A Parliament of Spies (28 page)

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Authors: Cassandra Clark

BOOK: A Parliament of Spies
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He in turn looked astonished. ‘You know, the nailed hand and all that?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Rivera had mentioned no such thing.
‘Don’t worry about it now.’ He put a hand under her elbow. ‘Come and sit down. You look washed out. What the hell happened? Where’ve you been all this time?’
‘I fell in the river. My rescuer took me in.’
‘Fell in?’
‘Careless of me.’
Ulf looked unconvinced but evidently decided to accept it. ‘Who saved you?’
‘A friar.’
‘Roger will want to give him a reward.’
‘No, he would not like that,’ she said hurriedly, determined not to allow Rivera into the matter.
‘These old mendicants who live by the river are ever vigilant,’ Ulf began to say. ‘They fish bodies out all the time. Compassion might come into it – but they make a fair living from selling the unclaimed cadavers to the surgeons.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Lucky your rescuer didn’t plan to do the same!’
‘Maybe he did and was disappointed when I survived!’ She tried to smile but her face was stiff with the effort of lying to her beloved friend. His trustful blue eyes were a deep reproach if he only knew it.
‘Two nights you’ve been missing,’ he continued, turning
his mouth down. ‘I was going mad with worry, Hildegard. You can’t imagine.’
Made more guilty by the fact that she had given no thought to the distress she might have been causing all the time she was in Rivera’s arms, she could only murmur something about how sorry she was and beg his forgiveness. ‘But what’s this about a nailed hand?’
‘The whole city’s in a panic. Some madman nailed a severed hand to the door of St Paul’s. It happened just before the King opened Parliament. Then, after the first session ended, a foot was found, nailed to the door of the Guildhall.’
‘Why would anybody do such a horrible thing?’
‘Speculation’s rife, as you can imagine. There was no written message. But let’s talk about you—’
She stood up abruptly. ‘No, really – I-I think I’ll go to my chamber and change my garments. They smell of river water and it’s beginning to make me feel sick. I must wash …’
‘Of course, I’m being thoughtless. Let me escort you. I warn you, from now on you won’t be let out of our sight until we’re all safely back in Yorkshire. This city’s a nest of madmen. Even I’m having to watch my back all the time.’ They moved towards the door and his men pocketed their dice and followed. ‘When your friar sent that message to say you were alive and well, Roger tried to insist that you stay with us on the Strand. His Grace has other ideas, though. He’s determined you’ll stay at York Place. I’ll send a messenger over to let him know you’re back and then we’ll get you over there with your things—’
‘No!’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s best if I stay here for now—’
‘But Hildegard—’
‘Take my things over for me in the morning. There’s a reason – I can’t explain yet. I must speak to Medford first.’ She straightened her cloak. ‘I can’t tell you more, Ulf. The offer of a message to Archbishop Neville to let him know I’m back would be helpful, though.’
‘And an armed escort. I insist. You can’t argue with that. I won’t have a moment’s peace otherwise, and I know Roger would give me hell if I failed in that as well.’ When she lifted her head he told her, ‘We still haven’t found Ravenscar.’
 
In the solitude of her small chamber at the top of one of the tower staircases Hildegard called for water, and as soon as it arrived tore off her stained garments and stood naked for a moment. Then, slowly, she began to wash.
 
The promised escort was waiting in the yard when she went down. He was a young fellow, one she recognised from Castle Hutton, a four-square Yorkshireman in his early twenties with a broadsword at his side and a confident step that showed he would take no nonsense from anyone.
‘Greetings, Haskin. You’ve been allotted this onerous task, have you?’
‘I trust you’ll make it light enough for me, Domina.’
Accompanied in this way she walked over to the Great Hall in the palace to seek out Mr Medford in his adjacent chambers.
 
