A Choir of Crows

by Candace Robb

  ‘Absences? I am not certain the cardinal has ever set foot in the city.’

  ‘You grow tedious. The sub-dean? Dean John?’

  A petulant scowl. ‘A simple mind, easily dominated. You grow tedious as well. I am more concerned about Jehannes, Archdeacon of York. He presents himself as a gentle, unworldly man. But I am warned that one does well not to underestimate him. He sounds a pious bore.’

  ‘And the lay men of influence? This John Gisburne might be of use. Yet having met him – I would prefer a more palatable man in our confidence. He is the sort to make an enemy with each breath. And it appears he considers himself above the law. Someone needs to teach him his place. What did Prince Edward’s man Antony of Egypt think of him?’

  ‘My secretary Leufrid found Antony inscrutable. He was courteous to Gisburne, no more, no less.’

  ‘What of the late John Thoresby’s spy, the one-eyed Welshman?’

  ‘Archer? He’s now captain of bailiffs for the city. And Prince Edward’s man in the city, his eyes and ears in the North, they say. He entertained Antony in his home. Geoffrey Chaucer as well.’

  Owen Archer’s position with the prince was precisely why Ambrose had come north.

  ‘I am aware Archer has the favor of the prince’s household. What do we know about him?’

  ‘The city sought his protection. He’s said to be a clever bloodhound, still a fine archer – he was captain of archers for Henry Grosmont before the loss of an eye, then his spy. Grosmont educated him to the latter position before he died. By all accounts he’s Gisburne’s nemesis. At some point the merchant crossed Archer and all the city awaits the day Gisburne is made to pay, and pay dearly.’

  ‘So Archer has enemies.’

  ‘Other than Gisburne?’ Ambrose wished he could see black jacket’s face, read the expression that lit up Alexander’s face. ‘Oh. Yes, I see.’

  Ambrose settled himself to hear more. His distasteful interlude with the kitchen wench had been worth it.

  As the company proceeded into the hall Ambrose cringed at the fog of greasy smoke in the great space, the rising odor of sweet wine, roasted meats, and sweat. And the noise! It was not the worst he had experienced, but that did not make the prospect any less daunting. To sing with his lungs filling with smoke – he would suffer tomorrow. At least he need not fret about the rough lyrics – few would hear them.

  His heart lightened when Carl directed them to ascend to a gallery overlooking the feast. Closer to fresh air, at a slight distance from the fire and the noise. Better. The steep wooden steps were a challenge with the instruments, the man before him stumbling, almost knocking the crwth from his grasp. Ambrose’s quick reflex saved it.

  ‘How will they hear us?’ Matthew whispered as Ambrose joined the youth.

  ‘Those who wish to will find a way.’

  And, lo, as soon as the musicians struck up a jig, faces lifted to see whence came the sound.

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Matthew.

  ‘Just so,’ said Ambrose, staring directly into the eyes of Sir John Neville, Knight of the Garter, Admiral of the North, Steward of the King’s Household, he of the gorgeous silver-seamed jacket. So the archbishopric of York was that important to the family that Alexander’s eldest brother took time away from his military activities and duties at court to attend this meeting. Suddenly what Ambrose had conceived as a fortuitous opportunity to gather a tidbit of gossip that might be of use had become a far more dangerous ploy than he had intended. John Neville’s cool gaze chilled him. Ambrose did not recall having been introduced. But he was glad the velvet hat covered his long, lustrous white hair, just in case Neville had seen him at the French court. He had certainly heard much about Neville there. He, in turn, might have heard of Ambrose, who was known as the silver-haired troubadour. God help him. He was glad he had decided to play an instrument that had been of no interest in France, the Welsh crwth.

  The song ended, and the players fanned out to make room for Ambrose and Matthew in the center. Lifting his crwth, Ambrose teased out the melody, giving Matthew the pitch.

  The pure voice rose up in praise of the Nevilles, Ambrose answered. John Neville’s eyes crinkled in delight.

  God be praised. Perhaps that was all his concern, that the entertainment be suitable and pleasing to the ear.

