The Traitor's Tale (44 page)

The monk started what might have become a protest to that, but Sister Margrett added very gently, with only the faintest hint that she might be going to slide from her horse in helpless weariness, "We're so tired."

Frevisse suspected that, more than anything, got them their beds. Ned, Bartelme, and Perkyn were shunted toward the stable with the horses and promise of places in the lesser guesthall meant for servants. Joliffe and Vaughn were sent to the men's guesthall. She and Sister Margrett were led away by a guesthall servant to the dorter kept for visiting nuns. The woman advised them that supper was nearly finished in the hall, and after a quick washing of face and hands, they went to eat out of plain need for food, more than any wish to stay upright much longer. They saw Joliffe and Vaughn there, looking as weary as Frevisse felt, but they did not speak together, and afterward Frevisse and Sister Margrett returned to the dorter, murmured something like Compline, and crept with aching weariness into their bed. There was not a worry or an ache sufficient to keep Frevisse awake. She was asleep from the moment of settling her head on the pillow.

Chapter 26

night's sleep made more difference to his weariness than Joliffe had dared to hope. He awoke in the morning with his side aching but not so badly he had to give it much heed, and after breaking fast in the abbey's guesthall, he was restless enough that he told Vaughn, "I'm going to see what rumors and news are in town."

"I'll go with you," Vaughn said with an alacrity that showed he was restless, too—or else unwilling to let Joliffe go unwatched.

Joliffe, having nothing more in mind than asking questions and listening, did not mind which way it was, was even somewhat glad of his companionship as they, first, wandered the length of St. Albans' long marketplace, overhearing what talk they could but nothing new to either of them. Along the way, Joliffe bought a good, dark blue doublet from a used clothing shop to replace his own, given back to him at St. Frideswide's mended and enough of the bloodstain cleansed away to make it wearable but not much presentable. He and Vaughn then made use of the town's public bathhouse to wash and shave, and with that and the "new" doublet Joliffe felt far more ready for the rest of the day.

For a while after that, the two of them drifted into and out of the several taverns and inns along the marketplace and nearer streets, listening to the talk around them, sometimes asking questions as if they were pilgrims worried how safe their journey home was going to be, "with all this shifting of lords' men about the countryside," Joliffe said several times to lead men on to more talk, but he learned nothing much new. Even talk with a pedlar lately out from London brought hardly anything. "The king's in Kent with that dog's toss-up Somerset and some others," the man said. "They're beating the whey out of the poor bastards as thought they had pardon last summer after Cade's rebellion. Is there more trouble than that? Because I'm heading north and don't want to walk into anything."

"Then I'd head west if I were you," Vaughn answered.

"Or sit it out here," Joliffe offered. "Once the duke of York is gone through, what trouble there is will likely go with him."

The pedlar frowned. "Aye. That business in Wales."

"Word of that has spread, has it?" Vaughn asked.

"It's being talked of in London, aye. People reckon it was Somerset's doing."

"Giving orders to the king's officers in Wales? That's moving fast for someone just come back from France," Joliffe said. "He never seemed that sharp to me. He wasn't when it came to saving Normandy, that's for certain."

"Happen losing Normandy has sharpened his wits, like, the pedlar said grimly. He raised his leather jack of ale. "Here's to Richard of York seeing to it Somerset gets what's coming to him."

Joliffe and Vaughn both drank to that with him, Joliffe at least with a whole heart.

To the good was that there was no word of any fighting, giving good hope there had been none because word of even a skirmish between York's men and anyone else's would have come racing up Watling Street like wind-born smoke ahead of a fire.

"Nor it doesn't seem the king or anyone is coming out to meet him on his way," Vaughn said as he and Joliffe sat finally alone at a table in the corner of another tavern, drinking thin wine.

"I wish I thought that was a good thing," Joliffe said.

"You'd rather it came to a fight?"

"Not by half. But for there to be seeming-nothing being done on the king's side is strange. Or seems so to me."

"Urn," said Vaughn, which might have meant anything.

Joliffe leaned back against the wall and tried to seem he was not as weary as he was. Far wearier than he should be. He needed more strength than this if he was going to be use to anyone, including himself.

Vaughn ended the silence between them by asking, "Have you read this letter, to know if it's going to make enough of a difference to be worth the trouble we've taken with it?"

Keeping voice and body at ease, Joliffe said, "So far as I know, no one has read it since Suffolk sealed it. As to what it's worth . . ." He shrugged. ". . .
somebody
thinks it's worth the trouble of killing men for it. I'm trusting the letter will tell us who."

Vaughn sat staring into his almost empty bowl a long moment before saying, "I'm going at this as if my lady of Suffolk was already agreed and allied with York. I could be very far in the wrong for it."

"The choice and the burden of it lies on Dame Frevisse, not on you. She's acting in her grace of Suffolk's name."

Still staring into the bowl, Vaughn moved his head slowly side to side, refusing that way out. "I don't know if that's good enough."

Joliffe held back from saying, "It has to be."

Instead, he considered his other answers, then carefully offered, "If Burgate was right and Suffolk's death was purposed and not by merely rogue sailors, then it was ordered, and the order came from someone with the power to stop any questioning about it afterward. Can we agree on that?"

"Yes," Vaughn said stiffly, not looking at him.

