Dispensation of Death: (Knights Templar 23) (38 page)

‘Oh, Sir Baldwin, please. There is no need to be like that. I meant no insult, my friend.’

‘Oh, no. I am sure you would only offer an insult when it was necessary and you felt justified.’

‘Quite. I am glad we understand each other.’

‘I think we do, Sir Hugh.’

‘I am glad to have had my stallion returned, anyway.’

‘Ah yes. And I was glad too. We collected some of the man’s belongings before the fire.’

‘Clothing? Was he your size?’ Despenser wondered with an insolence that scalded, glancing at Baldwin’s shabby tunic.

‘I am not like you, Sir Hugh. I didn’t look for items to snatch from a dead man. He left some interesting reading, though.’

‘Reading?’

‘Do you indenture all your servants?’

Sir Hugh was still now, his eyes unmoving. ‘Often. Yes.’

‘I suppose you have to buy loyalty. However, to ensure that we are both perfectly acquainted, let me just say that I intend to move all obstacles in my search for the true culprit of the other night. I will find him.’

‘The
culprit
? How quaint. I thought that the dead man was the “culprit”.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said coldly. ‘And perhaps the culprit still lives. As does the man who ordered the attempt on your life yesterday.’

‘Do you know anything about that?’

On hearing the eagerness in his voice, Baldwin gave a very slow smile. ‘Oh, no more than you yourself, I expect.’

As they left Sir Hugh and walked away, Baldwin was struck by the feeling that Sir Hugh’s reaction to his words was not quite right. Surely he should have been distressed to be left in the dark, or furious that the archer was unknown and his paymaster anonymous, but when he glanced back over his shoulder, all he saw in Sir Hugh’s face was a cold and unfeeling calculation.

It was a little less than an hour later that Queen Isabella saw Sir Hugh.

She nodded to the priest at the end of her Mass, and made her way back through the little door under the careful eye of Madam Eleanor. The woman was insufferable. She would not leave the Queen alone for even a moment. It wasn’t enough that she had seen to the removal of Isabella’s royal seal and her beloved children, now she must steal all Isabella’s spare moments too.

Despenser was waiting in the corridor with a face like thunder. He beckoned his wife and spoke to her with the deliberate precision of extreme rage, then span on his heel and strode away, his tunic snapping crisply with the speed of his march.

‘Lady Eleanor? Your husband looks most angry.’

‘No. He is fine. It is your husband who has lost his wife,’ Eleanor said tartly.

This wife of Despenser, Isabella thought, could once have been her friend and companion, but when her husband Sir Hugh first made his most improper suggestions, and Isabella told her of them, Eleanor was not surprised. She seemed to have expected something of the kind.

It was nothing new, true enough. Isabella knew that her brothers had enjoyed the favours of women while they were princes. It was natural. They were men, and a prince or King had rights. A man like Despenser, who was setting himself up as a prince in all but name, clearly felt he deserved the same dispensation. Somehow he had persuaded dear, weak Eleanor that he should be permitted similar latitude. And he would, of course, have asked his
close friend the King before making his suggestion.

At the time she had thought it was one of his jokes in bad taste. Asking her to join him in the King’s bed … then suggesting that the King could be there too …

Beds were for couples, she’d responded icily, and he had laughed, as though her view was deliciously quaint. And soon thereafter her husband had begun to view her with a degree of suspicion, as though she had betrayed him in some way. It had been a coolness in those days, little more. But then Sir Hugh had tried to force her to swear to support him no matter what, pinning her against a wall with his hand about her throat, as though he could scare her –
her
! The daughter and sister of a King, not son of a brain-addled knight of poor birth like him. But afterwards, when she refused and spat out her rejection of him and his evil ways, Despenser had grown cold, and she had wondered whether he would actually dare to throttle her right there in the hallway, as though she was just some servant girl, a wench from the stews or a cheap alehouse.

The grim suspicion had never left her husband’s face after that, as though Despenser had told him that she had refused to declare her devotion to him, her husband.