  While his companions busied themselves preparing for the performance, Ambrose had gathered the belongings he would not be needing and taken them to a spot he had found beside the gatehouse. A break in the wall, narrow, but he was still slender and agile, God be thanked. An overturned barrow covered his pack. Now, as the players were settling for the night, having drunk deeply and eaten their fill, Ambrose lay awake fully dressed, even to his boots, listening to the rustling, the stumbles and slurred apologies. He might simply slip out as if heading out to relieve himself but for his instrument and the blankets. So he waited.

  The danger lay in waiting too long, and he must have fallen asleep, for he came alert of a sudden, heart pounding, with a vague sense of someone thrashing about. Was that a cry? He lay still, holding his breath. There. A muffled cry, a grunt of warning. He sat up and blinked to adjust to the unhelpful light from a torch by the door, flame dancing in a strong draft. Someone hunched over Matthew’s pallet. Real? He quietly collected his things, donned his hat, and rose, gathering his cloak about him. His instrument case securely hanging from his shoulder, he crept toward the sound, and, seeing that he was right, reached out and yanked the naked man away from Matthew, tossing him aside. Ambrose would never be considered strong, but he knew how to make use of surprise, and the awkwardness of a swollen cock. A loud thud, a curse, then silence.

  ‘Get your things and come with me,’ Ambrose whispered, offering Matthew a hand.

  ‘I can manage,’ the youth muttered, scrambling up, gathering blankets, clothes, a pack, turning back with a curse for the boots that had been kicked away.

  ‘I have your boots. Hurry!’

  They picked their way among the players, some cursing, others merely turning over and resuming their snores. No one seemed to be chasing them. Near the door, Ambrose noted Carl was not on his pallet. It had not been him attacking Matthew, so where was he?

  At the door to the kitchen garden, Ambrose gestured for Matthew to stay back while he checked for a guard – or Carl, then took Matthew’s things and proffered the boots. ‘Best to start out well shod. It will be a long walk.’

  Bending over the boots, the youth glanced up. ‘You mean to go with me?’

  ‘I planned to leave tonight. You are merely an unexpected encumbrance.’

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘We waste time. Come.’

  As they began to move across the courtyard two figures approached from the fields, a bare-assed man tottering after a woman who yanked him along by his member. Carl and the assistant cook. Ambrose felt a laugh rising and covered his mouth as he backed farther into the shadows. As the two passed nearby, Ambrose felt the heat of the woman’s fury. Near the door to the kitchen she let go of Carl. He stumbled forward. She kicked him aside and disappeared within. Carl groaned. Grabbing Matthew’s hand, Ambrose hurried on. Clouds hid the moon, forcing them to move with care down the paths. But Ambrose had planned for it, walking the route several times, learning the contours, the obstacles – like the thorn hedge.

  Near the gatehouse he froze in mid-step as a guard called out a challenge. But it proved to be directed at a rider who approached the gate from the road. God watched over them. The distraction would give them the cover they needed.

  A forceful knock on the door. ‘My lord!’

  Sir John kissed the wench tenderly – a woman bedded is a dangerous creature should she feel used and discarded. ‘Forgive me, my beauty.’

  With a sigh, she slipped from beneath the sheets. John groaned at the vision, her curves caressed by the candlelight, in full view as she wrestled her simple gown over her head, dropping over that lushness. She blew him a kiss and scampered out, trading places with P
it, the man he had set to watch the players, especially the minstrel in the squirrel-lined cloak and robe. The elegance of the clothing had been his mistake, and his choice of instrument. Few played the crwth. Fewer yet with such a voice, and clothes unmistakably the work of tailors for the French court. And the intensity with which he had regarded those gathered in the hall – Sir John included. He’d not needed the curvaceous kitchen wench to tell him of the man’s interest in hearing ‘what the nobles said amongst themselves’ to know he was a spy. But who had hired him? At one time or another Ambrose Coates had been rumored to be the lover of every man in the French court – and a few women. Or was he now spying for someone in the English court? Of late John had been on the Scottish border, too far afield to stay current with court gossip.

  Pit slouched to the bedside, keeping his eyes averted as if fearing he might see his lord’s nakedness.

