Sumerford's Autumn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “What remarkably unsavoury friends it seems you have, Naseby,” Ludovic said, smiling at the taller man. “But you have interrupted my rest.” He sat up a little, turning his attention to the other man. “I admit some element of surprise, big brother. I suspected you of many things. But never, I must confess, of this.”

  It was a moment before Brice Sumerford found words. He stared down at his two younger brothers. Naseby remained speechless. Gerald scrambled to his feet, then, still part hogtied, tumbled back to the ground.

  Brice turned to Naseby. “Untie them at once,” he said quietly. “They will probably attempt to kill you. Assuming they don’t succeed, bring them both up to the house. If they manage to kill you indeed, I wish them good cheer of it.” He turned abruptly and disappeared again into the darkness outside.

  Naseby glared at his two prisoners. Gerald spat. “You work for him?”

  Naseby shook his head in confusion. “Not as such. Partners we is. You know him then?”

  “Let me introduce myself for the third time,” smiled Ludovic, “and on this occasion I shall relent and speak the truth. I am Ludovic Sumerford, and this is Gerald Sumerford. We are brothers to your enterprising partner.” Ludovic was finally, though faintly, enjoying himself.

  Rubbing their wrists, they followed Naseby through the stubbled grass and shadows to the great house. Its doors stood wide, lamplight in a vivid arc illuminating beyond the steps and the approaching path. Ludovic and Gerald entered ahead, Naseby at a discreet distance behind, and marched into the main hall. The boards gleamed, the copper was polished, the mantel dusted, but the furniture was sparse and the atmosphere whispered of abandon. A fire raged huge across the stone hearth however, the chandelier had been lit, other candles flickered from their sconces and Brice sprawled at the great table, cup in hand. He watched his brothers enter.

  “It is,” he said softly, “an unfortunate mistake for all of us. Why you must stumble into my business in this manner, I cannot tell. But it seems we must exchange excuses.”

  Ludovic raised an eyebrow. He pulled two pewter cups from their shadowed row centre of the table and filled both from the wine jug. He passed one to Gerald and drained the other, then refilled it. He ignored Naseby, who helped himself. “Is that a form of apology?” Ludovic said, draining the second cup. “I don’t offer excuses to pirates and murderers, but I am waiting for yours.” He sat facing Brice, and Gerald sat beside him.

  Brice nodded. He held a full cup but was not drinking. “Our ancestors were pirates,” he said. “The profits are large. The risks are high. I enjoy both.”

  “As boys we were taught to kill,” Gerald glared. “But we were taught chivalry as well, the moral code of decency, ethics and manners, to kill in God’s name or in defence of the realm, not for ourselves or for greed. What you do is vile.”

  Brice smiled. “Hypocritical as always, Gerald my dearest.” He leaned back, the vibrancy of his hair flaming in the candle light directly above. “We have an anointed monarch, England’s king crowned in God’s holy name at His holy altar. But you don’t kill in our blessed king’s defence. You’re a traitor to chivalry. Don’t think to judge me, my beloved.”

  Ludovic drained a third cup of wine. It was an excellent Burgundy and he thought it likely to be a barrel he had once smuggled into England himself. “How long?” he demanded.

  Brice shrugged. He wore his usual finery, gleaming in damasks, velvets and furs. His rings reflected the firelight, shrinking the fragility of his small palmed hands and narrow fingers. The luxury of his appearance contrasted with Naseby’s slovenly eccentricity, Gerald’s coarse broadcloth, and the torn and damaged doublet Ludovic wore, now coatless and cold.

  Ludovic smiled. “And are there other skills you practise, my dear? Other forms of subterfuge perhaps? Spying maybe?”

  “I distain kings,” Brice said, “and work neither for nor against them.”

  “Merely,” Ludovic continued, “that we have recently been informed against, and a warrant is now signed not only for Gerald’s arrest, but also for my own. Someone knowing our habits and specific address gave intelligence against us. This was a traitor indeed, without scruples or moral decency. Naturally, my dear, I thought of you.”

  Brice narrowed his eyes. “Thank you little brother. And you were escaping then, fleeing abroad when my friend Naseby here overtook you?”

