The Cardinal's Angels (14 page)

“The captain of the skulkers out the back is clearly one, and from his doublet, cap and sword, a well off gentleman.”

Oh God and the saints, not more hunters! Ned waved the distraction aside. “It doesn’t matter. How are we to get out of here, your secret passage?”

“No. Roger has arranged a disturbance to sweep away the watchers. Follow me.”

With that enigmatic answer, Mistress Black led him down the staircase, in the wake of her gruesome guardian. Well, at least he was getting to see the other levels of the apothecary’s establishment, and it was quite some revelation. From his descending view along the corridors, it was all wood panelling with painted ceilings. If his uncle had seen this much opulence, then Ned would have been knee deep in herbs before the end of the week.

At the end of his quick tour they’d finished up at a rear door set in a high brick boundary wall out past the workroom, by way of a profusely scented garden. No doubt it led onto a small twisting alley. The well–armed Roger was there, pressed up against the door timbers, listening intently to the sounds beyond. He had a wicked looking blade in his left hand and the metal shod cudgel in the right.

It was probably only a few minutes, but to Ned’s thudding heart it seemed much longer. Suddenly through the normal hubbub of the living city there rose the bellowing call of a band of apprentices out for a brawl. The disturbance drew closer and echoed down the overshadowed alley. He could hear their watchers cry out in alarm, and then the dull thuds as they tripped over and bounced off walls in their haste to be gone. When the cacophony was at its loudest, Gruesome Roger pushed open the door and stepped out into the street. There was a maelstrom of whirling figures, fists and knives flashed and clattered,
then
the last of the watchers broke and fled. Ned could have sworn that he saw a red velvet cloak on the last man as he disappeared around a corner. No matter. The apprentices raised the cry and sped off in pursuit, while the three of them headed up the lane deeper into Greyfriars and into the camouflage of the busy city streets.

The twisting and turning, then doubling back lasted for the best part of an hour, and with every step Mistress Black kept a tight hold on his arm. Apart from the pleasant touch of smooth skin, Ned found it reassuring. The other hand on his arm wasn’t so pleasant. Gruesome Roger had a fearsome grip that pinched deep into the muscle. Even if Ned was inclined to slip off, which his daemon prompted at every convenient opportunity, he couldn’t have done so without leaving this arm behind. Not that it mattered with pursuers so close. Eventually they emerged into
Aldegate
Street by Poor Jewry. Ned hid a smile. This area was home ground, and according to a quick word from Mistress Black, they were heading for Monte Jovis Inn. Excellent! If the situation required doing a runner he’d have a good chance.

With a wary eye he watched the afternoon fade. Damn, he must have been unconscious for hours. Now the sun had swung hard towards the west. A few more hours and it’d be dark. As every Londoner knew, the night held fortune and peril in equal measure. Ned broke into a tight grin. He was looking forward to the night.

Monte Jovis Inn had been part of the old monastery, and like many buildings in the city, had been extensively altered over the years to fit in with changing demands. The branches of the old garden’s orchard trees still thrust up between the grey stone walls on their left as they tramped down the road through the gossiping afternoon crowd. Since autumn was advancing the winds had left a splatter of brown–edged, green leaves spread across the muddy cobblestones.

To Ned, seeing this remnant of summer’s greenery carelessly trodden underfoot gave his soul an unexpected twinge of sadness. He looked at the crumbling brick and stone work in the walls that separated the garden from the city street, and a surge of melancholy overtook him. It was just one of dozens of religious foundations spread across the city, tucked away in back streets or beside parish churches. For a lost moment Ned saw the city’s landscape anew. Whether it was from the blow to his head or the effects of the bitter tasting medicines he couldn’t say. Now as he looked towards the old stone building he began to pick out glaring details that must have eluded his passage a thousand times so far.

The walls were crumbling covered in tattered vines, and on the church’s roof the slate tiles were shattered, providing little protection from rain or storm. As for its frontage, the statues of the saints leaned and tilted precariously from their niches as if resting there after staggering homeward from a tavern binge. To Ned on any normal day it would have been just another typical old church building, run down and neglected, left to moulder and decay since its
chantries
or benefices had been exhausted or seized by more prominent or favoured religious houses. If you asked the average Londoner, they’d shrug and say it had always been like that, for ten years or more. If you then pressed them to name any new or restored church structure, they would surely growl and spit in the gutter then make insulting reference to the Cardinal’s new Palace at York Place, or to Hampton Court After that, St Paul’s would spring to mind. With a weary sigh, you’d hear the tale of hundreds of years building and still not finished.

