When I left the building with the money carefully concealed inside my cloak I made my way back to the lodgings. The lights were still on in the kitchen as the last dishes and wines cups were washed and dried. Soon they would all be in bed, ready for an early rising. I stood back for the wood yard boys wheeling in a barrow filled high with wood, twigs, faggots and talshides. Already the fires would have been banked down, but this wood would spend the night in the warm kitchen and would be ready to catch fire from the smouldering embers in the morning when the first person up would resurrect the fires.
And, of course, one barrow would be wheeled into the hall so that the dry, warm wood was ready to kindle a fire in good time before the morning dinner.
The sky was clear of clouds when I came out into the Base Court, but it was not cold and there was a light south easterly wind blowing which would prevent a frost next morning. Ideal riding conditions! I tapped quietly on the door of my lodging and went in to give Padraig some last-minute instructions and then to send him off to bed.
I would not sleep tonight. I had things to do, plans to make and three documents to write. The first was a letter to Piers Rua, Earl of Ormond. The second one would be quite short, a page in length with plenty of room for the signature and for the name of the witness. The last, meant for the perusal of the sharpest brain in Europe, needed to be carefully thought out. Not long, this man had little time at his disposal, but every word had to count, every piece of evidence had to be listed. It would be important. He would be the first to judge the case on the evidence provided and I would work on it as if it were my first law case.
17
The sun had not yet risen when I slipped quietly out of the lodgings by its back door. It was a bitterly cold morning with a sharp easterly wind, but no sign of frost and my double layer of cloaks saved me from shivering. The moon was setting in the western half of the cloud-free sky. The River Thames was a pale grey and a couple of white swans rocked on its surface. There was no sign of anyone there. The cardinal’s barge was moored to the pier and a few small skiffs were tied up beside them. I looked up at the ‘towers and bowers’, as poor John Skelton expressed it. There were no lights other than the usual night lights burning. It did not look as though any of the guests had yet risen. I breathed a prayer to the gods that all would remain undisturbed for the next hour or so and then crossed the carpenters’ court and made my way out.
I went first of all to the stables. The cart, with its quiet burden of poor Colm’s corpse, stood in one corner, its shafts facing the door. Everything seemed to be ready for a quick exit. One lad only was there, rapidly tacking up one of our horses. I had promised a large bribe to him last night and now gave a nod of approval at his punctuality and tucked a sovereign into his hand, carefully pulling the hood of cloak over my head before going near to him.
‘We’ll soon be out. Remember, not a word to be spoken,’ I whispered before I left. I did not go back to the lodgings, but passed down the narrow lane to the paved passageway.
I had never been in the kitchen as early as this. The first thing that struck me was how tall it was. The walls stretched to a good twenty feet above my head, and the oak branched ceiling, normally shrouded in a mist of steam and smoke, showed every detail of intricate carpentry with its rounded arches and its carved bunches of corn. The whole place seemed incredibly large and I realised that on any other occasion when I came in that there were innumerable cooks and boys everywhere, turning spits, chopping vegetables, beating eggs, stirring sauces. This morning there was just one man in this immense space.
‘I’ve never seen you alone in here before,’ I said to Master Beasley.
‘You’re early. I was just getting some food ready for your journey.’ He had greeted me in his usual friendly fashion and now added that everyone would miss me. I saw that he had a couple of pairs of leather paniers, easy to tie onto the horses, already stuffed with some bread and he was now wrapping a chunk of cold pie in a napkin. A basket of hard-boiled eggs was steaming gently on the table.
‘I remembered that you said you were always the first up.’
‘Been up for a good hour.’ He was still friendly and unconcerned. ‘I like this place first thing in the morning. It reminds me of my young days, in my father’s alehouse. It was just me, then. Just me, moving around, cooking, tasting, not too many orders to give, a couple of boys to turn the spit …’
‘Rather different here.’ I had more important things to talk about, but nevertheless, welcomed his reminiscences. ‘Big numbers to cater for here,’ I said, walking across the kitchen and going to stand beside the chopping block. He had a knife in his hand, but it was an ordinary table knife. The really sharp one, the knives that could cut through raw flesh, were all present, stuck into the leather holster on the wall above the chopping block, ranged in size order, graded according to width rather than length.
