16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

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.

  The third morning came with a clearing sky and he rode on with hope of being a good many miles nearer to Ludlow by day’s end, until Rowan threw a shoe and promptly wedged a stone into her hoof. Prying out the stone took little time, but unsure how bruised her foot was, Joliffe chose to lead her rather than ride and maybe make it worse; and because in Wales the middle of nowhere was miles from any blacksmith, they were a long time coming to help. The blacksmith they found proved to be good, told Joliffe he had done right not to ride but that once she was new-shod, all would be well and didn’t he want to put all new shoes on her now and save trouble later? See
ing the sense of that, Joliffe had him do it, and it was only at evening the next day that he finally rode up Ludlow’s steep Broad Street into the marketplace. The hour was too late for him to present himself at the castle with request to see whoever was highest among the duke’s officers presently there—too late to do it without drawing unwanted attention to himself, anyway—so he paid himself and Rowan into an inn and waited for morning.

  Even then things did not go at the speed he wanted. Seemingly everyone in castle as well as town was more occupied with market day than with any other business that might present itself. He only finally was able to see the castle’s chamberlain, present the token that affirmed he was from Sir William Oldhall, and give his warning.

  The chamberlain grew grim at hearing how Sir Thomas Stanley was gone hot-saddled to Wales at word of York’s planned return.

  “Under orders for something,” the chamberlain said darkly. “That’s what you thought and that’s what I think.”

  “If I had to put money to it,” Joliffe said carefully, “I’d lay wager he had orders to stop my lord of York, either from landing or else from reaching England.”

  “Stop his grace? Sir damned Thomas Stanley is supposed to stop my lord of York? How? Arrest him?” the chamberlain scorned.

  Grimly Joliffe said, “I’ve heard from Sir William Oldhall himself that there are men around the king who want his grace accused of treason, that there’s secret order for at least one of the oyer and terminer commissions to claim they’ve found he’s behind these uprisings this year.”

  The chamberlain swore in Welsh. It was a good language to swear in, ripe with ways of damning to hell, both specific and general and especially for Englishmen. Then he said, There’s no telling, then, what Sir Thomas has been ordered to do against York. Sir Thomas is just the mean-minded wretch to do the worst he can. Not that my lord of York will let him do much of anything, I’ll warrant. Right. In any case, you’ll be wanting to get on to Ireland to warn his grace. I can give you …”

  I fear someone else will have to go,” Joliffe interrupted.

  “I’ve business in the other direction and it’s waited too long as it is.”

  The chamberlain looked ready to protest that but held back long enough to take good look at him and instead asked, “My lord of York’s business, is it?”

  “My lord of York’s business, and as weighty, maybe, as getting warning to him.”

  “Then someone else can go to Ireland. I can see to that. For you, do you need any help I can give?”

  “Some money wouldn’t come amiss, and a day’s rest and keep for my horse and me.”

  “You can have all that and a fresh horse, too, if you want.”

  “Better the devil I know,” Joliffe said lightly. Or, rather, a horse he knew was sound, good for the miles he was going to ask of her. “But my thanks for the offer anyway. Just some money, food, and rest, and I’ll be away sometime tomorrow.”

  “You’ll have all that. In the meantime I’ll have a messenger away to Ireland.”

  “Better secretly than not,” Joliffe suggested.

  “It would seem so, wouldn’t it? My wife has been at me to send someone to Shrewsbury with a list of things she wants. I’ll start him out as if for that and he can cut away toward the coast when he’s well away from Ludlow. There should be no trouble about it.”

  “Except from your wife,” Joliffe said.

  The chamberlain grunted agreement.

  Joliffe made the most of that evening’s supper, a full night’s safe sleep, and the next day’s midday dinner, before he rode out of Ludlow by the road toward Shrewsbury. He made no haste about it, so that when nightfall came he did not have so far to ride back on his tracks to be sure he had not been followed away from Ludlow before circling the town to take the road to Worcester, the opposite way from Shrewsbury. Favored by both the weather and moonlight, he covered a good many miles before, toward dawn, he gave himself and Rowan a rest along a particularly lonely stretch of road, unsaddling her and leaving her to crop the long’

  dewed grass of the wayside, her lead-rope in his hand while he slept dry under a hedge, pillowed on his saddle.

  As he intended, he awoke to the dawn twittering of birds in the first light of the coming day. With sighing memory of the bed he’d had in Ludlow, he crawled stiffly to his feet, ate some bread and cheese with one hand while wiping Rowan’s back carefully dry with a cloth in the other before saddling her. When she swung her head around to make a snap at him in token of her displeasure as he tightened the girth, he told her, “I couldn’t agree with you more, good lady. But needs must when the devil drives.”

