Roseblood (5 page)

‘Truly exquisite. Truly exquisite,’ Sevigny breathed. He knelt beside the tomb, which bore statues of four carved mourners, cowled and cloaked, along its side. The shoulders of each statue bore the Beaufort arms, very similar to those of the King except for the black bar sinister, the sign of illegitimacy, which cut diagonally across. After a while, he rose and peered at the doves of the dawn carved on each corner of the tomb, whispering:

He turned and smiled brilliantly at Roseblood. ‘Like you, Simon, I was educated by the Benedictines, though at Fountains Abbey on the beautiful moorlands of Yorkshire. You have been there?’ Roseblood shook his head. ‘No, no, of course not, you are from the West Country, yes? Glastonbury, beneath the soaring tor, a place of mystery.’

‘You slew Lazarus, one of my principal scavengers!’

‘I am the clerk of Richard, Duke of York. Lazarus drew against me, so I killed him.’

‘And Candlemas?’

‘In a short while, Master Simon. For the moment…’ Sevigny fished into his purse, drew out two coins and put these into the poor box, a small iron chest screwed to the wall beneath the statue of the Virgin. He then lit two tapers and smiled at Roseblood. ‘For your brother! Let us also say the requiem.’

Roseblood joined him in the prayer. He now recognised the subtle soul of this adversary, a veritable smiler who kept a dagger close beneath his cloak. He also wondered why Ramler, the sheriff’s scribe, still stood waiting patiently in the nave. Sevigny crossed himself and studied the wall fresco depicting Beaufort’s exploits in France.

‘Very good, very accurate.’ He pointed to a part of the painting that showed the duke, holding a staff and dressed in pilgrim’s garb, being helped into a small boat by a sturdy shipman. ‘Just like Suffolk was,’ Sevigny whispered. ‘You know, Master Simon, when he was caught off Dover and beheaded.’ He turned abruptly. ‘What truly happened to your brother? He too was a great friend of Beaufort.’

‘He was murdered.’ Roseblood retorted, hand falling to his dagger. ‘My brother was seized and slain when Cade’s men invaded the city. I truly don’t know why or by whom. When we found his corpse and severed head, we also found a dead crow pinned to a pole.’ He paused. ‘The Norman French for crow is
corbeil
. A cohort of French mercenaries now in England, serving in your master’s retinue, enjoy the same name.’

‘There was also a town in Normandy called LeCorbeil where a hideous massacre took place. I just wonder sometimes whether this is all connected, like beads on a string.’

‘Perhaps you know more than I do,’ Simon said quietly, ‘about these hirelings.’

‘Many people,’ Sevigny glanced away, ‘pretend to act on behalf of my master Richard of York. The same could be said for Beaufort and his coven.’

‘I was born on Beaufort’s estates in the West Country,’ Simon replied. ‘I entered his household. I became his henchman by sealed indentures. I swore to be his man body and soul, in peace and war. I served him in France, where my brother and I witnessed the aftermath of the massacre at LeCorbeil.’

‘You also won numerous ransoms to build your fortune.’

‘As did many.’

‘You saw Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, burnt in Rouen?’

‘I was a stripling at the time.’

‘Then you came home to build your empire in London, strongly supported by Beaufort. I mean, until his mysterious death. Suicide?’ Sevigny cocked his head to one side. ‘You must know the rumour? How John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, was recalled in disgrace from France and replaced by Richard of York. Some people say he could not accept the humiliation and took his own life.’ Sevigny paused. ‘They also say that a dead crow was found near his corpse, just like your brother’s.’

‘I believe Beaufort could have been murdered.’

‘Of course you would.’ Sevigny nodded. ‘You would believe the best of him, wouldn’t you, as I do of York. I was the only son of doting parents.’ Sevigny’s face abruptly changed; just for a fleeting moment, a deep sadness softened his hard expression. ‘They held manor and meadow from the Duke of York. During the early, tumultuous days of Beaufort’s regency, the manor was attacked; my parents were murdered. York took me into his household. He hunted down my parents’ murderers and hanged them before Micklegate Bar in York. He also educated me at Fountains Abbey, then the halls of Oxford. So we have a great deal in common, Master Roseblood: both loyal servants to our lords.’

‘Put not your trust in princes,’ Eleanor’s voice thrilled from the Swan’s-Nest, ‘nor your confidence in the war chariots of Egypt, nor the swift horses of Assyria. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who prepares my arms for battle and trains my hands for war…’

‘My good sister-in-law, Eleanor,’ Simon murmured. ‘She heard your words. This church has a strange echo.’

