‘There were the twelve from Tavistock, the little family of four, the pedlars and this guide. All told, twenty-one.’
Bill considered, sipping at his hot drink. ‘That’s interesting. Since we had only nineteen bodies.’
‘That was what I thought you’d say,’ Art said.
Nodding, Bill stood. ‘I’d best take another look about this place, then. Make sure there’re no more.’ He hesitated, frowning. Then, ‘Art, you come too, eh? Maybe my eyes have been missing something.’
‘All right, Bailiff,’ Art said. He drained his pot and joined Bill as the bailiff began a circumambulation of the area. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘I reckon this looks like a simple attack of outlaws,’ Bill said.
‘So why don’t you think that?’
‘I said—’
‘Oh, I know what you said, Bill Lark, but I’ve known you longer than anyone else, and I don’t think you believe it any more than I do,’ Art said easily.
‘No.’ Bill was quiet for a little while, and then he began to tell Art about the blood, the man who surely couldn’t have walked back to join the others after all that loss. ‘I think that makes it look different.’
‘Best way to make sure a man’s quiet is to hit him hard in the kidneys or liver,’ Art offered. ‘Stab him there, and he soon loses his blood and dies.’
‘Aye. The others didn’t matter. But this one man was clobbered hard. That makes me think.’
‘What?’
‘Makes me think that maybe he was a guard, and the fellows knocked him down so that they could surprise the rest of the party.’
‘Why do that?’
‘To make their attack all the more complete? Perhaps they wanted to catch someone in the group – the man with his eyes taken out?’
Art winced. ‘Poor bastard. And it’s odd, too.’
‘What is?’
‘This man who was telling them to take the other route, he only had one eye himself.’
Third Thursday following the Feast of the Archangel Michael*
London
Sir Richard de Welles had a simple faith that whatever was going to happen would happen. It was all in the hands of God, and for that reason there was little point in worrying.
Once he had been a great deal less fatalistic. When he was a youth, he had held the belief that he could alter his life and make things better by dint of special effort. But then, when his wife had died, his attitude changed. She had been killed by a fellow he had trusted, and an event like that was bound to be enough to change his attitude.
So today, as he rode with the others under the imposing entrance to London Bridge, he did not concern himself with idle fears about the interview with the king. He had the comfort of knowing that he had done nothing in France of which he should be ashamed, and that knowledge gave him an assurance that he could see the others did not feel. If anything, his mood lightened as he jolted along on the great bridge, looking up at the flags fluttering, seeing the glorious painted buildings under which they rode. The horseshoes clattered noisily on the timbers of the drawbridge, and he could look down to see some boys playing on boats, shooting down by the massive piers of the bridge supports.
‘Look at them, Master Puttock,’ he said happily.
Simon only grunted in response, and Sir Richard smiled.
‘Simon, whatever happens when we see the king, there is nothing we may do about it now. Best thing to do is to enjoy the journey and leave the future to itself.’
Simon nodded, but there was no apparent ease in his manner. Not even when one of the little boats struck the point of a pier and shattered. All watching guffawed with laughter to see how the two lads inside were tipped out into the foaming waters, but not Simon or Baldwin. It left Sir Richard feeling sad that he could not lighten the mood of his friends.
There were plenty of them, after all. Although Baldwin, Simon and he had no servants with them – only Baldwin’s beast, a great black, brown and white brute called Wolf – the bishop was a different matter. He had clerks, including his nephew, a squire called William Walle, three other men-at-arms to serve him, and his steward John de Padington. With these and the packhorses they led to carry the bishop’s belongings, they formed quite a cavalcade.
Their way took them from the city’s gates and west, down along Candelwryhttestrate, but they had to turn southwards where a wagon had shed its load, and Bishop Walter took them along narrower roads that Sir Richard didn’t recognise.
‘You know these lanes like I know my own manor,’ he said as they rode along Athelyngstrate towards the cathedral church of St Paul’s.
