The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  "Mayhap." Despite her voice stayed steady, Alice's hands had begun to twist together in her lap. "But what if he wasn't? And there's this. Frevisse, he was going into exile in Prance. Knowing all he knew and angry as he was, what if he decided to tell everything to the French? How better to assure his welcome than to tell King Charles everything he knew? About the war, about King Henry, about ..."

  "Alice, he would never have been that great a fool!"

  "Oh, yes, he could have been," Alice said with a deeper and darker bitterness than she had yet betrayed. "Believe me. He very well could have been. And whoever else was with him in losing Normandy . . ."

  "If there was anyone else in it besides Somerset," Frevisse said.

  ". . . had to be afraid he might truly do it, meaning I have to fear that someone while having no thought of who they are."

  "If there's anyone at all," Frevisse persisted.

  "Why is Burgate missing instead of simply dead like Hampden and Squyers? Why did he go missing weeks before anyone moved against them?" Alice was speaking more rapidly, as if having the words out might stop them hurting her. "The thing is, after Suffolk's . . . death, when some of our people came back and Burgate didn't and I asked if anyone knew where he was . . . Remember, I told of that?"

  "I remember. You said no one knew where he'd gone."

  "They didn't, no. But two of them offered that he'd been much with Suffolk just at the end, the day before they'd sailed. That Suffolk and Burgate had been away in another room, writing things."

  "The letter to John."

  "He had that nearly done before he left here," Alice said with cold scorn at Suffolk. "He showed it to me."

  "You didn't go with him to the coast?"

  "We parted here. There was nothing more to be said between us."

  Alice's coldness ended any more questions that way, and Frevisse tried, "Other letters then."

  "If so, they were never sent. There were no messengers. I asked that."

  "What you fear is that Suffolk was writing out—or was saying for Burgate to write out—his accusation against whomever he meant when he said he'd been betrayed. And you're afraid that Burgate has this accusation with him, wherever he is."

  "That. Yes," Alice said. "Or maybe nothing was written at all- If I could find him and he would tell me that, it would be something. As it is, the not knowing is torture in its own right."

  Slowly, Frevisse went on, seeing it more clearly as she said it and watching Alice while she did. "But anything Suffolk may have written in accusation of someone else would suffice to condemn him, too. Why would he do something so foolish as put in writing what would surely destroy him along with anyone he accused?"

  "He surely only meant it to be used if he was destroyed.”

  “Even if it could ruin John along with them?”

  “To Suffolk's way of seeing the world, if he was ruined, then all was ruined," Alice said with raw bitterness. "For him, if he was dead, what was left alive that mattered? Now he's dead and Burgate is missing and my fear has to be there is an accusation and it will come to the wrong people. And there are so many wrong people," she said, her bitterness laced with despair.

  Frevisse tried, "But Suffolk didn't know he was going to be killed. Even if he wanted to have everything written down, why trust any man to know it? Why trust this secretary?"

  "Oh, Burgate." Alice flicked one hand, dismissing him. "He's been Suffolk's man since he was a boy. In truth, they were boys together. He was the son of Suffolk's father's head clerk and followed his father's way. He probably knows more of Suffolk's secrets than Suffolk's confessor does." Her voice darkened again. "But if there is something and Burgate has it, where is he? Or where is it? If our enemies have it, why haven't they used it? If he doesn't have it, and they don't, who does?"

  "If this Burgate were dead, you'd have heard.”

  “Would I? He could be dead and no one know except whoever killed him. Or look how I'd not heard Somerset was returned to England. How much else is there I've not heard?" She sounded both grim and desperate now, her hands again clamped together in her lap. "I'm tainted by Suffolk's taint. I'm losing—or have maybe lost—my place at court and near the queen, and without that there'll be no one between me and all the enemies Suffolk made for us." She turned toward Frevisse. Her eyes were huge with staring into her fears, and with barely held desperation she said, "Everything is coming to nothing and I don't know how to stop it!"

  "You've not come to 'nothing' yet," Frevisse said sharply, in ruthless comfort. "Your place in the world is maybe lessened, but so far you still have your wealth and your wits. Unless you let your fears tear you apart, you're not helpless. You've still time to work against whatever you're afraid may come."

  Alice straightened as if from a slap. Momentarily her face tightened with anger; but then it cleared, and she said almost calmly, "There you're right. I'll be defeated when I'm defeated and not before. So, do I tell this Joliffe of yours about this possible written accusation or not? How far do we trust him? Always remembering that you like him and that may undermine your judgment of him."

  "You trusted him yourself three years ago."

  "Three years," Alice said, as if it were three lifetimes ago. "I've learned a great deal more about distrust since then, with everything that's gone so far astray from where I thought it would."

  "Life has that way of going astray from where we thought it would," Frevisse said dryly.

  "Has yours?" Alice asked in sudden sideways thought. "You wanted a nun's life and you have it. Aren't you happy in your nunnery?"

