A Murder too Soon Read online

  First to be seen were the chimneys. Initially they looked like tall tree stumps, as if a small wood on a hill had been cut across by a giant’s scythe. Then the hill resolved itself into a series of roofs, some tiled, some with grey wood shingles, that rose haphazardly; over generations, different blocks had been added as they were needed, much like a miniature town, and now the roofs sprawled like those in London or York.

  Finally, when you passed through the enclosing woods and could see the building, you were struck by the gatehouse.

  It was a sturdy, square block with castellations and four small windows that gave a good view of the road, but for an attacker it was a daunting sight: strong, imposing, threatening. Walking under this, the visitor entered the outer court. On the left were the stables, while ahead was the hall – a great block as large as a church, with a stone arcade dividing it along the centre so that was left as two aisles. Beyond this hall, on the left, was the chapel – a large chamber with the ability to see to the souls of all the household. To the right stood the kitchens, standing a short way from the hall with an alley between them to serve as a guard against fire, while storehouses of all kinds were set into the encircling wall. This outer court was at least two hundred yards square, and at all hours of the day it was full of wagons and carts, merchants haggling and arguing, and men-at-arms walking about with faces like stuffed frogs as they tried to ignore the rude local populace and pretend that they had serious work to perform.

  Of course, most of them didn’t.

  Behind the hall there was a second, smaller courtyard, of perhaps only one hundred square yards, and beyond that lay more buildings. Each served some purpose, but during my time there I spent little time investigating. Like most guests, my time was spent in the hall and larger courtyard. We weren’t welcomed in the rest of the palace.

  In our section, the walls stank of mould and damp, but they were yet solid. It was more sound than the house where my father raised me – and smelled more wholesome than the odour of recently tanned leathers. Even so, Woodstock had what to me felt like a malignant atmosphere. It was the sort of place where a man would walk along a dark corridor and hear … things. Steps behind you that stopped when you stopped. Candles and rushlights would gutter and flare and puff into glowing cinders in an instant for no apparent reason, and the air felt as cold as the charity at a prison’s gate.

  The surroundings were interesting. I come from Whitstable, but had lived in London from the moment I could leave my home, and the sight of the town of Woodstock did not impress. It was a poor collection of peasants’ houses, three or four better homes where merchants and burgesses lived, the Bull, where I had expected to be housed, and which had a good series of chambers for travellers, and the other essential – a church. The priest there had adopted the new English religion with alacrity, and now had converted back to the Roman faith with equal speed, so I heard. He kept his head when many others were losing theirs. Literally.

  Connecting the royal palace and the inn was a single road. It led, pretty straight, across marshland on a causeway, and I had been told that leaving the causeway was suicidal. A traveller attempting that would soon be up to his belly in the mire. Not that there was any need to leave the road. A man on it would have an easy walk along the valley there.

  The chambers set aside for the young Princess Elizabeth were over the gate itself. She had four good rooms, all hung with her own tapestries or painted, and all her permitted belongings were with her. Thus she had a warm lodging, cosy in the winter, with good views and many comforts. However, for all that, this place was to be her prison for a twelvemonth. And no number of delightful distractions can compensate for a young person’s loss of freedom, especially when the young person is a princess.

  At the gates, my fair-haired friend of earlier had managed to clamber to his feet and was again berating the gatekeeper, although somewhat more politely and cautiously, a hand to his head. Seeing a groom engaged in the time-honoured English task of leaning on a dung fork, watching and enjoying the show, I crossed to him.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Him? What of him?’

  ‘What’s he in such a hurry about?’

  ‘He’s Squire George of Carlisle. Don’t you know him?’ the groom sneered. He wanted to show that he moved in better circles than me. He probably did.

  ‘But why’s he in such a hurry?’

  The man glanced back at the young fellow. ‘Who knows? He’s young and rich and doesn’t want to be caged up here with the likes of some of the others around here.’ At this point he eyed me from scuffed boot to unkempt hair. ‘No doubt he has his reasons.’

