Jennet watched as Kate moved the chest and checked beneath the floorboards for Hubert Bale’s pouch and his letters of introduction from the king and the duke. Someone had searched Kate’s bedchamber while she and Jennet were otherwise engaged with Andrew Caverton and the unfolding drama of the day. Jennet had discovered the intrusion while Kate was searching for Phillip—a male scent in the room, a few items subtly out of place. She had remarked to Kate that whoever had searched was experienced and had taken their time.
“The pouch and the letters are still here, God be thanked.” Kate slumped back against the wall pressing the letters to her heart. The search had drained what little strength she could muster at the end of this most trying day.
“And nothing is missing?” Jennet asked, slipping off the bed. “Let me help you put it all back.”
Kate touched Jennet’s bandaged arm and shook her head. “Nothing is missing, and you must rest. I will put it back in a moment.”
Jennet shrugged. “As you wish.” She padded back to the bed. Settling back against the cushions, she sighed. “I’d wager it was Sir Elric. He was here at the house while we were in the gardens.”
“I know.” Of course he would be keen to find the letters and dispose of them. They were incriminating evidence of the Earl of Westmoreland’s connection with an assassin claiming to represent both the king and the duke. Treason. “I foiled him.”
“For now.”
“I intend to continue to do so. I might need these if I am cornered.”
“Sam must go away. He knows you have one of the letters. If he were to tell Sir Elric . . .”
“I thought of that.” Hours ago Kate had paused for a quiet word with Goodwife Bella, instructing her to slip poppy juice in some wine and make certain that Sam drank it down. The healer had proposed a few additional ingredients to fog his memory. Checking on Sam awhile ago Kate had found him groggy and confused. She must remember to pay Bella well for her services. “I will talk to Dean Richard about a place for Sam on one of his properties well away from York.” She forced herself up, tucking the pack back beneath the boards and arranging the furniture over the space.
“Sir Elric, here in your bedchamber, and he took nothing? Not even your silk shift as a memento.” Jennet grinned. “He is an honorable knight.”
Without comment Kate climbed into bed and slipped down beneath the covers, pulling them over her head. A romantic entanglement with Westmoreland’s man in York was the last thing she needed. Tomorrow she would show the letters to her uncle the dean. As Keeper of the Privy Seal he should be able to tell her whether the seals were official.
Lady Margery bent to the task, moving the letters so that they were in the best light from the casement window in the deanery hall. Dean Richard was not so familiar with Henry Bolingbroke’s seals to know whether this was current, but Lord Kirkby had kept up a correspondence with the exiled duke; hence the consultation.
“I knew that he had copied King Richard in adding Edward the Confessor’s arms, but I had not seen this motto: SOVEREYNE.” Margery gave a little shiver as she glanced up at Kate and Dean Richard. “I wonder that my Thomas did not mention it. Perhaps he does not take it to mean what the three of us clearly do? It is my greatest fear that my husband is too trusting, that he is mistaken in trusting that the duke wants to make peace with his royal cousin, that he wishes to claim his inheritance and nothing more.”
“At one time King Richard did name him as his heir,” said Kate. “Might this refer to his expectations?”
“After all that has transpired, Bolingbroke cannot be so naïve as to presume that. And such a seal would serve only to fuel King Richard’s suspicions.” Margery’s hands trembled as she folded the letters and handed them to Kate.
“This has troubled you. I am sorry.” Kate pressed Margery’s hand.
“Better to know.”
“So I am right in thinking this is an authentic letter, and the one introducing Underhill as King Richard’s man is a counterfeit?” Kate asked.
Both her uncle and Lady Margery nodded.
“Hide these well,” Margery whispered.
On Lady Kirkby’s last day in York, Dean Richard hosted a small, select dinner in her honor, attended by Archbishop Richard Scrope, Sir Elric, William Frost, and Kate. The conversation slid time and again to King Richard’s expedition to Ireland and the growing unease of the barons. Kate watched the archbishop and Sir Elric, trying to gauge whether they were friend or foe. Elric knew all her secrets, except for the letters, and she believed her uncle was correct in guessing that the archbishop knew far more than she found comfortable. How would they use her? But the dinner was a triumph for Lady Margery, who received the archbishop’s thanks for working for peace. He proved a complex man.
“Alas, we never had the opportunity to read Geoffrey Chaucer’s wonderful love poem,” Margery sighed as she and Kate parted at High Petergate.
“I look forward to doing so on your next visit,” said Kate. She meant it. Though eager to have the guesthouse available to her regular clients once more, and still of the opinion that the quest for peace was naïve and destined to fail, Kate was fonder of Margery than ever, particularly since that awful day when Phillip went missing. Margery had offered help in a hundred different ways, exhibiting a particular skill in guiding Marie and Petra to communicate beyond insults. She had even found suitable clothing for Petra to wear. Recalling that Drusilla Seaton had a granddaughter slightly older than Petra, she had paid the widow a visit and returned with a wardrobe. “May God watch over you and your husband on your noble mission,” Kate said.
