Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  ‘There’s a bloke downstairs,’ said the innkeeper’s son, blearily.

  It was Letice, dressed like a man in traveller’s clothes, face all but hidden by the heavy serge of her riding hood. She did not look as if she had slept at all. ‘I am coming with you,’ she said at once, before I could open my mouth.

  ‘No, you are not!’ I told her. ‘How did you find me, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Silver,’ she said, as if to a child. ‘How d’you think? Right. When are we off ?’

  ‘I’m off when the sun rises,’ I said. ‘You’ll be safely back in Two Dogs Court by then.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Where’s your room? I’ll explain while you get dressed.’

  The innkeeper’s boy and a couple of other shock-haired servants were ogling us, and so as not to argue in public I clenched my teeth and ushered her upstairs. She dropped down on to my bed with a groan.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘Go on: get dressed.’

  ‘No. I have a long day’s ride, and I haven’t had anything that you might call rest. Go home, Letice. I am sorry that I came looking for you, and I did not mean to cause you any upset. Can we … can you please accept my apologies, and leave me be?’

  ‘Ah. Not so simple. When you throw stones into a pond, you must expect to have things stirred up, yes? Don’t worry, though. I’m not here because of you. I need to leave London, and you’ve given me a good excuse.’

  ‘Excuse? I don’t think so!’

  ‘But yes. You turned up at my storehouse yesterday, causing a fuss. No doubt the court will be all a-murmuring about you and the Lady Agnes tomorrow – today, beg pardon – thanks to old John Jabberchops. I’ve been called away on an urgent matter of business to, ahh … Plymouth. One of my ships and the customs men. Absolutely perfect.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, too tired to argue, groping for my clothes and wondering, vaguely, if I were still dreaming. Maybe Letice would start shooting at me next.

  ‘The king’s customs men are about to find some, oh, irregularities in the duties I have paid over the past year.’

  ‘They’ll fine you. Pay them, Letice, they’ll go away.’

  ‘No they won’t. It’s this bloody war, you see. Henry is having trouble raising money for it. The barons don’t want to pay, and why should they? So he is taxing like a madman, and he has sent his tax-collectors and customs men out to chisel everything that may be chiselled.’

  ‘Like I said, pay them.’

  ‘Do you remember I told you about my other business?’

  ‘Timber and iron? That is not the king’s concern.’

  ‘No, but it is the Church’s. They have been sticking their fingers in too often of late. Henry is a terrible God-botherer, you know. It takes him a day to get from Westminster to the Tower because he has to stop and pray at every bloody shrine along the way. The Bishop of London has decided to turn all of us who trade with the Saracens – there’s more than me in London doing it – over to the Crown, so that Henry can confiscate everything we own and fund his bloody fight with cousin Louis.’

  ‘Well, what does the Church get out of it?’ I asked, hopping about as I drew on a stiff boot.

  ‘A lot. Henry is going to rebuild Westminster Abbey. Did you know that? His mother has been pushing him to do it, as she pushes him to do everything she wants. I thought that was why you were here, at first: to find Henry something miraculous for the high altar.’

  ‘But why come with me? Get your silver and take a ship over to Bruges or Ghent. It will blow over soon enough. Henry never stays on the same course for very long anyway, or so I hear.’

  ‘Richard.’ She put her hands behind her head and fell back onto the pillow, and her yellow braids fell out of their prison. ‘Richard is the steady hand in the kingdom. And he is interested in trade and most particularly in finance.’ She sniffed, and kicked her legs out on the pallet. She was exhausted, I saw, but all stirred up inside. I knew this mood well, and it would have to play itself out.

  ‘How, though, could he help you?’ I asked, finally, when I could bear her impatience no longer.

  ‘Aha. I thought you would never ask. It’s time I told you about my husband.’

  ‘Don’t mock me, Letice,’ I said, stiffening. ‘It was you who left me in Venice, and I have not forgotten that.’

