13 - The Midsummer Rose (30 page)

How, or by whom, the suggestion that he might replace Henry Tudor as the Lancastrian pretender to the English throne had been put to the disaffected Albany, I had no idea, and probably never would have. Nevertheless, I was certain that someone in Brittany had instigated this proposal. While King James’ agents had conducted a vain, and what they hoped was a secret, search for the refugee along the eastern and southern English coast, that someone had accompanied Albany south to Rownham Passage. There, Robin Avenel, alerted to the plan and obviously approving, had hired a night’s lodging for the duke and his escort in the abandoned Witherspoon house on the Avon shore. (‘A couple of friends … both men,’ Robin had told the apothecary.) Meantime, a deal had been struck with Eamonn Malahide for the Irishman to sail an unnamed gentlewoman to Brittany in his ship, the
Clontarf
. But the captain, running true to form, had somehow managed to discover his passenger’s true sex and identity, and promptly offered to sell the duke back to his brother. He would take him not to Brittany, but to Scotland.

Here, plot and counter-plot, discovery and counter-discovery began to play their part in the story. The nest of double traitors – those originally disloyal to King Edward and now to their master, Henry Tudor – had, by some means or another and at the eleventh hour, been made aware of Malahide’s intentions. Robin had been warned, but not until the very day itself, and after his sister had already left for Rownham Passage, taking with her, I suspected, a blue brocade gown and cloak belonging to Marianne and a pair of Robin’s shoes, red and sufficiently fancy to be worn by a woman. (His wife’s shoes would have been too small to fit a man.)

But
why
was Albany to be disguised as a woman? As with so much else, I could only guess (but my guesses so far seemed, to me at least, to make good sense). It was more than possible – more than probable – that Henry Tudor’s most loyal adherents, like his Uncle Jasper, had by now heard rumours of disaffection in their midst. Whispers could have reached their ears that Albany, another descendant of Gaunt’s bastard Beaufort line, was the chosen rival, so agents of the Tudor court would be on the watch for his appearance in Brittany – and no doubt his murder had already been arranged. Moreover, Duke Francis himself might well find it embarrassing to harbour yet another aspirant to the English crown on Breton soil, and Albany’s return to Scotland would win him the gratitude of King James. So Breton agents, too, could be on the lookout for the Scot. But in the guise of a woman, it might be possible to keep his arrival in Brittany a secret until his claim gained greater support amongst the exiled Lancastrians.

But the plans for Albany’s immediate escape across the Channel had all gone awry with the discovery of Eamonn Malahide’s treachery. Robin Avenel had arrived at Rownham Passage with the news and had then left almost at once to return to Bristol. Why had his sister and Albany not accompanied him? Why had he not waited for them? The second question was perhaps easier to answer than the first. There were urgent arrangements to be made for Albany’s concealment until such time as another ship could be found to carry him abroad. But that posed the question: where had Albany been hidden these past few weeks?

As to the rest of the events of that Saint Elmo’s Day, they were easy enough to piece together. Elizabeth Alefounder had probably hoped to follow her brother, accompanied by the fugitive, back to Bristol before the arrival of Eamonn Malahide, but when I, poor fool, had come knocking at the door of the ‘murder’ house, she had mistaken me for him and had tried to kill me. Albany had been upstairs, but the commotion had brought him running down to her assistance. In the middle of their debate on how to dispose of me, the real Eamonn Malahide had walked in, and Albany had despatched him with a swift, unerring thrust of his dagger, like the accomplished soldier he no doubt was …

‘You’re a miserable bugger to try talking to, ain’t you?’ the pieman demanded angrily as, with a snort of disgust, he stamped out of the Green Lattis, but not before he had emptied the remaining contents of my cup over my head – to the great amusement of my neighbours, all of whom laughed heartily at my discomfiture. Cursing and drying my hair and face on my jerkin sleeve, I grabbed my pack and followed him outside, but he had disappeared. Which was probably just as well. It was still too hot to pick a fight. Besides, I had other things to think about.

The church bells were ringing for Vespers. I judged it was time to go home for supper.