Margery kissed Kate’s cheek and whispered, “Have a care, my friend. Danger surrounds us.”
Sir Elric bowed to Lady Margery and wished her a safe journey.
“I will miss little Petra most of all. She is so like my youngest when he was her age.” Margery pressed something into Kate’s hand. “One for each of them, so they do not fuss.” Kissing Kate’s cheek again, Margery hurried off.
Gold filigree pins shaped as nests, with tiny jet beads tucked within. Kate placed them in her scrip.
“She is a generous woman,” Sir Elric noted as they continued down Stonegate. He had insisted on escorting Kate home, despite Jennet’s presence. Jennet now walked behind them with the squire Harry, a youth with a honking laugh. “Forgive my curiosity, Dame Katherine, but I wondered what you decided about your wayward servant, Sam?”
“My uncle the dean has offered him a penance of hard work, menial labor befitting a man of his years, in the kennels on an estate. He is good with dogs.” She enjoyed the surprise on the knight’s chiseled face. “Cliffords prefer to use problems, not destroy them.”
“I see.”
And Sam’s gratitude would silence him about the letters. Or so she prayed. “And you, Sir Elric, what will be the fate of your wayward henchman?”
“Alas, the wound in his groin festered, and with little will to live knowing he would be a cripple, he went to sleep and never woke.” A shrug.
Kate felt a chill down her spine. She must remember to warn her uncle never to reveal the whereabouts of Sam to this man.
“What do you think of Lady Kirkby’s mission now that you have dined with her? And witnessed the archbishop’s response?” she asked as they crossed into Davygate.
“I believe Lord Kirkby sincere in suing for peace, but he will fail. He understands neither Duke Henry nor the Lancastrians. The duke is a man besotted with his own image as first knight, a man who needs to be the hero of every tourney in which he participates. It is this that makes him dangerous. He dislikes that his cousin the king does not appreciate his military prowess. The king publicly embarrasses him by pointing out that a tourney is to the battlefield what a puppet show is to life, and that he has had little to no experience in actual battle. The duke has no wish to make peace with his royal cousin. The barons encourage the duke in his resentment, especially the Lancastrians. They see no benefit to peace.”
It seemed Kate and Elric were of one mind in this.
For a while they relaxed into casual comments on the state of the streets, the weather, the folk who greeted her, so many with questions in their expressions—she certainly had been a source of much excitement of late. It worried her. And now to be seen on the arm of a handsome knight . . . She shrugged to herself. Perhaps Sir Elric’s interest might be to her advantage, serving to ward off would-be suitors.
“Have you considered my proposal?” he asked as they crossed into Nessgate, almost home. “My silence and protection for your information?”
“And if I refuse?”
A small smile. “You are a formidable warrior, Dame Katherine. I prefer to be your ally, not your foe.”
“Then perhaps we understand each other.” She thanked him for the escort and excused herself for not inviting him in. “Petra is with her tutor today in the hall. I prefer that we not disturb them.”
“Ah. How is she fitting in your household?”
Kate shook her head. “Phillip has chosen to stay with the Granthams for a while, until Marie becomes accustomed to Petra’s presence.” She smiled. “It is an uneasy peace. Like ours.”
She nodded to him, signaled to Jennet, and was turning down the alley when Elric barred her way.
“One more thing, Dame Katherine.” Curious how chilly blue eyes could be. “Your cousin William mentioned that Jon Underhill had shown him a letter carrying King Richard’s seal. We found no such letter on the corpse.”
“So you have exhumed him? To give him a proper burial, I hope?”
An ambiguous shrug. “Frost said Underhill had a pack with him when he was escorted to your guesthouse that fateful night. Is that in your possession?”
“You know that it is, Sir Elric. You searched for it yourself up in my bedchamber.”
He cleared his throat and looked down at his boots for a moment. So he had a conscience. “Forgive me, Dame Katherine, but I had orders. And for all that I found no letter.”
“Of course not.”
“But you know of the letters.”
“I know of the one William glimpsed. Was there another?”
A slight twitch beneath his left eye. “You miss nothing, do you?”
Kate merely arched a brow. “It grows cold out here.”
“Of course. Forgive me for keeping you, Dame Katherine. I pray I have not jeopardized our partnership with my trespass.”
“And I pray it is not repeated.” She wished him a safe journey back to Sheriff Hutton Castle, then strode on down the alley, her heart pounding. She must find a safer place for the letters than the floor of her solar, somewhere they would be secure even should someone set fire to her home.