14 - The Burgundian's Tale (4 page)

In fact, Timothy appeared only briefly before handing me over to a young officer of the Gloucester household named Bertram Serifaber – a stocky, curly-haired young man, as friendly as he was bright and quick-witted.

‘I’m to assist you in any way I can,’ he told me. ‘I’m at your disposal for as long as you need me, and all my other duties are to be subordinated to your demands.’ He smiled happily at the prospect and his brown eyes sparkled. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he admitted candidly. ‘These state occasions can be a bore. There’s such a lot of standing around, just twiddling one’s thumbs. Trying to track down a murderer will be much more fun.’

‘Only trying?’ I teased. ‘You should have more confidence in me, my little locksmith.’

He blushed, then quickly forgot his embarrassment and grinned. ‘You’re right. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were, or are, all serifabers, but mending and fitting locks didn’t appeal to me. When my father did some work in the royal palace at Westminister a year or so ago, I accompanied him, which is how I met Master Plummer. He was in the service of the King at the time, as I expect you know.’ I nodded. ‘Well, he took a liking to me, thought me bright enough to be trained as a future spy and persuaded my father at least to let me try. Mind you,’ my new young friend added with a sigh, ‘I didn’t bargain on Master Plummer returning to the Duke of Gloucester’s household and having to go with him to Yorkshire.’

He spoke the last word with the kind of scorn reserved by all Londoners for anywhere outside the capital, but I was used to that. My lips might have twitched, but I hid my amusement and said bracingly, ‘Well, you’re back home now.’

‘But not for long. It’ll be Scotland next,’ he added gloomily, ‘if all the rumours are true.’ Then what was plainly his natural buoyancy shone through and he gave me a blinding smile. ‘However, anything’s better than locksmithing, and you do get to see a bit of the world. And now that I’m trying – oops! sorry! –
going
to solve a murder with you, perhaps I’ll be noticed by the King and My Lord of Gloucester and Duchess Margaret.’ He didn’t add, ‘Things are looking up!’ but the words were implicit in his general demeanour. He was an optimist and nothing could alter that fact.

‘Then we’d better make a start,’ I suggested. ‘As we’re not far from Fleet Street, you can show me first where this Fulk Quantrell was murdered.’ I had a moment’s misgiving. ‘You do know all about this killing, I suppose? Master Plummer has explained everything to you?’

Bertram Serifaber nodded vigorously. ‘He’s told me all that he knows, yes. But it’s not very much now, is it?’

I laughed and agreed.

We left London by the Lud Gate, under the raised portcullis, past the guards whose job it was to turn back any lepers who tried to enter the city, and across the drawbridge that spanned the ditch. I had forgotten how much bigger, dirtier and noisier London was even than Bristol, the second city in the kingdom; and long before we reached our destination my head was aching from the incessant cries of the street vendors, the chiming of the bells and the effort of pushing my way through the jostling crowds. The screech and rattle of carts, many driven at breakneck speed, was the inevitable prelude to being splashed with mud and refuse from the central drain. I cursed loudly and openly wished myself at home; but at the same time, there was a vitality, a sense of urgency about life in London that I secretly found exhilarating.

I remembered Fleet Street from my previous visits to the capital: a road leading from the Lud Gate at one end and merging into the Strand at the other. The River Fleet ran at right angles to it, as did Shoe Lane and the Bailey, and the houses that flanked it on either side were three-storeyed dwellings of fair proportions, home to the well-to-do, but nothing like as opulent as the nobles’ mansions in the neighbouring Strand.

‘It was here,’ my companion said eagerly, darting ahead of me as we approached the turning to Faitour – or Fetter, as my London friend pronounced it – Lane. ‘Between here and Saint Dunstan’s Church. According to Master Plummer, the man had been felled with a blow to the back of his head and then finished off with several more. He’d been robbed of everything of value.’

I reflected that this was hardly surprising. A number of the faitours – or beggars, vagrants, vagabonds, scroungers, whatever you prefer to call them – after whom the lane was named, were even now skulking around in doorways, rattling their tin cups or displaying their war wounds (ha!), waiting for the largesse they felt to be their due to rain down upon their undeserving heads.

