Roseblood

by Paul Doherty

  Sevigny glanced up at the elaborately carved rood screen that separated the nave from the chancel. In the centre rose a crucifix flanked either side by life-size statues of the Virgin and St John. Beside these, he noted with amusement, were similar statues of the leading merchants of Cheapside when the rood screen was first erected. His smile faded. Duchess Cecily! She resented him knowing her family scandals. She was also the one who encouraged the duke to consult warlocks and sorcerers such as Ravenspur, though Sevigny constantly warned him to desist. The dark arts were a true menace; their practitioners met in stinking charnel houses and gloomy haunted cemeteries to make the midnight sacrifice. If the duke was discovered, accusations of witchcraft and even treason could be levelled, and he would have to face both the wrath of the Crown and the full power of the Church. The fate of Joanna of Navarre, widow of Henry IV, as well as that of the present King’s uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, showed that nobility was no defence against judgement. York, however, remained insistent, whispering how Ravenspur had exciting news for him that could only be communicated by word of mouth.

  Thankfully, Ravenspur would have to seek Sevigny out here in London, so all he had to do was wait. Other problems would not. LeCorbeil, that elusive French threat, could be anywhere. London thronged with Bretons, Burgundians, Gascons, Picards and other French mercenaries, all seeking to seal indentures with the great lords as the bubbling cauldron of bloody politics came to full boil and spilled over into war. LeCorbeil would have to show himself, if he ever did. At the same time, Sevigny’s secret hunt for the malicious physician Giles Argentine depended on two sinister creatures, Cosmas and Damian, bounty-hunters, lurchers in human flesh, the very best according to kinsman Malpas. Both had simply been given Argentine’s name and description, nothing more, before disappearing into the tangled, murky maze of London’s streets, snouting for their quarry, while Sevigny remained busy on other matters, collecting information about royal troops in London, the strength of the garrison at the Tower, the number of men being summoned to Blackheath, which war cogs were moored in the Thames and how many of Beaufort’s allies, such as Stafford of Buckingham, were whistling up their liveried retainers. Finally, there was Candlemas.

  Sevigny walked across to the life-sized statue of St Christopher, slightly bowed, carrying the Christ Child on his back. The sculptured face of the saint was strained, eyes bulging, mouth gaping under the weight of the burden he carried. Sevigny recalled the legend: how a plea to St Christopher would fend off sudden and violent death that day. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against the carved stone and whispered his prayer, crossing himself before returning to the problem of Candlemas.

  ‘The dead felon organised the robbery, secretly encouraged by Malpas on behalf of York.’ Sevigny paused in his whispering to himself, a common practice ever since childhood. He listened sharply, but the church still lay silent. From outside rose the clanging of market bells and the faint shouts of street-sellers, proclaiming: ‘Fresh milk!’ ‘The purest water from St Mary Grace’s!’ ‘What else do ye lack?’ He peered around the church; votive candles flickered before statues but all else remained quiet. Man’s business with God was done; now it was Mammon’s turn.

  ‘Candlemas,’ Sevigny whispered to the statue of St Christopher, ‘was a fool, easily duped. The attack was expected; they had only opened one bag full of rusty scraps before Candlemas and his gang were beaten off. Frustrated, Malpas sprang the second part of his trap. Four of Candlemas’s coven were seized and, to satisfy justice, executed. Candlemas and his two henchmen fled into hiding. Cosmas and Damian informed me about the underground passage. I killed one of the fugitives and seized the other two, who promptly turned King’s Approver. Malpas and I wanted them to indict Roseblood. Placed in a secure room, bolted and locked on the outside, they were served food and wine that to all appearances seemed untainted.’

  Sevigny paused at the sound of a door opening and closing. He walked deeper into the nave. Three Franciscan nuns in heavy blue-edged veils and earth-coloured robes had entered St Mary’s, moving across to a chantry chapel. Sevigny shrugged and walked back, deep in reflection on what he’d seen, heard and felt in that death chamber. According to all the evidence, Candlemas and Cross-Biter had been safely locked in. Ramler had departed, whilst Skulkin and his coterie remained on guard. Sevigny had arrived just before dawn; the room was still secure, but he had found Candlemas sprawled dead on the floor near the table stool he’d been sitting on. Cross-Biter lay a little further in, with his head towards the door. The two victims had died violently, faces grotesquely twisted; both men had drawn their daggers, but against what? Was it suicide? Sevigny shook his head. Poison? Yet Ramler and Skulkin had tasted everything and Candlemas had been vigilant against such a threat. So how it had been done?

