The Traitor's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  Frevisse curtsied again, waited for Domina Elisabeth to leave first, then went out and around the square cloister walk to the passage to the outer door. During the day the door was kept neither locked nor barred nor guarded. She let herself out and Master Naylor, the nunnery's steward, came toward her from where he had been waiting in the middle of the yard. She likewise went toward him, to be sure they met well away from anywhere they could be overheard. That she did so without fore-thinking it distressed her. Was she grown so distrustful of everything, even here in the nunnery?

  As St. Frideswide's steward, Master Naylor had in hand all the nunnery's properties and oversaw its business interests under the prioress' direction. His long, well-worn face rarely had a smile and had none now as he bowed to Frevisse and said, "Good morning, my lady."

  She wished him the same, adding, "You asked to see me?"

  "I've a question for you, if you will, my lady."

  "Of course, Master Naylor."

  "Have you brought trouble back with you from where you've been?"

  The question froze her into too long a silence before she answered with a feigned calm she did not feel, "I pray not. Why do you ask?"

  "There's been a fellow skulking around the edges here since you came back. Some of the village folk have seen him along the woodshore and on the rise toward the mill, like he was watching things here, but he never lets anyone come up to him. Everyone is too busy with the harvest to make trouble over him if he makes none, and he hasn't, so there he is. They say he was here first, that he stayed at the guesthall one night."

  She was not surprised that what went on in the nunnery was known outside its walls. Servants mingled and servants talked and there were times like this when that was helpful.

  "Which night?" she asked.

  With the grim satisfaction of having foreseen that question, Master Naylor answered, "The night after the one you sent there. You and those two men. Seems one of them left him a message."

  "Which one?"

  "Old Ela says it was the dark-haired one."

  Nicholas Vaughn.

  "A written message, I suppose," Frevisse said, keeping her voice even.

  "Written and sealed, yes."

  So Vaughn had expected the man. Was he one of the men who had followed them from Kenilworth? Was that why Vaughn had seen fit not to say anything about them? Or was he maybe sent from Alice, meant to meet Vaughn here?

  If so, why had Vaughn said nothing about him?

  But then, why should he? His duty was to Alice, not to Frevisse and certainly not to Joliffe.

  Or maybe he had said something to Joliffe. It wouldn't have been easy to write and seal a message privately in the general sleeping and eating together in the guesthall.

  "So is it trouble you've brought back with you?" Master Naylor asked. "Should we do something about this fellow and keep a watch?"

  Slowly Frevisse said, "I don't know. I thought I'd left trouble behind me."

  "It seems more as if it was waiting for you here, with that minstrel. He's part of it all, isn't he?"

  "Is he?" Frevisse said, trying to sound blank about it and suspecting she failed.

  Master Naylor's shrewd look never left her face. "Seems so, the way he and the other fellow rode off together in the morning looking friendly together."

  "Rode off together?" They must have determined to go with each other to get the letter.

  "Headed westward together like they were old friends, Master Naylor said.

  "Westward?" She had only an uncertain thought of when Sible Hedingham was but knew it had to be east. Why would Joliffe and Vaughn have ridden westward? "The man who rode in with us, did he go with them?"

  "He did."

  Not back to Alice. All of them westward. What had they been playing at with that? Was it meant to be a misdirecting of the men who followed her and Vaughn from Kenilworth? That was possible. But what of this man now keeping watch on St. Frideswide's?

  Slowly, with too many thoughts coursing at once, like a tumbled pack of hounds confusing a trail, she said, "If anyone can lay hands on this fellow watching us, I'd like to talk with him."

  "Of course, my lady. There's nothing else you can tell me?"

  Fully meaning it, she said, "I'm sorry, no. I don't know what's toward at all."

  She thought Master Naylor accepted her answer less from belief than because respect demanded it. He had to settle for bowing and saying, "Very well, my lady." But he paused on the edge of going, seemed to consider, then said, "Whatever is afoot, it's not good, is it?"

  Matching his quiet, she said, "No. It's not good." And even more quietly, "I'm sorry."

  Master Naylor accepted that with a quick nod, bowed again, and left her. She watched him walking away, across the courtyard and through the gateway to the outer yard. An honest, upright man who wanted only to do his work well and keep himself and his family provided for and safe. Those were the things most men wanted, Frevisse thought. And most women. Why did there have to be men so bound up in their ambition to have more and ever more that they endangered and destroyed the little that others had, the little that others wanted?

  With a prayer that she had not brought deep trouble with her into St. Frideswide's after all, she went not back into the cloister but across the yard to the guesthall. As she went up the steps, old Ela came out. She had been "old Ela" and a servant in the guesthall for most of the years that Frevisse had been in the nunnery, but of late years she was grown very old, her body sunk in and bent forward on itself, her life. long limp become a shuffle. Most work was now beyond her but there was never thought of turning her out. There had been no need to discuss that Ela would have a corner of the guesthall's hall for her own and be fed and clothed and cared for the rest of her life, however long it might be.

