Wheel of Fate (15 page)

In the event, it was a good hour after sun-up before we passed through the Bishop's Gate. For this, the May Day crowds streaming out into the countryside to bring in branches of may and to dance barefoot through the grass were largely to blame. Strangers, even those on horseback, had to be stopped and kissed and garlanded with daisy chains before being allowed to go any further. The recent gloom following King Edward's death seemed to have vanished with the official arrival of spring. Oswald and I, he on his showy grey mare and I on Clemency's quiet Old Diggory, finally forced our way into the city against the outgoing tide of merrymakers, only to find ourselves, at the bottom of Bishop's Gate Street, caught up in another crowd making its way to Cornhill to dance round the maypole, which had been set up overnight. By the time we reached the Great Conduit, I was unsurprised to find my companion growing tetchy and ready to curse anyone who crossed his path.

I felt sorry, therefore, for the young apprentice who shot out of a goldsmith's shop in Cheapside and grabbed at Oswald's bridle. Before Oswald could snap at him, however, the boy gasped, ‘Oh please, sir! I can see you're a lawyer by your robes. My master says will you come and speak to him and tell him what it all portends?'

‘What it all portends, boy? What are you talking about?'

The apprentice's face fell ludicrously. ‘Haven't you heard the news then, sir?' He turned to the old man who had hobbled out after him, leaning heavily on a stick. ‘The lawyer hasn't heard anything, master.'

The goldsmith seemed bemused. ‘Not heard anything? Why they've been crying it ever since midnight, or the early hours at the very least. As soon as possible, anyway, after the lord mayor and members of the great council received the news. They say the duke sent his messenger express, and that the poor man's horse was nearly dead under him when he finally arrived.'

‘The duke?' I queried sharply.

‘His Grace of Gloucester.'

‘Where is His Grace?'

‘Why, Northampton with the young king, so the crier said, and as I understand it, not like to leave there for maybe a day or so yet.' The old man continued to look troubled. ‘What does it mean, sir, this arrest of Lord Rivers and Sir Richard Grey?'

‘There was a third man mentioned, too, master,' the apprentice cut in. ‘Vaughan, I think his name is.'

Oswald frowned. ‘Sir Thomas Vaughan? Probably. He's a Woodville kinsman.' Suddenly, we could hear a bell ringing in the distance and the upraised voice of the crier. He turned to me. ‘We'd better get on to Paul's Cross and see what we can find out. My good sir!' He addressed the goldsmith who was clutching at his arm. ‘Kindly unhand me! I know no more than you do. Indeed, less.' And with a jerk on the rein, he set the mare in motion once again.

But the crowds around Paul's Cross were dense, and by the time we had pushed the horses through to a position of vantage, the crier had finished. Oswald was just looking around for someone he could question, when a man wearing the striped gown of a fellow lawyer came hurrying out of St Paul's churchyard – the cloisters were a favourite business place for the legal fraternity – and hailed him.

‘Godslove! In a happy hour!'

Oswald dismounted, so I did the same, taking the opportunity to soothe Old Diggory, who was displaying distinct signs of unease. The newcomer indicated that we should follow him and led us back among the gravestones where it was quieter.

‘I'm glad I caught you, Oswald,' he said. ‘Are you in court today?'

‘I shall be at Westminster after dinner, certainly. For the present, I'm in chambers. But never mind that. What in God's name is—'

‘I just wanted to warn you,' his friend broke in, ‘to expect trouble in Westminster. Delays getting through. The place is in chaos.'

‘Chaos? Why?'

‘My dear fellow, you can barely move. Carts and chests and crates all over the road.' He encountered Oswald's and my blank stare and went on impatiently, as though it were something we ought to know, ‘The queen – queen dowager – is going into sanctuary, taking the princesses and the little Duke of York with her. Moreover, she's obviously anticipating a long stay. Workmen have had to knock down a part of the sanctuary wall to get all her household goods inside. You've never seen such stuff! Furniture, coffers full of clothes, chests of household linen, not to mention all the belongings of her attendants and the younger princesses' nurses. And I've heard on good authority that Dorset has been sent to the Tower to grab the remainder of the royal treasure. Edward Woodville's got the other half, and he's put to sea.'

