Wheel of Fate

SEVENTEEN

It was still barely light the following morning when I said goodbye to Adela and the children (and of course Hercules) in the courtyard of Blossom’s Inn. St Laurence the Deacon, in his flowery border, looked down benevolently upon us from his sign which swung gently to and fro in a faint, barely perceptible breeze. Jack, anxious to get started, contained his soul in patience while we took our fond farewells.

‘I give you four weeks,’ Adela said as she held me tightly and kissed my cheek. ‘Do you hear me, Roger? If you are no nearer solving this mystery in a month’s time, you are to make your excuses to Oswald and Clemency and Sybilla and start for home. Promise me. I won’t leave unless you do.’

‘Four weeks,’ I agreed, returning her embrace. ‘As near as possible,’ I added as a sop to those uneasy reservations which always plagued me.

She flashed me a suspicious look as, with Jack’s help, she stepped into the back of the empty cart. A basket of food and drink had been supplied by Arbella and I handed over a purseful of money to meet her immediate needs. (I had spent very little in the past three weeks since leaving Bristol thanks to the generosity of the Godsloves — yet another reason why I felt unable to abandon them.) Jack climbed on to the driver’s seat and was about to give the command ‘Gee up!’ when Adam suddenly scrambled towards me, standing up in the tail of the cart.

‘Remembered,’ he announced cryptically, ignoring his mother’s reprimand and leaning over to put his arms around my neck. ‘Woman,’ he said, adding impatiently as he encountered my uncomprehending stare, ‘Woman talking to Celia in the garden. Remembered!’

I took a deep breath. ‘You mean that the day you overheard Celia speaking to someone in the garden at the Arbour it was another woman’s voice you heard? You’re sure of that? Think carefully, Adam. It’s important.’

He nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said.

‘You haven’t been up until now.’

He gave a weary sigh: adults were such a trial. ‘Told you. Just remembered. Didn’t remember before. Do now.’

I kissed him soundly. ‘You’re a very clever boy.’ He shot me the same sort of leery look that his mother had given me (he was unnervingly like her on occasions). He knew when he was being patronized. ‘I mean it,’ I assured him and kissed him again.

Then they were off. I stood waving until they were out of sight, lost among all the early-morning traffic of the streets, before entering the ale-room of the inn and ordering myself a large pot of the very best brew. The place was fairly deserted at such an early hour of the morning and I was able to sit quietly at a corner table without being disturbed by garrulous neighbours, all longing to share their life histories with me.

I was thankful that I had things to think about or parting with my family would have been less bearable. We seemed to have grown exceptionally close during the twelve days I had spent at the Arbour in spite of the doom and gloom surrounding us, and for a brief while I worried that I was losing my taste for freedom. But by the time I was halfway through my second pot of ale, the feeling of being unencumbered, and therefore at liberty to please myself without any restraint being placed upon me, had returned in full force. I was my own man again.

I considered my dream of the previous night, and not only that. In the hour just before dawn, that hour when there is a sudden shift in the light, I had jerked wide awake with the words of Margaret Walker ringing loud and clear in my head: ‘I recollect my poor father going to see them once, on his own. He came back absolutely appalled. I can remember him exclaiming, “Eight children! Eight of them! You can imagine the noise! All of them talking and shouting together!” I think it made him thankful that he only had the one.’ William Woodward had been talking about the Godsloves.

The dream and subsequent memory had plainly been evoked by Lord Hastings’s mention of eight conspirators (and yet again I added the qualification ‘if that’s what they are’) but I was still unsure of the number’s significance. I knew I was being obtuse and that God was prompting me towards a solution of this mystery concerning Oswald and his siblings, but for the moment all was still dark. And why had I dreamed about Celia’s blue cloak? This explanation was also hovering just out of reach, like the butterflies I used to try to catch as a boy in the countryside around Wells, but which always eluded my destructive, grasping fingers. Furthermore, my walk with Adela the previous afternoon kept obtruding on my thoughts just as though it, too, ought to have some special importance for me.

I pushed away my by now empty pot and stretched my long legs out in front of me under the table, closing my eyes and trying hard to concentrate on all the facts I had gathered about the Godslove family, the chief of which was that they had some terrible secret hidden in their past — provided, that was, that my little kitchen maid had not misinterpreted what she had overheard. If this were indeed the case, then it was more than possible that they had an enemy out there somewhere; an implacable foe ready to do them harm and bent on vengeance. But vengeance for what? And how long had they — or he or she — been biding their time? I decided that the moment had come, Adela no longer being present to be embarrassed by my behaviour, to tackle the remaining three family members on the subject.

