The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Frevisse gasped. As one she and Sister Margrett crossed themselves, but Joliffe was demanding, "What was that about York?"

  "Tresham was on his way to meet him. That's what they're saying. Tresham and his son. They were waylaid somewhere on the way and Tresham was cut down and is dead."

  "What of his son?" Frevisse asked, remembering him and his parents that evening at Rushden, and that he had a small son of his own.

  "Wounded but not so's he'll die of it," the man said. "So they're saying anyway, yes?" he asked the man beside him who had passed the word on to him.

  "So they're saying. But Tresham is dead, that's sure it seems. He was going to meet York and was killed for it, that's what they're saying."

  "Who did it?" Joliffe asked.

  The men traded asking looks and shrugged. They did not know and neither did anyone around them. "It's what happens these days," someone said. "York should have stayed in Ireland."

  "It wasn't because of York he was killed," someone else protested. "Outlaws, likely."

  "Ha!" another man said.

  Leaving them and their fellows to the heated talk that started then, Joliffe went back up the steps. As he passed her, Frevisse asked, "Is it certain, do you think? That William Tresham is killed?"

  "As sure as any such news is. I wouldn't trust anyone's telling how it happened, the word has gone through so many mouths. But that he's dead, yes, that's probably true. And his son wounded. Why? Did you know them?"

  "His wife and Lady Alice are friends."

  "Widows together then," Joliffe said grimly and on.

  "That is too miserably sad," said Sister Margrett beside Frevisse. "They were all so happy together."

  Frevisse did not remember it quite that way, could only hope the almost-quarrel between Tresham and his son had not deepened from then, and she said a prayer for both of them—for Tresham cut down in some ugly skirmish of men with no time to make his peace with God; and for his son, that he might recover from his wound. And then for Mistress Tresham's grief, for which there could be little help at all.

  Joliffe had just finished sharing the news with Vaughn, and Vaughn had said bitterly, "That's cruel and wrong. It shouldn't have happened," when trumpets sounding from the far end of the long marketplace turned the crowd's excitement that way, all else set aside for present pleasure. More men and women tried to crowd onto the cross' steps, were fended off by those already close-packed there, with the very true claim there was no more room. Some made it anyway and the jostling was still going on when the first riders trotted into the yard with clatter of hoofs and jingling of harness—a half-dozen foreriders liveried in matching blue-dyed doublets, two carrying long trumpets now propped at their sides like staffs, two others carrying long lances with small pennons parti-colored blue and red-purple murray fluttering from them, showing York's badge of a spread-winged falcon inside the curve of a closed fetterlock, and two others in tabards with his heraldic arms of gold lions and lilies and crimson and azure—royal arms differenced from the king's only by a white bar with red roundels labeled across the top as was York's right.

  Royal-blooded dukes and their knights were always a good show, and York, riding behind his foreriders, did not disappoint. Having to know as well as anyone that authority dwelt in appearance as much as in reputation, he was all and openly a great lord, wearing a deeply blue surcoat open-sided over a green, high-collared doublet, with a wide gold chain set with heraldic white-enameled roses over his shoulders and a long sword in a blue-leather scabbard hung from his hip, and riding a tall bay palfrey whose green harness was studded with gold heraldic roses and falcons in fetterlocks.

  The score or so men riding behind him were garbed for show enough though not so boldly and were still a finer sight than most days gave, but as was right it was York who drew and held most eyes. Just as it would be York who would draw the most of any attack, should there be ambush or meeting with other lords that turned to fighting, Joliffe thought. That was also part of being a great lord, and Joliffe did not doubt that under York's doublet and those of his men were breastplates and other armor, hidden so as to give no alarm or threat.

  While thinking that, Joliffe swept his gaze across the men behind York, looking for Sir William Oldhall, found him, and snatched off his hat to wave it in the air just as Sir William was riding past the crowd nearest the cross. There were other hats off and being waved, and even scattered cheers among general shouts of welcome, but Joliffe put a suddenness into his move and called out, "Sir William!" as he did, and one or the other caught Sir William's heed. He turned his head, saw Joliffe, and gave a short, jerked nod at him that Joliffe returned before they looked away from one another. It had been enough. When the time came, Joliffe would have no trouble in coming to York.

  That would not be for a while, though. First, there was the abbot's ceremony of welcome to be gone through, and as York and his men came to a halt in front of the church, the wings of the nave's wide west door were pushed open by black-robed monks, to let out a double line of their fellows who spread to both sides of the door, framing it and their abbot as he came forward in abbatial splendor of green damask trimmed with gold-worked embroidery and pearls, his gold-crested crosier in one hand shining in the afternoon light. York dismounted and knelt on one knee to receive a blessing under the abbot's upraised hand. When he stood up, they seemed to exchange a few words before going away together into the church.

  Behind them, the procession of monks reversed itself and followed, while York's men dismounted and abbey servants came from where they had been waiting to take their horses, freeing them to follow their lord into the church. The bells in the abbey tower began to ring to Vespers, and a good many of the on-lookers crowded forward for the church, too—more townsfolk than would usually be there for any weekday Vespers, Joliffe thought dryly. But there was no surprise in a royal duke having more power to draw them than did God's worship.

