The deck master had started shouting for the lines to be thrown off as soon as he saw the King approaching and by the time Richard stepped on board with a small entourage the barge was already on the move, ripped into motion by the power of the tide. The oarsmen fell into place. Moments later the long sweeps were sending the barge swiftly downriver towards the palace at Eltham.
Rivera’s lodgings were outside the city walls on the Westminster side, not far from Roger de Hutton’s town house.
A woman with a worried-looking face answered her knock. ‘News of the master?’ she asked before Hildegard could open her mouth.
‘Let me in.’
She handed over Rivera’s pouch with the coins in it as soon as she stepped inside. ‘I’ve come to fetch clean clothes.’
‘So it’s true? He’s in the Tower? Jack Kelt said so.’
‘May I go up?’
She was nearly at the top of the stairs when the housekeeper called, ‘So you know where to go?’
Hildegard turned. Their eyes met and, with the look, understanding flashed between them.
His melancholy chamber. It was more empty than seemed possible from the mere absence of one man. Everything was as they had left it. The mulberry-coloured robe hanging on the door. The couch with the rumpled wolfskin. The two indentations in the pillows where they had lain their heads.
She found a chest with his clean linen in it and put a few pieces into her bag, folding on top a white habit with a hood. There was the badge of his Order, red and gold, lying on a book on the table and she carefully pinned it to his shirt.
When all was done she went over to the small shrine above the prie-dieu. Matilda must have been the one to light the candle in front of the image. A face with a resigned spirituality gazed out on the world from within its border of gold leaf. The painter had managed to catch a look of compassion in the face that recalled the way Rivera sometimes looked.
When she went down again Matilda came through from the back. She opened the door for her but before Hildegard went out she said hurriedly, ‘He’s a good man. You need to know that. He always denied it. He hated what he had to do but he’s good in his heart where it matters.’
Hildegard held out her hand. Matilda gripped it. Tears stood in her eyes. ‘They won’t rack him, will they?’
The city’s night of panic and defiance had given way to relief, thanksgiving and eventually debauchery. The air was filled with screams and shouts and the sound of things being broken. Before she set out even to Westminster to see Medford, Hildegard had heard the warnings to stay within the enclave of York Place. ‘The scenes out there are like Armageddon,’ opined the porter.
But she had her own view of defiance. There was too much to do. And anyway, Westminster had been safe enough.
Now, after leaving Rivera’s lodgings, which she had reached by asking the ferryman to drop her off at the narrow laup at the back of the house, she had to pass through crowds of exultant citizens spilling outside the walls into the fields and pouring in a noisy flow down Ludgate Hill to the Strand, where they would eventually fetch up outside Parliament. News of Gloucester’s insulting demands that sent his royal nephew marching out of the Great Hall had spread. Richard had acted with the sort of defiance everybody understood.
It looked as if they were going to celebrate but, knowing how volatile they were, it was easy to detect an undercurrent of violence in their behaviour. Civic authority had no control outside, nor even, at present, inside the walls. In the interregnum before the new mayor was sworn in nobody seemed to be in control. All along the route any taverns with ale left in the bottom of their barrels after the previous night were full of people nursing hangovers and doggedly drinking the dregs as if their defiance against the enemy had found another purpose.
As she hurried along Hildegard gathered that the annual election to choose the mayor had taken place earlier that morning in a rabble of fist fights, abductions, threats and the buying and selling of favours, and that the votes to elect the new mayor had already been counted. At the loser’s insistence they were being counted again.
When she eventually reached the Guildhall Brembre and his allies were standing around with expressions of dumb shock. She waited along with a massive crowd until the result was ratified, when a quietly thoughtful man called Exton took his place.
St Mary Graces. It looked as well fortified as the Tower.
‘Any news?’ she asked as soon as the door closed and they were alone. Thomas, his wounded leg resting on a padded stool, shook his head. He dipped his fingers into the sweetmeats Hildegard had brought him. ‘I have a feeling the abbot is avoiding me.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he has nothing to tell me about what he knows is uppermost in my mind – your fate at the hands of the Chapter.’
