Following quickly from Margate back to London, Kenelm had finally been permitted a brief visit with his partner, and immediately handed over the large sum of money which was Ludovic’s. Indeed, Kenelm had also parted with his own share of the previous trip’s profits; his friend’s need being far greater than his own.
“Get to Sumerford as soon as you can,” Ludovic asked, “and inform the earl.”
It was several months before he knew that Kenelm had also been arrested. While leaving the precincts of the Tower, Kenelm, accompanied by Ellis scurrying in tow, was quickly apprehended and taken to the Marshalsea. They were both accused of aiding and abetting known traitors to the realm, and thrown without questioning into the communal cells. The Fair Rouncie was briefly impounded and they were held for two months before perfunctory pardon without trial. In March the captain paid for his ship’s release and the vessel was returned to him, stripped of goods. Kenelm was able to arrange for recaulking and careening at last, but he did not reach Somerset until early in April, nor was able to pre-empt the crown messenger’s information regarding the Sumerford sons’ incarceration.
It snowed heavily during February and the Thames was under ice above the tidal reaches, but Ludovic saw neither rain nor snow. He did not see the river either in flood or in ebb and forgot the smile of sunshine. Three times he was permitted to remember the colour of the sky and the feel of the wind on his back when he was taken, shackled and stumbling to the whitewashed Keep. There his questioning took place. Sometimes from within his cell, he heard the wail of the gulls through the stone, but he saw no bird or other creature. He saw only his guards. Then spring slipped itself through the flurry of gales and the weather improved but within the walls of the Tower no difference was felt. Icy condensation continued to drip down the stone, turning the walls mossy in slimed stripes from ceiling to floor.
Ludovic was once again taken for questioning. “I have lost track of time,” he said.
“Time is not your problem, my lord,” Master Frizzard informed him. “If you confess, it is possible you will be pardoned. You may then make time your concern once again.”
Ludovic sighed. His wounds had healed and he suspected that two months or more must therefore have passed. But without window or light, he could not even count the days. He had done so at first, scratching a mark into the stone beside his bed as each breakfast ale was delivered. But the confusion of isolation had interrupted consecutive scratches and he had lost all desire to know how many days had passed him by.
“I cannot confess to treachery,” Ludovic said. “I’ve done nothing more than I’ve already explained. Naturally I was acquainted with my brother’s squire Roland Fiddington, and out of human decency visited the man, paid for his food in gaol, and attended his execution as he asked me to. When I heard of the warrant for my own arrest, I believed it farcical and disbelieved the rumour. I therefore did nothing either to avoid arrest or to seek it. My trip to Flanders had long been arranged, and was for business. I trade in dyed wool and fabrics. I killed the king’s guard in self-defence, and in the confusion of the moment. I regret my action. I can confess to nothing else.”
“I have recently received authorisation to continue questioning you and your brother under duress,” smiled Master Frizzard. “Our methods are meticulous and can be prolonged. The storage chambers beneath this Keep await you, sir, if you persist with your lies.”
“Torture?” Ludovic said, and nodded. He had expected it for a long time.
“The common word used by the ignorant,” smiled the captain. “I prefer the word persuasion. But it is one and the same thing. You will be brought to me again tomorrow. Then you will confess, and put your signature to the document already prepared. Or you will be taken below for – persuasion. The decision is yours, my lord.”
“Tell me, sir,” Ludovic said softly, “what would you do, should you find yourself in my position, remembering indeed that this frequently happens? It is not unknown for the executioner to be executed, and a man long in royal favour may lose that favour at a moment’s notice, and even with no fault of his own. So what would you do, sir, in your innocence? Accused of crimes you have not committed but when threatened with torture, would you confess? Even though you have no knowledge of what you are accused of and could not fully understand your own confession?”
Martin Frizzard leaned forwards, speaking clearly. “I would, sir. I would not willingly commit myself to the methods of persuasion I have at hand, for I know them too well. A confession is simply obedience to the king’s wishes. As an obedient servant of his majesty, I would confess and beg his mercy.”
