Dispensation of Death

Chapter Seven

Saturday, Vigil of the Feast of St Julian¹

Salisbury Cathedral

The dawn sprang upon them without warning.

Simon had slept fitfully, his aching muscles only allowing a shallow, unrefreshing rest. In the cold predawn light, he rolled from the bed and grabbed for his clothes, shoulders huddled against the chill as he foraged on the floor in the darkness. Tugging on his underclothes, the material of his shirt felt damp against his flesh as he slipped his tunic over his head, pulled on his thick travelling jerkin of leather and set his sword belt about his waist. With his cloak over the top, draped about him, and his gloved hands holding the two edges together, he began to feel a little more normal.

‘You awake?’ he called to Baldwin, but there was no answer, and when he turned to Baldwin’s side of the bed, it was empty and cool to the touch. He had been up some while.

His friend was in the Bishop’s hall where they had eaten the previous evening. On a large trestle there was a great breakfast laid out, with cold fowls, cuts of beef, and jugs of ale as well as heavy, crusted loaves. Baldwin was seated at the far end with Bishop Roger, and the two looked up as Simon entered. He saw the candle flames glittering in their eyes as they welcomed him, and he smiled in response, but when he took his seat, he was half-convinced that there was a meaningful pause, as though the two had been speaking confidentially on matters of great importance, and his intrusion was unwelcome. Still, the moment passed, and before long they were all discussing the merits of alternative paths onward, before Bishop Walter arrived, and took his own seat next to Martival.

‘I trust you slept well, my Lord Bishop?’ Martival said.

‘Perfectly, I thank you,’ Walter Stapledon responded, but he kept his eyes away from the other.

Simon was already on his horse in the greyness before the Bishops were ready to part. They had held a brief Mass for the travellers before beginning the latest stage of their journey, and then Bishop Walter went with Bishop Roger Martival for a few words of private conversation. Baldwin, Simon noticed, was more quiet and reserved than usual, and it gave Simon some pause for thought, but then the Bishop mounted his horse, and the gates to the Close were opened, and they were trotting gently down towards the city gates, waiting for the dawn and the gates’ opening. With the help of a canon from the Bishop’s retinue, a grumpy porter was persuaded to open them a little early, and then they were on the road to London, their horses’ hooves thudding on the muddy roadway. And when they had gone only a short distance, the sun appeared before them, flooding the entire landscape in golden light.

To Simon it was a surprise. In his experience the sun rose slowly, and the light only gradually washed over the fields and woods. Here, the country was so flat, it seemed to spring up from nowhere. Night became day in an instant.

‘You were having a long talk with the Bishop,’ he said when he drew nearer to Baldwin.

‘You guessed, old friend? Well, I thought it might be as well to be warned about the political situation in London before we arrived.’

‘And what did you learn?’

Baldwin sighed. ‘There are moves afoot to remove our Queen. That is what we both heard the good Bishops arguing about last night. What I find sad is that it is our own friend who is proposing this action — in order to, as he says, “remove the canker in our King’s household”.’

‘He said that of our Queen?’ Simon was appalled. He had always borne great respect for the Bishop. Walter Stapledon had been a heroic figure when he was younger, a man who fought for what he believed to be right at all times, who became Bishop of his Diocese and used his wealth to endow schools and colleges for the benefit of others. He was a great man.

‘He said that, I fear, yes. And a great deal more. He said that he desires to see the King’s marriage annulled. I believe that is the reason for his journey to London — to seek a way to remove the Queen.’

Sunday, Feast of St Julian²

Thorney Island

In the chapel of Queen Isabella’s apartments, her Chaplain, Brother Peter of Oxford, was still sweating as he stood, his head bent, before the altar. The fear was with him much of the time now, but rarely so concentrated as today.

He disliked this charge intensely. Never would he have seen himself as a messenger before, and certainly not one who was working against the interests of the King. If anything, he would have tried to support Edward. But when his Bishop, John of Drokensford, asked him to do something, he was not going to refuse. His Bishop held the powers of patronage, and it was important that he keep him contented.

As soon as Peter had knelt with his master to hear his Confession, the Bishop had grasped his wrist and whispered urgently.

