The Widow's Tale (Sister Frevisse Medieval Mysteries Book 14)

by Frazer, Margaret

  “I don’t understand,” Frevisse said, though she was beginning to.

  “That breaking of the truce,” Alice said. “It was deliberate. Surienne attacked that town by surprise, captured it, stripped it of everything worth stealing. The French demanded apology and reparation from Somerset as the English governor of Normandy. Somerset refused to do anything about it. Nor was he ordered to it, the way he should have been, by the king. Or my husband. Finally King Charles, as he was bound to do, began to attack our border fortresses in return. You have to know this much about it, surely.”

  “I knew the truce had been broken and that the war had started up again.” The way the war had been starting up now and again for the past twenty years and more, so that this time had not been worth any more thought that the other times had been.

  “The war started up again because we broke the truce on purpose to start it up again. Surienne’s attack was meant to goad the French into attacking us, and they have, and Somerset is doing nothing to stop them. I didn’t understand why. Nor would Suffolk talk about it.” Alice made as if to pace but there was no room for it, and she went on angrily and with growing despair, “I don’t know the tally of how many fortresses and towns we’ve lost by now. In a matter of weeks, Frevisse. Weeks! After all these years of laying claim to the French crown and fighting to get and hold Normandy, Somerset has been all but giving everything back to the French. He and my husband. They planned it. That’s what this paper tells me. That they planned it, all of it. Surienne’s attack and everything that’s happened since then. They’ve wanted for years to be done with the war and this is their way of doing it.”

  “But why? Why break the truce? Why end the war by losing it?”

  “Because losing it is the only way we can be done with it. We’re never going to win it.”

  “But we had the truce. And the king’s marriage to Margaret of Anjou to make it good …” A French princess who had brought nothing to the marriage but the hope of peace and the promise of an heir to the throne. Except that there was no heir yet. And now there was no peace either. “We’ve held Normandy for decades. Why lose it?”

  Alice’s voice hardened. “Holding Normandy costs money. When the war was new, when towns were being taken and sacked and lands were being seized, there was plunder in plenty. Enough to mostly pay for the war and make men rich into the bargain. But everything has been stalemated for years now. The money goes out for holding onto Normandy but no money comes in from it. The king’s honor requires we hold what’s left of his kingdom in France, but the king’s household has taken to spending more money on itself than comes into it and who’s going to tell king or queen or any of the lords around them—including my husband—that the money has to go into the French war instead?”

  The words, long-dammed and now unleashed, were pouring out—far more than Frevisse wanted to know and surely far more than Alice ought to be saying but bitterly, angrily, Alice went on, “Do you know why Parliament wouldn’t give any money to the war this year? Because for years they’ve watched almost everything they give go into the royal household’s pleasures, not the war. When the duke of York was governor of France, the King and his Council rarely sent him enough of the money he was promised to pay the soldiers and for supplies and all. He paid for things as best he could, much of it out of his own lands and money. I promise you that Somerset is not about to make that sacrifice. Not him nor any other lord. Instead, he and my husband have set up to be done with Normandy as fast as may be. They mean to save themselves the trouble and expense of the war by losing it, and never mind the dishonor and betrayal in what they’re doing.”

  Alice ran out of breath and words together. Frevisse looked down at the paper clenched in her rigid hand and said gently, as she would have handled a wound, “Alice, that’s much to take from the little that’s there. It says none of that . . .”

  “Put everything I haven’t understood of what’s happened these past few months together with what it dm say and suddenly there’s sense where there wasn’t any,” Alice said fiercely. “I promise you, it says enough. It even says it several different ways. They must have been trying out ways to say it without putting it straight into words. Suffolk and whoever else was there. There’s more than only his hand here. That’s what this is—their trial and error at giving the order for betrayal. They didn’t dare send it through a messenger by word of mouth or put it in clear words, lest it was captured on the way. But once they’d done it, why did they have to be careless with this?” She shook the paper, hating it and angry at their foolishness. “Why did they have to leave this lying where someone could find it?”

