His jest, he saw, was not well received and, still flush from their recent romantic exertions, he relented. “You wish to run up the ladder by leaps rather than a rung at a time—and you presume far too much upon both my largess and my capacity, madam. Protocol in these matters is unbending.”
Again he made to reach for the bell. Again she stopped him. “All things bend to the will of the King.”
“Madam Howe! You are in peril!”
“Not I,” said Annabella, standing and wrapping her dressing gown about her. All softness and supplication had fled from her eyes. This was the moment upon which all depended, either she would succeed, or die. “They sewed your father’s head back on. Did you know that?”
Charles did not care for the turn the conversation had taken, and he was alarmed by the sudden change in Annabella’s demeanor. He resisted the impulse to pull the bell; how could he allow such a statement to lie? His hand drifted to his throat and massaged it. “There are very few details of his—ultimate disposition—with which I have not been acquainted. You wish to make a point?”
Annabella stood and, allowing her dressing gown to fall open and reveal what it would, walked to the opposite side of the bed, tracing the coverlet with the tips of her fingers. The King’s eyes followed her, as if enchanted. “I can think of nothing so distressing, Your Majesty, than that such a condition should prove a family affliction.”
The King was perplexed in the extreme, at the same time morbidly fascinated. He knew when he had taken her to him the woman’s reputation for intrigue, indeed, her disposition toward danger—very likely the spice of those whisperings that prompted him to amuse himself with her; typical courtiers were so predictable and boring.
But what had he gotten himself into? “I endorse your concern, madam. And most heartily.” His adam’s apple bobbed beneath his fingers. “I trust there is nothing prompting you to anticipate such an extraordinary eventuality; no certain knowledge of any kind?”
Annabella had rounded the bed and, stopping by the pillow, still warm from her head, put her hands on the mattress, palms down, and leaned toward him. “How odd you should choose those words,” she said. “The very ones I was about to use myself. One might say Providential.”
“What knowledge then?” Charles snapped as several fissures appeared in the royal facade he had cultivated so carefully during recent years of stress. “And, before you speak, understand that our patience is very nearly at the end. You have remarkable gifts, no doubt, and exercise them to great effect, but they buy you only so much of our grace.”
Annabella stood and curtseyed perfectly. “As you wish. I shall speak plainly: I have in my possession the crown jewels of King John.”
Nothing she might have said could have been calculated to produce a more paralyzing effect; the King emitted a series of noises into which might be read anything from incredulity, to disbelief, to astonishment, to realization of the implications of the statement to the financially embarrassed royal coffers, if true, but for the moment no words were forthcoming.
“Not in my possession, of course. I should rather say I have certain knowledge of their whereabouts.”
The King at last gained his tongue. “Yes, at the bottom of the Wash. I can’t imagine what you hope to gain by revealing what is only common knowledge.”
“It is only common to those who accept the historical version of events. What is not common, Your Majesty, is that John pulled a fast one.”
“Speak clearly, mademoiselle.”
“The King arranged for the loss of his two treasure wagons in the Wash; one that customarily carried the crown jewels, the other his household treasures.”
“Arranged?”
“They were empty. Or, at least, didn’t contain what they were supposed to contain. Probably rocks or dirt, something heavy enough to drag them beyond reach.
“Meantime, he had the jewels themselves secreted in a place he had built for the purpose. . .”
“What place? What possible reason . . .?”
Annabella laughed. “What reason? Put yourself in his position, Your Majesty; the Barons on your heels, Alexander and Louis at your throat, surrounded by men of variable allegiances, salivating as much for your treasure as your neck . . . even the Pope aligned against you.
“Rather ask yourself why, when there are any number of perfectly dry and relatively safe roads by which he might have made his way to Newcastle, did John elect the route that was little more than a slender thread through quicksand? The King was many things, so I’ve heard, but stupid he was not.”
