The Scandal of the Skulls

by Cassandra Clark

  He shook the rain from off the shoulders of a grey cloak the way a dog, emerging from a pond, shakes off water droplets. He kept his hood up.

  ‘By St Thomas!’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s enough to freeze your bollocks off out there. Call this April? More like November.’

  The tavern-keeper remained po-faced. ‘I have a remedy especially for you, sir.’ He indicated the range of barrels along the wall.

  ‘I’ll have a stoup of your best brew then, master. These monks of Sarum are canny brewers.’

  The tavern-keeper patted the barrel nearest and cocked one eyebrow at him. ‘The usual?’

  With his back to the rest of the drinkers, the newcomer slapped a silver penny onto the counter but before the tavern-keeper could reach for it the stranger placed one large hand over it. ‘First, a question.’

  ‘Try me.’ The tavern-keeper’s expression did not alter.

  Before the man replied, Hildegard saw him flick a glance from under his hood at the muffled towns folk, and give a shrug. With her own hood up she busied herself in re-knotting the lace of her leather scrip. Apparently judging himself and the tavern-keeper to be alone, he leaned towards him and asked in an undertone, ‘Has a woman been in here?’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Know what one of them is?’

  ‘I do, friend. And I wouldn’t be without mine.’

  ‘Well, has there?’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘Tall, skinny, eyes like sea glass.’

  ‘Glass? You mean you can see through them?’

  ‘Yes, and you feel she can see through you.’

  ‘Most uncomfortable, sir. Why would you search out one such as that?’

  ‘Not uncomfortable at all. In fact - ’ the stranger lowered his voice and Hildegard, interest aroused, leaned forward as if her only concern was with re-lacing her boots. ‘I would say it makes her rather more challenging,’ she heard him say, ‘and for that reason I would say - exciting.’

  ‘Each to his own,’ replied the tavern-keeper. ‘Now, speaking for myself, I prefer a woman who - ’

  ‘I fear we’re getting off the topic.’ The stranger moved the hand concealing the penny in inch closer to the tavern-keeper and fixed him with a look.

  The taverner affected little interest in the coin and began to busy himself with the spigot of the ale barrel, murmuring, ‘As you know we get plenty of women in here, praise St Thomas, so tell me more, if you will.’

  ‘A tough, tall, troublesome wench, not above thirty or maybe thirty-two? Or even,’ he added, musing, ‘even older, for I doubt she’s above witchery to increase her allure.’ He chuckled. ‘Despite that she’s nobody’s fool. She’s a woman who’ll give as good as she gets. A wild woman when roused but a lamb and most peaceable when the world runs right.’

  ‘With so much detail, this is your own absconding woman we’re talking about, I surmise?’ He slapped the brimming tankard onto the counter.

  The customer did not so much as glance at the ale set before him. ‘She’s not a woman to belong to any man. She’s her own woman. A femme sole. A mystery woman, one with questions about her, about who she is and where she’s from. She has no qualms about wearing a nun’s habit either, if the occasion warrants. Above all, friend, arises the question concerning her reason for being here in your fair city? You understand me?’

  ‘A watchful and observing woman, is she?’

  ‘Very definitely the spying type.’

  ‘And in these times, therefore, dangerous.’

  ‘Undoubtedly - for anyone with something to hide.’

  ‘Then all men must fear her.’ The taverner smiled. ‘I believe, sir, that should she walk in here I’d spy her spying me. Praise be, to my knowledge she has not so honoured us and does not know my wife.’

  ‘If and when she does come in as well she might - ’ he lifted his hand from the coin on the counter and pushed it across, ‘there’ll be more where that comes from. You know me and you might remember her name. She travels as Mistress York.’

  Hildegard froze in astonishment. She pulled her hood further down over her face.

  How could anyone here know that name? Unless, she thought with dismay, they had knowledge of her recent past. The feeling of unease as she and Gregory had travelled through the forest returned. It had meant something after all. They had been followed. That fellow at the alehouse in Lepe taunting the soothsayer to draw out his affinity - he had worn grey. She took a quick look at the grey cloak of the stranger now. It could easily be one and the same.

