Wheel of Fate (2 page)

There was a general murmur of assent, and someone else called out, ‘It'll be all right once the Duke of Gloucester gets there, lad. He'll sort 'em out. He'll know what to do.'

The crier rose to his feet, pushing aside his empty mazer. ‘You never said a truer word, friend. Thank God for Duke Richard! He won't stand for the Woodvilles' nonsense.'

There was ragged cheer and, in moments it seemed, the Green Lattis had emptied of all but the usual regulars, the elderly and the young layabouts who spent their days dicing and drinking, desperately trying to avoid anything in the nature of manual labour. I, too, gathered up my pack and cudgel, stirred a sulking Hercules with my foot and left the inn, crossing the busy thoroughfare of Corn Street and starting down Small Street towards my house.

I felt deeply disturbed by the news I had heard. I knew Sir Edward Woodville. He had been with the expedition to Scotland the previous year, and I had seen him in London as recently as last October, peacocking up the steps of Baynard's Castle as though he already owned the place. But more than that, I knew what I had been sent to France by Richard of Gloucester to discover, and I wondered if the Woodvilles knew it, too. Their spy was dead, but that wasn't to say they hadn't made a guess as to what my mission had been.

There was going to be trouble, I felt it in my bones, but exactly what kind of trouble I found it difficult to guess. Were the queen's family planning a coup against the absent Duke of Gloucester? Were they – heaven forbid! – even considering the possibility of taking his life? But somehow I couldn't see Earl Rivers, head of the family and an essentially gentle, extremely cultured man who frequently went on pilgrimage to Walsingham, Compostella, Rome or Bury St Edmunds, sanctioning such a move. But then again, was he capable of controlling its more violent and rapacious members? Particularly Edward Woodville, who had never concealed his dislike of the late king's surviving brother? Lionel, too, might be Bishop of Salisbury, but he was as power-hungry as the rest of his clan. And the queen's two first-marriage sons, the Marquis of Dorset and his brother, Sir Richard Grey, were a couple of roistering, swaggering young braggarts; at least so I judged from what little I had seen of them. Their stepfather had kept them firmly in their place, but now that he was dead, I could imagine that their self-importance would know no bounds. They were half-brothers to the new young king. They would be a part of the tight circle of Woodvilles who would surround him.

Well, it was none of my business now, thank God. I had played my part – under duress, I might add – last autumn and I would stay safely here in the West Country while the main protagonists played out whatever drama awaited them in London. Nevertheless, knowing what I did, my uneasiness remained and refused to be shaken off, although my step became brisker and my mood lightened as I approached my own front door.

This proved to be locked, but that in itself was not surprising. It simply meant that Adela was at market and the children with her; or, more probably, as I had not spotted them in the crowds around the High Cross, visiting Margaret Walker, my former mother-in-law and her cousin, in Redcliffe. It was disappointing, but had happened often enough before as there was no way my family could ever anticipate my arrival home from one of my journeys. I took my key from the pouch at my belt, leant my cudgel against the wall, hitched my pack to a safer height on my shoulder, unlocked the door and stepped inside.

But once across the threshold, I paused. The house being temporarily empty, naturally I was expecting no noise, but the silence struck me as unusually oppressive. Moreover, there was a mustiness that suggested it had been unoccupied for some time, days perhaps, or even weeks. Hercules had dashed ahead of me into the kitchen, but now re-emerged, looking puzzled. He barked on a querulous, questioning note and then tried to nip my ankle, a sure sign of agitation.

‘All right, lad,' I said. ‘What is it? Show me.'

He returned to the kitchen and indicated the spot where his feeding and water bowls should be, always left in the same place even if there was nothing in them, so that he could indicate hunger or thirst by pushing one or the other around the floor, then standing back until his needs were attended to. But they were no longer there. They had been washed and stacked neatly on a side bench along with Adela's other kitchen implements, knives, bowls, choppers, all similarly clean and unused. I stared around, bewildered. There was no fire on the hearth, not even a handful of dead ashes, and no pot hung from the iron tripod above it. The water barrel in the corner was empty, as I discovered when, in response to Hercules's frenzied importuning, I picked up one of his bowls and went to fill it. The bunches of dried herbs, tied to one of the ceiling beams, were still there, rustling in a slight draught from the still open front door, but the meat skewer with its half side of smoked bacon and the net of vegetables which hung beside it were missing.

