The Midsummer Crown

FIFTEEN

Ihad never before seen the Tower at close quarters, although it dominated much of the London skyline. As, of course, it was meant to. Like everything that was built on the orders of William of Normandy it stressed Norman domination over the conquered Saxon. Throughout the kingdom, these great castles and fortresses were intended to let us know who was the master and who the serf, and woe betide anyone who ever forgot it. I had said to Etheldreda Simpkins that surely after five hundred years we were all one people, and she had scoffed at this idea. And she was right. The divide, however subtle, was always there, and maybe always would be.

Armed with Duke Richard’s authorization, written at his dictation by his secretary, John Kendall, I obtained easy access to the royal apartments, passed from one guard-post to the next without so much as a raised eyebrow, and was finally left kicking my heels in a small, barely furnished room while an usher went in search of Bevis and Blaise Fitzalan. Staring out of the window at a stretch of sun-washed greensward and a magnificent beech tree in full leaf, I thought back to my recent interview with Duke Richard and realized that events were gathering momentum. It could not be long now until he made his intentions public and claimed the crown. Twelve weeks had elapsed since the death of the late King Edward and the acclamation of his young son as Edward the fifth, and now the lad’s reign seemed to be drawing to a close. What would happen to him and his siblings? In particular to him and his younger brother, the Duke of York? Or should one even call the boy by that title any longer? ‘May you live in exciting times,’ was generally held to be a curse. I was beginning to think that it was true. .

The usher returned to conduct me to another, more comfortably furnished chamber where the two Fitzalan brothers awaited me, curious to know why I wished to see them, but at the same time a little resentful at having been dragged away from whatever it was they had been doing.

‘I hope this isn’t going to take long, Master Chapman,’ Bevis said in a fair imitation of his uncle Godfrey. ‘We’re in attendance upon the king this morning, and it’s very nearly dinner time.’

I could have told him that by the rumblings in my belly.

I explained my mission as briefly as possible and begged them both to think as hard as they could of everything they knew about Gideon. Was there something, however slight, that might set him apart from other boys? Anything at all that would explain his abduction?

The brothers seemed astonished by the request.

‘He’s always been a miserable little fart, if that’s what you mean,’ Bevis said, not mincing matters.

‘Always got something wrong with him,’ Blaise contributed. ‘Always running to old Mother Copley with a headache or a bellyache or earache or some such ache.’

‘And she doses him up with physic and tells the rest of us off for not being more sympathetic towards our dear little brother.’ Bevis made a gagging sound. ‘It makes us all puke.’

‘All of us being?’

‘Well, us — ’ he waved a hand at Blaise — ‘and our other brothers, Thomas and Peter and Maurice and Cornelius. We all call him a whinging little toad.’

I sighed and urged them to think of Gideon with something other than a healthy young man’s contempt for an ailing younger brother. It was quite possible that, as the runt of the litter, the boy was genuinely delicate. Was there something different about him that distinguished him from the rest of the family?

But this appeared to confuse Bevis and Blaise more than ever. They didn’t understand what I meant — which led me, of course, to the reluctant conclusion that there was nothing either peculiar or extraordinary about Gideon Fitzalan which might explain why he had been taken, or, indeed, what he had been taken for.

I was about to return to the attack for one last time, in the vain hope of eliciting some fragment of information, when the door to the room burst open and a young man came in, a petulant grimace on his pretty lips. Although I had only set eyes on him once before — some weeks earlier, riding into his capital between his uncles of Gloucester and Buckingham — I recognized him immediately. It was the king.

Or then again, perhaps not.

For the moment, however, I had no choice but to treat him as the former. Following Bevis’s and Blaise’s example, I sank to one knee and bowed my head.

‘What’s going on?’ he demanded querulously. ‘I thought we were playing cards.’ He caught sight of me and gave me an imperious stare. ‘Who’s this?’

Bevis saved me the trouble of replying. ‘Roger Chapman, Sire. He’s enquiring into the mysterious disappearance of our brother, Gideon, at the request of your uncle, the Protector.’

Something very like a scowl marred the delicate features. ‘I don’t like my uncle Gloucester,’ was the petulant reply, but there was also something akin to fear lurking in the blue eyes that were so much like his mother’s. ‘I want my uncle Rivers.’

