16 The Traitor's Tale Read online

  “And now those three men are dead or missing,” Frevisse said carefully. “Can anything be made of that?” Alice looked at her, and Frevisse knew to almost a certainty that they were thinking the same thing. A year ago, by chance, they had come to share a secret so dire that while Frevisse had pushed it aside from her mind as a thing about which she could do nothing, the weight of it had maybe been what kept Alice from asking why their own household men were being sent to Normandy.

  “Yes,” said Alice. “I can make something of that.” She looked at Joliffe. “But I won’t say it in front of him.”

  Frevisse offered, “He must already partly know it if he knows enough to say Normandy.”

  They both looked at him. Vaughn looked back and forth among all of them, seemingly understanding none of it.

  “Will it make difference,” Joliffe asked carefully, “if I say I have a dead man on my side, too?”

  “Who?” Alice demanded.

  “Did you know Matthew Gough, my lady?”

  “From when I lived in France, yes,” she said. “I was sorry to hear he’d been killed and so pointlessly.”

  “More than pointlessly,” Joliffe said. “He was murdered.”

  Vaughn scoffed. “He was killed in that fight on London Bridge. How does someone go about to get murdered in a battle?”

  “By being struck down from behind by men set on killing him and no one else,” Joliffe said back at him. And to Alice, “Gough wasn’t killed by the rebels. He was killed by men who had already ransacked his room and then came looking for him.”

  “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “I was there.”

  Frevisse was surprised into saying, “In the fight? I’ve never judged you were given to putting yourself into a fight if you could help it.”

  “My lady, you’ve judged rightly,” Joliffe agreed. “Much though I shall joy to come into God’s presence, I’m in no hurry for it. Nor,” he added thoughtfully, “am I in haste to go the other way either, supposing I’ve miscalculated.

  “Which is not,” Frevisse said dryly, “beyond possibility.”

  Chapter 9

  Joliffe was hungry and thirsty and ached from the uncareful handling of the past two days and a night’s uncomfortable sleep tied to a post in a stable. When he had understood where Vaughn was hauling him, he had had hope the trouble and slight acquaintance he and Lady Alice had shared three years ago would keep things from coming to the worst before he found a way either to escape or else talk himself out of trouble. Not that he had thought either would be easy, because Lady Alice was no fool and did not employ fools. Whomever she set to keep him prisoner would likely do it thoroughly.

  His closer worry, though, had been how to put off her questioning—or at least keep her questions away from where he did not want to go—until he had been fed and had chance to rest long enough to gather his strength and wits to him again. He knew both were fairly well worn away by the time he was dragged off Rowan in Wingfield’s foreyard, and he had not been altogether pleased to find Dame Frevisse with her cousin. To his good, her presence would likely keep Lady Alice from much she might otherwise have done to him. To the bad, Dame Frevisse was sharp-witted beyond the ordinary. The few times they had met before this, they had been on what passed for the same side. If they proved to be against each other in this matter, he had doubts how far he could mislead her. And so far he had not been able to mislead her at all. He wanted food. He wanted rest. And here she was back to where he did not want her to be, asking at him, “Was it because of Matthew Gough you were on London Bridge and in that fight?”

  He wanted away from her too-quick wits. Any answer he gave was going to bring more questions at him, and if he was caught in any lie, they’d be less likely to believe any truth he told them. “Yes,” he said.

  Sharply at him, Vaughn demanded, “Were you one of the men who killed him?”

  “No,” Joliffe snapped back. Vaughn had been wearing on his patience for two days now. “I was the man who killed two of the four men set on to kill him.”

  That was more than he should have said. Dame Frevisse’s already grave face became harsher; but she kept to the point, damn her, asking, “Why were you there?”

