The Pardoner's Crime

by Keith Moray

  ‘Indeed, Your Majesty. In fact —’ Sir Thomas began again.

  ‘But we must not stand here gossiping,’ cut in the King. ‘These ladies must be tired. Let us to our rooms, to refresh and then to supper.’

  Lady Alecia curtsied. ‘We have prepared a meal for you, Your Majesty and we have invited the local dignitaries to eat with us. I hope that is to your satisfaction.’

  Hugh le Dispenser yawned again, but the king smiled. ‘It will give me great pleasure, Lady Alecia. A king must ever be pleased to meet his subjects. Especially when they are as beautiful as you and your daughter.’

  Richard permitted himself a smile as he looked at the two ladies. Of the two, the mother was clearly more susceptible to flattery.

  The King clearly enjoyed the feast in the Great Hall, for socializing was one of his great pleasures, and something that he excelled in. He gave the impression to all, as they filed past and were introduced to his royal personage, that he was intensely interested in each person that he spoke to, even though it was unlikely that he would ever remember their names afterwards. He talked knowledgably about art and playmaking with Father Daniel and Lady Katherine; about physic with Wilfred Oldthorpe and about forestry and falconry with John Little, of the Guild of Foresters. Hugh le Dispenser, on the other hand, showed little interest in anyone except the King or himself. He was an easy man to despise, Richard concluded.

  The talk at the head table was mainly trivial. Although the King had shown some interest in the affairs of the Manor of Wakefield, yet he did not care to hear about details of any cases that were under investigation.

  ‘I appoint men such as you Sir Thomas, and Richard here to look after my interests,’ he said with a grin at Hugh Le Dispenser. ‘And while you are looking after those interests, I can take a healthy interest in this splendid feast and the affairs of my people.’

  ‘Quite right, Edward,’ agreed le Dispenser, dipping his fingers in a fingerbowl. ‘Why keep a chicken and cluck yourself!’

  ‘So speaks the King’s Eye! Am I not lucky to have such a friend? Mayhap I should call him my mouth?’ And both of them guffawed, as did those about them as if le Dispenser was the greatest wit in the realm, matched only by his sovereign.

  For his own part, Richard spied out Emma Oldthorpe with her husband on one of the lower tables and would have dearly liked some opportunity to have words with her. He was also pretty sure by a look on Lady Wilhelmina’s face that she had caught him more than once sneaking a glance in Emma’s direction. She did not seem happy about it.

  Indeed, that evening after the King and Hugh le Dispenser had retired to their rooms in the Great Chamber beside the Great Hall, and Sir Thomas and Lady Alecia had repaired to their lodge, Richard sat in his room musing over the events of the day. He still had much to do, and he was glad that he had been permitted to be excused from the hunt in the morning.

  The knock on the door made him jump up.

  Lady Wilhelmina was standing there in a hooded cloak when he opened the door.

  ‘Wilhelmina, what are you doing here?’ he whispered. ‘This is madness, I told you before.’

  She pushed past him and turned once he had closed the door. ‘Why, Sir Richard?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he replied.

  ‘Why do you keep putting me off? The other night when I came, naked, to this chamber, you thrust me away. And the time before that, you turned me around and sent me away. Why will you not lie with me?’

  He looked aside. ‘Wilhelmina, it is not easy.’

  Her eyes opened wide in shock. ‘Are you — like His Majesty? Do you prefer other men? Is that why he calls you Richard?’ As she fired questions her eyes became wider still, almost round. Beautifully round, he thought. ‘So is your manservant — Hubert — is he more to you than a servant?’

  He gave her a thin smile and shook his head. ‘No, Wilhelmina, it is nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what? Is there someone else?’

  He said nothing.

  Suddenly she looked crestfallen. ‘I saw you looking tonight. Why not at me? I come every day to your court. I sit beside you at dinner. Am I not desirable?’

  He hung his head. ‘Wilhelmina, I think you ought to go,’ he said.

  She forced back a sob as she pulled up her hood. ‘Damn you, Sir Richard. Damn you! You will regret this someday.’

  When she had gone, he leaned with his back against the door. ‘I think I do already, Wilhelmina,’ he whispered to the empty room. ‘There is just so much at stake.’