  I was tempted to make a cutting comment, but the fellow did have a useful weapon in his hands and I had no desire to be accused of brawling in a royal palace. ‘What sort of reason could he have?’

  ‘It’s said he was carrying on with the woman who died.’

  ‘What?’

  He sneered at my innocence. ‘The squire’s young; she was rich and beautiful. It’s hardly surprising.’

  That was interesting. I wondered whether the squire could have been so keen on leaving because he had killed the woman. Or, perhaps, if he was having an affair with her, he feared reprisals. Perhaps he had a rival in love, and that was why she was killed?

  And perhaps pigs could sprout wings and fly at will. It was none of my affair.

  ‘It’s shocking to hear that she’s been killed, even if she did have an affair.’

  ‘Her husband wasn’t happy.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He sneered and shook his head as if in disbelief at my stupidity. ‘Because Kitty, the chambermaid, heard them arguing two days ago.’

  ‘What were they saying?’

  He shrugged. ‘He wanted her to obey him, demanded something or other. Probably that she stopped throwing herself at any man who was available.’

  ‘Kitty heard all this?’

  ‘Something like it. They were shouting so half the palace could hear them. He often bullied her and beat her. That time, Kitty saw him strike her, and she fell. He reached for her, and Kitty thought he was going to punch her, but he just shook his fist in her face and stalked off.’

  ‘Hardly a marriage of love, then,’ I said. They were rare enough, surely, but it was sad to hear that a man regularly beat his wife. Even marriages of convenience, with money or power shared between two families, did not commonly result in physical battles. They formed their own households and went their own ways.

  I was about to walk away when I had another thought. ‘Have you been out here all morning?’

  ‘There’s a lot of shit in the stables.’

  ‘Were you here when the woman was killed?’

  ‘What if I was?’

  ‘The door over there, past the hall, leads to the room where she was killed. Did you see the squire around there after the murder?’

  He considered. ‘Just before the hue and cry there were a few fellows out hereabouts. The man in the chamber up there,’ he said, nodding towards John Blount’s room, ‘and I saw the squire, and Sir Walter Throcklehampton, too.’

  The woman’s husband, I guessed. It was interesting to know that there were at least two men who could be viewed as suspects, and amusing to hear that one of them was my own master, a man who had wanted me to kill her for him. Then my earlier thought returned to me: if this Sir Walter got wind of his wife’s adultery, that might lead him to punish her and seek compensation from her lover.

  I left the groom leaning on his pronged staff and made my way to the hall, aware of an unpleasant feeling in the pit of my belly. At first I was not sure what the cause was, but soon I understood. It was this place: it was steeped in misery and deceit, and all those who stayed here grew infected with it.

  As soon as I could, I would leave this melancholy manor, I decided, glancing again at the gates.

  I would look longingly at those blasted gates many more times before I could finally escape.

  At
the time of the evening meal, I saw Blount and his companions making their way to the hall. I followed them.

  ‘I have heard that two others were seen in the court when Lady Margery died,’ I said.

  We were in the corner of the great hall. Servants had been busy. Earlier, when I was flirting with Sal, Kitty and Meg, it had been empty, with the trestle tables stored behind tapestries on the north wall. These had been brought out and erected in three rows along the hall, and cloths set on them. Dishes were brought in now, and plain bread trenchers placed before each diner. I was looking forward to this, for I had a keen appetite. On the dais sat Sir Henry Bedingfield, gloomily getting outside a large jug of wine – his second since the meal had begun. He did not look happy. At his side was an empty chair, and every so often he cast an eye at it as if remonstrating with a ghost. At his other side was another space. One, I assumed, was for the Lady Elizabeth in case she deigned to join us; the other, I thought, was for Lady Margery Throcklehampton, although it seemed curious to leave her place set out. She was dead, after all, and wasn’t likely to return to the meal now.

