The Midsummer Crown (16 page)

‘So you can't help me, sir?'

He shook his head. ‘Though I feel sure Pomfret will manage to blame me or Lewis for the boy's disappearance when he finally arrives. Still on his way down from Yorkshire, you know.' I nodded. ‘You'd better find my nephew, Blaise – or the other one, Bevis. Like I said, they're about somewhere.' He added vaguely, ‘They're in attendance on Sir Francis.'

But when I at last managed to track down these two young gentlemen, I found them kicking their heels in the servants' hall, playing a desultory game of three men's morris. It appeared that Sir Francis Lovell had been urgently summoned to Crosby's Place to wait upon my lord of Gloucester – and, well, I could guess what for! The duke would gradually be testing the opinions of his friends, gaining their support for what I feared was no longer just an idea at the back of his mind, but a definite and fully-fledged plan.

I tried not to think about it – after all, there was nothing I could do – and seated myself beside one of the boys, both of whom bore a strong family resemblance to their twin uncles. Briefly, I explained what I wanted to know.

Neither was purposely unhelpful. It was just that they had no idea what could have happened to their youngest brother or why.

‘Did Tutor Machin have any particular enemies?' I asked in desperation when they showed signs of tiring of the subject and returning to their game.

They shook their curly heads in unison.

‘Nobody liked him enough to dislike him,' the elder, Bevis, said, adding, ‘if you know what I mean.'

‘He was a dry old stick, but a good teacher.' This was Blaise's contribution. ‘But harmless enough. He never quarrelled with anyone to my knowledge.'

‘Except Mother Copley,' his brother added with a grin.

I seized on this. ‘He and Dame Copley didn't get on?'

Bevis hunched his shoulders. He was a handsome lad of, I judged, about nineteen or twenty summers.

‘They fought over Gideon. He's always been the old girl's favourite, just as he's our mother's. He's a sickly little beast, although not near as sickly as he likes to make out. At least, that's my opinion.'

‘It's everyone's opinion,' Blaise concurred heartily. ‘Gid's a bit of a weasel. Likes to be coddled and made a fuss of. God's toenails! Wasn't there an almighty row when Mother insisted that Dame Copley accompany him to Minster Lovell?' He chuckled reminiscently. ‘I thought Father was going to die of an apoplexy. Never seen anyone so mad in all my life.'

'But the women carried the day,' his brother pointed out. ‘In the end, Father was no match for them, with their wailing and sulking and wringing of hands. And of course, Tutor Machin didn't like it much, either. In fact, to say truth, he was furious. He'd hoped to get Gideon to himself, toughen him up a bit. And get some book learning into his silly little noddle.'

‘What about young Piers Daubenay?' I asked.

But it seemed that there had been no objection to Piers.

‘He's Gid's servant,' the older boy replied with a shrug. ‘Gid has to have a servant. We all do. Nothing wrong with Piers. Bit vain, mind you. Prinks and preens in front of any mirror he happens to come across. But I think he has Gideon's measure. Or had,' he added, suddenly sober.

It seemed to hit both of them at once that they might never see their youngest brother again. They discarded their mocking tone and Bevis asked seriously, ‘Do you think he's dead?'

‘I don't know,' I told them truthfully. ‘It's possible, but in that case, I can't see any reason why he would have been abducted. If it was necessary to get rid of him because he'd been a witness to murder, then he could have been disposed of on the spot. Why go to the trouble of taking him away?'

‘So what do they want with him? Whoever “they” are?'

Regretfully, I shook my head. ‘I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you just at present.' Or in the near future at this rate, I added mentally, but was careful not to express my thought aloud.