How had it happened? It couldn’t have always been like this. At one time all this would have been bustling with activity. He’d heard whispers from old men. It’d been different in the past under previous kings, or lord chancellors. Such mutterings were not said out loud. A potential charge of treason had a funny way of cutting short a man’s words.

It was like the small pebble that tumbled down a hill to join the mounting screed, insignificant in itself, but its arrival was enough to trigger the rushing slide that could change the course of rivers. The broken walls of the Lord’s house and the gaunt trees combined with the desperate need to evade the minions of the Kingdom’s highest spiritual and temporal authorities caused a number of very rebellious and heretical thoughts to percolate through his consciousness. Hither too submerged by years of laboured instruction and hedged in by heavy handed doctrinal strictures, they popped up impudently and asked by his better angel, what had happened? The church was rich, wealthy beyond comprehension, even more so than the King. How had the worldly houses of the Saviour been allowed to just rot away? How was such an abuse conceivable? And why would their Saviour and all the Saints let such ruin come to pass?

Considering his taint of bastardry Ned had received a very good education. As with any university course, it had included Latin and some limited study of the scriptures, guided by the precepts of a few of the classical authors such as St Augustine, St Jerome and the Roman Cicero. All these weighty authorities didn’t help him in his struggle to understand. Were they being punished for their sins? Some priests had claimed the Sweats were a scourge sent by God as a punishment for their lack of faith. If that was so why did it afflict so few of the mighty, for surely their sins and omissions were all the greater? His uncle and teachers had schooled him to honour and respect the Church and the King, for they were placed above us, ordained by God as guide and shepherd. But another thought cropped up. It was not longer just rebellious. It smacked of full–blooded treason and heresy. What if their afflictions were actually due to the vices of senior Lords of the Church or to those of its head? Had all the land suffered for the faults of Cardinal Wolsey? It was a momentous leap for Ned, and his throat went dry at the thought. He quickly glanced at his companions almost expecting these troubling thoughts to be written for all to see upon his countenance. A man could end up in the Bishop of London’s Lollard tower branded a dangerous heretic for the merest suggestion of what was now marching in serried ranks through his mind.

If it had been his education that caused these disturbing thoughts to riot through his mind, it was now his legal training that helped calm the disorder. He had to look at the facts. Facts were important, essential. The first was simple—Cardinal Wolsey was the most powerful man in the country, surpassing the King. He had built his splendid new palace in London. It was said to have been built from the proceeds of monasteries he had closed down thanks to the efforts of his uncle’s friend, Thomas Cromwell.

While at Cambridge he’d heard talk about the new colleges the Cardinal was building at Oxford and Ipswich. They must have cost a shipload of gold. Ned wasn’t an innocent. He knew wealth equated standing. However he was curious as to what the King made of this latest bold statement of power. The word around the Inns was that it was one step too far along the path of prideful display. Powerful men watched in anticipation of the turning of Fortuna’s wheel. All they needed was an excuse. So Will Coverdale’s warning must have been closer to the truth than his usual bragging. Perhaps the day of retribution was close at hand.

Despite the need to practice his crabbed penmanship, Ned had found his indenture at the Inns of Court very useful. The place was awash with tales, rumour and gossip, usually concerning the lords of the land, temporal and secular. The dancing and rhetoric had been pretty good too, but most useful of all was the invisibility. Few of the senior attorneys paid much attention to their younger brethren, expect of course for lecturing them over their lack of moral fibre and a collective shaking of heads at the outrageous antics of modern youth. Like cockroaches and servants, the presence of young clerks was accepted as part of the normal background, as if they were nothing more than a chair or stool. On more than one occasion this had proven opportune as he had overheard juicy, but indiscreet conversation to his advantage.

As a result, Ned knew of the amusement that frequently rolled through the chamber when another of Cardinal Wolsey’s children gained preferment or a benefice. It had been a day of bitter pain to find that the man’s bastard son had obtained the sinecure of Dean of Beverly in Yorkshire, when he, Ned Bedwell, was barred from any church office for the same taint. Advancement was always a matter of money and influence. After all the Cardinal had unlimited wealth, holding the Archbishopric of York along with several other benefices. Despite the massive river of gold flowing into his coffers, Wolsey’s rapacity and greed were legendary. To defray expenses it was well known that, for the right price, any will could be settled or office acquired. At the Inns while they were forced to accept the heavy hand of the Lord Chancellor, discontent was gathering. Influential attorneys and justices complained that rather than reforming the legal system as he had assured the King and Parliament he would, the Cardinal was now, for all intents and purposes, above the law since if you felt hard done by in a case judged in the Star Chamber you had the right to appeal to the Legatine Council that Papal decree claimed administered and supervised the Cardinal’s affairs. The paper work may take a while to lodge since Wolsey had never actually got around to setting it up.

