‘Yesterday then?“ Arteys challenged.
Tom and Hal had traded looks compounded of guilt and smothered laughter before Tom said, “Urn, yesterday, yes. There’s this house outside the east gate, see…” and Hal had finished, “The thing is, we didn’t spend time in Bury yesterday.”
And this afternoon they had been waiting for him to come back before they did anything. By then it had been too close to dark for anyone to set off with word to Gloucester but they had decided that, come morning, Hal would go south by the way he was expected to come, and Arteys and Tom would spend the day in Bury, learning what they could. So Hal had ridden out at first light and Arteys and Tom had spent the forenoon going together from tavern to tavern, alehouse to alehouse, cookstall to cookstall, and back and forth from end to end of Bury’s two marketplaces until they were swilled full of ale and footsore with walking and not much better know-ledged than when they had started. Word was still running that Gloucester was coming with an army, that the men on Henow Heath had been summoned to protect the king against him, that the town gates might need to be shut at any time.
‘A pointless move, given the state of the town wall in most places,“ Tom had said glumly.
Then, at midday, word had started to spread, with much head-shaking and disgruntled laughter, that the men on Henow Heath had been unmustered at mid-morning.
‘Told to go home,“ one man was saying to another at the cookstall where Arteys and Tom were sharing a meat pie. ”Just like that. Told there was no more need of them, to clear out.“
‘Daft they were there at all,“ his companion had said. ”Only half as much paid them as promised, too, I heard.“
‘Why?“ Arteys had said to Tom as they moved on. ”Why send them all away before Gloucester even comes?“
‘Maybe Suffolk saw how idiot he was going to look, all those men at his back, when Gloucester rides in with only eighty or so?“
‘Why call them up at all?“
‘To scare people and turn them against Gloucester? Who knows? Come on. I want to sit down and let my feet pretend today didn’t happen.“
They had been almost back to St. Saviour’s when Sir Richard and Hal had ridden up beside them. They had met on the road, and although Hal had wanted him to turn back to warn Gloucester of what was happening at Bury, Sir Richard had wanted to see for himself how things were before he stirred up alarm and, “Now there’s no need,” he had said, sitting with his feet toward the fire in Gloucester’s bedchamber, where they could all talk privately together. “This kind of nonsense is what makes Suffolk a problem. His wits are quicker than his good sense. He thinks a thing and does it before he thinks it through. Leaps at the pretty bird before he sees there’s a thorn bush under it.”
‘How does he have so much power from the king then?“ Tom had grumbled.
‘King Henry became king when he was nine months old and was brought up being told what to do by whatever men were nearest around him. He’s used to it.“ Sir Richard had been more blunt about it than Arteys had ever heard anyone dare to be. ”Now Suffolk is nearest to him, and however poorly he thinks, Suffolk talks beyond ordinarily well. He’s talked himself into favor and no one’s been able to have him out of it. We can just be glad his latest idiot’s trick fell apart before it did harm. When he thinks straight, he knows he can’t touch Gloucester. Gloucester is the king’s uncle and heir. Now, where’s pen and ink? I have to send a message to Need-ham about tomorrow.“
He had, and this morning when they had ridden into Bury as the abbey bells were ringing to Prime, they had accordingly found Master Needham waiting for them outside the abbey gates and they had all ridden south together, in no haste about it because the farther out they rode, the farther back they would have to come after meeting Gloucester.
Arteys’ horse pulled at the reins, suggesting they could do more than amble. Arteys wished they could but returned the pull, telling there’d be no galloping this morning. Their duty was to come as gleaming-groomed as possible back into Bury St. Edmunds as part of Gloucester’s retinue, for everyone to see that Gloucester might be out of royal favor but still had power of his own and the royal pride of blood that was his right despite however many upstarts challenged it. Ahead, speaking of exactly that, Master Needham was asking Sir Richard, “Do you think a quieter in-coming might have been better advised, given the way things stand?”
