14 - The Burgundian's Tale (21 page)

When I opened my eyes again, daylight was piercing the chinks and cracks in the shutters. Somewhere a cock was crowing and I could hear the sleepy voices of the kitchen maids and ostlers as they crossed the courtyard to begin the day’s work. Then the landlord’s sharper tones chivvied them to get on with things. I turned over on my side, intending to go back to sleep for half an hour, but instead I suddenly threw back the bedclothes and swung my legs to the floor. I was a little unsteady on my feet and aching all over, but forced myself to get dressed before going down to the pump in the courtyard to wash and shave. Then I repaired to the ale room for breakfast.

‘Something put the wind up your tail this morning?’ Reynold asked as he served me with a beaker of his best home-brewed. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

I toyed with the idea of telling him about my nocturnal intruder, but decided against it. If William Morgan wanted to pay me another visit the same way, I had no wish to discourage him. But next time he would find me and my cudgel ready and waiting. I certainly didn’t want Reynold putting an all-night guard on the wall, or baiting the courtyard with a man-trap.

‘I just need to get on with my enquiries,’ I explained, ‘if I’m to solve this mystery before the Dowager Duchess returns to Burgundy. If young Serifaber arrives after I’ve gone, would you be good enough to tell him he’ll find me at the St Clairs’ house in the Strand?’

One or two other early risers were drifting into the ale room by now and seating themselves at the long table in the centre. A dark-eyed man with a faintly foreign accent, whom I recognized as having one of the bedchambers next to mine, sat down beside me and enquired if I had heard anything untoward during the night; but upon my assuring him that I had slept like a log, he seemed more or less satisfied. ‘Just thought I heard a noise, but obviously I must have been mistaken.’

‘Do you always rise at this hour?’ I asked in order to divert his attention.

Reynold returned with a plate of bacon collops in mustard sauce and a dish of hot oatcakes, both of which I attacked with gusto. I never allow bodily discomfort to stand between me and a good meal.

The man smiled. ‘You have to be an early riser if you’re in the employ of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy.’

I nearly dropped my knife in surprise. ‘You’re employed by the Duchess Margaret?’

‘I’m one of her grooms and she likes to go out riding before breakfast in good weather.’ He glanced at me and smiled again. ‘Did you think all her retinue was housed at Baynard’s Castle? There wouldn’t be room. There are over a thousand of us, and even so, My Lady thinks she’s travelling light.’ He swallowed his ale and helped himself to an oatcake and some bacon, but he ate quickly like a man in a hurry. ‘I must get to the castle stables.’

‘You speak excellent English,’ I complimented him, and he laughed.

‘I was born here, but after twelve years abroad, people say I sound like a foreigner.’

‘Only a very little,’ I assured him. ‘Tell me, did you know a young man called Fulk Quantrell?’

‘The Duchess’s favourite? Oh, yes! Him and his mother. He returned to England just after Dame Quantrell died, after Christmas. Someone told me he’d since been killed.’

‘He was murdered two weeks ago.’

My new friend shrugged, cramming the last of his bacon collop into his mouth and starting to get to his feet. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Good riddance, I say.’

‘You didn’t like him. Why not?’

‘No. As to why not, I just didn’t, that’s all. Like mother, like son. And now I have to go. The mare My Lady has chosen to ride this morning is in my charge. If she isn’t saddled and ready when she’s wanted, I shall be turned off and left to starve. The Duchess is a good enough mistress so long as her wishes are obeyed to the letter.’

‘And if not?’

‘Do you need to ask that? She’s a Plantagenet!’ With which succint remark, the groom wiped his mouth on his sleeve and fairly ran out of the ale room.

I
sat there for perhaps another minute, enjoying the peace and tranquillity of the ale room in the early-morning sunshine – a peace shared by only one other customer – before suddenly leaping to my feet and rushing after the Duchess’s groom. Of course, he had vanished, and I had no means of knowing which of the many routes to Baynard’s Castle he had taken. I decided that I should therefore have to contain my soul in patience until the next time I saw him to ask what he had meant by ‘like mother, like son’. As far as I knew – which, admittedly, was not as yet very much – no one had spoken the slightest ill of Veronica Quantrell. I went back into the inn and asked Reynold Makepeace for the man’s name.

