Katherine ignored all this, aiming like an arrow for the small postern gate in the south wall, which led down to the riverside. Only once did she pause, at the high-bricked enclosure that her father called the Hortus Mortis, the Garden of Death, a special herb plot tended only by Ignacio. This macabre garden contained deadly shrubs: the soft spiky pods and shiny brown seeds of castor, friar’s cowl; the white bell-shaped flowers of mandrake; yellowish hartshorn: purple-spotted hemlock and others. Katherine and her brothers had been warned ever since they were knee-high to a cricket never to enter that herber or have anything to do with it. Raphael once asked why the herbs were grown. Father had replied that such plants could also be medicinal.
Katherine hastened by. She reached the postern gate, pulled back the three bolts and stepped out on to the scrubland that stretched down to the man-made inlet, wharves and quayside of Queenhithe. She loved coming here. The Roseblood stood on an ancient hill that swept down to the Thames. Katherine had a favourite place – she called it the Eyrie – from where she could stare out over the river and watch the great cogs of war, the full-bellied merchant craft of the Hanse, the sculls of Flanders, the woads of Picardy and the whelk boats of Essex, as well as a horde of other barges, wherries and skiffs. Sometimes, on a very clear day, she could hear the sailors singing their hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary, the ‘Ave, Maris Stella’; all except the Greeks, who were allowed to sing their Kyrie.
A flash of colour caught Katherine’s eye. She turned and briefly glimpsed a flaxen-haired woman with a red mantle around her shoulders. ‘Calista!’ she breathed.
Calista was a street girl, a prostitute, who’d often drift into the Roseblood to ogle and entice would-be customers. Now she was threading through a copse, walking arm in arm with a tall man, cowled and garbed like a friar. A priest? Katherine wondered. But she could see no more. They had turned down a trackway skirting the trees that cut between the copse and some crumbling boat sheds.
Katherine walked slowly towards the ancient ruins halfway down the hill, lost in thought about what she had just glimpsed. She recalled the taproom gossip about whores disappearing along the alleyways and runnels of the ward. Father didn’t believe that anything had happened to them; he claimed that such ladies of the night moved around the city to escape the sharp gaze and greedy fingers of the bailiffs. She entered the crumbling ruins. Monkshood, one of Father’s henchmen, a former clerk, believed that the Eyrie had once been an ancient lighthouse built by the Caesars, or even the Trojans. Resting on her walking cane, Katherine peered through the broken masonry back up the hill at the jutting curtain wall of the Roseblood. She heard a sound, but ignored it.
Is this your bower
Oh lady of the Tower?
The couplet came soft and mocking. Katherine whirled round, raising her walking cane. A man now blocked the ruined entrance, cloak falling to his knees. Katherine glimpsed his shadowy face and white teeth, the gleam of silver on his chest and fingers. He seemed to fill the ruined tower with his presence.
‘Who are you, sir, to creep up on a maiden like that?’
The stranger stepped closer, rearranging his cloak and war belt. He was clean-shaven, the black hair on his head shorn close, his sallow face redeemed by sharp green eyes and a mocking mouth. He was dressed in a black leather sleeveless jerkin; the linen shirt underneath was clean and embroidered at cuff and neck, and a small silver medallion engraved with the fetterlock of York hung round his neck, a chancery ring on the little finger of his left hand. A man of power, Katherine swiftly concluded; she was fascinated by that clever, saturnine face.
‘What do you want?’ The words came blurting out even as the stranger stretched across and gently eased the walking cane from her fingers.
‘Mistress Katherine, is it not?’ The voice was soft and melodious. ‘Daughter of Master Simon Roseblood, now summoned to appear before the sheriff’s court before the market bell tomorrow?’ He bowed. ‘I am Amadeus Sevigny, principal clerk in the secret chancery of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York.’ His eyes crinkled as she stared. ‘Perhaps you have heard your worthy father mention my name?’ He took her by the hand and courteously kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘My apologies, mistress, I did not mean to startle you. Like you, I was simply wondering how remarkable it is what you discover and see. I am sure I glimpsed one of the priests from All Hallows, all hooded and cloaked, in the company of a common whore. Would one of your priests be steeped in such sin?’
Katherine frowned. ‘You are Mordred!’ she exclaimed without thinking. ‘You have come to Avalon. You mean us no good!’
The clerk stared blankly at her, then threw his head back and roared with laughter, so loud it echoed around that ruined tower. Katherine blushed as Amadeus turned away, one hand to his side. When he turned back, tears were glistening in his eyes. He touched her on the arm. She just glared at him, which sent him into further peals of laughter. He sat down on a plinth, wiping his eyes, trying to compose himself.