  ‘What of it?’ Blount said. His voice was low and he didn’t look at me as he spoke, but kept his attention on the other people in the hall. ‘They are not your concern. For now, you need only concentrate on your story and make sure that your confederates do, too. Women can be unreliable on occasion. I still wish you had listened to me when I said that you needed to make the death quiet. Still, I suppose sometimes victims will throw plans off course. Did she fight back? No, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know. The less I know, the easier it will be to deny all knowledge later.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Enough. I shall speak with you later. We’ll all be locked in here until the Coroner arrives, in any case.’ He nodded to me, wearing that insufferable look on his features that said he felt he had done a good job in picking me. It made me bitter.

  A servant brought a large bowl for our mess and set it on the table between us. Blount took the flesh hook and served himself first, and then the other two did the same before I was allowed my share. I sat back grumpily while Will helped himself, hoping that there might be something left for me when he was done. At least Blount’s fair-haired servant was less greedy. He took a small portion and passed the bowl to me. There was little left but the gravy. I poured it into my plate and took a hunk of bread.

  Just then I saw a familiar face and pointed. ‘That woman there! Who is she?’

  Blount looked over his shoulder. My friend the club-wielder had entered and now she passed down the middle of the hall as elegant and regal as a swan on the water. ‘She’s too good for you. Keep your tarse in your cods, man!’ he said.

  ‘No! I mean it! Who is she?’

  ‘She is Lady Anne. Daughter of the castellan, Sir Henry Bedingfield. So keep your hands and prick away from her, unless you want them all cut off. Sir Henry has more than enough on his mind already, without some London sex-fiend attempting his daughter’s virginity.’

  He leaned down to his food, his expression returning to its customary grimace of disgust, and I sank back on my bench and stared at this Lady Anne. She glanced at me briefly, and it was as if I was invisible. Her gaze swept past me and on to Blount and the others, but her nose was high to keep the smell of commoners like us from her nostrils, and she continued to her father, sitting sedately at his side in the empty chair. He made no comment, but gave her a short nod as she took the seat I had assumed was for Lady Margery.

  I had no idea why she had decided to help me, but I was glad she had. The one-eyed man was convinced that I was in a conspiracy to injure Lady Elizabeth, and if I’d been taken by the guards he called, things might not have gone so well. It was fortunate that I had the words of three maids to support me, because else I would find myself in difficulties, and since all were to be kept under house arrest until the Coroner arrived, I could not escape.

  However, although I knew I was safe from accusations of murder, there was the other aspect of Lady Margery’s death that was giving me pause for thought: if I had not killed her, then the man who had done so was still here, inside the palace. The squire had been nearby, as had Blount.

  Blount. He had commanded me to kill the woman. If he had killed her himself, he might think he could pass the blame for her murder on to me.

  I did not like that consideration.

  I spent much of that evening in deep reflection. I saw the squire at another table, but he did not appear to be in the mood for a conversation from the way he ignored those about him. He looked bleakly all around, and I wondered if this was the sad demeanour of a man who has lost his lover. I chose to leave him to his ruminations. Certainly, from the looks he cast about him, an opportunity to box a man about the head would have been welcome to him. I desired to give him no reason to select me as his personal punchbag.

  Rather than risk his ire, I sought out a quieter place, and finally found myself in a small chamber that was little more than a recess in the wall, not far from the buttery. A curtain was drawn back, and I could sit behind it and drink the palace’s strong ale without being disturbed. A large candle in the passageway threw out a strong light, leaving my spot in shadow, and I leaned back on a moderately comfortable low barrel with my back resting against the wall, assured that I was concealed.

  I was content. The other people did not appeal to me. I wanted solitude and ale. The palace had grown uncongenial. I did not enjoy seeing attractive women stabbed to death, especially when I had already myself been instructed to slay them. Nor did I like having one-eyed men thrusting daggers at my throat. It was still sore where he had broken the skin. I found myself wondering whether Blount had told anyone else that he wanted this Lady Margery dead, and indeed whether he had told anyone else that he had his own hired assassin. It was a thought that made my scalp crawl. At any moment someone could come to the same conclusion as One-Eye, and this time with more justification.

