The Dance of Death

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.

‘Perhaps,’ he admitted. Then the grin broadened. ‘To be honest, the pantomime between you and Mistress Marthe here was too good to interrupt.’ He went on, ‘Mistress Eloise came looking for you to bear her company to see the Armigers, wherever it is they’re staying. Seems they’ve turned up again, along with that silly fellow with the blue feather in his hat. They must’ve made pretty good time from Calais to be so hot on our heels.’

I regarded him affectionately. ‘Do you know,’ I asked, ‘that you’ve just said more in the last minute than you’ve uttered in a whole week?’ I dropped a hand on his shoulder and pressed it.

He let go of the handle of the spit, rose from his stool, shrugging off my hand as he did so, and turned towards me, his face suffused with anger. ‘Don’t you treat me to any of your patronizing airs and graces, Roger. Just leave me alone!’

This abrupt change of mood from the old Philip to the new was shocking. I felt as though he had dealt me a physical blow, and I heard Marthe making tut-tutting noises under her breath. She looked distressed, and although she had not understood what we were saying, Philip’s sudden descent into fury was painfully apparent. She glanced questioningly at me, obviously wondering what I had said to bring about such a transformation.

When I had brought my breathing and my temper under control, I said coldly, ‘I’m going out and I need you to accompany me. John Bradshaw’s orders. Get your cloak on while I fetch mine.’

‘No,’ Philip answered truculently. ‘I ain’t coming. Bradshaw’s given me no such order.’

The door into the yard opened and closed.

‘Who’s taking my name in vain?’ John demanded.

I explained the situation and he raised his eyebrows.

‘You’re going out now? I thought we’d agreed. .’ He paused, grimacing. ‘Oh well, if Mistress Eloise has gone a-visiting, perhaps you should take advantage of her absence.’ He looked at Philip and his features hardened. ‘You’ll do as you’re bid,’ he instructed harshly. ‘Get your cloak on and make no more bones about it.’ He turned back to me as, to my amazement and without further demur, Philip shuffled over to where his cloak hung on a nail beside the kitchen door and put it on. ‘Be careful, Roger,’ John urged. ‘Keep with Philip at all times. And Jules will be free today. If you decide you want his company, you’ll most probably find him in Le Coq d’Or in the Rue de la Juiverie. That’s the road that joins the Petit Pont on the south bank to the Pont Notre-Dame on t’other. It’s his usual drinking den.’

I thanked him and returned to the parlour to collect my own cloak from where I had carelessly thrown it over the back of a chair, and to retrieve my hat from where I had dropped it, even more carelessly, on the floor. (Anyone could tell that I was unused to smart clothes.) By the time I was ready, having had to search around for the latter before spotting it under the table, Philip was waiting for me outside the street door, looking cold and disgruntled.

The November afternoon was well advanced, and, above us, the sky was dull and overcast. A chilly wind was blowing off the Seine, whistling between the canyons of the houses and bringing with it the smell of rotting fish and the faint tang of the sea that is reminiscent of all cities built on great rivers. It reminded me poignantly of my adopted town of Bristol and for a moment I was dumb with homesickness.

I took a deep breath. ‘Which way?’ I asked Philip.

He shrugged, indicating that he either didn’t know or was bent on being obstructive. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and steered him in a westerly direction, having recollected that Eloise and I had returned to the Île de la Cité by the Pont Notre-Dame earlier in the day and must have crossed the Rue de la Juiverie to get to the square in front of the cathedral. The streets were still crowded, the noise still deafening, and I pulled Philip into the shelter of a doorway, where I could make myself heard.A couple of disease-ridden beggars reluctantly made way for us and rattled their tins, abusing us roundly when we ignored them. (I presume it was abuse. They certainly didn’t sound as if they were giving us the time of day.)

‘Now listen to me, Philip,’ I said, ‘and listen carefully. I’m going to have to trust you. And I do trust you. You may be behaving like a right little shit-house at the moment, but I’ve known you for years and we’ve been good friends in the past, so I’m going to tell you what I’ve even kept secret from John.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ he shouted, and clapped both his hands over his ears.

‘I don’t care what you want,’ I snarled back. ‘You’re damned well going to listen!’ Seizing his wrists, I forced down his arms. He struggled to free himself.

The beggars, seeing only what they thought to be a servant defying his master, whooped and cheered and banged with their collecting cups against the wall of the house where we were all sheltering. I heard one of them mutter, ‘Anglais! Anglais!’ followed by some imprecation, while the other fanned out his fingers behind his back in the semblance of a tail. (It crossed my mind, fleetingly, that for the English and French it would be almost impossible to live without one another. Who else would the denizens of both countries find to revile, despise and ridicule so virulently except the pestilential rapscallions on the opposite side of the Channel?)

Keeping Philip’s arms pinioned to his sides, I said through clenched teeth, ‘You’re going to hear what I have to say whether you like it or not.’

The fight suddenly seemed to go out of him and his thin, emaciated body went limp, but I knew him for a cunning little rogue and kept a firm grip on him while I outlined, briefly, the gist of my mission for the Duke of Gloucester. When I had finished, he appeared genuinely shocked, releasing himself gently from my grasp but making no further effort to escape it.

He let out a long, low whistle and murmured, ‘Hell’s teeth!’ For the first time since we renewed our acquaintance, someone else’s predicament had caught his attention and evoked his sympathy. He lowered his voice, even though the two beggars, disappointed of the expected brawl, had now moved on. ‘So that’s the way the wind’s blowing, is it? This is dangerous stuff, Roger.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ I responded feelingly. ‘If the Woodvilles should get an inkling of it, I’d be a dead man long before I could report back to the duke. That’s why it was thought best to keep it a secret even from John.’

