Son of the Morning (31 page)

3

Dow had bided his time in planning his approach to the thing in the circle, learning well from Edwin how to be as ready as he could for what lay ahead.

The priest was always careful to lock the door when he left the cellar and he never left Dow in there on his own. This lock was not like the one in his room – the priest had replaced it himself after Dow had encountered the red cardinal in the street. Edwin seemed to think that, if magic failed to hold in the devil, ironmongery might.

Dow was always locked in his room at night and, since his escapade with the lady in the street, the lock on that door had been changed to an external bolt. There was no shaking that out. The room was windowless and there was no means of exit, but Dow had already thought how he might talk to the demon. The boards of the floor were old and some of the wooden pegs that secured them to the cross beams were loose. When he realised he could pry them up he almost laughed. How had he not considered it earlier?

He worked on them at night while his candle lasted. Three pegs from a long board would come free with persuasion. He used the one that was very loose to pry up the other two. Beyond that, he thought, he would need some sort of tool. The knife in the garden was the obvious one.

One blue washday of nippy sunlight a few weeks before Easter, when Orsino was teaching him the sword, the Florentine went to the house to get some water from a pail.

Dow quickly scrabbled in the dirt where he had buried the knife. He dug down with his fingers, touching something solid which he pulled out. It was a little crucifix.

What had happened to the knife? He pushed the dirt back into the hole and stood up as Orsino came back into the garden.

‘You’re looking for your knife. And you found God. I put it there to teach you a lesson of where to address your thoughts. Don’t look so angrily at me, boy, your knife’s in my bag if you want it.’

Dow ran to the canvas bag in which Orsino kept his practice weapons. There was the knife, clean, bright and cruel.

‘What do you intend to do with that? To kill me? To kill the priest?’

Dow cast down his eyes.

‘No? Then what?’

Dow swallowed. ‘I do no harm.’

‘You could do great harm with this. It’s a rare blade. Where did you get it?’

‘The red man dropped it.’

‘The devil you say you saw.’

‘That’s right.’ He held the knife out, for Orsino to take it. ‘I do no harm.’

Orsino shrugged. ‘It’s good to keep souvenirs. You honour your enemies in that way, and it’s good to honour your enemies because it reminds you to treat them seriously. Have it back. I will trust you, Dow. I want to trust you. But make sure you don’t abuse my trust. If you escape again …’

‘I won’t escape. Nor do no harm.’

‘Then keep your knife.’

The boy put the knife next to the bag. Then he continued his lesson.

At dusk he picked up the knife and went back into his small room, waiting for the priest to come and lock him in with his half candle for study. Edwin was a believer in study and thought it would bring Dow to God. Some chance.

Edwin locked the door and left. Dow waited, working on his reading, until the candle was half burned. Then he removed the three loose pegs and worked the blade beneath the floorboard, raising it as quietly as he could.

It still gave out some fearful creaks and he waited after each one, listening to see if he could hear anyone coming. Stillness. Just after dusk was the quietest time in the city – all the good folk were home and most in bed. The bad folk weren’t yet drunk enough to go bawling through the streets.

He worked the knife further in. The board gave a loud groan of complaint, two pins flew out and it was free. Dow froze and held his breath. From the street came a voice. ‘You there!’ It was the city watch. He breathed again. The watch had given an explanation to anyone who was listening.

There was no ceiling to the cellar, so he found he was looking almost directly down at the demon in the circle.

It was curled up on the floor.

‘Asleep?’ said Dow.

The demon sat up. ‘Not after that row,’ he said. He stood and peered up at Dow.

‘Need help,’ said Dow.

‘What help?’

‘The priest has a key. I could unlock the door, get you out.’

‘Yes, yes. Look, just drop down here, get me out of this circle by whatever means you can and I’ll kick the door through. Never mind about the priest – I’ll kick him through as well if I have to.’

‘Orsino will hear. We need the key to the cellar. But the priest sleeps on it.’

‘Do as I told you. Go to the stewes of Southwark as I asked you to a year ago. Ask for Joanna Greatbelly. Tell her you need a sleeping draught. Get that into his wine and he’ll be flat out for twelve hours.’

