A Burnable Book: A Novel Part 29

FORTY-THREE.

St Leonard's Bromley In the parlour Millicent sat at the prioress's feet, watching John Gower. A tall man, quiet but confident, handsome if somewhat gaunt, with a neatly trimmed beard and a peculiar cast to his aquamarine eyes. These were piercing yet somehow clouded and he blinked frequently at times, as if warding off a troublesome gnat. Millicent had heard the name before, a whisper of disapproval from Sir Humphrey ap-Roger in one of his frequent fits of pique at the vagaries of courtly politics. She could tell Gower was troubled, or else hadn't slept in weeks. Dark crescents smeared beneath those curious eyes, his spine a tired arc. Yet he seemed to have the trust of the prioress.

With her work obscured by Isabel's robes, Millicent listened as the two of them discussed it all. The book, the prophecies, a futile search at Oxford, the fate of his missing son. It was amazing, what he said. For during the same span of weeks in which she had sought to sell the book, this man had been searching urgently for it, and would have been happy to part with a great sum to procure it yet Millicent had never crossed paths with him, nor even heard of his existence. Now here they were at St Leonard's Bromley, neither in possession of the ma.n.u.script, yet both intent on forestalling the threat to King Richard this evil work embodied.

'You haven't seen the book yourself?' Isabel asked him.

'Not the original,' he replied. 'Though I have read the De Mortibus in a copy.'

'And you believe we have this book here at Bromley?'

'No, Reverend Mother. Not the book.'

'You've come about the cloth, then.'

'I was told by a certain well, a certain procuress of my acquaintance-'

'A procuress, Gower?'

'-a bawd of Rose Alley-'

'A bawd?'

'-by a bawd of Rose Alley-'

'Not of your warm acquaintance, I should hope.'

'I only met her yesterday.'

'And she told you what?'

'That I should ask after her daughter, Millicent. That I would find her here, at St Leonard's.'

'And what is the significance of this cloth, Master Gower?'

'I have been told that it is embroidered with the livery of the supposed conspirators against King Richard. That it reveals their ident.i.ty without question.'

'So this cloth must be revealed, to preserve the life of the king against his would-be a.s.sa.s.sins?'

Gower hesitated. 'Or be destroyed. This entire affair, I believe, is a fabrication, an attempt to make an innocent lord appear guilty of the worst crime imaginable.'

'Oxford's doing, of course.'

Gower stared at her. 'How-'

'Oh, you're not the only one with good sources, Gower.' She cast a sidelong look at Millicent.

'Yes, Reverend Mother.' He cleared his throat, blinked those eyes. 'In any case, the feast of St Dunstan is in a week. The king will appear at a great feast at the Bishop of Winchester's palace. The details of the prophecy suggest the attempt on Richard will happen there.'

'When, precisely?'

'The prophecy maintains that the a.s.sa.s.sin will spring forth "at spiritus sung". I believe this refers to a processional proper to that day. Evidently the attempt on Richard's life will take place during its performance. At "Prince of Plums", so the prophecy reads.'

'A curious phrase, Prince of Plums.'

'I believe it refers to a game of cards.'

'Cards.'

'Playing cards, Prioress. They're all the rage at court. Swynford herself owns a deck, and is known for inventing new games. The plums, thistleflowers, hawks, and swords are suits with cards ranging from one to nine in each suit, and face cards ordered as princes, dukes, queens, and kings.'

Seven of Swords, Millicent thought with a thrill, finally understanding the strange symbols positioned around the centre of the cloth.

'So then.' She tightened her habit, spreading the material tautly across her knees. 'It all comes down to the cloth.'

'The cloth is the key to the book. If we can-'

'We have it.'

A pause. 'I suspected as much, Prioress.'

'Allow me to present Millicent Fonteyn, one of our laysisters. She brought the cloth here several days ago. Millicent, explain how it came to you.'