An icy hand squeezed my bowels. In a very few days his uncle Rivers would be executed at Pontefract along with Edward’s half-brother, Sir Richard Grey, and his cousin, Sir Thomas Vaughan. I stared hard at the floor, watching the royal fleas hopping in and out among the sweet-smelling rushes.

‘And have you found out what’s happened to Gideon Fitzalan?’ asked that small, cold voice which had none of the warmth and bonhomie of the late King Edward’s.

I raised my eyes to that sour little face, then realized with a jolt of compassion that one side of the boy’s jaw was badly swollen and that it was obviously giving him pain. He kept rubbing it with one beringed hand and screwing up the eye above it.

‘Not yet, Sire,’ I said gently. ‘I came to see if either of Master Gideon’s brothers knows anything that could assist me. That’s why I’m here.’

The fair head turned sharply in the direction of Blaise and Bevis. ‘And do you?’ Edward asked abruptly. When they shrugged and looked blank, he gave a high-pitched crow of laughter. ‘I didn’t think you would.’

The door opened once again and the nine-years-old Duke of York — it was difficult as yet to think of him as anything else — entered the room. There was no doubt that he was Edward’s brother; indeed, except for a marked disparity in height, they could have been twins. They were both fair-haired, blue-eyed and displayed the handsome Woodville features of their maternal family. But there the similarity ended. Whereas the elder boy was all gloom and acidity, the younger was sweetness and light.

He grinned at me and gave me a friendly nod before turning to his brother. ‘Ned, it’s almost dinner time and we haven’t finished our game.’ He smiled mischievously. ‘Or don’t you want to finish because you’re losing?’

The other turned on him, the pale face suddenly crimson. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ he screamed. ‘I am your king and don’t you forget it!’

I think we were all shocked and the younger boy flinched. Bastard or not, there was no doubt that Edward had the Plantagenet temper. Wasn’t the whole race reputed to be descended from a daughter of the Devil?

‘Sire,’ Bevis said hastily, ‘His Grace didn’t mean. . He’s only little. .’

‘He’s nine! Old enough to know how to address his sovereign.’ Edward glared at his frightened sibling for a moment, then put up a hand to rub his cheek ‘My jaw’s hurting again. Where’s Doctor Argentine? Why is he never around when he’s needed?’ He waved a hand at Blaise and Bevis. ‘One of you go and find him and tell him I want him. Now!’

Bevis gave me a speaking look and scuttled off, muttering out of the corner of his mouth as he passed me, ‘I’d come with me if I were you.’

I took his advice. There was, after all, nothing to stay for. I had obtained as much from the Fitzalan brothers as I was likely to get and any further questioning would obviously be nothing but a waste of time. So while Edward’s attention was focused on the other two — young Richard of York plainly offering an olive branch and trying to make friends again — I made a deep bow and edged towards the door. I had barely stepped across the threshold, however, when a voice arrested me.

‘Tell my Uncle Gloucester not to send his lackeys bothering my people again! And you haven’t taken proper leave of me! I am your king!’

There was a note of desperation in the last sentence that moved me in spite of myself. The same wave of compassion washed over me as it had done earlier. I went back, knelt and kissed the little hand held out to me. It was stone cold against my lips; almost, I thought, like the touch of dead flesh.

Once outside in the fresh air, I took a deep breath and leant against one of the massive walls, looking at, but not seeing, the archery butts set up on the green, where the boys had been shooting some time during the morning if the abandoned bows and arrows were anything to judge by. My emotions were in a tangle. I didn’t like young Edward and yet I felt deeply sorry for him. He was frightened and in pain, suddenly deprived of all the people he knew best, on whom he had always depended, and surrounded by strangers. Even his brother he did not know well.

I heaved myself away from the wall and gave myself a mental shake. It was no use standing there, worrying about things which I could not alter and over which I had no control. In any case, my loyalty had always been to my lord of Gloucester. I liked him as a man and knew him for a faithful friend so long as one returned that faithfulness. But I suspected he could be an implacable enemy to those who betrayed his trust.

It was nearly dinner time. I could feel it in my belly even if I couldn’t guess it by the way in which the out-of-door workers were flocking inside to the sound of braying trumpets and the banging of gongs. Once again, I had to decide where to eat, and this time settled on the Boar’s Head in East Cheap. It was not a hostelry I was acquainted with at all well, so was unlikely to meet anyone there whom I knew or who might recognize me. I therefore left the Tower by the Postern Gate and directed my footsteps in a westerly direction.