  ‘Look for the common factor, Amadeus.’ The advice of Eadmer sounded like a bell down the memory of years. Malpas’s plan to steal the silver had been betrayed. Candlemas was spared to give evidence against Roseblood and he had been betrayed. What was the common factor here? Sevigny sat back on the stool and searched for an answer. In his mind he listed all the people involved in Malpas’s plot. He scrutinised each name until a solution occurred. As he sprang to his feet, he heard a soft slurry of movement along the transept. Who could that be? The Franciscan minoresses?

  Sevigny’s mouth went dry. He quietly cursed his own mistake: those nuns had neither genuflected towards the pyx nor bothered to bless themselves from the holy water stoup. He had half drawn his sword from its sheath when the assassins, now free of their disguise, faces all blackened, slipped out of the shadows. Armed with sword and dagger, they moved silent and soft like deadly wraiths, fanning out, weapons jabbing the air. Former soldiers, Sevigny judged, now turned professional assassins. All three closed, blades whirling. Sevigny stood swaying, sword held in both hands, slightly low so as not to tire easily. He soon had the measure of his three assailants and easily blocked their thrusts, his blade slicing the air between them in an arc of shimmering, twirling steel. He held his ground, then abruptly lunged, jabbing his sword point against the assailant to his right, drawing it back in a savage cut along the left side of the attacker’s neck. The man staggered, screaming in pain. Sevigny had turned on the other two when a door crashed open further down the church.

  ‘Master Sevigny, Master Sevigny! You must see this!’ Skulkin’s voice echoed harshly. Ramler repeated the cry. Both assailants lunged together desperate to strike.

  ‘Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!’ Sevigny shouted the alarm so often heard along London’s streets. Skulkin’s heavy footsteps rang out. Sevigny’s two opponents abruptly broke off, fleeing silently back into the gloom. Sevigny stood, sword down, catching his breath.

  ‘Master Sevigny!’ Skulkin, followed by Ramler, hastened towards him. Sevigny ignored them. He collected his war belt and went to crouch by the dying assassin.

  ‘Help me!’ The man spluttered blood. ‘For sweet God’s sake…’

  ‘You are dying,’ Sevigny remarked. ‘You need to be shriven.’

  ‘A priest.’ The man’s desperate eyes pleaded. ‘For mercy’s sake.’

  ‘Shall I cut his throat?’ Skulkin, kneeling on the other side, drew his misericord dagger.

  ‘A priest! My eternal soul!’

  ‘Damned to Hell!’ Skulkin snarled, resting the tip of his dagger against the man’s quivering throat.

  ‘Mercy,’ Sevigny gently touched the man’s face, ‘has a price. Who sent you?’

  ‘A stranger. He met us in a tavern, the Inglenook in Southwark. Two silver pieces,’ the man gasped, body arching in pain, blood frothing between chapped lips. ‘Two pieces for hiring, two more when we were done. We were to bring your seals and war belt as proof.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ the man pleaded.

  ‘I can hear Lord Satan’s emissaries,’ Sevigny responded. ‘Dark and menacing. They gather rattling their chains. So who?’

  ‘On my soul, a stra
nger, hooded and masked; a soldier, I think. He spoke with a strange accent, that’s all I know. Please?’ The man’s fingers scrabbled at Sevigny’s wrist.

  ‘Master?’

  ‘Skulkin, fetch a priest. He will probably demand that our fallen friend be taken out to God’s Acre.’ Sevigny crossed himself and bowed in the direction of St Christopher’s statue. ‘This shrine is already polluted and will need to be reconsecrated. Tell the priest to shrive him.’ Sevigny tightened his war belt about his waist whilst Skulkin went deftly through the man’s paltry possessions. ‘Give the priest a coin; keep whatever else you find, including his weapons.’ He kicked a dagger away and stared down at the man lost in his last painful agony.

  ‘Then what?’ Skulkin asked.

  ‘Send him to God. Master Ramler, what do you want to show me?’

  ‘You’d best see for yourself.’ Ramler looked pale and peaky. Sevigny noticed his long eyelashes, and a smear of red on his left cheek.

