16 The Traitor's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  “Don’t,” she said. “As you well heard Ela say.” She eyed him. “You’re better. But not well.”

  “I’m well,” he corrected. “But not strong.”

  “You’re better,” she repeated. “You’re not well. Dame Claire says the wound is healing, has closed better than you deserve, but …”

  “Aren’t all men deserving of mercy?”

  “Some are more deserving than others.” And added before he could make answer to that, “I’ve thought further on our problem.”

  “To more purpose than I have, I hope. I need to know more and can’t learn it here. So …” He made a gesture as if casting away his frustration.

  “Will it help to have three more deaths to consider?”

  Joliffe sat straighter despite that pulled his side. “Three more? What have you heard?”

  “Nothing new. These were this summer in London when Cade had the city. Lord Saye and Sele, and his son-in-law William Crowmer.”

  “As fine a pair of extorting bastards as ever disgraced a royal government,” Joliffe said. “I heard of what happened, yes.” James Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and his son-in-law had been of the court party, close among the men around the king. They had held a large piece of southeastern England in their greedy hands and for years had stripped it of wealth by every legal and illegal means they could. That they had been beheaded in London at the height of the rebellion after mock trials at the hands of rebels had had a certain illegal justice to it. More justice, anyway, than Fiennes and Crowmer had given to any number of other men, Joliffe thought.

  “What I’ve been wondering,” Dame Frevisse said carefully, “is how they came to be in reach of the rebels. They were among the men the rebels had already named in their accusations to the king, but the only ones King Henry had had arrested.”

  “A sop to the rebels,” Joliffe said. “A ‘Look, we’ve met one of your demands.’ “

  “Yes. They were arrested and put in the Tower of London, and then King Henry and his lords fled London.”

  “Leaving Fiennes and Crowmer behind, and Lord Scales in charge of the Tower,” Joliffe said. “So they should have been safe enough, but they ended up dead anyway.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “Beheaded, the both of them.”

  “No, I mean how they came into the rebels’ hands at all?

  “No,” Joliffe said. “Too much else was happening, and I had no grief at Fiennes’ and Crowmer’s deaths. I never gave them thought at all.”

  “I heard from men who saw it happening. Lord Scales took Fiennes out of the Tower to London’s Guildhall for the trial that Jack Cade and the rebels were demanding.”

  “That I’d heard. Didn’t Cade threaten to set fire to London if Fiennes wasn’t tried?”

  “If he did, it was an empty threat. London was still on his side then. He had to know that if he had even looked like using fire, the whole city would have turned against him.”

  Joliffe frowned. “But Lord Scales gave way to it.”

  “Even knowing that once Fiennes was out of the Tower, the several thousand rebels baying for his death would never let him be taken back. However the ‘trial’ might go, Scales had to know that Fiennes was as good as dead once he was out of the Tower.” She was speaking rapidly, a smolder of anger under the words. “And then there’s Crowmer. Why was he in the Fleet prison and not in the Tower?”

  Joliffe startled. “The Fleet?” The Fleet prison was on the other side of London from the Tower and not defensible. A prison was for keeping prisoners in, not attackers out, and he echoed, “What was he doing in the Fleet? Why was he there instead of the Tower?”

  “I never heard anyone say, but that’s where the rebels found him. Dragged him out, bothered with even less of a trial than Fiennes had had, and beheaded him, along with some clerk they took from prison with him.”

  “Who was the clerk?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Joliffe struck at the bedding with his fist. “There’s too much we don’t know. Crowmer, who should have been in the Tower, wasn’t. Fiennes was in the Tower but was taken out and all but handed over to the rebels, despite Lord Scales had to know that once he was out he was as good as dead.” Joliffe paused with a sudden, inward coldness, then said, “Which has to mean he wanted Fiennes dead.”

  “Or that Lord Scales is a fool who made a bad choice?” Dame Frevisse suggested.

