The Midsummer Rose

Nineteen

I was conscious of an overpowering feeling of rage and resentment against the Spymaster General. I had never before actually disliked Timothy Plummer — I had found him pompous, irritating, self-important, yet nothing that was not eventually forgivable, if not exactly lovable — but now I was overwhelmed with hatred, not just for him, but also for his masters. The State? What new concept was this that could so dispose of innocent lives as if they were worms to be crushed beneath our feet? In the old days, men served their liege lords; living, breathing people who listened to pleas for help and clemency, who were open to reason and charity. But I had been threatened, my wife and family had been threatened, and now Jenny Hodge was likely to find herself a widow — and all because of this heinous, faceless new monster: the State. The wheel of fate and fortune revolves, my friends, but not necessarily for the better.

I realized that I was hot and very thirsty, but judging by the sun it was not yet time for supper. If I went home now, Adela would want to know where I had been, what I had been doing, and, above all, how much I had sold and what money I had earned. So, like many an erring husband before me — and no doubt like many who will come after — I decided to drown my grievances against the world in drink. I dragged myself to my feet, dried my wet hose as well as I could in the long grasses bordering the river, put on my boots and jerkin, shouldered my pack and set off back the way I had come.

The Green Lattis was full at this time of day, and although I recognized most faces, there were one or two strangers among the people crowded around the tables and seated on benches along the walls. I managed to catch the pot-boy’s eye and ordered a cup of ale before beating a local pieman to a stool that had just that second been vacated. The other occupant of this narrow trestle eyed me approvingly.

‘You’re nippy on your feet today, Master Chapman.’

I stared at him, trying to place the thin, tired-faced man who addressed me as if he knew me. There was something familiar about him, but for the moment, recognition eluded my grasp.

He smiled. ‘My name’s John Longstaff. We met at Rownham Passage a week or so back. You questioned my son, Henry, about two women you said had attacked and tried to drown you … Friday’s the day I sell my vegetables in Bristol market,’ he added, seeming to feel that his presence in the alehouse needed an explanation.

‘Of course! I remember now.’ The pot-boy set my cup of ale before me, slopping its contents as he did so, and departed to serve someone else with an equal lack of grace. ‘How is your mother?’ I asked. ‘She was none too well as I recall.’

Master Longstaff sighed. ‘Much the same, I thank you. Always dying, but never quite dead.’ He looked ashamed of this remark as soon as he had uttered it and continued hurriedly, ‘She’s looking after Henry for me. Or he’s looking after her, I’m never quite sure which.’ He set down his own beaker and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before continuing, a little self-consciously, ‘By the way, there was an odd sequel to your interrogation of my son.’

I raised my eyebrows and waited. He appeared to be faintly embarrassed, although I couldn’t think why, and twisted the half-full beaker of ale between restless hands.

‘When we got home,’ he said, ‘that day, I naturally quizzed Henry further about what he’d seen, just to make sure he hadn’t been making it up.’

‘He hadn’t,’ I interrupted.

‘No, no! I realized that. His story didn’t vary, however many times I made him repeat it. But a day or so later we were visiting my mother yet again and I had to help her to the chamber pot. Henry was in the room at the time, and afterwards he asked me why his grandmother wasn’t made the same as other women. I told him that of course she was. I didn’t understand what he was talking about.’ Master Longstaff took another swig of ale. ‘Finally, I winkled out of him that one of the two women he’d seen pushing you into the river — the one who’d hoisted her skirts up around her waist — had … had … well … had the same thing as you and I and every other man conceals in his breeches. Naturally, I told him this was impossible and that he must have been mistaken, but he swore — and continues to swear — that it’s true. Says he saw it plainly.’ My companion finished his drink in one gulp and rose to his feet, flushing deeply. He really was surprisingly shy. ‘I … I just thought you might be interested to know. I mean, I thought it might have some significance for you. I do hope you won’t take offence at my plain speaking. Well, I must be off, back to my stall. God go with you, Master Chapman. If you’re ever in the manor of Ashton-Leigh, come and see us. Everyone knows where we live.’

