‘Those yards are plagued by rats.’ He gave her a careful look. ‘What you suggest is that this attack was diabolically conceived?’
He slid his hands inside the sleeves of his robe.
Thomas still looked ashen-faced. ‘What malice,’ he kept saying. ‘How could anybody do a thing like that?’ She had told him about the rat and the piece of string that looked as if it had been tied to something.
‘I don’t understand it.’ Hildegard was riding along beside him. ‘Is it to do with the present political unrest? The archbishop sees the attack as a personal warning.’
‘It’d take some nerve to attack him,’ Thomas replied. ‘He’s the second-highest prelate in the land. Physical retribution would follow, public beheading, and also, for a believer, there’d be the risk of eternal damnation.’
It would only be worth it with an enormous prize at stake.
She could not fathom how the falconer could be involved in anything of such magnitude.
‘If His Grace is right, the man must have been chosen at random,’ he concluded.
It was late in the day, shortly before vespers, when the entire baggage train drew to a halt on the summit of a hill. There were exclamations of awe. Below them lay the wide valley of the Thames. A servant who had been here before shouted, ‘There she lies!’
The walls and turrets and steeples of London’s great buildings could only be guessed at. They were concealed under a pall of fog.
Undaunted, the lead waggoner raised his whip and pointed into the milky whiteness. ‘Journey’s end at last! Aim into that bank of cloud. It hides the portal to heaven or hell!’
Cheers and shouts rang out again as the wagons began to roll one by one and with ever increasing velocity down the side of the hill towards the invisible city.
It became a storm of sound, wheels churning over the rough track, pots, pans, harness, armour jangling and rattling in the sudden turning speed as the cavalcade hurtled down the last hill to their destination.
And then, as they drove beneath the clouds, the Thames revealed itself like a silver snake winding from one side of the horizon to the other.
‘London!’ Thomas stood in his stirrups and cheered.
They took the cattle drovers’ road through a vill called Islyngton where the herds from the mid-country and the wild mountains of North Wales were marshalled before being driven across the moor to slaughter at Smithfield.
Everybody was in a jubilant mood, even though they were forced to waste a night at an inn called the Angel while armed escorts were found to guide them through the territory north of the city. Cut-throats abounded, they were warned, and they should not attempt to cross except by light of day with an armed escort.
The men gave in to a spirit of celebration that night.
No earthquakes, no plague, no torrents of frogs, nothing but the grinding endless miles and the
discomfort of the saddle, the char, the feet. But they had done it! They were invincible! Now they were ready for anything.
To northerners it was as near London itself as to make no difference.
T
he threat of invasion was everywhere. Armed militia filled the streets. They clattered about in groups of four or five, sharpened swords swinging at their hips. Bowmen were constantly arriving from the shires. There were horsemen. Contingents of foot soldiers. Liveried armies pouring in to the town houses and palaces of the magnates.
The soon to be opened Parliament brought other kinds of incomers to fill the streets. Shire knights accompanied by their own small henchmen of liveried conscripts from the manors. Convoys of the nobility with armed guards wearing the signs of their allegiance. Bishops with sumptuously attired retinues of acolytes. City dignitaries, aldermen, burgesses, guildsmen of every description, all accompanied by servants and apprentices. There were clerks by the shoal, lawyers and serjeants-at-law plying for trade, general assistants to fetch and carry, and scriveners, parchment sellers, purveyors of wax for seals and candles, craftsmen in
wood and leather, stone and glass and precious metals; along with bow makers, fletchers, saddlers, carters, grooms, lorimers, stable lads and horse traders, there were wheelwrights, there were cloth workers, all accompanied by a hurrying, ever-changing crowd of servants, pages, messengers, go-betweens and attendants and, everywhere, the necessary marketeers to pander to all needs and desires.
The alehouses and wine shops were doing a roaring trade.
The armourers worked all hours making the streets ring with their clangour.
Young women in and out of the taverns schemed to make enough money to move to the country.
Apothecaries and leech women were in great demand.
Bakers, butchers, candlestick makers – name it, there were traders of every description enjoying the fruits of their foresight in stockpiling foreign goods as the blockade of the narrow seas continued.
