The Midsummer Crown (12 page)

I got thankfully to my feet and stretched my legs. ‘The best thing I can do is to see this Amphillis Hill for myself,' I said. I looked at Piers. ‘Do you know where I can find her?'

SEVEN

Dame Copley sniffed loudly.

‘If she's at her work, where she ought to be,' she said waspishly, ‘and not gadding around the castle or taking trips across the river, as these young girls seem prone to do, she'll be with the other seamstresses in the sewing room. Piers knows where that is. He'll take you.'

Piers rose from his seat on the bed.

I shook my head. ‘Don't bother, lad. I can find it. I've a tongue in my head. You'd be better employed seeking out Sir Francis and informing him of Mistress Blancheflower's death. And that of his dog.'

At my words, the nurse gave a piercing scream and staggered to her feet. ‘What do you mean? What's he talking about, Perry?' She laid a trembling hand on Piers's arm. ‘Nell? Dead? There-there must be some mistake. Tell me! Tell me!'

Piers threw me a reproachful glance. ‘She doesn't know yet. I was going to break it to her gently, later. Dame Copley and Mistress Blancheflower were particular friends, you see. They took to each other straight away after we arrived at Minster Lovell from up north.'

‘It can't be Nell!' Rosina Copley had seized the young man by the shoulders and was shaking him violently. ‘You mean it was William.' She drew a ragged, gasping breath and then seemed to take herself in hand. ‘What did Master Chapman mean about the dog? Is he talking about that brute, Beelzebub? But Nell had nothing to do with the dogs.'

‘It-it was an accident,' Piers said, obviously upset by the nurse's distress. ‘She . . . Well, no one knows quite how it happened. Mistress Blancheflower went out of the main courtyard the night before last or sometime during the early hours of yesterday morning. The dog savaged her. T-tore her throat out.'

I stepped forward quickly, afraid that Dame Copley was about to faint. But she was made of sterner stuff than that, and although she was ashen-white, her lips bloodless, she managed a faint, rueful smile at her own weakness.

‘Tell me all about it,' she whispered to Piers, who nodded and sat down on the bed again, inviting her to sit alongside him.

‘I'll go and seek out this Amphillis Hill,' I said, not merely because I wished to avoid a painful scene, but also because my own secret guilt was making me deeply uncomfortable. Piers volunteered no answer, being busy consoling Dame Copley like the good and caring lad he seemed to be, so I slipped out thankfully into the passage, closing the door quietly behind me.

I leant against the wall for a moment or two, convincing myself that there was nothing to be gained by confessing my unfortunate part in Eleanor Blancheflower's death to Piers and the nurse – or indeed to anyone. It would only complicate an already fraught situation. Silence, I decided for the second time, was my best, really my only, option. I had other things to occupy my attention.

I felt better for this decision and walked forward to stand in the open doorway at the end of the passage, staring out at the familiar landing-stage and water-stairs of Baynard's Castle. It took me back a year to the events following my return from Scotland, and for a minute or two I was lost in memories of a pair of large, violet-blue eyes, fair, wavy hair and a seductive, willowy form that invited embrace. Eloise Gray. I found myself wondering where she was now and what she was doing . . .

I shook my head angrily, freeing my mind from memories I had no business to be harbouring, and turned round to face the opposite direction. Ahead of me stretched the passage, empty now of all but shadows cast by the afternoon sunlight, and, at the far end, the first few treads of a flight of stairs that twisted up and out of view. That was where Amphillis Hill had seen young Gideon Fitzalan in company with his tutor, Gregory Machin, as they disappeared out of sight around the bend. By the time she herself reached the landing at the top, they had vanished, one to be found murdered in a locked room, the other . . . The other seemingly dissolved into thin air.

The sewing room of Baynard's Castle, which, after a number of enquiries and conflicting directions, I discovered on the third floor of one of the towers overlooking the river, was a bright, sun-filled room full of chattering girls seated around several long trestle tables littered with skeins of cotton, embroidery silks, pieces of material, parchment patterns, pin boxes, needle boxes, scissors and all the rest of the paraphernalia necessary for making and mending in a household as large as the Dowager Duchess of York's.

