by C. J. Sansom
But as I sat under the tree a while a calmer humour settled on me. I knew I was clinging on to my reputation for integrity because, after the battering I had taken during that long day, it was all I felt I had left. And I had no right to involve Barak in any unwise defiance of Rich. Yet I could not abandon my clients if, as I thought, we had a chance of winning. Barak should surely know that.
I jerked upright at the sound of approaching footsteps. I remembered that I could still be in danger. A dim figure was approaching across the grass; I was relieved to see it was a woman, her dress rustling as she stepped into the carpet of fallen leaves under the tree. As she came close I saw to my surprise that it was Tamasin, in her yellow dress and wearing a fine silver necklace.
‘Mistress Reedbourne?’
She curtsied, then stood uncertainly before me. She seemed nervous, not at all her usual pert self.
‘I wondered, sir, if I might speak with you,’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I saw you sitting there.’
‘What about?’
‘It is important, sir. Important to me.’
‘Very well.’ I gestured to the bench and she sat beside me. She did not speak for a moment, she seemed to be considering what to say. I studied her. With her high cheekbones, full mouth and determined chin she was indeed a very pretty girl. Yet so young; little more than a child it seemed to me.
‘Mistress Marlin has been taken to Sir William for questioning,’ she said at length.
‘Yes. Barak and I have just been with him. And Sir Richard Rich.’
‘Mistress Marlin looked angry. She dislikes Sir William greatly.’
‘Yes. I saw that when you were brought in for questioning on Wednesday.’
She reddened at the reminder of her deception.
‘You would have been better to have left Barak and me alone,’ I said. ‘I am involved in some very confidential matters.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We have had words. He will have told you. He is an impertinent fellow, Master Jack.’
‘He is anxious, sir.’
‘Usually it is me who is the anxious one.’ I hesitated. ‘But perhaps this time he is right.’ I looked at her, wondering how much of our business he had told her. The less the better, for her sake. ‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘He has just left to look at the camp. I have been wanting to say, sir . . .’ she added, then hesitated again.
‘Yes?’ I said encouragingly. It cannot have been easy for her to come and seek me out; Barak’s cross-grained old employer as she probably thought of me.
‘I am sorry for the trick I played that day you first came to York.’
I nodded. ‘It was foolish. And unbecoming for a woman. Maleverer was right there. Yet he should not have struck you.’
She shook her head. ‘I care little for that.’ She looked at me steadily now. ‘I have had a strange life, Master Shardlake. I have had to make my own way. My mother was a servant at court.’
‘Yes, Barak told me.’
‘She sewed the Queens’ bodyservants’ clothes in the sewery. In Catherine of Aragon’s time, then Anne Boleyn’s.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes. Then she died, in the plague in London seven years ago.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said gently. ‘So many were lost then. I lost someone too.’
‘I was but twelve, with no one but my grandmother to care for me, or rather me for her as she was old and ailing.’
‘I see.’
‘I never knew who my father was. But I believe he was of good blood.’ She seemed to straighten a little with pride. ‘My mother told me he was a professional man.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes. He might have been a senior courtier.’
Or a tailor. I felt sorry for her. Her mother had probably told her the tale to comfort her, to ease the girl’s shame at her origins.
‘I see you doubt me, sir. But I believe it. I take pride in myself, whatever cruel people may say about my birth.’
‘That is good. You should not listen to what cruel people say.’ I thought, but if it is the King?
‘My granddam told me to take advantage of the dearth of servants caused by the plague to seek the place my mother held,’ the girl went on. ‘And I did, sir. I told them in the chamberlain’s office I was a skilled seamstress, though I knew nothing of the work.’
‘It seems you have a talent for deception.’
She frowned then. ‘I worked, sir, I worked day and night to learn until I made myself a competent seamstress, learning from the other girls, who helped me for my mother’s sake. And poor folk must make shift for themselves. I had my granddam and myself to feed, and the Queen’s sewery offers good wages. And protection from the world outside,’ she added.
‘Yes. I can see that.’
