‘They all said more or less what I would have expected them to say in the circumstances. There was a good deal of animosity towards Fulk, but then we knew that already.’ I poured more ale into my beaker. ‘One thing intrigues me, however, and that’s the promptness with which the St Clairs’ new will was rewritten in its original form. It’s not much over two weeks since the murder, but both Judith and Godfrey said that the bequests had been restored as they were before Fulk arrived on the scene. I can only think that perhaps Judith had started to regret her impetuosity in leaving everything to her nephew, even before Fulk died.’
‘Conscience, you mean?’
‘Yes, probably … I wonder what it is Master Threadgold wants to tell me.’ I shifted restlessly. ‘Why couldn’t the old fool say while I was there? I hate delays. They’re dangerous.’ I thought of Lydia Jolliffe standing at her window and watching Martin Threadgold’s housekeeper running after me. An intelligent woman, it shouldn’t have been too difficult for her to put the right interpretation on what she had witnessed. The thought forced me into making a decision. ‘As soon as we’ve finished eating, I shall go back. I shan’t wait until this evening.’
But my good intentions were destined to be no more than that. The sight of Reynold Makepeace anxiously pushing his way through the crowded ale room, and heading in my direction, filled me with foreboding. And I was right to be worried. A summons to Westminster Palace, where, it appeared, another great banquet was being held in honour of the Dowager Duchess – the poor woman would be as fat as a sow by the time she returned to Burgundy – had been brought by Timothy Plummer himself, no less, released temporarily from his relentless vigil against all those imaginary French spies and assassins in order to make sure that I obeyed. The invitation did not include Bertram.
‘Is this really necessary?’ I demanded peevishly as I mounted my horse, which, on Timothy’s instructions, had already been led out of Reynold’s stables and saddled and bridled. (I could tell that the beast was as annoyed about the disturbance as I was.) ‘I saw Duke Richard only yesterday. He doesn’t usually interfere like this. In fact, he promised to leave me alone.’
‘Oh, stop grouching,’ Timothy advised brusquely. He was no more pleased to be used as an errand boy than I was to see him. ‘An important guest has particularly asked to meet you again.’
‘Who? And what do you mean, again?’
‘Wait! You’ll find out,’ he snapped, and I could coax nothing further out of him. Something had got under his skin.
As we jogged along the Strand, I cast a frustrated glance at Martin Threadgold’s dwelling. I could see no sign of life except for William Morgan walking up the narrow lane between the two houses. Even as I looked, he scaled the St Clairs’ garden wall with perfect ease, dropping down the other side and out of sight. What, I wondered, had he been up to? He was a man whose every action filled me with disquiet. I was still convinced he had been my attacker of the previous night.
Westminster Palace, when we finally reached it (not without difficulty, I might say, as so many people were making their way there) was a whirlpool of noise and lights – every cresset, every torch, every candle aflame – with servants scurrying all over the place, shouting, issuing instructions, countermanding instructions, falling over their own feet and everybody else’s amidst an overpowering smell of roasting meat. God knows how many swans, peacocks, capons, cows, sheep, pigs had been slaughtered to make this feast. If the Burgundian ambassadors and courtiers failed to be impressed by such a display of grandeur, then they could never be impressed by anything.
Not that I was allowed to share in the occasion any more than I already had. Having seen my horse comfortably stabled, Timothy led me along a number of narrow corridors, up and down various flights of steps until he eventually, and thankfully, left me in a small, but richly furnished ante-room which, judging by the raised voice coming from behind the closed inner door, was part of a suite of rooms occupied by someone of great importance. (Well, judging by the way in which he was browbeating some unfortunate inferior,
he
thought he was of great importance, which is not, of course, always the same thing.) The voice was vaguely familiar, and yet I could not immediately recognize it. Nor was I able to understand exactly what was being said, although I caught a word here and there. But before memory had time to jog my elbow, the inner door was flung open by a page and a young man swept through, both hands outstretched.
‘Master Chapman! Roger! Naturally you remember me!’
His confidence and vanity were, alas, not misplaced. Although I had last seen him when he was a bedraggled and penniless fugitive, escaping the clutches of his elder brother, King James III of Scotland, I knew him at once: Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany.
