Sovereign ms-3

by C. J. Sansom

  Chapter Four

  A GUARD TOLD US THAT to reach St Mary’s Abbey we should follow a street called Coneygate. This was another narrow lane full of busy shops, and again we proceeded at a snail’s pace. I noted a number of even narrower alleyways leading off, perhaps to squares and courts behind. I felt hemmed in by the city.

  As we passed a large inn I saw a group of young men in colourful slashed doublets standing in the doorway, flanked by watchful servants, looking out over the crowd as they drank wine from leather bottles. One, a tall handsome young fellow with a dark beard, was pointing out members of the citizenry and laughing at their poor clothes. The evil looks he received made him laugh all the louder. The advance guard of the Great Progress, I thought; these gentlemen should take better care.

  I thought about Radwinter and Broderick. Gaoler and prisoner, ice and fire. It was clear Radwinter visited whatever petty torments he could on Broderick, to keep him down and probably for his own enjoyment too. Such treatment could be dangerous; Sir Edward might be young but he was a gentleman, unused to privation. That burn on his chest could turn bad; I hoped there were good medical men in York. I wished my old friend Guy was with me. But Guy was far away, working as an apothecary in London.

  I could not help being troubled anew by Sir Edward’s accusation that I was keeping him safe for the torturers. He was right. And yet, for all his brave defiant words, Sir Edward had begged Radwinter for something to drink. And I had been able to order it brought.

  I remembered, too, Radwinter’s remark about my condition making me sympathetic to poor outcasts. How he could see into a man. Did he use such skills to delve into the minds of the heretics in Cranmer’s gaol at the top of the Lollards’ Tower? But he was right; sympathy for Broderick could cloud my judgement. I recalled the prisoner’s sudden furious lunge at the gaoler, and thought again, what has he done that he must be kept sealed away like a plague-carrier?

  Outside a candlemaker’s shop I saw a plump, choleric-looking man in a red robe and broad-brimmed red hat, a gold chain of office round his neck, inspecting a box of candles. The mayor, I thought. The candlemaker, his apron spotted with grease, looked on anxiously as the mayor lifted a fat yellow candle from the box and inspected it closely. Three black-robed officials stood by, one carrying a gold mace.

  ‘It’ll do, I suppose,’ the mayor said. ‘Make sure only the finest beeswax goes to St Mary’s.’ He nodded and the group passed on to the next shop.

  ‘Doing his rounds.’ I said to Barak. ‘Making sure everything is in order for when the Progress arrives. And-’ I broke off with a start at the sound of a scream.

  A young woman, standing at the mouth of one of the narrow alleys, was clutching a large basket, struggling to keep it from the grip of a ragged youth with a large wart on his nose who was trying to pull it from her. I saw it was the girl who had winked at Barak earlier. Another churl, a fair-haired boy with a broken nose, held her round the waist. Barak threw me Sukey’s reins and leaped from his horse, drawing his sword. A couple of passers-by stepped back hastily.

  ‘Leave her, you arseholes!’ Barak shouted. The two youths at once let go, turned and ran pell-mell up the alley. Barak made to follow, but the girl seized his arm.

  ‘No, sir, no! Stay with me, please, these are for Queen Catherine.’

  Barak sheathed his sword, smiling at her. ‘You’re all right now, mistress.’

  I dismounted carefully, keeping hold of both horses’ reins. Genesis shifted his hooves uneasily.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked her. ‘What do you mean, your basket is for the Queen?’

  She turned to me, her cornflower-blue eyes wide. ‘I am a servant in the Queen’s privy kitchen, sir. I was sent to buy some of the things the Queen likes.’ I looked in the basket. There were sticks of cinnamon, almonds and pieces of root ginger. The girl gave a little curtsey. ‘My name is Tamasin, sir. Tamasin Reedbourne.’ I noted she had a London accent and it struck me her fustian dress was expensive wear for a kitchenmaid.

  ‘Are you all right, mistress?’ Barak asked. ‘Those knaves looked as though they’d pull your pretty arms from their sockets.’