‘You’re right,’ he said emphatically. ‘Nothing but numbers, these days. One hundred, two hundred messes to cater for. A man begins to lose his interest in trying new recipes, devising new subtleties. And all these clerks, driving you out of your mind, accounting for this and for that. If they could do it, they would make you account for every drop of oil that you used.’ He sounded bitter and angry, but he handled the eggs carefully, rolling them into the folds of another napkin and inserting them into one of the satchels.
‘Whereas in the past, I suppose that it was always a part of the cook’s perks to be able to dispose of excess stores.’ I had been amazed to find that the cook, who managed such a huge staff and produced such tons of well-cooked food, was paid less than fourteen sovereigns a year, when Francis Bryan had received twice that amount as a present from the king after a particularly splendid jousting display. No doubt it had been understood in the past that they made some money on the side.
I had made the remark about perks as lightly as I could, but I saw him look at me sharply. I had to go ahead. The crackle of the piece of folded paper in my pocket reminded me of what I had to do.
‘I think you were in the habit of disposing of anything that you had not used up,’ I said. ‘You probably had a buyer on the docks and a full barrel could easily be sent back with the empty barrels of wine, oil, butter, anchovies, anything that you had not used up. It became a little more difficult in the past few years when the new system was set up by the cardinal, but you still managed it,’ I said. ‘The skiff by the fish pond helped, didn’t it and I suppose you had some sort of agreement with the ferrymen, didn’t you?’
It would not have been anything unusual at one stage. I knew that James’s father, Piers Rua, always swore that the sailors took a ten per cent by way of a levy on all of the goods that were imported into New Ross harbour in Wexford and that the carriers took another ten per cent. And judging by the poor food that we were served, probably the cook took his share of the good wine, of the tasty cuts of beef and left the poor stuff for us.
Nevertheless, the cardinal, with his genius for organisation, was trialling a scheme to stop all of this waste at Hampton Court. If it was a success, and it looked as though it might be saving quite a lot of money, then he was going to persuade the king to work the same system in his ten palaces. Then any such thefts would be punished with the utmost severity, perhaps with the loss of a hand.
‘Edmund Pace, the instructor of the wards, loved to ferret out secrets and to blackmail anyone who had a secret. He discovered yours, didn’t he?’ I said and saw his florid face turn white. He said nothing, but closed up the last of the four satchels, buckling it with care. I watched him intently, almost as though he were a wild animal who would spring, but he didn’t make a move towards the knives. He glanced once at the door, but it was safely closed. It would be some time yet before the boys who tended the fires would arrive to heap on them the warmed wood from the barrows and to wheel one of the barrows into the great hall to resurrect its fire before dinner at half past ten. ‘That was why he died,’ I added.
‘I don’t kn
ow what you are talking about; the man was killed during the pageant on Shrove Tuesday. I was in my bed and snoring then; you can ask anyone. Ask the pastry cook; he sleeps in the compartment next to mine. He’s always complaining about the noise I make. Says it keeps waking him up. He’ll tell you that I was there all night. He says he gets his sleep when I get up an hour before dawn.’ He spoke bravely in quite an assured manner, but there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. We stared into each other’s eyes but he was the first to look away.