  ‘You had best have news after so rudely interrupting my pleasure,’ John growled, more for the sport of seeing the man even more discomfited. Whence came these fine sensibilities in hired brutes? It was ever the same, a taste for all but a certain vice. Pit feared naked flesh, and pleasure. Pain, blood, splintered bones, guts spilling from sliced velvet, gouged-out eyes – nary a flicker of unease. But show him a woman’s bare breast or a cock wet with sex and the man blanched and bowed his head.

  ‘The minstrel and the fair-haired lad, milord. They have gone. Left all the rest asleep.’

  ‘Have they?’ John smiled to himself. ‘You know what to do.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Alive if you catch him on the road. I should like to know who sent him. But if you follow him into a town or guarded manor …’ John paused, considering how likely it was that Pit and his fellows could be discreet. ‘If you might be seen dragging him away, dispatch him in the shadows, leave him to die.’

  ‘And the lad?’

  The beautiful youth with the voice of an angel. Were the pair lovers? If so, the youth might know much, might be able to carry out the minstrel’s mission.

  ‘The lad likewise.’

  Pit managed to bow even lower as he backed from the room.

  ‘Take as many men as you see fit. And some horses – they took no horses, I presume?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ Pit mumbled at the door. ‘They were on foot.’

  ‘Do not disappoint me.’

  ‘May God bless this mission.’

  John almost laughed out loud. ‘God has little to do with such work. Get on with it!’

  When the door closed he lay back, contemplating the bed curtains. The kitchen wench was a delicious piece of flesh, but now, should the minstrel be found dead and she hear of it … He would order her death on the morrow. Tempting to send for her and enjoy her once more before his man took her away. Or he had that slow-acting poison … Rising, he knocked on the door, and when his manservant answered he told him to send for the wench. ‘And bring more wine.’ She would find her death in a fine claret. A kindness.

  TWO

  A Fell Night, An Angel’s Voice

  York

  At the dying of the year the minster stonemasons worked a short day, heading for home as clerics gathered in the choir to chant the prayers of nones. As soon as the yard no longer rang with the hammering of chisels on stone and the dust settled, the poor crept out of their makeshift hovels on the north side of the great minster to light their fires against the deepening dark.

  Brother Michaelo stepped out of Archdeacon Jehannes’s house. In honor of the first snow of the season he wore an old cloak over the tattered habit he donned to perform his penitential service, his feet clad in boots rather than his customary sandals. He need not add frostbite to his penance. In one hand he carried a horn lantern, in the other a basket of food for the poor. Already the minster’s immense bulk obliterated any last glimpses of the fading sun, but as Michaelo moved along the great windows the sanctuary lights over the altars in the chapels and in the choir lit his way, those with stained glass casting odd colors on the muddy snow. His exhaled breath swirled round him, a fragile cloud, and by the time he hurried up to the west door he was shivering. He jerked his head in a cursory nod to a man standing without as he swept past him into the relative warmth of the nave. At least here he was not battered by the rising wind. He stood still, closing his eyes, listening to the last notes of the psalms. A momentary silence ensued, then the rustling and shuffling of the men departing through the door of the lady chapel.

  As he turned toward the lady altar, Michaelo noticed two men standing in the south aisle, heads bent close as they talked. One of them struck an arresting figure with flowing white hair and clothes cut with attention to the drape of the fabric in the French fashion. He had graceful hands with long fingers; in one hand he clutched pale leather gloves, lightly resting the other on his companion’s shoulder. The other man was so enveloped in a heavy cloak, with a hat covering his head beneath his hood, that Michaelo did not recognize him until he shook off the hood to scratch his ear. Ronan, who had been Alexander Neville’s vicar. As with a vicar whose canon passed away, he was secure in his position for life, and sought after by clerics from the powerful to the humble desiring his knowledge of their new archbishop. He could afford such a warm cloak, though it was far more modest than his companion’s.

