Lord Cromwell demanded, “How do you come to know so much about the privy seal’s paper?”
Bishop Pecock made a small, almost deprecating shrug. “One notices things, such as black marks on the edges of papers, and asks questions. I can’t help it.”
York, whose mind had been racing toward conclusions, said thoughtfully, as if to himself, “And Bishop Moleyns who ‘has the answers he sought’ is Keeper of the Privy Seal.”
“Yes, indeed,” Bishop Pecock said, as if that were a mildly interesting observation. “With access to as much privy seal paper as he wants, I suppose. But to return to where I was—if the letter shows no sign of having traveled far and was, in fact, written here in Westminster, it therefore did not come from Normandy. You see? Nor was it written by someone who would have to go so roundabout as to use one of York’s couriers out of Normandy.” He looked around the table earnestly. “You see how simple it is? Once a premise is granted—in this case, two premises, the first being that the paper is not far-traveled and the second, that it’s from here—then a third premise derived from those must be granted—that the letter did not come from Normandy. Besides which, it would seem fair to consider the possibility that it was not meant for York at all, especially if no greater evidence to the contrary can be brought and I doubt that in this matter it can, so…”
York doubted he was the only one lost among premises, but it was Moleyns who protested, “That paper could have been stolen at anytime. Months ago even. There’s no saying when or where that letter was written.”
Bishop Pecock turned a benign gaze on him. “Is every stack of paper marked in the same place, time after time?”
“What? No. No one tries to do that. We just want them marked, is all.”
“The mark on this sheet matches the mark on the supply presently on your head clerk’s desk, to be given out as he deems necessary.”
Bishop Moleyns gaped slightly, then demanded, “How do you know that?”
“I went to see, after our first meeting this morning.”
“The mark proves nothing!” Bishop Ayscough said. “Not either way. Not any way. Not…”
He broke off, apparently well lost among Bishop Pecock’s premises, but, “It raises doubts, though, where there weren’t any,” said Buckingham. He had a heavy-paced intelligence rather than quick, but he was fair-minded when he could manage it. For him, doubts were doubts and not to be ignored once they were raised, and York felt a stirring toward hope that this wasn’t going to go all Suffolk’s way after all.
“And then, of course, there’s the trouble with how York’s man died,” Bishop Pecock said.
“There’s no trouble there,” Suffolk answered. “He was stabbed from behind by a thief who then robbed him and fled.”
“Ah, yes. Well. I went with his body, you know, when it was taken for the crowner to view it because I thought it might be best to go on praying over him closely a while longer, his death being sudden and all. The crowner, of course, verified the cause of his death.”
“It not taking much to verify a dagger-thrust from behind,” York said bitterly.
“But there was more than that, you see,” Bishop Pecock said. “There was also the large lump on the side of his head. The crowner commented on that, and I felt of it myself. He’d been struck very hard, I’d judge. And when he was stripped, there were large bruises to be seen around both his upper arms…” Bishop Pecock held up a hand, curving it as if around an arm, “… that large, as well as raw places rubbed into his wrists and both corners of his mouth. You see?”
At least some of them saw very clearly: Lord Stourton began swearing under his breath and York, sickened and angry, said harshly, “You’re saying that the stabbing was only the last thing done to him. Before then, he was sometime hit on the head, maybe knocked unconscious, was also sometime gagged and his wrists tied. He fought against that hard enough to leave raw sores, and the bruises on his arms you’re saying look as if they were made by someone holding roughly onto him.”
“Or it might have been by two someones, one on either side,” Lord Cromwell said.
Though he was holding it, York’s anger tightened his voice. “Davydd was killed where he was found. That’s certain, because of the blood. And the dagger-thrust looks to have come level at his back, as if he were standing when he was stabbed. But those other marks didn’t come from any thief creeping up behind him to kill him. He’d been brought there, maybe unconscious, maybe only still gagged and bound and knowing what was happening, held up between probably two men while a third one ran him through from behind.” York rose to his feet and leaned forward with fists braced on the table toward Suffolk. “His death was no chance killing. It was murder, for the sake of that letter supposedly for me being found on him here, where it could do the most damage to me.”
Into the taut silence after that almost accusation, with Suffolk all too clearly naked of any reply, Bishop Pecock said mildly, “Judging by the facts as we have them, it would seem within the reaches of Reason to say so.”
“Damnably right it does,” Lord Stourton said forcefully. Lord Cromwell was nodding frowning agreement, his look along with Buckingham’s glare turning toward Suffolk as Bishop Pecock went on, “The question then becomes…”
But Suffolk had regrouped enough to interrupt him warningly, “My lord bishop.”
As if he suffered from deafness as well as poor eyesight, though York doubted it, Bishop Pecock went blandly on,“… how to close the whole matter with his grace of York cleared of the charges that I believe have already begun to spread through the palace, without making obvious what truly occurred?”