  Joliffe decided it was time to give enough that maybe they would be satisfied for a while and let him alone a time. What he needed was to be fed, then locked somewhere away from everyone and all their questions, somewhere he could lie down and sleep; and with sudden, seeming openness, he said, “Right, then. It was this way. Gough had information from someone in Normandy. He wanted to pass it on to someone who might make good use of it. I was sent to get it. By bad chance, that meant I had to follow him into that fight on the bridge. After he was killed, his squires gave a paper to me off his dead body.” He swallowed thickly and said, looking at the goblet still in Dame Frevisse’s hand, “Might I have something more to drink?”

  “No,” said Vaughn.

  But Dame Frevisse was already turning toward a table where a pitcher and other goblets stood, and Lady Alice did not forbid her, instead asked tersely, “What was on this paper?”

  Making show of watching Dame Frevisse pour wine into the goblet, Joliffe said, “I didn’t read it.”

  “What did you do with it?” Lady Alice demanded.

  “Gave it to the man who sent me to Gough.”

  “And this man is?”

  “You don’t truly expect me to—” He broke off to say, “Thank you, my lady,” to Dame Frevisse as he took the goblet she handed to him. He still had to use both his hands, resenting his clumsiness not for the ungrace of it but because it told him how little he dared trust his body yet; and although he drank, he drank less deeply than he seemed to, wary of adding enough wine to his weariness to fuddle his wits more than they already were. He saw Dame Frevisse was looking at his hands, and as he lowered the goblet he told her, “They’re better.”

  She reached out and pushed one of his sleeves a little up his arm, uncovering the red grooves left around his wrist from the rope that had held him. Then she looked him in the face. He hoped she could read his look no better than he could read hers before she turned to Lady Alice and said, “He should probably be fed, too.”

  “When he’s told us what we need to know, he can have food and drink and rest. Noreys, you’ve only to tell us—”

  “You’ll pardon me,” Joliffe interrupted, “if I worry about what sort of ‘rest’ I’m to be given once you’ve no more need of me.”

  “There’s been enough killing!” Lady Alice said, sharp with believable anger. “I don’t want you dead. I only want to know what you know. You didn’t read this paper from Matthew Gough. You gave it to someone. You won’t say whom. You then sought out two men who are now dead. I’m willing to believe you had nothing to do with their deaths, but did they have something to do with the paper you had from Matthew Gough?”

  Joliffe considered his possible choices and his answer, then granted, “Their names were on it, I’m told. So was Burgate’s.”

  “And that,” said Dame Frevisse, “makes four men, counting Matthew Gough, with Normandy and that paper in common and all of them dead. Or missing.”

  She was too quick by half; but Lady Alice said at him angrily, “What was it you wanted to know from my men? Why did you seek them out?”

  Joliffe could suddenly see no point in not telling her. Either she knew the thing and it would come as no surprise to her, or she did not know it and now she would. But he looked side-wise at Vaughn and asked, “Do you want him here to hear it?”

  “Just say it out!” Lady Alice said.

  Dame Frevisse began, “Should he …” perhaps in warning to her, but Joliffe was already saying, sharp-worded back at Lady Alice, “I was to find out what any of these men knew about whatever messages they took between Suffolk and the duke of Somerset. To find out how much they knew about the plan to deliberately lose Normandy to the French.”

  He looked swiftly among their faces as he said i
t. On Vaughn’s he saw surprise shading toward denying anger, but the quick look that passed between Lady Alice and Dame Frevisse had no surprise in it on either side.

  So there had been such a plan.

  It wasn’t only in anyone’s imagination.

  Normandy had been lost by deliberate treachery.

  And Lady Alice and Dame Frevisse both knew it.

  How?

  Lady Alice because she was married to Suffolk, yes, though Joliffe would have doubted her acceptance of it. But Dame Frevisse? How did she come to share that knowledge? By way of Lady Alice, surely, because Suffolk almost certainly would have told her nothing, given what had passed between him and the nun the last time they had met. The last time so far as he knew of, Joliffe amended.

  The only way it made sense, he thought suddenly, was that the two women had known by some way other than Suffolk himself.