Despenser would be happy to see her destroyed. He had told her as much, but by then their enmity was so deep-rooted there was no surprise in the revelation. And she knew about her other enemies. Dear heaven, there were so many! Most of them hating her purely because she was French. Not for any rational purpose, but just because of the accident of her birth. They were determined to see her removed if they could. Perhaps
Despenser had stirred up hatred against her, spread lies to malign her reputation at court? Some would have needed little supposed evidence of her misdeeds, of course. There were many who would look on her as an enemy because they coveted her lands, her manors, her riches. Walter Stapledon. She knew she was hateful to him, and she knew why: he wanted the tinmining. It was worth a vast sum each year, and with Isabella’s control of the better mines, Stapledon’s jealousy knew no bounds. She’d seen it in his eyes.

He had attacked her with every means at his disposal. First, there was the removal of her servants, her chaplains, her physicians. Then her estates were sequestrated, her children taken from her, and now, the final indignity, even her seal was snatched and given to her gaoler, Eleanor, Despenser’s wife.

Alone, without money, her family taken from her, all the trappings of her wealth removed, she had been able to spend much time considering her situation. It was not pleasant. She had been a royal princess in the House of Capet, and she was used to being treated in a manner suitable to her rank. Not now, though. She was reduced to penury, to the status of a humble petitioner by that gripple miser, her husband. And most recently, she knew, Despenser and Stapledon had attempted to have her marriage annulled by the Pope. Oh yes, she knew of all these little schemes of theirs. Just as she had known that Mabilla was intended to be Despenser’s especial spy. Mabilla was the one who searched through her clothing and writing tools to see how on earth she had managed to get so many messages to her brother.

But they would not succeed in blocking her channels of communication any more than they would succeed in having her marriage declared void and her children declared bastards.

Poor Sir Hugh, he had looked so anxious this morning, she thought with a smile. Usually all he exuded was a vicious cruelty when he visited her. Not today. Today, for once, the fear was all on his part, no one else’s.

It was
delicious
.

At about the same time, Simon and Baldwin were returning to the Great Hall again, after taking Blaket’s advice and seeking a small meal to settle their bellies. There they met Bishop Stapledon almost as soon as they entered.

‘Baldwin, you look as though you have had a shock. Is it true that the King asked to see you?’

‘I fear so, my Lord.’ He studied the Bishop. To his eye, Walter looked even more careworn and weary than he himself felt.

‘Why “fear”?’

‘The King asked me to stop enquiring about the attempted murder on his wife, and instead commanded me to look into the attempt on Sir Hugh last night. I left him in no doubt as to where I thought my responsibilities should lie.’

‘Did he see you alone?’

The Bishop was peering at him in that short-sighted manner which was so familiar to Baldwin. If they were in his parlour, Walter would by now have reached for his enormous spectacles, and even now would be holding them at the join over his nose, staring at Baldwin with eyes magnified to giant proportions.

It was a curious question, Baldwin thought, but he shrugged and nodded. ‘There was only a door-guard in the room with us. No one else.’

‘He was angry, you would say?’

‘Absolutely. He was quivering with rage at the thought that someone could be so bold as to attack his favourite in his own palace yard. I think the audacity of the attack was what affected him so dramatically.’

‘Perhaps,’ the Bishop said musingly.

Baldwin cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. ‘You know more of this than you are telling. Why do you question my view?’

‘You are an astute reader of a man’s mind, Sir Baldwin,’ the Bishop acknowledged. Then his face grew more serious even as he dropped his voice. Simon had to lean forward to hear him. ‘Let me put it like this: if a man were to attack your wife in
your
yard, how would you respond?’

‘I would be enraged … I see.’

‘But he cares little!’ Simon protested.

Baldwin shook his head. ‘His affection is given to another, Simon. He is most angry because of the attempt on the life of his beloved.’

Simon’s mouth fell open in comprehension. Of course: Despenser was the King’s especial lover, if all he had heard and seen was correct.

‘That could explain it,’ the Bishop said.

Shortly afterwards, another Bishop, a man whom Baldwin heard described as Bath and Wells, arrived and engaged Stapledon in conversation. Suddenly his mind was taken back to the Chaplain in the Queen’s chapel. He
said he had been installed by Drokensford, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Baldwin studied the latter with interest.

