16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “He’s royal-blooded through a bastard line,” Joliffe pointed out. “And from a younger line than York’s.” Then added, “Which are two good reasons to want York dead, I suppose.”

  There was still light enough to show Vaughn frowning as he said doubtfully, “It would make Somerset an over-busy man at present. It would have him losing Normandy, returning to England, re-establishing his place with the king, taking Suffolk’s place at court, and setting up to destroy York, all in one grand rush.”

  “He’s already done the first three. Why not go for the fourth? Though the timing seems not so good as …”

  “He ought to be under arrest for treason, not into favor with the king!” Vaughn burst out.

  “He ought to be,” Joliffe agreed. “But it doesn’t look like happening. Which leaves only York for him to worry on. Hence the forethought to give orders against his coming back from Ireland.”

  Slowly, unwillingly, Vaughn granted, “It all holds together.”

  It did, but he didn’t sound easy about it. Nor was Joliffe. Despite it held together, something about it sat uneasily in his mind. Uneasily but not quite in reach, and he knew better than to nag after it, whatever it was. He could only trust it would come to him if he left it alone and so he said, “It would help to know how old this order against York is. Was it given before Somerset came back from Normandy, for instance. But all we can presently do is decide what to do next with what we know.”

  “Lay hands on this letter that Master Burgate has hidden with his cousin in Sible Hedingham. Judging by what he said and wouldn’t say about it, it’s black-dangerous.”

  “It’s surely that, and we should go together to get it, for safety’s sake all around.” And to make sure the game was played fair, he didn’t say. “The trouble is that I need to see word gets to my lord of York in Ireland of the welcome-home planned for him.”

  “There’s this, too,” Vaughn said. “We were followed from Kenilworth.”

  Joliffe paused, then asked, “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I’m no more trusting than you are. I had Symond, the man with me, fall back five times during our ride, starting not long after we left Kenilworth, to see what other riders were on the road behind us.”

  “It’s a well-used high-road south from Kenilworth.”

  “It is that, so it wasn’t easy to sort out and be sure of any of them. But there were two that were still behind us after we left Warwick, all the way to Banbury. They never got nearer. They never fell farther behind. Any of the times Symond rode aside to look back along the road, there they were. When we stopped at an inn at midday and afterward went on, they were behind us again, a little nearer but keeping the same distance all the afternoon. When we briefly stopped at an inn in Banbury in the afternoon, the nuns talked openly about being to St. Frideswide’s by nightfall. Symond saw one of the men watching us from down the street and saw them both behind us just after we left Banbury. Not again, though, but they wouldn’t have needed to follow us closely then, if they’d found out at the inn where we were going.” Vaughn tipped his head toward the gateway. “I’d take money in wager they’re somewhere close out there, waiting to see where I go next.”

  Joliffe made a disgusted sound. “If they’re so far gone at court they don’t even trust a nun, the duchess of Suffolk’s cousin …”

  “I’m not mistaken about we were followed,” Vaughn said stiffly.

  “No,” Joliffe quickly assured him. “They don’t seem to have been much good at it, but I’d wager that’s what they were at.” And even if they weren’t, someone else, better skilled, might have been. It was not a risk he cared to ignore. “What I’m saying is that someone at court seems to be more suspicious than I wish he was.”

  Or more than one someone. Under King Henry’s weakness the court had become a nest of greed and wrongs. Lords and men bold in a lord’s favor did not even need to be overly well-witted at what they did or how much they grabbed for themselves. It was all become grab as grab can, leave lesser folk to the devil, and be damned to the law. But such men never saw their own foulness of heart. They turned it outward into distrust of others, and hence Dame Frevisse had brought a spy in her wake. Damn it.

  “Do you think Dame Frevisse was let in to see Burgate in deliberate hope he’d tell her what he hasn’t told them?” he asked.

  “I’ve wondered that,” Vaughn said broodingly. “But it was too much a thing of the moment, her asking and the queen sending her off to see him. I’d guess the queen was innocent in it, didn’t know it mattered.”

