The Silence of Stones
Page 13
She leaned forward and took his hand, holding it firmly between her two warm ones. He suddenly hoped he had washed it thoroughly enough this morning. ‘Master Tucker, I’ve known Crispin a very long time. And I know once he has been set to a task he will fulfill it with all haste and skill. You must not give up faith in him. With his last breath he will defend you. I have seen it in his eyes. You are more important to him than any of the many servants he used to have.’
He swallowed. A ball of warmth filled the hollow place inside him. ‘Truly?’
She smiled, squeezed his hand once, and then let it go.
He stepped back, took the flagon, and poured her wine, handing her the goblet with a bow. She took it with a nod of thanks and sipped.
They waited. Lady Katherine patiently amused herself by examining the tapestry across the room while Jack stood, hands behind his back to keep from fidgeting.
Half of the hour had passed and longer when a timid knock sounded on the door. Jack shot a look to Lady Katherine, and she calmly nodded to him. He rushed to the door, steadied himself, and opened it.
The anxious young lady – the queen – stood in the doorway, her lady’s maid at her side. Her face snapped into surprise when she beheld Jack and a gasped ‘oh!’ released from her parted lips, but she quickly composed herself and turned to her maid. ‘Please await me without.’
The maid, the older one he had seen in the garden, did not look as if she thought this a good idea, but she nevertheless bowed and stepped back away from the door.
Jack bowed low and opened the door wider for her to enter. He closed it after her, and she entered into the parlor and found Lady Katherine standing to greet her.
‘It was so good of you to come, your grace,’ she said, curtseying and gesturing toward a chair.
Queen Anne gave the room a cursory glance before she made her way to the chair, her gown’s hem fluttering behind her, and sat. She gestured for Lady Katherine to sit as well, and both women faced one another.
Jack stood numbly for a moment before he scrambled to fetch the queen a goblet of warmed wine and presented it to her with another deep bow.
She took it graciously and studied Jack with a curious expression.
‘I was puzzled, Lady Katherine, by your missive.’ She spoke again with that same strange accent Jack could not identify. He knew that the queen had come from some distant country, but he didn’t know where that was.
‘The matter is … complicated, your grace.’
Queen Anne held herself differently in these surroundings, Jack noted, than she had in the garden. Among the autumn trees and faded foliage, she had seemed more at ease, more herself, but here, in this parlor, she sat stiffly, looking at Lady Katherine from the corner of her eye. Jack reasoned that the queen followed the dictates of her husband in all things. And he knew King Richard did not approve of Lady Katherine and her continued relationship with the duke of Lancaster. Perhaps the queen and Lady Katherine didn’t have much of a rapport at all. The idea of it saddened him, for here was a family. The duke was the king’s uncle, after all, and it seemed as if they all ought to be closer. On the Shambles, families might argue, but they all came together for meals, for festivals, for chatter over a beaker of ale. It seemed that the nobility were less content than those Jack had known on the streets of London. It made no sense, for surely wealthier people must be happier than his lot in places like the Shambles.
The queen flicked a glance at Jack before turning back to her goblet again.
‘Perhaps,’ said Lady Katherine, eyeing the both of them, ‘it would be easier if we allow your … “Goat” … to explain himself.’
This time the queen turned her full attention to Jack and he shrank a little. Her blue eyes were wide and he again saw the distressed maiden in the garden beseeching. He licked his lips. ‘Your grace, I … forgive me for speaking so liberally to you yesterday in your garden. I did not know who you were.’
A faint smile lightened her face.
‘Ah. Then there is nothing to forgive. For you gave me honesty where others would have simply flattered, or worse, dismissed my worries.’
‘Never that, your grace.’
‘You’re a sweet boy, my Goat.’
Jack’s face scorched.
Lady Katherine rose. ‘I think I should leave you to it. You have much to discuss.’
