The Green Man

Eighteen

But not, immediately, to sleep.

When I returned to the common hall and picked my careful way across the sleeping mass of bodies, it was to discover that Murdo, Donald and Davey were missing. Only James Petrie remained, still propped against the wall and snoring rhythmically. Without compunction, I shook him awake.

‘Where are the others?’

He stared at me stupidly for a moment or two, unsure of his surroundings, then slowly shook his head.

I indicated the empty space and, as though I were addressing an idiot, mouthed again, ‘Where are they? Donald, Murdo, Davey?’

I was uncertain whether or not he could understand English, but he really wasn’t a fool, and the substance of my question was obvious. After a few more seconds of playing dumb, he mumbled something in the broad Scots dialect in which the word ‘piss’ was clearly recognizable, even if he hadn’t mimed the act itself. Then he belched, farted and went back to sleep again. Well, he closed his eyes, although there was something about his bodily posture that suggested tension. I felt sure that he was not as relaxed as he would have me believe.

I lay down and once more pulled my blanket over me, but sleep refused to come. It seemed to me a little unlikely that all three would have gone outside to obey a call of nature together. On the other hand, I knew from sleeping with Adela that if one of us got out of bed to use the chamber-pot, the other would almost inevitably follow suit. And it was the same with the children. If one was disturbed, he or she would very likely wake the other two. I recalled thinking that Murdo had opened his eyes when I went on my own errand, so perhaps I had started a chain of events.

But where were they? The minutes ticked by and still they did not return. What were they doing? Playing the old game of seeing who could aim highest against the wall? Or the comparison game? (‘Mine’s bigger than yours.’) Somehow I hardly thought so, not on a night of wind and rain. And in any case, why hadn’t I seen them? I had been detained by Timothy Plummer, so the chances were that we should all have been returning to the hall at about the same time. Yet I had not had even a glimpse of any one of them … And that prompted me to wonder once again what the Spymaster General had been doing soft-footing his way around the darkened buildings of this northern acropolis. Had he been expecting some such movement of … of what? Conspirators? But who was conspiring with whom? And against whom?

I sat up abruptly, hugging my knees, staring uneasily into the darkness, now rent with groans and moans as the suppertime stew began working on people’s guts, giving them bad dreams, mounting them on the Night Mare. I remembered Albany’s assurance, frequently repeated, that he would be king, no matter what Fate, in the guise of the Scottish Council and the Duke of Gloucester as King Edward’s representative, decided. Why was he so confident? What exactly was he planning?

All my earlier doubts and suspicions regarding his true relationship with the late Earl of Mar’s servants began to worry me yet again. Looking back over the past two months, since leaving London, the conviction grew that I had been gulled. Albany’s fear that one of the five was in the employ of King James, with instructions to murder him, seemed increasingly threadbare the more I thought seriously about it. Once more I recollected the many occasions on which the duke had been content to dispense with my services, laying himself open, with apparent carelessness, to attack from any one of them.

I recalled the times when his life seemed genuinely to have been under threat and reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that those times could have been staged without much difficulty. The horse nearly throwing him in the courtyard of Fotheringay castle could as easily have been in response to a spur, cruelly applied by the duke himself, as to a cut on its flank delivered by someone else. And then there was the incident at York when an attempt had apparently been made to stab Albany to death in his bed, and only the fact that the duke had been bending over the night-stool, with me in attendance, had prevented a very nasty murder. I remembered how he had retched and retched, but without any resulting vomit. And while Albany had been claiming my attention with his feigned sickness, someone could have entered the room and planted the knife in among the bedclothes. Davey, perhaps? The page, too, had pleaded illness in order to account for his seeming absence.

But all this — what was now assuming the proportions of a certainty in my mind — provoked the question: why? The obvious answer was to convince me that Albany’s life really was in danger and to keep me from defecting, either by going directly to the Duke of Gloucester and telling him of my doubts or by simply running away and making my way home to Bristol. But there again, that also raised the question: why? Why was Albany so desperate to keep me by his side? It was possible, I conceded, that he might really have feared assassination by one of his English allies, but I failed to see how my presence provided him with any greater protection than his own retinue could have supplied …

The more I thought about it, the more my head began to spin. I felt reasonably certain now that I had been duped and lied to by Albany, but could see no rhyme or reason for it. Why was it so essential that I should accompany him on this invasion of his native country? Our previous acquaintance had been brief. On the first occasion, I had helped him to escape from England to Ireland (from whence he had fled to France and the protection of King Louis) but our relationship had been no more than that of passing strangers. The second time, I had, at his request, been granted a short audience with him at Westminster Palace when he was the guest of King Edward there two years ago — and when, no doubt, past differences reconciled, they had been plotting this present action against the Scots. But, rack my brains as I would, I could come up with no explanation for his urgent request that I should be made his special bodyguard; so urgent, in fact, that it had made me the subject of a royal command.