Sir Richard shook his head against that. “I wouldn’t say so to Gloucester for any price. On the way from Wales he’s been saying he’s as royal as his nephew and why should he pretend he isn’t, just to satisfy ravens and kites like Beaufort, Suffolk, Dorset, Chichester, and Salisbury.”
‘He said that?“ Master Needham’s open dismay matched Arteys’ silent own. ”Not for anyone else but you to hear, I hope.“
‘For half the household in hall to hear.“
‘Blessed St. Edmund. If he’s coming with that turn °f mind, we’re in for it.“
‘We are,“ Sir Richard agreed grimly.
But his father’s humours could shift with the wind, Arteys told himself. By today, please God, he might well be ready again to be a humble petitioner of King Henry’s mercy for Lady Eleanor. Not that it would help him if whatever spies were in the household—and other lords had spies in Gloucester’s household as surely as he had spies in theirs—had sent word of his rashness on to whoever was paying them—Bishop Beaufort and Suffolk surely, Dorset very probably, and any other lords who saw Gloucester’s royal blood as a threat.
Arteys had sometimes—maybe, he suspected, more often than he admitted to himself—looked on his own share of royal blood as an ill jest, bastard as it was. But at least it was not—as his father’s was—a danger. In truth, looked at from one way, Arteys suddenly thought, his bastardy was his safety.
‘There!“ said Tom, from behind but more forward-looking than any of them just then. ”Foreriders!“
Indeed, ahead where the road curved into sight around a low-rolled shoulder of hill, three men in Gloucester’s livery colors were just riding into sight, a flare of scarlet against the winter-drab fields, one of them raising a thin traveling trumpet from where he had been carrying it poised like a baton on his hip to sound a frilled ta-rah as warning to clear the way.
In answer, Sir Richard rose in his stirrups and waved. Another of the foreriders waved back while behind him more of Gloucester’s men were coming into sight with the ducal banner of quartered scarlet and azure with gold lions and lilies and white border bold even under the dull sky. The knights and squires riding behind it matched it for colors in their reds, russets, yellows, greens, and blues, their horses as gaily harnessed, but Gloucester on his tall white palfrey outdoing them all in his ankle-long, full-cut, deep-pleated houpelande of the same strong azure as his royal banner, with miniver at collar, cuffs, and hem, and sleeves hanging halfway to the ground, his horse’s harness of scarlet-dyed leather hung with small, gold-shining bells.
‘Jesus have mercy,“ Master Needham breathed. ”There’s going to be nothing humble about his entry into Bury, is there?“
‘Not a thing,“ Sir Richard replied.
Gloucester, glowing-faced with the wind, greeted them warmly when they met, shaking hands with Sir Richard and Master Needham, saying, “Sir Richard. You didn’t freeze on the way, then?”
‘Not yet, my lord.“
‘Master Needham. I take it Bury St. Edmunds still stands?“
‘It still stands,“ Master Needham answered. ”But Suffolk has been making trouble.“
Gloucester dismissed Suffolk with a wave of his hand. “Suffolk is always making trouble. Let him wait until I have the king’s ear again and then we’ll see. Arteys.” He reached out in the same moment Arteys reached toward him, clasping each other’s right arm in greeting, Arteys surprised both at his own gladness and Gloucester’s open pleasure at seeing him. This was Gloucester as he had been in the best days Arteys had known him, warm with affection, wearing pride and confidence as familiarly as he wore
a cloak.
They rode on, Gloucester keeping Master Needham with him to tell how Parliament was going, Arteys and the others dropping back among the other riders, who all seemed to share their lord’s high spirits. Sir Richard, Tom, and Hal fell in with friends but Arteys dropped farther back until almost at the company’s end, keeping enough aside that no one tried to talk with him, his momentary gladness fading as abruptly as it had come. He wanted to believe with Gloucester that everything would go his way the next few days but a darkling feeling told him it would not. The feeling was so strong that when they were almost into Bury St. Edmunds, with the abbey’s sky-tall spire sharp against the gray-clouded sky above the low spread of houses outside of Southgate and Gloucester’s trumpeter ta-rahing their approach, a flurry of horsemen riding out through the gateway made him lay hand to his dagger hilt before he thought about it.
