by Robyn Young
‘Grace?’ Jack rose quickly.
As he started for the door, Hugh grabbed his arm, his grip tight. ‘Not a word of our plan now.’
‘I’ve as much to lose as you,’ Jack reminded him, his voice low.
After a pause, Hugh released him.
Opening the tavern door, Jack’s eyes were stung by the morning’s brightness. He raised his hand and blinked away the glare to see a figure standing before him. It was Gilbert, Grace’s manservant. ‘Is something wrong, Master Gilbert? Is it Grace? Is she all right?’ The words tripped out of him. His chest was tight.
‘My mistress sent me to you with a message.’ Gilbert’s gaze was cool as he surveyed Jack, clearly no more tolerant of him now he was out of his mistress’s parlour.
Jack listened intently, his heart sinking, as Gilbert delivered the news that Arnold was dead, killed violently in his own home. He cursed when told it was Grace who had found the old man’s body. He had left Lewes thinking to protect her from whatever danger seemed to be following him. The knowledge the threat had remained came as Gilbert described the foreigners who had questioned Grace on his whereabouts and the giant with the white mask which had made her wonder whether the figure John Browe saw in the woods the day of the fire was not death, but a man with murder in mind.
Jack leaned against the tavern door, his mind racing. Was Arnold another victim in this hushed war that seemed to be raging on the borders of his life, never quite close enough for him to catch a glimpse of the enemy? Had these men killed his mother? Who were they and what did they want? Jack thought of the map spread across the table. Suddenly, he straightened, his gaze on Gilbert. He had only told Grace that he was travelling to Shoreditch to seek Ned Draper’s troupe. ‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘A seamstress with those players in Shoreditch directed me here.’
Charity, thought Jack. The answer gave him only more unease. If Gilbert could find him, then so could those men.
Deep in the inner chambers of the heavily fortified Château de Plessis-lèz-Tours, whose walls bristled with spikes and whose iron watchtowers were crowded with crossbowmen staring out across the River Loire, King Louis XI lay dying.
It had been a slow death, two years in the making, the king retreating into his private rooms from where he continued to administer the business of his realm, but in such a state of isolation that some whispered a phantom now ruled over France. Master of intrigue and plot, a king of both great might and mind, who his enemies called the Universal Spider, Louis had spun himself a cocoon of iron and stone into which few were now permitted a glimpse. Ever more guarded and suspicious, he had dismissed almost all his household over the past few months until only a small retinue remained, among them his physician, a few trusted counsellors and servants, and guards. Hundreds of guards.
Amaury de la Croix, hobbling through the gardens of the château on his afternoon walk, passed tight knots of them patrolling the grounds, bows slung over their backs. Some nodded in greeting, but most ignored the old priest, shambling along with the aid of his gnarled stick. The late summer air was scorched with heat. Bees droned in the lavender. In the distance, beyond the château’s high walls, Amaury caught the faint calls of men out working in the vineyards. The black grapes had grown swollen, almost to bursting on the vines. Passing the hermitage, built for a holy man Louis had summoned from a cave in the Kingdom of Naples to comfort him in his final days, Amaury entered the inner courtyard. He looked up at the large window, beyond the blue-skied reflections of which the king lay dying.
When he’d last seen Louis, the man, who with more years left to him could have perhaps ruled the world, had no longer been able to feed himself. Amaury had sat at his bedside, translating a blessing of health from Jerusalem, one of many the king had asked him to render into French for his physician. Prayers and potions, unctions and ointments, Louis had called for them all to help prolong his life, sending ships as far as the Cape Verde Islands to search for cures. With the blessing of Pope Sixtus, he’d had the phial of chrism with which the kings of France were anointed brought to Plessis, along with the staffs of Aaron and Moses, and Charlemagne’s Cross of Victory. The holy objects had been placed around his bed to ward off the spectre of death that lurked in the corner of the room, each day creeping a clawed hand closer.
