Rob, however, was not offended. “My tenement’s bin called worse afore now,” he said. “But we seen his lordship proper looked after when he come there sick as a castrated cockerel with the pestilence.”
Leaving the confines of Southwark the next morning as the dawn hesitated behind the black silhouetted treetops, a slow lime wash of creamy pastels splashed with gold, the small party headed across open scrub and fields to the winding lanes, the little chilly streams and the stretching haze of southern England. Skirting townships, they took the narrower paths then left the roads completely and took the horses through farmland onto paths barely scratched in the earth and under the fluttering shade of the woodlands. Eventually it was a bluster of coastal wind that brought them the perfumes of stinging brine and the tang of the sea. A meadow lark was singing, but in the distance were the high wild calls of the gulls.
Nicholas smiled. “We are nearly there. Do we sleep here in the open tonight, and keep watch? The grass is dry and the stench of the fields is behind us.” He dismounted, pulling out a well wrapped parcel from his saddle bags. The previous night’s wayside inn had supplied a simple supper packed for the morrow, and now they sat under the trees to eat.
“I’ve no objection to a well fertilised field,” Jerrid said, clamping a wedge of cold bacon between two slabs of dark bread. “Manure in, manure out. And it’s manure we’re chasing, far as I can tell.”
“I doubt the good marquess would be pleased to hear your description of him, uncle.” Nicholas grinned, drinking his wine straight from the leather sack. “Urswick, on the other hand, can presumably be described no other way.”
“A turd amongst turds,” nodded Jerrid. “How pleased I’ll be to meet him again.”
“If we manage to intercept him,” David said. “Remembering he’s evaded us more than once before.”
Nicholas, his uncle and David Witton lounged, talking softly together as the sun sank low. “Christopher Urswick, a good Lancastrian chaplain, and loyal to his lord and that lord’s mother,” Nicholas sighed. “Yes, I’ve met him before. He loathes me, of course.”
“Fears you.”
Nicholas smiled back at his uncle. “Perhaps. Since his loyalties make him our enemy.”
“Because his loyalties lie with that young fool Henry Tudor. Or more particularly to his lady mother who inspires such loyalty. She’s indomitable. Her servants adore her.”
“Loyalties are never simple,” murmured Nicholas.
David looked up suddenly and frowned. “Loyalty is never so complicated, my lord, being my lifelong cape and my chosen armour. Loyalty first to God, then to the anointed king, and then to my master. I know where my loyalties lie, and I sleep well because of it.”
“Which is why I call you friend,” Nicholas smiled. “But remember this, if Urswick has the sense I think he has, that wretched letter he carried will already have been passed on to the messenger entrusted to deliver it in the north. So we are looking for strangers, furtive or belligerent, and not the good chaplain himself.”
A little apart, Rob and Harry leaned against the ant infested bark behind them. The conversation they now heard was the first explanation they had been given of where they were going, and why. Rob looked up and said, “This be for our ears too, is it m’lord? There’s folks to be killed or captured prisoner?”
“Which is precisely what you’re here for,” Nicholas said. “Since I have no clear idea of their numbers. Crossing in secret from France, they’ll not be many. But once here, we could be looking for one man, or ten.”
“No matter the numbers, m’lord,” grinned Harry. “If that’s the job, then I’m ready. My line, you might say.”
Nicholas shook his head. “It’s the king’s business we’re on, and no rout. If there’s a fight, I want no wanton slaughter.”
Jerrid spoke softly, as though reciting old stories. “Urswick’s no fool, and nor is the woman who rules him. We’re speaking of a man originally sent to Flanders with money and secret messages from Tudor’s mother, who evaded all our royal guards, spies and envoys, and got himself right where he wished and into the hands of John Morton, the hypocrite of Ely. Urswick came backwards and forwards a few times it seems, and always without us knowing until afterwards. Then he was the wretch who somehow warned Tudor when Brittany’s duke was about to take him under house arrest. Morton sent out the alert, Urswick carried the news, and Tudor got away to France. That Tudor’s now in French favour with enough plots up his arse to turn turds into custard, is largely thanks to Mister Urswick.”