On top of this, the streets were full of carters bringing produce in from outside. Grain was being brought from the manors of Essex and Kent. Fruit was brought. Cheeses. Fish, dried and salted in immense quantities. Eels, jugged or jellied. The mayor, Nick Brembre, swore that if the French got off their arses and sailed across to lay siege to London they would have a long wait before they starved the Londoners out. As for Parliament, down the road, outside the safety of the walls and the protection of the city militia, there was a similar seething influx of persons and goods from afar.
A mood of grim purpose was apparent in both
places, and a sense of solidarity gave rise to the incessant chanting of war songs and raucous battle cries. ‘Engelond! Engelond!’
Into this the York contingent rode that morning like lambs to the slaughter.
T
he archbishop had his own substantial palace outside the city walls near Westminster. York Place was the first great house outside the abbey enclave. It was a formidable building, the largest on this side of the river and only outshone by Canterbury’s palace in Lambeth on the other bank. Scarcely a stone’s throw from the Great Hall in Westminster Palace where Parliament was due to meet on the first of October, it could not have been more conveniently close to the seat of power.
A small group of servants remained there through the archbishop’s long absences in Yorkshire and when his cavalcade arrived they lined up outside to give the northerners a warm welcome.
The archbishop had no sooner arrived than he whisked Edwin away with his inkhorn and writing desk to attend a private conference with his inner circle of advisors.
Hildegard was to stay in the guest house in the Benedictine abbey near Westminster Palace. Before
leaving she went into the great courtyard to see what she could do to help unload the wagons.
Thomas was on the point of going to his own lodgings on the other side of the city.
‘I’ll be spending all my time being ferried up and down river,’ he commented when he saw her. ‘You’d think they could have found somewhere closer.’
‘Who instructed you to stay over at St Mary Graces?’ she asked.
‘Neville and Hubert must have cooked it up between them.’
‘You’ll be glad of the peace and quiet. Westminster’s going be a seething cauldron with all the shire knights and their armies piling into town. And,’ she added, ‘it can’t help but be good for your career to be living in the English headquarters of your Order. You’ll be an abbot in two blinks, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He smiled at that. ‘I’m happy as I am.’
As he turned to go, keeping her tone casual, she asked, ‘Do you happen to know when Abbot de Courcy is expected?’
‘He may be here already for all we know. He’s riding down with only a clerk and his page in attendance. Knowing him it won’t take long.’
When she went to join them, the northerners were strolling around the palace and venturing as far as the warren of streets outside the gatehouse to see what was what. They were in no way allowing themselves to look impressed.
‘I thought York was big but this is madness,’ she heard one of them comment.
‘I wouldn’t like it. Swarms of folk all on top of one other?’
‘Like maggots in a midden,’ somebody disparaged.
Before they had even started on the wagons one of the pastry cooks went out to find a pie shop. ‘Just to compare them against our own.’
He came back when they had almost finished unloading, ages after everybody had forgotten he’d left. ‘You won’t believe it,’ he announced. ‘There was a queue about a mile long just to get near the bloody place.’ He held up a steaming pie like a trophy. ‘Imagine having to wait in turn like that every day, just for a pie!’
‘What’s it like?’ somebody asked as he bit into it.
He chewed for a moment looking thoughtful. Then he held it up to peer inside the envelope of crust. ‘I tell you what, even one of Martin’s concoctions could never have made this shite edible.’ He gave a flick of the wrist, landing the pie neatly near the muzzle of one of the dogs roaming in from the street. ‘London cooks? London pisspots!’
Roaring with laughter, the men watched as the cur, knowing no better, ran off with the pie in its jaws.
Thomas Swynford had lain low ever since his sword had been taken from him in the woods, but he had acquired a substitute from the blacksmith at St Albans, and at Islyngton he had not stayed with them overnight but had ridden on with his page – unafraid, he said, of a few lawless men now he was rearmed. They had seen neither hair nor hide of him since. Everybody assumed he was in a hurry to get to his patron’s house so he could start law proceedings against the fellows whose vill he
had destroyed, and the common hope was that he was lying on Clerkenwell Moor with his throat cut. ‘And good riddance’ was also the common view.
