The Witch of Eye

by Mari Griffith

  His plan paid off and he had soon built a solid reputation as a reliable supplier, work which often took him to St Paul’s Cathedral within the city walls of London where he sourced many of his supplies. The townsfolk made the nave of the huge cathedral their own and the atmosphere was noisy and colourful. More often than not, Virley would see someone he knew among the people who used the north and south transepts as a short cut between Paternoster Row to the north of the building and Carter Lane to the south, particularly when the weather was bad. They would call out greetings to each other and congregate in groups, chatting and gossiping, or they would amble around the walls to browse among the books. Those booksellers and stationers whose main premises were in Paternoster Row would often set up temporary stalls inside the cathedral where they did a roaring trade selling some of their wares at second hand.

  In the churchyard outside, under St Paul’s Cross, public announcements were made and sermons were preached to save the souls of the ungodly while urchins played hide-and-seek and leapfrog around the handcarts of the street traders, risking a clip around the ear if they got in the way.

  Today, the cool spring air was full of sounds, shouts, street cries and laughter. John Virley loved the hustle and bustle around St Paul’s: it was where he felt most at home. Born and bred a Londoner, he revelled in the opportunity to catch up with friends or to visit one of several welcoming women he knew who lived within the city walls. His narrow eyes shone with pleasure at being a part of all the colour and movement which surrounded him.

  He made his way down to St Faith’s Chapel in the undercroft of the cathedral, where he bought two bags of iron gall ink powder. He always mixed his own ink, using wine rather than water for the purpose. In Virley’s opinion, wine gave the finished ink a far greater intensity. He usually bought his vellum in bulk from another trader and was waiting impatiently while the man took his time in counting out the sheets and calculating the bill of sale.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Master Virley, but we have been very busy this morning,’ the trader grumbled apologetically. ‘Trouble is, there are too many people learning to read these days.’

  ‘And we have to supply the books for them,’ snapped Virley, ‘so I’d appreciate it if you –’ He broke off at the sudden sound of raised voices from the other side of the chapel.

  ‘Run out! What do you mean, you’ve run out? You can’t possibly run out of ink powder, man! So what do you expect me to do, eh? Tell me, what do you expect me to do? Tell my master he’ll have to write a letter for the Duke in his own blood?’

  Virley knew those stentorian tones, he’d know them anywhere. The pugnacious William Woodham had a famously short temper: he’d always been the same, even when he and Virley were youngsters growing up in Aldgate Street to the east of the city.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ The trader had taken fright: his back was against the wall and he was cowering away from the onslaught. ‘You see, sir, that gentlemen over there bought the last of my ink powder not a minute since ... and I haven’t had the chance...’

  Woodham turned and spotted Virley. ‘Virley,’ he roared, ‘you old dog. You’ve bought the last of this man’s ink, drat and damn you!’

  ‘Have I? I wasn’t aware that I had. And I certainly didn’t do it on purpose. So calm down, William. You’ll do yourself harm, carrying on like that. There are other traders who sell ink.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose there are,’ Woodham said grudgingly, his anger subsiding. ‘Well, it’s good to see you anyway, Virley, even though you might have got me into trouble. You know me, I’ve a temper like a tinderbox if I can’t have what I want when I want it. And Canon Hume will be furious if I go back to the palace empty-handed.’

  ‘Why does he need ink so urgently?’

  ‘Why does anyone need ink, Virley? That’s a stupid question. My master needs ink because he serves as secretary to their Graces the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester.’

  ‘And one of them wants to write a letter?’

  ‘The Duke does. Well, dammit, Virley, Canon Hume can’t do his job without the right tools, can he?’

  ‘Language, language, Woodham! This is a church, remember, for all that we’re in the crypt.’

  ‘I don’t care. Well, yes, I do care, of course I do. And it’s my fault anyway, for forgetting to order it. Forgive me, Lord,’ he crossed himself quickly, bending his head. No good would come of offending the Almighty. ‘Anyway, Hume has run out of ink so I’ve had to come all the way up from Westminster to get him some. I don’t suppose you could let me have half of what you’ve just bought, could you? It would save me having to go hunting for it. I’m dying of thirst and I can’t drink ink so I don’t want to waste more time on it. I’d rather be in The Bush. So, will you, Virley?’