He ended on a question spread with seeming innocence among Suffolk, Ayscough, Moleyns, and the other lords, leaving it for Ayscough to say with forceful calm, “An excellent point, well taken. I think we should adjourn, though, for a time and take it up later, when we’ve all had time to think on it. Agreed?” he added at Suffolk, who said quickly, “Yes. Yes, I think so. This is definitely something we should take time to think on. My lords, until later?”
He was rising as he said it and on his own way out before anyone else was fully on their feet. Less hurriedly but no less firmly closing off the possibility of further talk, Ayscough and Moleyns followed him, and shortly, after a brief exchange of words with Buckingham, Cromwell, and Stourton to no particular purpose, York was alone with the Bishop of Saint Asaph’s, the two of them still seated, regarding each other along the table in a full silence that finally ended with Bishop Pecock saying with soft, apologizing sadness, “There’s nothing to tie them decisively to your man’s death. You understand that, yes?”
“Yes,” York agreed. While there was enough in all that Bishop Pecock had brought forward to discredit the letter, there was no way at all to bring Davydd’s murder home to anyone— neither those who had planned it nor the men who had done it for them.
“It’s your name must needs be fully cleared now, my lord, lest the taint of Moleyns’s charges against you stick despite the facts being disproved. Not that they’re actually Moleyns’s charges against you. My lords of Suffolk and Salisbury have a large or larger hand in them, no doubt. It was simply that Moleyns has been most lately in Normandy, making it most reasonable to use his name in this, here and now. Therefore it’s for him to refute what’s said against you in his name, and from what little I’ve known of him, being myself but these two years a bishop and of the royal council but never of the most inner circles…
“Raynold,” York said.
Bishop Pecock broke off, blinked, gathered himself, and said, admirably to the point for a change, “Moleyns has no courage in himself. Present his charges against you in writing to King Henry. Forced to face you openly, Moleyns will dodge like a hunted hare.”
York slowly nodded, seeing his point and that Suffolk and Bishop Ayscough would not say anything for risk of showing their own part in the matter too openly.
“But Davydd’s death…” York said and stopped, frustr
ated.
“There’s no way to bring anyone to trial for it that I can see,” Bishop Pecock said with the clear feeling that if he could not see a way, there must not be one. “Countering their intents against you is the most retribution there can be.”
Again York slowly nodded agreement. As vengeance went, it wasn’t enough but it would have to be. They were stopped and he was safe.
For now.
Until they moved against him again.
Or he moved against them.
Author’s Note
Of the named characters here, only Davydd ap Rhys is imagined. Both York’s challenge to Bishop Moleyns and Moleyns’s gibbered protest of innocence are on record. It was very few years afterward that Suffolk, Moleyns, and Ayscough were all murdered within a few months of each other. It was seven years more before Bishop Pecock proved too clever for other men’s good and was brought down by the court faction who replaced them. Three years after that the Duke of York was killed in battle.
Plucking a Mandrake
Clayton Emery
The hunter’s ears pricked to the gabble of ducks and bate of wings. From under an old blanket stuck full of sweet flag and canary grass, he watched the flock jitter across the sunset: teals, mallards, pintails, and fat graylag geese.
All afternoon Robin Hood had lain sopping wet amid tussocks of reeking marsh under his blind. With the caution of a hungry man, he nocked a bird arrow with steel spines like a hedgehog’s. As he’d guessed, the weary ducks dropped toward this pond, for it was sheltered from the north wind, removed from foxes and badgers, and warmed by the southern sun. Slowly, Robin shrugged the itchy blanket from his shoulders, came to one knee, drew as he rose—
—and jumped at a cry of “Yah yah yah!”
Ducks exploded off the water, groping for sky, colliding and dodging and quacking. With his eye on the graylags, the outlaw loosed. Steel tines ripped the female’s breast and she tumbled. Within seconds he dropped five more birds, but he’d hoped for twice that.
Cursing, Robin pushed through reeds. What bastardly fool blackguard had rousted his birds with that idiot croak?
He stopped. Dying ducks and feathers dotted the pond. Amidst them sloshed a bedraggled stick-man in a filthy smock and matted hair and beard. He seized a dying duck, stretched the neck, and bit to suck heart’s blood.
Shocked, angered, and disgusted, Robin shouted, “Drop that, varlet! Tis mine!”
The man crouched, cringing, his mouth smeared with blood and feathers, eyes vacant. Robin saw a rude cross stitched to his smock: a cure for madness. The fool swatted water at Robin, hooting, “Yah, yah!” Clutching the duck, he floundered out of the pond and scuttled up the wooded slope toward the village.
Swearing, teeth chattering, Robin slogged through icy water to retrieve his ducks. Piercing the webbing on a string, he trudged up a twisted path between trees. He’d lay a few stripes on that madman. Even a dog knew better than to steal a man’s game.
But shooting ducks was foolish, he decided: gigging hooks or drowning nets would gather more sooner. He needed many ducks. With Easter past and May Day looming, winter apples and rye and salt pork and herring were all eaten, and famine stalked the land. Food was so scarce in the Greenwood, he’d dispersed his band until fatter times. Not that that was why he hunted so far from home.