‘Oh for the love of God!’ she snapped. ‘It was no jest or witty sally!’
‘No, no, it wasn’t,’ he agreed, mopping his cheeks with the back of a gloved hand. ‘Yet you look so serious. Believe me, mistress, I have been called many things in my life, but never Mordred, Arthur’s great enemy and the destroyer of Camelot.’ The humour drained from his face and he rose to his feet. ‘Mistress Katherine, my apologies. I came to study Avalon, not to destroy it. I have walked the entire length of the Roseblood.’ He waved down towards the quayside. ‘I have been down to study the tavern barge,
The Excalibur
. It is very impressive: stout, deep-bellied, six-oared, with a canopied stern. I understand that the Fraternity of the Doom use it to collect the dead. Others whisper how it smuggles in wine.’
‘Many people are liars,’ Katherine retorted, but she could not stop the flush returning. This stranger so deeply unsettled her, she was relieved when Dorcas, standing on top of the hill, shouted her name.
‘Mistress Katherine, I had best let you leave.’ He swooped down, lifted her hand and gently kissed her fingers again. ‘It was an honour and a privilege.’ He escorted her to the entrance and returned her walking cane. ‘I bid you God speed.’
Katherine fled the ruined tower, banging the stick on the ground. When she joined Dorcas, she blamed her obvious fluster on the steep climb. She half listened to the maid, who could chatter without pausing for breath: how Master Roseblood seemed very distracted, how the taproom was busy and hadn’t Katherine heard her shouting?
They passed through the Great Cloister. The refectories, as her father grandly described the eating chambers, were positioned on either side of the gateway. Here, each table was cleverly closeted so that customers could dine and talk in peace. The principal taproom and buttery, fronting the city, seethed with noise and bustle. The drinking chamber was spacious and high-ceilinged, its tiled floor regularly brushed and swilled with clean water; no rushes were ever strewn there. Hams, cheeses, flitches of bacon and dried fruit hung in white string nets from the rafters, well away from vermin, their tangy smell mingling with the sweet odours from the wine tuns and beer barrels, not to mention the fragrance from the hog roast turning on its spit under the mantled hearth. Some of the shutters and horn-covered windows had been removed to provide more air. The noise was clamorous as tradesmen, beggars and scavengers crowded into the popular tavern.
Katherine’s father, protected by Ignacio, stood near the common board. He glimpsed Katherine and raised a hand in acknowledgement, indicating with his head that she should help the scullions and slatterns hurrying about with brimming pots, tankards and black jacks. Servants scurried in from the kitchen courtyard bearing platters and bowls of stewed capon, mutton and lemon, aloes of beef, strips of venison all hot and sauced in chopped vegetables and tangy spices. Shreds of crispy pork were being cut from the spit turned by the buttery boy, whilst the tavern baker managed the ovens either side of the hearth, where fresh bread was being baked.
Katherine donned the offered apron. She bundled her rich auburn hair under a kitchen bonnet and helped where she could, only pausing to peck at her father’s cheek, kiss Ignacio roundly on the lips and wave at Raphael, who, his square face all worried, bustled in with a ledger. As she moved around, she listened to the conversation. The great taproom was the meeting place of the Guild of Scavengers, the Fraternity of the Doom, the Brotherhood of the Babewyns and the Coven of the Gargoyles, all inhabitants of the decaying tenements and crumbling garrets along the narrow runnels of Queenhithe and beyond. Katherine glimpsed Master Reginald Bray, seated in the corner all by himself, a bowl of pottage before him. This self-styled pilgrim looked serene and smiling, but his unblinking stare carefully took in all around him. He caught her eye, scratched his mop of blond hair and raised a beringed white hand in greeting.
She moved across the taproom and into the calm buttery chamber, where the greyheads of the ward gathered. Wherever she went, be it the Great Cloister garth or the kitchen courtyard, Katherine caught the tension and fraught mood of the day. The summons issued against her father was now common knowledge. York’s threat was real: he wanted to be regent and remove the fey-witted King. She also heard fresh comment about the disappearance of prostitutes, and recalled glimpsing Calista with the man dressed as a monk whom Sevigny had thought to be one of the priests from All Hallows.
The very thought of the clerk made Katherine pause: those mocking eyes, the laughing mouth, the way he found her so amusing. He was Mordred, however, the black knight about to enter the lists of Camelot and challenge the world of Avalon. So lost was she in her thoughts that Katherine almost dropped the jug she was carrying when a voice boomed out.
