16 The Traitor's Tale Read online

  “Hampden. Too bad he was killed before you talked with him. But what’s done is done. Best you try the Suffolk household priest. Sire John Squyers. I’ve found out where he is. Not with the Lady Alice as it happens. He’s gone to his parish. At Alderton on the Suffolk coast. It’s somewhere not much beyond Ipswich.”

  “When did he go there?”

  “Two months ago.” Sir William began to push papers around on his desk. “Or maybe it was a month and a half. A while anyway. He’s not with Lady Alice. That’s the point.”

  “You’d think now is when he’d be most needed in the household.”

  “Maybe he was more Suffolk’s chaplain rather than hers. Maybe he and the Lady Alice don’t get on.”

  “Or maybe he lately discovered a need to serve his flock instead of merely fleece them,” Joliffe offered.

  Sir William stopped moving the papers and looked up at Joliffe across the desk. “You find him out and ask him, that’s all.”

  “There was another name on Gough’s list.”

  “Edward Burgate. The duke’s secretary. Yes. The nearest I’ve come to learning about him is that he may have been arrested at Dover.”

  “Arrested? For what? By whom?”

  “Maybe by a royal officer. Maybe not. My man wasn’t certain, but he’s not been seen since, anyway. Not by anyone who’s admitted to it.”

  “He’s not at Dover, though.”

  “No, not at Dover, it seems. But nowhere else either. Best get as much from this priest as you can. With Hampden dead and unless we find Burgate, the trail we want back to Suffolk and Somerset is going cold and narrow.”

  Cold as dead men’s bodies, Joliffe thought. Narrow as graves.

  At least Ipswich was an easy enough ride from Hunsdon. Not much north from the manor was one of the roads the Romans had made, Stane Street, running straight eastward toward the coast. With good will and fine weather, Alder-ton should be hardly two days’ ride away, but he and Rowan had made a hard push of the ride to Wales and back, and he had no mind to push her again, nor trade off for a less-certain horse from Sir William’s stable for the sake of faster going.

  “Better the devil I know, yes?” he said at the back of her head as they ambled away from Hunsdon. She flicked her ears at him in what he chose to imagine was displeasure, and he granted, “You’re not a devil then. You’re an angel of patience and virtue. Is that better?”

  She did not say whether it was or not, but she likely approved of their easy pace and later that morning made no objection to the hour they spent only standing in a copse of young trees on a hill above Stane Street for Joliffe to see who passed by. That way, if he saw anyone of them along his way again, he would have to worry they had been following him, realized they’d lost him, and been waiting to see if he came behind them.

  Since no one but Sir William should know what he was about, that he would be followed from Hunsdon was unlikely, but Joliffe strongly believed, “Better safe than sorrowful.”

  But of course, if someone knew not only his business but where he was going, they’d have no need to follow him; could go happily ahead and wait for him to come, but about that Joliffe could do nothing, could only watch his back.

  Making no haste, he rode into Colchester early in the second day. Ipswich lay some eighteen miles farther on and northward again. If he put effort into it, he could be past there today, but he spent an hour at an alehouse two hours’ ride beyond Colchester, waiting to see if anyone familiar from his first day’s travel happened by. None did and he rode on, somewhat easier in his mind but not much. Besides the possibility that he might be followed by someone as wary at this game as he was, he was bothered beyond the ordinary by both Gough’s and Hampden’s deaths.

  Gough’s surely had to do with the letter. Did whoever had wanted him dead know what had become of it, or were they still looking for it? And Hampden. There was the chance his death was maybe only by mischance and nothing more, but that “maybe” kept Joliffe wary. The only thing he knew Hampden and Gough had in common was that Hampden’s name was in a letter that Gough had wanted the duke of York to have. That might mean nothing. It might mean much. What was certain was that Joliffe now had that letter in common with them, and since he was not minded to be dead before he had to be, he was taking care while care could be taken. One of his earliest-learned lessons in this life of twisted corners he now led was that suspicious was a better way to be than blindly trusting.