Charles had been mentally preparing to interject logic at any point, but the woman was making too much sense. He allowed her to continue, not least because the wineskin of avarice that was his soul had begun to swell beneath the bellows of greed.
“Witnesses reported that the wagons went down, together with some thousands of men which John was as willing to sacrifice in the fens as on the battlefield in order to lend the illusion verisimilitude, knowing that, with his treasure presumed forever lost, the ardor of many of those pursuing him would be greatly dampened; and he would be able to resurrect it from its true hiding place at a time when his star was ascendent. But either sickness or poison intercepted his scheme.”
Charles was warming to this version of events. “So the treasure remained hidden.”
“Yes.”
“And you know where it is.”
“I do.”
“I am curious how this knowledge, secret for so many hundreds of years, has come into your possession.”
Annabella chose to continue being direct. “You remember the legend of Robert Tiptoft?”
“Vaguely. A lesser nobleman whose sudden wealth was attributed by locals to his having found some portion of John’s treasure the tide had uncovered in the Wash. Became a significant landowner thereabouts— rather his wife and daughters did—for he died in France, as I recall. This is the kind of fairy tale that grows up to explain the inexplicable.
“From what I’ve heard of the man, it is much more likely that his wealth proceeded from gambling.”
“He is my direct ancestor, Your Majesty, and hedidfind John’s treasure—all of it. Not in the Wash, which the witnesses put about, but in the place where John had hidden it. A place dear grandfather Tiptoft had, quite accidentally, come into possession of as a result of the recreation to which you refer.”
Charles was now sitting on the edge of the bed, a veritable marionette of animation, his interest fully ensnared. Annabella’s story was altogether too likely. It had to be true; or at least have truth at the heart of it.
He allowed his imagination free reign to think of the debt he could erase with so great a tide of treasure! The wars he could prosecute!
“And this knowledge somehow descended to you?” he hazarded. This was too good to be true. He whispered, so as not to puncture the bubble of his self-forming aspirations with too pointed a question.
“It did.”
“How?”
“Does it matter?”
Charles laughed. It didn’t matter in the least, it was a logical question that, he hoped, would buy him time to spin a web. The germane issue was how could he play this woman so that she would put the treasure—or knowledge of its whereabouts—in his hands; preferably without anyone else knowing, at least no one whose sudden disappearance at a future date would be missed by anyone of consequence.
Already she had made one mistake, telling him she knew where the treasure was. Now all he had to do was wheedle the specifics from her. There were any number of ways this might be done, some much more direct than others.
Meantime, if an elevation in social ranking of the magnitude she requested would help win her complete confidence, well—what ink and paper can accomplish with a flourish, a blade can undo with a stroke.
“You’ve spun an intriguing tale, madam Howe. So well spun, in fact, that I am almost persuaded! I can see countryfolk at their firesides and, for want of tuppence for a the
ater ticket, entertaining themselves with legends like this. It puts riches in reach of everyone, doesn’t it? At least in the imagination.”
Charles chuckled. “If wishes were horses. . . But it is all pretend, isn’t it? I mean, tosay one has a thing. . .”
Annabella had been wandering the room while the King spoke and came to a stop beside the clothing she had earlier discarded. Stooping, she withdrew from some private pocket, a jewel-encrusted dagger.
The conclusion of Charles’s apothegm was absorbed by a gurgle.
The knife’s blade, as Annabella revolved the instrument in her hands, flashed molten reflections of firelight, stitching the rift in his previously divided attention as she approached, point forward.
“I say. . .!” said Charles, massaging his throat in earnest and, unknowingly, coining a phrase he was to use often thereafter which, in turn, became embedded in thelingua franca ofthe island. His free hand rummaged the air in the vicinity of the bell-pull. “Whatever your intentions. . .!”
She thrust the dagger at his chest and, at the last second, turned it toward him hilt-first.
Charles swallowed deeply and, with the hand that had been groping bootlessly for the bell rope, received the knife hesitantly, as if expecting it to turn and bite him.
