The Silence of Stones

by Jeri Westerson

  But something black speared out of the sky. It screamed and flapped at his face, pecking at his eyes.

  He bellowed, trying to bat the raven away. His hand slipped off the rope and over he went, plummeting not into the water, but down to the rocky shore. He landed headfirst, and everyone heard the crunch of bone.

  When Henry and Crispin scrambled across the dock and down the bank, it was plain that he was dead.

  Crispin combed the shoreline, and just there in the shadows stood Domhnall. He saluted Crispin, shouldered the bird, and disappeared back into the shadows.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Wrapped in a borrowed cloak, Crispin made his way back toward the Shambles with Jack striding beside him. With them was John Rykener and Eleanor bundled in Gilbert’s cloak. He cooed to her with his arm encircling her tight. She laid her head on his shoulder, a broad smile on her face.

  ‘What a night!’ crowed Rykener. ‘What a night! I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘And pray we never do again,’ said Crispin, teeth chattering.

  Gilbert seemed not to notice the cold without his cloak. He kept his wife close and that appeared to be all the warmth he needed. ‘I hope you will all come back to the Boar’s Tusk with us to celebrate. Food and drink for you three.’

  Jack looked up at Crispin wearily.

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ said Crispin. ‘I am soaked to the bone and need to warm myself.’

  ‘Tomorrow then.’ Nothing could crush Gilbert’s enthusiasm.

  ‘How was Madam Eleanor taken?’ asked Jack, checking on Crispin’s cloak for the fourth time, making sure it covered him from the cold wind.

  Gilbert sobered. ‘I was in the mews, tending to the barrels when suddenly I was locked in. I called out for over an hour at least, until that wretched boy Ned let me out. He said someone had propped a chair in front of the door. It was another hour at least until we realized my Eleanor was gone.’

  ‘An hour!’ cried Eleanor. ‘Well! I am glad to know I am so missed.’

  ‘But my dear, Ned and I had cleaning up to do, and I thought you were busy elsewhere. How was I to know it was deadly mischief afoot?’

  ‘Indeed, Eleanor,’ Crispin placated. ‘I only wish I had been more vigilant. They mistook John, here, for you when they abducted him the first time.’

  Eleanor sized up Rykener. He postured. Crispin supposed the man was trying to look as appealing as possible.

  ‘I look nothing like him,’ Eleanor decided and snuggled into Gilbert’s shoulder again.

  ‘And you, my lad,’ said Crispin to Jack.

  Jack looked up expectantly.

  ‘You are now friends with the queen, I hear.’

  Jack flushed. ‘Aye, sir. She was a lady in distress. I could not fail her.’

  ‘And you were greatly rewarded for your honorable intentions.’

  ‘More than you know,’ he muttered, patting his money pouch.

  ‘Was that all the gang rounded up, Crispin?’ asked Rykener.

  ‘Yes, I do not think there were any more conspirators. McGuffin’s scheme was undone by young Jack here. It was only Findlaich who was out for himself under cover of the Mormaer’s duty.’

  ‘And he got his,’ said Jack with a decided nod.

  ‘The greedy do not prosper in the end.’

  Rykener nodded sagely. ‘And he killed that monk who had killed another. What sin it is when a monk kills. What wretched souls.’

  They stopped when they arrived at Gutter Lane. ‘You take care of our Jack, Crispin,’ said Eleanor. ‘And yourself.’ She reached out and took him in an embrace once more, even planting a kiss to his cold cheek.

  ‘I shall do what I can,’ he said softly.

  ‘Tomorrow!’ said Gilbert cheerfully. ‘We will celebrate together.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crispin wearily. ‘Tomorrow.’

  The Langtons giggled and then shushed each other, gesturing toward the shuttered windows and the quiet street.

  John yawned. ‘And it is time I get back to my own home at last. I thank you, Master Guest, for your kind hospitality.’

  ‘What?’ cried Jack. ‘Did you let him stay with you, too?’

  Crispin approached his friend and grasped his arms. ‘John, I scarce know how to thank you for all you have done for me.’