  He spent the night in Ipswich at a comfortable inn where the ale was good and the wine better, and in the morning found someone able to tell him his way to Alderton lay through Woodbridge some eight miles farther along; and in Woodbridge a man leading a horse and cart across the marketplace readily pointed him toward the coastward road for Alderton. “Not much of a place to have business,” the man said. He gave a squint-eyed stare at the sky with its milky overcast and added, “It’s a good ten miles and I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s fog coming. But there’s only the one road, so if you keep straight on and don’t go wandering, you should do well enough. Shouldn’t linger about it, though.”

  “I’ve no mind to.” Joliffe assured him, thanked him, and rode on. He had half-promised himself a midday meal in Woodbridge but decided to forego it. Beyond the town, he even pressed Rowan into a canter now and again. The cool smell of the sea had been with him ever since Ipswich and was stronger here, carried on a small wind over the flat fields. He knew there was a wide-estuaried river to his right and the sea somewhere ahead, and as the man in Wood-bridge had said, if he kept straight on, he should not lose his way, but he would rather not ride in fog if he could help it. If he was fortune-favored, maybe he could find out what he wanted from this Squyers and be away ahead of the weather’s change. But before he was as many miles along as he would have liked to be, the fog came sliding in over the low coastwise sandhills and across the flat fields. In moments the world disappeared and Joliffe resigned himself to a longer ride at a slower pace.

  He tried the comfort of telling himself he had been in thicker fogs than this and that he might ride out of it, but he did not. A street of houses formed out of the gray murk, and he asked a woman just going in at a door if this was Alderton, only to be told it was not.

  “It’s next along,” the woman said. “Keep to the road and you’ll come to it.”

  He did keep on, and after a tedious, blind ride that was probably not so long as it seemed, house-shapes along a village street again formed out of the fog. Since this must be Alderton, he now only needed to find this Sire John Squyers. He had long since decided against the roundabout-to-get-there he had meant to use with Hampden. Knowing for certain now how far this place was from the comforts of being a duke’s household chaplain, and already doubtful that Sire John Squyers had suddenly come down with an attack of pious desire to serve his parish, a straight appeal to the man’s self-interest would likely serve best. Threat—much is known and more will be found out—leavened with some of the gold coins Sir William had given him to the purpose would very likely be all that was needed.

  If it was not, he’d find another way.

  So … the church first. That would be easily found, even in fog; and if Squyers wasn’t there, his house was surely close by and someone could be found to point the way. Or if by ill luck Squyers was not here anymore, someone could say where he had gone. Joliffe just hoped if he wasn’t here it was not because he had gone back to the duchess of Suffolk’s household, because that would make talking to him the more difficult.

  Besides those thoughts as he rode along Alderton’s street—and whether it was Alderton’s only street or one of several he could not tell—he was looking for an inn, not wanting to ride back to Woodbridge through this murk. He did not see one, but then he was not seeing much of anything besides house-fronts, closed doors, and no people, until the church thickened out of the fog into a solid shape beyond a low wall, and there on a backless wooden bench beside the wall, where they would have been enjoying the sun if th
ere had been any, were two old men, one of them humped and shriveled inside his clothing, the other straight-backed with his knob-knuckled hands resting on top of a stout cane set firmly upright in front of him. Plainly not minded to be put off it by a mere fog, they had the look of having been on that bench for a fair while; and Joliffe drew rein in front of them and nodded friendliwise, sitting deliberately easy in his saddle to show he was here on no urgent matter.

  Before he could ask anything, though, the bow-backed man said, “You’re here about the priest?”

  Just able to keep surprise from his voice, Joliffe answered, “I am, yes.”

  “Time someone got here,” the other man said. “He’s starting to stink.”

  While Joliffe hesitated, stumbled by that, the first man demanded, “You’re from the crowner?”

  With a sinking fear of where this was going, Joliffe said, “The crowner? No.”

  “What do you want with stinking Squyers, then?”

  “I came to talk with him.”

