I came into Westminster from the west and posted my horse well up Orchard Street, going the rest of the way on foot at a jog, dodging around the crowds moving to the palace yard. The announcement of the papal delegation had stirred Westminster, London, even Southwark, hundreds of citizens boating up and walking over for a glimpse of the foreign officials. The crowd thickened as I neared the palace, then slowed as dozens crammed through the last feet of the lane.
The wide expanse between the palace yard and the abbey was a churning sea, a great plain of bobbing heads, lifted caps, shouts and cheers. The whole area had been cleared of hucksters and peddlers, all but a few of the fires extinguished. It appeared that the king and the cardinal had not yet left the palace, where a private service was being held in the St Stephen’s upper chapel, though judging from the anticipation in the air the procession would begin at any moment.
The chancellor would be in his chambers off the hall. He avoided processions like the pestilence. My work, he would always say, is best done out of view, a sentiment I shared.
Two doors, then the lesser hall and the chancellor’s rooms. My face must have registered my fear, for when he saw it, Sir Michael de la Pole, usually cool, stood at once. With him was Edward More, his secretary and fixer, a man I had dealt with many times. Broad-chested, commanding, with a head and beard of shining white, More had a reputation for ruthless partisanship and calm under pressure. ‘What?’ the chancellor demanded.
‘It’s Hawkwood,’ I said breathlessly, my words barely a wheeze. ‘He has a man, in the papal delegation.’
‘How do you know this, Gower?’
‘There’s no time to explain, my lord.’ A deep breath, holding my side. ‘But believe me, my information is good.’
‘Who is he, Gower?’ More asked.
‘We’ll know him when we see him, I suspect. A trained assassin. Hawkwood wouldn’t take any chances with a middling knife. One of the cardinal’s guards, would be my guess.’
The chancellor went to a position by the outer door of his chambers, ducking his head to look out to the palace yard. ‘We can’t stop the procession. They just left the palace. We’re too late.’
‘Then we catch them,’ said More, belting on his short sword. ‘Even if it takes us to the abbey altar, we catch them.’
‘Very well,’ said the chancellor, arming himself as well. I followed them out of his chambers and across the hall, which was nearly empty as the procession got going from the palace. De la Pole summoned a clutch of pursuivants idling on the west porch, and we all sped together from the hall toward the royal procession, now making its slow way through the palace yard to meet the crowd still pouring in through the abbey gates, overwhelming the guards at the gatehouse.
As I saw immediately, the king and cardinal were on foot rather than mounted, as they would have been on the longer processions from the Tower, and it was nearly impossible to see them over the masses between their position and ours. The crowd was at least twenty ranks thick, all elbows and indignation as everyone fought for position. With the chancellor, Edward More, and the pursuivants we were ten men strong, though against so many moving hundreds we could hardly hope to force our way through. The noise was deafening, too, and our shouts could not be heard over the din. The pursuivants headed straight into the crowd, angling toward the king’s position. I bobbed along behind the outermost rank of spectators, taking short leaps into the air, feeling useless, attempting to get a glimpse of the principals and those clustered around them.
I stopped for a moment and took in the scene from afar, imagining myself atop the Wardrobe Tower at the far corner of the yard, or the bell tower opposite, and picturing the next few minutes in my mind. I reasoned that the attack, when it came, would happen before the abbey’s west entrance, where the procession would bottleneck to move through the great doors. If I could get well ahead of the principals I would have a better angle on any potential attacker, though it wasn’t clear to me what I could do about it. I pushed my way toward the abbey and gave two boys a shilling apiece to give up their spot on a column base.
I was now elevated two feet above the yard, but that was enough. Pockets of commotion everywhere, hard to tell what represented danger and what did not. I saw More. He was leading the chancellor and the small wedge of pursuivants toward the rearmost line of the procession. His focus was on the cardinal’s guards, a rank of ten Italian soldiers, dressed for the occasion in livery and flounce, with banners and flags held above as they marched. The guard had accompanied the prelate all the way from Rome. Despite the procession’s gaudiness these were seasoned, well-armed men. Any one of them would be capable of assassinating the king without a thought.