  Virley appeared to hesitate while he considered the proposal.

  ‘If the price is right,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on man, for old times’ sake. Split it with me and I’ll give you a ha’penny more for half of it than you paid. I’ll just tell Hume it’s gone up in price. He’ll never know.’

  ‘Done!’ said Virley, never a man to pass up a bargain.

  Not having seen each other for some months, Virley and Woodham decided to walk to Westminster together, Virley heading for the monastery to deliver parchment to the monks and Woodham to take the ink to Canon Hume at the palace. After crossing the Fleet Bridge, just outside the city walls, Woodham stopped on the corner at the entrance to Cock and Key Alley in front of a large, square building, a branch of hawthorn nailed above the door.

  ‘Ah, The Bush,’ said Virley. ‘Probably the best ale house in London!’

  ‘No question of that,’ said Woodham. ‘The alewife isn’t bad either! Used to be a Winchester goose when she was younger, one of the prettier ones. I knew her well. Mind you, she’s no gosling nowadays. Must be thirty years old if she’s a day, but she’s still got most of her teeth so she’s not too bad-looking.’

  As they entered the low-ceilinged room, Woodham was greeted with shrieks of pleasure by a plump woman with greying fair hair and a greasy apron tied around her ample waist. A table laden with jugs of ale stood at one end of the room and a pall of smoke from a peat fire hung over the dozen or so men who sat talking and laughing loudly, mugs cradled in their hands.

  ‘William Woodham!’ she shouted above the din. ‘Where’ve you been? We haven’t seen you for ... oh, I don’t know ... I was only saying to the girls last week ... it must be nigh on a month.’

  ‘Quiet, woman, and give us each a measure of your best ale.’ Woodham seemed not to be a man for polite conversation. He turned to Virley. ‘It’s as well the ale is good. Otherwise I couldn’t abide the noise in here.’ Then he grinned and gave the woman a great thwack on the backside. She cackled with laughter.

  ‘How have you been keeping, you old jade?’

  ‘Oh, all right, you know,’ she laughed again. ‘Better for seeing you, though. Where’ve you been? Still working for Good Duke Humphrey, are you?’

  ‘Why not? It’s as good as anywhere else.’

  ‘Better than most, I’d say. He’s a good man, that Duke Humphrey. Everybody says so. You should count yourself lucky to be working in his household.’

  ‘And he doesn’t know how lucky he is to have me!’ said Woodham, pushing away Virley’s half-hearted attempt to pay for the ale. ‘You can get the next ones,’ he said. They were clearly going to be there for some time, which was just as well since they had a lot of catching up to do.

  The two had grown up together in a rundown area just to the east of the city walls, the closest of friends. Woodham’s father was the landlord of the Crown Inn in Aldgate Street, just next door to the church of St Botolph-without-Aldgate in which Virley, the possessor of a fine treble voice, had been a choirboy. With his face framed in a collar of pleated white linen, Virley always looked the very picture of innocence and purity as he sang, though under the red cassock and white surplice his knees were as grubby as any other boy’s
and he was quite likely to have a few worms in his pocket for an afternoon’s fishing with his friend William.

  This early career as a choirboy meant that, of the two, Virley was by far the better educated, having been taught to read and write by a minor canon of St Botolph’s who had taken an unhealthy interest in him. Woodham, on the other hand, was the son of a brutish bully who normally got his way simply because none of his neighbours wanted to antagonise him. Whereas he could see the sense of reckoning up the number of tankards of ale he’d sold and the profit he’d made, there didn’t seem to him much sense in spending that profit in educating his son. Woodham’s education came much later, when he’d gone into service and realised that the ability to read was a very valuable skill for someone with ambition. The friendship between the two boys had been an unlikely one and yet it lasted throughout their childhood until they eventually went their separate ways in search of employment.

