The Dance of Death

Two

I did not recognize her immediately. She was wearing a long blue cloak with the hood pulled up, and for a brief moment I wondered if she was the woman I had noticed earlier, at the top of the water-stairs. Then I dismissed the idea. She was surely somewhat taller, and the other woman’s cloak was brown.

Timothy stepped forward to greet the new arrival. ‘Mistress Gray,’ he murmured, bending gallantly over her extended hand. He indicated me. ‘You. . you. . er. . remember Master Chapman.’

The lady gave a gurgle of laughter and shed her cloak to reveal a slender, willowy form in a plain dark red woollen gown, the colour of garnets, and ornamented with nothing more than a simple leather girdle and a solitary gold chain about her throat. Her long white fingers were innocent of rings. The fair, wavy hair, which curled luxuriantly over a small, neat head, had been coaxed into a silver net at the nape of her neck, but had obviously, at some time, been cut short like a boy’s, and, if loose, would, I reckoned, be barely shoulder-length. A pair of large violet-blue eyes regarded me appraisingly.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘How could I forget him?’ Her voice had an underlying lilt to it, slight but unmistakable, that transported me straight back to Scotland.

And that was when I knew her, the moment the scales dropped from my eyes.

Now, it’s one thing to be rendered speechless once in a while, but twice in the same day is too much. I made inarticulate gobbling noises as I backed away from her, overturning my stool as I did so, and gestured furiously with my hands as though to ward off the evil eye; all of which seemed to afford her the greatest amusement, but angered Timothy, who could plainly foresee another interminable argument with me.

I finally found my voice. ‘Oh, no!’ I exclaimed savagely. ‘Oh, no! There is nothing on earth will persuade me to go to France — indeed, to go anywhere — with her!’

The spymaster’s mouth set in a grim line. He had evidently done with trying to cajole me. When he spoke, it was with the voice of authority, reinforced by royal command. ‘You’ve no choice, Roger. I thought I’d made that perfectly clear. Mistress Gray is your travelling companion whether you like it or not. If you refuse, I shall have no alternative but to place you under arrest.’

‘That bitch tried to murder me!’ I shouted. ‘You know damn well she did! And you expect me to go jaunting through France with her?’

That did, at last, wipe the smile from Eloise Gray’s face. She managed to look both offended and horrified at once.

‘Roger!’ she protested. ‘You don’t really believe, surely, that I would have harmed you?’

‘You gave a very good imitation of being prepared to cut my heart out,’ I yelled, and was conscious that my teeth were drawn back over my lips in a wolfish grimace. I was disgusted to feel my heart pounding like that of a woman.

Eloise took a step towards me and I moved even further away until I fetched up against the wall, my hands, cold and sweating, pressed against the stones.

She sighed. ‘This is ridiculous. How can I convince you that I intended you no hurt? If Master Plummer here had not arrived in time, I would have found some other way to save you. I promise! It was never my intention to allow that murdering band to carry out their fell design.’

I looked at Timothy. ‘Is she telling the truth?’

I could see by the expression on his face, fleeting though it was, that he was considering whether or not to lie. In the end, however, he decided on the truth as being the wiser course.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I wasn’t in league with Mistress Gray, if that’s what you’re asking. But I know of no reason to disbelieve her.’ All the same, there was a shifty gleam in his eye.

‘When I left Scotland,’ I pointed out, ‘she was under arrest with the others on a charge of sorcery. I assumed that she’d gone to the flames by now.’

For a moment, my blunt speaking brought Eloise up short and she blenched. She made a sign, but, watching her closely, I would have been willing to swear that it was not of the Cross. Some pagan symbol, perhaps? Timothy seemed to notice nothing: his eyes were fixed on me. I met the lady’s limpid gaze and decided that I might have been mistaken. Surely such a beautiful face could never be a mask for evil: she must have been led astray by her erstwhile companions. And although I was not altogether convinced by this theory, common sense and fairness told me that it could indeed be true. I relaxed a little and Timothy, quick to observe it, permitted himself a brief smile.

‘The fact is, Roger, that during my questioning of Mistress Gray, I discovered that she would be of greater use to us alive than dead.’

‘Us?’

‘To His Highness the King, and therefore, of course, to me. The first news of Hubert Pole’s death, and the early rumours of a possible rapprochement between King Louis and Duke Maximilian reached me while we were still in Edinburgh.’