The pleasant-faced, elderly woman who was in charge readily acceded to my request to speak to Amphillis Hill without evincing any interest in who I was or what was my authority. Here was no strict taskmistress, and it was small wonder that the girls all seemed happy and relaxed. But whether as much work got done in any one day as the duchess had a right to expect, was debatable. I decided that the answer was probably not.

Amphillis Hill was very much as Piers had described her, if not prettier. She certainly had a buxom figure, although in my opinion just a little too buxom for her height. Another inch or two would have made her perfect. As it was, the first word that came to my mind was ‘squat'. But I soon realized that this was an over-exaggeration and that most people would find nothing to criticize. Perhaps it was my recent memory of Eloise Gray that was making me too particular. As for Mistress Hill's face, with its rosy, rounded cheeks, wide blue eyes, long, fair lashes and delicate, overarching, equally fair eyebrows, only your true misanthrope could have found fault with that.

I beckoned her away from the table where, with tiny, almost invisible stitches, she was mending a rent in a black velvet skirt, and drew her to one of the windows, thrown open on this warm June day to let in both sunshine and the stench of the river. I explained as briefly as I could who I was and what was my mission at Baynard's Castle, expecting her to be puzzled and question my identity, or at least to ask a few pertinent questions. But she just laughed.

‘Oh, I've heard of you,' she said. ‘In fact a lot of people have heard of you. You're the man Duke Richard always sends for when he has a problem to be solved. You went to Scotland with him last year in the company of his cousin, the Duke of Albany. You're the notorious Roger Chapman.'

I was taken aback. It had never occurred to me that my association with the duke had been so noticed and commented upon; but when I gave the idea my serious consideration, I could see that it was probably well-nigh inevitable after so many years. I wasn't sure I cared for her choice of the word ‘notorious' though.

Amphillis went on, ‘I suppose you want to ask me about that poor man who's been murdered? And the boy, the one who's disappeared?' I nodded and she shrugged. ‘I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than I've already told the duke, Sir Francis, the lad's uncle, his two brothers and the Virgin alone knows how many other people who've interrogated me on the subject.'

I smiled down at her, my special, winning smile that I persuaded myself could always melt the heart of a pretty young girl. (Oh, the conceit and folly of youth!)

‘Could you bear to tell me again, for one last time?'

She sighed with exaggerated weariness, but a dimple peeped. ‘I suppose so.'

‘You were coming in from the landing-stage,' I prompted. ‘You'd been out, I understand, across the river.'

‘Yes. I'd been on an errand for Dame Claypole there.' She indicated the head seamstress. ‘There's a shop in Southwark that sells extra fine linen, which we needed to repair one of Her Grace's nightgowns.' She added irritably, ‘Duchess Cicely really ought to have new ones made, but she won't. They say that when she was younger, she was terribly extravagant. If that's so, she's certainly atoned for it since.'

‘So what did you see when you came in through the landing-stage door?' I asked, putting an abrupt end to this digression.

‘What? Oh! Yes. I saw a man and a young boy mounting the stairs at the other end of the passageway.'

‘Did you know who they were?'

‘No. There are so many people in this place, you can't possibly know everyone. And anyway, it turned out that those two had only arrived late the day before. If I'd recognized them, it would have been a miracle.'

‘You hadn't noticed them previously? I mean they hadn't been ahead of you as you crossed the landing-stage?' I wanted to test Dame Copley's story.

Amphillis shook her pretty head. ‘I was the only person in the boat that brought me back from Southwark and when I got out, the landing-stage was deserted. There was only one place they could have come from, and that was one of the rooms opening on to that corridor.' She glanced at me sharply. ‘I've been told since that the lad's nurse – although he looked too big to me to have a nurse – has been given a chamber there. And if that's so, he and that tutor of his must have been visiting her. It was some time after supper, so perhaps they'd been to wish her goodnight.'

