by Robyn Young
Downstairs she crept, her footsteps soft. She had already learned which steps creaked. There was a new smell in the air of the house, like warm metal mixed with something unpleasant. She slowed her steps and moved to the edge of the gallery, looking down on the hall. It was in shadow, but the door to the chamber they were staying in was open, spilling a faint wash of candlelight. She stiffened, her eyes picking out shapes down there in the dark, sprawled across the floor. She couldn’t quite make them out, but none seemed to be moving. Heart quickening, she flitted down the stairs.
It was a scene of horror that greeted Amelot as she stepped into the hall. The bodies lay in various poses, some draped across one another, others skewed at hideous angles, limbs broken or hacked apart. Discarded weapons were scattered among them, the blades catching the flicker of candles in the far room. The blood was the source of the metal smell. It was everywhere, black in the gloom like glossy ink, sprayed across the walls and puddled on the floor. Moving closer, trembling, she realised she could see Remy and his men among the corpses, but there were others too. Men she did not know. One, close to her, looked as if he had crawled across the floor away from the others, leaving a wide smear of black on the tiles in his wake. He lay face-down, arms stretched before him. As she went to step past him, the man on the floor clutched her ankle.
Amelot staggered back in shock. As her mouth stretched in a scream, a huge hand clamped itself over her face. Another seized her arm. She twisted fiercely, but the grip tightened. A giant of a man with a mask that covered half his face was looming over her. She hadn’t even heard him approach. The giant looked to the man on the floor, who pushed himself up on his hands.
The injured man asked something in a language she didn’t understand. His voice was hoarse with pain, but the question was a sharp demand. The giant shook his head in response and the man grimaced and hung his head. After a moment, the man on the floor raised his eyes and looked at her. This time, when he spoke, his voice was low, full of menace. Amelot felt pain explode at the back of her head. She crumpled limply to the tiles. Through a daze, she saw the man being helped up by the giant. A moment later, hands grabbed her again and she was lifted into the air. She felt her world spin into darkness.
Chapter 17
Jack walked the riverbank, the rising sun filling his eyes. Across the Thames, the waking city was flooding with light, the spire of St Paul’s and the stone bulk of the Tower gleaming gold. Women clustered on the green-stained slipways that led down from the alleys to the water, taking their turns washing pots or clothing in the river. A crane on Wine Wharf was moving slowly, raising a barrel from the hold of a merchant galley. Smoke plumed from chimneys, church bells were clanging the hour and, to the west, the fish market at Queenhithe was already busy with traders setting out stalls of plaice and conger, smoked mackerel and salted herring. By prime, the street hawkers would be out in force around Friday Street, selling oysters and whelks from their baskets.
Ahead, the drawbridge had been raised on London Bridge and the first of the line of galleys that had moored up for the night were starting to pass through, the tide at its lowest and the waters between the arches at their calmest. Jack had left Ned and Hugh in the Ferryman’s Arms, slumped over the table where they had spent the night arguing, reminiscing and raising their cups to Thomas Vaughan and other fallen comrades. He had pushed his tankard aside hours ago. He needed clarity. Needed to think.
Sitting at the top of a set of mooring stairs at the end of a jetty, he watched the galley’s main mast carve through the centre of the bridge. The stinking mud-flats below him were teeming with gulls. Timbers from wrecked boats poked out of the mire, crusted with barnacles. He rubbed at his face, trying to wipe away the fog of exhaustion that had settled over him. Throughout the sleepless night, filled with Ned and Hugh’s talk and the hum of noise from Bankside, fragmented thoughts and half-formed plans had flared in him like fires. Now, just one was left, a faint, fitful spark of an idea. Jack’s gaze moved to the sun-gilded walls of the Tower.
He had followed every route in his search for answers. Only the prospect that Hugh’s brother-in-law might be able to tell him more about the map’s origins remained, but even then he knew that whatever he learned wouldn’t tell him what to do next – wouldn’t tell him how he was supposed to live his life. He had no home, no family and no money. He had no trade, only the skills he had learned on the broken path to a knighthood that had never been granted him. Now, his hope of that – of legitimacy, of acceptance – was as distant as the stars. His mother’s name was nothing and his father’s was tarnished with the black brush of treason. The map’s potential value explained why Gregory might have wanted it, but didn’t explain why his father had sent him away with it in the first place. The fear that Vaughan was ashamed of him was gone, but an even more discomforting possibility had taken its place.
