The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  "Nothing. Nothing I know of," Alice amended. "They held greatly different places in the household. I never saw them keep particular company with one another when they were here."

  "You said Burgate was going with Suffolk into exile. The priest stayed with you until after Suffolk's death. What of Hampden?" Frevisse asked.

  "It was never intended he'd go with Suffolk into exile. He was needed for his duties here and besides had lands of his own to see to."

  "Why was he in Wales?"

  "I don't know."

  "Joliffe, do you know?"

  He had been studying the floor while rubbing at probably a cramp in one arm. Now he lifted his gaze to her and smiled with a mild innocence that she no more believed in now than she had any other of the few times they had met over the years. Joliffe might be many things—and she had known him as a player, a minstrel, a spy, and a friend—but she had never thought him innocent. "No," he said.

  "If none of us know any more than this, we're going to learn nothing," Frevisse said, impatient at him and Alice together. She did not trust Alice to tell everything and was certain Joliffe was holding back and she snapped at him, "Why did you say 'either' just now, when Alice said she doesn't know where Burgate is?"

  "I said 'either'?"

  "You were surprised that she didn't know 'either'."

  "Was I? More likely, I'm tired and just saying words that don't mean anything."

  "It means," Frevisse said, "that besides you sought out Hampden and Squyers, you have interest in Burgate, except you don't know where he is. How did you know where the other two were?"

  Alice, coldly, not waiting for his answer, said, "Some spy here in the household could have told him. Which lord does your spy work for?" she said at Joliffe. "For whom do you work?"

  "He won't say," Vaughn said. "I've asked him."

  Joliffe touched one side of his face as if it hurt. "That you did," he agreed. Under the shadow of his coming beard a bruise showed.

  Threat open in her voice, Alice said, "I can give him 'eave to ask again."

  "More near the point, Joliffe," Frevisse said quickly, "do you know anything else about any of the three?"

  He held silent.

  More impatient with every unanswered and uselessly answered question, she snapped at him and Alice both, "Someone has to tell more than they already have or we'll never be anywhere with this. There has to be some reason you wanted to see these three particular men, Joliffe. No, I don't expect you to tell me what it is. There likewise is almost surely some shared reason two of them are dead and the other missing."

  "Maybe there's no particular reason," Joliffe said. "Maybe someone is just setting to kill as many of Suffolk's people as he can."

  "At least for the moment, let's doubt that," Frevisse said dryly. "Are there any others of Suffolk's household you were going to see?"

  "Others we might be in time to warn," Vaughn said.

  "There were only those three," Joliffe said. "That I'll swear to."

  "Then that's something," Frevisse said. "If it's not a general killing going on, then whatever it is must have to do with those three." She faced Alice. "Is there anything you can think of they had in common?"

  Now it was Alice who was staring at the floor in thought but slowly shaking her head as she said with matching slowness, "Not a single thing. Perhaps Master Thorpe would know of something. I don't."

  Quietly Joliffe said, "Normandy?"

  Alice jerked her head up, stared at him, then said, "No. They had nothing to do with Normandy. They ..."

  She stopped, some other thought coming to her. For a long moment she stared past Joliffe at nothing. Then slowly she said, "Normandy. Yes. In the last year and a half or so, at different times, they each of them went over to Normandy. Hampden went twice that I know of. He could have gone more without I knew it. Squyers and Burgate went, too.

  Once for each of them. Or Burgate could have gone more and I'd not know, if it was while Suffolk and I were apart. But I know for a certainty they all went."

  "Do you know why?" Frevisse asked.

  "To take Suffolk's messages, I suppose. Why else?" Alice said with sudden impatience. "Probably to Somerset. And, no, I never troubled to ask why they went instead of one of the usual messengers. We have enough of those, both of our own and the king's. A whole array. Enough for two a week to cross to Normandy at usual times and oftener if need be." Her voice darkened with self-reproach. "But I never asked why he used our own household men those few times, and I should have."

  "And now those three men are dead or missing," Frevisse said carefully. "Can anything be made of that?" Alice looked at her, and Frevisse knew to almost a certainty that they were thinking the same thing. A year ago, by chance, they had come to share a secret so dire that while Frevisse had pushed it aside from her mind as a thing about which she could do nothing, the weight of it had maybe been what kept Alice from asking why their own household men were being sent to Normandy.

  "Yes," said Alice. "I can make something of that." She looked at Joliffe. "But I won't say it in front of him."

  Frevisse offered, "He must already partly know it if he knows enough to say Normandy."

  They both looked at him. Vaughn looked back and forth among all of them, seemingly understanding none of it.

  "Will it make difference," Joliffe asked carefully, "if I say I have a dead man on my side, too?"

  "Who?" Alice demanded.

  "Did you know Matthew Gough, my lady?"

  "From when I lived in France, yes," she said. "I was sorry to hear he'd been killed and so pointlessly."

  "More than pointlessly," Joliffe said. "He was murdered."

  Vaughn scoffed. "He was killed in that fight on London Bridge. How does someone go about to get murdered in a battle?"