Jack reached out. ‘Oh no, Lady Katherine!’ He turned quickly to the queen. ‘If you will pardon, Lady Katherine has been a friend to me, your grace. And she is a most discreet lady. Perhaps you might wish her to stay. I can do much to help you but she might be able to succor you. For it is said that a secret shared is a burden lifted.’
The queen looked from one to the other and offered a quick nod. Smoothly, Lady Katherine recovered her seat. They all fell silent again.
Jack remembered the many times clients had come to Master Crispin and him, burdened so heavily from their anxieties that they found it difficult to talk. He did what Master Crispin did and gentled his expression. ‘Sometimes, your grace, it is easier to begin at the beginning. That way you can go through it all step by step,’ he urged with a friendly nod.
She sighed, laying her hands in her lap and looking at them. ‘Very well. I … there was this … object. In itself, it seemed innocuous. But once it was taken, it was explained to me how the king, my husband, might misconstrue. It might put me in bad stead with him.’
Jack stopped her with a raised hand. ‘I see you are reluctant to name this object. We will let that lie for now.’ He could hear his master’s words in his head as he parroted them. ‘But tell me. When was it exactly you noticed that it was missing?’
‘It was the day of the explosion in the abbey.’ She paused to briefly touch her lips with trembling fingers. Clearly, the event, though two days ago, was fresh in her fears. ‘I had it on my person. When the explosion happened and with all the confusion, I was jostled this way and that. Many people moved around us, and it was later that I found it missing. I thought at first that it had dropped in the abbey. I went myself later to search, but it was not there. And then that evening I received the first letter.’
Jack’s heart sped. ‘And your grace, do you have that letter?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I burned it immediately. And every subsequent letter.’
Jack sighed. A great pity, that. Their only clue. ‘Did you recognize the hand of the letter?’
Again she shook her head.
‘What exactly did the letter, the first letter, say?’
‘It … it told me how this … this object … might be taken by the king. How careless I was in commissioning it. And how silence on the matter might be maintained with a “small remuneration.” I did not understand it at first. Your English is sometimes strange to me. But when the second letter arrived, I was made to understand that I was to supply this miscreant with a sum of money.’
‘How much?’
‘One thousand marks.’
Jack choked, coughed, and smoothed down his coat once he had control of himself again.
‘Yes,’ she said with a trembling sigh. ‘It is a very great sum.’
Jack wrung his coat hem until he realized that he had returned to an old habit and placed his thumbs between his belt and body, as Master Crispin was wont to do. ‘What did he say would happen if you did not pay?’
‘He would show the … object … to the king. He said it would intimate that I had been unfaithful. But nothing could be further from the truth!’
Lady Katherine stretched out a hand to grasp the queen’s. Jack knew that such intimacy was usually reserved for maids and always initiated by the higher ranking noble to a lower. But in this case, the queen seemed only to notice the much-needed comfort. For she was in peril just as much as Jack was. Infidelity in a queen was an act of treason.
Jack girded himself before he asked, ‘But could you not explain to his majesty that this was not the case? That this … this object was not meant in that way?’
‘I see. Well then. Will you not tell me what this thing is, lady? For it will be nigh impossible for your Goat to find such a thing if he is not to know whether it is the size of a pea or that of a horse.’
Her teeth dug into her lower lip, reddening it to a rose color. She was beautiful and tender in her distress. Jack was of the opinion that Richard did not deserve such a queen.
‘Well … if I must say. It is … a piece of jewelry. A brooch. I had it commissioned to look like his majesty’s arms – the lions of England, the fleur de lys of France, the martlets and cross of Edward the Confessor – but … it was artlessly done and if it is whispered in your ear, they somehow look like the arms of another courtier. I know it is a plot to embarrass the king, to make him look weaker in the eyes of his subjects. To hurt me is to hurt him. My Goat, can you find this brooch?’
‘I … I will do my best, your grace.’
