The Flame Eater

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  His climax seemed leisurely, no longer pushing but pulsing within, holding her tight and still, a heartbeat of sorts but so strong that she cried out, making him smile.

  It was afterwards, lying close and tired on the bed, that he said, “Each time, each touch brings you closer, little one. Less timid. I like it when you show you want me.”

  She spoke with her eyes shut, snuggling to the warmth of his body. “You want an adventuress.”

  “I think,” he murmured, “I shall become domesticated instead. A creature of comfort and complacent arrogance. I shall keep my passion only for my wife’s bedchamber.”

  She didn’t believe him.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  No longer the gloriously meticulous aristocrat, no velvet, no damask and no fine dyed silk, Nicholas strode into the great hall of the Chatwyn house in the Strand, and regarded his wife.

  “I’ve had word,” he said. He wore laddered black hose with a small hole at the knee, a loose belted broadcloth tunic in drab blue, and an unbleached shirt below. These were the clothes he had long worn when travelling on the king’s orders when requiring discretion and anonymity.

  Emeline stared back. “What words? Who from? About what?”

  “That might take longer to answer than you’d suppose,” Nicholas said, pulling up a chair and stretching out his legs and the ill-fitting hose. “Some old fellow unknown to any of us loped into the stable block this morning and informed Rob that a Sir Berendon Baker was hoping to speak with me later today.” Nicholas was smiling. “Interesting, don’t you think?”

  Since she found it exceptionally uninteresting, Emeline said, “Really? And who is he?”

  Still smiling, Nicholas shook his head. “I know nobody by that name. But Adrian’s home sits square in Berendon Place, Nottingham. Adrian’s name is Frye, which denotes some obscure kitchen activity, as does baking. And the use of the knight’s title, which means so much to Adrian’s conceit, remains. I therefore presume it is him.”

  “So why such a mysterious message?” Having long been waiting for her mother and Avice to return from a shopping trip in the city, Emeline had spent the last half hour attempting to involve herself in some much despised needlework. Instead she had stared out of the window far more consistently than at her needle. Any discussion with her husband was a welcome distraction. She said, “For what possible reason would he give a false name? Especially if he wants to meet you anyway?”

  “There are several possibilities,” Nicholas said, the smile intact. “Either he considers me sufficiently stupid not to read the code and wants me to come galloping down, incautiously and unarmed, to meet my fate. Or he wishes to inform me that we need to speak, but without others present. All guesses, of course. Adrian is, perhaps, a little odd. I always accepted that I was. But he’s worse.”

  “Perhaps he wants to say he’s returning to his home in Berendon Place, and wants Sissy to accompany him. Baking – you know.”

  “Sissy’s never baked anything in her life.”

  “But it’s a female association perhaps – even though cooks are usually men – but at home, of course, in ordinary families – ovens and women – so he’s implying he wants Sissy to go back to Nottingham with him.”

  “So why not say so?”

  Emeline knotted her fingers. “So you think it’s a trap?”

  “This poor old dodderer who came to the stable block,” Nicholas told her, “admitted he was paid a penny to bring the message. He was evidently given the information and the payment by a thickset fellow with a northern accent.”

  “Not Adrian then.”

  “But presumably one of his men. And there’s more. I sent Rob immediately to the docks at Bilyns Gate where the message said to meet this Sir Berendon Baker. Rob saw Adrian entering a rent house backing the quay. Why there? Either he’s still involved in treachery and is meeting some spy shipping incognito from France, wishes to catch a boat himself, or he’s planning on employing the sort of cut purses who often hang around the docks these days, and he’s ready for further family retribution. There are also more innocent possibilities. Perhaps he simply wants to contact his sister and the cheapest rental he could find happened to be at the dockside. I intend finding out which it is.”

  “Adventure again?” She put down her needlework. “I thought you hoped he’d run, and stay away.”

  “I did. I do. But if he’s back I can’t ignore it.”

  She paused, then said softly, “Can I come with you?”

  He laughed. “If my wicked cousin simply wants to make sure his sister is thriving, then you’d be the ideal companion. For anything else, you’d be in the way. I can’t take the risk that you’d be at risk.”