He eased his way out of the Green Lattis, now crowded to the point of discomfort, and left me sitting at the table, my mind reeling, while so much that had been a puzzle fell into place. Of course! Of course! What was wrong with me that I had been unable to work out such an obvious truth for myself? My wits had gone wool-gathering, atrophied by my brush with death, by my weeks in bed and by the unrelenting heat.

Elizabeth Alefounder’s companion on Saint Elmo’s Day — that person whom Edgar Capgrave had seen riding beside her as she entered Bristol by the Frome Gate, that person in a wet and muddied blue brocade gown — had not been Rowena Hollyns, had not in fact been a woman at all. I ordered another stoup of ale from the harassed pot-boy and ignored all attempts by the pieman, who had seized upon Master Longstaff’s empty stool, to enter into conversation with me.

I knew now that there never had been a third assailant in that room in the ‘murder’ house. The man’s voice I had heard belonged to my attacker in the blue brocade gown. She was a he, and I had no hesitation in assigning him a name. This surely must have been King James’s brother, the Duke of Albany.

I recollected a question I had meant to put to Timothy Plummer. Who or what was the Midsummer Rose? Now, with my new knowledge, I never doubted but I had the answer. It was the name by which Robin Avenel and his sister referred to their guest in case they were overheard by inquisitive eavesdroppers such as Jess. How Timothy had learned of it, I was unable to guess, although I doubted that anything remained a secret from him and his fellow spies for very long. His network of informers must be formidable. I swallowed some more ale and set my mind to working out what must have been the likely sequence of events.

How, or by whom, the suggestion that he might replace Henry Tudor as the Lancastrian pretender to the English throne had been put to the disaffected Albany, I had no idea, and probably never would have. Nevertheless, I was certain that someone in Brittany had instigated this proposal. While King James’ agents had conducted a vain, and what they hoped was a secret, search for the refugee along the eastern and southern English coast, that someone had accompanied Albany south to Rownham Passage. There, Robin Avenel, alerted to the plan and obviously approving, had hired a night’s lodging for the duke and his escort in the abandoned Witherspoon house on the Avon shore. (‘A couple of friends … both men,’ Robin had told the apothecary.) Meantime, a deal had been struck with Eamonn Malahide for the Irishman to sail an unnamed gentlewoman to Brittany in his ship, the Clontarf. But the captain, running true to form, had somehow managed to discover his passenger’s true sex and identity, and promptly offered to sell the duke back to his brother. He would take him not to Brittany, but to Scotland.

Here, plot and counter-plot, discovery and counter-discovery began to play their part in the story. The nest of double traitors — those originally disloyal to King Edward and now to their master, Henry Tudor — had, by some means or another and at the eleventh hour, been made aware of Malahide’s intentions. Robin had been warned, but not until the very day itself, and after his sister had already left for Rownham Passage, taking with her, I suspected, a blue brocade gown and cloak belonging to Marianne and a pair of Robin’s shoes, red and sufficiently fancy to be worn by a woman. (His wife’s shoes would have been too small to fit a man.)

But why was Albany to be disguised as a woman? As with so much else, I could only guess (but my guesses so far seemed, to me at least, to make good sense). It was more than possible — more than probable — that Henry Tudor’s most loyal adherents, like his Uncle Jasper, had by now heard rumours of disaffection in their midst. Whispers could have reached their ears that Albany, another descendant of Gaunt’s bastard Beaufort line, was the chosen rival, so agents of the Tudor court would be on the watch for his appearance in Brittany — and no doubt his murder had already been arranged. Moreover, Duke Francis himself might well find it embarrassing to harbour yet another aspirant to the English crown on Breton soil, and Albany’s return to Scotland would win him the gratitude of King James. So Breton agents, too, could be on the lookout for the Scot. But in the guise of a woman, it might be possible to keep his arrival in Brittany a secret until his claim gained greater support amongst the exiled Lancastrians.