He worried at his own lip as the queen rose and thanked him. She exchanged pleasantries with Lady Katherine, but it was plain she wished to depart as soon as possible. Once she had gone, Lady Katherine returned to Jack’s side. ‘A simple thing, then. The theft of a jewel.’
‘And extortion,’ said Jack absently. ‘But that is not what troubles me. What if the explosion and theft of the Stone were but a distraction? A way of stealing the brooch from the queen?’
‘But that is absurd. How can the two things be related? It’s so outlandish!’
‘My master has taught me to think in patterns, my lady. And though it might be coincidence it might also have served as a planned opportunity.’
‘Let us pause and suppose, just for the sake of argument, Master Tucker, that this is so. The perpetrator would have had to have known that the queen carried the brooch on her person.’
‘Aye, he would. And so he would have known when the explosion was to happen, you see?’
‘But then … only the conspirators knew that.’
‘Aye. You see the problem.’
‘It seems fantastic that they might be working together.’ She shook her head but paused. ‘It … would have to be from the inside. Someone from within the palace.’
He nodded. ‘If we suppose that they were, then we can imagine the rest. Master Crispin has taught me that anything suspicious must not be discounted. And so my proposal is this. If one plot did not work, then another was set to go in its place. Now that both have gone forward we have three problems to solve. Who in the palace is a traitor, where is the Stone, and who has it?’
FOURTEEN
The man bucked beneath Rykener as he pressed the miscreant’s wrists to the mud. ‘You damnable woman!’ the man cried over his shoulder in a thick northern brogue. ‘Get off!’
Letting his wrists go, Rykener grabbed handfuls of the man’s cloak and hauled him to his feet. The man swung at him, but John managed to pull the man’s swinging arms behind him and had him secured until Crispin arrived.
‘Well done,’ said Crispin, looking the muddied man over.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a man who doesn’t like to be trifled with. And you sir, and your ilk, have been trying my patience to the limit.’
The man spit the mud from his lips and squinted. ‘Och, I’ll wager you are … Crispin Guest.’
‘How very astute.’
The man tried to wrench his arms free and sneered back at John. ‘Call off this bitch of yours. She’s as strong as an ox.’ He seemed to notice the spectacle they were making. ‘For God’s sake, man. To be bested by a woman …’
‘Well there’s where you’re wrong.’
John twisted the man’s arms up just once more before letting him go. He patted the man’s shoulders. ‘Don’t feel too badly. You were bested by a man, after all. Albeit one wearing women’s clothes.’
The man spun around and glared, eyes sharpening on John’s flat chest and smirk.
Before the man could gain his senses and flee, Crispin grabbed his cotehardie at the neck and hauled him close. ‘I want to know where the Stone is. And I think you can enlighten me. That would be better than a dagger in the gut, wouldn’t it?’
The man sobered. There was plainly nowhere to run. ‘Very well, Master Guest. I … I don’t know where it is …’
‘I’m beginning to think that no one does. And yet it vanished into thin air. With your help.’
The man had the nerve to crack a smile. His eyes flicked toward the shop. ‘Oh, I see. The man who sells the powder has a loose tongue.’
‘He doesn’t like the idea of a blade at his throat any more than you would, I imagine.’
‘You have me. There’s no need for threats. Aye, I supplied the means to blow up that plaster Stone, and it worked perfectly.’
‘Too perfectly, as no one seems to know where the real one is now.’
The smile faded. ‘Aye. Well. That was not part of the plan.’
‘So I gathered.’
The man straightened, pulling his shoulders back. ‘You have only yourself to blame. You’ve been avoiding us.’
‘What the devil—’ Crispin frowned. ‘I’ve been avoiding no one. It is only chaos from Scotland. None of you have enough brains to scrape together a cogent plan, one that can be followed. If you have some new information I would be pleased to hear it.’
‘You were to meet us and you didna.’
‘At the Boar’s Tusk?’ Crispin shook his head. ‘I tried. Are you Deargh?’
