The Dance of Death (16 page)

I was just wondering if now was the moment to take John Bradshaw into my confidence and unburden myself of all the various secrets I was harbouring when we were joined by Eloise, ready for travelling in a green woollen gown trimmed with squirrel skin, and carrying a thick, hooded cloak of grey camlet, together with a squirrel-skin muff. Her hair, growing a little longer each day, was caught up in its usual silver net.

As soon as she saw me, she gave a peal of laughter. ‘You have your hat on backwards, Roger. The brooch should go at the front.'

John Bradshaw, joining in the merriment, made room for her beside him on the bench. His grey eyes signalled appreciation of her appearance as he shouted for a server to bring the lady's breakfast. Meanwhile, I bad-temperedly snatched off my hat and put it on again the right way round.

‘Much better,' Eloise approved. ‘I must say you look very well and nearly worthy of being my husband.' I could tell that she wasn't going to forgive me very easily for last night, and that mockery and jibes were to be the order of the day.

As she reached for the beaker of ale that John Bradshaw had poured for her, I noticed a fine gold ring on her wedding finger and, leaning forward, caught her left hand in mine. I grimaced. ‘An expensive piece,' I remarked. ‘Do you get to keep it when this little charade is finished?'

‘As a matter of fact, it's mine.' She smiled. ‘I bought it yesterday in Cheapside.' She lifted her hand closer to my face. ‘You see, it's really a loving-ring with hearts engraved round the outside. I thought I'd use it instead of the cheap-looking thing Master Plummer gave me to wear. You are meant to be a prosperous haberdasher, after all. And I, presumably, am the love of your life.'

Again the little pinprick of mockery, but this time I barely noticed it. I was too busy wondering where she got her money from. She had two good woollen gowns to my knowledge, and quite likely a third, and now she had bought herself a gold ring. This sudden affluence was troubling. Could it mean that she was in fact not a French but a Woodville spy and in receipt of payment from them?

As if reading my thoughts, her smile deepened and grew more enigmatic. Then she withdrew her gaze from mine and ignored me for the rest of the time it took her to eat her breakfast, deliberately setting out to charm John Bradshaw. In this, she succeeded so well that she did not even have to ask him to carry her travelling chest out to the waiting horses; he had it under his arm before she had risen from the table. He then delicately withdrew, taking the interested young groom with him, while she transferred her belongings to her saddlebags, but he was instantly at hand to assist her to mount. While I hoisted myself stiffly on to the back of my own animal, he adjured us both to wrap our cloaks well around us as it was a chilly morning, with more than a nip of the coming winter in the air. He himself had a thick, serviceable frieze cloak to cover his servant's garb and a plain peaked hat to keep off the worst of the weather.

And so, finally, we were ready, setting forward just as a pale sun was doing its best to gild the rooftops, riding the length of Thames Street, past the steelyard, where the Hanseatic merchants were, by the sound of things, already hard at work, into the Ropery and, eventually, crossing London Bridge into Southwark.

The first leg of our journey had begun.

I don't know why I felt surprised to see Philip waiting for us in the courtyard of the White Hart Inn. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I suppose, I hadn't quite believed in his existence in this ridiculous, dreamlike situation that I found myself a part of. But there he was, as large – or, in his case, as small – as life, standing unhappily beside a brown cob and with a hangdog expression on his narrow features. His old sparkle and zest for life were completely missing, his shoulders slumped, his thin lips unsmiling. His hair was sparser and greyer than when I had last seen him, but that, at least, was not surprising: by my calculations he had to be nearing fifty, or maybe even past it. I don't think he knew himself exactly how old he was. His pock-marked, weather-beaten face, too, was greyer, the healthy tan that contentment and Jeanne's good food had given it dulled with hopelessness and grief.

‘Philip!' I dismounted and walked towards him, hand outstretched, but I had to speak to him again and shake him by the arm before I could rouse him.

He blinked rapidly several times, as though trying to get his bearings and his thoughts in order, before he suddenly forced a smile and responded, ‘Roger!'

