The Burgundian’s Tale

Two

I laughed shortly. ‘Now there’s a surprise!’

Timothy nodded gloomily. ‘A predictable ending to a predictable tale. But not an unprecedented one. Strange things seem to happen to women of Judith St Clair’s age, particularly if they’re childless. Suddenly faced with a handsome young man, her twin sister’s son, and deeply affected, I suppose, by the unexpected news of that sister’s death, she adopted him almost immediately as her own. Her former affection for her stepchildren was overwhelmed by the love she felt for her nephew.’

‘So why does Duke Richard need me to solve the crime?’ I snorted. ‘It seems to me any fool could work out the answer given time and patience. You already have four suspects with very strong motives for wanting the young man dead: Judith’s present husband, his son, her stepdaughter by her second marriage and the – er – cousin, was it? of her first husband, who runs the embroidery workshops for her, and who, in the fullness of time, might well have expected some acknowledgement of the fact in Judith’s will. It was generally known, I take it, that she had made this Fulk Quantrell her sole heir?’

‘She may not have said anything about it, but it appears he openly boasted of the fact.’

‘Well then!’

‘It mightn’t be quite as simple as that,’ Timothy demurred. ‘I’m not in possession of all the facts – God knows, I’m just the messenger – but I gather friends of Godfrey St Clair, a certain Roland and Lydia something-or-other, may also be involved. Don’t ask me how! Besides, no one else has the leisure to spend on the matter.’ His chest swelled importantly. ‘By the time we get to London, the Dowager Duchess will already be at sea, and the Earl of Lincoln must set out again almost at once for Gravesend in order to escort his aunt into the capital. I, of course, will be in attendance on My Lord of Gloucester and must be constantly on the alert for any outside forces, any foreign agents, who might pose a threat to the friendly outcome of this visit and England’s renewed ties with Burgundy.’

‘The French, you mean,’ I said drily. ‘Such cunning, devious, little bastards – they’re everywhere. I wonder you could be spared to come chasing after me.’

Timothy gave me a narrow look. ‘You watch that sarcastic tongue of yours, Roger! I volunteered to fetch you because I knew I had the power to make you acquiesce in Duke Richard’s request.’

‘Not a command, then?’

The spy turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘The Duke is sympathetic – unnecessarily so, in my opinion – to the demands of a wife and children. And given your present recalcitrant mood, it would appear to be a good thing that I did come.’

I was not prepared to allow Timothy that much satisfaction. ‘As it happens, I was already preparing to leave Bristol and go on my travels for a week or two. So’ – it was my turn to shrug – ‘I might as well be in London as anywhere.’

I was delighted to note his look of disappointment. But he made no comment apart from asking me where I would choose to stay. ‘I daresay a room can be found for you in Baynard’s Castle. You’ve lodged there once before.’

I had indeed; which was how I knew the servants’ dormitories to be cramped and overcrowded, some poor fellows sleeping three or four to a bed, others having no bed at all but forced to spend their nights on the draughty floor. Since becoming a house owner I had grown soft and used to my comfort.

‘I’ll find a room at St Brendan the Voyager in Bucklersbury,’ I said. ‘I know the landlord, Reynold Makepeace: an honest man, who won’t take advantage of a country cousin like me by charging outrageous prices.’

Timothy’s face brightened. ‘I know the Voyager: it’s tucked in among all those grocers’ and apothecaries’ shops. I also have a nodding acquaintance with Innkeeper Makepeace. But what’s even better is that Needlers Lane is a turning off Bucklersbury, about halfway along on the opposite side of the road to the inn. You’ll be a mere stone’s throw from the Broderer workshops.’ He rose and clapped me on the back, the same shoulder favoured by the Earl of Lincoln. I winced. ‘And now, if we’re not to keep the King’s nephew waiting – and I wouldn’t advise it, in spite of all his good humour and friendly ways – you’d better make your farewells. We must be at the castle by noon.’

We spent three nights on the road (the young Earl refusing to travel on the Sabbath) and entered London around midday on the sixteenth day of May, which, by coincidence, was the Feast of Saint Brendan the Voyager. Timothy, the least superstitious of men, nevertheless took this as a good augury for my success.