Amaury had worked on the blessing in silence, his quill scratching at the paper, while the wasted king breathed shallowly beside him, occasionally muttering at the sakers and sparrowharks flying free around the chamber, speckling the bed and floor with their droppings. Louis had been a keen hunter and his favourite hounds and hawks remained at his bedside long after his ministers had been dismissed.
That had been almost a month ago, but Amaury knew that the king was still alive, even now. Of all the men left here, he was the least surprised. He knew well that dogged desire to cling to the cliff-edge of life; to dig in fingers and toes and howl defiance at the abyss opening below. The scarred stump of his left arm was but one testimony to that. Any day now, the physician had muttered that morning. Any day. The dauphin had been informed. Charles, thirteen years old, would be governed by his sister, Anne, a woman as strong-willed as her father, who had entrusted her with the regency until her brother came of age. Now, it was just a question of waiting. Waiting for word of death to wind its way out of the king’s riddle of chambers; a whisper on the wind that would rise to a roar across France. A deep hush had settled over Plessis as if all breaths were held.
The chapel bell began to toll, sending a cloud of doves skyward and turning the faces of the crossbowmen on the watchtowers. Grasping his stick, Amaury hobbled towards the château, the gold ring on his finger gleaming in the sunlight. For him, death was not the only waiting game. He’d heard nothing from England since midsummer. In his chamber was a bag. He had packed it weeks ago, ready for the moment he was freed of his duties.
King Louis was not the only huntsman.
Chapter 20
It was late afternoon and the woods were hushed, just the whistling cries of two circling buzzards to break the stillness. The sun’s fire smouldered through the trees, the leaves of which were starting to turn. Lammas was long gone and September had already ushered in the first autumn fairs. All across the kingdom, in towns and villages, harvest queens were being crowned by the reapers. Crops had been gathered and animals herded from summer pastures, ready for slaughter and the salting of their meat.
Lady Margaret stood on the slope of a grassy mound, a tiny figure dressed all in black, the ruin of an ancient castle jutting like a broken tooth from the brow of the hill behind her. Before her, between the trees, she could see the Severn. Here in Shropshire the river, carrying on its currents the chill of Welsh mountain streams, was broad, but nowhere near as wide as it would become when it neared Bristol, its brown waters flowing out of that mighty estuary to embrace the sea.
The jingle of a bridle turned Margaret’s attention to the foot of the slope, where her two servants waited with the horses. When she told Lord Stanley that morning that she was making a pilgrimage to St Milburga’s shrine, her husband insisted she take some of his men for an escort, but she had brushed the suggestion aside, steering the conversation back to the sick palfrey he had been worrying about moments earlier. An hour later, leaving him to discuss the animal’s treatment with the stable-master, the countess had ridden from the manor with only her trusted servants for company. Not north to the saint’s shrine at Much Wenlock, but south along the banks of the Severn.
After three marriages she knew how to conceal, to manipulate, to soothe. She had learned such arts young in the bed of Edmund Tudor, half-brother of her cousin, King Henry VI, and father to her only son. These days, with forty years spinning grey into her hair, and fifty in Lord Thomas Stanley’s, it was no longer the bedchamber where she had to work her strategies, but she found the dance of parlour and hall to be much the same. Men like you to be a mirror, her mother had told her, when she was twelve years old and betrothe
d to Tudor, a strapping man of twenty-four. Hold yourself up, let them gaze at their own reflections, and all will be well. Margaret had often wondered what her father, the Duke of Somerset, had seen in her mother’s mirror, for he had killed himself when she was just an infant.
Her gaze moved from her servants to where the track snaked away through the woods. The hour was growing late and there was still no sign. No, it was good that Thomas didn’t know where she was this day. Good for her and for him. King Richard might have involved them in his coronation and appointed Lord Stanley as his royal steward and a member of the Privy Council as King Edward had before him, but Margaret knew that was to keep her husband close, rather than to reward them.
