‘Some good may yet come of it, then,’ Thomas said after a pause. ‘It might deter the Duke of Gloucester and his cronies from trying to steal what is not theirs.’
Thomas was somewhat optimistic. Another view was soon sweeping London. The severed head was a warning to the King himself. Obey your subjects or you’ll finish up with your head crowned with thorns and stuck on a pole like any other traitor.
‘Who would like to accompany me to Westminster?’ Hildegard asked. It was nones. Parliament would soon rise for the day.
Ulf offered at once and Roger, strapping on his sword belt, got up as well. Thomas, unable to hide his limp, said he hoped a horse could be found for him, if Roger would be so kind.
With an armed escort, the three of them set out and arrived in Westminster shortly after the doors of the chapter house had been flung open.
‘I should have been in there this morning,’ remarked Ulf without regret.
‘And I should have been in the other place,’ Roger pointed out. ‘To hell with the bastards.’ He shot a glance at Ulf. ‘What’s she brought us here for?’
Hildegard rode alongside him. ‘There’s someone we need to see, isn’t there?’
One of the shire knights was leaving as if he couldn’t get out fast enough. He recognised Ulf and came over. ‘You missed nothing, fella. The carve-up is now complete. I abstained. I doubt they’ll ask me again. I’m off to the country to save my life.’ He reached up to grasp Ulf by the
hand and the steward got down off his horse and gave the man a bear hug. ‘Watch your step, Geoffrey.’
When he was out of earshot Ulf said, ‘He’s a rare bird. He’s called Geoffrey Chaucer. He’s Richard’s court poet but he’s retained by Lancaster on account of his wife. She’s the sister of the Duke’s mistress.’
‘Which one?’ Roger asked.
‘Katharine Swynford.’ The Duke had countless women but his liaison with Thomas Swynford’s mother was the longest lasting and most fertile in terms of the children she had borne him outside the law.
‘I saw her in Lincoln.’ Hildegard commented. There were other concerns on her mind at present.
A figure she recognised left the chapter house with a crowd of other men and she watched as they swarmed across the yard, some elated, others with grim faces. They disappeared into the nearby tavern.
‘That’s that, then,’ observed Roger with a covert glance in Hildegard’s direction. ‘What are we doing next?’
‘I understood you’d offered to escort me?’ she replied with something of her former spirit. ‘Now I’m going to go over there,’ she gestured towards the tavern. ‘You can accompany me or not, as you please.’
‘I’ve got better wine in my slop buckets than they’ll have in there,’ Roger began to point out when Hildegard dismounted and threw him the reins of her horse. ‘Come on, Ulf. I’m going to fetch him outside.’
When she looked back Roger was holding the reins of two extra horses in his hand with the possibility of a third as Thomas gingerly dismounted.
The tavern was bursting at the seams with the sort of people who like hanging around anybody with the lustre of political power about them, and as well as them there was the big crowd from the Commons who had just come in. Guy de Ravenscar was easy to spot. He stood head and shoulders above most of the local men.
Hildegard went straight up to him. ‘Was it you?’
She didn’t offer any of the usual greetings and when he saw her face he peeled off from his companions and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Come outside.’
People were staring as she pushed her way back through the crowd to the door and somebody shouted, ‘You’re doing well there, Guy.’
But then they were outside and she was turning on him shouting, ‘Did you do it?’
‘Do what, my dearest—?’
‘Don’t give me all that. The head. It’s horrible – that thing! Is it your doing?’
‘What is this?’
She took him firmly by the arm. ‘Did you, Guy. Tell me! That head, nailed to the Savoy gates. Who put it there? It was you, wasn’t it?’ Tears suddenly welled up and she felt she was having to fight for breath. She slapped his face and began to punch him. A crowd formed. Nobody interfered. Guy gripped her by both arms.
‘Steady on! What’s happened?’
Ulf stepped forward and explained, succinctly, adding, ‘I know I vowed to deal with the bastard but I would never have done anything so barbaric.’
Guy’s jaw seemed to sag. He released her and she stood
panting for breath, shouting, ‘I don’t even care what happens to him! I don’t care! Don’t you understand? I can’t breathe.’ She was choking. ‘Did you, Guy? Was it you who nailed him up there?’
His strange reaction made her falter. He was staring at her with his mouth open. He looked back at the tavern then turned to face her. ‘I think I must have.’
‘What?’
Ulf took a step forward.
Guy suddenly seemed unsteady on his feet and groped his way to a nearby wall and sat down with his head in his hands. Hildegard and Ulf followed.
After a moment Guy rubbed his hands over his face and lifted his head. ‘My men are loyal to me and I to them. I hated Hugh. Everybody knew that. I’d no idea how much I hated him until I met him again in the city. Didn’t you hate him, Hildegard, truly, in your heart? You have as much reason as anybody.’
She shook her head. ‘He was as he was. My only ambition was never to set eyes on him again. I don’t hate him. There’s too much sorrow in the world to make room for hatred.’
‘I don’t have your nature. I hated Hugh and despite that …’ he gestured vaguely in the direction of the Savoy ‘ … I still do. I feel no sorrow. If that’s what’s happened then he’s got what he deserved. But I fear I may have brought him to such a hideous end by allowing my men to think I would welcome it. I fear they have fulfilled what they see as their duty to me.’
He stood up. He seemed dazed. It was easy to see that he believed what he was telling them. Somehow he
pulled himself together and managed to explain. ‘They’re wild border men. Used to everyday brutality. It’s how they survive. They live by simple rules. If they see that I’m dishonoured, they’ll take revenge on my behalf. Their allegiance to me is absolute. They know no other law.’
