The Cardinal's Angels (16 page)

It took time for the mirth to subside but Ned didn’t mind the merriment at his expense. It had banished the ominous threat of a severe pounding, at least for now. Gruesome Roger relaxed and finally his hand dropped away from his cudgel. Mistress Black looked distinctly disappointed at the turn of events and whispered in her retainer’s ear. With a muttered comment about getting some food and drink for the gathering he left, trailed by an obviously bored Mistress Black. Ned noticed she didn’t look back as she walked through the door.

Idly two thoughts vied for his attention. The first was that she still filled a bodice well and moved with an eye catching grace. The second though was concerned with more mundane matters, and expressed relief that the Ned–flattening advocate had left. Concentrating on the here and now he focused all his attention on Robert Black’s continuing tale of the brawl. Ned had a reprieve and its length or revoking depended on solving the problems of the murder. “Master Black, Robert, how do you know I wasn’t the one to put the knife in Smeaton?

“No Master Black or Robert! Call me Rob. That is what all my friends call me. Ned, you couldn’t have slain Smeaton because you’d already fallen, taking a blow that was meant for him. I’d just beaten off another of the rogues and chased a few off down the alley when I heard Meg’s cry. Most of the attackers had fled. You were crumpled by the wall and the fellow
Smeaton,
was toppling over you with a blade in his back.”

Well this was good—proof and a witness that Master Smeaton had not fallen to his blade. Still Ned knew how ‘inquests’ worked. They wanted a cony to pin the blame on and, in the interests of staying out of gaol, he needed to find someone not so usefully blameable as a reprobate law apprentice and his possibly questionable companions. “So who did kill him?”

“His drinking companion, the one in a blue brocade doublet.
I saw him stooping over the both of you with a blade in his hand, tugging at something.”

By all the Saints, he was saved! More locked secrets surfaced from his clearing mind–fog, trickling up to join the rest of the memories of that evening at the Cardinal’s Cap. Yes, he recalled when Mistress Black came in. It had been enough of an entrance to stop a few conversations, but just before that, both Smeaton and his ‘murderer’ had been deep in huddled conversation. At the time it had seemed as if they were on the edge of an argument. Bethany’s warning surfaced. Damn, it was Blue Brocade! He was the one who called for the rent at the Cardinal’s Cap!

As Rob Black continued with his tale Ned endeavoured to sort out the sequence of events, so he just caught the edge of something important. “What, what was that you just said?”

“I said I charged at him and he bolted like a rabbit. We lost the murderer in the alleys.” Black Rob then hung his head in embarrassment. “I am sorry Ned, but in my anger I forgot about you. It’s a sin for which I constantly pray forgiveness.”

Ned appraised the bulk and size of his companion. Yes if someone like that, bellowing in anger ran at him, he’d have been hard pressed not to turn tail and run.

“But I did find your purse. The thieving cutpurse must have dropped it.” Rising from the stool, Robert Black rummaged through a satchel on the small bed.

Ned was slightly relieved. There were some witnesses who could testify to his innocence on the charge of murder and he was, once more, a man of some wealth. However Blue Brocade must have some powerful friends to believe that he could casually slay the Lord Chancellor’s man and get away with it. On the bright side at least he could count on those fifty angels. This thought died almost before it was fully formed. Instead of his small and well–worn purse, Rob Black now handed him a modest satchel.

As a satchel it was nothing special. In fact you could see them at any cordwainer’s stall, well stitched and waterproofed by coats of oil and wax, with heavy brass chains to attach to your belt. It was the sort frequently used by couriers to keep its contents dry and safe. From the deep scored cut and dark splatter of dried blood, he could tell who’d owned it, and Ned could swear that, if he looked at the man’s corpse, there would be a two or three inch wide gash on the back right–hand side just above the hip. From what he had heard from a few of the veterans of the old King’s wars, it was just the place to slip in a blade for a quick, quiet killing. Any remaining colour drained from Ned’s face. In his hands he held the satchel of John Smeaton and instinctively he knew that this little parcel of worked leather was worth quite a few lives—theirs for a start.

