16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Sister Margrett quickly took up her faltering words. “Rather than take infection into the cloister, you mean. Yes. Surely.” Dismounted now, she hurried to Frevisse’s side and put an arm around her waist to help her toward the guesthall steps. “Tom, fetch Dame Claire. Maybe there’s some supper left, some broth maybe, Tom? Master Vaughn, your man can see the horses to the stable, can’t he? And if you’d bring our saddlebags …”

  Kindly, capably, Sister Margrett set everyone around them to doing one thing or another, and in the general shifting of horses and men and helping Frevisse up the steps she took the chance to whisper worriedly in Frevisse’s ear, “You’re not really ill, are you?”

  “No,” Frevisse whispered back. “But I have to talk to …”

  “… the man who was waiting here,” Sister Margrett finished for her, and said loudly, for others to hear, “There now, lean on me, dame. Just a little farther.” And to Joliffe, now holding open the guesthall door for them, “Thank you, sir.”

  It ended with Frevisse put to bed in the chamber saved for the nunnery’s better guests and feeling very foolish at the bustle Sister Margrett made of it. Dame Claire, the priory’s infirmarian, soon came from the cloister, but she and Frevisse had known each other for all the years Frevisse had been in the nunnery, and Frevisse knew there was small likelihood of deceiving her. So she whispered as Dame Claire bent over her, feeling her forehead and for her pulse, “I need to stay the night here.”

  Dame Claire gave her a sharp look, continued to examine her, and finally turned away to tell Sister Margrett clearly enough for the servants hovering outside the chamber door to hear, “I find nothing greatly wrong with her. It may be only she’s over-wearied, not being so young as she once was.”

  Frevisse’s glare was wasted at her back, and she went on, “But best we be safe about it. You’ll both stay here tonight. See she drinks the potion I’ll leave for her, and we’ll see how all does in the morning.” She turned back to Frevisse in the bed and said, “Mind you behave,” with a look that said she was agreeing to help but did not like it.

  Her disapproval was evidenced more plainly by the potion. Made of sharp herbs, it did no favors to the ale into which it was mixed. As a kind of penance for her lies, Frevisse drank it all and then pretended she wanted only a little of the supper brought to her, hungry though she was. Beyond that, she decided she must leave Joliffe and Vaughn to find a way to talk with her that would raise no suspicions or curiosity among the guesthall servants. Happily, there were no other guests tonight to make that more difficult, and soon after her tray of barely eaten supper had been taken away, Vaughn scratched at the room’s doorframe. Sister Margrett went, and just loudly enough to be overheard by anyone in the hall behind him, he asked, “How does she? Happens the fellow here is a minstrel. Might she care for some quiet lute-playing?”

  “That might be good,” said Sister Margrett with the same carrying quiet. “She’s querulous and a little restless. The music might soothe her.”

  Frevisse had to feel advantage was being taken of her in her “illness”. First, it had been “not so young” from Dame Claire. Now it was “querulous” from Sister Margrett. But she remained leaning back against the pillows, trying to look wan. Which well she might, after Dame Claire’s potion, she thought, the after-taste of it still unpleasantly with her.

  Sister Margrett had helped her off with her outer gown and veil before she took to bed, but for seemliness’ sake she had kept on her heavy undergown and her wimple was still around her face and over her throat, pinned to the close-fitted cap that covered what there was of her short-cropped hair, so that she was decent enough to be seen by Vaughn and Joliffe. She nonetheless felt the lack of her habit’s familiar safety—somewhat how a fighter must feel without his shield, she imagined. Nor did Joliffe help. He came into the room carrying a lute in one hand and a joint stool from the hall in the other, bowed to her, then set the stool not far aside from the foot of her bed and said with respectful concern, “If I sit here, my lady, you need not tire yourself with speaking but can sign to me with a small movement of one hand if I play too loudly, too softly, or too badly. Will that do? You need only nod,” he added, the laughter in his eyes belying his “kindness.” He was enjoying himself.

