A Parliament of Spies (6 page)

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Authors: Cassandra Clark

BOOK: A Parliament of Spies
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‘You’ll find out. We’ll have something to drink while we wait for him to scrape the mud off his boots.’
 
Not much later, and energised by a jug of something from the bishop’s cellar, they were confronted by the man in charge of herbs and spices. ‘Confronted’ being the appropriate word in Hildegard’s opinion.
He strode in with a determined manner and folded his arms across his chest before subjecting each of them to a penetrating stare from beneath black brows. Afterwards his glance returned to Edwin.
‘I’ve nothing to tell you,’ he began without invitation.
‘I don’t know why I’ve been brought here.’
‘I’ll tell you why,’ replied Edwin with youthful dignity, outfacing the older man. ‘It’s because, as you’ve probably heard by now, one of our friends and respected servants has died and we intend to find out how. Anything and everything that happened the morning of his death is of interest to us and will shortly be known to us. You can count on that. Now give us your version if you’ll be so good.’
The man was unfazed. ‘I have no version. I wasn’t there and I know nothing.’
‘
Where
weren’t you?’ Thomas asked quietly enough.
‘
There
,’ he snarled in response. ‘In the brewhouse where the body was found.’
‘Did you see the body?’ asked Hildegard.
‘No. I did not.’
‘Then how do you know where it was found?’ Edwin demanded.
The herberer let his arms drop to his sides and then refolded them. ‘Am I deaf? Everybody knows.’
‘And you weren’t there. What is your name, my friend?’ asked Edwin, moving on. ‘I need it for my records.’
The man eyed the clerk with antagonism and looked as if he would refuse to have his name recorded, but then, seeing the three of them staring him out, he muttered, ‘Jarrold.’
‘Jarrold of … ?’
‘Kyme.’
‘Now where in the world is that?’ asked Edwin in a pleasant tone.
‘South of Lincoln.’
‘So we’ll be passing your home territory as soon as we’re back on the road? You’ll be stopping off to visit your kinsfolk, no doubt?’
‘Not likely.’ Jarrold the herberer plainly thought as little of his kinsfolk as he thought of his questioners.
‘Well, Jarrold, if you’ll be so kind, tell us where you were on the morning in question. You’ll have heard when that was, won’t you?’
Sarcasm didn’t bring out anything helpful.
Grudgingly he told them that he left the lay brothers’ dormitory to get a bite to eat in the adjoining kitchens with everybody else, then returned to the dormitory to fetch his gear. He then went down into the kitchen yard to find out which wagon to put it in and then he’d hung around just like everybody else until it was time to leave.
‘And were you present when the papal envoy did his head count?’
‘I was.’ He stared straight ahead without blinking.
‘And was this before or after we went into church?’ Hildegard asked.
He gave her a startled look and mumbled, ‘Same as everybody else.’
‘And did you notice anybody missing in the yard whom you expected to see present?’ Edwin leant forward watching him intently.
Hildegard turned at this unexpected line.
The herberer was already shaking his head. ‘I didn’t notice Martin being there, if that’s what you mean, but nor did I notice he wasn’t there neither. I wasn’t especially looking to see who was there. It was all the usual crowd.
And it didn’t matter a tinker’s cuss who they took. It was all one to me. Except I was more likely wondering whether I’d be the one to be left behind when the Pope’s man said we were one too many.’
‘Why would you wonder that?’ Hildegard queried.
‘Last in, first out,’ came the retort.
‘Explain.’ Edwin dipped his pen in the inkhorn and glanced up.
‘I only joined the household a while back. Yorkshire folk here, aren’t they? I’m a Lincolnshire man myself.’ He paused and insolently added, ‘As I’ve just told you.’
‘Do you thereby feel excluded?’ asked Thomas in an interested tone.
Jarrold looked at him as if he were mad and didn’t bother to reply.
‘What is your function in the household, exactly?’ Hildegard asked him.
‘I’m an outdoor-indoor servant. I’m an expert on herbs. I oversee the ones grown and check that the right ones get given to the cooks.’
If Martin had been poisoned, here would be their prime suspect, she thought, a man with all the shiftiness and ill-humour you might expect in someone evil enough to kill a man in cold blood. But Martin had not been poisoned. ‘So did you go into the herb garden that morning to pick herbs for the journey?’ she asked.
‘I told you what I did.’
‘We’ll take that as “no” then, shall we?’ Edwin scribbled something in his notes and looked up. ‘You might beg the domina’s forgiveness for your tone.’
Jarrold stared at the floor and made an almost
imperceptible movement of the head that seemed intended to mollify. Edwin dismissed him with a shooing motion.
When the door closed Thomas turned to him. ‘What do you think?’
‘Insolent bastard. But that doesn’t make him our man. We’ll have to see if anybody can vouch for him.’ He pushed the plug into the inkhorn to stop it from spilling, replaced it in its notch in the tray and closed the whole thing up. ‘I expect you’ve both got to attend the next office. Let’s stop now and reconvene. We’ve already got a few questions for the constables at Bishopthorpe. If Master Jarrold or anybody else was near the brewhouse at that time somebody must have seen them. It’s just a question of combing through their depositions and finding a discrepancy.’
Thomas gave a hollow laugh. ‘Finding a needle in a haystack might be easier.’
Hildegard reminded Edwin to ask about the weapon that had battered the back of Martin’s head in. ‘I wonder what happened to his travel bag?’ she asked as they got up to go. ‘Do we know whether it turned up here with all the others? Or didn’t he get around to fetching it from his chamber on the morning?’
 