  Even in the near darkness Rykener’s blush was evident. ‘You would have done the same for me, Crispin. And though I am not as fascinated by murder as you seem to be, the rest of it was … rather exciting.’

  Crispin shook his head. ‘Nevertheless. I owe you a great deal. You are a true friend.’

  ‘And so are you. God keep you, Crispin. And you, Jack. Take care of your master.’

  ‘I shall,’ said the boy, chin raised.

  Crispin gave a lopsided grin. ‘Come along, Jack.’

  They waved their farewells as each went their separate ways. Jack and Crispin hurried that much more to get in front of their fire and Crispin out of his wet things.

  They reached the dark tinker shop and climbed the stairs. Crispin fitted his key in the lock and ushered Jack inside. The boy immediately went to the fire to stoke it from its covered ashes. When the hearth was bright again and the candle on the table was lit, Jack suddenly jerked to a halt.

  ‘What … what is that, master?’

  ‘That, Jack, is your new bed. You are soon to be a man. And a pile of straw simply will not do for the apprentice of the Tracker. Unless you would prefer straw, that is.’

  Jack said nothing. His back was to Crispin as he faced the bed. All at once his shoulders drew up and a sob escaped him.

  Crispin shuffled from one foot to the other while Jack dropped his face into his hands.

  ‘Come now, Jack,’ said Crispin softly. ‘You have been through enough these past few days. Settle yourself and … and get you into bed.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he whispered, and set about to disrobe. Gingerly, he touched the bedframe, smoothed his hands over the rough blankets and pillow. He stripped off his coat and set it carefully at the foot, folded and petted. A long silence ensued before Jack asked tentatively, ‘Sir? I must confess … there was a time when I could have escaped, free and clear.’ He slid his glance toward Crispin. Crispin raised a brow as he unbuttoned his wet cotehardie. ‘’Course, I couldn’t have returned to you. They would have come here looking for me first thing. But that wasn’t what stopped me. It was … it was that I had a duty to the queen. And more. To Lady Katherine for her kindness, and to Lord Henry for his charity. I … I felt it an obligation. And that my … my honor was at stake, if I can be so bold as to call it so.’

  Crispin peeled off the wet coat from his shoulders and draped it over the chair by the fire. He began to unlace his soaked chemise. ‘Of course you can call it so, Jack. Do you think “honor” is only for the nobility? Well … I must admit, I used to think so, but I have long since learned differently. You sacrificed yourself for something greater than yourself. For if a man cannot live by his principles, what is the point of living at all?’

  ‘Aye, sir, you have said as much many a time, and I didn’t quite understand the sentiment before. But now that I am nearly a man, I suppose I have learnt that lesson at last. I did think it the honorable thing to remain and fulfill my oath to the queen.’

  ‘Rightly so, Jack.’ Ringing out his chemise, he laid it before the fire. He took his blanket from his bed and draped it over his naked shoulders. He stared into the flames and said nothing.

  ‘It’s a sore thing carrying one’s honor,’ said Jack, hanging his cloak on the peg by the door. ‘I see now the burden you have carried for so long, master.’

  ‘It is not a burden, Jack. It is … myself.’

  Jack nodded, continuing to disrobe.

  ‘And now yourself,’ said Crispin. ‘Dare I say the mantle is passed?’

  Jack looked up, eyes wide with a deep flush blooming in his cheeks.

  Crispin turned away, unfamiliar emotions roiling just below the surface. He wasn’t
as certain as Jack was as to whether it was a good thing to have taught the boy that lesson so well.

  AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

  It’s the oldest piece of furniture in Great Britain still used for the purpose for which it was created. It’s over 700 years old and only used when a monarch of England accedes to the crown.