‘I learned to live by my wits, sir.’
‘As Barak did.’
‘When I saw him that day in the town, something stirred in me, as it has seldom done before, and I thought – why not manufacture a meeting?’
I smiled reluctantly. ‘In truth you are clever, mistress, as well as bold.’ I looked at her directly. ‘And now you hope to hook your fish, eh?’
Her face was serious. ‘We are becoming fast friends, sir. I wanted only to ask you not to stand in our way. And please, where is the boldness in asking that?’
I studied her a long moment. ‘I think you are an unusual woman, Mistress Reedbourne,’ I said. ‘I had thought you of a frolic disposition but I see I was wrong.’
‘Jack is sorry for his words earlier,’ she said.
‘He used to be very bold. But I think part of him wants to settle down. Though part does not,’ I added.
‘I hope he would settle down,’ she said. ‘Stay working for you, give proper value to the opportunities you have given him.’
I smiled wryly. ‘So that is it, Mistress Tamasin,’ I said. ‘You have come to offer me an alliance.’
‘We have an aim in common. Jack admires you greatly, sir, he says you have known troubles and have sympathy for poor folk and the necessities of their lives.’
‘Does he truly say that?’ I asked. I was touched, as no doubt she meant me to be.
‘He does, sir. And he feels it was his fault the papers were lost. I think he is angry with himself more than anyone. Do not be too hard on him.’
I took a deep breath. ‘I will think on what you have said, mistress.’
‘That is all I ask for, sir.’
‘Well, I see you care for him. And he perhaps for you?’
‘I hope when this wretched Progress is done, Jack and I may meet again in London. But it will be as he wishes.’
I nodded. ‘Tell me, how did you get from the sewery to working for Mistress Marlin and Lady Rochford?’
‘After Jane Seymour died her household was broken up. I obtained a post with Mrs Cornwallis, the Queen’s confectioner. She trained me in the art of making comfits and sweets.’
‘You made her your friend too, eh?’
‘She is a good old body.’
‘You have a talent for making the right friends. But as you say, poor folk must shift as they can.’
‘When the King married Queen Catherine last year I was taken into her household, since she too is fond of comfits, and placed under Mistress Marlin. She has been kind to me.’
‘Mistress Marlin is a strange woman.’
‘She is good to me. The other women mock her.’
And you are naturally kind, I thought. Yes, I think you are. ‘And Lady Rochford?’ I asked. ‘What is she like?’
‘I have little to do with her. All fear her, they say she is dangerous.’
‘And is she?’
‘I think so. She likes nothing better than to dig up juicy gossip and take it where it may do most harm.’ She frowned. ‘She is not a stupid woman, I think. Yet she behaves stupidly.’
‘Dangerously.’
‘Yes. It is what she has always done. Yet she has attached herself to t
he Queen, they are fast friends.’
‘I saw the Queen today.’
She hesitated. ‘At Fulford?’
‘At Fulford. Jack told you what happened to me there?’
She cast her eyes down. ‘It was a cruel thing.’
‘Well, as you say, the sooner we are all out of York the better.’
She rose. ‘I should go, sir. I must see how Mistress Marlin fares.’
‘Does Barak know you are having this conversation with me?’
‘No, sir. It was my idea.’
‘Well, Tamasin, you have charmed me, as I guess you have charmed many. Would you like me to accompany you back to your lodgings?’
She smiled. ‘Thank you, sir, but no. As I said, I am used to making my own way.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
She bowed, then turned and walked confidently away, to be lost in the crowd. I watched her go. I had been wrong about her, she was a girl of mettle. Perhaps Barak had met his match.
Chapter Twenty
TAMASIN’S COURAGE in approaching me with her confidences made me feel rather abashed; after all, I had been less than civil to her these last few days. I rose from the bench, for I was getting chilled, and decided to visit the camp across the road and see if I could find Barak. I went through the door in the precinct wall by St Olave’s church and crossed the lane to where guards stood at a gate in the wicker wall. I showed my papers and was allowed through. My nostrils were at once assailed by a harsh smell of woodsmoke, unwashed bodies and excrement. As I entered the field, where grass was already turning to mud under the pressure of feet and hooves, someone blew a horn nearby. Men began walking to the nearest cooking-fire, carrying wooden bowls and mugs. It was late for dinner, they would be hungry.
