16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “And afterwards,” Dame Frevisse said stiffly, “he’ll see Sister Margrett and me back to St. Frideswide’s, because by then we’ll have been long enough away.”

  Before Lady Alice could answer that one way or another, Joliffe put in, “And I’ll meet them either on their way there or at the priory, to find out what they’ve learned.”

  Lady Alice’s sharp look back and forth between them told she understood what they both were saying behind their outward words—that Dame Frevisse would do this much for her but then was done, and that he expected to be set free now. Their demands did not please her, but she said crisply, “Well enough,” accepting them.

  “With Joliffe to be let free to go about his own business in the meanwhile,” Dame Frevisse said, to be sure that was clear.

  For which he must remember to thank her, Joliffe thought, as Lady Alice said almost angrily, “Yes.”

  “And he might as well go now,” Dame Frevisse said. “To have him out of the way.”

  And out of Lady Alice’s temptation to keep him after all?

  Joliffe wondered. Had Dame Frevisse lost that much confidence in her cousin? But careful to show none of that thought, he bowed to Lady Alice and said, all pleasantly, “I’ll go at once, then, by your leave. If I may have my horse and gear again?”

  Making a small movement of one hand at Vaughn, Lady Alice said, “See to it.”

  Vaughn bowed and left the room. Straightening from his own bow, Joliffe met Dame Frevisse’s look for one long, unsmiling moment between them before he left, too, wondering as he went what that look had meant.

  Chapter 12

  Frevisse saw Joliffe from the room with relief. She doubted he would have been content to stay quietly a prisoner if Alice had decided to keep him; but with both men gone she was left alone with Alice, who looked at her from a distance greater than the few feet between them and said, “Satisfied?” Then added, more than halfway to accusation, “You’ll be as glad as he is to be gone. And the more glad not to come back.”

  Under the bitterness there was hurt that Frevisse would have eased if she could, but denial would be a lie. All she could offer was, “Alice, this isn’t where I belong.”

  “It isn’t,” Alice agreed sharply and moved away to the table where cards still lay where the men had dropped them-Beginning to gathering the cards together, she said, “Sister Margrett has at least enjoyed John’s company, I think. You’ve enjoyed nothing and can barely wait to be away.”

  Because neither a lie nor the truth were any good to Alice just now, Frevisse held silent.

  Finished with gathering and tidying the cards into her hands, Alice dropped them into a scatter on the tabletop and turned around to Frevisse again. “It frightens me I didn’t think sooner that the queen’s household was somewhere else to ask questions. I simply set her aside from everything that’s happening.”

  “It’s because she’s been set aside in Kenilworth safely away from everything,” Frevisse said. “Of course you’d look to around the king, where everything is happening.”

  “But I know better than that. She’s not a nothing. There’s constant come and go between the households. It frightens me whenever I find my mind has failed me that badly.”

  Glad for the chance to be kind as well as truthful, Frevisse offered, “You’ve had too much of too many things in your mind of late. Mind and heart are both tired.”

  “My heart.” Alice dismissed that with a quick, sideways jerk of one hand. “I gave up living by my heart years ago. It’s too treacherous a thing to trust.”

  There was more bitterness than truth in that, but Frevisse did not challenge her. Sometimes bitterness was the only shelter left. Just so long as it did not become a permanent dwelling.

  “But, Frevisse, if my wits have started to fail me,” Alice said with raw despair, “I’m finished. They’re all I have. What else besides the queen haven’t I thought of, that I should have?”

  “You can go mad wondering that,” Frevisse said. “Better that you simply hope that if you haven’t thought of it, it’s because there’s no reason or need to think of it yet.”

  “Frevisse, I’m so tired.” Alice paced away from her to-ward the window, rubbing her fingertips into her forehead where it showed in the tight circle of her wimple. “I’m just so tired.”

  “With all you’ve done and had done to you,” Frevisse said gently, “tired is the least of what you are. Presently, while there’s chance, with nothing more you can do for now, why not rest? Play with John, or read, or walk in the gardens. Sleep,” she added as afterthought. The gray under Alice’s eyes betrayed how much she needed that.

