Sovereign ms-3

by C. J. Sansom

  Barak traced his finger down the line. ‘And Edward IV was our present King’s grandfather.’

  ‘Yes. Through the King’s mother, Elizabeth of York. It is said the King greatly resembles him.’

  ‘What about our King’s father’s claim? King Henry VII?’

  ‘His claim was weak, but he joined his bloodline to that of Edward IV by marrying his daughter. It is that which makes King Henry’s position dynastically secure.’

  Barak’s finger followed the line back up the paper. ‘When Edward IV died his son inherited briefly as Edward V, did he not? But he and his brother were killed when the throne was usurped by King Edward’s brother Richard.’

  ‘That is right. The Princes in the Tower.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Something interesting there. Richard III is named as “Crouchback, so-called”.’ Barak looked uncomfortable, and I smiled sadly. ‘Oh, let us not beat about the bush. It was said Richard III was a hunchback, though others say that is a lie invented by the Tudors. Because hunchbacks are said to be unlucky, and our outward shape a sign of inward degeneracy. The fact the writer says “so-called” indicates he did not believe the stories about King Richard. In any case, Richard III’s seizure of the throne angered the country, so that when the King’s father rose against him he got much support. Then he made his heirs secure by marrying Elizabeth of York.’

  ‘And the Duke of Clarence, Edward IV’s other brother, he died before him?’

  ‘He was executed for treason – he had tried to seize the throne as well.’

  ‘Jesu, what a family. The mother of those three, Cecily Neville. Maleverer mentioned her. He said it all starts with her.’

  ‘Yes. And there was a bitterness in his tone.’ I frowned. ‘I wonder why. All those shown here are her descendants, but they are Richard of York’s too and the line of descent runs through him.’

  Barak thought a moment. ‘If the conspirators had overthrown the King this spring, little Prince Edward would be the rightful heir.’

  ‘Yes, but a child king. That is a recipe for strife among the nobles. No, if the conspirators were going to replace the King, Margaret of Salisbury would have been their choice.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the conspirators would have wanted them for one reason above all others. The family are all papists, like the conspirators. Montagu’s brother Reginald Pole is a cardinal in Rome.’

  ‘Jesu.’

  ‘And the royal bloodline now gives the King not only the right to the throne but to headship of the Church in place of the Pope. As Cranmer said to me, when the King’s conscience is moved it is God who speaks through him, giving him the right to make or break religious policy.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘Anyone who took the throne would take the title Defender of the Faith as well.’

  ‘God speaking through the King’s voice.’ Barak shook his head. ‘That has always seemed to me as stupid an idea as that he speaks though the Pope’s. Though it gives the King great power.’

  It was the first time he had spoken so frankly of his beliefs. I nodded slowly. ‘I agree. But to talk thus is treason.’

  ‘’Tis what many think.’

  ‘Ay, it is. But come, we are straying into dangerous waters.’ I sanded the paper carefully. ‘Here, take this to Maleverer. Make sure it is placed in his hands only.’

  He hesitated. ‘I wonder if it might be prudent to take a copy.’

  ‘No. No more hostages to fortune. Besides, I have a copy already.’ I tapped my bruised head. ‘In here.’

  AFTER BARAK LEFT I lay down on my cot. I fell asleep at once, and did not wake till Barak shook my shoulder some hours later. ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Near five. You’ve slept the afternoon.’ He seemed more cheerful.

  I sat up. My head felt clearer, but I winced at a jab from my neck. ‘Did you take the family tree to Maleverer?’

  ‘Yes, and got a growl for thanks.’ He hesitated. ‘Then I went to find Mistress Tamasin.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I tipped a guard to fetch her, saying I had news of a relative.’ He gave me one of his hard direct looks. ‘I understand why you felt you had to tell Maleverer what Tamasin did, but I wanted to tell her it was not my decision.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She forgave me readily enough. And admitted her own fault in deceiving us, though she said she didn’t regret it. By Jesu, she has spirit.’

  I grunted. ‘You’ve told me more than once you like a woman who keeps her place.’