“I have not heard,” Ludovic said, “that this is a merciful king.”
“And I am not a merciful man, for I am dutiful to the king’s wishes,” said Master Frizzard. “But the rack and the lash await you sir. Think on that as you lie warm in your bed tonight.”
“It is a hundred nights since I lay warm,” said Ludovic softly. “And the rack often enters my thoughts.”
The easy sleep of untroubled youth had deserted Ludovic the first night of his arrest. Instead he watched the faint slime of damp illuminating the darkness within the imagined passing of the hours, eyes open and stinging with dejection and weariness. But he was not always entirely alone.
The voice of his madness accompanied him. The tiny light hovered within the damp chill. “Do you still acknowledge me? Do you come here, because it is where I came long ago?”
“I remember and acknowledge you,” Ludovic whispered into the deep black chill. “But I am here against my will. I do not search for you.”
“You would not find me,” the voice murmured. “I have gone from there. It is a sad place. The echoes remind me of such dismal disillusion. You sleep close to where my hopes died.”
“I do not sleep. Nor do I hope,” said Ludovic to the shadows.
“Then we are both dead,” whispered the voice. “For nor do I sleep and hope is long gone.”
“It is true. I believe I am dead,” Ludovic said. “Though first there will be pain, and degradation, and the dread of anticipation. I expect to welcome death when it comes.” There were long pauses, wandering silences and the unravelling of thought. Ludovic did not know whether both voices were his own, or even if both voices were simply the ghosts of imagination. But if so, the imagination of whom? His own? Or did he exist merely in the thoughts of someone else? He was no longer sure if he was fantasy himself, but he felt the soft damp of his own breath on the air around him and its familiar cloud of faint warmth against his lips. His eyes stung, his limbs ached. Discomfort kept him sane. “If you were once here,” he wondered, “then how, if you are who I thought you, did you leave?”
“By river,” the voice said, after pause. “Bustle by night and a warm wind in the sails. I was glad to leave. I feared death.”
“Then you left here alive?”
“It was arranged for me. I was warned only moments before, and then I breathed brine.” The speaker sighed, conjuring sweet memories. “My servants had told me I would be secretly killed. It was inevitable, they said. They frightened me. Caring, cheerful faces by day. Haunting horrors by night. But they misjudged. I was smuggled out alive, well treated and taken abroad to my aunt.”
“Then you are not the child I searched for,” murmured Ludovic. “You are not Pagan.”
“I am nameless, for they stole my name and my title and my honour.” The voice rustled, as if struggling for a lost identity. “And when I died, it was yet another name they gave me, forcing me to hide beneath secrets. I fought for myself but I was not myself when I was killed. I am no longer myself. I have no grave. I have no monument, no marker, no mourners. But in this place where you have come, I begin to remember myself at last.”
“This place inspires your memory, but in here I am forgetting myself,” Ludovic said. “The cold seeps in where once there was integrity and understanding. I do not know your name after all. Perhaps I do not know my own.”
“
So do our names make us who we are? Are we judged by names alone?”
“Judgement?” Ludovic sighed. “Judgement is for liars.”
“Then we are all lost,” whispered the echoes. “But there is someone else nearby. I know him, though I cannot remember who he is. And he knows me, though he struggles to call me by name. But I talk to him in the night just as I speak now with you. And he replies as you do. He is bitterly alone and sometimes I hear him sobbing in the dark. But once he was close to me, and I feel his love like streamers of light in the darkness.”
Ludovic shook his head. “I never knew you, nor know you now. So why come to me?”
“You called me,” the voice said.
“I was not conscious of it,” Ludovic said. “I do not wish to call on the dead.”
“Your mind wrapped around me,” decided the words. “For a long time, your thoughts surrounded me. Many others have called in the same way. For a long time I knew no peace, being pulled like breezes into other men’s minds. But when I answered their calls they were frightened and I was thrust back. You were never frightened. You answered me and gave me comfort, so I came again. I hoped to find myself.”