Immediately, glad his cloak had hidden the gesture, he let go again. Alertness rippled through the rest of the company but no alarm. There were only six mounted men coming toward them, and four of them, Arteys judged by their plainer clothing, were attendant on the other two, who wore surcoats parti-colored with King Henry’s livery of white and green and were mounted on horses too good for merely servants. They drew rein beside Gloucester’s foreriders and Gloucester drew rein where he was, stopping the riders behind him while his herald rode forward to meet the newcomers. Arteys would have ridden forward to Gloucester but the street was narrow between houses and people were beginning to gather, an excited running of Gloucester’s name among them and growing louder as more folk came out to join them, happy for a diversion.
Ahead of Arteys, a woman with a market basket on her arm called a question to Jenkin ap Rhys. Arteys heard neither what she said nor what Jenkin answered, but it was more probably his voice than his words that made her step hurriedly back from him and say something to the woman next to her and the people beyond her, because the next moment there was a rush of rising voices along the street. Arteys caught the words “Welsh” and “Wales,” saw a man spit at the ground, and remembered Sir Roger had advised Gloucester to take no Welshmen with him to Bury.
‘I’ve had more loyalty and better service out of them than from most Englishmen,“ Gloucester had said, stubborn.
Sir Roger had ignored that enlarging of the truth. “You know how the Welsh are looked on in England. They’re supposed to be half wild and wholly treacherous. It’ll do you no good with anyone to have an array of Welshmen with you.”
Arteys, used to it, had not thought about that until now but over half the riders were indeed Welsh and people were drawing back and pointing, heads coming together in quick talk. Even this far from Wales, where the Welsh wars had never come, there was dislike and distrust of Welshmen, and Sir Roger had been right. Gloucester would have been wiser not to bring them, or at least not so many.
The herald turned his horse and came back with the two surcoated riders to Gloucester. Arteys recognized them now, Sir John Stourton and Sir Thomas Stanley, both of King Henry’s household and, according to Gloucester, self-servers of the deepest sort. “They’d serve a bunion if they thought there was profit in it for them,” he had said once. “Well, maybe not Stourton. He has some honor in him. But Stanley? The most I’d trust him with is a rabid dog and then only if it promised to bite him.”
But Gloucester, when he was in the midst of a dislike, was given to over stating things that later he either unsaid or, more often, forgot he’d ever said at all. Presently he seemed, from what Arteys could see, to greet both knights cordially enough while they bowed deeply from their saddles to him. Nor did he seem disturbed by what-ever they then told him but nodded to it and answered with no sign of anger about him. Then, with more bows, they parted from him and rode back toward town, their four men parting to let them pass and falling in behind them while Gloucester signaled with a raised hand for his own men to ride on.
With the way already cleared for them, they rode into Southgate Street. More people were coming out to see them pass, the riders jostled into an even longer line along the narrowed way, with “Welsh” and “Wales” still running through the crowd but Gloucester’s name being said more strongly, more excitedly. Despite people might well be tired of lords after all the days of them displaying through the streets, people were leaning out at upper windows into the cold, waving and calling to Gloucester as he rode by, and he was raising a hand first to one side, then to the other, acknowledging them. He would be smiling, Arteys knew, pleased and loving the people back as strongly as they loved him. Whatever his quarrels with other nobles over the years, no one had forgotten he was still the last of the great King Henry the Fifth’s brothers and part of the days of glory in France.
The column rode into the marketplace outside the abbey gates where Arteys and the others had met Master Needham at dawn. In late morning it was far more full of people, most of them leaving off whatever they were doing to watch Gloucester ride past. More people were crowding full the abbey’s gateways, and although here among the followers of so many other lords the cheering had fallen away, a few bold voices called out, “God bless the duke!” in despite of all, and maybe in godly answer, as the head of the retinue passed the abbey’s great gateway, a narrow streak of sunlight broke slantwise through the wind-driven clouds. Pale and moving swiftly across the marketplace, it caught the lions and lilies of Gloucester’s banner to sudden gold fire before it was as suddenly gone, swept over the abbey wall and away on the sharp gray wind.