  The Coronation Chair (not to be confused with a throne, for the Coronation Chair’s only purpose is to anoint and crown the monarch) was created by King Edward I. Originally, it was to be a magnificent bronze chair to house his greatest relic, the Stone of Scone (pronounced, scoon), the celebrated stone of lore that every Scottish king was said to sit upon to get his crown. No one knows if it was housed in a similar chair in Scotland, but its capture in 1296 signaled to the Scots that England was now in charge. Edward still had battles to fight and needed money to do it, so the bronze chair idea was scrapped and he instead commissioned a wooden chair. Historians are not certain that his heir Edward II, or his heir Edward III, or even his heir Richard II were crowned sitting on the chair, but it is believed to be so. In fact, every monarch since sat on that chair except for the following:

  • Edward V (one of the princes in the Tower) was deposed before a date was even chosen for his coronation.

  • Lady Jane Grey was only declared queen and nine days later met a sticky end.

  • Mary I sat in the chair for the homage but took a different seat for her crowning.

  • For Mary II, her husband William of Orange got that privilege, and they made a special chair just for her, as they ruled together.

  • And Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson before he could have his coronation.

  Even Oliver Cromwell used it to become Lord Protector, and he had it removed from the Abbey to Westminster Hall to do the deed.

  The first king that we know for certain to have been crowned sitting in that chair was King Henry IV, Henry of Bolingbroke.

  The Stone of Scone has a lot of names: Jacob’s Pillow, the Royal Stone, the Stone of Scotland, the Coronation Stone, and the Stone of Destiny. It is supposed to be the stone that biblical Jacob used as a pillow in Bethel. As legend has it, it was taken into Egypt with Jacob’s sons and then the daughter of the Pharaoh, Scota (from which the name of Scotland was supposed to derive, but didn’t – It comes from Scoti, a late Roman word used to describe the Gaelic regions), took it with her to Spain. From Spain it is said to have gone next to Ireland and to the sacred Hill of Tara. There it was supposedly called ‘Lia-Fail,’ the ‘fatal’ stone, or ‘stone of destiny.’ Irish kings were made by sitting on the stone – a very popular thing to do, apparently. Legend had it that it was supposed to groan if you had the right, and keep silent if you didn’t. Finally, in the sixth century, Fergus Mòr Mac Earca, legendary King of the Picts and perhaps founder of Scotland, brought it to his western Scottish lands, where a later ninth-century King of the Picts and also supposedly the first king of the Scots, Cináed mac Ailpín, left it at the monastery of Scone in Perthshire for safekeeping.

  It’s not a very impressive rock. Gray, made of sandstone, carved and knocked about, it weighs 336 pounds, with two iron rings attached to it. It’s 27 inches long by 17 inches wide by 11 inches high. In 1996, sophisticated tests proved that the stone’s origins came from less than a mile from Scone. So much for the Egyptian/Irish tale.

  For the purposes of this story, I took two fictional liberties (only two?): I moved up the date for Parliament to meet (so we wouldn’t drag the story) and I had the Stone stolen in the fourteenth century (so we would have a plot). But it was never stolen, that is, not until Christmas Day in 1950 when it was taken by Scottish Nationalists. It really wasn’t made for lugging around, and it had a deep flaw in it anyway, and the thing broke into two pieces. After four months on the run, the Stone was repaired and finally returned. And from then on it was placed in the same vault that kept it safe during World War II and only brought back out to the Coronation Chair in February of 1952 for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.

  In 1996, the British Prime Minister, John Major, announced that the Stone would be going back to Scotland with the proviso that it be returned when crowning a new British monarch. After all this time, the return of the Stone was greeted not with adulation by the Scots, but with a sneering sense of ‘Really?’ So if you wish to visit the Stone today, you will have to go to Edinburgh Castle. If you wish to visit the chair, you need to be in the opposite end of the UK in Westminster Abbey.

  And this is all well and good, but there has been some question as to whether King Edward I actually got his hands on the real Stone of Destiny in the first place all those centuries ago. Did the monks hide the real stone and give him something like the lid to a cesspit, complete with its iron rings to carry it? After all, the stone is made of the same stuff that can be found around the abbey. Either all the other stories about the stone are fancies – and as we know from research into relics, they very well can be – or is there an even bigger conspiracy afoot, lost to the marches of time? Because some say that the seat of kings was made of basalt, and much larger, and decorated with carvings and the following inscription:

  Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatum

  Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem

  (If Fates go right, where’er this stone is found

  The Scots shall monarchs of that realm be crowned.)

