The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Alice was silent for a moment when she finished, then said, "Richard Rolle. And so very apt at the difference between your life and mine." She stood up, moved across the path to pluck a spray of golden St. John's Wort flowers from among the herbs in the bed there, and returned to sit again. "I don't think Father liked my marrying Suffolk."

  Frevisse suspected that was possible. Although the marriage had come long before Suffolk became what he became, Thomas Chaucer—like his father, Geoffrey—had seen more clearly into people than most people did, had been able to set what they said and seemed to be against what they truly were and did.

  Alice began to strip the green leaves from the flower stem, dropping them to the path. "Did he ever say anything of it to you? Of my marriage? Or about Suffolk?"

  "He never did. I was long gone into the nunnery by then, remember."

  "Father came to see you there. He sent on a letter from you to me, too. After Salisbury died." Alice's second husband, killed by a chance-shot cannonball at the siege of Orleans the winter before the French witch called The Maid had made her trouble there.

  Alice had never answered that letter, Frevisse remembered.

  Alice had finished with the leaves, was now twirling the flowered stem between her fingers, staring at it while she said "If I had come back to England then, everything would have been different. But I was friends with Anne of Burgundy." Wife of the duke of Bedford, then-governor of France for then-infant King Henry VI. "So I stayed in France, and Suffolk was there and courted me and we married. Anne died, and then Bedford did, and Suffolk hoped to be made governor of France in his stead. When he wasn't, that's when he settled to winning young Henry to him and rising into power here in England. And here we are." She lifted her head, staring into some dark distance that had nothing to do with the herb-scented garden around them. "Father never said anything at all about him?" she asked. "Not then or later?"

  "Nothing at all that I remember."

  Alice gave a small, tear-denying laugh. "In its way, that's worst of all. That he wouldn't even talk about him." She dropped her hand with St. John's flowers into her lap and said wearily, as if even the words were almost too heavy to bear, "He became so small a man. My husband. It's as if the greater he became in the world, the less of him there was. That's been very hard to live with. To watch the man I loved change and dwindle until he was gone and I was left married to someone I would never have chosen to wed my life to."

  Frevisse held silent. She did not think Alice wanted her words, anyway, simply her presence to lean on in the otherwise vast loneliness of loss almost beyond measure. To have given life and love to someone, only to find that neither was enough to save him from himself and then be left at the end of it all in danger and fear as well as bitterness—what could be said to that?

  Alice abruptly tossed the flowers away, folded her hands firmly together in her lap, and said briskly, as if ashamed of having wandered into memory and now snatching at the first business that came to mind, "I sent an order a few days ago to my household priest that I want him back with me. I want Mass in my own chapel instead of needing to go out to the church every day. But do you know, this afternoon I had message back from him that he's presently needed where he is and begs leave to be excused a time longer. I'm minded to excuse him permanently."

  "Maybe he is presently needed there," Frevisse said, less because she believed it than because Alice angry at a defaulting priest seemed better than Alice sinking further into the lethargy of her dark thoughts.

  And Alice obligingly snapped, "It wouldn't matter to Squyers if he was 'needed where he is'. He's one of those well-fleshed, red-faced men who think God made the world for no better reason than to give them somewhere to live comfortably. 'Needed where he is'. They're probably praying to see the back of him there at Alderton." She suddenly laughed. "Poor man. He saw himself on his way to a bishopric by way of serving Suffolk. He was disappointed almost past bearing when Reynold Pecock was made bishop of Chichester instead of him this year, after Bishop Moleyns' death." Her momentary laughter dropped away. "After Moleyns' murder," she murmured.

  That had been in January, three and a half months before Suffolk's own murder, five months before the bishop of Salisbury's, and five months and a little more before Jack Cade's rebels murdered some other equally-hated men of the king's government. It had been a brutal year.

  Alice sighed, rubbed the heel of her hand hard against what little of her forehead showed in the tight surround of her widow's wimple, and said wearily, "Let's just say that Squyers has served better as a messenger than he's ever served as a priest." She stood up. "Let's go inside again. The ( sun is making my head hurt."

  They were on a sunny path between low, square-cut borders of lavender, walking side by side in silence toward the house, Frevisse with her gaze to the graveled path a few yards ahead of her, when a sudden check in Alice's step made her raise her eyes to see one of Alice's ladies coming toward them, followed by a man whose plain, dusty clothing and tall riding boots made it likely he had just ridden in from somewhere. That he was brought so directly to Alice argued there was a pressing necessity to whatever word he brought, and Frevisse slowed, falling back just as the other woman did, to let Alice meet him alone.

  Not alone enough, apparently. They met at a crossing of paths. The man went down on one knee, saying, "My lady," and Alice gestured for him to stand up and turned aside, leading him away along one of the paths, far enough that when she stopped and faced him again, what he said to her was well beyond Frevisse's hearing.