And that was as far as I got on Saturday, while the Dowager Duchess of York's insistence that everyone under her roof should attend Mass at least twice, if not three, times on Sunday, as well as observing a Sabbath calm throughout the intervening hours, effectively put a stop to my investigation until the following day. I used the respite by trying to assemble my thoughts and impressions in some sort of order, but found that, at the moment, they were too jumbled to form any kind of pattern. The murder of Gregory Machin in his locked room frustrated me at every turn for the simple reason that although it was an impossibility, it was also a fact. But how could one have an impossible fact? It was a paradox, a contradiction that sent my mind reeling. There would appear to be only one answer; that some supernatural agency was involved, but that I refused to allow. Once again, I examined the reason as to why I was so adamantly set against this solution, and again accepted that my instinct told me it wasn't so. And over the years, I had learnt to trust that feeling which seemed to emanate from somewhere deep down in my guts.

I saw very little of Piers during these two days. Once or twice, I recognized him at a distance during meals in the servants' hall, but he made no move to come over to my table; indeed, he returned my salutations with the briefest of nods or waves. He was in company with a group of younger men, all about his own age, and there was a good deal of laughter and joking as well as a certain amount of horseplay when the steward's stern eye was not upon them. It made me uncomfortably aware that in a few months' time, on October the second, I would be thirty-one years old. I was approaching middle-age.

And it was this realization as much as anything that made me so restless that Sunday night, chasing sleep from my pillow and keeping me awake into the small hours of Monday morning. And when I did finally fall asleep, it was to dream of Eloise Grey of all people; a muddled farrago of nonsense in which I was chasing her through the twisting passageways of Baynard's Castle, never quite catching up with her, but always a frustrating step or two behind. I woke just before dawn with the changing of the light, then slept again almost immediately to resume the same dream. Although not quite the same. This time it was Piers Daubenay whom I was pursuing – but still with the same lack of success . . .

I awoke with a start to find the morning well advanced if the bustle and clatter and raised voices within the castle were anything to judge by. And when I had eased my aching body from my hard pallet and opened the shutters of my cell-like room, the sun streaming in upon my face, the amount of traffic already on the river and the shouting of the boatmen as they vied with one another for trade convinced me that it was even later than I had thought.

I dressed as quickly as I could in my own comfortable old clothes, leaving the better stuff in my saddlebags, which I stowed away in a dark corner to reduce the possibility of theft. Next, I went down to the kitchen courtyard to stand in line for my turn at the pump, before making my way to one of the sculleries where bowls of hot water had been set out for shaving. By this time the water was tepid and my knife blunt, so I managed to cut myself twice, once on my cheek and once on my chin, and went to breakfast in a foul mood not improved by the usual meal of porridge, dried fish and yesterday's stale oatcakes. Silently, I cursed the dowager duchess and her parsimonious ways.

While I munched laboriously at my final oatcake, swilled down with some exceedingly weak small beer, I decided that I must speak again with Amphillis Hill. Accordingly, when I had finished, I directed my steps towards the sewing room.

‘I'm sorry, Master Chapman, but I can't spare any of the girls just now.' The pleasant, elderly supervisor looked genuinely upset at having to deny my request, but her tone was determined. No blandishments or persuasion were going to make her change her mind. She indicated the silent girls, their heads bent diligently over their work, not a word or a giggle to be had from any of them. ‘The duchess has ordered extra embroidery on the train of her coronation robe, and we're going to be hard pressed to get it done in time. If you wish to speak to Amphillis, you must do it later. Perhaps this evening.'

I glanced round the room, but there was no telling which girl was which. None of them looked up or gave me greeting. I could have urged it, citing my work for the Duke of Gloucester as my authority, but the dame in charge appeared harassed, overburdened with responsibility, so I gave in with as much grace as I could muster.

Once outside the room, I paused, wondering what to do next. Finally I decided to visit Dame Copley again in the hope that she might, now that she was calmer, remember something of value.

As I approached the twisting stair leading to the nurse's chamber, I heard the soft murmur of women's voices and then the gentle closing of a door. Two swift strides brought me to the head of the steps and I tiptoed down them, steadying myself with a hand against the left-hand wall, just in time to see Amphillis Hill let herself out of the door at the end of the passageway which gave access to the landing-stage. That same Amphillis Hill who, according to the sewing-mistress was busily plying her needle somewhere upstairs with the rest of the seamstresses.

