‘God’s will be done!’ somebody shouted from the crowd.
Rivera turned towards the sound. The words floated clearly in the deathly quiet that descended. ‘I am absolved. May you be absolved also.’
Hildegard began to fight her way towards him, but no one would let her through and the guards held her back with their pikes and she had to watch as he turned to the swordsman. In a nightmare she heard him ask, ‘Is the blade sharp?’
‘Sharp enough, magister.’
Swynford, detecting a note of doubt in his man’s voice, snarled, ‘Get on with it.’
Rivera raised his right hand. ‘So be it.’
Hildegard watched in horror as he knelt and rested his head on the block. She saw him make a small movement with one hand to push aside his hair.
The swordsman lifted his massive blade. As one, the crowd drew in a breath of expectation. Hildegard reached out. Help must come.
Then the blade swept down in a brutal arc. The crowd groaned. There was the crack of splitting bone. The sword rose and fell again. And for a third time it made its descent.
The chaos of public spectacle was reduced to the most intimate moment of death.
The crush of onlookers at the front fell back, scattering those behind, and the crowd like a wave, without a mind, moving on instinct, drew in on itself, away from the horror. And then a roar broke out and cries of release rent the air.
Hildegard uttered one howl of grief and loss.
It was Ulf, holding her protectively in his arms, and they were somehow free of the passers-by and standing lower down the hill in the shelter of a building. He was murmuring, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise who he was.’
The de Hutton house on the Strand. Night.
Hildegard felt as if she would never sleep again. How could she? When, around prime, the noises from the chamber below convinced her that the household was awake, she somehow prepared herself for whatever was to come. In her hand, she found Rivera’s red and gold emblem, its shape indented into her palm. She pinned it underneath her shift and went down.
‘I have to see Medford,’ she announced when she came face-to-face with Roger de Hutton on the way into the hall. Ulf was beside him and stepped forward.
‘I’ll be ready shortly.’ He turned to Roger, ‘If I may be released for an hour, I’ll escort her.’
‘I’ve sent a message across to York Place to tell them you’ll be staying here when you get back. You’ll be safer.’ Roger led her in to break the night fast.
She sat in the hall and stared at the bread and wine put in front of her but did not touch it.
Ulf returned to tell her he was ready to leave when she was.
She lifted her head. ‘What happened afterwards?’
‘Some Dominicans came out of their priory and took him into one of the chantries along there. Swynford and his accomplices had disappeared by the time we arrived. The crowd handed over half a dozen of the ringleaders.
We took them to the Fleet. They’ll hang this morning. We came as soon as that little fellow, Kelt, alerted us.’
‘Why did the rats not try to stop it?’ demanded Roger.
Ulf took her hand. ‘He was the one who saved you from drowning, wasn’t he? The one who looked after you. I’m sorry.’
When she came down carrying her cloak, Edwin Westwode had arrived. The look of concern on his face showed that they had explained everything. Together they left for Westminster with Ulf and a couple of bodyguards.
Hildegard had no fear of being waylaid by mobs or cut-throats on the way there and would have gone without an escort. It didn’t matter one way or the other now. Nothing mattered. She was seeing everything through a heavy gauze. It absorbed her grief. She felt nothing could get through it to touch her. She lived lightly behind it.
Medford. In black velvet as usual. A white linen shirt with elaborate cuffs. More than ever he looked like a tall child in its best clothes. Now, she knew, he was a child who pulled the wings off flies.
Dean Slake was by his side as usual.
Medford was expatiating, uninvited, on his reason for living.
‘To protect my liege, His Grace the King, from the machinations of his enemies. To maintain his glory and splendour, to increase profit and establish peace in his realm. Richard is our anointed king, our one hope for victory against the French. Without him we are nothing. We exist solely to do his will.’
He turned to Hildegard.
‘You have information for me?’
‘The name you want is Harry Summers.’
Edwin made an exclamation of surprise. ‘Harry? But I know him!’
Medford swivelled. ‘Go on.’
‘He was my predecessor at Bishopthorpe Palace. He was Archbishop Neville’s private secretary.’
‘Where is he now, do you know?’
‘He’s with the Duke of Northumberland. I haven’t seen him for ages.’
‘Northumberland’s staying up near Clerkenwell,’ broke in Ulf. ‘Roger de Hutton was dining there a couple of nights ago.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ Dean Slake was at the door.
Medford gestured to the others to follow, calling, ‘Horses, Slake! And armed guards!’
Northumberland had an imposing house and was famous for barring the Duke of Lancaster, Gaunt, from the gates of his castle during the time of the Great Revolt, when Lancaster had been booted out of Scotland and feared to return south until the troubles had died down. By that time news had already reached him that the mob had burnt his Savoy Palace to the ground. The north was safer.
On the ride over to Northumberland’s, Slake mentioned this insult to Gaunt and his continuing opposition to Gloucester, but Ulf was of the opinion that he was a slippery customer and said he wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him – and given his girth that wouldn’t be far.
Hildegard listened but felt no inclination to add anything. The streets seemed abnormally quiet now. The new mayor, Exton, although he had not yet received his chain of office, had sworn in dozens of new constables and given them broad powers to clear the streets. Curfew was enforced once more. The void that had been filled by men like Swynford with their own militia was now filled by the official forces of law and order. Even Gloucester, seen parading around with his army, the fox’s brush swinging from his lance, was now asked to stay outside the walls.
When they arrived at Northumberland’s stronghold Medford pushed in straight past the guards on duty with a peremptory ‘King’s business!’ Slake followed. It was up to Ulf to explain that it was nothing to look affronted about but rather a matter for pride to be visited by the King’s secretary, abrupt of manner though he was.
