‘The invasion? Or are we back to the exalted spirit and the sinful flesh?’ He looked at her with the sort of expression that made her heart turn over.
Nothing will happen to him, she thought, shivering with revulsion against Medford and Slake and the rest of the Signet clerks, the shadowy figures whose function was to further only the wishes of the King.
He rested her palm against his cheek. ‘The poet tells us there is no greater woe than to remember past bliss in times of distress. May your woes be small, Hildi. Soon I shall have to take you into a place of evil. You know it.’
‘Believe in your saint. He’ll protect us.’ When he smiled with a glinting irony, she asked, ‘Who is he, St Serapion?’
‘He was a Castilian. He offered himself as ransom for the release of a friend during the wars with the Moors. They took him in exchange, then tortured him to death as he knew they would. An uncle of mine, my father’s brother, was one of his followers. He offered himself in the same way in a time of war. He was my hero when I was a boy.’
‘Did you live in Castile?’
‘I was born here. My father was an ambassador for King Pedro and married an English woman in the household of the Duke of Lancaster.’
‘Was this when he was negotiating for the hand of Pedro’s daughter, Constanza?’
‘Yes, the second Duchess. When my mother died and my father decided to go back to Castile the Duke made me his ward. He promised me to the Benedictines but afterwards I asked him to allow me to leave them to establish a shrine in honour of St Serapion.’
‘You owe the Duke a lot.’
‘The Duke, yes. Pray he does become King of Castile and end our war with Spain.’ He lifted his head towards the rattling casement. ‘Still the wind blows …’
He took her in his arms and held her as fiercely as if the army was already at the gates. His voice was no more than a whisper. ‘I have certain information that the French will sail this night. Their prophets say the wind will drop. Then nothing will stop them.’
His words sent a chill through her.
‘It makes it more urgent than ever to find out who Brembre visits in the Tower and whether he’s a traitor to the King. Or,’ he added, ‘whether the King is a traitor to his people.’
They had a strategy worked out so that when they arrived at the ward bridge they would do so separately. ‘I have free access here,’ Rivera told her superfluously as they approached the grim walls of the Tower’s outer defences. ‘You have a prisoner to visit. Go and ask for him. I’ll meet you at the Salt Tower when the vigil bell sounds.’ He gave her a small push in the direction of the guardhouse.
Before she left she asked, ‘Are you armed?’
He gave her a slanting smile. ‘Are you?’
When she spoke to the custody serjeant he frowned. Beckoning, he led her outside into the great yard on the other side of the bridge and with nobody to overhear him asked, peering into her face, ‘Didn’t anybody tell you he’s been moved?’
‘Where to?’
The man gazed worriedly off across the yard. ‘All I know is, after his interrogation, they come in, they move him, they tell nobody what they’re going to do with him.’
‘Interrogation?’ Her breath was held until he gave her a bleak look that said everything. As if to confirm it he nodded towards the distant figure that was crossing the bridge. It was Rivera.
‘Who moved him?’ she managed to ask.
He scratched his head. ‘You might go to a private chamber in the White Tower. Tell the guards there I sent you. Here,’ he rooted in his coat for something and handed her a well-thumbed pass. ‘Show them this.’ Before he turned away he said softly, ‘I only do this because you folk do good.’ He looked her up and down in her commonplace disguise. ‘You Cistercians,’ he added, to make it plain, ‘as I know you to be.’ He crossed himself.
Rivera was to meet her outside the tower closest to the river where the aldermen made their visits. Deciding to try to seek out the prisoner after they had done their task with regard to the mayor she set off towards it under a sinister cloud of ravens that fed on the severed heads of the condemned.
‘Moved him?’ Rivera’s face turned cold.
‘Didn’t you know?’ She searched his face for the truth.
He was shaking his head.
‘Why would they do that, Rivera?’
‘There’s only one reason. But I told them they’d get nothing more from him. There was nothing more to give.’
