The Midsummer Crown (4 page)

I turned back to my informant. ‘There hasn't been any . . . any trouble then in the capital?'

Our ale arrived, plonked down in front of us by the harassed pot-boy with more haste than ceremony. He held out a grubby hand for the money before hurrying away in response to a shout from the landlord.

‘What do you mean by trouble?' Joshua Bullman asked, his small, round eyes peering at me enquiringly over the rim of his beaker.

‘Roger knows something,' Jack said with conviction. ‘I never met such a man for gettin' tangled up in things he shouldn't. Go on, then, lad! Tell us what trouble you're expecting.'

‘I'm not expecting anything,' I retorted irritably. ‘But the Queen Dowager's family aren't any friends of the duke, and there was that plot by the Woodvilles to either arrest or quietly despatch him at Northampton. And if it hadn't been for the Duke of Buckingham it might well have succeeded. And also Sir Edward Woodville has put to sea with half the royal treasure.'

Joshua Bullman nodded. ‘Oh ay! I heard men'd been sent to waylay him before he reached Calais. But that's all. What the outcome was, or is, I've no more notion than you.'

‘And Lord Chamberlain Hastings?' I persisted. ‘He hasn't been stirring things up?'

‘Not that I heard. Why should he?'

I hesitated, picking my words carefully. ‘Oh . . . I just thought . . . I thought he might resent Buckingham's growing influence with my lord Gloucester. After all, right-hand man to the Protector is the position he'd probably decided upon for himself. Indeed, the position he had every reason to expect would be his. To be usurped in such a fashion could make him discontented, to say the least.'

Again came the shrug. ‘I know nothing of that. There were no rumours in any of the alehouses and taverns that I heard tell. London seemed peaceful enough when I left it. Everything going forward for the king's coronation as it should. The place'll be heaving by now, I shouldn't wonder, with folk arriving for the ceremony and the Parliament that's been called. There won't be a decent bed to be had for love nor money. My advice is, if you're thinking of going there, wait until after the crowning and thing's have settled down a bit.'

‘Oh, I'm not thinking of returning to London,' I said forcefully. ‘That's the last thing on my mind. It's my intention not to stir much beyond the Bristol pale for the next few months.'

Jack was shaken with silent laughter. ‘I've heard you say stuff like that before, Roger, my lad, and it never works out that way. You tempt providence, you do! I reckon you'll be back in London inside a month. What'll you wager me?'

‘Nothing,' I said angrily. ‘Stop talking nonsense! I've told you! Adela and the children need me. I'm staying near home for the rest of the summer.'

He grinned. ‘Oh, ah! And I might find a pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow.' He got up. ‘I must be off. You coming?'

I shook my head. ‘I'll stay a bit longer.'

‘Please yourself. Josh?'

‘Ay' The other man rose ponderously to his feet and they went out together.

‘Don't get drunk,' was Jack's parting shot. ‘I reckon you've had enough.'

I stuck two fingers in the air, but the gesture was wasted. He was already out of the door. As it happened, I had no intention of spending my money on more ale: I simply wanted to be alone, to think.

I could have sworn, when I left London three weeks earlier, that trouble was brewing. The general mood of the city was edgy and had been, or so I guessed, ever since the heralds had cried the news of King Edward IV's death on April the ninth. Certainly, by the time I rode in through the Lud Gate on St George's Day, there was a febrile atmosphere that was hard to explain. Even the arrival of the Duke of Gloucester with the young king three days after May Day had done nothing to dispel the general sense of uneasiness. Duke Richard's perhaps over-excessive gratitude to his cousin, Henry of Buckingham, for riding to warn him of the Northampton plot, had put many noses out of joint; and, as I said before, I knew for a fact that Lord Chamberlain Hastings had begun plotting almost at once with his old enemies, the Woodvilles, and some of their adherents to overthrow the Protector.

