Son of the Morning (32 page)

Montagu felt guilty and wanted to be with his king. He laughed at himself. Everything made him feel guilty that morning – including laughing at himself.

‘You’re a flippant dog, Montagu,’ he said, ‘you deserve the public pillory.’

He reached the bottom of the tower and strode across the courtyard. Two armoured young men who had been circling each other with longswords immediately stopped and bowed.

‘Enough, Thomas,’ he said, ‘and you, George. We want you in one piece to fight the French. It won’t be long, boys, so put up your arms for this evening.’

Both men bowed again and embraced each other.

Montagu slipped out of the main courtyard and down to the curtain wall. From there he told the guard he was off to take the air and took a lantern with him. There were four men at the gate and three of them were new to him – picked up with the new office of Marschall, sergeants detailed to help keep in the wool collections. The three fell in behind him but he waved them away.

Sergeant Darrel Cook, a man Montagu had had in his retinue for twenty years, came wandering by, declaring: ‘The lord bested ten pagans in a straight scrap out in the east. A few Nottingham beggars won’t bother him.’

Montagu shook his head as he went through the gate. He’d heard that story many times, but it wasn’t true – or at least, it was only true if you counted the enemies in what was known as ‘knights’ numbers’. That is, you multiplied the number of enemies by at least five. The result of this was that, if you said you’d only killed one or two – and Montagu knew he had only done for a couple of men when he had been ambushed in the woods of Livonia – people assumed you had spent the entire campaign in bed.

He walked down beneath the cliff, the green fields stretching out before him into Nottingham.

It wasn’t ideal to come in the dusk, but he needed to make his investigation discreetly. He couldn’t search at night, and by day too many people might wonder what the de facto ruler of all England was doing crawling around in bushes. There was thick undergrowth around the base of the cliff, trees and grass too, going up to at least five man heights.

The mouth of the cave gaped in front of him – or rather the mouths of the cave – four of them, two below and two above. He recalled the one they’d taken – the smaller, above. He scaled the rock as he’d done on that night. Not so easy now, Montagu. Not the monkey you were, eh? The going was tougher than he remembered. He carried the lantern in his teeth. Back then they’d gone by moonlight.

He made the lip and struck to light the lantern. Then he went within, the shadows of his lamp dancing ghosts in the darkness, the damp in his nostrils. He made it thirty paces in before he came to the rocks. The entire passage was blocked – it was not a fall, these blocks were regular and showed the marks of chisels. Relief, then. The way had been closed by Lancaster. He explored the other tunnels to similar result. All blocked, all quite deliberately.

He went back with a spring in his step. Sorcery? Rubbish. Always look for the simplest explanation, William. Isabella had been teasing him, testing his credulity. Very like her.

When he returned to the courtyard, the two young squires were at it again, clashing sword against sword, the fat scarlet figure of Lancaster and some of his ladies watching – servants carrying torches.

‘Stop!’ The two men instantly broke.

‘William, sorry,’ said Lancaster, ‘I was taken up in town with legal business all day and I wanted to see your men fight. They do you proud, sir.’

‘Thank you, Lancaster,’ Montagu bowed.

‘Been outside?’

‘Just surveying the castle. You never know when we’ll need to defend these walls.’

‘Not that bad yet is it?’

‘No, but too much caution never hurt anyone in war. Thank you for the use of your room by the way,’ said Montagu. ‘Tell me, given my history at this castle, I’m slightly concerned about security here. The French aren’t above an attempt on my life. And, while I disdain to fear for myself, the wool collection is very critical to our success abroad. So it would be inconvenient for me to die now. I’m glad to see you sealed the passage that leads up to your rooms, but are there any other entrances?’

Lancaster smiled and tapped his nose. ‘Ah, the secret passage,’ he said.

‘I don’t follow, old man.’

‘The one you used to take the usurper.’

‘The same.’

‘Ah, the famous, famous secret passage.’

Montagu looked at Lancaster quizzically. The chubby knight slapped him on the back. ‘It’s a long time ago, William. You can let that one go now!’

‘Say it plain, Henry, I’ve a thick old head for riddles.’

