But that, I had to admit, was no more than guesswork. There had indeed been trouble in Scotland, according to the Dominican friar who had stopped to refresh himself at the Full Moon. King James III had quarrelled with his brothers: one, the Earl of Mar, had died in suspicious circumstances; the other, the Duke of Albany, had fled, no one knew whither. But supposing he was here, in Bristol … Yet what possible connection could there be between Lancastrian supporters of Henry Tudor, such as Elizabeth Alefounder and Robin Avenel, and a royal duke of Scotland escaping his brother’s wrath?
To add to my confusion, I was also faced with an Irish slaver who – it seemed likely – had been about to double-cross the Avenels and who had been summarily murdered for his pains by a pair of ruthless women, who had at first mistaken me for him. And now Robin Avenel himself was dead, but by whose hand? And why had he risked breaking into my house a week and more ago? What had he been hoping to do or find?
My head was beginning to ache, and not just because of the sun’s relentless glare, but I did my best to ignore it and continue with my train of thought. Although Edgar Capgrave had observed Rowena Hollyns returning with her mistress from Rownham Passage, her gown muddied and wet, he swore that she could not have left by the Frome Gate earlier that same day without him having seen her. Or, rather, without him
remembering
to have seen her. There was a difference, and it might be that his memory was not as infallible as he thought it.
All the same, had not Jess, the kitchen maid, told me less than an hour since that the blue brocade gown belonged not to Rowena, but to Mistress Avenel? And that her mistress complained of not being able to find it? If that were so, had it merely been mislaid or had it been taken by someone else? And if so, by whom and why? Jess had also denied Rowena’s ownership of a pair of red shoes. Indeed, I already knew that Robin Avenel had possessed red shoes; one of them still reposed in my secret hiding place, along with the ring I had found in the ‘murder’ house. But I was still uncertain of the significance of either item …
I was beginning to nod off by now, and made a determined effort to keep myself awake, sucking in great gulps of air and agitating my feet in the river. But it was no good. Fatigue and heat won the unequal contest, and I was vaguely aware of my chin falling forward on my chest before I was lost in a scene that seemed to have no connection with any of the myriad thoughts milling around inside my head.
I think I have said somewhere before in these chronicles that my mother was gifted with the ‘sight’, something that I have inherited but which visits me very rarely and then only in the form of dreams …
Now, I was standing in the crypt of Saint Giles, but the rows of shelves and coffins had disappeared and I was at the bottom of the steps leading down from the nave. But it was not the present staircase; indeed I knew – although how I knew was a mystery – that the church was a different building. It was not even a church any more.
Above my head, I could hear a mob baying for blood, hammering and battering at the outer door, screaming filth and imprecations in the mindless way that only a crowd can do. I have seen it happen too often: people lose their souls; all vestige of human dignity and kindness desert them and they turn into ravening beasts. I could feel the hair rising along my scalp, even though, in the strange way of dreams, I knew I was not their quarry.
I moved forward effortlessly, weightlessly, skimming the ground along the length of that great cellar. From somewhere overhead came the sound of rending wood and the crash of the door caving in. Blood-curdling shouts of triumph preceded the rush of feet towards the cellar stairs and my heart started to beat so fast that I could scarcely breathe. People were in danger and I had to reach them before their persecutors did …
I could see them now, faint shapes in the darkness, illuminated by the flickering glow of rushlights and candles. There were about a score, all men, and wearing – judging by some ancient illustrations I had seen – the Jewish gabardine.
‘What are you doing? Why are you still here?’ I yelled, but although my lips moved no sound came out. ‘The others have all gone! Why haven’t you gone with them?’
But they couldn’t hear me any more than I could hear myself. They turned and looked straight through me, foreknowledge of death already written on their faces.
‘Why did you wait?’ I demanded again. ‘Why didn’t you leave with the others?’
But they took no notice, blowing out the candles and all pressing hard up against the furthest wall. Then, in a great rush of noise and movement, the mob was upon them, slaughtering them like beasts in the shambles until the floor and walls ran red with blood. One of the crowd set fire to a man’s gabardine with his torch, another dashed someone’s head in with his club. And yet a third took hold of me by the shoulder and shook me violently, urging me to move. I spun round, fetching him a blow across his cheek, and found myself flat on my back on the river bank, staring up stupidly into the cowled features of one of the Dominican friars.
