[Stephen Attebrook 10] - The Corpse at Windsor Bridge

by Jason Vail

  “Well enough, if you count being fed regularly and given a soft bed. There isn’t much to occupy the mind when you’re a prisoner. Not even a single book to be had anywhere in Clun. And safe? FitzAllan hasn’t threatened my life, but he’s said he might have me beaten until I come round to his notions.”

  “And what notions are those?”

  “He intends to seek the king’s leave to hold me as his ward.”

  “You don’t think that was obvious the moment FitzAllan had you carried off?” Stephen asked softly. He had known this in his bones, but hadn’t wanted to confront the thought. The places where it led were too painful to think about.

  “Can’t you fight it?”

  “I don’t know what I can do to change matters. The manor is held of the king. He is the final appeal in any challenge to seisin. You know what the outcome of a contest between FitzAllan and me will be in that court.”

  “You know what power comes with a wardship,” Ida said bitterly. “The power to choose a husband!”

  “Yes,” Stephen murmured. He recalled Rykelyng’s remark about coming into his estate through his marriage to an heiress. That woman would have been just such a ward as Ida. Such women, particularly the rich ones, were reckoned to be great prizes and were much sought after. Lords bought the loyalty of their men with the gift of such prizes. The wishes of the women counted for nothing.

  “Then you can guess what happens now. FitzAllan wants me wed to one of his men. An odious spider of a man without lands of his own. I’d sooner die than be his wife.”

  Ida drew a breath and let it out.

  “You have to stop it somehow.”

  Chapter 5

  “We need to find the writing office,” Stephen said to Gilbert as they waited in the chapel doorway for Ida to make her way across the upper bailey to her quarters in one of the timber buildings leaning against the castle’s south wall. “I need to write a letter. It’s probably the only place close by with parchment and quills.”

  “You want to write a letter?” Gilbert asked. “Whatever for?”

  “We need to tell the prince we’re leaving for London tomorrow.” Stephen had been in hot water once before for failing to keep a superior advised of his actions in an investigation and he wasn’t about to risk such a thing happening again.

  Gilbert considered this; it was the first time Stephen had broached what their next move would be. “Shouldn’t we pursue the matter of Lady Isabel’s involvement, and that of her husband? Instead of running around the countryside chasing who knows what of a dead end?”

  “Lady Isabel isn’t going anywhere she can’t be found,” Stephen said grimly. “We have other matters to take care of first.”

  “And what could those matters be?” Gilbert asked.

  Stephen glared at Gilbert and did not reply.

  Gilbert’s mouth opened and shut. He nodded slowly. “Oh, of course. I see. London. Away from here. But it’s an excuse, surely.”

  “Right. One that will be believed. That’s all we need to explain our absence.”

  Gilbert paced a step or two as the thought of what they were about to do and the special dangers it posed sank in. “Why not just tell the prince in person?” he asked, returning to the subject of the letter.

  “He could object.”

  “Do you really suppose he would?”

  “He might find a trip to London a wild-goose chase. And if not him, someone close to him might. And then we’d never get there.”

  “It is probably a wild-goose chase,” Gilbert lamented. “Except for …” he glanced around as if to see if there was anyone close enough to overhear, and even though there wasn’t, he did not go on. “But still! The prince wants an answer in a week. How can we give it to him in that time if we spent the bulk of it away?”

  “Then we must get busy. Standing around here and debating about what to do doesn’t get it done. Ida’s in. Let’s go.”

  Gilbert caught Stephen’s arm. “Do you think it’s a good idea to be seen coming out of the chapel even after she has gone in?”

  “You’re right.” Stephen nodded toward the door to the queen’s chamber block. “We’ll pass through here to the hall and out to the cloister.”

  Writing materials were not common. Clerks of magnates had them, of course. But Stephen didn’t feel comfortable approaching just any clerk and asking to borrow parchment and quill.

  There was a place, however, where such implements could be found in abundance, and where it was not unusual for strange people to come and go on errands that were not questioned.

  The office of the Clerk of the King’s Chamber was in a stone building on the other side of the hall. It was tall and built of stone, unlike all but the king’s hall and chambers, and the chapel, with a blue tiled roof, dignified as befitted its purpose as the beating heart of the king’s administration. For here all the king’s writs were copied and logged before being dispatched either to the Chancery at Westminster for reproduction and sealing with the Great Seal or to designated recipients by the messengers who loitered around the fireplace on the ground floor, awaiting instructions.

  Stephen and Gilbert climbed to the first floor. The writing office took up the entire chamber, which was high, long and narrow. Two tables parallel to each other ran the length of the room, where a dozen tonsured clerics sat scribbling away, their fingers stained with black ink; some had smudges on their faces where the fingers had rubbed them, especially around the eyes and upon the bridges of noses.

  There were three tables in the middle of these two long ones and at right angles to them. At the far end, was the senior clerk’s table, so that he could preside over the operations of all the others. The middle table and the one at Stephen’s end were occupied by the clerks responsible for different departments. One department specialized in legal writs and general correspondence, one in those directed to sheriffs, and another in charge of foreign correspondence.