  The bow-backed man gave a rattling laugh. “You can talk to him, but you won’t be getting much answer from him.”

  Sounding ready to be unfriendly, the man with the cane asked, “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “Never met him,” Joliffe admitted with outward lightness.

  The bent-backed man chuckled. “Won’t meet him now, either.”

  “He’s dead, see,” his fellow said. “And not afore time.”

  “Mind yourself, Tom. The man’s dead,” his fellow warned.

  “And good riddance to him.” Old Tom had clearly not taken to heart the proverb of never speak ill of the dead. “Dead and lying there with his head propped in the crook of his arm and his soul burning in hell, the grasp-handed bastard.”

  “If you want to see him,” his fellow said helpfully, “he’s along there, in the lane alongside the priest-house.”

  Joliffe had no wish at all to see a body with its head in the crook of its arm, more especially one that had been dead long enough to start stinking.

  “We’ve not moved it, like,” old Tom said. “Just canvas-covered it over and left it for the crowner to come. We know the law.”

  The law was that a body found murdered was to be left where it was until the crowner could see it and begin inquisition into how it came to be dead. Mostly, though—because it could take days for a county’s crowner to be found and then come—people chose to move a body safe away from dogs and vermin and pay the fine for having done so.

  It seemed Squyers, in the villagers’ opinion, did not warrant that trouble or cost.

  Still with an outward lightness he was far from feeling, Joliffe asked, “So how does this Squyers come to be dead with his head in the crook of his arm?”

  “Ha!” the bent-backed man said, more than ready to talk about it, but his fellow cut him off, saying at Joliffe, “If you didn’t know him and you’re not the crowner’s man, then there’s no need we tell you anything. He’s dead and you’d best be on your way.”

  Joliffe would by far rather have been on his way than stay, but he needed to know more than he did and said with a shrug, “Ah well, if he’s dead, he’s dead, and I don’t know anyone who’s likely to care. It was sudden, was it?”

  That brought a snort from old Tom and an outright bark of laughter from his fellow, but before either could answer, muffled hoof-fall and the chink of harness away along the street made them look and Joliffe turn Rowan toward the way he had come as five horsemen formed out of the soft gray wall of fog.

  Joliffe curbed urge to lay hand to sword hilt. They were most likely the crowner and his men finally come. If so, then maybe he could learn by way of them something more about Squyers’ death.

  The next moment he re-thought all that. Crowners, as the king’s officers, usually looked the part, went well-garbed in gown and authority and accompanied by clerks and guards. These five men were all rough-dressed much like himself, in plain doublets and boots meant for hard, long riding.

  And then they were near enough for him to know he knew them.

  Their leader was the sharp-eyed man he had met on the stairs of the Green Cockerel in Flint.

  And the man knew him, too.

  Choices being few, Joliffe decided to play it out. He stayed where he was while the riders drew rein and stopped, the lead man only a few yards from him and eyeing him coldly. Rather than leave it at that and because someone had to start, Joliffe said cheerfully, “We meet again. What brings you here?”

  Response to his boldness glinted briefly in the other’s eyes before the man said tersely enough there could be no mistaking his unfriendliness, “Report of Squyers’ death came to her grace the duchess of Suffolk. She sent me to find out more about it. What I find is you. Again.”

  “And likewise I find you. Again,” Joliffe said back.

  “The difference being you’re here before us this time.”

  “By no longer than a few switches of a horse’s tail. These men will tell you as much.”

  “That’s not to say you weren’t here before.”

  “And came back for what reason? To be sure the priest was still dead? Because I wasn’t sure the chopped-off head had sufficed?”

  The man ignored that, said coldly, “Nor does it answer why you’re here at all.”

  “No, it does not,” Joliffe agreed. “But then why I’m here is no business of yours anyway.”

  Over his shoulder to his men, the man said, “Take him.”

