The Midsummer Crown (23 page)

Once inside, it was my intention to seek out a member of the Fitzalan family, but my purpose was delayed by the sounding of the trumpet for supper. I was not to be balked of my victuals, having eaten nothing since ten o'clock dinner, so I made my way to the servants' hall with the rest of the hungry crowd. I joined in the general groan of disgust at the sight of the inevitable pottage, warmed up from the previous meal, and added my voice to the loud condemnation of Duchess Cicely's parsimony where the lower orders were concerned. Not that that stopped any of us falling to our bowls like ravening wolves in the hope of being the first to finish and so being able to claim a second bowlful. And I'm proud to record that I won the race on my table, having learned a trick or two worth the knowing while a novice at Glastonbury Abbey.

‘Feeding your face again, Roger?' enquired a mocking voice behind me.

I swivelled round on the bench. ‘Piers! Do you know if any of the Fitzalans are still in the castle?'

He was carrying a beaker of small beer and sipped it with a moue of distaste before answering. ‘Sir Pomfret and his lady must still be here, but I think Godfrey and Lewis have gone to Crosby's Place to wait upon the duke. And Bevis and Blaise set out an hour or more ago for the Tower to be with the king.' He cocked a knowing eyebrow. ‘I suppose we may still call him that, may we?'

So the rumours were circulating even here! I thought the conversation in the hall had been more than usually subdued, with heads bent close together and hands cupped over whispering mouths.

I avoided the question, pretending I hadn't heard.

‘I don't want to bother Sir Pomfret or Lady Fitzalan,' I said, ‘but perhaps you can tell me, lad. Do you happen to know if a ransom demand for Gideon's return has been received by anyone?'

Piers hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Not that I know of, and I feel sure I should have heard something if one had been sent.'

I bit my thumbnail thoughtfully. ‘And it's now – what? – eleven days since Gideon disappeared, and still nothing has been seen or heard of him. Or from his captor or captors. I think, therefore, it's safe to presume that he wasn't taken for money.'

Piers grimaced. ‘Why, then?'

I continued biting my thumbnail, a childish habit that my mother had sought in vain to cure and which seemed to have manifested itself again of late. I would be thirty-one at the beginning of October. Maybe I was reverting to a second childhood.

‘I don't know,' I admitted. ‘That's what I have to find out.'

‘You'd better hurry in that case,' Piers advised callously. ‘Time may be getting short.'

I finished the remains of my small beer, swung my legs over the bench, accidentally kicking my neighbour as I did so (but we were all used to that) and stood upright.

‘Will you lend me your aid?' I asked.

Piers looked startled. ‘How?'

‘I want to search this building from top to bottom, look in all the unused rooms, cupboards hidden away under stairs, that sort of thing. There's a chance, a remote one I agree, that Gideon might be being held somewhere in the castle.'

My companion, who was also in the act of finishing his beer, choked. When he could speak again, he demanded, ‘Do you have any idea how many rooms there are in a place like this?'

‘A fair notion, and I daresay I'd never discover all of them. But I feel I must try.' I gave him a wheedling smile. ‘Will you help me?'

He thought for a moment before nodding. ‘But not tonight. I'm promised to some fellows for a game of cards this evening. Tomorrow, however, after breakfast, we'll try this madcap scheme of yours. Not that I'm expecting anything to come of it, but I've nothing better to do with my time since Gideon vanished.' Piers replaced his empty beaker on the table to be cleared away by the servers. ‘Meanwhile, shouldn't you be concentrating your energies on finding out how Master Machin was killed inside a locked room?'

‘Oh, I know that,' I answered grandly – and walked away, leaving him staring.

Piers didn't wait until after breakfast the following morning to seek me out, but came knocking at my chamber door as soon after sun-up as was reasonable. His curiosity was such that he would have followed me the previous evening had his fellow card players not claimed him at almost the same instant as I left. I was tempted to feign sleep for a while, but relented and let him in.

‘Well?' he asked, his voice trembling with excitement. ‘How was it done? I've hardly been able to sleep, trying to puzzle it out. And I lost at cards last night, thanks to you. I couldn't concentrate.'