‘I see. . And where does His Grace the Duke of Gloucester figure in all this?’

I saw alarm flicker in the spymaster’s eyes as he said hurriedly, ‘No, no! This mission is for the king. It has nothing to do with Duke Richard. If you thought I said to the contrary, you must have misunderstood me.’

I knew, and he knew, that there had been no mistake. I was to have an audience with the duke that very evening. What I hadn’t realized until that moment was that it was to be a secret from my travelling companion. Why? Was it that Timothy really didn’t trust her, or was it that this special errand I was being saddled with was so dangerous that the fewer people who knew about it, the better? My uneasiness and sense of foreboding increased and I cast around frantically in my mind, searching for some way that I could escape. What was to stop me from simply leaving Baynard’s Castle and London this very afternoon and melting into the countryside, making my way home to Bristol by all the byways and unfrequented roads that I knew so well as a pedlar? Nothing was the answer, except that I would be pursued, or, most likely, I would arrive home to find myself being arrested on my doorstep and hauled off to prison in front of my wife and children. There was absolutely no possibility of being allowed to flout the might of authority.

I shrugged and eased myself away from the wall, walking back to the table, where I refilled my mazer with wine and sat down, stretching out my long legs so that neither Timothy nor Eloise Gray could pull up a seat too close to me. Not, I think, that Timothy would have tried. He knew, even if the lady did not, that I was in such a cold fury that he would do well to keep his distance until my anger had abated somewhat.

Instead, he addressed himself to the task of placating me. He invited Eloise to take his vacated seat and fetched himself a joint-stool from beside the empty fireplace, sitting down somewhere between us. Then he poured wine for the two of them, casting me a reproachful look for my lack of manners.

‘Mistress Gray’s mother,’ he announced, ‘was French. Eloise speaks the language fluently.’

Well, I supposed that explained some part of her usefulness, although not all by any means. Timothy must have at his disposal a number of people fluent in the French tongue who could just as easily have been despatched on this foray across the Channel. So I waited expectantly, at the same time being careful not to display the slightest sign of interest. I studied the scuffed toes of my boots, waggling my feet up and down.

‘Oh, stop sulking, you great oaf!’ the spymaster roared, his patience snapping.

Both Mistress Gray and I jumped, and I turned my head to stare at him. He had gone quite red in the face and looked ready to murder me. Something about his appearance forcefully, and unreasonably, struck me as funny and I began to laugh. After a moment’s hesitation, Eloise joined in, although I could tell that she was unsure exactly what I found so amusing. For his part, Timothy was so relieved that the atmosphere had lightened he forgot to take umbrage and beamed at the pair of us, rather like a parent whose children had suddenly decided to be good.

‘That’s better,’ he said approvingly, ‘so I’ll continue. As I was saying, Roger, Mistress Gray speaks French as a native, learned at her mother’s knee. In addition, she has family connections in Flanders.’ He paused, obviously to give added weight to what was to follow. I waited expectantly, but unfortunately, when the information came, it meant nothing to me. ‘One of her distant cousins,’ Timothy continued impressively, ‘is Olivier le Daim.’

I raised my eyebrows politely and waited some more.

‘Olivier le Daim!’ Timothy repeated impatiently.

It was Eloise who came to my rescue. She gave a tiny gurgle of laughter, no doubt at my bewildered expression, and said, ‘I don’t suppose Master Chapman has ever heard of him, sir. Outside of France — indeed, beyond French court circles — he would be very little known.’ She smiled at me, deliberately setting out to charm. ‘This cousin of my mother’s — cousin in the third or fourth degree, I forget which, but distant — was a barber by trade, and eventually — don’t ask me how or when — became barber to King Louis. King Louis, however, found that Olivier had other talents, such as successfully organizing the royal baggage wagons when the court moved from one place to the next. No easy task, I imagine. So my cousin was promoted and put in charge of all the king’s journeyings around the kingdom. In short, he has become a great favourite and close confidant of His Highness. A few years ago, he was sent as royal envoy to the Flemings of Ghent, and nowadays entertains visiting dignitaries to Plessis whom the king cannot be bothered to see for himself. From being a mere barber, he is now a great man.’

