10 - The Goldsmith's Daughter (11 page)

I encountered Christopher Babcary’s amused glance, and he winked at me.

‘I think the chapman wants to be off, Uncle. It’s wet and dark outside. He’s wanting the comforts of the Voyager, I reckon.’

‘Of course! Of course! My boy, you should have said. But beauty delights me.’

He led me towards the street door and the display booth, where the glitter of precious metal still enlivened the darkness. Soon everything would be taken inside and safely locked away for the night but, for the moment, the windows of the goldsmiths’ shops in West Cheap continued to sparkle like so many heavenly constellations.

As I was about to escape into the murk of the January evening, Master Babcary grabbed my arm and detained me yet again.

‘My father, you know,’ he said, his eyes glowing with excitement, ‘saw the crown brought to this country by King Richard’s first queen, Anne of Bohemia, at the end of the last century. He told me that it was the most exquisite thing he had ever laid eyes on in the whole of his life. He said it was six inches tall at its highest point, straight-sided and set with the most glorious array of jewels: scores of diamonds, rubies and sapphires and more than a hundred pearls.’ Master Babcary’s transports suddenly died away in a heavy sigh. The light left his eyes and his shoulders sagged. ‘It’s gone from these shores now, alas! It was given away by the usurper, Henry of Bolingbroke, as a part of his daughter’s dowry when he married her to Ludwig of Bavaria.’

‘Uncle!’ Christopher Babcary had come to stand beside us and slipped an affectionate arm around the older man’s shoulders. ‘Master Chapman needs to be off, and we have to start packing up for the night. Besides, it’s suppertime and I’m ravenous. My stomach is positively rumbling with all those delicious cooking smells wafting in from the kitchen.’

My host was contrite. ‘You must forgive me, lad. My family have heard all my tales so often that they derive no pleasure from hearing them any more, so a stranger is a godsend to me. Well, well! We shall see you again on Monday then.’ He shook my hand vigorously and swung round on his heel, immediately berating the unfortunate apprentice for some sin of omission or commission, I wasn’t sure which.

Christopher Babcary grinned as he opened the outer door. ‘You musn’t mind Uncle Miles,’ he apologised quietly. ‘His enthusiasm for his work can become a little wearisome after a while, and you have to ask him – politely, of course, but firmly – not to repeat all the anecdotes that you’ve heard a hundred times before. But don’t you worry! I’ll make sure he doesn’t bore you too much while you’re here.’

I thanked him, but assured him that I really didn’t mind. ‘How did his son-in-law take Master Babcary’s stories?’

Christopher’s face lost its animation. ‘Gideon was never one to wrap things up in clean linen. He would tell my uncle bluntly to hold his noise; that he had no interest in what he was saying. Indeed, Gideon made no secret of the fact that he found goldsmithing itself extremely irksome. He once told Uncle Miles to his face that he would sell the shop as soon as he was master here.’

I nodded. I should have liked to continue the conversation, but instinct told me that it was not the right time. Christopher wanted to be away to his supper, and I needed to go back to the inn to find out how Adela was faring. I therefore bade him goodnight and stepped out into the wind and the rain.

Both had increased in intensity during the last few minutes, and there was also a hint of sleet in the air. The cobbles gleamed wetly between the piles of refuse that had mounted up everywhere during the day, and their surface was treacherous and slippery. I trod warily, using my cudgel as a walking stick rather than holding it at the ready as a weapon. A sudden, particularly fierce gust of wind almost tore my cloak from my back, and I clutched at it with my free hand, holding the edges together at the neck as best I could, but unable to pull up my hood, which now lay, a soggy weight, across my shoulders. I silently cursed Master Babcary for delaying me, but reflected yet again on how much he and Gideon Bonifant must secretly have disliked one another. To be compelled to live and work together, day in, day out, under the same roof, and, at the same time, be forced to present a complaisant face to the world for Isolda’s sake, must have been purgatory for both of them. Had it eventually been enough of a spur to drive Miles Babcary to murder?

I was too tired and too preoccupied with the elements to give the idea further consideration just then, and I pushed on along West Cheap in the direction of the Poultry. The rising storm had driven most people to seek either permanent or temporary shelter indoors, and there were only two or three other intrepid walkers like myself still battling against the squalls of wind and rain. Many of the wall cressets had been doused or blown out, but shafts of light from shops and houses slabbed the darkness.