  Richard slept little that night and was grateful when the first light of dawn permitted him to rise, do his ablutions and then get ready to take his leave. As he expected, Hubert was up, breakfasted and pacing across the bailey courtyard awaiting his orders. The place was buzzing with activity as men prepared horses and weapons for the hunt that had been arranged for the King and his adviser.

  ‘We will go to Wakefield straight away,’ Richard said. ‘But first I need to speak with the Deputy Steward.’

  Hubert pointed behind Richard and he turned to see Sir Thomas coming down the steps from his lodge.

  ‘Ah, Sir Thomas, a word,’ said Richard. And they retired again to the Deputy Steward’s office.

  ‘I am concerned for the King’s safety, Sir Thomas,’ said Richard.

  Sir Thomas looked puzzled. ‘As am I, Sir Richard. As should every good Englishman be. We go hunting this morning and I will have men all around him, to say nothing of his own. He could not be safer.’

  ‘And what of tomorrow, at the Mystery Plays?’

  ‘The same. We shall have him well protected.’ His cunning eyes narrowed. ‘Why this all of a sudden, Sir Richard? Do you suspect some attempt on his life?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘It is just as well to be prepared for any eventuality. What of the men you were going to send into the forest?’

  ‘They have gone, and they are better prepared than before. That blockhead who led them last time has had a lesson in tactics.’ Hubert had been standing silently at the door. He grinned inwardly, for his friend Adam Crigg was in the contingent sent into the forest. He had told him the extent of the tactics given to them by Sir Thomas. It was simply, keep an eye behind you and don’t get hoodwinked.

  Once they reached Wakefield, Richard sent Hubert off to check on Matilda and Lillian, which he did with great willingness. He himself rode to the parish church of All Saints and tethered his mount outside. Then he went inside the church and walked up the aisle to the altar, where he knelt and said a silent prayer.

  It was eerily quiet and slightly cold. He gripped the hilt of his sword, testing it for swift unsheathing if necessary, then he walked into the shadowy sanctuary beyond the altar.

  He stood in the centre and turned to look back at the altar.

  From behind him he heard a rustle of cloth from somewhere in the shadows, then a voice whispered his name.

  ‘I was hoping to find you here,’ Richard whispered back.

  13

  His Majesty, King Edward II had enjoyed his day’s hunting in the Great Park. He had shot two deer and stuck one boar, all clean kills. By contrast and much to his chagrin, Hugh le Dispenser had taken one deer, but messily, so that it had to be dispatched by one of the foresters. The evening meal with the Deputy Steward, his family, and Richard had inevitably been a splendid dinner of boar and venison prepared to perfection by Gideon Kitchen, whose beaming presence was called for by the King himself.

  ‘How is it, Master Kitchen, that I have not heard of your skills before? Methinks that your talent may be wasted up here in the wilds of Yorkshire. How think you of coming to London to cook for us?’

  Gideon beamed anew, his cherubic cheeks seeming to bulge with pleasure. He bowed, stumbling slightly as he did so, because of his lame leg. ‘Your Majesty does me great honour, yet I am not the person to ask. Your Majesty, the Deputy Steward may have —’

  ‘The Deputy Steward may have other ideas?’ Edward interjected. He
laughed lightly, and waited in the expectation that the others would also find his words amusing, which they dutifully did.

  ‘And I expect that is so, am I not correct, Sir Thomas? You would not like to lose so accomplished a cook.’

  Lady Alecia volunteered a reply. ‘I would hope that our good Gideon Kitchen would stay with us, Your Majesty, so that we could entice you to favour us with further visits in the future.’

  Hugh le Dispenser laughed. ‘Well said, madam. And to be frank, I would suggest that you keep him here, Edward, for I would like to hunt these woods again, despite my bad luck today.’

  ‘Then the cook shall stay!’ the King announced, taking a large mouthful of wine. ‘And who knows, perhaps someday the Deputy Steward will not just be a deputy,’ he said suggestively. ‘I am liking this Sandal Castle. I quite see why the Earls Surrey and Lancaster both had a liking for it.’

  Sir Thomas beamed. ‘I hope that I will merit the trust you have placed in me, Your Majesty.’