  "I'm not in my nunnery," Frevisse snapped, hearing too late the betraying anger in her voice even as Alice said back with matching sharpness, "I'm sorry. I've told you I'm sorry-It was wrong of me to . . ."

  "No," Frevisse said with quick contrition. "The wrong is mine, to grudge you my help because I'm ..." She caught on the word, then brought herself to finish, ". . . because I'm afraid, too. For you and John both."

  Unexpected tears came into Alice's eyes and she reached out and grabbed hold on one of Frevisse's hands, saying, "Oh, Frevisse, then you know. I'm so frightened I don't know anymore if what I do and decide is driven by fear or reason. That's why I need your help. We have to decide how much more to trust to this Joliffe, and I don't know, I simply and just don't know ..."

  Chapter 11

  The afternoon was clouding over. The parlor had been warm with light a little while ago but was gathering gray shadows now, and Joliffe, standing at the window, said without turning his head, "It's likely coming on to rain."

  Vaughn, still seated at the low table behind him, shuffling the cards with which they'd mostly passed their time, made a meaningless sound, and the heavy silence fell again between them.

  They had tried through the past hours to find a way around their several days of distrust into a semblance of ease between them. They had tried talk, Joliffe asking if Vaughn had been long in Suffolk's service, to which Vaughn said tersely, "I grew up in her grace's service and have never wanted other."

  Joliffe noted he had made plain he had served Lady Alice, not the duke. Was that a new distinction, meant to distance himself from Suffolk, or something he held to out of a long dislike of the man?

  "What of you?" Vaughn had returned. "Have you been York's man for long?"

  "Only a few years." If he stretched a point.

  Vaughn had cocked a curious look at him. "These few years haven't been the best of times to take service with someone like York."

  "No," Joliffe had agreed. These past few years were in fact a very foolish time to have taken service with a man so openly fallen from royal favor as York; but he had added nothing to his single word, and their talk had mostly ended there, neither of them ready to give away more or trust each other further.

  They had tried chess next, because Vaughn knew where a battered board with plain wooden pieces was kept in an aumbry built into one wall of the room—"Not good enough to pack up and take whenever the
household moves on," he said as he brought it out—but they were neither of them much good at the game. After one game, that Vaughn stumbled into winning with neither of them quite sure how, they turned to cards with a battered pack from the same aumbry. They had laid the cards out to be sure none were missing, found they were all there, and settled to the least challenging games they both knew, where the shuffling, sorting, and slapping down of cards occupied the mind without need for much actual thought about it.

  Getting drunk would have served the same purpose but taken longer and been less quickly recovered from. Besides, they had only the weak ale that Vaughn had brought from the kitchen when he fetched their midday meal.

  The little cautious talk they tried between games had gone nowhere, and now late afternoon was come and the weather was turning and restlessness was creeping up on Joliffe. He could put up a seeming of patience if he had to but never fooled himself for very long, and he was relieved to hear a light footfall in the neighboring room where no one had been all day. He turned toward the door with what might have been betraying quickness except Vaughn was rising from the table just as quickly. But they had done no more than that when Lady Alice came in without troubling to knock—she being lady here, and everything hers, she went where she wanted, when she wanted—and both men bowed, Vaughn saying, "My lady."

  "Nicholas," she answered. And stiffly, "Master Noreys."

  Joliffe had already noted how "Master" came and went with her opinion of him. That he was "Master Noreys" again was probably a sign to the good.

  It was surely to the good, too, that Dame Frevisse was with her, closing the door behind them. With her plain black Benedictine habit and quiet manner she was like a shadow to her cousin's more richly garbed widowhood and bold readiness to make use of her own high place in the world. But Joliffe knew better than to take those outward seemings at their outward value. Just as Dame Frevisse knew him better than he wished she did, he knew that behind her downcast eyes a sharp mind kept busy. That sometimes had been to his good, sometimes to his discomfort but never to his ill, he reminded himself.

  As for Lady Alice . . . With the quickness that had served him well when he was altogether a player and had helped to keep him alive a few other times, he took in what Lady Alice's face and body told him about her. She was frightened, and meant to hide it behind her graceful bearing but her voice was taut behind her words as she said to him and Vaughn together, "There's another matter I've decided you should know. I've come to the end of what I can do about it and hope maybe one or the other of you has some useful thought."

  "If we may, my lady," Vaughn said with a bow that Joliffe slightly echoed.

  Crisp with an anger she did not trouble to hide, maybe hoping it would serve to hide her fear, she told how and why she thought her husband, at the end, had written out an accusation in damnable detail against those who had agreed together to lose Normandy.

  Joliffe's first thought, as he grasped what she was telling him, was disbelief that any man could be so great a fool. Had Suffolk ever seen further than the reach of his own narrow feelings, to want that kind of revenge on his fellows at the cost of what it would bring down upon his son and wife? Plainly his wife believed him capable of such a fool's play, and that well-accounted for her fear.

