Chapter Fifteen

I have mentioned on at least two previous occasions in this narrative, the fact that throughout this strange case of Clement Weaver I was destined to be an observer of great events, simply because God decreed that I should be in the right place at the right moment. And so it was that during the last week of May, a few days after the execution of Thomas Burdet, I was passing through the city of Westminster when Clarence stormed his way into the palace council chamber to protest his henchman’s innocence.

I had taken almost a month over the journey to London, not hurrying, going out of my way to visit the remoter communities of Wiltshire and Berkshire and the city approaches, allowing the quiet of the countryside to act as balm to my bruised and battered spirit. I had set out from Lawford’s Gate still convinced of my undying passion for Rowena Honeyman, only to discover that by the time I reached the scattered hamlets and holdings of Savernake Forest, a whole day would go by without my once conjuring up her face. Indeed, as the fitful showers of early May gave way to more smiling weather, and as the white stars of the campion flowers began to displace primroses and sweet wild violets, I found that I might not think of her for several days together, until something happened to jog my memory. And even then, the sadness and regret did not last beyond an hour or two.

There was so much to be observed, and occasionally to be done when my services could be of any use, that I had little spare time for repining. May is the month for rethatching roofs after the depredations of winter, when torn and loosened straw must be flattened down and stitched into place; for threshing grain when the weather is kind; for planting peas and weeding autumn-sown corn; for draining grassland. It is also the season for the start of the summer activities.

On Whit Sunday, after Mass, I clapped and cheered the Morris dancers on the green of some village whose name I have long since forgotten, although I shall never forget the mouthwatering taste of the Whitsun cheesecake given to me by one of the local Goodies. The pastry which encased it was light as thistledown, while the flavours of clove and mace were so skilfully blended with the curds and egg yolks that there was no bitterness or stinging of the tongue. And when I fell asleep that night, beside that same Goody’s damped-down fire, I was undisturbed by dreams of a little, straight nose, periwinkle-blue eyes and a small, determined chin, all in a frame of silky fair hair. The following morning I awoke refreshed, and, if not entirely carefree, then certainly without that weight of misery that I had carried with me for so many miles at the beginning of my journey.

I was even prepared, when at last I reached it, to look with a tolerant eye upon the city of Westminster with its teeming streets full of aggressive Flemish merchants, not so much trying to sell their wares as to force them at knife-point on innocent passersby. Lawyers, in their long striped gowns, and Sergeants-at-arms, in their silken hoods, strutted in and out of Westminster Hall with as much pomp and inconvenience to other people as they could possibly manage. Furthermore, the city, then as now, has always been a hotbed of thieves and pickpockets who can be out by the gate and halfway along the Strand towards London before their victims realize that anything is missing.

That particular morning, I pushed my way through the crowds, brandishing my cudgel as a warning, letting everyone know that I should defend myself if the need arose. The pack on my back also served as a handy weapon, for although it was not so heavy as when I first left Bristol, it was still weighty enough to give any rogue a hefty blow to arm or face if I swung my body in his direction. Coupled with my girth and height, this proved to be deterrent enough, and I was untroubled even by those most determined of cutpurses who operate the stretch of ground between the waterfront and the Abbey.

As I headed towards one of the many cookshops, their goods displayed enticingly on trestle tables set up in front of their booths, I recalled the last time I was in Westminster, two years previously, when, on the eve of the English invasion of France, I had seen the Duke of Gloucester, at the head of his retinue, ride by on his way to London. The thought was barely formed, before I and my fellow citizens found ourselves being unceremoniously pushed to one side in order to make room for another lordly procession, this time entering, not leaving, Westminster, its banners and pennons all bearing the insignia of the Duke of Clarence. The Duke himself led the cavalcade, his handsome, florid face contorted with an anger that was akin to hatred. In front of Westminster Hall, he reined in with a violence which must have torn at the delicate skin of his horse’s mouth, and almost threw himself from the saddle, beckoning furiously to a man who rode just behind him. A palace official tried to bar his way, but was thrust roughly from his path.

‘I must and will see my brother!’ declared the Duke, his voice carrying clearly to our straining ears.

‘His Highness has left for Windsor,’ spluttered the outraged steward, still valiantly trying to prevent Clarence’s entry.

‘But the Council is still in session?’

‘It is.’ The affirmation was reluctant. ‘But I have no authority to admit Your Grace.’

The Duke, however, balked of his chief prey, was in no mood to give in gracefully. ‘I don’t give a toss for your authority,’ he snarled. ‘Where are they sitting? Upstairs?’ He addressed the hang-dog man at his elbow. ‘Doctor, stay close and follow me.’

