by Robyn Young
‘I saw Arnold at Mass and he said you were leaving. I’ve been looking everywhere. I feared I was too late.’ Grace looked at the sword and bag on the grass by the grave. ‘Where will you go?’
‘Shoreditch. There’s a man called Ned Draper who served in Sir Thomas’s household. He’s with a troupe of players there.’
‘What do you hope to find?’ Grace’s earlier anger had faded. Now she just sounded sad.
He paused, his eyes drawn back to the turned earth of the grave. ‘Answers. God willing.’
‘Are you in trouble?’ When he didn’t speak, Grace’s brow creased. ‘You disappeared for a year with no one to say where you had gone. And, James, I saw your reaction to the fire. You don’t believe it was an accident, do you? Does it have something to do with Sir Thomas? His execution?’
He met her gaze. ‘In truth, I don’t know. But I shouldn’t stay here. If there is danger out there I don’t want to bring it to your door. Besides, I doubt your brother and father will stand for my presence here much longer.’
She nodded reluctantly, then held out the bundle she was carrying. ‘It’s nothing much,’ she added as he took it questioningly. ‘Some food. A few of Peter’s clothes.’
‘I don’t need it,’ he said stiffly, feeling like a beggar she’d taken pity on. ‘Arnold had some papers he asked me to take to London. He paid for me to travel by horse.’
‘Please, James,’ she said, putting a hand on his.
‘Call me Jack. I haven’t been James for a while now.’
‘Jack?’ Her face brightened as she laughed. ‘You used to call yourself that when we were children.’ Her smile faded. ‘Will you come back?’
When he nodded her eyes lingered on his, searching for the truth. Jack leaned in and kissed her softly on the cheek by way of answer. Grace closed her eyes, then pulled away.
‘Walk with me to the White Horse?’ he asked her.
‘Of course.’
As he bent to pick up his father’s sword and his bag of belongings, Jack glanced over at the yew tree. There was no sign of the hooded figure. Maybe it had been a spirit? He supposed there were enough of them here.
As the boat ground on the shingle, six figures jumped into the shallows, the rush of waves masking the crunch of boots on pebbles. A seventh, whip-thin, leapt down last with barely a sound. Pulling the hood of a grey cape over a crop of short dark hair, the figure followed the others up the beach.
Ahead, the cliffs towered, a great white wall glowing faintly in the starlight. Just before the seven reached the rocks strewn around the base of the cliffs, the thin figure paused and looked back. The boat was making its way out through the waves, oars carving the water. Beyond, in the bay, the shadow of a much larger vessel lurked. The figure stood for a moment, eyes on the ship, thinking of the master’s last words.
This is the most important thing I have ever asked of you, Amelot. Everything depends on it. Find it. Bring it to me.
A low, impatient whistle turned Amelot back to the cliff face, where a dark fissure wound its way up to the top. Slipping past the six men she took the heavy coil of rope from one and, hefting it on her back, began to climb. She was as surefooted as a goat even with the rope pulling at her small shoulders and the soft chalk crumbling in places beneath her hands and feet. The men watched in silence below, waiting for the rope’s end to come slipping down to them.
Chapter 11
The spire of Holywell Priory loomed from the green shroud of trees that encircled the parish of Shoreditch. Jack had used it for his bearings since joining the road out of London. The drizzle that had greeted him that morning as he left the tavern near Ludgate, where he’d spent the night after delivering Arnold’s papers to a clerk at Middle Temple, had lifted and the sun was now trying to break through.
The road was busy with travellers. Whenever people peeled off into one of the many hamlets that clustered around London’s walls – the population having long ago burst from the city’s stone girdle – more joined it, driving animals and carts, walking in groups or riding alone. Jack felt less conspicuous than he had on his previous journey from the city. He’d borrowed a razor and comb from Grace’s manservant and was dressed in her dead husband’s clothes. The peacock-blue doublet was more than snug at the padded shoulders and puffed sleeves, but it was well-made and, together with the velvet cap and cape, made him appear like a man of some means going about his business: affluent enough to be left alone, but not so rich that he was an attractive target for thieves.