‘It is vital that you let her know this as soon as you can,’ he had said.

‘You want me to try to get it to her now?’

‘No. You have to wait until there is no suspicion. We have to pray that her enemies will not jump before her next visit to the chapel. Dear God, I only hope that we shall not be too late.’

That was the trouble about being the Queen’s own Chaplain, Brother Peter thought: it meant that no one trusted him even slightly. Never had there been a court that was so riven by internal politics, or so he reckoned. This place was full of intrigue, and no matter to whom he turned, he knew that, without fail, every word he spoke would be used or at least measured and weighed and recorded, just in case it might, at some point in the future, become useful. And of course there was never an opportunity to see his Queen alone, except at Confession. If he were to ask to see her, it would immediately raise suspicions.

Well, let them weigh and measure. He was no fool, and he was perfectly content to hold his tongue and only speak when he was sure of his words. If any man chose to try a more physical approach, he’d be ready for him, too.

The sun was fading already, he saw. This was an awful time of year. The trees over at the riverbank opposite were all denuded of leaves as though dead. To his eye, the whole countryside looked barren. Skeletal boughs thrust upwards, foul and rotten in their nakedness. Even those plants that retained a few leaves were brown at the edges as though they had been touched with a scorching chill. All was disgusting. It reminded him each year of God’s bounty when he looked at this — and he understood the pagan fear that spring might never return. All the peasants felt it, especially as their teeth started to pain them, and the gums to bleed, as the winter scurvy took its toll.

Not here at court, though. Peter sighed. Spring would come, no matter the outcome of all this plotting. Bishop John had been most insistent that he should come here: he wanted someone in the palace who could listen to the Queen and help her, someone who was above the temptation to take a bribe to see her poisoned. And someone who could maintain certain lines of communication with her.

Such as delivering little notes.

They had a system now. When there was something urgent, he would pass it to her praying hands during Communion, and she’d read it with a face like stone, the little slip of paper sitting in her cupped hands as he passed her the bread, taking it back from her as she sipped the wine and concealing it in his little towel. This time in particular, he was impressed with her resolution. Her face did not change. She could have been a housewife reading a missive from her husband directing her not to forget to feed the chickens, for all the impact that note had apparently had upon her. There was little to show how devastating it was.

Soon after that, she had left him with a gracious nod, swirling from the room with my Lady Eleanor in attendance, the other women about her. Brother Peter noted Mabilla watching the poor lady closely, as if she expected the Queen to run off at any moment. Others, like that little strumpet Alicia, were much more keen on eyeing up Peter himself. She always seemed to have a little curl of her lips for him, and waggled her arse all the way up the passage to the chapel’s door in flagrant temptation. Aye, she had somehow picked up that he was no better than he should be. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Bishop needed someone with certain … skills here, Peter knew he would never have been given this job. No, he’d have been left to rot in gaol, where he rightfully belonged.

As he polished the goblet, he eyed his reflection in the shining gilt. His dark eyes stared back at him, serious and contemplative, and filled with self-loathing. Well, at least he had passed on the message. She could do what she wanted with it now.

When she was gone, he had reread the message concealed in his towel. As usual, he was going to eat the little scrap of paper, to deprive unfriendly eyes of the sight of the close, neat writing, but he paused when he saw those words.

My Lady, beware! Sir H plans your murder.

It was dark now. Full dark, with the moon hidden behind a cloud that shimmered every so often with the light it concealed, like a floating ball of silk. This was the kind of night Jack atte Hedge liked. An assassin craved the dark.

He was clad in dark brown hosen and a gipon he had bought in Southwark. It was very tight-fitting, as the modern fashion demanded, and he had dulled its colours by immersing it in the mud of the river for some hours. The stain had made it as dark as the hosen, although not actually black. He disliked black. Many years before, he had noticed that a black dog on a dark night was easy to see — but a brown or grey dog, that was impossible, even from a moderately short distance. So when he took up his new occupation, he decided to make use of that discovery.

He was on the far side of the River Tyburn. It was a strange little river, this. The Abbey monks had only a short while ago had it extensively reworked, apparently, in order to make it more easily navigable, or maybe to make the tidal wheel work the better on their mill. There was no boat or bridge here, but he’d only come here to observe, nothing more.