Now it was Lancaster’s turn to look puzzled. ‘This is my family seat,’ said Lancaster, ‘the foundation stone of my security and that of my ancestors. If you think us foolish enough to provide a herb-scented road for our enemies to get in then you underestimate us, Bill, which I know you don’t. The passages were used as quick routes up from the bottom of the cliff when the castle was built in old Henry’s day. They were filled in one hundred and more years ago. It’s a castle, not a whorehouse – you don’t want a quick and furtive way in and out.’

Montagu smiled, tried to remain light. ‘I just want to be sure there are no threats to security, no way of scrambling over the rocks.’

‘No. People have tried. The peasants believed your story, you know. We even had some of the rougher sort skulking around the base of the cliff looking for a way in – fancied a bit of my tapestry work, I’d guess.’

Montagu laughed, trying to make out he was in on the joke. ‘They never found it.’

‘No. A nice bit of fluff to cover the truth, though. I would be interested to know who you suborned to get in here. Particularly if he’s still working for me.’

‘Mortimer’s men were not all as loyal as they seemed,’ said Montagu, ‘they knew where their true duty lay.’ Montagu’s mind was racing and he struggled not to betray his surprise.

‘As I thought. Can’t have been easy, though – you’d have had to come through three hundred men to get there.’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly put on my full battle colours and sound the trumpet at the gate,’ said Montagu.

Lancaster laughed. ‘Indeed not, indeed not. You did a great thing freeing us from that tyrant’s yoke.’

‘We did God’s work. We could not fail.’

‘You could not. Will you come to the hall? I’ve a range of rare meats for you.’

‘Gladly,’ said Montagu.

Montagu was having a hard time marshalling his thoughts. He had got there through that upper tunnel – he wasn’t mad. So how? Isabella, on reflection, was not the sort for a childish joke at his expense. So, if she were telling the truth, then what? Sorcery? No. Edward, now king, was appointed by God. He could not believe any prince of England would have truck with sorcery. It was unthinkable. So, if not by magic, how had Edward enabled their entry?

Had it been through angels? That would mean the new king had had use of angels and had lost them. He was deeply confused.

That night, when the glad handing was done, the greeting and the courtesies to knights and dignitaries too old, too young or too useless to be with the king in Flanders, Montagu lay alone in the great bed of Lancaster’s solar. He imagined Isabella lying there with him, her body as lithe as a snake’s, the smell of her sweet breath, the feeling she gave him that some things in the world were more important than any comfort, any peril – even that discomfort and peril were preferable to all the sweetnesses of life. Isabella was dangerous for him, but he couldn’t put her from his mind. He tried to think of exactly what he knew concerning Nottingham and the condition of the angels. He sat up in his bed, sweating. Had she enchanted him? How far to Castle Rising? How long would it take to get back there? How many horses would he need to canter the whole distance? Eighty miles. Just about possible to do it in a day.

Dawn came up and still he hadn’t slept. He forced himself to sit at his table and write what he knew, to focus his mind on what he needed to think about rather than let thoughts of her consume him.

Isabella said Despenser had vanquished the angels – a miscast sorcery. Well, then it would be necessary to see Eleanor, Hugh’s widow. She was as unlike old Hugh as the sea the land, but she might know something. He would visit her at Tewkesbury and drop in at Hanley – the old Despenser seat before his wife set it ablaze. What might be found there? Montagu didn’t know, but it wouldn’t hurt to look. But Nottingham? There was no passage. He had never even thought to question its existence before. He had seen it with his own eyes on that night, so why would he? He went through the names of the men who had been with him then. He would write to them all and ask them what they recalled.

He mulled what he knew in his mind. The king had no angels. And yet Mortimer, Isabella, and Edward as a boy under their sway, had overthrown a sitting king with angels. They must have had some supernatural power – divine or diabolical. Had the French king employed his own angels to help his sister Isabella?

Whatever the power was, it had not helped Mortimer when they’d crashed into the castle, bound him and dragged him to Tyburn. Old Edward was dead and young Edward on the throne by the time Mortimer was cast down. England’s angels were supposedly absent for some three years before that night.