  Whenever the king took himself to another place, the entire apparatus usually went with him. Without the writing office, the king could not make his will known to his subjects.

  Stephen surveyed the room from the doorway. There was some murmured conversation, but the scratching of quill pens was the most predominant sound, a nervous sort of thing.

  The clerk directly ahead was slumped in his chair, chin on his chest, contributing to the murmur with a gentle snore. No one paid Stephen the slightest attention.

  He slipped onto a stool beside the sleeping clerk, and extracted a fragment of vellum that had been scraped clean of its writing from beneath several draft letters. He plucked a quill pen from the sleeping clerk’s fist and, sliding the clerk’s ink pot over, dipped the pen and started to write hastily but in as good a clerk’s hand as he could manage, given the pressure to finish quickly before someone could interfere.

  Stephen finished the letter, which he set aside, and tugged a second piece of vellum from the pile of drafts. This was the important message, and the one he had really come to write in secret. It was a short message, only a few words, and was quickly finished, too. He returned the pen to the clerk’s hand. The clerk snorted and his chest heaved.

  Stephen retreated to the stairwell, forcing himself to walk calmly as if he belonged there. The vellums lay on the palms of his hands while he blew on the ink to dry it.

  “I thought surely that fellow would wake up!” Gilbert said. “Imagine what would have happened if he had!”

  “I’d have said something clever, he’d laugh, and that would be the end of it.”

  The ink was stubborn. It was not drying as rapidly as Stephen hoped. Carrying it any distance before it had dried risked the ink smearing and running. He opened the shutter of the narrow window in the stairwell and lay the letters on the sill in the expectation that the fresh air would hasten the process.

  The pause provided the chance to view the buildings along the east and south walls of the bailey. They were the typical structures you found in castles, timber-framed an
d three stories high with slate roofs and the newest of household amenities, chimneys for fireplaces, three to a structure. Unlike some castle buildings, though, these seemed to have no cellars, nor were the ground floors in stone. Perhaps this was because they were used as apartments rather than for storage.

  His eye wandered across those on the east wall, then stopped and shot back. He’d seen something there that was out of place. It took some time to find it again. It was what appeared from this distance to be an entrance to a cellar for the top of the opening in the side of the building was only about three feet off the ground and there appeared to be stairs leading down to it. There was another odd thing about this door. Paths led to all the doors along the walls except for this one. If it was a cellar, it was not much used. What was the point to a cellar if you didn’t use it?

  Stephen checked to see if the ink was dry at last. It was. He folded up the vellum strips and put them in his pouch.

  “I wonder,” he said to himself as he started down the circular staircase.

  “You wonder?” Gilbert asked. “What about?”

  “Come on,” Stephen said.

  He took the stairs two at a time, heedless of the pain this caused his sprained ankle. Once outside, he set off briskly toward this mysterious doorway.

  Gilbert caught up halfway across the bailey. “Have you lost your mind? FitzAllan’s people might see us!”

  “Can’t be helped,” Stephen said as he limped to the peculiar doorway.

  But Gilbert’s caution caused him to study the apartments along the south wall, where Ida’s and FitzAllan’s apartments were located. The windows were shuttered against the cold weather.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Stephen said. “Nobody’s seen us.”

  “Why are we standing before someone’s cellar?” Gilbert asked.

  “I don’t think this leads to a cellar.”

  “Looks like a cellar to me.”

  “If it was a cellar, why wouldn’t it be in use?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look there. There should be a path.” Stephen pointed to the top of the stairway where the grass was almost knee high and a happy green despite the season. There was no path.

  “What else could it be but a cellar, anyway?”

  “I have an idea,” Stephen said, starting down the stairs.

  They ended about ten feet under the surface at a thick oak door. Stephen tried the latch. It was not locked. He opened the door and stepped into the darkness beyond it.

  “What is this?” Gilbert asked uncertainly behind him.

  “I think it’s a sally port,” Stephen said.

  “It runs beneath the wall?”

  “You are on top of your game today,” Stephen grinned. “Come on. Mind your head.”

  Gilbert didn’t need to mind his head as much as Stephen did, for the tunnel that stretched ahead was just high enough to let him stand upright. He didn’t trust the builder, though, and ran a hand along the roof overhead as well as along a wall as he shuffled on an uneven surface into a gloom so thick that he could not see his feet after some distance. The air was dank and smelled of piss.

  Eventually, he bumped into another oak door. This too was not locked. He opened it and tripped on a set of stairs on the other side, narrowly avoiding bashing his head on them when he fell forward. The steps led up to a third door. Stephen felt about for the door handle and the lock that had to be securing the door. He found the handle but no lock. He lifted the handle. The door opened a crack, sending a thin shaft of faint light across his shoulder and upon the stairs.

  “Ah, ha!” Stephen said.

  “What is it?” Gilbert asked.

  “The answer to a prayer I haven’t even made yet.”

  A courtyard, especially a courtyard barren in winter, was not a good place to remain inconspicuous. The hedges provided some cover, but they had been trimmed down, so if Gilbert wished to be unseen by members of the FitzAllan party, he would have to lie on his ample belly, and that would not have done. Someone would notice, come over to see what he was doing, and inevitably conclude that he had no business here.