Ned was lost in complex speculation. How did he phrase this without first sounding ungrateful, and secondly, supremely suspicious? “Ahh Rob, you said that you got this from the man who killed Smeaton.”

Rob nodded his head.
“Picked up it from the muddy street.”

“Are you sure?”

“Aye Ned.”
Rob again nodded his head like an eager horse. Black Rob looked very happy as well he should. In the city of London very few people would even consider returning ‘found’ property, especially a weighty purse like this one. Perhaps Lady Fortuna had played her hand, helping Ned stumble upon the only honest man in London. “Like I said, I was running after him when he tripped over a dead dog and dropped it. The fellow swore worse than any wherry man when he realised what had happened. We could hear him for the length of the street, but he still kept running. Meg picked it up and we then walked back to the Cardinal’s Cap, and ahh…well you know the rest.”

Actually he didn’t, unless he counted Will Coverdale’s drunken confession, but he could make a pretty good guess that belatedly the Watch had arrived and, seeing a few men dead on the ground and him slumped with a blade in his hand, had decided to make their life easier. It didn’t take much effort to see how the Southwark Watch thought. Why waste effort and search properly when a solution lay ready to hand. How damned typical!

So Ned was sitting there on the stool staring at possibly the most dangerous satchel in London, when to his great annoyance the door was flung back and their two companions burst in. Couldn’t these people ever walk through a door without a performance?

“Robert we need to leave,” shouted Mistress Black clearly agitated as she cast a worried glance out the doorway.

This was getting too much. It seemed nowhere in London could offer him safety, or more importantly time to collect his thoughts. Without thinking Ned spoke. “Why, is the Inn pack full of enemies?”

Rather than answer Margaret Black ducked back inside and slammed the door shut, dropping the bar, while Gruesome Roger strode over to the window and pushed open the shutters.

Ned took the ignored question as a confirmation, and with a resigned sigh, shoved the satchel into his doublet. It felt quite weighty and to a lad of his means and instincts that was encouraging, but since his new ‘companions in peril’ were rushing about there was no time to investigate its contents. Perhaps that would come later in a quiet secluded spot, and without an audience.

Now if he was in a similar situation, needing to leave out a window hurriedly, not implying that he did this a lot, he’d have been knotting the woefully, worn sheet on the bed into something resembling an improvised rope. Then once that was secure, he’d throw down the lumpy straw mattress to aid a softer landing. He was actually about to suggest as much to the Black clan. However as he was beginning to discover, he was in the company of masters of the trade of rapid exits. Gruesome Roger was standing on the small bench and had most of his body outside the window. Even though he was both smaller and leaner than Rob Black, it was still a narrow fit. The rest of the band were busying
themselves
with what Ned thought were rather strange actions. Mistress Margaret was tucking her skirts up into her belt. He wasn’t complaining– she had very shapely legs that instantly drew his attention. Her brother, on the other hand, was rummaging under the small bed and to Ned’s surprise, pulled out a coiled rope. This gave his seed of suspicion all it required to blossom into a full–blown conviction. The thicket of suspicion was fast turning into a forest.

A rattle and thump from the window reluctantly drew his attention back to Gruesome Roger, who he noticed was now climbing out through the opening and to Ned’s astonishment, disappearing upwards! What was going on? He was jolted out of his amazed reverie by a sharp prod to his back.

“What you waiting for, an invitation from the King?” It was Mistress Black, and she was pushing him towards the yawning space of the window. All he could see was the boots of Roger ascending skywards.

“What?” This exclamation produced a harder shove and he stumbled against the low bench by the wall. All of Gruesome Roger had now disappeared.

“You go up first. I’m not having the likes of you peering up my skirts.”