‘Ah yes, the recluse, the anchorite. Why is she so?’

‘Master Sevigny, that is her business, not yours, and I am very busy. I have listened to you long enough. Why are you here?’

‘They say you are a dangerous man, Simon,’ Sevigny answered blithely. ‘A taverner, a vintner, an alderman, but also lord of the dunghill and the latrine. The knight of the night soil. You control the scavengers who swarm through the filthy alleys of London. They clean the guts, filth and bloody rubbish of the shambles. They pile the dirt of the city into muck hills and middens.’

‘And?’ Roseblood demanded.

‘You have spies in every ward, Master Simon. Your minions of the mollocks collect the gossip, spread the rumours and fan the flames. Your adherents jostle, mix and crackle with the rest of the mob.’

Sevigny wiped the sweat from his upper lip. Simon smiled to himself; this clerk might claim to know a great deal about him, but he did not understand him. Never once had Sevigny managed to provoke him. The clerk turned away. Simon was sure he was trying to compose himself.

‘Master Sevigny, I am waiting.’ Simon deliberately kept his voice light. ‘We have danced and curtseyed, flattered and threatened. Now, your business or I walk away.’

Sevigny opened the door to the chantry chapel. ‘Master Walter!’ he shouted. The scribe hurried out of the shadows, head down, one hand held high. ‘Serve it!’

The scribe thrust a warrant, folded and sealed, into Simon’s hand.

‘Master Simon Roseblood,’ Sevigny declared, ‘you stand accused of treason, robbery, murder and other heinous felonies. You are summoned by lawful writ to present yourself at the Guildhall in two days’ time, before the market bell sounds, when a true bill of indictment will be laid against you.’ Sevigny let the legal terms roll off his tongue. ‘A jury will assemble and you will be indicted to appear before a special commission of oyer and terminer sitting in the same Guildhall. For the moment,’ he lazily waved a hand, ‘you are free. However, at your first meeting at the Guildhall, heavy recognisances will be demanded of you.’

Sevigny pushed Ramler out of the chapel. Roseblood followed them to the corpse door, trying to curb his anger.

‘Sevigny?’ he called.

The clerk turned.

‘Listen well. Tell you and yours that this is
à l’outrance
,
usque ad mortem
, to the death.’

Sevigny sketched a bow, fingers on the hilt of his sword, and left the church. Simon closed the door and leaned against it, the parchment still in his hands. He crumpled it into a ball, put it into his purse and walked back into the chantry chapel. ‘To the death,’ he whispered. Fury surged within him. He had been baited, taunted and threatened here at the very heart of his life.

He glimpsed a shadow shift to his right, and Ignacio moved into the pool of light. The Castilian was thin and angular, eyes worried in his dark-lined face, hands tapping the war belt around his waist. Roseblood winked at him and made a sign: ‘Peace and goodness.’ Ignacio relaxed, his fingers flickering and fluttering as he described what he’d seen and felt. Roseblood sensed the Castilian’s profound anxiety. Amadeus Sevigny was truly dangerous, and they were involved in a fight to the death. Using signs, he told Ignacio all he had learnt, both from the clerk and from his own spy in the sheriff’s household: Candlemas and Cross-Biter had turned King’s Approver; they would probably indict him, serve as witnesses against him, so they must die. Ignacio’s reply was swift and brutal: they would!

Roseblood watched him leave. Ignacio would certainly take care of it. Candlemas and Cross-Biter might think they were safe in the Shadows of Purgatory, a special house put aside for important prisoners, which stood along an alleyway off Cheapside. Ignacio would prove them wrong.

As Roseblood crossed the nave, walking down to the anchorite’s cell, his gaze was caught by a wall painting,
The Torments of Hell
, a compelling vision of the damned. A horde of demons, hairy, humpbacked creatures with swollen bellies and bulging calves and buttocks, prowling a blighted wasteland. Trying to clear his mind of Sevigny’s threats, he crouched to study the various colours, noting how the demons, half human, half animal, were in constant conflict with the golden-haloed, sword-wielding angels.

‘What are you, Simon Roseblood, angel or demon?’ Eleanor the anchorite could glimpse him through the squint gap of her cell.

‘A mere man,’ Roseblood replied, walking towards the Swan’s-Nest. ‘A very tired, rather worried one. My sleep is disturbed by demons and my waking hours by those who hate me.’

‘Then come and be shriven.’