  Emeline stood up in a hurry. “Adrian wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “Even though he probably killed your father? Murdered my brother?”

  “He might not even recognise me. I can wear old clothes, just like you. I well used to that, since my father thought that was how a modest young lady ought to dress.” She paused, then said, “And what if I promise to stay out of the way? I’ll only talk to Adrian if it’s about Sissy. And if there’s – fighting – danger – I’ll run into the nearest church and stay hidden there.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Nicholas muttered. “I’d be mad to agree. My father would hurl me from the house if he ever found out I’d permitted my wife to join me on such business. Your sister would think me a lunatic and your mother would certainly want me thrown into Newgate. Even Jerrid would frown – and that’s something he barely knows how to do. The king would probably send me off to Calais.”

  Emeline danced across and kissed his cheek. “So you mean I can come?”

  “Well,” Nicholas conceded, “I doubt Adrian plans on fighting or anything else too energetic after last time. And you could actually prove a calming influence. He’ll hardly be inspired to act the hero, and will more likely want your help with Sissy.” Nicholas grinned suddenly. “No doubt I should be shut up in Bedlam for it, but all right, you can come if you make those promises you mentioned. Any trouble, and you run straight into the nearest church. Perhaps you’d better pray for your husband’s miserable life while you’re in there.”

  “I promise.” She twirled, skirts askew, arms out, smiling broadly. “Will I do like this? Shabby enough? Or must I poke holes in my stockings and drop pottage on my apron?”

  “That hideous old gown of yours is ugly enough,” he decided. “Remind me to have any remaining item of your old clothes burned once we get back to Chatwyn Castle and a peacefully elegant life without fires or murders.” He took her hand. “But I want no cavalcade of attendants to alert whatever hole he’s hiding in, so I’m taking only David and Alan with me. Enough to protect you, my love, should there be need of it. But you’ll stay quiet and obey orders, and if anyone behaves foolishly and oversteps the boundaries of good sense, then it will be me alone as usual. Remember your promise.”

  “I’ve promised and I’ll remember. I’m not the mad adventurer in this family,” she laughed.

  He looked her over with a slow smile. “I’m not so sure,” he said.

  A light sunshine turned the drizzle into a melted butter mist. The horses shook golden spangles from their manes. Over the small stench of the Fleet, fleet no longer, and through the busy Ludgate, four tired mounts and four slumped riders were heading east. No one observed such travellers of little note.

  Where the roads were paved, the cobbles seemed glazed, their little wet stones sitting high between the trickling puddles, and the horses’ hooves clattered with a damp thud and a spray of rain drops. Where the unpaved lanes lay deep in shade, the ground gradually turned to mud. Where they rode beneath the overhang of the houses’ upper storeys, so the drip, drip of falling water seeped down the travellers’ necks, then spilling over the waxed surface of their rain proofed capes into little rivulets dribbling from every stirrup. The houses leaned in, sharing their shadows, worn oak trusses now soaked, tired beams and cracked doorways
leaking. But the day remained warm and the tall brick chimneys belched no smoke nor dancing cinders flying skywards.

  The travellers passed the steeple of St. Magnus, the sunshine turning the church windows into haloed brilliance. Nicholas nodded and spoke quietly to his wife. “This will be the nearest church, should you need it. We’re nearly at Bilyns Gate.”

  She whispered back, keeping her head down. “But surely Adrian won’t be standing at the docks just waiting for us?”

  “That,” grinned Nicolas, “depends on whether this is simply an innocent desire to meet with me, or a complicated trap. He may not wait at all, since I sent no message in return to his invitation.”

  “Or there’ll be some respectable gentleman tapping his foot impatiently – the real Sir Berendon Baker.”

  “In which case,” Nicholas nodded, “I shall tip the wretch into the Thames for having dragged me out in the rain for no reason whatsoever.”