His father had told him to protect the map, but hadn’t informed him of the dangers. Had Vaughan knowingly abused his loyalty? Worse – had he abused his mother’s? Was Sarah a victim of whatever he’d been involved in? Had she died because of him? The answers to these questions could change everything he thought he knew about his father and everything he understood about himself. Who was he really? The son of an honourable nobleman cut down by an evil king? Or the bastard boy of a thief and a liar who had sacrificed his family for the sake of an ill-gotten fortune? More than ever, he needed to know the nature of the blood in his veins.
There were other trails he might yet follow: the serpent symbol that seemed to connect his father to Earl Rivers and to the house off Lombard Street, the reference to the Needle in the letter and the Bristol merchant company whose crest was marked on the map, but these routes were obscure and not without danger. If he went asking around without care, who might he lead back to him?
As Jack stared across the river, scanning the high walls of the Tower, Hugh’s words echoed from yesterday. Other people he was close to? Close enough for a secret none of us – his own men – knew? There was one perhaps – one person who knew his father better than most. The boy he had raised since infancy, guiding and teaching him. The boy in whose company he had spent the past decade. The boy he had died for. Not him. Not Harry. The son who was not of his blood.
It was the one thought that had remained flickering inside him when dawn had broken and Hugh and Ned lay slumped in the tavern. Jack’s eyes drifted to the bridge as a second galley lined up to pass through. He thought of the heads of the men Hugh had plotted with now decorating those spikes. The same fate could easily await him if he failed. But what awaited him if he didn’t try? What would become of him then? Could he live as a player like Ned, tilting at women and drowning in drink, or slip into the forgotten world of the vagabond, relying on charity and stealing to survive, with every purse cut risking the torture of the pillory? He could perhaps go to the Continent, become a soldier for hire with his father’s sword, but he had no money to get there. And if he did? Could he live with the restless ghosts now thronging inside him?
Jack picked a stone from the wall. Standing, he tossed it far out into the river. It sank beneath the chop of waves without a trace. Throughout the night and all their intoxicated talk, two things had become clear to him: Ned’s undimmed loyalty to Vaughan and Hugh’s hatred of King Richard. Both were exploitable.
Robert Stillington sat on the window seat, hands clasped in his lap. Through the glass the grounds of Woking Manor faded in a rosy-hued dusk. The sun had almost set and he was still here waiting. As a door off the hall opened he looked up sharply. A serving girl appeared carrying a basket of crumpled linens.
‘Good woman,’ Stillington called sharply, rising to his feet. ‘When will the lady see me? The hour grows late.’
‘When my lady is done with her prayers, sir,’ said the girl, bobbing her head and hurrying away through another door.
Stillington sat back down, his jaw tight. The countess was known for her praying. It was said she had worn holes in her knees wit
h her piety. There was, perhaps, a point when devotion became self-indulgence. Especially in a woman.
He thought of the great machine that was the royal household coming slowly to life in Reading, rolling up its hundreds of servants and officials, equipment and supplies as it trundled on to the next town. Catesby, who had watched him closely since the coronation, had left for Oxford early that morning to help prepare for the king’s arrival, allowing him to make his move. Taking leave of the king with the excuse he had an urgent matter to attend to in his diocese, Stillington had promised to rejoin the progress at Gloucester. In all the commotion of the departure, he hoped no one had noticed his route, which had taken him and his small retinue south and east, rather than west on the king’s highway.
Another door opened and a young blond-haired boy appeared, neatly dressed, with a practised, head-high walk. A page, Stillington surmised. His eyes followed the boy as he passed, noting the soft curve of his cheek and jaw, not yet pocked or stubbled by adolescence, nor scarred by manhood. Like a cherub, he thought, his gaze following him down the passage, his mind wandering.
‘Your grace?’