For the first time in our two years of marriage, Adela and I were not speaking to one another. Her annoyance at discovering that I had still not sold any goods – or, more exactly, her annoyance at finding that I had not even
tried
to do so – had spilled over into a torrent of abuse that ended with me threatening her, at the top of my voice, with the scold’s bridle. After which, there was nothing more to be said.

Supper was the quietest and most uncomfortable meal I could ever remember eating. Even the children, who never took any notice of my antics and tantrums, were reduced to silence by their mother’s unaccustomed anger. As for me, I knew Adela had right on her side, but I felt aggrieved and mulishly refused to apologize. ‘Master in my own house’ were the words that kept buzzing around my head while I ate my vegetable pottage and drank my small beer. But in the end, even they were drowned out by more clamorous thoughts and by the urgent need to know where Elizabeth Alefounder and her brother had hidden their unexpected guest. Irrationally, I entertained the belief that if I could only locate the Scotsman I would find out who had killed Robin Avenel.

And then, quite suddenly, while I was scraping the last spoonful of stew from the bottom of my bowl and wondering with one part of my mind if I dare ask for a second helping, three memories surfaced and finally converged to give me a possible answer to the riddle.

The first memory was of my dream that afternoon, on the river bank. I had not yet worked out its meaning, but where I had been and what I had ‘seen’ was obvious. I had been in the cellars under the synagogue in Jewry Lane nearly three hundred years ago, when the last members of the city’s Jewish community had been massacred by a mob of bloodthirsty citizens. But why had some Jews remained behind when most of their friends and families had already fled? And what were they doing in the cellars? Conjuring up the scene of my dream yet again – almost, you might say, being drawn back into it – I realized what had eluded me before. They had not been trying to get
out
of the cellar, but had all been crowding up against the furthest wall, just as if … Just as if what? Just as if they had been trying to get
through
it! Yes, that was it! Through it! And at least two men had been bending down as though searching for something.

At very nearly the same moment, Luke Prettywood’s voice echoed inside my head. ‘My grandfather used to tell me that
his
grandfather, as a boy, came down here looking for a way into the secret vault that people swore had been built by the Jews in order to house their hoard of gold and silver.’ And another voice, this time Edgar Capgrave’s, joined in chorus with the first. He was describing his meeting with Silas Witherspoon on the evening of Midsummer Day. ‘He was keeping close to the wall of Saint Giles’s and the rest of the buildings, and taking very precise, evenly paced steps … He seemed to be concentrating on his feet.’

Precise, evenly paced steps and concentrating on his feet – what did that suggest? That the apothecary had been counting, perhaps. But what had he been counting? The answer came pat. He had been measuring in paces the distance from the beginning of Saint Giles’s Church to Saint John’s Arch, and had no doubt, at some other time, paced from one end of Saint Giles’s crypt to the further end of the cellars. But had he found a significant discrepancy between the two distances?

Timothy had told me that Silas Witherspoon was a Lancastrian agent, and he could well be one who retained his loyalty to Henry Tudor. If he had discovered, or been warned, what Robin Avenel was up to – or if, equally likely, Robin had tried to recruit him to the cause – then Silas would have been as anxious as anyone to find the missing Albany, probably with orders to kill him on the spot. So, could that make the apothecary the possible murderer of Robin Avenel?

I gave my head a little shake. I was going too fast. First, I had to find out if my newly formed suspicion was correct; that there was indeed a secret hiding place somewhere in the old synagogue cellars and that it was where Albany was being hidden. One other circumstance persuaded me I was right. I had never been able to locate the bed which Jack Nym told me he had taken, on Robin’s instructions, to store in the crypt. But even if I could convince myself of the secret chamber’s existence, I still had to discover how to open it. Had Silas Witherspoon already done so? Was the Scotsman already dead or spirited away? I didn’t know, and only time would tell.

I scraped my stool back from the table and stood up, stretching and yawning.

‘I have to go out again, sweeting,’ I said. And it was only when I met Adela’s outraged gaze that I recollected our quarrel.

I knew that I should stop and make things up between us, but I didn’t have time just then. I was filled with a sudden urgency to put my theory to the test. I would have kissed her, but she ducked away.

‘I won’t be long,’ I promised.