‘I can trust it?’

‘The whores use it to rob rich clients. Tell Greatbelly that Osbert the pardoner sent you.’

‘I have no money to pay her.’

‘Then steal something to give her. A church cup, a plate. Not that expensive. Give her one of the books down there. Anything. Just give her something, knock that madman out and get me out of here!’ His voice was an insistent whisper.

‘I will.’

Dow replaced the board and pressed the pegs back in with the flat of the knife.

The next day, as Orsino moved his sword to correct his guard, Dow spoke to him. ‘I want you to take me to see a whore,’ he said.

Orsino laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’re a man now. High time. High time.’

‘When?’

‘Now, if you like.’

Dow put down the sword. ‘Come on then,’ he said.

4

There was no passage at the foot of the stairs that led to the main bedroom of the grand tower at Nottingham Castle. Montagu had insisted, as Marschall, on turfing old Earl Lancaster and his wife out of their bed so he could use the most luxurious rooms himself. Normally he would have held back from such boorish behaviour but he wanted to conduct an investigation.

The cupboard through which he and his fellows had emerged to steal away Mortimer was just that – a cupboard. There was no sign of any false panel, any hollowness when he knocked on its interior and, pry at it as he might, he could not move the wooden panel.

‘Never mind,’ he told himself, ‘very likely Lancaster has filled it in.’ A secret passage is, after all, no longer secret when it has been used to abduct the most powerful man in the land and take him to his death. But the story of the raid was not well known – or at least the fact the passage had been used. They hadn’t wanted to compromise the defences of what had always been a royal castle. The safest thing was to decommission the tunnel. He would go down to the sandstone caves beneath the castle to investigate any routes that had been filled in.

Montagu pulled on his coat, but before he left he went to his bag. He took out a piece of cloth – a fine damask sleeve of a lady’s dress, shot through with a pattern of dogs pursuing a stag. He breathed in its scent. Castille soap. He had not gone to Isabella, but Isabella had come to him:

A soft knock on the door of his chamber. He pulled on his braies. Then he stumbled through the darkness of his room, fumbled for the catch on the door and opened it to see Isabella’s lady-in-waiting standing there with a candle on a holder in her hand. He was going to turn the girl away. He was aware that his martial achievements and position made him attractive to young women but, though the marriage vows placed no responsibility on men to be faithful to their wives, he loved his Catherine and found other women wanting in manner, intelligence and beauty when compared to her.

All but one. The lady pushed the candle into his hand and slipped away as Isabella came towards him down the passageway. Her shining blonde hair was loose about her shoulders and she was wearing a long, tight white shift, the shape of her body beneath it an assault on all reason and common sense.

Montagu felt his breath catch in his throat. His every good instinct told him to close and bolt the door. But his bad ones left him standing where he was. He could no more step away from her than walk through the wall.

She brushed by him into his room. Montagu almost wanted to call for the Hospitallers to come and rescue him. It was, as if a panther had swept past him, its sleek side lingering an instant too long against his. He knew the legend of the panther, the beast they called the Love Cervere, how it emits its sweet perfume to draw in its prey.
How to react, how to proceed?
.

She sat on the edge of the bed. He came into the room, closed the door and put the candle on the dresser.

‘Have we not talked enough today?’

‘I have matters that cannot be discussed in company.’ Her smile with sadness behind it.
Oh Montagu! Listen to yourself! So sentimental, so gullible. It’s an act
, he told himself.
She bends men like an archer a bow and to the same purpose – to make use of them
. But what an act. And she wanted him to see it. She wanted to say, ‘Look what I do for you, see how I turn my head and touch my hair. It is a performance and it is performed for you, as an offering. Show me comfort, hold me. Once my head is on your breast, anything is possible.’

