Sumerford's Autumn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  When whispers formed in the mist, he knew at once what they meant. He had heard them before. He sighed, tightening his clasp on the reins.

  “Will you find me?” whispered the wind, soft murmurs and insubstantial suggestion. Ludovic turned, staring across the Thames into nothingness. He turned again. The land loomed in blurred shadows like the scattering of ashes after the fire is out. The river was lost in thick fog. Ludovic shook his head, cleared nothing, and rode on. The whispering wove like threads through the haze. “Why?” it breathed. “I am so alone. Will you find me?”

  Ludovic stopped. He could see little in front of him now, only his mount’s ears pricked forwards, alert and nervous. The cold had intensified. Then the horse’s ears snapped back, lying flat against its head in terror. It stood still, shivering, and would not move. Ludovic turned up the fur trimming of his coat and peered ahead. He had heard of men drowned when London’s river surged in flood, the mist disguising the danger. But the Thames had been at low tide and even the heavier rain had not threatened it slipping its banks. Ludovic listened for the insidious slurp of water but heard only whispers.

  “They have all left me,” moaned the breeze. “Everyone I love has forgotten me. Why won’t they come?” Ludovic calmed his horse, bending low over its neck and speaking softly. The horse rolled its eyes and shuddered. From the outer corner of his eye, Ludovic watched the light swoop towards him, growing as it closed. It came, a small blue flame tinier than a candle, and hovered before his face. “Why?” it pleaded. “I have done nothing wrong. Why won’t they come?” Ludovic held his breath as the light moved, fluttering like a heartbeat. It encircled his face, searching for recognition, blinking out and then reappearing, perplexed.

  The light suddenly elongated like a candle flame almost extinguished by the wind. Again it came close. “I will be good,” it promised. “I swear to be good. Why does no one come for me?”

  Ludovic spoke, not caring if someone beyond the mist heard. He spoke to the star and its small, lonely voice. “Who are you?” he asked softly. “What is your name?”

  The silence lengthened. Then the whisper replied. “I do not know. I have no name. I am no one. I am lost and do not know myself. Will you tell me who I am?”

  Ludovic shook his head. “Are the dead always so alone?”

  “I wasn’t – before,” the voice was slow, as if the wandering consciousness was capable of memory. “I was loved once. But now I am not loved anymore.”

  “You are not of my world,” Ludovic answered gently, his own whisper as soft as the shadows. “I cannot welcome ghosts or phantoms into my life. Have you no place to go, no path to follow? Why do you come to me?”

  There was no reply but a gentle sobbing, a bleak misery in the mist. The light blanked out. Ludovic sat very still and stared, but nothing returned, no candle, no star and no breeze, only weeping in the dark. Ludovic sat there for a very long time. Eventually there was silence. The fog did not lift, but Ludovic rode on. “I think,” he said to his horse, “I am going mad.”

  It was past dinner when he arrived back at court.

  On Christmas Eve, the Lady Jennine sent her personal maid home. “Pin up my hair first dear, in curls as I showed you,” she said. “Then go down to the kitchens, tell them I sent you and ask for all the cold venison left over from supper to be parcelled up for you. Then go on off to your nurses for your own celebrations. You needn’t come back until St. Stephens. I shall save you some roast boar and some quince pastries from Christmas dinner, and you shall have those for your St. Stephen’s supper in my chamber.”

  Alysson curtsied. “You’re – very kind, my lady.”

  “Oh, pooh,” said her ladyship. “You know, when my good brother asked me to hire you, I was not entirely pleased. Ludovic’s a very good looking young man, and I – well, I had no idea who you were and why he so specifically wanted you to work here. He warned me you weren’t even experienced. It seemed rather unusual. Perhaps – you understand of course – I tend to think the worst in such situations. I have my – reasons, as you know. But now I’m delighted I agreed to take you on. You’re quite the favourite lady’s maid I’ve ever had.”

  Alysson grinned. “Since I’m the first and only.”

  The Lady Jennine winked. “Now, you won’t be telling that to anyone else, I hope. And especially your young man when he comes back.”