‘It’s going to prove an easy case for you to solve, Roger. Come and find me at Baynard’s Castle this afternoon, when we’ve both had a chance to settle in. Duke Richard and his Duchess are staying there. They decided against Crosby’s Place so that His Grace could be more in the company of his sister. If he’s not too busy, he’ll be pleased to see you. But he won’t be able to afford you much time.’

I didn’t take this amiss. I knew from what Timothy had told me during our journey that this rare visit to London by the Duke of Gloucester was not simply to greet his youngest sister, but also to hold urgent talks with his brother concerning Scotland’s violation of her truce with England. Egged on, I learned, by the wily French King – who, typically, was also sheltering James III’s rebellious brother, the Duke of Albany, at his court – there had been almost daily raids across the Border throughout the past autumn and winter. Four days earlier, the Duke of Gloucester had been appointed the King’s Lieutenant-General in the North, authorized, so the Earl of Lincoln had informed us, to levy the men of the Scottish marches, ready for war.

It said much for the Duke’s family feeling that, in the midst of all this turmoil and uncertainty, he could find time to worry about Duchess Margaret’s probable grief at the death of her favourite’s son, and to want to have something done about solving the murder. I could understand why Timothy was so anxious not to let him down, and secretly determined that I would do my utmost to discover the culprit – although I naturally had no intention of telling Timothy this. Let him think me still resentful: it would keep him on his toes.

The Earl of Lincoln left us even before we entered London, making his way to Westminster where the King and Queen and most of the court were lodged. Timothy and I parted company outside St Paul’s, he riding south to Baynard’s Castle, between Thames Street and the river, I jogging along West Cheap to the Great Conduit, where I took the right-hand fork to Bucklersbury. And here, nestling, as Timothy had said, among the sweet-smelling grocers’ and apothecaries’ shops, I found the inn of St Brendan the Voyager still with its sign of the saint and his disciples in their skin-covered coracle, being kept afloat by the good offices of a sea monster.

I thought Reynold Makepeace might have forgotten me after more than two years, but he greeted me as though I were his long-lost brother, enquired solicitously after Adela and the children, and generally made me so welcome that I even began to enjoy this unsought and begrudged visit to the capital.

‘As luck would have it,’ he said, ‘you can have the same chamber that you shared with your wife. It was vacated only this morning by a merchant from Nottingham who had business in the city. And when I talk about luck, I mean it. London’s seething at the moment with people pouring in to catch a glimpse of Duchess Margaret. Many of the larger, more important inns have been commandeered for members of her retinue. Your guardian angel must be watching over you, guiding your footsteps here.’

The room was exactly as I remembered it – small, but spotlessly clean, opening off a gallery that ringed three sides of the Voyager’s inner courtyard. The bed, which took up most of the space, still sported the same goose-feather mattress and down-filled pillows. There were no other furnishings, but my wants were modest, having no luggage except my pack and the cudgel I had insisted on bringing with me despite Timothy’s reservations.

‘You won’t need your cudgel,’ he had objected. ‘You’ll be under royal protection. The Duke’s armourer can supply you with any weapons you might need to keep you safe in the London streets.’

But I preferred my own trusty ‘Plymouth cloak’ and my knife, both of which I was used to handling, and in this argument, the Earl of Lincoln, who had happened to overhear the altercation, had backed me up.

‘Better the weapons you know, Master Plummer, than those you don’t,’ he had said gaily, but decidedly; and I noted with amusement that Timothy gave in at once. The young man might parade and boast of his de la Pole and Chaucer blood, but he was a Plantagenet at heart, and expected to be treated as one.

The horse that had been hired for me from the Bell Lane stables, in Bristol, Reynold Makepeace readily agreed to house and feed for the duration of my stay in London at a slightly increased cost, to be added to the price of my room. I was happy to agree, and having donned a clean shirt and hose, brushed down my leather jerkin and combed my hair, set out for Baynard’s Castle as I had been instructed.

It seemed to me that I had stood in that room only yesterday, instead of nine years earlier. There was no fire of scented pine logs on the hearth, it was true, but everything else was surely just the same: the table against the wall supporting silver ewers and goblets of the finest Venetian glass; the armchairs with their delicately carved backs, depicting birds and trailing, intertwined vine leaves; the tapestries, slightly more faded perhaps, showing Hercules’s fight with Nereus; and the copper chandelier with its scented wax candles, all lit because of the overcast day and the general gloom of the chamber.