He gripped her fiercely by the shoulder in the shadow of the tower. ‘He was Swynford’s prisoner, acting for Bolingbroke. I told Swynford he had nothing for us.’
‘Is he … did they rack him?’
Rivera turned away. ‘We can’t stay here all night. Let’s do what we have to do.’ He turned back. ‘Or would you rather keep out of it?’
‘I’ll come with you.’
He looked surprised but simply turned on his heel and went in through a small unguarded door that led into a corridor. Hildegard followed. By the time she reached the end, the one guard, who had apparently been half asleep when Rivera burst in, was groaning with a bruised jaw while his arms were being trussed. Rivera did a professional search for all the keys, found them with no difficulty, then locked the man inside his own cell.
‘Come on.’ He led the way to a set of narrow stairs that spiralled up round the inner wall of the tower. On the first level the stone gave way to wood and they trod more cautiously over the boards until they reached a stop at a locked door. Rivera tried various keys until he found one to fit. Before shouldering it open, he whispered, ‘We don’t know who or what’s on the other side. If necessary I’ll give you time to get back down below. Don’t argue.’
He inched the door open without a sound. A bright glow of light issued from the chamber beyond. It was brilliant, like sunlight, unearthly after the darkness of the stairs.
Rivera stepped through the door onto a gangway that ran round the inside of the tower. Hildegard followed then stopped with a gasp. There was no chamber beyond. Instead there was a yawning pit.
They were staring down several floors to ground level where a massive furnace belched out tongues of flame and a dozen men stripped to the waist were feeding it with fuel, wielding bellows and pouring molten metal down a gully into a series of moulds. The heat, even from the height of the gangway where they stood, was intense. It was like a scene from hell: the heat, the flames, the clanging of metal, the raucous shouts in some foreign tongue from the sweating labourers.
The closer she looked, the more she noticed. A dozen men were dousing the hot metal with cold water from a massive barrel. Steam rose up, hissing and spitting. Others broke metal pipes from the moulds and stacked them in orderly rows, others wrapped sacking round the finished objects in a further part of the arena.
Rivera turned to her. ‘Not who but what! He’s making weapons.’
‘What are they?’ she whispered.
‘Firing machines of some sort.’ He peered over the edge again. ‘They must be what the French used when they attacked Southampton decades ago. “Ribauldequins” they called them. I thought they’d given up on the idea. It didn’t work.’
‘I heard some mercenaries talk about this sort of thing when I was travelling in Italy.’
He gave her a sharp glance.
‘They thought the problems could be surmounted. It was to do with the explosive they have to use. Sulphur, saltpetre …’ she remembered the mercenary, Jack Black ‘ … and the charcoal to ignite it. Once they get the proportions right they can project a bolt further than a longbow. Or so they expect.’
‘There’s also the problem of how to hit a target with any accuracy. The French failed to solve it.’
‘Do you think these men have found a way round it?’
He gazed down at the arena below. ‘If they have done, they’ll be invincible.’
She drew in a breath.
In her interest in the scene she had temporarily forgotten tha
t Bolingbroke would delight in having discovered the secret of the Tower. Now, even if he didn’t know already, he soon would because Rivera would inform him of the fact.
‘I think,’ Rivera broke into her thoughts, ‘those iron workers down there must be Bohemians. I know they’ve been working on the idea in Prague for some time. The Castilians are still working on it as well. So far nobody seems to have solved the problems. Eventually, I suppose, they will do so. Men are always trying to invent the ultimate weapon of destruction.’
She stepped back from the immense heat that was rising from the furnace. ‘I can see how Mayor Brembre got involved – the Powder Makers’ Guild must supply the gunpowder. They’re one of the guilds he supports.’
‘So much for the so-called fish wars. They’re not fighting over fish at all.’
‘I suppose now we’ve learnt the secret, we part,’ she said in a clipped tone. ‘You to inform your Master Swynford, lackey to the Earl of Derby, and—’
He gripped her by the shoulders to make her stop but before he could speak there was a commotion down below and when they peered over the rail of the gangway a group of men were entering the workshop through the doors immediately below.