  “Prudence, not escape,” Gerald interrupted. “We left for Flanders. A storm blew us back to the coast. Your foul friend behaved with all the monstrous bestiality and disgusting deviance I’d expect of any pirate. But not of you. Good God, Brice – how could you? How do you?”

  “Not having been aboard at the time,” Brice pointed out, “I performed no act of deviant monstrosity, my dear. Naseby is his own master. I do not control or command him, except in the taking of prisoners for ransom and the use of my home. I write his ransom demands, since he cannot scribe. He sails my ship. I take his profits.”

  “You’re gone too long from home, my dear, to claim only a passing influence on the business,” added Ludovic. “A few times you’ve come back wounded, so you sail and plunder too. What’s more, I’ve seen you at court recently, so you were there for business, whether it be spying, collecting ransoms perhaps, or selling stolen goods to the highest bidder. So you are amongst the filth of the sea, the dross and shit which slime the waters. Do you know this? Or do you blind yourself with stories of adventure?”

  Brice blinked as though stung. “Adventure? I’ve seen plenty of that, dearest brother, more than any of you with your dullard lives. And I live my life as I wish as do all the Sumerfords. One traitor to the crown running for his life, one smuggler caught up in treason, oh yes, long ago I guessed your game my dear, one simpleton lunatic with a whore for a wife, and both parents as seamed in vitriolic hypocrisy as any of us. What should I learn at the bosom of such a family? What else should I do? Take me to a monastery? But the church is just as seeped in greed and crime, and our most Holy Father in Rome the worst.”

  Ludovic stood, carried his stool to the great flaming fire and sat, his back to his brothers. He stretched his legs to the blaze and spoke softly to the flames and their dancing shadows. “Simple crime does not disgust me. Cruelty and brutality do,” he said. “You will order your men to release the boy who was taken from my ship. He will be brought here to me this night. I leave in the morning.”

  Brice also stood, scraping back his stool and flinging down his cup. He nodded to Naseby, verifying Ludovic’s order. “There are bedchambers above,” he said, curt. “I shall not see you again before you leave. You’ll carry no tales to father concerning me, and I’ll tell him nothing of you, though no doubt the royal guards may already be searching for you at Sumerford. Goodbye little brothers. If we never meet again, I doubt any of us will weep over it.”

  “For tomorrow we need horses,” Ludovic said, not looking up. “And the return of my sword and my purse, coin intact.”

  Brice did not answer, striding quickly from the hall. Naseby muttered, “I’ll arrange that.” He left hurriedly, following in Brice’s shadow.

  Gerald brought his stool and sat beside Ludovic facing the fire’s heat. Neither spoke to the other, but watched the flames crackle and leap. It was after the boy from The Fair Rouncie was brought to them, wrapped in a kersey cape, shivering and pale, that they collected candles, climbed the staircase and searched out a bedchamber. Although long closed up, shutters dust ridden and rat droppings scattered deep in the corners, its bed was well clothed in old linen and damp blankets. Gerald broke an old stool leg across his knee and lit the splintered pieces with the candle flame, tossing the burning fragments to the hearth. The room slowly warmed. Ludovic and the boy took to the bed and slept. Gerald sat for long hours beside the little fire, hugging his knees and thinking, allowing the night’s depression to wrap him as thick as any quilt.

  It was raining in the morning. The dawn misted in a rose and lilac haze through the heavy grey sleet. Two horses from B
rice’s stables were already saddled and waiting outside the doors, heads hanging, manes and tails dripping. The lord of the house was not present. There seemed to be no staff, but some of Naseby’s men, sullen and morose, wandered the corridors, obeying orders. Naseby waited at the doorway.

  “Ain’t no food for no breakfast, but there’s ale,” he said. “Have put a flask in the saddle bag, your purse too, intact with naught taken. Both your metal’s sheathed ready in the saddle scabbards. You want the skinny lad, then take him up behind. His lordship said just two horses, and there’s no more spare.”

  “I’ll take the child up before me,” Gerald said, hoisting the boy up into the saddle and quickly mounting himself. The horse stood motionless, dejected by duty to strangers.

