The Eve of Saint Hyacinth

Chapter Eleven

No one complained about my prolonged absence, or if they did, I did not hear them. I caught one or two resentful murmurs when I finally presented myself for duty to the head Yeoman of the Chamber, but nothing was said overtly; a fact which, on reflection, I found a little disturbing. Was there a feeling among my fellow workers that I was somehow different? Not truly one of them? A sense that I was there under false pretences? If so, was our would-be assassin also alerted to the possibility that I was not what I seemed? And would he therefore suspect my real purpose? I tried not to think about it and to throw myself so whole-heartedly into my duties that all such suspicions would be stillborn.

I encountered no difficulty in securing the honour of waiting upon the Duke at supper that evening, other Yeomen being only too pleased to exchange the boredom of office for a few hours of leisure in which to do as they pleased. And I was presented with an extra bonus when I discovered that Humphrey Nanfan and Stephen Hudelin had also been chosen to attend His Grace. If Matthew were right, and Ralph Boyse, Jocelin d’Hiver and Geoffrey Whitelock were present as well, I should have them all under my eye at once, which would at least give me an hour or so’s ease of mind as far as our five chief suspects were concerned.

As Humphrey had promised, the officers of the household ate an hour earlier than the Duke and his guests and this afternoon, as usual, we were seated, according to our proper stations, at the tables in the great hall. The two which ran along the north- and south-facing walls had been augmented by extra trestles in the centre of the room in order to accommodate the Duchess of York’s servants as well as her son’s. As we sat down to supper at four o’clock, my eyes searched the ranks of Duchess Cicely’s women for a glimpse of Amice Gentle. I saw her at last, at a table lower than my own, and raised a hand in greeting. She inclined her head in acknowledgement of my salute, but even at that distance I gained the impression that she would rather I had not made it. She turned away quickly to speak to the girl sitting beside her.

Feeling rebuffed, my eyes came to rest on one of the handful of household women who had come south in the Duke of Gloucester’s train: a girl of commanding presence and lovely to look at. It was not possible to make out her colouring, but I could see that the face framed by the snow-white hood was a delicate oval and the mouth full-lipped and sensual.

Humphrey, who had stationed himself next to me on the bench and who seemed to have constituted himself my guardian angel, dug me in the ribs with his elbow. ‘That’s Berys Hogan,’ he hissed, ‘nursemaid to the Lady Katherine, His Grace’s bastard daughter. The child has come to pay a visit to her grandmother and will return with the Duchess to Berkhamsted after we’ve sailed for France.’

I knitted my brows. ‘Berys Hogan,’ I repeated. ‘Why does that name sound familiar to me?’

The servers were coming round with our meal: being a Friday, it was fish.

Humphrey, picking up his knife and spoon, chuckled. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be surprising if the gossip had reached your ears, even in such short space of time as this. The beautiful Berys is betrothed to Ralph Boyse, that fellow sitting over there among the Squires of the Household, but she’s cuckolding him with Lionel Arrowsmith. Lionel’s one of the Duke’s four Body Squires and is easily spotted. He’s the one who looks as if he’s been to the wars already.’

I did not bother glancing in Lionel’s direction, but instead divided what attention I could spare from my plate between Ralph Boyse and Berys Hogan. Ralph, as far as I could tell, was a slender young man, about the same age as the Duke and myself, with very black hair and a sallowish complexion. Even had I not already been told that his mother was French I think I should have suspected the presence of foreign blood in his veins, for he was too swarthy to be wholly English. His expression was close and secret, the handsome face set in sullen, unsmiling lines. But then, in response to a remark from his neighbour, he laughed and was suddenly transformed, reminding me forcibly of the Duke himself, whose natural severity of feature could be lightened beyond all expectation by a moment of humour.

So now I could recognize Ralph Boyse and it only needed Matthew Wardroper to identify the other two this evening. I suppose I could have asked Humphrey Nanfan there and then to point out Jocelin d’Hiver and Geoffrey Whitelock, but I had no wish to arouse his curiosity by displaying an unnecessary interest in them. Besides, I was content for the present to observe Ralph Boyse, who in his turn was watching the exchange of glances between Berys Hogan and Lionel Arrowsmith without apparently seeming to do so. Several times during the course of the meal Lionel raised his beaker in Berys’s direction, whereupon she cast down her eyes in what could have been mistaken for maidenly confusion had her shoulders not been shaking with ill-concealed merriment. Furthermore, she was not averse, I noted, to sending him looks that could only be described as encouraging, a sly smile curving the sensuous lips. I recalled Timothy’s admonitions of Tuesday night and his warning that Lionel was playing a dangerous game. And now that I knew, as I had not known then, that Berys was one of the maids in charge of His Grace’s daughter, I felt that Lionel was being even more foolhardy than I had previously thought him. If trouble flared, he would incur the Duke’s wrath as well as that of Ralph Boyse.