  ‘So, what’s it like working for the Duke of Gloucester, then?’ Virley asked as they sat on a bench near the fire. ‘It can’t be bad. He certainly seems very popular around here.’

  ‘Oh, aye, he is. Londoners love him,’ said Woodham. ‘Mind you, they aren’t so keen on his wife.’

  ‘No, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘An arrogant bitch,’ said Woodham, never one to mince his words. ‘She loves showing off, riding around town in her carriage so everyone can see how elegant she is, how rich her clothes are. It’s no wonder people think she’s too big for her boots.’

  ‘Boots? Surely not!’

  ‘No, of course she doesn’t wear boots, blockhead! Only the finest leather shoes from the best cordwainer in London will do for Her High and Mighty Grace! But you know what I mean. Everyone thinks she’s just a little upstart who married well.’

  ‘Came from Kent, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. A place called Sterborough. Her father’s Sir Reginald Cobham. He’s fairly low down the pecking order as these things go. Mind you, he has the care of the Duke of Orléans at the moment. He’s his custodian, so someone must think something of him.’

  ‘I thought the Duke of Orléans was being sent back to France. That’s what I heard, anyway.’

  ‘Not if Duke Humphrey has anything to do with it. He’s dead against it. I overheard him talking to Canon Hume about it the other day, when he was dictating a letter. To the King I think it was. Anyway, he was damned furious when Hume ran out of ink, I can tell you!’

  ‘Then shouldn’t you be getting back to the palace with it?’

  ‘All in good time.’ Woodham leaned his back against the wall, stretching his legs out comfortably towards the fire. ‘I’ll have another mug of this excellent ale first. For my trouble. You can get this one, Virley. And don’t take all day buying it!’

  He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist and burped loudly.

  ***

  ‘Uncle, tell me for pity’s sake. What have I done to deserve this?’

  King Henry paced up and down on the luxurious Persian carpet in the private royal solar at the Palace of Westminster, a roll of parchment in his hand. Every now and then he would stop his pacing to shake the letter aloft, in the direction of his great-uncle Cardinal Beaufort, who stood impassive, watching him.

  ‘I mean,’ the King went on, ‘why does my uncle of Gloucester see fit to sign his name and include all his titles? Look at it. He styles himself Duke of Gloucester, Holland, Zeeland and Brabant, Earl of Pembroke, Hainault and Flanders...’

  ‘To be fair to him, you must allow that he has been all these things in his time. That is to say he was all these things while he was married to the Duchess Jacqueline, but since he divorced the poor woman, I doubt he has a right to use those titles any longer. Perhaps he’s included them because the document is to be read out in Parliament, just to remind everyone exactly how important he is.’

  The King turned down his lower lip in a pout and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said. ‘But, my Lord Uncle, he says some dreadful things about you.’

  ‘That’s nothing new,’ Beaufort responded with a hollow laugh.

  The King began his pacing again, looking down at the roll of parchment in his left hand, flicking at it with the back of his right hand as he enumerated each of the many points Humphrey of Gloucester had noted in his complaint.

  ‘He says you shouldn’t have been allowed to become a cardinal, that my late father forbade it. Then he says that you and Cardinal Kemp are taking over the council and thereby the running of the country instead of me ... in derogation of your noble estate, he says. And he’s at pains to denounce the whole Congress of Arras as a complete waste of money. He states quite plainly that you are stripping the English crown of its assets and manoeuvring to get the Crown Jewels into your possession. He demands to know how you have come by your wealth!’

  He looked up from the letter and was surprised to see his great-uncle appear quite calm, a slightly sardonic smile on his lips.

  ‘Is that all he says?’ asked Beaufort mildly. ‘Can’t he think of anything else? Hasn’t he got any bigger sticks to beat me with?’

  ‘Oh yes, plenty.’ The King continued reading from the lengthy document. ‘He professes himself profoundly surprised that you procured the release of James of Scotland from English captivity without the consent of Parliament and turned this to your advantage by marrying your niece to him.’