  Frevisse narrowed her eyes at him to show what she thought of his “kindness,” while accepting it with a small nod. When he was seated, though, and began to finger a quiet melody from the lute, she had to grant he had skill at the playing—and was displeased at herself to find she a little grudged him that, as if in return for making such a jest of things, he should at least play badly.

  Vaughn had followed Joliffe into the room, had kept back from the bed what seemed a respectful distance while positioning himself to block Frevisse from anyone’s view beyond the doorway. With Sister Margrett withdrawn to the chamber’s far end to sit with her breviary in apparent prayer, this was as private as they could, within reason, be, and Frevisse asked, low-voiced, of Joliffe, “What’s Vaughn told you?”

  “That you found this secretary,” Joliffe sang in a soft murmur matched to the tune he was playing, watching his fingers rather than her. “That’s all. There have been people around.”

  “Not about the duke of York?”

  Joliffe’s fingers did not fumble the strings but his gaze flashed up to her face, demanding to be told more; and he went on watching her while she said, “Word came to Kenilworth at suppertime yesterday. He’s said to be coming back from Ireland. The news took Sir Thomas Stanley right away from the high table.”

  “Ah.” Joliffe dropped his gaze. “The good Sir Thomas.”

  Behind him, Vaughn said, “He’s gone to Wales. He rode out with his men this morning.”

  “Wales,” Joliffe said. A Welsh melody ran from under his fingers.

  With a small backward glance to be sure no one was near behind him in the hall, Vaughn said, “If York is coming back from Ireland and without royal leave, they’ll catch him on that hook if none other.”

  “My lord of York …” Joliffe slid the hint of a marching song into his playing. “… had it put in his indenture with the king, before ever he went, that he has the right to come back to England whenever he wants, without need of royal leave.”

  “Well fore-thought,” Vaughn said.

  “But Sir Thomas has hied himself away to Wales. I wonder why,” Joliffe said, more as if thinking aloud than expecting any answer, and neither Vaughn nor Frevisse gave him one. Joliffe slipped into a lullaby of many rippling notes and said as gently as his playing, “This secretary, my lady. What did you learn from him once you found him?”

  Behind him, Vaughn took a half-step forward, this being what he wanted to hear, too, and they all three of them glanced toward Sister Margrett across the chamber, sitting with her head bowed over her breviary open on her lap, reading from it in a low murmur that likely masked from her whatever they were saying. Glad to be done with and rid of Burgate’s secret, Frevisse told all that he had told her. Though Joliffe continued to play quietly, she watched his face and Vaughn’s go grim while she did; and when she finished, Joliffe turned his head enough to say over his right shoulder at Vaughn, “You’ve sent word to her grace he’s there?”

  “Yesterday. As soon as I knew.”

  Joliffe made a small nod, as if satisfied by that, and said now looking down at his fingers drifting at the lute strings “You’re probably going to sleep now, my lady. We’ll leave you to it and be about our business, by your leave.”

  That “by your leave” was pointless courtesy. She had given them what they wanted and they were done with her and her “leave” had nothing to do with what they would do now. But despite she had wanted to be done with it all, she suddenly wanted to know what they intended to do next, and was angry at herself for wanting that and closed her eyes and evened her breathing, willing herself to lie as if gone to sleep while Joliffe lessened his playing away to silence. With her eyes kept firmly shut, she listened to him rise and pick u
p the stool, and only at the very edge of hearing heard him say then, for no one else to hear, “Well done, my lady.”

  Chapter 16

  There being too much chance of being overheard in the guesthall’s main room among the servants bringing out the night’s bedding, Joliffe and Vaughn strolled in seeming idleness outside to the cobbled yard between the hall and the cloister and church. The warm last of daylight was just gilding the cross atop the point of roof above the church’s west front. All else was in soft-shadowed twilight. They had the yard to themselves and went to sit on the step around the well there, to look at ease in their talk, should someone take especial note of them.

  There was need both to talk over what Dame Frevisse had said and what they would do now, but while Joliffe turned over his thoughts, considering where to start, Vaughn said, “I heard someone besides the duke of York being talked of among Sir Thomas’ men in the hurry at Kenilworth. Sir William Oldhall.”