But the dark-haired young man (exactly my own age for, according to my mother, we had been born on the selfsame day) who rose to greet me was older and far more careworn than he had been on the occasion of our first meeting. Lines of suffering and sorrow were deeply scored into the thin, olive-skinned face. Sadness lurked behind a smile that had once been sweet and gentle, but which, now, could suddenly transform itself into a kind of rictus grin. Once described by the Countess of Desmond as ‘the handsomest man in the room after the King’, Richard of Gloucester’s good looks had been eroded by the twin evils of great grief for the death of his brother, George of Clarence, and his hatred for those he considered responsible for that death, the Queen’s family, the Woodvilles.

Then, as he came towards me, he smiled again, and this time his whole face lit up. I realized with gratitude that the man I had known and to whom I had sworn lifelong devotion was still there, inside that shell of suspicion and disillusionment that had hardened around him for his own protection.

‘Roger!’ The Duke held out a heavily beringed hand, which I knelt and kissed. He raised me, adding, ‘It’s good to see you once more. Thank you for coming. I know you’re married and a father. And also, rumour has it, a householder. You must tell me how that happened, for you’d never accept any help from me. But first, here’s someone who wants to meet you.’ He turned and beckoned.

A boy, who had been sitting in one of the armchairs, came forward; a tall, smiling, shining – for I can think of no better way to describe him – child of some eleven or twelve years of age.

‘My son, John,’ the Duke said proudly. ‘John, this is Roger Chapman of whom you’ve heard me speak.’

I bowed. ‘My Lord.’

This, I knew, was Duke Richard’s bastard son, born before the Duke’s marriage to his beloved cousin, Anne Neville. There was also a bastard daughter, Katherine, as much the apple of her father’s eye as this bright and lively young man. (I wondered fleetingly about Prince Edward, the Duke’s legitimate heir, who, if everything said of him were true, had inherited his mother’s fragile constitution.)

The boy grinned broadly. ‘My Lord father has been singing your praises, chapman. My cousin, John of Lincoln, insisted on haring off to Bristol just to steal a march and get a glimpse of you before I did. I wanted to go, too, but it wasn’t allowed.’

I addressed the Duke. ‘Your Grace, I suspect all this undeserved praise is a ploy, first to get me to London, secondly to ensure I do your bidding now I’m here.’

Duke Richard smiled. ‘You always did have a suspicious mind, my friend. But if you can solve the riddle of a death that will greatly distress my sister, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, when she hears of it, I don’t mind what you think of me.’ He gave his son a little push. ‘Off you go, my lad, and make yourself useful to your grandmother if she needs you.’ He ruffled the dark hair so like his own and watched with pride and affection as the Lord John made his courtesy to both of us in turn before quitting the room. ‘One of the lights of my life,’ he said simply as the door closed. ‘Now, come and sit down and tell me all that’s happened to you in these past two years.’

Half an hour later, he knew as much of my life as I had chosen to reveal; and, being an astute, shrewd man, probably much else that I had hoped to conceal.

‘The bond of marriage can sometimes be just that,’ he said enigmatically when I had finished. ‘All the same, I’m delighted you’ve found a good woman to comfort your bed and bear your children. I’m pleased, too, for your good fortune, and that the money I sent after you last time proved of use in furnishing the house. You obviously rendered this Mistress Ford a great service to be the recipient of such gratitude.’ He must have seen me colour up because he chuckled. ‘No, no, Roger! I didn’t mean that! I give you credit for being a faithful and loyal husband. Now, I’m afraid I must leave you. I’m wanted at Westminster. But I’ll send Timothy to you. He’ll arrange for someone to show you where the murder was committed and Mistress St Clair’s house in the Strand. How you then go about solving our mystery is up to you. But I’m sure we shall see one another again in the days to come.’ He pressed my shoulder – the same one – and I valiantly refrained from letting out a yelp of pain. ‘I shall, of course, expect to be kept informed of your progress, but otherwise, you won’t be bothered. I know you like to work alone.’