Nothing, however seemed to have come of it. If Joshua Bullman were telling the truth – and there was no reason whatsoever why he should not be – all was quiet in the capital and plans going ahead for the young king's coronation and the calling of his first parliament. And yet . . . I repeat that no one knew better than I that Duke Richard strongly suspected, even if he were not entirely convinced, that the late king had been his mother's bastard by an archer, named Blaybourne. Had he not sent me to Paris the previous year in an attempt to discover the truth of the matter? Unfortunately, the evidence I had uncovered had been sufficient merely to bolster the duke's suspicions without amounting to proof. And as long as the Dowager Duchess of York refused to confirm or deny the allegation she had once made, on the occasion of the late king's marriage to Dame Elizabeth Woodville, then my lord of Gloucester had no alternative but to accept his elder nephew as his rightful sovereign.

I swallowed the dregs of my ale and rose to my feet. But even as I did so, a memory obtruded itself; a memory of the night I had spent at Reading Abbey on my recent journey to London and the sudden flurried arrival, which I had accidentally witnessed, of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. My lord had appeared unnecessarily agitated, as he had also done when I saw him just over a week later on his way to the service of thanksgiving, for the king's safe entry into his capital, at St Paul's. A third sighting of him leaving Crosby's Place in Bishop's Gate Street, where the Duke of Gloucester had been temporarily lodging, convinced me that my lord bishop had something on his mind. And this, in turn, had provoked the recollection that Robert Stillington had not only been a close friend of George of Clarence, but had briefly been imprisoned around the time of the duke's execution.

I sat down again, much to the annoyance of a man who had been waiting to take my seat, and stared sightlessly ahead of me, twisting my empty beaker between my hands. Here was certainly food for thought. But then, suddenly, resolutely, I once more stood up and made my way outside, breathing in the balmy evening air. What concern was any of this of mine? I asked myself. The capital and its affairs, its intrigues and secrets, were none of my business. Wild horses wouldn't drag me back there. I was home and that was where I was going to stay.

I had been hawking my wares around the manor of Clifton with some success – enough, at any rate, to make me feel at peace with myself and life in general – and was seated on the edge of the gorge, eating the dinner of bread and cheese with which Adela had provided me. Far below me it was low tide, and the sluggish Avon was a narrow thread between its glistening banks of mud, while on the opposite side of the river, as on my own, the towering cliffs were cloaked in the green of trees and shrubs that clung perilously to the rock face. As I watched, a faint breeze tossed the sun-bronzed leaves into patterns of silver and jade and slate-blue, and the distant hills were awash with light, waves of beaten copper rolling towards some celestial shore. The June day was playing at being high summer to make up for the previous evening's wind and rain.

I thought once more of the giants, Vincent and Goram, whom legend credited with cutting the gorge using only one axe between them. The latter, the lazy, gluttonous brother, had suggested that they raise great mounds of rocks mingled with bones of the huge creatures which stalked the earth at that time. Vincent could supply the rocks, he the bones, and incidentally provide meat for their table. The axe, which Goram also used for hunting, would be tossed from one to the other as needed, preceded by a shout of warning, a system that worked well enough until one day the inevitable happened. Goram, asleep in his chair, failed to hear his brother, who was digging three miles off, call out. The axe split his skull in two and he died instantly, leaving Vincent, grief-stricken with self-blame, to devote the rest of his life to good works, amongst which were the building of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, the raising of the ancient stone circle at Stanton Drew and even the single-handed building of the Giant's Dance on Salisbury Plain.

Hercules, my dog, who had accompanied me on my excursion, as he so often did, nudged me with his cold, wet nose, indicating his willingness to finish my bread and cheese for me if I really didn't want it. As he had already demolished a large chunk of meat which Adela had thoughtfully packed for him, I ignored the suggestion and, instead, got to my feet preparatory to starting on the homeward journey.

‘You're quite right,' I said, addressing him. ‘All this brooding on old legends and fairy stories is doing no good whatsoever. I don't know what's got into me lately.'