  She smiled, showing white teeth and a pair of pretty dimples. ‘I wouldn’t let go. When the Queen arrives her lodgings are to be filled with her favourite doucets, all made from ingredients bought here in York.’ She looked between us. ‘Are you here to meet the Progress, sirs?’

  ‘Ay.’ I gave a little bow. ‘I am a lawyer, Master Shardlake. This is my assistant, Jack Barak.’

  Barak doffed his cap and the girl smiled at him again, a little coquettishly now. ‘You are brave, sir. I noticed you earlier, did I not?’

  ‘You know you gave me a pretty smile.’

  ‘You had a bodyservant in King’s livery with you then,’ I said.

  ‘Ay, sir. But Master Tanner wished to buy a piece of cloth and I gave him leave to go into that shop.’ She shook her head. ‘It was foolish, sir, was it not? I forgot what a barbarous place this is.’

  ‘Is that him?’ I asked, pointing to a thin-faced young man wearing the King’s badge who had just left a shop on the other side of the road. I recognized him from that morning. He crossed to where we stood, hand on his sword-hilt.

  ‘Mistress Reedbourne?’ he asked nervously. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Well may you ask, Tanner! While you were choosing cloth for your new doublet, two youths tried to steal the Queen’s dainties. This man rescued me.’ She smiled again at Barak.

  Master Tanner cast his eyes to the ground. Genesis pulled at the reins.

  ‘We must go,’ I said. ‘We are due at St Mary’s. Come, Barak, they will be waiting like everyone else to tell us we were expected yesterday.’ I settled matters by bowing to Mistress Reedbourne. She curtsied again.

  ‘I am lodged at St Mary’s too,’ she said sweetly. ‘Perhaps I shall see you again.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Barak replaced his cap, then winked, making the girl turn scarlet. We rode off.

  ‘That was a bit of excitement,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Not that there was any danger, they were just ragamuffin lads. Must have thought there was something valuable in that basket.’

  ‘You did well.’ I smiled sardonically. ‘Rescuing the Queen’s doucets.’

  ‘The girl’s a little doucet herself. I’d not mind a game of hot-cockles with her.’

  AT THE TOP OF Coneygate we passed into another road that ran alongside the high walls of the abbey. The King’s guards patrolled the top of the walls, and beyond them I saw the high steeple we had seen on our way in, almost as high as the Minster. The monasteries had all had enclosing walls, though I had never seen any so high as this; St Mary’s must have been an enormous site. Such a wall would greatly help security and I wondered whether this was why the abbey had been chosen for the King’s base in York.

  Once again we passed under the barbican at Bootham Bar, this time turning left to join a queue of riders and pedestrians waiting to go into the abbey. My commission was scrutinized with care before we were allowed to pass. Inside, we dismounted. Barak took the panniers containing our belongings from the horses’ backs and slung them over his shoulders, then joined me in staring at the scene before us.

  Directly ahead was a large manor house that must once have been the abbot’s residence. It was splendid even by the standards the abbots of the large monasteries allowed themselves, a three-storey building in red brick with high narrow chimneys. Beds of small white roses lined the walls. There had once been a lawn too but it had been turned to muddy earth by the passage of innumerable feet and cartwheels. Some men were excavating what turf was left, replacing it with flagstones, while a little way off others were digging up what must have been the monks’ graveyard, hauling up the gravestones and manhandling them onto carts. Above the main door of the manor the royal arms had been hung on a large shield.

  Beyond the manor house stood an enormous monastic church of Norman design, one of the largest I had seen, its square tower topped b
y an enormous stone steeple, the façade decorated with ornate buttresses and carved pillars. The manor house and the church made two sides of a great courtyard, an area perhaps a furlong in length. There an amazing spectacle was taking shape. Outbuildings had been demolished, leaving trenches where foundations had once stood. Dozens of tents had been planted on the space, and hundreds of men were labouring in the open, working on the final stages of the construction of two enormous pavilions. Forty feet high, they had been built to resemble castles, complete with turrets and barbican gates; all in wood but painted and designed to resemble stone. Workmen on ladders swarmed over the extraordinary buildings, fixing plaster images of heraldic beasts, painting the walls in bright colours, glazing the windows. As I watched, I thought there was something familiar about the designs of the pavilions.

