"I am sure we shall meet again, Alice. You have not won. Not the whole battle." Thoresby took up his jeweled goblet and left with the pleasant taste of her blood in his mouth.
The Archbishop returned to York in March and sent for Owen.
As Owen entered the Archbishop's chambers, he noticed that Thoresby looked pale.
"It did not go well, Your Grace?"
"It went well enough--though the King could not be bothered with my claims. Alice Perrers has bewitched him."
"Anna found no hidden papers, so I could send you nothing to support your accusation."
Thoresby nodded. "I received your letter."
"You stayed a good while."
"I left court last month. I have been visiting some of my deaneries. I think now I shall withdraw to Fountains Abbey to think on my future."
Owen nodded to the chain of office that glinted in the firelight. "For all that, you are still Chancellor."
"For now. For perhaps only a little while longer."
"What do you mean?"
"That is one of the things I must decide. Whether to step down."
"And then she wins."
Thoresby closed his eyes, sank back in his chair. "She is the Devil's creature, Archer. Mark my words. When the King lies dying, she will take what she can and desert him. She is cold and unnatural." He opened his eyes. "But no, she has not won."
"With treason she bought her way to court, with murder she covered her trail, but what is it that holds the King?"
Thoresby shook his head. "The illegal wool sales were her uncles' doing, not hers. And it was they, too, who used information about Enguerrand de Coucy to buy Alice's introduction to the Queen. But the murders and the hold on the King, yes, that is all Alice Perrers, young as she is. She has eyes like a cat's, Archer, an intelligence that misses nothing--no nuance of speech, no gesture--and a body clothed to reveal its youthful bloom. But it is her spirit--the power that emanates from her--that arouses." There was an odd flush to Thoresby's cheeks as he thought about her.
"She aroused you, Your Grace?" Owen tried to imagine the cold, bloodless man before him in a state of passion. He could not.
Thoresby opened his eyes and laughed. "Another man might take offense at your shock, Archer, but I am pleased by it. My mask is back in place."
"Are we finished with the deaths of Ridley and Crounce?"
"Yes. Pity we had to lose our best Town Wait in the reckoning. Did you warn him away, Archer?"
"No. Though Lucie and I had decided to. They had already fled."
"And you've never heard another word from them?"
Owen shrugged.
"You know where they are."
"No."
Thoresby stared at Owen for a long moment, then shook his head. "You have changed, Archer. You are growing into this life. You are learning to use the ambiguities to your own advantage."
Owen shrugged. "The money Ridley gave you for the Lady Chapel. Have you decided whether it is blood money?"
Thoresby smiled a little. "I am certain it was, Archer. Yet I am but a man. Is it not fitting that I accept an imperfect tomb?"
Owen stopped at the York Tavern to improve his mood with a tankard of Tom Merchet's ale. Tom joined him.
"So 'twas our King's leman ordered the bloodshed." Tom shook his head.
"Take care you forget that as fast as you've learned it, Tom. The King would call it treason to speak of it."
"But sure she's too young to have plotted it all?"
"Her uncles put her on the path. It was they who traded the wool illegally and bought the information from Wirthir about the King's French son-in-law. Either de Coucy or the Princess Isabella then bought their silence by presenting Mistress Alice to the Queen."
Tom frowned, thinking. "It was Kate Cooper had Scorby chop off hands?"
Owen nodded.
"A woman with a black heart," Tom muttered.
"She could not forgive her father's ruin, her brother's death."
"Was it her poisoned Ridley?"
"No."
"Bess had a mind to tell Mistress d'Aldbourg what her Kate did to our John."
Owen drank down his ale. "I'm sorry for that."
"Bess didn't tell her after all. Said it might kill her, and she'd not have such a stain on her soul."
"Bess is a good woman. And wise." Owen stood up. "I must get home to Lucie."
"Aye. Tell Bess to come home. There's a lad come to see her about working in stable. I'd thought to offer work to Jasper, but Bess says he's learning to read and write."
Owen nodded. "He thinks he'd like to apprentice to Lucie." "Well, some good will come out of much evil, then." "Precious little." Tom shrugged. "We must be content with it."
Author's Note
Many people think o f history as mighty figures, epic events, and statistics. But at their best, historians bring the past to life by suggesting the motivations of the mighty, like a biographer with a clear thesis of the subject's inner life. Historical novelists or dramatists go further by reducing the mighty to human scale. Shakespeare put a human face on Richard III in his fatal battle by using the fact noted by one historian, that the turning point for Richard was when he was unhorsed. The Bard lets us witness Richard's tragic awareness as he cries, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" Novelists and dramatists paint in the detail of the period, set the mighty in motion with imagined dialogue, and create the less than mighty characters missing in the historical records, those Owen Archers and Lucie Wiltons working secretly behind the scenes, those Bess and Tom Merchets providing the lodging and brewing the ale. Believable characters bring history to life.
A key element in any study in character is motive. Motive traces the trajectory of an action from stringing the bow through setting up, aiming, and hitting (or missing) the target. What fascinates both the historian and the novelist is that any one event seen through the eyes of different participants suggests completely different motives, and it's the sum of the motives that culminates in the epic events. For a mystery writer, there is an additional fascination in how many people have motives for any crime, innocence being at times little more than a lack of opportunity.