He was a tall, handsome man, with curling grey hair that almost sprayed out from beneath his mitre. Grey it may have been, but it was thick and gleaming. There was no weakness in his face, either. Baldwin saw astute eyes set in a face that gave nothing away, but clearly the man missed little. Even as Baldwin studied him, Drokensford looked across at him and murmured a question to Stapledon. Soon afterwards the Bishops were before Baldwin and Simon, and the two had to kiss another Episcopal ring.

‘I believe you are the knight who was looking into the attempt on the Queen’s life?’

‘That is right, my Lord Bishop,’ Baldwin agreed. He was surprised that this great Lord would have any interest in the affair. It appeared to have all the hallmarks of a rather grubby attempt, not the sort of thing that should have appealed to a man in Drokensford’s position. He was intrigued to learn what his interest was.

‘I have heard from my Lord Walter that you are not to look into the man who last night made an attempt upon the King’s especial adviser.’

‘I take the view that the person of the King’s consort is of more moment than a man who, though he is important, is nonetheless merely a knight,’ Baldwin said firmly.

Drokensford smiled at the certainty in his voice. ‘Your judgement shows great honour, Sir Baldwin. However, I simply wonder whether there are aspects which may have evaded you?’

‘I am scarcely omniscient!’

‘Perhaps. I merely wonder whether it could be advantageous to seek the attempted assassin of Sir Hugh, since I should have thought that two assassins in one palace in a week is enough of a coincidence for anyone.’

‘I do not think I follow you, my Lord Bishop.’

‘Come – I think you follow me perfectly well! We have passed many years without a single assassin appearing. Then within a week we have two. Surely both should merit investigation, in case this unseemly rash of murderers might have a logical explanation behind them.’

‘Of course,’ Baldwin nodded.

‘I merely leave the thought with you, Sir Baldwin. If you look into one assassin, why not look into both?’

‘And if I seek neither?’

His words took both the Bishops by surprise. Stapledon thrust his chin at Baldwin and scowled with the attempt to see his face, while Drokensford’s mouth fell open for a moment before he realised how unedifying his expression must appear. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Both assassins are dead. The second, it is true, died in his attempt on the life of Sir Hugh. The first, though, was killed without any comment. No one claimed responsibility. That is curious, is it not? If a guard had come across him in the palace in the middle of the night, recognised him as an intruder and killed him, would he not be in front of the King’s steward the very next morning, demanding a reward for his selfless devotion to his duty? And he would have raised the roof that night with elation, for having done a job so well. Have you ever known a guard do the right thing and then
conceal
it?
Have you known any servant hide his behaviour when it only redounds to the benefit of his reputation? Good heaven, Bishop, the more I think about this matter, the more certain I am that the man who killed the assassin was desperate to hide his part in the matter. And he killed the assassin to protect someone – perhaps even to protect his true prey.’

‘The assassin killed that lady, Sir Baldwin.’

‘No –
someone
did. And I have to wonder why. It is stretching credulity too far to consider that Mabilla was being sought out by one assassin, a second was seeking another victim, and the two met in the palace with disastrous consequences for the one found dead.’

‘I agree. That scarcely holds water.’

‘Yet there was an assassin. And he was killed. So somebody in the Palace wished to stop his murderous attempt. I think it is fair to consider that the man who killed Mabilla was almost certainly the same man as he who killed Jack, the assassin.’

‘You have his name?’ Drokensford was shocked. ‘I had thought he was a complete stranger to all in the Palace.’

‘Oh no. He was commissioned by someone here to go and make his daring assault.’

‘Then who could have ordered that?’

Baldwin felt Stapledon’s eye on him warningly. ‘Somebody who wished for the Queen to be killed,’ he replied. ‘You may have more idea of that than me.’

The Bishop eyed him doubtfully. ‘I have a feeling that the sooner the poor lady, our Queen, is away from here and back at her home in France, the safer she must be.’

‘I cannot argue with that, my Lord Bishop.’