‘I think you killed him in the morning, not the night time,’ I said gently. ‘I think that he came here on the morning of Ash Wednesday, quite early, before anyone was up. Just as I have done this morning. Everyone knows that you are the first up in the morning. I think that was when he was killed. Yes, the body was stiff by eleven o’clock, but that was the heat of the tremendous fire that you have here. You didn’t know what to do with him. Everything would still have been very quiet indoors. I think that you put the body on one of the empty barrows, and then piled the logs all around it and bundles of faggots on top, covering it completely. You rule your kitchen. If anyone suggested using the wood from that barrow, you would have told them to leave it alone. And then when you had sent the boys away to have some breakfast, at about eight o’clock, then you moved the barrow to the great hall. Not something that you would have done in the normal way of things, but no one would question you. If they did, you could just have said that one of the boys forgot to do it. And, of course, because of the intense heat of the fire, the body was now rigid. You placed it behind the tapestry.’
Then he did take a cautious step nearer to the knives. I held up a hand.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I have a solution. I won’t turn you over to the hangman. I think that was a spur of the moment crime, something that you will never do again and I don’t want you to lose your life for it. You and I are the same height. Take this cloak of mine, the Irish mantle, everyone in Hampton Court knows the look of my Irish mantle. Wear it and everyone will think it is me. You can go straight to the stables. Carry the paniers with you; no one will question you. I’ve arranged for you to go to Ireland. The Earl and Countess of Ormond will welcome you for my sake and once they taste your food, once they sample your cooking, they will keep you for your sake. You will have a small kitchen compared to this one, nevertheless I think you will be happy with it. But James must be cleared of this accusation.’
I took from my pocket the folded piece of paper and handed it to him. He held it in his hand and looked at me hesitantly.
‘And I am not the only one who knows this,’ I said. ‘I have told my man Padraig. He will see you safely back to Ireland and bring you to Kilkenny Castle. He is sworn to secrecy, and carries a letter from me to the earl, but,’ I said warningly, ‘if you don’t join him in the stables fairly soon then he will come here to look for me. And he is armed with a good sword.’ I waited a moment to allow him to digest this. ‘You’ll like Kilkenny,’ I added. ‘They have a wonderful garden of herbs, the river runs past your kitchen window and it’s filled with fish. There’s a big poultry yard. The earl will love your cooking and the countess will be happy to see him content. And the place is full of wild duck and deer and there is a mill down the road.’ I seemed to be always trying to persuade people to go to Kilkenny. Perhaps I should make another effort to persuade Mistress Boleyn.
‘Sounds good,’ he said decisively. He took the paper over towards the small desk in the corner of the room, picked up a pair of glasses, held them in front of his eyes, read the words carefully and scrawled his signature; the bold, almost square loops on the B would definitely identify it as his. I took it from him and held it to the heat of the fire for a second then folded and replaced it in my pocket.
‘Don’t expect too good a supper today,’ he said. ‘The dinner is already worked out, but the supper may be new territory.’
I slipped off my Irish mantle and handed it to him. ‘Wear this. Pull the hood right up. No one will challenge you. The cardinal has given orders for the gate to be opened for us. They will be expecting two men on horseback and a cart. Tell me one thing more,’ I said as he put the cloak around him and pulled the hood forward over his head and half-covering his face, ‘why did you try to implicate James?’
‘I never meant to,’ he began.
‘You found the arrow in amongst the wood, was that it?’
‘Stuck right through the bundle of faggots.’
‘I thought that was it. I remembered James saying that he shot at a wild duck from across the moat. I worked out that his arrow might have fallen into a bundle of faggots. I just wondered why …’ And then I stopped. ‘And, of course, you couldn’t see the initials, could you? Not without your eye glasses.’
‘That’s right, blind as a bat without them. I was very sorry about that.’
‘Go in peace,’ I said gently. It was what was always said after judgement day back home on the hill of Kyle. I had issued no fine, but perhaps banishment from his native land might be punishment enough. Our Irish law always took into account the provocation for the deed. And the crime of ridding the world of a man who blackmailed young boys did not seem to me to be too heinous.