‘He is the man who leads us.’
Crispin rubbed his forehead. ‘Very well. I am prepared to talk with him now. You will take me to him.’
The man seemed to mull it over and finally nodded. ‘Aye, that’s likely best. It’s back to Westminster, then.’
Crispin gestured for the man to lead, and with all the dignity of a man covered in mud, he set out back to Trinity Street as Crispin and John followed.
John elbowed Crispin as they passed through Ludgate, some minutes later. ‘I have to say,’ he said quietly so that only Crispin could hear, ‘you lead a very exciting life.’
‘You should have seen it before I was exiled to the Shambles.’
John shook his head. There was mud on his cheek and his coif was somewhat askew. ‘Despite your hardships, my friend – and I do not mean to diminish them – I have a feeling that you are a much more interesting man now.’
Crispin snorted. Interesting indeed! What had this life made him but bitter and morose? True, it had given him a heretofore unknown empathy for those of the lower classes, for he saw how they struggled – how he struggled – from day to day to merely put food on the table. And sometimes there was none. There was many a time that he went to bed with a belly aching and hollow. But that hadn’t been the case for some years. When had that tide turned? Could it have been when Jack Tucker wormed his way into his household? With that second mouth to feed, perhaps he had spent fewer coins on drink. He scowled, thinking. Perhaps. And yet he often got just as drunk. He knew damn well that Jack had supplemented their larder by cutting purses or pilfering the occasional bird from the poulterer. But not lately. Not in the last few years as the boy grew into manhood. He was fifteen now. And Crispin well remembered his years at that age. Jack was the quickest study he had ever seen, like a cloth ready to soak up anything under it.
And where was he now? Not in a dungeon, thanks to Lady Katherine. He sent up a prayer of thanks for that. Even though imprisoned, his lot was better, at least for the moment.
And John had gotten him thinking about a bed for the lad. He supposed it was high time he did something about that.
He nearly ran into a snuffling hog being led to market back toward London and he looked around to notice that they had just passed under the Temple Bar arch, being
waved through by the porters, and were almost within spotting distance of Charing Cross.
London was now behind them, and Westminster before with a smattering of shops along the Strand that opened to the vista of the more crowded shops and houses of the central city, such as it was. Farmland and plains rambled beyond the perimeter, much as it did outside the city limits of London.
Westminster Abbey’s bells tolled Sext, and Crispin looked up into the cloudy sky, happy to feel a little noon sunshine warming through.
Crispin thought they would head to the Keys, but their man instead led them into the middle of the city, down crooked streets growing narrower.
‘Where are you taking us?’ said Crispin at last, eyeing the lanes and fenced dead ends with suspicion.
‘It’s just down here,’ said the man, though with his darting glances and nervous gestures, he didn’t look too certain.
The man moved quickly now, weaving through the men and women along the road, putting distance between himself and Crispin. ‘What the …’
And before Crispin could utter another word, the man broke into a run. He picked the perfect moment, for just as Crispin tried to give chase, a boy with a herd of sheep turned the corner, and Crispin and Rykener were blocked from moving forward.
‘The churl!’ cried John. ‘Why did he run? I thought he wanted to speak to you, to meet with you?’
Crispin pushed ineffectually at a blackface sheep that bleated at him as it shoved forward. ‘Did he? Perhaps not. This scheme has got more twists and turns than a labyrinth.’
‘What do we do now?’
Crispin measured where they were and headed without speaking toward one of the many narrow lanes. Wet laundry hung in arcs of heavy lines, crossing over one another, fluttering listlessly in the smoky gusts.
They ducked under a particularly low-hanging drape of white linens where they reached a door. Crispin knocked gently and stepped back.
‘Come in, the door’s unbarred!’ came the call from within, and mere moments after was followed by a raucous caw, startling John. Crispin pushed the door open and moved into the dark space. Flint struck against steel, sending a spark, lighting briefly the cold and now familiar room.