  The king laughed again. ‘Oh, I am sure that you will.’ He was smiling, yet there was no mistaking the fact that the smile was only a movement of the mouth, for there was no laughter evident in his eyes. ‘After all, everyone knows what happens to those who cross me.’

  Hugh le Dispenser was dangling his knife in his right hand. He smiled and suggestively waved it in front of his neck. ‘Look what happened to Lancaster, the last “owner” of Sandal Castle.’

  The minstrels up in their gallery came to the end of their music and it seemed that an eerie silence fell upon the diners. It was broken after a moment by the King.

  ‘And tomorrow we shall see these Mystery Plays that Wakefield seems famous for.’ Suddenly, he turned to Richard. ‘What say you, Richard? You have been quiet all evening.’

  Richard was taken unawares. ‘My apologies, Your Majesty. My mind has been with more mundane matters than this. I am sure that you will be mightily entertained by it all.’

  The whole of Wakefield was up before daylight for the Corpus Christi celebrations. The day before, the pageant wagons had been hauled into place to form a semi-circle around the one side of the Bull Ring and all of the market-stalls had been taken down. The plan was to start the celebration at nine bells with a mass at All Saints before the procession of the players through the town, to end up at the Bull Ring, where the crowd would be eagerly waiting.

  Hubert met Richard as agreed at the Roll’s Office in the Moot Hall a good hour before the mass was due to start.

  ‘My Lord, I … I have a favour to ask,’ he said.

  Richard was sitting at the desk, tapping the lid of a chest containing some of the artefacts from the recent court cases. He was preoccupied and replied distractedly. ‘Ask then, good Hubert.’

  ‘May I … may I have your leave to marry?’

  Richard looked up in surprise. ‘You wish to marry Beatrice? But you have only known her a few days.’

  ‘A few days, a couple of nights. What does it matter? I love her with my soul. I love her when I see her across the Bucket Inn, I love her when she scolds me, and I love her when we make love. When I close my eyes I see her, as she is in bed, naked, looking down at me, smiling with those beautiful lips. I love those lips, that gap in her teeth, the way she —’

  ‘Hubert, stop! That’s it!’

  ‘That’s what, my lord? Have I said too much?’

  ‘Teeth, Hubert! Teeth! Go and find George-a-Green the pinder. Bring him to me.’

  ‘But my lord, what about —?’

  ‘Now, Hubert!’

  It took Hubert a good twenty minutes before he returned with the bewildered looking pinder. He was dressed as a shepherd, ready to perform in one of the plays.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, sir?’ he asked. ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘I want to talk to you about Hector Lunt. You must have been one of his closest friends. I want to know if he bought a pardon from Albin of Rouncivale.’

  A muscle twitched in the pinder’s strong jaw, and Richard thought that he detected a glint of anxiety register in his face. ‘No, sir, he didn’t buy a pardon, but he did buy something else.’

  Hubert interjected, ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘I didn’t see that it was important.’

  ‘It was a tooth, wasn’t it?’ Richard pressed. ‘I imagine he paid a goodly sum for it.’

  The pinder looked amazed. ‘It was, and he did. He said it was the tooth of a sainted nun and that he was fully protected because of it. He became really cocky and all. But how did you —?’

  ‘That will be all,’ Richard returned coldly. ‘I have no time to explain, but you will probably have to explain in court sometime.’ When the pinder departed sheepishly, Richard tapped the casket in front of him and opened it. ‘Teeth, Hubert! Fool that I am, I did not recognize the significance of the teeth.’ He drew out one of the Pardoner’s small jars and poured from it the two teeth. ‘Look at them, Hubert. What do you notice about them?’

  Hubert bit his lip and concentrated. ‘They look fresh and they look good.’

  ‘Exactly! No rot. Just as Lady Wilhelmina said. These are not the teeth of a peasant.’

  ‘So could they be the teeth of a saint, as the Pardoner claimed?’

  ‘No, they were the teeth of a noble. Someone who ate and lived well.’

  ‘But who lost their teeth?’ Hubert asked, still bemused.

  ‘These teeth had been pulled out, Hubert. After death, I am sure.’

  Hubert snapped his fingers. ‘A noble killed in battle?’

  ‘No! One who died by decapitation.’

  It took Hubert a moment, then he stared at his master in disbelief. ‘The Earl of Lancaster?’