  “I’ll give you there’s nothing brisk about Lord Scales’ brain. He takes his orders and does his duty, without troubling to think overmuch about it. The king’s man straight and simple.”

  Looking at him strangely, Dame Frevisse asked, “You know him that well?”

  Suddenly careful of his words, Joliffe said, “In the … work I do, it’s good to know more rather than less about men who may come to matter. It’s not that I always know the men myself. It’s …” He stopped, uncertain how much he should say that she did not need to know.

  She finished for him. “It’s that someone has troubled to learn about these men, then share what they’ve learned with you and others who do the same … work.”

  “Yes,” Joliffe agreed, and offered no more.

  She let him leave it at that, going back to, “Then you’d say that whatever Lord Scales did with Fiennes and Crowmer, he did it by someone’s orders.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that whoever gave those orders probably gave them because he wanted both men dead.”

  “That all follows together,” Joliffe said. “So does the thought that it had to be someone who could not only give the order, but afterward keep questions from being asked.”

  “The way questions haven’t been asked about Suffolk’s murder.”

  “There were questions asked,” Joliffe said; and added slowly, “Some.”

  “The ship was the Nicholas of the Tower. With all the records kept in every port, both the ship and its men should have been easy to find, to indict, to bring to trial. Were they?”

  Joliffe slowly turned his head from side to side, his eyes fixed on hers. “Nothing has been done about them. Not that I’ve heard.”

  Dame Frevisse looked at him, frowning, for a long, wordless moment before finally saying, still frowning, “Nothing has been done about the murder of the king’s greatest lord? The man nearest him for ten years and more? Nothing?”

  Joliffe tried, as devil’s advocate, “With all the upheave of rebellions and the French war there’s hardly been time to bother with Suffolk’s murderers.”

  Dame Frevisse gave that the scorn it deserved. “Since nearly nothing was being done to save the war in France and the revolts here did not break out at their worst until at least a month after Suffolk’s death, there was time enough.”

  “Come to that,” Joliffe said quietly, “not much has been done about either the bishop of Chichester’s murder or the bishop of Salisbury’s. Some things, but not much.”

  Very slowly Dame Frevisse said, “There’s nothing to say they all link, the way these later, lesser murders so surely do, to someone trying to keep hidden his part in Normandy’s loss.”

  “But the thought does come,” Joliffe said.

  “It does.”

  “Misfortunately, it sets us no nearer to knowing who, besides the duke of Somerset, is behind them, although Fiennes’ and Crowmer’s murders make it even more certain there’s someone besides him.”

  “Because he was still in Normandy when Jack Cade’s revolt blew up, and everything happened so fast then, he would, at best, barely have heard Cade was in London before it was all over. He’d not have had time to give the orders that got Fiennes and Crowmer dead.”

  “But someone did,” Joliffe said. “My guess would be the same someone who learned Suffolk had been making threats and writing letters before he sailed for France, and gave order for Burgate to be seized and held immediately after Suffolk’s death. And if those orders, then the orders for Gough’s death and Hampden’s, too, and probably both priests’, tho
ugh by then Somerset could have sharing in the business.”

  “Who around the king has that kind of power?” Dame Frevisse asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” he said, because he didn’t know. Among the lords left around the king there was no one who stood out in power as Suffolk and Somerset had done these past few years.

  But a fear was beginning to crawl up the back of his mind with small, sharp claws.

  It was something he was not going to share, and he gave way and let his body slump as if suddenly he could not hold straight anymore. “I think I need to sleep again,” he said and lay down and closed his eyes.

  Dame Frevisse made a small sound. Whether of irk, anger, or worry he couldn’t tell, only waited, listening as with a soft whisper of skirts and no other word she left, leaving him wishing he was as suddenly tired as he had seemed, because then he might have gone to sleep. Now he was going to have to lie here with his thoughts when he would rather have not.