Stillington looked round with a start. The door in front of him had opened without his notice. A man was standing there staring at him.
‘My lady will see you now.’
Stillington stood, brushing down his silk robe. Two little damp patches had formed on the material under his palms. He entered, glancing around the spacious chamber, the focal point of which was a bed, surrounded by sumptuous drapes. An archway, partially cloaked by black velvet, led into a private oratory. He glimpsed an altar with a book spread open upon it. There were other books stacked neatly on a table by the window, along with a green glass vase filled with lilies, the sickly scent of which at once made Stillington want to sneeze.
‘His grace, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells.’
As the usher announced him, Stillington’s gaze was drawn to a chair by the fireplace, from which rose Lady Margaret of the House of Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and matriarch of the fallen House of Lancaster. He had known her for years, but it still surprised him how small of stature she was, even compared to him, who could rely only on the pulpit to raise him above other men. Margaret wore a stiff black gown, the bodice of which was embroidered with red flowers. Her hair was covered by a padded headdress that arched over her head in a steeple of black silk. Everything about her was neat and trim, down to her lean face and long thin nose. She had sharp grey eyes, which had no difficulty meeting his as she came forward to greet him.
‘Good evening, your grace.’
He noted that her tone was mild, cordial, even though she must surely be surprised by his arrival. Stillington had seen the countess only a matter of weeks ago, when she carried Queen Anne’s train in the coronation at Westminster Abbey and her husband, Lord Thomas Stanley, the royal steward, had wielded the ceremonial mace. But they hadn’t spoken. She had, he believed, never forgiven him for the role he had played eight years before in King Edward’s attempts to extract her son, Henry Tudor, from Brittany. Still, if she was wondering what he was doing here unannounced at day’s end, dusty from the road and far from King Richard’s side, she hid it well as she kissed his hand and bade him sit, for all the world as if she had been expecting him.
As Stillington settled himself on a cushioned chair, embroidered with the gold portcullises of the Beaufort arms, a servant appeared at his side and poured wine. The bishop drank, grateful for the opportunity to soothe his tension. The events of the last few weeks had shredded his nerves and Margaret’s manner wasn’t helping. The woman might be more than twenty years his junior, but sitting opposite her he felt as powerless as a schoolboy. After handing Margaret a goblet, the servant slipped back to wait with the usher.
Stillington glanced at them. ‘My lady, might we speak in private?’
Margaret held him in her gaze for a moment, then nodded to her servants.
Waiting for the door to close, Stillington drained his goblet. When they were alone he began to speak. ‘You may have learned, my lady, that there has been an attempt to rescue Prince Edward and his brother from the Tower.’ He waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, he pushed on. He was here now. Committed. ‘The attempt failed and last week at Windsor the king ordered the deaths of the conspirators. But not all were caught. I remain free.’
Margaret raised her goblet and took a sip, covering whatever emotion might be displayed there at the bishop’s confession of treason.
‘I plotted this in league with Lady Elizabeth Woodville. She gave me the names of men staunchly loyal to her husband and a warden at the Tower she believed would aid the attempt.’
‘Why would you betray our king, your grace?’
The words sent a chill through him, but Stillington held fast to the trust that had brought him to her door. ‘I am the reason Richard of Gloucester was able to take the throne of our kingdom. I was the one who publicly charged King Edward with a false marriage and who, in one stroke, bastardised his children. The claim he was promised to Eleanor Butler was a lie. I never presided over any such contract.’ His tone was acerbic, laced with bitterness. ‘That creature, Catesby, forced me to say that I did. I went to Lord Hastings for help, hoping to refute the lie, to take a stand against Catesby, but our confederacy was discovered and Hastings, well . . .’
Stillington swallowed back the cloying scent of the lilies. ‘These past weeks I have watched the king throw titles and estates at his northern followers like scraps at hounds. Catesby has been elevated to the heights of the realm and I – the man whose testimony brought Richard a crown – whose mouth they forced in a lie? I have seen no such . . .’ He trailed off, biting his tongue. He didn’t want the countess to think his reasons were all self-motivated. He went to drink, but his goblet was empty and the servants were gone.