‘Riding the night mare, Roger?’ enquired a familiar voice ruefully as the man rubbed his face where my hand had caught him. ‘If all that snorting and threshing of limbs is anything to judge by, you must be suffering from a very bad conscience. Or I suppose, knowing you, it might just be too much ale and victuals.’
‘T–Timothy?’ I stuttered, my brain still feeling as if it were stuffed with feathers, and trying desperately to shake off the clinging remnants of my dream. ‘Timothy Plummer?’
He sat down beside me on the grass, tucking surplus folds of the habit, which was far too large for him, around his knees.
‘The very same,’ he grunted.
My mind was beginning to clear and I sat up with such force that I almost knocked him over.
‘Where have you been?’ I roared. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere for days. And what in heaven’s name are you doing dressed up as a Dominican friar?’
‘I’m staying with the brothers in the friary,’ he answered mildly. ‘I’m less conspicuous if I blend in with my surroundings. And could you try not to be so rough? That’s the second time in minutes that you’ve attacked me. What’s making you so angry?’
‘You are,’ I replied in a more subdued tone, but with enough venom to let him know that I was still not mollified. ‘Finished playing the beggar now, have you? Now that your testimony has got a friend of mine arrested and charged with a murder he didn’t commit.’
‘Ah!’ Timothy paused to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his habit. ‘So that’s it. I thought if I started that particular hare, our good friend Richard Manifold might go chasing after it. It seems I haven’t been disappointed.’
‘Burl Hodge did not kill Robin Avenel,’ I hissed furiously. ‘You know he didn’t.’
Timothy laid a restraining hand on one of my arms, and it was only then that I realized my own hands had balled themselves into fists.
‘How do you know your friend is innocent?’ he asked softly. ‘Have you any proof?’
‘Not yet,’ I snapped. ‘But I mean to find some.’ I turned to look at my companion, scrutinizing him narrowly. ‘I’m sure you have a very good idea as to the name of the real murderer.’
He lowered his hood and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t. I wish I had. It might indeed be your friend, this Burl Hodge, for all I know.’
‘And you think I’ll believe that?’ I sneered.
Timothy shrugged. ‘You must believe what you will. It happens to be the truth. I didn’t want Robin Avenel dead. At least, not until …’ He broke off, looking vexed.
‘Until what?’ I asked, feeling daunted. I had counted on being able to prove Burl’s innocence once I had found the Spymaster General. But now
he
had found
me
and I was no further forward. My mind was still clogged with my dream, trying to interpret its meaning, and I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying. I just made a stab in the dark. ‘You were hoping he would lead you to the Duke of Albany, I suppose.’
The effect of my words on Timothy was as unexpected as it was startling. Taken unawares, I found myself lying once again flat on my back with my companion’s fingers around my throat.
‘What do you know about the Duke of Albany? Where is he?’
I made a gurgling sound, unable to speak, and felt the blood pounding inside my skull. Recovering from my surprise, I took hold of Timothy’s skinny wrists in a grip of steel and prised his hands from my neck. Then I rolled over, coughing violently and pinioning him beneath my weight.
‘Don’t,’ I said, bringing my face as close to his as I dared without being asphyxiated by his breath, ‘ever do that to me again. I don’t like it.’
I held him down until I could see that he was struggling for air, then freed him. He sat up, every bit as furious as I had been.
‘Don’t threaten me with what you like and don’t like, Roger! I could have you arrested and tried for treason as easily as I could spit in the river there. I hold a warrant and a token of credence from the King. There isn’t a sheriff in the country who wouldn’t acknowledge their authority and do my bidding. So if you’ve any sense, which I sometimes doubt, you’ll answer my question. What do you know about the Duke of Albany, and how do you know it?’
I rubbed my throat and hawked and coughed a bit more, just for appearances’ sake and to make him wait, as well as to impress upon him that he had done me serious injury. But I could tell he was growing impatient and so, without further ado, I explained how I had come by such knowledge as I possessed.
