14 - The Burgundian's Tale (33 page)

My eyes were growing used to the gloom by now, and I stood up carefully to make a search of the shelf. But it revealed nothing that I had not seen during my previous visit, except for a paper folded and sealed. I turned this over once or twice, before noticing that it bore an inscription in a large, bold, confident hand. Even so, I had to squint a little to make it out, then recognized, with a painful jolt to my stomach, that it was addressed to me.

‘Roger the Chapman,’ it ran; and underneath was the message: ‘Candle and tinder-box on the floor.’

I was on my knees almost before I had finished reading, feeling with my hands over every inch of those dusty boards until I found what I was seeking. Right up against the clothes chest my fingers encountered a candle in its holder, and a tinder-box. Carefully, I lifted them on to the shelf, reflecting that in this, at least, Judith St Clair had kept her word.

I put flame to wick and watched the golden light spread and glow, illuminating the narrow space. The ‘fly trap’ suddenly seemed a less menacing place, and in my relief I failed to notice that the candle was little more than a stump which could last only a very short while. I broke the paper’s seal, flattening the thick parchment as well as I could, then held the candle close.

It didn’t take me many seconds to realize that what I was reading was Judith St Clair’s confession to the murder of her first husband, Edmund Broderer, twelve years earlier, and to that of her nephew, Fulk Quantrell. It wasted no words and offered no excuses, being short and to the point. It merely stated that she, and she alone, had killed them both, and exonerated anyone else of being involved.

I read it through two or three times, wondering why she had not adduced some sort of explanation for the killings, both of which might be thought justifiable in certain circumstances. Then it occurred to me that, if this confession was ever read by anyone but me, I should somehow or other have managed to escape from the ‘fly trap’ and could supply all the explanation needed. But if I failed to get out, and everything went according to Judith’s plan, the confession would be disposed of, along with me.

For a tantalizing moment I flirted with the idea that I might be able to free myself. What would Judith do then? Suicide? I remembered the poppy and lettuce juice potion she took for her headaches (those headaches that could be put to such good use when an alibi was needed). Taken in a sufficiently strong dose, could it kill? My guess was that it probably could.

I had a sudden heart-stopping memory of Bertram picking the inside lock of the ‘fly trap’ in the Threadgold house. With a trembling right hand, I drew my knife from my belt as, with my left, I held the candle closer to the centre of the door, where Bertram had told me the lock of these things was always located. At that moment, however, the candle guttered and gave up the ghost. Cursing fluently, I hunted around for the tinder-box and, having at last found it, attempted to relight the wick. But it was a lost endeavour: the candle had burned itself out.

I tried, half-heartedly, to use the tinder-box as a light, but it proved impossible, as the tinder was swiftly used up. I was back in the all-enveloping gloom and with eyesight that needed to adjust to the dark all over again.

‘What now?’ I asked myself.

I was sweating profusely, panic adding its toll to the heat of the cupboard. Then, with something akin to hope again lifting my spirits, I recollected Bertram, in similar circumstances next door, running his finger over the panneling until he could feel the inside lock …

Several agonizing minutes must have elapsed before I found this one – before a finger of my left hand travelled round a strip of metal so thin that I was at first unaware that I was touching it. With my heart pounding, pressing my finger to the spot, I once more drew my knife in my other hand and brought up the blade …

It was hopeless. I don’t know how long I kept trying, using every trick of lock-picking that Nicholas Fletcher had taught me, and that had never failed me before. But in the end I had to admit defeat. I was growing short of breath, my head was swimming unpleasantly and my throat was parched. Unconsciousness threatened to overtake me and I was forced to sit on the floor, my chest heaving. This was it, then. This was death, which I had faced on so many occasions in the past, but always cheated until now.