After the pie incident Hildegard heard one or two of the men talking in this manner as they were carrying in sacks of produce from the carts. ‘Do you fellows have any personal grievance against Swynford?’ she asked, going to help them.
One of the men pursed his lips. ‘Personal? It could get personal, Domina.’
‘Why so?’
‘It’s his manner. Who the bloody hell does he think he is? He’s no better than us.
Sir
Thomas!’ The man spat. ‘Everything he has is gifted from Bolingbroke. We might ask why the great Earl of Derby should be so generous in raising this nobody to such heights.’
‘And what answer would we get?’
‘We’d get an answer that says maybe he’s not all he seems. Maybe he’s more closely related to Bolingbroke than it appears? Is his name really Swynford? Or would it be more honest to use another name?’
Hildegard gave him a sharp glance. ‘What name do you have in mind?’
‘Any name you want to give to the bastards of the Duke of Lancaster, I reckon. The ones he spawned with Mistress Swynford are running around with the name Beaufort now. A name plucked from the air.’ He gave a jeering laugh.
‘You’re suggesting Swynford is brother to the Earl of Derby – and that he was born outside the marriage?’
‘We shall never know now, with his supposed father,
old Hugh Swynford, dead. Unless his mother’s confessor spills the beans!’ The servant gave her an amused smile. ‘The old man’s death was lucky timing.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Very lucky indeed. They say it was
she
had him poisoned because he was in the way of her ambition to be the Duke’s whore.’
‘This is slander …’
‘No smoke, Domina. They say old Swynford discovered the truth. The midwife sold him the information, looking to enrich herself—’
‘More likely the midwife to be poisoned, then—’
‘And maybe she was! She vanished and he died in France – so how are we to know the truth of it?’
‘This is preposterous …’
The man was laughing. ‘They say even Gaunt isn’t what he seems. He was born of a butcher in Ghent. His mother, Queen Philippa, God bless her, gave birth to a girl but when she rolled over in bed she smothered her. She was so frightened of old Edward she bought a newborn from a butcher’s wife and claimed it as King Edward’s own. So you see, Lancaster is a bastard too, his begettings are bastards and—’
‘What? His son, Bolingbroke, as well?’ She, too, was beginning to laugh. The man was outrageous. He was clearly enjoying the idea of shocking her and no doubt saw her as nothing but a pious nun foisted on them for no good reason. ‘I’ve heard it all now!’ she scoffed, hoisting one of the smaller sacks onto her hip.
‘What our masters get up to, oh, you wouldn’t believe, there in your cloisters with your holy sisters! But no, I’ll concede that one point. Bolingbroke is likely to be
his father’s son, seeing as the Duchess Blanche was ever reckoned to be a virtuous woman. Nobody disputes that. But you can see why he’s so generous to Swynford, can’t you? Bolingbroke, or Harry Derby if you prefer, is Swynford’s half-brother.’
They dumped the sacks of flour they were carrying on top of the ones that were already stacked up in the storeroom.
Another servant came staggering after them with one more and now he chipped in as well. ‘You’re as mad as a bat, Jack. You’ve got it all wrong.’ He grinned at Hildegard. ‘Don’t heed a word he says, Domina. Swynford stands high for one reason only.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘He’s such a useful little toad. It’s this way, see. If the price is right, Swynford’ll fall over himself to oblige. And why? Because his mother pulls his strings. His
ma
, get it?’
‘What the hell’s Kate Swynford got to do with it? She’s out on her ear, they say.’
‘Yes, but it’s like this. She’s desperate to get back in with the Duke. And her son is the means to do it.’
‘What the devil can he do?’
‘Think about it! You’d oblige a man if he’d scratch your arse for you, wouldn’t you? Harry Derby’s no different. Swynford does the scratching and Derby obliges him – by putting in a good word for his ma with the Duke.’
‘Aye, I like it.’ He was beginning to grin.