  “Ludovic – his lordship – is not my young man,” said Alysson with a quick scowl. “I’m – well, I’m just nobody. But he’s a lord and very arrogant so he’d hate you saying that. Besides, I don’t even like him.”

  “Well, I do,” said the lady. “But we won’t discuss that yet. Now – take two days off and I order you to enjoy your celebrations. I shall certainly enjoy mine.”

  Alysson dropped the combs and hair pins in less than perfect order and began to untie her apron strings. “Then I’ll go now, my lady or I’ll arrive too late to enjoy anything but bed. It’s already dark.”

  “I always liked walking at night, but that’s another story,” smiled the lady. “I suppose the dark bothers some. Or are you still frightened of my husband creeping up on you, silly girl? I shall keep him far too busy for that, I assure you.”

  First through the principal bailey and long courtyards, the heady smells of the smithy furnace and the stables with their scents of soft dry hay and fresh manure, on past the high Keep and the lounging guards, Alysson hurried, keeping her cape over her head and her nose down. Over the drawbridge and the spit, spit, spit of rain pattering onto the moat below. She skirted the outlying farms, the pastures lying fallow and the huge barns, winter snug with the cattle snorting in the straw. No cows to milk these days, and no dairy master threatening to beat her. Alysson hoisted up her parcel of food and began to run. She did not pass through the snuggled village with its watching windows and the church steeple pointing hopefully to its God. The unpaved pathways wound to the market square and an unnecessary deviation. So she kept to the empty lanes, hidden between hedges.

  The light rain dulled the stars but the clouds were parted by the sharp night breezes and a sickle moon peeped cold between the trees. Finally she came to the edges of the forest. With still an hour to walk to Dulce’s house if she cut through the thickly wooded paths, or two hours if she took the wide road around the forest outskirts, Alysson again chose the quicker way, pulled her shawl tighter, blessed Ludovic for her little warm boots, and ducked her head below the willow boughs. The branches were bare, leafless and stark. Silhouetted against the thin paring of moon, they were blacker than the night. Something rustled, small animals active while the world slept, and an owl hooted soft, searching for the life in the undergrowth.

  Alysson slipped deeper into the forest. The moonglow hovered low in the breeze. The cold became ice.

  At Sheen Palace the yuletide feast was extravagant. The high table, raised on its royal dais and sheltered by a huge heraldic awning, was crowded not with people but with food. His majesty sat central, a little hunched in his carved chair, regarding his court spread at their separate tables below, watching intently but eating little. His diet was strict for his health had worsened, and for the entire year he had pleaded exemption from the rigors enforced by Lent, Easter Friday and all religious abstinence. To his left sat his queen, a rare appearance. She smiled to those who bowed to her, but did not seem inclined to speak. To the king’s right sat his mother, severe in her dark robes. The Lady Margaret had been born an heiress with some claim to eminence but no title of her own, though within the royal family she appeared to outrank everyone else, bar her son. And sometimes, in private, even him. Her husband Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, quite ignored, sat beside the queen and attended to his stomach. He had never been known as a quiet man, but after his brother’s recent execution over the damnable Warbeck affair, he had become morose. Beyond the Lady Margaret, Prince Arthur sat, glorious in purple. Now back from Ludlow and affianced to the Spanish princess, he was considered of an appropriate maturity to share his f
ather’s table, but he looked to his grandmother with studious care and was not talkative. Although now eleven years of age and conscious of his status and his pride, the Tudor heir to the throne was perfectly aware that his grandmother must, in all things, be regarded as paramount. At least he was content that his little brother Harry had been confined to the nursery and did not sit amongst the adults. Christmas, for whatever rank, came only once a year, and it mattered most of all for proving precedence.

  The great roast boar, glazed in mustard and its tusks shaved to points, was borne in by six men including the chief cook, who beamed at the applause and stayed to carve. The other tables welcomed their smaller platters, forty roast goose stuffed with forcemeat, and eight dozen partridge all carried in rows upon their roasting irons. There was venison on beds of flaming Seville oranges, heavily spiced sheep’s testicles, tripe stuffed with boiled onions and saffron, jellies drizzled with syrup, and huge subtleties shaped as the manger, each complete with a haloed infant. Plum porridge, Christmas pie and a variety of custards completed the first course. The trumpet calls faded and the minstrels began to play.