‘I am the rider of the Pale Horse and all hell follows in my retinue.’ The speaker stood in the sun-filled entrance to the taproom, cloak thrown back, sword and dagger drawn. He was tall, with shaggy hair and beard, his jerkin and hose stained and tattered, cheap jewellery decorating his fingers and wrists. He walked into the tavern followed by two others similarly attired. The raucous noise subsided as customers drew away. A relic seller hastily grabbed his tray of special stones from the rock of Moses and tried to leave, only to be pushed back. A juggler, his pet monkey on his shoulder, a ferret in the crook of his arm, fell off his stool and crawled under the table.
Katherine watched the three rifflers swagger further into the taproom. According to whispers around her, these wolfsheads were Blackshanks, Gull-Groper and Scalding-Boy. Her father, Ignacio behind him, left the common board and went over to confront the new arrivals. Katherine was surprised at how calm and measured he seemed, for he had a temper second to none.
‘Good day, sir.’ Simon bowed. ‘Welcome to this tavern. I—’
‘The Dominus of the Dunghill,’ Blackshanks, the leader, interrupted rudely. ‘I know you, Master Roseblood, and you know me, as you do my two friends, Gull-Groper,’ he turned mockingly, ‘and Master Scalding-Boy. We have just come from Cripplegate ward.’ Blackshanks’s voice grew stronger. ‘I quoted from the Book of the Apocalypse. Ever since my days as a scholar I have loved that verse. It signifies the end of things.’ He poked Simon in the chest with the point of his sword. ‘And you, sir, are certainly at the end of things. Candlemas and Cross-Biter will indict you, then it will be Newgate for Master Roseblood.’
‘You have everything planned!’ Raphael pushed his way through, hand resting on the hilt of his dagger. ‘You have us judged, condemned and hanged.’
‘As the cock, so the chick,’ jeered Scalding-Boy, his scorched face ugly.
‘You are all wanted men yourselves,’ Raphael retorted. The usually quiet-faced lawyer was now flushed with anger. ‘Are you not,’ he declared, ‘wanted by the sheriffs of Essex and Hertford for various crimes and felonies?’
‘Misunderstandings!’ Blackshanks lifted the point of his sword. ‘Sir Philip Malpas,’ the felon turned to the left and right so that all could hear him, ‘is about to issue pardons. In the meantime, Cripplegate is without its scavengers because you, Master Roseblood, led them into a failed and bloody robbery. Accordingly,’ Blackshanks brought his sword back to rest the blade against his shoulder, ‘my two learned colleagues and my good self will take over all their duties, as we might well do here too.’
‘A former cleric, now a collector of shit!’ Raphael jeered.
Blackshanks moved threateningly; his two companions brought up their swords and daggers. Katherine caught a glimpse of polished steel, the fresh leather war belts all three wolfsheads wore. She knew that these had either been recently purchased or were fresh from the armoury of her father’s enemies at the Guildhall. The three men had been sent here to proclaim her father’s imminent downfall; to weaken, even shatter the patronage he exercised. Her father, however, remained unperturbed. He stepped back, spreading his hands.
‘My friends, you are welcome.’
Blackshanks’s shoulders drooped in disappointment. He glanced in surprise at his two companions.
‘You are most welcome,’ Roseblood insisted. ‘Some wine, some food, but not here, yes? Let us meet in the great tithe barn, where we can talk in private and reach some form of agreement. Ignacio, fetch what our guests want.’
Katherine hurried from the taproom. She had heard about her father’s meetings in the barn, a place where he dispensed justice. She ran through the Great Cloister and into the kitchen bailey. Toadflax, one of her father’s leading scavengers, a captain of the cohort, stood on guard outside the barn. He stared bleary-eyed at Katherine, who lifted her finger to her lips as a sign of silence and fluttered her eyelids. Toadflax would do what she asked. Katherine had turned many a blind eye to the free pots of ale he quietly supped, not to mention his cogged dice, which her father regularly seized and destroyed.
She slipped through the half-open door into the dappled, sweet-smelling light of the barn, all warm and close. Her mind was a-tumble with lines from the poems about Arthur and the appearance of the Knight from the Red Lands, as well as snatches from the sequence of the mass for the dead. ‘See what fear man’s bosom rendeth.’ The sombre line echoed through her head, followed by: ‘When from Heaven the judge descendeth.’ She thanked God her leg was not troubling her as she climbed the ladder into the hayloft and hid behind the bales, holding her breath.