A Murder too Soon Page 21

  ‘Look at it! It’s a man’s ring. It was too big for her,’ he said contemptuously.

  ‘Well, why did you take it?’

  He stood abruptly. ‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is to establish yourself at court? Especially when you have a reputation for being loyal to the last incumbent? It is not easy. I thought that by marrying Margery I would soon have a better position, but no! Apparently, I was seen as a scheming person who would even use my own wife in my pursuit of advancement. As if the tight-hosed, pizzle-pulling politicians at the Queen’s Court wouldn’t sell their own mothers to get better positions! I was relatively mildly behaved compared to most.’

  ‘You hated your wife.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. She was perfectly acceptable to me. However, I did find her intolerant and difficult to deal with. I was forced to use a belt to her on occasion, when she was most reluctant to do as I wished. Several times I was forced to go and enjoy myself with the maids. Have you seen the young girl Sal? She has a most satisfying figure. I have lain with her several times.’

  ‘With …’ I was dumbfounded. I had been so certain that she adored me, and here was this old charlatan making it clear that I was a fool. I felt as though I had been cuckolded. I could have taken her and given her a … well, a cuddle, probably. She was no worse than any of the tarts in the Cardinal’s Hat, and I was happy to enjoy myself with them. I suppose she was no worse than me myself.

  ‘When Margery discovered what I had been doing, she made it clear that as far as she was concerned, if I wanted to have my way with the staff, she would not try to enjoy herself in the marital bed. I could use her, by all means, but she would not … um … facilitate matters for me. So I have been stuck in a loveless marriage, and tempted by the wonderful young flesh all about.’

  ‘You admit you killed your wife?’ I said.

  He moved as fast as a surprised adder. There was the merest hiss of steel, and suddenly I had a blade at my throat.

  ‘You accuse me?’ he snarled.

  You can believe me or not, but after One-Eye’s attention, then Atwood’s and Lady Anne’s, I was heartily sick of being threatened with various types of metalware at my throat. I took his sword’s blade in my hand and moved it aside irritably. ‘No, I don’t accuse you of anything. I thought you just said that you removed her because you had a “loveless marriage”. If that’s not what you mean, by all means explain what you did intend, but don’t think to scare me with a sword. I don’t scare that easily.’

  He took his weapon away with a look of faint surprise on his face and held it low, although he didn’t resheath it. ‘No, I did not murder my wife. I was in the outer chamber, and walking into the room, I saw her body. There was someone at the top of the stairs – not that I saw him at that moment. All I saw was Margery, poor woman. You saw her, too. Lying there, with the blood pumping from her torn neck. She was moving – just. I saw her eyelids flutter, but even as I went to her, the breath rattled in her, and she was gone. The blood … dear heaven, so much blood,’ he added, and rested his forehead on the tips of his fingers. ‘She did not have the seal then. I had taken it before, as she well knew.’

  So the boy had told the truth about that. ‘Why? What did you want the seal for?’

  He sighed and dropped his arse to the bed. ‘When Margery’s father died, he left many tenants who paid very little on their parcels of land. I wanted to increase the revenues from the fields and towns under his control, so I wanted the seal in order to have new arrangements drawn up.’

  ‘You would defraud the tenants and make them pay you more?’

  ‘Yes, that or kick them from my lands.’ No shame there, I noticed.

  ‘So you took the seal.’

  ‘On the table there you will see the documents I have had drawn up. All they needed was the seal, but it’s irrelevant now. Even if I had the wax fitted to the pages, it’s too late.’

  ‘Why?’

  He sneered a little at that. ‘You have no brain at all, do you? Her lands came to me for her life. If we had offspring, her lands would pass to the child. Since she died without issue, the lands and all go to her boy. Her sister’s family will have him as their ward. I get nothing.’

  ‘Surely as her husband …’ I began.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘She had to be alive for these documents to hold water. Now she is dead, it matters not one whit. If I try to amend the documents, so what? There is no point. It benefits me nothing.’

  ‘So you did not kill her?’

  He gave me a long, cold look. ‘No.’