I became conscious of a dull, throbbing ache behind my eyes to which the airlessness of the hall and my own uneasy thoughts contributed. I glanced around for any kindred soul also unable to sleep and was suddenly aware that neither the two squires nor the page had yet returned. This was far longer than any night-time piss could possibly warrant, and I had started to heave myself to my feet with the intention of going in search of them when I felt someone tap me on the arm. It was James Petrie, awake and leaning forward to offer me a leather flask which he had produced from somewhere about his person.

He grunted a word which could have been interpreted as, ‘Drink?’ But whatever it was, the message was clear.

I thought of the wind and drizzling rain outside, and after the briefest of hesitations, accepted his offer in the spirit in which it was apparently meant.

‘Thanks.’ I took a generous swig from the flask only to realize too late that it was the damned ‘water of life’ that the Scots seemed so keen on. It caught me in the back of the throat and I began to splutter and cough, my eyes streaming with tears, so that I thought I must choke to death there and then. My convulsions were so extreme that several of my neighbours who, until now, had appeared oblivious to any sound, including, I suspected, the Last Trump, woke up and started to throw things at me. Two or three pairs of shoes and a belt, whose buckle scratched my face, all found their mark before I was at last able to breathe freely again. I handed the flask back to James Petrie, who, even in the dark, I could see was shaking with silent laughter. ‘I’m going to look for the other three,’ I told him huskily and with what dignity I could muster. ‘They’ve been gone too long.’ I noticed that I suddenly sounded tipsy.

And that was the last thing I remembered saying …

I was standing outside Mistress Callender’s house, looking in through one of the open ground floor windows, a sheep and a cow staring back at me. Next, without being aware that I had moved, I was floating effortlessly up the outside staircase, my feet not touching the treads. Mistress Callender was seated on a stool at the top and I could see that she was trying to tell me something. Her lips were moving but I could hear no sound, and in one hand, she held what looked like a bunch of herbs which she kept waving at me. I called out to her to speak louder, but my words, too, drifted away into silence. I touched down on the small stone landing at the top of the flight of steps, but the widow had vanished. I glanced around frantically in an effort to find her, convinced that her message was of vital importance, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was lying on the bed in Aline Sinclair’s bedchamber, the coverlet’s Green Man medallion underneath me.

To my horror, I could feel the embroidered tendrils and shoots that wreathed the Green Man’s head and coiled in and out of his mouth, begin to come alive, snaking around my limbs and body, holding me in a slowly tightening and evermore deadly embrace. Living in a port like Bristol, I had heard plenty of sailors’ tales of the weird and wonderful creatures to be found in foreign lands; and I recalled one of a snake that could crush a man to death. I’m not sure that I believed the story at the time, but it came back to me now in my dream as the foliage engulfed me.

I yelled, but, as before, could make no sound.

Maria Beton was standing beside the bed, gazing down at me, and beside her was the gaoler’s son from the castle, the young boy who had apparently taken her a message from Master Sinclair. In one hand the housekeeper was holding a fruit which, after a moment, I recognized as a quince, and in the other several leaves of parchment tied together with two knots of red ribbon. The missing diary! I sat up, struggling to free myself from the clutches of the Green Man …

It was morning. A pale sun lit the windows of the common hall and all around me was the bustle of a new day, men hauling themselves to their feet after an unsatisfactory night’s sleep, searching for lost shoes, belts, even tunics that had been discarded due to the heat. I felt like death, as though I had been kicked in the back of the head by a mule. The rags of that hideous dream still hung around me, making me tremble.

‘Are you all right, fellow?’ someone asked me, and I recognized the livery of one of Lord Rivers’s men.