‘Thomas, in this turbulent time my personal problems cannot be uppermost. I mean to say—’
‘I’m not pretending I wasn’t worried last night when we expected the French to come roaring in. We’re on the front line here and would have had to deal with their wounded. It would have been a sore trial of our consciences. Even so, my thoughts are ever with you.’
Hildegard gazed at a patch of sky framed in a square of lattice. ‘My prioress is always warning me to be less impatient. The patience required to wait for their verdict is sent as a lesson to me.’
‘We all have to learn something—’ he broke off. ‘There is news. You got my note?’
‘Yes. That’s why I came over. I thought it was to do with the decision of the Chapter.’
‘It’s news from St Alban’s. Prepare yourself.’
‘What is it?’
‘The falconer, John Willerby. He was found dead three days ago. The news has just come through.’
‘But he seemed to be on the road to recovery when we left—’
‘He didn’t die from his wounds. He was poisoned. You remember that kindly monk who was attending him? He wrote to me in detail describing what happened. He was full of remorse that he had allowed it. He said the smell made them suspicious at once, that mousey smell of hemlock, and then before they could set their minds to the problem a man made a full confession to his priest. And then hanged himself.’
Hildegard took the seat Thomas offered. ‘Go on.’
‘The story is that he recognised Willerby from years ago when, so he said, Willerby had accidentally shot his daughter, a child of ten, when she was playing in the abbot’s chase. We can imagine the man was doing a bit of poaching at the time and took the child along with him. Such would be his guilt at being the cause of his own child’s death, when he saw the instrument of his guilt he decided on revenge.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m told Willerby was apprenticed to the St Alban’s falconer in the old days. Not the same fellow we met but the previous one. The bereaved man couldn’t believe his eyes when he sauntered in soon after we arrived. He blurted it out to Swynford who was in the mews at the time. Swynford told him there was only one thing he could do. If he was ever to call himself a man again he should get rid of him. I have this verbatim.’ He showed her the document in his hand. ‘Would you like me to read you what it says?’
She nodded.
‘Swynford says, “I don’t like that fella either. He’s done me and my master a great harm. Let’s put the rat out of his misery and I have a sure way of putting him down,” and he comes out with some plot to make the new bird attack him so it looks like an accident. “Frighten the bastard,” says he. All I have to do is go into the mews while their men are out and whack the fellow over the head and tie some carrion to him then get out. “Leave nature to do its course,” says he, “Let God decide.” Then this other fella come to me: “You heard what my master said – put the rat out of his misery. But keep it simple. You can do it with this if that first plan fails,” and he shows me some hemlock and says, “Do it with this for a safe job but only make sure I’m well down the road before you give it him.”’ Tho
mas frowned and lowered the pages. ‘So Swynford was away on the road to London when the attack occurred and so was the man who suggested hemlock.’ He indicated the pages of the confession. ‘He’s described here as Swynford’s retainer—’
‘His retainer being … ?’
‘Jarrold of Kyme.’
He gave a grim smile. ‘When Willerby did not perish from his wounds, this poor grieving fellow,’ he waved the sheets of vellum, ‘took the opportunity to get inside the infirmary and gave him a lethal dose of the hemlock Jarrold had supplied. End of story.’
Not quite the end, thought Hildegard. She said, ‘We always guessed Jarrold was more than Swynford’s tenant. Alexander Neville will not be pleased to find a member of his household has allegiance to anyone else, especially the vassal of one of the King’s enemies.’
After she left Thomas she went to the Tower and tried to get in to hand Rivera his things but the custodian shook his head. ‘No visitors, mistress.’
She went cold. ‘What are they doing to him?’
He shook his head again. ‘If that’s stuff for him you can hand it to me. I’ll make sure he gets it.’