  ‘Not you, Patch. My real husband. The one who died at sea.’

  ‘De Wharram? He’s a fiction, Letice. You made him up.’

  ‘Now there’s the thing of it. I didn’t.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Godwyn de Wharram was a rich young knight who went to seek his fortune in the Holy Land about nine years ago. He was probably twenty or so years old. He arrived in Jaffa and soon decided that he preferred trade to fighting. So he found himself a partner and bought an interest – a large interest – in a spice ship bound for London. His partner was Nicholas Querini, of course. Now, unlike in my version of things, Godwyn did make it to Venice alive – I met him, actually. Don’t look at me like that, Patch. Yes, I met him in that way. Nicholas lent me to him for a night. That was before they fell out, though. About a week later he had Facio knife him and bury him out in the Lagoon. Now during our tryst, as I will call it, I found out all about him, for he was a talker and not much of anything else. He had no parents and no brothers or sisters. He had a nice fortune – all tied up with Nicholas by then, as you might imagine – and an estate in Northamptonshire. His father, though, had held a fief for Richard, brother of the king, and he was Richard’s vassal too – very proud of it. He had some deeds with him, and Richard had given him some letters of introduction. Anyway, he died, and I forgot about him, until I decided to come back to London. Nicholas had kept all his papers – he kept records of everything he did, because he liked to gloat over them, and that’s how I learned to read, by the way, poring over Nicholas’ records.

  ‘So I resurrected Godwyn. When I … after I had made up my mind, I had Mother Zanetta get the papers for me. There was a palace clerk, an important one, who spent half his life in the Bisato Beccato. All the Querini stuff had been confiscated by the state, and this little man knew where it was, and for an extra bit of tongue, or some free Greek-style, he filched it. So I arrived in London as official as could be. And as far as Earl Richard knows, I am his vassal’s widow, and he can never prove it otherwise.’

  We were riding past Turneham. It was just past nine, and the rain was coming down as a thin mizzle. But it was sweet on the eye and the ear, as only a May morning in England can be, and when we had left the village piggeries behind, our noses could take delight as well.

  I had given in to Letice after the bells of Saint Paul’s had rung the fourth hour of the day. I could not find within me the resolve to send her away, and besides that I was still feeling guilty and foolish for having left her in so ungentlemanly a fashion the day before. It would be pleasant to have some company on the long ride, and I could leave her, with a clear conscience, with Earl Richard when we found him.

  ‘So you will put yourself under his protection?’

  ‘Why not? He is the coming man in England, you know. And besides, I am sure I can interest him in a few things I have going on.’

  ‘So you have met him before, then.’

  ‘Actually I haven’t. He only got back from his Crusade in February, and there was all that fuss with the barons dissolving Parliament … And besides, I didn’t need him. I have been keeping that particular card in reserve.’

  ‘Incredible. So you feel perfectly all right about passing yourself off as this Godwyn’s wife?’

  ‘Patch, love, I can tell him things about that poor man that he could not possibly know, and they’d be true and all.’

  ‘From one night in Venice.’

  ‘He was about the place longer than that. And I told you: he was a talker, and I’m a listener.’

  ‘Meanwhile, you have fled London in the dead of night with a strange foreigner. That is going to look interesting.’

  ‘No
t a stranger, dear one.’ Letice looked at me and pouted fetchingly. There was a mist-drip on the end of her nose. ‘After you left me so hurriedly—’ she put a charming accent on the word, and I groaned silently ‘—I went around to my various places of work and told everyone that my gentleman cousin was returned from Outremer and was squiring me down to his country estates for a month, with the idea of marrying me off. You can imagine how happy everyone was.’

  ‘Glad to be rid of you?’ I meant to annoy, but failed.

  ‘Absolutely. A rich and competent woman is no one’s friend. They all hope that I will find some overbearing man who will take over my business or put an end to it, thus sparing them the shame of having to compete with me on losing terms. I cannot wait to see their faces when I return with the Earl of Cornwall in my purse.’

