The Traitor's Tale (16 page)

He looked swiftly among their faces as he said it. 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."

Holding her gaze, Joliffe considered that and everything else that had been said, added it to what had passed unsaid among them, then looked at Lady Alice. "I serve Richard, duke of York."

That was probably not the best of the very many answers he might have made her. It meant he was a far greater matter than he might have been, and after a moment's silence Lady Alice said, "Ah." A flat sound that told him nothing of what she was thinking.

It was Dame Frevisse who said, very quietly, "The duke of York. Is that wise?"

No, it probably was not. Joliffe knew too well that if Sir William was right and someone close to the king was trying to find a way to charge York with treason, that was a charge that could all too easily be stretched to include those who served him, and traitors came to ugly deaths. But to Dame Frevisse's question he merely lifted one shoulder and said wryly, "Isn't the saying 'Experience is the mother of wisdom'? How will I know if it's wise until it's too late to change my choice?" But having gone so far, he saw use in going further, and looking at Lady Alice, he said, "There's this. Two of your household men have been murdered and a third is missing. There looks to be some manner of danger stalking your household and maybe you. In that you have some common cause with my lord of York, because he's under threat, too. With those commissions of oyer and terminer being issued all over England for the finding out who's had part in this summer's rebellions and troubles, secret word has gone to at least some of the commissioners that they're to find York guilty in it."

"Is he guilty in it?" Lady Alice asked.

Sharp at the foolishness of that, Joliffe said, "Of course. From Ireland. To be sure he's too far away to take any advantage of anything that happens or to protect himself when the accusations surely come."

As sharply Dame Frevisse said at him, "Her question is reasonable."

"It is," Joliffe granted just as sharply. "But whichever way I answered it, she won't believe me, so why ask me at all?"

"You're fighting so hard against being alive, I swear you want to be dead!" Dame Frevisse snapped.