  It was the great blanketing shadow of the Tower beyond the loading bays that blocked out the sunshine and turned the river cold. Ships too tall to pass beneath the Bridge, stopped before it, and at Bilyns Gate three cargo ships, high masted carvels, were tight roped to the quay. The two wooden cranes cranked, unloading crates and bales. A swarm of traders pushed forwards, shouting, waving, each man concerned for his business and the cargo he had come to inspect. Their carts waited and the sumpters, heads patiently bowed, flicked their tails in the drizzle.

  There was no immediate sign of Adrian, nor of his henchmen.

  The noise hemmed in the dockside, one wall of busy warehouses behind, ropes thrown, streaming seawater, caught, and tied. Calls from deck to shore, calls from crane drivers to those carters waiting, calls from customs officials to ships’ captains and from captains to wherrymen. The smells, sweet to some, were of brine and ocean weed caught on barnacles, cargos of fresh fish, dyed and treated hides and barrels of wine. The customs’ wherry dodged the bow waves, heading out to those cogs waiting in line, a queue of three mid river, more ships hoping for space alongside the bay once their cargo had been cleared, their ballast dumped, their dues paid, and bribes carefully passed below deck.

  Nicholas raised his voice over the bump and thud of one wooden hull to another and the complaints of those fearing damage to their gunwales. The crack of wet sail to mast, quickly lowered, the whine of sudden wind in the halyards and the thump of the boom. “The Cock Inn first,” Nicholas called. “Steaming hippocras, and a dry place to wait without being too quickly seen.”

  The small alehouse was set back, a busy place for traders celebrating deals and for others waiting for ships overdue. Leaving their horses in the small stable barn at the back, Nicholas edged through and found a tiny table in an annexe, half private, seated his wife on the low bench and pulled up a stool for himself. The noise was larger than the space. Alan leaned back, elbow to the wall. David strolled off to order light ale, strong beer, and hippocras, if they had any, for the lady.

  It was some time later when they realised that David had not returned. Emeline and Nicholas had been discussing their return to Chatwyn Castle. Not Adrian, not Henry Tudor, not the possible threat to national security, nor even the problem of what to do with Sysabel. It was dreams of an orderly future that seemed attractive now. “Whatever happens,” Nicholas said, “and whatever my wretched cousin decides to do, I’ll not stay much longer in Westminster. The king’s in Coventry anyway, before heading up to Nottingham Castle.”

  Emeline was breathing in the sweat and stale beer from an alehouse overflowing around them. “Will we be able to move into the Keep again then, and will you have your own bedchamber back, Nicholas?”

  “Not even fire can turn my childhood home to ruin.” He shook his head, smiling again. “It’s stood for five hundred years through war and pestilence and storm, protecting our family as well as it might. My forefathers and their forefathers have always lived there. Continuity, a sense of the land and the people, farming and hunting. Home. The castle will protect you too, and you’ll be the mistress of it all.”

  She watched the animation sparkle in his eyes. “Yet so many of your memories there are – sad.”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t enter the nursery tower for years afterwards –. But it’s not just memories. There’s a sense of belonging. And it’s more now. The inheritance for our sons.”

  “All ten of them?”

  He hadn’t heard her. “The castle gleams like polished brass under the summer sun. The battlements rise stark against a blue sky, the gatehouse walls drop sheer to the moat, golden stone reflected in the water, ripples as the swans dip, tails up, fishing. The calling of the frogs in the long evenings, the cries of the kestrels in the mornings. The banners fluttering like little wings in the breezes, the glass mullions echoing the dawn blinking dewy over the hills, the creak of those huge iron hinges as the outer doors open, welcoming me home.”

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered, “you loved it that much. It must hurt, then, to remember the fire and the ruin.”

  But at that moment, interrupting very quietly, Alan said, “My lord, ‘tis some time, I reckon. Too long. Is Witton brewing the ale himself, then?”

  Nicholas stood at once, his stool scraping back. “Watch the lady. Whatever happens, Alan, stay with her. If it’s dangerous, take her to St. Magnus and then join me.”

  “Are you armed, my lord?” Nicholas wore no sword and no obvious weapon.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Nicholas said, and strode out into the larger chamber. Within a breath, he had gone.

  Emeline stared at Alan Venter. “I’m all right,” she said quickly. “You should follow his lordship.”