  For Richard of York, though, this thing would be a godsend. It could be the weapon he needed against whatever men around the king were trying to bring him down; and as Lady Alice finished, he asked, to be sure, "You think, then, there were more men agreed to the business than Suffolk and Somerset?"

  "Yes." She said the word as if she hated it. Or merely her husband? "Almost surely."

  "But you don't know where this accusation is, or even if it was ever written."

  "Nothing like it has shown up among any of my lord husband's things that were returned to me. But neither has his secretary returned either, and he's the man most likely to know whether or not this thing ever was."

  "You're certain he's someone his grace of Suffolk would have trusted that far?" Joliffe asked.

  "Yes."

  "Even with something like that?" he persisted.

  Curtly Lady Alice said again, "Yes. One has to trust someone, sometimes. My lord husband trusted Edward Burgate."

  And presently she hated having to trust Joliffe and he was scarcely happier trusting her, but he hid that and said, "As it stands, then, there may or may not be an accusation that this secretary may or may not have either written or at least known about, and presently you know neither where this secretary is or if he's alive or dead."

  "I pray to God he still lives," Lady Alice said curtly.

  "What you want, then, my lady, is to find this secretary and to learn what he knows. Want us to find him," he corrected, including Vaughn.

  "Yes.

  "Because if there is an accusation all written out and signed and sealed by your late husband," said Joliffe—and did not add aloud, God rot him, "then it would serve both you and my lord of York to have it. Because whoever was in this business with Suffolk—Somerset for certain and whoever else there might have been—they're surely among my lord of York's enemies around the king and are someone, or someones, likely to prove equally your foe if they're free to lay all the blame for Normandy on Suffolk, should things come to that."

  "Yes."

  "What crosses my mind is what guarantee have I that, should your man and I find this secretary, I won't end up dead and my lord of York out of luck in the matter? Since you've assuredly considered that he could use this accusation against your interests as well as against whoever else was part of it."

  "A point well put," Lady Alice granted crisply, "and one you'd do well to keep in mind if you were dealing with my late husband in anything. But he was a treacherous cur and I pray to all the saints that I am not."

  Her blunt bitterness startled Joliffe and, by their faces, Dame Frevisse and Vaughn, as well; but Lady Alice went on, to only him and still bitterly, "Listen, Master Noreys. There are too many people glad to have Suffolk out of their way. If Somerset doesn't grab his place next to the king, others will be trying to. My son is too young for anything but to be shoved aside, and in myself I have very little power. The most I really hope for is to be given control of his wardship and marriage, but I've no guarantee of those. They could as easily be given to someone else and my son taken completely away from me. Your duke of York is neither my rival nor my enemy. I'd keep him that way. Even more, I think he and I would be best served, the both of us, in making common cause together, and this—through you—looks my best way to that."

  "How do you know my lord of York won't betray you, use whatever this is to bring on Suffolk's attainder and ruin your son anyway?"

  That was possibly a fool's challenge to make, but better to have it in the open than lurking, since it had to be something she had already thought of; and she asked straight back at him, "Do you think York is that sort of man? To ruin a child for revenge on its father?"

  "No." Joliffe's answer came on the instant and without need for thought. "I think my lord of York has more honor in his little finger than Somerset in his whole body."

  Bitter humour flickered up in Lady Alice's eyes. "I think that, too. That's York's weakness in dealing with those around the king." She paused, perhaps bracing herself for the next before she went on, "You spoke about the use of a marriage alliance. If this matter ends well, I will indeed be more than willing to a marriage between one of his daughters and John."

  Since they seemed to be dealing so openly, Joliffe asked, What if my lord of York uses this supposed accusation to bring down Somerset, and Suffolk's part in it becomes known?"

  "We can hope it will not come to that. I doubt it would serve the government well to have everything made known.

  Let York show it to the king and to the chancellor. That should be enough to shift Somerset, and whoever else was part of it, out of royal favor and keep them there."

  It should be, yes, Joliffe inwardly granted. It should like
wise put paid to whoever around the king was trying to build a case of treason against York, which was an even more immediate need; and he said, "Well enough. Do you have any thought how I should go about searching for this Bur-gate? Or learning what's happened to him?"

  "Master Vaughn can tell you what he's learned thus far toward finding him," Lady Alice said, with a look at Vaughn that gave him leave to speak.

  He promptly did, saying, "Unhappily, it's mostly what has not been learned. He was set ashore at Dover with the rest of my lord of Suffolk's household. That's the last we know of him."

  "Nothing else?" Joliffe asked. Somehow he had not expected them to know less than he did.

  "Everything was in disorder. Some of the men were keeping watch over my lord of Suffolk's body on the beach, waiting for the crowner and sheriff to come. Some left to take word to my lady and elsewhere. Some just left, wanting to get away from the business altogether. Burgate did neither of the first two things, and I've failed to find that he did the last."