  Was Edward duped all those centuries ago? Even he was suspicious and sent his knights back to the abbey two years later to tear the place apart, looking for the real stone. None was found. It might be buried at Dunsinnan Hill, where the real King Macbeth secreted it. It might be in Skye. Or at the bottom of the sea.

  Or it really is the same stone. It’s the kind of thing where no one will ever really know the complete truth.

  In this book, we also finally meet Katherine Swynford. She was the sister-in-law of Geoffrey Chaucer, and that was, no doubt, how Katherine met John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, as Chaucer lived in his household. By all accounts by her contemporaries, we can extrapolate that she was witty, charming, able, and dignified. But the details of her life are sketchy at best. We don’t even know what she looked like.

  She married Hugh Swynford when she was about twenty and had two children from him, Blanche and Thomas. When Hugh died in 1371 in Aquitaine under Lancaster’s command (very David and Uriah), Katherine’s association with the Lancaster household only deepened. She had started as lady’s maid to his first wife, Blanche, and was already governess to Lancaster’s daughters – Philippa and Elizabeth – when it is believed somewhere around 1372, a year or so after Katherine’s husband died, that she became John of Gaunt’s mistress. They had three children together, and all, by law, were considered bastards. This sort of activity was not uncommon, but a deeply religious man such as King Richard found it distasteful. He was utterly devoted to his own first wife, Queen Anne of Bohemia, and even though they had no children, Richard is not known to have any bastards of his own.

  Katherine had a brief falling out with John for a few years, but then resumed their relationship. And when John’s second wife died – a match made purely for land, profit, and prestige – Gaunt had nothing more to prove and, like Charles and Camilla, married his longtime love at last. (Heck, he was already the richest man in England. What more did he need?)

  The children sired by Gaunt were declared legitimate by King Richard, but they were barred from ever inheriting the throne. However, Gaunt’s eldest son by Katherine Swynford, John Beaufort, had a granddaughter, Margaret Beaufort, whose son became Henry VII and took the throne from the last Plantagenet, Richard III. And Henry VII in turn married Elizabeth of York (who was also related to John of Gaunt), thus ending the York and Lancaster feud known as the War of the Roses. Their descendants inherited the throne after all.

  In fact, Katherine’s descendants are not just great in number but great in prestige. Her descendants include five American presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George W. Bush – as well as Princess Diana, Sir Winston Churchill and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. How’s that for a legacy for a person about whom history knows very little?

  Now let me just say one thing about the book Katherine by Anya Seton, by which many of us were introduced to Katherine Swynford. The book, written in 1954, would seem to be the definitive word on Katherine, when in fact, much of it was speculation. As I have mentioned before, we don’t know much about Katherine, even to the year she was born. I did not refer to the novel for my own characterization of Katherine or John of Gaunt. I read it too many years ago to remember it, and I don’t find that novels are good places to do research. Instead, I took the contemporary accounts of each character and drew my visions of them from that. Seton’s Katherine will always be well-loved, but it can’t necessarily be gospel.

  And then there is John Rykener. We first met him in The Demon’s Parchment. John Rykener is a real fellow from fourteenth-century London, cross-dressing and serving as a male prostitute as well as spending time as an embroideress. So there was diversity in London all along, even though the term ‘homosexual’ was a long time away and understanding one’s orientation even further. John got in trouble with the law not for his homosexuality or even for prostitution but for his cross-dressing, a distinct no-no for men as well as women; one was not to dress as the opposite sex.

  Crispin and Jack, as usual, had a lot to contend with in this book and there is no end of trouble as their story continues in yet another tale of mayhem and death in the next installment,A Maiden Weeping.

  GLOSSARY

  Aventail A curtain of mail, it is affixed to the bottom of a helm and cascades down, protecting the chin and neck.

  Bascinet A conical helm onto which one can affix any number of visor styles, so that the head and face are completely covered.

  Cog Compact one-masted medieval ship designed for trade.

  Destrier Warhorse.

  Diseisement To be dispossessed of title, properties, and rights.