I stood and watched as a large group gathered round the fire, a huge blaze of wood set in a rectangular pit under a huge spit, six feet high and a dozen long, an enormous metal construction on which a whole ox turned. Scullions ran up with more wood while others turned the immense handles under the supervision of a sweating cook. The spit was an amazingly complex piece of equipment. Underneath chickens turned on smaller irons, and gallapins darted in and out, pulling out the cooked birds and slicing them deftly on big platters, fat dripping on them from the ox. Wearing leather aprons and neckerchiefs over their faces against the spitting fat, the little kitchen boys moved with extraordinary speed and skill to fill the plates held out by the hungry men. There was joking and catcalling but the men were well behaved; all looked tired for they would have started travelling at dawn, waited during the spectacle at Fulford and then come on here to set up the camp.
Watching the little scullions darting among the flames and hot fat, I reflected that Craike was incorrect. The organization of the Progress was an extraordinary thing, but to sneer at the workmen was wrong; without the discipline and skill of these men, the drivers and cooks and carriers, nothing would have been accomplished at all.
I heard a cough, and turned to find Barak at my elbow. ‘Oh, you’re here,’ I said roughly. ‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ We were silent a moment, watching as the men crouched on their haunches by the fire, eating hungrily.
‘There’s hundreds of great Suffolk horses in the far fields,’ Barak said. ‘I’ve never seen so many.’
‘I saw. Master Craike took me to the belltower. The officials have an eyrie there to watch the camp. In case the men make trouble.’
He grinned. ‘A nightmare, eh?’
‘Ay, a nightmare!’ I laughed.
‘I’m sorry for losing my temper earlier. Being with those arseholes Maleverer and Rich unnerved me.’
‘You had a point. But I do not feel I can abandon this case, not when it seems there may be even a slim chance of winning. Can you understand that?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He was silent a moment, then changed the subject. ‘I was talking to one of the clerks earlier, who was at Fulford.’
I looked at him sharply. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘He said Master Wrenne was taken ill, just after he met the King.’
‘What?’
‘He collapsed in the midst of the city councillors, had to be taken home in a cart.’
‘So that was why he disappeared. I thought he’d run out on me. How is he?’
‘I only know he was taken home to rest. He can’t have been too bad, or they’d have fetched a physician.’
‘I will visit him tomorrow. Did you and Tamasin see the King when he entered York?’
‘Ay. Jesu, he’s a big fellow. The Queen looked tiny next to him, a mouse beside a lion. He smiled and waved merrily, but there were hostile faces in the crowd, and a line of soldiers between him and them.’
‘Yes.’ The cooking-fire was blazing now. I wondered how the four sweating men who turned the handles of the spit could bear the heat. ‘Let’s walk on,’ I said, ‘before we roast like that ox.’
WE WANDERED ROUND the camp. It was quite dark now, though the many cooking-fires and lamps set before the tents gave enough light to see by. A cool breeze had risen, sending smoke drifting into our faces and making us cough.
‘I should tell you,’ I said. ‘I had a fight with Radwinter this afternoon.’
‘A fight? You?’ Barak looked at me incredulously.
I told him what had happened. He whistled. ‘I wanted to fly at him myself after what he said about the York Jews. Jesu, he knows how to provoke.’ He gave me a shrewd look. ‘Do you think that was what he was after, making you lose control?’
‘I’m sure of it. He means to hold it over me. No word among the clerks on the Scotch King’s arrival, I suppose?’
‘No. I’ve been talking to some of the men in the camp. They’re happy to sit it out here for a few days so long as it doesn’t rain and the countryside can bring in enough supplies. They ran out at Pontefract they were there so long, and were put on short rations.’
‘It’s harvest-time. I imagine the farmers will be making money out of the Progress.’