  No doubt they were discussing preparations for the enthronement. All the minster close was obsessed with plans for the event. The elegant one seemed to be reassuring Ronan, now and then looking round, as if expecting someone. Or did he not wish to be overheard? He need not worry. Michaelo saw no one about at the moment, too far from the crowd in the transept and the clerics in the choir, and he himself could hear nothing. Ronan’s companion was not familiar – Michaelo would not forget such a man, and yet whenever he turned a certain way a memory stirred. Long ago. Perhaps … Michaelo closed his eyes, attempting to catch the memory, but already it was gone, and the elegant one was rising with a grace that bespoke a much younger man. It was then that the two men did something most peculiar. Each removed his cloak and held it out to the other, their expressions solemn, though it seemed Ronan’s mouth turned up a little as he handled the costly cloak. He certainly had the better part of the exchange. Now the elegant one bowed and strode away, Ronan’s dark sheepskin-lined cloak billowing round him as if he might take flight.

  The vicar fussed with his acquisition, burying his face in the fur, then looking up with such pleasure Michaelo guessed it was perfumed. As he moved to leave, the vicar glanced down at the floor, bent to pick something up, and turned as if to call to his companion. But the stranger was gone. With a shrug, the vicar turned the object round in his hands – soft, yielding, a scarf or a hat, then shrugged and removed his plain felt hat and replaced it with what he’d rescued from the floor. He took care with the placement of the dark velvet hat, winding its trailing piece of velvet round to secure it in place. Smiling to himself, the clerk tucked his discarded hat under his arm and shuffled away. Was there a flicker of movement toward the transept? No, Michaelo must have been mistaken. The clerks and others who worked in the north transept were gone for the day.

  Shrugging at the odd encounter, Brother Michaelo continued to the lady altar, where he knelt with a sigh of contentment, bowing to his devotions.

  Michaelo sat with the dying Mary Garrett through the night until a lad returned with the healer Magda Digby. A light shone in Mary’s eyes at the sight of Dame Magda, and she cried out her relief, humbling Michaelo. For all his prayers, he had not the gift to comfort the dying. As he stepped out into the snowy yard he heard shouts off to his right, toward the chapter house. Pulling up his hood, he turned away from the sound, bowing his head to the blowing snow as he hastened round the west front of the minster. The wind reached icy fingers into his hood, stinging his ears and freezing the lashes over his watering eyes. He tried to warm himself by imagining how he would soon sit before the fire – Anna the cook would already be up – with a cup of hot spiced wine, perhaps some fresh bread and c
heese. He should fast and take communion, but as he had not slept he would compensate with a brief prayer in the minster on his way. As he changed direction he stumbled into a drift of snow beneath which something hard bruised his shins. Muttering a curse he brushed the snow away from a long wooden sledge. Left by the stonemasons, he guessed, in their haste to find shelter and warmth. Who could blame them?

  Stepping through the flimsy door over the entrance to the unfinished lady chapel he faltered, caught by an unexpected sound curling within the howling wind. A voice. An angelic voice singing Missus est Angelus Gabriel a Deo in civitatem Galilææ, cui nomen Nazareth. An Advent hymn – appropriate, but at such an hour, and alone? He thrust back his hood so that he might gauge whence came the sound. The transept? No, that would echo and cut the immense silence of the overarching stones. This came from behind a door. The chapter house? He was hurrying in that direction when something did cut the silence – the jangle of keys on a ring approaching from the south transept. Shining his lantern to his left, he saw Theo, the precentor’s man, lit by his own lantern as he hurried across toward the chapter house.

  ‘God in heaven, what madness has descended upon us this night, a man fallen, someone singing in the chapter house. What? Who dares intrude—’ Theo halted, peering at Michaelo. ‘Out of my way, brother,’ he called, hurrying on, the keys and the rude command sacrileges in this holy place.

  Michaelo followed on his heels. Reaching the door of the chapter house Theo paused, breathing heavily while he bent his head to fumble with the keys.

  … de domo David, et nomen Virginis Maria …

  ‘You said a man had fallen,’ said Michaelo. ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘From the chapter house roof. Or so it would seem. The snow did nothing to cushion his fall. Now hush. Between that bleating and your questions I cannot think.’

  It seemed to Michaelo that unlocking a door that Theo locked and unlocked daily should require little thought.