Roseblood approached the anchorhold. This had once been another side chapel, but he had persuaded the parish priest, Father Benedict, to remove the wooden trellis screen and replace it with a heavy stone wall containing both a squint and a narrow door under a black Hospitaller cross. Now the door opened and Eleanor ushered him into the Swan’s-Nest. Sunlight poured through the large window high in the wall, its shutters pulled fully back.

Eleanor smiled at him, her beautiful ivory-pale face framed by a starched white wimple beneath the brown veil of a nun of St Clare. She ushered him to the only chair, while she sat on a stool close to his knees. Embarrassed, as he always was by this woman whom he loved, had loved and would love beyond all telling, Roseblood stared round as if seeing the simple contents of the cell for the first time. A cot bed stood beneath the window, next to it a table that also served as a desk. A diptych depicting the Five Wounds of Christ and the Seven Sorrows of Mary hung on the wall alongside a coloured cloth proclaiming the Jesus Prayer beneath the Franciscan Tauist symbol. He shuffled his feet on the coarse rope matting and stared at the lectern, which bore a book of hours containing the divine office.

‘You are agitated, Simon. I heard most of what that clerk said – the echoes of this church carry long and clear – although I did not catch his name.’

‘Amadeus Sevigny, Yorkist clerk, a nephew of my enemy Malpas.’ This time Simon held Eleanor’s grey-eyed gaze. He noticed her long lashes, the finely etched brows, the lips still red even without any carmine. He thought she looked tired and wan, yet this was a face that plagued his dreams and left a soreness of heart that could not be soothed. He curbed his agitation. He had lost this woman to his brother, and, after Edmund had been murdered, to God.

Unnerved and most uncomfortable with such a feeling, he rose and went across to study a painting of the Resurrection of the Dead that decorated the plaster above the squint. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The dead were rising from their long sleep as if from a good night in bed. Some came to life yawning and stretching; a few immediately sprang up to eternal life. Others were slugabeds, so lazy that angels armed with crowbars levered their coffined lids and gently roused them into eternal wakefulness.

‘Is it serious?’ Eleanor abruptly asked. ‘Don’t hide from me, Simon.’

Roseblood looked over his shoulder. ‘York will invade. Civil war is imminent.’

‘And the King?’

‘Poor Henry, long-jawed, bewildered, his dark eyes full of sadness, cowers like a bird in its cage when the cat is around. York’s badge, the fetterlock, and his insignia, the white rose, are appearing all over the city, on the great crosses at Cheapside and St Paul’s; even on the doors of Beaufort’s quarters at Greyfriars.’

‘And you, Simon, why are you being threatened?’ She laughed softly. ‘Of course I know, but why now?’

‘I am Beaufort’s man. I control the babewyns and the gargoyles of London, the scavengers, muckrakers and gong men in every ward. I can spread rumour and collect gossip. I speak for the King, his Queen and the Beauforts on the city council. My spacious tavern can host special guests. I can bring in and dispatch whomever I want. If Beaufort wishes to send someone abroad, I can arrange it. If he or the Queen want to receive some secret envoy, their wish is my command. If a street fight begins, I can whistle up my hoard of rifflers and ruffians. York and his henchmen, Malpas and Sevigny, would love to destroy that.’

‘But why now? Why has Sevigny appeared? Surely this is connected to my Edmund’s death. The same deadly game?’

‘I think so.’ Simon breathed in the heavy fragrance from the herb pots arranged around the chamber. ‘Yes, the same deadly game: who will control London? Five years ago, Cade occupied the city. He slaughtered many of the King’s party in an attempt to win it. In the end, he failed. Now Malpas is attempting the same before York marches, and has brought Sevigny in to assist. They will use the law, or in this case, Candlemas.’

‘I recall his name. I have heard rumours about the attack. What happened?’

‘Oh, Candlemas and his coven failed to steal silver being escorted to the Tower mint.’ Simon grinned. ‘They didn’t realise that there was no silver to rob; just sacks of old iron castings. No, no,’ he waved a hand, ‘I cannot tell you the full story. Four of the robbers were taken and tried before the justices at the Guildhall. Malpas had no choice. They had killed a royal serjeant, so they were sentenced to death for treason. Sevigny used the executions to see if Candlemas would appear. The fool did not disappoint him. He and two other rogues took refuge in the sanctuary of St Paul’s. On execution day, they stupidly left this and used a secret tunnel, an ancient sewer that runs close to Smithfield. They were captured and offered pardons as King’s Approvers. They must testify that I was the moving spirit behind the robbery.’