  ‘I can’t see how that benefits me personally,’ said Beaufort, brushing an unseen speck of dust off his sleeve, ‘though it’s true, Joan did become Queen of Scotland.’

  ‘Then he goes on to accuse you of selling benefits and offices in England and France which were not yours to sell and says that by these ill-gotten gains, you have assumed the pomp and magnificence of royalty.’

  ‘I was conceived on the wrong side of the blanket for that,’ said Beaufort, drily.

  ‘You can’t be blamed for that, Uncle. At least you were legitimised when your parents were finally able to marry.’ The King turned his attention back to the letter in his hand. ‘But listen to this: my uncle of Gloucester goes on to say that you and Cardinal Kemp have estranged me from the Duke of York, the Earl of Huntingdon and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who should be counted among my chief advisers. I would disagree most strongly with that! I rely heavily on their advice, but I also rely on yours.’

  Beaufort sighed deeply before replying. ‘It’s a nasty, malicious little missive, is it not?’ he said.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ agreed the King. ‘And I wonder what my uncle of Gloucester hoped to achieve by writing it.’

  Henry Beaufort had another question to ask. ‘Does he make any mention of Charles, Duke of Orléans?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. Would you expect him to?’

  ‘Oh yes. Your uncle is fervently opposed to the release of the Duke of Orléans, on the grounds that it would strengthen the position of the Duke of Burgundy in his claim that Charles de Valois is the rightful King of France. That is the fundamental disagreement between us.’

  ‘That is nonsensical,’ said King Henry. ‘I am King of both England and France and everyone should acknowledge the fact. But I wish there was not so much enmity between us.’

  ‘Of course, if you renounced your claim to the French throne, life would be a great deal more peaceful.’

  The King hesitated for a moment before replying. ‘Peace is what I aspire to,’ he said quietly. ‘It is what I crave more than anything.’

  ‘Even to the extent of renouncing the throne of France, Your Highness?’

  ‘No, of course not. And, with God’s grace, it will not come to that. But for the present, I can see nothing to be gained by holding the Duke of Orléans in captivity against his will.’

  ‘Even though your late father decreed that he should be held at all costs?’

  ‘Uncle, the Duke of Orléans was taken prisoner at the Battle of Agincourt. That was many years before I was even born. You know better than anyone how greatly I revere the memory of my late father,
but I am King now. I am old enough to make my own decisions and I would dearly love to see peace between France and England. Surely it would be wise to pursue a peaceful foreign policy?’

  ‘Certainly the ransom, which France will have to pay for the Duke’s release, will ease the debt which burdens us.’ Money was invariably a major consideration for Beaufort. If the full ransom was paid, then he himself might stand a reasonable chance of being repaid the money he had lent the crown. Perhaps even with a decent rate of interest.

  ‘Then he must be released. And I will issue a manifesto to assure my people that the release of such an important prisoner from captivity is entirely my decision and my responsibility,’ said the King decisively. ‘Everyone must understand quite clearly that I am doing this on my own initiative for the sole purpose of bringing to an end the war in France.’

  ‘There is both wisdom and bravery in that decision, Your Highness.’

  ‘The war has gone on too long, it has killed too many Englishmen and has been too great a drain on the resources of the English crown. If the best way to secure peace is to release the Duke of Orléans, then so be it. After all, he is not privy to any of our state secrets so he can do no harm. Besides,’ added the King with typical piousness, ‘it is immoral to keep a prisoner of war in perpetual confinement.’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Beaufort. ‘Quite so.’

  There was no more to be said, particularly since he seemed easily to have won the King around to his way of thinking. That made him the victor in this, the latest skirmish in the ongoing battle between himself and his nephew of Gloucester.

  ***

  From where she sat at her dressing table, the Duchess of Gloucester could see a perfect mirror image of Jenna’s face. It was a study in concentration as she stood behind her mistress, pinning up her hair to make certain it would stay in place under the elaborate hennin that perched like an exotic bird on a wooden block on the dressing table, ready to be placed in position on Eleanor’s head.