Yet even the closest of them was nearly forty feet from Richard. It would take a great effort to clear the distance, especially with the royal rearguard positioned where they were. For the first time since leaving Bromley I felt a twinge of doubt.
My gaze moved forward, along the intermediate ranks between the cardinal’s guard and the principals. Most of them were clergy, separated by order and office. In the rear walked monks of the abbey, a dozen of them in two close ranks. Next came the friars, six Franciscans and a lone Dominican, the seven of them forming a single rank. Before the friars marched five bishops: Wykeham, Braybrooke, William Courtenay the Archbishop of Canterbury, and two Italians, all of them grand with their caps and mitres in various bright hues.
In front of them, forming one rank behind Richard and the cardinal, walked the king’s guard. Twelve hardened knights, a squat rectangle around the royal person and the papal delegate. Their heads swivelled at every step, looking for threats. My eyes swept back again, over the lines of clerics, back to the cardinal’s guard, then forward once more, looking for something, anything that might indicate—
There. A face, standing out against the others. A friar. One of the Italian Franciscans – no, the Dominican, his black robe stark against the grey favoured by the other order. The balance of the clerics – canons, monks, friars, and bishops alike – had pious, beatific looks on their faces, all pretending not to be enjoying themselves as the citizens of Westminster and London showered the company with spring flowers and words of praise.
The Dominican was different. His features hard, his frame lean, his stance taut as he walked, coiled, ready to spring. His eyes two slits of malice, measuring distances, reckoning angles. The ripple of his robes, loosely cinctured, obscured his hands, which seemed at the moment to be tucked behind him as he walked.
The procession was nearing the abbey door. The frontmost rank of guards would soon start to slow. I looked for More and the chancellor. The pursuivants were still too far away. I looked back at the friar. He was making his move. A flash of steel, and his knife was out, held against his chest, partially obscured by his hands. No one near him had noticed.
‘The friar!’ I shouted into the deafening roar, waving from my position at the column. ‘More, More! It’s the friar!’ The Dominican, oblivious of my shouted warnings, started to move, pushing gently through the row of bishops in front of him.
‘The friar!’ I shouted again. More didn’t hear me either. I might as well have been screaming into a bucket sunk in the sea. But just as I had that thought the chancellor looked up at the abbey door and saw me pointing wildly. He pulled on the sleeve of the pursuivant immediately ahead of him. They both gaped at me. On an impulse I clasped my hands together, bowed my head in mock prayer, and pointed urgently to the cluster of friars pressed against the king’s guard, which had now slowed to a near crawl. The abbot of Westminster prepared to welcome the king and cardinal at the abbey door, less than twenty feet in front of King Richard.
I mock-prayed again, pulled on an imaginary hood. The chancellor’s eyes widened. He understood. A friar, I saw him mouth to the nearest pursuivants.
With a surge of forgotten strength the aged Lord Chancellor pushed ahead, taking Edward More and two pursuivants with him. They were fifteen feet from the friar, twelve, eight.
Then, with a snake-like precision, the Dominican, sensing movement behind him, leapt forward, slashing at the necks of the king’s guard, intent on his target. But one of the guards had heard More’s and the chancellor’s shouts. His sword was out. It slashed at the friar in a protective arc. The friar ducked, and it took another swipe to halt his lethal progress toward the king. Two of the chancellor’s pursuivants had finally reached the spot. There was a brief but furious melee, arms and swords and knives flying about.
It ended quickly. By the time the king and the cardinal bothered to glance over their shoulders the threat had been neutralized, the friar sliced to a bleeding mess. The principals exchanged a few words with the abbot, received the blessings, and pressed forward through the doors, the seemingly minor nuisance behind them. Only the bishops looked somewhat flustered. Braybrooke, two ranks behind the king, gave me a dark look, which I returned with a low bow and a hidden smile.