I took the stairs three at a time and burst into the bedchamber I shared with Adela. Here, a stripped bed, the patchwork quilt neatly folded in the middle, told the same story. With trembling hands, I flung open the lid of the clothes chest to find it almost empty. All that remained were a few old things of mine, plus the two new outfits I had been given last year to wear to France and which Duke Richard, in defiance of Timothy Plummer's arguments that the ducal finances could not afford such extravagant gestures, had insisted that I be allowed to keep. The room which the two boys – my son, Adam, now almost five, and my stepson, eight-year-old Nicholas – shared was equally devoid of any sign of recent tenure, as was the little attic at the top of the house, normally occupied by my daughter, Elizabeth.

Slowly, inexorably, it was borne in upon me that Adela and my children were gone. But where? And why?

The silence was appalling. Even Hercules had become conscious of it and had stopped badgering me for water, sniffing around the vacant rooms and whimpering pathetically. I shivered, suddenly feeling cold in spite of the thin April sunshine struggling through the oiled-parchment window panes, and I recognized it as the chill of neglect.

With legs that felt like lead and with my heart beating so fast that it seemed as if I must choke, I turned and went downstairs again. As I reached the bottom of the flight, there was a knock at the still half-open street door. I flung it wide.

‘Adela?' I croacked.

But the small, neatly coifed, grey-gowned woman who stood there was not my wife, although I recognized her as one of our neighbours; one of those respectable Goodies who had objected so vociferously years ago when Cicely Ford had outraged all their finer feelings by leaving a common pedlar and his family her Small Street house in her will.

‘Oh, it is you,' she said with a sniff. ‘I thought it might be, but when I noticed the door was open I decided I'd better come over and take a look.' The brown eyes, set beneath eyebrows which were beginning to go grey, sparkled maliciously. ‘If you're looking for your wife –' she gave the last word an insulting emphasis which indicated some doubt of the fact – ‘she's been gone these many weeks and the children with her. At least, I don't know about the girl. I think she may be over with her grandmother, in Redcliffe. She's not your wife's child I've been told.'

‘Is Mistress Chapman there, too?' I demanded, choosing to ignore the unpleasant and totally unwarranted innuendo. I hoped my wife had gone to stay with my former mother-in-law.

The woman shook her head. ‘No. I don't know where she's gone. Someone said London, but I wouldn't know about that.' She gave a small, self-righteous smile. ‘I mind my own business.'

You lying old besom, I thought viciously, but schooled my features to nothing more than a polite scepticism, asking, ‘Do you have any idea exactly when it was that Mistress Chapman left?'

She wrinkled her brow, the furrowed lines bobbing up towards a thin fringe of greying hair, just visible beneath her coif.

‘It must have been about a week after you, or maybe a little longer. I can't say for certain. As I told you, I'm not one of those who spies on her neighbours.' A prim smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘But I can tell you it was the day after a woman called here. A young woman,' she added, ‘carrying a baby.'

The almost opaque brown eyes were suddenly alive with prurient curiosity. A few blobs of spittle had appeared on her upper lip. She was agog with eagerness to winkle out the truth and pass it on – no doubt with her own embellishments – to other neighbours.

My mind was reeling as I tried desperately to think who this woman could have been and what she might have said to make Adela pack up and leave our home, taking the two boys with her. My guilty thoughts immediately turned to my recent lapse from grace with Eloise Grey, but common sense at once told me that even if Eloise had returned to England from France, there was no possible way she could have given birth to a child in the past six months.

I drew a deep, steadying breath. Whatever else I did, I must be sure to give this nosy old busybody no food for further gossip. (I had little doubt that she and her friends had already chewed the matter over daily since Adela's departure, and had been waiting with impatience for me to make my reappearance.)

