16 The Traitor's Tale Read online

  Alice was not someone given to pleading but that was a plea, and Frevisse said, “Yes.”

  Low and unevenly, Alice said, “Thank you,” with tears sounding very near; but it was with dry eyes and lifted chin she moved past Frevisse and toward the man leading her horse toward her. In the saddle, she even smiled around at her people before nodding for her lead men to ride on.

  They rode that day much as they had ridden the day before. When they paused at noontide to eat—more bread and cheese and ale, none of it very fresh now; they seemed to be avoiding market towns where new could have been bought— Frevisse judged they were all—men, women, young John, and the horses—nearing the end of their strength; and indeed sometime in the afternoon the packhorses and the men leading them fell behind and were left. Frevisse hoped that was sign they were near Wingfield, but more in early evening than late afternoon they rode under gathering clouds around a last twist of road, passed a church and straight toward a towered gatehouse set in a long wall the far side of a moat. “Wingfield” one of the women riding behind Frevisse sighed in aching relief.

  They seemed not to be expected. At the shut gates the two men on watch took a while to grasp that Lady Alice was indeed there. Then one went shouting the news while the other unbarred and swung open the gates, letting them into the manor yard. As they rode across the yard to the fore-porch of the great hall, a man came out in flustered haste, catching Alice’s reins and holding her stirrup while she dismounted, all the while apologizing that all was not fully ready for her yet, that he had thought she meant to arrive tomorrow, that he …

  “The apology is mine to make,” Alice assured him. “We’re before our time. Whatever is ready will serve very well for now. We’re very tired. Anything will be welcome, Master Thorpe. No, Sir Edmund, let the servants take the horses. All of you come into the hall. There’ll be wine for everyone. You’ve deserved that of me, and more. I’m in your debt.” Save that she was very pale, Alice gave no sign of being anything but the lady caring for her people. Smiling, she added, clear enough for all to hear, “Nor do I doubt that Master Thorpe will have a goodly meal on the table for us almost before we’ve had time to unstiffen from our ride.”

  “Be assured, my lady,” Master Thorpe said with a low bow, sounding far more sure of that than he probably felt.

  But Alice leaned near to him and said in a false whisper, meant to carry to everyone around them, “Mind you, we’ve lived on bread and cheese for two days, so any meal that’s more than that is going to look most excellent to us.”

  On the lift of the general laughter that answered that, Alice held out her hand for John to come to her from among the women. His eyes were large and shadowed. With that and the mourning-black of his doublet and over-gown, he looked even younger than his seven years; looked very young to be burdened with a dukedom and a murdered father and a very frightened mother. But straight-backed and head up, he went to take his mother’s hand, and with Master Thorpe they led the way inside, through the foreporch into the screens passage low-ceilinged under the minstrels gallery and then into the great hall.

  It was perhaps as large as St. Frideswide’s whole church but far more elegantly proportioned with stone-mantled fireplaces and tall windows of clear glass set with heraldic beasts in bold color, and its high-beamed roof decorated with painted shields. For all that, it was presently less than it would usually be, with the walls naked of tapestries over the white plastering, the fireplaces empty, the floor swept clear and no fresh rushes yet laid down. But that did not lessen Sister Margrett’s, “Oh. My,” as she stared around her. Even as the daughter of a well-off merchant of Northampton town, she was unused to such display and withdrew, somewhat subdued, to one side of the hall with Frevisse, who was as uncertain as Sister Margrett was of what their place was here.

  The others were breaking into small clumps and beginning to talk among themselves in a mingling of weariness and relief. A haste of servants were setting up a trestle table down the hall’s length and bringing out the household’s cups from wherever the tablewares were locked away in the lord’s and lady’s absence. For her own part, Frevisse looked forward to the promised wine and then food and then rest, and beside her Sister Margrett groaned quietly, “I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow.”

  “I only pray I don’t need to ride again for a month,” Frevisse said from the heart.

  Sister Margrett groaned again, maybe at the very thought of riding; then said with startled dismay, “A month? Will we be here that long?”

