The King's Spies

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘Did he confess anything interesting?’ asked Geoffrey, too weary to be angry. ‘Such as who employed him or why he attacked us?’

  ‘He muttered something about a “map”, but I could not be sure what. I think he may have been trying to say your name – Mappestone.’

  Geoffrey considered. If Durand was right, then it meant the archers had not been opportunistic robbers after all. But why would anyone want Geoffrey dead? At that point he had not agreed to do Henry’s dirty work, and no one should have known about the royal plan to trick Bellême. Even if word had seeped out, Geoffrey was a long way from inveigling himself into the Earl’s favour, and all Bellême had to do to thwart him was refuse to grant him an audience.

  ‘Did Petronus say anything pertinent?’ he asked, thinking that Durand might have noticed something Roger had ignored. Durand was more observant and certainly more intelligent than Roger.

  ‘You mean did he think the attack was aimed at him?’ asked Durand astutely. ‘He did. He said his messages to Bishop Maurice were important, and it was imperative we saw him safely to the palace.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  Durand reviewed the question carefully, then nodded. ‘He really did imagine he was significant enough to warrant the hire of ambushers. But that is not to say he was correct. No man likes to think he is expendable and his duties irrelevant.’

  Geoffrey supposed he was right. The fact that Petronus alone had been hit must have made him assume he was the quarry, and it was not unreasonable for him to ask Roger to see him to safety. Geoffrey thought about the monk’s death. He had been walking to the palace, because his horse had bolted, and it would not be difficult to approach a fat, unarmed priest and choke him. Such a method of execution was virtually silent, with no noisy fighting to bring Roger to his aid. So, was Petronus carried to the abbey by the men who had killed him? Or was he really just found by chance, as Maurice claimed? Geoffrey supposed he would never know.

  ‘Do you think the attack had something to do with Hanged Hugh?’ asked Durand worriedly. ‘Or with the fact that Matilda came and asked you for a favour?’

  ‘Matilda is not responsible,’ said Geoffrey with more confidence than he felt. ‘She wanted me to speak to the King for her, and would hardly have shot at me while I was on my way to meet him.’

  ‘Was it someone who did not want you to deliver her message then?’ pressed Durand. ‘Someone like Bellême himself, or one of his brothers? I hear they are all at each others’ throats and would sell their grandmother if it served their purposes.’

  This made sense to Geoffrey. Bellême or his siblings might well have decided they did not want Matilda to have an advantage over the rest of them, so had made plans to deprive her of her messenger, just as she may have been deprived of Hugh.

  ‘Did you do it?’ asked Durand in a whisper, glancing around to ensure he could not be overheard. ‘Did you tell the King that Matilda wants to negotiate without her brothers knowing?’

  ‘No,’ said Geoffrey shortly.

  Durand’s large blue eyes settled on the man who watched them. ‘Then perhaps he is working for her, and she is angry you did not do as she asked.’

  ‘She cannot know yet,’ said Geoffrey, ‘unless she has some very good spies – and if she is that well placed in the King’s Court, she would not have needed my help in the first place.’

  ‘You have an eye for her,’ said Durand accusingly. ‘She has turned your head.’

  ‘Roger is a long time,’ said Geoffrey, not wanting to pursue that particular subject. He had taken a fancy to Matilda, but he was not going to admit it to Durand, especially now he knew she also dispensed favours to men like the obese Bishop Maurice.

  He stood, and saw the cloaked man open a watchful eye. His dog came to its feet and shook itself. ‘I am going to make sure Roger is all right. Stay here and finish your ale.’

  ‘He can manage that by himself, surely,’ said Durand disapprovingly. ‘And you cannot leave me here alone. That fellow is looking at me.’

  ‘Come with me, then,’ said Geoffrey. He did not like the way everyone was pretending to ignore him. It was odd not being the recipient of hostile Saxon glowers, and that in itself was enough to put him on his guard. He opened the door and stepped outside, then stepped back in again just in time to see the cloaked man start to follow. The man knew he had been outwitted, and tried to hide his mistake by going to speak to a group of tinkers. The tinkers refused to acknowledge him, unwilling to become involved in business not their own.