I thanked him and said I was. A lie, but at that moment, all I wanted was to be left alone. In any case, the tardy ones amongst us were being elbowed out of the way by the castle servers who were busy dragging the trestles and boards to the centre of the hall and setting up the tables for breakfast. Kitcheners began to bring in food; great platters of oatcakes and huge bowls of porridge. But the mere thought of eating made me feel queasy again. My one thought was to escape into the fresh air.

I was stamping on my second boot when the night’s events suddenly sprang to mind, and I stared around me, ignoring the dizziness that made my head lurch painfully. James Petrie was still there, and Davey, knuckling the sleep from his eyes. But of the two squires there was no sign.

The choice was who to tackle first. In the end, I settled on the page.

‘What happened to you three last night?’ I demanded. ‘Where did you get to?’

Davey opened those great violet-blue eyes of his to their fullest extent.

‘What do you mean, where did we get to?’ His injured innocence was marvellous to behold. ‘We went for a piss, like you.’

‘You were gone for ages,’ I accused. ‘It doesn’t take that long to relieve yourselves.’

‘How would you know how long we were gone? You were asleep when we got back.’

‘Not asleep,’ I snarled through gritted teeth. I swung round on James Petrie who recoiled slightly from the expression on my face. ‘What was in that damn whisky you gave me?’

He gabbled something, giving a swift, bolt-eyed look at Davey who translated his answer as, ‘Nothing! Why should there be? It was just the usquebaugh. It was too strong for you.’ He added of his own accord and with an impertinent grin, ‘You Sassenachs can’t stomach it.’

I started to shake my head, but then thought better of it. ‘No, it was more than that. I went out like a candle being snuffed, and this morning I feel terrible.’

‘Why on earth would Jamie be carrying around a flask of doctored whisky?’ Davey was prepared to argue the point, but I cut him short.

‘Where are Murdo and Donald?’

‘What? Oh … They were up at dawn on my lord’s orders to go to search John Buchanan’s house in the Grassmarket. They’ve taken a contingent of soldiers with them to make sure he doesn’t resist and that the job’s done thoroughly.’ At the mention of Buchanan’s name there was another fleeting exchange of glances between him and James Petrie. ‘Are you going to sit down to breakfast?’ Davey continued peevishly. ‘If not, would you move? You’re blocking my way.’

I could see that there was little point in remaining any longer. Not only would I get no joy out of either the page or James Petrie, but the clatter of knives and spoons and the general chatter of a hundred or more voices was making normal conversation difficult.

‘Where’s the duke?’ I said, but didn’t bother to wait for an answer.

I knew that Albany had been lodged in David’s Tower, together with the Duke of Gloucester, but my enquiries for him were met by the information that my lord was already up and dressed, in spite of the early hour, and had left the castle some time ago, accompanied by his two body squires. I could guess what that meant: he had gone in person to oversee the ransacking of Master Buchanan’s premises. Cursing under my breath, and trying to ignore the fact that I felt like death, I set out after him. I told myself not to be a fool. I could achieve nothing by trying to dissuade Albany from this course of action. And in any case, he would soon discover his mistake when the diary proved not to be among John Buchanan’s papers.

But I was wrong.

I had barely left the castle precincts when I met the triumphant party returning, Master Buchanan guarded by several stalwart soldiers, arrested, it seemed, on Albany’s say-so for having deliberately suppressed vital evidence. Aline Sinclair’s diary, I was told, had been discovered almost at once among the litter of papers on her brother’s table.

‘And it’s all thanks to you, Roger,’ Albany said, slapping me on the back. I tried to protest, horrified, but the duke wouldn’t have it. ‘Yes, yes! Honour where it’s due. If you hadn’t discovered that Mistress Sinclair had had time to fetch the diary and pass it to her brother on Monday, John Buchanan’s involvement might never have occurred to anyone.’ He waved the diary at me as he spoke, the pages bound together with their blood-red ribbons. ‘This will clear Rab of the charge of murder. I’ve perused the contents and they’re exactly as he described them. The sordid details about Aline and her lover, the different ways they were considering of getting rid of her husband, they’re all here. No jury could possibly convict Rab with this evidence to hand. Having read this, when he saw her pick up the knife, of course he thought she was going to kill him.’