  "By being struck down from behind by men set on killing him and no one else," Joliffe said back at him. And to Alice, "Gough wasn't killed by the rebels. He was killed by men who had already ransacked his room and then came looking for him."

  "How do you know that?" she demanded.

  "I was there."

  Frevisse was surprised into saying, "In the fight? I've never judged you were given to putting yourself into a fight if you could help it."

  "My lady, you've judged rightly," Joliffe agreed. "Much though I shall joy to come into God's presence, I'm in no hurry for it. Nor," he added thoughtfully, "am I in haste to go the other way either, supposing I've miscalculated.

  "Which is not," Frevisse said dryly, "beyond possibility."

  Chapter 9

  Joliffe was hungry and thirsty and ached from the uncareful handling of the past two days and a night's uncomfortable sleep tied to a post in a stable. When he had understood where Vaughn was hauling him, he had had hope the trouble and slight acquaintance he and Lady Alice had shared three years ago would keep things from coming to the worst before he found a way either to escape or else talk himself out of trouble. Not that he had thought either would be easy, because Lady Alice was no fool and did not employ fools. Whomever she set to keep him prisoner would likely do it thoroughly.

  His closer worry, though, had been how to put off her questioning—or at least keep her questions away from where he did not want to go—until he had been fed and had chance to rest long enough to gather his strength and wits to him again. He knew both were fairly well worn away by the time he was dragged off Rowan in Wingfield's foreyard, and he had not been altogether pleased to find Dame Frevisse with her cousin. To his good, her presence would likely keep Lady Alice from much she might otherwise have done to him. To the bad, Dame Frevisse was sharp-witted beyond the ordinary. The few times they had met before this, they had been on what passed for the same side. If they proved to be against each other in this matter, he had doubts how far he could mislead her. And so far he had not been able to mislead her at all. He wanted food. He wanted rest. And here she was back to where he did not want her to be, asking at him, "Was it because of Matthew Gough you were on London
Bridge and in that fight?"

  He wanted away from her too-quick wits. Any answer he gave was going to bring more questions at him, and if he was caught in any lie, they'd be less likely to believe any truth he told them. "Yes," he said.

  Sharply at him, Vaughn demanded, "Were you one of the men who killed him?"

  "No," Joliffe snapped back. Vaughn had been wearing on his patience for two days now. "I was the man who killed two of the four men set on to kill him."

  That was more than he should have said. Dame Frevisse's already grave face became harsher; but she kept to the point, damn her, asking, "Why were you there?"

  Joliffe decided it was time to give enough that maybe they would be satisfied for a while and let him alone a time. What he needed was to be fed, then locked somewhere away from everyone and all their questions, somewhere he could lie down and sleep; and with sudden, seeming openness, he said, "Right, then. It was this way. Gough had information from someone in Normandy. He wanted to pass it on to someone who might make good use of it. I was sent to get it. By bad chance, that meant I had to follow him into that fight on the bridge. After he was killed, his squires gave a paper to me off his dead body." He swallowed thickly and said, looking at the goblet still in Dame Frevisse's hand, "Might I have something more to drink?"

  "No," said Vaughn.

  But Dame Frevisse was already turning toward a table where a pitcher and other goblets stood, and Lady Alice did not forbid her, instead asked tersely, "What was on this paper?"

  Making show of watching Dame Frevisse pour wine into the goblet, Joliffe said, "I didn't read it."

  "What did you do with it?" Lady Alice demanded.

  "Gave it to the man who sent me to Gough."

  "And this man is?"

  "You don't truly expect me to—" He broke off to say, "Thank you, my lady," to Dame Frevisse as he took the goblet she handed to him. He still had to use both his hands, resenting his clumsiness not for the ungrace of it but because it told him how little he dared trust his body yet; and although he drank, he drank less deeply than he seemed to, wary of adding enough wine to his weariness to fuddle his wits more than they already were. He saw Dame Frevisse was looking at his hands, and as he lowered the goblet he told her, "They're better."

  She reached out and pushed one of his sleeves a little up his arm, uncovering the red grooves left around his wrist from the rope that had held him. Then she looked him in the face. He hoped she could read his look no better than he could read hers before she turned to Lady Alice and said, "He should probably be fed, too."

  "When he's told us what we need to know, he can have food and drink and rest. Noreys, you've only to tell us—"

  "You'll pardon me," Joliffe interrupted, "if I worry about what sort of 'rest' I'm to be given once you've no more need of me."

  "There's been enough killing!" Lady Alice said, sharp with believable anger. "I don't want you dead. I only want to know what you know. You didn't read this paper from Matthew Gough. You gave it to someone. You won't say whom. You then sought out two men who are now dead. I'm willing to believe you had nothing to do with their deaths, but did they have something to do with the paper you had from Matthew Gough?"

  Joliffe considered his possible choices and his answer, then granted, "Their names were on it, I'm told. So was Burgate's."

  "And that," said Dame Frevisse, "makes four men, counting Matthew Gough, with Normandy and that paper in common and all of them dead. Or missing."

