The Dance of Death (29 page)

A man entering by the nearby Porte Saint-Antoine reminded me of John Bradshaw: middle-aged, well-fleshed, square of face with a thatch of brown hair, English-looking.

‘Did you know,' I asked Eloise, suddenly recalling a surprising fact, ‘that John had a French grandmother?' She shook her head. ‘So he told me,' I went on. ‘You wouldn't think it, would you, to look at him?'

She wiped her mouth daintily on the back of her hand. ‘Poor man,' she murmured ironically. ‘A French grandmother! What a cross for him to bear!'

‘I didn't mean it like that,' I answered stiffly.

‘Didn't you? You English think you're only one step down from God.'

I could see that we were on the brink of another of our pointless disputes. I said, ‘She came from Clervaux. John's grandmother, that is.'

Eloise raised her eyebrows. ‘From Clairvaux or Clervaux?' she asked.

‘What sort of question is that?' I barked irritably. ‘I warn you, I'm in no mood for playing games.'

‘You're so ignorant,' she replied coldly. ‘I'm not playing games. Did John Bradshaw's grandmother come from C-L-A-I-R-vaux or from C-L-E-R-vaux? The first is in Champagne, where St Bernard founded his great monastery. The second is in the Grand Duchy.'

‘Grand Duchy?'

She sighed wearily, a well-travelled woman dealing with an ignorant stay-at-home. ‘Luxembourg.'

I had to admit that I didn't know the answer, nor had I realized that there was any question to be asked in the first place. I suggested austerely that we go back to the Île de la Cité and the Rue de la Barillerie. Eloise agreed with a rather superior smile, which annoyed me even further.

We returned by the Pont Notre-Dame, eventually emerging into the square in front of the cathedral, where three streets converged on a space that was overhung on one side by the frontage of what my companion informed me was the Hôtel Dieu, a strange building whose roof looked as though it had suffered a very nasty rash of pustules and warts. I was just about to ask Eloise the reason for this architectural aberration when a fist smote my shoulder and a familiar voice addressed us in English.

‘Master Chapman! Mistress Chapman! What a pleasure to see you both again!'

It was William Lackpenny.

Seventeen

‘M–Master Lackpenny!' I stuttered. ‘Will! Y–you're in Paris, then!'

‘We arrived this morning.' He beamed.

‘We?' Eloise queried. ‘Are the Armigers with you, as well?'

‘Indeed. They are at this moment settling into Mistress Armiger's cousin's house in the Rue de la Tissanderie, off the Rue Saint-Martin. Perhaps you know it? For myself, I've found a very comfortable lodging not far from the Hôtel de Ville in the Place de Grève.'

‘But what has happened about Master Cook?' I asked. ‘We imagined you still in Calais, waiting for news.'

Will Lackpenny shrugged. ‘There was no news, that was the trouble, and we couldn't wait for ever.' He added hastily, realizing how callous he must sound, ‘At least, Master Armiger felt that to remain there any longer was a waste of time. He was certain that his brother-in-law had been washed overboard and drowned mid-Channel. No hope of the body ever being found, so he persuaded Jane – Mistress Armiger I should say – that they might as well continue their journey. Naturally, she, poor girl, didn't wish to leave Calais until something definite had been heard. But even I, far more sympathetic, I assure you, than that cold fish of a husband of hers, could see that to remain was useless. Oliver's dead: I don't think there can be any doubt about it. So we left a day and a half after your good selves. We made excellent time on the roads and here we are. And who should I encounter almost as soon as I set foot out of doors but the two of you!'

He seemed so genuinely pleased at the meeting that I began to feel churlish at our lack of response. But I knew John Bradshaw would feel the same. If Will Lackpenny and the Armigers were to plague us with their attentions, we should have to be constantly alert, ready to slip into our respective roles as master and servant at a moment's notice. I found myself wondering about Robert Armiger's insistence on following us to Paris so soon, and whether or not there was something sinister to be read into it. Or had my smart young gent of the blue feather – now dried out and perked up again after its salt-water baptism – persuaded the older man that no good could be achieved by loitering in Calais? Was he a Woodville agent, or were they, all three, exactly what they seemed to be?

