The Traitor's Tale (13 page)

"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 word 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.

All in all, it was a rich and gracious room, presently so at peace with quiet music and laughter that almost there might have been nothing amiss in all the wide world—nothing to weigh on the mind but the day's simple wending toward bed and a night's sound sleep. As she wandered the room, unable to settle, Frevisse deeply wished that were true.

She paused to run her hand along the curved and polished arm of a cross-legged chair sitting between the windows overlooking the foreyard, wondering, as she had wondered before, how much of this room's pleasant wealth had been stolen out of France. An ungracious thought but not an unreasonable one. A great deal of French wealth and goods had flowed into England on the tide of victories that followed King Henry V's new-beginning of the war thirty-five years ago. Only when the profits of war had given way to the costs of peace and the hard business of governing a ruined country back to prosperity—only then had the lords begun to turn against that war. The lords who had made the most profit from it and now no longer did. Not that the war would be a problem for them much longer, given the speed at which Normandy was being lost, Frevisse thought.

A call from the gateway, then the sudden sound of horses clattering into the yard drew her the two paces needed for her to see out the window. From across the room, Alice asked, "What is it?" but Frevisse hesitated over her answer. The evening gloaming was deep enough in the walled yard that she could make out men and horses—too many of them to be merely bringing a message—and that there were servants coming out to meet them but not who . . .

"The man you sent to find out about the priest. I think he's returned," she said.

"Nicholas Vaughn," Alice said. "John, I fear we must pause the game while I talk with him. It shouldn't take long." She was rising from her chair as she said that but paused to lean over the game board and add, mock-sternly, "And no moving of any pieces while I'm not looking."

"The way she used to do when she played her father," Frevisse said.

Alice laid a hand on her breast, humbly bowed her head, and said, with a preacher's sententiousness, the old proverb, " 'Things past may be repented but not undone.' " Then she fixed John with a stern stare and added, "So if you don't do it, you won't have to repent it."