  Joliffe was aware of Vaughn watching him while he said that and chose to look interested rather than blank. Blank too easily gave away you were trying to show nothing. With outward easiness he asked, “What about him?”

  “It was being said among Sir Thomas’ men that he’s the one took whatever word it was that’s set York to coming back on the sudden.”

  “Damnable spies,” Joliffe said lightly.

  “What are we, then, if not ‘damnable spies’?” Vaughn asked.

  “Oh, we’re spies, surely. Just not damnable.”

  “You hope.”

  “And we’re not Sir Thomas Stanley.”

  “He’s no spy,” Vaughn scoffed.

  “No. He’s a cur-dog who thinks he’s a wolf, but that won’t make his bite much the less if he takes a snap at someone.”

  “Oldhall,” said Vaughn. “Do you have any thought on what he would have told York to set him on coming back to England?”

  “Probably what I told Lady Alice at Wingfield. That men on at least one of those commissions of oyer and terminer against rebels have been told to find York was behind at least Cade’s uprising.”

  “Was it someone on one of the commissions?” Vaughn asked, watching him, probably as interested in judging whether Joliffe was going to tell him the truth as Joliffe was interested in seeing how far they could go before they began lying to each other.

  For now, rather than lying, Joliffe settled for looking at him wordlessly, admitting nothing.

  “Someone in the royal household?” Vaughn tried. Joliffe still said nothing, and Vaughn shrugged and said, “Well enough. Let it be your secret. Just swear to me there’s nothing to Lady Alice’s harm in what you’re not telling me.”

  “Nothing that I know of,” Joliffe said readily. “I swear it on my hope of heaven.” And tucked away the thought that yet again Nicholas Vaughn gave every sign of being, first of everything, the duchess of Suffolk’s man. There was always the chance he was playing some double game of his own, in someone else’s service more deeply than he was in Lady Alice’s, but without some sign that he was, Joliffe would take him as he seemed—and tell him no more than need be. Just as Vaughn was likely doing with him.

  “It’s pity, though, your nun didn’t win her way closer to the queen,” Vaughn said.

  Forebearing to say Dame Frevisse was not “his nun,” Joliffe simply asked, “Why?”

  “From what I heard, for what it’s worth, it seems that the queen, in her own rooms after supper, when she heard what Sir Thomas had to tell her, went into a …” Vaughn gave half a smile. “… royal rage.”

  “When he told her that York was coming back from Ireland?”

  “At that, yes. One of Sir Thomas’ men who was there was laughing at it this morning, saying she had Sir Thomas backed against a wall and was yelling in his face that York had to be stopped, that Sir Thomas had to see he was stopped.”

  Leaving aside pleasure at thought of Sir Thomas Stanley backed against a wall with a woman yelling at him, Joliffe asked, “Did he have any answer to that besides, ‘Yes, your grace’?”

  “He did. He said he had orders that way already. That she Needn’t worry. That it would be seen to. He had his orders.”

  “He kept saying he had his orders?”

  “The fellow telling it in the stableyard this morning fancies himself a player, I think. He was miming Sir Thomas against a wall and blustering. How much he was over-playing I don’t know, but he had Sir Thomas saying he ‘had his orders’ more than once.”

  “Already had orders to stop York if he came back from Ireland. You’re right, it was pity Dame Frevisse wasn’t there.” It would have been interesting to know what she made of it all.

  Still watching him, Vaughn went on, “The queen seems also to have said she wants ‘this traitor Oldhall dead’.” Vaughn mimicked a French, shrill woman’s voice. ” ‘I want him dead. See him dead and do the same for York if he gives you chance.’”

  “She said that?” Joliffe demanded. “She told him to kill the both of them?”

  “So this fellow was saying. Nor does it sound like something anyone like him would make up from whole cloth and stale wit.”

  Joliffe shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.” And it made a believable parcel with what else was going on against York. For one moment his anger flared past his carefulness. “Damn them! York hasn’t done anything. Nothing that deserves death. Even coming back from Ireland is within his rights.”

