Sovereign (58 page)

He nodded, running his finger along the edge of his beard again. ‘If there is no trace of the papers we can assume that she got rid of them. She took them from Oldroyd and he was in with
the conspirators.’

‘Yes. Bernard Locke told her he had repented. She told herself she was helping scotch the conspirators’ plans, as well as destroying evidence that would incriminate him. Though I
think Locke’s main concern may well have been to save his own skin.’

Maleverer nodded. ‘Many held in the Tower come to see things that way. Especially if they’ve been shown the rack, and heard the screams.’

‘Not Broderick.’

He grunted. ‘He’s not there yet. Well, if she has destroyed the papers, she did us a favour. Though the Privy Council would have preferred to see them.’ He got up. ‘Locke
will have some stiff questioning now. I am going to start the search.’ I could almost feel the nervous energy coming from his big frame. ‘And I’d better have that bitch’s
body fetched down, before some villager stumbles over it. Until I come back, do not move from this room, do you understand?’

H
E LEFT THE ROOM,
his robe whisking behind him. I sat down in the seat Wrenne had vacated. I thought, Maleverer is not the cleverest of men, he gets his
way by bullying. He despises me but likes to pick my brain. I sighed and looked round the room. It might have been a study once. An old tapestry of a hunting scene hung behind Maleverer’s
desk. Had the executed Robert Constable sat gazing at it, as I did now? I turned away and looked out of the window at the dark night for some time, thinking.

I thought of Jennet Marlin. Even now I could not help but feel sorry for her. Her love for Bernard Locke must have been an obsession since childhood. She had not been unattractive, she could
have made another match had she not fixed her heart so desperately on Locke. What manner of man was he, I wondered. A charismatic rogue perhaps, who could get women to do anything he asked. I had
come across those in my career, usually when they had bled some woman of all her money and she was trying to recover it at law. Had Locke used that obsessive love of Jennet’s to turn her into
a murderess, to save him from execution? If so, he was worse than her. I shuddered as her face came to mind, her expression as she looked at me over the crossbow.

I looked at the box. Who did you originally belong to, I wondered. Someone rich. I leaned forward and opened it, looking into the empty interior. There was still a faint smell of old, musty
papers. Had Jennet Marlin destroyed them all? If she had, anything there about the Queen and Culpeper was gone. How little I care about that, I thought; I have no loyalty left to Henry. Perhaps a
false King. He will be relieved indeed if that was what the Blaybourne papers said.

I jumped violently as the door banged open and Maleverer reappeared. He shut the door and frowned down at me.

‘What are you fiddling with that box for?’ He threw himself down in his seat. ‘There’s no sign of the papers in her quarters. Just letters from Bernard Locke in the
Tower, tied up with ribbon. They say nothing, they just say how much they love each other. Like turtle-doves.’ He snorted. ‘I’m having the ladies questioned to see if they
remember anything that might help us, but I doubt they will. I think you were right, she destroyed those papers. Perhaps threw them on to one of the campfires in York. ‘Go back to your tent
now, I’ll call you if need be. There’s a soldier outside. He will take you back.’

‘Very well, Sir William.’ I rose, bowed and left the room. A soldier waiting outside led me out of Howlme Manor. It was a relief to be back in the open air.

‘Is the King abed?’ I asked the soldier, to make conversation.

‘No, sir, he is playing chess with the gentlemen of the bedchamber. He will not sleep for many hours, I think.’

The soldier led me into the camp. The cooking fires were dying down now, the soldiers and servants fed. Men sat before their tents talking or playing cards.

‘Is it far?’ I asked. ‘I am sore tired.’

‘Not far. You have a tent by the fence. Your man and the old lawyer are next to you.’

He came to a halt where three small conical tents were set together in a corner of the field. There were others dotted around, some lit from within by flickering candlelight; the other lawyers,
perhaps, whose status merited their own tent. I thanked the soldier, who walked away to the manor, and opened the flap of the only tent of the three that was lit from within.

Inside, Giles lay on a truckle bed which had been set on the bare grass. Barak sat on a box beside him, his injured leg up on another box and his crutch beside him, drinking beer.

‘This is a homely scene,’ I said quietly. ‘How are you both?’

‘Master Wrenne is asleep,’ Barak answered. ‘He told me what happened. Is Jennet Marlin truly dead?’

‘Ay, she is. I have been with Maleverer; he has searched her belongings for the papers, but found nothing.’

‘She destroyed them, then?’

‘He thinks so. How is your leg?’

‘All right so long as I don’t put any weight on it. Tammy had to go back to her quarters.’

‘Maleverer is going to question her about Jennet Marlin. And the other ladies. Lady Rochford too.’

‘Tammy will be shocked,’ he said seriously. ‘She was fond of Mistress Marlin.’ He sighed.

‘Still no word from your friend in London? About her father?’

‘Only a note to say he is following some leads.’

‘Have you told her?’

‘No. And if it’s bad news in the end, as I suspect, I won’t.’

I nodded, then went over and looked at Giles. He seemed deeply asleep.

‘He saved my life,’ I said. ‘But I think it was all too much for him. He can only take so much. We must take care of him.’

‘We will.’ Barak looked at me. ‘So. It is all over.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘There’s something – but I am tired, I must go to my tent, sleep. I can’t think straight now.’ I laughed suddenly.

‘What?’