  As if rest were another thought that had not come to her until now, Alice said with surprise, “I should. Especially the sleep. Even if I have to give myself a sleeping draught to do it.” They were both looking out the window, not at each other; and still looking out, Alice went on, “If by some wonder you should find Burgate and he’s unable—or unwilling— to return to me, at least ask if he knows where the account roll for the manor of Cockayne might be.”

  Left behind by Alice’s sideways shift of thought—the more so because “Cockayne” was only an imagined place used in stories—Frevisse said blankly, “What?”

  “The account roll for Cockayne. That way he’ll know you’re truly from me. It was something between Suffolk and I, to be sure a message was truly by one of us. Where the account roll ‘might be’. Those words.”

  “Where the account roll for the manor of Cockayne might be,” Frevisse repeated. “I’ll remember.” Trying to sound as if she believed he would be found and she was not on a fool’s errand to Kenilworth.

  The next morning was sweet with a soft rain under gently gray clouds. “Not the best of traveling weather but not the worst, either,” Sister Margrett said while she and Frevisse waited in the shelter of the great hall’s porch for the horses to be brought. Their farewells to Lady Alice were made, but while Frevisse’s thoughts still lingered on regret that their had been stiff with damaged trust, Sister Margrett was already looking eagerly ahead.

  “John will miss you,” Frevisse had said when telling her they would be leaving.

  “And I shall miss him.” Sister Margrett had suddenly smiled. “But to see Kenilworth and the queen! That will be something to tell at St. Frideswide’s!”

  Frevisse would gladly leave all the telling of it to her if only, please God, they could be back in St. Frideswide’s soon.

  Sister Margrett’s other thought had been that they might well reach Northampton, where her family lived, by their second night. “We’ll have to stay at St. Bartholomew’s of course.” Their priory’s parent-abbey, not far from Northampton. “But my folk could come see me there before we ride on. Or we could maybe visit them?”

  “We’ll visit them, surely,” Frevisse promised, willing to make someone happy about something. “But we’re not to stay a night at Northampton. The second night we’re to be somewhat this side of it, at a place called Rushden. Lady Alice has us taking a gift of pheasants to the Treshams there.” And two brace of rabbits to Kenilworth. It seemed Queen Margaret was uncommonly fond of rabbit in a sweet sauce of wine and spices.

  “The Treshams?” Sister Margrett had asked. “William Tresham that’s been Speaker in Parliament ail those times?”

  “Several times, I gather, yes.”

  “But …” Sister Margrett had paused with a puzzled frown of thought and a quick glance as if to be sure they were alone, though they had been in their bedchamber at the time. “… my mother said at her Easter visit this year that he was Speaker this past winter when Parliament brought down the duke of Suffolk. Why would Lady Alice …”

  What Alice had said, when Frevisse had asked her much the same, was, “Master Tresham did what his duty required of him. He dealt honestly in the matter, and I don’t choose to belittle either him or myself by holding that against him.” She had lifted her chin and added somewhat defiantly, “Besides, his wife is my friend an
d I don’t choose to forget it.”

  Frevisse gave only the latter part of that answer to Sister Margrett. “His wife is a friend of Lady Alice’s.” Then had added, as Alice had, “There’s this, though. Master Tresham is not in favor with people around the king and queen for what he did. At Kenilworth, it may be best if we say nothing about having stayed there.”

  Sister Margrett had understood that with blessed quickness and said only, “Oh. Yes.”

  Now, as Sister Margrett was saying she thought the rain was slackening, Vaughn came to tell them the men were ready and the horses being brought. Only Vaughn and three other men were to accompany them, the hope being that with so few riders—and if the weather went no worse and all else went well—they would make good time, and they did, Vaughn keeping them to a mile-passing pattern of walk to trot to walk again, with occasional brief gallops on better stretches of road and the weather clearing by early afternoon.

