by Mike Ashley
You may try to escape the past, but its long chilly fingers can stretch out to touch you whenever and wherever you least expect. I’d thought myself free and clear, reborn and reinvented as Scotland was reborn with Robert the Bruce as king. I thought I was so safe in my new life and new identity I’d even started courting a Highland girl.
But who should have known better than me? You can never be safe.
And now here I was, clattering up Tower Street past All Hallows Church under armed escort. The walls of the Tower of London loomed on my left, ahead the River Thames sparkled in the early morning summer sunshine. I shuddered as we turned and crossed the first drawbridge and entered through Lion Gate. Long ago in my old life I’d been instrumental on several occasions for sending other men on this route. They’d not come out again and I could only pray that I would escape a similar fate. But first, I had to find out what I stood accused of before I could talk my way out of it.
As we walked our horses past the Barbican and towards Middle Tower I heard a terrible growling behind us. Even my guards, tough men that they were, looked alarmed and our horses jittered uneasily. Then came the shout of one man, followed by howling, then more shouting and finally a horrible cacophony of wild animal cries.
“The King’s Beasts are restless. Has old Osric forgotten to feed them or is he no longer Keeper?” I remarked to the least taciturn of my own keepers. I’d hardly been able to get a word out of either of them about the weather, let alone anything more interesting, on the week’s journey south from Scotland, which meant they’d been the right men for the job, unlikely through compassion or bribery to allow me to escape and make their own lives forfeit.
He muttered something indecipherable in his native Welsh and I shrugged. At least I wouldn’t have to face him and his companion over breakfast any more.
“Ho – what have we here!” a voice challenged as we entered Middle Tower. I was in luck. Alfred, Sergeant at Arms, was hurrying towards us followed by several of his men. A short wiry man, his face knocked about and scarred, his men feared and respected him. “As I live and breathe – Gregory Deschamps. That is, if you’re Gregory today and not wearing some other guise.” He gave a sly grin as he referred to my former life as spy for John Droxford, head of the King’s Wardrobe and ultimately, the old King, Edward I. But these were new times, with a new King, and I thought I called no man master any longer.
“No counterfeit but the real Gregory,” I told him. “You recognize me after all these years.”
“Not that many and anyway, once seen never forgotten. Are you here on business or pleasure?”
“Possibly the King’s pleasure. The new Lieutenant of the Tower wants to see me, and then I’ll know.”
“Ah – in that case come with me. I’m on my way to him now – you two take the horses and report in.”
I had no time to stretch my stiffened limbs. Alfred hurried me down a stone staircase and I realized we were heading for the menagerie, back the way we’d come, to the Lion Gate, but through an underground passageway. “What’s happening, Alfred? Has one of the animals escaped?”
“I’m no wiser than you are.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Come and drink some ale with me later. We’ll talk then.”
The stench of the caged animals hit me as we approached the circle of cages set in a stone wall under individual arches around an exercise area open to the sky. Gutters on either side carried away their excrement into the Thames. There were lions, leopards, bears and other strange wild creatures not seen in England, all sent as gestures of admiration and pride from foreign rulers to the English kings and queens. The roar and snarl of a lion greeted us as we rounded a corner and saw two men examining something lying on the ground.
They moved aside to reveal their secret. It was the body of another man, but who he was I could not tell. His face had been bitten away and his body badly mauled – at a guess by the very lion who was venting his anger at being thwarted of his meal. I recognized one of the men as Osric, the gnarled, bandy-legged Keeper of the King’s Animals. The other, a slender man of medium height with straight black hair, wore expensive clothes and had to be the Lieutenant of the Tower, de Lisle, the man who had ordered me to be brought here.
“Who is this?” he asked, regarding me from hooded eyes and fastidiously holding up his long sleeves edged with fur to keep them from dangling in either the drainage gulley or blood from the dead body.
“Gregory Deschamps,” I informed him. “You sent for me.”
