The Traitor's Tale (21 page)

"My 'privy friends' in the king's household," she said, using the more courteous term but with a mocking edge, "have reported nothing. They've heard nothing that might be about him or in particular against me. Or at least not at last report from them."

"What about the queen's household?" Dame Frevisse said.

"The queen's household?" Lady Alice was surprised. "She'd have no part in Burgate having vanished. She's not even with King Henry now. The last I heard the king was at Westminster with I don't know which lords, while she's still at Kenilworth, safely away from the worst that's been going in the south and around London."

"She doesn't have to have anything to do with Burgate vanishing," Dame Frevisse said. "Her household is simply one more place someone of your spies might have heard something."

No courteous "privy friends" for her, Joliffe noted.

"Yes," Lady Alice granted slowly. "Among her women, maybe. Women talk."

"And women have lovers who talk," said Joliffe. "Maybe about Burgate."

"Word could pass that way from the king's household to hers, yes," Lady Alice said.

"Could you go there, to the queen?" Dame Frevisse asked her. "You're fairly much her friend, and you'd be best placed to ask questions about your own man."

Lady Alice shook her head. "That would be the simplest way, but I've been given widow's leave from court, to gather up my life and spend my grieving. It would look very odd for me to suddenly return. I'd be very wondered about and there would be too much heed taken of any questions I asked."

"Send Dame Frevisse, then," said Joliffe.

Dame Frevisse said harshly, "No," as Lady Alice said, "That's possible. Yes."

"No," Dame Frevisse repeated with an angry look at Joliffe. "It wouldn't. I've no reason to be there."

"To take my greetings to her grace and give her my hope that she's doing well," Lady Alice said. "You can say you came to tell her that I'm well enough and that I'm praying for her and King Henry in all these troubles. I'll write her a letter for you to put into her hand. That will serve to get you into the heart of the household, and once you're there . . ."

"Alice," Dame Frevisse said, warning in her voice.

". . . you can ask questions without making much of them. And besides and more than anything, you see things differently than others do. You hear more than people say and see things others of us don't."

"And you're a nun," Vaughn said. "Who will suspect a nun?"

Joliffe held back from saying he would, if it was
this
nun; instead he said as if it were settled, "I'll be part of her escort to Kenilworth. I can ask questions of my own there."

"Better you keep your distance from my lady's business," Vaughn said. "There's too much chance someone will know you for York's man."

"A point well taken," Joliffe granted with a slight, agreeing bow.

"Nicholas will go," Lady Alice said. "He's known as mine. He'll be able to ask questions and make talk among the lesser people around the queen with no one likely to think twice about it."

"And afterwards," Dame Frevisse said stiffly, "he'll see Sister Margrett and me back to St. Frideswide's, because by then we'll have been long enough away."

Before Lady Alice could answer that one way or another, Joliffe put in, "And I'll meet them either on their way there or at the priory, to find out what they've learned."

Lady Alice's sharp look back and forth between them told she understood what they both were saying behind their outward words—that Dame Frevisse would do this much for her but then was done, and that he expected to be set free now. Their demands did not please her, but she said crisply, "Well enough," accepting them.

"With Joliffe to be let free to go about his own business in the meanwhile," Dame Frevisse said, to be sure that was clear.

For which he must remember to thank her, Joliffe thought, as Lady Alice said almost angrily, "Yes."

"And he might as well go now," Dame Frevisse said. "To have him out of the way."

And out of Lady Alice's temptation to keep him after all?

Joliffe wondered. Had Dame Frevisse lost that much confidence in her cousin? But careful to show none of that thought, he bowed to Lady Alice and said, all pleasantly, "I'll go at once, then, by your leave. If I may have my horse and gear again?"

Making a small movement of one hand at Vaughn, Lady Alice said, "See to it."

Vaughn bowed and left the room. Straightening from his own bow, Joliffe met Dame Frevisse's look for one long, unsmiling moment between them before he left, too, wondering as he went what that look had meant.

Chapter 12

Frevisse saw Joliffe from the room with relief. She doubted he would have been content to stay quietly a prisoner if Alice had decided to keep him; but with both men gone she was left alone with Alice, who looked at her from a distance greater than the few feet between them and said, "Satisfied?" Then added, more than halfway to accusation, "You'll be as glad as he is to be gone. And the more glad not to come back."

Under the bitterness there was hurt that Frevisse would have eased if she could, but denial would be a lie. All she could offer was, "Alice, this isn't where I belong."

"It isn't," Alice agreed sharply and moved away to the table where cards still lay where the men had dropped them-Beginning to gathering the cards together, she said, "Sister Margrett has at least enjoyed John's company, I think. You've enjoyed nothing and can barely wait to be away."

Because neither a lie nor the truth were any good to Alice just now, Frevisse held silent.

Finished with gathering and tidying the cards into her hands, Alice dropped them into a scatter on the tabletop and turned around to Frevisse again. "It frightens me I didn't think sooner that the queen's household was somewhere else to ask questions. I simply set her aside from everything that's happening."

