Wheel of Fate (27 page)

‘And when was the pyx stolen from the church?'

Oswald wrinkled his brow. ‘Not long before, I think.' He raised his eyebrows at Arbella. ‘Isn't that right?'

The housekeeper's only reply was to dump the plate of oatcakes on the table and withdraw without a word. A spot of colour burned in Oswald's cheeks, but he made no comment on her behaviour other than to pull down his mouth at the corners. He rose from the table, shrugging on his lawyer's striped robe which had been draped over the back of his chair.

‘I must go. You are, of course, free to borrow Old Diggory whenever you wish. I shall see you this evening, probably sometime after supper as I shall be working late on a case with my clerk in chambers.' He held out his hand in a sudden gesture of friendship that he had not displayed hitherto. ‘Find out what you can, Roger,' he added on a note of desperation at variance with his usual frigid manner.

‘I'll do my best,' I promised, ‘but I can't work miracles, Oswald, and sooner or later I, too, must go home. I have a living to earn.'

He waved a dismissive hand as though such a triviality were unimportant and hurried from the room. I went upstairs again to where my loved ones were still soundly asleep, thrust my knife into my belt and put on my cloak, for the early May morning had turned cold and showery. Today I had thankfully abandoned my smart new clothes for the old familiar hose and jerkin which fitted me in all the accustomed places and were as comfortable as a second skin. Moreover I should be far less conspicuous, just one of the crowd.

A few people were coming out of St Botolph's as I neared the church, so I guessed that prime had just finished. I therefore went inside to speak to Father Berowne. He greeted me with delight.

‘You're just too late for the service, Roger,' he said, his eyes twinkling with suppressed laughter. ‘You must have overslept. What a shame! I know you must be sorry, but come and have some breakfast with me. I'm sure Ellen can find enough for two.'

I declined on the grounds that I had just eaten. ‘I won't detain you for more than a moment, Father. I simply wanted to ask you about the pyx that was stolen from this church.'

He looked surprised. ‘But that was over a year ago. Why do you want to know about that?'

‘There has been another robbery. At the Arbour, yesterday. A ring belonging to my wife was taken. Clemency and Oswald mentioned the previous thefts.'

‘Thefts?' he queried sharply.

‘It seems that a man called Peter Coleman was also robbed, of his savings.'

‘Peter? Ah, yes! I'd forgotten that. Well . . . there's nothing much to tell, I'm afraid. This is a poor church and the pyx was one of the few valuable things it possessed. It was silver-gilt and kept in that aumbry you see to the right of the altar.' The priest shrugged. ‘The lock in those days was flimsy and easily broken, unlike the one you see on it now. By the greatest good fortune, the two candlesticks, also silver-gilt, had been removed by myself for cleaning on the very morning of the robbery.' He grimaced. ‘And that's all I can tell you, Roger. Although, as I say, why you should want to know . . .' He broke off, smiling at someone who had just entered the church behind me. ‘Mistress Rokeswood! You wish to speak to me?'

I turned. Arbella was standing in the doorway, and I had the fleeting impression that she was a little flustered. But if she were – and I could think of no good reason why she should be – she recovered herself immediately, walking forward and saying calmly, ‘I've come to confession, Father. I haven't been since last Wednesday.'

Sir Berowne nodded, waving her towards the confessional and raising his eyebrows at me, an indication that it was surely time for me to leave.

I took the hint, wished them both good-day and left, walking the length of Bishop's Gate Without until I reached the Bedlam. Already the shrieks and cries from within were loud enough to chill the blood, but I had grown used to them by now. I counted back two houses and knocked on the door.

After a few moments' delay, it was answered by a small, wizened man whose most prominent feature was a large pair of ears, giving him the appearance of some woodland sprite. He was holding a needle and thread in one hand, and behind him, I could see a long trestle table covered with lengths of material. Several bolts of cloth stood against one wall and a pair of scissors dangled from the belt at his waist. He regarded me uncertainly.

‘Yes? Who are you?' His voice was astonishingly deep for such a little man. ‘If you're wanting a gown for your wife, I'm sorry but just at present—'

I interrupted his apology to explain my business, receiving in return the sort of blank look I had got from Father Berowne, and an almost identical response.