I became conscious of Eloise nudging me in the ribs.

‘Sweetheart, Master Lackpenny is speaking to you.' She gave a tinkling little laugh. ‘I'm always having to scold him, Will,' she apologized, ‘about this bad habit he has of going off into a fit of abstraction when he's talking to people. Isn't that so, dearest?'

I smiled weakly and nodded.

‘Oh, I can see you're a busy man, Master Chapman.' He indicated the satchel slung over my left shoulder. ‘You've been hawking your wares around some of the Paris shops and appraising their goods in return with a view to buying. You're preoccupied and I mustn't keep you.'

I started guiltily. Of course, it was exactly what I should have been doing, establishing my presence in the French capital as a prosperous haberdasher, but which, in my usual slipshod fashion, I had forgotten all about. I was never going to make one of Timothy's little band of spies and foreign agents, not if I lived to be a hundred (which seemed highly unlikely in my present state of jangled nerves and stomach-churning apprehension). I made up my mind there and then that as soon as this jaunt was over, I was going back to my family and to being an ordinary pedlar again, no matter what inducements were offered or what commands were laid upon me, not even if they came from the king himself.

Will Lackpenny finally took his leave of us with a flourish of his blue-feathered hat, and we watched him vanish into the crowds as he made his way back to the Pont Notre-Dame and the Place de Grève. Or would he go straight to the Rue de la Tissanderie to report our meeting? And if so, from what motive? Innocent? Or with a more sinister intention behind it?

As I had anticipated, John Bradshaw was not best pleased with the information that Will Lackpenny and Robert and Jane Armiger were already in Paris.

‘I was hoping we'd seen the last o' them,' he grumbled. ‘I trusted we'd have been on the road home by the time they arrived.' He heaved a sigh. ‘Ah, well! It can't be helped. If they come calling, as I don't doubt they will, I'll have time to make myself scarce for a chinwag with Mother Marthe in the kitchen. So, Roger,' he went on, ‘do you think you can find your way around Paris on your own now?'

‘Why should he want to go on his own?' Eloise asked, shedding her cloak and draping it elegantly over one arm. ‘I'm supposed to be his wife, and he's here to escort me. At least, that's what I understood from Master Plummer.' She regarded us both with sudden suspicion.

I hurriedly recounted the details of our meeting with the real Raoul d'Harcourt on the Quai des Orfèvres, and if I failed to divert Eloise's attention completely, I certainly grabbed and held John Bradshaw's.

‘I always knew there was something smoky about that fellow,' he muttered. ‘I felt it in my bones.'

He continued to brood about it for several minutes, and even when he finally appeared to shrug the news aside, I could see that it still worried him. When he finally left the room on some pretext or another, I made an excuse to follow him out to the kitchen, where, surprisingly, we found Philip turning two capons on a spit, while Marthe made pastry and smiled approvingly at him and crooned a little tune under her breath.

‘A miracle,' John grunted, although I got the impression that he was none too pleased by the sudden and apparently ripening friendship between this oddly assorted couple.

He opened the back door and went outside, where there was a tiny yard, surrounded on three sides by a rough stone wall, above which crowded the jumble of sloping roofs and conical towers of the neighbouring houses.

‘What do you want, Roger?' he snapped, plainly irritated to discover that I had followed him.

I shrugged. ‘I thought maybe there was something you wanted to discuss with me.'

‘Such as?'

‘Master Harcourt. Or the man posing as him, whoever he might be. Because whatever uncertainties we harbour about the Armigers and Master Lackpenny, we now know for sure that Raoul d'Harcourt is not who he claims to be. So what do you think has happened to him?'

John leaned his shoulders against the wall of the house and sighed wearily. ‘I don't know,' he admitted. ‘I wish by all the saints that I did, but I don't. I tell you, Roger, that I shall be thankful when this mission is accomplished and we're safely back in London. Nothing is going according to plan, and from almost the very beginning we've been beset by too many other unexpected players in the game: the Armigers, Master Lackpenny and now this Frenchman – if he is a Frenchman at all, which I'm starting to doubt.'