  ‘I don’t like bossy women. But Tamasin is not like that. In fact -’ he smiled – ‘I have never met anyone quite like her before.’

  ‘Women with strength of spirit may come to rule their men.’

  ‘Oh come,’ he said hotly. ‘You know you do not believe that. How often have you told me you admire women with minds of their own? Like Lady Honor.’

  ‘The less I am reminded of Lady Honor Bryanston, the better I like it.’ I heard the bitterness in my own voice at the memory of my ill-fated dalliance the year before. ‘And do not mistake reckless improvidence for an independent mind.’

  ‘Well, I am meeting her tomorrow evening at the singing, as we arranged.’

  ‘Is that wise? Maleverer was not happy about what she did.’

  ‘He’s not one to care what dalliances men and women may have so long as there are no political implications.’ He looked at me hard again. ‘Do you disapprove?’

  ‘ ’Tis not for me to approve or disapprove,’ I replied defensively. I still had doubts about the girl, but I realized too that I was jealous, not of Barak for having a pretty girl chase him, but of her for taking the attention of one of the few real friends I had. I changed the subject, asking Barak if he had seen Master Wrenne.

  ‘In the courtyard when I went in to Maleverer. Only in the distance – he was making for the gate and did not see me.’

  ‘Did he look all right?’

  ‘Yes. He was walking towards the gate. I thought I caught a slight smile on his face.’

  ‘Thank God. I feared Maleverer might take him in for rough questioning.’

  ‘I told you he could look after himself.’

  ‘Ay.’ I got up. ‘Well, I shall go for a walk, I think. I need some air.’

  ‘Want some company?’

  I smiled. ‘All right.’

  OUTSIDE A WIND had got up, and I smelled rain in the air. ‘Autumn is well on here,’ I observed. My head felt clearer, but with the clarity came apprehension. I watched the people passing to and fro and thought, somebody here, one of these people, attacked me. Will they try again? I was glad of Barak’s company.

  We walked past the animal enclosures. Two big metal cages had been set up to one side; in each a huge brown bear crouched, staring out through little red eyes full of fear and anger.

  ‘There’s to be bear-baiting among the public entertainments for the King,’ Barak said. ‘I dare say you’ll steer clear of that.’ He smiled slightly, for he found my squeamishness about such things odd.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied shortly.

  ‘A whole lot of fighting cocks were being brought in when I was in the courtyard earlier. Games for the soldiers and workmen. They’re not allowed in the city in case they fight with the Yorkers. They’ve put the birds in the chapterhouse, I was told.’

  I shook my head. ‘How the world is everywhere turned upside down.’

  We walked down the side of the church to the main courtyard. Men on ladders were fixing pennants to the pavilions now, in the green and white Tudor colours, the red-on-white cross of England and, I saw to my astonishment, blue flags with a slantwise white cross. I pointed. ‘Look! Isn’t that the Scotch flag? Jesu, King James must be coming here! That is what all this is for!’

  Barak whistled. ‘A meeting of kings.’

  ‘So King Henry has come to make his terms with the Scots as well as the Yorkmen. He’s after a peace treaty.’ I shook my head. ‘King James would be mad to abandon his alliance with the French, it’s all that
’s ever stopped us overrunning them.’

  ‘Maybe he’s offering James a choice between peace terms and invasion.’

  ‘If this is what it is all about, perhaps Queen Catherine is not pregnant after all.’

  I looked round the courtyard, less crowded now the building work was finished. Men were loading surplus building material on to carts, while more flagstones were being laid near the manor house, covering the earth so the King – the Kings – should not get their robes muddy. I shivered, feeling tired again. ‘Come, let us go back through the church. We can see how the horses are doing.’