Ned poked his head out the open window and looked up. This was amazingly clever. A small wooden ladder terminated just at the top of the beam above the window. He stretched and began to clamber up, grasping the proffered hand of Gruesome Roger to pull him up onto the slate tile roof. He was soon followed by the Blacks, Margaret first then her brother who bent over and pulled the ladder back up into a recess in the eaves. Then with Gruesome Roger in the lead, they carefully traversed the pitched slope of the roof, keeping well away from the crest and any possible sighting from the courtyard, and headed towards the walled orchard he had seen earlier. With dusk almost upon them and the settling haze from the city’s chimneys and fires, the chance of being seen from the street was unlikely, while the taller structure next door had only a few small windows overlooking their escape route.

When they had reached the gable end, Robert Back looped the rope over a protruding stone mullion and dropped the end to the shadowed space below. Ned peered cautiously over. It could have been thirty feet to the grass below but from here it looked a lot further. This time it was Mistress Black who took the lead. She grabbed the rope and swung out into the abyss. In a few moments the lass was standing on the ground, untucking her skirt and brushing off the grime of the passage.

Robert Black bent down and whispered into Ned’s ear. “When you swing out on the rope, if you look at the wall you will see a number of slots carved into it, like treads. Use them to help you.”

Ned supposed that Rob Black’s advice was intended to be helpful, but a thirty–foot drop was, at the end of the day, still a thirty–foot drop. Then he remembered Mistress Black. By all the Saints, if she could do this then so could he.

Ned took a deep breath. If he were to slip he had no idea how it would help, but it did at least help to calm him and steady his hands.

There was a brief moment of panic as he hung suspended in the air with the sight of Rob Black’s concerned face above, washed by the last red light of the sunset, as his feet scrabbled vainly to find the promised treads. Missing the first, he wedged his foot firmly in the second and slowly began his descent. He hit the ground trembling and very thankful. That was not as difficult as he had expected.

The rest of their band soon followed. With a quick tug, Rob Black loosed the rope and stowed the coil in his doublet. Once more with Gruesome Roger in the lead, the small party quickly made its way through the orchard until they came to a recessed postern gate set into the wall. By now he was used to the conjuring tricks of the Blacks so when Mistress Margaret produced the required key from behind a loose stone, he was beginning to think that if needed they could supply the boat to find King Arthur and the Isle of Avalon.

Now that they were once more on the byways of London, Gruesome Roger assumed the lead as they wove through the bent alleys towards Crutched Friars, and he thought Northumberland House. But they took so many side laneways that he had trouble figuring out the landmarks. Each twist he noted still kept them on a westerly path towards the last dimming of the sun. Ned had no idea where they were going—so long as it was away from danger he was happy to follow. The hand of Gruesome Roger clamped on his shoulder like a vice, also indicated that his membership in the Black fraternity of peril had its limits, despite the given trust of Rob.

Slowly and steadily the night closed over London. The darkness pooled and spread, flowing out from the overshadowed alleys that rarely saw the sun except for a fragment of midday, until the deepest shadow had swallowed up all the streets and lanes. Wan pools of yellow light from lanterns or cressets irregularly dotted the streets, occasionally revealing treacherous mounds of rubbish or more likely, the painted sign of a tavern, gently swinging above. In theory city ordinances had been in force for over a hundred years requiring all citizens to have a small lantern outside their dwelling. It was to be lit
every dusk
between the celebrations of Hallowtide and Candlemass, but like most decrees, this was mostly honoured by the citizens with benign indifference. After all, who could afford the expense of tallow rushes for such an extravagance?

In the city the hours of darkness brought forth another aspect of the churning life and urgent needs of England’s greatest jewel. The ebb and flow of the day had changed. Gone were the carts, water sellers and cries of purchase. Instead between the ringing of the Vespers and Compline bells the tone changed. The diversions of the city’s dark called up all the aspects of a sinner’s soul that had the priests busy with confession and fuelled the booming market for indulgences.