  She was too quick by half; but Lady Alice said at him angrily, "What was it you wanted to know from my men? Why did you seek them out?"

  Joliffe could suddenly see no point in not telling her. Either she knew the thing and it would come as no surprise to her, or she did not know it and now she would. But he looked side-wise at Vaughn and asked, "Do you want him here to hear it?"

  "Just say it out!" Lady Alice said.

  Dame Frevisse began, "Should he . . ." perhaps in warning to her, but Joliffe was already saying, sharp-worded back at Lady Alice, "I was to find out what any of these men knew about whatever messages they took between Suffolk and the duke of Somerset. To find out how much they knew about the plan to deliberately lose Normandy to the French."

  He looked swiftly among their faces as he said it. On Vaughn's he saw surprise shading toward denying anger, but the quick look that passed between Lady Alice and Dame Frevisse had no surprise in it on either side.

  So there had been such a plan.

  It wasn't only in anyone's imagination.

  Normandy had been lost by deliberate treachery.

  And Lady Alice and Dame Frevisse both knew it.

  How?

  Lady Alice because she was married to Suffolk, yes, though Joliffe would have doubted her acceptance of it. But Dame Frevisse? How did she come to share that knowledge? By way of Lady Alice, surely, because Suffolk almost certainly would have told her nothing, given what had passed between him and the nun the last time they had met. The last time so far as he knew of, Joliffe amended.

  The only way it made sense, he thought suddenly, was that the two women had known by some way other than Suffolk himself.

  He would give something to know how that had come about.

  But Lady Alice was saying forcefully to Vaughn, "You will never tell anyone what you just heard. You'll never say it. Never write it. Ever. Understand? Never even think about it if you can help it."

  Vaughn bowed. "Yes, my lady."

  But he was thinking, and his quick looks back and forth at the women suggested he was guessing much the same as Joliffe had. But Lady Alice was saying sharply at Joliffe now, "Noreys, no more gaming with words. You know far too much that you shouldn't. I have to know who sent you to Gough. Who has this paper of his? Who else knows all this?"

  Joliffe shook his head, refusing an answer.

  "Joliffe," Dame Frevisse said coldly and with an edge of anger, "at this point I would not mind shaking you or maybe worse myself. You're hungry, you're tired, you're probably aching, and those cuts on your wrists are surely hurting you and would be the better for cleaning, ointment, and bandages on them. You very likely don't have your wits as sharp about you as you might have ..."

  Joliffe grimaced in acknowledgment of all those truths.

  ". . . so let me make this plain to you. We have three Murders very much alike and all of them with this paper and Normandy in common. I think, you think, Lady Alice thinks these murders have something to do with one another. Now, if they're not being done on Lady Alice's orders and they're not being done by whomever you are serving in this, then we have to ask—all of us have to ask, including the man you're serving—who are they being done for? We can at least guess at the why of these murders. They have to be meant to hide whatever passed between Suffolk and Somerset concerning Normandy."

  "Their loss of Normandy," Lady Alice said bitterly.

  Joliffe noted the bitterness. Whatever she knew about Normandy's loss and however she knew it, she was angry about it. That was something he might be able to use to his good. He needed something to his good just now.

  Still at him and giving her cousin no heed, Dame Frevisse said, "Will you grant me all of that? That the murders have to do with Normandy's loss?"

  Deciding he would rather follow her than hinder her, Joliffe said, "Yes."

  She waited, as if expecting him to say more. So he did not.

  She made a small disgusted sound at him and went on, "Can we agree, too, that those most interested in keeping their part in it secret would be Suffolk and Somerset? If there are other lords involved, we don't know their names . . ."

  She paused, looked questioningly at Lady Alice who shook her head that she did not.

  "But of those two, at least, we're certain," Dame Frevisse said. "Likewise, although Suffolk and Somerset are not the only lords with power sufficient to effect the deaths of men, they both possessed such power."

  Her sharp reasoning was wearing on already worn wits, and he could not hold back from say
ing, "Except Suffolk doesn't anymore."

  "To a certainty, he does not," Dame Frevisse granted, dry enough to parch a desert. "Which leaves us—"

  "Somerset," Lady Alice interrupted angrily.

  Quietly, Dame Frevisse agreed. "Somerset."

  Three years ago Somerset had been the earl of Dorset. Since then he had risen by the king's grant to be earl of Somerset and then, again by royal grant, to duke. When he had gone to be governor of Normandy two years ago, he was said to be second only to Suffolk in power near the king, helped to that place by Suffolk himself. His rise in estate and power had been swift. His fall would be even swifter if he were proved guilty of deliberately losing England's hold on Normandy. And to Joliffe's pleasure Vaughn burst out, "He's surely traitor enough to do it. The nothing he did to stop the French—that was treason. Sending no aid to any town or place the French besieged. Or else sending too little to matter. He stayed in Rouen and did nothing while town after town, castle after castle were taken. Then, when the French came to Rouen itself, he surrendered it, and did the same again at Caen. If even half of any of that is true ..."