Dispensation of Death: (Knights Templar 23) (10 page)

‘You were having a long talk with the Bishop,’ he said when he drew nearer to Baldwin.

‘You guessed, old friend? Well, I thought it might be as well to be warned about the political situation in London before we arrived.’

‘And what did you learn?’

Baldwin sighed. ‘There are moves afoot to remove our Queen. That is what we both heard the good Bishops arguing about last night. What I find sad is that it is our own friend who is proposing this action – in order to, as he says, “remove the canker in our King’s household”.’

‘He said that of our Queen?’ Simon was appalled. He had always borne great respect for the Bishop. Walter Stapledon had been a heroic figure when he was younger, a man who fought for what he believed to be right at all times, who became Bishop of his Diocese and used his wealth to endow schools and colleges for the benefit of others. He was a great man.

‘He said that, I fear, yes. And a great deal more. He said that he desires to see the King’s marriage annulled. I believe that is the reason for his journey to London – to seek a way to remove the Queen.’

Sunday, Feast of St Julian
²

In the chapel of Queen Isabella’s apartments, her Chaplain, Brother Peter of Oxford, was still sweating as he stood, his head bent, before the altar. The fear was with him much of the time now, but rarely so concentrated as today.

He disliked this charge intensely. Never would he have seen himself as a messenger before, and certainly not one who was working against the interests of the King. If anything, he would have tried to support Edward. But when his Bishop, John of Drokensford, asked him to do something, he was not going to refuse. His Bishop held the powers of patronage, and it was important that he keep him contented.

As soon as Peter had knelt with his master to hear his Confession, the Bishop had grasped his wrist and whispered urgently.

‘It is vital that you let her know this as soon as you can,’ he had said.

‘You want me to try to get it to her now?’

‘No. You have to wait until there is no suspicion. We have to pray that her enemies will not jump before her next visit to the chapel. Dear God, I only hope that we shall not be too late.’

That was the trouble about being the Queen’s own Chaplain, Brother Peter thought: it meant that no one trusted him even slightly. Never had there been a court
that was so riven by internal politics, or so he reckoned. This place was full of intrigue, and no matter to whom he turned, he knew that, without fail, every word he spoke would be used or at least measured and weighed and recorded, just in case it might, at some point in the future, become useful. And of course there was never an opportunity to see his Queen alone, except at Confession. If he were to ask to see her, it would immediately raise suspicions.

Well, let them weigh and measure. He was no fool, and he was perfectly content to hold his tongue and only speak when he was sure of his words. If any man chose to try a more physical approach, he’d be ready for him, too.

The sun was fading already, he saw. This was an awful time of year. The trees over at the riverbank opposite were all denuded of leaves as though dead. To his eye, the whole countryside looked barren. Skeletal boughs thrust upwards, foul and rotten in their nakedness. Even those plants that retained a few leaves were brown at the edges as though they had been touched with a scorching chill. All was disgusting. It reminded him each year of God’s bounty when he looked at this – and he understood the pagan fear that spring might never return. All the peasants felt it, especially as their teeth started to pain them, and the gums to bleed, as the winter scurvy took its toll.

Not here at court, though. Peter sighed. Spring would come, no matter the outcome of all this plotting. Bishop John had been most insistent that he should come here: he wanted someone in the palace who could listen to the
Queen and help her, someone who was above the temptation to take a bribe to see her poisoned. And someone who could maintain certain lines of communication with her.

Such as delivering little notes.

They had a system now. When there was something urgent, he would pass it to her praying hands during Communion, and she’d read it with a face like stone, the little slip of paper sitting in her cupped hands as he passed her the bread, taking it back from her as she sipped the wine and concealing it in his little towel. This time in particular, he was impressed with her resolution. Her face did not change. She could have been a housewife reading a missive from her husband directing her not to forget to feed the chickens, for all the impact that note had apparently had upon her. There was little to show how devastating it was.