  “But when someone found out what she’d done, they decided to do what they could to recover her error,” Joliffe said.

  “And had us followed,” Vaughn agreed. “They probably reared he’d told this nun what they want to know and that she’d go back to Lady Alice with it.”

  “They might take that she didn’t go back to Lady Alice as proof he told her nothing,” Joliffe said for the sake of argument, though he already knew the answer to that.

  Vaughn promptly gave it. “She doesn’t have to go back to Lady Alice, and likely she’s safe enough if she keeps in her cloister. It’s me they’ll be watching now. As soon as I leave here …” He made a sharp, angry gesture.

  “You’ll likely be no more than followed,” Joliffe said. “In hope you’ll lead them to this letter. Or, at worst, you’ll end up like Burgate.”

  “Or dead. That would be their surest way of being sure I pass on nothing I might have learned. I’m only hoping the man I sent off from Kenilworth back to Wingfield keeps ahead of whatever trouble they might send after him. But I gave him his orders while there were half a dozen men standing around, and he set off within the hour, and they could report, if anyone asked, that I neither told nor gave him anything beyond the message that Burgate was there.”

  “And he was likely well away before whoever has Burgate in keeping knew anything about it.”

  “Or never knew I sent Ned away at all.”

  “Also possible.” The trouble was that there were too many possibles, too many ways to guess at things in all of this. “The one certain thing seems to be that you were followed. Or Dame Frevisse was, which came to the same thing today, but tomorrow when you ride out and she of course doesn’t, it will be you they follow. They’re not likely to kill you, though. They want this letter. They have to hope you’ll lead them to it and they’ll want you unharmed until you do. I suppose you could always lie in wait and kill them,” he added helpfully.

  “Thereby showing whoever has set them on that, one, I’m suspicious enough to note that I was followed, and two, that I must have something to hide.”

  “Not if the bodies are never found.”

  “They only have to disappear for my innocence to come under question.”

  True enough; but it was good to know Vaughn did not see murder as his quickest way to solving problems, Joliffe thought; and said, “Where is this Sible Hedingham anyway?”

  “A northern part of Essex. There’s two Hedinghams, close together and both not far from your duke of York’s castle at Clare.”

  “Back eastward from here,” Joliffe said. Somewhere beyond Hunsdon.

  “East and somewhat south, yes.”

  “You could go back to Lady Alice at Wingfield first, rather than straight there.”

  “I may have to, but the longer this thing is in this priest’s keeping, the better is the chance we’ll lose it. All it will take is someone asking enough questions at Ipswich to find out Burgate entrusted a package to some fellow there, then find the fellow and ask him questions he won’t see any reason not to answer.”

  “It might not be that easy. Haven’t you already asked questions in Ipswich and heard nothing about this package?”

  “It was Burgate we wanted. We thought we’d have all our answers once we found him. I didn’t ask the right questions,” Vaughn said bitterly.

  “You asked the right questions. Just not enough of them. I know well enough how that
goes.” Knew it too well and that there was small help for it when it happened. You didn’t look for the key to a lock on a door when you didn’t know the door was there. “But our package-carrier might not be all that easily found, even with the right questions. London is large. Or then again …” Joliffe liked to see as many sides as possible, as much for the sake of making trouble as to solve it. “… maybe he’s already tired of London and gone home and is even now sitting in an Ipswich tavern complaining of the package he delivered for the duke of Suffolk’s man to some priest in …”

  Vaughn stood up. “I have trouble liking you sometimes.” Most of the time, I thought,” Joliffe said, standing up, too.

  Vaughn let that go. Night was enough come that they had to go inside or else be wondered at, supposing they weren’t wondered at already; but when Vaughn took a step that way Joliffe stayed where he was and said, “We have to settle what we’re going to do. I could go to this Hedingham instead of you. I doubt I’m known as part of this at all and wouldn’t be followed. But before anything I need to set word on its way to York in Ireland of what’s being planned against him here. The sooner he knows that the better. Unfortunately, the nearest man I know for it is west of here.” In the Welsh marches opposite the way to Essex, and damn Sir William for not having a tighter net where help could be asked for when needed. “So why don’t you come with me tomorrow?”