“So it’s this Urswick you’re after?” Harry rubbed his nose. “Ain’t never heard of him. And this Tudor – not rightly heard of him neither.”
“Once of no account whatsoever,” Nicholas answered, “now, with French backing, he is fast becoming a dangerous man.”
“But it’s the mother supplied the ambition,” added Jerrid.
“Urswick, on the other hand,” Nicholas continued, “is simply a messenger, who will pass his responsibility onto another messenger. We have reliable information that he’s bringing with him a letter from Henry Tudor addressed to the Earl of Northumberland. This is, somewhat incongruously, a request from Tudor to marry with one of the Herbert girls, who are the earl’s sisters-in-law.”
“We’re here just to stop a bloody wedding?” demanded Rob, aggrieved.
“A little more than that.” Nicholas smiled as he helped himself to bread and cheese. “His highness finds it highly suspicious that an exile and enemy feels it both safe and advantageous to himself to approach one of England’s senior nobility on a private matter such as this. Seemingly he expects Northumberland to back him in making a good marriage, in spite of having neither home nor title to offer a bride. Certainly Urswick would be an interesting guest should we manage to intercept and take him. But it’s just how friendly and involved the Earl of Northumberland has become with Henry Tudor that is of far greater importance.”
“Northumberland. I’ve heard of him.” Harry was pleased.
Wolt, sitting alone, had heard of none of them, but smiled, assured of companionship. “Loyalty,” he mumbled to himself. “Traitors. Kings. Grand lords and foreign countries. Me Ma’d be proud, I reckon.”
The sun was setting behind the trees with a smudge of pink beyond the clouds, and a sudden streak of vermillion. The horses were loosely tethered and grazing as each man kicked out a place to lay his saddle blanket and lie warm wrapped in cloak and shaded by leaf. But they still talked as twilight hooded the treetops and the darkness folded them into greater secrecy.
Nicholas lay on his back, staring up into the first hint of star flicker. He clasped his hands behind his head, murmuring into the growing darkness. “Then there is a different matter entirely, involving someone else you have all surely heard of,” he said. “The Marquess of Dorset is being held hostage in France after having once attempted escape. It’s his own damn fault he’s there in the first place, but some months ago his mother recalled him, having finally made peace with King Richard.”
Even Wolt had heard of the king. Pleasantly stuffed with bread, cheese, bacon and light ale, he put his thumb in his mouth and closed his eyes.
The gentle hum of voices reverberated as the night deepened. The wind was shuffling in the trees. “The wind murmurs and moans along the shore,” Jerrid said, curling tight beneath his thin blanket and thicker cloak. “But tomorrow may bring danger. Or it will bring a small boat and Dorset the passenger, if he and we are lucky.”
Harry thought a moment. “Dorset’s mother was the queen,” he decided.
“Until her marriage was discovered bigamous.”
“When she flounced into sanctuary.”
“But,” Nicholas said, “last year the lady was told something in secret concerning her younger sons, the king’s sons declared illegitimate but who then disappeared. Some thought them dead.”
Jerrid laughed, half smothered within his cloak. “When their mother was told differently, she immediately tri
ed to persuade her various relatives to leave the ignominious Tudor camp and return to King Richard’s court. Dorset obediently attempted exactly that, but was betrayed, captured on the French borders and taken back into French custody. Another of Urswick’s fingers in the pies of conspiracy.”
Rob was interested. “And this so called differently, what the lady were told, m’lord? And what would it be, that secret, then?”
“That secret remains a secret, my friend, and I have no intentions of telling you about it,” Nicholas answered softly. “It is a matter at present too dangerous, and the lives of others would be at much risk. Eventually it will all become known, though not yet. But now we have word that Dorset will make another attempt to escape back to England. And so we are here for two men. One is a tentative friend, the other a committed enemy.”
“Dorset was an enemy but now he ain’t,” muttered Rob from the shadows beside his brother. “This bugger Urswick weren’t no enemy but now he is.”
“We’ll have to try not to kill the wrong one, then,” grinned Harry.