Aware of the unlikelihood of breaking through the security that surrounded the Tower, she was forced to turn back.
There were no ferries to be had at the Tower steps. By now swarms of people were flocking round the landing stage, trying to get home, but with so many out on the streets and the increasing danger of violence after the election result, the pressure to get away had forced an unusual number of ordinary citizens to try to escape by water. All the boats were full and many ferrymen were refusing to come back into town because of the violence. There were no horses for hire either. When she approached a nearby ostler he told her, ‘All gone, mistress. Stay in your house and barricade the door. It’s going to get worse.’
‘I can’t stay in my house. I’m far from it,’ she told him, turning away.
She would have to walk. She pulled up her hood, checked that her knife was in reach, and set off.
The Tower, with its secret torture chambers, now lay behind her. It dominated the tenements around it, a white and deathly place against the darkening sky. She felt full of foreboding. The custodian had not confirmed that he was being tortured. In that, she told herself, was comfort. Medford had said he would get him released but then Medford said many things, or at least, allowed them to seem to be said.
It took an age to negotiate the teeming streets. Doing her best to avoid the unlit alleys and the most raucous mobs out looking for trouble, by the time she left the city gates on Ludgate Hill and had crossed the Fleet by its wooden bridge it was late afternoon and already getting dark. The prospect of night enticed rougher elements from their lairs, professional pickpockets and cut-throats, revellers drunk on ale, all were emerging from the backstreets, shouting obscenities as they reeled along looking for entertainment. There were women among them, young and old, children even, mindlessly hurling stones into the crowd.
She saw for the first time what it must have been like here in London during the Great Revolt, the hurling time, when the ideals of the leaders were brought into disrepute, compromised by the violence of the undisciplined mobs.
The air was thick with smoke from their naptha flares and in the light of the flames hundreds of faces passed before Hildegard’s gaze, looming out of the shadows with a lurid prominence – faces pockmarked, distorted by open sores, mouths lolling open to reveal blackened teeth, leering and graceless. But not their fault, she reminded herself; forced to live like brutes, they behave like brutes, their lives as hopeless and fractured by pain and poverty enough to send them mad.
The best of them had been exterminated in the great bloodletting that followed the Revolt. Now it had all come down to an undirected frenzy of hatred. Crazy on strong drink, they spilt over the paths, gesticulating and threatening anyone who fell foul of them. One of these gangs objected to Hildegard’s presence as she tried to walk past and they shouted some insult, but she ignored them and hurried on. One of the men, however, followed her.
‘You, bitch, are you French?’ He stabbed his finger into her shoulder.
She lifted her head long enough to assure him she was as English as he was, adding, before she could stop herself, ‘Sad be the day.’
‘Here!’ He gave her a push. ‘What did you say?’
Wishing she had bitten off her tongue, she tried to walk on but he stepped in front of her.
‘Bloody bitch!’
A group of four or five horsemen were riding up the street towards the city. They were about to pass as the man tried to pull at her headscarf and their leader brought his small cavalcade to a halt with a raised hand. ‘Hold it! Who’s this?’ he called out. Looking down at Hildegard he said, ‘I know you, woman. You’re that whore nun of Alexander Neville’s!’
Hildegard felt like sinking into the ground. His words had drawn in the rest of the drunk’s cronies. Now, high on a horse and with his massive war sword and glittering breastplate, the banner of the Earl of Derby cracking in the wind beside him, he momentarily managed to transcend his usual insignificant demeanour.
Before she could reply, her loutish attacker stepped up. ‘She calls herself a nun?’
‘She does indeed, master.’ His tone was unctuous. ‘We can imagine how rigorously she keeps her vows, eh?’ Swynford looked down at her. ‘Plying for trade in the stews, Domina?’ He laughed and his own men followed suit as if he had cracked a particularly witty joke.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, Swynford,’ she replied.
‘Or what?’ He gazed down with contempt into her face.