Brembre himself, his blue hood pushed down round his shoulders, his cap deferentially held in one hand, was immediately recognisable. He was pointing out the various aspects of the works to someone as he came into view and a crowd of people were jostling in behind him. At the appearance of the visitors, the labourers stopped what they were doing and stood mopping their brows. The ironmaster ordered the metal gate on the furnace closed. Cressets were brought in to light the sudden darkness.
Visible in the glitter of the flames a tall, handsome, athletic-looking young man strode into the middle of the foundry and looked round. Even in the wavering light, when he pushed back his hood to reveal his red-gold hair he looked every inch a king.
Hildegard had never seen him before. She turned to Rivera. ‘Is it … ?’
He nodded. ‘Striking, isn’t he? It’s called “regality”.’ He watched through narrowed lids as the King began to explore every inch of the foundry, turning his attention with particular acuteness to an examination of the finished weapons.
Now that the roar of the furnace was shut down his voice reached clearly to the balcony. ‘Petrus, are you sure they can’t show me how they work?’
One of the courtiers brought the foundry master forward. He pulled off his sweatband in place of a cap and bowed. ‘Best off in the open, My Lord King. Such is their firepower. And more space, should an accident occur.’
‘When can you show me?’
Brembre stepped forward. ‘In time, My Lord.’
‘We have no time. When the French arrive our enemies will swarm in like rats. Nothing can stop them. My people have been told I’m going to abandon them. I must show them otherwise.’
The captain was heard to explain in a mixture of English and his own language the difficulty of controlling the aiming of the weapon and Hildegard caught the word ‘ribauldequin’. She exchanged a glance with Rivera.
The King was able to discuss the matter in the ironmaster’s own language and Brembre stood by, unable to follow more than a few words, while the King went over and hefted one of the firing tubes onto his shoulder and peered inside the hollow. The royal retinue, wearing plain cloaks with hoods concealing their faces as if in disguise, now began to fling them back in the heat and explore for themselves. Hildegard gripped the edge of the balcony when she saw Medford and Dean Slake in the group. The King, however, had turned to a young man by his side.
‘What do you think, Robert?’
‘That’s de Vere, the new Marquess of Dublin whom Gloucester hates so much,’ murmured Rivera.
De Vere put down the iron casing he was examining. ‘I think this is the most significant advance in the art of war ever made. It will end the use of horsemen and sadly make a nonsense of our greatest strength, the longbow.’
‘I agree. The black art of war has turned a shade darker. And it’s our decision whether we take advantage of it or not.’ The King patted Brembre on the shoulder. ‘You kept the secret well, Nicholas. Even Mr Medford here did not know what was going on, did you, Medford?’
‘I am remiss in my duty, Your Grace.’
‘No, the mayor here was following my instructions to the letter. I still wear the Signet.’ He lifted his hand and a ring caught the light and shone like fire.
He beckoned to the foundry master. ‘I want this place cleared by morning. The weapons must be taken upriver to Windsor Castle. My men will be ready to receive you.’
There was no discussion about whether this would be possible in so short a time. The Bohemian did not question the order either but set to at once barking out instructions to his men who got onto the task with alacrity.
The King turned to leave saying, ‘Medford, make sure these men are well rewarded.’
In moments the whole retinue had swept from sight.
Rivera’s face was like a mask.
Below, in the guttering light, the job of putting out the furnace was started, while others gathered up the implements of their trade, and the metal tubes, the so-called ribauldequins, were rolled in sacks. A man was sent to organise transportation.
Then, as Hildegard and Rivera stood on the balcony, something happened that took them both by surprise. The door through which they had entered suddenly opened. There was a shout. Hildegard saw the gleam of weapons in the half-light. A man with a pike materialised and began to walk towards them.