The weapon lay heavily on the bed of his tremulous fingers, warming his flesh as only gold can. He held it up to a bedside candle and ravaged it with his eyes.
“John’s,” said Annabella.
That it was a King’s weapon was evident—for only a King would dare possess so flagrant a symbol of wealth. That it was John’s was attested by a suite of letters engraved about the pommel in Poitevinian script which he translated;Pas t’en prime Mirebeau. ‘A gift of Mirebeau, not given willingly.’
Mirebeau, in France, had been one of John’s great military successes; of which there had been so few to boast. More than likely the jewels had belonged to King Arthur, John’s nephew and rival claimant to the throne and, not unlikely, had been pried from his crown in defeat, thereafter to festoon this commemorative dagger.
Most significant, though, was not the weapon’s intrinsic worth, either as treasure or historic artifact, but the fact that it existed. He had read it described in minute detail on the manifest of John’s missing household treasures.
Which meant that, as Annabella had said, John had pulled a fast one, which would not have been out of keeping with his character. Furthermore, it lent the weight of veracity to the woman’s claim that her family was in possession of John’s treasure; perhaps, indeed,all of it.
“Your information excites my interest, madam; but moreso my curiosity.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. I am a man. . .”
“I’ve noted the condition.”
“Good of you to say, my dear. Please allow me both to speak and inhale. I am a man like any other. . . not in station, it may be argued, of course—thanks be to God —but in composition. Meaning that, while inclined toward integrity, honesty and so forth, especially at the philosophical level, I am pricked now and again by temptation.”
“Temptation is a prick, Your Highness,” said Annabella as she dressed. He searched her eyes for mockery, but found none.
“Yes, well, pricked, as I was saying, by temptation.”
“And you’re wondering that my family, which must have been greatly pricked through the years at the knowledge of so great a treasure. . .”
“Supernaturally pricked, I should say!”
“. . . has refrained from availing itself of the treasure?”
“Exactly! Saints are solitary fellows,” said Charles. “To find them traveling in packs would be remarkable; but in families? Impossible!”
“Shall I tell you a secret, Sire, which no man has heard for several hundred years?”
And so she told the King all she knew; almost.
By the time she finished, the King was fully-dressed and roaming about his bedchamber like a man distracted.
“These women of your family, even they didn’t know where the treasure was? All this time?”
“No, Your Majesty. It was not until I came upon the ancient scrap of poetry I told you about that I was able to divine the hiding place.”
“This is beyond belief! I would be hard pressed to accept the contention that a society of men—formed expressly for the purpose—could keep such a secret for so many centuries. But a chain of gossiping hausfraus! This beggars the senses!”
“The threat of death is a powerful inducement to keep one’s lips sealed, Majesty. Women are especially adept with knives.”
“And you are the end of the line?”
“Both my father and Elizabeth are dead,”
“So you have nothing to fear from her. And your eldest sister?”
“Margaret is a simpleton, Highness. I happened to overhear when mother Scrope, with brooding ceremony, passed the secret to her.”
“Together with this?” The King scribbled the air with the dagger.
“Yes.”
“And, being simple, she gave it to you when you asked politely?” said the King, not attempting to conceal his incredulity.
“Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup.”
“And your sister’s price?”
The expression that shadowed Annabella’s face could only be called a smile, but there was nothing of a smile in it. “A dress, Your Majesty. A dress.”
Charles, whose experience of women was not inconsiderable, was every bit as prepared to accept that Margaret, if she was as feather-headed as her sister would have him believe, had surrendered the dagger, together with its ghastly curse, in return for a dress as he was that Esau had sold his birthright for a bowl of soup.
He alighted on the edge of the bed, threw his dressing gown around his shoulders and, pulling Annabella to him, began tracing her chin with the tip of the blade. “What do you propose?”
“You’ve heard my proposal.”