  She snorted her opinion of that but took the bit and her bridle with only one try at pushing him off his feet with a hard shove of her head.

  He had prayed for dry, clear days for this part of his ride, and his prayer was half-way answered. That day and the others after it either started clear and ended with rain or else started with rain and ended clear. He did not find one was better than the other. Either way, he was rained on every day and twice had to stay the night at inns and once spent a whole midday in a village tavern while a pounding rainstorm wore itself out. He was only glad he need not press onward so hard as he might have. By now Vaughn would have Burgate’s letter from the priest in Sible Hedingham. He would come there only to find that Vaughn had been and gone and then have to go on to Wingfield, in hope that Vaughn had played as straight as he was playing it and that Lady Alice was ready to carry through their bargain.

  He little doubted that she would. She was frightened and m need of an ally and was not fool enough to think she could find a safe one among the greed-drooling pack around King Henry. He would have liked to think she would not want to lose her cousin Dame Frevisse’s regard, either, by Straying their agreement, but he was not sure how much weight that might have in the balance. No, what he most counted on were Lady Alice’s fear and her need of Richard duke of York.

  His last miles of riding to Sible Hedingham were by green-hedged lanes through the easy roll of Essex countryside. He was back not so very far from where he had started when he left Hunsdon on his way to Alderton. He had made a ragged figure-eight across England and back, and now to end it all he was going to be rained on some more, he thought, eyeing the roil of clouds mounting the eastward sky ahead of him. He was becoming very tired of weather.

  In truth, he was simply becoming tired, he admitted as he rode into Sible Hedingham. The village stretched along the road, with a slope down to pastures in a shallow valley on one side, on the other a rise of land to the village fields. As he had neared it, he had seen across the valley, above another village’s roofs, the tall, stone square of an old castle’s keep. Over there, he guessed would be the local market, because here all he came on was a slight widening of the street before it somewhat jogged and sloped into another stream valley, leaving the village. This wide place in the road was the village’s center, he judged by a green-leaved branch thrust out above a door of one of the houses, telling there was new ale to be had there, with two trestle tables with benches set outside the door to invite folk to sit and drink.

  But rather than the few lazing scruff that almost every alehouse seemed to have and the only folk likely to be there this time of day, what looked to be half the village men were there and not idle but crowded up to the tavern’s open door and window, with a grumbling throb of voices from inside that told more men were there and, by a shriller note mixed among them, some women, too. Nor were they drinking. Joliffe saw one man raise a fist and shake it over his head, and inside someone roared a “No” that was answered with cheers.

  As a traveling player Joliffe had learned to “read” any place he came to very quickly, judging whether its folk were likely to welcome a play or prefer the sport of throwing garbage or stones—or simply go on sullenly about their business, not interested if poor players starved for lack of work. As he drew rein in the other side of the road from the alehouse, he thought that if he w
as come here as a player, he would have moved on without unpacking the cart. Something was getting ready to happen, and the sooner he learned for certain that Vaughn had been and gone so he could go, too, the better. Wherever he’d be when the storm came down on him, it would likely be better than here.

  A little farther along the street three boys were kicking a stone back and forth across the dust to each other. Joliffe guided Rowan toward them and asked where the priest lived. They answered by pointing at a narrow lane running up-slope beyond the alehouse. “Just up there,” one of the boys said. “Across from the church. You’ll know it.”

  “Is he home?” Joliffe asked.

  “Him? Yes,” another boy said with unboyish bitterness. “Counting his coins and planning how to get more, likely.”

  “Yah,” the first boy said. “That’s your father talking.”

  “Your father, too!” the other boy defended, while the third boy nodded vigorously.

  Joliffe thanked them and dropped a silver half-penny to each of them, bringing wide smiles to their faces and an offer from the second boy to tell him anything else he might want to know.

  Joliffe smiled back at him, said, “Later, maybe,” and reined Rowan toward the lane. It proved to be brief, steeply sloped with the church set on his right on the point of the slope where the lane ended against another road running both ways from it, making another widened triangle of road. There were more houses here, along the lane and the road it met, but as the boy had said, Joliffe knew without having to ask again which was the priest’s house. Like its neighbors, it sat flat-faced to the street, so there was probably a large garden behind it, and probably a byre and barn beyond that for the priest’s livestock and the tithes-in-kind from his parishioners’ fields, unless—as it seemed from the boys’ talk—he had brought his folk to paying their tithes in coin instead of with dried beans and peas and grain. Then only what came from his own fields would be in the barn.