The traffic, both four-wheeled and two-legged, was dense at that time in the morning and the June day was beginning to heat up. The ranks of the innumerable street-vendors had been augmented by strawberry sellers coming in from the country, anxious to dispose of their wares as quickly as possible before they became overripe and mushy. The season was, in any case, short for these luscious fruits, so one was accosted on all sides by men, women and even occasionally children pushing their trays right up under people’s noses, thus making progress even more difficult than usual.

It was while I was repelling a particularly persistent man, with black stumps of teeth and a body odour to make the eyes water, that I saw, some little way ahead, her back towards me, a woman I was sure was Amphillis Hill. She, too, was staving off the importunities of a strawberry seller, who was trying to force a sample berry between her teeth.

I raised my voice and hollered her name and, in spite of the din all around us, I thought for a moment that she had heard me. She half-turned her head and gave a quick glance over her shoulder, so I shouted again, but this time with no effect. She elbowed the strawberry seller aside with a strength surprising in so small a woman and vanished among the crowds ahead of her. It had been my intention to offer to buy her dinner, but now resigned myself to a solitary meal.

Of course, it was inevitable that the moment I entered the Boar’s Head in East Cheap the first person I clapped eyes on was Amphillis. But she was not alone. She was sitting — huddled one might almost have said by their postures and the closeness of their heads — with two other women at one of the smaller tables beside an open window, whose shutters had been flung wide in a vain attempt to allow some air into the ale room. So engrossed were the three of them in their conversation that they failed to notice my entrance, despite the fact that my height drew the usual curious stares from some of the other customers.

I hastened to sit down, choosing a seat in a shadowed corner where I could observe without being seen. As I edged on to a rickety stool that had seen better days — and had probably been there since King Henry V’s misspent youth, the inn having been one of his and his cronies’ favourite haunts if all the stories about him were to be believed — I realized that one of the other women with Amphillis was Rosina Copley. I had not thought them to be such good friends. And then, with a start of amazement, I recognized the third member of the group as Etheldreda Simpkins. But a greater shock was to follow. It was when Dame Copley turned her head to stare in disapproval at a noisy group of young men seated at a neighbouring table, and who had already consumed too much of the tavern’s good ale, that I saw a marked likeness between her and Etheldreda. I recalled Lady Fitzalan saying that the nurse had a sister who lived in Dowgate.

A potboy came to take my order and my attention was momentarily distracted. By the time I was at liberty to look again, the three had been joined by yet a fourth woman, and another stool was being dragged across from the large table in the centre of the ale room and accommodated at their own. I knew at once that the newcomer was the woman I had twice before seen in Amphillis’s company and whose back view I had been so certain that I recognized. And yet, now that I saw her face, I was unable to place her. Nevertheless, the sense of familiarity persisted.

Once more, the heads were bent towards one another and the earnest conversation resumed. That it was earnest was apparent by the set expression of their features. This was no idle gossip between friends. There was no giggling, no head thrown back in laughter, no hand extended to press another’s arm or shoulder, no purchase produced for the approval of the rest. Whatever the four of them were discussing, it was a serious matter.

My food, a rabbit stew with sage and onion dumplings, arrived to claim my attention, together with a beaker of the inn’s best ale. For quite a few moments I had no thought for anything but filling my belly and slaking my thirst, and when I had time to look around me again, the women had gone. I stared in consternation at the table where they had been sitting, but this was now occupied by three men, carpenters judging by the tools jutting from the pockets of their leather aprons. I half-rose from my seat, then sank back again to finish my meal. There was no point in wasting such excellent fare.

And in any case, why did I want to go after the women? Why did it matter where they had gone? Yet something nagged at me, something I could not quite put my finger on. It was not simply that I could not place the fourth woman, even now that I had seen her face, nor the fact that I felt certain of having met her somewhere before. No, there was something else, some small thing that irritated me like a fly buzzing around my head that would not go away.

In the end, I gave up thinking about it. I knew from long experience that it was the only course. The more I tried to remember, the less my brain was amenable to divulging its secrets. I called for bread and cheese to round off my meal.

‘Stuffing your belly again, Roger?’

I recognized Piers’s voice, and I wondered briefly when the more respectful ‘Master Chapman’ had been replaced, not just by the familiarity of my Christian name, but also by a certain mocking intonation whenever it was pronounced.