I was bemused. It all seemed too pat, too easy. There hadn’t even been a real search. The diary had just been lying there, on John Buchanan’s table, waiting — practically begging — to be discovered. It didn’t make sense. A man who had been entrusted with an incriminating document would surely have taken pains to hide it away, not leave it where any fool could put his hand on it. Nevertheless, I supposed it could be argued that when Aline passed the diary to her brother, neither of them knew that her husband had found and read it. She was simply acting in response to some sort of premonition; that pricking of the thumbs which we all experience sometime or another.

Yet I still felt uneasy. Looking back on yesterday’s visit to the house in the Grassmarket, I had no recollection of seeing anything on that table tied with red ribbons. It would have leaped to my eye: it was, after all, what I was looking for. I couldn’t have avoided noticing it. Could I?

By this time, we were back in the castle ward and beginning the ascent to the rock’s summit.

‘The rest of the morning’s your own,’ Albany told me, ‘until after dinner. I must visit Rab to tell him the good news and also put this — ’ he waved the diary — ‘in the hands of the City Magistrates. But when dinner’s over, come and find me. We have work to do.’

It was no good asking him, what work. The duke was already gone in a flurry of self-importance, leaving me with Murdo and Donald to watch John Buchanan being marched away. He caught my eye and gave me a filthy look. But he was frightened, too. I felt a surge of guilt and wanted to assure him that his arrest was none of my doing. I turned my back.

I needed to think, but the two squires showed a sudden and unexpected desire for my company, almost, I thought, as if they had been set to guard me; an obviously nonsensical notion.

‘What does the duke want me for this afternoon?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?’

Donald hesitated, as though unsure whether to answer me or not, but Murdo said bluntly, ‘He wants us all to ride with him to Roslin to … to worship at the chapel there and …’

‘And give thanks for our safe return to Scotland after all these years,’ Donald supplied when his companion’s voice faltered. ‘It’s some few miles to the south of Edinburgh. Not far, but I think my lord plans to stay the night. He has a small hunting lodge on the edge of the village.’

I frowned. ‘Why would he want my company? I’m not a returning exile like the rest of you. My services can well be dispensed with. And will be in a few days’ time when the negotiations are completed and I return to England.’

‘Oh, the duke regards you as quite one of the family now,’ Murdo replied smoothly. ‘He would be disappointed if you weren’t present at his thanksgiving.’

‘Albany regards you lot as his family?’ I asked in disbelief.

‘In the loosest sense of the word,’ Donald intervened hastily. ‘You’re not a fool Roger. You know what Murdo means.’

‘All five of you?’ I persisted. ‘All of the late Earl of Mar’s servants?’

‘Why not? We’ve been with him some years now, first in France and then in England.’

‘I’ll tell you why not,’ I said angrily, suddenly standing still and forcing them to turn and face me. ‘Are you unaware that Albany made a special petition to King Edward to have me as a bodyguard because he was afraid that one of you five was an assassin in the pay of King James?’

There was a momentary silence during which I could almost feel Donald and Murdo exercising all their self-will not to glance at one another. Then the former gave an awkward laugh.

‘No, no! You’re mistaken, Roger. What my lord feared was an assassin among his English allies. He knew that there were some who violently disapproved of King Edward’s plan to make him King of Scotland.’

‘That, too,’ I agreed. ‘But take my word for it that he suspected one of you, as well. The reason he asked for my services was because he knew me and knew also that he could trust me. At least,’ I added, ‘that was what I was given to understand.’

Murdo grinned, visibly relaxing and throwing a friendly arm about Donald’s shoulders.

‘It would seem that my lord has by now discovered his mistake. Nothing’s happened to him, has it? He’s realized that he can trust us, after all.’

‘There were at least two attempts on Albany’s life,’ I suggested, and waited for their reactions.

‘Perpetrated by the English, undoubtedly,’ Donald said, without even the flicker of an eyelid to hint that he might be lying.

Or was he simply being truthful? How could I tell? So I returned to my first bone of contention.

‘None of this explains my lord’s desire for me to accompany you all to this place — what’s it called again?’

‘Roslin.’ It was Murdo who spoke this time. ‘And we’ve told you already. The duke regards you as one of his intimate servitors. One of us. One of the “family”. And until you … go home again, you will be expected to obey him. I feel certain His Grace of Gloucester will say so.’

