16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “They weren’t pirates. And our captain knew they were coming. He wasn’t surprised. You could see that. What he did and what they did, it was under orders, and the man there giving the orders he wasn’t a pirate or anything like. He was …” Burgate stopped, swallowed convulsively, and let her go. Stepping back from her a half pace with a rattle of chain, he straightened a little and said, “No, that’s not for you to hear. Nor you wouldn’t believe me anyway, maybe. No. It’s the letter.” He edged forward the little he had retreated, his voice fallen back to a low whisper. “The letter. My lord told me in Ipswich, when he’d finished it, he told me to keep it somewhere safe. Not among his other papers Safe. And that no one was to know of it but me. Unless he died. Then Lady Alice was to have it. But after they … after they … killed him, other men seized me. At Dover. Someone must have told them there was something Suffolk had written, but they didn’t find it and they’re not sure of it and they want me to admit there’s something and tell them where it is.”

  “But you haven’t. Haven’t given them the letter or admitted it exists,” Frevisse said. Because if he had, he would not still be here. He might not even be alive.

  Burgate had had time enough and more to think on possibilities she was just guessing at, and with a hunted look around his cell he said, “If I’d told them, they’d have killed me by now so there’d be no one else would know what it said. But I haven’t even told them it exists, no. So it’s safe. It’s safe.”

  “Where?” Frevisse asked.

  Wrapped in his months-long nightmare, Burgate jerked back from her, wild-eyed with distrust, before he remembered she had the right to ask. He was trembling, though, and grabbed his face between his hands as if forcibly to hold himself together, saying hoarsely between his fingers, “They’re going to torture me. I know it. They only haven’t because he’s … he’s ordered otherwise. But if he … he …”

  “Who?” Frevisse asked before she could stop herself.

  Burgate began to shake his head strongly. “No. That’s something I won’t say. Won’t ever say. No.”

  “The duke of Somerset,” Frevisse said. “The duke of Buckingham?”

  She was more thinking aloud than asking, but Burgate answered hurriedly, “No, not him, no. The …” Again he fumbled at words. “The others. Them. Yes.” He seemed to become more certain. “Them.”

  That was as much as she wanted to know. Come to it, she did not want to know even that much, and she said in an even, steady voice, “What did you do with this letter my lord of Suffolk meant Lady Alice to have?”

  Slowly, as if counting each word as he said it, Burgate half-whispered, “When it was done and closed and sealed and he gave it to me, I wrapped it in oil-cloth and sealed it with my own seal. Then I wrapped it into a package of two new-made shirts and a pair of hose and tied it so it was just a bundle. There was a boy at the inn there in Ipswich. He’d been saying he wanted to go to London. To find his fortune and all that nonsense.” Burgate momentarily showed the pride of a man who had “found his fortune” in a far more sensible way, forgetting it had brought him to here. “I gave him money to help him on his way in return for him delivering the bundle to my cousin John Smythe in Sible Hedingham. Sire John. He’s priest there, very safely out of the way of everything. I told the boy Sire John would pay him for the bundle and gave him a letter asking John to do so. In the bundle I enclosed another letter telling John that the sealed packet had to be safely and secretly kept. Not what it was. I never told him that. Only that he had to keep it for me until I came for it or … or he heard I was dead. Then he should take it himself to her grace, my lady of Suffolk. It was the best I could think of,” he apologized. “There wasn’t much time to think of anything. We were to sail in the morning and I didn’t want the letter on me. It was the best I could do. The thing was … the letter was … it’s …” He sank suddenly onto the edge of the bed again and hid his race in his hands. “Blessed St. Peter ad Vincula, I’m going to die here. I’m going to die here. Because of that … that …”

  Frevisse moved quickly forward, laid hand on his shoulder, said strongly, “It’s no longer your burden. You’re rid of it. Someone besides you knows of it now. It’s not yours to bear anymore. All you need do is hold silent and wait for Lady Alice to have you out of here.”