  The lowly and insignificant servant addressed as Peter Warbeck, or, when wishing in particular to insult, the diminutive form Perkin, did not wait on his sovereign at table this day, nor partake of the feast in any manner. But his wife, without doubt the most beautiful at the higher ladies’ table, was present throughout. She answered now to her maiden name of Lady Katherine Gordon, but had, to his majesty’s surprise and irritation, refused to accept an annulment of her marriage on the grounds of her husband’s false pretences and fraudulent identity. She was not permitted to sleep with the man she loved, but she remained adamantly married to him.

  Ludovic, youngest son to a countrified earl out of favour since Bosworth, sat at a different table to either his father or William of Berkhamstead, and at a considerable distance from the royal dais. This pleased him. It was the only thing which did, though the food was excellent and the wine plentiful. He was thinking of other things altogether. He wondered what was happening at home, what his three brothers were up to in their varied and troublesome ways, and whether he believed in phantasms, spirits, and visitations of the dead. Most of all he wondered about the green eyed girl who walked so softly through his dreams, perpetually present even while he considered it unlikely he would ever see her again.

  Three days later on the anniversary of the Holy Innocents, he was still suffering from mild indigestion. The headache had passed, but whether it had been caused by too much wine, too much food, or too much thought, Ludovic had no intention of repeating the experience. He welcomed the holy day’s enforced abstinence and avoided both food and wine. He also avoided Lord William of Berkhamstead and even kept his mother company at cards.

  It was snowing on the fourth day when he set out alone for Ludgate and the city. He retrieved his sword from the gatekeeper and fastened his baldric beneath his coat. His horse, well rested, was avid for exercise and they made good speed along the river side as far as the Strand.

  Most of the grand houses’ occupants were away attending court, and a gloomy silence hung beneath the gentle hush of snowflakes. It was busy at the Ludgate however, with queues in both directions. Ludovic, impatient, pushed through; his clothes, his manner and his horse finding a path. Then he was in London, the iniquitous heart of every countrified gentleman’s antipathy. In fact Ludovic enjoyed the Capital although he was not well acquainted with it.

  But he knew his way to the docks. He rode the breadth of the city through the paved and unpaved streets where the captured Duke of York had been paraded day after day before Christmas. As a cheat or forger is put in the stocks to humble and expose his fraud to the public, so the son of Edward IV was humiliated and forced to act the groom, though chin held high and eyes straight ahead as the crowds jeered. Treated as the peasant the king claimed him to be, the young man then led his own friends to their death and disgrace in the Tower. He would not be well liked in the city, especially around the docks, for this so called pretender was the cause of a great embargo on trade which had meant the looming ruin of many English merchants. Burgundy’s unfailing support and refusal to abandon the boy or admit his imposture, had led to Tudor’s eventual sanctions on all things pertaining to Flanders and Burgundy and the Holy Roman Emperor. Antwerp no longer enjoyed uninterrupted commerce. Their ships were refused permission to sail into English ports, their exports were forbidden to land on English soil, and their citizens of all ranks were promptly sent back home. Even the Hanseatic League was denied their usual business. Within England, all matters Burgundian ceased. Maximillian had quickly responded in kind. He banned all English trade. Fortunes were lost.

  Cutting away from the river and shadowed by Baynard’s Castle and then the mighty warehouses, Ludovic eventually skirted the Tower, frosted in white like the Christmas subtleties. He felt well rimed himself, his coat wet and its fur trimmings ice studded, his hat drooping and snowflakes collecting on his shoulders, knees and boots. He plodded slow now, though his horse snorted and shook its mane, jingling its harness, eager to quicken its pace. But wet cobbles were treacherous and the Tower threatened all travellers passing its looming stone.