  ‘Precisely. And now I think it fits. Or much of it. The Pardoner came to Wakefield from Pontefract, that we know. I believe that he bought some teeth from the headsman and probably sold them off to people who believed that they needed special pardoning. Probably because they were racked with guilt, or because they were afraid that some crime might be discovered.’

  ‘Like Hector Lunt?’

  ‘Like a man who had raped a girl in the town,’ Richard mused. ‘And who confessed to the Pardoner. Then later, Hector must have panicked and tried to get the tooth back. And that was why the Pardoner gave himself up to the watch and confessed that he had committed a crime. He blurted out that he had committed the crime that had been confessed to him, and which was obviously in his mind at the time. He felt threatened and needed to gain the protection of custody. Albin of Rouncivale’s crime was not rape, but greed.’

  ‘So where does Robert Hood come in?’

  So deep had they been in discussion that they had barely noticed the sound of people milling about outside, of horses clopping up the streets. Then the bells of All Saints started to ring.

  ‘Never mind the Hood,’ Richard said. ‘The thing that Hector Lunt gasped when he lay dying is of the greatest importance now.’ He thumped the side of his head and cursed. ‘I have been such a blind fool! Hubert, we assumed he was just saying an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. What he was actually saying was that his killer had taken his tooth, his protection. And also something deeper than that. Remember, Scathelocke had been shot in the eye! An eye for an eye.’

  ‘I don’t understand, my lord.’

  ‘No, I do not fully understand it myself. Yet there is something here that worries me deeply. And it concerns the King. He used to call Piers Gaveston his Eye. And now he calls Hugh le Dispenser the same thing.’

  ‘You think that someone means to kill le Dispenser?’

  ‘I think it is possible. The King still has many enemies, and le Dispenser is as unpopular as ever Gaveston was. We must be vigilant.’

  ‘What do you want me to do, my lord?’

  ‘I want you to stay close to His Majesty and le Dispenser. I will have a word with Sir Thomas and make it all right. Also, keep an eye on me. If you hear me call out, guard the King and Le Dispenser.’

  ‘Shoul
d we not say something to His Majesty?’ Hubert asked.

  ‘There is no time,’ Richard replied. ‘We must to church straight away.’

  Richard shuffled up the aisle and sat down beside Sir Thomas Deyville, who was sitting behind the King and Hugh le Dispenser. Richard whispered his concerns to the Deputy Steward, but as he expected he found that he was less concerned than he thought he should be.

  ‘The King could not be better protected,’ he whispered back. ‘There is a small army in the town. You stick to the law, Sir Richard, and leave this to me. I will allow your man to shadow the King, but otherwise I shall take care of his protection.’

  Richard looked past him and bowed his head to Lady Alecia.

  ‘Where is the Lady Wilhelmina?’ he asked.

  ‘She is unwell this morning,’ Lady Alecia whispered back. ‘A sickness. I have sent word for the apothecary to call later today.’

  Richard nodded guiltily, feeling sure in his own mind that he was partly responsible for her absence.

  Father Daniel conducted the Corpus Christi mass after which Lady Katherine and her nuns sang while the King, Hugh le Dispenser and the congregation filed out of the church. The King and his party, now including Hubert, walked the short distance to the Bull Ring and took their seats in the special high carved chairs that had been set up on a canopied dais for them to observe the plays as they were performed in the temporary amphitheatre.

  The procession of players, musicians and singers meanwhile marched through the streets, snaking their way into the Bull Ring to take up their places behind the pageants of their guilds.

  A drum rolled and Father Daniel walked into the main area before the dais and welcomed the royal party and the crowd of spectators that had formed round about. As he did so, Richard noted Sir Thomas and Lady Alecia sitting on either side of the King and le Dispenser, and Hubert standing to attention behind the King’s chair. He also stood surveying the rows of armed men within easy reach of the king. He knew too that more armed men were located around the town boundaries, so there would be no chance of an armed assault by anything less than an organized army while they were there, for, of course, the town was built on a ridge, with good views in most directions. He ran an eye across the tops of the buildings, checking that no one could be secreted on a rooftop or in a garret. Beyond the Bull Ring stood the scaffold-surrounded tower of All Saints, from whence the bell pealed every few minutes, as Father Daniel had instructed.