The meal was drawing to an end and the servers were already waiting impatiently to clear the tables (and put away the extra trestles) preparatory to laying them again for the Duke and those people who had been invited to share his supper. As we were hastily swallowing the last morsels of food and gulping down the dregs of our wine, the steward rose and fussily banged on the floor with his wand of office. When he had everyone’s attention he addressed us.

‘Tomorrow night, His Grace the Duke of Gloucester and Her Grace, the Duchess of York, will give a banquet and masquerade in honour of Their Highnesses King Edward and Queen Elizabeth, His Grace the Duke of Clarence and other esteemed guests. All Squires and Yeomen, without exception, will be required on duty and everyone will be expected to give of his best. You will assemble here, in the great hall, tomorrow morning before breakfast, to receive your instructions.’ And with that, the steward nodded majestically and quit the hall with a slow and measured gait.

As soon as he had disappeared from view there was a general groan of dismay.

‘A pre-embarkation feast and entertainment,’ sighed Humphrey Nanfan. ‘We might have guessed. Well, I suppose we did, but hoped that either the King or my lord Clarence would play host instead.’

‘What does it mean?’ I asked in my ignorance.

Stephen Hudelin, rising from his place just across the board from us, spat into the rushes. ‘It means damned hard work, that’s what it means,’ he said.

I glanced at Humphrey, who nodded gloomily. ‘We’ll be run off our feet,’ he confirmed. ‘Meantime, we’d better get on and see that everything’s in order for His Grace’s supper. No good worrying about tomorrow until it arrives.’

The sleeping quarters for the Duke of Gloucester’s Yeomen of the Chamber was a narrow, stuffy room in one of the towers. Here, eleven of us, the ten who had come with His Grace from Middleham and myself, slept close together on straw palliasses and kept our worldly goods – razors, soap, clean shirts and so forth – in linen bags which we stored beneath our pillows. Such spare time as we had was spent, therefore, in close proximity to our fellows, so it was just as well that our duties kept us busy. (Humphrey Nanfan assured me that normal sleeping conditions at Middleham or Sheriff Hutton or any other of the Duke’s seats of residence were better than our temporary lodgings here at Baynard’s Castle; but nothing he said inspired in me the wish to give up my chosen life for the transitory importance of counting myself among the personal servants of a royal household.)

Finding that I had a few free moments between my own supper and that of the Duke, and having drunk too much wine, I went to the privy to answer nature’s call. Then, the dormitory being near at hand, I decided to change my shirt, the day having been hot and sticky and my activities strenuous. I entered the room expecting it to be full of those Yeomen not on duty, but the warm weather had tempted them out of doors to savour the coolness of late afternoon. All but one, that is, and that one was crouched low over the mattress where I slept and was rifling through the contents of my bag. So intent was he upon his task that he did not hear me enter, so I crept up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Stephen Hudelin let out a yelp and sprang clumsily to his feet.

‘I thought,’ I said grimly, ‘that you were still in the great hall, helping Humphrey Nanfan. Instead I discover you here, looking through my things. What was it you were hoping to find?’

‘N-nothing,’ he stuttered. ‘That is… I thought you’d gone to the garderobe. That’s what you said.’

‘So you decided to take the opportunity to search my bag. I repeat, for what reason? What did you think you’d find?’

‘I… I need a shave and I’ve mislaid my razor. There was… no time to ask anyone’s permission and… and so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed yours.’ A little of his confidence returned with what he considered to be a fairly plausible explanation and he added belligerently, ‘You don’t, do you, chapman?’

‘A chapman no longer,’ I answered calmly, ignoring the bait. ‘No, I don’t mind. Here!’ I stooped and picked out the razor from the pile of belongings which had been emptied on to the floor. The last thing I must do was to feed Stephen’s suspicions by even so much as hinting that I disbelieved him. ‘Take it and welcome. You’ll just have time to shave before we’re needed on duty. Do you have soap? I’ve some of the cheap, black, Bristol kind if you want it.’

He shook his head and the eyes beneath the shock of red hair seemed to burn, just for a second, with the same bright colour. I proceeded to strip off my tunic and change my shirt while he stood irresolute, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet, my razor clutched in one hand. He was trying desperately to guess what was going on inside my head, baffled by my apparent acceptance of his story and my good-natured reaction to it. Finally, he threw down the razor with an imprecation and muttered that he had, after all, decided not to shave. He stomped out of the room, flinging over his shoulder, ‘You’d better hurry! It’s almost five o’clock!’