  “I don’t know. Lady Alice has told me nothing about why we’re here at all.” And Frevisse was beginning, coward-wise, to think she did not want to know why Alice needed her.

  She had not even seen Alice and John leave the hall, but looking around, she saw they were not here. But as she thought that, Master Thorpe, who must be the household’s steward here, approached her and Sister Margrett, bowed to them both, but said to only Frevisse, “My lady asks that you come to her,” adding to Sister Margrett, “She asks your pardon, but she would like to see her cousin alone.”

  “Of course,” Sister Margrett said as courteously.

  Feeling far from courteous, Frevisse followed Master Thorpe up the hall and through a doorway there. Other rooms lay beyond it, and stairs, and it was up the stairs Master Thorpe led Frevisse and to more rooms. They opened one into another, one after another, making a wing of the house away from the courtyard, with walls wainscoted with panels of golden oak below, plastered and patterned above, or else painted. Because a lord’s and lady’s comforts traveled with them in a lumbering train of wagons when they moved from manor to manor, these rooms were barren of most furnishings, except it seemed the de la Pole wealth was sufficient that not everything had to be moved when they moved. In one chamber through which Master Thorpe led her a tall, posted bed was centered against the far wall, lacking the curtains that would usually have hung around it but with several servants unrolling a mattress onto the bedframe while others waited with folded sheets and blankets piled in their arms. Alice at least would have a bed tonight, Frevisse thought.

  But Alice was not there, and Master Thorpe led on to the room beyond it. A much smaller room than the others, it was as bare, with only a flat-lidded chest against one wall and a narrow window set in a thickness of wall that made Frevisse guess this was the older part of the house. Rather than a bench set under the window, two stone seats ran with the several feet of the wall from the room to the window, facing each other, and Alice was there, standing between the stone benches, looking out at the day’s end.

  Master Thorpe said, bowing, “Dame Frevisse, my lady.”

  Without turning even her head, Alice answered, “Thank you. Leave us until I call.”

  Master Thorpe bowed again and went out, closing the door, and at the soft snick of the falling latch Alice swung sharply around and started toward Frevisse, a hand thrust out so desperately that Frevisse went toward her in return, reaching out, too. Alice grabbed her hand as if grabbing for life, saying nothing, simply holding to her with eyes shut, taking the shallow, shuddering breaths of someone wanting to cry but unable to give way.

  With no thought of what to say, Frevisse clasped her hand in both her own and simply held it as tightly as Alice was holding to hers, until Alice pulled sharply away and with seeming anger began to fumble at the pins holding her black widow’s veil of heavy linen over her wimple, so clumsily that Frevisse said, “Here. Let me. Sit down.”

  With a trembling gasp, Alice obeyed, dropping onto the chest. Frevisse deftly removed pins and veil, would have loosed Alice from the confining circle of the wimple around her face and throat, too, except Alice with that same anger stripped it off herself and threw it across the room.

  “There!” she said fiercely. “So much for grieving!” She bowed her head, clutched it from both sides, her fingers digging into her fair hair as if her head might fly apart without she kept hard hold on it, but said no less fiercely, “If he wasn’t dead already
, I think I’d kill him.”

  Assuming that Alice meant her late husband, Frevisse did not pretend to a dismay she did not feel. Regrettable though Alice’s urge might be toward any man, Suffolk had done more than most to earn it, and she contented herself with folding Alice’s veil, carefully putting the pins in it for safe keeping, then laying it on a rear corner of the chest. By then Alice had dropped her hands into her lap and was sitting with her head leaned back against the wall, staring dry-eyed up at the ceiling with such despair and weariness that Frevisse would have given comfort if she had known what comfort might serve. Not knowing, she instead asked, “How much danger are you truly in?”

  Alice jerked her head forward from the wall. “Danger?” she demanded, sounding almost ready to turn her anger on Frevisse.

  Keeping her own anger to herself, Frevisse returned evenly, “You all but said it in so many words to me on the way here. Besides that, you deliberately sent word to Master Thorpe that you would arrive here a day later than you meant to. I assume that was to forestall any ambush that might be planned against you.”