The Lady Chapel's plot hinges on King Edward III's manipulation of the wool trade. Motive: to finance his repeated attempts to add the crown of France to his English crown. The wool trade was of vital importance to the economy of Flanders; Flanders was of strategic importance to Edward's war with France. Edward's scheme was to influence supply and demand to such an extent that the Flemings would support Edward rather than the French King in order to protect their economy. But Edward did not inspire confidence and trust in his own merchants--he gave them rights and revoked them ruthlessly, and promised monies that his scheme failed to raise; nor did he learn from the failures of the first year--he bullheadedly went on with the scheme. In effect, he pushed the merchants on both sides of the English Channel to devise means to continue their trade illicitly. In general, their motivation was to make a living, but in some, opportunity for unrestricted trade inspired greed. Merchant companies such as Chiriton and Company and Goldbetter and Company steered a daring course, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.
But in the 14th century, even in the heat of business, people were keenly aware of their mortality and tried to secure a comfortable afterlife. Gilbert Ridley was tending to his soul when he offered a generous sum to Archbishop Thoresby for York Minster's Lady Chapel. Lady Chapels were common additions to churches and cathedrals in the 14th century, when the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary was strong. Mary was seen as the gentle intercessor between God and man. In a time that suffered plague, war, famine, deluges, and drought, the Virgin was embraced by the people as the Mother who would beg God the Father to forgive His erring children and spare His hand. The placement of the Lady Chapel was usually on the east end of the church, behind the high altar. The chantry priest appointed to the chapel would say daily masses there dedicated to the Virgin. John Thoresby, Archbishop of Yor
k from 1352 to 1373, built York Minster's Lady Chapel to house his own tomb and those of six of his predecessors. He also provided for the chantry priest. Motive: the obvious one was that he saw the chapel as a lasting monument to his power and holiness. But I put forth another. At this point in his life Thoresby was an aging man, increasingly disillusioned by the King, and his thoughts often turned to his own passing. Like Ridley, he wished to secure his place in Heaven, and
in building the Lady Chapel he expressed his hope that the Blessed Virgin Mary would intercede on his behalf.
As I present it, part of Thoresby's rift with the King was Alice Perrers. He saw her as a meddling commoner, an insult to the ailing Queen Philippa. Alice's influence over the aging King Edward III, particularly after the death of Queen Philippa, was the great scandal of the time. And yet this powerful, enigmatic, controversial woman left little record of herself, and as surviving descriptions of Alice Perrers were written by her enemies, even those are suspect. There is no record of her relationship with John Thoresby. I based my portrait of Alice on F. George Kay's Lady of the Sun: The Life and Times of Alice Perrers (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966), and then seasoned to taste. Alice Perrers's motives were complex--love and devotion to the King mixed with ambition and the need to secure her future; being mistress to a King, especially one who was quite old by medieval standards, was to walk on quicksand, because the King could die at any moment and leave her defenseless in the midst of her enemies. Being a commoner, she lacked the family connections that might have protected her. It is interesting that what her highborn enemies appear to have disliked most about her was her business savvy.
The Mercers' Guild was a trading company, later known as the Merchant Adventurers. Representatives chiefly of the woolen industry--mercers, drapers, hosiers, dyers, the guild members were the wealthiest citizens of York, especially the mercers, or wool merchants. In this period, the term "merchant" was applied to the large traders, the petty retailers and also the artisans who bought their own raw materials, produced their own wares in their own workshops, and sold the wares direct to their own customers. The mercers of York dominated the city council. Of the eighty-eight mayors of York between 1399 and 1509, sixty-eight were mercers. Archbishop Thoresby would have taken great pains to solve the murders of two members of this guild in his jurisdiction. And, of course, the Archbishop would wish to clear Gilbert Ridley's name so that he could make use of the merchant's generous donation to the lady chapel with a clear conscience.
It is not surprising that this influential guild was responsible for the elaborate play "The Last Judgment" that formed the finale of the York mystery plays on the feast of Corpus Christi. The guild had the money to invest in a pageant wagon with various levels and a platform that lowered Jesus Christ from heaven to earth. The Lady Chapel opens on the feast of Corpus Christi, as the pageant wagons of the guilds of York wind through the narrow streets of the city, stopping at stations set up along the way for the players to present the set of roughly fifty plays (the number varied over time) depicting the history of mankind from the Creation to the Last Judgment. These were elaborate undertakings; preparations began in early Lent. An abbreviated, four-hour production is performed in York in the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey every fourth summer.
Town Waits participated in the Corpus Christi celebrations. They were musicians who received an annual stipend from the city treasury as well as livery and sometimes free accommodation. They performed on specified occasions for the mayor and the corporation of the city and provided special music for ceremonial occasions and royal entries. In York they held a special position in relation to the Minster, regularly performing at Pentecost and on the two feasts of St. William. In The Lady Chapel, Ambrose Coats is therefore a civil servant and hence his concern about keeping out of trouble.
Ambrose plays two medieval bowed instruments, the rebec and the crowd. The rebec belonged to the generic family of fiddles. It was a pear-shaped instrument, typically with three to four strings, held either in the armpit or across the chest. The bow was held as fiddlers hold theirs today. Its pitch was described as high, its quality shrill. It was used often as a drone instrument.
The crowd was the ancestor of the Welsh crwth. It was an adaptation of the newly imported bow to the long established lyre (or Anglo-Saxon hearpe). It typically had parallel sides, and most English examples had some form of neck. The number of strings varied from four to six. It was most commonly held at the shoulder and pointing downward. Typically sounding at least two notes at once, the crowd was described as melodious and harmonious.
For further reading about King Edward III's financing of the war, I recommend Scott L. Waugh's England in the Reign of Edward III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and E. B. Fryde's Some Business Transactions of York Merchants (York: St. Anthony's Press, 1966). For further detail on the musical instruments, see English Bowed Instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor Times by Mary Remnant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
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