  The surprise only somewhat lay in Dame Frevisse and Sister Margrett turning away from the church, back toward the guesthalls. Vaughn followed them, but Joliffe fell into step beside Dame Frevisse and asked, "What? No urge to go in and stare at a duke?"

  "None," she returned. Her asperity would have shriveled apples. "And we both think we'll pray better in the dorter than in that crowd."

  "As ever," Joliffe said lightly, "wise as well as . . ."

  Her look stopped him. But she had looked full into his face for the first time, saw something there he did not mean to show, and demanded, "What is it? Has something more than Tresham's death happened?"

  He was caught off guard, not used to being so easily read—although with her he ought to know better by now—-and answered, "Something else, yes, but not that matters just now." He shifted to a grin and added easily, "Just don't lose yourselves after supper. I think we'll be wanted then."

  She must have seen that was all the answer she was going to get from him, and she answered him with a silent, short nod, he sketched a bow to her and Sister Margrett, and dropped back to join Vaughn, the two of them slowing to let the nuns go well ahead of them. Now there was the waiting until Sir William sent for him. Waiting and more waiting, and no surety that anyone was going to be happy at the end of it.

  Chapter 28

  Having had little satisfaction from the saying of Vespers and kept away from Joliffe and Vaughn in the guesthall during the supper of vegetable pottage, a large piece of cheese, and a thick slice of buttered bread that Frevisse barely tasted, she and Sister Margrett went to sit on a bench just outside the hall's door. Only then, in that pause, did Sister Margrett ask, at hardly more than a whisper, "Are you to meet the duke of York?"

  Frevisse answered in kind, despite no one seemed near enough to hear, "I don't know. One of his men more likely. Whoever it is that Master Noreys answers to."

  "Oh." Sister Margrett sighed with disappointment. "I should have liked to see the duke nearer than across the yard."

  But that was all she said, and Frevisse said n
othing else either. Instead, they sat side by side on the bench, their heads bowed, Sister Margrett with her rosary, Frevisse with her hands simply folded together on her lap, unwilling to make pretense of praying when her mind was so completely elsewhere, the packet in her belt-hung purse a far heavier weight on her mind than it was at her waist.

  Joliffe and Vaughn had left the hall before they did. She did not know where they had gone, and it was a squire with no lord's badge on his plain doublet who stopped in front of her and Sister Margrett and said, "I beg your pardon, my ladies. The others ask your company, please you."

  Sister Margrett stood up immediately, Frevisse more slowly. She had not known she would be so afraid of doing this thing when the time came.

  Dusk had gathered in the little while they had waited. The tallest pinnacle of the abbey church still caught the last glow of sunlight, but torches were being lighted beside doorways around the guesthall yard as they crossed toward a lesser gateway than the wide one by which they had first ridden into the yard. A damp night-chill was already beginning to settle, and Frevisse shivered, although not entirely from the outward cold.

  Joliffe and Vaughn were waiting in the arch of the gateway. Frevisse wondered if her face was as stiff and carefully blank as theirs. And for no good reason at all, she suddenly wondered if she trusted Vaughn. Joliffe seemed to. Alice assuredly did. But did she?

  Come to it, did she trust anyone in this matter beyond what bare necessity had forced on her? She was not sure she did. Not even Joliffe.

  But why? Did she sense something she had not yet reasoned out, or was it simply that trust—like so much else— was falling prey to the rot eating through England's heart? A rot of which the treachery and murders there had been so far were only the outward show, if what she and Joliffe suspicioned was true. And if what they suspicioned was true, what kind of death was trust going to die? And if trust died, what was left? The questions and their maybe-answers frightened her more than anything ever had, and only because now was too late to do more than go on the way she was, she did not falter but nodded to Joliffe and Vaughn and walked on, her hands thrust up her opposite sleeves in an outward seeming of humility that hid how tightly her fists were clenched, following the squire into another, smaller yard, cobbled, enclosed on three sides by usual buildings but on the fourth by the buttressed cliff-rise of the abbey church itself.

  As usual with rich abbeys, the abbot's dwelling was set apart from the more enclosed and cloistered living of his monks. This was his own yard, Frevisse guessed, and the high-roofed hall along one side of the yard, its tall windows glowing yellow with light, would be where he was presently dining with the duke of York and his household men in lordly fashion. Around the yard's other sides would be the abbot's own rooms and chambers set aside for such guests as were great enough to receive his hospitality, with several such surely given over to the duke of York tonight.

  Those would be where the squire was going, Frevisse supposed as he led them past the wide doorway to the abbot's hall and the warm hum of many men's voices inside it to a lesser door on another side of the yard. A lighted lantern hung there, but the windows to either side were dark and so was the short passage inside; but straight ahead stairs went straight up and another lantern burned at their top, giving light but likewise making shadows enough that Frevisse and Sister Margrett, with their skirts to worsen matters, went only slowly up. The squire waited for them at the top, then led them aside, through a small, shadowed room into a larger chamber so quietly lighted by three candles on a stand of a dozen unlighted ones that Frevisse could tell little about it save there were tapestries on the walls and the windows were shuttered.