  Alan shook his head. “Not yet, my lady. I’ll obey orders as always.”

  Nicholas did not waste time searching the crowded alehouse. David would not have stood patiently waiting to catch the landlord’s eye nor a waiter’s attention. Outside the drizzle had turned to a fine veil of scattered silver for the sun had dulled, breaking through the clouds only in fragments. Those glimpses steamed the damp shoulders of his cape. Nicholas skirted the edges of the Bilyns Gate harbour where the warehouses towered and the alleys between lay in constant shadow. He crossed to the steps leading down to the water where the wherries bumped, unloading travellers, collecting those aiming for the Southwark side, and taking those both buying and selling upriver.

  A thickset man was standing at the foot of the steps, looking across at a fishing cog rolling in from the estuary and the Narrow Sea beyond. Nicholas recognised the man’s back, his hunched belligerence and his dark red cape over solid soled boots.

  Nicholas stood above on the quayside, looking down. He called, “Not planning on buying fresh fish for your supper I’d warrant, Mister Prophet.” The man turned in a hurry, scowling up. Nicholas nodded, smiling. “Awaiting the arrival of some messenger from France, I presume? Or perhaps even scouting out a vessel suitable to carry your master into Henry Tudor’s welcoming embrace?”

  “My lord?” The man shifted uncomfortably, half an eye up to the dockside, the other across to the fishing cog.

  “And your master’s friend, Sir Berendon,” asked Nicholas, “where might I find him?”

  Francis Prophet flushed beneath his hood. “Not for me to say, my lord. Nor have I heard of any such gentleman. I’m here – to meet someone, sir, and must ask you to excuse me. I’m on business which cannot wait.”

  “Codfish?” Nicholas smiled, staying where he was. “Sole? Or simply herrings, Mister Prophet? Or perhaps – just perhaps – a cargo of secret information?”

  Hearing footsteps behind him, Nicholas expected the voice. “Can’t leave well alone, even now, cousin?” Adrian demanded. “What brings you here, of all places?”

  Nicholas turned slowly, “Why, you, my dear, who else? I received your message, after all. Was it not intended to bring me here?”

  There were rain drops on the end of Adrian’s feathers, his hat a little askew. “That message was for Sysabel, not for
you, you fool,” Adrian objected. “I hardly expected it to reach you, nor for you to understand it if it did. Do you always intercept my sister’s messages?”

  “Ah, sad inefficiency, cousin dear,” Nicholas sighed. “You sent some ancient buffoon who passed your name, ineptly disguised, to ‘his lordship’. Indeed, it should have been my father who received your fascinating news, but since it was my own man who spoke to your jester, it was I alone who was then told. If your message was meant for your sister only, then it was poorly phrased and poorly executed. Next time send a messenger young enough to remember your words and direction. A sad waste of a penny, I imagine.”

  Adrian flushed deeper. “Does Sissy know of this?”

  “She does not. And was not, in any manner, informed. She sits patiently in the house on the Strand, watched over by a parcel of female servants, hoping, I imagine, for you to climb through the window and rescue her. Your reputation for heroic rescues has, of course, improved over recent weeks.” Nicholas continued to smile. “Along with your reputation for treason, of course, which has rather spoiled the final affect.”

  A young man had disembarked from the bobbing cog, and had climbed down into one of the small wherries. He was being brought to shore. Francis Prophet moved aside, ready for the passenger to disembark. Adrian said, “Well, Nicholas, since you’re here, wanted or otherwise, then it’s the ideal time for us to talk without anger or misunderstanding. I intend taking my sister back home, and no doubt you’ll be pleased to pass her back into my care.”

  “Your attempts to distract me from the new arrival are a little too obvious, Adrian,” Nicholas smiled. “If you wish to escort Sissy back to Nottingham, then I suggest you come to the house to collect her, as would be both normal and proper. I’ve not abducted the girl and naturally she’s free to go. In the meantime, I’m perfectly well aware that you’re about to greet someone you clearly don’t want me to identify.” He shook his head. “And before even that, I wish to know exactly where my squire is. David Witton. You know him. Where is he?”