The palace official made one last attempt to halt this uninvited guest, but was immediately pinned back against the open door by two of Clarence’s bravos, two whose faces I swore I could remember from the arrest of Ankaret Twynyho.

I turned to my neighbour who, judging by his bloodied apron and the cleaver fastened to his belt, was a butcher delivering meat to the pie-shops. ‘What’s it all about?’ I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more than you, friend, but I suspect it’s to do with that man of the Duke’s who was hanged on a charge of trying to procure the King’s death by necromancy. I was told that before his execution, he read out a long statement on the scaffold, passionately protesting his innocence.’

‘No doubt like the Widow Twynyho,’ I commented bitterly.

‘Who?’ My companion was nonplussed. I explained and the butcher sighed. ‘There’s bad blood between those two brothers, no doubt about it. Small wonder really, when you consider how King Edward’s had to put up with the Duke’s carryings-on for all these years.’

‘Who’s the man with him, the one he called Doctor?’ I wanted to know.

Neither the butcher nor anyone else in the immediate vicinity could enlighten me, but an elderly woman, standing just within earshot, said that he was that same Doctor Goddard who had proclaimed the late King Henry’s right and title to the crown seven years earlier. ‘You know! When the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick tried to oust King Edward and put King Henry back on the throne.’

This was disturbing news if Clarence were indeed stirring up old treacheries, and consorting with past comrades from those days of his greatest betrayal. I studied the rest of the Duke’s retinue, patiently awaiting their master’s reappearance, and saw with alarm that some of them wore breastplates and leg armour, and carried both sword and dagger at their belts. I wondered if others had also noticed.

The crowd began to disperse as people quickly grew bored with inactivity. It had been interesting for a moment or two while it seemed as if the Duke’s retainers might start brawling in the street, with the hint of possible bloodshed to come. But all was now quiet and they started to drift away, anxious to pursue their own affairs once again. Just at that moment, however, the Duke of Clarence erupted from the hall, literally dragging the unfortunate Doctor Goddard behind him.

‘Read it!’ he screamed at the poor man, who was white-faced and shaking. ‘Read it! Loudly, you stupid fool, so that everyone can hear you!’

What Doctor Goddard was being forced to declaim was Thomas Burdet’s protestation of innocence, which, according to the butcher, the condemned man himself had proclaimed just before he was hanged. When the quavering voice eventually died away, the Duke cleared his throat and yelled, ‘You all heard that! My man was not guilty! But that didn’t protect him from the vengeance and spite of the Woodvilles. Let me inform you, however, that they are the ones who are exponents of the Black Arts, not Thomas Burdet! They are the ones who have put a spell upon my brother in order to turn him against me! They are the ones whose agents poisoned my wife and newborn child! They are the ones who, if they have their way, will consume me as a candle flame is consumed by the wind!’ He paused for a moment, blinking, as though he had surprised himself by this flight of poetic imagery. Then he continued, ‘But I shall not let them. I shall be requited. That creature who calls herself Queen of England shall be proved an impostor when the time is ripe! And that will be sooner than she thinks!’ After which diatribe, he remounted his horse, wheeled it about and galloped off back to London, his retinue streaming in his wake.

This histrionic performance left his audience in two minds; some seemed to be genuinely worried at the prospect of renewed civil strife, while others merely sniggered.

‘He’s a windbag, that one,’ laughed the butcher. ‘He’ll soon come to heel when the King whistles him up.’

‘But suppose the King doesn’t whistle him up this time,’ I suggested. ‘Suppose that, at long last, Edward’s had enough.’

My companion considered this idea for a moment or two before confidently dismissing it. ‘No, he’ll forgive his brothers anything. Duchess Cicely’s children have always been a closeknit brood.’

‘So have the Woodvilles,’ I retorted grimly.

But we parted friends, agreeing to differ, and when I had eaten my dinner, bought from a pieman’s stall near the London Gate, I set out along the Strand, past the Chère Reine Cross, to the capital, where my first business would be to look up my old friend, Philip Lamprey, in his second-hand clothes shop, west of the Tun-upon-Cornhill.