I suddenly realized that Oswald had never provided me with the names of any former clients who might possibly hold a grudge against him, in spite of his having promised to do so. Did this mean that he knew of somebody who hated him; somebody whom he had wronged or failed or allowed to be condemned when he knew the person to be innocent? Oddly enough, I didn’t think so. I felt convinced that he was genuinely unaware of anyone connected with his calling as a lawyer who would go to such lengths as murder — or paying others to do murder for him — simply for the sake of revenge. And yet I felt certain that, deep down, Oswald was afraid of something to which he refused to admit. The terrible secret? Most probably. That is, if there really was one. .

I stood up abruptly, knocking over my empty pot. This was getting me nowhere. I was going round in circles, the trouble being that I wasn’t sure what to do next. I remembered Adam’s parting words that it was a woman he had heard talking to Celia just before the latter disappeared, so if Roderick Jeavons was involved, could it have been his sister, Mistress Ireby, delivering a false message to lure Celia away? And then it occurred to me to wonder why Celia had not returned briefly to the kitchen, to inform Arbella or one of the maids that she was going out and where she was bound. She must have stepped indoors, into the passageway, for a second or two to fetch a cloak, because Father Berowne had seen her wearing one. And it would have been only the work of a moment to put her head around the door to speak to the housekeeper. But then again, had it really been Celia that the priest had seen or had he been mistaken. .?

Of course he had been mistaken! He had said the woman had been wearing a blue cloak, and Celia’s blue cloak was still hanging in the kitchen passageway. Adela had put it on the previous evening when we had gone for our farewell stroll in the garden. That was what my dream had been trying to tell me. But even so, I still had no clue as to what had happened to Celia or where on earth she might be.

I sat down again and called for a third pot of ale while yet again I tried to figure out what to do next. It seemed to me that I was getting in a muddle. This was one problem which I seemed unable to solve and I hated to be defeated. It was an affront to my pride.

‘Drowning your sorrows, Roger?’ asked a familiar voice.

I turned my head and saw Timothy Plummer sitting alongside me. He gave a lugubrious smile and whistled for the pot boy.

‘You don’t look any too happy yourself,’ I retorted, my conscience pricking me as I wondered if I should tell him what I knew — or thought I knew — about the Lord Chamberlain. But self-interest won and I kept silent. ‘Is anything the matter?’

‘Anything the matter?’ he spluttered. ‘With the duke’s life in danger every hour of the day! And you ask if anything’s the matter!’

‘Is his life in danger?’ I enquired uneasily. ‘I thought the Woodville bid for power had been scotched. Someone told me that Earl Rivers and Sir Richard Grey and Sir Thomas Vaughan have been imprisoned up north where they can’t do any further harm.’

‘And the Queen Dowager is still in Westminster Sanctuary,’ he snapped back, ‘at liberty to plot and scheme. Edward Woodville is at sea with half the royal treasure and her other brother, our precious Bishop of Salisbury, is spreading sedition and lies wherever he can.’ He took a swig of the ale which the pot boy had just set before him. ‘I tell you, Roger, the duke is a worried man. His whole way of life is like to come crashing down about his ears if the Woodvilles have any say in the matter. For years now he’s been sovereign in all but name in the north. The late king let him have his way in everything, and rightly so. Duke Richard has been the most effective and just administrator that part of the country has ever known. Yorkshiremen adore him, and that’s no exaggeration. Of course, it ain’t endeared him to the Percy family who’ve grown used to having it all their own way for centuries past. They’ll do him an ill turn if they can. And then there’s the little king himself. A Woodville to his fingertips if all I hear is true, and none too happy with his Uncle Richard. Not, I suppose, that you can blame him, poor little bugger. But you can’t help remembering the late King Henry and Humphrey of Gloucester. I overheard our own duke mention it to Buckingham only the other day, how Good Duke Humphrey died in very mysterious circumstances as soon as his nephew was old enough to rule for himself.’

‘Worrying,’ I agreed, but half-heartedly. I had worries of my own to concern me.

‘How long are you staying in London?’ Timothy asked, draining his cup. His tone of voice put me instinctively on my guard.

‘Not long,’ I answered quickly. ‘In fact Adela and the children and Hercules have already left for Bristol. That’s why I’m here. A friend of ours, a carter who’s been disappointed of a load, is able to take them all the way home. I shall follow them as soon as I can.’