‘But that was a year and more ago.'

Once he grasped the fact, however, that my interest was serious, he seemed anxious to talk about his loss, inviting me in, clearing a space on the table and producing two beakers and a jug of what he assured me was the best home-brewed ale in London. (And while accepting this with a pinch of salt, I have to admit that it was by no means the worst ale I have ever tasted.)

‘What do you want to know?' he asked.

‘Who, apart from yourself, knew where you kept your money?'

‘No one,' he answered, his little face puckering with distress. ‘I had dug the hole myself, most secretly, when I first came to live in this house. A woman's tailor, sir –' he indicated with a sweep of his hand the jumble of coloured silks and velvets that littered the trestle – ‘does not make a great deal of money. Thrifty goodwives make their own gowns and only those with money to spare can afford my services. And I dare not overcharge or I lose such custom as I have. But I'm unmarried and live frugally – a habit I learned from my mother, herself a sewing-woman – so I was able to save steadily against the day when my eyesight begins to fail me and my fingers to thicken and become misshapen—'

‘In other words,' I interrupted, smiling, ‘you had a fair sum put by.'

He nodded ruefully. ‘But,' he was quick to add, ‘it represented many years hard work. So, as I said, when I first came here, I dug a good, deep hole beneath the floor, over against that wall there –' he nodded towards the back of the cottage – ‘placed the money in its leather bag inside, stuffed the remaining space with scraps of old material and smoothed earth over the top. Then I stood that chest over the spot. The hole was not easy of access, I assure you, and I used to curse myself for having made it so difficult whenever I had money to put away.'

‘People, though, must have suspected you of having a secret hoard,' I suggested. ‘A single man, living alone, making a reasonable living but spending little, would be bound to give rise to that sort of speculation.'

He shrugged. ‘I suppose so. But the strange thing was that when I returned home on the day of the robbery, nothing appeared to have been disturbed. The house had not been ransacked, neither upstairs nor down. Everything seemed to be in order until I went to put away the day's takings that same evening. It was only when I had moved the chest and scraped away the layer of earth that I realized the hole was empty. The bag full of money had gone.'

This put a different complexion on the matter. ‘So someone knew exactly where it was hidden?'

‘But how could they?' he protested excitedly. ‘I never told anyone of my hiding-place.'

‘It's no good saying that!' I retorted irritably. ‘You must have mentioned it to someone, it stands to reason. It beggars belief that a chance thief, or even an acquaintance who suspected you of hoarding money could go directly to the right place without prior knowledge of its location.'

‘I told no one,' the tailor reiterated, growing rather red in the face, his ears seeming to stick out even further from his head.

‘Could anyone ever have looked through the window and seen you stowing your money under the floor?' I asked with sudden inspiration.

He shook his head decisively. ‘I never did so until after dark, even in the summer months, when the shutters were fast closed and the door locked.'

‘And there's no back entrance to this house? No one could have crept in and spied on you without your knowledge?'

‘There is, but that, too, was always locked once dusk had fallen.'

‘A mystery, then,' I said, finishing my ale. ‘The church, too, was robbed, or so I've been told.'

Once again, Master Coleman nodded. ‘That was not long before my money was stolen. Sacrilege! Father Berowne was distraught. He told the congregation after Mass the following day and begged the guilty party to come forward and confess. He promised that no further action would be taken if the pyx were restored. But of course it never was. I'm a good son of the Holy Church, sir, and one morning shortly afterwards, when he was here visiting me because I was sick, I offered to head a subscription to raise money to replace it.'

‘And was your offer accepted?'

My host shook his head sadly. ‘Sir Berowne thanked me, but doubted if other folk would be so generous. I suggested the people at the Arbour, but he was loath to ask them. He said they had troubles of their own. One of the ladies had been seriously ill and another sister had recently died from eating a poison mushroom.' He regarded me curiously. ‘You're staying with Lawyer Godslove, aren't you? And now another of his sisters has gone missing, or so I've heard. Such ill-luck!' He shuddered. ‘There's evil at work there, sir. And you say that the robberies have started again. A ring belonging to your wife? You need to be careful. Misfortune can be contagious.'