  She waited to hear what he would say next.

  The tavern-keeper was gazing at the coin but did not pick it up. ‘It’s going to cost you to pay every ale-man in Salisbury in pursuit of this woman. Let’s hope she’s worth it when you finally apprehend her. But tell me, how shall I redeem my reward for this information when I obtain it?’

  ‘If you don’t see me in here, send to me at Clarendon Palace.’

  The man swivelled on his heel, his ale untouched, and walked out.

  After a considered pause, the tavern-keeper came across to Hildegard. With a backward glance towards the door, he murmured, ‘That’s a rare and oblique fellow. Did you hear all that?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘He’s the type to wield a knife if he thought to force his point of view - and bribery failed him.’

  ‘My opinion also, master.’

  ‘Whether you know him or not - and I do - I suggest you go out through the back - unless you wish to make my earning of his tainted coin too easy?’

  For a brief moment Hildegard lifted the tip of her hood to reveal the eyes the visitor had described as sea glass, a trait the tavern-keeper himself had noticed as soon as she walked in accompanied by a tall, rangy-looking monk with a sword ill-concealed beneath his riding cloak.

  ‘Further, I suggest you keep well out of his way if you can, Mistress York, if that’s your name.’ He glanced pointedly at the small wooden cross just visible in the opening of her cloak. It was the only visible evidence that she was a monastic.

  She pushed it out of sight. ‘I shall heed you’re advice. My gratitude, master.’ She rose to her feet, ‘and my thanks also for your good ale.’

  As Hildegard walked away through the rain, she was puzzled. She recalled the jostling men on the quayside at Lepe, the crowd in the ale house, the slam of a door at the refuge in the Forest last night. And now, here was someone asking for her by a name she had not used for over a year. It was her alias when on secret work for the king. What could this stranger want of her? Worse was the fact that he knew of her alias. It was alarming. No-one outside the secret world of intelligence should know it. In fact, the last time she had used it was when she went to Santiago de Compostela to light a hundred candles for the soul of her murdered lover, Rivera.

  At that time an assumed identity had been the safest way to travel. It had also been a sign of her uncertainty about her vows, one of which she had broken over and over again without remorse.

  But who else could know the name Mistress York? The rest of the pilgrims on that long journey, her travel companions, had known it, taking at face value the widow from Yorkshire, but that was all they knew. There was one here in England, however, a man she had been forced to trust with her life. He knew. But that was the sum of it.

  It can only be him, she thought now with a jolt of fear and rage. He has betrayed me. And he is here. I have seen him. I knew I had made no mistake.

  It had been a strange and unexpected encounter taking place soon after she attended prime in the cathedral this very day of her arrival.

  She had been unable to believe her eyes. To meet someone here in Salisbury from that ill-fated autumn in London was too astonishing. Even now, as she thought about it, doubts crowded her mind. Surely it was out of the question that he, of all people, should have mentioned her name to anyone? He certainly knew it, though. It had been his job to know everything relating to the safety of King Richard.

  It had been d
uring the fateful October parliament last year, a desperate period when, with France on the brink of invasion, the barons, led by Thomas Woodstock and the earl of Warwick had made their first attempt to impeach King Richard’s trusted chancellor, Michael de la Pole. A trumped up charge had been levied which de la Pole had easily defeated as the Parliamentary Rolls showed. But it was clear the charge had been meant as an underhand threat directed at the king himself. The man she had met by chance in the cloister that morning, like a ghost from the past, had been in Westminster at the dark heart of events during that fateful autumn.

  He was the only man in England, apart from his deputy, who knew of her alias.

  His name was Richard Medford, one-time Head of the Signet Office, a master spy in the service of the king.

  FOUR

  Full of rage at the thought that Medford had been so incautious as to betray her identity she crossed the Cathedral Close in the pelting rain, determined to confront him.