But the innkeeper didn’t know and wasn’t sure whom I meant and in any case had to go and oversee what was happening in the kitchens, having recently engaged a new cook whose methods and temperament were giving him some cause for concern. I reassured him that the inn’s victuals were as good as ever, and begged him not to bother his head about it. Relieved, Reynold bustled away just as Bertram arrived, eager to know why I had been summoned to Westminster the previous evening. I had not, after all, managed to avoid him.

‘Master Plummer says you can have me for two more days,’ he announced, when I had finished a brief account of my meeting with the Duke of Albany, ‘and then I must return to my normal duties. It would be nice,’ he added wistfully, ‘to be able to say that I’d helped to find the murderer. Do you think that might happen?’

I sighed deeply. ‘Everyone, including you, is expecting me to perform miracles,’ I reproached him.

But Bertram’s attention had been distracted by the smell of bacon collops, and he was wrinkling his nose indignantly. ‘It’s Friday,’ he said, pointing an accusing finger. ‘All I had for breakfast was a dried herring.’

‘Master Makepeace isn’t as particular as he should be about Fridays,’ I replied smugly. ‘At least, not this early in the day. They were very good, too. The bacon collops, I mean. If you don’t believe me, ask one of Duchess Margaret’s grooms, who’s lodging here. I don’t suppose you’ve come across him by any chance?’

But it was too much to hope that, out of all the Duchess’s vast Burgundian retinue, Bertram would have made the acquaintance of one particular groom, and, alas, my expectations were not disappointed. He shook his head and continued to moan about dried herrings and the Spartan regimen of Baynard’s Castle until, in self-defence, I asked Reynold, on his next appearance, to bring the lad a plate of bacon and oatcakes. And while, sunny temper restored, Bertram munched his way through this welcome repast, I recounted all that had happened the previous night. The only thing I failed to mention was my suspicion – or, rather, my belief – that Martin Threadgold had been murdered.

Lacking this knowledge, Bertram’s interest in the death of one whom he considered to be every bit as old as Methuselah – anyone over the age of twenty, including myself, being, to my companion, in his dotage – was transitory. He seemed to think it perfectly natural that Martin should have died in his sleep and did not even suggest the possibility of murder. All his attention was centred on the second attack on my person by William Morgan.

‘You’re certain it was him?’ Bertram asked excitedly, actually forgetting to eat for at least twenty seconds and stabbing the air with his knife.

‘Yes, I’m certain.’ I pushed the hand holding the offending weapon aside and adjured him to take care what he was about. ‘And I’m even more certain now that he was my assailant on the first occasion. But this time I have his cloak to prove it.’

‘Are we going to arrest him?’ Bertram demanded eagerly.

I shook my head. ‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’ My assistant was plainly disappointed. ‘Why else would William Morgan try to kill you if he isn’t the murderer?’

‘But why would he have wanted to get rid of Fulk Quantrell? Ask yourself that. Fulk was no threat to him. William didn’t stand to lose anything by Judith St Clair’s new will. Furthermore, he hasn’t attempted to kill me on either occasion; and surely he would have tried harder to dispose of me if that had been his object. Both attacks have been nothing more than warnings to me to leave well alone – to cease my enquiries into Fulk Quantrell’s death.’

‘Yet if you’re right, and your enquiries pose no threat to William, what’s the point of giving you a beating?’ Bertram finished the last of the bacon and oatcakes and proceeded to drink what was left of my ale. Letting rip with a loud belch, he stretched his arms above his head until the bones cracked. By now the ale room was filling up, and several breakfasters glanced round to discover the source of the noise.

I said, ‘I can only think that he’s trying to protect somebody else, but I don’t know who. When I do, I might be one step nearer to finding Fulk’s murderer.’

‘But you
are
going to confront him with the evidence?’

For answer, I bent down and pulled a rolled bundle from beneath my stool. It was the first time I had really examined the cloak since folding it up the previous night, and I was faintly surprised to note that, far from being made of that rough woollen cloth we used to call brocella, as I had supposed it would be, it was camlet, a much more expensive material of mixed camel-hair and wool.

‘A decent cloak, that,’ Bertram remarked, fingering it approvingly. ‘So where are we going now? Mistress St Clair’s?’

‘All in good time. But first, on our way, we’ll call at the Church of St-Dunstan-in-the-West. I think it might prove worthwhile to have a word with the priest there regarding Fulk’s visit on the night that he was killed.’