  ‘Sealing wax stain,’ Ramler murmured, following Sevigny’s gaze. The clerk went to brush it off, but the scribe hastily stepped back, nervously pawing at the mark before beckoning Sevigny.

  ‘Sir, you must see this. Roseblood—’

  ‘Soon.’ Sevigny raised a hand and looked back at the dying man still jerking against the paving stones. Skulkin had hurried out to search for a priest. Sevigny wondered whether Roseblood was responsible for the attack, but was that his way? Or was it LeCorbeil, that French will-o’-the-wisp who seemed to dabble in all kinds of mischief? If so, why? Was it because they were both hunting Argentine? Skulkin would have to take care of all of this; explain to the priest how a royal clerk had been attacked during his oraisons by city assassins. Sevigny recalled the dying man’s story of being hired by someone with a strange accent, but that would have to wait.

  He followed Ramler out through the corpse door. They crossed the cemetery, which lay quiet under the strengthening sun. Even the birds seemed to have fled from the ancient yew trees, their drooping branches shading the battered crosses and moss-covered houses of the dead. As he approached the majestic lychgate, Sevigny could hear the shouts and cries that heralded some unexpected tumult along the great thoroughfare of Cheapside. He left the cemetery, following Ramler down a needle-thin alleyway and into the great trading area of London.

  Despite the relatively early hour, the markets were thronged; a shifting sea of colour, a shoal of people shoving and jostling their way down the broad concourse: merchants and their wives in their costly embroidered robes, as well as soil-stained peasants pushing their handbarrows piled high with produce. Bells chimed and clanged. Traders shouted prices. Dogs barked and yelped. Children being taken to the church schools darted like sparrows amongst the stalls. Sevigny surveyed the milling crowd. He wondered if the two assassins who had escaped, faces now cleaned, weapons concealed, were mingling with the throng, searching for a fresh opportunity.

  The source of the clamour came from the direction of the soaring Tun, the main water conduit of London, with its black-barred prison cage on top packed with the nightwalkers, whores, drunks and other curfew-breakers from the night before. The massive, elaborately sculptured conduit now swarmed with Londoners drawn by the procession assembling there. Sevigny narrowed his eyes and pinched his nostrils. The spring breeze carried the reek of the fleshers’ stalls further up Cheapside, close to the ugly, brooding mass of Newgate prison. The odours mingled with the scent of sweat, leather and horses, as well as the stench from a mass of unwashed bodies. The dusty fug cleared and he could clearly glimpse the colourful banners and brilliant sheen of a group gathered on the steps of the Tun. He made out the blue and white standards and pennants of Lancaster, as well as the gorgeous livery of the Vintners’ guild. He also glimpsed three long poles with severed heads on the ends, like small black balls against the bright colour behind them.

  Sevigny left his vantage point and vigorously pushed his way through the crowd. Other spectators scuttled out of the way of this harsh-featured mailed clerk in his black leather jerkin prigged with gold and silver thread, the war belt strapped around his waist holding a long sword and a stabbing dirk in their brocaded scabbards. Such a man was to be feared and avoided. The palliards, beggars, cunning men and their doxies, who could mark a possible victim from head to toe in the twinkling of an eye, soon recognised the clerk. News of Sevigny’s swift and brutal execution of Lazarus, as well as his seizure of Candlemas’s gang, had swept the dingy alehouses and dismal taverns. His name, reputation and appearance had been swiftly posted by word of mouth. No one impeded him.

  The clerk reached the foot of the steps and stared up at Simon Roseblood, resplendent in his gorgeous alderman’s robes. On his right, Raphael was also richly garbed in hose, tunic, soft boots and ermine-lined cloak. On his left, a sight that made Sevigny catch his breath. Katherine stood attired like a great court lady in an exquisite sky-blue dress powdered in gold and silver and trimmed at neck and cuff with the costliest lace from Bruges. Her beautiful auburn hair lay hidden under a thick gauze veil, and a jewelled cross on a silver chain circled her swan-like neck. Her lovely face had been painted to emphasise her lustrous eyes and delicate mouth. She looked slightly amused, her snow-white hands, shimmering with rings, resting against a gold-brocaded stomacher.

  In front of Roseblood and his family, on the lower steps, stood Ignacio and other minions whom Sevigny recognised from the tavern. These were all dressed in their master’s livery and well armed with swords, daggers and maces. On the bottom step, three members of the Fraternity of the Doomed, garbed completely in black, grasped the long poles bearing the severed heads of Blackshanks and his two companions. Neatly shaven at the neck, these gruesome trophies had been as skilfully pickled and tarred as any of those decorating the parapet along the gatehouse on London Bridge.