Yesterday, trawling through a leatherworkers’, he’d found an old scabbard which, with a few deft cuts and stitches, had been made to fit his father’s sword. He’d bought it with a couple of the pennies Grace had slipped wordlessly into the bundle she had given him. The sword’s ruby-embedded pommel was hidden by the folds of his cloak and the crude scabbard disguised the blade’s true worth. So far that morning two companies of armed men had passed him, riding north, but other than a few patrols in the city, where many buildings were still strung with ribbons from the coronation, the imposing presence of soldiers had vanished and the atmosphere was calmer, more subdued than it had been.
Taking the papers, the clerk at the Temple told Jack that the new king had recently departed with a great host of men-at-arms and dignitaries on a royal progress.
‘Now, perhaps, peace may be restored to the realm,’ the man had said with a hopeful smile. ‘Our lives can return to the way they were. Long live the king.’
It was the first time Jack had felt truly angry. The shocks, the uncertainty and the inebriation of the past weeks had kept him from dwelling on who was to blame for his father’s death, but the clerk’s words had fanned a flickering fire of rage. His life would never be the same.
Now, as the road cut its way through cornfields, following the reed-fringed line of the Walbrook, the pale, pinched face of the Duke of Gloucester filled Jack’s mind. He had marched with the man along this very same road on Easter Eve twelve years ago, the war drums loud in his ears above the rough stamp of thousands of feet and the bellows of oxen hauling cannons through the mud.
Knights on armoured horses, halberdiers and pikemen, crossbowmen and gunners: King Edward’s banner had led them all, that blazing sun in splendour returned to England’s shores, home from exile to face his kinsman, the Earl of Warwick. In the king’s custody that day was Henry VI, taken from the Tower, a pitiful shell of a man, who so many of them, Thomas Vaughan included, had once served. But long gone were the days when they were countrymen together under one crown. They were now Yorkist against Lancastrian. Blood against blood. Civil war is the devil’s work, James, Vaughan once said. It is where he does his worst hurt.
Ten miles out at Barnet, the light fading fast, they had met Warwick’s army. Edward ordered his men to make camp, while the earl’s guns fired blindly through the night, and all across England the lights in churches were extinguished ready for the paschal candles to be lit in honour of the rising of Christ. When Easter dawn broke, cloaked in fog as thick and white as milk, the two armies had celebrated their own resurrection in a hell-storm of cannon, King Edward leading his men, roaring, into the enemy’s lines.
It was Jack’s second experience of battle, after Stamford, but it was the first where he’d been caught up in the fighting. He remembered the deafening crack and boom of the guns, the choking, sulphurous smell and the curses of the gunners whenever their powder didn’t ignite, its terrible power stifled by the damp air. He remembered men coming howling out of the mist on all sides, impossible to tell until the last moment whose side they were on, the archers struggling to see targets. Vaughan had ploughed forward in the king’s company, along with the Duke of Gloucester, leading their men into a wall of thrusting blades. Jack had followed with the infantry, keeping close behind the large form of Ned Draper, his short sword gripped tight in his fist. All around the air was rent with the screech of steel-tipped halberds slicing along iron helms, the hammer cracks of axes smashing into breastplates
, the splintering of bones and skulls, and the screaming. So much screaming. The smell had been the worst of it. That stinking stew of sulphur, voided bowels and spilled guts.
In the heart of that chaos, Jack had glimpsed two men in Warwick’s colours go for the Duke of Gloucester. The duke had cuffed away the blade of one, but the other’s spiked mace had struck him on the shoulder – hard enough to puncture plate – felling him. Into the breach, Vaughan had swept, smashing his own mace into the helm of one attacker, then spinning to swing it into the chest of the other, protecting the fallen duke. At that same moment a man in a bloodstained gambeson appeared out of the fog and rushed at Ned Draper.