  “You might be assuming wrongly,” Alice snapped.

  “I might be,” Frevisse granted. And waited. Whatever Alice’s anger, it was not really at her, and whatever her own anger at Alice, there was no useful purpose in showing it.

  And Alice suddenly gave a choked laugh, tried to say something, failed, and put her hands over her face, bowed her head again, and gave way to crying, her body shaking with terrible sobs that somehow she kept almost soundless, as if even now she had to hold as hidden as she could. Frevisse, having no better comfort to offer, offered none. That probably served best. Alice had begun to quiet by the time there came a soft scratching at the door and a woman called, “Wine, my lady.”

  Alice hurriedly arose and went to the window, putting her back to the room and herself as far from the door as might be, leaving Frevisse to let in a servant carrying a tray finely balanced between a tall pitcher of Venetian glass painted with swirling gold vines, two matching goblets, and a clear glass plate with narrow slices of toasted, buttered bread. Frevisse took the tray from the woman with thanks and nodded for her to withdraw.

  Even at sound of the door closing, Alice, now wiping her eyes, did not turn from the window. Frevisse set the tray on the chest and poured the dark red wine into the slender goblets, took one to Alice, who murmured thanks without fully looking around. Frevisse went for the other goblet and the plate. The bread looked to be plain kitchen-bread, not the fine, white kind that would be the duchess of Suffolk’s usual fare. That this was the best to hand told again how sudden her arrival was, but it was certainly better than drinking wine on empty stomachs, and joining her cousin at the window, she held the plate out in front of Alice.

  Alice, with her goblet already half-emptied, made no move to take any.

  “Eat,” Frevisse ordered. “You don’t make a practice of letting your household see you drunk, do you? Which you’ll be if you don’t eat something.”

  Alice, about to drink again, gave a choked, unwilling laugh, lowered the goblet, and took a piece. Frevisse set the plate down on an end of one of the window seats where they could both reach it and for a few moments they ate and drank in silence, standing because they had been sitting on horseback for a great many hours and the bare stone of the seats promised little compensation of comfort. But with the edge taken from her hunger and thirst, Frevisse returned to her curiosity. She had no doubt at all that Alice wanted her here for something more than her companionship. Only Alice’s unwillingness to come to it surprised her, and carefully schooling any particular feeling from her voice, she tried, “Since you wrote my prioress for my company at your husband’s funeral, may I ask where is his body?”

  Calmly, still looking out the window, Alice said, “It’s here. In the church. He’s been here almost from the beginning.” She hiccuped on a small, bitter laugh. “Or from his ending. Depending on which way it’s looked at.” She sat suddenly down on one of the window benches and looked up at Frevisse. “Sit, please. You’re too tall.”

  Frevisse sat on the other bench, facing her, and waited. Alice ate more of the toast, gathered herself, and went on, “I was afraid of what would be done to his body if anyone had chance at it. The hatred is still so high against him. Even with him dead. I didn’t want worse than was already done. Not more than …”

  Her throat seemed to close against saying what had already been done to Suffolk’s body—butchered by a crude beheading and thrown like rubbish onto the stones at Dover’s beach with his head rammed onto a stake beside it.

  “I know,” Frevisse said, to save her saying more.

  Alice nodded sharp acceptance and went on, “The king’s men who found him … it … his body … they took it into the castle there at Dover but it couldn’t stay there.” She turned her head away to look out the window and into her memories. “I sent orders for it to be lead-coffined and taken from Dover by ship and part way up the Thames, as if it were going to Ewelme, but before it reached London, it was shifted to a coast-hugging balinger and taken the other way, north around the coast to Aldeburgh and wagoned from there under a load of cloth to here and buried secretly in the church at night with enough of the rites to satisfy but no ceremony to draw anyone’s unwanted heed. The other ship went on up the Thames to London with no sign there’d ever been a coffin aboard.”