‘Your Highness.’ I bowed, and he gave me his hand to kiss. ‘I thought you were in France.’
‘I was! I was!’ he exclaimed exuberantly, moderating the thick Scots tongue for my West Country ears. ‘And very civilly my dear Cousin Louis treated me – that goes without saying. But now, as you see, I’m enjoying the hospitality of my dear Cousin Edward.’ He grinned broadly. ‘There are reasons for this change of venue which I feel sure a clever fellow like yourself will be able to fathom.’
I made no reply except to bow and say, ‘I’m honoured to see Your Grace once again, and in such good spirits, too.’
He punched me on the shoulder (I did wish people would stop doing that!) and said, ‘Of course you are. Just as I’m delighted to be able to call you friend.’ He paused, awaiting my reaction to this signal honour. When none came, he looked disappointed before producing the winning card from his sleeve. ‘But think how far more honoured you will be when it’s the
King
of Scotland who invites you to his court.’
I had, indeed, guessed which way the wind was blowing as soon as I’d clapped eyes on him. He might have been well received at the French court, but Louis XI, that reportedly shrewd and wily monarch, would do nothing that might upset his Scottish ally, King James, who, with his constant harrying of the northern shires, was distracting English attention from its ties with Burgundy. It made sense, therefore, that there should be some devious scheme afoot, hatched by Albany and King Edward, to replace James III with his renegade brother.
I bowed. ‘I wish Your Grace every success in your enterprise, whenever it may be.’
The Duke beamed, but the eyes above the smile were hard and calculating.
‘A year perhaps,’ he said. ‘Maybe a little more, maybe less. ‘But rest assured that I shall remember you, Master Chapman, when the time comes for me to ascend the Scottish throne, as I shall remember certain of your friends across the Irish Sea.’
I hurriedly disclaimed any such friends and silently suppressed a shudder: the Duke’s promise sounded more like a threat to me, but naturally I couldn’t expect him to see it that way. So like the craven that I was, I thanked him profusely for his interest and, sensing that the interview was at an end, backed out of the ante-chamber just as the trumpets began sounding for the start of the feast. In fact, I backed straight into the Earl of Lincoln, who had arrived to escort Albany to his place at the high table among the rest of the honoured guests.
‘Roger!’ Luckily, I divined the Earl’s intention just in time and moved before he could slap me on the back. ‘Have you discovered our murderer yet?’
‘Not yet, Your Highness. But I’m getting closer,’ I assured him, lying through my teeth.
‘Good! Good! My uncle is relying on you. My Lord,’ he went on, turning to the Duke, ‘let me conduct you to your seat in the great hall.’
The two men swept past me, the candlelight gleaming on their satins and velvets, glinting on their jewelled buttons and rings. My moment of glory – if you care to call it that – was past. I was forgotten as easily as I had been recalled to mind. I had been the object of Albany’s graciousness and gratitude just long enough to make him feel that he had repaid a debt (or so I devoutly hoped), and now I was free to go.
I rescued my horse from the royal stables and rode back along the Strand, my one object now to hear what Martin Threadgold had to say, and hoping against hope that he had not, in the meantime, changed his mind.
The late promise of the day had been fulfilled. The clouds were banked high in the evening sky and the dying sun made paths of ghostly radiance across the quiet gardens. It caught the tops of the shadowed trees, lighting them, like lamps from within.
As I reached the Fleet Street end of the Strand, I could see a cluster of anxious people outside the first of the last three houses, all trying to calm the figure in their midst. And that figure was a small woman in floods of noisy tears.
My heart and stomach both plummeted as I recognized Martin Threadgold’s housekeeper.
I
hurriedly dismounted and, leading the horse, approached the group. Apart from Martin Threadgold’s housekeeper, this turned out to consist of Lydia and Roland Jolliffe, the St Clairs, Paulina Graygoss and, somewhat surprisingly, Lionel Broderer. Of William Morgan and the younger members of both families there was no sign.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
No one seemed to find my sudden appearance remarkable. (I think they had come to regard me rather like the Devil in a morality play, always popping up when least wanted or expected.) Judith St Clair gave me a resigned look and said, in an even more resigned voice, ‘Master Threadgold is dead.’ She finally managed to hush the little housekeeper’s noisy sobbing with a curt word or two, which she palliated with an arm about the woman’s shoulders. ‘My dear Mistress Pettigrew, you have had a shock, but you must pull yourself together. Many people die in their sleep, you know. It’s not uncommon, and your master was not a young man.’