‘Ah!' I said with studied nonchalance. ‘Yes. I think I know who that was. A . . . a kinswoman of my wife's first husband. Adela would not have been altogether surprised to see her. There has been some . . . er . . . trouble in the family of late and Adela had promised assistance if she could be of any use. Yes, yes! Of course. That would be it. Things must have come to a head during my absence. Adela will have gone to stay with them. The Juetts live some miles off, near . . . er . . . near Glastonbury.'

The woman seemed disappointed with this ingenious explanation, and she gave me a narrow look as if not entirely convinced by it.

I smiled blandly back at her and hoped that she was unable to hear the thumping of my heart as I waited in a fever of impatience for her to go.

‘Oh well, if that's all . . .' she muttered sulkily.

‘It is. You say you think my daughter is with Mistress Walker, in Redcliffe?' I asked as she finally and reluctantly turned away.

Hope flared again in the strangely dark eyes. ‘So I was told. But why would your wife have left the girl, but not the boys? That's odd, surely?'

‘Not at all. My stepson and son, being also my wife's children, are related to the Juetts. Elizabeth is not. As you and your friends have doubtless made it your business to discover during the years my family and I have lived in Small Street, she is my child by my first wife, Mistress Walker's daughter.'

‘Hmmmph.' The noise was wonderfully indicative of her contempt for me and my household, implying that such domestic irregularities were only to be expected of a low-born pedlar.

‘Thank you for your concern,' I said, preparing to close the door. ‘But there is no need for you or any of our neighbours to worry any further.'

I think, even then, she was tempted to linger, prompted by a feeling that she had by no means discovered the whole truth, but by this time Hercules, too, had had enough of her unwelcome presence on his doorstep. He suddenly advanced several paces, baring his teeth and growling ferociously. The woman gave a little shriek, snatched at her skirts and ran up the street, letting herself in with more haste than dignity at her own front door.

This ignominious departure afforded me a momentary satisfaction, but it was short-lived. Now that Hercules and I were alone again, all my anxiety flooded back and I felt as if some unseen hand were squeezing my entrails. I glanced down at the dog, who was regarding me with a puzzled stare, then, for the second time, ran upstairs and into the bedchamber, unearthing from a corner cupboard a large canvas sack. Into this, I stuffed all my clothes from the clothes chest, my new garments being thrust unceremoniously in amongst the old, and made certain that the children's and Adela's coffers really were empty, ran downstairs again, Hercules at my heels. I was out in the street almost before I knew it, locking the door behind me.

I walked back to Redcliffe as fast as my legs would carry me, the canvas sack somewhat impeding my progress. The crowds around the High Cross and the Tolzey were as thick as usual but there was a subdued air about them. Shoppers were clustered together in little groups of three or four, deep in earnest conversation, speculating, no doubt, on what the future under a boy king was likely to hold and reflecting sadly on the past twelve years of peace and prosperity of the late king's reign, ever since the spring of 1471 when he had returned from temporary exile to wrest back his crown from the Earl of Warwick and the latter's attempt to re-enthrone King Henry VI. Several people hailed me, eager to hear my views, but I pretended not to see them and pressed on across the bridge to Margaret Walker's cottage.

My greatest fear was that she would be from home, but to my relief she answered the door after my first knock, staring at me for a moment as though uncertain who I was – her sight was not as good as it had once been – before her features settled into lines of accusation and disapproval. At the same time, in response to a bark from Hercules, my daughter, Elizabeth, pushed past her grandmother and flung herself into my arms.

‘Father! Father! Tell Mother and Nicholas to come back! And Adam, too,' she added generously, ‘if we have to have him. I miss them so much!' And she burst into tears.

My quondam mother-in-law pursed her lips. ‘So you're home at last, are you?' she said grimly. She pushed the cottage door wider. ‘Well, I suppose you'd better come in.'

TWO

I
picked up Elizabeth – no mean feat for she took after me in both colouring and physique and was nothing like her dark, delicate, small-boned mother – and stepped into the cottage.