16 The Traitor's Tale Page 4

  Thereafter came the part that had made no sense. That a mercenary captain might run mad was one thing, but Somerset had done nothing—either against Surienne or to save the truce; and when finally, after months of unanswered demands, the French king, allied with the duke of Brittany, attacked Normandy’s border in return, Somerset had done nothing to stop him. Town after town, castle after castle had fallen or been surrendered to the French, until—in a few short months—Somerset himself was besieged in Normandy’s chief city, Rouen, with his family and most of the English army’s best captains. Then, with a haste that bordered on what some might call cowardice, he had surrendered Rouen and its castle and left a good many of those captains as hostages to the French while he retreated with his goods and family toward the coast, to Caen. There, after another few months and more towns and castles lost, the French army had again closed in on him, and word was lately come that Somerset had now agreed to surrender Caen, too, giving up England’s last great stronghold in Normandy.

  In hardly a year almost everything the English had gained in France through the thirty-five years of war since King Henry V’s great victory at Agincourt had been lost, and there was no hope of saving the rest.

  From the beginning, the great, blazing question had been: What had possessed Surienne to seize Fougeres and break the truce?

  Then: Why had Somerset done nothing either to punish him or to save the hard-won peace?

  And finally: When all the French attempts to mend the truce were ignored and they finally attacked, why had Somerset done nothing, had simply let Normandy fall to them, like a poorly made house of sticks?

  Robert James’ scrawled words gave something close to answers to all that. Joliffe leaned over and picked up the paper. “This Robert James was there in Rouen. He saw Suffolk’s steward, Sir John Hampden, there two months before the attack on Fougeres. He says Hampden was in close talk with the duke of Somerset and Surienne together.”

  “There could be reasons for that besides … treason.”

  The word “treason” seemed to come hard to Sir William. It came less hard to Joliffe. There were men—essentially sound but not wanting to know how bad their fellows could be—who preferred not to see the great many layers of treachery and ugliness there were in the world, or at least to look no closer than could be helped. Joliffe preferred to know. Instead of shying clear, he watched, he saw, he thought about it, and he was willing to believe in the ugly picture this probably-dead Robert James had put together from what he had seen and then had thought about.

  But Sir William was trying, “Suffolk still has … had lands in Normandy. Hampden as his steward was there to see about them, that’s all.”

  “Surely Suffolk would have had a separate steward for his Norman lands,” Joliffe said.

  “Some other reason of business then. He would see Somerset simply in the usual way of things. Bringing a message or simply greetings. Suffolk and Somerset were friends, after all.”

  If two carrion crows looking to pick over the same carcass could ever be thought to be friends, thought Joliffe. He was also willing to warrant that if anyone cared to look, they would find Suffolk had sold those Norman lands of his a safe while ago. But he only said, “And that kept Hampden in close talk with Somerset and the mercenary captain a full turn of the hourglass?”

  “What was this James doing, keeping such close note of them, anyway?” Sir William said almost fretfully. “It was no business of his.”

  Joliffe held back from saying Robert James had noted it because it was odd; instead persisted, “And Suffolk’s chaplain? Why would he be in Normandy? His place is in the household, or else in his own parish, supposing he has one.”

  “Pilgrimage,” Sir William promptly answered. “Like Hampden, there for one reason but bringing greetings and some message from Suffolk since he was going that way anyway.”

  “He was there twice. And in talk with Surienne at least one of those times. And Suffolk’s secretary? What was he doing traipsing off to Normandy? A secretary overseas isn’t very useful for writing the daily letters.”

  “If it was Suffolk’s secretary. James said the man ‘was said’ to be.” Sir William pointed almost angrily at the paper still in Joliffe’s hand. “Even if he has the right of it, that is proof of nothing! No one can be accused of anything on simply that—one bitter man’s assertion scrawled when he was angry and in pain with defeat and wounds.”

  Only with effort could Joliffe grant all of that was fair enough counterargument. But, “He was at Fougeres, too. On Somerset’s order he took a supply train there from Bayeux.” Given the distance between the towns, that made as little sense as everything else Somerset had done, but the point he added was, “Somerset was supporting Surienne in holding Fougeres, and that’s proof of it.”

  “It’s Surienne I’d give a hand to talk to!” Sir William said with raw frustration.

  “Does anyone know where he is?”

  “Gone,” Sir William said disgustedly. “Vanished out of Normandy. As I would be, if I were him.”

  So would Joliffe. A mercenary captain as successful over the years as Surienne had been would have seen clearly enough who would be handily blamed for the utter rout the French war had become after his attack on Fougeres. He would have known that away was the best thing for him to be, and away he was gone.

  Sir William crossed back toward the desk. Joliffe straightened from it. There was sufficient difference between his place in the world and Sir William’s for him to show that much respect. At the same time, Joliffe knew his usefulness lay in being bold beyond what otherwise he should be, and he said, “The point is that this report gives more weight to all the suspicions and accusations already abroad that Suffolk set about deliberately to lose the war. This makes plain it was he and Somerset together, and even if it isn’t proof in itself, it gives us somewhere more to ask questions. Of Hampden and the priest and even Suffolk’s secretary on the chance he really was there.”