‘Of course the marriage contract was a lie.’ Margaret’s tone was clipped. ‘Only feeble-minded fools would believe such.’ She took a sip from her wine. ‘Richard has always been ambitious. He hid it well, cloaked beneath his brother’s shadow, biding his time in the north. Edward was impetuous, led by desires of heart and body. Richard is led by his mind. It makes him the more dangerous animal.’
Grateful the countess had reacted to something, Stillington pressed on with what he had come for. ‘Young Edward remains the rightful claimant. The attempt to rescue him may have failed, but there is yet hope. Richard’s progress will not sway the loyalty of all his subjects. Dissent and dissatisfaction are there to exploit. We can raise an army, but we need a man of strength to lead it.’ He sat forward, animated now. ‘My lord Buckingham is unhappy. He wanted the hand of the Prince of Wales for his daughter. Richard refused him. Buckingham hates it that men like Catesby, Lovell and Tyrell are more favoured by the king than him, a prince of the blood. He helped Richard ascend to the throne and now he wants to take his place behind it. Buckingham has the might. If we can turn him.’
‘My nephew has been the king’s greatest supporter these past months. He may well be unhappy, but he has also been one of the main benefactors of Richard’s largesse. What makes you think you can turn him into a traitor?’
‘I believe you could, my lady.’ Stillington waited. When she didn’t speak, he continued. ‘If you can show Buckingham that he will be to young Edward what Catesby is to Richard, I feel confident he can be swayed. I know your good friend, John Morton, has recently been moved from the Tower and placed in Buckingham’s custody. The Bishop of Ely is a shrewd man. You may be able to use him – a seed of dissent, if you will, planted at the heart of Buckingham’s camp.’
‘And you, your grace? What would you hope to gain from this spin of Fortune’s wheel?’
‘I want to be treated with respect. Not kept under a glass and moved this way and that. And I want William Catesby gone.’
Margaret set her goblet on the floor. It looked as though she were about to stand.
‘You must have heard the news from B
rittany by now,’ Stillington said quickly. ‘With Duke Francis granting safe passage to Edward Woodville he has shown he may finally release Henry Tudor from his Breton prison.’
Margaret stilled at the mention of her son.
‘I know that just before his death, King Edward drafted a pardon for Henry. He was even speaking of a marriage with his eldest daughter, was he not?’ Stillington continued before the countess could answer. ‘Elizabeth of York would make a fine match for your son, my lady. Her hand could draw the House of Lancaster in from the cold. I know you hoped to see Henry return to England, not as a traitor, but as a free man with a rich inheritance. This would be his best chance at such a life.’
The emotions were now clear in Margaret’s grey eyes. Stillington resisted an urge to smile. There it was: the trust that had brought him here. Trust that love for her long-banished son would outshine any frail candle of loyalty she might hold to a Yorkist king – she, cousin and sister-in-law to the last Lancastrian king, Henry VI, with the royal blood of the House of Plantagenet flowing in her own veins.
‘The House of Lancaster need not lie in ruins, my lady. With young Edward on the throne your son could finally return home, with the promise of a marriage to the king’s sister. Henry has been in exile far too long.’
‘This I well know, your grace,’ Margaret said, her voice low. ‘For I sent him there.’
‘Use your influence over Buckingham to inspire him to rise against Richard, my lady, and I will use mine with the queen-dowager to ensure that Henry Tudor receives his pardon and the hand of her daughter, Elizabeth of York.’
Chapter 18
After making their way along Thieving Lane, then down to Tothill Street, the three men joined the masses shuffling in through the west gate of Westminster Abbey. As they passed beneath the stone archway, Jack saw armed guards ahead, eyeing the lines of worshippers and pilgrims, beggars with bowls and novices with prayer books. Hugh pulled his hood forward, trying to hide his scarred face. Jack, crushed in beside Ned, felt the tension in the man’s body. He noticed Ned’s hand stray to the bollock dagger at his belt. Keeping his gaze forward, he saw the eyes of the guards drift over them. One, who had a silver boar badge pinned to his tunic, seemed to study him a little too long. Then the guard’s attention was gone, moving over the men behind.