  There was also a man, standing near enough to the candlelight for her to see she did not know him and that he was not pleased at seeing, first, her, then the others. He dismissed the squire with, "Keep watch on the stairs," then waited until he was gone and the door closed before he said sharply at Joliffe, "I expected you alone."

  "Without them, there'd be nothing," Joliffe answered as abruptly. He went forward, into the warm spread of the candlelight. The rest of them, even Vaughn, stayed near the door, in the shadows, leaving this to him. "The man and one of the nuns are here on someone else's behalf. The other nun is here because the first one is. There's no more I'll tell you than that. We have to speak to his grace the duke and no one else. And soon."

  Over the years Frevisse had seen Joliffe be—and seem to be—some several things, from a rascal of a traveling player to a careless fool to a spy to almost a friend, with more understood between them than was ever said. As a player, he had any number of voices he could use, could seem to be a great many kinds of men, but until now she had never heard him thus—a man sure of his authority speaking as equal to another man of authority, telling him what they would do. And from the way the man was standing suddenly rigid, staring at him, he had never heard it either, and after that staring moment he demanded back at Joliffe, "Without I know anything more than that?"

  "Without you know anything more than that," Joliffe agreed. "Men have died for knowing it, and I will not tell it to you, Sir William."

  "But you'll tell it to my lord of York."

  That was accusation more than question, and Joliffe answered it as such, not giving up an inch of certainty. "I'll tell my lord of York because likely his life depends on he knows it. What he does then will be his choice. Including telling you." Without pause but his voice suddenly lightened, he went on, "By the way, what happened in Wales? Was there truly order for your death?"

  It was an unsubtle turning of their talk, and Sir William paused, his gaze still hard and assessing on Joliffe, before he accepted it and said, "There was. And for York to be arrested. Arrested!" Sir William barked a harsh, angry laugh. "It never came to a single blow. He faced down Stanley's officers and there was the end of it. Harry Norris, for one, ended up sitting to wine and dinner and a long talk instead of putting him in shackles and prison!"

  Joliffe matched Sir William's laughter and asked on the ebb of it, "Did Harry know who gave the orders? Did York ever find out?"

  And Frevisse suddenly understood he was not simply using up time. He was trying to lay hold on another strangling rope of the web there was through all of this, hoping for more answers; but Sir William made a disgusted sound and said, "Everybody had their orders from Stanley and supposed he had them from Somerset. What do you suppose?"

  That question came sharp back at Joliffe, who said, "I do think they'd both be hard put to order their dog to sit and be obeyed."

  "Hm," Sir William said. Their shallow laughter had fallen away from both of them. For a long moment they only stood, looking at each other, each waiting for the other to speak, and when Joliffe did not, Sir William finally said flatly, "You mean it about telling only York."

  Joliffe made a small assenting movement of his head.

  Sir William stared at him a dissatisfied moment longer, maybe still uncertain how things had shifted between them from master and man to two masters. Then he shifted his belt with both hands, probably in outward sign of resettling his mind, and said, "No point in our standing about, then. My ladies, pardon for my lack of courtesy. I pray you, sit." And to Joliffe again, "I'll send someone to put a word in his grace's ear, on the chance he can slip free of our good abbot the sooner."

  "We can only hope," Joliffe said smoothly, like a gracious guest accepting a host's right attentions.

  Frevisse thought he was playing it too far, and maybe Sir William did, too. His look held on Joliffe a moment more before he again chose to let it go, settling for a silent bow of his head to Frevisse and Sister Margrett on his way to the door. They both made curtsies in return but it was to his back as he went out the door, closing it behind him.

  "So," said Vaughn.

  "So," Joliffe agreed.

  There seeming nothing else to say, no one said it, and in their silence, Joliffe went to the candlestand, took one of the lighted candles and lit the rest, the soft light
blooming to fill the room.

  "Better to wait in light," he said, "than have things come at us out of the dark."

  With no knowing how long their wait would be, Frevisse and Sister Margrett went to sit on a short-legged chest against the wall near a window; Vaughn chose a low-backed chair and sat with his head down and hands clasped; Joliffe hitched a hip onto the corner of a table from which he took up a small, plain-bound book and began to turn the pages. Beside Frevisse, Sister Margrett began to whisper the beginning of Compline, the day's final Office. Without thought, simply from long custom, Frevisse joined her, hardly listening even to herself, until the familiar words and their peace took hold on her and she began to say them with her mind as well as her mouth, and then with her heart.

  "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace ..." Now dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace . . . "Salva nos, Domine. . . et requiescamus in pace." Save us, Lord . . . and may we find rest in peace. Taking the comfort there was in knowing that these words, this hope, had outlasted the ambitions and lusts of more hundreds of men than she could count or know.