  A discarded piece of paper that should have been burned but was not and instead became the thing on which Cristiana had hung her hopes of her daughters’ safety and brought on—probably—the deaths of three men.

  Weary with the weight of it all, Frevisse said, “Likely each of them thought someone else had seen to destroying it.”

  Sounding weary, too, with the kind of weariness that comes with defeat, Alice said, “But no one had. And now what am I going to do?”

  Chapter 21

  Frevisse had no useful answer to Alice’s desperate question. Even if there were enough on that paper to prove Suffolk’s treachery, anything Alice might do against him would come back on herself and their children. Let him be found guilty of treason and he would be sentenced to death and everything he owned stripped from him—nobility, properties, reputation. He would be dead and his family dishonored. His destruction would be theirs. And even if Alice risked that, even if she—or someone—denounced Suffolk, would it be of any use? He was presently all-powerful in the government. Who in England had anything like sufficient power to bring him down now that the duke of York was sent away to Ireland?

  Alice’s place and power came through her husband. Frevisse had none at all. What could they do that would change anything for the better? But there were lives being destroyed in France and countless people betrayed. To say nothing, do nothing . . .

  “The king,” Frevisse ventured. “If you could tell …” Alice unhesitatingly shook her head against that. “No. ITe …” She broke off, shaking her head more, rapidly refolding the paper and thrusting it back into her sleeve. “No. I have to think.”

  She pushed past Frevisse, seized open the door, and left. Frevisse, slow with thought, picked up the cloth that had been around the paper, folded it and hid it up her own sleeve while pushing the cord and wax seal aside with her foot, out of sight under a chest sitting along the wall. Better no one knew the packet had been opened.

  Still slowly, still thinking, she blew out the oil lamp, turned to leave, and found Mistress Say in the doorway. Uncertainly, Mistress Say asked, “Lady Alice . . .?”

  “She’s just gofte . . .”

  “Gone out. I know. She passed me without a word. Is there something more wrong?”

  “About tomorrow? No. She’s gone to set everything in hand,” Frevisse said quickly, coming out of the butlery. And added, to take the talk away from Alice, “How is it with Cristiana and her daughters?”

  “She’s told them about Sir Gerveys. They’ve cried. The girls have. Not Cristiana.” That lack of tears worried Mistress Say as much as it did Frevisse. Grief turned inward instead of let out could be a deadly thing. “She wants to go to her chamber with them. I came to be sure she’d not meet Lady Alice on the way.”

  “Domina Elisabeth and Ivetta are still there, I think.” Locking the small room’s door with a key from among those hung from her belt, Mistress Say said, “It might be a comfort to her if your prioress prayed with them.”

  “Has Master Say returned?”

  “Not yet.” Mistress Say’s worried frown deepened between her eyes. “Nor sent any word.”

  “Will he bring Sir Gerveys’ body back here, or will Cristiana go to the church, do you think?”

  “Cristiana means to go nowhere. She says she’ll stay in her chamber and keep Mary and Jane with her t
here until this is over, until she knows they’ll be safe. By your leave, my lady.” Mistress Say left her, going back toward the parlor.

  Glad to be alone and not wanting to meet Cristiana, Frevisse went along the screens passage and out the foredoor, down the steps, and along the yard to the garden. As she had hoped, no one was there and she settled herself on the turf bench along one wall, alone with her thoughts, little though she presently liked them.

  There was nothing she could do about the secret now burdening Alice, and with the rest, no matter how she sorted and sifted and arranged what she knew, she saw no answers. Because nothing else seemed of any use and she had missed all the day’s Offices since Prime, she tried to pray, both for the good it might do and to free her mind from her thoughts’ useless circling. And sometimes answers came to her while she prayed.