  ‘I’m not sure how I feel about being your cousin. Though I suppose I should be grateful that you’ve made me a gentleman.’

  ‘As well you should, Patch; as well you should.’

  It took us five days to reach Dorchester along muddy roads that the rain had turned for long stretches into sluggish brown streams. The wild wood pressed about the feeble excuse for a track, and we kept our hands close to our hilts, though we had no sniff of trouble. Letice seemed in all respects a man, her hair tucked up out of sight, her clothing dark and purposeful. I knew she could fight, but my anxiety simmered nevertheless. I had not intended to be anyone’s protector, no matter that the person in question did not believe she needed one. The inns were crowded and all seemed to have the same smell of mildew and rotting thatch. There seemed to be a couple of other riders headed south and west, for three times we saw the same faces at dinner. By the third night Letice began to worry.

  ‘Those two men are following us,’ she said. I looked over to where they were sitting closer to the fire.

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘Don’t know. Something about them. Don’t they have a tax-collector look about them? I think King Henry has sent them to spy on me.’

  ‘You’re giving yourself airs, my dear,’ I told her, and to prove my point I raised my beer mug and nodded in the men’s direction. They gave me a smile of recognition, the old travellers’ appreciation of shared coincidence.

  ‘Don’t worry, Letice,’ I told her. ‘Tax-collectors do not spy, they collect. Have you felt any fingers in your purse? No. And I don’t think those two are spies, really, do you?’ She was not mollified, but I thought no more about it, especially as we seemed to have taken different roads after that, for we did not see their faces again.

  For propriety’s sake Letice and I had to take separate rooms and twice I found myself sharing a bed with three other men who filled the chamber with beery farts. The beer, it must be said, was good, and as I had missed the taste of it for many long years I perhaps had more than my share. Every night, Letice watched me primly over the scrubbed and stained tables, her face unreadable. I returned her gaze from the snug warmth of a bellyful of ale. She was, alas, the same woman I had ached to marry. I had hoped to find her changed, but she was not, and all the feelings I had packed down at the very bottom of my heart began to stir. I could not help the warmth that stole into my eyes and my words, though I felt nothing from her by way of an answer. She was not cold to me, not at all; and nor was she unduly warm. I did not know my cousins well as a child and had forgotten even what they looked like long before I ever went aboard the Cormaran, but there was something unmistakeably cousin-ish about Letice – not quite sisterly, thank Christ, but not quite anything else. But I knew very well – and that knowledge pained me – that I could do nothing. Our time as lovers was past. Letice did not want me in her bed, and I no longer disliked her enough to make a nuisance of myself. Far from it, for to my relief I was discovering that I enjoyed Letice’s friendship for its own sake. And so every night I drank my beer and we kept each other company until it was time to go to our separate beds.

  By daylight we bowled along merrily. After Sherborne the weather improved, strangely enough, and so we passed through the sweet round-topped hills of Somerset in the green glory of late spring. The dog roses were in bloom, and fat bullfinches rollicked among the whitethorn buds. We picked up the Fosse Way west of Yeovil, and on the hard-packed road we began to make better time, daring to trot or even canter from time to time without fear that our horses would break an ankle or vanish into some bottomless, muddy sink-hole. Somewhere up on the Blackdown hills, the breeze coming strong and salty from the west, we passed over into Devon. A night at Honiton, then across the marshy levels of the Otter river to Exeter. One night in that city’s finest inn, where we dined on Exmoor roebuck and plump thrushes, and then on into the west. We climbed the steep slope of the Exe valley and there in the distance was the brown back of Dartmoor, the crag of Haytor stark and grey in the sun.