‘Go,’ Medford encouraged as soon as she had explained Rivera’s plan to get into the Salt Tower. ‘You’ve done good work,’ he approved. ‘Let’s see what you can find out. We’ve trusted Brembre so far but he plays a close hand. We need to know who he’s got in there. He’ll be worried about his future. Maybe he intends to sell the King down the river, like his own rivals with their fish! Of course, we have no jurisdiction over the Tower or the city. He can do what the hell he likes in there. He’s King of London. It might be different next week, though.’
‘What happens then?’
‘His year’s up. He has to stand for re-election on the thirteenth. The way things are it’s touch-and-go whether he’ll win.’
‘So might there be a new mayor?’
‘Yes, if he plays a poor hand. But don’t ask me who it’s likely to be. There’s no clear runner. Everything’s hanging by a thread.’
‘So, for clarity, in a few days Brembre might lose his power over what goes on in the Tower?’
Medford nodded. ‘He’s adept at packing the Guildhall with his supporters but this time he might not be able to summon enough of them.’ He laughed. ‘Quite a force, our Nick Brembre. But nobody’s invincible. Find out before Bolingbroke what he’s up to.’ He frowned. ‘I wonder who the hell they’ve got in there? Some bloody French spy, I expect.’
‘Maybe it’s a mermaid,’ suggested Slake with his usual strange humour
‘Will you go, Domina?’ Medford asked as if suddenly doubting her sense of purpose. ‘We’ll take care of Rivera.’
‘Take care of him?’
‘It’s our job.’
‘I won’t go without your promise he’ll come to no harm.’
He gave her a long look. ‘I gather you were with him for a couple of nights.’
She said nothing.
Medford gave a quick nod of his head. ‘Our gratitude. Have no fears for him.’
 
The bells of Westminster seemed to count the divisions of the day more slowly than she had ever known. Descending by candlelight to the half-built church for the night office with other hooded and softly shod worshippers she afterwards lay wakeful and impatient until lauds at the first glimmer of day. Then came prime, tierce in the teeming mid-morning when the whole abbey was alive with visitors, and then as regularly as sunrise and sunset, the office for the sixth hour, the ninth, vespers, until at last it was compline again and night folded everyone in its sacred embrace.
Before sending her clothes down to the laundry she buried her face in them, smelling river water. And the lingering scent of rose oil.
 
She had missed the opening of Parliament when Richard and his queen appeared with all the glamour of royalty. But she had been told about it by a couple of monks when she ate in the guest hall. The King had looked determined, she was told, the Queen frail and beautiful and frightened.
The Lords and Commons were in session every day by now. Only the representatives were allowed inside,
but outside in the yard, waiting to hear what happened next, the entire population of London and the shires seemed to have gathered. Accents from all regions of the realm mingled in the general cacophony of musicians, food and ale sellers, and the endless singing of the pilgrims. The muzzled bear was made to dance to a piper and it did a sad shambling jig before sitting down again to look at its chains while its master collected pennies in a hat.
Every so often a herald would appear in the great arched doorway to make an announcement in a suddenly descended hush. Now shouts of astonishment were beginning to greet these announcements, arguments were breaking and fists flying, and by the time the latest reports filtered to the back of the crowd the facts were usually distorted and more arguments would break out about what was really going on. Hildegard listened to her neighbours. There was no doubt about de la Pole’s predicament.
He had told the archbishop’s assembled guests only a few nights ago that if a scapegoat was needed, it might as well be him. Now he was putting up a valiant defence against some outrageous charges being levelled against him. The barons were clamouring to impeach him on seven articles to do with rents and tolls in Yorkshire and other accusations of embezzlement and failing in his duty to the Crown.
 
Ulf sought Hildegard after he left the Commons. ‘I’ve been in there all day,’ he told her. ‘I just want to check that Haskin is doing his job.’
The young bodyguard gave a smirk. ‘I’ve got an easy task here, Captain.’
Ulf bent his head so Hildegard could hear him beneath the noise of the rabble swirling around the doors. ‘There’s a real clamour in there. They’re now trying to blame de la Pole for that fiasco in Ghent. What more could he have done, I ask you? He raised ten thousand crowns in three days, mustered an army of three thousand including over a thousand longbowmen. The man’s brilliant. It wasn’t his fault that the French Flemings did a deal behind his back with the Duke of Burgundy and kicked their own countrymen in the balls.’
‘How did de la Pole defend himself?’
‘He said, “If I’m guilty – which I’m not – then so is the council for voting such a strategy.” Then he laid the facts before them. It was enough. They had to shift around to find some other criticism – and all they could come up with was some nonsense about the renting of a parcel of land in the Riding and the profit he was supposed to have made from it.’
‘Where is the land?’ asked Hildegard, forgetting Rivera for a moment. It was her own territory, the East Riding, and might be something in which the Abbot of Meaux had an interest.
‘It’s on the bank of the Humber. Place called Flaxholme.’
‘Nothing to do with Meaux, then.’ She gave him a look. ‘It’s a hellish place, flooded half the year. I’m surprised he can make anything like a profit from it. What’s their argument?’
‘They say it was leased from the King in lieu of port taxes at Hull but the lessee was accused of murdering his
wife’s lover years ago and fled back to Middelburg. So de la Pole took it over. They claim he’s taking an excessive profit from it that by rights should go to the King. As if he’d swindle the King!’
‘So what did he do?’
‘He dazzles them with figures and says, “With a profit like that I’ll gladly sell. Any offers?” He looks round the chamber. There’s dead silence. “No takers, then?” And he sits down in a storm of applause from our side and some snarls of rage from theirs.’ Ulf grinned. ‘He’s quite a card. So far he’s tying them in knots.’
Spirits lightened by this exchange she watched him leave.
The session had ended for the day and now it was between nones and vespers, still some hours before her meeting with Rivera. Having been pushed to the front of the mob outside the chapter house Hildegard had a good view of the rest of the Commons coming out. Ulf had been one of the first but now others followed.
No sign, she noticed, of the Abbot of Meaux. And no message about her legal status.
 