Bertram was inclined to cavil at this, wanting action, but he knew better by now than to obstruct me: a tacit acceptance that I usually had good reasons for what I did. I just wished that I had the same confidence in myself as he did. I still felt as though I were groping my way in the dark.

The morning, unlike yesterday, was beautiful, a cornucopia of sunshine and shade spilling its coloured profusion over the busy streets. The sky stretched richly blue above the jagged rooftops, with here and there a moth-wing cloud, pale and translucent in the soft spring air. It was the sort of day that made me glad to be alive, and I experienced that same chilling spurt of anger that I had felt so many times before at the act of murder. To kill, to deprive another human being of life, was the most dastardly of crimes.

Bertram and I passed through the Lud Gate, pushing our way against the general tide of people coming into the city from the fields around Paddington, where the purity of the rills and streams that watered the meadows produced lush harvests of lettuces, peas and beans, water parsnips and early strawberries. The beggars and lepers, already at their stations outside the gate, rattled their tins with a ferocity it was difficult to disregard (although many hardened their hearts and managed it), and both my companion and I dropped a groat into the cup of the legless old man who propelled himself around at amazing speed on his little wheeled trolley.

We crossed the Fleet River, where small boats and barges floated like swans drowsing on the sparkling water in the early-morning warmth. Corn marigolds starred the banks with gold, and little clumps of scarlet pimpernel gleamed like blood among the grasses. All was bustle as maids appeared outdoors with their brooms to brush the doorsteps, raising clouds of choking dust over the muddy cobbles.

The Church of St-Dunstan-in-the-West was on the corner of Faitour Lane, tucked into that little dog-leg where Fleet Street starts to give way to the Strand. Dunstan has always been one of my favourite saints, being Somerset born and bred like myself, and having been Abbot of Glastonbury for many years before finally being raised to the see of Canterbury. A bit of a curmudgeon, judging by all I had ever read and heard tell of him; a man who had never hesitated to give the Saxon kings and thanes the rough edge of his tongue whenever he felt they deserved it; a man who had helped make Wessex the chief kingdom of the Saxon heptarchy and who had crowned Edgar the Peaceable first king of all England at Bath.

By sheer coincidence, the nineteenth of May was his feast day, and when Bertram and I entered the church, preparations were already under way for his patronal mass. A couple of stalwart youths were lifting down his statue from above the altar ready to be borne in procession around the church. Three women were seated on the dusty floor, busy making garlands of flowers and greenery, while the priest himself, a little man whose lack of inches told against him whenever he tried to assert his authority, was here, there and everywhere at once.

I caught his arm as he tried to push past me on his way to remonstrate with a pair of giggling altar boys.

‘A word with you, Father, if you please.’

He stared up at me in indignation, as much, I think, at my height as at my presumption in accosting him. ‘Who are you? Can’t you see I’m busy?’

Once again, I found it convenient to indicate Bertram’s livery. ‘We’re here on the Duke of Gloucester’s business.’

This flurried him a little. ‘The D-Duke of Gloucester?’ he stammered, eyeing me uneasily.

I smiled to put him at his ease. ‘Don’t worry, Father, you’ve not incurred His Grace’s displeasure. Could we talk somewhere? It won’t take long.’

He took a hasty glance around him, trying, I could tell, to think up a way of refusing my request. Had I cited anyone but the King’s brother, and had I not been accompanied by someone in the Gloucester livery, he would undoubtedly have sent me about my business. As it was, he complied, albeit with a very bad grace.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

He led us both outside, after ostentatiously issuing half a dozen orders to his acolytes (just to prove, I imagine, that he was not only in charge, but also a very important and busy man), and round the corner to a modest, two-storey house in the lee of the Chancellor’s Lane side of the church.

‘Well?’ he demanded impatiently, having unlocked the street door and ushered us inside. ‘What does the Duke of Gloucester want with me?’

There was nowhere to sit down in the stuffy parlour except for one stool stowed beneath a rickety table; and as the priest showed no inclination to draw this out, we all stood, half blinded by the motes and specks of dust that danced in the powerful beam of sunlight shining through the unshuttered window. A pewter plate and cup, the former displaying a few crumbs of bread, the latter some dregs of stale ale, bore testimony to our reluctant host’s frugal breakfast.