  Burgate uncovered his face, grabbed her by her hands. “A week,” he pleaded. “A week, you said.”

  “A week,” she repeated, with silent prayer that Alice would move that quickly and he would last that long.

  She made to step back from him and he loosed her, let her go, wrung his hands together in his lap and began to rock slowly back and forth where he sat. “A week,” he said.

  “A week,” Frevisse said again, in retreat now, back across the noisome floor to the stairs where Sister Margrett still waited, her veil still held over her mouth and nose.

  The guard was just coming down the stairs, carrying the two buckets, one with a wooden lid, just as she had ordered him. He would have gone past her without any look, but because her sharpness to him might all too likely be passed on to Burgate, she said quietly, “My pardon, sir, for speaking so harshly before. Thank you for your goodness. If you could give him such kindness after this, too, you’ll have my prayers and blessing.”

  With a look both disconcerted and embarrassed, the man said, “Aye, my lady. I’ll do what I can.”

  “The blessed saints have you in their keeping,” Frevisse murmured, mild as honey and milk, ignoring Sister Margrett’s surprise-widened eyes.

  Having done what she could to appease the guard, she went at haste up the stairs and through the guardroom, escaping the tower at just short of unseemly haste. Only when she and Sister Margrett were outside and away from it, in clear sunlight and clean air under open sky, did she slow her pace and say with sharp need at Sister Margrett, “I want to be away from here. Soon. And far.” Meaning not only Kenilworth but whatever darkness moved here under all the outward grace and beauty of the queen’s royal court.

  Chapter 15

  The yeoman who had brought them to the tower was gone about his other business, leaving Sister Margrett free to ask as they went back together toward the heart of the castle, “I shouldn’t want to know more than I do about any of this, should I?”

  “No,” Frevisse answered quietly; then, after a moment, added, “Nor ever speak of it at all to anyone, if you can help it.”

  Sister Margrett was silent then with what Frevisse hoped was acceptance, until just short of the passageway back to the courtyard, she asked, “Will Lady Alice be able to have him out of there? Before he dies?”

  “I pray so.”

  “So shall I,” said Sister Margrett and then nothing more, to Frevisse’s relief. She did not want to outright lie, but neither was she going to share any of the truth with Sister Margrett. For her patience through all of this—and more especially for holding back from questions she surely had—Sister Margrett deserved better than a burden Frevisse would not wish on her for any reason.

  In the courtyard below the keep they found a servant to send in search of Vaughn, followed the man as far as the gateway to the outer yard, then waited there while he disappeared into the busyness of men beyond it. He must have known where to go, because he came back soon with Vaughn, who tossed him a coin. The man bowed in thanks and returned through the gateway and Vaughn said, “My ladies?”

  Not needing to be told, Sister Margrett drifted aside, out of hearing, and Frevisse told Vaughn of Burgate. Vaughn went grim while she did and at the end said, “I’ll send Ned off with word to Lady Alice within the hour. Did he tell you anything of why he’s there. Or the other business?”

  “What he told me I think would be best saved to tell to you and Master Noreys together.”

  Vaughn eyed her for a moment in a shrewd way that reminded her of Joliffe. She had thought he might protest that and she was ready not to argue with him, simply tell him that was how it would be—the fair sharing Lady Alice and Jo
liffe had agreed on in the business. But Vaughn only said, “My lady does well to trust you. You found Burgate when no one else has.”

  “It was only by chance that I did and so readily,” she said.

  “Some are more favored by chance than others are.”

  “I’ll count myself well-favored if we can leave here tomorrow.” Because talk of chance had made her suddenly wonder, belatedly, whether finding Burgate had been only chance. Had she been deliberately used to get from him what no one else had been able to pry from him? If so, she was now in the same danger he was. But no. No one here had known she was coming or could have known she would ask after the duchess of Suffolk’s secretary. Or that the queen would think it of so little matter as to simply tell her. It had all been only chance. It had to have been.