He snorted. “Hardly. I had you arrested, and at just the right time. This man – do you recognize him?” he nodded at the body on the ground.
“No. Do you?”
“You should do. This is – or was, until a few scant minutes ago – William de Kellseye. It was you who gathered enough evidence against him five years ago to have him condemned to the Tower for life. When I became Lieutenant six months ago he approached me and told me that you had falsified evidence against him and that he was now in a position to prove it. It was not easy, but I had you tracked down and ‘sent for’ as you so delicately put it.”
I made a noncommital noise. I had been under armed escort and outside the Tower when de Kellseye had met his death and had indeed forgotten his existence. But I had learned long ago that innocence and ignorance were no protection in this brutal world of ours. I would have to wait and watch and listen, and pray I would survive.
“And now, at the very moment of your arrival, here he is, dead. Convenient wouldn’t you say?”
“I can hardly be accountable for a man foolish enough to wander too close to an uncaged lion,” I pointed out reasonably. “And what was the animal doing out of its cage – or did he open the cage himself and climb in there with it? Even old Osric here thinks twice before doing that.”
“The animals don’t get fed until mid morning – now, in fact. Everyone knows that. This lion is a gentle beast.”
De Lisle ignored him. “Either someone forgot to close the lion in, and Osric assures me he checked all the cages personally last night and first thing this morning, or the cage door was deliberately opened. You could easily have bribed someone to do that.”
I sought another line of attack. “Is there a guard on these cages night and day? No. And lords and ladies are not always above,” I pointed up to a rampart, where curious onlookers had indeed gathered now, looking down on us, “to see what is going on. Anyone could have been down here, and sheltered from view under these arches before making good his escape. And what was de Kellseye doing down here anyway? I think –”
“Don’t think to sharpen your wits against me, Master Spy, because you’ve met your match.” His smile was tight-lipped. “See here,” he pointed to what was left of the chest on the mangled body. “Look closely – a knife or sword thrust killed him and the lion released to cover the misdeed. Only Osric came by and the animal didn’t have time to finish his meal.”
“I heard him growling. ’Twasn’t the right sort of growl. I knew as something was up,” Osric contributed.
I crouched down to examine de Kellseye’s torn clothing then, with permission, lifted it and examined the narrow chest sprinkled with grey hairs underneath. One thrust right to the heart. Probably a short sword, as used for close combat, judging by the size and type of wound, and from the front too. His attacker was a friend then, or so he thought, to allow him so close. De Lisle was right, he’d been slaughtered in cold blood and then the big male lion, who was kept in a separate cage from his lionesses, released to hide the deed.
“Give me one good reason,” de Lisle said, enjoying this moment to the full, “why I should not have you arrested, tried and executed – preferably hung, drawn and quartered – before the week is out.”
“I’ve never come across de Lisle before, except by hearsay, and that wasn’t much, but he’s definitely got a grudge against me. I wonder why.” I stretched my feet a little closer to Alfred’s warm fire. These quarters in the Tower were often chilly in the evening whe
n the mist rose up from the river, as it did even in the height of summer, and summers now were not hot like they used to be.
“You won’t like to hear this, but he’s the first honest Lieutenant I’ve served under. Couldn’t handle himself in a fight, but he can run this place and keep the men happy and prisoners in order. Not to mention the King himself. He wants to make his mark, prove himself.” He poured us some more ale. We were alone in his private quarters for, after I had stolen a kiss and a squeeze of her ample body, his wife Matilda had tactfully withdrawn to her sewing to give us time alone together.
“Shame young King Edward doesn’t visit the Tower much. I’d like to have seen the man he’s grown into. He was never anything like his father, but a few years in power may have changed him?”
“He’s up in the fens. Likes to go there for rowing and those rural pursuits he’s so fond of. Thatching, I ask you! But he’s a brave man, good swordsman. You’d always find him in the thick of the battle. Bad choice in friends, though.”