‘I assume this murder happened at night,’ I said, provoking an incredulous glance from Bertram.

‘Yes, of course! Didn’t Master Plummer tell you
anything
? I thought you’d know more than I do.’

‘Master Plummer has left me in your more than capable hands,’ I answered smoothly, but feeling a fool just the same. I determined to have a few well-chosen words with Timothy the next time I saw him. Nevertheless, I acknowledged that my ignorance was partly my own fault: I should have asked more questions, instead of wallowing in the ease and luxury of a journey undertaken in the company of a royal earl.

I surveyed the scene of the crime. The church of Saint Dunstan-in-the-West stood maybe fifty yards or so from the entrance to Faitour Lane, at a point where there was a small dog-leg turning in the road. On the walls of at least two of the houses, and on a wall of the church itself, were cresset holders which, judging by the smoke-blackened stonework and plaster behind them, were frequently used. But I reckoned the flames of the cressets might cast more shadows than light under certain conditions, as well as being put out altogether in rain or high wind. Besides, there was plenty of protection to be had by a would-be killer in the narrow doorways of the houses, and a way of escape up Faitour Lane itself to the village of Holborn. All in all, I didn’t think a murderer would have had much difficulty in getting away unnoticed and undetected.

I wondered if the local brotherhood of beggars had been questioned as to anything any one of them might have seen or heard that night, but guessed that, even if they had, the interrogation would have yielded nothing. Communities, particularly those that live by their wits or by preying on other people, stick together. They live by a code of which the cardinal – probably the only – sin is betrayal.

I knew from Timothy that there had been an enquiry of sorts, but the Sheriff’s officers had been needed elsewhere to root out those Frenchmen thought to be lurking around every corner of every London street, just waiting to disrupt the Dowager Duchess’s visit. I had tried to persuade Timothy, during one of our convivial drinking sessions on the journey from Bristol, that such fears were probably unjustified. I pointed out that King Louis was already master of the situation on account of the seventy-five thousand crowns he paid yearly to King Edward. Surely, I argued, that was a sufficient inducement to preclude any serious English assistance to Burgundy against the French, particularly as the King had a very expensive wife and, in the Woodvilles, as rapacious a set of in-laws as any ruler in Christendom.

But Timothy had remained unconvinced. He had reminded me sharply that it was
my
job to discover the identity of Fulk Quantrell’s murderer while he and every other officer of the law busied themselves about the safety of the realm. In the face of such blinkered obstinacy I had given in gracefully, but I should have questioned him more closely about the crime.

So here I was with very little information to aid me in my search. I looked thoughtfully at the faitours, who either whined for alms or, when they had assessed my social standing and probable worth, gave me back stare for stare, poked out their tongues and made other obscene gestures which I am too much of a gentleman to describe. But I decided they could wait. They would still be here whenever I was ready to speak to them.

‘Very well,’ I said to my companion. ‘Now you can show me the house in the Strand where Mistress St Clair and her husband live; then we’ll retrace our footsteps back to the city, to Needlers Lane.’

At my request, we walked the whole length of the Strand as far as the Chère Reine Cross, because I wished to renew my acquaintance with this part of London-Without-the-Walls, where the tentacles of the city were creeping further and further into the countryside between the capital and Westminster. Then we walked back again.

On our right were some of the finest houses in and around London – magnificent four-storey affairs with well-tended gardens running down to their own water-steps and landing stages on the Thames. Mansions, I suppose, would not have been too strong a word for many of them. Here, the great palace of the Savoy had once stood before it was destroyed during the insurrection of the peasants almost a hundred years before.

At the Fleet Street end, however, were three smaller houses; still handsome, but modest by comparison with the rest: they lacked a storey and were narrower in width. Nevertheless, the gardens were just as pleasant, and the overall impression was of money, possibly hard-earned, but plenty of it and well spent.

‘I think Master Plummer said one of those three belongs to Mistress St Clair.’ Bertram rubbed his nose apprehensively. ‘But I’m not sure which. The middle one, I think.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll soon find out.’ I smiled at him, not displeased that he seemed a little wary of my displeasure. (I judged him to be a youth who could easily get too cocky.) ‘But first we’re going to pick up my pack and cudgel at the Voyager and then we’ll pay a visit to Needlers Lane.’