‘I would be a sorry bishop if I didn’t know this city well,’ Bishop Walter replied. ‘I have spent so much of my life here in London. The king saw fit to make me his lord high treasurer some years ago, and since then I have spent much of every year here – apart from those periods when he has discarded me,’ he added with a thin little smile.
‘Why would he do that?’ Sir Richard asked.
‘Because my advice was unwelcome. The last time he removed me from office it was because he split the treasury into two – one to deal with the north, one for the south. That would be a fair way to deal with the problems of the treasury, separating it into two halves in the same way as the Church is split between Canterbury and York, but only if there was a corresponding increase in staff to cope with the workload. Such administrative corrections are necessary once in a while, after all. No man could dispute that. However, the king is ever seeking greater efforts by all without considering the impact on individuals. And that is what happened here. He divided the one institution into two parts, and expected these two new courts to be able to cope with the same number of staff as the one court employed before. It could not work!’
‘That is why you resigned the post?’
‘Yes. I will not be a part of an effort like that.’ The bishop’s tone was sharp, but Sir Richard was sure that it was merely a reflection of his concern at the impending interview with the king.
That there might be another reason for the bishop’s shortness did not occur to him until they were near the cathedral itself. There Sir Richard saw Bishop Walter’s eyes turn this way and that, and he didn’t seem happy until they had left the cathedral behind them. It seemed to Sir Richard that there was something about that area that was distasteful to the bishop.
They rode on down the hill to the Ludgate at the bottom, and then continued on the Fletestrete. Sir Richard saw Baldwin stare down at the Temple buildings, which Sir Hugh le Despenser had taken for his own only recently, and glanced over them himself. There was not much to interest him, though, and soon he found himself studying the Straunde as they rode on towards Thorney Island and Westminster.
The buildings here were all grand. Too grand for Sir Richard’s taste, if he was honest. He required only a simple dwelling. Space for himself, a few mastiffs and raches, perhaps a mews for a pair of hawks, and that was about it. Here, though, there was an apparent need for ostentation on all sides. And when they reached the Temple Bar and passed beyond, the houses were even more extravagant.
‘We shall rest here a while before continuing,’ the bishop said as he turned left just before St Clement Danes.
‘Where’s this, then?’ Sir Richard asked, eyeing the hall with some suspicion. It was even more splendid than the other places they had passed, or so he felt.
Bishop Walter was already passing under the gatehouse. It was the steward, John de Padington, who turned in his saddle and eyed the knight with an amused look. ‘It’s the bishop’s house, Sir Richard. He built it himself so that the bishops of Exeter would always have a comfortable billet in London.’
Chapter Three
The Painted Chamber, Westminster
‘It would be better that you rested, your royal highness,’ Sir Hugh le Despenser said.
‘I am not in a mood to rest,’ King Edward II replied.
Sir Hugh ducked his head, then signalled to a wai
ting servant. The man nodded and fetched him a goblet of wine, bowing low as he passed it.
It was good to see men who understood their position in the world. This bottler, for example. He knew that his place was to wait for the merest signal, and then to rush to serve his betters. And Sir Hugh le Despenser was definitely his better. As the second most wealthy and powerful man in the realm, after only the king himself, Sir Hugh was the better of all. The king alone he viewed as an equal.
But even knowing his own importance, Sir Hugh could not help but stare at the bottler as he poured, wondering for how much longer he would merit such respect. It felt as though the entire realm was a tower teetering on the brink of complete failure, undermined by enemies that could not be seen, swatted away or exterminated. They were deep underground, hidden from view. And if the realm failed, Sir Hugh would die. He and all his friends must be taken and slain. The strain of his position was like a band of steel tightening around his skull. ‘My lord, would you not take a seat? I can arrange for some diverting—’
‘Be still, Sir Hugh! Do you not see when a man needs peace and silence to consider? I have much to think of, in Christ’s name!’
