The Dance of Death (2 page)

‘I should be grateful for the truth,' I snapped.

‘The truth is –' Timothy took a deep breath, like a man plunging into a tub of cold water – ‘the truth is, you're accompanying someone else who
can
speak French. A lady. You will pose as her husband, her English husband.'

‘What?!' I couldn't believe my ears.

‘Your job –' now that the murder was out, Timothy was gaining in confidence – ‘is to look after her and see to her needs as if she were indeed your wife.'

Slowly I rose to my feet. ‘Oh, no!'

‘Oh, yes! Those are the orders, Roger, and there's no gainsaying them. And if you're thinking about Mistress Chapman, there's no reason why she should ever know. She isn't even aware of your present whereabouts. You could still be making your way back from Scotland. You've dropped out of sight and out of time as far as she's concerned. With regard to the lady you're taking to France,' he hurried on, not giving me a chance to speak, ‘as her supposed husband, you'll have, of course, to share a bedchamber with her wherever you stop for the night. Possibly the same bed. Well, yes, definitely the same bed if you are both to avoid suspicion. But what happens . . . What I mean is . . .' His tongue seemed to tie itself in knots and he eventually fell silent, drumming his fingers on the table top.

‘Nothing is going to happen,' I answered quietly but firmly, ‘because I'm not going. The king can find someone else to play out this little charade.'

Timothy sucked his teeth as if considering the matter, then sadly (the hypocrite!) shook his head. ‘No. His Highness has commanded your services and will accept no one else's. I apologize again, old friend, but there is nothing I can do.'

‘Stop calling me your “friend”!' I shouted, bringing my fist down with a thump on the table. ‘Sweet Virgin!' I straightened my back and took in air like a drowning man reaching the water's surface. ‘You're asking me – all right, the king is asking me – to squire a woman to France, posing as her husband, and to share the same bed with her for goodness knows how many nights. If this isn't an invitation to commit adultery, I don't know what is!'

‘Not if you're a faithful husband,' the spymaster retorted smugly. ‘And I hope, Roger, that you've always been that.'

Which showed how much he knew. I recollected with acute discomfort an amorous episode the previous year with a cosy little armful in Gloucester by the name of Juliette Gerrish. Until then, I had thought myself immune to the physical charms of other women. Now I knew better.

I walked back to the window. The man and woman had disappeared. The landing stage was empty. Typically, the warmth of the autumn afternoon had suddenly vanished and there was a spiteful rumour of winter in the air. Clouds chased one another overhead, broken by only momentary gleams of sunlight, cold as steel.

‘So what is she like, this woman I'm to escort to France?' I asked harshly. ‘Old? Young? Pretty? Plain? Or downright ugly with a face like a pig's backside? Probably the latter. That would be your idea of a joke.'

‘All the better for you if she had.' Timothy grinned. ‘It would curb your baser instincts, if they're what you're afraid of.'

‘You haven't answered my question.'

There was a pause: then my companion said, with more than a touch of evasiveness, ‘You'll find out, all in good time. I'm just relieved that you seem to have accepted the situation.'

‘Don't be too sure.' I heaved myself away from the wall against which I had been leaning and faced him once more. ‘I've a good mind to try to speak to my lord of Gloucester. He's here, in the castle, and has always shown himself sympathetic to me in the past.'

‘Ah! Now!' Timothy smiled benignly. ‘It's odd that you should say that, Roger, because I have instructions to take you to see the duke this very evening. His Grace has half an hour to spare before attending yet another banquet of thanksgiving, given by the lord mayor.'

‘Oh? And what does he want to see me about?' I demanded belligerently. ‘Prince Richard, I mean.'

Again Timothy looked discomfited. ‘He wants you to undertake a special mission for him while you're in Paris. Paris, by the way, is your eventual destination. I don't think I've mentioned that.'

‘There's a great deal you haven't mentioned,' I retorted wrathfully. ‘This is a bit like peeling an onion: there's always another stinking layer underneath.' I returned to the table and sat down yet again, folding my hands on the table top and staring at him across the wine- and food-stained boards. I made a great effort to speak calmly. ‘So let's begin at the beginning, shall we, “old friend”? Why am I – and, of course, my fair travelling companion – being sent to France in the first place? Am I allowed to know the reason?'