Ludovic lay for some time in silence. When he finally spoke again, he already knew himself alone. “The other man who lies nearby,” he whispered, “who sends love and answers when you speak. Is he your brother?”
But there was no movement within. The echoes of his voice fell flat against the wet stone. Ludovic turned, staring out into emptiness. It was a long time before he slept. They came for him in the morning.
Chapter Forty-Two
They had heard nothing further from London for some time but rumour in Sumerford was busy. The castle staff overheard what they could and imagined the rest. They carried back stories to their families in the village. The butcher told the carpenter and carpenter Berris told his mother. Mistress Berris told the thatcher and the thatcher told his daughter who told her husband who told the innkeeper who told his wife.
Some said the lords Ludovic and Gerald had already been executed, others swore they had heard of pardons. The brewster was quite sure it was the king himself who had been killed while others proclaimed this treason and blasphemy. The countess meanwhile kept to her chambers and no letter arrived from the earl.
Alysson sat with the Lady Jennine as the funeral procession tolled across the moat and down the old beaten roadway towards the village church. The drums thrummed loud and exceedingly slow and the coffin was so tiny it cast no shadow on the catafalque. Black horses drew the cart, lifting their front hooves very high, embraced by circlets of feathers, dyed black. Their manes were plaited, their tails long and twined in black ribbons. The pale sun made their coats gleam, double polished.
The family crypt beneath the Sumerford chapel already held the new marble plaque for Edward Sumerford, rising poignant behind a hundred flickering candles.
Alysson had been crying. “Don’t sniff,” snapped Jennine from the window enclosure. “And don’t pretend it’s for my little boy. You’re crying for the lover who’s abandoned you. You dream of his prick hot between your legs.”
Alysson stared back at her. “Don’t be a fool, Jenny. You know I dream of him. But not like that. And you know I cry for Eddie too.”
Jennine looked away. “I hate the way you talk to me. I wish you wouldn’t be so rude. You never used to talk to me that way, Alysson. You make me feel cheap.”
Alysson poured wine for them both. “You are cheap, Jenny. Dismiss me if you want to, but then you’ll be left with no one to talk sense to at all. Remember I know exactly who you are and what you were, and I’m tired of talking to you as if you’re the grand lady and I’m just your maid.”
“You are a maid. And I’m a lady now, grand or not.” Jennine took the wine and emptied the cup immediately. She held it out for more. “You should be grateful to me even if you don’t respect me. I used to think you liked me.”
“I did once.”
“You still do. You just haven’t forgiven me for not seeing little Edward at the end.” Jennine drained her second cup of wine. “Why can’t you simply understand how much I hate sickness and misery and pain? Why should I be reminded of all that if I don’t want to be? There’s too much of it in the world. It’s better to ignore it and then it doesn’t hurt. And the child never missed me anyway. You know that too.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alysson. “I’ll be honest with you, Jenny. I’m leaving anyway before the end of next month if Ludovic doesn’t come back. My nurses have been saving the money Ludovic and I gave them. They’ve enough to help me travel to London.”
Jennine’s face changed. She stared. The petulance turned severe. “You will not leave,” she said. “I refuse to allow it. I need you.”
Alysson smiled. “That’s not a compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” said Jennine. “It’s a warning. You won’t leave me Alysson. Not until I throw you out.”
The last days of January spat and sneezed. February strode sinister and threatening across the fields. Snow wove silent curtains, a skyward tapestry, an array of silvered fantasies. The castle slunk and oozed frozen damp. The cobbles were rimed, the limestone iced. The moat froze and snow banked against the towers and their turrets.
In March the snow paled to hail and sleet. Wild flowers peeped, sprigging the slush clogged roadsides and spreading over the hills. The hedges sprouted bird’s nests, trees fluffed into blossom, hedgehogs scrambled back into the light, hoping for sunshine. Seabirds crowded the cliffs. The cattle calved and were brought out from their winter byres and the pastures were dotted with new lambs, as pretty as the primroses and buttercups.