  But then, when whoever kept Burgate here—those others he was too frightened to name—found out he had talked with her and that Alice knew where he was …

  The sooner she was away from here, the better she would feel. Vaughn was saying, “We can leave in the morning directly after you’ve broken your fast, if you will,” and she agreed, “That would do very well. Thank you.”

  He bowed and went away the way he had come, and Sister Margrett, returning to Frevisse’s side, asked, “Done?”

  “As done as can be,” Frevisse answered and wished she felt the lighter for it.

  They dined in Kenilworth’s great hall at supper. Seated at one of the tables stretching the hall’s length, they were a long way from the dais at the hall’s upper end where the queen sat behind the high table that was covered by a shiningly white cloth down to the floor and set with gold and silver dishes that caught and glowed with the evening light through the hall’s tall, glassed windows. Queen Margaret was differently gowned from this afternoon, in summer-blue velvet edged with dark fur around the low curve of the neck that showed a gold-brocaded undergown. A close-fitted necklace of gold and pearls circled her throat, and there were pearls and blue jewels in her crown, too—a different crown from the plain one of this afternoon.

  She shared the high table with the duke of Buckingham on her one side and a churchman on the other, then two other women and finally at one end of the table Sir Thomas Stanley and at the other another churchman, all of them as finely arrayed as the queen and looking to be in high good humour among themselves, giving as much heed to their own talk as to the several singers, jugglers, and tumblers that performed at intervals in the center of the hall during the meal.

  Was their high-heartedness real, Frevisse wondered? Did they really feel so little the harsh certainty of the lost French war and the revolts and rebellions tearing at England? All of that was out of their sight, certainly, but was it likewise out of mind? Or were they feigning, for the sake of those who watched them?

  It was not a life she had ever wanted—to be the center of other people’s need, having to match her outward seeming, despite whatever she inwardly felt or thought, to what her place demanded of her. Even when something other than a nun’s life had been within her reach, she had known it was not what she wanted—to be divided between outward seeming and inward heart for duty’s sake to others. In that way, her choice to be a nun had been utterly for herself, she supposed. She had once said as much to Domina Edith, her prioress at St. Frideswide’s through her early years there; and Domina Edith, old and grown wise with time, had smiled on her and said, “At the best, yes, your choice was utterly for yourself.”

  She had left Frevisse standing startled for a moment before she went gently on, “Most people lack the good sense to do something so utterly for themselves. They accept being broken into pieces by life’s and other people’s needs. By becoming a nun, you are hoping for a wholeness of mind and body and spirit that will let you grow outside the bonds of body, the bonds of even this time and this place.” Domina Edith’s smile had deepened. “You are unlikely to attain that prize in full, unless you achieve sainthood, but it is surely a prize worth the striving for. Surely better than the death-limited, world-battered prizes for which most people settle, usually without much thought about their choice. It may be said, yes, you were self-willed, choosing yourself over others, but should you begin to feel that as too great a burden on your soul, you need only consider what your self-will has gained you—utter obedience, by oath, to the Rule and whatever orders your superiors may give you under it. You may have come by stubborn self-will to be a nun, but one of the great goals of your nunhood is to learn to give up that self that willed you here. Remember that and you’ll have no worry about the self-will that brought you here.” And when next Frevisse had had to work in patient silence under Dame Alys’ ill-humoured, angry orders in the nunnery kitchen, that lesson had come all too heavily home.

  It was toward the middle of the last remove that the expected way of the meal was broken when Frevisse happened to see a servant lean over at Sir Thomas Stanley’s shoulder and say something in his ear. Even from as far down the hall as she was, Frevisse saw Sir Thomas jerk and stiffen. He rose, moved along the table to put his head between the queen and Buckingham, said something, and apparently received her leave to go, because he bowed and went away, out by way of a door at one end of the dais. A ripple of head-turning along the hall followed him but that was all.

  He had not returned when the meal ended and the lords and ladies withdrew the same way he had gone, leaving the hall to whatever pastimes the lesser folk might find for the evening. Rather than linger there, Frevisse and Sister Margrett sought out the castle’s chapel for evening prayers and went from there to bed, and only in the morning, as they readied to leave, learned what news had taken Sir Thomas from the table.

