Clarenceux ran forward across the second yard. The vague whiteness of the snow was marked by the dark ruts of a cart—there had to be a gate somewhere. He came to a stone wall and felt around in the darkness. Here it was—locked, yes, but the bolt had to be on this side somewhere…somewhere…where? He found it at head height, opened it, and rushed out into Noble Street as the pursuing soldiers clambered over the fence behind.
He knew where he was now, crossing the street into a narrow alley and running as fast as he could along one side. He was not far from the stable loft where he had been with Rebecca. But she must be back there by now—I must lead them away, in another direction.
He turned right down another alley and slipped on some ice. The first man pursuing came to the corner and saw his shape clearly outlined against the snow. Clarenceux scrambled to his feet and pushed himself on, drawing the dagger from his belt and holding it ready for the strike, when it should come. The man was almost on him when Clarenceux suddenly turned, thrust once with the dagger, caught the man’s arm with the point, and slashed through the air in front of his face, just catching his nose. He started to run again, down another turning, aiming to get back to Wood Street.
The blow had gained him a few seconds, that was all. The sudden stopping and twisting had weakened his knee further and he knew he was going to have to rest soon. Then they would surround him. I have to hide somewhere. Use the darkness; I am wearing a dark robe. Disappear.
A church loomed in the darkness, and there was a lighter patch of ground just this side. Clarenceux knew it was St. Peter’s and that the lighter patch was the churchyard on the north side of the church. He turned down the alley that ran alongside it and, after about ten yards, pressed himself flat against the dark front of a house overlooking the snow-covered open space. He held the dagger at the ready.
He edged along the wall but then froze, hearing his pursuers come to the turning.
“He turned right here,” said one man.
Clarenceux could hear himself breathing heavily and realized there were two men walking toward him. They were bound to sense his presence. He edged away into the darkness as silently as he could, biting his lip, trying to quieten the heaving of his chest. The wall behind him seemed to give way to a gap, and he inched around it. This second alley was even darker, for the upper stories of the houses projected out and closed over the passageway so that there was barely any starlight visible. Less snow had fallen here, and what had fallen had been churned to mud over the past day.
He backed down the alley a little further, and his hand touched wood. There was a tub of frozen water behind him. If he moved around it, the men at the end of the alley might see him. He saw their shapes silhouetted in the starlight of the alley’s opening, just fifteen feet away. They were coming toward him, one feeling in the shadows with his sword.
Very slowly, Clarenceux crouched down, with his back to the barrel.
“What do you think?” whispered one of the men to the other.
“He’s here,” replied the man with the sword. “You take the left-hand side, I’ll take the right.”
Clarenceux strained his eyes to see in the darkness. The man with the sword was waving it along the gutter, feeling for Clarenceux in the dark shadows at the edge of the road. Clarenceux knew he could not be seen. But the man with the sword was coming straight for him. He heard the point scrape the wall and stab the stones on the ground. He saw the man’s shadow come closer, and closer—and he knew he had no choice.
This was where he had to fight.
He waited. As the sword swung toward him, he stood, took one silent step forward, and thrust upward with the dagger, hard, puncturing the man’s windpipe at the top of his throat. The long blade skewered his tongue as Clarenceux drove the point through the top of his mouth into his skull. The man had no chance to cry out, not even to draw a breath; half a second after realizing Clarenceux was there he was dying, the blood flooding his brain and frothing out of his mouth and out through the cut in his neck. Clarenceux twisted the dagger and withdrew it as the blood spurted. He tried to catch the body, but it was heavy and already falling away from him. The sword fell silently into the icy mud and snow but the man’s body thumped onto the ice.
“Roger?” called the other man, alarmed.
Clarenceux slowly bent down and felt for the sword. He picked it up, swapping the dagger to his left hand. He could see nothing against the shadows of the houses on the other side of the alley. He heard the other man’s footsteps crunch on the frozen mud. Then they stopped.
“He’s here,” he shouted to the men still in the churchyard, backing away from the corpse. “He’s here somewhere.”
Clarenceux watched the man and saw him move into the blackness on the far side of the alley. He listened carefully, to sense if he moved. He did not. But nor was he coming to look for Clarenceux.
If he shouts again, I will have three of them to contend with. If I fight this one, I have just the one.
Clarenceux had no choice. Staying hidden was unsafe when his location was known. They could simply seal off the alley and wait until dawn. He crept along, knowing the other man could not see him, until he was ten feet further away, and then darted across to the other side of the alley and waited, listening.
After a minute he edged slowly and silently back toward the opening of the alley. Soon he could see the vague outline of the second man, hunched low, directly adjacent to the dead figure in the snow. He watched as he too crossed the alley, placing himself again on the opposite side from Clarenceux.
“Quickly. He’s here,” the man shouted again.
The man was a coward; his strategy was simply to call for help. He was also blind to Clarenceux’s movements, so there was a chance of escape. Clarenceux began to back away down the alley, watching in case the other men appeared. Then he turned and made his way quickly and quietly to the far end, leaving his pursuers to search the dark corners of the empty alley in fear of their lives, while he made his escape.