Soon after that, she had left him with a gracious nod, swirling from the room with my Lady Eleanor in attendance, the other women about her. Brother Peter noted Mabilla watching the poor lady closely, as if she expected the Queen to run off at any moment. Others, like that little strumpet Alicia, were much more keen on eyeing up Peter himself. She always seemed to have a little curl of her lips for him, and waggled her arse all the way up the passage to the chapel’s door in flagrant temptation. Aye, she had somehow picked up that he was no better than he should be. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Bishop needed someone with certain … skills here, Peter knew he would never have been given this job. No, he’d have been left to rot in gaol, where he rightfully belonged.

As he polished the goblet, he eyed his reflection in the shining gilt. His dark eyes stared back at him, serious and contemplative, and filled with self-loathing. Well, at least he had passed on the message. She could do what she wanted with it now.

When she was gone, he had reread the message concealed in his towel. As usual, he was going to eat the little scrap of paper, to deprive unfriendly eyes of the sight of the close, neat writing, but he paused when he saw those words.

My Lady, beware! Sir H plans your murder
.

It was dark now. Full dark, with the moon hidden behind a cloud that shimmered every so often with the light it concealed, like a floating ball of silk. This was the kind of night Jack atte Hedge liked. An assassin craved the dark.

He was clad in dark brown hosen and a gipon he had bought in Southwark. It was very tight-fitting, as the modern fashion demanded, and he had dulled its colours by immersing it in the mud of the river for some hours. The stain had made it as dark as the hosen, although not actually black. He disliked black. Many years before, he had noticed that a black dog on a dark night was easy to see – but a brown or grey dog, that was impossible, even from a moderately short distance. So when he took up his new occupation, he decided to make use of that discovery.

He was on the far side of the River Tyburn. It was a strange little river, this. The Abbey monks had only a short while ago had it extensively reworked, apparently,
in order to make it more easily navigable, or maybe to make the tidal wheel work the better on their mill. There was no boat or bridge here, but he’d only come here to observe, nothing more.

It was not the first night he had spent out here. For the last five evenings, he had simply sat and watched to see what routines there were in the royal household.

From this position he could look over past the point of the Westminster Abbey wall, straight up to the southern wall of the palace yard. Directly ahead was the Queen’s chapel, then her cloister, before the King’s own chamber. In low tide, Jack reckoned he could make his way over the mud, through the Tyburn, and onto the thicker mud in the angle between the old palace yard and the Abbey’s yard, but if he did, he’d leave clear tracks for others to follow. Better to remain dry, he thought.

The guards at the wall went to their allotted positions, and he watched carefully. This was a special day, the Feast of St Julian, and he was hoping that the guards would be less assiduous than usual, so that he might assess routes of ingress and egress. Not that they were ever that assiduous: from all he had seen, the men were remarkably slapdash about their duties.

At the southern tip, the guard there seemed to give a cursory look up- and downriver, and then he followed the line of the wall to the western point, where he disappeared from view. There was some rattling, and then Jack saw him reappear, now wearing a blanket. He took his metal cap off, set it on the wall between the crenellations, and disappeared once more. Soon there was the sound of a man snoring.

It would be easy to knock him down, Jack thought. Throw him over the wall into the thick mud. He’d probably drown there, and no one would suspect it was foul play. They would simply assume that the fool had fallen asleep and toppled over the wall – if they ever found him. The others knew he slept on duty. They must. Today being a feast day, all would have eaten and drunk more than usual. No doubt half of the guards were snoring already.

He waited until he was certain that the fellow was asleep, and that no more men were tramping over the walkways, and then he slipped quietly along the Tyburn’s bank.

Jack had spent the first nights here considering how he might enter the palace yard or wall’s walkway – but last night he had thought of another, easier option. If he could just get inside the Abbey’s grounds, it must be possible to gain access to the palace area from there. There was only one wall between the two.