  Vaughn was openly caught flat by that. “Come with you? To Wales?”

  Hiding pleasure at having out-flanked him, Joliffe answered evenly, “Your followers will be waiting to see where you go in the morning. So they’ll follow us and we’ll be obviously friends and that will make me as suspect as you are.”

  “West from here?”

  “The better to mislead them. You need only keep with me for a day or so. Then we’ll split up, and they’ll have to split up to follow us. You can head north, then curve away east, losing your man on the way. I’ll head south and lose my man before going on west. That should confuse matters.”

  “Then I head for Sible Hedingham, get this letter, and return to Lady Alice at Wingfield. Yes.” Vaughn liked the thought. “But will you trust me—trust her—to play fair with York if she gets it?”

  Steadily, Joliffe said, “I do. I’ll set the warning on its way to my lord of York, then head back to meet you at Wing’ field. Or better I go to Hedingham, too?”

  “On the chance I miscarry along the way?” Vaughn was practical rather than grim about it. “Assuredly. However it goes, let’s plan we each go to Wingfield after we’ve been to Hedingham. Will that satisfy?”

  Since they were trusting each other—forced to it but nonetheless having to play it out as if the trust were true-rooted—Joliffe said, “Wingfield. Yes.”

  “Good. Settled then,” said Vaughn.

  As they started toward the guesthall, though, Joliffe noted that neither of them offered a hand to the other to seal the agreement, as either one of them would likely have done with a friend—or with someone they at least truly trusted.

  Chapter 17

  Frevisse made sure of not seeing either Joliffe or Vaughn before they were away in the morning, to seem to have no especial interest in them; but she did send Sister Margrett with her thanks to both of them— to Vaughn for accompanying them and to the minstrel for his kindness—and assurance that she was much better. She did not add that an evening spent pretending to be sleeping and ill until, finally, she had truly fallen asleep had done nothing for her ease of mind. Only when she was into the cloister again, safely back into her familiar life, would she be able to count herself done, finished, and free of all the business. She knew she did not hide well her urge to demand her release when Dame Claire finally came later in the morning, because Dame Claire’s eyes lighted on her for a moment and brightened with mild laughter before sliding to Sister Margrett standing on the far side of the bed. Despite that, she was serious enough of voice as she asked, “How does our patient? She looks better this morning, I think,” while lifting Frevisse’s wrist to take her pulse. “Are you better, Dame?”

  Resisting the urge to snatch her wrist away, Frevisse snapped, “Yes. I’m well. Whatever it was, it’s passed now.”

  Dame Claire regarded her with that lurking inward laughter and said, “Still, a goodly dose of spurge might not come amiss.”

  Knowing the purgative properties of spurge and most certainly not wanting a dose of it, Frevisse said firmly, “I think not. I feel entirely well.”

  Dame Claire’s laughter lingered but under it she seriously asked, too low to be heard beyond the bed, “It’s done, then? Whatever it was, it’s done?”

  As quietly, Frevisse said, “It’s done. Yes.” At least for her.

  “Well then.” Dame Claire lifted her voice to where it had been. “This time I shall suppose the patient knows best how she does. Pray, return into the cloister and be welcome, Dame. You nursed her well, Sister Margrett.”

  Through that day and the next Frevisse readily and gratefully settled back into the even ways of the nunnery’s life—its carefully balanced times for prayer and work and rest. She let the deep comfort of the Offices, the pleasure of her copying work at her desk in the cloister walk, even the small scrapes of familiar aggravation among the nuns, wrap around her as cushion and curtain against what she wanted neither to think nor worry on, because neither thought nor worry were any use. Her prayers had to be enough, and she round most of them were for Burgate, because Alice stood best chance of coming least scathed from everything, and whatever present perils Joliffe and Vaughn were in, they were come to them by choices made out of fair knowledge of what they hazarded. She doubted the same was true of the secretary. He had likely never thought his service to Suffolk would bring him where it had. Like her, he had been brought into this spreading trouble through no wish or knowing choice of his own, and she was safely back where she belonged, while someone meant for Burgate to die.