But the plans for Albany’s immediate escape across the Channel had all gone awry with the discovery of Eamonn Malahide’s treachery. Robin Avenel had arrived at Rownham Passage with the news and had then left almost at once to return to Bristol. Why had his sister and Albany not accompanied him? Why had he not waited for them? The second question was perhaps easier to answer than the first. There were urgent arrangements to be made for Albany’s concealment until such time as another ship could be found to carry him abroad. But that posed the question: where had Albany been hidden these past few weeks?

As to the rest of the events of that Saint Elmo’s Day, they were easy enough to piece together. Elizabeth Alefounder had probably hoped to follow her brother, accompanied by the fugitive, back to Bristol before the arrival of Eamonn Malahide, but when I, poor fool, had come knocking at the door of the ‘murder’ house, she had mistaken me for him and had tried to kill me. Albany had been upstairs, but the commotion had brought him running down to her assistance. In the middle of their debate on how to dispose of me, the real Eamonn Malahide had walked in, and Albany had despatched him with a swift, unerring thrust of his dagger, like the accomplished soldier he no doubt was …

‘You’re a miserable bugger to try talking to, ain’t you?’ the pieman demanded angrily as, with a snort of disgust, he stamped out of the Green Lattis, but not before he had emptied the remaining contents of my cup over my head — to the great amusement of my neighbours, all of whom laughed heartily at my discomfiture. Cursing and drying my hair and face on my jerkin sleeve, I grabbed my pack and followed him outside, but he had disappeared. Which was probably just as well. It was still too hot to pick a fight. Besides, I had other things to think about.

The church bells were ringing for Vespers. I judged it was time to go home for supper.

For the first time in our two years of marriage, Adela and I were not speaking to one another. Her annoyance at discovering that I had still not sold any goods — or, more exactly, her annoyance at finding that I had not even tried to do so — had spilled over into a torrent of abuse that ended with me threatening her, at the top of my voice, with the scold’s bridle. After which, there was nothing more to be said.

Supper was the quietest and most uncomfortable meal I could ever remember eating. Even the children, who never took any notice of my antics and tantrums, were reduced to silence by their mother’s unaccustomed anger. As for me, I knew Adela had right on her side, but I felt aggrieved and mulishly refused to apologize. ‘Master in my own house’ were the words that kept buzzing around my head while I ate my vegetable pottage and drank my small beer. But in the end, even they were drowned out by more clamorous thoughts and by the urgent need to know where Elizabeth Alefounder and her brother had hidden their unexpected guest. Irrationally, I entertained the belief that if I could only locate the Scotsman I would find out who had killed Robin Avenel.

And then, quite suddenly, while I was scraping the last spoonful of stew from the bottom of my bowl and wondering with one part of my mind if I dare ask for a second helping, three memories surfaced and finally converged to give me a possible answer to the riddle.

The first memory was of my dream that afternoon, on the river bank. I had not yet worked out its meaning, but where I had been and what I had ‘seen’ was obvious. I had been in the cellars under the synagogue in Jewry Lane nearly three hundred years ago, when the last members of the city’s Jewish community had been massacred by a mob of bloodthirsty citizens. But why had some Jews remained behind when most of their friends and families had already fled? And what were they doing in the cellars? Conjuring up the scene of my dream yet again — almost, you might say, being drawn back into it — I realized what had eluded me before. They had not been trying to get out of the cellar, but had all been crowding up against the furthest wall, just as if … Just as if what? Just as if they had been trying to get through it! Yes, that was it! Through it! And at least two men had been bending down as though searching for something.