  Geoffrey walked briskly from the inn, dragging Durand with him. He darted down an alley and took cover in a shadowy doorway, aware of running footsteps as someone followed, desperately trying to find him. There were two of them – he glimpsed the King’s colours in their tunics, which answered one question, at least – and he wondered where the other had been hiding. It was a clever ploy, using one obvious spy to draw attention from another. Geoffrey saw he would have to be more careful.

  When he was sure they had gone, he abandoned the alleys and made for the dark mass that comprised the public lavatory. It was so sturdily constructed that the city burgesses felt it was safe to illuminate its wooden interior with a lantern. A dull orange glow came through the windows, and Geoffrey could hear Roger singing. He hesitated. There were places where a man was entitled to his privacy, and a latrine was definitely one of them. Roger was bellowing the words to one of the bawdy ballads he had learned on the Crusade, all about eastern ladies and their improbably exotic ways. Then he stopped. Geoffrey tensed and his dog released a low whine of unease.

  ‘He never misses out the next bit,’ whispered Durand at his side. ‘It is his favourite part.’

  ‘Wait here,’ ordered Geoffrey, beginning to ease along the wall towards the Queen’s fine new building. ‘Do not move until I get back.’

  ‘What if you do not come back?’ demanded Durand in a frightened voice. ‘Then what shall I do?’

  ‘Find a monastery and lie about your past,’ suggested Geoffrey, clicking his fingers to indicate that his dog was to go with him. It regarded him malevolently, but followed readily enough, intrigued by the tempting smells that emanated from within.

  Geoffrey reached the door, and opened it. Suddenly, the lamp was doused and the inside plunged into darkness. The dog yelped and ran for its life, while Geoffrey strained his eyes and tried to see. It was as well he had brought his shield, because the hacking blow aimed at his shoulder would have deprived him of an arm had it met its target. As it was, the force of the attack threw him off balance, and he only just managed to raise his sword to parry the next blow, which was towards his face. He recovered quickly, and went on the offensive, striking out at a shadow he could barely see. Then he became aware that someone was behind him, too. He turned, so he had the wall at his back, and looked from one to the other as they began to advance.

  ‘That was a good fight,’ said Roger the following morning, rubbing his hands as the landlord brought bread, fish, oatmeal and watered ale to their room. ‘I would have managed alone, but it was good to see you. You distracted them, and allowed me to show off the full extent of my knightly skills.’

  ‘But we do not know who they were or what they wanted,’ said Geoffrey, taking some oatmeal. Durand nibbled fussily on salted fish, and Geoffrey thought it was no surprise that the man was of such a fragile build when his appetite was so feeble.

  ‘Who cares?’ asked Roger airily. ‘They were just after our gold. Everyone thinks Jerosolimitani are loaded down with treasure from the sack of Jerusalem and Antioch, so are worth robbing.’

  ‘But I do not think these were robbers. Like yesterday’s archers, they came for a specific purpose, and it had nothing to do with the contents of our saddlebags.’

  ‘There were four of them against us two,’ said Roger gleefully. ‘And they went tumbling from the latrines as though the Devil himself was on their tails once I went at them. It was an amusing sight.’

  After the frac
as of the previous evening, during which Geoffrey felt he had embarrassed himself by his mediocre performance, he and his companions abandoned the lavatory and headed to a major thoroughfare called Eastceape, where there were a number of taverns that were a cut above the ones Roger usually favoured. Geoffrey had elected to stay at the Mermaid Inn, which promised clean beds and a good meal. They awoke with the dawn, and threw open the window shutters to see a street lined with beautiful houses, some even built in stone.

  ‘It was definitely an ambush,’ said Durand with conviction. ‘They distracted Roger with a whore before he began his business in the lavatory, so you would worry about the length of time he was gone and would go to investigate. They thought they could dispatch you both at the same time.’

  ‘I was not in the mood for a whore last night,’ explained Roger. ‘So I finished with her quickly. They were lucky you came so soon, Geoff, or their efforts would have been for nothing.’