"It's because she's been set aside in Kenilworth safely away from everything," Frevisse said. "Of course you'd look to around the king, where everything is happening."

"But I know better than that. She's not a nothing. There's constant come and go between the households. It frightens me whenever I find my mind has failed me that badly."

Glad for the chance to be kind as well as truthful, Frevisse offered, "You've had too much of too many things in your mind of late. Mind and heart are both tired."

"My heart." Alice dismissed that with a quick, sideways jerk of one hand. "I gave up living by my heart years ago. It's too treacherous a thing to trust."

There was more bitterness than truth in that, but Frevisse did not challenge her. Sometimes bitterness was the only shelter left. Just so long as it did not become a permanent dwelling.

"But, Frevisse, if my wits have started to fail me," Alice said with raw despair, "I'm finished. They're all I have. What else besides the queen haven't I thought of, that I should have?"

"You can go mad wondering that," Frevisse said. "Better that you simply hope that if you haven't thought of it, it's because there's no reason or need to think of it yet."

"Frevisse, I'm so tired." Alice paced away from her to-ward the window, rubbing her fingertips into her forehead where it showed in the tight circle of her wimple. "I'm just so tired."

"With all you've done and had done to you," Frevisse said gently, "tired is the least of what you are. Presently, while there's chance, with nothing more you can do for now, why not rest? Play with John, or read, or walk in the gardens. Sleep," she added as afterthought. The gray under Alice's eyes betrayed how much she needed that.

As if rest were another thought that had not come to her until now, Alice said with surprise, "I should. Especially the sleep. Even if I have to give myself a sleeping draught to do it." They were both looking out the window, not at each other; and still looking out, Alice went on, "If by some wonder you should find Burgate and he's unable—or unwilling— to return to me, at least ask if he knows where the account roll for the manor of Cockayne might be."

Left behind by Alice's sideways shift of thought—the more so because "Cockayne" was only an imagined place used in stories—Frevisse said blankly, "What?"

"The account roll for Cockayne. That way he'll know you're truly from me. It was something between Suffolk and I, to be sure a message was truly by one of us. Where the account roll 'might be'. Those words."

"Where the account roll for the manor of Cockayne might be," Frevisse repeated. "I'll remember." Trying to sound as if she believed he
would
be found and she was not on a fool's errand to Kenilworth.

The next morning was sweet with a soft rain under gently gray clouds. "Not the best of traveling weather but not the worst, either," Sister Margrett said while she and Frevisse waited in the shelter of the great hall's porch for the horses to be brought. Their farewells to Lady Alice were made, but while Frevisse's thoughts still lingered on regret that their had been stiff with damaged trust, Sister Margrett was already looking eagerly ahead.

"John will miss you," Frevisse had said when telling her they would be leaving.

"And I shall miss him." Sister Margrett had suddenly smiled. "But to see Kenilworth and the queen!
That
will be something to tell at St. Frideswide's!"

Frevisse would gladly leave all the telling of it to her if only, please God, they could be back in St. Frideswide's soon.

Sister Margrett's other thought had been that they might well reach Northampton, where her family lived, by their second night. "We'll have to stay at St. Bartholomew's of course." Their priory's parent-abbey, not far from Northampton. "But my folk could come see me there before we ride on. Or we could maybe visit them?"

"We'll visit them, surely," Frevisse promised, willing to make someone happy about something. "But we're not to stay a night at Northampton. The second night we're to be somewhat this side of it, at a place called Rushden. Lady Alice has us taking a gift of pheasants to the Treshams there." And two brace of rabbits to Kenilworth. It seemed Queen Margaret was uncommonly fond of rabbit in a sweet sauce of wine and spices.

"The Treshams?" Sister Margrett had asked. "William Tresham that's been Speaker in Parliament ail those times?"

"Several times, I gather, yes."

"But . . ." Sister Margrett had paused with a puzzled frown of thought and a quick glance as if to be sure they were alone, though they had been in their bedchamber at the time. "... my mother said at her Easter visit this year that he was Speaker this past winter when Parliament brought down the duke of Suffolk. Why would Lady Alice ..."

What Alice had said, when Frevisse had asked her much the same, was, "Master Tresham did what his duty required of him. He dealt honestly in the matter, and I don't choose to belittle either him or myself by holding that against him." She had lifted her chin and added somewhat defiantly, "Besides, his wife is my friend and I don't choose to forget it."

Frevisse gave only the latter part of that answer to Sister Margrett. "His wife is a friend of Lady Alice's." Then had added, as Alice had, "There's this, though. Master Tresham is not in favor with people around the king and queen for what he did. At Kenilworth, it may be best if we say nothing about having stayed there."

Sister Margrett had understood that with blessed quickness and said only, "Oh. Yes."

Now, as Sister Margrett was saying she thought the rain was slackening, Vaughn came to tell them the men were ready and the horses being brought. Only Vaughn and three other men were to accompany them, the hope being that with so few riders—and if the weather went no worse and all else went well—they would make good time, and they did, Vaughn keeping them to a mile-passing pattern of walk to trot to walk again, with occasional brief gallops on better stretches of road and the weather clearing by early afternoon.