Until now! The true implication of the words hit me with all the force of a blow to the heart. I should never see Adela again. I should never see my sons and daughter again. What would they do without me? Life was not easy for widows or fatherless children. Perhaps Adela would marry for a third time, once she had recovered from my loss. A picture of Richard Manifold rose up before me. He had wanted her from the start. A sheriff’s officer, a sergeant, he would be a good provider, but somehow I could not bear the thought of him taking over my family as his own. I remembered the many times they had seemed a burden to me; my sense of freedom as I took once again to the open road and put the miles between myself and them. I remembered how often Elizabeth and Nicholas had driven me to the limits of my endurance, and how frequently Adam had inspired me with thoughts of infanticide …

But sitting there in the dark, feeling my senses being gradually overpowered, I vowed that if I ever got out of this dreadful trap alive, I would be a reformed character. I would treat each member of my family with the loving tenderness that he or she deserved. Even Margaret Walker, Adela’s cousin and my former mother-in-law, would receive her share of appreciation and esteem.

I gave a gasp, a desperate sucking in of fetid air, halfway between tears and laughter, as darkness began to close in. Even
in extremis
, my old, cynical self told me that, if I did survive, everything would be exactly as it was before. But I hoped that, somehow, Adela and the children would know that I loved them, and had died thinking about them, their names on my lips …

But, strangely, it wasn’t Adela standing beside me, looking down at my supine form, but Lillis, my first wife, who had died after our all too brief marriage, giving birth to our daughter, Elizabeth. She bent over me, smiling.

‘Go back, Roger,’ she said. ‘Go back. It’s not time yet … not time.’

The vision of her faded with her voice and she was replaced by my mother, who stood, hands on hips, regarding me in that exasperated fashion I recalled so well from my childhood – a kind of despairing ‘what are we going to do with you?’ look. She said nothing, but shook her head and warded me off as I tried to wriggle in her direction. She took a step backwards and was gone, and a small, dark man with weather-beaten features, stood there in her stead. I recognized him vaguely as my father, who had died when I was barely four, after a fall from scaffolding as he worked on the ceiling of Wells Cathedral nave. He had been a stone carver by trade and by name, and throughout the early part of my life, I had been known either as Roger Stonecarver or Roger Carverson (and a lot of other names, besides, far less complimentary; but we won’t go into that). I couldn’t remember much about him; he had made very little impact on my young life compared with my mother, and then he was gone. I had the vaguest recollection of finding my mother in tears on more than one occasion, and associating her grief with my father. But she told me, during one of our rare conversations about him, that, unlike a lot of men, he had never beaten her or used any other sort of violence towards her. So her sorrow must have had a different cause …

The visions faded as I briefly regained consciousness. I became aware of a great weight on my chest, as though someone had placed a heavy stone there. I tried to push it off, but was unable to shift it … I was drifting now, down a long, dimly lit passageway, at the end of which was a peculiarly bright white light, and I suddenly felt very calm and peaceful, as though all my life I had been waiting to get to the end of that corridor and lose myself in that light. Indeed, so strong was the urge to complete this journey that when someone shouted in my ear, ‘Roger! Roger! Wake up! Wake up!’ I was angry and resentful at having been robbed of my goal …

I was suddenly awake. The ‘fly trap’ was open and Bertram was bending over me. The bedchamber beyond appeared to be extraordinarily full of people: men-at-arms, wearing the blue-and-murrey livery of the Duke of Gloucester, and Sheriff’s officers.

‘What … What’s going on?’ I murmured dazedly, and a voice I thought I recognized said, ‘Thanks be to God. He’s alive. Carefully, now! Carefully! Carry him out and put him on the bed.’

It was the Duke of Gloucester.

I would have struggled to my feet, but was told peremptorily not to be a fool and lie still. Someone – Bertram? – brought wine and held it to my lips while I drank greedily.

Meantime, all around me chaos reigned. Sheriff’s men – there were probably only some three or four of them, but to my still disordered senses it seemed like a cohort – went in and out of the bedchamber as Duke Richard issued his orders. A bewildered Godfrey St Clair and an equally bemused Jocelyn and Alcina were summoned into his presence, but had little to contribute by way of answers to his questions. Paulina Graygoss and the two maids arrived, breathless and scared half out of their wits from the kitchen regions, but had equally little to say, except that William Morgan had disappeared. According to Nell, he had run into the garden and heaved himself over the wall into the alley as soon as the first loud, authoritative knocks on the outer door had heralded the arrival of officialdom. (‘’E buggered off out the garden an’ over the wall as soon as ’e ’eard that there banging,’ were her precise words, but we all knew what she meant.)