Timothy breathed an obvious sigh of relief, sensing my capitulation. ‘Let's have some wine,' he suggested, and, going to the door, opened it and yelled for a server. ‘We might as well be comfortable,' he added, ‘and it's still an hour or so until supper. I don't know about you, but I could do with a drink.'

Ten minutes later – the service was prompt in Baynard's Castle – Timothy poured us both a second mazer of a wine that he assured me, aware of my ignorance, was one of the best in the castle cellars. This information did nothing to reassure me. On the contrary, it only increased my uneasiness. If the lackeys had orders to treat us like honoured guests, there was a reason for it. ‘Flattery' and ‘bribery' were two of the words that immediately sprang to mind; ‘softening up' were two more. I liked none of them.

Suddenly realizing how thirsty I was, I had tossed back the first cup of wine with an abandon that had made my companion wince, but he had forced himself to keep pace with me for the sake of good fellowship. Now, however, he urged me to savour the second with more decorum.

‘We don't want to get drunk, do we?' he said. ‘We need our wits about us.'

‘I'd very much like to get drunk,' I snapped. ‘Oh, don't worry – I won't. Just get on with what you were going to tell me. Why does the king want me to go to France . . .? But wait a minute!' My worst suspicions were suddenly aroused. ‘You must have regular spies in Paris. Why aren't you employing one of them to do whatever needs to be done?'

‘Ah! Yes!' Timothy recruited his strength with another gulp or two of wine, forgetting in his agitation to give it the respect he claimed it deserved. ‘The unhappy fact is . . .'

‘Go on,' I encouraged him grimly.

‘Well, sad to say, we need a . . . a fresh face in Paris to . . . er . . . to replace poor Hubert Pole, who . . .'

‘Who what?'

‘Who met with an accident,' Timothy finished in a rush. ‘Have some more of this excellent Rhenish.' He refilled my mazer with a generous hand, ignoring his recent injunction to me not to get drunk.

‘What sort of accident?' I pushed the cup aside, untouched.

‘He . . . er . . . Well, strangely enough, he was found drowned in the Seine. The poor fellow must have slipped and fallen in.'

‘Slipped and fallen in, my left foot!' I exclaimed with unusual restraint, adding caustically, ‘Such a quiet river, the Seine, by all accounts. I don't suppose there was anyone around to pull him out . . . Now, suppose you tell me the truth.'

‘It did happen at night,' Timothy explained hopefully.

‘Of course it did. And I expect this Hubert Pole was just enjoying a quiet nocturnal stroll, minding his own business, no threat to anyone.' I sat up straight on my stool, clasping my arms across my chest defiantly. ‘You can find someone else, Timothy. I'm not going.'

‘You won't be in any danger as long as you follow instructions. One of the reasons it has been decided to send you and the lady as husband and wife is that a married couple is less likely to arouse suspicion. In any case, you aren't being sent to winkle out closely guarded state secrets. In all probability, the information wanted by King Edward – if, unfortunately, what he fears should prove to be true – will be common knowledge by Christmas.'

‘In that case,' I interrupted angrily, ‘
why
are we going?'

‘His Highness wishes to be forearmed.'

‘About what?' Although my tone of voice was still forbidding, I relaxed my posture a little.

Timothy was quick to notice it and breathed more easily himself. ‘You know, of course, that negotiations have been proceeding for some time for the betrothal of the Princess Elizabeth to the young Dauphin of France.'

‘No.'

My companion, taken aback by this flat denial, looked his astonishment. ‘You must do,' he protested.

‘I've been otherwise occupied,' I snapped. ‘Toiling up to Scotland, for example, and then nearly being murdered. Or had you forgotten?'

‘But . . . Oh, well, never mind. Just accept my assurances that this is so. There's been a flurry of diplomatic activity between London and Plessis-les-Tours for months. Ever since February, in fact.'

‘Plessis-les-Tours?'