I snorted. ‘He wants to watch his back, then. Nobodies who become kings’ favourites are usually hated and very often pay for it with their lives. We had a good example of that in Scotland only a few months ago, as you know as well as I. When King Louis dies, your precious cousin could find himself dancing on air at the end of a rope.’ (Prophetic words, as it turned out the following year, but that has nothing to do with the present story.) ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘what has Master le Daim got to do with this mission to France that you and I are undertaking?’

‘I’ve had word,’ said Timothy, ‘from Lord Dynham, the deputy governor of Calais, that Monsieur le Daim will be in Paris very shortly — probably sometime next week — on a mission for King Louis to the city goldsmiths. If Mistress Gray can introduce herself to him as a kinswoman, she may be able to find out King Louis’s intentions with regard to Burgundy and the English marriage between the dauphin and the Princess Elizabeth, straight, as it were, from the horse’s mouth.’

‘And are you sure that Lord Dynham’s information is reliable?’

Timothy got to his feet. ‘It usually is. A great many people pass through Calais on their way home from the Continent, and, unlike most rolling stones, they gather moss. Calais is a hotbed of gossip, not all of it idle. Now!’ He smiled paternally at Eloise Gray and myself, looking so pleased with himself and so condescending that the toe of my boot itched to make contact with his backside. ‘I shall leave you two to get better acquainted in your new roles as husband and wife. Take a walk. Visit the shops. But, Roger, remember, I need you back here at Baynard’s Castle by suppertime. My lord of Gloucester,’ he explained glibly to Eloise, ‘wishes to thank Roger personally for accompanying the Duke of Albany to Scotland.’ Whether or not she believed this, there was no means of knowing: the elfin face gave nothing away. Timothy went on, ‘Tomorrow, Roger, you must be fitted for some new clothes.’ At my indignant protest, he eyed me up and down and responded sharply, ‘You can’t go to France posing as a prosperous haberdasher looking like that. And you will need extra baggage and some samples of cloth to give credence to your story.’

‘And what is my story?’ I demanded belligerently. ‘Until this moment I wasn’t even aware of my new calling.’

He patted my shoulder. ‘Everything will finally be decided upon in the morning. You will both please meet me here, in this same chamber, immediately after dinner, when the details of your journey and of your. . er. . “marriage” will be agreed between us. The tailor will also be present to measure you, Roger, for those clothes I spoke of.’

A moment later, he was gone, whisking himself out of the room before I could raise further objections or subject him to any more of my ill humour.

‘Coward!’ I shouted, but the door had already closed behind him and I found myself addressing solid oak.

I turned back to my companion, eyeing her askance.

She laughed. ‘You needn’t worry, Master Chapman. I don’t require your escort around London. I have sufficient knowledge of the streets to be able to take care of myself. I was here with my lord of Albany two years ago.’

‘Just as well.’ I glowered as she rose to her feet and prepared to depart. But nevertheless she intrigued me, and I detained her by the simple expedient of asking another question. ‘Your mother may be French, but I’d swear there’s Scottish blood in you somewhere. Your father?’

She sat down again. ‘Yes. Maman was French,’ she agreed. ‘She died five years ago. Both my parents are dead, and you’re right — my father was indeed Scottish. He was a member of King Louis’s Scots Guards and died fighting for him, when I was four years old, at the battle of Montlhéry.’

‘Montlhéry?’ I queried, coaxing my tongue around the name, not without some difficulty.

‘Oh, you probably wouldn’t have heard of it,’ she said. ‘It was a battle fought against the king’s own subjects, who wanted to depose him in favour of his brother Charles.’ She added scornfully, ‘They called themselves the League of the Public Weal,’ and spat on the floor in a most unladylike fashion. ‘Common good? They had no thought of the common good! It was pure ambition and greed. I know! My mother told me all about it when I was old enough to understand. Burgundy was one of them. The late duke, Charles of Charolais, as he still was then, fought on behalf of his father, Duke Philip.’ She leaned towards me, suddenly deadly serious, her great violet-blue eyes burning with righteous wrath. ‘Do you know that after he became king — that was the year I was born — Louis bought back Picardy and the Somme towns from Burgundy for four hundred thousand crowns? But then Duke Philip regretted the deal and decided he wanted them back again.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ I interrupted, ‘I can guess what’s coming. Philip wanted them back and to hang on to the money as well. Am I right?’

She gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Of course you are. So he formed this league with all the other malcontents — the dukes of Brittany, Berry, Anjou, Calabria, Bourbon and I don’t know how many others — all pretending that they were acting in the public interest and that it would be better for the country if they put Charles instead of Louis on the throne.’