  Ludovic was frozen, the sleet quickly soaking his shoulders. He stood looking at Naseby, allowing the rain to seep through his torn doublet to his shirt and to his skin. “You still have my coat,” he said quietly. “But I will no longer wear something you have defiled. One day I will find you again. Remember me. I want you to know who it is that slits your throat.”

  Naseby sniffed, returning to swagger. “And fine words from a man wanted by the law hisself,” he hissed. “I treated you fair. If you’d not lied about your name, my friend, I’d have known right well who you are, and never taken you on. You and yours would have gone free from the first.”

  Ludovic shook his head, sending rain drops into small glittering circles. “I won’t argue rights and standards with a pirate. You would never understand any explanation of true honesty. One day I’ll make my argument with my sword.”

  “I makes my living by my steel,” Naseby glowered. “No man’ll take me easy, let alone some pin pricked fart of a lord. I’ll have your guts steaming across my deck long afore your blade touches my neck, my fine friend. So remember that, when you comes alooking for Black Baldwin. Brother of his lordship or no, I’ll be waiting.”

  Ludovic, ignoring him, turned on his heel and swung his leg up into the stirrups. Gerald led out of the courtyard, Ludovic to his side. They left the estate, its grand house disappearing quickly into the low clouds behind. The countryside ahead was barely lit by the dawn and the cold shrouded them in the sound of the sleet, diminishing all else.

  They rode in a sodden silence. The horses’ footsteps squelched, their breathing muffled. The rescued child clung to the front of the saddle. He was barefoot and barely clothed though the thin woollen cape swaddled him. Gerald sat behind, his arms surrounding the boy in warmth, each body protecting the other from wind and cold. Ludovic slumped, letting the horse decide the speed. The sharp slant of the east wind froze the rain on his face turning his expression to ice.

  They rode into the hamlet of Ashford as the rain eased. The first building as the narrow unmade road dipped towards the ford across the Stour, was the Carrier’s Inn, and brightly welcoming. It was not yet dinner time, but in silent agreement they stopped, called the ostler to stable the horses, and strode immediately into the well-lit tap room. Some hours later they retired to the upper chamber they had paid for, and began to make plans. Gerald regarded the urchin now holding his hands to the brazier. “What the damnation is your name anyway?” Gerald demanded.

  “M’lor. ‘Tis Ellis, m’lor.”

  “Then Ellis,” said Gerald, refilling three ale cups from the earthenware jug, “we’ll first acquire you some warmer clothes, though they’ll have to be ready used since there’s no time to have anything properly made.”

  Ellis nodded happily. The pallid misery of his sunken cheeks had now puffed pink with three hours of ale and warmth. “Ain’t never had nuffin just once-used afore, m’lor,” he said. “’Twill be an honour.”

  “And shoes too of course,” continued Gerald. “We will then attempt to discover a carrier heading for London.”

  “Will all be headin’ for Lonnon from ‘ere, m’lor,” Ellis pointed out.

  “Very well,” Gerald said. “We will buy you a place in a cart and send you off to find Captain Kenelm. I hope he’ll be waiting at London docks to hear from us.”

  “He will be,” Ludovic interjected from the shadows. “He had better be.”

  Gerald turned from the boy to Ludovic. “So what should we arrange, Lu? To follow on to the docks once we hear the ship’s truly waiting? Or for them to meet us off the coast here somewhere?”

  “Unappetising as is the thought of once again going to sea,” Ludovic said, “we must. Therefore meeting on the coast will be safer than entering London again. Somewhere at a distance from our dear brother’s estate, I think.”

  Gerald nodded. “Well, that’s a subject we’ve been avoiding, but clearly we have to talk about it one day. A wretched use made of those estates, so proudly bestowed on the family by King Edward after Towton. Now used as a pirate’s lair.”

  “For the moment,” said Ludovic, “we need to concentrate on getting safely out of the country. I suggest we follow the Stour up to Margate, and Kenelm can meet us there.”

  “Good.” Gerald smiled at the boy. “Tell your captain we’ll be at some hostelry or other in Margate, and to find us as soon as he arrives. You had better sail with him, and pray not to meet any more storms or pirates.”