Hildegard followed the men up to the solar.
The Duke was truculent and as irascible as Roger de Hutton but ten times more powerful, owning vast tracts of land as one of the marcher lords in the border country between Scotland and England. He was known to have got rich on running arms between the two old enemies.
Slake, smiling despite the frosty reception, introduced them. ‘Mr Medford, the King’s secretary. And I’m Will Slake, Dean of the Signet Office.’
‘What about it?’ asked Northumberland in his strong northern accent.
‘We understand you retain a clerk called Harry Summers?’
‘What if I do?’
Smiling peacefully Slake said, ‘Mr Medford and I
would like to speak to him.’
Without taking his glance off Slake, Northumberland cuffed a page on the head. ‘Fetch him.’
While they waited Northumberland looked his visitors over and seemed to find nothing to like. He grudgingly acknowledged Ulf but had nothing to say to Hildegard.
It was surprising that he was so vastly popular with the Londoners but it was entirely because of his insult to Gaunt and he rode his popularity as if by innate right.
A young man came in, hair somewhat tousled, and, still tying the laces of his shirt, bowed elaborately to his lord.
Northumberland merely growled, ‘Playing skittles again, you bloody wastrel?’
When Summers looked round at the visitors his glance alighted on Edwin and his face lit up. ‘Westwode, you old devil. What are you doing here? How are you, fella?’ He strode forward and clapped Edwin on the back.
Edwin shot a glance at Medford but was clearly pleased to see Summers. ‘Going well, Harry?’
‘Still keeping the old quill sharpened.’
Medford looked irritated. ‘We have some questions for you, Summers.’ He turned to the Duke. ‘Is there a privy chamber where we might conduct this business?’
Northumberland nodded towards an inner door and they all trooped inside leaving the Duke glaring after them.
‘Well,’ asked Summers with a bright smile, ‘what brings you here? I don’t understand. How can I help?’
Slake was at his most affable. He got into conversation about skittles and when Summers was off his guard he
slipped in a question about allegiance, but Harry Summers, his face lacking any trace of guile, affirmed outright his support for the King.
‘We’re all King’s men in the north, everywhere but Pontefract, Pickering, Knaresborough and Scarborough.’ He listed them on his fingers. ‘Lancaster’s got them in his iron fist. You should hear the Duke fuming. “He’s placed his bloody castles so he’s got me cut off from the south of my own country. Is he trying to throw me into the arms of the Scots?”’ A look of alarm crossed his face. ‘I don’t mean to imply … not that he would—’
‘You mention these Lancastrian strongholds,’ Slake cut in with a disarming smile. ‘Did you and the archbishop visit many of them?’
With a puzzled look at Edwin, whose master the archbishop now was, he shook his head. ‘Why would we? We’d enough to do with church business. Oh, except of course for Pickering Castle. His Grace loves to hunt, and of course we sometimes ended up at Scarborough after a day out.’
‘Tell us about it.’ Medford spoke for the first time.
‘About hunting?’
‘About Scarborough Castle. You must have been there when Sir Ralph Standish was constable?’
‘We were, as a matter of fact.’ Summers looked bewildered but evidently believing there was no harm in it answered in a straightforward manner. ‘His Grace thought he’d better have a look at this new placeman of Gaunt’s, so we went over there after a good day out. They spent the evening in discussions up in Standish’s solar. It was at the top of a tower looking out over the sea one way
and the moors the other. Amazing place. You could hear the sea booming on the rocks way below.’
Hildegard heard Medford sigh but he allowed Summers to continue.
He was saying, ‘I have good cause to remember those steps leading up to the top.’ He grinned. ‘Standish had a flaming temper, even worse than Neville’s. He threw me down them and I had a bump on my head for a week.’
‘What made him do that?’ asked Hildegard while everybody stared at Summers as if they couldn’t believe their eyes.
‘He thought I’d been listening in. I was astonished that anybody should harbour such suspicions about an archbishop’s clerk. It’s outrageous. But here I am, going up the stairs to give His Grace a message, when the door at the top suddenly flies open. It’s Standish. He’s shouting something over his shoulder like: “I’m owed! Get it? It’s not my fault things went arse over teat. They owe me!” And a voice comes from inside: “And if they don’t pay their debt?” Standish again: “I shall take the truth to where it will do most harm!” Then the archbishop: “And where is that?” And then Standish mentions you, Mr Secretary. He says, “Ask Medford!” And then he comes flying out, knocks me over, picks me up and gives me a great shove sending me back down the stairs. I was never so astonished in my life.’
‘And, apart from Archbishop Neville, do you know who was inside the chamber at this time?’ asked Medford.
On the way back they had to ride down Ludgate Hill. Hildegard found her cheeks were wet as if a shower of
rain had passed over without being noticed.
‘So did Standish have something to tell you?’ Slake asked Medford.
‘Don’t you think I would have informed the King?’ Medford stared straight ahead.
‘It’s to do with the rebellion,’ announced Slake, continuing, ‘we know Standish was one of the traitors at Smithfield.’
Hildegard wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. ‘The Abbot of Meaux heard a rumour along those lines.’
‘Go on,’ said Medford.
‘Apparently Standish was paid to get rid of Tyler. He was also instructed to assassinate Richard in the confusion they expected to follow. Standish was rewarded with Scarborough Castle by his master—’
‘Lancaster,’ put in Slake.
‘And,’ she continued, ‘maybe he thought he had a right to the rest of his payment, whatever it was, despite the fact that he failed in the final detail. Maybe that’s what he was so furious about when Summers was there. Neville must know.’