‘Hercules?’ Timothy queried with a puckered brow.

‘My dog.’

‘Dear sweet virgin! You mean that mangy cur you dignify with the name of dog?’ He moved closer to me on the bench and lowered his voice. ‘Listen, Roger. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave the capital. The duke may need your services before all’s done. I don’t know what’s in the wind — in fact I don’t know for certain that anything is in the wind — but I do know I’m feeling damned uneasy. A sixth sense is telling me that all’s not well. It’s no good asking me why, but I’ll say this. Ever since you got back from France last year, Duke Richard has been unsettled. Even up north, where he’s usually at his happiest and most carefree, he’s been preoccupied. And after news reached us of King Edward’s death, well. . He was upset naturally. Grief-stricken. He was devoted to his brother, as you know better than most people. But there was more to it than that. Of course he assembled all the magnates of the region, had a solemn Mass sung for the repose of the late king’s soul and then, himself included, made everyone swear an oath of allegiance to the new young king. And yet. .’

‘And yet?’ I prompted, my attention caught in spite of myself.

The spymaster shrugged. ‘There’s something about him I can’t quite define. An edginess, a withdrawal into himself, an unhappiness almost, as though he’s constantly wrestling with some knotty problem that the rest of us can’t be allowed to share.’ He called for a second pot of ale before continuing. ‘And the business at Northampton shook him to his very foundations. I don’t think he imagined that the queen and her family would move against him so swiftly and with such malice. If it hadn’t been for Henry of Buckingham being privy to the Woodvilles’ intentions and then deciding to throw in his lot with his cousin instead of his in-laws, it’s more than probable that by now Prince Richard would either be a prisoner at Grafton Regis or — even more likely — he would be dead. Murdered like the previous Duke of Gloucester, poor old Humphrey.’

‘And you think that Buckingham was telling the truth? About the plot, I mean. Not just trying to curry favour with the man who will undoubtedly be nominated as Protector by the council?’

Timothy was indignant. ‘Why would he need to curry favour? As husband of the Queen Dowager’s sister he’d have done as well, if not better, to have stayed with the Woodvilles. It’s a serious threat, Roger. As Spymaster General I know for a fact that men have already been despatched to man the fortifications on the Isle of Wight and at Portsmouth. Furthermore, Sir Thomas Fulford and Sir Edward Brampton have both been ordered to sea to intercept Edward Woodville and his merry band of pirates who are apparently trying to join up with some French privateers, at present threatening the southern coast.’

I grimaced. ‘As bad as that, eh?’

‘If not worse.’ He shook my arm. ‘So keep your ear to the ground, my friend, and if you see or hear anything — anything at all — let me know at once. And, as I say, don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave London. You may be needed. It’s a great piece of good fortune you being here just at this time.’

If he hadn’t added those last two sentences, I would have told him what I knew there and then. Indeed, I had drawn a breath ready to speak. But at his words, I expelled it again and sat silent, staring into my empty beaker. I realized that if I was not to be inveigled into Duke Richard’s affairs by Timothy Plummer I had best keep quiet about the house in Old Dean’s Lane and what I had overheard. I also had to apply my mind to this business of the Godsloves and either come to a conclusion as quickly as was humanly possible, or express my regrets and shake the dust of the capital from my boots as rapidly as I could.

I rose to my feet. ‘I’ll-er-let you know if I hear anything, Timothy,’ I said, lying through my teeth. ‘I shall be resident in Bishop’s Gate Street Without for a while yet, I daresay.’ I crossed my fingers behind my back.

He nodded. ‘See that you do. By the way, what do you know about the Bishop of Bath and Wells?’

‘Robert Stillington? Nothing much, Why do you ask?’

Timothy swallowed his ale. ‘No reason, except that he’s from your part of the world. And he’s turned up at Crosby’s Place a couple of times lately and been closeted with the duke.’

‘Has he now?’ I sucked my teeth thoughtfully. ‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ I said, ‘let me remind you that the bishop was very close to the Duke of Clarence. In fact he was imprisoned for a while round about the time of Clarence’s trial and execution. It might have been a coincidence, of course. And then again it might not.’

Timothy looked sick. ‘You’re right. It had slipped my mind. I must be losing my grip on things.’ He also stood up and straightened his tunic. ‘I’m unhappy about the way things are going, Roger, and that’s a fact.’

‘And where are they going?’ I asked.