The soldier, pushing on into the fray with his halberd thrust before him, hadn’t seen him coming. Jack had moved without thinking, ducking forward and ramming his sword into the attacker’s thigh. He remembered the blade sticking, wedged in padding and muscle, the man turning on him, eyes blood-drunk, remembered staggering from the clumsy counter-strike, the man buckling to his knees, the sword stuck deep in his thigh. He remembered tugging the man’s own dagger from his belt, yelling as he struck at him in the face and neck, again and again, falling down on top of him, still stabbing, only thinking to end the life before him – to be the one left standing. He remembered the hot spray. The man’s inhuman shrieks. His own horror.
It only ended when Ned hauled him off, grabbing his chin in his gloved hand and forcing him to look at him. ‘It is done, James! It is done!’
That day – the day Edward destroyed Warwick and had gone on to reclaim his kingdom – Jack had been christened with his first blood, aged thirteen.
Now, as he left the road and walked into Shoreditch, he wondered whether his father would still be alive if he hadn’t cut down Gloucester’s attackers that day or whether destiny had always marked him for death and dishonour. Who was Thomas Vaughan really? Had his steadfast desire to follow in his father’s footsteps blinded him to the path the man had chosen? Did that road lead not to a place of light, but into darkness?
On Holywell Lane near the priory, a crowd had gathered. Approaching, Jack saw a monk in a black habit standing on the verge. His tonsured scalp had been roasted by the sun and his voice was hoarse as he addressed the crowd.
‘I tell you, the end of all days is coming! These men who sail their ships to the edges of the world – what but the demon hosts of Gog and Magog await them there? The barbarous Turks crowd in on Christendom. The black army hungers for our blood. And we?’ The monk raised his arms to the sky. ‘We send ships to seek out luxuries! We send merchants to hunt for spices and pearls!’
‘And you and your brethren get drunk in your monastery!’ shouted someone from the back of the crowd.
The monk continued, undeterred. ‘We should be sending soldiers to carve God’s will into the flesh of the infidel!’
A few people in the crowd murmured in agreement and crossed themselves. His detractors, bored, peeled off and moved on.
‘For our sins, we will awaken darkness! For our sins, we call our doom!’
Jack moved up to two young women at the back of the crowd. One turned, her brow furrowing warily. The other appraised him with a smile. ‘Good day, sir.’
When Jack removed his cap and inclined his head, her smile broadened.
‘Do you know where I might find the Shoreditch Players?’
The frowning woman turned away, lips pursed, but her companion pointed down the street. ‘They’ll be in Sir Cuthbert’s field most likely. He lets them practise there. Turn right past St Leonard’s Church. The big house at the end of the lane.’
Offering her another courteous dip of his head, Jack left the woman grinning coquettishly after him and the priest continuing his doom-laden sermon.
As he headed between rows of timber-framed houses, he passed gardens fragrant with herbs and flowers where women were harvesting the summer crops. The sight made him think of his mother and he focused instead on the church the woman had pointed him towards. Making his way down the lane, boots splashing through puddles, he approached a red brick house. From behind it rose shouts and the familiar clash of weapons. Jack’s hand strayed to his sword hilt. Moving cautiously through the shade of a line of oak trees bordering the house, he saw a meadow stretching away, dotted with barns and feed-stores.
On the grass was a large wagon with enormous wheels. Enclosed at the back and sides, two great doors opened like wings at the front gave a view of a stage. Wooden cut-outs of garish green trees rose from the boards, forming the scene of a forest. A boy in a white dress was tied to one of them. In front of him, six men leapt and rolled across the stage, shouting fiercely as they battered one another with blunted swords. Three were dressed in green tunics and hose, the others garbed in black. A few people sat watching, while one man moved in front of the stage, occasionally shouting directions at the six.
Jack scanned the spectators and players, searching for a familiar face, although just how familiar that face would be after nine years, he wasn’t sure. The last time he had seen Ned Draper he’d been sixteen and the soldier his age now. The men in green were losing, falling back, away from the youth tied to the tree. The three in black pressed forward, shouting victoriously. Suddenly, a trapdoor in the boards burst open and a great bear of a man rolled out from a chamber beneath the stage. As he leapt to his feet with a roar and carved his sword at one of the attackers, mock-felling the man in an instant, Jack grinned. He knew that mighty sword stroke anywhere.