Actually the mood at the Inns went a good deal past discontent. Hate and loathing were more appropriate descriptions, and all because of a play. A few years past, the Cardinal had been invited to the Christmas celebrations at Gray’s Inn. They always put on a very impressive series of plays and entertainments, usually with a moral message amongst the usual prat falls and jokes. That particular year the theme was ‘Ambition and Greed displacing Lady Public
Weal’.
The Cardinal was not impressed with the allegory and sent the master of the play, John
Roos
, and one of the clerks, Thomas Moyle, to the Fleet prison for an indefinite stay. He’d seen
Roos
hobbling around the Courts. The time spent in prison had broken his health and he looked nearer sixty than forty. That made Ned burn with an indignant righteous anger that the Lord Chancellor, the overall authority of law in the Kingdom, could treat a respected man so poorly, leaving him without recourse to the laws of the land. Another of the players had been Simon Fish, who had prudently fled to the Low Countries where he had produced a book, ‘A Supplication of
Beggars’ slamming
the practices of Wolsey and the clergy. Ned had seen some smuggled copies around the Inns just a few weeks ago. From the few parts he’d read the work was very clever, claiming that the Church was the leech draining the commonwealth of its lifeblood, and pleading with the sovereign to rein in its greedy practices. So this was added fuel to his ‘bonfire of vanities’. If one of those secret, despised Lutherans had walked up right now, Ned would have embraced him as a brother and begged for enlightenment. He couldn’t do any worse considering the circumstances.

Ned was roused from his fierce reverie when his companions turned into the open yard of the Inn, led by the wary Roger, who cast a cautious eye at the motley selection of patrons drinking, eating or checking horses. Their escort bypassed the usual courtyard clutter, and spoke quietly to one of the lamed veterans sitting at a bench basking in the last of the autumn sun, and then soon beckoned them inside. It appeared to be a familiar haunt, for
all the
group received was a discrete nod from the innkeeper as they walked up the stairs to the private rooms in the second storey. Gruesome Roger paused outside the fourth door at the end of a narrow corridor, and lightly tapped the timber panels in a simple staccato rhythm. A moment later the door swung open, and led by Mistress Black they filed in, their menacing looking escort last.

It was a very typical room for an inn—not very large with a sturdy timber framed bed set against the wall, flanked by a narrow bench that ran along the wall under a small window. A couple of stools scattered around the periphery completed the main inventory of furniture. It was not luxurious, but could be considered modestly comfortable depending on how well the exterior stone wall kept out drafts on a cold night.

But that was all background to the man who dominated the room. He was young, probably only a little older than Ned, maybe just hitting eighteen years of age. In any market crowd this lad would stand out. Cheery smile and cornflower blue eyes not withstanding, his sheer height and bulk would dominate any gathering. The lad must have been well over six and a half feet tall, with heavily built shoulders to match. Now Ned himself was an inch above six foot and he always found his handsome features and fine nose set the girls a sighing, but if he walked in after this young Adonis, none would notice him as the new Hercules blotted out the sun. This fellow was a giant. Whereas Gruesome Roger put one in mind of a rangy wolf of nasty disposition and burning hunger, this lad was his opposite, an oak of a man with a winning smile and open friendly blue grey eyes.

No wonder Bethany preferred him. That fleeting sour thought was soon swept away as the dam of memories cracked, releasing a tumultuous cascade of recollections. Ned shook his head and staggered. A tree limb sized arm held him upright as his mind sort to arrange the returning memories. The lifting up of a dray, the deposit of a heavy bag of gold into his hand, the flash of white teeth and a broad grin over a firkin of ale. Then Ned looked from this young Adonis to his recent escort. Why hadn’t he seen it before? She’d been the reason they’d gone to the Cardinal’s Cap. All this damned effort just to catch up with family. Mistress Margaret Black, apprentice apothecary, was young Adonis’s sister!

Gruesome Roger shut the door and locked it with a timber crossbeam. Ned’s wits must still have been dulled from his various injuries. It took more than a moment for him to notice. That was an interesting addition to the internal hardware, heavy enough to halt even a battering ram. Usually in a tavern you were lucky to have even the most rudimentary lock. Ned’s daemon gibbered in panic warning of a trap. He took a deep, steadying breath and tried not to panic. Escape was now impossible—out of one prison into another.