  Because both Frevisse and Sister Margrett had been to Bury St. Edmunds, had already seen the saint’s gold and be-jeweled shrine in the great abbey church there, neither felt need to stop for it and willingly rode straight through the town’s wend of streets and market crowds, satisfied with sight of the abbey’s sky-scraping spire before their road bent away, leaving it behind them; and in late afternoon they came down from the gentle roll of hills into the marshy levels toward Cambridge and not much before twilight stopped for the night at a small Benedictine nunnery in time to join the nuns for Vespers in the church. That while of prayer and praise—the familiar words said and sung in the enwrapping certainty of a church among other women living their lives to the same pattern as her own mostly was—was like balm laid over the raw edges of Frevisse’s worry and thoughts. She let herself sink deep into the peace as the women chanted, trading verse for verse back and forth across the choir— Domine, salvum fac regem. Et exaudi nos in die, qua invocaver-itnus te. . . Fiat Pax in virtute tua. Et abundantia in turribus tuis … Retribuere dignare, Domine, omnibus, nobis bona facien-tibus propter nomen tuum, vitam aeternam… . Lord, make safe the king. And hear us in the day that we call to you… . Create peace in your strength. And abundance in your towers… . Deign to repay, Lord, to all of us doing good in your name, eternal life… .

  For the sake of avoiding questions, she and Sister Margrett did not join the nuns for their evening hour of recreation but pleaded weariness and a need to rest, only rejoining them for Compline before going to their beds in the nunnery’s guesthall. They awoke there in the middle of the night when the cloister bell rang its simple summons and returned to the church for Matins and Lauds, with Frevisse praying from the heart, “Dignare, Domine, die isto sine peccato nos custodire. Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri. Fiat miseri-cordia tua, Domine, super nos, quemadmodum speravimus in te. In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternam.” Deign, Lord, for this day to keep us without sin. Pity us, Lord, pity us. Have your mercy, Lord, on us, as we have hoped in you. In you, Lord, I have hoped: let me not be confounded forever.

  With every Office, with every prayer and psalm of pleading and praise, the tight binding of worry Frevisse had carried with her these past days loosened a little more. What she could do, she would do. Beyond that, all was in God’s hands, and—returned to bed after Lauds—she fell to sleep more easily than she had been able to for some few past nights.

  Vaughn showed he was not best pleased that in the morning she and Sister Margrett said Prime with the nuns before riding on, but to his good he did not try to make up the time by pushing their pace any harder than he had yesterday. They kept to the same rhythm of walk and trot and gallop, and the miles went by. Cambridge’s crowded streets slowed them somewhat, but beyond there the level roads through open countryside of wide pasturelands made for unhindered riding. At St. Neot’s they crossed a river by way of a timber bridge—always to be preferred to a ferry or fording—but farther on the land began to rise into hills more definite than the ones they had ridden out of yesterday. That slowed their going, but there was still goodly daylight left when they reached the stone-built market town of Higham Ferrers and Vaughn turned them south toward the Treshams’ manor at Rushden. He knew the way, so no time was wasted in asking it, and very soon they turned down from the highway and rode through a small parkland and an open gateway into the foreyard of a manor house with its surround of stables and other buildings.

  All was far less fine than Wingfield—its hall smaller and older, the spread of buildings less—but the gates stood open in welcome, and because Vaughn had sent one of the men ahead to warn of their coming, someone had been watching for them, and Master and Mistress Tresham came from the enclosed stone foreporch to greet them as they drew rein. A servant came from the stable, too, to lead their men and horses away while the Treshams greeted Frevisse, Sister Margrett, and Vaughn with the hope their ride had been easy and questions of how Lady Alice was when they left her, and saw them into the house. Because Vaughn was there in Lady Alice’s name, he was being given something of the courtesy that would have been hers and went with them, through the great hall to the solar where wine and small, freshly made, berry cakes were waiting.

  The Treshams were much as Frevisse remembered them from the few times she had met them in Alice’s company: Master Tresham a well-mannered man in his fine later mid’ die years, aware of his own wits and worth without need to wear them heavily for the world to see; Mistress Tresham graciously well-matched to her husband in years and wits and worth and manners. While her husband asked Vaughn questions about their journey and for what news he might have, Mistress Tresham soon asked Frevisse and Sister Margrett if they should care to ready for supper, and having drawn promise from Master Tresham that, yes, he would see Vaughn to his room in just a few minutes, she led Frevisse and Sister Margrett upstairs to a pleasant chamber from which someone looked to have been hurriedly removed.