  Trestle tables stood everywhere in the yard, carpenters hewing and planing huge lengths of wood. A pile of perhaps fifty trunks of young oak was stacked against the abbey wall, and sawdust lay everywhere. Other workmen were carving ornamental cornices in complex designs, the colours bright in the dull afternoon.

  Barak whistled. ‘God’s wounds. What are they planning here?’

  ‘Some spectacle the like of which I’ve never imagined.’

  We stood a moment longer watching the extraordinary scene, then I touched Barak’s arm. ‘Come. We have to find the man in charge of the accommodation. Simon Craike.’ I smiled. ‘I knew him, a long time ago.’

  Barak shifted the weight of the panniers on his shoulders. ‘Did you?’

  ‘He was a fellow student at Lincoln’s Inn. I haven’t seen him since, though. He never practised, he went into the royal administration.’

  ‘Why’d he do that? The pay?’

  ‘Ay. He had an uncle in royal service who got him a post.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  I smiled again. ‘You’ll see. I wonder if he’s changed.’

  We led the horses over to the manor house, which seemed to be the centre of all the great bustle; people were running in and out, officials standing on the steps giving orders, arguing and looking over plans. We asked a guard where Master Craike might be found, and he told us to wait, calling a groom to take the horses. As we stood there a high officer of state in a green velvet robe waved us out of the way, then another barged between us, as though we were dogs in his path.

  ‘Arseholes,’ Barak muttered.

  ‘Come, let us get out of their way.’

  We walked to the corner of the manor house, near to where two women were arguing with an official who held a floorplan of some sort. He was bowing and scraping almost to the ground, risking his plan falling in the mud, as the more richly dressed of the two ladies berated him loudly. She was in her thirties, with brown hair under a French hood set with pearls, and a high-collared robe of red silk. A woman of status. Her square plain face was red with ill-temper.

  ‘Is it too much for the Queen to know how she may leave her lodgings in the event of a fire?’ I heard her say in a deep, sharp voice. ‘I ask again, which is the nearest door and who has the key?’

  ‘I am not sure, my lady.’ The official turned his plan round. ‘The privy kitchen may be nearest -’

  ‘I’m not interested in may be.’

  The other woman saw us looking and raised her eyebrows in an affronted stare. She was slim, with a face that might have been attractive but for its cold, haughty expression. The brown curly hair beneath her plain hood was unbound, signalling unmarried status, though she too was in her thirties. She wore an expensive-looking engagement ring, however: a diamond set in gold. She frowned again and I nudged Barak out of hearing. Then I smiled at the sight of a man in a brown robe who had come out of the manor house and stood on the steps, staring round him. A little portable writing desk was tied round his neck with blue cord. An inkpot and a quill were set there, and a thick sheaf of papers was pinned to it.

  I remembered Simon Craike by his anxious, harried air. But for that I might not have recognized him, for the years had changed my old fellow student greatly. The good fare of court had given him a plump face and wide girth, while the shock of fair hair I remembered was mostly gone, leaving only a yellow fringe. As he turned at my call, though, his careworn features lit up. Barak and I doffed our caps as he crossed to us, one hand on the little desk to keep it steady. He shook my hand with the other.

  ‘Master Shardlake! I recognized you at once. The years have dealt kindly with you, sir. Why, you still have your hair. Not even grey.’

  I laughed. ‘’Tis a wonder, given some of the affairs I have had to deal with.’

  ‘By Our Lady, it must be near twenty years.’ Craike smiled sadly. ‘The world has seen many changes since then.’

  ‘Truly it has.’ I thought: a revolution in religion, the end of the monasteries and a great rebellion. And my father now dead, I remembered with a sudden stab. ‘So,’ I said. ‘I hear you are in charge of accommodating the gentlemen in York.’

  ‘Ay. I have never had such a task as this Progress. Everywhere I have been going ahead to work with the harbingers to ensure everyone has accommodation at each stop. The problems with the rains, the King ever changing his plans.’

  ‘You have been with the Great Progress from the start?’