Without speaking Rivera pushed Hildegard behind him. She saw the knife in his hand as he stepped forward to meet them.
She caught at his sleeve. ‘No, Rivera, don’t!’
The pikeman came on, backed up by half a dozen more. Grinning in triumph he beckoned to Rivera with one hand, ‘Come on, Brother. Let’s have you. You’re not going nowhere now. Might as well save your skin and come quietly.’
‘He’s right,’ said Hildegard. ‘Don’t fight them. There are too many.’
Rivera seemed to agree. He pitched his knife over the edge of the balcony and spread his arms by his sides as if in surrender.
The pikeman went back to the door to allow them to follow him along the narrow walkway. When the man was bending his head to duck under the lintel Rivera suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him headlong down the stairs, scattering like skittles the rest of the detail standing lower down. In the confusion Rivera managed to grab Hildegard by the arm and drag her with him. They managed to get halfway down the stairs, half falling, pitching headlong, leaping three steps at a time in a welter of arms and legs until a second group of pikemen materialised at the bottom.
They wasted no time in talking but simply stormed up, grabbed Rivera by both arms and hauled him bodily down to ground level. He fell to his knees and they kicked him in the ribs with their metal boots until Hildegard came tumbling down after him and then they made a grab for her too until an authoritative voice called out, ‘I said let the woman go.’
It was Medford.
Rivera was dragged along the passage, blood pouring from his mouth.
‘Rivera!’ Hildegard gave a scream that echoed to the height of the tower. Before it died away he was in chains and being hauled roughly out of sight.
She turned on Medford in a fury. ‘You promised him no harm!’
‘I did no such thing.’
‘You said—’
‘Yes?’
He was right. He had made no promise but he had allowed her to believe he had.
‘Affairs of state, Domina,’ he said coolly. ‘We must keep clear heads. The King’s life is at stake. And we are still no nearer to discovering the nature of the plot against him, nor what form it might take. Rivera will tell us what he can if he knows what’s good for him.’
Hildegard was allowed to leave. All she saw in her mind’s eye as she trudged across the green towards the White Tower was Rivera’s bloodied face and his dark
eyes turned towards her in disbelief. They said as clearly as words: You have betrayed me.
As the bridge warden had told her, the prisoner she and Thomas had been visiting had been moved. When she eventually found him in a cell at the end of a dreary passage he was lying in a wooden chair, limbs lolling helplessly, his pupils dilated with pain.
‘I shall rest here until I’m fit again,’ he muttered hoarsely when he recognised his visitor. ‘Remember your promise to my wife?’
Hildegard took his broken fingers in one hand as gently as she could. They were swollen to double their size, blue-black with bruises, his nails ripped out. ‘You must let her know what has happened. She’ll care for you.’
‘I fear she will not when she sees I’m no longer any use to her.’ He closed his eyes in defeat.
Hildegard did what she could to mend him. She applied salves and tinctures to his broken sinews and she paid his guard to follow her instructions on how to treat him after she left. Then she leant over and whispered, ‘Did you have anything to tell Rivera?’
The prisoner lifted his head, sweat standing on his brow with the effort, and was about to speak when the guard called out, ‘No more time, Domina! Quick! Out of here! The guards!’
The tramp of heavy boots could be heard in the passage as another watch came on duty.
As soon as Hildegard stepped outside onto the green she noticed something different. It was the uncanny silence. The wind had dropped. It was just as Rivera had told her. When the wind dropped, the last barrier to the invasion would fall.
Outtside the great walls of the Tower the city was in uproar. An atmosphere of panic had taken hold. A fever of fear and excitement was bringing people out into the streets. Groups of men were going from door to door selling cudgels that somebody had had the foresight to stockpile over the preceding weeks. The sound of swords being belatedly sharpened filled the air as every rusty blade was dragged out.
‘Arm yourselves!’ went the cry. ‘The French are coming! Protect your families!’
A Parliament of Spies Page 23