His voice, thank heaven, hadn't altered. It still had that rasping quality that made it sound like an old file being dragged across iron.

I tightened my grip on his arm. ‘Philip, I'm so sorry . . . so very sorry—' I stumbled, but he cut me short, shaking off my hand and moving slightly away from me.

‘Yes,' he said abruptly, and again, ‘yes.' Then, as though conscious of discourtesy, he added, with a catch in his throat, ‘I understand. I know what you want to say. But don't, that's all. It's over. Done with. Finished.'

The most eloquent prose could not have affected me more profoundly and I found myself struggling to suppress my tears. I had to take several deep breaths before I had my emotions under control and could lead the way back to where John Bradshaw and Eloise were waiting, amidst all the bustle, the comings and goings of a busy inn and a new day.

‘Ready?' John Bradshaw spoke briskly. ‘I only want to spend one night on the road, so we've some hard riding to do before dusk. The days are getting shorter, so we'd best be on our way. Roger, ride ahead with Mistress Gray, or Mistress Chapman, as we'd better get used to calling her. Lamprey, behind, with me! From now on, we're master and mistress, man and groom. Try to remember it, all three of you.'

Eloise gave him her most winning smile. Philip and I said nothing.

It was not the cheeriest of journeys. Once the noise of London was left behind, we were enveloped in the peculiar soundlessness of a winter's day. Birds wheeled silently overhead, while a sullen wind had begun stripping the trees. The people we passed were disinclined to talk – they were too cold or too busy – and John Bradshaw pressed us forward, discouraging any friendly overtures that might have been made by either side. We did stop once for a draught of cider at a cider press, but the man who served us could do nothing but moan dismally about the poor apple harvest, a result of the terrible weather that had gripped the country for the past eighteen months, causing misery and famine throughout the length and breadth of the land.

It was little better at the wayside inn where we ate a dinner of bread and cheese and drank yet more cider – Kent, like my native Somerset, being apple country, where the orchards foamed and frothed in springtime, but were now struggling to produce a decent crop of fruit. The landscape also yielded a view of oast houses, but hops, we learned had also been disastrously affected by the recent weather. In the woods and forest, we passed a number of swineherds watching while the animals they tended foraged for beech nuts and acorns among the roots of the trees, but they, too, were taciturn and meagre of speech. All but one did nothing more than grunt a reply to our greetings, and that one merely recommended us to watch out for armed robber bands and to have our cudgels at the ready.

‘Food's scarce. They'm desperate men, masters. And lady,' he added, catching sight of Eloise.

We thanked him and rode on, the blown branches of the trees rattling like angry skeletons. Every now and then a watery sun broke through a growing pall of cloud, but by early afternoon, when we stopped to let the horses drink at a little stream, a dark, rough, brown streak of troubled water, we were all chilled to the marrow. Eloise asked me to look in her left-hand saddlebag for a pair of gloves she had brought with her, but John Bradshaw forestalled me.

‘I'm the servant, mistress,' he reminded her. ‘You must remember to ask me to perform these services.'

He seemed to take longer than I thought strictly necessary to find the gloves – a fine leather, lined with that thin, cochineal-dyed wool known as scarlet – and I wondered if he had snatched the opportunity to look swiftly through some of her belongings. Perhaps, like me, he was growing uneasy about the costliness of quite a few of her possessions.

By the time we reached Rochester on the River Medway, the great castle, set on its high chalk cliff, dominating the town, it was almost dark, and the four of us were cold, saddle-sore, ravenous and so bone-weary that we could barely speak. I don't recollect the name of the inn we stayed at – I was too tired even to notice it – but it was in the shadow of the cathedral and offered Eloise and myself some excellent fare. There was a particularly fine pigeon pie, as I remember, which at any other time would have had me calling for more, but I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to eat it. (Eloise informed me the following day that I had also swallowed two portions of fruit syllabub, but I had no memory of them.) When the pair of us were finally shown to our bedchamber by an obsequious landlord, where our saddlebags had already been bestowed, we were both too exhausted even to notice the embarrassment of our first night together in the same room, let alone the hideous awkwardness of sharing a bed. I must have stripped, because in the morning I was wearing only my shirt, and so must she in order to don her night-rail, but neither of us could recall anything about it. It was only when we opened our eyes in the morning, and stared into one another's faces, that we realized our fictional life as man and wife had actually begun.