I was approaching the entrance to Gudrun Lane, a gaping mouth of blackness on my left, illuminated solely by a lamp hanging high over the doorway of a stable. As I pressed forward, my head bent against the ever increasing force of the wind, I was suddenly convinced that, out of the corner of my left eye, I had seen a movement – someone or something had retreated into the alleyway. Common sense told me that there was little significance to be attached to this fact: a man, a child, a dog, a cat was taking cover from the storm. But I discovered that for no apparent reason I was nervous. Fear slithered across the surface of my skin.

I had suddenly recollected that halfway along its length, Gudrun Lane was connected, by a little street running at right angles to it, to Foster Lane. And Foster Lane, at its southern end, joined West Cheap by the church of Saint Vedast and Master Babcary’s shop. I also remembered something else that I had lost sight of during the last two or three hours, whilst making the acquaintance of Miles Babcary’s family and servants: a member of that household could well be a murderer who would be terrified that I might discover the truth about him or her. Had someone left the house as soon as I had taken my own departure, hurrying by that circuitous route to waylay me at the entrance to Gudrun Lane?

I spun round, my cudgel gripped firmly in my right hand and raised to do whatever combat was necessary. My heart began beating faster as I entered that black void of the lane, lit by its solitary beam of light from overhead.

K
eeping close to a row of three-storeyed houses that made up the left-hand wall of Gudrun Lane, I crept forward, my cudgel at the ready, my feet squelching through puddles and piles of garbage. Once, a thin cat, disturbed from its scavenging by my approach, shot across my path with a screech of fury, making me start back and almost knocking me off balance, my heart pounding so hard that I was scarcely able to breathe. Another time, a dog, as wet and bedraggled as I must have looked myself, came sniffing and snapping around my ankles, until I kicked it away with a curse. But apart from these two incidents, nothing broke the silence except for the drumming of the rain and the gusting of the wind.

I was beginning to doubt the existence of this alley that connected Gudrun and Foster Lane – how did I know about it, anyway? I must, at sometime or another, have been this way with Philip Lamprey during one of our forays into the city – when suddenly, there it was, to my left, as narrow and as noisome as memory had painted it. I hesitated for a long moment before turning the corner, every muscle tensed in readiness for a sudden assault upon my person. But nothing happened. No one was lying in wait for me, and the wet cobbles stretched away into the darkness, lit by the pallid gleam of a torch fixed to the wall of one of the cottages and set in a sheltered nook, out of reach of the wind. The piles of rubbish were even higher here than in West Cheap, and I had to step with extreme caution so as not to lose my footing.

Beyond the range of the torchlight, I paused again, convinced that I had heard a noise some little way ahead of me: a cough, perhaps, or a sharp intake of breath.

‘Who’s there?’ I called, but there was no reply. Seconds later, a huge rat scuttled close to one of my boots and disappeared into another mound of offal and rotting vegetables a few yards behind me.

Three or four more paces brought me into Foster Lane. I turned left towards the looming bulk of Saint Vedast, and within moments was back in West Cheap, standing outside Master Babcary’s shop. I could hear voices from within raised in cheerful conversation, and the sudden peal of a woman’s laughter, but the shutters were up and there was nothing, no movement of any kind, to suggest that anyone was lurking in the surrounding shadows. Either whoever had come after me, with the intention of warning me off, had then thought better of it, or I had been a victim of my own overheated imagination. I was reluctant, however, to admit that it might be the latter.

The storm had abated somewhat, and I was gripped by a burning desire for the warmth and safety of the Voyager – its ale, its excellent food and the company of my wife. Moving as far into the centre of the thoroughfare as I dared without danger of stumbling into the open drain, I strode out as fast as I could, looking straight ahead of me and ignoring as much as possible all the black, gaping mouths of the streets and alleyways on either side of the road. Ten minutes later, I reached the Great Conduit and the entrance to Bucklersbury.

‘You’ve had a long day,’ Adela observed.