‘I do understand, your highness,’ said Sir Hugh. It was harder and harder to restrain his own tongue in the face of the king’s bile. ‘But surely a rest would do no harm.’
The king continued as though he had not heard him speak. ‘It is humiliating that my wife is not yet home. She should have returned as soon as Stapledon arrived there. What could be holding her up? There is no news, and we do not know how the French are responding. Christ Jesus! She must know how it embarrasses me. And my son is still there. I want him home again. I do not want my heir to be held there any longer than is entirely necessary. He is young, vulnerable. He is not yet thirteen years old, and already he has been forced to go and pay homage to the French like a mere knight, when he is a duke!’
‘It was better that he did so than that another should go,’ Despenser said. ‘It was better than that you should go.’
‘I couldn’t!’ the king snapped. He was at the farther end of the chamber now, the easternmost end, near his bed. There were three large oval windows above him, and he appeared to be staring up at them, but when Sir Hugh followed his gaze, he saw that the king was peering up at a picture of a prophet on the ceiling.
It was the most beautiful room in the kingdom. In fact Sir Hugh had heard that the French king himself was jealous of the chamber, and had ordered that a similar one be built for his own use. There were paintings over the walls and the ceilings, all with an exuberant use of colour and gilt. Even the meanest feature had decoration upon it. As Sir Hugh glanced at the window nearest him, he saw that the soffit itself had a picture of an angel staring down. Below her was a virtue, Debonerete, or meekness, triumphing over the vice Ira, wrath. As was normal, the virtue was depicted as a woman, holding a shield on which the arms of England were differenced by two bars, while the arms of St Edmund and other saints were carefully painted around her in a border. She was a stunning figure, especially since she stood some three yards tall, and gleamed with fire from the gilt and gold leaf.
Nearby there was another figure in the same vein. Here the virtue was Largesse, and she was triumphing over Covoitise, covetousness. That at least was one vice which the king never suffered from. Not in the presence of Sir Hugh.
Sir Hugh had his goblet refilled and waited. He had much patience. Sometimes he thought that it was the only virtue he required while here with the king. But he couldn’t deny that he’d been well rewarded over the years for his patience. All he had ever needed to show his king was humility and deference, leavened with adoration, and Edward had repaid the effort many times over. Sir Hugh’s desires became the king’s desires; Sir Hugh’s friends became the king’s, while his enemies became Edward’s most detested foes. There was nothing Sir Hugh could do that would colour the king’s opinion of him. Even when the French demanded that Edward travel to France to pay homage for the territories held from the French crown, the king was happier to send his own heir, the Earl of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, rather than make the journey himself. Some believed it was because he feared for his safety. Sir Hugh knew it was more because he was anxious for Sir Hugh.
Edward was happier to risk the life and livelihood of his own son than he was to risk the neck of his lover.
‘He would have something to say about this, wouldn’t he?’ the king was saying.
His words brought Sir Hugh back to the present. ‘Who, your highness?’
‘I said, the prophet here, Jeremiah, he would have had much to say about my reign, wouldn’t he?’
Sir Hugh racked his brains. ‘Jeremiah – he foretold of the disaster that was about to overwhelm the Holy Land, did he not? When the Babylonians overran it?’
‘Yes. He was rejected by his own people because they felt he was a doom-monger, always giving them the worst, never telling them that all would grow better. He was as popular as I am.’
The king had a break in his voice as he spoke, and Sir Hugh took a breath. ‘Sire, you are much loved by your people. It is not your fault that—’
‘I have been astonishingly unlucky. Look at me! I was feted when I was crowned, but one thing after another has set the seal on my reign. The Scottish, the French, the bastards from the borders – and there’s been nothing I could do about any of it! As soon as I had the opportunity, I took my host to the lords marcher, and I defeated them, didn’t I? But that wasn’t good enough to recover my reign. The people detest me. No! Don’t think to lie to me, Sir Hugh! I know what they are thinking. And now even my queen has deserted me. She sits there in France with her brother and entertains his friends and my enemies, and I cannot be sure what she intends. Fickle woman!’