I
n the event, I paid the visit alone, leaving young Master Serifaber to kick his heels in the ale room of the Voyager until my return.

Upon reflection, I had decided that it might be as well not to advertise – at least, not immediately – the Duke of Gloucester’s interest in this affair, which my companion’s blue and murrey livery, together with the badge of the White Boar, most certainly would do.

‘Just to begin with, I’ll spy out the lie of the land on my own,’ I told him.

‘I’ve been instructed to help you,’ Bertram complained fretfully. ‘After all,
I’m
supposed to be the spy.’

‘You’re a novice at this game, my lad,’ I retorted, ‘and don’t you forget it. You’re here to do my bidding. And if I have any nonsense, you’ll find yourself back at Baynard’s Castle quicker than you can blink. I don’t think Master Plummer would be very pleased about that, do you?’

He grumbled mutinously under his breath, but was forced to cave in.

I patted his shoulder. ‘I can’t conceal Duke Richard’s involvement for long,’ I consoled him. ‘Then you shall live in my pocket.’

He grinned at that and took himself off to sample Reynold Makepeace’s best ale with the money I had given him as a bribe for his good behaviour. I crossed the road and turned into Needlers Lane. A quick enquiry of a passer-by elicited the fact that Broderer’s workshop was on the right-hand side, at the far end, where the street we were in joined Soper Lane.

It wasn’t difficult to find. Not only was it the largest workshop in the vicinity, but it had an imposing sign above the door, bearing the somewhat faded, but still readable legend ‘
EDMUND BRODERER
’ in red paint. I hitched up my pack and went inside.

I knew nothing about embroidery, but I didn’t need to in order to understand that this was a thriving business. A first, cursory glance suggested that there were at least ten or twelve people in the room, and all hard at work. Along one of the walls, great panels of silken mesh were stretched on wooden frames. Two men in white linen aprons were busily plying their needles in and out of the net in a kind of cross stitch, which gradually formed patterns of birds and beasts and flowers. Occasionally, one or the other of them would refer to a coloured pattern, drawn on a piece of parchment and nailed to the upright between the frames. But for the most part, they seemed to need no guidance, knowing instinctively what to do next.

Three women were working at a horizontal frame just in front of me, laying strands of gold and blue thread across a piece of crimson silk, then stitching the strands in place to form a solid block of colour. (This process I eventually learned is known as ‘couching’. There’s also another process called ‘undercouching’, but we won’t go into that.) Two young women were being instructed by a grey-haired matron in the art of appliqué work; while yet another, middle-aged woman was sewing tiny prismatic glass beads into the centre of embroidered velvet medallions which, in their turn, were being stitched to the sleeves of a dark-green silk dalmatic. And at a long trestle to my left, a bevy of much younger girls were busy embroidering the smaller items such as purses, orphreys, belts and ribbons. A veritable hive of industry.

As I stood staring about me, a second door at the other end of the workshop opened and a man entered carrying a small metal box, iron-bound and double-locked. This, I guessed, most likely contained pearls and other precious gems which, as I could see from several of the richer garments hanging up around the room, were used for decoration. The man put the strong-box down on the end of the trestle, said something to one of the girls, looked up and saw me.

He frowned. ‘Who are you?’

I could see by his expression that he wasn’t really annoyed, but his voice had a harsh timbre to it that made him sound as though he might be, and was probably good for discipline. He could have been any age from the late twenties to mid-thirties, and was indeed, as I discovered subsequently, not long past his thirtieth birthday. He was of middling height, the top of his head reaching just above my chin, sturdily built, but with surprisingly delicate, long-fingered hands – a great asset, I imagined, in his chosen calling. Apart from a slightly bulbous nose, his features were unremarkable: blue-grey eyes and hair of that indeterminate fairish brown so prevalent among my fellow countrymen.

Before I could reply to his query, he had noticed my pack. ‘A chapman, eh?’ he went on. ‘Looking for offcuts to fill your satchel, I daresay. You won’t find many here. The owner likes the last scrap of material, be it silk, velvet or linen, and the last inch of thread to be accounted for.’