  Dame Frevisse did not return that day or the next. Joliffe walked around the guesthall yard a little more each day, regaining his strength more quickly than he had dared to hope. In the while he had been too ill to note it, the year had slipped well into early autumn. The mornings had more of a chill to them, but the afternoons could still turn warm, and he took to sitting for a time on the guesthall steps then, to breath open air and see the sky a while longer before he took himself back into the hall.

  Because he could take his meals sitting at table now and no travelers were there that evening, he was having his supper in the hall alone, save for Luce hovering in talk with him despite old Ela’s glare, when Tom came in excitedly, saying to all of them as he came, “Have you heard? Tad of the stable is back from Banbury. He says word’s running the duke of York is come back from Ireland without the king’s leave and there’s been trouble in Wales about it. A battle even, maybe.”

  “Why’d he be fighting the Welsh?” Luce asked. She flattened a hand to her flat breast. “Are they rising again? Is that Glendower man come back, the way they’ve said he would? Is that the way of it?”

  “Not the Welsh,” Tom said. “That Glendower was in my grandfather’s time. He’s not coming back. No. It was the king’s own men York fought! They tried to stop him coming into Wales. Or maybe into England. Anyroad, there was a battle and the king’s men lost and he’s coming this way, they say. York is. Going to London to challenge the king and … and …” His words failed. He made a wide gesture with both hands. “And all.”

  Luce’s eyes were huge with excitement. “Oh! Do you think he’s come back to claim the crown for himself? Is he going to take it away from King Henry the way King Henry’s grandfather took it that while ago?” She lowered her voice. “There’s some say that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  Joliffe’s hand was tightly cramped around the spoon he had been holding, but he asked as if the whole business hardly interested him, “What do you say?”

  Old Ela was shuffling from her corner toward the table to hear better and snapped, “If she’s her wits about her, she won’t say anything.”

  “I’m only saying what people have said,” Luce said righteously. “It’s only fools talk that way.”

  “They’re fools, too, who say York is going to make worse trouble than we’ve already had all this year,” Tom declared. “My thought is he’s come back to settle it all before it all gets worse. Someone has to and he’s the man to do it.”

  “Rightly thought,” Joliffe agreed with outward lightness.

  “He’s never showed other than loyal, so why would he turn against King Henry now?”

  “Puh!” said Luce scornfully. “King Henry! King Henry has been useless for years and everybody knows it, God keep him.” She gasped, crossed herself, and said, “I never said that. I’ve never said anything against the king.”

  “You never have,” Joliffe agreed.

  Old Ela snorted. Luce tossed her head to show she was ignoring Ela and said, chin in air, “And even if he is useless, he’s still king and that’s that. So I don’t believe at all the duke of York is going to claim the crown. If he wants to show a few lords where the line is, that’s another matter and he’s welcome to it.”

  But if it had come to battle between York and any of the king’s men in Wales, that was another matter, Joliffe thought. That would be taken for open treason by those intent on bringing York down.

  He wanted to ask more but Tom wouldn’t know more, and even what he had said was probably something like tenth-hand. Maybe there had been no battle. Probably the one certain thing was that York was back from Ireland.

  He pushed himself up from the bench by heavy leaning on the table, said something about being ready to lie down again, and left Luce and Tom still talking. Because old Ela was watching him rather than them, he gave her a smile and a nod to show he was as untroubled by the news as she was. She nodded back, but with a shrewdness in her gaze that made him doubt her message was the same as his.

  Pleased to find himself neither so weak in the legs nor so tired as he might have been, he was nonetheless grateful to lie down when he reached his bed. He had yet to bother putting his boots on, so he did not have to trouble with taking them off, and if he decided not to get up again, he could sleep well enough in the new shirt and someone’s old hosen and tunic he’d been given. What he feared was that he would not sleep at all but lie awake in worried thought. His day’s exertions saved him that. He was part way through his prayer for blessing in the night when he fell into heavy sleep.