*   *   *

The evening meal – a simple stew made special by some secret ingredient of Jeanne Lamprey’s own – was finished, the dirty plates pushed aside and our cups brimming with ale. Sitting opposite me at table was my host, his small, pock-marked face, illuminated by the single rushlight, intent and interested. When I had first met him, six years earlier, he had been thin to the point of emaciation, a beggar on the London streets, deserted by his wife who had run off with another man while Philip was soldiering abroad. In those days, his friends, if they could be dignified by such a name, had been found among the dregs of humanity in East Cheap and Southwark. But between then and our second encounter, four years later, he had prospered, saving enough money from his begging to rent a stall in Cornhill, where he sold second-hand clothes, and was now living very happily with his second wife in the daub-and-wattle hut at its rear.

Jeanne Lamprey, a little, round, bustling body, with bright brown eyes and a mop of unruly black curls, was young enough to be Philip’s daughter, being at this time, as far as she knew, some twenty years of age, compared with his forty-three. But in everything except years, she was far older than he. Her obvious love of him was not uncritical; she was not blind to his faults. She knew he was fond of strong liquor and therefore kept a wary eye on the amount he consumed, scolding him gently when he drank too much. Her business sense, too, was greater than his, although she was too partial and too clever to make him aware of it. Meeting her again, I was reminded of someone else, not in looks but in ways, and it was a long time before I realized that it was Adela.

‘So,’ breathed Philip, sighing with contentment at a well-filled belly, ‘here’s a puzzle. I can tell from your manner what you think, Roger, without even having to ask. You think this man who claims to be Clement Weaver is definitely an impostor. But he could have escaped in the way he says he did, you know.’ My host spoke with all the authority of one who had played a part in the original mystery, and made a contribution, however small, to its unravelling. ‘I knew a man once who struck his head a severe blow, and knew nothing of who he was, or where he came from, for months after he recovered consciousness.’

I shook my head. ‘You haven’t met this Irwin Peto. There’s something about him I just don’t trust.’

‘Something you don’t want to trust,’ Philip surmised shrewdly, ‘because, foolishly, you feel it to be somehow your fault that the Alderman has suffered his son’s absence all these years. You blame yourself for not having thought of the possibility of escape and your failure to search further.’

‘No,’ I insisted stubbornly. ‘The real Clement was fond of his sister, everyone who knew him says so. He wouldn’t have allowed his father to rob Alison of her share of their inheritance, however badly she behaved. He wouldn’t have been so unfair.’ I wiped my forehead with my hand. The hut was small and the May nights were growing warmer.

Philip gulped more ale. ‘Yet this friend of yours,’ he continued in his rasping voice, ‘this Widow Juett, is of the opinion that he is Clement Weaver. According to her account he recognized her without any prompting, although if he was an impostor, he couldn’t have known her. What do you make of that?’

‘I think Adela was pointed out, and her history made known to him at some time or another without her being aware of the fact. That seems to me the most likely answer.’

Philip grinned. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We won’t waste time arguing. So what do you want of me?’

I glanced guiltily at Jeanne Lamprey as I answered, ‘To help me find this Morwenna Peto who lives in the Southwark stews. I want to hear what she has to say; to see if her story tallies with Irwin’s.’

Philip, too, looked towards his wife, as though asking for her approval, but Jeanne kept her eyes lowered, apparently absorbed in the task of picking at one of her nails. Denied her authority, my host said cautiously, ‘I’m not sure … It’s a long time since I was in those parts. I doubt I’d be remembered.’

‘Bertha Mendip would remember you,’ I insisted. ‘And as far as Morwenna Peto’s concerned, Bertha’s a West-countrywoman herself, and would surely have heard of any other such in the neighbourhood.’

‘That’s possible,’ Philip admitted, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. He knew from past experience that my appearance in his life invariably meant trouble, and that his wife also knew it.

Jeanne stopped picking her nail and looked up, fixing her big brown eyes sternly upon her husband. ‘You must do what Roger asks, Philip,’ she said, surprising both of us. ‘He is a friend, and he needs our help. As long as you carry your knife with you and Roger takes his cudgel, you should come to no harm. Wear your oldest clothes. Better still, you can pick the worst items from the stall.’

Philip was unable to restrain the face-splitting grin which cut his sharp little features almost in two. I guessed that, just occasionally, he pined for the freedom of his old way of life and the companionship of his former comrades. Not for long and not very often, respectability had become too deeply ingrained in him by now to be lightly abandoned, but every now and then he needed some excitement in an existence which had become a little too humdrum.

‘We’ll go to Southwark tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, drink up and let’s hear the rest of your news.’

So I recounted the episode I had witnessed at Keyford the preceding month, also the one at Westminster that selfsame morning, and the conversation immediately turned to the likelihood of renewed civil strife, this time not between Yorkist and Lancastrian, but the possibility of internecine war between two royal brothers.