  She ran over the earlier meeting, if that’s what it was, when she had noticed one of the canons walking towards her in the cloister. His head was bowed, both hands thrust into his sleeves, and he appeared deep in thought.

  At first she had not recognised him.

  Black, unkempt vestments flapped around him and she would not have looked twice except that when they drew level he stopped dead in front of her and stared with such open-mouthed astonishment that she too jerked to a halt. Peering into his face, shadowed by his hood, only then did she realise who he was.

  The last time they met he had been in the ascendant as King Richard’s trusted royal clerk. As he stared at her, his face blanched. He glanced from side to side then put a finger to his lips.

  His fear was so palpable and out of keeping with his former dash and courage it sent shock waves of alarm through her.

  How times had changed while she had been in Avignon, she thought as she stared at him. That he should come to this.

  A wasted, frail, somewhat ethereal figure now, his black cassock hung off his skeletal frame, his face haggard, his dark eyes, once bright and penetratingly intelligent, now darker and emptied of hope. She imagined the horrors he must have seen in these last few months.

  Without speaking he had glanced wildly round again as if suspecting a trap and then walked hurriedly away.

  Before she could call out or catch up with him he had vanished through a door in the wall. She heard a bolt being drawn.

  She felt as if she had seen a wraith.

  He will not get away a second time, she vowed now as she shook the rain off her cloak and pushed in through the west door.

  It was near the end of tierce. She took up a position outside the chapel and waited until everyone started to come out. When she saw Medford she stepped firmly into his path. Everybody flowed round them and she waited until they were alone before speaking.

  ‘Greetings, Mr Medford.’

  ‘Hildegard of Meaux,’ he croaked. ‘Domina? Is it really you?’ He reached out. Finding she was real, he gripped her feverishly by one arm. ‘I saw you earlier. I could not believe my eyes. You! Here, of all places! What on earth brings you to Salisbury?’

  His lips were white and dry and his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. Before she could reply he demanded, ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘Fear not, Mister Medford. No-one sent me. I recently arrived back in England and intend to stay in Salisbury for a few days.’

  ‘No-one sent you?’

  ‘Why should anyone do that?’

  ‘No matter. It is all disaster.’

  Gone was the self-confidence, the swagger of youth, the aura of power that comes from proximity to royalty.

  ‘Have you been at the Lent parliament?’ she asked, searching for some explanation for his changed condition. ‘The one folk are calling The Merciless?’

  ‘You left the country quickly enough when de la Pole was impeached,’ he parried.

  ‘I was in Westminster as assistant to the Archbishop of York. You know that. When Alexander Neville had done with my services I returned to my priory in Holderness. My leaving was nothing to do with poor Michael de la Pole. I was then sent to Avignon from whence I’ve but shortly returned.’

  He backed away and his voice held a note of suspicion. ‘Why to Avignon of all places? To confound Pope Urban in Rome and offer your prayers to the anti-pope Clement instead?’

  ‘You know me. Have you forgotten so much?’

  He offered a quick, excusing gesture. ‘No one is to be trusted these days.’

  ‘So I learn. A stranger is asking around the taverns for a Mistress York.’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘How could anyone not in that Westminster circle know that name?’

  ‘You must have been seen somewhere.’

  ‘Not you, then?’

  ‘Not me.’ He gave her a derisory glance. ‘I preserve some of my old discretion, domina. But tell me, you must have heard about the dire straits into which our king is fallen?’

  ‘We heard rumours in Avignon about Mayor Brembre. As soon as we touched English soil we learned of the unjust fate of the rest of them. Based on false evidence, we understand.’

  ‘Mostly no evidence at all.’

  ‘So many seem to have been executed for nothing more than the crime of supporting the king.’

  ‘That is so,’ he replied tersely.

  Too late she remembered Hubert’s advice to hold her tongue but she was in too deep now. And anyway, Medford, above anyone, had demonstrated his loyalty to King Richard.

  And yet, here he was. He had survived the barbaric cull of Richard’s supporters.