At very nearly the same moment, Luke Prettywood’s voice echoed inside my head. ‘My grandfather used to tell me that his grandfather, as a boy, came down here looking for a way into the secret vault that people swore had been built by the Jews in order to house their hoard of gold and silver.’ And another voice, this time Edgar Capgrave’s, joined in chorus with the first. He was describing his meeting with Silas Witherspoon on the evening of Midsummer Day. ‘He was keeping close to the wall of Saint Giles’s and the rest of the buildings, and taking very precise, evenly paced steps … He seemed to be concentrating on his feet.’

Precise, evenly paced steps and concentrating on his feet — what did that suggest? That the apothecary had been counting, perhaps. But what had he been counting? The answer came pat. He had been measuring in paces the distance from the beginning of Saint Giles’s Church to Saint John’s Arch, and had no doubt, at some other time, paced from one end of Saint Giles’s crypt to the further end of the cellars. But had he found a significant discrepancy between the two distances?

Timothy had told me that Silas Witherspoon was a Lancastrian agent, and he could well be one who retained his loyalty to Henry Tudor. If he had discovered, or been warned, what Robin Avenel was up to — or if, equally likely, Robin had tried to recruit him to the cause — then Silas would have been as anxious as anyone to find the missing Albany, probably with orders to kill him on the spot. So, could that make the apothecary the possible murderer of Robin Avenel?

I gave my head a little shake. I was going too fast. First, I had to find out if my newly formed suspicion was correct; that there was indeed a secret hiding place somewhere in the old synagogue cellars and that it was where Albany was being hidden. One other circumstance persuaded me I was right. I had never been able to locate the bed which Jack Nym told me he had taken, on Robin’s instructions, to store in the crypt. But even if I could convince myself of the secret chamber’s existence, I still had to discover how to open it. Had Silas Witherspoon already done so? Was the Scotsman already dead or spirited away? I didn’t know, and only time would tell.

I scraped my stool back from the table and stood up, stretching and yawning.

‘I have to go out again, sweeting,’ I said. And it was only when I met Adela’s outraged gaze that I recollected our quarrel.

I knew that I should stop and make things up between us, but I didn’t have time just then. I was filled with a sudden urgency to put my theory to the test. I would have kissed her, but she ducked away.

‘I won’t be long,’ I promised.

In the bright evening sunshine, I, too, paced the distance of Bell Lane and of Jewry Lane from the Fish Street end of Saint Giles’s to Saint John’s-on-the-Arch. Then I entered the church and descended to the crypt, where I walked its and the two cellars’ length. I did it a second time. And a third, just to make sure. But there was no doubt about it. The interior was shorter than the exterior by a good ten paces.

Once again, I conjured up my God-given dream (although the ‘sight’ can be an instrument of the Devil, as my mother had taken care to warn me) and as far as I could recall, the two men bending down had been in the far right-hand corner of the last of the three chambers. It was too dark to see anything in detail, so I went back upstairs to the church and lit a candle, then descended once more, sheltering the flame with one hand.

I knelt down, holding the candlestick as close to the wall as I was able, but saw nothing except damp stones and spiders, the latter scurrying away in high dudgeon, angry at being disturbed. In spite of the heat outside, the chill struck up through my knees, making me shiver. At least, I persuaded myself it was the cold and not fright that had this effect. I shifted the light again and the shadows assumed new shapes. Still I could see nothing but slime and mould. Then I had an inspiration. I drew my knife from its sheath and began to scrape away the patches of lichen that mottled the wall.

How long I had been down in the cellars, I had no idea. I seemed to be losing all track of time and I was growing sleepy. Deciding to stretch my legs and walk around for a while, I picked up the candle, which I had placed on the floor beside me, but as I did so, something caught my eye. I moved the flame closer to the wall, my heart pounding with excitement. And there it was: a tiny six-pointed star carved into one of the stones where I had recently removed a circle of moss no bigger than a thumbnail. I sat back on my haunches, staring at it and wondering what to do next. Tentatively, I put out my right hand and pressed my fingers to the star …

There was a muted rumble, a slight rattle like a hiccough, and a section of the wall, just about big enough for two men to enter abreast, swung inwards on well-oiled hinges to reveal the chamber beyond. I took a grip on my knife and cautiously stepped across the threshold.