  Whatever word he brought was brief, however; nor were Alice's questioning of him and his answers much longer before she said, somewhat more loudly, "Thank you, Nicholas. Master Thorpe will see to bath and food and bed for you. We'll talk more later, when you've rested and I've had time to think on it."

  The man bowed. As Alice turned and started away, toward an arbored walk on the garden's other side, her lady came to Frevisse and said low-voiced and hastily, "Will you go to her, my lady?" Her words were respectful with suggestion but her tone demanded, and yet more earnestly and quickly she added, "She shouldn't be much alone as things are now and there's none seem able to help her so well as you do, my lady."

  Before Frevisse could answer that, the man had joined them. With duty done, his face had sunk into dull weariness, making him look older than his young years, and when the woman said, "I'll take you to Master Thorpe now, if you please," his bare nod in answer looked more from his failing strength than from failure of courtesy; but despite that, he made a small bow to Frevisse as he passed her.

  Whatever word he had brought must have been urgent, Frevisse thought, and, yes, maybe Alice had best not be left alone with it; so with her hands tucked into her opposite sleeves and her steps more firm than her thoughts, she followed Alice, gone now into the arbored walk and out of sight. Coming in her turn out of the sun into the arbor's deep, vine-made shade, Frevisse momentarily failed to see her, Alice in her black widow's gown and veil being too nearly part of the small flickering leaf-shadows; and when she did see her, Alice was just turning back from the arbor's far end, having already paced its length. Not sure of being welcomed, Frevisse went slowly to meet her, but when they met at the arbor's middle, Alice only said, in a flat voice, "That was young Nicholas Vaughn. My father took him into the household when he was an orphaned boy and he's been in our service ever since. Father's, and then mine. Mine. Not Suffolk's," she said curtly, each word like another stone in the wall she had made between her and her dead husband.

  "He brought ill news?"

  "Ill enough. One of our stewards had been killed. In Wales. In a street brawl according to the inquest, Nicholas says. Not even his own brawl. He was simply passing and happened in the way of someone's dagger." She made an impatient sound, side-stepped Frevisse, and paced on.

  Frevisse turned and kept step beside her. "When was this?"

  "A little over two weeks ago. Nicholas found it out because I'd sent him with word I w
anted Hampden back to his duties. He's among those who've started to distance themselves since Suffolk's death. I wanted his refusal to return so I could dismiss him entirely." Alice clapped her hands together angrily. "Why didn't someone send me word? Why did I have to find out by chance? Sir Thomas Stanley is the king's chamberlain in North Wales. He knew Hampden. Why didn't he send me word when it happened?"

  That was a reasonable question, and Frevisse had another. To reach the almost-staggering edge of weariness Nicholas Vaughn had looked to be in, he must have hardly slept since leaving Wales nor bothered much with eating, and she asked, "Why did your man think he had to bring word of it in such haste?"

  They had reached an end of the arbor walk. Alice stopped, still in its shade, staring out at her sunlit garden for a long moment before answering, "It was three daggers Hampden happened into the way of. Nicholas thought that was overmuch for one man in a brawl not even his own."

  Frevisse joined Alice in staring at the garden. Its summer quiet and ordered beds and clean-swept walks did not match her thoughts and in a while she said, "So Vaughn doesn't think it was a chance-killing?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Frevisse ..." Alice started with a stir of anger, broke off, swung around, and started back through the arbor. Frevisse followed her, letting her keep a little ahead, knowing she could not force an answer; and again, near the arbor's middle, Alice stopped, abruptly faced her, and said, "It's not that Hampden was a good man. Maybe he was. I don't know. Are there any good men anymore? I've begun to think not," she said with naked bitterness and added with anger, "Or if there are, none of them seems to have been drawn into my husband's service. The thing with Hampden is that he lately went twice to France for Suffolk. Or not so lately. Over a year ago. Just before and again soon after the attack on Fougeres." The Breton border town whose seizure and sacking by an English-hired mercenary captain had broken the truce with France last year and led on to these months of English defeats and losses across Normandy.

  Frevisse knew more about how that truce had come to be broken than she wanted to know. It was a knowledge that she and Alice shared and it had estranged them until Alice's need of her had been greater than their mutual angers; but the shadow of their past angers and of what they knew still lay dark between them, and it was at the hazard of opening a wound only a little healed that Frevisse said carefully, "You're afraid this Hampden's death has to do with his having gone to France."

  A taut moment passed before Alice snapped, "Yes."

  "That his going to France had to do with Suffolk's ..." She hesitated over the word, then said it. ". . . treason."

  Alice drew a short, sharp breath. "You're bold to say that to my face."

  "Did you want my companionship so I could lie to you?"

  Alice put out a sudden hand and took hard hold on Frevisse's arm. "No." She spoke with something of the gasp of someone drowning. "No. I need your truth. It's only that sometimes the pain ..."

  She freed Frevisse and started to pace the arbor again. Again Frevisse went with her but now beside her as Alice went on, low-voiced. "No, it's not the pain so much as the fear. I know Suffolk set up with Somerset to lose France because the war was becoming nothing but a drain down which England was endlessly pouring its wealth, but people were unwilling to let it go."