  ‘This is becoming ridiculous,’ said Geoffrey resentfully. ‘We are attacked wherever we go, and we do not even know why. Perhaps we will be safer in Bellême’s fortress after all.’

  ‘You will not,’ warned Durand. Geoffrey noted that he did not say ‘we’ and wondered whether the squire planned on deserting. It would be a blessed relief to be rid of him, although he would have some explaining to do to Tancred.

  ‘Did you recognize any of the four men last night?’ he asked of his squire.

  ‘It was too dark to see properly,’ said Durand. ‘Besides, I did not want to stray too far away from the shadows in case one of them spotted me. I cannot die outside a public lavatory. What would my father say? He would assume I had been soliciting.’

  ‘We should not have let them escape so easily,’ said Geoffrey, bitterly frustrated. ‘Not without answering our questions.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ asked Roger. ‘I was about to slit one’s throat, but you told me to stop.’

  ‘How could he speak to us if his head was all but severed from his body?’ Geoffrey had seen the way Roger slit throats.

  Roger began to laugh. ‘You should have seen your face when they gave you that shove. I thought you were going into that latrine pit, and so did you.’

  ‘It was that which allowed them to escape,’ said Durand, who had watched from a safe distance. ‘While you struggled to regain your balance, three of them ran away. And Roger abandoned the one he was fighting to rescue you.’

  ‘I would have drowned,’ said Geoffrey stiffly. ‘That pit was deep and full, and my armour would have dragged me under. Then what would you have told Joan?’

  ‘I would have thought of something,’ said Roger with a nasty snigger. ‘But you cannot blame me for not giving chase when I came to save you from an ignoble death in a latrine.’

  ‘Public latrines are not a phenomenon that will last long,’ said Helbye, arriving with Ulfrith from the stables and catching Roger’s last comment. ‘I prefer the convenience of “human lavatories”, where you hire a man with a pail, and he uses his cloak to screen you from passers by.’

  ‘But they can be expensive,’ argued Roger, his mouth full of oatmeal. ‘They seem to know when you need them most and raise their prices accordingly. And you cannot trust them not to lower the cloak at awkward moments, either, in order to demand a higher fee for raising it again.’

  ‘The notion of the sponge on a stick in the public lavatories is clever, though,’ said Ulfrith, reaching for a manly sized piece of bread that would have lasted Durand a week. ‘It is a great improvement on the piles of stones, shells or bunches of herbs that are usually provided for cleaning yourself.’

  ‘But only as long as the salt water in the bucket is regularly changed,’ argued Durand with a fastidious shudder. ‘And the ones I saw yesterday had not. They were afloat with—’

  ‘The ambush,’ said Geoffrey firmly. ‘I want to talk about the ambush, not about London’s sanitary arrangements, no matter how fascinating you all seem to find them.’

  ‘Do not fret, lad,’ said Roger comfortably. ‘All is not lost. I got this from one of them before he fled for his life. I doubt he will be attacking folk in lavatories again very soon, given that I sliced him with my knife before he fled.’

  Geoffrey took the item from him. It was a piece of silk, like the sort of token women offered knights before they went into combat. He had several himself, given by various ladies he had taken a fancy to and who had allowed him to act as their champion.

  ‘Blue silk,’ said Durand, regarding it admiringly. ‘Pretty, too. I wonder who gave him that? It means he is not just a peasant, but someone important.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Roger. ‘They fought like peasants – all brute force and no skill.’

  ‘Because peasants do not pass each other fine silk tokens,’ Durand explained in a tone of voice that bordered on the insolent. Geoffrey would not have blamed Roger if he had taught the squire a lesson with his fists, but Roger was intrigued and Durand continued. ‘You will find there is a lady who favours this colour, perhaps some noblewoman from the King’s Court.’

  ‘So, one of our attackers is a man with a lofty lover,’ mused Roger. ‘We shall have to visit the Court, and see if we can spot a damsel wearing clothes of this unusual blue.’

  ‘We will not,’ said Durand, pointing through the open window. ‘Because there she is.’

  Roger and his companions gazed out of the window, following the direction of Durand’s finger. From their room on the inn’s upper floor they had an excellent view of the street. Among the seething mass of people that scurried along it was a woman wearing a cloak that was almost the exact same colour as the piece of silk in Roger’s ham-sized hand. He studied it carefully.