  The monastic church was also full of workmen. Row upon row of wooden stalls had been set up along the nave now for the horses, and men were piling up bales of hay for fodder and setting straw in the stalls. The banging down of the bales, the swish of the straw being laid, echoed round the place. As we walked down the church another sound became audible, an angry crowing from the chapterhouse. There must be hundreds of fighting cocks, I realized, and wondered what they made of the holy statues, whether they took them for real men as Barak had. I looked around. For all the great vaulting arches this was the corpse of a church, a corpse set out to be mocked and desecrated as they said Richard III’s was after the Battle of Bosworth. I felt suddenly giddy, and went over to a bench that someone had left in the middle of the nave. ‘I must rest a moment,’ I said.

  Barak joined me. We sat in silence for a minute, then I turned to him, wincing at a spasm in my neck.

  ‘I wonder if I am safe now,’ I said.

  ‘You mean your assailant would have killed you had Craike not interrupted him?’

  ‘I’m not sure Craike did interrupt him.’

  ‘You mean he was the attacker?’

  ‘No. Otherwise the cudgel, or whatever else he used, would have been found on him when he was searched. And those damned papers. No, I mean my assailant had already left the room when Craike arrived in the corridor. Think about it. That is a long corridor, whoever attacked me would have heard Craike’s footsteps as he arrived at the far end. He could not have left the room and run down the other staircase without Craike seeing him. And Craike said he heard footsteps descending, not running.’

  ‘So the attacker thought he had killed you.’

  ‘Unless he did not mean to kill me, just knock me out.

  Say he entered the room just as I lifted that confession by

  Blaybourne from the box, and hit me before I could read it.’

  ‘If it’s that important, surely he’d kill you to make sure.’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, unless he thought I was already dead. If

  so, he showed carelessness. And when he sees I am alive, he

  may try again.’

  ‘But the damage has been done. You’ve told Maleverer everything you saw.’

  ‘The attacker may not know that.’ ‘Then we’ll have to keep watch,’ Barak said. ‘Thank you for the we. I wonder what those papers signify. An orthodox-seeming family tree, a copy of the Mouldwarp legend, an Act of Parliament Maleverer says is a fake and a confession by someone called Blaybourne whose name appears to strike terror into the hearts of the mighty. There were other papers too, quite a few, they looked like statements of some sort. And who was the thief? A conspirator, trying to keep the papers out of the King’s hands? But if so, why did Oldroyd not give them to him – I am assuming that was why he was killed.’

  ‘I don’t know. Jesu, I wish we could go home.’

  ‘So do I.’ I shivered in a cold wind that came through an empty window-arch. I looked through it at the grey sky, just beginning to darken. Oldroyd would have removed that glass. I wondered what would happen to his house and business; he was another who had died without heirs.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ Barak asked.

  ‘How since we got here my mind has run on genealogies. Those like the King’s that have heirs and those like Wrenne’s and Oldroyd’s that have run out. And mine, perhaps.’ I smiled sadly. ‘Your tree I suppose will go back to Abraham, through your father’s Jewish blood.’

  He shrugged. ‘And we all go back to Adam, the first sinner. I am my father’s only child too. I would like the line to go on.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘The secret line of Jewish blood.’ He turned back to me. ‘You could still marry. You are not yet forty.’

  ‘I will be next year. Then people will start to think of me as an old man.’

  ‘Ten years younger than the King.’

  I sighed. ‘After Lady Honor, last year-’ I changed the subject. ‘So, you have made up with Tamasin?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled, then looked at me seriously. ‘She was frightened at being hauled up before Maleverer, I think, though she tried to hide it. She said Mistress Marlin was sharp with her, but has promised she will not tell Lady Rochford.’

  I nodded. ‘That is in her own interest. Lady Rochford might blame Mistress Marlin for not keeping proper control of the girl. Mistress Marlin is a strange creature. What does young Tamasin think of her?’

  ‘That she is mostly a kind mistress, oddly enough. It was she who chose Tamasin to come to York. I think Tamasin feels sorry for her, because the other ladies mock her. Tamasin has a kind heart.’

  ‘Well, that is a virtuous thing in a woman.’ I massaged my neck again. ‘Jesu, I am tired. I should go to the prison tonight, but I cannot face trailing through York again in the dark.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, after being knocked out. You should rest tonight.’