‘Give my love to the countess,’ I said lightly as he left the kitchen. I gave him a few minutes and then slipped out of the back door. Susannah would hide me for a few hours and then I would go to see the cardinal. I had thought of trying to get to London, but decided against that. It would be important that James was publicly cleared of this murder before he came back to Hampton Court. I would tell her the whole story; she was fond of the cook and would be sorry, so I would conceal the fact that Master Beasley had tried to throw suspicion on to her when he had purposely visited her rooms with an unexpected gift of fish soup for her glue, had taken her knife and left it in the great hall. He had tried to throw suspicion onto Gilbert Tailboys, also, of course, reporting that he had seen him hand money to the instructor of the wards. Fear will make a man do evil things and perhaps we should just remember his good deeds, his affable company and his superlative cooking, I would tell her.
And so I dallied there in that quiet workroom, talking with Susannah, mixing her paints for her and waited until the first warning trumpets sounded for morning dinnertime before making an appearance. By now Padraig and Master Beasley would probably have gone past the town of Reading. Even in the unlikely event of the cardinal deciding to send men after them, the pursuit would take some time to organise and by then they would be well on their way towards Bristol. I slipped back into my own lodgings without causing any comment and then made my way to the cardinal’s rooms.
18
Despite the early hour the whole of Hampton Court seemed to be in uproar. Messengers, page boys, stewards, sewers, footmen, yeomen, riding clerks, writing clerks, chamberlains, gentlemen ushers, all were hurrying up and down. Outside, there was just as much bustle. Men riding forth the stables. The cardinal’s own barge disappearing around the corner of the river. George pacing up and down on the pier, his face white with anxiety. I wondered whether to question him, but thought it might all be a bit long-winded. He gave me a startled glance, but when I nodded towards the cardinal’s window where His Grace stood, looking down at the scene, George looked up, also, and, like me, saw a hand raise, and then lifted his own hand signalling his acquiescence.
‘Well, what’s all the excitement about?’ I said, as I opened the door into the cardinal’s room.
Hugh.’ He acknowledged my presence but gave no sign of surprise. He had guessed, of course, that I was not going to be the one on the second horse leaving Hampton Court during the dawn Mass, though I ventured to think that he was probably mistaken about the identity of that rider.
‘James?’ he queried. And I knew that I was right. I smiled a little, thinking of what I was about to reveal. It was not often that I surprised the cardinal. But I would postpone explanations for the moment.
‘Safe, I hope.’ I kept my voice non-committal and
he nodded.
‘What’s happening here? What’s the excitement about?’
‘You may well ask. In fact, as the legal representative of the prospective bridegroom, you have indeed, a right to ask.’
This was slightly puzzling. I raised an eyebrow at him and he leaned back in his chair, his long white fingers just touching at the tips, forming a perfect steeple beneath his chin. He gave me a moment to enjoy the picture of a calm man before saying coolly, ‘Mistress Boleyn and Master Harry Percy have disappeared. The birds have flown.’
‘Indeed.’ I took a seat opposite to him. ‘And Master Thomas Boleyn?’ I queried.
‘I’ve sent a boat to Westminster for him.’ The cardinal’s tone was slightly grim, but personally I did not blame the father. The lady would probably have hatched the whole plan herself.
‘And where have they gone?’
‘Well, according Mistress Dymoke, who got the information from Mistress Dorothy Bouchier, who got it from either Elizabeth Bryan or Elizabeth Darrell, who got it from Mistress Jane Parker, they are on their way to Hever Castle where there is an obliging clergyman, enslaved by Mistress Anne Boleyn’s black eyes – please don’t ask me who said that, but it was one of the young ladies. Anyway,’ finished the cardinal, ‘a proper marriage ceremony is, one of these young ladies confided in George, planned by Mistress Boleyn and no doubt it will be followed by a rapid consummation.’
‘When did they leave?’
‘This morning, early, I believe. Apparently neither was at Mass. I’ve sent men to the north for the Earl of Northumberland. He will not be pleased. But there you are, I could not have been expected to have locked up the boy.’ The cardinal shrugged his shoulders but his eyes were angry.
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