I again kissed his hand. When he had gone, I sat down and waited patiently for Timothy Plummer.

In fact, Timothy appeared only briefly before handing me over to a young officer of the Gloucester household named Bertram Serifaber – a stocky, curly-haired young man, as friendly as he was bright and quick-witted.

‘I’m to assist you in any way I can,’ he told me. ‘I’m at your disposal for as long as you need me, and all my other duties are to be subordinated to your demands.’ He smiled happily at the prospect and his brown eyes sparkled. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he admitted candidly. ‘These state occasions can be a bore. There’s such a lot of standing around, just twiddling one’s thumbs. Trying to track down a murderer will be much more fun.’

‘Only trying?’ I teased. ‘You should have more confidence in me, my little locksmith.’

He blushed, then quickly forgot his embarrassment and grinned. ‘You’re right. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were, or are, all serifabers, but mending and fitting locks didn’t appeal to me. When my father did some work in the royal palace at Westminster a year or so ago, I accompanied him, which is how I met Master Plummer. He was in the service of the King at the time, as I expect you know.’ I nodded. ‘Well, he took a liking to me, thought me bright enough to be trained as a future spy and persuaded my father at least to let me try. Mind you,’ my new young friend added with a sigh, ‘I didn’t bargain on Master Plummer returning to the Duke of Gloucester’s household and having to go with him to Yorkshire.’

He spoke the last word with the kind of scorn reserved by all Londoners for anywhere outside the capital, but I was used to that. My lips might have twitched, but I hid my amusement and said bracingly, ‘Well, you’re back home now.’

‘But not for long. It’ll be Scotland next,’ he added gloomily, ‘if all the rumours are true.’ Then what was plainly his natural buoyancy shone through and he gave me a blinding smile. ‘However, anything’s better than locksmithing, and you do get to see a bit of the world. And now that I’m trying – oops! sorry! – going to solve a murder with you, perhaps I’ll be noticed by the King and My Lord of Gloucester and Duchess Margaret.’ He didn’t add, ‘Things are looking up!’ but the words were implicit in his general demeanour. He was an optimist and nothing could alter that fact.

‘Then we’d better make a start,’ I suggested. ‘As we’re not far from Fleet Street, you can show me first where this Fulk Quantrell was murdered.’ I had a moment’s misgiving. ‘You do know all about this killing, I suppose? Master Plummer has explained everything to you?’

Bertram Serifaber nodded vigorously. ‘He’s told me all that he knows, yes. But it’s not very much now, is it?’

I laughed and agreed.

We left London by the Lud Gate, under the raised portcullis, past the guards whose job it was to turn back any lepers who tried to enter the city, and across the drawbridge that spanned the ditch. I had forgotten how much bigger, dirtier and noisier London was even than Bristol, the second city in the kingdom; and long before we reached our destination my head was aching from the incessant cries of the street vendors, the chiming of the bells and the effort of pushing my way through the jostling crowds. The screech and rattle of carts, many driven at breakneck speed, was the inevitable prelude to being splashed with mud and refuse from the central drain. I cursed loudly and openly wished myself at home; but at the same time, there was a vitality, a sense of urgency about life in London that I secretly found exhilarating.

I remembered Fleet Street from my previous visits to the capital: a road leading from the Lud Gate at one end and merging into the Strand at the other. The River Fleet ran at right angles to it, as did Shoe Lane and the Bailey, and the houses that flanked it on either side were three-storeyed dwellings of fair proportions, home to the well-to-do, but nothing like as opulent as the nobles’ mansions in the neighbouring Strand.

‘It was here,’ my companion said eagerly, darting ahead of me as we approached the turning to Faitour – or Fetter, as my London friend pronounced it – Lane. ‘Between here and Saint Dunstan’s Church. According to Master Plummer, the man had been felled with a blow to the back of his head and then finished off with several more. He’d been robbed of everything of value.’

I reflected that this was hardly surprising. A number of the faitours – or beggars, vagrants, vagabonds, scroungers, whatever you prefer to call them – after whom the lane was named, were even now skulking around in doorways, rattling their tin cups or displaying their war wounds (ha!), waiting for the largesse they felt to be their due to rain down upon their undeserving heads.