When I had finished, I could sense rather than see his disappointment. He sighed.
‘You don’t really know anything,’ he said. ‘You’ve just been bumbling around in your usual incompetent fashion, nosing out a fact here and a bit of gossip there, then adding a rumour or two and a few lucky guesses to the brew until it’s all bubbling away inside your head like a bad cook’s mess of pottage.’
I knew that when Timothy began insulting me, I was closer to the truth than he liked. I squeezed the water out of the feet of my hose and turned to look at him.
‘Stop waxing poetical and just tell me what’s going on. You ought to know by now that you can trust me.’
He thought about this, staring at the sunlight sparkling on the river, brilliant discs of gold like newly minted pennies. Then he heaved another sigh, this time of resignation.
‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘But I can’t tell you who murdered Robin Avenel, because I don’t know. That is the truth. Of course,’ he added, puckering his thin lips judiciously, ‘my guess, if I had to make one, would be Silas Witherspoon.’
‘
Silas Witherspoon?
In God’s name, why?’
Timothy shot me a sideways glance. ‘I’m trusting you as you requested, Roger – interfering, disobedient fool though you are. I gave you strict instructions not to get involved in this.’ He gave a short bark of laughter that sounded almost affectionate. ‘I might have known I was wasting my breath!’
‘In the name of Gabriel and all the angels, just get on and give me the facts,’ I begged. ‘Why Silas Witherspoon?’
‘He’s a Tudor agent. Has been for years.’
‘You know this for a fact?’ My companion nodded. I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. ‘But in that case, why haven’t you got rid of him? Even if there’s no positive proof, don’t try telling me you couldn’t manufacture some if you put your mind to it.’
Timothy leaned forward and trailed a hand in the river, frightening a moorhen who had rashly ventured forth from her nest among the reeds.
‘Don’t underestimate me, Roger, by supposing that I don’t know how to do my job. Of course I can tighten the noose around Silas’s neck any time I please. But what would be the point, have you thought of that? Another agent would only be sent from Brittany to take his place; a man who would be unknown to us and whose identity would have to be discovered all over again. As it is, Apothcary Witherspoon is closely watched by the Sheriff and his men and is even, on occasions, given false information to confuse our Lancastrian friends across the Channel. One day his time will come, but not just yet.’
I rubbed my forehead, trying to adjust my mind to this new vision of Silas Witherspoon as an agent of Henry Tudor.
‘So,’ I said at last, ‘he and the Avenels are bedfellows?’
Timothy dried his wet hand by shaking it, the iridescent drops flying in all directions like a miniature rainstorm.
‘They were,’ he conceded, ‘until lately. But not, I fancy, any more.’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged, when he seemed disinclined to continue.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘We–ell, I fancy it’s a matter of loyalties. There have been rumours coming out of Brittany for some months past – you may even have heard them yourself – that Henry Tudor has been ill. He’s always been of a sickly constitution, but recently there have been, or so I’m told, serious worries amongst his followers concerning his general health. In short, there are fears that he might die before he can make old bones. So you see the Lancastrian dilemma.’
I did indeed. The direct male line of Henry of Bolingbroke had come to an end, first at Tewkesbury, with the death in battle of his great-grandson, Prince Edward, and then, subsequently, with the death in the Tower of London of his grandson, the boy’s father, King Henry VI, who had died, we were informed, of ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’. (And if you believed that you had to be the most credulous fool in Christendom.) The Lancastrian cause was in decline, as were its contenders for the English crown. Henry Tudor, who, through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was the great-great-grandson of John of Gaunt and his third wife and former mistress, Katherine Swynford, was the best that supporters of the Red Rose could find. But his claim was thin and tarnished by the Bend Sinister. If he were to die, who could be found to replace him?
‘You mean …?’ I began, but hesitated.
Timothy nodded. ‘There are certain Lancastrian supporters who have been casting around for another claimant to the throne. The Scottish king and his siblings are all grandchildren of James I’s queen, Joan Beaufort, who was herself a grandchild of John of Gaunt and his paramour, Lady Swynford. So you see, this quarrel between King James and his brothers set some of Henry Tudor’s disaffected supporters thinking.’