The Traitor's Tale

The Traitor's Tale

Margaret Frazer

Chapter 1

Revolts and riots lesser and greater had been flaring and fading across the south and east of England all through the spring into this fine-weathered summer of 1450, but Jack Cade's rebellion had proved to be something more than all of them. Given a leader better than most and driven by years of rough injustices and this past year's failure of the war in France, men had gathered to him in the thousands and marched on London, demanding justice from the king and his lords; and the king and his lords had fled, had disappeared northward.

Their thought had maybe been that London would be safe enough with the wide river Thames and the towered gates and drawbridge of London Bridge to keep the rebels at bay; but four days ago London, angry enough at its own wrongs and angrier still at the king's betrayal, had opened the bridge's gates and let the rebels in.

And riding toward London, Joliffe had watched the sky, thinking to see smoke from burning buildings, expecting to meet with droves of escaping citizens. He had counted on learning from them how bad matters were in the city, but the few he met with were more interested in keeping going than talking, had seemed more grumbling than terror-struck. With that and the lack of any black towers of smoke, he chose to stop at an inn outside London's Newgate in hopes of learning more about what was happening in the city before going in himself.

The innkeeper, his business slack—"You're the first traveler in here these three days past. Such folk as pass are going away from London, not to it."—was more than happy to sit drinking the good wine Joliffe paid for and talk of what he knew. "Not that there's even been many of those, from what I've seen. Cade's kept his men under his hand, I'll say that for him. No rioting, robbing, and raping through the streets, if you know what I mean. That's small comfort, mind you, to those as Cade set his men on purpose to pillage. Them as were rich enough and disliked enough for it. Malpas and that lot. Nor any comfort at all to the half-dozen or so men he's had killed." The innkeeper chuckled with deep satisfaction. "Not that anyone's minded Lord Saye's and that bloody thief Crowmer's heads hitting the pavement in Cheapside. There were more than rebels cheered that. Nor it hasn't hurt that Cade's seen to it his men have been paying for what they take otherwise—food and drink and the like."

"You haven't been into London yourself to see how it's going?" Joliffe asked.

"Go into London now?" The innkeeper sounded disbelieving Joliffe could think him so short of wits. "Not likely! This isn't going to last, this love-match between London and Cade. Those he hasn't robbed are going to be wondering when it'll be their turn, and his men will be wanting more than drink and taking orders and chopping off a head now and again. No, hereabouts we're laying bets on when it's all going to turn uglier than it is. I want to be around to collect my winnings and I'm keeping out of London the while, thank you. If you've good sense, you'll do the same, man."

"Now there's a problem," Joliffe said cheerfully. "I gave up claim to good sense years ago." Instead of it, he paid for two nights' keep for his horse and set off on foot by way of Holborn bridge and to Newgate. The guards set there by Cade asked him his business, and his tale of needing to see how his aged aunt did—"Or more to the point, how my hoped-for inheritance does."—got him in without trouble.

"It's Cade's curfew soon, though," one of the guards said. "See you're out of the street by then or you'll be hustled over to Southwark with the rest of us."

"She only lives in Forster's Lane," Joliffe said with a wave of one hand and kept on going.

As the innkeeper had said, Cade seemed to be keeping his hold over his men, but the quiet in the streets was wrong. Where there should have been the city's late afternoon busy to-and-fro flow of people, bright-arrayed shop fronts, and crowding market stalls, there were barred house doors, shops blank-faced behind shutters, no crowding market stalls. The only places he saw open were taverns and a few cookshops, and almost the only people seemed to be rebels, and they were either drinking or else wandering as if at a loss of what to do, those that weren't already drifting toward the London Bridge now that late afternoon shadows were beginning to fill the streets.

That was something the innkeeper as well as the gate-guard had warned him of—Cade's order that every day by sunset his men were to withdraw across London Bridge, out of the city into Southwark. The order was maybe the more readily obeyed because all London's brothels were there, but for such as needed help remembering where they were supposed to be, Cade had his officers going through the streets to turn and herd them the right way.

Since Joliffe's way lay bridgeward—but had nothing to do with any aged aunt—no one troubled him. The worst he met with were four drunken men lurching along broad Cheapside arm in arm and singing together happily, even if not all the same song. They looked far enough gone to want any passer-by's company and be offended if it wasn't given, so Joliffe put a slight stagger into his own step and raised a hand in fellow-feeling as he passed them, in the hope that they would know a fellow drunk must have business as important as their own and leave him to it. They did, with a cheerfully shouted something at him as they passed. He cheerfully shouted something back, doubting they would
get
much farther before they were gathered up and sent toward Southwark. For himself, when he was far enough away to suppose they had by now forgotten him, he returned to his own long stride, out of Cheapside into Poultry and from there into the Stocks Market. Five streets met there, but the one Joliffe wanted still went enough toward the bridge that he'd hoped to have no trouble, nor did he, save that men plainly Cade's officers were there before him, herding a score of men—probably collected from the surrounding streets— toward the street Joliffe wanted for himself. If he got herded with them, he might well find himself going over the bridge before he knew it; but he'd not for nothing spent years pretending to be a great many people besides himself. He set back his shoulders, lifted his head, changed to a bold stride, and crossed the marketplace like a man firmly about his business. As he passed the nearest of the officers, he raised a hand in easy greeting. The man lifted a hand in return and no one made him any challenge as he strode on, safely into Lombard Street.

