The Dance of Death

Fourteen

My sleep that night was disturbed by dreams — nothing of any significance or much that I remembered clearly the following morning, except one sequence when I was standing in the cloisters at St Paul’s and the skeletons from The Dance of Death all left the walls and cavorted round me, nodding and grinning. I could hear the clicking of their bones as they gradually drew closer, a circle tightening like the noose about a felon’s neck. The sweat was pouring from my body and I could barely breathe. I gasped for air, great rasping sounds forcing themselves from my chest and throat. One of the skeletons reached out a hand and took me by the shoulder.

‘Wake up, Roger!’ Eloise’s voice, full of alarm, sounded in my ear as she shook me violently. ‘What is it? Are you ill?’

I struggled to sit up, shivering suddenly as the chill of the bedchamber — the fire had long ago dwindled away to ashes — stroked my clammy skin. ‘No, no!’ I assured her. ‘Just riding the night mare, that’s all. Thank you for rousing me. I’m well enough.’

‘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?’

‘No, none.’ I got up and raised one of Jane’s limp hands to my lips. ‘I must be going, mistress. Please give my adieus to your husband and Master Lackpenny.’

She made no response. John jerked his head imperatively towards the door, while standing deferentially to one side for me to precede him from the room. I was halfway through the doorway when Jane Armiger turned her head in my direction and said clearly, ‘Yes.’

I paused, looking back at her. ‘Yes?’ I queried.

She had stopped playing with her hair and was looking straight at me. ‘The answer to your question,’ she said, ‘is “Yes.”’

That was all, after which she seemed to lose interest in me, hunching further into her chair, her knuckles white as she clenched its arms, looking deep into the heart of the fire that had been kindled on the hearth. I waited a moment to see if she would say anything else, but when it became obvious that she was not going to, I went out into the frosty morning and mounted, not without a great deal of misgiving, the mettlesome-looking grey that John had hired for me.

And so we set off through the Calais streets, heading for the Pale and the beginning of our journey into France.

We were a silent bunch as we put the weary miles between ourselves and Calais, first as we crossed the Pale and then as we headed south into France itself.

Philip, of course, was always silent nowadays, resisting all my efforts to draw him out or involve him in any sort of conversation, efforts that had grown more half-hearted with every passing day as he failed to respond. My exasperation had increased as my sympathy ebbed until I found myself content to ignore him and treat him like the servant he was pretending to be.

John Bradshaw also seemed wrapped in his own thoughts during that first day’s ride, only raising his voice to urge us all to greater efforts and to chivvy us into moving again each time we stopped — which wasn’t often — for refreshment. Paris was now his goal and he would only be happy when we got there. In a burst of confidence during one of these rests, he did repeat how glad he was to be freed from the company of the Armigers and Master Lackpenny, and even went so far as to consider the disappearance of Oliver Cook as a blessing in disguise.

‘I wouldn’t wish death by drowning on any man — a nasty, protracted business, I should imagine — but I have to say that I found the fellow extremely offensive. I had known of his reputation in Baynard’s Castle, although we had never actually met face to face, and his removal has meant the freedom to be ourselves for at least that part of each day when we are not in the company of fellow travellers.’

I understood this. For a man used to directing others, playing the role of a servant must have been irksome in the extreme, especially when it meant deferring to someone as new to, and as ignorant of, the spying game as myself.

Eloise’s silences, answering only when I addressed her directly, and then with the minimum of words, I had no difficulty in interpreting. She was still angry about my treatment of her that morning, and was beginning to experience the frustration of playing a part most hours of the day and night. At first it had probably seemed like a game to her, a chance to goad and needle me with impunity. She had known that I didn’t trust her, and with good reason, but as the days, and then a week passed, the game palled. I liked to think that she felt my attraction as I felt hers, and that being thrust into the most intimate of situations with me without being able to relieve the emotional strain was making her short-tempered. To make matters worse, she was at liberty to give full rein to her natural instincts: I was the stumbling block with my marriage and my children and my much vaunted determination to remain faithful (or at least not to stray again, as I had done with Juliette Gerrish in Gloucester — not that Eloise knew about that).

As for myself, I was preoccupied with my own stupidity in having spoken to Jane Armiger about the Dowager Duchess of York in that unguarded fashion without first thinking of the possible consequences. At least I derived some comfort from the knowledge that I would never make a good spy. I was too impetuous, too careless of orders, too unthinking for the devious, double-dealing world of Timothy Plummer and his ilk. I was glad of that.

