16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  That was maybe only her own piety speaking—to see it that way and think someone else might, too. It was maybe simply what it most seemed to be—a brutal foolishness not clearly thought through by someone valuing power over all else.

  But then why no torture?

  She was suddenly aware that the voices around her were fading toward silence on, “… misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace.” … by the mercy of God rest in peace, and that her voice was not with them. She did not know when she had fallen silent with her thoughts, and rather more hurriedly than reverently, she joined in the Amen that ended the Office, while a quick, guilty look sideways toward Domina Elisabeth found her frowning from the prioress’ higher place at the end of the choir stalls.

  Her failure had been noted.

  As with other such failures of duty, nothing would be said about it now, unsettling the day. Both confession and rebuke would come tomorrow in the morning’s chapter meeting, a practice meant to keep the hour by hour life of a nunnery undisturbed and give the erring nun time to consider her fault and reach a humility that let her freely admit her wrong and accept her punishment when the time came. That the practice did not always reach perfection did not lessen the value of the intent. Frevisse’s own good intention to keep her mind to her tasks and away from where it did not need to go was helped by her afternoon work being presently the copying out of prayers to the Virgin from the breviary, as a gift from the nunnery to a butcher’s wife in Banbury who had promised her younger daughter as a novice there when the girl was old enough. Frevisse always silently added to that “and if the girl be willing”, but just now there was soothe in laying the letters evenly in firm black ink across the paper, filling what had been emptiness with the beauty both of the letters themselves and the wonder held in the words.

  Only in the hour’s recreation after supper, before the day’s final prayers at Compline and then bed, did her guard against her thoughts fall as she walked in the evening light beside Dame Claire in the nunnery’s walled garden along the graveled path between the carefully kept beds of herbs and flowers.

  She and Dame Claire often walked together in that hour because they were usually content to keep silent in their own thoughts, not needing to talk for the pointless sake of talking; but in that ease this evening Frevisse’s thoughts went back to where they had been. Who had ordered those murders, and was someone purposefully waiting for Burgate either to live and break and tell his secret or else to die with his secret kept, whichever God willed?

  The latter question she could least answer. As for the outright murders, the duke of Somerset still seemed most likely. He must surely be hoping to move into Suffolk’s place near the king and counting on King Henry’s slack sense of justice to protect him against the accusations and outcries already being made against him. But even King Henry would not be able to hold ignorant against Suffolk’s open charges in this hidden letter.

  The trouble remained that when Suffolk was murdered and Burgate arrested, Somerset had been still in Normandy, waiting to be besieged in Caen. He might of course have men in his service who dealt for him, but could they have acted so swiftly—with no time for orders back and forth across the Channel—against Burgate? Could they have had the secretary not only seized but away into a royal prison before word of Suffolk’s death was hardly known? Possibly. But could they be the “others” that Burgate had been too afraid even to name?

  She doubted it. Those “others” had sounded more like men equal or nearly equal in power to Suffolk and Somerset themselves—and that would be how they had dealt so well at ordering the murders and Burgate’s seizure.

  And then the matter of Suffolk’s own murder. Burgate had denied the given story that he had been taken in the Channel and killed by no more than angry shipmen taking their chance against him. Burgate had claimed it was all planned. But again Burgate had shied from giving any name.

  She was hopelessly hindered by not knowing enough about the lords close around the king to make a strong guess about any of them and their ambitions. The duke or Buckingham, of course, because he was presently charged with the queen’s safekeeping at Kenilworth and therefore with the keeping of the castle, which could be explanation for Burgate’s imprisonment there. Where had Buckingham been in early May, when Suffolk was murdered and Burgate seized? Frevisse thought she remembered the king had been at the Parliament in Leicester all that month. His great lords had been with him there, including Buckingham. But maybe not. Maybe …

  She found she had come to a stop, was turned on the path and staring down into the dark heart of a red flower whose name she did not know, without knowing how long she had been there. Dame Claire had walked on; Dame Juliana and Dame Amicia were coming her way along the path in murmurous talk together; but for the moment she was alone save for a bee bumbling among the blossoms and she wondered why mankind couldn’t live in simplicity with itself instead of with ambition-driven greeds for wealth and power and the lusts of the body. But there was no simplicity anywhere in life, she thought. There was nothing simple about the flower in front of her, with its deep colors and delicate, many petals and finely detailed veins and stem and leaves, each part of it as different from its other parts as all plants differed from one another. And likewise with the simple, bumbling bee that had nothing simple about it, if she paused to think on it. Even the gravel beneath her feet was not simple. Every rock of it was different from all the others. So why uselessly wish that mankind might be simple among itself? “Simple” was not the way the world was made.

  “Gone away again, Dame? In mind if not in body this time?” Dame Amicia asked—somewhat tartly, Frevisse thought; and wondered if there was jealousy about her time spent away from St. Frideswide’s.

  But of course she had known there likely was, with no one to know how less than happy she had been in it or the burden she had brought back with her; and quietly, with no urge to answer tartly back, she turned and said, “No. Merely giving thanks I’m here again,” before walking away, head down and hands tucked into her opposite sleeves, wishing she matched inwardly that outward quiet.

  She was ready, next morning in the chapter meeting, to confess on her knees before Domina Elisabeth her distraction of mind at Sext yesterday. Because praying was the center and reason of nuns’ lives, failure at it was a grave fault, and her penance was grave to match it: to spend the hour before that same Office on her knees at the altar today, tomorrow and the day after, and to have only bread and weak ale for her midday meal those same three days.

  With deeply bowed head, Frevisse thanked Domina Elisabeth and returned to her low joint stool among the other nuns, both accepting her guilt and soothed at listening to ordinary matters being settled in ordinary ways through the rest of the chapter meeting. Her coming penance did not weigh on her. She had prayed too little while she was gone. This would be chance to recover some of that lost time. And fasting was no longer the great trouble it had been when she was young, now that she understood how acceptance was the greater part of bearing it and knew how to accept.

  If only she could as well accept everything she did not know—would probably never know—about Suffolk’s death and all the ills that were come from it.

  The chapter meeting ended with Domina Elisabeth’s blessing on them. The nuns rose to go about their various morning work, but Domina Elisabeth beckoned for Frevisse to come to her as the others left and said as Frevisse curtsied to her, “Master Naylor has asked leave to talk with you, Dame. I’ve told him you’d see him in the guesthall courtyard after chapter. You have my leave to go. Afterward, I’d see you in my parlor.”

  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 wel
l 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.