  Chapter 8

  That Sister Margrett was settled with reasonable content into the household was one less matter for Frevisse to worry on, and that they went to Mass and kept the Offices together as best they could, in Wing-field’s chapel during the day, in their room for Compline and the night Offices, was more help to Frevisse’s unease. The prayers gave some familiar shape to their days, but Frevisse still found herself, on the whole, much under-occupied. Alice wanted her companionship but perforce spent much of every day dealing with all the necessities of the household and such business as came in from the dukedom’s far-spread manors, because however secret she might hope to keep her presence at Wingfield from the world beyond its boundaries, her officials had to be able to find her no matter where she was.

  “Much of the trouble is that everything has been in change all of this year,” Alice said, rubbing at her tired eyes in one of the brief times they were alone.

  To Frevisse’s mind, “change” hardly touched what Alice’s life had been this year. From January into February there had been the fear and strain of Parliament’s demand that Suffolk be impeached for treason, ending with the king first sending Suffolk into the Tower of London, then exiling him to save him. After that must have come the weeks of frantic readying for that exile, with much shifting of matters to provide for his family and properties in England and for himself abroad. Then had come his murder and everything had changed again, made the worse because through the three months since his death England had been constantly torn by outbreaks of rebellion that had thrown life even further from ordinary.

  “I’m just so tired of change,” Alice sighed. “I want things just to settle into one way and stay there. I get so tired of all the things I must not say aloud. Thank you for being someone I can freely say things to.”

  Frevisse tried to content herself with that, but between the whiles when Alice wanted her close company and needed her to listen, the days stretched long. She read much, but she thought, too, and the longer she was at Wingfield the more there was to think on and little of it was pleasant, knowing that even if Alice said nothing more about her fears, they must still be in her, with nothing Frevisse could do to help her, save listen while she talked of lesser things.

  And then word came that the priest John Squyers was dead.

  Frevisse was in the solar with Alice and some of her women when the crowner’s man brought the message. To Alice’s taut questions he was able to say no more than that the priest had been killed by some of his own people, that w
ord of it had been brought to the crowner who was sending word on to her while he readied to go to Alderton. Alice thanked him, sent him away with one of her women to see that he was fed and rested, and sent another of her women to, “Find Nicholas Vaughn and say I want to see him.”

  Her order to him when he came was equally short. She told him what the crowner’s messenger had said, then, “Go there and find out what happened. Take men with you.”

  He answered her with a bow and left. Frevisse watched Alice watching him leave, and said, “You put a great deal of trust in him.”

  “I do,” Alice granted. “I can’t decide if he’s more the younger brother I never had, or the son there might have been if I’d had a child by Salisbury.” She laughed at herself. “But if he had been either of those things, he’d not be free to serve me so well, and that would be a loss. He’s a man without family or any ties except to this household. That, and that he’s sharp-witted make him valuable. I’ve deeded him a steady income from various properties, but no lands of his own, to keep him free to go on serving me.”

  Free to serve her? Or bound to it, having small other choice? Frevisse wondered.

  Three days later, in the warm evening after supper, Alice sent most of her women to walk in the gardens but chose to stay inside herself, in the solar off the great hall, playing at chess with John while Sister Margrett prompted him in ways to win. Alice laughingly protested but allowed it. Across the room, one of her women played in a small, pleasant way on a psaltery, plucking notes lightly into the quiet beyond John’s laughter and Alice’s feigned protests; and Frevisse, watching the game for a time, made a small prayer that this while of ease would draw out through the whole evening, for all their sakes.

  She was restless herself, though, and wandered the room. The solar was a large room, meant for the gathering of family apart from the more general life of the great hall. It was also newly made, from the glazed green and russet floor tiles to the plastered patterns of the pargetted ceiling. One tall, stone-mullioned window looked onto a wall-enclosed corner of the gardens; two others faced the foreyard and its gateway. A wide fireplace on the inner wall was carved around with the leopard heads of the de la Pole arms, and if the several chairs and various tables had been made in England the work had been by French craftsmen, Frevisse thought. There should have been tapestries on the cream-yellow walls but they would have been moved when the household last left and had not come back with Alice.