For half a second I toyed with the notion that I must be mistaken, but the evidence of my own eyes assured me I was not. There was something immediately recognizable about the girl. Besides which, the faint echo remaining in my head of the voices I had heard told me that one of them was hers. She must have been visiting Rosina Copley. There was no alternative: the nurse's room seemed to be the only one occupied along this corridor.

Abandoning my original intention of going to see the dame myself, I followed Amphillis out of doors. She was in the act of summoning a passing boat and, keeping to the shadows cast by various small buildings to my left, I was lucky enough to hear her direction to the oarsman.

‘Westminster. And hurry!'

I waited until the vessel was in midstream before descending the water-stairs and shouting to another boat. I gave the same direction.

As we pulled away, turning upstream, the oarsman grumbled, ‘Westminster! Westminster! No one's going anywhere else today it seems. You're the fifth person I've taken there this morning, and the day's hardly begun. Doing the same run all the time gets monot'nous. I'm the sort what likes variety in me work, I am. Howsoever –' he shrugged resignedly – ‘it's only t' be expected, I suppose.'

‘Why?' I asked, listening to him with only half an ear while my eyes strained to keep Amphillis's boat in sight.

‘D'you mean you don't know?' He sounded incredulous. ‘Why you going there, then?'

I ignored this intrusion into my private affairs and asked again, ‘What's happening?'

‘They're bringing the young Duke o' York out of sanctuary. They say the Duke o' Gloucester – him what calls himself Protector now – has ordered it. Says he wants the lad to be with his brother in the Tower, ready fer the little king's coronation.' He sniffed. ‘You really mean you ain't heard?'

I shook my head. ‘I've only been in London since Friday.'

‘Ho! Friday is it? In that case, you surely must have heard about the 'heading o' the Lord Chamberlain in the Tower.'

‘He wasn't beheaded,' I said loudly. ‘He's awaiting trial.'

The man gave a sort of snorting hiccough which I took to be a laugh. ‘Who told you that fairy story? Them little elves at the bottom o' the garden? You don't want to believe everything you hear, y' know.'

‘And neither do you!' I could feel my temper rising. Timothy had been right. Once those sorts of lies were disseminated, they quickly took root. ‘You don't like the Protector?' I asked in a quieter tone, noting with relief that Amphillis's boat was still within view. The influx of river traffic was making it difficult to proceed with any speed.

‘Don't know much about him down here, do we? Barely set eyes on him these past few years. Caught a glimpse or two of him last year, o' course, when there was all that fuss about him having won back some godforsaken, piddling little town in Scotland. What I say as a good Englishmen is bugger the Scots! Barbarians, all o' them. No good t' man nor beast. Same with northerners,' he added darkly, speaking as a man of the south. ‘Weird, they are. Who knows what goes on up there? And he's one o' them. The Duke o' Gloucester, I mean.'

There seemed to be no argument against such entrenched prejudice, so I held my tongue, concentrating instead on keeping the other boat in sight. I became aware, however, that we and all the smaller vessels on the northern side of the river were being forced closer to the bank as a number of great gilded barges rowed past. And I noted that the leading barge flew the Gloucester standard, while others sported those of the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Howard. But the most worrying aspect was the boatloads of armed men following in their wake. It at once suggested to me, as it most certainly must to others, that the queen dowager was not willingly parting with her younger son. My heart sank. If force were to be the order of the day, Prince Richard would forfeit a great deal of goodwill.

My boatman suddenly rested on his oars.

‘Might as well let 'em go,' he grunted. ‘It'll be easier when that lot have landed.'

‘Nonsense!' I said sharply. ‘Go on, man! Go on!'

But he was not to be shifted, with the inevitable result that, by the time I did disembark at Westminster stairs, Amphillis was nowhere to be seen, having vanished into the crowds that were assembled in front of the sanctuary. I stood still perforce, but even though I was a head taller than most of my neighbours, looking for her was as much use as searching for a needle in a bottle of hay.