16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  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 doublets, 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.”

  It was that. And dark. And the stink of damp and mold and a slop bucket not emptied lately came to meet Frevisse and Sister Margrett as they followed him. Frevisse heard Sister Margrett slightly gag and said over her shoulder, “Cover your mouth and nose with your veil. Breathe through it,” doing the same herself.

  The room below was the sort often used for storage— thick-walled and stone-vaulted to bear the weight of the tower above and stand against assault. Here, with the moat coming almost to the wall, the seeping damp made that use unsuitable: wood, cloth, and food, kept here, would rot.

  So they were keeping a man instead.

  What light there was came slanted and narrow through three slits hardly wider than a man’s hand and maybe a forearm long, set somewhat above man-height. Pierced through the walls’ thickness, they gave hardly even sight of the sky, certainly no warmth of sun or light enough to more than grope by. It was the rattle of a chain that told her where to look, just able in the gloom to make out a man slowly standing up from something along the far curve of the wall; but her eyes were growing used to the gloom and her nose to the smell. The chained man was trying to bow, and Frevisse felt sudden anger on his behalf. That he should still try for such courtesy after probably months in this death-hole said better of him than of his jailers, and she said sharply to the guard, “His slop bucket should be emptied. See to it.”

  “There’s someone does it when—” the man started.

  “Not often enough,” Frevisse snapped. As a nun she had held too many offices in the nunnery, been in charge of too many duties and servants to hesitate at all over giving orders where orders were needed to those beneath her; and anyone who would leave a man living with his own filth when there was no need was very much beneath her. “Take the bucket. Empty it. Scrub it clean before you bring it back.” Her eyes were more used to the gloom by the moment. “With a lid, like it’s supposed to have. And take that water bucket, too, and do the same and bring it back with clean water in it.”

  She felt the man hesitate. She sent him a look that, even in the shadows, decided him to do what he was told; but when he had picked up the two buckets and was heading for the stairs again, it was Sister Margrett who said to him quietly, “God’s blessing on you for your mercy, sir,” earning a respectful, quick duck of his head to her as he passed.

  A little shamed at her own curtness but with no help for it now, Frevisse moved more toward the chained man and asked, “Edward Burgate?”

  Chapter 14

  The thin, bent-backed man shuffled a little forward. Frevisse could see now that he was shackled around one ankle by a fetter attached to a chain fastened to the heavy wooden frame of a bed, the cell’s only place to sit. “Yes, my lady,” he said, making another bow. He was roughly bearded, his thinning hair uncut, his clothing fit only for throwing out, but he was clinging to what courtesy he could despite his voice croaked as if not much used. “Edward Burgate, if it please you, my ladies. Are you … are you from my lady of Suffolk?”

  “We are,” Frevisse said to him quickly. “She knows I’m here?” His voice broke and trembled. “She will, now that I know,” Frevisse assured him. “She’s been searching to know where you were but we’ve only just now found you out.”

  “Is she here?”

  “She isn’t. She’s at Wingfield, but I’ve a man will take her word immediately.”

  Burgate shuffled a little backward and sank down on the edge of the bed as if unable to stand up any longer. His head hung low, his hands dangled between his knees, and Frevisse heard him say on nearly a sob, “Not here.”

  She looked around at Sister Margrett. “I need to talk to him alone.”

  “I’ll stay here by the stairs,” Sister Margrett said. She probably wanted no more than Frevisse did to cross that wet dirt floor embedded with smells and filth both old and new; but where she had choice, Frevisse did not and went forward, careful footed. The place was large enough that, if she and Burgate kept their voices down, their talk would be private and it was on him and what he might tell her that she had to fix her mind, not the stink and filth.

  Burgate, despite she gestured for him to stay seated, forced himself respectfully to his feet again as she approached. Seen nearer, he looked to be one of those men who hovered between old and young for a great many years, weakly neither one nor the other; but all else aside, he was plainly near the end of his strength.

  “A week,” she said. “Lady Alice’s man, riding fast, can be to her and back again in a week and have you out of here.”

  If it were possible to have him out of here. There was something very wrong about him being here at all, and like this. Wrong enough that after his brief flare of hope, Burgate was apparently gone untrusting, because he said now, Peering at her, “Are you truly from her? This isn’t another trap of theirs, to make me tell …” He faltered. “… tell that I don’t know,” he finished, almost believably.

  “Lady Alice told me that if you doubted, I should ask you where the account rolls for the manor of Cockayne might be. That if I said that, you’d know you could tell me whatever you needed to.”

  On what might have been a smothered sob, Burgate said “Thanks be to whatever blessed saint has heard my prayers.”

  “Then there is something you need to tell her, something she needs to know.”

  He gulped on what sounded like a need to cry and said with plainly forced steadiness, “There is. I was my lord of Suffolk’s secretary. You know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. Of course you do.” Burgate ran unsteady hands through his hair. “Yes. I wrote his letters. I wrote … whatever he needed written. I wrote … those last days in Ipswich … I made copies of his letter to Master John and … It’s a very fine letter. Have you read it?”

  “It’s a very fine letter,” Frevisse agreed because Burgate thought so and Alice’s feeling about it had no place here.

  “He was a noble man, my lord of Suffolk. A very noble man.” The relief of being able to talk was overcoming Bur-gate’s restraint but not enoug
h to let him come straight at whatever he had not been saying these months since Suffolk’s death. “I made copies of that letter and wrote his last words to my lady, his wife …”

  He faltered again and stopped. Frevisse could guess he both wanted desperately to be rid of his secret and was desperately afraid to give it up after clutching it to him all these months, and carefully she said, “Your pardon, but I don’t think that ever came to her.”

  “It wasn’t …” Burgate fumbled and stopped again, staring at her with a frightened man’s great need for something to steady him. A frightened but brave man, Frevisse told herself. Even in his need and fear, he did not reach out for the hold on someone that he looked to desperately need; so, little though she wanted to touch him, sure he was vermined as well as dirty, she put out a hand to him and said with forced gentleness, “Sir, I’m here for her.”

  With a gasp, he grabbed hold on her hand with both of his, clinging but steadying—like a man adrift and drowning given something certain to hold to for a while. At a whisper that Frevisse even at two arms’ length could hardly hear, Bur-gate said, “It was something he hoped would never have to come to her. It was … it tells how he and the duke of Somerset and … others dealt together to lose …” The final word he mouthed more than whispered. “… Normandy.”

  That finally said, he swallowed, then went on in a stronger, faster whisper. “My lord said that if they played him false—his grace the duke of Somerset and the … and the others—if they played him false, then my lady would know how to make the best use of what he was telling her. Against them.”

  “But she never got it,” Frevisse said.

  “No. Because after they played him false, they took me and I …”

  Surprised and alarmed, Frevisse said with forced care, “Suffolk wasn’t played false, was he? It was pirates in the Channel took his ship. Men angry at him for …” She broke off as Burgate shook and shook his head, refusing her words. “It wasn’t?” she asked softly.