‘It's where King Louis mainly resides these days. A château on the Loire. In fact, the rumour is that he has withdrawn there permanently with the French court. He has never liked Paris.'

‘So? Princess Elizabeth is going to marry the Dauphin. That seems simple enough. English princesses have married French princes before now, and vice versa.'

Timothy shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, rumours have been reaching us of late of a change of heart by Louis. There's talk – nothing substantiated as yet, but the information is from trusted sources – that he is ready to repudiate the English alliance and marry his son to Maximilian's daughter, Margaret. Worse still, it's said that Burgundy is ready to make peace with France and that this marriage will be a part of the peace terms.'

I absorbed this information in silence. There was no need for Timothy to spell out exactly what this would mean for England. The Duchy of Burgundy had been our closest ally for many years now, and, equally important, if not more, the chief customer on mainland Europe for our wool exports. King Edward's own sister, Margaret, had been the third wife of the late Duke Charles, but his death five and a half years ago had left only one child, Mary, the daughter of his first marriage, and she had married Maximilian of Austria. Immediately, Louis had moved to bring back the duchy – for many decades now a palatinate, owing little but lip-service to the French Crown – to a fiefdom under France's control. Maximilian and the dowager duchess had appealed for England's support in vain: King Edward refused point-blank to jeopardize the substantial annual pension paid to him by King Louis ever since the Treaty of Picquigny, seven years earlier. Even the disapproval of his own people, expressed in shouts and insults whenever he showed his face in public, had failed to change his mind. He had sown the wind: now, it seemed, he was about to reap the whirlwind.

I shrugged. ‘What did His Highness expect when he left Burgundy to struggle on against France alone? It was surely inevitable that Maximilian would eventually be forced to make peace. And after the death of his wife, I imagine that what little remained of the will to fight went out of him.' (Mary of Burgundy had died the preceding spring after a fall from her horse.)

Timothy regarded me approvingly. ‘I'll say this for you, Roger,' he conceded generously, ‘you're never such an ignorant fool as you look.' I thanked him acidly, but he ignored me and continued, ‘Mind you, I wouldn't argue with you on that score: nor would a lot of other people. But that's not our business. Our business is to carry out the king's commands, which are that you and the lady in question go to Paris and try to discover the truth of the matter. Separate rumour from fact.'

Before I could reply, there was tap at the door of the room in which we were sitting and Timothy rose, pushing back his stool. ‘Ah! This must be the lady herself,' he muttered, giving me an oddly apprehensive glance. He braced his shoulders and went to let her in.

Two

I did not recognize her immediately. She was wearing a long blue cloak with the hood pulled up, and for a brief moment I wondered if she was the woman I had noticed earlier, at the top of the water-stairs. Then I dismissed the idea. She was surely somewhat taller, and the other woman's cloak was brown.

Timothy stepped forward to greet the new arrival. ‘Mistress Gray,' he murmured, bending gallantly over her extended hand. He indicated me. ‘You . . . you . . . er . . . remember Master Chapman.'

The lady gave a gurgle of laughter and shed her cloak to reveal a slender, willowy form in a plain dark red woollen gown, the colour of garnets, and ornamented with nothing more than a simple leather girdle and a solitary gold chain about her throat. Her long white fingers were innocent of rings. The fair, wavy hair, which curled luxuriantly over a small, neat head, had been coaxed into a silver net at the nape of her neck, but had obviously, at some time, been cut short like a boy's, and, if loose, would, I reckoned, be barely shoulder-length. A pair of large violet-blue eyes regarded me appraisingly.

‘Of course,' she said. ‘How could I forget him?' Her voice had an underlying lilt to it, slight but unmistakable, that transported me straight back to Scotland.

And that was when I knew her, the moment the scales dropped from my eyes.

Now, it's one thing to be rendered speechless once in a while, but twice in the same day is too much. I made inarticulate gobbling noises as I backed away from her, overturning my stool as I did so, and gestured furiously with my hands as though to ward off the evil eye; all of which seemed to afford her the greatest amusement, but angered Timothy, who could plainly foresee another interminable argument with me.