I threaded the last of my shirt laces through the corresponding eyelets in the top of my hose and wondered exactly what Master Hudelin had thought to discover? Proof that I was not really a chapman but an agent of the Duke? (If that were so, then, ironically, he was both wrong and right at one and the same time.) And what else had he hoped to report to his Woodville masters? That somehow, somewhere, someone had got wind of their plot to murder Duke Richard?

But would the Queen’s family be so foolhardy in the first place as to try to arrange the Duke’s death? Would they dare risk forfeiting the King’s bounty and goodwill on which all their prosperity depended? And if so, what reason could be powerful enough to make them do so?

That one question, ‘why?’, haunted me, for its answer held the key to our killer’s identity. The need for the Duke of Gloucester’s death – and his death, moreover, before the Eve of Saint Hyacinth – would unlock the door to the mystery. I replaced my tunic and laced it slowly, but no sudden illumination came to lighten my darkness.

I followed in Stephen Hudelin’s wake and ran down the twisting staircase which led to the minstrels’ gallery above the great hall. On the landing halfway down, I had to flatten myself against the wall in order to allow three men-at-arms to pass me. They ascended leisurely, according me no more than a cursory glance, and indifferent to the fact that they were keeping me waiting. Behind me was a door, giving access to a small chamber which opened off the landing; and it was only when the first man, a huge fellow with broad shoulders, came abreast of me and I was forced back even further, that I realized it was ajar. It creaked inwards a fraction, causing me to stagger and cling on to the latch-handle for support before I could regain my balance. The leading man-at-arms sniggered and the other two grinned, but I was barely conscious of their amusement. I was only aware of the sudden quiet caused by the cessation of urgent, sibilant, conspiratorial whispering, which I must have been listening to for the last few moments without realizing that I was doing so. All sound had stopped abruptly with the movement of the door and I could almost hear the breath-held silence within the room behind me.

Foolishly, as it turned out, I waited for the men-at-arms to disappear around the bend in the stairs, before pushing the door wide and entering the chamber.

The room was empty. Small as it was, it boasted a second door, set in the opposite wall. I reached this in a couple of strides, flinging it open, but there was no one to be seen. Another staircase, no wider than the shoulders of a slender man and unlit by even the faintest gleam of torchlight, descended into the bowels of the castle. Turning sideways, and with my hands splayed against the roughness of the wall, I cautiously eased myself down three or four twisting, slippery steps before deciding that I had embarked upon a fruitless errand. Wherever they led, I should not find my quarry now. The two people who had been in such earnest consultation would have mingled with their fellows, lost in the ant-hill of activity which was Baynard’s Castle.

I retraced my steps, pausing only to cast a brief and unhopeful glance around the chamber. But apart from a single chair there was nothing in it. The floor was innocent of rushes and a coating of dust lay everywhere, indicating that the room was rarely, if ever, used and I remembered how the door hinges had creaked beneath my weight. I stood, racking my brains, trying to recall some word or phrase which might have penetrated my consciousness, but nothing came. All that remained was an impression of urgency and, above all, secrecy, borne out by the rapidity with which the whisperers had vanished when threatened with discovery.

Had it been two men talking? A man and a woman? Two women, even? (No, not the last. Of that I was certain without knowing exactly why.) Of course, it might have been a wholly innocent meeting between two members of either household. But then, if so, why had they so precipitately fled? I sighed. With nothing resolved, but possessed of the strong conviction that had I been quicker to enter the room I should have discovered something of the greatest importance, I descended to the great hall to take up my duties at the supper table.

I was abstracted during the meal, failing to perform my duties properly and, on several occasions, incurring the wrath of the head Yeoman of the Chamber. Twice at least, I encountered Duke Richard’s quizzical glance, the faint arching of the thin, black eyebrows, but he made no comment, not even when, on bended knee, I offered him a dish of prawns in mustard and then withdrew it before he had had time to take any. It was only Humphrey Nanfan’s horrified gasp, and the Lady Katherine Plantagenet’s gurgle of delighted laughter, that brought me to my senses. Red with embarrassment, I quickly rectified my mistake and withdrew to the back of the dais to await the arrival of the next course from the kitchens. Nevertheless, I thought, I must try to have an urgent word with Timothy Plummer. The Duke should be told to treat me as he would the other servants, or their already burgeoning suspicion would flower into certainty.