‘What in the name of all the saints is going on?' Oswald demanded, his sense of order and propriety outraged. The world was being stood on its head. ‘And what's all this about Rivers, Grey and Vaughan being arrested at Northampton? I thought the idea was that the king's party and Gloucester should meet up there and then enter London all together.'

The other lawyer shrugged. ‘That was the proposal as I heard it. But obviously something went wrong. My lord Gloucester must have suspected treason. A plot of some kind by the Woodvilles to take him prisoner? A threat to his life? Queen Elizabeth's flight into sanctuary could indicate something of the kind. Maybe she and Dorset are expecting to be arrested.'

I said nothing, merely stroking Old Diggory's nose, but all the while trying in my own mind to assess the possible danger in which Duke Richard now stood. Or, at least, thought he stood. Relations between him and the queen dowager's family had always been strained, one of the reasons he had stayed in his northern territories, visiting London as seldom as possible. And he had made little secret of the fact that he held their influence responsible for the late king's decision, five years previously, to sign the Duke of Clarence's death warrant. Somehow I doubted he would ever forgive them for that, and they must know it. But would they seriously plot either his downfall or his murder? Wouldn't they be too afraid of the people's reaction if any harm came to Richard of Gloucester? On the other hand, many of the Woodvilles had proved themselves ruthless and grasping in the past, while the queen dowager's rush for sanctuary could easily be interpreted as the action of a woman with guilty knowledge. But there again, it could just as easily be interpreted as the action of a frightened woman. We should have to wait upon events.

I touched Oswald on the shoulder. ‘If you'll tell me where this silversmith's shop is,' I said, ‘I'll leave you now. I doubt there's much more to be learned at present. We'll have to contain our souls in patience until the king and duke arrive from Northampton. We may learn more then, I suppose.'

Oswald nodded, looking gravely portentous. I dreaded supper that evening. The women would be hanging on his every word while he expounded his theories. Nevertheless, as I rode back along Cheapside, I had to own to a sense of foreboding. I wasn't sure why, but realized that the feeling had begun two weeks ago, when I had first heard the news of King Edward's death. I told myself that I had been ill; that this was surely the cause of such womanish vapours, but even so, I found it hard to dispel my gloomy thoughts.

The early morning sunshine had vanished and a thin wind, sharp as a knife, was blowing between the overhanging eaves of the houses. People were returning from the countryside, bringing their branches and garlands of may with them, but they seemed to have lost their earlier exuberance, slouching wearily along, dragging their feet.

I shivered suddenly, for no apparent reason.

NINE

O
swald had pointed out a shop on the corner of Foster Lane and Cheapside where the latter divided, the left-hand fork becoming Paternoster Row and the right running into the Shambles. In spite of its closeness to the butchers' stalls and slaughterhouses, with their accompanying stench of blood and rotting entrails, the silversmith's seemed to be prosperous enough and attracting a high-class trade. It made me glad that I had followed Adela's advice and worn one of the two new suits of clothes provided by Richard of Gloucester's bounty for my journey to France the preceding autumn. Consequently, having tied the horse to a nearby post, I entered the shop confident that I looked my best in brown woollen hose, a pale green tunic adorned with silver-gilt buttons and a brown velvet hat sporting a fake jewel on its upturned brim.

‘I've never seen you so smart,' my wife had said admiringly as I stood in the middle of our bedchamber earlier that morning while she had made final adjustments to the set of the tunic across my broad shoulders. But my sympathies had been with Elizabeth and Nicholas, convulsed by silent laughter, and with Adam who, upon coming into the room, had asked where his father was.

The ground floor of the three-storey building was part shop, for the display of finished goods, and part workshop, where the apprentices worked the bellows and stoked the furnace and the master craftsman, with his two assistants, fashioned the molten silver into cups and crucifixes, bracelets and necklaces, rings and buttons and all the other products of the silversmith's art. They glanced up briefly as I entered, but did not pause to acknowledge me, leaving that to the well-dressed gentleman seated just inside the door, who rose to greet me with a large, ham-like hand and an ingratiating smile.