Lord Thomas Stanley was one of the highest-ranking magnates in the realm and, as one of the largest landowners in the north-west of England, wielded considerable power. Although he had served both Lancastrian and Yorkist masters, Thomas had always been a private soul, who had kept his heart and his mind hidden throughout the clamour of the wars when other men stamped their chests with their badges and colours and raised their banners to the red rose or the white. To someone like Richard, a mistrustful man in a precarious position, he presented a possible threat even when he did no wrong. She wouldn’t have her actions today reflect badly on him if things went awry. She was, after all, committing treason.
Margaret turned, hearing the low yet unmistakable throb of hooves. The tension tightened in her body as her gaze fixed on a haze of dust, rising to the south. The rumbling grew louder. Five horsemen came into view, their cloaks vivid flickers of colour between the trees. The company hauled their sweat-soaked mounts to a halt by her men.
Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, dismounted his piebald courser and handed the reins to one of his servants. Margaret watched her nephew ascend the hillside, looking furtively around him. Buckingham wore a scarlet jacket with great ballooning sleeves, embroidered with swirls of gold brocade. His cap, which topped his broad face, was decorated with two swan feathers dyed black and held in place by a large ruby, encrusted with pearls. Clothes for a banquet, thought Margaret, not a long ride to a tryst. But, then, her nephew had always been a peacock, even when compared with his most extravagant peers. She had speculated this was due in part to the way he had been treated in his cousin, Edward’s court: forced into a low marriage with the queen’s sister, a commoner, then pushed to the sidelines. Perhaps his wardrobe had been the only route he’d found by which to display his status?
‘My lady,’ Buckingham greeted tersely, removing his cap and dipping his head.
Despite Margaret’s tiny stature, the slope kept the duke almost level with her. She inclined her own head, keeping her hands clasped in front of her.
‘His grace, the bishop, sends you his greetings.’
Margaret caught the bite in his tone, but she ignored it. The fact was he had come. That told her all she needed to know. ‘John Morton is well in your custody?’
‘Well enough to request audiences with me. Well enough to whisper treason in my ear.’
‘One man’s treason may be another’s truth, my lord.’ Margaret spoke lightly, but both of them were aware of the gravity of this meeting – what it would mean for them if they were discovered. Her tone changed. ‘I know you are unhappy, Henry. I know you thought our king would give you more for the service you have given him. I know it is not just land and titles that you want. You want your place at his side.’
‘You know a great deal, aunt, for someone who is so rarely in court.’
‘Richard keeps you close and yet at arm’s length. I know this place well, for my husband and I occupy it. It is a place of control.’
Buckingham’s eyes flashed in the sun’s dimming fire. ‘I made him.’ He thumped his brocaded chest with his fist. ‘I made a king, as Warwick once did. My cousin wears the crown because of me. Yet Catesby and that brute Tyrell now have his ear. There are lawyers and soldiers where a prince should stand.’
‘Then let us speak openly about what might be done.’
Buckingham looked behind him to where his men stood with the horses, out of earshot. He turned back to her, his face set.
They talked for a time, the duke and the countess, only the cries of the circling buzzards to interrupt them. Their men waited watching the road, the sun slipping into a crimson dusk. By the conversation’s end, the duke was a changed man. The anger in his eyes was gone, so too the arrogant twist to his mouth. There was something new in his face. Something iron. Margaret, seeing this, knew she had made the right decision in following Stillington’s advice. Buckingham would be their fist.
‘In the meantime, my lord,’ she said, when they were agreed on the next steps they would take. ‘There is one more thing I must ask of you.’
‘One more, my lady? My task is arduous enough.’
‘It is small, but vital. I need you to start a rumour, telling people you have learned that Prince Edward and his brother have met a violent death at the hands of their uncle.’
Buckingham’s surprise was plain. ‘Why?’
‘It will stir men’s anger – help you to raise your army.’
After a long pause, Buckingham nodded slowly. ‘And when Richard is brought down, we will produce the boy and set him on the throne?’
‘And you will take your rightful place as kingmaker.’
After bidding her farewell, Buckingham returned to his men and mounted his courser. Margaret listened to the plunging hooves fade, a prayer for her nephew’s success fervent in her mind. When Robert Stillington had come to her, offering the chance to bring Henry home with a marriage to a daughter of York, she knew the bishop had hoped to incite a mother’s love for this act of treason. In truth, his offer had roused something far deeper: a love that dwelled not only in the heart, but one that flowed in the veins.