‘And did Louis win at. . at this place you mentioned?’

‘Montlhéry? Sadly not. My father died in vain.’ Then her little face brightened, losing its bitter look. ‘But King Louis got the better of them all in the end, not by force of arms, but by cunning and sheer strength of will.’

I chewed my thumbnail thoughtfully. ‘And now it would seem that he intends to bring Burgundy to heel by marrying his son to Maximilian’s daughter.’

‘We don’t know that for certain,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s what we’re going to France to find out.’

I agreed. ‘But I don’t suppose it’s King Louis’s intentions we’re being sent to discover, but Maximilian’s. I have no doubt whatsoever that Louis will happily repudiate the English alliance in favour of the Burgundian. He would be a fool not to. And once Burgundy is a spent force, no longer a thorn in France’s side, well then. .’

‘Well then what?’

‘It will be farewell to that annual pension that King Louis pays King Edward so promptly every year.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s been paid for the past seven years on the understanding that England would refrain from going to Burgundy’s aid in any conflict she had with France. Which is exactly what has happened. In spite of all the pressure on him from nobles and commoners alike, the king has steadily refused to send an expeditionary force to help Maximilian in his struggle against the French, with the result that he looks likely to have cut off his nose to spite his face.’ I grimaced. ‘My own guess is that this mission you and I are being sent on is a sheer waste of time. Any fool with half a brain could predict that Louis will choose the Burgundian marriage. He has everything to gain from it and nothing at all from the English alliance. Indeed, he’ll be the richer in more ways than one for breaking with King Edward.’

Eloise raised an eyebrow. ‘You think we’re being sent on a fool’s errand? I agree with you about King Louis, but you said yourself that it’s Maximilian’s intentions that are the more important, and what we have to find out.’

I snorted. ‘My dear girl, I’ve just told you that anyone with half a brain could foretell what Louis will do. Well, anyone with the other half must surely harbour very few doubts concerning Burgundy’s reaction. He’s appealed to us, his closest ally, in vain. He’s in a fair way to being beaten to his knees. His wife, who commanded his subjects’ loyalty, is dead and their child too young to be a rallying point. He’s an Austrian, a stranger, which many of the duchy’s people resent. He can either wait for his lands to be overrun or he can rescue a little dignity from the situation by marrying his daughter to the dauphin and making a peace of sorts with King Louis. An idiot could work it out.’

My companion looked thoughtful. ‘So, as you rightly ask, what is the purpose of sending us to Paris? My cousin Olivier, although a very shrewd man as I understand it, can only tell us what we already know.’

‘Guess,’ I corrected her. ‘As for the rest,’ I went on scornfully, ‘our superiors, those set in authority over us, don’t need reasons for squandering money. The discovery that you and this Olivier le Daim are in some vague way related to one another is a heaven-sent pretext for Master Plummer to arrange a secret mission for us into France. It makes him look as though he’s busy protecting the safety of the realm. Our wonderful spymaster general, ever vigilant!’

She laughed. ‘You sound like a man with a grudge.’

‘I am. I should be on my way home now to my wife and family, none of whom I’ve seen for months. Instead, that little runt has enmeshed me in one of his precious schemes, which, as far as I can see, is a waste of time.’ I poured what remained of the wine into my mazer, tossed it off and felt slightly better. ‘However, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’d better resign myself to making the best of a bad job. At least it doesn’t seem as though it’ll take long, not if this cousin of yours really is going to be in Paris some time soon. Mind you,’ I added gloomily, ‘a dozen things could go wrong or he could simply change his mind.’

‘A possibility,’ Eloise agreed, smiling. ‘Because it won’t, of course, be Olivier who changes his mind, but the king. And Louis is a great one for altering his plans at the last moment.’

I regarded her curiously. ‘You speak of him — the king, that is — as if you were fond of him. I noticed it before.’

She rose from her stool and smoothed down her skirt. ‘I’ve never set eyes on him, so I can hardly be fond of him, but I admire him greatly, as my parents did.’ She looked at me defiantly. ‘You appear to find that odd.’

I shrugged. ‘Most people seem to dislike him. I’ve heard him described as devious, cunning, crafty. Someone compared him to a spider sitting in the middle of his web, spinning his schemes. I saw him once.’ She looked surprised. ‘From a distance, you understand. I was at Picquigny. A very unprepossessing man and not dressed at all like a king.’