The George Inn, with its sign of an armored knight on a white horse spearing a writhing dragon, was near the farther end. Like everywhere along the street, its door was shut, its windows shuttered. For good measure, the gate into its yard was unwelcomingly closed, and when Joliffe knocked at it, a man on the other side demanded to know who he was and what he wanted.

"I've come to see Matthew Gough," Joliffe answered, half what the man had demanded but enough. There was a scrape and thud of a bar being pulled aside, and the gate opened just enough to let a very lean man slip through. Fortunately, Joliffe was and did, with the man shutting it on his heels while saying, "His rooms are the first along the gallery up there," and already reaching to put the bar in place again.

The George was one of London's best inns. It stretched long along its cobbled yard, with stables and lesser guest rooms on the left, its public rooms on the right, sheltered from ill weather by an open gallery that ran the building's length, reached by stairs at both ends and lined with doors to the inn's best guest chambers that were sheltered in their turn by the eaves of the steep-pitched roof. Even in these strained days all was cleanly swept and cleanly kept, but where there should be people on the come-and-go, and talk and laughter from the tavern-room, and servants on the move, the empty yard, the crushed, taut silence, the servant on guard at the gate, a wary face at a lower window, were unsettling, and Joliffe went quickly up the stairs and along the gallery to the first door there.

It stood open to a well-sized room, low-ceilinged under golden oak beams but with a wide window overlooking the street. There were clean rushes underfoot, a curtained bed, a table and chair and several stools, and space along the walls for travelers' chests and baggage to be set, though presently table and chair were shoved aside, leaving the room's middle to a large chest from which a man was just lifting an elegantly curved breastplate undoubtedly meant for the man standing, already in a thickly padded arming doublet while a third man knelt behind him, buckling the straps of a leg harness around his thigh.

Joliffe rapped at the doorframe. They all turned toward him. The man holding the breastplate was the youngest and not very young—somewhere around Joliffe's own age. The other two were nearer sixty years than not, with faces rough-worn by weather and hard living that looked to have agreed with them.

"Master Gough?" he asked.

The man standing to be put into his armor answered, "I am, yes. You want what?" The Welsh of his younger years was still in his voice despite the decades he had spent in France as one of England's great captains in the war now being so headlong lost there, and the other two men must be his squires.

Joliffe went into the room, away from the door, before he answered, "I'm from the duke of York."

"Are you?" said Gough, committing to nothing.

Joliffe answered the question behind that question with, "Sir William said I should remind you about the
damoiselle
in Caen."

Gough laughed and a taut wariness went out of him. "I remember. Though I did have hope Sir William had forgotten." The kneeling squire went back to buckling the leg harness' straps behind Gough's thigh and the other squire came to fit the breastplate over Gough's chest. "So you're York's man," Gough said past him. "Any good with a sword?"

"I've been taught."

"By anyone who knew what they were doing? Or catch as catch can?"

Finished with the leg harness, the older squire stood up and went to the chest for another piece of armor.

Joliffe named a name.

Gough looked up in surprise from helping his squire shift the breastplate to lie most comfortably against his waist. "He had you in hand? How did that come about?"

"Someone I once worked for thought I should have that skill to add to my others."

"Did he?" Gough had likely survived years of battles, raids, and changes of lords over him by not only how well he fought, but by how well he could assess the worth and skills of men around him when their lives and likely his own might depend on how right he was. Just now he was assessing Joliffe. "Does my lord of York know this?"

Evenly, Joliffe answered, "I'd not tell you something about myself that my lord of York didn't know."

The older squire brought the backplate that went with the breastplate. He and the other squire began to buckle the pieces together at Gough's shoulder while Gough's look held on Joliffe and Joliffe's held on him, until finally Gough said, "So he knows, and here you are." He raised his arms for his squires to come at the straps and buckles at his side. "I'd trust York's judgment before I'd trust most other men's. So. You'll have your chance to use that sword-skill tonight."

Among things Joliffe preferred to avoid was chance to use his sword-skills, and blandly, deliberately misunderstanding, he asked, "You mean I'm to fight you for whatever it is you wanted Sir William to know? My lord of York will have to find himself another messenger, then. I don't favor being too dead to take it to him."

Gough chuckled. "Not me. No. Cade's had his chance in London and tonight he's losing it. We're taking the bridge back from the rebels."

"I can't say I see the four of us having much likelihood of that," Joliffe said. "Begging your pardon for doubting your skill as a fighter, of course."

"What are you? York's jester?" No longer prickly with doubt, Gough was in sudden good humour. One to a side, his men were now fastening armor around his upper arms. "No, I've gone back and forth much of today between Lord Scales in the Tower and the mayor and his men at the Guildhall to set this up."

"Him being about the only man who could go freely back and forth from one to the other," the older squire said. "Some cur among the rebels would challenge him, 'Who are you and where are you bound?' and he'd come back at 'em, 'Matthew Gough, new-come back from France. Who are you?' "

The other squire laughed. "There wasn't one of them didn't know who he was and gave him way."

"There's many of them been in France themselves," Gough said. "They know who's at fault for there and here, and the shame is we're against them when we ought all to be against the curs around the king who've brought us to it. But Cade shouldn't have taken to robbing one rich man after another through the city. Your London merchants will lie down for a lot but make them afraid for their wealth and they'll fight. Even Lord Scales, whatever else he's been ordered, isn't minded to let London go to ruin in front of him."