The guards started to force everybody back to make more room for the rest of the Commons to get out. It was then she found herself staring into the face of Guy de Ravenscar, her brother-in-law.
He was gaping, colour draining from his cheeks. ‘Hildegard?’ He pushed the bodyguards aside and stepped into the crowd, taking her by the arm. ‘It is you?’
‘Of course it’s me, Guy. What on earth do you mean?’
‘I thought you were dead!’
Her thoughts flew to the bearded would-be murderer who had tried to drown her in the Thames and she tried to pull away. ‘Where did you hear I was dead?’ she demanded suspiciously.
‘From my bloody brother, of course.’ Calling over his shoulder for his bodyguard to follow he put an arm round her shoulders and carved a path for them through the onlookers to the edge of the crowd where there was less noise. Haskin followed.
‘The bastard said he’d got you out of the way and now it was only me he had to deal with. He seemed to think I was more easily persuaded to give up my land than you your dowry.’ He gave a sardonic chuckle. ‘He always underestimated me, the sot-witted devil. But how are you? He told me you’d slipped off the river path and drowned.’
‘He hoped! He sent a man to take me to meet him. We went by boat. His instructions included pushing me overboard.’
‘The murdering devil.’
‘Luckily someone rescued me.’
‘Tell me his name. He deserves a reward.’ He looked intently into her face.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Won’t?’ He gave a narrow smile. ‘What is all this?’
‘Nothing. He’s a friar. He won’t take a reward.’
‘No matter. You’re safe. That’s the important thing. We’ll join forces and take Hugh to court. We’ll best him there, legally. We’ll do him for every bloody penny he’s got. We’ll tie him in knots. He’ll wish he’d stayed in Normandy with his French mare.’ He chuckled darkly.
‘He hasn’t a leg to stand on – a bit like the poor fellow whose parts they’re nailing up all round London.’ He turned to his bodyguard. ‘Let’s go.’ And to Hildegard, ‘Coming to dine with me?’
‘I can’t. I have things to do.’
He nodded. ‘I’m relieved to see you …’ he searched for a word ‘ … in bloom.’ He bestowed a kiss on her forehead and with that he was gone.
 
Haskin was standing close, as ordered, and Hildegard turned to him, ‘What’s this about the nailed man?’
‘They’ve found another part, Domina. His left leg nailed on a church door in Petty Wales near the Tower.’
‘It’s horrible. Why would anyone do such a thing?’
‘They say it’s a warning to Parliament, or to the King, or to Gloucester. They’re not sure which way it’s going yet.’
‘A warning?’
‘Haven’t you heard the soothsayers? The corpse represents the body of the realm – the right hand is Calais, the left hand Aquitaine, the limbs are England and Wales, hence this latest, and the head is the city of London. The meaning to some is that Richard will hack his kingdom to pieces and hand the corpse piece by bloody piece to France.’
‘Or his enemies will,’ she replied sharply.
Haskin nodded. ‘That’s our view in the de Hutton household. Let’s hope this broiling mob sees sense, votes for the right man and gives the Duke of Gloucester a kick up the arse.’
As a reliable bodyguard should, Haskin followed her all the way back to the staircase door leading up to her guest chamber.

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