I indicated he should sit on the bed while I finished dressing, and then kept him waiting even longer while I found my willow bark and cleaned my teeth. But, finally, I took pity on him, described my meeting with Julian Makepeace and recounted the story he had told me.

When I had finished, Piers sat quietly for several minutes, obviously turning it all over in his mind, occasionally making little grunting sounds and nodding.

‘My friend assured me that such a thing could happen,' I said at last, to break the silence. ‘He had taken the trouble to consult with a doctor acquaintance of his, who confirmed that it was possible.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't doubt the word of Julian Makepeace,' Piers agreed. ‘He has the reputation of being a thoroughly honest man. A learned man.'

It was my turn to stare in surprise. ‘You know him?' I asked. ‘But according to you, you only arrived from Minster Lovell less than two weeks ago.'

‘Oh!' He flushed slightly. ‘Let's just say that I've met the buxom Naomi.' He added defensively, ‘She's friendly with one of the pantry boys in the bakery. She's Apothecary Makepeace's . . . er . . . housekeeper, I believe.' He slid off the bed, grinning. ‘Seems quite fond of the old fellow.'

I felt my hackles rise. I certainly wasn't inclined to discuss Julian's domestic arrangements with young Master Cock-up-spotty. (Not that Piers was at all spotty. As I have said before, he had an extremely smooth complexion.)

‘Let's go down to breakfast,' I said. ‘I'll shave afterwards. I see you've already done so.'

Piers and I spent a frustrating morning, both before and after dinner – pottage again, need you ask? – getting filthier and filthier as we explored parts of Baynard's Castle that I don't think even the duchess or her steward knew were there. (On second thoughts, I don't suppose the duchess would have known. I don't imagine she ever left the royal apartments.) Some of the rooms we investigated were occupied and we got very short shrift from the tenants. Twice I got hit on the head by a boot – and once by a pair of boots – while Piers got an elbow jammed in his ribs and, on another occasion, was helped through a doorway by an oversized foot. We then descended to the cellars, which might once have been used as dungeons but were now innocent of anything other than cockroaches, mould and damp, hardly surprising as they were below the river's waterline. We next ascended to the attics, tiny, claustrophobic cells stuffed with the detritus of years, one or two even inhabited by the lowest of the low; chamber-pot emptiers, stool-cloth washers and the like. I even insisted on a thorough search being made of the sewing room, leaving Piers to charm the head seamstress while, to the great amusement and caustic comments of the girls, I peered under trestles and poked my nose into cupboards that obviously couldn't conceal a fly. (Well, all right, they probably could have concealed a fly, but I'm growing too old and crotchety to split hairs with you.) For once, the head seamstress was all compliance, the alterations to the duchess's coronation robe having been completed before time.

But of Gideon Fitzalan we found not a single trace.

‘I'm sick of this!' Piers announced wrathfully as the sun strode up the cloudless sky and threatened us all with sunstroke. ‘I'm tired, I'm hot and I'm filthy dirty. I've had enough, Roger, and if you're sufficiently stupid to go on searching for someone we're both reasonably sure isn't hidden here, then you can do it by yourself.'

‘You're right,' I sighed. ‘Mind you, I wouldn't go so far as to be certain that the boy isn't here somewhere. There are still places we haven't looked and quite a few, I imagine, whose existence we're unaware of. Mind you, I never really had much hope of finding him. I always felt it was a fool's errand, but—'

‘You mean to say—' my companion began indignantly.

‘But,' I went on inexorably, ‘it was something I felt had to be done.' I slapped him on the back. ‘You've earned a drink, lad. Let's go to the buttery and see if we can cajole Master Butler into giving us some ale.'

This the butler, a jolly, fat man as befitted his calling, was prepared to do, so Piers and I took our beakers out into the sunshine and sat on the water-steps, watching the play of light on the bustling Thames while we drank.

‘Why Gideon?' I asked. ‘If it wasn't for ransom, why was he taken?'

Piers shrugged. ‘Perhaps he was just unlucky. Perhaps any boy would have done.'