“Mmm. Talking of his friends, what of his other pursuits?”
“Ah. So news did reach you amongst those heathen savages north of the border. What on earth possessed you to stay up there, squatting in the heather and thistles when you could’ve been in London –”
“King Edward’s other pleasures?” I reminded him.
He gave a short dry laugh, almost like a cough, which was the most that ever escaped him. “He has a pretty French queen for a wife, though I hear she’s strong-willed. Piers Gaveston,” he made a face, “is safely out of the way in Ireland ordering the savages there about, instead of lording it over everyone here. He’s the King’s ‘good friend’,” he glanced over his shoulder as if checking we weren’t being overheard, “and I don’t know how much further it goes than that, but he’s anyone else’s friend.”
“I don’t suppose the Irish want him lording over them much either, but he’s doing a good job I hear.”
“Where’s all this leading, Greg? What’s it to do with your dead man?” He shook his head. “I don’t like it when one of our prisoners dies on us like this. Looks bad – like I’ve fallen down on the job.”
“Hardly my dead man – I take no responsibility for him. As for the King – let’s say I have my reasons. He may be brave but he doesn’t know how to unite the country behind him. There’s plenty want him off the throne already and not just because of his taste in bed partners, rumoured or not.”
“I think you’re wasting your time there, and wasting your time drinking ale here. You’ve got one night to come up with a story to prove your innocence, and it had better be a good one. De Lisle is no fool.”
“I can see that.” I drained my beaker and set it down on the hearth. “What I want to know is, why was de Kellseye down by the animal pens? You know everything that goes on in here. Was he an animal lover?”
“Hah,” he gave his short coughing laugh again. “He was a forgotten man, wasn’t he? Model prisoner, wife visits him every Saturday, prayers every day in the chapel. Didn’t mix with the wrong sort, no conspiracies. Wasn’t even mixed up in the crown jewels’ robbery. So now he wanders about just as he wants and no one pays him any attention.”
“A forgotten man – yes, I’d certainly forgotten him. Yet he remembered me.” I frowned. “Why was he so keen to blacken my name? I was completely unimportant in this game. An expendable underling.”
“Revenge?” Alfred suggested. “Not that he looked to me like he was brooding. Seemed to have accepted his fate.”
“Nothing fits together – yet. But it will. If only I had more time – just a few hours to clear my name and ensure I make it back to Scotland and the bonnie lass waiting for me there.”
“Bonnie lass!” Alfred spat into the fire. “Some thickheaded peasant girl when you could be warming the silken sheets of a fine lady or writing poems of courtly love to your true heart. That King Robert as he calls himself has turned your brains to porridge.”
I grinned. “I doubt any fine lady would let me air her sheets, let alone lie in them with her. I have no riches and no standing these days, and that’s just how I like it,” I said lightly, to cover the clutch at my heart that always came at the thought of a certain lady fate had decreed could never be mine, despite the love we had for each other. “Now, will you trust me out of your sight? I know the curfew bell has rung and the gates are locked but there is someone in the City I want to talk to.”
He snorted. “Trust? I gave that up long ago. And you’re more slippery than any eel I can snatch out of the Thames. But you know if you don’t return to my custody you’ll have an unhappy and very short life. And it won’t be the botched job that someone made of de Kellseye’s end.”
As I walked down the Inner Ward past the White Tower towards the royal apartments the first pale stars were beginning to appear though the sky still held the blush of the setting sun. The prisoners had been locked in for the night when the curfew bell had been rung, and those men who were not on duty had either returned to their families, or were gathered together to drink and play dice into the night.
Alfred was right. William de Kellseye’s death bore all the hallmarks of a botched job. My suspicion was that he’d been silenced, but had the murder been deliberately botched in order the easier to implicate me, the person who appeared to have the biggest reason to kill him. As I’d said to de Lisle, “Yes, I could have somehow heard of his accusations, I could have planned his death. But if I had, I would have made a far better job of it. I’d’ve made it look like an accident, or that someone else was to blame. I wouldn’t point the finger at myself.”