‘I assume this murder happened at night,’ I said, provoking an incredulous glance from Bertram.

‘Yes, of course! Didn’t Master Plummer tell you anything? I thought you’d know more than I do.’

‘Master Plummer has left me in your more than capable hands,’ I answered smoothly, but feeling a fool just the same. I determined to have a few well-chosen words with Timothy the next time I saw him. Nevertheless, I acknowledged that my ignorance was partly my own fault: I should have asked more questions, instead of wallowing in the ease and luxury of a journey undertaken in the company of a royal earl.

I surveyed the scene of the crime. The church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West stood maybe fifty yards or so from the entrance to Faitour Lane, at a point where there was a small dog-leg turning in the road. On the walls of at least two of the houses, and on a wall of the church itself, were cresset holders which, judging by the smoke-blackened stonework and plaster behind them, were frequently used. But I reckoned the flames of the cressets might cast more shadows than light under certain conditions, as well as being put out altogether in rain or high wind. Besides, there was plenty of protection to be had by a would-be killer in the narrow doorways of the houses, and a way of escape up Faitour Lane itself to the village of Holborn. All in all, I didn’t think a murderer would have had much difficulty in getting away unnoticed and undetected.

I wondered if the local brotherhood of beggars had been questioned as to anything any one of them might have seen or heard that night, but guessed that, even if they had, the interrogation would have yielded nothing. Communities, particularly those that live by their wits or by preying on other people, stick together. They live by a code of which the cardinal – probably the only – sin is betrayal.

I knew from Timothy that there had been an enquiry of sorts, but the Sheriff’s officers had been needed elsewhere to root out those Frenchmen thought to be lurking around every corner of every London street, just waiting to disrupt the Dowager Duchess’s visit. I had tried to persuade Timothy, during one of our convivial drinking sessions on the journey from Bristol, that such fears were probably unjustified. I pointed out that King Louis was already master of the situation on account of the seventy-five thousand crowns he paid yearly to King Edward. Surely, I argued, that was a sufficient inducement to preclude any serious English assistance to Burgundy against the French, particularly as the King had a very expensive wife and, in the Woodvilles, as rapacious a set of in-laws as any ruler in Christendom.

But Timothy had remained unconvinced. He had reminded me sharply that it was my job to discover the identity of Fulk Quantrell’s murderer while he and every other officer of the law busied themselves about the safety of the realm. In the face of such blinkered obstinacy I had given in gracefully, but I should have questioned him more closely about the crime.

So here I was with very little information to aid me in my search. I looked thoughtfully at the faitours, who either whined for alms or, when they had assessed my social standing and probable worth, gave me back stare for stare, poked out their tongues and made other obscene gestures which I am too much of a gentleman to describe. But I decided they could wait. They would still be here whenever I was ready to speak to them.

‘Very well,’ I said to my companion. ‘Now you can show me the house in the Strand where Mistress St Clair and her husband live; then we’ll retrace our footsteps back to the city, to Needlers Lane.’

At my request, we walked the whole length of the Strand as far as the Chère Reine Cross, because I wished to renew my acquaintance with this part of London-Without-the-Walls, where the tentacles of the city were creeping further and further into the countryside between the capital and Westminster. Then we walked back again.

On our right were some of the finest houses in and around London – magnificent four-storey affairs with well-tended gardens running down to their own water-steps and landing stages on the Thames. Mansions, I suppose, would not have been too strong a word for many of them. Here, the great palace of the Savoy had once stood before it was destroyed during the insurrection of the peasants almost a hundred years before.

At the Fleet Street end, however, were three smaller houses; still handsome, but modest by comparison with the rest: they lacked a storey and were narrower in width. Nevertheless, the gardens were just as pleasant, and the overall impression was of money, possibly hard-earned, but plenty of it and well spent.

‘I think Master Plummer said one of those three belongs to Mistress St Clair.’ Bertram rubbed his nose apprehensively. ‘But I’m not sure which. The middle one, I think.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll soon find out.’ I smiled at him, not displeased that he seemed a little wary of my displeasure. (I judged him to be a youth who could easily get too cocky.) ‘But first we’re going to pick up my pack and cudgel at the Voyager and then we’ll pay a visit to Needlers Lane.’