There was some unidentifiable source of fresh air in the chamber, but it was not enough to counteract the strong smell of urine and human excrement that met me, and my eyes were at once drawn to the chamber pot that stood near the end of a bed that occupied most of the room’s cramped space. But there were also a chair, a stool and a table, on which stood the remains of a meal. Three or four lighted candles and a flint and tinderbox stood on a shelf above the bedhead, a chessboard and chessmen were scattered over the floor, as if their owner had thrown them down in a fit of pique, while a green velvet-covered book, its laces all tangled, lay alongside them. And seated on the edge of the bed, eyes wide and staring in alarm, sat a man dressed in a soiled white shirt and dark-red hose. A blue brocade gown, together with a woman’s coif and hood, lay beside him.

Several moments of complete silence followed my entrance while we stared at one another. Finally, the figure on the bed rose slowly and stretched to its full height, which was about as high as my chin, but still no word was spoken. I decided I must break the deadlock.

‘Am I addressing His Grace, the Duke of Albany?’

He replied formally, ‘Alexander Stewart at your service,’ and inclined his head. Then formality was thrown to the winds as he demanded violently, ‘And who in the Devil’s name might you be?’ I saw one hand grope behind him, searching for his dagger, which was lying on the counterpane.

I gave what I hoped was a disarming grin.

‘Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury,’ I said, hoping to make him laugh and, much to my surprise, succeeding. Well, he smiled — quite broadly as a matter of fact.

‘Has Elizabeth sent you?’ His Scots accent was thick, but, as I had remembered from our first encounter, sufficiently anglicised as to be comprehensible to my west country ears.

‘No,’ I answered bluntly. There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘I’m the man you’ve twice tried to murder; firstly in the house at Rownham Passage when you thought I was the Irish sea captain, and secondly when you broke into my house two weeks ago. And don’t try to tell me it wasn’t you. You left a shoe behind — a shoe I now know was lent to you by Robin Avenel.’

He had stopped smiling and was looking grim. He had at last found the dagger, and I saw his fingers close around the hilt. I moved swiftly to hold the point of my own knife at his throat, although somewhat hampered, I have to admit, by the candlestick in my other hand. Reluctantly, he released the dagger.

‘Proceed,’ he said. ‘What do you want? Or is that a stupid question? I’m sure there’s a price on my head.’

‘Not that I know of. In any case, I don’t deal in blood money,’ I assured him, but without lowering my knife. ‘Why did you try to murder me a second time? And how did you know where I lived?’

He blinked rapidly. ‘The answer to both questions is Mistress Alefounder. She asked me to do it and she told me where to find your house. She’s afraid of you. She said you can’t keep your nose out of other people’s business and were better disposed of. Sooner or later, she thought, you’d puzzle out what was happening. It seems she was right.’

He was smiling again, so I took a chance and removed my knife from his throat. He made no move to attack me.

‘I’m not the only one who’s been looking for you,’ I said. My anger with Timothy Plummer had still not abated. ‘There’s a government spy in the city, desperate to discover your whereabouts and take you hostage for our king. A bargaining counter to use against your brother, King James. There’s also the apothecary, Silas Witherspoon, who owns the house at Rownham Passage and is one of Henry Tudor’s agents. I have reason to believe that he has also joined in the search. Now, the motives of both these men bode ill for your future good. I, on the other hand, just want to prove the innocence of a friend of mine who’s been arrested for murdering Robin Avenel.’ With a jerk of my arm, I brought up my knife again and pricked the skin of his throat. A bead of blood appeared on his neck. ‘So, what can Your High and Noble Mightiness tell me about that?’

‘I? N-Nothing,’ he stammered. But his eyes shifted sideways and downwards to try to locate his dagger.