  Beyond the Tower, St. Katherine’s dockyard swelled with noise. The great wooden cranes swung and clanked, the customs men were yelling across the forests of masts and a jam of barges raced off to help unload. There was a tumult of business surrounding all those fine carracks too tall to sail past the Bridge to the smaller wharves within city limits. Lying mid river, recently arrived, double banked and waiting for its place at the quay, was a tall masted carvel, streaming salt water from flush planks and the crusts of old barnacles. The decks were busy, the crew hauling down the last sail and straining on the ropes.

  Ludovic stopped beside the water’s edge, away from the cranes and the main bustle, and peered through the drifting snow. He brushed off his hat, clamped it back on his head, and cursing quietly at the freezing conditions, waited. It was the hectic activity on the carvel’s decks that Ludovic watched; the ship’s master bribing the custom’s officers, a quick search, the papers signed, and then the slow tug towards land with the masts creaking and the boards groaning. Finally the ship docked with a thud as ropes were thrown and fastened. At last, amongst the scurry of the crew pushing ashore, Ludovic stepped on board.

  The decks rocked gently, sluicing the slime of the German Ocean from their planks. Ludovic balanced, adjusting his stance. The master shouted his last order and strolled over. “My lord.”

  “Done?”

  “The regular cargo will go ashore when the first crane comes ready, my lord. Then we’ll offload your special shipment after dark. ‘Tis done, and exactly as we like it. Ship shape, you might say, and mighty profitable too, my lord.”

  “Both that end – and this?”

  “That end most of all, my lord. I’ve the coded papers in my cabin. But this end will do us fine too, I reckon, once transactions are complete. You’ll have no complaints, my lord, I promise. And might I ask, my lord, about our other – concern? The Fair Rouncie, and the good Captain Kenelm?”

  Ludovic nodded. “She’s still in transit, Hussey. There was an unaccountable delay to her setting off. But she sailed over a month back and I expect to hear some time soon. She’ll not return to London of course. Kenelm will put in somewhere on the Southwest coast early next year.”

  The stout captain nodded. “Indeed. The Rouncie carries a greater danger than we do, and could hardly risk the London customs. But we take a risk ourselves, my lord, and I reckon it’s a touch too public for payment just yet if you don’t mind.”

  Ludovic shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, I’m hardly likely to demand ready coin in full daylight with the customs men at less than spitting distance, and all the world looking on. On the contrary. I’ve come to arrange payment, but not here. I want the full amount taken to a hostelry by the river near Sheen, name of The Swan and Cygnet. Ask for Sir Gerald Sumerford. G
ive the money directly to him, and no one else.”

  “A relative of yours, my lord?”

  “Of a sort. But I don’t want him informed that the coin comes from me. It must be handed over as a donation – for the matter in hand.” Ludovic smiled. “Do you understand?”

  The ship’s master tapped his nose with a conspiratorial wink. The snowflakes already attached to his short beard flew free and fluttered into the river’s breeze. “Certainly, my lord. I’ll send Isak and two of the best and biggest from the crew. It’ll be a large sum, so will need guarding.”

  “Oh, and Hussey, no mistakes. I shall know if anything goes missing.”

  “There’ll be no mistakes, my lord, I swear. It’s hardly worth my living to defraud you, which you must know sir, since I owe that very living to you. It shall be attended to exactly as you say sir, tomorrow after dark. The full sum shall be deposited, but quiet like, and only to the person of Sir Gerald.”

  “And remember the message,” Ludovic added.

  “I will sir,” said the captain with a small bow. “The name of the donor is to be kept secret, but the full moneys passed over as a donation for the matter in hand.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I am honoured, Ludovic,” said his father. “It is rare these days that you even acknowledge my presence. I must thank you for deigning to notice me at all.”

  “Since you sent for me, sir.”

  “Did I? Perhaps I did. I wonder why.” It had continued snowing and from the earl’s small chamber window, the palace gardens appeared spread in a silent wonderland. A robin was singing from the branch of a holly bush, but the Earl of Sumerford was not attending to matters beyond the window. “No doubt I had a reason,” he murmured. “You are aware, I imagine, this being the day marked as Epiphany, we leave court early tomorrow?”