I shook my head. ‘No, I don't think so. If that was the case, why bother to snatch a lad who seems to have been so well guarded? Why go to the length of murdering one of those guardians in order to lay hands on him?' I sipped my ale thoughtfully. ‘Which forces me to the conclusion that there's something special about Gideon Fitzalan that I'm missing. I shall have to talk to members of his family again to discover if any one of them can shed light on the riddle.'

‘I told you, only Sir Pomfret and his lady remain here, and you said you had no wish to disturb them. And I think you're quite right,' Piers added sententiously. ‘As bereaved parents, they ought to command your compassion.'

I gave him a look that should have withered him on the spot had he not been occupied with waving to someone in a twopenny rowing boat going upstream.

‘In that case,' I said, scrambling to my feet, ‘I must pay a visit to Crosby's Place and speak to Gideon's uncles. But first, I'll have another word with Dame Copley.'

However, when I tried to run the nurse to earth, I was informed that she was still in attendance on Lady Fitzalan and had moved permanently into the rooms put at Sir Pomfret's disposal by Duchess Cicely. I discovered this to be only too correct. The chamber she had previously occupied, close to the landing-stage, was bare of any trace of her. All that remained was the furniture normally to be found there.

This was not quite true, however. On top of the clothes-chest, someone had placed a small stone pitcher of birch twigs, wilting now in the midsummer heat, the leaves turning brown as the water dried up, depriving them of nourishment. I stood staring for a minute or two before opening my pouch and taking out the little twig I had picked up in the upstairs passageway a few days earlier. I recollected similar birch twigs worn by the seamstress Maria Johnson and by Julian Makepeace's Naomi; adornments, according to the latter, closely associated with the rites of Midsummer Eve. I recalled, also, Julian's distaste for a festival founded, so he claimed, on the blood sacrifices of the old religion that had preceded Christianity in this island. And suddenly, I was back amongst the stone henges of Avebury, thinking about the ancient legend of the Daughters of Albion, of Wayland the Smith, and of the white horse carved into the hillside at Uffington . . .

‘What are you doing in here?' demanded Piers's voice. ‘I thought you'd gone to find old mother Copley.'

‘She's not here any more. She's with Lady Fitzalan.'

‘I could have told you that if you'd asked me.'

‘Then why didn't you?'

‘You went off so suddenly I didn't have time to mention it. Besides, I thought you must have known.'

‘I don't see why you should have thought that,' I snapped tetchily, then changed the subject as I realized that this exchange of words was descending to the level of a childish quarrel. I nodded towards the pot of birch twigs. ‘Do you know what the association of birch is with Midsummer Eve?'

‘The crown and the bough?' Piers shrugged. ‘Not really. Only that its leaves and branches are used to crown the Midsummer Eve queens. I believe the tree has an association with virginity or some such nonsense.'

‘Virginity?'

‘Nowadays.' Another shrug. ‘I think that in the past it may have been more to do with celibacy. I believe it was an emblem for women who wanted to live a chaste life but had been forced into marriage by their families.'

‘Like St Etheldreda you mean?'

Piers turned his head sharply to look at me. ‘Yes. You know about her? She's not one of the more celebrated saints.'

‘You forget that I was once a novice. Brother Hilarion, our Novice Master, made certain that his charges were well versed in the lives of all the saints. But,' I went on, ‘I might say the same about you. You also seem familiar with Etheldreda's life.'

‘Oh . . . well, there's nothing remarkable in that,' he said, stumbling a little over his words. ‘I learned about her from Mother Copley. The lady's a favourite of hers.'

I raised my eyebrows. ‘For any particular reason?'

Piers looked uncomfortable. ‘As to that – I suppose there's no harm in my telling you: it's not exactly a secret, though Rosina doesn't talk about it very much – she was married once, forced into it against her will by her father when she was very young. She felt she'd had the call to become a nun, but the old bully wouldn't hear of it.'

‘What happened?'

‘Oh . . . fortunately, the husband died after a year or two. Her father died, too, so she was finally free to do as she pleased.'