know that much and Frevisse said, "Yes."

  "When it's done, will we go home?"

  "Yes."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "I hope so." But to be fair she had to add, "If it's done that soon."

  And that was all.

  Their afternoon devotions were cut short by a monk going through the church and shooing people out. "To make way for his grace and his men," he said, herding would-be worshipers toward the outer door with a sheepdog's determination to have them where he wanted them.

  "How many is he bringing here?" someone asked.

  "We don't know. Most will camp on wasteland north of the town, but how many will come all the way with him we've not been told. You'll want to see his arrival in the yard anyway. Thank you for moving on."

  Sister Margrett was holding in unseemly giggles by the time they passed out the west door into the afternoon sunlight and the outer yard. Townspeople and abbey guests were already gathering there and, "There are Noreys and Vaughn," Sister Margrett said, pointing ahead to a man-high stone cross standing atop five stone steps in the middle of the abbey yard, just beyond where abbey servants were urging people back to keep clear the way between the marketplace and the church. Joliffe and Va
ughn were on the top step, where they would have good view over other people's heads, and because she and Sister Margrett were nuns people moved aside, making room for them to go up.

  They settled into place on the step below Joliffe and Vaughn, with nods among the four of them but not words; but as they stood there among the shift and eager unease of people waiting for something to happen, Frevisse began to see heads turning, one to another, in a different way, with what looked like murmurous dismay from some people and denying shakes of the head from others, until finally the talk rolled to the foot of the cross' steps and up. She caught, ". . . Tresham . . ." and ". . . killed . . ." and ". . . York . . ." and then Joliffe shoved down past her and next to the nearest man talking to ask him, "What's that?"

  The man turned, glowingly ready to tell his news. "They're saying some folk have come from Northampton and are saying William Tresham—him that was Speaker in Parliament this year—that he's been killed."