‘The soldier who brought me across told me the King is playing chess with his gentlemen. It struck me, this whole Progress is like a great chessboard, with a real king and queen trying to
outmanoeuvre the people of the north.’

He looked at me seriously, eyes glinting in the candlelight. ‘A real king?’ he asked quietly. ‘Or a cuckoo in the royal nest?’

‘Either way we three are the humblest of pawns, easily dispensable.’

W
E WERE TRAVELLING DOWN
a long stretch of road. I was still on the horse I had been given yesterday, for Genesis’
cuts were not healed sufficiently for me to ride him. He was at the back of the Progress, with the spare horses. Alongside me, Barak sat wearily in Sukey’s saddle; he had insisted on riding
today, despite his leg. Giles was not with us; he had wakened feeling ill and weak, his face grey. I suspected he was in pain and had begged a place for him to travel in one of the carts. I too was
feeling the effects of the previous night. Although I was thickly swathed in my coat, I felt cold.

We had an even longer ride today: to Leconfield Castle, five miles north of Hull. The country beyond Howlme was less flat, with low round hills capped with trees whose leaves glowed red and
yellow this bright, cold autumn morning. It made a pretty picture. Away to the east I could see a line of hills I heard someone call the Yorkshire Wolds. All around us the Progress thundered and
clattered. Behind, the procession of carts disappeared out of sight beyond a bend in the road. Ahead, the feathers in the caps of the officials bobbed up and down, while on either side the soldiers
in their bright uniforms rode, with harnesses jangling, and the messengers ran up and down the verges.

The picture of Jennet Marlin with her head staved in kept coming into my mind. I guessed Giles’s state of health this morning was at least partly a reaction to what he had had to do. I
recalled his shocked expression and his words, ‘I have never killed another person.’

‘Penny for ’em,’ Barak said.

‘I was thinking of last night. Mistress Marlin lying dead on that hill.’

‘I saw Tammy this morning, before we set off. She said Lady Rochford had looked terrified when Maleverer came to question her. He questioned Tammy too, but there was nothing she could tell
him.’ He glanced at me. ‘She was sore upset to learn the truth about Mistress Marlin. She was in tears when I saw her.’

‘Upset that her mistress was a murderess?’

‘And that she was dead.’

‘Lady Rochford must have been scared the Queen’s foolery had been discovered.’

‘Ay. But none of the ladies knew anything. Mistress Marlin had no friends apart from Tamasin. She used to go off for walks on her own sometimes, but no one knew where she went.’

‘To spy on me,’ I said.

Barak lowered his voice. ‘You were right all along not to tell Maleverer about Culpeper. Cheer up, you are safe. It’s over. And you can stop worrying about that family tree, and who
Blaybourne was.’ He grinned. ‘Stop moithering, as the Yorkers say.’

‘I wonder,’ I said quietly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jennet Marlin never actually admitted to taking the papers.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Surely she of all people would have made sure I was dead when I was struck down and the papers stolen at King’s Manor.’

‘You mean she had a confederate?’

I shook my head. ‘No, she worked alone on her mission.’

‘Then who else can have taken them?’ Barak sounded exasperated.

‘I don’t know. But why did she not kill me at once when she had the chance last night? She could have shot me in the back as I stood there pissing against that beacon. But she made
me stand there.’ I shuddered. ‘I think if she had had the time she might have asked me if
I
knew where the papers were.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘No. But if she thought I had them it would explain why she was so sure I had seen the papers incriminating Bernard Locke.’

‘But she didn’t try to question you before. The bitch just tried to kill you.’

‘She didn’t have the opportunity before. If one of her earlier attempts had succeeded she might have somehow found the chance to go through my papers at the lodging house. Bribed a
servant to do it, perhaps.’

Barak shook his head. ‘I can’t see it.’

‘I’ve no proof. If it
was
someone else who struck me down at King’s Manor, someone linked to the conspirators, the papers would probably have been despatched to them
long ago.’

‘So they’re gone, whatever they were?’

‘Long gone, I’d say.’ I sighed. ‘Maleverer said they would subject Bernard Locke to stiff questioning now. Perhaps they will learn more from him.’

Barak shrugged. ‘I guess they’ll rack him.’

‘Yes.’ I shuddered. ‘And what will he say? I hope the name Martin Dakin does not come up. That would just about finish the old man.’

‘There’s no reason it should. Just because they share the same chambers.’

I nodded thoughtfully. ‘There’s an age difference, too. Giles said Dakin was over forty, and Locke must be about ten years younger if he was of an age with Jennet Marlin.’

‘There you are. Barristers with that much difference in experience wouldn’t normally mix much.’

‘Unless they have other things in common.’ I sighed again. ‘I must visit Broderick when we arrive at Leconfield. I never went back to his carriage yesterday.’

Barak shifted his position to ease his leg. ‘You should tell Maleverer what you have been thinking. That the papers might not have been destroyed.’

‘I will. But he will probably only scoff. He will believe what he wants to believe, which is that it is all over.’

Barak looked round him at the crowds. ‘Who could it have been?’

I followed his gaze. ‘Anyone. Anyone at all.’

W
E PASSED THROUGH
the little town of Market Weighton without stopping. The King and Queen were at the head of the Progress, far out of sight. People
stood in the streets and watched the Progress as they had in the villages, with caps off but generally stony faces, though I heard some ragged cheers up ahead as the King and Queen went by.