"Can we likewise agree that the someone who ordered Suffolk's death is likely the someone behind all these other deaths and likewise keeping any useful questions from being asked?"

Vaughn finally raised his gaze to him, frowning, still wary even while assenting, "Yes. Well enough. It's likely that's the way of it."

"Then if whoever has the power to do all that decides to be afraid that Lady Alice knows too much about the same thing these men are being killed for, what chance will she have against him?"

Vaughn took his time over answering that, not because he did not know the answer, Joliffe thought, but because he hated even to think it. But finally he said, "Now that she's had chance to talk to Burgate and it's known first Gyllam and then you went for the letter, whoever is doing this probably does think she knows too much." He made a frustrated sound and said half-angrily, "Why didn't Buckingham just kill Burgate outright?"

"Because none of this is coming from Buckingham," Joliffe shot back. "The duke of Buckingham never troubled himself with a new thought all his own in his whole life, let alone subtleties like are tangled here. And don't tell me Somerset, either. Somerset has all the subtlety of a five-year-old who thinks that by hiding his hands with a stolen apple behind his back he can make his mother believe he doesn't have it. Burgate is alive because someone was leaving it to God whether he would live or die, whether they'd have his secret or lose it. That's like tossing dice with God and telling yourself however it comes out, it's God's doing."

"That's mad," Vaughan protested.

"Not so much outright mad as reason working half a step sideways from where you and I do our thinking. Now," he said on anger-shortened breath, leaning toward Vaughn, "can you think of who that might be and with the power to make all of these deaths happen and no one look his way? Because if you can't ..."

He did not finish. Either Vaughn could see it or he could not. And either way, Joliffe was not going to say the thing aloud.

Vaughn began to open his mouth toward saying something. Then the full weight of Joliffe's words hit. Joliffe saw his eyes widen, and his mouth snapped shut. His hands clamped tightly around the wine bowl and he said back, harsh and low, "You think
that's
what's in the letter?"

Joliffe nodded.

"If you're right, then, no, Lady Alice has no hope against him. There's only York might do it."

"Only York. Yes," Joliffe agreed. "And even then . . ."Joliffe broke off, there being little need to finish. Because even then, how much chance did even York have?

They finished the wine with no more said between them. Joliffe paid and they went out into the late morning's sunshine. The tavern they had happened into was in a short lane off the marketplace and busy with people coming and going. Just now five men were standing a few yards from the door, in close talk with one another and almost blocking the way. As Joliffe and Vaughn shifted to the lane's far side to pass them, the talk turned into shouting, two of the men starting to wave their arms, a third shoved another of his fellows hard and backward, between Joliffe and Vaughn, making them step apart. In that instant what had been talk erupted without warning into a quarrel with daggers and a familiarity that made Joliffe shout in sudden warning at Vaughn,
"Hampden!"
and draw his dagger and go for the two men nearest him, turned from their "quarrel" to go for him, spreading apart and probably meaning to take him from both sides. With a wide swing of body and arm, Joliffe slashed the dagger-arm of
the man on his left open from elbow to
wrist, completed his spin full around to bring himself in behind the startled other man's guard, stabbing into his side and stepping back as the man staggered, both to free his dagger and give himself room to draw his sword in time to knock aside the dagger of a third man coming for him. He followed through with his own dagger but the man stepped back from it. Joliffe caught movement from the side of his eye and slashed his sword backhanded at his first man, this time slicing him across the thigh, and bringing his sword back around in time to
jam its point low into the gut of his third man well before the fellow was in dagger-strike reach. Joliffe was just enough off balance and the man just enough beyond clean reach for the blow to be too shallow for killing, but the man lurched backward, staring down in disbelief at the blood starting through his doublet.

Joliffe could have killed him then, but did not; instead stepped back to put his back to the nearest house-wall for time to see what needed doing next. But the fight was done. Vaughn stood a few feet away from him, sword and dagger drawn, watching the two men he had faced running away for the far end of the lane, hauling Joliffe's first man limping and hopping between them, one of them limping, too, and Joliffe could not tell if the blood trailed behind them was from one or both. His third man was following, bent over and staggering a little. And beyond them, at the lane's end, watching, was . . .

With a hot rise of the anger there had been no time for in the fight, Joliffe started forward.

"Noreys!" Vaughn said, catching his arm. "Let them go!"

In the moment it took to jerk loose of Vaughn's hold, the man at the lane's end stepped back, was gone around the corner, out of sight.

"There!" Joliffe pointed furiously. "Did you see him? The man in the black cap. Watching it all. That was him. The man at Hedingham!"

"I didn't see him, no. Come on. We have to
get
away from here."

Vaughn had hold on his arm again, pulling, and Joliffe realized the man he had stabbed in the side lay close by, twisted and unmoving in the runnel down the middle of the street. There would be questions about that and not to his own good, Joliffe knew, and he gave way to Vaughn's pull on his arm, sheathing sword and dagger—they would have to be cleaned later—while following him back into the tavern. The whole business had gone so fast that only now were people starting to come out of other doors along the street, and the few men in the tavern were still getting up from their benches to go see what had happened. Vaughn and Joliffe went past them, into the tavern's rear room, past the two women there, and out the back door into a small rearyard.