  What had not been known was what good value the nunnery would have for that kindness. Her body might be worn out but her eyes and wits had not lessened. From her corner or, on cold days, from beside the hearthfire, she kept a sharp watch on everything and everyone, and no one, including whichever nun might presently be hosteler and in charge of guests, was ever misled when asking what she thought about what was wrong, right, or could be bettered around the guesthall and among its servants.

  Now, giving Frevisse a stiff-jointed little curtsy—the best her knees would let her—she said, "I've come out to sit in the sun while it lasts."

  It was Ela to whom Frevisse wanted to talk, and from Ela's knowing look at her, Frevisse judged Ela's purpose was the same, so she gestured to a square stool set beside the door, saying, "Sit, please, Ela. I've come to ask you something."

  "About what you and Master Naylor were looking so sour-faced at, yes?"

  "About the dark-haired man who left a message here before he left with the minstrel. Did the minstrel know he wrote and left that message?"

  Done with lowering herself with painful care to the stool, Ela gave a sniff. "That he didn't. The minstrel, I mean t'other took care he shouldn't, seemed to me."

  "Oh?" Frevisse encouraged.

  "In the morning, when his man and the minstrel went out to see that the horses were fit and ready for the day, he stayed behind, wrote out his letter quick-like, sealed it, and handed it off to Ralph, saying he should give it if anyone came asking for 'the dog's letter'."

  The dog's letter? Did Vaughn see himself, then, as Alice's faithful dog? More to the point, he had expected someone to come for that letter, and aloud Frevisse wondered, "Did he have all the means to hand to write this letter, then? That he was able to do it so quickly?"

  "Had it all in a pouch he carried," Ela said. "Paper, ink, pen, sealing wax, and a seal."

  All planned out ahead.

  "Did you happen to have chance to see what device was on the wax seal after he'd gone?"

  Ela gave a wide smile that deepened the deep wrinkles of her old face. "Happen I asked young Ralph to let me look at it. Old women have fancies like that and it's easier to give me my way than make trouble over it
."

  Frevisse smiled back at her. "And you thought someone else might be interested in knowing, too."

  "That thought was in my mind by then, yes," Ela granted. "So, for anyone who might want to know, I can say it was a cat's face with a circle around it. That's what the seal was. That means something to you?"

  There being no point in denying it, Frevisse said, "Yes." That' 'cat's face" was likely a leopard's forward-facing head. Three of them were on the duke of Suffolk's heraldic arms. Vaughn must carry such a seal for when he needed to send something to Alice. That he had had everything necessary there to hand told he must do it often enough to make carrying it all worth the while.

  But that didn't mean this letter had been to Alice.

  There was no reason except unbased suspicion to think it had not been. But if it hadn't been . . .

  He and Joliffe could have gone westward to throw off the men who had followed from Kenilworth. He and Alice might well have provided beforehand that someone of hers would meet him here, and he might well want to send her word of what was happening. But why keep the letter secret from Joliffe? For plain reasons of secrecy, of course. There could be very little deep trust between them. But there could be other reasons, too—ones not so plain and maybe nothing to do with Alice. Or did it tell her where to find Suffolk's long-sought final letter, and Joliffe was betrayed? Or did it tell someone else, and both Joliffe and Alice were betrayed? And in any case, why was the man still here, keeping watch on the nunnery?

  Unless there had been more than one of them, and while one came into the nunnery, the other had lain low and was now gone back to Alice with Vaughn's message.

  Or whomever else Vaughn might be serving.

  Because Vaughn might be playing a double game. And he and his man were ridden away with Joliffe. Who was alone.

  Her mind hurt with all the possibilities for treachery there might be and with knowing there was nothing she could do except pray, when this was one of the times when prayer seemed a very thin comfort against all her fears.

  All Domina Elisabeth wanted from her was whether she had been able to help Master Naylor; and just as she had asked no more at Frevisse's return than if she had been or comfort to her cousin and been satisfied when Frevisse answered that she had been of some, so now she accepted Frevisse saying she had been of no help to Master Naylor and let it go at that, to Frevisse's relief.

  * * *

  She spent the hour on her knees at the altar praying for the burden of her fears and worries to be lifted from her mind and soul, but nothing had lifted by the time the heavy-noted cloister bell began to clang to Sext. Her soft groan as she climbed stiff-kneed to her feet was less for her knees than for her sense of helplessness under the burden of all she knew and how little she could do about any of it. Then someone's hand under her elbow steadied her as she a little swayed, and she looked around to find Dame Thomasine there.

  Dame Thomasine was a much younger nun, though not so young anymore, whose early years in St. Frideswide's had been fraught with almost frantic piety and a much-cherished hope among some of the nuns that she might be a burgeoning saint. That hope had dimmed over the years, and likewise, Dame Thomasine's desperate piety had changed, not lessened but deepened and grown quiet in its strength. She seldom raised her eyes higher than her prayer-folded hands, and Frevisse was somewhat startled to find the younger woman was looking at her now, and was more startled when Dame Thomasine, who rarely spoke except in the Offices, said softly, still gazing at her, "It will help to remember that all things under the sun have their time. The time of keeping and the time of casting away. The time for things to come and the time for things to pass. Whatever our own wishes and hopes may be."