‘There’s some would say that was a sign of some saint’s favor on his grace,“ Sir Roger Chamberlain said at Arteys’ side.
He had been riding back along the column, closing up the line into better order, and now swung his horse around to ride beside Arteys, who was glad of it and answered, “St. Edmund himself, maybe.”
‘May be, God willing. How have things been here?“
That might have been an ordinary asking but a tightness in his voice suggested otherwise and Arteys, glad to be able to say it, answered, “Not good. Have you heard what Suffolk was at?”
‘Sir Richard was telling me of it just now. If I understand a-right, it came out of nowhere and went away as quickly?“
‘Yes. We think maybe Suffolk found out Gloucester was only bringing eighty men and saw how foolish he would look, meeting him with an army.“
‘The question is, why did Suffolk ever think Gloucester was bringing an army? Or was he just trying to raise dread in people?“ Sir Roger shook his head. ”Either way, he misplanned again. I wonder what else he’s maybe misplanned?“
‘What did Stourton and Stanley want?“
‘They brought King Henry’s word that, the day being so bitter cold, Gloucester need not attend on him now but should ride on to St. Saviour’s and his dinner and come to him later, at better leisure.“
‘That was graciously done.“
‘I just hope gracious is all it was,“ Sir Roger said, then ruefully half-smiled and added, ”No. There’s no fault in the king that way. It was gracious. I’m uneasy but probably for no good reason. How have you been?“ Arteys thought about it before echoing, ”Uneasy.“ They rode on side by side in companionable silence the few minutes more to St. Saviour’s, where Gloucester was met by Master Grene with word that dinner was ready, if it so pleased his grace. Gloucester declared it pleased him very well, horses were hurriedly given over to scurrying stablehands, and Arteys sped with other squires to scrub their hands and smooth their hair and race to the great hall while Gloucester and the rest were yet being sorted to their places.
Gloucester was at the high table on the dais, of course, with Sir John Cheney and Sir Roger to his right, and Master Needham and Master Grene to his left. The rest of the company had place at the two long tables facing each other down the hall’s length and, to begin, squires and servitors with linen towels over one arm carried basins of warmed rose water from man to man, for them to wash and dry their hands. Arteys’ place was at the high table and Gloucester smi
led at him over the basin and made a little flip of the fingers to spatter water lightly at his face. Arteys grinned and slightly shifted the basin, as if threatening to slosh its water over the edge at him, an old game between them, then straightened his face and moved to Sir John.
After that came the ceremony of serving the meal, something Arteys always enjoyed because however harried and harassed things might be in the kitchen, butlery, and pantry, with dishes being served forth and orders flying as to who should take what to where—and why wasn’t the venison ready—and where were the pears in wine syrup—and had someone taken the fish tart to the high table, they shouldn’t have yet—the moment he stepped over the threshold into the great hall bearing the broad serving platter or deep bowl or whatever was in his charge for each remove, everything took on order and grace, from his walk up the hall to the setting of the food before Gloucester to the serving of it to his withdrawal down the hall to bring whatever came next. For that while, everything he needed to do and be was ordered and certain, his place among everyone without question or doubt.
Today the meal went its way through its three removes of four dishes each, with wine in plenty along the way and Gloucester’s pleasure in it so open that his laughter spread merriment along the high table to either side of him. The final dish—a petypernaunt of ginger, dates, and raisins in sweet pastry—had been served and eaten and Arteys was at one end of the high table, refilling Sir Roger’s goblet with a red wine, when a sudden rise of voices from the screens passage to the outer door to the foreyard turned everyone’s heed toward the far end of the hall, without even time to begin asking each other what was happening before perhaps a dozen men in royal livery shoved past servants and into the hall. Moving swiftly, they made a double line between the tables the hall’s length, from the door almost to the dais, ignoring the babble of questions and demands rising all around them.
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