The lout had stepped up behind her and now, encouraged by Swynford’s manner, put an arm round her waist. ‘Come on, bitch, show us what they teach you in that nunnery of yours.’ He tried to drag her into his foul-smelling embrace but she slipped her knife from her sleeve and held it in front of her.
‘Try it!’ she warned.
He stepped back with an oath. ‘You, a nun? You’re no nun, you’re a bloody witch.’ He glanced back for support from his accomplices who were now beginning to goad him on. ‘We know what they do with witches in Paris!’ he shouted for their benefit. When they staggered closer, asking what the fun was, he shouted to them, ‘What do they do? They burn the bitches!’
One by one they took up the cry. ‘Burn! Burn! Burn the witch!’
Hildegard stood her ground with the knife still in her hand but Swynford drove his horse right up against her so she was trapped between the two groups. He snarled, ‘Neville’s not much use to you now, is he?’
She tried to duck under his horse’s head to make her escape but he drove the animal forward again and she stumbled back to avoid being trampled and bumped into the drunk, giving him the opportunity to grab hold of her round the waist.
‘Come on, lads!’ he bellowed. ‘Let’s have a bit of fun. Let’s burn the witch!’
They began to drag her back the way she had come, up Ludgate Hill towards the city. Swynford, roaring with laughter, shouted encouragement. His men, a gang of ill-kempt ruffians, their livery typically obscured, started up an excited chant and began to follow. It was plain they had been riding out looking for trouble and now they had found it. Swynford took out his sword and held it aloft.
‘A witch! A witch!’ he roared. ‘Let’s make this city clean! Out with witches!’
His yells, augmented by those of his henchmen, brought people running. Soon there was an excited crowd. Some took up the chant, not caring what it was about so long as they could join it; others stood dumbly, staring with a kind of horror at the witch who had been caught and was now being dragged along the street towards her just desserts.
The gates of the city lay in the distance but it was a place where the King’s writ did not run. And far behind, receding, lay the fields, gardens and orchards of the great houses along the Strand and, even more distant, Westminster, the seat of government where the rule of law was supposed to hold sway, and
close by, on both sides of the lane, were the shuttered houses of the friars, the courts of the lawyers, the scribes and clerks, and no help anywhere.
A cart was found and was being dragged into the arena that had formed round her. She looked at it in horror. She knew that if she allowed them to force her into it she would be as good as dead. They may not be able to build a fire before help arrived, as it must, but they could tie a rope around her neck, sling one end over the nearest branch then whip the horses on.
This is the end of my life, she thought in cold fury. Among a rabble of drunks urged on by a traitor to the King. She turned on her captors. ‘You’ll regret this to the end of your days and beyond! Take your hands off me. At least permit me to walk to my fate!’
The idea of prolonging her ordeal appealed to Swynford and he encouraged them to make her walk step by step up the hill, and as they goaded her with jibes of witchcraft and naked orgies at the full of the moon and other obscenities their thwarted lusts could summon, the crowd grew so dense they had to use cudgels to carve a path for her. ‘Here comes the Queen!’ went the shout. ‘Behold the bitch, the Queen of Hell! Make way!’
People pinched her and snatched at her clothing, and tried to tear it. They crossed themselves, gazed in horror at what they saw as the embodiment of their worst fears. They spat and pulled her hair, the headscarf long since lost along with her knife. And she thought in despair: This must be my punishment for loving Rivera.
They were nearing the summit now, in a tumult of noise, when she felt someone hanging onto her sleeve, and glancing down, with the intention of shaking herself free, she saw that it was the very small man, Jack Kelt. He had wriggled his way to the front of the mob and was clinging onto her arm, and such was the pace that was being forced, he was having to run to keep up as Swynford’s henchmen quickened their speed in their eagerness to reach the top of the hill where the old gods were worshipped at the ancient place of sacrifice dedicated to the pagan king, Lud.
A Parliament of Spies Page 25