  They slept warm that night and the following morning Ellis, dressed in fresh wool, broadcloth, knitted hose, felt hat and thick leather boots, was fed a hot meal and bundled into the back of a carrier’s cart, three coins pressed into his excited fist, and ordered not to forget his instructions on pain of being returned to Naseby. Ludovic and Gerald then wandered back into the inn and frowned at each other. There was a considerable amount to discuss.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Six days later Ellis’s tousled tow head once again peeped around their chamber door. It was a different chamber. The Purple Popinjay was a far larger hostelry in the centre of Margate on the north of the village square, and its colourful sign swung in the wind with a squeak as loud as the popinjay it represented. Ludovic and Gerald had taken the best front chamber, sharing a bed wide enough for six, facing a large hearth already blazing with fire, and drinking a superior cabernet. However, although the comfort was considerable, both men were restless and neither appeared content.

  Now clothed in practicality, the two younger Sumerford sons had bought the dress of respectable country merchants, good linen, blod and padded Lindsay wool, which they would never have previously worn. Ludovic, stern in dark brunette trimmed in badger and a coat lined in sheepskin, was unrecognisable except for his golden hair. Gerald, his red hair newly cut, now took his blod cape over his arm and stood quickly, head to knee in russet.

  “’E’s ‘ere, m’lors,” announced Ellis.

  Ludovic and Gerald smiled expansively at the boy. “Thank the good Lord,” said Gerald. “The waiting has driven me witless. I am dull as the Exe in flood, and as stiff as an oak in autumn. Let’s get moving.”

  Ludovic paid their bill and they strode out into scattered drizzle. A light wind pulsed in from the sea, the rain no more than a briny mist. A pale sunshine seeped through the cloud and, now just five days before Christmas, the weather seemed mild.

  Ludovic sighed as they tramped down to the coast. “A fine sailing day,” he said, “no storms in sight, and so it has all been quicker and easier than I’d feared.”

  Ellis scampered ahead. “Capin’s mighty pleased. Fort we was all done for. Proper ‘cited when I turns up and gives the news.”

  “I imagine so,” said Ludovic. “I represent his future. At this precise moment however, he represents mine. I am, although too morose to show it, equally ‘cited.”

  “An’ ‘e’s still got all the coin them pirates was too stoopid to find,” Ellis continued. “Capin’ says I’ve to tell you that, m’lor. All safe and awaitin’.”

  “Which also most decidedly represents our future,” Ludovic nodded, “since we must now make a new life in Flanders.”

  Gerald laughed. “I’ve never felt so wealthy. In fact, after selling your fancy doublet
and Brice’s horses, I feel I can even face storms.”

  “Yes, considering I paid for all the new clothes and the charges at the inn,” said Ludovic. “And you seem remarkably cheerful, Gerry. I do believe you’re eager to leave our balmy shores. No regrets at all this time? Abandoning your prince locked up in the Tower for instance, and your Tudor villain still on England’s throne?”

  Gerald shook his head. “As soon as I put foot to dry land, I’m off to the court at Malines to drum up support for Prince Richard, and see if I can rouse enough interest for an invasion.”

  “Another war to further subjugate our wretched countrymen.”

  “Well, they should have had more sense than support Tudor,” Gerald objected. “And they won’t support the bastard anyway, once there’s a suitable alternative and it’s explained exactly who Prince Richard really is. Oh, Lu, it’ll be a glorious new world.”

  “It’ll be bloodshed and suffering as usual, my dear, and taxing us dry to pay for our own misery,” said Ludovic quietly. “At least I shall not be here to see it. But those I love and leave behind will do so.”

  “We’ll come back with the army,” Gerald said at once. “Oh, I accept it may take a year or two before I can travel around and rally enough support, but I believe Maximilion will promise Burgundy’s and Hapsburg backing, and there’s money enough throughout the Holy Roman Empire to fund a dozen wars. Flanders will come to the table of course, and parts of Italy too, though Spain will back Tudor once she’s married her princess to Tudor’s son. France, naturally, will try and make trouble for everyone, pledge support to both sides, cry off at the last moment, and intercept shipping from every quarter. In any case, don’t go thinking we’re lost to England for evermore, Lu. Two years at the most, and we’ll be back.”