Jerrid laughed. “Changing sides according to one’s temporary benefit, one’s temper, one’s sudden hopes or sudden affronts, well that’s the English way it seems. There’s half the English nobility have made their fortunes and their titles by changing sides every few years. Loyalty? That can change too, with a little bribery or a few threats, real or imagined.”
By the following morning, a thick fog had rolled in from the sea. The little village of Lympne was swathed in low cloud and even the church steeple could not find its way to heaven. No welcome for men choosing to sleep out of doors, it was therefore within the tiny local tavern’s half-timbered attic that Nicholas slept that night, disturbed by fractious dreams and his companions’ snoring. So it was to a moonless and clammy mist that he woke dry mouthed, and set off downstairs to find a jug of ale and clear his head.
It was simply luck. But luck can rule the world.
Four men were leaving the stables, leading their mounts and slipping out under cover of night in a fog that obscured the stars. Sheltered by the doorway, Nicholas watched, suspicious. Only one voice, blurred by distance and caution, muttered, “We’ve an hour, no more, before the tide changes. So move yourselves or we’ll miss him.”
Within minutes Nicholas shook his uncle awake. “I must remember to thank my wife,” he said, pulling on his cape, gloves and baldric. “She disturbed my dreams and sent me downstairs at the perfect moment to hear what I believe is the answer we’ve been waiting for. Up, all of you. We’ve an appointment on the coast, and very little time.”
“Our hopeful Marquess arriving after all?”
Nicholas shook his head. “No. If Dorset arrives at all, then once on English soil there’s no one meeting him except ourselves. What I overheard were four furtive ruffians expecting a secret arrival under cover of dark. It’s Urswick I hope to meet now.”
Half a mile beyond the cottages and lanes, Nicholas called halt on the scrubby cliff edge before trudging the downward path to the gravel banks below. The party had dismounted, ready to lead their horses, careful of rock fall or the slip of mud beneath tired hooves. And more insidious now; the risk of missing a boat out at sea, unseen in the gloom of rolling damp.
But then over the sounds of the sea Nicholas heard at once the breathing and the fumble of waiting men. He turned, pivoting, calling to alert his companions, his long knife immediately in his hand well before the first man reached him. They came out of the mist, a sudden dash from the bush tangled undergrowth. Three men, three knives, three pairs of muscled arms, boots kicking and the tearing of fustian on brambles. But they were three men outnumbered, since Nicholas led a group of five, not counting, as he did not count, the boy Wolt who was quickly out of sight beneath the trees.
The attackers used ambush and surprise. Forced backwards with a knife thrust into his eyes, stumbling, rebounding, Nicholas smashed the blade away with his own. His arm bent back by a man less tall but twice as wide, Nicholas gave ground, immediately grasping the second knife hidden within his belt, jabbing it to the back of his assailant’s neck. The man lurched, staggering as the knife ripped down and along his shoulder blade. Then David took him from behind.
Two more ran at Jerrid, Rob and Harry. Nicholas yelled, “It’s a diversion. Finish them – quick.”
Jerrid, laughing, yelled, “No more scars please, Nick m’boy. I’ll slaughter this bastard first, then come help with yours.”
Nicholas swerved, one leg forwards to dislodge and trip, feet dancing, slipping over the grassy hollows, yelling back, “I’ve no need of you. See to your own.”
The clash of steel on steel, and Harry shouting, “Filthy scut, dare cut my brother and I’ll shove your scrotum up your arse,” Then, “Come on, Rob. Can’t we throw the bugger off the cliffs?”
Only moments later Nicholas and Jerrid, panting hard, looked down at the two sprawled and bloody corpses. The third, although wounded, had finally sliced at Jerrid’s thigh, wrong footed him, then thrown down his knife and run. Harry had started to follow, then saw his brother injured and hurried back.
“This was a diversion.” Nicholas wiped his knife on one of the fallen men’s backs. “We were five strong men, young, and dressed much as these wretches were themselves. Not worth robbing nor the risk of three against five. So! Why attack?”
“But you told me four men left the tavern stables for the coast.” Jerrid pulled out his kerchief and roughly staunched the bleeding from his thigh. “So a diversion, but a strange one.”