Millicent stood and Gower raised his chin, watching as she haltingly began her account. She watched his face in turn, noting the flickers in his eyes, the changes in his colour as he heard her story. He interrupted her to ask questions, probe the details, and it was in those moments of heightened attention that his eyes remained open and unblinking. He was taken with her intricate memory of the prophecies, which seemed to match his own knowledge. When she had finished she bowed her head and waited.

Isabel said, 'Show him the cloth.'

Millicent reached for her work.

'The other one.'

She turned to Isabel's great chair and lifted the original cloth from the back. She held it out for Gower's inspection, seeing through his eyes the violent scene of treason limned in thread of so many hues: the boyish face of a crowned prince or king, his brows knit together, his mouth opened in a cry of surprise; the long knife pointed at his heart; the bearded face of the attacker, scowling as he aimed the weapon at the royal breast; the heraldry of England's greatest magnate, poised against the royal livery of his victim.

Gower slowly shook his head. 'Lancaster, of course. The obvious suspect.'

'Quite,' said Isabel. 'The cloth is clearly an attempt to incriminate Gaunt, to make him seem the prophesied slayer of his nephew.'

'Though-'

'I don't believe it for a minute, of course, and neither do you. Yet what we believe is hardly at issue. What our flighty young king can be made to believe? That is another matter.'

'The cloth must remain hidden, Reverend Mother. If anyone puts this with the book there will be no mercy for Lancaster.'

Isabel turned. 'Millicent, show Master Gower your work.'

'Yes, Prioress.' Millicent stooped and gathered up her embroidery: a shield and badge, crafted in the style of the cloth, and nearly ready for careful boring into the original.

Gower stared, his high brow lined in thought. As Millicent watched, the creases grew shallower, his skin smoother, until his lean face took on an almost beatific smile. Finally he looked up, his hand on his stomach, and laughed the laugh of a man unused to merriment. A crazed and joyous sound.

When he recovered, Gower looked at the prioress, his sobriety returned. 'How will you get the altered cloth into the right hands?'

'Millicent will pa.s.s it to Lady Katherine Swynford just before the feast,' said Isabel. She explained the abbey's connection to Gaunt's mistress. 'Lady Katherine will be expecting the cloth, and we'll depend on her to reveal it at the right moment.'

Gower shook his head. 'With respect, Reverend Mother, I don't believe relying on Swynford is wise.'

Isabel was unused to being contradicted, especially in her own parlour. 'You have a better idea?'

A slender finger to his chin. 'I have in mind an unusual alliance, Reverend Mother. An alliance that only the direst threat to the realm could create.'

The prioress tilted her head. 'Tell me, Gower.'

FORTY-FOUR.

St Mary Overey Southwark suffered the vigil of St Dunstan beneath a soaking spring rain, the clouds low and close, the house damp with cold as I spent a day alone at my writing desk. Scribbles, pen trials, some scattered rhymes in French and English were the extent of my accomplishment, distracted as I was. I drank far too much wine at supper, also taken alone, and retired early with an ache in my head and a tightness in my gut, fearful of what the feast day would bring.

Though the fear, I discovered, was not as acute as the ignorance. Having gone through most of adulthood in firm control of nearly every aspect of my life, it was jarring to antic.i.p.ate an event of such magnitude that was entirely out of my hands. No one to threaten or bribe; no whispered scandal to use; no idea whether my son lived or suffered; no certainty about whether the entire course of events over the last weeks had been anything more than a phantom.

That night, sunk in a deep slumber, I saw a tower on a hill, and below it a field stretching to the horizon. On the field were hundreds of ploughmen, toiling silently in unison, digging in the soil, though for what wasn't clear. All they turned up was rock, heavy stones they would shove to the side before going back to their holes for more. The ploughmen worked for what felt like hours, days, weeks. Then, like a scythe cutting through a lawn, sleep overcame them all simultaneously, and they fell to the ground.