Margaret’s eyes drifted to the great river that split the kingdom, its waters coursing down to the sea which whispered its waves on the far sands of Brittany where her son waited. Her miracle, born in a Welsh winter, his father already dead of plague in the cold confines of a Yorkist prison. He had torn her apart when he came screaming into the world, ripping away any more chance at children. But she needed no more than him, her beloved Henry. The last hope of Lancaster, burning like a beacon on those distant shores.
Carlo di Fante gripped the sheets, twisting them in his fists as the barber surgeon bent over him and tugged the bandage away. Blood, dried and crusted on the linen, had stuck to the wound in his side. Fresh fluids oozed as the scabs were pulled apart. Carlo groaned.
The surgeon looked round at Goro, standing against the door, larger than the frame itself. ‘Open them, please,’ he said briskly, nodding towards the shutters.
Goro crossed the chamber, the floorboards complaining under his weight. As he pushed open the shutters daylight flooded the room. Carlo winced and turned his face away. Goro glanced out, his eye travelling up the great spire of St Paul’s that dominated the view, thrusting to the sullen sky far above the cathedral grounds. Below, two canons dressed in their robes were walking along the path towards the cloisters.
Turning his attention back to the bed, Goro watched as the surgeon removed the bandage and sopped up some of the blood leaking from the puncture. The skin around it was livid, tendrils of feverish colour stretching across Carlo’s sweat-slick skin. The hole in his back, where the dagger had been shoved in, was larger, but the wound seemed to be healing better. The surgeon paused to dip his bloody hands in a basin of turpentine, then took up a pair of tweezers.
Goro watched intently, transfixed, as the surgeon eased out the lint he had stuffed into the edges of the wound to help drain it. Carlo breathed shallowly, clinging to the sheets, sweat pouring off him. Goro peered in closer when the surgeon turned to reach for the fresh rolls of lint, soaked in honey and oil of roses. As he studied the wet rawness inside, his fingers twitched, wanting to prise open the wound a little wider, just enough to see what lay within. Then the surgeon moved in and
his view was gone.
Goro realised Carlo was staring at him. He straightened, licking his lips. ‘It looks better.’
It was true. Carlo had hovered close to death these past few weeks, shaking with fever, crying out in delirium and reaching for his rosary beads that were no longer there, torn off by one of their attackers in the house on Birchin Lane. He’d had the last rites read by one of the cathedral canons, the cross held over his head to ward off any demons that might be circling in wait for his soul.
The surgeon didn’t turn at Goro’s comment. ‘The next few days will tell the tale,’ he said in Latin. He paused before inserting another wad of lint, peering down at his wax-white patient. ‘I would still prefer to observe you in the infirmary.’
‘No.’
‘But if—’
‘Do you see that?’ said Carlo, flicking his eyes to the roll of paper curled up on the table. There was a large, ornate seal attached to it.
The surgeon followed his gaze and nodded.
‘You recognise the seal, yes? Then you know that its order to provide me and my men with whatever care we require should be obeyed to the letter.’
The surgeon continued his work in silence. When he was done and a new bandage covered the wound, he tossed the turpentine out of the window and stowed his equipment, almanac and bowls in his bag. ‘I will be back in two days to change it. The moon will be in the correct phase for blood-letting. That should help to release the bad humours.’ Nodding to Carlo, he edged past Goro and left the room.
‘Give me a physician of Salerno,’ breathed Carlo when he had gone. ‘I wouldn’t trust these English butchers with the care of my horse.’
Goro said nothing. He thought the surgeon seemed more proficient than many a quack and healer he’d seen in his time. His fingers drifted to his face, absently stroking the worn leather of the mask, which was reinforced with a steel plate, beaten to fit the contours of his face. The man who had made it was from Antwerp. He had painted it to suit a pale-faced northerner. Not a man of Milan.