‘And don’t forget,’ his companion added, ‘Kate Swynford was Harry Derby’s wet nurse. She’s as close to being his real ma as spit. I reckon he’s still in the nursery, jumping when she says jump.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing, you bat-eared losel, if I wanted my arse scratching, I’d employ somebody with bigger tits than Thomas Swynford’s!’ They both roared and, punching each other on the shoulders, strolled off to unload more sacks from the wagon.
Well! Hildegard thought, watching them for a moment.
She considered Swynford and his connections. She thought of the ambush and the cross the archbishop had taken to safety. Now it was in his privy chamber where no thief would ever find it.
And then came the business of the rats. Before they even began to settle down for a much-earned meal the first one showed its muzzle. Five, ten, a swarm of them appeared from out of the stores. With no fear of the humans they ran all over the sacks of meal and began biting at the threads with their vicious teeth.
Hildegard hurried outside with everybody else when she heard a din of shrill squeaking. The place was overrun. A few men armed with clubs were setting about the vermin and a hunt and hullabaloo started up when the creatures swarmed into the yard to escape. With a lot of shouting the men pursued them and blood and guts and torn flesh were soon being spattered everywhere. Hildegard felt sick.
A falconer came out to see what the commotion was with one of his birds on his wrist and when he saw what was going on he loosed her. She made several gyrations to gain height and then fell to earth like a stone and flew up at once with one of the struggling rats in her mouth.
But there were too many for one hawk and not enough
space in the yard for more so the men tried to scare the rats towards the river. To the horror of those watching, the remaining ones turned on their pursuers. One man had two or three clinging to his garments, biting, devouring, while he screamed for help to get them off him. He fell to the ground and rolled around until they let go and turned to another victim.
The battle continued until the men got the upper hand and were chasing the last one, a particularly large cunning creature, round and round the yard unable to dispatch it until somebody stepped forward and whacked it over and over until it was pulp. He picked it up by the tail and, with a shout of triumph, hung the mess on the tip of his knife and paraded it round the yard as a trophy. There were cheers and shouts: ‘It’s the Duke of Gloucester!’
Somebody standing next to Hildegard muttered, ‘If clever methods don’t succeed, try the old one Jarrold.’ There were knowing guffaws from those who overheard him.
The rest of them were shouting for Gloucester. It was known that the Duke carried a fox’s tail tied to his lance. It was his symbol. A sign of his brutal cunning, as Hildegard saw it.
She went to the cart to pick up her bags. The threat of being in a strange city seemed to have unleashed a mood of violence in the men and she was glad to get away.
A couple of more temperate servants escorted Hildegard from the landing stage at York Place to the busy quay near the abbey. ‘Safer to go by water, Domina,’ they warned her. ‘We’ve been instructed not to set foot on the
Strand at night without a few men-at-arms with us.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
It was only a short boat ride but their wherryman had to row against the tide and the servants marvelled at the strength of it, comparing it unfavourably with the slower more tranquil River Ouse that swept past the edge of the woods near the purlieus of Bishopthorpe Palace. They dropped her bags on the quay when she alighted, then stayed in the boat for the return journey, leaving her to make her way by herself up the path and along to the porter’s lodge where she had to show her pass and wait to be admitted.
Westminster Abbey had been built long ago in wood, rebuilt by King Henry II in stone, and was now being added to yet again by the King’s master mason Henry Yevele. Situated in marshland on a hummock called Thorney Island, the only reminder now was the watercourse that encircled the abbey complex like a moat.
Bridges gave access at three points. One went over a stream to the west and led to the horse ferry. This served travellers, especially pilgrims, who wanted to cross the Thames to go south to Canterbury, to Rome, to Jerusalem even. It also gave access to a group of fortified buildings on the opposite bank set amid meadows and pleasant-looking copses. After Archbishop Sudbury’s murder during the rebellion it was now William Courtenay who wore the mitre in Canterbury and lorded over there at Lambeth.
The second bridge was a small wooden service bridge leading north from the gardens and used mainly
by servants for conveying produce in and out of the labyrinthine kitchen quarters serving both the abbey and the palace.