  None did this time. She was unable even to hold her mind to the prayers themselves, and she was grateful when a servant brought food and drink to her on a tray. He said that since there was no dinner in the hall today, Mistress Say had thought she might want to eat out here alone. Frevisse sent back her thanks, ate and drank without much noting what, and was something like glad, as she finished, to see Master Fyncham come through the gateway.

  The midday sun was pleasantly warm along the turf bench and she beckoned him to join her there, saying as he bowed to her, “Sit, please you. You found out something?” For he looked very much like someone pleased with himself.

  He sat and said, “Nol was not in Wormley that while. He paid the alewife to lie for him.”

  “She told you that?”

  “She did. It seems she told him she’d lie for him so long as there was no trouble about it, but ‘If you’re here asking about him,’ she said to me, ‘then there’s trouble and, no, he wasn’t here.’ I found out, too, whom he hired a horse from. What they told me agreed with what the alewife said—that he was gone about two and half days. He left in early afternoon of his half-day off and came back at evening two days later and spent the night drinking at the alehouse after paying the alewife to send her lying complaint about him along to here the next morning.”

  Frevisse gave him well-deserved thanks and asked, “Do you know where Nol was last night?”

  Master Fyncham began, “In the loft where the servants—“ then he saw what lay behind her question and trailed off uncertainly “—sleep.” He recovered. “Or he should have been. I’ll ask the other men.”

  “Another thing.Has he been away from the manor any other time since Mistress Helyngton came here? On his half-day or even for only a few hours?”

  “He hasn’t, no. He’s been under my displeasure and close watch since his supposed while in Wormley. He’s been nowhere except here. Unless,” Master Fyncham said grimly, “it was at night, and about that I shall ask, too.”

  As he rose to his feet, Frevisse warned, “We don’t want him frighted into running.”

  “I’ll take care,” Master Fyncham assured her briskly.

  “I want, too, to send a message to Lady Alice. I need to write it and have a servant take it.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Frevisse thanked him again, he left, and she was left with the satisfying certainty that this Nol was Suffolk’s spy and had taken word of the paper to Suffolk. What part he had had in Pers’s and Sir Gerveys’ deaths was still to be found out. He likely had struck no blow himself, but had he passed word to someone else who had?

  To someone else in Suffolk’s pay? Or to Laurence Helyngton? But then Laurence might well be in Suffolk’s pay, earning Suffolk’s regard and satisfying his own anger against Sir Gerveys at the same time.

  It would tie together so many ends if that proved true.

  Except that Suffolk might well protect Laurence if Laurence was his man in this. What would happen to Cristiana and her daughters then? Alice had surely promised their safety in good faith, but what good faith was in her husband?

  That thought kept Frevisse uncomfortable company into the afternoon. A servant came with the pen and ink and paper she needed to write to Alice. When she had done, he took the message and sometime after that Master Say returned home. Hearing horses in the yard, she went to look, saw Master Say dismounting, and followed him into the house, needing to pause at the stairfoot to let men carrying down the tabletops, trestles, and benches from the great hall go past her, on their way to load them onto two wagons waiting to haul them to the field for tomorrow’s use. When finally she was able to go up and inside, she found Master Say in the parlor, telling his wife and Domina Elisabeth how the crowner’s arrival had kept him in Broxbourne.

  Sent for because of Pers’ death, the man had found himself with two more and, “I stayed to give what help I could,” Master Say said. “Everyone who lives around the green has been questioned, but no one heard anything, let alone saw aught. The mist and darkness took care of that. We found out as best we could what travelers were at the inns in Broxbourne last night, questioned those still here, and sent men after those already gone to be sure who they are and if they know anything.” His discouragement was open. “I doubt they will.”

  “One of the murderers was wounded,” Frevisse offered.

  “The crowner has sent men to question herbwives, apothecaries, and doctors from here to Waltham, Ware, and Hertford in hopes someone has been treated for a dagger-wound. If it was only slight, though, we won’t find anything out that way. And priests,” Master Say added. “Priests are being asked, too, on the chance it was bad enough to kill the cur. That’s our best hope.”