  ‘I congratulate you on not being one of those held in the Tower, tortured, led out to Tower Green or worse, to Tyburn to be executed. We can scarcely believe what we’ve been hearing,’ she finished, rather weakly.

  He gave her a long, studying look that inched chillingly over her face. She remembered of old the treachery behind that look.

  Eventually he said, ‘The trials are a complete farce based on nothing but the malice of Woodstock.’ Then he gave a hollow laugh. ‘We must now remember to call Thomas of Woodstock “his grace, the duke of Gloucester.” Duke! That barbarian! And he’s still not satisfied.’

  ‘Isn’t it ended then?’

  He shook his head. ‘Woodstock and Arundel are going to see this through to its violent and bitter end. Nobody is willing or able to stop them.’

  ‘Have all the king’s supporters been frightened into silence?’

  ‘That, or executed. To condemn the Mayor of London, dauntless Nick Brembre, they had to go to the vote three times before one casual remark by the Recorder was used to condemn him. That’s justice in England now. I could tell you more that would make you weep through all eternity.’

  ‘We heard one of his enemies exulting over Brembre’s fate when we were in Avignon.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  Seeing no harm in naming him she told him. ‘Sir John Fitzjohn.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  She thought he might be lying but explained anyway. ‘He’s a Lancastrian, a vassal of Thomas Swynford - ’ she nearly choked on the name, recovered, and added, ‘who is presumably an ally of Woodstock, the new duke, as is Swynford’s lord, Harry Bolingbroke.’

  ‘What were Lancastrians doing in Avignon? Buying arms from Pope Clement?’

  ‘Maybe. Or more likely purchasing an alliance with him in some other way.’

  In the old days Medford would have picked up on that remark at once. Now it was different. ‘I was in Westminster,’ he muttered hoarsely. ‘I witnessed Woodstock’s revenge. The horror of it. Good Queen Anne two hours on her knees to him, pleading for Simon Burley’s life. Poor Burley. They’ll get him eventually but even Woodstock knows he has to dress his spite in the cloak of legality. That they can even threaten to butcher Sir Simon Burley of all men makes a mockery of every decent human endeavour! Did Burley’s valour at Poitiers mean nothing to th
em? There were riots of protest in Kent last week but they were put down in as brutal a manner as you would expect. Many summary hangings took place just as in the days after the Great Revolt.’

  He seemed to be staring at something far away and terrible and his grip on her arm was like a claw. ‘Why did I survive, you ask?’ He stared intently into her face.

  She could not reply but waited for him to continue.

  ‘A valid question, domina. I know you will want an answer. It was not through my own efforts. I escaped death only because of my clerical privileges. Thanks to the Great Charter. But for that it would have been me, too, to lose my head to the axeman. And what delight they would have taken,’ he added with bitterness. ‘They’ve destroyed everyone close to dear Dickon. He and his sweet queen have no-one now. Good Queen Anne, the Londoners were calling her when she requested an end to the executions after the Great Revolt. Where are their voices now?’ His voice rose. ‘Fear has silenced them. The king and queen are quite alone.’

  ‘They must have allies - ?’

  ‘No-one dare speak out. King Richard lives under the threat of assassination. He and Anne are little more than children.’ His voice broke. He is not much older than them himself, Hildegard thought, looking at him and feeling something like compassion stir for the broken man in front of her.

  ‘I am sorry to hear of your own ordeal, Medford. Your loyalty to the king was proved at the October parliament when Woodstock and Arundel so ruthlessly pursued de la Pole.’

  ‘You played your part then. I asked much of you. I fear I betrayed your lover. I hope there has been no lasting harm?’

  She stared at him. Eventually she managed a reply. ‘No harm to me, apart from nightmares. It was Rivera who paid the price.’

  Medford looked as guilt-ridden as his conscience allowed. He had been instrumental in the spy Rivera falling into the hands of Thomas Swynford and a howling mob of Londoners out for revenge. Goaded by the militia they dispensed with the need for a trial and with only the rage of the mob in control, Rivera had been beheaded in the street.