I glanced up to find the lad standing by my table, but the slight protest I had been about to make died on my lips. The left-hand side of Piers’s face was marred by a bruise that spread upwards from his cheekbone to encircle his eye.

‘Wh-what happened to you?’ I stuttered.

‘What happened? Oh!’ Piers put up a hand to touch the discolouration. ‘You mean this? Careless of me, wasn’t it? I wasn’t looking where I was going and walked straight into the edge of a door.’

‘When was this?’

He waved a vague hand. ‘Yesterday evening sometime.’ He winked. ‘I’d had a drop too much to drink.’

‘Was there someone with you when it happened?’

He frowned. ‘Does it matter? Why do you want to know?’

‘Because someone attacked me with a knife last night, just as I was returning to my room. I managed to hit whoever it was a good right-hander on the left-hand side of his face and he ran away.’

The smile was wiped from Piers’s lips and he stared at me in horror. ‘Roger, that’s terrible.’ He gave a little gasp and his eyes widened. ‘Sweet Virgin and all the saints! You don’t — you can’t — think it was me?’ When I didn’t answer, he went on, ‘Roger! I swear to you that I really did walk into the edge of a door. It’s true! If you don’t believe me, ask Dame Copley. As a matter of fact, it was partly her fault that it happened. Some of the other lads and I had just returned to the castle by boat — we’d been across to Southwark, to the Tabard — and had gone in by that landing-stage door not far from her room. As I said, we were a bit drunk. More than a bit if the truth be told, and we were kicking up quite a din. We disturbed her and she flung open her door just at the very minute I was passing. I walked straight into it. Caught myself the devil of a crack as you can see. Not that I got any sympathy from her, I can tell you! She said it served me right and gave us all a great scold, just as if we were children.’

‘Dame Copley’s gone back to that room then, has she? I thought she’d moved permanently into the guest apartments so that she could be a comfort to Lady Fitzalan. When you and I looked into her old room yesterday, it was empty.’

For a moment, he seemed utterly taken aback. Then he shrugged. ‘I’d forgotten that,’ he said. ‘So it was. Of course! I arranged for you to see her in the guest apartments, didn’t I? I must be losing my wits. But it did happen as I’ve told you. All I can think of is that she must have returned there for something. The pot of birch twigs, perhaps.’

‘Why in heaven’s name would she want them? The leaves were all brown and wilting.’

Piers gave me a sharp look. ‘Why are you so suspicious? I swear to you that what I’m saying is the truth. Ask Mother Copley if you think I’m lying. I promise you she’ll bear me out.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’re Dame Copley’s nephew?’

He blinked. ‘I–I never thought about it. I–I didn’t realize you didn’t know. It’s not important, anyway. We’re not that close.’ The mockery had vanished and he appeared genuinely perturbed. ‘Roger!’ he pleaded. ‘You can’t really believe that I would try to murder you! Why? Why should I wish to? You’re my friend.’

I sighed and got to my feet. ‘It was just the bruise,’ I said apologetically.

‘I’ve explained that.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. But you must see that it looks suspicious. Here,’ I added, ‘take my seat. If you’re going to eat, I recommend the rabbit stew.’

He slid on to my vacated stool with a nod of thanks. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ He sounded anxious. I nodded and he continued, ‘You mustn’t walk about by yourself at night. There’s a killer somewhere amongst us, and if he’s now after you, you’re in serious danger. Make sure someone always goes with you.’

I laughed. ‘Anyone determined to kill me could do it just as well by day. Baynard’s Castle is a veritable rabbit warren of passageways and staircases, as you well know. But I shall be careful.’

He nodded. ‘Do be.’

‘By the way,’ I said, as I handed over some coins to an anxious potboy who thought I was about to abscond without paying my shot, ‘Dame Copley was in here not very long ago, together with Amphillis Hill and two other women, one of whom I’m sure must be her sister because of a certain family resemblance between them. Her name’s Etheldreda Simpkins.’

Piers looked startled, staring at me as though he didn’t quite know what to say. ‘You. . you know Aunt Etheldreda?’ he managed at last.

Of course! If he were Rosina’s nephew, then he would also be her sister’s.

‘We’ve met,’ I said, and explained, in part, the circumstances of that encounter. What I didn’t say was that when I stumbled across St Etheldreda’s Church, I had been following Amphillis Hill. I let him think it had been by chance, but offered no explanation of why I had been in the Dowgate Ward. Fortunately, he displayed no curiosity on that head.