‘My dear sir! And what may I interest you in on this fine Mayday morning? Something for your lady, perhaps? A trinket, a token of your affection? This ring, maybe, in the shape of two clasped hands?'

I had no difficulty in recognizing Adrian Jollifant from Adela's description of him; solidly built without being fat, fair hair turning grey, blue eyes in a round face and exuding an air of wealth and self-consequence that would not have been out of place in some of the highest in the land.

He grew impatient. ‘Well sir, and what will it be?' Then he changed his tune. ‘Of course, I understand. You are a stranger to London. You stand amazed at the quality and variety of my goods. Take your time! Take your time! I can wait.'

The man was a pompous idiot, that was plain, but one, I had no doubt, who could turn nasty if things did not go his way. I had met his sort before and always found them unpleasant characters. The trouble was that, in my usual careless fashion, I had failed to work out beforehand exactly how I should approach him. His desire to buy the Arbour was not, strictly speaking, my business, and I could hardly ask him outright if he had murderous inclinations towards the Godsloves. But if he did, I might only make matters worse for them by claiming to be acting on their behalf. I cursed myself, as I had so often done in the past, for my lack of forethought.

I decided to play the innocent. As he had already decided that I was not a Londoner – my clothes could not be quite as fashionable as I had thought them – my role would be the country bumpkin, overawed by everything about me. I let my jaw drop a little and exaggerated my West Country accent.

‘I . . . I wanted to buy summat fer my wife, zir, and was told to come here as you had the best goods in Cheapside. But . . . I dunno. I don' think I could manage anything I can see here.'

Master Jollifant preened himself. ‘Oh, I don't know. I'm sure if we try hard enough, we can find something within your means.' The condescending bastard! ‘May I ask who recommended me?' He smirked. ‘It could be almost anyone, I suppose.'

‘Oh yes. Quite a number of people mentioned your name,' I said, taking my cue from him. ‘That little ring you showed me, 'tis pretty now. How much would you be askin' fer it?'

He named a price, obviously expecting me to reject it out of hand, and looked disconcerted when I paid up without demur. (My family and I had lived free at the Arbour for the past sennight, and I had had a profitable few weeks before my return to Bristol, so I was well able to afford it.) While he packed the ring into a small wooden box for me, I continued to stare reverently about me, trying to appear suitably impressed.

‘I can see you're a gen'leman of means, zir,' I remarked in a hushed whisper. ‘You mun live in a gert big house, I reckon.'

Immediately, an expression of keen dissatisfaction distorted his features. ‘As a matter of fact I don't,' he snapped. For a moment I could see him struggling against the indiscretion of confiding in a stranger, but in the end indignation and anger won. ‘I ought to, but no!' He smacked the little box down on the counter in front of me and continued, ‘My old family home has been filched from me by an unprincipled rogue of a lawyer.'

‘Indeed?' I forced myself to appear goggle-eyed with interest. ‘How did he come to steal it from you, zir?'

‘We-ell!' The silversmith had the grace to look momentarily embarrassed before venom and spite took over, plunging him into a story of double-dealing and deliberate obstruction which had only the smallest relation to the truth. I could see that he was obsessed by his grievance to a dangerous degree; that long nurturing had turned it from a mild irritation into what he deemed to be a major injustice. But would he do murder, and multiple murder at that, to get his own way? The fanatical gleam in his eyes and the vicious thinning of his lips suggested that he might.

Clutching the ring in its little box, I left the shop, promising to call again. I was just about to untether Old Diggory, at the same time watching the turmoil that is Cheapside on a busy spring morning without really taking any of it in, when someone spoke my name and a hand was laid on my arm.

‘Roger? Is it really you after all these years?'

I turned quickly to find myself confronting a fashionably dressed woman whose painted face was considerably more raddled than on either of the two previous occasions when our paths had crossed. For a moment I was nonplussed, then recognition dawned.