It must have been angelic power that opened the passage – angels backed kings, no devil would. And that meant the angels
could
be called – under the right circumstances. So old Edward might be dead after all. Montagu’s head was in a spin.

If he could find the means by which the passage had been opened or, if that had not occurred, by which they had been transported into the castle, he would be closer to understanding why the angels had attended then and would not now. He would need to question Eland, the old steward, if he was still alive. He had met the man himself, so he was sure Isabella was mistaken in naming this Baricloughe the custodian. But first, he called for George.

‘Despenser,’ he said, ‘we’re heading west and we’ll take a night at Hanley. I’d like to impress on your mother the need for getting the taxes collected. Send a couple of men to ride ahead to give proper notice.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And ask Lord Lancaster if I might meet his man Eland, the steward.’

Montagu looked out of the window and thought of Isabella. It would be better for everyone if old Edward was dead.

An hour later, George returned. ‘The noble lord says there’s no such man, sir.’

Then how had the king secured their entrance? Montagu smiled.

‘Must have been my mistake,’ he said.

5

Dow’s heart skipped just looking at the Southwark stewes. He’d passed them on his way into the city but then he had been overawed by everything he saw, in great pain, his head spinning. Now he wasn’t just seeing them but actually going in. The houses were set very close and leaned into each other, like drunken men grasping for mutual support. The place stank of … so many things. It was like a great rubbish tip. Every trade that existed in the city existed here, but crammed in, meaner, darker, smaller and poorer. Leatherworkers, stinking of the shit they used to soften the skins, jostled against butchers, next to iron workers with their acrid fires, next to fruit stalls full of maggoty apples, next to bakers and barbers and brewers and – finally – bawds.

Gangs of ragged children ran barefoot through the streets, people pissed openly in doorways, lewd women enticed raucously from windows. These weren’t the rural poor Dow had known – priest-cowed church mice – nor even like the open rebels he’d lived with on the moor. Here were people who neither bowed to nor fought authority but simply ignored it. There was a shabby church, but it seemed to list at one side on soft foundations like a storm-grounded ship. Dow was scared but exhilarated. What a power these rough people would be if they could be made to move collectively against the high men and the priests.

How it would be to live so free.

‘Hello handsome!’ a young woman called from a doorway. Dow thought she was very pretty – no more than eighteen, small, dark and lovely.

‘Take a tumble with Flying Bess?’ she said.

‘You like her?’ asked Orsino. The journey to the stewes had lightened the Florentine’s bad mood. He had been restless since Sariel had come and gone, and it did him good to have some purpose, however small. The mercenary had spoken of how he had thought that one day he would make such a journey with his own son, it being a great day for a Florentine father to take his son to a whore. Dow had sensed stirrings of a reciprocal feeling. Could this fellow be converted, saved by Lucifer? He tried to focus on the joy Lucifer brought. He could not forgive but could good fruit spring from bad seeds?

‘I want to see Joanna Greatbelly,’ said Dow.

‘She’s been recommended to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Doesn’t sound very promising,’ said Orsino.

‘She’s the one I want to see.’ Dow’s throat was tight. He really would have liked to ‘take a tumble’ with Flying Bess. He’d had his fun with the girls on the moor – but none of them were as pretty as Flying Bess, nor dressed the same in her yellow hood and tight dress.

‘Do you know Joanna Greatbelly?’ said Orsino to the woman in the doorway.

The woman took his hand and put it to her breast. ‘You like ’em old and fat, do you?’

‘It’s for the boy.’ He turned behind him. ‘Look, Dow, give me a little while, then we’ll find yours.’ He turned to the woman, ‘Never mind about the bath – we’ll just get down to business straight away, I’m only meant to be here for the boy.’

As he ducked into the doorway, leaving Dow in the street, Orsino called back, ‘Actually, Dow, give me quite a long while.’

The boy looked around him, suddenly feeling vulnerable. Orsino had left him with no weapon, no money, no anything. He wanted to summon the courage to speak out – to spread the word of Lucifer. Abbadon had often held the villagers rapt with his preaching but that was a different place. There was a tradition of Luciferism in the West Country, men were prepared to hear the word. Here, in the shadow of the church? No, it was not yet the time.