“And that’s it? You will give me the treasure if I elevate you?”
Now they had entered the time of greatest peril, but Annabella had ventured far from shore, all that remained was to see if the ice would hold. “No, Your Majesty. I beg your pardon for not having been clear. The treasure will remain where it is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“So great a store of riches, Your Majesty, could—in the hands of your enemies . . .”
Charles goggled her in disbelief, the dagger limp in his hand. “You’re not going to give me the treasure!”
“No, your Highness.”
“But . . . it’s mine.”
“Then you must know where it is.”
The King’s mouth moved a couple of times, but nothing came out. The abandoned puppy of his brain, however, was hurtling through the dust in its effort to catch up to the wagon of events. “You would give it to my enemies?”
“Oh, no, Your Majesty! Never! How could you entertain such a hideous notion! No, I would nevergive it to anyone.”
The emphasis was not lost on Charles. “But, in return for a title. . .?”
“It would be unwise, on my part, to gainsay a proposition I haven’t heard yet, Your Highness. So if any should come my way. . .”
It was Charles’s turn to smile, which he did, warily. He pressed the tip of the dagger under Annabella’s chin until it punctured her skin. Annabella stood trembling but defiant as a small trickle of her blood trickled down the blade. “I have a man in my employ who is a midwife or sorts. His peculiar skills have drawn many a secret into the light of day from the womb of darkness.”
“Of course,” Anabella said, attempting do speak without moving her lower jaw, “I have left a message that, if anything were to happen to me, will guide others to John’s hiding place.”
“I’ve never danced so much in my life,” sighed the King, removing the knife from Annabella’s throat. He collapsed exaggeratedly in a nearby chair. “I’ve finally found a woman who could wear me out!”
Annabella saw that she had won an advantage, however tenuous, and determined to drive home her argument. “You’ve given me a terrible thought though, Your Highness. I shudder to think, but among those of your blood, (this is true of any family; I should know), may lurk one who does not cherish your welfare. Should such a one, by means fair or foul, come into possession of the treasure—among which are Alfred’s scepter and crown. . .” She gasped theatrically, “Mightn’t he seek, with them, to substantiate a claim to the very throne of England — your throne, Your Majesty!”
Charles knew he was being played like a lute. He also knew there was more than a grain of truth to what Annabella, so recently nothing more than warm female flesh, was saying. He was conceited, but not so conceited as to be blind to the fact that when the barons had summoned him to take his father’s throne, their choice had resulted from negotiations in which other candidates had figured; candidates of his own family, as Annabella had said, whose claim to the throne, in respect to birth, was every bit as valid as his own. Should one of these come into possession of John’s treasure, he would at once have a threefold advantage: by blood, by Alfred’s crown and scepter, and by riches enough to hire an army or mercenaries to enforce his claim.
“Do you play tennis, ma’am?”
The question nudged Annabella momentarily off-balance. “Tennis? I’ve seen it played, Sire. Why?”
“You have put me in a situation that reminds me of a phrase I have heard in connexion with the sport.”
“Which is?”
“‘Game, set, and match.’”
Annabella was perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps not the game, but you are consummate at the sport. Well played, your Ladyship.”
Charles made an exaggerated bow to the Earl’s daughter.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Castle Combe, Wiltshire, 1986
“Annabella Scrope became Lady Annabella Howe, yes,” said the Woman with Tight Hair. Without being asked, she turned Jeremy Ash’s wheelchair toward the fireplace and dropped another sugar cube in his tea.
The manor at Castle Combe that had been home to Scropes and Howes for hundreds of years had, in its most recent incarnation, become a hotel for the well-heeled, and the Woman with Tight Hair had been assigned by the manageress to conduct a tour for the odd trio who had turned up that evening unannounced. One was apparently a famous piano player of whom she had never heard, but who, rumor had it, the Queen herself had knighted and whose appearance at the inn her superior found practically orgasmic.
Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3) Page 32