  “What’s been done with Sir Gerveys’ and Sawnder’s bodies?” Mistess Say asked.

  “Sawnder’s cousin is seeing to his. I thought Cristiana . . .” A servant appeared in the doorway. “Lady Alice, sir,” he said and moved quickly aside, barely out of Alice’s way as she swept passed him, swept a look at them all rising to their feet, and declared, “Master Say, I’ve come to talk to one of your servants. A man named Nol. Send for him.”

  Master Say, just straightening from his bow to her, bowed again. “Of course, my lady. Edmund, tell Nol he’s wanted here.”

  As the servant started to leave, Alice added, “I’ve two men of my own in the hall. They’ll go with you to see that he comes.”

  With the servant gone, Master Say asked tersely, “What’s amiss, my lady?”

  As tersely back, Alice said, “You’ve a spy in your household, set here by my husband. Dame Frevisse found him out for me. Now I want to question him.”

  Master Say started to say something but thought better of it. Alice moved to the middle of the room. The gracious friend and guest were gone from her manner. She was altogether the duchess of Suffolk, possessed of power and able to use it. She turned to face the door, waiting. In silence the rest of them waited, too, Master Say with a hand on his wife’s shoulder; Domina Elisabeth looking questioningly at everyone; Frevisse careful to meet no one’s gaze.

  Wherever Nol had been, he was soon found. He came into the parlor boldly enough, despite Alice’s two men behind him. He surely had small doubt why he was there and less when the men took places on guard either side of the doorway, but he put on a brave front, trying to look as if he was clear of any thought why he was there.

  “You,” Alice said, wasting no time on subtlety. “You’re a spy here for the duke of Suffolk.”

  Probably ready for clever word-play while he tried to find a way out of however much trouble he was in, Nol froze at the blunt accusation, then gathered himself and said steadily, “Yes, my lady.”

  “You took word to him that Mistress Helyngton and Sir Gerveys had a secret they would sell to him.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “I listened outside the room where they were talking. They said they had something that would ruin the duke of Suffolk.” He seemed to have decided that, once begun, he might as well hold nothing back. “I didn’t hear more than that. That woman Ivetta was coming, so I finished going
up the stairs as loudly as I could and claimed I’d come for a tray.”

  And that was why Ivetta had not seen him when she came along the screens passage, Frevisse thought. He had been already on the stairs, listening.

  “You then went to my lord of Suffolk with word of what you’d heard,” Alice said. “Is that how you always got word to him when you had something to tell?”

  “No, my lady. There’s someone comes through Wormley at set times. I meet him and tell him if there’s anything to tell.” He shifted an uneasy look at the Says and away to Alice again. “Not that there’s been anything to tell, but I’ve told him that, too. But this was something that seemed shouldn’t wait until he came. So I went myself.”

  “And were well paid, I trust,” Master Say said coldly. Even wariness could not keep the gleam of coins out of Nol’s voice. “I was.” But he had the grace to add, “It wasn’t like what they said had anything to do with you, sir. It was all them and against the duke of Suffolk.”

  “Who else did you tell?” Alice demanded.

  Nol’s answer came as quickly as Alice’s demand. “No one. I never told anyone else at all.”

  At the doorway one of Alice’s men moved suddenly, barring the way. Past him, Cristiana said, “I want to come in.”

  Mistress Say looked to Alice for permission.

  As Alice hesitated, Cristiana said, “Ivetta heard in the kitchen you were questioning someone.”

  Alice nodded at her man and he stood aside. Cristiana came in. Her dreadful calm was still on her—dreadful because it was the calm of someone facing a thing so terrible she did not dare to feel it; so terrible that when she finally felt it, the pain might tear her into pieces. Frevisse wondered how long it would be until she could no longer hold back that pain. And what would happen when finally it broke free in her.

  Mistress Say met Cristiana and led her toward the settle with an arm around her waist, saying, “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be up at all. At least lie down.”