The crowd surged against the abbey’s west façade, all craning for a last glimpse of the king. The pursuivants dragged the friar against the tide of the commons, and few bothered to glance at them. Soon they had him hoisted on their shoulders, a trail of blood spattering the pavers in their wake. Walking behind the chancellor, Edward More turned to look back at me from the abbey’s northwest corner. He gave me a small nod. The pursuivants, with the dying assassin, disappeared. More followed them.
Two groats to the abbey guard got me into the nave, where I watched the procession conclude before the altar. All was calm, disconcertingly normal after the madness outside. St Peter’s nave glistened, gem-like, the clerestory windows casting mottled sun on a large crowd of nobles and clerics of all orders finding their places. The grand service began, an elaborate introit in five voices echoing to the vaults.
Not feeling prayerful I decided not to stay for Mass, angling instead up the nave and into the south transept along the narrow passage past the chapterhouse. There I paused for a moment before a painting of St Thomas I had always loved. Not St Thomas Becket, nor St Thomas Aquinas the philosopher, but St Thomas the Apostle. The great doubter, his unbelief perpetually etched in his face at that precise moment before he touches Jesus’s side: his gaze cast down, his finger bent over his savior’s open wound. This Thomas, I think, has always been my favourite occupant of the canon of saints. The patron saint of doubt and suspicion, of verifiable information, in whatever form it comes.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Priory of St Leonard’s Bromley
‘Prioress Isabel has asked me to remain at St Leonard’s,’ Millicent Fonteyn said to Eleanor Rykener. The sky was clear that afternoon, awash in a blue deeper than any in Millicent’s memory. They sat in the small herb garden off the almonry, a promise of summer in the piney waft of rosemary from behind the bench. ‘Says she’ll take me in again as a laysister.’
Eleanor had begged a slab of tar from a ditcher along the walls. She had her shoe off, patching the leather. ‘Will you stay, do you suppose?’
Millicent nodded. ‘Not a sole doubt in my mind. Though maybe one small regret.’
‘What’s that?’ Eleanor rubbed dirt over the tar, smoothing the patch with her palm.
Millicent smiled, thinking of John Gower. Widowed, tall, rich. ‘Can I live my life without the touch of another man?’
Eleanor snorted. ‘I’m touched by another man six, seven times a day. Can’t say it’s much to miss.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Millicent with a sigh. ‘Though I’ll miss my figs.’
‘No figs at St Leonard’s?’
‘No figs, no money, no men.’
Eleanor slipped her shoe on. ‘Nothing wrong with going figless, Millicent. Nor penniless, nor even cockless.’
‘Millicent the Cockless,’ she mused. ‘I like it. And as Agnes used to goad me, I’ve always wanted a title.’
‘Agnes,’ said Eleanor wistfully.
Millicent regarded Eleanor Rykener with a stab of shame. Millicent had spent just a few years in her mother’s service at the Bishop before seizing the opportunity to flee to St Leonard’s and a new life. Eleanor Rykener had lived nearly ten years now on her stomach, enduring the gropes of monks, squires, and franklins, and all without a trace of the bitter self-pity that Millicent spoke like a second tongue.
She thought of the saints, that litany of suffering women whose works and lives the nuns of St Leonard’s would intone in their offices. Of St Margaret, swallowed by the dragon, then standing triumphantly on its back. Of St Cecilia, her virtue threatened by a Roman despot, suffering three sword-strokes to her neck. Of the Blessed Maudlyn herself, lifted by Jesu from the bowels of the swyve. And here was Eleanor Rykener, enduring more trials of the flesh than all these sainted women put together. Yet no one would think to write Eleanor’s life for an Austin canon to include in the legendum. No one would compose St Edgar Rykener a hymn, nor sing a collect in praise of St Eleanor the Swerver.
She had a sudden thought. ‘Would you take up other work, do you suppose, if the opportunity came?’
Eleanor waved away a fly. Shrugged. ‘Seems God suited me for swyving. There’s not another line of work would let me be true to my mannish side, least that I can tell.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Imagine I’ll keep with it till Gerald reaches his majority. Then we’ll see.’
The next day Millicent visited the prioress in her apartments. All was arranged with a few words to Isabel.