52
It was about an hour and a half before dawn when Clarenceux opened the door to the stables. He listened. No sound came from above. He felt his way to the ladder and climbed, stopping halfway to whisper, “Are you here?”
He heard Rebecca move. “Oh, Christ be praised! I heard the fight in the yard and came back here, as you said. Are you hurt?”
“I have more bruises, a cut to my face and another on my arm, and I am covered in blood—but most of the blood is not mine.”
“Whose is it?” she asked as he reached the top of the ladder.
“One of Crackenthorpe’s men.” Clarenceux remembered the moment. It had been a cold-blooded, merciless killing. In terms of its execution, it had been perfect. But he felt sick with himself. He was a herald, not an executioner.
He bent down, felt the hay, and let himself fall into its softness. “Goodwife Machyn, we cannot continue like this. Crackenthorpe knows we are together. The Knights are in disarray; they can do nothing to help themselves. We have to get out of the city.”
She came near him in the darkness and lay down beside him. “That is what we are trying to do, isn’t it? That is why we went to my brother’s house.”
“I suppose so. I just want to be away from this city, from …all this.”
Rebecca heard the note of despair in his voice and was worried. He had not previously sounded so weary, so despondent. If he had thought such things, he had not expressed them to her. He had always been strong for her. It was her turn now to be strong—to distract him from the abyss of dark doubts.
“I’ve been thinking while I have been waiting—about the names.”
“What have you found out?”
“Nothing—except I have an idea. Maybe the names of the Knights spell a word.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You asked why there were two Sir Reynolds and not one Galahad or Gawain. No Mordred. Well, maybe it’s simply because the word that Henry intended required two
R’s.”
Clarenceux was skeptical. “Is that what Henry might have thought? Does that sound like his way of thinking?”
“As much as anything else I can think of.”
“So, which letters have we got, if we put all seven together?”
“Lancelot Heath—L for Lancelot. You and Henry—C for Clariance. Michael and Nicholas Hill are Ector and Reynold, so E and R. There’s D for Dagonet, another Reynold and Yvain. So…”
“L, C, E, R, D, R, Y,” he repeated. “Only one vowel.”
“The other names could be vowels. A could be Arthur.”
“But it doesn’t seem right that someone else should be King Arthur if Sir Arthur Darcy—one of the founders—was merely Sir Reynold.”
“So, if there’s no A, what about U—for King Uther? Do you think we can dismiss that too?”
“I don’t think we can guess things like this. If we had an M and an O we could make ‘Mercy, Lord.’ If there was an A, then one word might be ‘Darcy.’ But who knows? They might not actually be initials. We need to see the chronicle.”
53
Wednesday, December 15
Dawn had broken: light now crept around the opening of the door to the stables, and in through the cracks under the eaves. One of the horses shifted her hooves and searched for fodder; her stablemate awoke and whinnied.
Above, lying on the hay, Clarenceux opened his eyes, blinked, and looked around. He lifted himself onto one elbow. Rebecca was asleep beside him. He watched as she started to stir also, her deep slumber touched by the never-sleeping part of her mind that knew she was in danger, which even now was listening out for signs of alarm. But the sound of the horses was not enough to wake her; she had become accustomed to being in the stable.
He looked at her face, eyes closed, seemingly at peace. He looked at her brown hair upon her pale neck, the mole on the side of her face. He was struck by her beauty. Looking at her sleeping was an indulgence; he could gaze on her. And yet she was not the same woman as she was when awake. If she woke now, he would feel guilty.
Suddenly there was a cough outside. The door to the stable creaked open, the latch lifted by an uncareful hand.
Clarenceux was on his knees instantly, reaching for the sword that he had brought back in the early hours. He picked it up and crouched, ready, hearing the person in the stable below and Rebecca shifting as she woke. He moved forward, peering down through the open space where the ladder rested.
Rebecca gasped and started breathing as if in shock. He turned to gesture to her to keep quiet and saw that she was looking at him.
“Holy Mother of God,” she whispered.
Clarenceux turned back to the stables, watching. A lad appeared, not more than twelve years old. He watched him pat the first horse and hand her some good oats.
“Mr. Clarenceux, look at yourself,” Rebecca whispered, touching his arm.
Clarenceux looked down. His robe was streaked with the brown encrusted blood of the soldier. His hands were torn and bloodied. His clothes were ripped too, with seven or eight holes and gashes to his legs. As for his face, Rebecca’s expression told him enough. The boy will scream if he sees me like this.
He moved away from the opening. “The boy down there is called Philip,” he whispered. “He’s the son of Tom Griffiths, a dealer in hides and skins. Tell him I am here, and that I’m hurt. We need his help.”
When he heard the footsteps on the ladder, the boy was startled. He dropped a bucket he had been holding and backed away. The sight of a woman only confused him further.
“Philip?” Rebecca asked, stepping cautiously down the ladder as he retreated to the far side of the stable. She could see he had fair, curly hair by the light of a small window.
The boy said nothing. He glanced at the door but did not run. He was further from the door than she was.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “There is a friend of your father’s upstairs in the hay loft. He is badly injured. Do you know him? He is an important man; his name is Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms.”