‘And. . and Aunt Etheldreda actually showed you the crypt?’ he asked.

‘She fetched me a lantern from her house so that I could see my way down the steps,’ I told him cheerfully. ‘What she didn’t tell me, but which I discovered for myself quite by accident, is that there’s another chamber below that one whose foundations look to me to be very ancient. They may well be those of the Roman Temple of Mithras that stood, so I understand, close to that site, and might indeed have actually stood on it.’

‘Well!’ Piers looked, for once, lost for words. ‘Did. . did you tell Aunt Ethel about this second chamber you found?’

‘No. I thought it best not to. She seemed such a game old lady that I thought it wisest not to. She would probably have decided to explore it for herself and might have slipped and broken a limb, if nothing worse.’

‘Quite right,’ Piers said. ‘There’s no doubt she would have.’ He still seemed a little dazed by my revelation. ‘I must go and investigate it for myself one of these days.’

A potboy finally came to take his order and, with a parting admonition to have the rabbit stew, I seized the opportunity to take my leave.

I made my way westwards along East Cheap into Candlewick Street and suddenly realized that I was only yards from the place where Etheldreda Simpkins had her dwelling; the little bow-shaped alleyway that linked Candlewick Street to Dowgate Hill and bypassed the junction of both with Wallbrook. On impulse, I decided to pay another visit to the church and its crypt, for no better reason than that I could think of nothing else to do and didn’t want to own to myself that, in the matter of Gideon Fitzalan’s disappearance, my thinking had reached a standstill. I had no idea why he had vanished, where he was being held or who was holding him. It was time for prayer and a word with God in private.

‘You’re not very gallant,’ said a reproachful voice, and a hand caught hold of my arm. I turned to see Naomi, obviously on her way home to Bucklersbury with a covered basket in one hand. ‘I saw you come out of the Boar’s Head,’ she went on, ‘and I called to you, but you took no notice.’

‘I didn’t hear you,’ I protested.

She ignored this. ‘I’ve been buying meat for the master’s supper tonight and dinner tomorrow. All the best butchers are in East Cheap, just as all the best drapers are here, in Candlewick Street.’ She smiled happily, withdrawing her hand from my arm and raising it to finger the birch twig pinned to her bodice. ‘The master’s treating me to some new material for my Midsummer Eve Queen’s dress. I’m off now to choose it.’ And planting a light kiss on my right cheek, she darted away across the road to a stall whose proud owner was shouting something about newly arrived ‘silks from the Orient’.

Of course, I thought, that was it! That was what I had been trying to remember. All four women in the Boar’s Head had been wearing little sprays of birch twigs pinned to their gowns. Did the fact have any particular significance, or was it something many women did at this time of year? I recalled the two boys I had met on the downs at home, not far from the great gorge, and how they had been denuding a birch tree of its twigs and tender young branches. The Crown and the Bough. The birch leaf wreaths that encircled the Midsummer Eve Queens’ heads. I sighed. It seemed like common practice after all.

I had paused for my moment’s contemplation, leaning against the nearby wall of a house, letting the tide of humanity flow by me. Now, as I heaved myself upright once more, I glanced idly to my right — and saw a flicker of movement as if someone had suddenly ducked down out of sight. Was I being followed? But by whom and why? I stood still, staring, oblivious to the opprobrium of people trying to push past me, but knowing full well that I was being foolish. In those sort of crowds, how could one distinguish one kind of movement from another? After last night’s attack, I was becoming unnecessarily jumpy.

A few more steps brought me to the mouth of the alleyway and I turned into its cobbled silence with a feeling of relief. The racket and bustle of Candlewick Street was making my head ache, especially as it had not really recovered from my drinking session with Jack the evening before.

The door of the church was still unlocked and I pushed my way inside, then waited a few seconds to allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I easily found the cupboard where candles, their holders and the tinderbox were stored and, having provided myself with light, proceeded to the back of the altar. Within minutes, I was descending the stairs into the crypt, its unpleasant smell rising to meet me. I spent a few minutes looking around, but nothing seemed to have altered since my last visit three days earlier until I noticed that the planks, previously propped against the second door, had been removed. For a moment, I hesitated, then telling myself not to be a fool, I opened the door and went down the second flight of steps into the fetid atmosphere of the lower chamber.

There was something different about it, but before I had time to work out what that difference was, something caught me a swingeing blow on the back of the head.

I descended into blackness.