  Suddenly, everything seemed familiar, although I had never been hereabouts so far as I could recall. The brambles were lush and bristling with red spines. Ferns and harts-tongue spilled from the hedgerows like green flames. Moss grew thick on tree and stone, and buzzards wheeled, screeling above the oaks. I could find my way now, but I had not decided what that should be. To reach Lydford it might have been more sensible to skirt the northern brows of the moor and drop down past Okehampton, but I had felt my heart clamouring ever more insistently since we had left Exeter, and I let myself be led past the southern slopes of Haytor towards Ashburton. Letice was deferring to me and I had not let her know why I had chosen this particular route. I told myself that we would take the monks’ track from Buckfast and over the moor to Tavistock, being a way that I knew and so, of course, safer than the northern one. It made good sense, except that we would ride past the gates of Buckfast Abbey, and that would be the sheerest folly.

  But perhaps not. Time passes, and the mind of man cannot hold anything for very long. The Gurt Dog must have been the talk of the whole valley when the blood was still wet in Balecester, but perhaps he had been forgotten. Maybe some new ogre had supplanted me in songs and the threats of wet-nurses. I was starting to feel completely free for the first time in years, and it was filling me with strange thoughts and feelings. It was as if I had been carrying two souls within my flesh since I had fled from Hugh de Kervezey: that of the man I had become, Petrus Zennorius or whatever title of convenience fit my errand or scheme; and poor Petroc of Auneford, who had disgraced his abbey and disappeared into some appalling reckoning with the demons who had corrupted him. It was Petroc who was coming alive again, like apple juice turning to cider, a great golden head of foamy joy rising up inside me. And if I passed through Buckfast unrecognised, I would be as free as any man.

  We slept a night in Ashburton, full of sullen miners drunk in the street, and left before sunup, passing beneath where the stannery gibbets were serving up the bodies of dishonest tinners for the ravens, and in an hour the tower of Buckfast Abbey came into sight. I was shaking as we splashed through the ale-brown waters of the Dart and started up the track on the left bank. Some brothers were walking towards us in a loose group, spades and rakes in hand, on their way to the fishponds, no doubt. I searched their faces as we passed. How familiar, all of them: monks’ visages, smoothed by their interior certainties as rocks are polished by a river. Healthy and well-fed, and off to do a few hours’ easy work on a sunny day. Then with a shock, I saw that one of them was more than familiar. It was Stephen of Cornwood. We had been novices together. We had sat side by side in the refectory for years, cleaned out the pigeon coops, fed the pigs. Taking a deep breath I stared him straight in the eyes. He smiled, a little startled perhaps, and mistaking my intent he gave me a quick blessing, a murmured pax vobiscum, and carried on, the strangers on horseback forgotten already. I was a stranger. I was a free man again.

  We rode on, past the high gates of the abbey. They were open, and I slowed and looked inside. Nothing had changed, as I had known it would not. There were the stables. There was the old cart I had hidden under, all those years ago, nothing
more now than a heap of nettles and briars. There was the pigsty, and the edge of the garden where I had spoken to Adso the librarian. Letice rode up alongside and gave me a quizzical look, so I shrugged and set heel to horse, and up the track we went.

  I knew that, if we were early enough upon our way, we could cross the moor and reach Tavistock long before nightfall, and put up in the abbey hostelry there. So we followed the trackway across the river Mardle, past Button and Bowerdon and Bowden until we had passed the last field and our horses had stepped out onto Dartmoor. The sound of their hooves changed in an instant: where before they had clattered on the stony bed of the track, now they were muffled and hollow, as if the moor were a giant drum, or the vast, distended belly of a sleeping giant: Gog, or Magog. The hedge-rows had been loud with songbirds, but now silence came down on us: only the whistle of the breeze through last year’s sedge, and the faraway call of a lark, disturbed the hush. Letice reached over and caught my bridle.

  ‘We’re not really going in to this place, are we?’ she asked, plaintively. Her voice sounded little and faint, dwarved by the great sweep of the hillside above us.

  ‘My lady, you are safer here with me than any London soul who leaves his house on a morning to buy a dozen eggs. This was my garden when I was a boy.’