Nicholas kicked over the body of the dead man at his feet, rolling him face up. He proceeded to rummage through the man’s clothes within the rough tunic, shirt and boots, feeling for packages, but found nothing hidden. Then he nodded to Harry. “Give a good look to the other,” he said. “Perhaps I’ve no cause for suspicion, but I’m suspicious all the same. Now I regret not having chased down the wretch that fled.”
“If these were Urswick’s men,” said Jerrid, “they’d have avoided us, not purposefully drawn our attention.”
Nicholas shook his head. “No. They knew exactly who we were, and these three risked their lives, planning to hold us up while the fourth man galloped away either to meet the boat, or already with Urswick’s letter safe inside his shirt.” He marched over to where Wolt shivered in the shadows, dutifully clutching the tethers of the horses. Nicholas took his horse’s reins, leading it back to where Jerrid still sprawled on the grass. “You can’t ride yet, uncle, but I can. David, come with me. I know the direction, and even in this murk I can follow a speeding horse and hear it too.”
“And what if Urswick’s boat hasn’t anchored yet?”
“Keep a watch on the cliff top until I get back.” Nicholas swung his leg to the stirrup and mounted. “Urswick would recognise me, so if the boat comes while I’m away, you’re better without me.” He looked down at his uncle. “That’s a nasty gash on your leg, sir, and needs cauterizing.”
“It needs nothing of the kind,” snorted Jerrid. No more than a scratch. You’ll have no rival for your own scars, my boy. Get off, then, and follow your suspicions. Harry, Rob and I will stay and watch the coast.”
His horse was not bred for speed, but it was strong and dogged over rough terrain. Nicholas knew exactly the path a man would take for the north, and eventually Northumberland. And he knew where to cut across the fields, and head the other man off. Within moments he had outpaced David, and was gone from both sight and sound.
Chapter Thirty-Four
While waiting for Avice and Martha to accompany them into London, Emeline walked with Sysabel, silently remembering another rendezvous in the same place, love making in the rain, and willow shaded passion. They skirted the herb plot with its perfumes of sweet thyme, and followed the clipped hedges down to the placid swell of the Thames. No pier stood close to the house, and no wherries crossed at that point, so no splash of busy oars interrupted them. Only a swan, dipping, fishing and resurfacing caused eddies amongs
t the little bubbles of escaping fish. The brown waters were patterned with floating debris but this was too far upriver for the raker’s tipped deposits, or the wail of hunting gulls. Emeline gazed out to the far bank.
“I’m sorry we upset you yesterday, Sissy, talking of Adrian that way,” sighed Emeline. “It must be particularly hard for you to talk about, since I imagine you miss Peter very much.”
Sysabel stared down at her toes. “I do,” she said. “It’s kind of you – most understanding – even though you must feel the same about him yourself.”
“Although Papa’s death was hurtful, I can’t claim to miss him.” Emeline shook her head. “Peter’s death was equally evil of course, but I never really knew him well.”
“You did,” blinked Sysabel. She looked up but paused, staring at her companion. “That is, forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude. But being affianced –”
“We never were.” Emeline began walking slowly back towards the house. “The negotiations were never finalised. Of course, I thought him handsome and charming, but we met only a few times. Perhaps I was a little infatuated, but that was only a juvenile dream. Now I’m married to a man I love.”
“I see.” Sysabel sniffed. “So you think my dreams are juvenile.”
With a deep breath, “No, Sissy dear, I understand from Avice that you went far beyond the juvenile. Should I not mention it? But we are all friends together, and I would never criticise. Nor will I ever tell my mother or your aunt.”
The tears which Sysabel had been resisting now overflowed. “As long as you say nothing,” she whispered, “perhaps it’s a relief. And I know about you too, because Peter told me, so you’ve no need to try and hide it from me. I shall tell no one of course, not even Avice if you prefer. But Peter explained everything. Was that disloyal of him? But you see, we were so very much in love. He was resisting his father’s attempts to make him marry you. He always promised to marry me, and had already written to the Vatican for a dispensation, since we are cousins.” She gulped. “When he died – it was the end of my world.”
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