  When Frevisse said as much, Mistress Tresham admitted with a smile, “Our son. Thomas. He has his own home now, at another of our manors, Sywell, not far away. His wife died last year and his little boy is staying with us. We’re dealing for another marriage for him, but meanwhile he comes to see Jack, which means we get to see more of him. The only trouble,” she warned, half-laughing, “is that he and his father go on at each other at length over where the rights and wrongs of the world lie. They’re nor of one mind about it, and best I warn you, because you’ll probably have to listen to them at supper. I’ll send someone for you when it’s time to go down, and leave you in peace until then.”

  She withdrew, and Frevisse and Sister Margrett used the respite to wash their faces and hands and say a hurried Vespers before a serving woman came to lead them downstairs, back to the solar again. The Treshams dined in the newer fashion—apart from their household, the great hall left to their servants while they were private in the solar. Like all else at Rushden, the meal was done with quiet grace, served with no great show but with no lessening of courtesy. There was an ease to it all that told here were a man and wife who had made choices about their life and were well-pleased with it.

  Rushden might be less fine than Wingfield, but there was the quiet sense of family and a well-loved home that told that here “less” was no loss. Certainly neither Master nor Mistress Tresham showed any sign of thwarted ambitions, only the grace of people pleased with their lives.

  Their son Thomas was something of another matter, Frevisse covertly noted. Much about Vaughn’s age, he had all the bearing of a young man ready to be ambitious in the world. His manners were faultless but he joined in his father’s and Vaughn’s talk with a restless eagerness. When Mistress Tresham had again asked after Lady Alice, this time in caring detail, and Frevisse had told what she could, Sister Margrett asked about Mistress Tresham’s grandson, and while they shared stories of him and Alice’s young John, Frevisse listened to the men’s talk. Master Tresham and Vaughn were past sharing reports of how things were elsewhere to sharing their thoughts on matters, with Thomas joining in strongly, unti
l Master Tresham said somewhat sharply at him, “That’s a fairly simple view of matters.”

  “Simple?” Thomas protested. “Do you truly think the Commons have boiled up over half of England all of their own? That there’s no one was behind it?”

  “What’s behind it are a few years too many of wrongs gone on so long and deep that men were finally goaded into rebellion to make someone listen to them,” Master Tresham returned. “No one has to be ‘behind it’. However ill-guidedly, most of these rebels are no more than trying to better things.”

  “They may honestly think that’s what they’re doing, the most of them,” Thomas said. He reached out and tapped a firm forefinger against the table top. “But I tell you they’re being used. Behind everything, it’s York has stirred them up.”

  “York,” Master Tresham scoffed. “Name me one thing— one thing—York has ever done that shows he’s treacherous.”

  “He wants the crown. That’s a certainty.”

  “Certain for whom? He’s never made a single move that way. You can’t name one thing he’s done that says he’s out to have it. Unless you’ve learned to read his unsaid thoughts and found it there, you’re …”

  “You don’t have to read unsaid thoughts to know what’s in them. What about …” Thomas had taken up a spoon to add ginger sauce over the portion of roast chicken in front of him but forgot himself and was waggling it at his father instead. His mother cleared her throat delicately, without directly looking at him. Thomas paused, said, “Pardon,” laid down the spoon, and went on but no less intensely, “What about last April? That shipman, in Stony Stratford when King Henry was passing through on his way to Leicester. That fellow who beat the ground with a flail and yelled that York would do the same to traitors when he came back from Ireland. What of that?”

  “You can’t condemn York because a half-mad fellow— and how much in the way of wits can a shipman in Leicester, days away from any coast, have about him?—rants his name in the public street. ‘There’s many talk of Robin Hood who never drew a bow.’ These claims that York’s behind these risings is as much a fable as ‘Robin Hood’ is. Just because there’s talk doesn’t make a thing true.”