The Dance of Death (24 page)

‘Praise heaven for that,' she said, snuggling down under the bedclothes again. ‘You had me worried for a moment. Mind you,' she added, ‘I'm not surprised you're having bad dreams. I've had a few myself. What do we do tomorrow? Or today as I suppose it is by now. Do we start for Paris, or remain here with the Armigers, to see if Oliver Cook turns up?'

‘Ride on,' I answered. ‘John has had word that your kinsman, this Olivier le Daim, will be in Paris no later than the end of the week, and, according to him, it will entail some hard riding on our part to reach the capital in time. Besides, John is convinced that Oliver Cook is drowned, whether accidentally or on purpose it doesn't matter as far as he's concerned. What is important is that you should see and speak to your cousin and try to discover what King Louis's intentions are regarding the Burgundian alliance and the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to the dauphin. We must leave the Armigers here to make their own enquiries.'

‘I hate abandoning Jane in these circumstances,' Eloise murmured as I lay down again, pulling the bedclothes up around me. ‘Particularly as I sense she'll get very little sympathy from that brute of a husband, who seems to be almost pleased by the notion that his brother-in-law might be gone for good. He showed no signs of distress this evening, while the rest of us were waiting for news. The only moment of anxiety he displayed was when we thought that Master Cook might, after all, have shown up. But, instead, it was only Monsieur d'Harcourt to say he'd picked up one of Robert Armiger's saddlebags by mistake and was returning it.'

The Frenchman had indeed appeared halfway through the evening, having, according to him, searched for our party in half the inns of Calais before finding us, a mere two streets away, at the Blue Cat. On quitting the harbourside, he had, or so he said, walked off with a saddlebag belonging to Master Armiger and had brought it back. He had been thanked, but absentmindedly, by Robert, who admitted that he had not, so far, even noticed it was missing, and had then been apprised of our unhappy situation. The Frenchman had been all polite sympathy, but unable to help us, and had taken his leave as soon as he could decently do so without seeming to be too callous or unconcerned.

He gave the impression of a man chary of becoming entangled in other people's problems – for which I could not blame him – but nevertheless, I felt uneasy. I did not understand how he could have picked up one of the Armigers' saddlebags by mistake when he was possessed of only a baggage roll himself, and could not help wondering if it had been taken on purpose, the mistake, if there was one, being that it was not mine. Was he the innocent traveller that he seemed, or did his joining us at Dover have more sinister connotations?

Eloise's sleepy voice cut across my teeming thoughts. ‘How can John be so certain that Monsieur le Daim is to be in Paris by the end of the week?'

‘Oh, he got word somehow,' I answered in a voice as apparently sleepy as her own, followed by a very good imitation of a snore.

She seemed satisfied with this, turned her back to me and, a few minutes later, was breathing sweetly and deeply, fast asleep. I, on the other hand, remained awake a little while longer, reflecting that deception seemed to be an integral part of this mission; no one, including myself, was quite what he or she appeared to be.

During the course of a long, miserable evening of useless speculation and deepening fears, I had gone outside to get a breath of air and shake off the oppressive gloom of the inn parlour. Turning down a narrow alleyway that ran alongside the building, I had seen, at the end, standing beneath a wall-cresset that supported a flaming torch, John Bradshaw's solidly upright figure in conversation with a little whippet of a man, who was talking earnestly in a low tone and fidgeting with the buckle of his belt. Neither man saw me nor heard my approach until I was close enough to realize that both men were speaking French. Admittedly, John's was heavily overlaid with an English south-coast accent – Hampshire at a guess – but his language was fluent and rapid, and I could not help but remember how he had played down his ability to speak French to Eloise when they first met.

When the little man – who turned out to be one of Timothy's agents, bringing the news about Olivier le Daim – had departed, I taxed John with his deception.

He laughed. ‘If you think back, I did say that I could parlez vous as well as you two, but when young madam took exception to my remark – her mother having been French – I didn't bother arguing the point. I let her think what she liked. And, of course, up to a point, she's right. No Frenchman in his right mind would mistake me for a native, but he'd understand me, I don't doubt. The truth is, one of my grandmothers was a Frenchwoman. Can't recollect which one, but she came from somewhere called Clervaux. Anyway,' he continued, sobering and slapping me on the back, ‘we must be off first thing in the morning. Dawn if possible. We've a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it in. This business of Oliver Cook is a bugger, but we daren't let it hold us up.'