In the bright evening sunshine, I, too, paced the distance of Bell Lane and of Jewry Lane from the Fish Street end of Saint Giles’s to Saint John’s-on-the-Arch. Then I entered the church and descended to the crypt, where I walked its and the two cellars’ length. I did it a second time. And a third, just to make sure. But there was no doubt about it. The interior was shorter than the exterior by a good ten paces.

Once again, I conjured up my God-given dream (although the ‘sight’ can be an instrument of the Devil, as my mother had taken care to warn me) and as far as I could recall, the two men bending down had been in the far right-hand corner of the last of the three chambers. It was too dark to see anything in detail, so I went back upstairs to the church and lit a candle, then descended once more, sheltering the flame with one hand.

I knelt down, holding the candlestick as close to the wall as I was able, but saw nothing except damp stones and spiders, the latter scurrying away in high dudgeon, angry at being disturbed. In spite of the heat outside, the chill struck up through my knees, making me shiver. At least, I persuaded myself it was the cold and not fright that had this effect. I shifted the light again and the shadows assumed new shapes. Still I could see nothing but slime and mould. Then I had an inspiration. I drew my knife from its sheath and began to scrape away the patches of lichen that mottled the wall.

How long I had been down in the cellars, I had no idea. I seemed to be losing all track of time and I was growing sleepy. Deciding to stretch my legs and walk around for a while, I picked up the candle, which I had placed on the floor beside me, but as I did so, something caught my eye. I moved the flame closer to the wall, my heart pounding with excitement. And there it was: a tiny six-pointed star carved into one of the stones where I had recently removed a circle of moss no bigger than a thumbnail. I sat back on my haunches, staring at it and wondering what to do next. Tentatively, I put out my right hand and pressed my fingers to the star …

There was a muted rumble, a slight rattle like a hiccough, and a section of the wall, just about big enough for two men to enter abreast, swung inwards on well-oiled hinges to reveal the chamber beyond. I took a grip on my knife and cautiously stepped across the threshold.

There was some unidentifiable source of fresh air in the chamber, but it was not enough to counteract the strong smell of urine and human excrement that met me, and my eyes were at once drawn to the chamber pot that stood near the end of a bed that occupied most of the room’s cramped space. But there were also a chair, a stool and a table, on which stood the remains of a meal. Three or four lighted candles and a flint and tinderbox stood on a shelf above the bedhead, a chessboard and chessmen were scattered over the floor, as if their owner had thrown them down in a fit of pique, while a green velvet-covered book, its laces all tangled, lay alongside them. And seated on the edge of the bed, eyes wide and staring in alarm, sat a man dressed in a soiled white shirt and dark-red hose. A blue brocade gown, together with a woman’s coif and hood, lay beside him.

Several moments of complete silence followed my entrance while we stared at one another. Finally, the figure on the bed rose slowly and stretched to its full height, which was about as high as my chin, but still no word was spoken. I decided I must break the deadlock.

‘Am I addressing His Grace, the Duke of Albany?’

He replied formally, ‘Alexander Stewart at your service,’ and inclined his head. Then formality was thrown to the winds as he demanded violently, ‘And who in the Devil’s name might you be?’ I saw one hand grope behind him, searching for his dagger, which was lying on the counterpane.

I gave what I hoped was a disarming grin.

‘Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury,’ I said, hoping to make him laugh and, much to my surprise, succeeding. Well, he smiled – quite broadly as a matter of fact.

‘Has Elizabeth sent you?’ His Scots accent was thick, but, as I had remembered from our first encounter, sufficiently anglicised as to be comprehensible to my west country ears.

‘No,’ I answered bluntly. There was no point in beating about the bush. ‘I’m the man you’ve twice tried to murder; firstly in the house at Rownham Passage when you thought I was the Irish sea captain, and secondly when you broke into my house two weeks ago. And don’t try to tell me it wasn’t you. You left a shoe behind – a shoe I now know was lent to you by Robin Avenel.’

He had stopped smiling and was looking grim. He had at last found the dagger, and I saw his fingers close around the hilt. I moved swiftly to hold the point of my own knife at his throat, although somewhat hampered, I have to admit, by the candlestick in my other hand. Reluctantly, he released the dagger.