It was a facet of London with which Ned had acquired a quick and easy familiarity, for it presented opportunities along with its manifest dangers–though this night was different. Each deeper well of inky black huddled in the mouths of alleys and crooked lanes held the uncertain promise of attack. For once it wasn’t the usual footpads and shadow lurkers that he worried about. Far more deadly hunters coursed this night. And now he was very thankful it was not him out front, sniffing for peril. That was Gruesome Roger’s duty. Mind you, like the wolf he resembled, Roger seemed to have the skill for it. On two occasions in their journey he had pulled them into a sheltering doorway to await the passing of a determined band of searchers. Lanterns held high they stopped every passer–by, rudely inquisitive and menacing. With the innate sense of the cityborn, Londoners knew some manner of mischief was abroad that night, and very few ventured onto the streets. In a way it made their passage easier but that palpable sense of threat also removed the cover of boisterous bands of revellers.

Despite the darkness and the lack of a moon Ned could tell they were heading for the river. The slope of the ground and the spray of coloured lights that could be seen as they passed by a parish church told him. He had frequent cause to remember midnight navigations by the illuminated windows of St Michael’s or St Botolph’s. It was times such as those that he was thankful for the devotions of late night penitents.

The Compline bells had rung their solemn toll by the time they reached the riverbank. It had been the most perilous journey across the city that Ned had ever made, and at every pace he felt like the satchel, tucked close to his chest, was acting as some arcane beacon sending out malevolent signals to their hunters. A leisurely stroll could see one cross that distance in an hour, but for them with all the hiding and detours three hours would be closer to the mark. Now they sheltered in the lee of a ruined warehouse upstream somewhere to the west of the Fishmongers Hall.

Ned was tired, hungry and sore. He would have been angry as well, but the other two afflictions had ganged up and forcefully reminded this long abiding sin of his that they were there first. More so he was trying very hard to overhear the whispered argument raging not four paces away. His daemon didn’t need to hint that it concerned his presence, and whether it was easier and safer to dump him in the river than reveal another of their secret activities. Right now he didn’t care so long as whatever decision they came to involved sleep and maybe a crust of bread while a firkin of ale would surpass it all.

A hand tugged at his sleeve and wearily he pushed himself up. His daemon screamed for escape, but his body was too weary to do more than silently agree. He hoped they were heading for a close refuge. Apparently that was the case for after the next block of buildings they arrived outside the impressive stone–arched gates of the Steelyard. For Ned another part of the Black’s secret locked into place. Once more Gruesome Roger stepped forward and gave a brief number of raps on the heavy timber doors. He hoped some warden would come soon—he felt very exposed standing in the small pool of light cast by the lanterns above the gate.

After a delay that had them all nervous and twitchy, a small panel opened in the door and a pair of suspicious eyes peered out. Obviously it wasn’t the first time surreptitious past curfew entrance had been gained, for only a couple of glinting silver coins had the portal opened and the grumbling warden leading them to one of the doors in a long colonnade. Further hammering produced the face of an irate Hanse merchant under the light of an upraised lantern. Ned braced himself for the expected explosion of wrath. The Hanse were a touchy company of merchants who made it very plain that they expected better treatment and respect than that usually granted foreigners in the city. Strangely they got it at least from the mayor and alderman. His uncle had cynically suggested it was due to loans they frequently made to the King or perhaps the twenty pounds of pepper annually gifted to the royal kitchens.

Whatever appetite for justifiable murder the portly merchant may have had for being disturbed at this hour was lost once he cleared the sleep from his eyes and spied the state of his visitors. To Ned his present company was approaching the realms of the incredible. The merchant, rather than bid such a raggle–taggle company hence, clasped each of them in turn and gave Mistress Black a kiss of welcome. Then to increase the feeling of being in a player’s scene, this generous welcome included both Gruesome Roger and himself. Ned rubbed his eyes, perplexed. He’d always heard that foreigners were mad, and practised bizarre customs, but to have the proof in his own city—well!

The merchant, probably either German or Dane, dragged them inside and pushed them along a short corridor and through an open door into a mostly packed storage room. While accented the man’s speech was clear enough for Ned to understand as he assured them that they could rest here for the night. Ned needed no further encouragement and, grabbing some coarse sacking, settled down on a woolsack. He had no idea if the others followed his lead for as soon as he pulled the cloth over his head he was immediately lost to sleep.