Despite their efforts, speculation was rife. An air of suspicion prevailed. Word was out that questions were being asked and no one would be exempt.
It was disturbing to everybody to suspect that they were harbouring a murderer in their midst. The ambush on the road had startled many of the staff into a state of fear. With word out about this new danger, the killing of the wolf was seen as an omen.
It distracted them from the threat of invasion, despite the fact that the castle garrison was on full alert. Previously the knowledge that they were staying in a garrison town had given everyone a feeling of security: groups of armed militia on duty at the perimeter of the bishop’s enclave, archers visible on the battlements of the castle. With the view from the keep stretching for miles over flat country to the south there would be no element of surprise should an army come marching up the shire from that direction. Lincoln would be impossible to take.
Even so, with a murderer within the enclave, the mood of the men from York became volatile. Scuffles broke out. Old vendettas were revived. Eating knives sharpened as if the meat in Lincoln required it. Some people stopped speaking to others altogether. Suspicious cliques stood around in the belief there was safety in numbers.
 
Martin’s bag, packed for the journey, was discovered in one of the wagons. The contents looked pathetic as they were tipped out onto a table – a clean tunic, some woollen hosen, and a trinket wrapped in a piece of cloth, presumably a memento from his wife – not much as the sum of one man’s life.
‘No clues there,’ murmured Edwin as if he expected an incriminating note as he sifted through the things.
During the rest of the day Master Fulford’s other kitcheners were called in to give an account of themselves.
It was as the master cook had told them. Everything was on the record – he had waved his clerk’s parchments to prove it – but with such a lot of coming and going it was impossible to know who had been able to slip away without
being spotted. The brewmaster confirmed what the cook had told them, the cook’s account was confirmed by the chamberlain, the steward’s by the sub-steward, and so on. What was clear was how the chamberlain had arrived at a figure of forty in his first head count and the Pope’s man at forty-one in the second. The extra man was the murderer.
 
Archbishop Neville was given a full account of what they had discovered – precious little, Edwin complained – and one of his pigeons was dispatched at once with a message seeking additional information from Bishopthorpe: had anyone been working in the herb garden at any time that morning, was anyone at all seen near the garden or on the path under the infirmary windows?
The baker and his clerk were recalled but could only repeat their story. The murderer had to have entered through the garden. But neither Martin nor anyone else had been noticed around there. In the confusion of departure everybody had been too busy to notice anything exceptional.
The herberer was not mentioned because there was nothing to report other than a dislike of his manner. In none of the accounts did anyone say they had seen Martin other than in the yard helping to load wagons.
Now resigned to staying in Lincoln until more information turned up, the three of them went separate ways: Thomas to the scriptorium to talk shop about the chronicle of Meaux his abbot was planning, Edwin to continue his duties on behalf of his lord, and Hildegard to have a look at the famous vines in Bishop Buckingham’s garden now there was a break in the rain.
 
She plunged her hand in among the wet leaves and tugged at the roots. They came up easily. Short and straggly. Wet earth clinging to them. A herb of some sort, perhaps.
The woman she had seen just now had collected an entire scripful before hurrying back up the garden to greet a young man just coming out of the bishop’s hall. The leaves were clearly useful for something.
She sniffed one. It had no distinctive smell. She crinkled a leaf and tasted it. It had no particular taste either. Fern-like, it looked undistinguished but clearly it had a use.
Regretting that the woman had disappeared before she could ask what it was, Hildegard decided to take a sample. The gardener Archbishop Neville had mentioned, who ran the gardens outside the London walls at the place called Stepney, would be the one to identify it – if he lived up to his reputation.
She got up off her knees. It might be something she could add to her cures.
 
An uneasy couple of days elapsed. The delay, the suspicion, set everybody on edge.
Neville was also beginning to fret about being late for the opening of Parliament. It was now three weeks away and he had to be constantly reassured that he would be in Westminster well before then.
Hildegard met Edwin as she was crossing the yard to go onto the cathedral close shortly after Lady Mass that morning. She had decided to visit St Hugh’s shrine before hordes of pilgrims turned up and turned it into a bunfight. But Edwin detained her.
‘I was just coming to find you, Domina. His Grace
wishes you to go to his chamber.’ He added that he had no idea what it was about but to watch her step, his mood was worse than that of a baited bull.
 
When she went in, Neville gestured irritably for his servants to leave, and after even his little page had slipped out he trod over to the great door of his chamber and pushed a stool against it. Hildegard stared.
Dressed in his usual opulence, he wore scarlet and purple beneath a silvery cope and the insides of his full sleeves were lined with viridian silk. The hem of his many-layered vestments made a slithering sound as they trailed after him along the floor tiles as he padded over to his reading desk. He beckoned her, then gave her a considering stare for one long drawn-out moment.
‘Domina – in future I’ll address you as Hildegard. Why? As a token of our complicity.’
She stared at him in confusion.
‘Two years ago, you most admirably travelled across the Alps to Tuscany in order to retrieve a powerful relic at the behest of your prioress in Swyne. Your courage has not passed unnoticed. You may be wondering …’ he paused and his blue, somewhat red-veined, eyes fastened on her face ‘ … why I claim complicity? It’s in recognition of our shared support for the King. It has come to our ears that a conspiracy is being hatched to destroy him. But as you know, we possess something that may save him and confound his enemies.’
Without saying more he reached across to a small leather-covered chest banded in iron that sat prominently on the desk and, fishing inside his vestments, brought out
a key which he fitted into a complicated lock in the lid.
He invited her to come closer and she watched while he listened for the key to turn in the lock. Then, slowly and reverentially, he lifted the lid.
Inside was a gold reliquary about twelve inches long and four inches deep. Hildegard had never seen it before but she stared in astonishment as the archbishop removed the reliquary from the chest and pressed a secret catch in the design of little figures that ran round its rim, and made the lid spring open.

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