  Frevisse forbore to point out that much of that English wealth had come from the pillaging of France through the years of the war. Nor did she say that Suffolk's ill and greedy governing of England had been as costly to England's good as the war had been. No purpose would be served by saying it, and she settled for only, "We had the truce with the French. There could have been treaty made. That would have settled much."

  But then that slight truce, when there should have been a full treaty, was another of Suffolk's failures. When he had made the king's marriage to the French princess Margaret of Anjou, he had settled for a few years' truce when a treaty for full peace should have been part of the marriage agreement, the more especially since he had also settled for no dowry to come with the girl. All of that was among the reasons for all the angers at him, but Alice said defensively, "There still would have been the on-going cost of keeping our garrisons and maintaining the government there in Normandy."

  "With a treaty that ended the fighting there, Normandy could have settled back to what it was—rich and prospering," Frevisse returned. "It would have come to support and defend itself."

  "Not for years. The costs until then . . ."

  "Were honestly England's to pay, considering we robbed and stripped everything we could from there when we claimed and seized the country," Frevisse said; but she heard the sharpening edge of anger in her voice and said quickly, "Alice, I'm sorry. That's not something worth debating between us. It's all beyond our help and always was. Nor is it what has you frightened here and now."

  Alice had been drawing breath for probably an angry reply, but stopped, was silent a moment, and at last said, very low, as if her brief flare of anger was burned out, "No. It isn't. But the other thing . . . It's maybe nothing."

  "Or it's maybe not," Frevisse said.

  "Or it's maybe not. I only wish I knew where Edward Burgate is!" There was no anger, only despair in that cry, and wearily she went on, "I didn't tell you all the reason I sent Nicholas to fetch Hampden to me. It was more than to see if he would stay in my service. I wanted to warn him to say nothing about whatever reason he went to Normandy last year." She heaved a trembling sigh. "Well, he won't. I can only hope he never did."

  Somewhere away across the garden John gave a happy shout. Alice lifted her head toward it. "That's better, anyway," she said, a sob of half-laughter in her voice. "It's him I have to save from all of this. I want him happy, not robbed of everything that should be his." Her words sank into bitterness again. "Because of what his father was."

  Chapter 7

  Again the tower room at Hunsdon and again Sir William Oldhall standing at the window, gazing out, his hands behind his back. He might have been no more than considering his fields where the grain was standing golden ripe and the harvest was begun.

  More likely he was not.

  Joliffe, standing behind him and across the room, able to see only sky beyond the window, was holding in his impatience for Sir William's response to his word of Hampden's death. When told of it, all that Sir William had done was turn away to the window, and there he had stayed these several minutes.

  The better years of Joliffe's life had been spent as a traveling player, wandering England's roads, sometimes footsore, occasionally hungry, always homeless save for the cart that carried the band of players' few belongings. That he saw those as better years than this standing silent attendance on someone who paid him better than he'd ever been paid as a player told him nothing about himself he did not already know. But he also knew quite clearly the choices that had brought him to this and that he would likely make them again if he had to, given one thing and another.

  But then, if ever he went back to being a traveling player, he'd now be able to afford a horse to ride and daily meals and forego the footsore and hungry part, which did add appeal to the possibility.

  He was considering that and the small drift of a thin cloud across the window's view of sky when Sir William turned around and said, "I'm going to Ireland. My lord of York has to be warned."

  That was so far aside from anything that Joliffe had expected that he said somewhat blankly, "About Hampden's death?" It had not seemed that great a matter. Except to Hampden, of course.

  "No. Fastoif."

  "Fastoif?" Joliffe echoed. "Sir John Fastoif?" Famed, like Matthew Gough, as a captain in the French war. Except Fastoif had seen what was coming far enough ahead that he had left the war, sold all his interests in France, and was now living comfortably and very rich in England.

  "Him. Yes. You know there are to be commissions of oyer and terminer all over England to deal with all the troubles there've been these past months." Commissions of royal o
fficers and other men appointed to hear reports of crimes and determine indictments. "Fastoif is named to the one for Norfolk and Suffolk, and he s sent me warning there's word been given—not official, not in writing, but with no doubt about what's meant—that the commissioners are to find out evidence against my lord of York."

  Knowing the question was stupid even as it came out of his mouth, Joliffe blurted, "Evidence of what?"

  "Of treason," Sir William said grimly. "That York stirred up all these uprisings and rebellions against the king this spring and summer past."

  Joliffe held back startled exclaim against that; instead said with a steadiness he did not feel, "Treason. Allege it against him while he's in Ireland, beyond readily defending himself."

  "Yes," Sir William said bitterly. He paced away from the window and across the room, tapping his fingertips on the desktop as he passed. "The charges would be laid and his property seized before he could do anything about it. Then he would be told to come back and face trial."