  Mercy ended when he awoke at first light. All the thoughts he had escaped in sleep were waiting for him with no way short of strong drink to be rid of his thinking and no way for him to come by strong drink here.

  York was out of Ireland and seemed to have won against whatever the king’s men had set against him in Wales. How he had won past them was among the worries. Then there were all the others. How many men did he have with him? Had he had time to gather them from his Welsh estates or had he brought them from Ireland? If from Ireland, he could have left matters dangerously unbalanced there, given how ready the Irish were to revolt against every treaty they made. However it was, he’d had enough men not only to fight—or face down—Sir Thomas Stanley, but was he going now to challenge King Henry? Or was that just rumor running the way rumor did? Come to it, how much of anything Tom had said last night was only rumor that had out-run anything like the truth?

  Which left the questions: Where was York? What did he intend? And as importantly, what did King Henry intend?

  Or would it be better to say: What was the duke of Somerset intending?

  Somerset and whoever was allied with him, Joliffe amended.

  He could bring himself to stay here quietly a small while longer, let the wound heal a little more, let his strength come back more. But in a day—two days—he would have to go. He would get Suffolk’s letter back from Dame Frevisse and ride Wales-ward, learning what he could as he went.

  If he was lucky, the most trouble with that plan would be getting a girth strap around Rowan after this while at pasture with nothing asked of her but eating.

  Luce came with his breakfast of bread and ale and he asked her, “Any more word about the duke of York and all?” Trying to make it sound as if it little mattered.

  “It would be an early traveler brought it if there was,” she laughed and went away, easy in her life, content that other people’s troubles were their own and nothing to do with her.

  Dame Claire and Sister Johane had taken to seeing him turn and turn about. This morning Dame Claire came in, carrying her box of medicines, and Dame Frevisse followed her but stopped just inside the doorway, saying nothing, not even a morning greeting, only waiting quietly while he lifted up his tunic and shirt for Dame Claire to unfasten the bandage and take off the poultice. To her open satisfaction it came away clean.

  “The wound is closed very well,” she said. “There’s no sign of infection left. I’ll bandage you but nothing more today,
and in a day or so you’ll not need even that. Have you been stretching as I told you?”

  “Yes, my lady.” He did the gentle stretch and twist of his arms and body she had said would keep the wound from stiffening. “I’ve walked in the yard, too.”

  “You seem none the worse for it, but take care. If you reopen the wound, you may not be so fortunate with your healing as you’ve been this time.”

  “When will I be able to ride?”

  “You mean leave here?” she said sharply. “You’re healing, not healed. There’s a difference. I would say you’re some days yet from riding.”

  Quietly Dame Frevisse asked, “Is tomorrow too soon?”

  Dame Claire swung around on her, looked back at Joliffe sitting suddenly very still, his gaze fixed on Dame Frevisse, and said very sharply, “If he’s no good sense, yes, he could ride tomorrow. And likely be someone else’s problem the day after that.” She picked up her box of medicines, added, “Just so he isn’t mine again,” and left, brushing past Dame Frevisse who did not move aside.

  Joliffe sat looking at Dame Frevisse looking back at him in silence for a moment, before he said, “She doesn’t approve of me.”

  “Right now she doesn’t approve of either of us,” Dame Frevisse returned and finally came into the room and a step aside from the doorway.

  Behind where she had been stood Nicholas Vaughn.

  Chapter 24

  Frevisse had not gone again to see Joliffe because she did not know what else there was to be said between them.

  There had to be some other answer than the one to which they had come near but left unsaid.

  Had left unsaid because the answer that seemed to be uncoiling in front of them had to be wrong. But if it wasn’t wrong … If it was right …

  She had repeatedly pulled back from that thought, then forced herself to think onward, to face that after all the answer maybe was simple: If she and Joliffe were right, there was nothing they could do beyond Joliffe going to Alice and the duke of York with what he had, with what he knew. Then the matter, whether they were right or wrong, would be all York’s trouble and no more of theirs.