  He would give something to know how that had come about.

  But Lady Alice was saying forcefully to Vaughn, “You will never tell anyone what you just heard. You’ll never say it. Never write it. Ever. Understand? Never even think about it if you can help it.”

  Vaughn bowed. “Yes, my lady.”

  But he was thinking, and his quick looks back and forth at the women suggested he was guessing much the same as Joliffe had. But Lady Alice was saying sharply at Joliffe now, “Noreys, no more gaming with words. You know far too much that you shouldn’t. I have to know who sent you to Gough. Who has this paper of his? Who else knows all this?”

  Joliffe shook his head, refusing an answer.

  “Joliffe,” Dame Frevisse said coldly and with an edge of anger, “at this point I would not mind shaking you or maybe worse myself. You’re hungry, you’re tired, you’re probably aching, and those cuts on your wrists are surely hurting you and would be the better for cleaning, ointment, and bandages on them. You very likely don’t have your wits as sharp about you as you might have …”

  Joliffe grimaced in acknowledgment of all those truths.

  “… so let me make this plain to you. We have three Murders very much alike and all of them with this paper and Normandy in common. I think, you think, Lady Alice thinks these murders have something to do with one another. Now, if they’re not being done on Lady Alice’s orders and they’re not being done by whomever you are serving in this, then we have to ask—all of us have to ask, including the man you’re serving—who are they being done for? We can at least guess at the why of these murders. They have to be meant to hide whatever passed between Suffolk and Somerset concerning Normandy.”

  “Their loss of Normandy,” Lady Alice said bitterly.

  Joliffe noted the bitterness. Whatever she knew about Normandy’s loss and however she knew it, she was angry about it. That was something he might be able to use to his good. He needed something to his good just now.

  Still at him and giving her cousin no heed, Dame Frevisse said, “Will you grant me all of that? That the murders have to do with Normandy’s loss?”

  Deciding he would rather follow her than hinder her, Joliffe said, “Yes.”

  She waited, as if expecting him to say more. So he did not.

  She made a small disgusted sound at him and went on, “Can we agree, too, that those most interested in keeping their part in it secret would be Suffolk and Somerset? If there are other lords involved, we don’t know their names …”

  She paused, looked questioningly at Lady Alice who shook her head that she did not.

  “But of those two, at least, we’re certain,” Dame Frevisse said. “Likewise, although Suffolk and Somerset are not the only lords with power sufficient to effect the deaths of men, they both possessed such power.”

  Her sharp reasoning was wearing on already worn wits, and he could not hold back from saying, “Except Suffolk doesn’t anymore.”

  “To a certainty, he does not,” Dame Frevisse granted, dry enough to parch a desert. “Which leaves us—”

  “Somerset,” Lady Alice interrupted angrily.

  Quietly, Dame Frevisse agreed. “Somerset.”

  Three years ago Somerset had been the earl of Dorset. Since then he had risen by the king’s grant to be earl of Somerset and then, again by royal grant, to duke. When he had gone to be governor of Normandy two years ago, he was said to be second only to Suffolk in power near the king, helped to that place by Suffolk himself. His rise in estate and power had been swift. His fall would be even swifter if he were proved guilty of deliberately losing England’s hold on Normandy. And to Joliffe’s pleasure Vaughn burst out, “He’s surely traitor enough to do it. The nothing he did to stop the French—that was treason. Sending no aid to any town or place the French besieged. Or else sending too little to matter. He stayed in Rouen and did nothing while town after town, castle after castle were taken. Then, when the French came to Rouen itself, he surrendered it, and did the same again at Caen. If even half of any of that is true …”

  “It is,” said Lady Alice grimly. “And, yes, it’s treason to surrender a town without resistance. Although I believe he waited until the French had fired upon him once or twice before he surrendered.” Lady Alice said that as dryly as Dame Frevisse might have done.

  “That still leaves all the rest,” Vaughn protested. “The king will surely arrest him, and that will be an end of anything he can do against you.”