Over the Tyburn was one bridge, which led from the Abbey’s south gate towards the mill. He walked to it, gazing along its length, and then slipped over it silently. The man at the gate opposite was clearly asleep, because there was no alarm given. Jack reached the gate cursing to himself at the sound of gravel stones crunching underfoot, but when there was no challenge, he began to follow the line of the wall east to the Thames.

At the Abbey’s corner, he paused and felt the ground ahead of him. As he had feared, from here to the water it was a thick, silty mess. If he were to step into that, he might sink an inch or a yard; there was no way to tell, and
he daren’t take the risk. Instead, he began to feel his way about the wall. The mortar between the stones felt solid. Each had been cemented firmly in place, and the quality of the stone-dressing was good. There were no footholes: climbing this would be difficult. Jack swore silently to himself again. Perhaps after all he should find a different place from which to launch his attack.

But then he had a stroke of good fortune. As he stood there, gazing out at the water, disconsolate at wasting his time, he noticed a gleam of light on the ground at his feet. He spun about, thinking a man had spotted him and was holding a candle aloft to observe him, but then he realised that there was another way inside.

Just here, the Abbey had a drain that emptied the yard’s waste into the Thames. It was little more than a culvert, here at the point of the wall, and when he leaned down to investigate it more closely, he saw that it was protected with a metal frame, but that the frame had rusted badly. Testing it, he was convinced that he could pull it away with his bare hands. The vertical bars were badly corroded where they were set into the wall above.

He squatted back on his haunches. It was possible to enter now, find his prey, finish the commission and be off. Yet he still had a little time left. Better, perhaps, not to act precipitately.

Rising silently, he crossed the river again, then made his way down to the Thames once more, where he knelt and gazed at the walls. There was the sound of raucous singing from the other side of the wall, and he reckoned that the guards off-duty were making the most of their freedom. As any troops always would.

This was clearly a good time, then. As soon as the main guards had been changed, and when there had been enough time for the new ones to get the first ales inside them, they would give him a little covering noise to hide his steps.

He had his means of entry to the abbey. Soon he would be able to infiltrate the Palace grounds, and do his Lord’s bidding.

Tuesday before Candlemas
¹

Sir Hugh le Despenser woke with that nervousness that had grown so familiar recently. Only a few months before, he had discovered that the devil’s own bastard, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, had plotted to have him assassinated by the use of black magic. Now each morning he anticipated waking to find a stabbing agony in his belly or head to drive him mad, but so far, thanks to God, he had proved immune.

At the time, Despenser had written to the Pope himself to beg for papal protection. The response had been sharp, if couched in diplomatic terms; it advocated that he should look to his soul, beg forgiveness for his sins and make amends. At the time it had made him rail against the arrogance of popes, but gradually the rage had failed. The magician in question had been caught and killed, and now he had other matters to occupy him.

First was the lack of news from Jack atte Hedge, and
in the middle of the afternoon as he sat enjoying a cup of wine after his meal, Sir Hugh mused over the man.

He was a curious fellow, Jack. Despenser had first come across him when he, Sir Hugh, had been the King’s Chamberlain, more than ten years ago. Christ alive, how his life had changed since then! In those days, the King hated Hugh; he was a symbol of the power of the barons who had ousted his lover Piers Gaveston and murdered him. The King resented his appointment, and for many weeks tried to ignore him, as though pretending Despenser wasn’t there could make him disappear.

Despenser often had to travel to Winchester, to the old seat of parliament, and in July of the sixth year of the King’s reign, he took part in an action against felons and freebooters there.

There had always been outlaws living in the forests of England, and the great forest south of Winchester harboured many. It was forty years or more since the last King, Edward I, had led an expedition to Alton Forest to eradicate the outlaws living there. For a time that had cleared the place of the worst malefactors, but in the intervening years some had returned. A group had robbed merchants at the Alton pass, killing some Hainaulters and stealing from all. Despenser heard, and was keen to join in with the posse sent to capture or kill those responsible.