I pressed the knife further into his thin flesh and a second gout of blood joined the first.

‘By my reckoning, Master Avenel was killed right outside this door. If you didn’t kill him, you must know who did. I just want to know the name of the murderer, that’s all. Then as far as I’m concerned, you’re free to go to Brittany or France or wherever you wish. I shan’t try to stop you, I promise.’

The sweat was standing out on his forehead in great drops.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know, I swear by Christ and all His saints.’ He made to push aside the point of my knife, but I held it steady. ‘Look,’ he said desperately, ‘in return for your help, I’ll tell you all I do know.’

‘And what help can you possibly need from me?’ I sneered.

‘I need to get away. To escape. I need a ship to carry me to France as soon as possible.’

I frowned, sensing a trap. ‘Isn’t that what you’re doing? What Mistress Alefounder is doing for you? Trying to arrange your passage to Brittany?’

The duke sat down again on the bed, emitting a little moan and burying his etiolated face in his long, thin hands.

‘I don’t want to go to Brittany,’ he said in defiant, but muffled tones. Then he raised his head, a desperate expression in the sapphire-blue eyes, and proceeded to explain.

‘When Sir Thomas St John — he’s a disaffected Lancastrian supporter of Henry Tudor — came to me at Stirling and made his proposal, I have to admit that I was excited by it. I promised I’d consider the scheme. However, before I’d had time to think about it carefully, word reached me that my younger brother, Mar, was dead, probably murdered, and I was advised to get out of Scotland before I suffered a similar fate. Sir Thomas’s offer at once took on the appearance of divine intervention. It also meant I would have protection on my journey and that my passage abroad would be arranged without any extraordinary exertion on my part. So, Sir Thomas escorted me south to this house near Bristol, where we slept the night. The next day he left me in the care of Mistress Alefounder, who would see me safely aboard the Irish ship which was to carry me to Brest, and there I should be met and cared for by others of the conspirators.’ He shrugged. ‘But it all went awry, as you know only too well. Instead of being transported to Brittany, I’ve been mewed up here for over three weeks.’

‘And you’ve had time to think,’ I suggested.

The duke laughed grimly and said something in broad Scots which I didn’t understand, then reverted to English.

‘I’ve done little else but think in between Mistress Alefounder or that pretty friend of hers bringing me my meals. I shall go mad if I have to stay walled up here much longer. And after Master Avenel’s murder, his sister’s been as jumpy as a cat on cinders — and with good reason, I suspect. Especially now you tell me that there is not only an agent of Henry Tudor living in the town, but also one of King Edward’s spies.’

‘Not “one of”,’ I corrected him. ‘The best.’

Albany cursed fluently, again in broad Scots. It sounded splendid. I wished I knew what he was saying.

He continued. ‘As I said, I’ve had time to think these past weeks and it’s brought me to my senses. I realized I’ve been deluding myself that I could ever usurp Henry Tudor’s place as the Lancastrian pretender to the English crown. Within days, hours even, of landing in Brittany, I’d be as dead as yesterday’s meat. But more than that, the whole mad scheme has as much substance as a puff of air. Henry Tudor is never going to be King of England. I’m never going to be King of England. King Edward’s hale and hearty according to all the reports I’ve ever had of him, and he’s the father of two male heirs.’ Albany gave a smile of great cunning. ‘Besides, I’d much rather be king of Scotland, and if I play my cards aright — well, who knows? Stranger things have happened. So you see — ’ he paused and spread out his hands — ‘what I need is an accomplice who might be able to help me escape to France.’

I considered him for a moment or two, still holding him at bay with my knife. Was he genuine, or was this a ploy to put me off my guard? I had to make up my mind.

‘And in return for my assistance, you agree to tell me what you know of Robin Avenel’s death?’ I asked.

‘Everything. Although in fairness I should warn you, it isn’t as much as you would wish.’

I hesitated before slowly lowering the point of my knife.

‘I’ll have to take that chance,’ I said.