  So that if anyone was looking for revenge beyond Suffolk’s death, the trail had gone cold and confused, Frevisse thought.

  And now you’re here to give him proper funeral,” she said.

  “Yes,” Alice agreed, stood abruptly up and moved away, saying bitterly as she went, “I didn’t want him buried at Ewelme where I mean to be buried. I don’t want him near me through eternity.”

  To her back, Frevisse said quietly, “You’re that angry at him.”

  Alice spun around. “I am that angry at him, yes. You know as well as I do the part he played in bringing on this disaster in France. What else he’s done …” She started to pace the room. “You’ve no thought of what else he’s done. I don’t know everything, have only a guess at how much I don’t know. But I know enough …” She had begun pacing again. “Have you heard about the letter he wrote to our son before he sailed from England?”

  Frevisse had not, nor would it have mattered if she had, because Alice did not wait for answer but went scathingly on, “He ever had a way with words, did Suffolk. He wrote this letter that urges John to honor God and the king, and to obey his mother, shun the company of bad men, and never follow his own mind but only the advice of others. Told him that if he did all that, he’d come to a good end.” Anger etched Alice’s words with scorn. “All that and none of it meant for John at all. All of it no more than shallow wisdom-by-rote, meant to show the world what a fine and noble man the duke of Suffolk was.” Alice did not actually spit as she said his name but came near enough as made no difference. “How dare he write things like ‘Never follow your own wits but ask the advice and counsel of good men. Draw to your company good and virtuous men? This from the man who protected and kept company with men like Fiennes. And Tuddenham. And Danyell. Cheating, thieving, grasping, vicious …” She strangled on her anger, recovered, and burst out, “I doubt he spoke a straight thing in all the last ten years of his life!”

  With a mildness wholly feigned, Frevisse suggested, “So when he wrote all that to John, he knew whereof he spoke?”

  Alice stared at her, then gave a sudden fragment of laughter and said, “I suppose so, yes.” She returned to sit facing Frevisse again. Hands clasped tightly around the glass goblet now resting on her lap, she asked bitterly, “But do you know what he did with that letter? He had his secretary write out I don’t know how many copies of it. John got his, yes, but so did the world at large. It wasn’t meant for John at all, only for Suffolk. Just like everything else he did in his life. All for himself and nothing for anyone else.”

  And so Alice was tangled in bitterness as wel
l as grief; but what Frevisse so far failed to understand was her fear—or rather, why she was so much more afraid now than she had been when Frevisse last saw her, far sooner after Suffolk’s death. She did not ask, though. Not yet. Just now Alice’s need was to pour out her anger and her pain, like lancing a sore to let out the festering pus, that healing might begin. And indeed it was with far less anger, as if she were gone away on some side thought, that Alice said, “I just wish I knew what had become of Burgate. He’d still be of use to me.”

  “Burgate?”

  “Suffolk’s secretary. Edward Burgate. He’s taken himself off without a word to me. All our people that sailed with Suffolk were put ashore along with his body. Burgate, too. Most of them came back to me. Some stayed with the body and came later. Everyone but Burgate, but no one has been able to tell me where he’s gone or even when he went. He was there and then he wasn’t.”

  “Did anyone else go missing? Then or later?”

  Alice made a dismissing shrug, more irked than worried. “The expected fleeing rats from a sinking ship. Not more than expected. Our chaplain, though,” she added with faint surprise. “He came back with the rest but asked my leave to go to his parish.” She gave a curt laugh. “That’s something he never wanted before. It will be a wonder if anyone there even recognizes him.” It being all too usual for a priest to be given a parish, take the income from it but hire a lesser priest to serve there in his place for a very small portion of the tithes. “Just another rat from my sinking ship,” Alice said bitterly.

  Carefully, Frevisse asked, “Are you sinking?”

  The question seemed to give Alice pause. She sat silently awhile before saying slowly, “I don’t know that I am. I’d say that presently I’m bailing fast enough to keep afloat.”

  “But you’re afraid,” Frevisse said quietly, “of some sudden sea-surge that, if it comes, could overthrow you.”