  “He’s too royal-blooded.”

  “And those who have found how fat they can live with a weak king don’t like the chance there might be a strong one, yes,” Joliffe agreed, impatient with what was all too plain. “But King Henry looks to be a long way from dead …”

  “Unless there’s something about his health we don’t know.”

  Joliffe stopped short over that thought, then shook his head. “No. He’s spent a fairly vigorous few months of late, what with riding against the rebels and all.”

  “What with riding toward them, then riding away from them even faster,” Vaughn said, rightly enough.

  “And now he’s riding against them again,” Joliffe said mockingly. “Now that Cade is dead and the rebels scattered.

  But be all that as it may, King Henry has been too much seen of late to think his health is poorly.”

  “It’s the rebels’ demands that York be finally, openly, fully named King Henry’s heir that’s done it. That’s frighted those who want him nowhere near the king or in the government at all.”

  “Which doesn’t change the fact that, by right of blood, he is King Henry’s heir.”

  “And that if someone wanted to,” Vaughn said very quietly, “they could say York is more than only ‘heir’.”

  The last golden light had gone from the cross, and the twilight in the yard was deepening toward darkness, but it was for more than the creep of the evening chill that Joliffe shivered before—as quietly as Vaughn—he said, “They could say it. But better they don’t say it aloud. York has never pushed any claim that way at all, ever, that I’ve heard. All he’s ever done or asked for is what any prince of the royal blood could rightly expect. And far less than some have demanded.”

  “He’s surely thought about it, though,” Vaughn said, making it sound half-way to an accusation.

  “He’d better,” Joliffe returned tartly, “since men are willing to kill him because of it.”

  “True,” Vaughn granted. “My guess, for what it’s worth, is that Sir Thomas Stanley and whoever else is in this against York are judging him by how they would be if they were him.”

  That was a thought Joliffe had had before now. He had had other thoughts, too, and asked, “Was that how it was with the duke of Suffolk?”

  “Suffolk?” Vaughn put neither liking nor respect into the name. “Suffolk loved himself too much to think much about anyone else. No. His distrust of York came, I think, from knowing, somewhere in himself where he likely never looked straight at it, that York was by far the better at governing the French war than Suff
olk had been when he’d had the chance, and that York would surely have done better at governing England, too. Better than Suffolk ever did or ever wanted to. And remember,” he added as if Joliffe had accused him of something, “it’s the Lady Alice I serve, have always served. Never Suffolk.”

  That must have sometimes been a narrow distinction and maybe hard to keep when Suffolk was alive to give orders; but Joliffe understood too well how narrow the distinction could sometimes be between respect of self and humiliation, and he chose not to argue Vaughn’s, just as he would have wanted no one to argue his.

  “About yesterday,” Vaughn said. “There’s this you’d best know, too, about what was being said. According to this fellow doing all the talking, when Queen Margaret said she wanted York dead, Sir Thomas answered that once he’d been seized …”

  “Seized?” Joliffe interrupted with disbelief. “For what?”

  “I thought it would be for leaving Ireland without the king’s leave but if what you say about his indenture is true …”

  “It is.”

  “Then I don’t know.”

  Moving his mind backward through what else Vaughn had told him, Joliffe asked, “He never said who had given that order?”

  “The fellow in the stableyard? No. And since he seemed to be saying everything else Sir Thomas said, he would probably have said that, too, if Sir Thomas had.”

  “But Sir Thomas didn’t. Even faced with the queens rage, he didn’t say it. So I wonder who …” He let the question trail off. He was back again to asking who—with Suffolk dead—now had that kind of power? “The king?” he said doubtfully.

  But at the undeniable root of all the realm’s present troubles was King Henry’s willingness to leave every choice and decision in his government to someone else. To the duke of Suffolk for most the past ten years. But with Suffolk dead …

  “Somerset,” said Vaughn. “Our fine Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Back from France with his royal blood and seemingly into King Henry’s favor in spite of all.”