  ‘Ay. There has never been one anything like so large.’ He shook his head. ‘The problems, you cannot imagine. Dealing with the waste has been the worst thing. Everywhere we stop vast pits have to be dug. With three thousand people, five thousand great horses, you may imagine?’

  ‘Cannot the local people use the dung for manure?’

  ‘There was far more than they need. And the stink, you can imagine…’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Even with the pits, all the road from London to Hull is littered with rubbish. It has been a nightmare, sir, a nightmare.’ He shook his head. ‘And my poor wife left behind in London.’

  ‘You are married?’

  ‘Ay. Seven children we have.’ He smiled with pride. ‘And you, sir?’

  ‘No, I have never married. This, by the way, is my assistant. Master Barak.’

  Craike studied Barak solemnly with his pale-blue eyes. ‘You will need him, all the work there is here. As for me, I am surrounded by incompetents. So much to be got ready. Indeed I fear I cannot spare much time now, though I am glad to see you again. But I will show you your quarters.’

  I nodded at the manor house. ‘That is a fine building.’

  ‘Ay. It was the abbot’s house. The King will be staying there when he arrives – it has been renamed King’s Manor in his honour.’

  ‘Perhaps we may have an opportunity to meet later, discuss old times.’

  ‘I should like that, sir. I will if I can -’ He broke off, as the two women came round the corner, and a hunted look came into his face. ‘God’s death,’ he muttered, ‘not Lady Rochford again.’

  I started, for that was a name whose mention could send a shudder through any group. The three of us bowed hastily. As we rose I looked more closely at the square-faced woman. Her high-coloured features were still set in an angry frown, and I noticed she seemed strung tight with nervous tension. Her companion, who was holding the plan the official had been showing them, saw me studying her mistress and gave me another disapproving look.

  ‘Master Craike!’ Lady Rochford snapped. ‘Your churl of a planmaster cannot answer the simplest question. I want to know, sir, is there a privy way out of this house on this side that the Queen might take? She is terrified of fire, when she was a girl in Horsham the house near burned down -’

  ‘I am sorry, my lady-’

  ‘Pox on sorry! Jennet, the plan! Hurry, woman!’

  Her companion held it up. Craike laid it out on his desk, studied it a moment and then pointed out a door. ‘There. The privy kitchen is nearest.’

  ‘Is it guarded?’

  ‘No, madam.’

  ‘Then I will need a set of keys. Arrange it. Jennet, come on, do not stand there like a lost sh
eep!’ And with that, Lady Rochford snatched the plan and the two women left, holding their skirts up above the muddy ground.

  Craike wiped his brow. ‘By heaven, that woman’s an ogre.’

  ‘Ay. I know her history. Who is her sour-faced companion?’

  ‘Mistress Jennet Marlin, a maid in waiting. She has cause to look sour. Her fiancé is in the Tower, accused of a part in the conspiracy.’

  ‘She’s local, then?’

  ‘Ay, she was picked to come to York for her local knowledge. There’s no taint of disloyalty against her, her family are reformers.’ Craike made a little moue of distaste, faint but enough to show me where he stood in matters of religion. ‘Come, I’ll take you to your accommodation. It’s not the best, I fear, but in a few days there will be thousands here. Thousands.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Four days now until they come, is it not?’

  ‘Ay. I have to send my officers to the inns today, to check all is ready. Something can always go wrong. By Our Lady, the trouble we had during the rains in July. The number of carts broken and stuck in the mud, they nearly called the whole thing off.’

  ‘I am sure all will be well,’ I said with a smile. I had a sudden memory of Craike as a student in the Lincoln’s Inn library, working late on his exercises – surrounded by papers, his hands stained with ink, determined everything should be exactly right.

  ‘I hope so,’ he answered with a sigh. ‘The itinerary has been constantly changed, it has driven me half mad. The King was supposed to be in Pontefract two days and stayed near two weeks, and now he’s diverted to Hull.’

  ‘Perhaps to allow time to finish all this work going on in the forecourt, those pavilions. What is it all for?’

  Craike looked uncomfortable. ‘I am sorry, I may not say. It will be announced when the Progress arrives.’ He stepped away, leading us to the monastic church. ‘But the work – it is a nightmare, a nightmare!’