I didn't confirm this, saying merely, ‘And when you yourself mounted the stairs, both man and boy had disappeared?'

‘Yes. But that wasn't surprising. There are rooms there, also used by visitors. I just presumed they were in one of them.'

‘You didn't see anything out of the ordinary?'

‘No. But then,' she added astutely, ‘that doesn't necessarily mean there was nothing to see. I wasn't looking for anything, was I?'

‘No,' I agreed, ‘I suppose you weren't. Thinking back now, is it possible that there might have been something?'

She puckered her pretty brow in concentration, but this was almost impossible amidst the chaff and general banter coming from the girls on the tables behind us. Intrigued by my presence and the low-voiced conversation with Amphillis, they were agog to know what it was all about.

‘Don't keep him all to yourself, my dear. A good-looking fellow like that should be shared around,' a snub-nosed girl with bright brown eyes called out, occasioning a gust of laughter.

‘There's enough of him in all conscience,' another girl cried, this time provoking an absolute gale of merriment.

‘More than enough,' someone else sniggered.

I realized it was time to be going. Experience had taught me that women in a crowd could be far cruder than men, however sweet and modest they might be singly. Before I could take my leave of Amphillis, however, the snub-nosed girl had left her table and come across to us, throwing one arm around her friend's shoulders and raking me from head to foot with those bright brown eyes.

‘Well, well!' she said. ‘We don't often see your like at Baynard's Castle. And never at Berkhamsted.' This, I knew, was the dowager duchess's other castle, where she lived in semi-reclusive, semi-religious retirement, only coming to London for important occasions. The forward young minx continued, ‘You need speaking for, and I don't see why little Philly here should have you all to herself. So, I shall give you my favour as if I were a grand lady and you my knight.' And giggling and blushing in equal measure, she unpinned a sprig of leaves from the bodice of her gown and fixed it to my jerkin. Then with eyebrows coquettishly raised, she waited for my reaction.

I'm afraid I disappointed her. I was more interested in what she had given me than I was in her.

‘Birch leaves,' I said, squinting down at them. ‘Of course! It can't be long now until Midsummer Eve.'

‘Just over a week,' Amphillis cut in, frowning furiously at her friend.

‘This coming Monday sennight,' brown-eyes confirmed. She gave a delicious shiver. ‘They say that if you walk seven times clockwise round a church at midnight, sowing hempseed as you go, and then look over your left shoulder, you'll see the person you're going to marry.' She cocked her head to one side and laid a hand on my arm. ‘Is it possible, sir, that you might be somewhere near a church on Midsummer Eve?'

‘He's married,' Amphillis said tartly, before I had time to answer. ‘And if you're going to ask me how I know, Maria Johnson, I have a nose for these things. Master Chapman looks married. You can always tell. Men who are leg-shackled don't behave in just the same way as men who aren't.'

The other girl's face fell ludicrously. ‘Are you?' she asked, addressing me. And when I nodded, snatched back the birch leaves and pin. ‘No use giving you my favour then,' she snapped, and returned to her table amid the jeers and laughter of the other girls.

The head seamstress, suddenly aware of behaviour getting out of hand, came hurrying across, her pleasant face creased with concern. ‘Amphillis—' she began anxiously, but I forestalled her.

‘I'm leaving now, mistress,' I said. And, with a smile and a quick general word of farewell, departed.

My immediate intention was to go in search of Piers until I realized that I had no idea where to find him. So, instead, I went to look for the steward to find out where I was housed. To my astonishment, I discovered it was the same costive little chamber that I had occupied the previous year before I was despatched to France: damp, chilly, high up, with the same narrow window overlooking the water-stairs. Someone had fetched my saddlebags and dumped them on the bed, and the young lad who had been deputed by the steward to be my guide, informed me that supper would be served in the servants' hall in half an hour.

‘Never mind that,' I said, rather to my own surprise as well as the boy's (food being of paramount importance in any underling's day). ‘Do you know where the murder took place last week?' He nodded mutely, his eyes suddenly wide with alarm. ‘Good. Can you take me there?'