Again the boy glanced at the door. Rebecca felt he might bolt for it, and waited, watching him breathe.
“Is Mr. Clarenceux in danger?” he asked at length.
Rebecca nodded. “There are men chasing him who want to kill him. We need your help to get washed and dressed in some spare clean clothes—they can be old, they don’t have to be new—so we can get out of the city. Can you do that for us?”
The boy hesitated for a long time. Then he said, “By your leave, madam, I will ask my father.”
This troubled Rebecca. But it was inevitable. She stood back as he walked self-consciously from the stable. Their fate was now in the hands of this boy’s father, a stranger to her, a skinner by the name of Tom Griffiths. If he valued his safety more than Clarenceux’s friendship, they were dead. They would be waiting there until the guards came.
No one came.
Rebecca went back up the ladder to Clarenceux. He was crouching by a chink of light, tending to his wounds as best he could. As she came up the stairs he looked up at her.
“He’s gone to get his father.”
Clarenceux nodded and looked down. He could not keep his worry hidden when he looked at her. She could see it in his face. And she knew it was reflected in her own.
The stable door opened again. They both heard heavy footsteps on the ladder. Clarenceux glanced at where he had hidden the sword, under the hay. If it came to the worst, he could make a fight for it here—perhaps hold them up while Rebecca escaped.
Another step, and another. The whiskered face of Tom Griffiths appeared at the top of the ladder. He caught sight of Clarenceux, crouched in the hay, and Rebecca standing beside him, and climbed the last rungs.
“My boy tells me you’re in trouble.”
Clarenceux could not be sure how this meeting would turn out. He had no inkling of Griffiths’s religion. He only knew him on two accounts: the tenement he rented and the Skinners Company. He could easily imagine the gruff and stoutly traditional Griffiths taking it into his head to turn him in to the authorities.
“Goodman Griffiths, I am in a desperate plight. A man of my acquaintance—this goodwife’s husband—came to me one night last week and asked for my help. Naturally, I did what I could, but there is some business in which the man was involved that attracted the attention of a royal sergeant-at-arms. I don’t know what that business is; I am trying to find out. Nevertheless, that same sergeant-at-arms wrecked my house the following day and killed one of my servants, a boy. The same man tortured this woman’s husband to death. Last night there was an attempt to kill me. I fled here in desperation. I need to leave the city and to stay away for a while. I need clean clothes and a basin of water.”
Griffiths thought for a moment. “You left tracks. Not just footprints; bloody tracks. They lead straight to this stable.”
“For that, Goodman Griffiths, I am deeply sorry. I beg your forgiveness.”
Griffiths said nothing.
“We have trespassed on your time too much and will trouble you no more,” said Clarenceux suddenly, feeling that Griffiths was disinclined to help them. He started to get to his feet.
Griffiths did not budge. “Hear me out, first, before you go. You are a good man, Mr. Clarenceux. I know you don’t have to come here and check these houses. The queen’s bailiff would take the same two pounds and five shillings every quarter either way, and it would be delivered to you whether you cared about their condition or not. But you do come and look, and you do send men to repair them. You take far more care of us than the bailiff. Maybe you’ve only done all that so today you’d have a hiding place. But you’re a good warden of the company too. So I’ll do a deal with you. I have a young family, and we have little money. It is a struggle every quarter to pay the rent. If I don’t give you clean clothes but take you out of the city in a pelterer’s cart, how much is it worth?”
“A pelterer’s cart?” Clarenceux almost laughed at the rep
ulsive thought. But then he realized that it was perfect. Who would suspect anyone would hide in a cart of stinking hides and skins?
“We need to go across the bridge, to Southwark.”
“Then I’ll take you across the bridge. There’s a three-penny toll for a full cart.”
Clarenceux looked up at Rebecca. She looked nervous but shrugged her shoulders. What alternative have we got?
He felt in his pocket for the purse he had taken from the table in Draper’s study and looked at the coins. “Half a year’s rent. Four pounds ten shillings.”
“Make it five pounds.”
“Payable when you get us safely to the stable yard of the Bell Inn in Southwark.”
“Mr. Clarenceux, you and I have an agreement.”
54
Lady Percy, the dowager countess of Northumberland, was about sixty years of age. She had a permanent frown upon her deeply lined, very pale face. She was motionless, seated on a massive horse in the park of Sheffield Manor, which was slightly frosted after the recent cold weather. Her small bright eyes were fixed on the dead rabbit in front of her. The goshawk had dropped it on the ground and, being allowed to peck, had broken open the skull and eaten the brains first. Then it had eaten the rest of the head and the top half of the body. Next it had upended the remains, so the legs were in the air, and pulled the fur out in tufts, scattering it all around the carcass. Now it was gorging on the thigh muscles. Every so often it would look up and its bright red eye would switch from point to point in the landscape.
Her ladyship remained motionless. Fascinated.
She had seen the rider out of the corner of her eye but he could wait. Her servants had instructions not to disturb her. If she guessed rightly, she knew who the caller was, and what his mission was.
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