‘And now you’ve told me.’ Philip sounded bitter and I realized guiltily that by doing so, I had possibly endangered his life as well as my own.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But you must see for yourself that I’m in desperate need of some help. Finding a former English soldier who, after forty years, most likely speaks French like a native, in a city the size of Paris is a near-impossible task. Added to which, there’s no positive evidence that this Robin Gaunt lives here at all.’

‘Oh, that sort of thing’s only to be expected,’ my companion snorted savagely. ‘Our lords and masters issue their orders, no matter how impossible they may be, and we poor underlings are expected to carry them out. And woe betide us if we fail!’

‘I don’t think the duke would-’ I was beginning, but Philip interrupted me.

‘Princes, nobles, officers, gentlemen, they’re all the bloody same if you ask me! I never met one who was any different. But all this jabbering ain’t going t’ solve your problem.’ He chewed a dirty fingernail. When I would have spoken, he raised an equally grimy finger and wagged it under my nose. ‘Bide quiet a minute, can’t you, and let me think. Mind you,’ he went on, ‘after what you just told me, I’m buggered if I can think proper. You’re dabbling your fingers in treason here, Roger. And so’s Prince Richard.’

‘Depends if it is treason,’ I argued. ‘Depends on what I find out.’ I glanced over my shoulder, then whispered, ‘Maybe His Grace is already the rightful king. Maybe he has been since the execution of Clarence. And maybe Brother George was rightfully king before him, and that’s why he had to be got rid of.’

Philip clapped one of his hands over my mouth; it smelled of smoke and garlic. ‘Will you keep your great gob shut? Just to please me!’ He started chewing his nail again, nodding his head up and down and staring vacantly into the distance before suddenly coming to a conclusion. ‘Best thing you can do-’

‘We can do,’ I corrected him.

He ignored me. ‘Best thing you can do,’ he continued, ‘is to enquire around the inns and taverns if anyone knows of an elderly Englishman married to a French wife. An old soldier, someone who might once have been part of the occupying forces forty years ago.’ He stopped, giving vent to a rusty, reluctant chuckle. ‘O’ course, you could just ask if anyone knows a man called — what was it? — Robin Gaunt.’

It was so good to hear him laugh again that, for a moment, I joined in his merriment, but other considerations soon had a sobering effect. ‘It sounds like excellent sense, Philip, except that it overlooks one thing: I can’t speak French. And neither can you.’

His face fell; then he rallied. ‘It’s surprising how much you can make yourself understood if you try hard enough. Just keep repeating the name Robin Gaunt and tell ’em he’s English, Anglais. Femme française. Do you know them? If so — by some miracle — where do they live? Keep saying things long enough and loud enough and something’ll get through to somebody. Provided, of course, there’s someone somewhere who knows something. Which I very much doubt.’

‘No, wait!’ I said. ‘We’ve forgotten Jules. John told us where to find him. Le Coq d’Or in the Rue de la Jui- something or other. Anyway, the street that runs from a bridge on the south bank to the Pont Notre-Dame. I know where that is. Eloise and I crossed it earlier today. We’ll go and find him.’

Philip’s mouth set in familiarly stubborn lines. ‘No,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I’m not dragging Jules into this.’

‘Why not? John told me-’

‘I don’t trust him. That’s why not.’

I was astonished at Philip’s vehemence. ‘Why don’t you trust him?’

He hesitated for a moment or two, searching for an answer. Finally, he came up with, ‘He’s a Frenchie, ain’t he? That’s reason enough.’

‘Not in this case,’ I argued. ‘It was John’s suggestion, and he said Jules wouldn’t be interested in anything I might be up to. And, indeed, why should he be? All we need is for him to ask a few questions for us. If by any chance he should evince any curiosity, we’re just trying to find an old friend who might have settled in Paris. Surely that should satisfy him.’

‘No,’ Philip repeated even more forcefully than before. ‘If you want to ask Jules for help, you’ll go on your own. Try and force me to go with you and I’ll kick up such a rumpus that you’ll have half of Paris crowding round. I mean it, Roger. We do this alone or not at all.’

I was puzzled as well as annoyed. ‘You can hardly know Jules,’ I said. ‘He’s obviously one of John’s French agents, but you can have seen very little of him, I should have thought. Why do you mistrust him so?’

Philip avoided my gaze, or, at least, it seemed to me that he did. I convinced myself that I was mistaken.

‘I’ve told you,’ Philip muttered sulkily. ‘He’s a Frenchie and I wouldn’t trust a single one of ’em with my name and direction, let alone a secret of this magnitude.’

‘But he won’t-’

Philip rounded on me furiously. ‘Look, Roger,’ he hissed, seizing my arm and digging his nails in so violently that I could feel them even through the material of my sleeve, ‘I ain’t coming with you if you confide in that there Jules and that’s my last word. So it’s him or me. Take your pick.’

I finally accepted that he was serious. There would be no changing his mind and I had to choose between one and the other. The sensible choice was Jules, who could speak a little English as well as fluent French, whereas Philip’s knowledge of the latter was non-existent, like mine. So why was I hesitating? But I knew Philip of old; we had been friends for years, and some of his distrust of the Frenchman had begun to convey itself to me. I knew it was foolish to let myself be influenced, particularly when Philip’s attitude seemed to have nothing to give it substance, but there might be some reason behind it that he wasn’t telling me. In the end, the devil I knew was better than the one I didn’t.

‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘We won’t bother Jules. We’ll leave him to enjoy his ale in peace.’