It was not the first night he had spent out here. For the last five evenings, he had simply sat and watched to see what routines there were in the royal household.

From this position he could look over past the point of the Westminster Abbey wall, straight up to the southern wall of the palace yard. Directly ahead was the Queen’s chapel, then her cloister, before the King’s own chamber. In low tide, Jack reckoned he could make his way over the mud, through the Tyburn, and onto the thicker mud in the angle between the old palace yard and the Abbey’s yard, but if he did, he’d leave clear tracks for others to follow. Better to remain dry, he thought.

The guards at the wall went to their allotted positions, and he watched carefully. This was a special day, the Feast of St Julian, and he was hoping that the guards would be less assiduous than usual, so that he might assess routes of ingress and egress. Not that they were ever that assiduous: from all he had seen, the men were remarkably slapdash about their duties.

At the southern tip, the guard there seemed to give a cursory look up- and downriver, and then he followed the line of the wall to the western point, where he disappeared from view. There was some rattling, and then Jack saw him reappear, now wearing a blanket. He took his metal cap off, set it on the wall between the crenellations, and disappeared once more. Soon there was the sound of a man snoring.

It would be easy to knock him down, Jack thought. Throw him over the wall into the thick mud. He’d probably drown there, and no one would suspect it was foul play. They would simply assume that the fool had fallen asleep and toppled over the wall — if they ever found him. The others knew he slept on duty. They must. Today being a feast day, all would have eaten and drunk more than usual. No doubt half of the guards were snoring already.

He waited until he was certain that the fellow was asleep, and that no more men were tramping over the walkways, and then he slipped quietly along the Tyburn’s bank.

Jack had spent the first nights here considering how he might enter the palace yard or wall’s walkway — but last night he had thought of another, easier option. If he could just get inside the Abbey’s grounds, it must be possible to gain access to the palace area from there. There was only one wall between the two.

Over the Tyburn was one bridge, which led from the Abbey’s south gate towards the mill. He walked to it, gazing along its length, and then slipped over it silently. The man at the gate opposite was clearly asleep, because there was no alarm given. Jack reached the gate cursing to himself at the sound of gravel stones crunching underfoot, but when there was no challenge, he began to follow the line of the wall east to the Thames.

At the Abbey’s corner, he paused and felt the ground ahead of him. As he had feared, from here to the water it was a thick, silty mess. If he were to step into that, he might sink an inch or a yard; there was no way to tell, and he daren’t take the risk. Instead, he began to feel his way about the wall. The mortar between the stones felt solid. Each had been cemented firmly in place, and the quality of the stone-dressing was good. There were no footholes: climbing this would be difficult. Jack swore silently to himself again. Perhaps after all he should find a different place from which to launch his attack.

But then he had a stroke of good fortune. As he stood there, gazing out at the water, disconsolate at wasting his time, he noticed a gleam of light on the ground at his feet. He spun about, thinking a man had spotted him and was holding a candle aloft to observe him, but then he realised that there was another way inside.

Just here, the Abbey had a drain that emptied the yard’s waste into the Thames. It was little more than a culvert, here at the point of the wall, and when he leaned down to investigate it more closely, he saw that it was protected with a metal frame, but that the frame had rusted badly. Testing it, he was convinced that he could pull it away with his bare hands. The vertical bars were badly corroded where they were set into the wall above.

He squatted back on his haunches. It was possible to enter now, find his prey, finish the commission and be off. Yet he still had a little time left. Better, perhaps, not to act precipitately.

Rising silently, he crossed the river again, then made his way down to the Thames once more, where he knelt and gazed at the walls. There was the sound of raucous singing from the other side of the wall, and he reckoned that the guards off-duty were making the most of their freedom. As any troops always would.

This was clearly a good time, then. As soon as the main guards had been changed, and when there had been enough time for the new ones to get the first ales inside them, they would give him a little covering noise to hide his steps.

He had his means of entry to the abbey. Soon he would be able to infiltrate the Palace grounds, and do his Lord’s bidding.