I had asked him what his thoughts were on the subject, but his reply had been cagey. It was fairly obvious that he considered foul play to be the answer and it was making him edgy, anxious to get on and to get our mission over and done with. Whether or not the cook's murder – if that was what it really was – had anything to do with our reason for being in France, he refused to speculate.

‘All I know,' he had said quietly, as we walked indoors together, ‘is that here is as good a chance as we're likely to get to shake off the Armigers and Master Lackpenny. And I tell you straight, Roger, I shan't be sorry to see the back of them, especially Master Blue Feather.'

And lying there in bed, staring into the darkness, listening to Eloise's gentle breathing, I could not doubt his sincerity, any more than I could deny my own relief at seeing the last of our unwanted companions. With a sigh, I turned over on to my side and tried to get back to sleep, but it refused to come. Recalling John's words about his grandmother had reminded me of something I had half forgotten: that Jane Armiger also claimed a French grandmother, who had been one of the Dowager Duchess of York's seamstresses. I had intended to quiz Jane on the matter, but somehow, what with one thing and another, it had slipped my mind.

I rolled on to my back and shut my eyes tightly, willing myself to sleep, but still unable to command it. Instead, all I could see inside my closed lids were the grinning skeletons of my earlier dream, bearing away their harvest of dead bodies. There had been too many bodies since my return from Scotland and being charged with this new mission for Duke Richard: Humphrey Culpepper, the boatman Jeremiah Tucker and now, seemingly, Oliver Cook. As an accompaniment, there had been the news of more personal deaths: Jeanne Lamprey and Reynold Makepeace.

Abruptly I got out of bed, slipped silently between the bed-curtains and went across to the window, softly opening one of the shutters. A shaft of light from a nearby sputtering wall torch illuminated a wet and windy world. In the distance, a watchman cried the hour, and a mangy cat slipped by across the gleaming cobbles, in search of its unfortunate prey. A dog barked and then fell silent. In a doorway on the opposite side of the street, a shadow moved. A beggar, perhaps, seeking shelter for the night? But then it resolved itself into the figure of a man whom I thought I recognized, the same one surely that I had seen that other night landing at the water-stairs of Baynard's Castle. The features were hidden by a hood drawn well forward over the face, but the movements, light and quick as he slipped along in the shadow of the houses, were surely the same. I leaned further out of the window, but he was gone, melting into another doorway further along the street.

Frustrated, and increasingly uneasy, I went back to my cold half of the bed and awaited the coming of morning, convinced that I should never sleep. Eloise stirred, muttering unintelligibly to herself, turned over and flung an arm across my body, at the same time snuggling into my side, but without awakening. The human contact was unutterably comforting and I held my breath, afraid to move and disturb her. Cautiously, I freed my right arm from the bedclothes and eased it around her head, my hand coming to rest on her shoulder. And so, finally, I slept.

During the night, she must have moved again, for when I awoke to the crowing of some distant cock and the faint light of dawn seeping through the slats of the shutters, she was lying on her back on her own side of the mattress, the tip of her cold nose just showing above the blankets, scenting the early morning air, like the snout of some small animal emerging from its burrow. As I sat up, the great violet-blue eyes turned in my direction, with a slightly puzzled expression as though she was struggling to remember something.

The bed by now was icy cold and I resigned myself to the prospect of getting up. I pushed aside the bedclothes and reluctantly put my feet to the floor.

‘We didn't . . .?' she murmured. ‘Did we . . .?'

‘If we had,' I answered roughly, ‘you'd remember it. So you can rest easy on that score. You've been muttering and snoring all night.'

The softness, almost tenderness, drained from her face and she bounced up in bed, spitting venom. ‘Conceited pig! If it comes to snoring,' she retorted, ‘you take the prize. And you can add farting to that, as well.'