The two remaining attackers staggered from Ned Draper’s haymaker blows.
‘You’ll pay for this, Robin Hood!’ shouted one, pointing his sword at a wiry man in green, fighting alongside Ned. ‘Our master will see to that!’
‘Fly, you cowards!’ bellowed Ned. ‘And bring back your master for a taste of my blade!’ He raised his sword in one hand and grabbed his crotch with the other.
The spectators laughed.
When the black-clad men had stumbled off stage, Ned moved to untie the boy.
‘Wait!’ shouted Robin, stepping forward.
When Ned ignored him the wiry man turned angrily to the man below the stage, who had been following the fight scene intently. ‘Little John can’t save Maid Marian!’
‘Master George, my dress keeps falling off,’ complained the youth as he was freed by Ned, clutching the voluminous white gown to his scrawny chest.
‘Blood and thunder!’ seethed the man, pushing his hands through his hair. ‘Charity! Charity!’
A young woman scurried from around the back of the wagon and raced up a set of steps that led through a door in the side. She appeared on stage.
‘God damn it, girl, I told you to fix that gown!’
‘Begging your pardon, Master George,’ said the woman, taking the dress as the youth stepped out of it.
‘Master George,’ Robin began again, still indignant at being upstaged by one of his merry men.
‘Enough! We return in an hour.’
As the men left the stage and the spectators, who Jack guessed were other players, dispersed, chatting among themselves, he started forward. Ned had disappeared down the steps, following the girl with the dress. Approaching the stage, Jack was confronted by Robin Hood and one of his green-clad men.
‘What’s your business here, eh?’
‘I’m here to see Ned.’
The two men stared at him with the unfriendly eyes of the pack. Hood’s comrade twirled his blunt sword idly in his hand.
‘Ned Draper,’ Jack tried again. ‘I’m an old friend of his.’
After a long pause, Robin grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. ‘Then pray welcome, sir,’ he said, stepping aside and sweeping off his green hat, grandly gesturing Jack to pass. ‘You’ll most likely find your old friend round the back. In Charity’s wardrobe.’
Jack moved past, hearing a snigger behind him.
As he headed around the wagon he saw it had a lower compartment built beneath the stage, complete with a set of doors. Above them, acro
ss the back of the wagon, The Marvellous Shoreditch Players, was painted in red and gold. He knocked. The doors remained closed.
‘Hey!’
Turning, Jack saw another of Robin’s merry men striding towards him.
‘You! What do you want?’
Jack ignored him. If there were answers to be found here he wouldn’t be kept from them. He pushed open the doors and ducked into the wardrobe, unheeding the man’s shout. The first thing he saw, past a set of short steps that he realised led up to the stage above, were costumes hanging from hooks in various states of completion. The second thing he saw, between the curtains of clothes, was Ned, propped between the splayed legs of Charity, her legs wrapped around his buttocks.
‘Son of a bitch!’ spat the soldier, jerking round.
The seamstress shoved him away and sat up, pushing down her skirts, her face scarlet.
‘I’ll take your head off,’ Ned growled, stuffing himself into his unlaced hose with a wince.
Jack raised his hands, backing towards the door as the hulk of a man came at him, bent double beneath the low ceiling. ‘Ned, I’m sorry!’
Ned halted mid-stride, his expression changing. ‘Christ and all the saints. James? James Wynter?’
‘Come, Father! Hurry!’
Prince Edward hastened across the lawn, turning every now and then to make sure his father was following.
‘They aren’t going anywhere,’ Richard called, unable to match his son’s impatient pace. ‘I hope,’ he murmured, as he approached the large wheeled cage.
Inside, two tigers lay panting in the sun. The acrid smell of urine-soaked straw tainted the air. Nearby, the acrobats who would entertain his guests that evening were practising. One man stood on another’s shoulders, juggling three apples. As Richard watched, a third threw up a knife, which the juggler incorporated into the circle. Edward had reached the tiger cage and had already struck up a conversation with the man guarding the animals. The forthrightness of the young, thought Richard. If only adults were so frank.