After some weeks Clovis discovered a carrier planning to cart his merchandise to London by mid-April, as soon as the rivers were passable and the roads clear. Ilara’s savings paid the carter with a further donation made towards the hire of two armed guards. Clovis had no need to announce his departure from the castle. Unknown to all who accepted his small presence and ordered the routine of his days without question, Clovis was not in fact employed as a member of the staff. Ludovic had paid him simply to watch, aid and protect one Alysson Welles, insuring her safety and wellbeing until he might return to care for her himself. Clovis had achieved this for some months. Now he would travel with her to London, attempting to preserve the safety and wellbeing of Lord Ludovic instead. Alysson prepared her departure.
“Won’t take more’n four, five days I hopes,” Clovis confided. “Calls it spring season, they does, but ‘tis bloody cold still. I were bumped eight days coming here when his lordship sent me down last year. Took for bloody ever. An’ mighty cold it were then too. Maybe worser.”
“Well, we have no horses ourselves,” Alysson said, “so we have to go by cart. There’s little choice. Besides, I wouldn’t like to make that journey on our own. How could we be sure of the way? And what about robbers on the roads, and trying to ford rivers in flood, and getting soaked when it rains and not finding inns with room to take us? Carriers may be slow, but they’re far safer and far more comfortable. Hopefully the journey won’t take too long.”
Clovis scowled. “Better at sea.” He thought a moment. “’Cept for storms and pirates and maggoty bacon and sea monsters, that is.”
“And the carter won’t permit us to take much luggage,” Alysson sighed. “I should have liked so much to take my two good gowns so I might dress nicely when I see Ludovic again. But I must be practical for travelling. I would be better staying in my broadcloth livery, but I suppose they’ll demand that back from me before I leave.”
“They will,” Clovis nodded.
“Then I shall have to wear my old tunic from two years ago,” Alysson said. “It’s such a horrid thing and badly marked. But at least now I have good shoes.”
“Wot silly fings females care ‘bout,” Clovis muttered, backing away. “Startin’ a right good adventure we is, and all you talks of is clothes.”
It was not cloth
es Alysson was thinking of. It was soft silken hair against her cheek, penetrating eyes the colour of sunshine on grassed pasture, and a thin lipped mouth tilted into sweet smiling corners. Ludovic’s careful hands caressed her through the long cold darkness of her nights, touching secret places where he had never truly touched, whispering words he had never truly spoken. Her dreams warmed and cosseted her, but she woke each morning to cold fear. She did not even know, though clung to hope, whether he lived. It had been nearly six months since she had seen him. There had been no further word of execution, but death in custody was not unknown. She was not sure how such an endless imprisonment could affect even a strong man, and prayed for his safety and his health and his survival. She prayed to find a way to see him, and prayed that eventually, by some skill of her own or through the earl’s pleas to the king, Ludovic would come home to her.
Jennine said, “It is the silliest thing, but something’s wrong with the cess pit. Her ladyship is furious.”
“There’s the gong farmer in Sumerford,” Alysson said, distracted. She was wondering how to tell the lady she was leaving in three days. “George Wapping. I met him once and he seemed a nice man though his clothes do keep hold of that particular aroma, and sometimes strange things hang around in his beard. But he’ll clean out the cess pit and take the muck in cartful’s down to the sea.”
“I’m sure the countess knows all about that already.” Jennine shook her headdress. “But she says there’s no reason for the pit to be full already, since it was cleaned right out and re-dug three years ago after they stopped using the moat. It should have lasted without cleaning for several years more. Besides, it smells absolutely horrid and I have to hold my nose going past the privy. Yesterday this shocking yellow sludge came bursting up out of the hole. I was mortified. If the earl was at home, I’m sure he would never have allowed it.”
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