‘No.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘My mother said he had no interest in clothes and was always attired like one of his lowlier servants. But an extremely clever man. According to Maman, when he became king, France was a nation torn apart by a dozen rival factions, after the long years of war with the English. But when you were finally kicked out — ’ she gave me a cheeky grin, tinged with malice — ‘Louis set about unifying the country again by any means at his command. And he has done so. If you’re right, Burgundy will be brought to heel very soon. . Now, I must be off. As I mentioned, I’ve no need of your company. I can look after myself.’ She moved towards the door, then with her hand on the latch, glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Why does my lord of Gloucester want to see you?’ she asked.

‘What?’ The question caught me off guard. ‘Oh. . Didn’t you hear what Timothy said?’ What the devil had he said? Something about Duke Richard wanting to thank me. ‘He. . er. . he wishes to express his gratitude for my-my care of the Duke of Albany in Scotland.’

I don’t suppose she believed the story for a moment, but the mention of Albany and Scotland made her take herself off in a hurry with the promise to see me in this same room the next morning, after dinner, if not before. I made no immediate move to follow her, but sat for a while longer, staring into space, thinking.

At first, Eloise’s admiration for King Louis seemed to me to sort ill with her undertaking of the present mission, but after a very few minutes mulling it over, I considered it less strange. To begin with, she didn’t really have a choice but to comply with Timothy’s and his royal master’s wishes. Being convicted of sorcery and witchcraft meant being burned at the stake. She must know she was lucky to be alive and would throw no rub in the way of remaining so. Secondly, our mission was in no sort damaging or harmful to either the French king or his country.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more unnecessary it seemed and the more my anger increased. It appeared to me that I was being made a fool of. Well, perhaps not a fool precisely, but that I was being kept in London against my will for no very obvious reason. But in that case, I told myself, there must surely be a hidden motive. In spite of what I had said to Eloise Gray, I couldn’t really believe that either Timothy or, more particularly, the Duke of Gloucester would despatch me to France simply to bring back information that would probably soon be common knowledge. God forbid that I should be as cynical as that!

I had been told that my role was passive, that I was being sent in order to afford Eloise protection and to add to her disguise as an ordinary traveller. A woman alone would be too conspicuous and open to all manner of unwelcome advances from predatory men. But I was beginning to wonder if the opposite were not really the truth: if she were not my protection and my disguise. But against what? Or whom? What was this secret mission that I was to undertake for Prince Richard? And it was to be kept secret even from my companion. Now why?

My head was aching and I became conscious of a crick in the back of my neck. I was also aware of how rigid my shoulders had become, and I got to my feet, stretching my arms in order to ease the tension. I walked over to the window again, pushing the casement a little wider and breathing in the stale odours of London: fetid water, fish, seaweed, the smells of a hundred cook-shops, the blood and guts of the Shambles and the stink of the drains, full to overflowing by this time in the afternoon. The noise, too, the cacophony of a myriad voices and rumbling traffic, interlaced as it was with the constant chiming of bells, smote my ears, reminding me, in case I was in any danger of forgetting it, that this was a capital city, the hub of the country and one of the largest trading ports in the whole of Europe. But Paris, I had been reliably informed, was even bigger, noisier and of far greater importance. After the comparative quiet of Scotland that had embraced me for the past few months, I wasn’t looking forward to my enforced visit.

Two people came out of the castle and stood at the top of the water-stairs just below me. I recognized them as the couple I had seen earlier: the young — at least I presumed she was young — woman, still cloaked from head to foot and with her back towards me, and her escort, as debonair and jaunty as ever. The blue feather in his hat positively quivered in the sunlight, the sun having recently deigned to show its face again.

‘Wagge! Wagge! Go we hence!’ the man yelled at a passing boat, and the boatman, on the lookout for a new fare, immediately rowed to the foot of the steps. My smart young gent ran lightly down, blew a kiss to his lady with the tips of his fingers and was rowed away upstream. The woman watched for a moment or two, then turned with a swirl of her cloak and disappeared once more indoors.

I turned from the window. Before I came back for my meeting with Timothy, and then with His Grace of Gloucester, I had visits of my own to make, old acquaintances to be looked up and friendships renewed.