‘Well,' Eloise said, dragging herself into a sitting position and hugging her raised knees, ‘that wasn't so bad, was it?' She stretched and almost immediately groaned. ‘Dear heaven, I feel as though I've been kicked all over by a mule.' She frowned. ‘Why? It wasn't like this when we were travelling to Scotland.'

I, too, sat up. ‘It was a much longer journey but not at such a determined pace. Bradshaw is set on getting us to Dover by tonight. He's afraid the weather's going to turn nasty and the autumn gales make sailing impossible for days, maybe even weeks. I understand that most people doing the ride from London to Dover also stop a night at Canterbury, but he'll make us do the rest of the journey today, if he possibly can.' I eased my body against the pillows. ‘I know what you mean.'

She giggled suddenly. ‘You do appreciate that we're now the master and mistress, and can therefore order the going as we please?' she asked. ‘If we say that we're not prepared to set forward until after dinner, and say it loudly in the presence of the landlord and other guests, there is nothing our “servant” can do about it. Shall we try it? It would be interesting to watch his face.'

I smiled but shook my head. ‘I somehow don't think that John Bradshaw's a man to trifle with,' I advised, ‘and I wouldn't attempt it if I were you.' I got out of bed, carefully pulling my rumpled shirt down around my knees for propriety's sake. ‘I'm going downstairs to the pump in the yard, but I'll ask in the kitchen for some hot water to be sent up. Don't use it all. I need to shave.'

I slid between the bed curtains, closing them again behind me, and pulled on the brown hose that I had worn yesterday, then, wrapping myself in my cloak, went down to the yard, passing on my message to a pot boy whom I encountered at the bottom of the stairs. By the time I returned to the bedchamber, shivering and blue-knuckled, Eloise was in her under-shift, washing her face and neck before proceeding to her hands and arms. She indicated the gently steaming pitcher to one side of the bowl. ‘There's your shaving water.'

I thanked her and went over to my saddlebags to retrieve my razor. I knew it was at the bottom of one of them. In fact, it was in the first one I opened, underneath my blue hose and yellow tunic, but as I walked slowly back across the room to pour hot water into a second bowl, thoughtfully provided by the landlord, I had a distinct recollection of packing my yellow tunic on top of the hose. I told myself not to be silly, but I was certain that I could remember seeing yellow as I had fastened the saddlebag straps. Feeling that I was making something out of nothing, I kept quiet, leaving Eloise to prattle away and giving only random answers, but as soon as I had finished shaving, I went on my knees beside the other bag, unstrapped it and examined its contents.

My spare shirt lay on top of my second-best boots – much patched and mended – just as I had packed them, but my knife, which I had carefully placed within the folds of the shirt, was lying loose at the bottom of the bag, still sheathed but most definitely not where I had put it. Had it just worked free of its own accord? That was possible, considering the jolting the saddlebags had received yesterday. Or had someone gone through my belongings while I slept? Heaven knew, my sleep had been deep enough for me to miss the Last Trump had it sounded and I felt certain that anyone could have entered the bedchamber during the night without me hearing. Or Eloise could have got out of bed and examined the bags and I should have been none the wiser.

I went down to breakfast still wondering if I were not being unnecessarily suspicious, when I was brought up short by the sight of someone already seated at a table in the ale room, eating his porridge.

It was, once again, the smart young gent of the blue feather.

Ten

He glanced up as I entered, then rose, hand outstretched. ‘Master Chapman, I presume. Please allow me to introduce myself. William Lackpenny, at your service.'

Close to, he was a little older than I had thought him – somewhere around twenty-five would have been my guess, but I don't believe I ever did learn his correct age. He was good-looking in a foxy kind of way, although his reddish hair and lean features might well have contributed to that impression. The eyes, now regarding me so limpidly, were hazel.