  That thought came to her during Sext in the morning of her third day back at St. Frideswide’s, in the choir as the nuns were chanting, their voices twining around each other. “Ad te, Domine, confugio … In justitia tua libera me … Educes me e reti quod absconderunt, quia tu es refugium meum …” To you, Lord, I flee for refuge … In your justice free me … You will bring me away from the snare they have set, because you are my refuge …

  Someone meant for Burgate to die.

  As quickly as the thought came, she denied it. Whoever held Burgate prisoner wanted him alive, able to tell his secret. If ever he told, then yes, he might well be killed to be sure he told no one else. That was the straight-forward way to see it. But the sudden thought come to her was that he could have been kept prisoner otherwise than as he was. He could, God forbid it, have long since been tortured to have out of him what was wanted. Torture was against the law, but so was his imprisonment, uncharged of any crime as it seemed he was. Why had whoever held him held back from torture?

  And who had the power to have him held prisoner in a royal castle at all?

  In their pressing need to lay hands on whatever Suffolk had confessed into writing at the last, neither she, Joliffe, nor Vaughn had spent time over that question. It was not even that Burgate’s imprisonment was a great secret. Queen Margaret had known of it, had lightly sent Frevisse off to see him.

  Or had that been done not lightly at all? Vaughn had sent a man ahead with word they were coming. Had it been planned for her to see Burgate on the hope he would tell his secret to her and she had made it easy for them?

  And then she had been followed from Kenilworth.

  She had seen Vaughn knew it, but since he had kept silent about it, so had she, with the thought that once she was back in the nunnery, the problem would be all his and he could handle it as he thought best. But that did not stop her wondering who had given the order for it. Queen Margaret? That was possible but was it likely? Young as she was and foreign, could she have that kind of power and know how to use it among the lords elbowing for their own plac
es and power around the king? Far more likely was that one of those lords, ambitious and already beginning to be successful in replacing the duke of Suffolk, had dared Burgate’s imprisonment and ordered her to be followed. The duke of Buckingham was there at Kenilworth, well able to set someone on to follow her and Vaughn in hopes of making use of whatever damage had been done by their discovery.

  Or could it be someone among the household officers, acting on some lord’s behalf. Somerset’s? Or Sir Thomas Stanley, apparently far more powerful than he seemed behind his seemingly plain knighthood? Or could Stanley be working for and with Somerset? Or …

  Did it matter who it was, now the thing was done and she was out of it? Not to her. But Burgate’s imprisonment joined with the murders of Suffolk’s steward and priest wade it easy for her to believe someone among the lords around the king was intent on taking Suffolk’s place in power with no scruple over men’s deaths.

  And yet that someone had scrupled against using torture on Burgate. Why?

  All three men had taken messages from the duke of Suffolk to Somerset in Normandy. That was certain. And Burgate, as well as that, had written out—not so much Suffolk’s confession of guilt; nothing so humble as that—but his accusation of those guilty with him, and that was why Bur. gate was still alive—because someone wanted what he had written. But except by the vileness of his prison he had not been tortured to have what he knew. Why? Kept as he was, his death by neglect or disease was almost assured. It was almost as if it was what was hoped for.

  But surely they didn’t want him dead before he told where the accusation was hidden, because surely whoever held him had considered that Burgate must have made provision for what would happen to the accusation should he die or even be missing long enough to be supposed dead.

  The pieces did not fit together with any way that made ready sense. It was as if whoever held Burgate was of two minds how they wanted this to play out. It was almost as if they were leaving whether Burgate would live or die, with whatever would come of it either way, to God’s choice.