  Frevisse opened her mouth, as if there were some answer she could make to that, but found she had none. Besides, Dame Thomasine had already lowered her gaze again and was going toward her seat in the choir. The other nuns were coming, too, and Frevisse went to her own place, taking with her a moment of resenting Dame Thomasine. For someone so quiet, she could be very disquieting. But there was both truth and comfort in those quiet words from Ecclesiastes, and as Frevisse knelt and bowed her head, she set to giving herself up to them, because—as Ecclesiastes likewise said-come what may and despite when men might wish or hope, it was God who brought all things to their end, and therefore all ends must be good.

  Chapter 18

  Having once determined that the two men from Kenilworth were indeed following them, Joliffe and Vaughn kept together for a day and a half, riding vaguely southwestward, meaning to draw them well away from whoever had given them their orders. The longer before the men reported back, the longer before some other move could be made some other direction.

  "If nothing else, we may buy time enough for Lady Alice to have Burgate freed," Vaughn said. "Then he can tell her everything, and while we play 'hunt the hare' . . .”

  “We being the hares," Joliffe said.

  " . . she can send someone else for this unblessed letter.”

  “We having served our purpose by keeping the hounds headed this way."

  There was the worry that when they did go their separate ways, their 'hounds' might guess their quarry had spotted them. "But if we show no especial alarm," said Vaughn "they may think we're simply parting company to be careful and split themselves to follow each of us. Either way," he added with a frown, "you'll be at the greater hazard, riding alone. I'll still have Symond."

  "It's a pity killing doesn't come easy to us," Joliffe said. "That would be the straightest way to be rid of them."

  "It would, but we're not going to," snapped Vaughn.

  He rode in stiff silence for an hour afterward, but Joliffe did not regret having tried him. As Vaughn had pointed out, he was one to Vaughn's and Symond's two. It helped to know Vaughn did not favor murder as a short way to an end. But neither did Joliffe regret when they went their separate ways the second day, Vaughn swinging away northward, intending to lose his follower and curve back to the east in a day or so, Joliffe carrying on the way they had been going. As hoped, their two followers split to follow them, and Joliffe spent part of another day losing his man in a market-day crowd in Gloucester, doing his best to make the loss seem by chance rather than purpose so that maybe the man would go on looking for him there; and because a very likely reason to come to Gloucester was to take the bridge over the wide Severn River, Joliffe let himself be last seen heading that way, before turning Rowan away and heading north, to cross the river by the ferry at Tewkesbury.

  A day after that he was well westward into the Welsh hills, free and clear of any sign that he was followed; and he turned north again, meaning to make as straight as the roads would allow for Ludlow, the duke of York's town and great castle where he would surely find someone to carry word to Ireland. But the weather turned when he did, and a lashing rain too bad for riding held him two days at an inn-He had to fight the urge to pace the hours away, but Rowan did well out of it, taking her ease in the inn stable and, "Eating your head off," Joliffe pointed out to her when he went in the evening to see how she did.

  She flicked an ear at him and did not raise her head from the shallow pan of oats he was holding for her. The stable was a clean-kept place. The smells of hay and warm horses prevailed over any other, and the rain on the roof's thatch and Rowan's crunching of oats were the loudest sounds, far from the inn's loud main room crowded with other stranded travelers and villagers short of work in this weather. Sitting on the edge of the manger, his back safely to a wall and no one else there, Joliffe felt a better measure of quiet than he had had in days. Just now, just here, for this little while, there was nothing he could do toward what needed to be done. For this little while the weight of necessity was off him and it was pleasant to be doing nothing in particular except contenting Rowan.

  In his youth and young manhood he had enjoyed the contentment that could come from doing nothing in particular. He had even worked to better his skill at it. Only over time he had let
himself be drawn into other men's matters and matters of his own and somehow had lost the skill, so subtly that he had not seen it go, only known when it was gone. Sometimes he was not sure why. Had it been ambition? Or blindness, so he failed to see what was happening? Or simply stupidity? There were times when he favored the latter reason. If what he truly wished was to be sitting beside his own hearthfire in his own home, why wasn't he there, instead of here?

  Rowan shoved her head at him to let him know the oats Were gone. He shoved her back, saying, "Greedy. That's all you get. You don't want to turn into an oats-fattened slug, do you?"

  She shoved at him again to let him know that, yes, she did, and he laughed and slid off the manger's edge and set to combing her mane, not because she needed it just then—-the inn's stableman had done a good job of it—but simply for their mutual contentment: hers at being brushed, his at the plain work.

  Besides, he knew why he was here instead of simply at home. One way and another through the years he had learned too much about the men who had gathered to the duke of Suffolk and into power around the king. Even if he was near to nothing himself in the wide weave of power in the realm, still, whatever he could do, however slight, against such men was worth the doing. He only wished, at present, that he knew better what men he was working against, because surely Somerset was not alone in all of it.