‘They get paid over the purveyance rate, I hear. Part of the plan to win the Yorkers over.’
I looked at the men walking to and fro or sitting by their tents with their bowls, waiting as more cooking-fires were lit around the camp.
‘They’re tired,’ Barak said. ‘They’ve had near three months on the road.’ I nodded, envying the ease with which Barak could strike up conversation with common folk.
We had arrived at a cockfighting ring. Men stood cheering as two black cocks, feathers slick with blood, circled in a clear space next to the fire, slashing at each other with the fierce hooks fixed to their claws.
‘Your bird is losing again,’ I heard a cultivated drawl. ‘You may strive till you stink, Master Dereham, but you will never beat me in a cockfight wager.’ Looking round, I saw the louche handsome face of the courtier Lady Rochford had referred to as Culpeper. A little group of male courtiers stood at the front of the crowd. The rest of the audience, out of respect, had left space around them. Culpeper’s face was lit redly by the flames, as was that of secretary Dereham, who stood next to him, a saturnine smile on his face.
‘No, sir,’ Dereham replied. ‘I took a wager on your bird as well as mine. For two marks.’
Culpeper looked puzzled. ‘But then . . .’ He still looked puzzled as Dereham laughed in his face. For all his charm with the ladies, young Culpeper had little intelligence.
Then Dereham saw me. He frowned and stepped forward with a bullying swagger. ‘Hey, you!’ he said sharply. ‘You’re Lawyer Shardlake, ain’t you?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘I’ve had Sir William Maleverer asking me questions about seeing you carrying some decorated casket at King’s Manor a few days ago. What have you been bandying my name about for, you stinking knave?’
‘I have not, sir,’ I said evenly. ‘Sir William wished to enquire of everyone who had seen me with the casket, and I remembered you and Lady Rochford looked over at me. I had some plaster on my cloak,’ I added.
‘What’s so important about the box, hey?’ Dereham demanded. ‘Maleverer wouldn’t say, only that it had been stolen.’
I looked around uneasily; several people had turned at the sound of Dereham’s loud braying voice. Maleverer would be furious if he knew Dereham was broadcasting the news like this.
‘It was lost, sir,’ I said quietly. ‘Sir William has the matter in hand.’
‘Don’t answer me back, you baseborn slug.’ Dereham’s face reddened. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘You are Master Dereham, the Queen’s secretary.’
‘Then have respect.’ Dereham frowned, then smiled cruelly. ‘You’re the hunchback the King made mock of, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ I said wearily. With one of Dereham’s rank, as with Rich and Maleverer, there was nothing one could do but take it.
‘It’s all round the town.’ He laughed and turned away.
Barak took my arm and walked me off. ‘Parasites,’ he said. ‘Tamasin says that Culpeper made a pass at her, he tries it on with every woman he likes the look of. He’s one of the King’s bodyservants, he can do as he likes.’
‘I am going to have to develop the hide of a crocodile.’
‘It’ll be a two days’ wonder. There’s to be a big bear-baiting at the manor tomorrow, all the York gentry invited, and half the camp will straggle along to watch. That’ll be the talk tomorrow night.’
I nodded. ‘Will you take Tamasin?’
‘She doesn’t like the bear-baiting. Another one with a weak stomach.’
I smiled. ‘When we return to London, will you see her there? Or is she just another of your dalliances?’
‘I thought you didn’t like her?’
‘Maybe I was too harsh. Anyway, ’tis your business.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see.’ He smiled enigmatically. ‘I can’t think that far ahead. I feel like we’ve been here for ever.’
‘So do I. Come, this walking is making me hungry. Are they serving food in the refectory?’
‘Should be.’
We started walking back to St Mary’s. I saw young Leacon standing with a group of soldiers by the tents; he bowed to me and I nodded in reply. Then I espied another figure, standing with arms folded at the edge of a crowd, cheering on a bloody dogfight between two great mastiffs. He nodded approvingly as one dog tore open the other’s stomach, spilling a mess of guts and blood.