  ‘I shall go tomorrow, and call on Master Wrenne as well. I grow fond of that old man.’ I was quiet for a moment then said, ‘He is alone. That reminds me of my father, and then I feel guilty for not visiting him for a year before he died.’

  The events of the day seemed to have put us in a rare mood for confidences, there in the huge desecrated vault of the church, the swish of straw and crowing of fighting cocks echoing in the background. ‘I dream of my father sometimes,’ Barak said. ‘When I was small he always wanted to hold me and I would squirm away because I could not stand the smell of his trade. The emptying of cesspits. I often dream he comes to me with arms outstretched, but I catch the smell of him and draw back as I did then, I cannot help myself. Then I wake with that smell in my nostrils. I thought of it when they brought that apprentice into Maleverer.’ He fingered his breast, where I knew he carried the ancient mezuzah his father had bequeathed him. ‘Perhaps such dreams are sent to punish us,’ he concluded softly. ‘To remind us of our sins.’

  ‘You are a Job’s comforter.’

  ‘Ay.’ He rose. ‘ ’Tis this grim place.’

  ‘I wonder what will happen to that boy.’

  ‘Young Green?’

  ‘That was a cruel humiliation Maleverer visited on him, sending him bare-arsed into the town.’

  Barak suppressed a laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but it did look funny. The Yorkers will probably sympathize. He’ll find another place. Come, shall we get some supper before you retire?’

  ‘Yes.’ I rose and we walked to the far door.

  He turned to me. ‘I am sorry for causing you to lose the papers, more than I can say.’

  I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come, no recriminations. There is no point.’

  We went to look at the horses, complimenting the stable boy on how well they were cared for, then went and ate companionably in the refectory. As we walked we were both on the alert, looking into shadowed corners. The refectory was busier and noisier than the night before. The carpenters, their work done, were in boisterous mood. If they were allowed into the town tonight there would be revelry and probably bloody noses too. I was tired again, glad to return to my cot. Barak said he was going into the town, ‘to see what I can see’.

  ‘No adventures.’

  ‘No, I’ll save those for Tamasin tomorrow. Shall I wake you at six in the morning?’

  ‘Ay.’ He left me then, and I sank into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep, disturbed only when the lawyers and clerks returned late and we
nt to bed. Yet it was not Barak who woke me next morning but a soldier, a hand shaking me roughly awake. It was still dark, he carried a lamp. I stared at him. It was young Sergeant Leacon. His face was serious. My heart leaped in terror, and I feared for a second that Maleverer might have put me under arrest.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have been sent to escort you to York Castle, sir, at once,’ he said. ‘The prisoner Broderick, he has been poisoned.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT WAS STILL ONLY five in the morning as we marched through a dark and silent York. Barak had been woken when Leacon roused me and I asked him to accompany us; whatever awaited us at the castle, I wanted another pair of eyes to see. The town constables, roused by our footsteps, shone their lamps at us but retreated again at the sight of Leacon’s red uniform. I shivered and drew my coat round me, for a cold gusting wind had risen.

  ‘Who brought you the news?’ I asked the young sergeant.

  ‘A messenger sent by the captain of the castle guard. He said the prisoner had been poisoned and seemed like to die, and you were asked for at once. I thought it best to come myself as we must cross the city. The constables would stop you otherwise.’

  ‘Thank you.’ By the light of his lamp I could see a worried expression on Leacon’s boyish face. ‘I put you to much trouble, I fear.’

  ‘I was called to Sir William yesterday, asked for the details of your arrival at St Mary’s with that box. He questioned me closely.’ He hesitated, looking at the bruise on my head. ‘He told me you were attacked. The guards at St Mary’s have been warned to be triply attentive. The King arrives tomorrow.’

  The castle tower reared up on its hill, outlined against a sky which was just beginning to lighten. We hurried on to where torches burned brightly on the drawbridge; we were expected and quickly gained admittance. I thanked the sergeant and told him to go back to St Mary’s. Barak watched him return across the drawbridge.

  ‘He must think trouble surrounds us everywhere we go.’