But what exactly had that ‘Yes’ of Jane Armiger’s been intended to convey? Yes, her grandmother had once mentioned rumours of a love affair between Cicely Neville — as so many people, even now, still thought of her — and one of the archers of her Rouen bodyguard? Or had Jane, in her dazed and bereft state, merely been answering some question of her own poor, exhausted mind and which had nothing to do with what I had been saying to her? Yet she had looked at me as she spoke, a direct, steady gaze that seemed to indicate she had heard me and was offering a response. But how could I be certain in the state that she was in, grieving for her brother, even if no one else considered him much of a loss? And perhaps grieving even more because others appeared so indifferent to his fate.

John Bradshaw had of course been curious to know the meaning of that ‘Yes’, but had accepted, without much persuasion, the explanation that Mistress Armiger was distraught and that it had been nothing more than an expression of her own distress of mind.

And so the first day passed more or less in silence, with three of us, at least — Eloise, Philip and myself — oblivious for much of the time to anything but our own glum thoughts, and saying as little as possible to one another. John Bradshaw was apparently content to have it so until we racked up for the night at some wayside inn — auberge, as I suppose I should call them from now on — when, as we dismounted in the yard, he snapped at us in English, and without bothering to lower his voice, that he was tired of our childish behaviour. This, of course, was meant for Eloise and me. Philip he continued to ignore except to ply him with orders about stabling the horses and making sure they were rubbed down and properly fed before he turned in for the night.

Someone came out through the doorway of the inn and gave a discreet cough. ‘Do you always allow your servants to speak to you in that insolent fashion, Master Chapman?’ asked a voice that was vaguely familiar, but that I could not immediately place. It was only when its owner moved out of the shadows and into a pool of light made by a wall torch that I recognized, much to my astonishment, the Frenchman, Master Harcourt, who had made the Channel crossing with us.

‘You-you’ve made good time, sir,’ was all I was able to stutter. I didn’t dare look at John, who was no doubt cursing himself roundly for not being more careful in a public place.

It was Eloise who stepped into the breach while he and I were still gathering our wits. ‘Monsieur d’Harcourt,’ she purred, offering him a hand, which he gallantly kissed. She then proceeded to burble away to him in French, which he answered in his accented but perfectly intelligible English.

‘Yes, indeed, madame. I was up before dawn and waiting at the porter’s lodge of the town gate for it to open. But you, yourselves, have not been tardy. I could not have been much more than an hour or so in front of you anywhere on the road. I regret infinitely that I gave you no chance to catch up with me. I would not willingly have foregone such attractive company.’

Eloise simpered. Raoul d’Harcourt might be middle-aged, but he was a good-looking man for all that, and he had what I supposed women meant by ‘Gallic charm’. Frankly, it made me want to spit.

‘Are you staying at this inn?’ I asked abruptly.

He smiled. ‘But of course. It is the only inn for some miles.’ He glanced curiously between John and me, once again kissed Eloise’s hand and turned to re-enter the inn. ‘I shall look forward to your company at supper,’ he said.

I grunted and received an understanding smile for my pains. Eloise said something gracious in French, and John stomped off to the stables to vent his anger with himself on Philip and any unfortunate stable hand who happened to be present. I could hear him roaring away in both English and his own broad-vowelled version of the French tongue as I followed my ‘wife’ indoors.

At that time of year, there were fewer travellers than usual on the roads, and, apart from Master Harcourt, Eloise and I were the only people sitting down to supper in the comfortable room at the back of the inn.

To begin with, I was too preoccupied poking around the contents of my plate in order to find out exactly what it was that I was eating to pay much heed to the conversation of the other two, even though it was conducted in English for my benefit. It was the name of Oliver Cook that finally caught and held my attention.

‘You heard about his disappearance, then?’ I asked, raising my head from the contemplation of a suspect piece of something or other swimming around in my spoon.

Raoul d’Harcourt inclined his head. ‘But naturally. If you remember, I called on you to return Master Armiger’s saddlebag. In any case, Calais is a veritable hotbed of gossip. Nothing happens that isn’t known throughout the town in a matter of hours, and the presumed drowning of one of my fellow passengers aboard The Sea Nymph was of more than just a passing interest to me.’

‘“Presumed drowning”?’ I asked, returning the suspect something to my bowl of broth and absentmindedly watching it sink to the bottom. I raised my head and looked our companion in the eye. ‘Why do you say “presumed”?’

‘Because,’ was the answer, slowly and deliberately given, ‘I am certain Master Cook’s death was no accident. I feel sure in my own mind that he was murdered.’