  And yet people came and went while Gilbert lingered under one of the many apple trees planted in the courtyard and no one paid him much attention. Curious that. He nervously wondered why that was so, if the upper bailey was the province of the noble born and those who served them, a place to relax away from the unwashed commons. Perhaps that was it; he was mistaken as a servant, although he wore no noble’s livery, the usual costume for servants of the rich.

  Stephen had given him a simple task: get word to Ida to find a way to leave the hall later in the evening. But Gilbert still wasn’t sure how he was to do that. He had come up and discarded numerous plans as the sun sank behind the walls, casting the courtyard in shadow. And he had yet to fashion one that was satisfactory.

  Foot traffic increased through the yard as the wealthy who were entitled to supper with the king made their way to the great hall.

  Gilbert nervously watched them for signs he had been detected and for Ida. Fortunately for his galloping heart, he hadn’t been noticed yet. It seemed only a matter of time.

  Meanwhile, there was no sign of Ida, either.

  He began to worry that the FitzAllan party was not coming. Had FitzAllan concluded his business over custody of Hafton Manor and its presumed heiress?

  However, at last, FitzAllan made his appearance. His close-cropped hair — an odd fashion followed by no one else Gilbert could think of — and his large head on massive shoulders made the earl a hard man to miss.

  He was surrounded by at least twenty retainers, male and female, and at first Gilbert did not spot Ida. But there she was, in the midst of a gaggle of women, with her two maids at her heels. He had hoped he would not find her among a crowd!

  Gilbert came away from his tree as FitzAllan passed close with the thought of blundering into Ida or something, risking a beating to pass his message: a strip of vellum wrapped about a stone.

  But they went by before Gilbert could rouse his courage to make the attempt, and were gone inside the hall.

  He had failed!

  Everything — Ida’s life and future, the desperate plan Stephen had fashioned — had depended on him, and he had been too frightened to act!

  He could not face Stephen.

  Gilbert wandered through the chapel to the bailey, his mind churning. A breath of wind brought the aromas of a kitchen behind the building housing the writing office, and the glimmer of a glimpse of an idea began forming in his mind.

  He went round to the writing office to the courtyard where a kitchen stood against the north wall. A parade of servants was tracking to the hall bearing full trays while others brought back the empty ones. The hurry and bustle made him think of a line of ants going to and from their hill.

  The wide double doors to the kitchen remained open to admit this ant race of servants. Gilbert watched them for a few moments, and then got in line and went in boldly as if he belonged there.

  Just within the doorway was a cloak room where cloaks and coats hung from pegs. A thin fellow was removing his cloak and coat, and putting it up as Gilbert stood in the doorway. The thin man passed around him and entered the kitchen: one of the cooks?

  Gilbert noted that some of the coats were like those worn by the servants going and coming at that hall.

  He searched through these coats for one that would fit. Most seemed far too small, but at last he located one that seemed alright. It was just alright: it was tight across the shoulders and he managed to fasten the buttons, but, looking down, the fabric between them was strained apart and revealed his linen shirt. It would have to do.

  Back in the kitchen, he took up a pitcher which he filled with wine in the buttery, and marched off with the procession toward the hall.

  The way through involved several twists and turns, but then Gilbert burst forth into the hall proper. He nearly froze in his tracks at the stunning magnificence of th
e scene. Only the pressure of the servants behind him kept his feet moving. While the others fanned out among the tables, Gilbert edged against a dark paneled wall so overcome that he could barely breathe, much less move.

  The hall, like all halls, was much longer than it was wide, but there the resemblance to an ordinary hall faded to nothingness. Around all the walls to a height greater than that of a man, lush, dark wood panels covered the bare stone. It would have been enough just to display those panels, but almost the entire circumference of them was covered by thick tapestries of all sorts of scenes depicted in brilliant colors — hunting, jousting, battle scrums, peaceful orchards with beautiful rich women strolling among the trees and flowers, a large snow-covered mountain with small figures climbing a path to the top.

  Above the panels and tapestries, large, glass-filled windows admitted the best light you could find in a hall so that rather than being dingy, a frequent condition of the ordinary hall, this one was filled with natural light even though sundown was not far off. And those windows — some were of clear glass, some of green, some of red, and a few of the windows held scenes made of colored glass as you would find in cathedrals.

  Three lines of tables marched in parallel down the middle of the hall to the king’s high table, which sat crosswise in front of a massive fireplace that burned high and might have roasted the backsides of those at the high table if they had not been seated in high-backed chairs.

  The king was there in the middle with the queen. He was speaking to a woman on the other side of the queen. The woman and the queen laughed in what seemed a rather forced way as if they did not actually find what the king had to say to be that amusing; Gilbert approved of a practice of laughing at a king’s jokes even if they weren’t funny.

  “Don’t just stand there, you idiot!” someone hissed in Gilbert’s ear. “Get to work, damn it!”

  “Right away!” Gilbert sputtered.