She was curled up on the bed, watching me devour a huge, steaming hot meat pie, together with a bowl of dried peas and onions. Both dishes had been served, on the orders of Reynold Makepeace himself, in the warmth and comfort of our room. My wife, who had eaten her supper before my arrival, assured me that she was feeling a great deal better, and insisted that we talk about the rigours of
my
day – although I fancied that there was an unusual touch of acerbity in her tone.

‘As a matter of fact, I have had a very tiring few hours,’ I answered defensively. ‘First, if you remember, I had to visit Mistress Shore at her house in the Strand––’

Adela, who had indeed forgotten this fact, immediately interrupted. ‘Tell me all about it!’ she commanded.

And I was allowed to go no further with the account of my doings until I had described my meeting with the King’s mistress in the the minutest detail. Adela was particularly taken with my description of the old dog on his red satin cushion, and at once pronounced Mistress Shore to be a woman very much after her own heart.

‘Jeanne Lamprey tells me that she’s popular both with the common people and at court.’ Adela tilted her head to one side. ‘So why doesn’t the Duke of Gloucester care for her, do you suppose?’

I stared consideringly at my plate. It was a question that had been nagging away at the back of my own mind ever since my meeting with the King’s mistress and the realisation that she was, in truth, as kind and as merry and as unassuming as her reputation made her out to be. Why then did the man I admired – worshipped, almost – above all others obviously have so little liking for her?

‘I think,’ I said at last, raising my eyes to my wife’s, ‘that Duke Richard regards Mistress Shore in the same light as he regards members of the Queen’s family, the Queen herself, Lord Hastings and so many others who surround the King. He sees them all as responsible in their various ways for his brother’s physical and moral decline. Oh, Edward’s handsome enough even now, I grant you, but seven years ago, around the time of the battle at Tewkesbury, he was magnificent; lean as a greyhound, strong as an ox and with a mind sharp enough to outwit all those powerful barons who had robbed him of his throne and driven him into exile.

‘But now, while he’ll never be fat on account of his great height, he’s growing corpulent, he has a double chin, he’s a pensioner of King Louis of France – a fact of which the Duke of Gloucester bitterly disapproves – and, if the gossips are to be believed, he devotes more time to pleasure than the Council Chamber. And to top everything else, he seems, finally, to have turned against his brother, George of Clarence.’

‘Your Duke sounds to me a rather puritanical young man,’ Adela observed dryly, wriggling into a more upright position on the bed, her back supported by the banked up pillows. ‘Almost a prig, but not above overlooking Mistress Shore’s faults – real or imagined – when he needs to make use of her and of her influence with the King.’

I resented any criticism, however oblique, of the Duke of Gloucester.

‘He’s trying to save his other brother’s life,’ I protested vigorously. ‘Surely a compromise with his conscience is justified under such circumstances.’

‘It depends what the Duke of Clarence has done to turn the King so irrevocably against him at last.’ Adela gave her sudden, disarming smile. ‘But don’t let’s quarrel when I haven’t seen you all day, and when I’m unlikely to see much of you for as long as it takes you to resolve this mystery. What happened at the goldsmith’s? Do you have any idea as yet whether or not the daughter really committed the crime?’ She patted her stomach. ‘Tell your son and me all about it.’

‘It might be another daughter,’ I said, somewhat rattled by her insistence that the child she was carrying was a boy. ‘What I want is a girl who looks like you.’

‘It’s a boy,’ was the confident answer. ‘And Margaret agrees with me.’

‘I don’t see how you can possibly be so sure,’ I retorted, and was rewarded with what I called her ‘knowing’ expression – a slight smile of contempt for my male ignorance, accompanied by a look of pity. A shake of her head implied that it would be fruitless to continue a discussion in which I was so plainly at a disadvantage.

As I had come to realise over the years that all pregnant women, however rational in other ways, adopt this omniscient attitude towards the mysteries of childbirth, especially when addressing a man, I let the subject drop and launched into a recital of everything that had happened at Master Babcary’s shop.

‘So you see,’ I said when I had finished, ‘there are still many enquiries to make before I can offer an opinion as to Mistress Bonifant’s guilt or innocence. To begin with, apart from the family and servants, there were three other people present in the house on the night of Gideon’s death – three neighbours to whom I have not even spoken as yet.’