  ‘The seal! When you found her body, did she still have the Princess’s seal?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. I broke her necklace two days before and I didn’t look for the new one.’

  ‘So someone else took it from her and killed her.’ My head was hurting now with the effort of thinking it all through.

  ‘Perhaps. And now, Master Thief, who sent you in here to spy on me?’

  ‘I was here because I thought you might have killed her.’

  ‘What if I did? She was my wife.’

  It’s not considered the sporting attitude, but there was at least justification in his words. Although a woman killing her husband was obviously considered a perversion of the natural laws, and thus a treason, a man who beat or perhaps even killed his wife was only keeping her in check. Cutting her throat might be considered extreme, but a rich man would probably escape punishment. No man should actually want to kill his spouse. That involved destroying a part of his family’s wealth. It would be irrational.

  Perhaps this man was irrational, I thought. But if he was, he showed little sign of lunacy. Rather, he displayed a calculating, callous disregard for all others.

  ‘But that matters little,’ he said now, and stood. He was actually quite a large man when he loomed over a fellow. ‘Again I ask you, who sent you here to spy on me?’

  And suddenly I realized that I didn’t have an easy answer to that. I stood and backed away, and he smiled, which was deeply unsettling in the circumstances. ‘Um,’ I said.

  Then there was a tremendous crash from outside. A cheering came from the gatehouse, and then a loud roaring, a screaming, a thunderous clamour of pounding hoofs and feet, and the clatter of weapons.

  ‘God’s ballocks! We’re being attacked!’ Sir Walter said, aghast.

  He and I stared at each other for a long moment. His eyes were wide with shock, but I saw something else: he was thinking to himself how easy it would be to remove me. I could be safely stabbed under cover of an assault, and no one would be any the wiser. Perhaps it was my new role as an assassin that made me think in this way, but whether it was or not, I could see the thought running through his mind as clearly as if it was printed in letters two inches high on a sheet on his breast.

  I smiled. He smiled back. I walked to the door and shot the bolt open. He was holding his sword now, and I quickly pulled the door wide, expecting him at any moment to lunge and spear me with his blade, but he remained where he was. Perhaps I had guessed wrong, and he was going to wait until I was out and leave me to be skewered, while he locked the door and stayed hidden safely inside.

  In my hand I still held the seal from the chest. For safekeeping, I shoved it on to my left forefinger now, and sidled out. As soon as I was in the corridor, I started to pelt off towards the noise. I felt certain I would be safer in among all the noise and danger of battle than remaining there in the room with Sir Walter.

  But he followed me. I had not expected that. Behind me I could hear his steps, steadily closing up; I increased my own pace until I was running at full tilt, and although I was going as fast as I could, he was close behind me. When I came to the door at the end of the corridor, I was panting with fear, expecting to feel steel in my back, but instead he passed by me, reached the door and was through it in an instant. I stood panting and stared out at the melee.

  The Coroner’s men had been surprised by the assault. From the scene o
f discarded carts and pack horses, it looked as if a travelling party of merchants had entered with a gang of his ruffians and surprised the garrison. Atwood’s men, I realized. Now the court was filled with men fighting, apart from the growing number who were dead or who had retired from the fight. I felt a wave of nausea as I took in the sight of a forearm and hand lying on the ground. A man was staggering away, feebly clutching at the stump of his sword hand, but then a man took his shoulder and pommelled him over the head until he collapsed.

  I watched with horror, and then saw two more men running. The man in front was One-Eye, and as I watched, the man chasing him hacked with his sword and One-Eye went down. His killer was one of the Coroner’s men, whom I recognized as being from the men who had guarded the gates. He had his mouth open like a roaring lion, and when he saw me, I knew he was about to set about me. He came pelting at me, and I gave an involuntary jerk with my sword, and the damn fool ran on to the blade. It slipped in under his breast bone, and I felt the weapon twitch in my hand. I averted my face as his own expression hardened and then … well, it seemed to shear, like a steel coulter when the plough’s put under too much strain and the metal snaps. The left remained fixed, but the right side about his eye became engorged with blood, seeming to swell and move with him, and his eyebrow rose, his eyes both narrowing. I held on to my sword with both hands. He mouthed something, and even as I tried to pull my blade free, Harvey appeared behind him and struck him twice more on his head with a small hatchet. The man’s eyes rolled and he slid away from me, releasing my sword.