Judith, too, seemed to be missing, to the great distress of her husband, who found it impossible to comprehend what was going on, and was overwhelmed by the invasion of his house by the King’s brother and various representatives of the law. I whispered to Bertram, who, following my instructions, slipped inside the ‘fly trap’, emerging a few seconds later with Judith’s confession. This he handed to the Duke, who read it without comment, before passing it to Godfrey St Clair.

Godfrey’s whole body was shaking so much that Duke Richard ordered a stool to be found for him, and, when this had been brought, he read his wife’s confession with Alcina and his son looking over his shoulder. Of course, all three refused to believe it, but there was a desperation in their denials reminiscent of people spitting against the wind. There was no refuting, either, that the confession was written in Judith’s own hand, no matter how much they would have liked to prove it a forgery. Even so, they would have continued to express their doubts, had not one of the Sheriff’s men brought word that Mistress St Clair was to be seen sitting beneath the willow tree at the bottom of the garden, apparently either asleep or gazing out across the Thames. At this information, Godfrey gave a great cry and, oblivious to protocol, rushed from the bedchamber without so much as glancing at the Duke or asking his permission. He had guessed the truth, of course: Judith had taken her own life.

Duke Richard glanced at me with raised eyebrows. I told him about the lettuce and poppy juice potion that she took for her headaches.

‘She must have seen Your Highness’s approach along the Strand,’ I suggested, ‘and realized that the game was up. But, My Lord, how did you know where to look for me?’

The Duke, who could be extremely haughty if he wished, merely grinned like a schoolboy and perched on the end of the bed, smoothing the beautiful, embroidered coverlet with a long-fingered, appreciative hand.

‘First things first,’ he reproved me gently. ‘Are you fully recovered after your ordeal? If so, I should be glad to know the details of these two murders. My sister, the Duchess Margaret, will be shocked beyond measure and and it will be hard to convince her of Mistress St Clair’s guilt, in spite of her confession. I need to know all of the facts.’

So, I told him.

When I had finished speaking, I lay back against the pillows, exhausted, my recent experience in the ‘fly trap’ having sapped my strength. Bertram handed me another beaker of wine and, over its rim, I met his reproachful gaze.

‘If only you’d kept me informed,’ he chided, ‘instead of trying to keep me in the dark all the time, you wouldn’t have ended up almost dead meat.’

‘I’m truly sorry,’ I said contritely.

But my apology must have lacked sincerity, because the Duke laughed.

‘And so you should be, Roger,’ he told me. ‘If it wasn’t for young Master Serifaber’s unshakable conviction that something had happened to you, and his insistence on speaking personally to me, you would certainly have died of suffocation.’

It appeared that Bertram, calling on Lydia Jolliffe, had been informed not only of my visit, but also of the fact that she had seen me returning along the Strand in the direction of the city. Indignantly, he had returned to the Voyager only to find that I wasn’t there.

On some God-given impulse, he had decided to visit the Broderer workshop, where Martha had just arrived in order to give a hand with some of the beadwork. She admitted to having seen me and, under pressure, had reluctantly divulged the gist of our conversation. Bertram had then set off back to the Strand, convinced that I had gone to confront Judith St Clair and, as a much brighter lad than I had earlier given him credit for being, already beginning to get a faint inkling of the truth.

At the St Clair house, Paulina Graygoss, who answered his knock, had declared that I had called, but must have gone without her noticing, because she hadn’t seen me since. She had referred him to William Morgan, who had confirmed that I had left. Something in the latter’s manner, however, had aroused Bertram’s suspicions and convinced him that the Welshman was acting under orders from Judith St Clair. Bertram, therefore, had made his way back to Baynard’s Castle to seek out Timothy Plummer, but that gentleman, still swollen with self-importance in his role as chief guardian to the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, had refused to listen to what he considered the merest conjecture. My fate could well have been sealed there and then, had the Duke of Gloucester not happened to ride into the outer courtyard at the very moment Bertram was leaving.