‘Oh, just get dressed! John wants us on the road as soon as possible.' I dumped both her saddlebags on the bed, closed the curtains again and began pulling on my breeches.

It was obvious that the journey ahead of us would not be easy. I wondered what was wrong with the pair of us that made us so scratchy and unfriendly all the time.

But I suppose, really, in my heart of hearts I knew the cause.

Our travelling companions were not yet out of bed when, after gobbling our breakfast, the four of us – John Bradshaw, Philip, Eloise and myself – left the Blue Cat and made our way towards one of the great gates.

A quick word with the landlord of the inn had ascertained the fact that no Oliver Cook had turned up during the night. But then, nobody had really expected him to. The lady, his sister, had insisted on sitting up until midnight had been called, when her husband had more or less carried her bodily upstairs.

‘In floods of tears, poor soul,' the landlord had added. ‘There's no doubt her brother's drowned. The Channel can be a treacherous beast in the autumn gales, that's for certain.'

He had then assured us that he would make our farewells to the rest of the party, giving it as his opinion that they were all so worn out by their trouble that none of them was likely to put in an appearance until dinnertime.

Here, however, he was wrong. I happened to be alone, while John and Philip went to the nearby livery stable to fetch the horses they had hired the previous day, and while Eloise was upstairs doing whatever it is women find to do before setting out on even the shortest of journeys, when Jane Armiger entered the parlour. She had looked dishevelled and distraught, her uncombed hair tumbling down her back, a cloak flung anyhow over her night-rail, two dark rings, like bruises, under eyes, which were wild and staring.

‘Oh!' she said, pulling up short when she saw me. ‘I . . . I heard a noise. Voices. I thought . . . perhaps . . .' She broke off, her lips quivering, tears welling up and running down her cheeks.

‘No. I'm sorry. It was only my–my wife and me. We're leaving early.' I went forward and led her to a chair. ‘Sit down, my dear child. Have some ale.' I reached for the jug of small beer, still standing on the table among the remains of our breakfast, poured some into a beaker and pushed it towards her.

She gave me a watery smile and took a few sips. ‘Robert's asleep,' she explained. ‘Of course,' she added quickly, ‘he's just as worried as I am, but . . . but . . .'

‘He needs more rest,' I finished for her. ‘I understand.' I pulled up a stool and sat down beside her. I was more than a little ashamed of what I was about to do, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. ‘Try not to think about your brother for a minute or two. It will give your mind a rest and make your trouble seem less.' Oh, the lies we tell when self-interest is at stake! ‘Do you remember saying that your grandmother was one of the Duchess of York's seamstresses, forty years or so ago, in Rouen, when the duke was governor of France and Normandy?' She looked at me dazedly, as though I were talking a foreign language, but then, after a second or two, nodded. ‘Did your grandmother,' I went on hurriedly, aware that I probably had very little time before one of the others put in an appearance, ‘ever mention any scandal concerning Duchess Cicely? In connection, maybe, with one of her bodyguard? With one of her archers?'

There was no reply. Jane Armiger simply sat there, twisting a lock of hair round and round one finger. I wondered if she had even heard me, or comprehended what I was asking. I wanted to shake her and demand an answer. I could hear voices and the clop of horses' hooves in the inn yard and hurried footsteps overhead, making for the stairs. But at the same moment, I was seized by the conviction that I had made another of my unthinking blunders. I was not supposed to ask this question of anyone but the unknown Robin Gaunt and his wife. Supposing either Robert Armiger or William Lackpenny should really be a Woodville spy and already suspicious of me – if Jane told them of my interest, it would at once alert whichever one of them it was to the reality of my mission in France.

The parlour door burst open and John Bradshaw came in, an irritated frown wrinkling his brow. ‘I thought I told you—' he was beginning, then broke off abruptly as he became aware of Mistress Armiger's presence. ‘I apologize for disturbing you, sir,' he continued smoothly, ‘but I was under the impression you wanted an early start. We're ready and waiting for you. The mistress, too.' He glanced at Jane, who still sat at the table, staring, empty-eyed, in front of her. He raised his eyebrows. ‘There's no news of Master Cook, I take it?'