De Lisle regarded me carefully. “I believe you,” he said at last, “I heard you were a clever man. Now prove it to me. You have one day before I turn you over to the Sheriff of London for examination. He’s on his way here now with the Coroner who is going to examine the body.”
I’d been given into Alfred’s safekeeping, but it was only now, after all the due administrative processes were over, that I was free.
My first target was de Kellseye’s prison, and I’d persuaded Alfred to part with the key. He’d told me that Mistress de Kellseye, the widow, had been too distraught to attend today. I hoped the room would be untouched and just as he had left it – as long as none of Alfred’s men had sneaked in and plundered it first.
The room was small, but comfortable, and on the first floor with a slit window with open views to the south across orchards and vineyards. It was well furnished with two colourful tapestries on the walls, a bed made up with linen, blankets and furs, a table and several chairs. Using the light of a candle I walked around slowly, looking not only for anything out of the ordinary but also to develop a portrait of the man and his life in the Tower. He may have been a model prisoner, but something had happened. Something had changed and given him the hope that he could overturn his conviction. Had he kept the evidence here?
Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. I went to the cold fireplace and sifted through the ashes, but they gave nothing away but dark embers of wood. Systematically I searched his bed, behind the tapestries, and in every crevice, saving his coffer until last. I recognized the type – once it had been my job to know as many types of lock and key and ways of preserving secrets as any good locksmith could devise. After going through his few – but good quality – clothes I reached down inside and found the lever I was looking for. A slender drawer slid out from underneath the chest. Here were his quill, ink and parchment, as well as his personal seal, wax and candles. There were a few coins too.
I sat down and turned the seal in my hands, recalling how and why I’d hunted this man down. Surely there must be some event, some clue, in what took place then to have led to this moment when, from beyond life, de Kellseye had reversed our roles and put me in greater jeopardy than he had ever been.
It was about money. What else? The old King, the coldhearted monster Edward I who’d nevertheless ruled with an iron grip, could not give up his dream of conquering
Scotland. He could not bear to have his will thwarted. But the war was a costly one. The Crown borrowed a huge amount of money, and the Jews of the City of London had proved exemplary financiers. But then came a new source of revenue, the Frescobaldis, bankers from Florence in Italy. Not only did this give Edward the chance to reform the currency to make things easier for himself, but the Frescobaldi family was distantly related to Piers Gaveston’s family through Gascon connections. There was a link. So Edward accused the Jews of clipping coins in order to reduce their power over him.
However, not everyone liked the Florentines’ influence.
William had been a middle man. He carried messages and brokered loans and deals. But Edward discovered he was being short-changed somewhere along the way. Was it the Jewry, to tarnish their new rivals’ name? Or were the Frescobaldis not to be trusted after all? I was told to infiltrate this financial world and find out, without disrupting the flow of cash into the Crown’s Treasury, who was defrauding whom.
It was delicate work but eventually I narrowed in on de Kellseye as the point at which the money went missing. I held the evidence in my hands right now. His private seal on his signet ring. I’d intercepted, by devious means, one letter which was carefully worded but, when taken in context with other transactions, confirmed his secret negotiations. And he’d sealed it with this seal. Easy to prove as it had a small crack on one side which showed up in the wax.
At the time he had not protested. I’d sat at his trial and been surprised at his demeanour. He neither accepted nor denied the charges, but took his sentence without a murmur. He’d been rewarded with this fine room and freedom to have his family in and to roam the Tower as he wished.
But what was the ring doing here? I jumped up and, candle in hand, began to search the room even more minutely. He would surely not leave without it. Take it off at night, perhaps, while he slept, but I remember he always wore the ring – hence he could not claim that someone else had used it on the incriminating letter.