The spymaster sighed. ‘I don’t honestly know, and that’s the problem.’ He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height (which was a little below my own shoulders). ‘But just remember what I’ve said to you. If you hear or see anything, anything at all in the least suspicious or that you think I ought to know about, get in touch with me at once. If I’m not there, a message left at Crosby’s Place will bring me up to this house you’re staying at as soon as possible.’

Once again, I nearly spoke, but once again self-interest held me silent. We walked together down St Lawrence’s Lane into Cheapside, but there we parted, he striding off in the direction of the Strand and Westminster and I loitering on the corner. Various cries of ‘Hot sheep’s feet!’, ‘Pies!’, ‘Ribs of beef!’ reminded me that I had breakfasted very early with Adela and the children, and that my belly was now rumbling with hunger. I approached the beef vendor.

‘How many ribs for a farthing?’ I asked.

‘Eight. Got yer bowl with you, sunshine?’

‘No. . No, I haven’t,’ I said slowly. There it was again. What was it about the number eight that bothered me so much? I became aware that the street-seller was speaking. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

He cast his eyes up to heaven (or what we could see of it between the overhanging eaves of the houses). ‘I said, dozy, I’ll lend you a bowl.’ He took one from a pile on the edge of the tray strapped around his neck. ‘And that’ll be another farthing until I get it back.’ He ladled eight ribs into the bowl, adding, ‘I’ll be around here fer a bit yet awhile.’

I thanked him and retreated to lean against the nearest wall, out of the path of the constant stream of traffic that screeched and rumbled its way along this busiest of thoroughfares, while I sucked the ribs clean of meat and upended the bowl to drink the gravy. I had just finished and was looking around for the vendor in order to return my empty basin, when I was pounced on by a vaguely familiar figure who shouted, ‘It’s you again, is it?’

Adrian Jollifant! By sheer ill-luck I had chosen to prop myself against the wall of the silversmith’s shop. I gave an elaborate sigh. ‘What do you want with me now, sir?’

He looked me up and down. ‘Damn me if I can make out who or what you are,’ he complained peevishly. ‘One time you’re dressed up as fine as five pence, mounted on a decent horse, another time you’re playing the country bumpkin but buying a ring for your wife, and now you look like a servant, but talk like an educated man.’ Without giving me a chance to reply, he continued, ‘Where’s that thieving rapscallion Oswald Godslove? Is the old sod going to sell my house back to me or is he not? I warn you, he’ll be sorry if he doesn’t.’

I turned to face him. ‘And if he won’t agree, which I can tell you here and now is the case, what will you do to him, Master Jollifant? What can you do?’

I must have looked and sounded fiercer than I intended because he backed away, stuttering, ‘D-don’t you dare hit me again or I’ll have the law on you, whoever you are. And being a friend of that cursed robber won’t help you!’

I calmed down a little. ‘I have no desire to hit you,’ I said, ‘and only did so before because you attacked me first.’ I put two or three paces between us to demonstrate that I meant him no harm, and as I did so, caught a flicker of movement at the second-floor window which bellied out over the street. ‘Who’s that upstairs?’ I demanded sharply.

The silversmith stared at me for a moment or two as if I had taken leave of my senses before his anger got the better of him again. ‘What in the devil’s name has it got to do with you?’ he asked furiously. ‘It’s my old father if you want to know.’

I could see that he had left the shop door open. To distract his attention, I stooped and put the beef-seller’s bowl carefully on the ground; then, before he could divine my intention, I straightened up and made a dash for it, through the shop, vaguely aware of the gaping mouths of the apprentices, to the flight of stairs beyond. At the top of this was a narrow landing and, because of my familiarity, five years earlier, with the old Babcary shop, I knew exactly where to find the steps leading to the upper floor. Once there, I could see a door partially open and, without any hesitation, pushed it wide and went in.

The pathetic occupant, a white-haired, rheumy-eyed old man, sat trembling on his bed, the frayed end of the rope which normally tethered him to the bedpost held limply on one hand.

‘I-it snapped,’ he whimpered. ‘It-it wasn’t my fault, Adrian. I-it just snapped. I only had a peep out o’ the window. No one s-saw me. I–I promise.’ He was terrified, and, I guessed, with some reason. A stick stood in one corner of the room, a nasty thin cane which could wreak havoc with the flesh. And as my eyes grew accustomed to gloom, I noticed raised wheals on the backs of the old man’s hands and on one of his cheeks.