  Harvey ran off to another fellow, snatching up a sword as he went, and I was left for a moment.

  It was a peculiar sensation, like when you’ve drunk too much wine after ale, and the world seems somehow clearer than ever, but feels as if you are viewing it in a dream. This scene had that sort of quality. I looked up and saw two of the Coroner’s men at the walkway overhead: one slumped with his back to the curtain, feebly holding a fist to a wound in his thigh that oozed thick blood; nearby, another was sprawled, arms dangling over the court, and a thin drizzle of blood dripping from him.

  Following the drops, my eyes returned to ground level. Here it was mayhem. Men were writhing about on the ground in pairs or threes, each struggling to throttle or stab another, each holding on to the other’s hands to keep their weapons away while their opponents strove to push their own blades into them. Men bellowed and screamed and shrieked and died. I saw the gatekeeper kick his man in the cods, and make a wild slash with his knife, but his blow went awry, and another man pinked him in the breast with a long blade. The keeper fell back, but then gave a loud cry and ran forward, the sword remaining in him high on the left shoulder. I saw it appear behind him as he ran down the blade and hacked at the swordsman’s throat until a sudden gout of blood showed he had succeeded. The man fell with a horrible gurgling, and the gatekeeper glared about him as he tried to pull the sword free. He was bleeding badly, and another man ran at him, but his blade clattered on the hilt of the sword in the gatekeeper’s breast and went wide, and the keeper stabbed him in the belly, twisting the blade viciously and grinning all the while like a demon.

  I looked away. Squire George was just coming out of a doorway near the gatehouse, and as a pair of the Coroner’s men-at-arms went past him, hurrying to the fight, the squire grabbed the nearer one by the neck and threw him over his thigh to slam on the ground, winded. The squire took his weapon and raised it immediately to the second man, but he took one look at George’s face and decided that there were few easier ways to suffer pain and death than by accepting the challenge. He took to his heels. The last I saw of him, he was slipping out through the gate and making his way towards Woodstock.

  It was a good choice. Squire George strode to the thickest part of the fight.

  Nearer the hall’s main door were Sir Walter and the Coroner, the pair of them pressing back two others, pushing them with vigour, until one fell and Sir Walter finished him with a lunge at the heart. Then he and the Coroner took on the last man together. He could not survive their dual onslaught and was soon brought down.

  I slid myself along the wall, desperate to avoid danger in this madness. I sidled cautiously towards a buttress, and that was when I saw Atwood. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but these fighters were those I had seen with him when he caught me walking from the inn that evening.

  He was standing now with Thomas Parry and Blount, and the three were making quick work of a group of the Coroner’s men. Harvey was with them, using the hatchet in his left hand, the sword in his right. I saw him dispatch one man, and then he and Atwood were encircling the Coroner and Sir Walter with Blount and Parry. More men were joining them. Squire George hurried up behind the Coroner and began to assail him from behind, until one of the Coroner’s men attacked him, and he was distracted enough to divert his assault. As he did so, the Coroner and Sir Walter were forced back, and gradually they were moved to the middle of the main courtyard, with men moving towards them on all sides.

  When the ring of blades about them had become as thick as the prickles on a hedgehog’s back, the Coroner finally accepted defeat and threw down his weapon with a bad grace. Sir Walter was made of sterner stuff and tried to fight on, but a pair of spears were found and he was forced to retreat, with men attacking him on all sides. Finally, a man with a shield managed to get close enough to grab his sword hand, and then he was beaten with fists until he was knocked to the ground.

  Meanwhile, I slipped over to where a Coroner’s man lay. I kicked him hard, so that my action fighting could be witnessed. I still had blood besmearing my blade, and I dare say I looked a fierce, savage brute at that time, with fresh blood on my filthy jack and a scowl like the devil’s on my face. The broken nose and other injuries would only have added to my brutal visage.