He raged inwardly. He wanted to tell her, ‘I see what you are doing. I know your tricks and your deceptions.’ But it was useless. This woman had made a country fall in love with her, armies steal away from her husband at her approach. He’d wanted to kill Mortimer from the second he’d seen her on his arm and he’d wanted to kill old Edward too, for ever having touched her. Was that it? – his honour, his bravery, the risks he had taken to depose the tyrant, the risks he was taking now, spiritual and physical, to find old Edward – simply driven by love of this woman? No, not love, something stronger. He knew what he bore in his heart for old Edward. Hate. In her presence, he hated other men for just existing, for having eyes to see her. Yes, it was hate she kindled inside him – of himself for his weakness, of everything that had ever happened and would happen without her. Did he care that England got its angels back? He didn’t care for anything but her. If old Edward lived, he would die for how he’d treated her. With her mouth on his, his hands in her hair, his life had no other purpose.

‘Lady. I …’

‘What?’

Montagu felt unbearably self-conscious. ‘I think of my wife.’

‘It is no betrayal.’

‘But you must be faithful to your husband.’

‘My husband is dead. Is he not?’ She looked at him with that slight smile, a smile that had toppled a king. Montagu could not read what she meant. An invitation to bed or …

She held up her hands and he took them in his. ‘William,’ she said.

She began to stand and he instinctively took her weight to help her. Then she was in his arms, her head in the crook of his neck.

‘Come on, Lord Mars
ch
all,’ she said, crunching up the ‘ch’ in imitation of a provincial English lady, ‘tell me all your troubles.’

A while later she gave him a sealed letter for her son. Young Edward insisted that all communications between him and his mother went through Brother Robert – with the result that none did.

‘The king might be angry that you bring him this,’ she’d said.

‘I’m used to his anger. I can stand a little for you. But will he read it?’

‘If you stress its importance. He trusts you, Montagu. Use that trust for me. Read it to him if you have to. Will you swear it?’

‘I will. I swear it.’

‘Robert searches everyone who leaves, so be careful.’

‘I’m Lord Marschall of England,’ said Montagu, ‘if he searches me, he’ll find my sword quicker than he’d like.’ He felt dizzy at how easily he became angry on her behalf.

As Montagu put the sleeve back into his bag, he continued dwelling on the events of that night.

She’d put her arms around him and he’d felt that he could do anything at all while she held him in her regard. Good Lord, no wonder Mortimer had overthrown a king for her. When she nuzzled into his neck and nibbled at his ear he felt he could overthrow God if he chose. What had old Edward been made of that he was immune to her charms?

She’d given him the sleeve, like a lady at a tournament might give her sleeve to a champion. He’d understood what she was saying. He had felt like a knight from a romance on a quest, and felt foolish for doing so. He was only delivering a letter, not slaying a dragon. But it felt good to be doing something for her, noble even.

Coolheaded now, sitting on his bed at Nottingham, he sniffed the letter. Even the smell of the wax reminded him of Isabella. He was not in control of his passions while he thought of her, let alone in her presence. The seal was different from the one he remembered. No fleurs-de-lys to signify her royal descent. This was a scratchy circle with Latin names upon it, a snake curling around its circumference, a broken triangle above it. He felt a flash of anger that her son had denied her even her family seal.
What are you thinking, Montagu? Edward was generous to spare her life.
He put his head into his hands and vowed that he would never see her again as long as he lived.

He picked up a pen to write to his wife to tell her he would try to come home soon, that he loved her. No, that was the action of a coward wanting to apologise for his betrayal but lacking the backbone to do it outright. He did love Catherine very much. He thought of all his favourite times with her – with the children by his Manor, long days by the river, on his little boat or just playing in the garden. And yet Isabella seemed like a deep shadow over his memories. He could be lost to the queen, he knew.

He went down the stairs out of the tower. The courtyard outside was loud with the sound of clash of arms. His squires were taking each other on in an informal tournament that had been fought all day. It was nearly dusk, and he thought he should tell them to stop before someone got seriously hurt or wounded. Still, it did them good to exercise their skills, though he wished they could do it against Lancaster’s men and not each other. Lancaster’s men were all with Henry out in Flanders, bashing up a few of the Holy Roman Emperor’s knights at tournaments in similar fashion.