I also thought this entirely possible, Prince Richard being a man of his word. I could see no way to get out of this unwanted expedition, and could only pray that a very few more days would bring Anglo-Scottish deliberations to a satisfactory conclusion.

‘Look, I need to go for a shit,’ I said. I had to shake these two off. ‘There’s no need for you to accompany me. I know where the latrines are.’ And I moved purposefully away. Thankfully, they made no move to follow me.

‘We’ll see you at dinner in the hall,’ Donald shouted after me.

It had occurred to me to quiz them on the morning’s doings in the Grassmarket, but common sense told me that I should get no useful information out of either one of them. They had been taken to John Buchanan’s house to search for the missing evidence, and they had found it. That was probably all they knew. Or wanted to know if it came to that. But I still found it hard to believe that it could have been discovered so pat, just as though it had been placed on the table for all the world to see. There was something that I was missing; something that my dream of the previous night had tried to tell me, but which I was too tired, or too stupid, to see.

I passed the latrines without a second glance: my bowels were not bothering me for the moment. Instead, I made my way to Saint Margaret’s Chapel and went inside. Fresh candles had been lit in the candlesticks on the altar, illuminating the effigy in its niche and showing up the fact that it badly needed repainting. The yellow and blue robe was dingy, spotted here and there with mould, and the gold of the halo tarnished. But I doubted that this was out of disrespect for the saint, ancestress of both the English and Scottish royal lines, but because money was not in plentiful supply at a court where its king had lavished so much of its hard-come-by wealth on his numerous favourites. But that was over now with King James in captivity and his minions dead, hanged from the Lauder Bridge like common felons.

I had the chapel to myself and went down on my knees in front of the altar, but feeling at something of a loss. Although paying lip service to them as a good Christian should, secretly I had little direct contact with the saints, preferring to talk straight to God. (I could never see the point of communicating with the middle-men and — women. And how could I be sure that my messages got passed on?) But this morning, as on my first visit, I appealed for Margaret’s help in her capacity as a descendant of the Wessex kings, direct in line from Alfred the Great and from Cerdic, first self-appointed ruler of the West Saxons. But it was only after I had also had a swift word with my fellow west-countrymen, Saint Dunstan and Saint Patrick, that it occurred to me to wonder exactly what it was that I was praying for. Help, obviously; but why? What was it that was troubling me?

For something was trouble me, even though both my missions seemed to be successfully accomplished. I had seen Albany safe to Scotland; and my brief investigation into the facts surrounding Master Sinclair’s arrest had culminated — although no particular thanks to me — in the production of the necessary evidence to assure his acquittal on the charge of murder. Self-defence would be his plea, and would undoubtedly be accepted. So why was I bothering the saints?

Well, for a start, there was a growing feeling that Albany had used me as a cat’s-paw, not once, but twice, yet without any evidence or any solid reasons to bolster the conviction. Secondly, the arrest of John Buchanan particularly worried me.

I got up from my knees, then sat down on the dusty floor, propping my back against the nearest stretch of wall, trying to sort my thoughts. I fixed my gaze on the figure of the saint, but after a disturbed night, drowsiness overcame me. The painted face became at first a blur, but then gradually assumed the living features of the woman. She held out both hands, one holding a bunch of herbs and the other a fruit, a quince as had been offered to me in my dream by Maria Beton … I jerked awake, straightening my back with a suddenness that jarred my spine.

Quince jelly! Recipes!

What was the point of Maria Beton and Mistress Callender exchanging recipes if the former could neither read nor write? Yet both had mentioned the fact, so why the lie? Why the pretence that the housekeeper was illiterate? I recalled the gaoler’s son leaving the Sinclair house as I approached it the previous day. Had he been sent by her master to warn her of my impending visit and of the role she must play? I had to be convinced that she could not have known the contents of the diary because she could not read them …

Another thought occurred to me like a flash of lightning across a summer sky. She could also have written the diary. For whatever reason Rab Sinclair had murdered his wife, for whatever reason he had wanted her dead, he had to have a story that would exonerate him in the eyes of the law. My guess was that the killing had been unpremeditated, and Mistress Callender’s inopportune arrival had caught him literally red-handed. The story of the diary was concocted hastily between Rab and Mistress Beton, but she had needed time to write it. And after that, it had to be searched for and dramatically found. But where?

I had been used to supply them with the answer.