‘Mistress Gray seems to believe he is, and I should consider her judgement sound in such a matter.'

John snorted. ‘Don't be taken in by her,' he advised, adding spitefully, ‘She's not anywhere near as clever as she thinks she is. And, for the sweet Virgin's sake, remember she's your wife!' He heaved himself away from the back wall of the house and thumped it. ‘Just recollect, these things have ears. Her name is Mistress Chapman until we set foot on English soil again.'

‘And how long will that be?' It was my turn to sound morose and despondent.

John Bradshaw straightened his shoulders. ‘Well,' he said, ‘if Maître le Daim does arrive in Paris on Monday, then it's up to Mistress Eloise to make herself known to him as soon as possible after that. Necessary, too, because we don't know how long he'll be remaining in the capital. Jules will alert us as soon as he finds out where he's staying.'

‘And if he won't see Eloise, or won't satisfy her curiosity concerning the Burgundian alliance? What then?'

‘Then we return home.' He shrugged philosophically. ‘We've done our best. But I'm willing to wager a considerable sum that she'll get the information from him. She has a wheedling way with her has Mistress Eloise. She ain't going to ask him outright, of course, but I reckon she'll find out what we want to know.' He took a deep breath and faced me squarely. ‘No, it's you, Roger, and this secret mission you're on for Duke Richard that bothers me. Somehow or another you've got to get out and about without the lady accompanying you, and without arousing her curiosity any more than it's aroused already. So what I suggest is this: tomorrow's Sunday, so just play the good husband and take your “wife” to church and wherever else she wants to go—'

‘In other words, allay her suspicions,' I interrupted.

John nodded. ‘Exactly. But come Monday, she'll have to stay at home waiting for word of her cousin's arrival, and maybe the next day, and even the day after that. Meantime, you take Philip and get on with whatever it is you have to do.'

‘What about Jules?'

My companion shook his head. ‘He won't be available until Olivier le Daim is safely inside the city. I'm sorry, but I was a bit premature there in offering his services.' He gave another sigh. ‘I'm afraid I'm getting too old for this job. I'm growing addle-pated.'

‘You've too much on your mind,' I comforted him. ‘But how do we explain my absences to Eloise?'

‘Do I have to think of everything?' he demanded peevishly. But a moment's thought gave him the answer. ‘You're playing your part, of course! The haberdasher buying and selling your goods, trying to establish an overseas market in these peaceful times. You're merely lulling any suspicion that you might not be what you seem to be. That should satisfy Mistress Eloise.'

‘And if – when – she goes to visit Mâitre le Daim, do I accompany her?'

‘We shall do what seems best at the time.' The spy flexed his arm joints. ‘Now go away, Roger, and leave me in peace and quiet for a few minutes. Indeed, it was for that reason I came out here, only to find you at my heels. I need to collect my thoughts. Go and make your peace with your “wife”. I don't doubt but what she's fretting at your absence.'

‘You think she's fond of me?' I asked, surprised.

John grinned. ‘Not for a moment,' was the honest reply. ‘But she's a woman, ain't she? Never met one o' that breed that wasn't born with the curiosity of a cat. And that one's got a damn long nose on her – like you! In that respect, you're well suited to one another.' He emitted one of his deep-throated chuckles. ‘P'r'aps it's a good job you ain't really married or the sparks would fly.'

Eloise was nowhere in the house.

I returned to the kitchen and, by dint of much miming and nodding and smiling, together with interrogative shouts of ‘Madame?' Marthe and I managed at last to establish that Eloise had gone out while I had been talking to John in the yard. It was only when we were both exhausted by our efforts at understanding that I remembered Philip.

‘Why didn't you tell me, you great lump?' I shouted at him.

‘You didn't ask me,' was the surly response. ‘Besides,' he went on before I could give full vent to my wrath, ‘I couldn't absolutely swear to what they were saying.'

‘Lying bastard,' I said, but with less heat. ‘I'll wager Eloise told you in plain English that she was going out, didn't she?' He grinned and I suddenly saw something of the old Philip who had been absent for so long. ‘Didn't she?' I repeated.