  ‘Identical,’ he declared. ‘And an unusual hue at that. But what shall we do? Waylay her and ask whether her champions are in the habit of attacking innocent men in lavatories?’

  Geoffrey reached for his cloak. ‘Why not? That is the question we want answered.’

  ‘No,’ said Roger, gesturing to the remains of his breakfast. ‘We have not finished, and I do not like questioning ladies on an empty stomach – and that is what she is: a lady. She is no peasant.’

  ‘Stay here, then,’ said Geoffrey. ‘We do not want to tear after her in a mob, anyway. She will think she is being attacked. But do not wander off to inspect more latrines until I return, or we might never find each other again. This is a big city.’

  ‘I will stay here,’ promised Durand, whom Geoffrey thought might have offered to go with him. He did not want Roger, Helbye or Ulfrith, armed and ruffianly as they were, but Durand presented no threat to a lady. But Geoffrey was afraid she would be gone by the time Durand had donned his cloak and primped himself for the outside world, so he left his companions to the remains of their meal and ran lightly down the stairs.

  By the time he reached the street, the woman was out of sight and Geoffrey found himself among a heaving throng of people that moved in all directions, pushing and shoving in their impatience to be about their business. There were gaudily clad merchants, doing their best to keep grubby fingers from their fine attire. There were serfs from the surrounding villages, come to display their wares on dirty blankets; they snatched at the ankles of passers-by to draw attention to squat purple turnips and silky-skinned onions. There were traders selling ribbons, pins, oily cakes, spices, candles and ropes. There were moneylenders, distinctive with black curling beards, and there were dark-robed clerics, some walking piously with hands tucked inside wide sleeves, but most striding as briskly as the merchants, minds full of the business of the day.

  A herd of sheep was being driven to market by men with sticks, and small flocks of geese were shepherded haphazardly by children. Cows were being taken outside the city for daily grazing, and moved in unhurried gangs along the centre of the road, adding their own contributions to the mess of manure on the street. It stank so much that Geoffrey’s eyes watered, and he could not think of anywhere he had ever been where there we
re so many people, so much noise and so many stenches. It was impossible to move with any speed, so he found it difficult to catch up with his quarry. He glimpsed her mantle now and then, and hoped he would not lose her if she entered one of the many houses that lined the street or turned up a lane.

  As befitted a noblewoman, she was guarded by four soldiers. One limped and another held his arm stiffly, and Geoffrey assumed they were the four who had attacked him and Roger the previous evening. He wondered whether they were her permanent bodyguard, and grimaced, thinking she needed to choose some who were more proficient if she intended to use them as killers.

  As they neared the eastern end of the thoroughfare, the crowd began to thin, which meant that Geoffrey was able to move closer to his quarry, but also that he was more likely to be seen. He had already decided to see where she went before making his approach, so he hung back, pulling his hat over his eyes and keeping his hands in his sleeves in the hope that a casual glance would mistake him for something other than a knight following a lady along an increasingly deserted road.

  The houses along Eastceape became smaller and less grand farther away from the centre, and Geoffrey began to wonder whether she planned to leave the city altogether: he could already see the wall that protected the east side of London. But eventually she entered a church. The knights waited outside, scanning the street as they did so. Geoffrey kept walking to avoid catching their attention, then ducked up an alley.

  He broke into a trot, moving through a maze of lanes until he was able to reach the back of the chapel without being seen by the men at the front. He arrived at a graveyard that, judging by the number of grass-covered mounds, was depressingly full, and slipped through it, holding his sword so it did not clank against his mail and give him away. He looked for a rear door, so he could speak to the woman without fighting through her guards. He did not want her to escape while he engaged them, since he imagined he was unlikely to spot her by chance a second time.

  He was lucky. Although the Saxon church was a simple affair, there was a little priests’ gate leading to the chancel in addition to the main door the woman had used. The gate was unlocked, and Geoffrey saw smoke rising from a house at the end of the cemetery. The resident cleric was evidently cooking himself some breakfast.