‘Timothy Plummer predicted it,’ I said gloomily, ‘when I saw him at Tewkesbury last January, after the funeral of Duchess Isabel and the news of Charles of Burgundy’s death at Nancy. He said Clarence would propose himself for Mary’s husband, and blame the Woodvilles if he were thwarted, and that’s exactly what has happened. Either he or the Queen will eventually be destroyed in the process, but in the meantime, other innocents on both sides are being sacrificed.’

‘That’s all very well, but how d’you know they’re innocents?’ argued Philip, who liked to take the opposing view, often for no better reason than sheer cussedness. ‘Take this clerk, this Stacey, who accused Blake and Burdet! I was chatting to a man in Leadenhall Market only yesterday morning. He was from Oxford, and he said Stacey’s well-known among the undergraduates as a caster of horoscopes. His whole family’s been involved in the business at one time or another.’

‘Maybe, but that doesn’t make Blake and Burdet equally guilty,’ I insisted, started to get heated.

‘No smoke without fire,’ Philip countered belligerently, slapping his empty cup down hard on the table.

‘Nonsense!’ I snapped. ‘I’ve seen plenty of smoking fires where there was never so much as a wisp of flame.’

‘You’ll tell lies just to win your point,’ my host retorted, and was about to thump me, not altogether playfully, on the shoulder, when his wife leaned over and grasped his wrist.

‘Stop it, the pair of you! Why can men never talk seriously without losing their tempers? In any case,’ Jeanne added, ‘it will soon be time for bed. Roger, you know you’re welcome to share our quarters if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.’

‘I’ve slept in far worse places,’ I assured her heartily, while Philip, a little shamefaced, poured us both more ale, ‘but tonight I’ll walk as far as the Ald Gate and the Saracen’s Head. I’ve stayed there before, two years since.’

Philip at once demurred, urging me to remain, but Jeanne was too sensible to contest my decision. She knew as well as I did that the hut was not big enough to be shared by a husband and wife, not yet out of love with one another, and a comparative stranger.

‘You’ll be comfortable at the Saracen’s Head,’ she agreed. ‘But you must promise to return here for breakfast.’

I gave her my word and, leaving my pack in a corner of their room, but armed with my cudgel and also Philip’s knife, which he insisted that I borrow, I set out eastward through the evening dusk for the inn which stood just inside the city gate, on the southern side of the wall.

It was an inn greatly favoured by travellers and merchants from East Anglia, being the first hostelry they happened across after entering the city, and consequently was always busy. That evening was no different from any other, and I was forced to share a room with a tailor from the Fens, who had come to London in search of a runaway daughter. I was compelled to listen to his unhappy chronicle of filial disobedience well into the night, and, when he did at last fall asleep through sheer exhaustion, to his snoring. However resolutely I closed my eyes or stuffed my fingers in my ears, I could not sleep, nor could I block out the noise. In the end, I stopped trying to do either, linking my hands behind my head and staring into the smoke-scented darkness.

As my body began to relax, and as I was at last able to ignore the snorts and snuffles coming from the opposite side of the bed, my vacant mind was suddenly preoccupied with another worry; one that I was familiar with and had experienced many times before. It was the feeling that something had been said by someone that should have had significance for me, if only I had had the wit to realize it at the time. I cudgelled my brain, trying to recollect my conversation with the butcher and the woman outside Westminster Hall. Was it something one of them had said? Or the Duke of Clarence? Or Doctor John Goddard? Or was it some words uttered by Jeanne or Philip Lamprey? But the more I thought, the more my head ached and the less I was able to recall.

At last, as I teetered on the brink of sleep, I was seized by the conviction that it was somehow something that all of them had said; that there was a thread linking the various conversations which was eluding me. And my final thought, as I tumbled into the pit of unconsciousness, was that this thread, if it could only be traced, would lead me straight to the heart of the mystery surrounding the impostor who claimed to be Clement Weaver. And even as this thought came to me and was lost again in the mists of sleep, Adela’s face swam in front of my eyes. She was smiling and beckoning me forward, into her cottage …

I sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake, the tailor still snoring on the other side of the bolster which separated us. I had almost had the answer. It was there, somewhere, hovering in the darkness all around me. I had had it, but now it was gone, slipping away into the night like a puff of smoke when the candle flame is doused. I lay down again. Perhaps it would come back to me in the morning. Meanwhile, there was nothing else to do but give my companion a nudge and try once more to sleep.