He took an unsteady step. ‘The city is no place for them. They are too savage, too free. Parliament is finished. I’m going back to Wales to raise men for King Richard. He’s going to need longbowmen. I beg you, do not detain them. My wild Welsh archers may yet save England.’
He went back into the tavern and Ulf and Hildegard were returning to where Roger was still waiting with the horses when they saw him emerge with half a dozen subdued but rough-looking men-at-arms. A few girls from the tavern straggled out after them with lewd comments and invitations to return.
Their horses were brought up. Guy swung into the saddle, the raven still hanging by its neck from his pike, and began to lead his men in the direction of the horse ferry. When he drew level with the de Hutton group he raised one hand in salutation and one or two of his men glanced over and then quickly away.
Ulf helped Thomas into the saddle. Hildegard leant her head against her horse’s neck for a moment and closed her eyes.
When she looked up, her brother-in-law’s small army had gone.
Later they discovered that before he left the city for good, Guy had made sure the head was taken down and he paid
for a mass at All Hallows by the Tower, the little church where his brother had attacked Hildegard in the early days of her stay in the capital. Appropriately it was near Petty Wales, between the river and the Tower, where his men had hunted down their liege lord’s inglorious sibling and dealt him their own form of justice.
Hildegard doubted she would ever see Guy again. She had failed to get his measure. He had looked pleased enough when he set off with that jaunty salute. It was clear he was going home to consolidate his claim on his lands and not to mourn but to celebrate.
After compline later that day, when the kitchens at Roger de Hutton’s town house were quiet, Hildegard went down to boil some water. In her hand were some fresh leaves of hart’s tongue, a gift from the old gardener, Henry Daniels.
While she waited for the water to boil she thought of the wasted man-hours spent poring over arcane legal texts as the monks at St Mary Graces discussed her situation. She had been a widow before and she was a widow now.
The water began to bubble and she poured it over the crushed leaves, stirred them, watched small flecks rise to the surface, and let it steep. Old Daniels had told her what the plant’s virtue was before she left. Turnbull’s master had called it white hart physick, so pure the hart will never breed. Daniels’ words had been more prosaic. It’s a spleenwort, he told her, to promote women’s courses. When it was ready she strained it into a cup then lifted it to her lips and drank.
These days it was easier to get a ferry now that Parliament had ended. Most of those called had returned to their manors in the shires or to their great castles in far-flung corners of the realm.
Westminster Hall was again peopled only by the shadowy figures with business at the court of Chancery or the King’s Bench. The sightseers and the pilgrims in Palace Yard had found other places to visit, and after they departed the food sellers, the jugglers, singers, card sharps and other mountebanks had no trade so they too left, and even the chained bear no longer sat outside the tavern. That once boisterous place was again host to no more than a few regulars who regained their former positions by the windows and went back to watching the world go by.
The abbey, too, lost its guests and resumed the ancient pattern imposed by the followers of St Benet. Choirs of monks sang, undisturbed, the offices of the day from matins to nightfall and the only ripple on their serenity was the sad and sudden death of their abbot, Nicholas Lytlington. His legacy, his precious Missal, was hoped to outlast the plotting of the city men, the chicanery of the barons and the rise and fall of kings. He had voted for King Richard. The abbot’s death was sudden but he was, as Ulf told Hildegard, a very old man, an alleged son of Edward the Third by one of his mistresses. He would be missed for many years and no one thought his death in the slightest degree sinister.
The shrine beside one of the abbey bridges in honour of St Margaret, the helper of women, was empty too, although the altar was decked with late roses from the
gardens at Eltham. Queen Anne and her entourage had just left when Hildegard reached the threshold and looked in. A sacristan was dousing candles.
She walked on towards the landing stage where Thomas and Edwin were waiting. There were several ferrymen to choose from, but as they strolled along the quay to make their choice one of them called up to them. He knew them, he claimed.
It was the same man who had taken Hildegard and Thomas downriver shortly after they arrived in London.
He asked what they thought now to the great capital.
They were polite and non-committal. In response he told them he had made a small fortune over the last few weeks and would be sorry to see the last of the outsiders leave.
‘By, you wouldn’t believe the passengers I’ve had in my boat while Parliament’s been on,’ he told them, pulling strongly from the shore as soon as they were aboard. ‘Magnates, burgesses, knights; I even had the King’s secretary in here the other night. Took him all the way down to Eltham, I did, when Dickon was refusing to come out.’
Thomas murmured his interest. Encouraged, the boatman continued. ‘Aye, and he knows your part of the world. How about that? Says it’s rough country. He was up there a couple of years back, he says, on king’s business.’
Hildegard sat up. ‘Whereabouts was he? Did he say?’
The boatman allowed the craft to ride the tide with only a token pull on the oars. ‘A wild place, he says, by the sea. A great castle high on a cliff.’
‘Scarborough, maybe?’ she suggested.
‘Aye, that’s the place. Been there yourselves?’
‘So everything is clear,’ Hildegard frowned. ‘Or is it?’ She got up to pour some of the archbishop’s Gascon wine into their beakers, then sat down in the corner of the cloister where they had gone to keep out of the wind.
The talkative boatman had dropped them off at York Place, where Edwin had to make some final preparations before returning north and Hildegard, belatedly, had been granted an audience with His Grace. Thomas was planning to leave with the Meaux contingent just as soon as Abbot de Courcy gave the command, but for now was not needed.
Many in Neville’s retinue had already packed up and the wagons, surrounded by prowling cats, were being loaded with baggage and filled the main yard amid all the mayhem of departure.
She waited for her companions to say something. Edwin spoke first.
‘It was Medford in the tower chamber with Archbishop Neville when Standish had his outburst and threw Harry down the stairs.’