  Sir William sat down in the chair behind the desk and said heavily, “It does.” He rubbed at his temples with his fingertips. “The trouble is that I don’t want it to be true. But I agree it may well be. So there are three things to be done. Learn where Hampden and the priest—what was his name, John Squyers?—and our late duke of Suffolk’s secretary presently are. My spy in the Lady Alice’s household can find that out. Once we know it, you will find out what you can from them. Suffolk’s death may have them frighted enough they’ll be willing to buy safety by telling what they know. In the meanwhile of all that, I’ll send word to my lord of York in Ireland of what’s toward. My messenger taking my report about this Jack Cade’s rebellion to him can take that word, too.”

  Sir William paused, looking in two minds about saying more. Joliffe waited, and Sir William finally said, “You’ve not been long in my lord of York’s service.”

  “I’ve not,” Joliffe agreed; and he had come to it by cross-ways rather than by purpose.

  “Nor do you go by a name that’s your own.”

  “I don’t, no.”

  “But my lord of York trusts you. Without saying why, he’s said his reasons are sufficient.”

  “Yes,” Joliffe agreed again.

  Sir William paused again, then said sharply, “There’s something I’ve heard. From court. From inside the king’s own household.” He leaned forward, toward Joliffe, bracing both hands on the desk. “It’s coming from that high. What I want is for you to keep your ear out for it. We have to know how wide they’ve spread the word and if they’re going to follow through on it. Because if they do, the danger is doubled and more than doubled. You understand?”

  “Not yet. For what am I listening?”

  With mingled anger and unwillingness, somewhat strangling on the words, as if it were a struggle to get them out, Sir William said, “That my lord of York is guilty of treason.”

  Joliffe’s first stab of disbelief was replaced by feeling he was a fool not to have foreseen that. The duke of Suffolk
was dead but the lords and other men who had held power with him around the king were still there, were too deeply set in the royal household and the government to be shifted easily, even with all this summer’s rebellions against them. What was more likely than that they would try to turn England’s anger away from themselves and toward York? To find him guilty of treason would serve two purposes— provide a scapegoat for the rebellions and rid the lords of him. And never mind that he had never made anything of his blood-claim to the throne, had so far lived and served only as King Henry’s cousin. All that had got him so far was nearly no place on the king’s council, recall from Normandy when he was too successful, and now all but exile out of the way to Ireland.

  The trouble was that he was not out of men’s thoughts.

  With England’s government given over these past ten years to men more interested in gain than the country’s good, York’s right to the throne, so easily forgotten under the strong rule of King Henry’s father and grandfather, was being remembered and not only by those who wished him well.

  With one thing and another and memory of the duke of Gloucester’s fate—dead of uncertain causes, the men around King Henry said; murdered, said most others—Richard of York had to feel less than easy about his place in the plans of the men around the king.

  “It’s this Cade,” Sir William said tersely. “He’s made it the easier for them by claiming his name is John Mortimer. You know that.”

  “Yes,” Joliffe said, as tersely as Sir William. He knew that, and that “Mortimer” was the family name of York’s mother and that it was through her that York’s royal blood most dangerously came.

  “Why Cade claimed to be a Mortimer, I don’t know,” Sir William said irritably. “It likely makes no difference in the long run of things, because some sharp-wit around the king would have come up with this treason thought anyway.”

  “You mean they’re going to claim my lord of York was behind Cade’s rebellion.”

  “Behind his uprising and all the other ones, too, very likely. That’s why I want to know if you hear anything that way. Anything. From anyone.”

  Because after all, if an untried and unproved charge of treason had brought the king’s own uncle, the duke of Gloucester, to his death, why couldn’t a treason charge do the same for Richard of York?

  And for any men too loyal to him, such as Sir William. And Joliffe.

  Chapter 4

  Only with St. Frideswide’s behind them had the man in charge of seeing Frevisse to her cousin told her they were not bound for one manor or another but would meet with Lady Alice and her company somewhere on the road.

  “To where?” Frevisse had demanded. “I believe my lady is going to her manor of Wingfield,” the man had said. Wingfield, in the heart of the late duke of Suffolk’s lands in East Anglia, at least three days’ ride from St. Frideswide’s.

  Frevisse had wanted to know more but that was the last she had from him or anyone else; and they did meet Alice at some lesser crossroads near nowhere in particular so far as Frevisse could tell; but while Frevisse had thought to find her carried in a horse-litter with drawn curtains, making slow progress as a bereaved widow through the summer countryside, Alice was sitting on a black palfrey among some twenty other horses and riders and two lightly burdened packhorses, while her small son, John, played some running game with himself around the base of the tall wayside cross there, its shadow thrown long across the road by the late afternoon sun.

  It was a lonely place, no village in sight, and yet there was a wary alertness to the men around Alice, one of them saying tersely to the leader of Frevisse’s own company, “Any trouble?”

  “None. You?”

  “Only some, and that was yesterday.”