In spite of my frequent errors, however, I could not stop cudgelling my brains for some sentence, phrase or even word, that surely must have left an imprint on my mind whilst I was listening to that whispered conversation. But what remained was the sense of urgency, of secrecy and, above all, of conspiracy which told me plainly that it had been no ordinary confabulation between two friends or fellow workers. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had been within seconds of discovering our would-be killer and cursed myself accordingly for my tardiness of action.

A line of servers emerged from behind the screen which separated the great hall from the kitchens. As I watched them process down the length of the room towards the dais, bearing aloft their silver salvers, the scents and smells of the next course wafting deliciously about our nostrils and making me hungry all over again, I became aware of Matthew Wardroper hovering at my elbow.

‘Over there,’ he muttered through barely moving lips, ‘standing beneath the torch to the left of the archway. That’s Jocelin d’Hiver, thought by Master Plummer to be in the pay of the Burgundians. And approaching the Duke’s chair now, Geoffrey Whitelock, probably employed by the King to spy on his brother.’

Matthew moved away again, leaving me to study the two young men. Jocelin d’Hiver was small and thin, with sharp, birdlike features in which brilliant black eyes darted here and there with an avian swiftness, watching everything and missing nothing. Geoffrey Whitelock, on the other hand, was as fair-haired as the other was dark; tall, slim and comely, with an attractive air, easy manner and a regularity of feature that was almost patrician. Of all the Squires of the Household on duty that evening, he seemed most at ease with his master, his head bent gracefully over the back of the Duke’s chair, his full lips curled in appreciation of whatever it was that His Grace was saying.

Humphrey Nanfan gave me a nudge as the servers filed on to the dais, and it was time once again to present the Duke and his guests – who, tonight, were only the senior officers of his household – with pike in galentyne sauce and a side-dish of onions, garlic and borage. (I could not help thinking that the latter would produce such a blast of stinking breath as would put paid to all but the most ardently amorous advances during the coming hours of darkness.) This time I managed to keep my mind on what I was doing and discharged my duty without error.

Finally the meal was over, the covers drawn and the tables removed, so that the Duke and his mother could better enjoy the evening’s entertainment. Tonight the talent was home-grown, with the household minstrels providing music for dancing and the Duke’s own troupe of acrobats causing the seven-year-old Lady Katherine to double up with laughter until, loudly protesting, she was carried off to bed by her nurse and two attendant nursemaids. Berys Hogan, however, was not one of them and I noticed that she remained in the hall with the rest of us.

Duchess Cicely, still, at sixty, displaying the remnants of a beauty that had in youth earned for her the nickname of the Rose of Raby, was speaking to her son. The Duke listened, nodded, kissed her hand and turned to scan the ranks of his retainers. Finally he found the face that he was seeking.

‘Ralph!’ he called. ‘A song. Her Grace particularly wishes to hear again the one you sang the other night. The Trouvère song from northern France. Do you have your instrument there or do you need to fetch it?’

‘I have it with me, Your Grace.’ Ralph Boyse beckoned to one of the pages who hovered close at hand, probably hoping to be sent on some errand or other in order to alleviate the tedium of inactivity. The boy advanced and handed Ralph his flute.

I immediately ceased to take any interest in the proceedings for, as I have stated before, I have no ear for music. To me it all sounds much as a tomcat does when serenading his lady-love on the roof-tops; a sad loss, I’ve no doubt, for they say that music is the food of the soul, in which case I’ve known only a lifetime of starvation. But there again, they also say that what you’ve never known you never miss and I can testify to the truth of that observation. I leaned my back against the wall, closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift once more to that sibilantly whispered, definitely sinister-sounding, overheard conversation.

Like a bubble forcing its way to the surface of a pond a single word now rose and burst among my crowding thoughts. ‘Demon.’ I let it float for a moment or two inside my head, considering it from every angle; but in the end it failed to convince me that that was what I had really heard. Who would be talking so urgently about a spirit of darkness? Or was the word ‘demesne’? Had my whisperers been discussing something to do with demesne lands and the disposition of property? Or was my mind simply playing tricks on me, feeding me false information so that it could get some rest from my incessant probing?

Instinct warned me that Ralph Boyse’s song was coming to an end and I readied myself to join in the general applause. Even my unreceptive ear, now that I gave him my full attention, could tell that he had a fine and powerful voice, interspersing the words of chorus and verse with echoing runs of notes upon his shawm. He played a final trill upon the pipe, then his voice soared, clear and unaccompanied.

‘It is the end. No matter what is said, I must love.’

There was a moment’s silence before the Duke of Gloucester and his mother led the outburst of enthusiastic clapping. I joined in as a matter of course, but with furrowed brow, for I had just been presented with yet another puzzle. Why were those last words familiar to me? Where had I previously heard them?