Hercules wagged his tail in a disappointed sort of way as I crammed the last of the bread into my mouth, but was soon happy again now that we were on the move, snuffling for rabbits among the long grass. (He had never caught one and never would, but he lived in hope.) I strode out across the downs, that high plateau of grassland that shelters Bristol from the northerly winds, keeping it snug in its marshy bed from the worst of the winter weather. In the past ten years, however, since I had been a resident, the city had begun to spread its tentacles ever further beyond the walls, spawning dozens of little communities on the slopes rising towards Clifton and Westbury, so that it was no longer remarkable to encounter children escaping from harassed mothers or to meet with washing drying on wayside bushes, or even blowing about one's ankles on windy days.

As we descended the first of the three main slopes leading homeward, a young lad, some ten or eleven years old, toppled out of the lower branches of a birch tree, landing almost at my feet with a painful thud. Luckily, his fall was broken by a pile of small, leafy branches which he had hacked off previously and which provided a sort of mattress at the base of the trunk.

He picked himself up, cursing, but before I could commiserate with him, a voice from overhead enquired, ‘Are you all right, Harry?'

‘Of course I'm all right,' Harry said irritably. ‘Don' ask stupid questions.'

Another boy of roughly the same age as the first, swung from a lower bough and dropped to the grass. Together, the pair began to gather up the birch branches which I now noticed were far too young and green to serve as firewood.

‘They won't burn,' I remarked. ‘Your mothers won't be pleased.'

The second lad regarded me scornfully. ‘They bain't fer burning, master.' His tone was derisive.

‘Naa,' added the boy called Harry. ‘They'm fer makin' midsummer crowns. We'm goin' t' sell 'em in Bristol market.'

Of course! I had forgotten the old pagan custom of making wreaths of tender young birch twigs and crowning some local child king or queen of Midsummer Eve. It was a country practice and not much adhered to in cities and towns where the watchful eye of the Church was constantly upon one.

‘Better not let too many people catch you at it, then,' I advised. ‘You know how many churches and parish priests there are in Bristol.'

‘We'm not fools, you know,' the second boy snorted, his contempt for me increasing. He waved a branch in my face. ‘Pretty leaves t' decorate your home, sir? Take some home t' your goody. Look lovely in a pot, they will.'

I laughed. ‘The priests aren't fools, either,' I warned, ‘so be careful. You don't want to find yourselves in the stocks.'

‘My da's a carrier,' Harry said, ‘and he says in Lunnon they don't care. The priests turn a blind eye. Do you want a sprig? It don't have t' be a crown.'

I thanked him but refused. Hercules was growing restless, anxious now to be home, an anxiety that communicated itself to me. I said goodbye to the two lads, striding out and soon leaving them trailing in our wake until, glancing over my shoulder, I could see them no longer.

Half an hour later, I was at the Frome Gate and, having exchanged a few words with the gatekeeper, was about to pass under the arch when I saw Elizabeth waiting for me, on the opposite side. My heart lurched. Something was wrong.

‘What is it?' I asked, gripping her shoulder and hushing the dog who was barking ecstatically in welcome.

Elizabeth lifted her face to mine.

‘That man's here again,' she announced accusingly.

THREE

My heart gave a great lurch and sank into my boots. I had no need to ask whom she meant by ‘that man', but nevertheless I stalled for time, staving off the actual moment of acknowledgement.

‘What man?'

My daughter made no answer, simply staring at me with the large blue eyes that were so like my own. Indeed, she bore such a strong resemblance to me, fair-haired and big-boned with the promise of height to come, that I could see nothing in her of her small, dark Celtic-looking mother. I had often noticed my former mother-in-law, Margaret Walker, searching for some likeness of feature between Elizabeth and Lillis but failing to find one; and I often reflected that it must be a source of great disappointment to her that her one true grandchild had not a single feature to remind her of her long-dead daughter.

We were joined by my stepson, Nicholas, who arrived from the direction of Small Street closely shadowed by his little half-brother, Adela's and my son, Adam. The latter would be five years old at the end of the month and was now of an age to want his siblings' company, a fact which they resented. From the moment Adela and I had married, six years previously, Elizabeth and Nick had been inseparable and had needed no other companions than each other. Now, a persistent little serpent was invading their Eden.