Which was true, as far as it went, but there is old and then there is old; and if Martin Threadgold had been much past his middle fifties, I would have owned myself greatly mistaken. And he had died in his sleep, apparently. Now that really did surprise me; and when I had paid, and paid handsomely, two passing and fairly honest-looking youths to return my horse to Reynold Makepeace’s stables, I followed Mistress Pettigrew and the rest of the party into Master Threadgold’s house. I was not invited, but no one seemed to object to my presence.
Godfrey and Judith St Clair took charge, as, I supposed, the representatives of the absent Alcina, the dead man’s next of kin.
‘Now, stop snivelling and let us see your master,’ Judith instructed the housekeeper, quietly but firmly. She was not, I guessed, a woman who had much time for the self-indulgence of grief. Whatever life threw at her, she absorbed the shock and just got on with living, expecting others to do the same and ignoring the fact that not everyone is capable of such stoical behaviour.
Paulina Graygoss gave her fellow servant an encouraging pat on the back.
‘Come now, Felice,’ she urged gently, ‘show us where Master Threadgold is.’
He was in the little room at the top of the ‘secret’ stair leading up from the inglenook of the empty fireplace, slumped in his armchair. A folio, bound in moth-eaten red velvet and with broken laces, had fallen from his hand to the bare flagstones, although, oddly enough, the reading-stand had been folded down on its rusty hinges to perform its other function as a table. A tattered brocade cushion was stuffed awkwardly behind his head.
It only took a swift glance to convince us that Martin Threadgold was indeed dead. The cold and pallid skin, the slack jaw, the thread of saliva glistening on his chin and, above all else, the stillness of the body twisted at an awkward angle, left no room for doubt; and at the sight of her master, Mistress Pettigrew renewed her lamentations.
‘Paulina, take her downstairs and give her some wine if you can find any,’ Judith St Clair recommended. There was an edge to her voice that suggested she might be more rattled by her neighbour’s and former brother-in-law’s death than she was prepared to admit. ‘Now,’ she continued when the two women had disappeared, ‘Godfrey, you and Lionel, if he will be so kind, had better carry poor Martin to his bedchamber and lay him on his bed. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Tomorrow will be time enough for us – and, of course, Alcina – to make arrangements for his burial. I’ll wait up for her tonight until she returns from wherever it is she’s gone, and break the news. An unhappy occasion for her, but not, I fancy, one that she will find unduly distressing.’
‘Did anyone visit Master Threadgold this evening?’ I asked, butting my way into the conversation as I recalled the sight of William Morgan walking up the alleyway between the gardens.
They all turned to stare at me in faint surprise, as though I was something nasty that had just hopped out of the woodwork.
Again, it was Judith who answered. ‘You’d have to put that question to Mistress Pettigrew, Master Chapman. Neither Godfrey nor I keep account of our neighbours’ movements.’
And while I was prepared to accept that this was probably true of herself and her husband, I was extremely sceptical of the Jolliffes’ exaggerated nods of agreement – well, of Lydia’s, at any rate. I remembered her peering down from the side window of her house at me and Mistress Pettigrew.
But something else had attracted my attention: two small damp circles on the surface of the reading-stand table, as though a bottle and beaker had stood there at some time during the evening. But they weren’t there now. I wondered what had happened to them.
Godfrey St Clair and Lionel Broderer were attempting to lift the body, but the former was struggling somewhat. Dead men weigh more heavily than you think, as the term ‘dead weight’ implies. I stepped forward and gently elbowed him out of the way, seizing Master Threadgold under the armpits and signalling to Lionel to take hold of his legs.
Judith St Clair gestured to us to wait, disappearing and returning after a minute or two accompanied by the housekeeper.
‘Show these gentlemen to your master’s bedchamber, Felice,’ she instructed. ‘Then you and Paulina can lay out the corpse.’