  “Likely spoiled his digestion, too,” said Vaughn as he made a final tightening of saddle girths in the outer yard. “What I’ve heard is one of Stanley’s men rode in from Chester with word the duke of York has had warning there’s plotting against him around the king and he’s set on coming back from Ireland. Nobody around the king wants that. Sir Thomas sent a messenger on his way last night to the king and rode out himself with his men at first light this morning.”

  Since the first full rays of sun had yet to strike over the castle walls, “first light” must have been when the dark had thinned enough to see the road.

  “He’s going to the king, too?” Frevisse asked. Vaughn was standing aside from her horse now, holding the reins so she could mount.

  “No. Toward Wales, I gather.”

  Frevisse swung up to the saddle. While settling her skirts, she looked down at him, somewhat frowning, and asked, “Why to Wales?”

  “He’s chamberlain there and York’s coming seemingly means he’s needed there.”

  “Why?”

  Vaughn shrugged. Beyond them, his man was helping Sister Margrett onto her horse.

  “Why?” Frevisse asked again, reading more into his shrug than maybe Vaughn had meant to tell.

  But he only asked as he handed the reins to her, “Sir Thomas maybe expects the king will take exception to York’s return?” before he turned away to his own horse and mounted, giving her no chance to ask more.

  They made a very long day’s ride of it, coming in sight of St. Frideswide’s when the evening light was lying long across the golden stubble of the harvested fields beyond its walls. Vespers was done, but the priory’s outer gates still stood open and they rode straight in. The inner gates, to the guesthall courtyard outside the cloister door, were shut but would have been opened readily enough at any traveler’s need because the Benedictine Rule required it, but the guesthall servingman who came at the ringing of the bell opened the more quickly when he saw them. Because both Frevisse and Sister Margrett had sometimes been the priory’s hosteler overseeing the guesthall, he knew them and said, openly pleased as he pulled the gates wide, “You’re late-come, my ladies, but right welcome. There’s been wondering how you were and where.”

  “We’re here now, St. Frideswide be thanked,” Frevisse said. “And well enough, Tom.” Supposi
ng she was not too stiff to swing down from the saddle. “Has all been well?”

  “Well as might be. No great troubles,” Tom said, walking beside her horse as they rode into the yard. “There was some yelling when someone lost a pottery bowl down the kitchen-yard well a few days gone. That’s been the most lately.”

  Frevisse nearly gave a laugh of relief. To have a broken pottery bowl the worst thing to be upset over seemed wonderful. But her laugh faded unmade as she saw Joliffe standing up from where he had been sitting on the guesthall steps.

  Partly, she was relieved to see him. She had been refusing to be worried for him, but had been anyway because men had been murdered in this matter and there was no reason he could not be, too. Now, seeing him safely here, she simply, suddenly, gave herself up to her deep weariness. All was as well as it might be, and all that was left to do was give over to both him and Vaughn what she had learned from Burgate and be done with it.

  She had had all day to think of how she would discretely do that, and as Tom held her horse for her to dismount, she turned to Sister Margrett and said in a somewhat fainting voice, “I don’t feel well.”

  Vaughn, already dismounted and taking Sister Margrett’s horse by the bridle, gave her a sharp look. So did Sister Margrett, and Frevisse had the feeling that whoever else believed her, neither of them did, so she made a clumsy effort of climbing down from her saddle and stood holding to it as if too weak or unwell to dare letting go. Aware of Sister Margrett’s and Vaughn’s questioning frowns and Tom’s worried look, she faltered, “I wonder if, visiting that prisoner, I may have caught a fever?”

  “Oh, my lady!” Tom said, alarmed.

  “I pray not,” Sister Margrett said with matching worry.

  “Should I … would it be better,” Frevisse said as if uncertain, “if we spent the night in the guesthall, rather than …”