  “I wish so. I hope so,” Lady Alice said. “But our lord the king would rather be led than lead, be governed than govern. Suffolk and Somerset were both more than willing to oblige him. I strongly suppose Somerset means to take up where he left off, and I’m doubtful there’s anyone who’ll stop him.”

  “King Henry has a plenitude of other lords around him,” Joliffe said. “Surely someone among them will oppose him, Persuade the king to his arrest.”

  “They’ve had the months since Suffolk’s fall to sort it out among them who would take Suffolk’s place that way,” Lady Alice answered, cold and precise on the words. “I’ve had no report that any of them have. They’ve pushed and pulled King Henry hither and thither but none has come to the fore and taken the high hand over the others or him. Their failing may be that despite everything King Henry has failed at, they still have it in their minds that kings are to rule, not to be ruled. I promise you Somerset won’t be held back by any such thought. If once he’s received into King Henry’s presence—mark me on this—it will be as if Normandy never happened.”

  Dame Frevisse protested, “But it did, and if nothing else, people’s outrage will force the king to bring Somerset to some kind of trial.”

  “Will it?” Lady Alice said with scorning disbelief. “I doubt it.”

  “The Commons in Parliament forced Suffolk from power,” Dame Frevisse persisted. “They’ll do the same with Somerset.”

  “They may,” Lady Alice granted. “But not while the country is caught up in these uprisings still happening everywhere. There’s a new one in Kent, and small outbreaks all over Essex that could turn into something more, and Wiltshire is still seething from Bishop Ayscough’s murder hardly a month ago. Besides all that, there is no Parliament just now, and by the time another one is called, Somerset will be so deeply set in power it will be a long haul of work to get him out. Believe me.”

  Slowly Dame Frevisse said, “All of that would explain why Somerset might order these men murdered, if alive they could be a threat to his hold on power through the king. None of it is proof that he did order any murders, though.”

  Joliffe had leaned one hip sidewise against the back of a chair beside him and been watching the two of them over the goblet’s rim as he sipped more wine, learning much and more than willing to have them taken up with something other than questioning him.

  It couldn’t last, though. Vaughn said suddenly at him, “You said whoever killed Gough never saw the paper with their names on it. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Joliffe answered, more inwardly wary than he outwardly showed and carefully keeping his pose of ease against the chair.
/>   “Then it wasn’t from the paper that someone knew these men knew too much,” Vaughn said.

  Dame Frevisse quickly picked that up. “And if it wasn’t from the paper, then the only way that someone would know these were men they wanted dead would be if that someone already knew …

  Vaughn and Joliffe said it with her.

  “… that these men knew too much.”

  In the immediate quiet among them all, Joliffe heard the mumble and movement being made by those of the household who slept in the great hall bringing out and laying down their bedding there. Beyond the open window some bird—a nightjar likely—was welcoming the darkness now fully come; and into their own quiet it was Dame Frevisse who finally said slowly, “That brings us again to Somerset. Because he’s the only one besides Suffolk we can be certain knew what these men knew about Normandy’s loss.”

  Lady Alice had been standing rigidly silent this while. Now she said sharply at Vaughn, “Nicholas, pour yourself some wine and sit down. Let’s all of us sit down. And you,” she said at Joliffe, “once and for all, tell us for whom you’re working, since it may well be his purpose and ours is the same.”

  Joliffe shifted into the chair but sat staring into his gob-‘et, slowly swirling the wine there, not answering, still not sure he should.

  Quietly Dame Frevisse said, “Joliffe.”

  He looked up at her. She had sat down, too—on a long, low-backed settle mostly facing his own chair. Vaughn was a little ways away, in the room’s other chair. Only Lady Alice was still standing, for all she had said they should sit. But for the moment only Dame Frevisse and Joliffe might have been there as she said to him, “On my word, you can trust her grace of Suffolk. She isn’t trying to play you or anyone else false.”