  Frevisse rode past them then to Alice, dressed all in widows black save for the elegantly tucked and pleated white widow’s wimple around her face and over her chin as well as her throat, and even that subdued by the black veil over her head, hanging below her shoulders on either side. Only her face showed, making her as swathed from the world as a nun; and both her face and voice were likewise swathed from showing anything as she said formally, “Dame Frevisse. Thank you for coming.”

  Frevisse returned in kind, “Your need was enough to bring me, my lady,” while trying quickly to assess how much was wrong here. A year ago, she and Alice had parted in anger and disappointment at each other. Since then, once, Alice had asked her secret help and Frevisse had given it despite deep doubts. She and Alice had briefly met afterward, had found last year’s wounds still there but their kinship— their mothers had been sisters—still strong and their friendship maybe ready to stir to life again.

  By Alice’s stiff greeting it looked dead again, and in the same formal way, Alice looked past her to Sister Margrett and said, “You’re welcome, also,” but was gathering up her reins as she said it. Welcome was over. One of her men had taken John up in front of him in his saddle. The rest of her escort were forming a double column, half the men riding ahead, half behind, except for John’s man who rode with Alice’s six women, Frevisse, and Sister Margrett in the middle of them all.

  Frevisse noted that the women, like herself and Sister Margrett, all rode astride rather than fashionably side-saddled, the better to match the men’s pace, she supposed. She also noted that the duke of Suffolk’s badge was nowhere to be seen, nor the ducal banner of three gold leopard heads on azure, a golden fesse between them, despite small John was now duke and had right to it. It was rare for a great lord— or even a great lord’s widow—to ride in obscurity, unless there was grievous necessity for it. Was the hatred against dead Suffolk still so widespread that Alice had to hide who she and John were?

  She could expect no answers from Alice any time soon, she supposed; could only meet Sister Margrett’s questioning look with a shake of her head as the column rode on. At a trot as often as at a walk, and sometimes at a canter along straight stretches of the road, they kept on through the long end of the summer’s afternoon. Their shadows stretched far aside from them, across the road’s grassy verge into the thickening shadows of hedges, coppices, walls, and villages by and through which they rode. The sun touched the horizon and began to slide from sight. Time was come to stop at an inn or a monastery’s guesthouse but still they rode with no word passed among them.

  Even Sister Margrett, who might well have been querelous, asked nothing; bur on her own part, Frevisse warned very much to take hold on Alice and demand explanation for why their going had the seeming of a flight, of someone afraid or with something to hide. Even the two packhorses were so lightly burdened they kept up easily with the others; and now the sun was fully gone and still they rode. Twilight faded into full dark but the night was clear; even without moonrise there was starlight enough by which to ride, if only at a walk now. The hour was long past when Frevisse and Sister Margrett would have gone to their beds. Frevisse drowsed and jerked awake, drowsed and jerked awake again more times than she counted. Beside her, Sister Margrett did the same; and once one of the other women reached out to push the woman beside her straight in her saddle when she began to slump sideways.

  By the stars Frevisse thought the hour was close to midnight when finally there was a general drawing of reins to a halt. Beside her, Sister Margrett whispered, “Where are we?” but Frevisse could only answer, “I don’t know.” As best she could make out, it was empty countryside around them. She could hear a stream but that was all. Around them everyone was dismounting. She and Sister Margrett did, too. A man led their horses away, toward the stream, Frevisse thought, and then she made out that a bustling away to one side was the setting up of small tents nothing like the fine pavilion she had known otherwise for Alice; but when she and Sister Margrett had eaten the bread and cheese someone gave them, had washed it down with warm ale from leather bottles shared around, and used the privacy given by a canvas screen stretched between poles for other necessities, they both willingly ducked into the tent pointed out to them. That they were t
o share it with four other women cramped together on scant bedding mattered less to Frevisse at that moment than that she was lying down; sleep came without trouble.

  Morning was another matter.

  First, it came too soon. Called awake by one of the men, the women rose with soft groans of stiffness and little exclaims of pain and came out into dew-wet half-darkness, the sun not yet risen. The men had likely slept even less, taking turns at guard, and unsheltered, but neither they nor the women made any complaint or said much of anything at all. Frevisse, Sister Margrett, and the other women did what they could to straighten wimples and veils and shake wrinkles from rumpled gowns, all with very little talk. More bread and cheese and ale were handed around while the horses were being saddled, and Frevisse realized past her yawns and aches that they were going to ride on with no more explanation than there had yet been.

  Enough was enough, and she went purposefully toward Alice, at that moment standing alone, a little apart from everyone, looking eastward as if to hurry the sunrise. To her back and with no friendliness, Frevisse said, “My lady.”

  Alice turned around. In the half-light of the almost-dawn her face was drawn with more than lack of sleep, with more than the weariness of hard riding; and instead of the demand Frevisse had meant to make, she surprised herself and maybe Alice by asking almost gently, “Alice, by all mercy, what is this about?”

  Alice made as if to answer, stopped as if words would not come, then finally forced out, “This is me being afraid for my life and the life of my son. When we’re at Wingfield I’ll tell you more. Until then … please.”