‘Your timing is propitious, Millicent,’ the prioress told her. ‘Bromley has received a generous endowment, in the neighbourhood of twenty pounds.’
‘Twenty pounds?’ Millicent marvelled at the sum. ‘Who established this endowment, Reverend Mother?’
‘Our benefactor has asked not to be named, though I can tell you he’s a Southwark man. But the funds are not given freely.’ She said this with a trace of disapproval. ‘The endowment’s terms are quite clear. It is to be employed in perpetuity for the benefit of the maudlyns of Southwark and London, with Bromley required to come to their aid and succour whenever possible. So it won’t be difficult to budget ten shill a year for your Eleanor Rykener. Scullery work?’
Millicent nodded, delighted with the prioress’s response. ‘Or the animals, Reverend Mother. Whichever you think best.’
‘She’ll be your charge, Millicent, not mine,’ said the prioress. ‘But don’t let me catch you running a flock of whores out of the gatehouse.’ She went back to her book.
‘No, Reverend Mother,’ said Millicent with a hidden smile. She started to back out of the parlour.
‘And, Millicent?’
She looked up. ‘Yes, Reverend Mother?’
‘Will Tewes, our yeoman cook, grows old,’ said the prioress, her gaze still on the page. ‘He’s in need of a cutter, a young man good with a knife. See that one is found for him.’
FIFTY-EIGHT
San Donato a Torre
A knock at his opened door, then a boy’s voice. ‘Ser Giovanni invites you to dine with him, Master Scarlett.’
Adam Scarlett, annoyed at the interruption, turned from his desk with a frown. Not even a page at the door, but a boy from the villa’s kitchens. He sighed, set down his pen, and closed the ledger. He followed the boy from his rooms and through the labyrinth of low hedges leading to the side door.
In the hall Hawkwood was bent over the central table, concentrating on a mess of papers. Two of his dogs, hunting hounds, all nose and tongue, were curled around his feet. The closer one licked Scarlett’s hand as he sat.
A servant set a goblet of wine between them and a thick soup at Scarlett’s place. At Hawkwood’s inviting gesture he sipped contentedly until the condottiero looked up and joined him in the meal. Scarlett told him the news of the day – another letter from Carlo Visconti, a herd of poached sheep lost in transit from near Poggibonsi. Hawkwood nodded at the right places, asked a few questions; all seemed perfectly normal. Yet Scarlett could sense a certain tension in the air. There was a stiffness to Hawkwood’s manner, a formality he rarely saw in the man when they were a
lone.
Finally Hawkwood leaned back, sighed, and put a hand on Scarlett’s arm. ‘Desilio has broken the final cipher,’ he said, a note of longing in his voice.
Scarlett felt a leap of hope, though Hawkwood quickly dashed it. The condottiero lifted the topmost paper and read, his gravelled voice weighing the deciphered message with a heavy finality.
My Lord, know by this that our earlier suspicions are confirmed. John Hawkwood, false knight and traitor to the crown, plots against His Highness’s rule. His brigades will sail from Spezia no later than the Feast of St Edmund, to join the French fleet off Sluys. Five thousand spears, with a thousand from Hawkwood, four from France. The coastal garrisons must be reinforced, the forts heavily manned, the artillery strengthened, and with all deliberate speed.
As Hawkwood recited the missive Scarlett felt his shoulders sink, all his fears realized. ‘We are done, then. Betrayed, and by that snivelling runt.’
‘So it seems,’ said Hawkwood, patting Scarlett’s arm. Scarlett grasped his master’s hand, feeling the surge of disappointment through the rough skin.
They finished their meal in silence, the air heavy with regret and stifled ambition. When the service was cleared Hawkwood took a final swallow of wine, wiped his lips, and handed the goblet to Scarlett, who sipped once, then again – and his hand stopped in midair as three of Hawkwood’s roughest men entered the hall from the direction of the main gallery. They positioned themselves in a shallow triangle around Scarlett’s chair and stood, silent, as Hawkwood brought out his cards.
A Burnable Book Page 40