Muttering, dodging branches, stumbling over roots as dusk fell, absorbed, Robin bumped into a pair of dangling feet. In horror he snatched a handful of grass to scrub his face, then crossed himself repeatedly.
The dead man hung from an elm. Shrunken to a skeleton, neck stretched like a sausage, skin curdled a moldy gray, his lips were cracked, and his eyes picked out by crows and sparrows. The sockets glared at Robin in accusation.
Snatching his bow and birds, Robin Hood dashed up the trail toward the village.
SKEGBY MOOR WAS PONDS and fingers and rills and marsh and tall grass and brambles. Above the moor on low mounds rambled the village of Skegby, thirty cottages linked by muddy tracks and bridges of fallen trees. A fief of Tevershalt, a manor in the north, Skegby was old, squirreled away like a motte-and-bailey castle in the dark days of raids by blue-painted demons. The occupants spoke in canted words and archaic idioms and had gaped at Robin and Marian as if they were elephants from Egypt.
Yet the wattle-and-daub cottages were neat, the gardens and patchwork fields tended. The air was ripe from privies and pigs, yeast from the alehouse, coal smoke from the smithy, and incense from the chapel. On the outskirts stood the cottage of a wise woman, or witch. Robin Hood stopped running at her door.
The cottage was buried under vines and rosebushes, lapped on all sides by a garden like a spring tide. Bees bumbled at a hive, two brown goats rooted through chaff, and chickens scratched for weevils. Indoors was just as crowded. Robin ducked hanging herbs. The only furniture was a plank table crowded with pestles and bowls and pots, a pair of stools, and a pallet that unrolled for a bed. A white cat licked its paws by the hearth.
Fitful rushlight surrounded Marian’s dark head like a halo. She was dressed like Robin in winter-brown shirt and trousers and greased deerhide boots. The witch was barrel-round in a faded red gown and kirtle. A headscarf made her chapped cheeks rounder. Her name was Rocana, an old name Robin had never heard before.
“What’s wrong, Rob?” Marian asked. “Why do you pant so?”
“Dead man.” The outlaw gulped air. “On the path at the bottom of the hill. Hanged. Walked right into him.”
“Aye, a sad place to hang a man.” Rocana’s eyes crinkled in sympathy. At the fireplace, she turned turnips buried in dock leaves and ashes. “But that elm is traditional. I’m sorry, I should have warned you. Ducks and a goose! Lovely!”
Robin shucked his sopping clothes and hung them near the fire, then cleared a spot on the table for the ducks. Fingering a diamond on a hen mallard’s wing, Marian recited, “ ‘Touch blue and your wish will come true.” “
They lopped off heads and winkled out innards while Robin got his breath back. “What was he hanged for? Who is he—or was he?”
“Ingram. Our local rake. Fathered half the bastards in the parish. A poacher of sheep. The hills are full of deer and the moor of ducks and eels, but Ingram wanted mutton. And I’d cook it for him!” Rocana hooted. “But that half-Irish beast, Fedelm, the bailiff, finally caught him. He always danced the Jack in the Green, too. Don’t know who’ll do’t this year.”
“It’s almost May Day, isn’t it?” Robin said. The first of May meant festivity, when a man donned the Jack in the Green, a cone of wicker and leaves for the forest spirit, the mythical tree man. Escorted by Green Men in face paint and leaves, and Morris dancers with sticks, and doggers with swords, the Jack would caper while people danced after it, till the Jack was felled with swords to die and rise again, to show spring had arrived. It was Robin’s favorite holiday, and he was suddenly homesick for the Greenwood.
Marian asked, “How long must he hang there?”
“Till he’s ripe and falls. Like a pheasant.”
“We’ll have to tell our cousin, Will Scarlett. He’s gallows fodder, too.”
Robin carried guts to the back door to pitch them on the midden. A snuffling at the stoop jarred him. “What the hell?”
On hands and knees, the madman from the pond lapped from a wooden bowl.
“That’s just Serle,” Rocana called. “He drinks the milk we put out for the wee folk. They don’t seem to mind.”
Robin stepped around the madman, pitched the guts, and wiped his hands on mint leaves. Serle scuttled off. The outlaw huffed. Every village had an idiot: even he had Much the Miller’s Son. Returning to pluck ducks, he asked, “What was Series offense, that God punished him so?”
Rocana seared duck breasts in a kettle, then added water from a red clay ewer. “I’ll stew ‘em to go farther. Serle abused his family. After a pot of ale he’d see in his poor wife and children all the demons of Hell. He pickled his brain. Now he’s one with the beasts, and may God
bless us all, I say.”
“Beasts,” Robin groused. “Better we lived like beasts. They follow God’s will without questioning. Or meddling.”
Marian sniffed. “Rocana says we needs stay a few days more.”
“As you wish, honey,” Robin sighed. “T’will let me lay in more ducks. If we can keep—Serle?—clear of the marshes.”
“We can.” The witch plucked herbs from the sheaves overhead and crumbled them in the stew. “I have a special way with him.”
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