  All I wanted just then was to run away and pretend I’d never met Blount or Parry, or heard about seals. I glanced around, and no one paid me any attention. I took a step towards the gate, shuffled another yard or so, and it was closer: a huge, welcoming, yawning space through which I could lurch and be free of this place forever. But I couldn’t go. Bedingfield would try to protect his daughter. He might try to put the blame onto the Princess, and I couldn’t allow that.

  Instead, I looked over to the doorway behind which Princess Elizabeth was sitting, no doubt, and sighed, before making my way back to the others.

  ‘Sir Thomas? Master Blount? We have some matters to discuss, gentlemen.’

  ‘Is this going to take long?’ Sir Walter said.

  We were gathered in the palace’s main hall. The Princess with her servants sat a little away on a corner of the dais. Sir Henry and his daughter were standing near me, while Sir Walter and Master John stood behind them. Squire George was leaning against a pillar, watching events with suspicion and jealousy. Sir Thomas Parry had taken his seat in the place of honour, and was accepting a cup of wine from Kitty and eyeing the people in the hall with a benevolent eye, now that the battle was successfully concluded.

  The majority of the injured and captured were installed in an undercroft, where the maids were running ragged under the instruction of a couple of clerks and Harvey, being commanded to fetch more linen for bandages, more honey and egg white, and all the other paraphernalia of the physician’s toolbox. I was glad Harvey was out of the way for a while. It gave me a little more time to get my head around the various issues.

  ‘I hope not,’ Sir Thomas said. His usually amiable features were fixed on me with a shrewd cunning. I didn’t want to upset him. But then I didn’t want to upset anyone. All I ever wanted was an easy life.

  I bowed to the figure on the great seat at the dais. ‘Lady Elizabeth, Lady Anne, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, Sir Walter, Coroner, Squire George, I think I can help all of us here.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ Sir Walter growled. He had a large strip of cloth about his head like a turban, and one eye was swelling nicely. I had no reason to like Sir Walter, and he was the least imp
ortant man in the room, so I gave him a curt nod and continued.

  ‘I don’t like this place. I didn’t from the first moment I came here. But I spent too much time thinking it was the atmosphere or the damp or the rotten timbers. I hadn’t realized that the problem was the various factions within the walls. The Princess Elizabeth,’ I bowed again, ‘is held here against her will, and without the support even of more than a few friends. Sir Henry Bedingfield is here to represent Her Majesty the Queen, by holding Lady Elizabeth here. He has the sorry duty, unwillingly, of keeping her bolted away from rebels who might seek to use her as their figurehead. It is not a pleasant task, of course, but he does it to the best of his ability.’

  ‘I have to obey my Queen,’ Bedingfield muttered. His daughter laid a comforting hand on his forearm.

  ‘Quite so, Sir Henry. And although you found it distasteful, you agreed to remove the Princess’s favourite lady-in-waiting, and replaced her with Lady Margery. She took to her duties with great skill. Everyone thought she was a devoted spy, but some few knew that her family was very friendly with the Boleyns. She grew up as a companion of Princess Elizabeth. She would not betray her friend. However, her husband has his own reasons for being here. Sir Walter did not arrive because he sought to help his wife in her tasks. He came here in order to further his own interests. When he married Lady Margery, it was not a marriage of love. They wed because both families could see advantage. Yet Sir Walter’s advantages were not to shine. He had good prospects, but he squandered them with gambling and women. Lady Margery knew this, and they did not see eye to eye on this or other matters. However, while she lived, he had the use of her wealth.’

  ‘So, he killed her for her money?’ Sir Thomas said.

  ‘No! Because he knew that as soon as she breathed her last, he would have nothing. If he had fathered a child with her, the son would become the lord of her demesne, but if she died, her money and property went to her family. Which I think means young Gilbert. Sir Walter has nothing. Perhaps he can claim the right to be the boy’s guardian, but if he tries, Lady Margery’s family will no doubt fight the case. He is too much of a spendthrift to be a safe guardian. In any case, he is one man who had absolutely no interest in seeing her dead. He bullied her and beat her, and two days before she died, he took her seal. With that he hoped to defraud her tenants and take the money for himself.’