  On either side of the great Tun stood carts laden with barrels of ale as well as wicker baskets heaped with fresh bread, fruit and dried meats, which servants from the tavern were now preparing to distribute to any citizen who asked. Roseblood and his family, however, just stood there like figures in one of those glorious pageants the city would organise to welcome the return of a conquering king. Sevigny quietly marvelled at the sheer effrontery of the taverner, who seemed to be waiting for other leading citizens and officials to gather and witness the unfolding of this elaborately staged masque.

  Hand on sword, the clerk edged closer. Roseblood caught his eye and nodded; Raphael glowered down at him. Katherine’s smile, however, widened as if she and Sevigny were fellow conspirators, and try as he might, he could not resist smiling back. Roseblood saw this and took it as a sign to begin. He gestured, and three of his retainers flourishing trumpets came round and stopped just before Sevigny. The clerk stepped back as the trumpets brayed commanding silence. Once they had finished, Roseblood raised his hands.

  ‘Fellow citizens!’ His powerful voice carried clear as any clarion. ‘Fellow citizens of this great city, I come before you as your alderman, a member of your council, a true subject of His Grace our saintly and well-beloved King. I, who have worked so hard and striven earnestly for this city, have been feloniously threatened and attacked by these malefactors.’ Roseblood flourished a hand at the three impaled heads. ‘Mark my words, these are not fellow citizens but aliens, foreigners to this great city and, what is more, wolfsheads from the wilds of Essex. These felons had the temerity to trespass on my dwelling, to threaten, menace and subvert the King’s peace and that of this city.’

  Roseblood’s words were greeted with growls and shouts of approval, though Sevigny noticed that some just stood silently staring up at this audacious alderman.

  ‘In the presence of a host of witnesses, now here before you,’ Roseblood continued, ‘these wretches dared to draw weapons on me, your alderman, in direct contravention of this city’s ordnances. If they can do that in my home, what protection does an ordinary citizen have?’ The taverner had hit his mark, his words being greeted with roars of approval a
nd shouts of ‘Harrow! Harrow!’ the usual proclamation when the hue and cry was raised. Roseblood again lifted his hands.

  ‘Fellow citizens, I swear by God, the Virgin and all the angels and saints, especially my patron, Fisherman Peter, that I shall now proceed to the Guildhall, where I will meet my accusers. Mark my words, however: God will strike them down as he did Agag and the Amalekites.’

  Roseblood paused to nod at the clear calls of approval. Sevigny stared at Katherine, who grinned impishly back. Sevigny was sure that she and the rest of her family knew about Candlemas and Cross-Biter being long gone to God. He raised one hand in salute before returning to Roseblood, who was now thoroughly enjoying himself.

  ‘In the meantime,’ that cunning vintner continued, ‘let me share my hope in God’s justice as well as that of the King by welcoming you, my fellow citizens, to a celebration fitting for such vindication. Moreover,’ Roseblood stilled the growing cheer as the crowd stared hungrily at the heaped carts, ‘such hospitality will also be available at my tavern, where true and loyal subjects of our King and this glorious city may raise their tankards and chorus “Alleluia!” in the cause of right.’

  Without further ado, Roseblood turned to his trumpeters, and the entire procession, horns and clarions ringing out, standards and pennants fluttering, moved down the conduit steps and along the broad thoroughfare, winding past the stalls, shops and stately mansions of Cheapside to the imposing gateway leading into the great bailey of the Guildhall. Sevigny followed behind. At the gatehouse, a line of Sheriff Malpas’s archers and men-at-arms allowed the Roseblood household through but pressed back the accompanying crowd. The throng had now turned into a mob, growing increasingly unruly as the midnight folk of the city, sensing mischief and with a sharp eye to easy pickings, swarmed through. Sevigny was recognised and also permitted through. He hurried to join Malpas, dressed in half-armour, waiting on the steps beneath the soaring statues of Justice, Faith and Wisdom and blocking the entrance to the principal court of the Guildhall. Behind him stood men-at-arms and, on either side, members of the council hostile to Beaufort, as well as two judges of oyer and terminer in their scarlet robes and caps all fringed with the purest lambswool.