  There was, somewhere in this palace, a man who had wanted this woman dead, I reasoned. Blount had explained his reasons, but I wondered now how Blount could be so certain of the fact that Lady Margery was spying. If he was right, then anyone who was keen to support the Lady Elizabeth, or who disliked or mistrusted the Queen, would have a good reason to want Lady Margery removed. That meant Lady Elizabeth, one of the two other ladies-in-waiting, or one of her three manservants. They were almost certainly devoted to her, since she had insisted on bringing these fellows with her, so it was likely that they would obey her commands, no matter how ill-framed. I was reminded of the old King who had demanded that someone might rid him of his troublesome priest, and three knights went and murdered Becket thinking he was ordering them. Fools! A king doesn’t behave in so plain a manner. He is more likely to insinuate slyly that a certain fellow has earned his displeasure, and wait for his chamberlain to discover proof of treachery so that all the legal niceties can be followed. Much easier to have an executioner use his axe by the order of the courts than send a trio of dull-witted men to hack a priest to death at his own altar.

  But my problem was clear. If anyone should come to the conclusion that I might have had a motive to slay Lady Margery, my life would not be worth the purse at my hip – and that was depressingly light.

  Oh, for the happy days of my poverty in London! All I cared for then was the opportunity to meet with a decent cony and foist him. There were times I had made a good return by dipping into strangers’ purses. Of course, I would often get little (like the time I won a purse of wooden tokens worth less than a dog’s turd), but the life was at least free and easy. A man could breathe the fresh London air and hurry to the nearest alehouse or brothel and live well for an evening.

  Here, however, I was trapped. No one could leave the palace until the Coroner had arrived and listened to the evidence so it could be recorded.

  I wondered again about Blount. He had, by his own admission, been in the court when the murder happened. Perhaps he had been in the room, slew the lady
, and decided to leave me to be accused. I knew Blount. He was ruthless enough. A player of chess will oftentimes sacrifice a pawn in order to achieve a better position on the board. I could not convince myself that Blount could even look at me as anything more than a pawn waiting to be discarded.

  There were steps in the passage, and I listened with half an ear. I was feeling lonely and slightly maudlin drunk. I didn’t wish for company. The steps went into the buttery, and then I heard soft footfalls approaching my cell. The curtain was moved, but I remained where I was, wishing the man to go away. I think that the candle must have blinded him, for although I watched his feet, I soon heard him speaking in a low voice.

  ‘There’s no one here, Sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  The two stepped into the buttery, I thought, and I could scarce hear them. Not that I was interested. I was still thinking about Lady Margery.

  One-Eye had been close by. He got there miraculously quickly, now that I thought about it. Perhaps he had killed her, was scared away by the noise but could not escape far, and when I hurtled in, he sprang out from the doorway and held me up? He certainly appeared from the doorway that led inside the palace. According to the groom, Squire George and Blount had been in the yard. Either could have committed the crime and darted outside, to all appearance merely aimlessly wandering.

  No, I didn’t think it was likely, but just now I was seeking any explanation. And then I heard a snippet of the conversation from the buttery and nearly fell from my perch.

  ‘Close your mouth and keep it shut, or you’ll have it permanently silenced! Or do you want to go the way of the bawdy-basket?’

  You can be sure that I concentrated hard, even after several strong ales, on hearing that. To describe the dead woman as a pedlar and whore when she was still warm spoke of someone who had a serious dislike of her.

  ‘You can threaten me all you like, but I know: I saw you out there.’

  I recognized that voice. Last time I saw him, he was shouting for help to hold me, just before Lady Anne Bedingfield ended his excitement for the day. It was my friend One-Eye.