‘We shall soon know, sire.’
But the king was not to be consoled, and when Sir Hugh left him some while later, it was with a worried frown at his brow. Edward’s fears were all too well known to him, but it seemed that the man’s concerns were growing daily into fully developed panic. And that was enough to give Sir Hugh cause for thought. His own position in the world was dependent entirely on the king’s goodwill.
Sir Hugh had thought that when the Welsh marches rose in rebellion against him, it was a master stroke to have the king raise an army and march with him. At the time it had seemed the most ingenious response. Those who had sought to meet Sir Hugh in battle instead found themselves faced by the king’s banners. Any who attempted to fight would now be branded as traitors. Their declarations of loyalty to the king were irrelevant. They had tried to impose their will on the king, and Edward had suffered from that kind of interference before. He had been forced to submit to men who enforced ordinances restricting his freedom to rule as he wished. When he tried to reward his favourite, Piers Gaveston, the earls had captured Piers and executed him. Edward would not permit any man to stand in his way again. He had decided that he loved Sir Hugh, and any who sought Sir Hugh’s destruction was an enemy of the king.
But the sheer brilliance of his scheming had concealed one possible risk. Sir Hugh had first seen to the capture of his worst enemy, the bastard grandson of the murderer Mortimer, may he rot in hell for all eternity. Roger Mortimer, the grandfather, had slaughtered Sir Hugh’s own grandsire at Evesham, and the Despensers were not a family to forget a blood feud. So Sir Hugh’s first ambition was to have Mortimer held for a brief period, and then executed as a traitor to the king. And he had almost succeeded. The king had agreed, after two years of careful persuasion, and Mortimer would have been dead already, except the fortunate devil had learned of the death warrant being signed, and had made a daring escape from the Tower of London. Now he was living abroad, plotting the downfall of Sir Hugh, no doubt. Rumours of his negotiations in Hainault for mercenaries and ships had come to Despenser’s spies.
When the rebels were all captured or beaten, flying from the country, Sir Hugh acquired all those parts he had craved so long. He owned almost all of Wa
les, he possessed vast tracts of the West Country, and he was undoubtedly the second most wealthy and powerful man in the realm. No one but the king could stand against him. And while he had the king’s ear, all knew that to court Sir Hugh’s enmity meant to attract Edward’s hatred. None dared that. They’d all seen how the king would respond to those who angered him. After the rebellion, the bodies of his enemies had decorated city gates and London’s walls for over two years, until his wife’s pleas for leniency had finally persuaded him to remove them and allow the tanned, leathery remains to be buried.
Which had led, in part, to the king’s increasing dislike for his wife.
Sir Hugh entered the little chamber where his own clerks worked, and strode over to a chair. Sitting, he steepled his fingers and rested his lips on his forefingers, head bowed.
There was much now to cause concern.
Stories abounded that Mortimer was raising an army to invade: he was gathering shipping; he had money to pay mercenaries. And Roger Mortimer had been the king’s most successful general. If he were to return to England at the head of the army, there was no telling what the outcome would be. Except Sir Hugh knew full well that if it was a simple matter of generalship, with Mortimer against the king, the king would lose. His only saving would be the fear all men had of breaking their vow of loyalty to him. That might keep some by his side. But if Mortimer proclaimed that he had no fight with the king himself, many might flock to his banner. So many hated Despenser.
But there was nothing to fear yet. He must wait until he had information. There was no point in worrying about Mortimer until he knew that the bastard was a threat. He licked his lips and looked about him. The pressure of his position was growing to be insupportable, he thought as he chewed his fingernail, running his incisor under it to nibble away a little more.
There was a sharp stabbing pain, and he withdrew his hand, looking down. The nail was separated, but had torn away some of the flesh beneath. A sickle of blood stood out at the end of his finger, and he stuck it back in his mouth, sucking.
No Law in the Land: (Knights Templar 27) Page 5