As I moved into the light filtering through the grime of the windows, he stammered, ‘Wh-who are you? Y-you’re not my son.’

‘No, I’m not,’ I answered grimly and swung round furiously as Adrian Jollifant puffed and panted his way into the room.

‘Get out of here!’ he shrieked. ‘Get out! You’re trespassing!’

‘And you’re trying to murder your father!’ I accused him. ‘You’re mistreating him, and starving him, too, by the look of it. Mistress Napier told me that there were rumours you’d done away with him, but she thought he was just ill and confined to bed. Well, he is confined to bed, isn’t he? He’s tied to it, and until the rope snapped he couldn’t even reach the window. Just helping him on his way, are you? And no doubt you’ll give him a splendid funeral once he is dead so that all the neighbours can come and pay their respects. And, of course, they will all accept that you really are the master of the shop at last.’

‘It’s none of your business,’ Adrian Jollifant screamed. ‘He’s a meddling, stupid old fool who thinks he knows better than anyone else. I hate him! I’ve always hated him! Now get out!’

‘Oh, I’ll get out,’ I said, advancing and towering over him. ‘And the first thing I’m going to do is to inform all your neighbours what’s going on here. I’d be prepared for some very angry visitors if I were you. Not to mention representatives of the law you’re so fond of invoking.’

He blenched. ‘You-you wouldn’t do that,’ he faltered.

‘Just watch me,’ I snarled, and seized hold of the cane. ‘But before I do, I’ve a good mind to give you a thrashing.’ He shrank back. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I sneered, suddenly sickened by him, ‘I won’t touch you. But I shall carry out my promise to tell your neighbours about your father’s plight unless I get your solemn word that your treatment of him will alter. I’ll tell you something else,’ I added. ‘Again according to Mistress Napier, there’s been talk that you might have murdered your first wife in order to marry your second. And if people realize that you and she have been trying to murder your father, there may be more than just talk. There may be accusations brought.’

The silversmith looked so terrified now that I felt almost certain that the rumours concerning him and the first Mistress Jollifant were true. I pressed home my advantage.

‘And there’s another condition for my silence.’ I seized him by the shoulders, pinning him back against the bedchamber wall. ‘You’ll leave my friends, the Godsloves, alone. You’ll give up this insane pretence that somehow the Arbour belongs to you. Now!’ I let him go and wiped my hands down the side of my breeches. ‘I’ll be back in three days to see that you’ve amended your ways. If not, or if I’m denied entrance, I shall carry out my threat. But before I go, you are going to give me permission to search the whole of this house, attic to cellar, just to make sure that you’re not holding Celia Godslove a prisoner.’

I could tell by the blank expression on his face that he neither remembered Oswald’s accusation of Sunday nor understood what I was talking about. Nevertheless, he made no effort to stop me, even following me downstairs to detail one of the apprentices to show me round the cellar. If looks could have killed I would have been a dead man, and I experienced a few qualms about descending into the depths, but he made no attempt to follow me, a circumstance for which I was truly grateful.

By the time I had finished my search, I was convinced that, whatever else he was or was not guilty of, Adrian Jollifant was not Celia’s abductor. I had looked under every bed, in every cupboard, in every place, however absurd, where there was even the remotest chance that she could be hidden. If nothing else had convinced me, the return to the shop of the second Mistress Jollifant would have made up my mind for me. She might have dimpled cheeks and a sweet little turned-up nose, but she had a gimlet eye and a mouth that shut like a trap when, as now, she was displeased. Her husband would have had no chance to conceal another woman in the house while she was around. I gave her a brief bow and left the silversmith to explain my presence as best he could. Had he been a different sort of man, I would have wished him luck. As it was, I hoped he would get all that was coming to him.

As I left the shop, I said, ‘Remember! Three days.’

Then I was gone, walking eastwards along Cheapside.

So that was that. Adrian Jollifant was no longer a suspect as far as I was concerned. And I felt as reasonably certain as it was possible to be that Roderick Jeavons was not the culprit, either. So who was this implacable enemy of the Godsloves, determined to eliminate them all one by one? And what, if any, significance did the number eight have? God was doing his best to enlighten me, but I was proving to be singularly obtuse, probably because there was another, greater distraction nagging away at the back of my mind. Did I tell Timothy Plummer what I knew? Was the duke’s life truly in danger? Were the Woodvilles really plotting his downfall? Did this strange uneasiness which seemed to have the city in its grip have any foundation in fact?

I didn’t know. And I doubted, at that point, if anyone else did either.