I rose to my feet. ‘So my wife believes. She is anxious to go home to Bristol as soon as maybe.'

The tailor got up with me. ‘She's wise,' he said and accompanied me to the door. ‘I hope I've been of some use to you; that you've learned whatever it is you wanted to know.'

I thanked him without giving him an answer. The truth was that I wasn't at all sure what it was I had hoped to glean from him or what it was exactly that I had wanted to know. As I had said to Adela, I had been following one of those inexplicable hunches that possessed me every now and then. Or were they indeed directions straight from God? I was never quite certain: I only knew that they had to be obeyed.

Once outside the tailor's cottage, I debated whether or not to return to the Arbour and saddle Old Diggory for the ride into the city, but in the end, decided against it. For one thing, my old clothes would consort ill with a thoroughbred horse and draw people's attention to me. For another, the walk would do me good; I was growing lazy and putting on weight. I was used to going everywhere on my own two legs and had never been comfortable in the company of horses, a rather stupid animal in my estimation. I had my knife in my belt, and this, together with my height and girth, would afford me sufficient protection.

As I passed through the Bishop's Gate, I noticed that there was no sign of any workmen.

‘The repairs are finished, then,' I remarked to the gatekeeper.

‘God be praised,' he answered devoutly. ‘All that noise! Banging and hammering and shouting and cursing! It was enough to drive a man out of his wits, so it was. Not,' he added petulantly, ‘that it's much better now that the Duke of Gloucester's taken up residence at Crosby's Place. Such a to-do and people coming and going at all hours. Still, it's further down the road and not right in your earholes like the masons and the hod-carriers, which is summat, I suppose.'

‘Is the king staying there, as well?' I asked.

The man gave a vigorous shake of his head. ‘Lor' love you, no! He's lodging with the Bishop of London, or so I was told by one o' Gloucester's men. Temporary, like. Rumour is,' he added confidentially, warming to his theme and blatantly ignoring the impatient queue that was building up behind me, ‘his uncles want him moved to the royal apartments in the Tower, but they want his brother, the little Duke of York, to go with him for company. Trouble is, he's in Westminster sanctuary with his mother and sisters, and Queen Elizabeth, well, she don't want to let him out.' The gatekeeper blew his nose in his fingers. ‘S'pose you can't blame her, not after what happened to her brother and other son.'

I took no notice of the old lady who was prodding me in the back with her stick. ‘They were only arrested.'

‘Ay!' The gatekeeper again nodded his head. ‘And imprisoned up north, so Gloucester's man tells me.'

He was a fount of information and I would have liked to stay and gossip with him longer, but the clamour of indignant voices behind me was growing too great to be ignored. Reluctantly, I took my departure and walked on down Bishop's Gate Street Within. Long before I drew abreast of Crosby's Place, I could hear the hum of activity and saw at least five messengers wearing the Gloucester livery ride out, all in the space of five minutes. And just as I reached the turning into the Poultry and Eastcheap, I was forced to one side of the road as the duke himself swept past. Thankfully, he was surrounded by a vast number of attendants and men-at-arms, so failed to notice me, although I was able to get a good look at him.

Never of a high colour and always with something of the pallor of ill-health about him, he appeared even grimmer and more drawn than usual, as though he had the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders. Which, undoubtedly, he had. Moreover, he was, and always had been, a man of the north, of the moors and mountains and wide open spaces of his beloved Yorkshire, and had never been happy in the south. London, I knew, particularly irked him, making him feel caged. But I reckoned that there was more to it than that. If his version of what had happened at Northampton were true – and I, for one, believed it – then his life had already been endangered; Sir Edward Woodville was at sea with half the royal treasure along with him; and somewhere at the back of his mind – or perhaps in the forefront of his mind – was the belief that he, and not his nephew, was the rightful king. But he had no proof. And as long as his mother chose to remain silent, there was nothing to say if the information I had brought him from France the previous year meant anything or no.