It was only then that I realized I was one of them. My hands were filthy with the muck of the field, my back an aching quarter moon, my joints exhausted and worn after a fruitless search for the unknown.

At one point in my dream I had the distinct sense of an obscure figure hovering over me. I could not make out any features, as a luminous arc shone from behind. An angel? Its touch was warm, its breath moist on my skin. It spoke. I am sorry, Father. Sorrier than you will ever know. An urgent whisper, a gentle hand on my cheek.

I woke with a start, drenched in fear, my heart fluttering beneath my ribs. No one there. Or was that-? A presence I knew. The smell of my son.

Simon. There, in the doorway, backing out. 'I I am sorry, Father,' he murmured, seemingly to himself. 'Forgive me, Father. You must forgive me. So so sorry-'

I came fully awake only to see him turn and stumble forward into the gallery. I called after him but his footsteps were already on the back stairs, clomping down to the rear garden. The slam of a door. I threw open the shutters. He was in the priory sideyard, awash with silver beneath a newly cloudless sky, making diagonally for the high street. I called out again but he ignored me. He ran with a limp, a new injury, his hand clutching a dark bundle against his side.

I lit a candle and walked through the house, sensing his traces in every room. An overturned chair, a table set at an unfamiliar angle against the hall wall.

I immediately saw why. High on the western face of the hall hung the Gower arms, the colours and crest of my father and his father, embossed on an oaken shield that had once hung in our family seat. The shield had been torn from the wall and now hung by one corner, exposing a small recess gouged from wattle and daub between the timbers. I stood on the table and reached into the hole, feeling only the rough boards on the house's street side. The hole was just the right size to hide a large purse, a box of gems, perhaps a silver cross.

Or a book.

FORTY-FIVE.

New Rents, before Winchester Palace The poor of Southwark could smell out a feast from a league's distance, and here they were, all shapes, sizes, and ages, crowding Eleanor's way, though also masking her from anyone who might be watching for her. Closest to the palace's great outer gate stood the usual clutch of old gossips, making a din that competed with the hoa.r.s.e shouts of the men ranked behind.

'First and third argent? That's Buckingham, sure.'

'And there's Warwick's dragons, I'll be bound.'

'Ah, Lady Anne!'

Earls and bishops, knights and squires, even the unt.i.tled were recognized and named as they rode through the gates and into the palace grounds. Most slowed to hand out coins or purses, some more liberally than others.

Midway through this procession of gentry there arrived an armed man on horseback whose appearance raised a less welcoming note from the crowd. A knight, Eleanor saw: lean, tall on his horse. She couldn't see his face from that angle.

He turned his head. Eleanor gasped. From his lip to the lower part of his chin a wide scar traced a crescent, the only flaw on his ruddy skin. With a thrum of fear, Eleanor recognized him: the man from Gropec.u.n.t Lane, the man she felt certain had killed poor James Tewburn. Sir Stephen, the night watchers had called him.

With her own face hidden, chin at her chest, Eleanor leaned over to the bonneted woman to her left. 'Who's that, the knight just there?'

'Sir Stephen Weldon,' she replied with a look of disgust. 'Most generous man in England, gifted my purse with an entire farthing last of Wykeham's feasts. He'd pinch a dead babe's face for the coin in its eyes.' Eleanor watched Weldon carefully as he made his way through the guarded gate.

She looked down the high street, along the market rows, waiting for Gerald and thinking about the meaning of Weldon's presence at the feast. Eventually, through a gap in the crowd, she spotted the butchers making their way up New Rents. As Gerald had told her, the bishop didn't like too many fires going at once on the grounds, least when the king was to be present. So twenty lambs and six piglets would be spitted by Wykeham's cooks in a shallow firepit along Cutter Lane, to be carted to the palace for carving, and now here they were. Ten butchers and apprentices processed with the cooked flesh, guarded by bishop's men on either side to keep the hands of the poor off the tender meat, which wafted a delicious scent throughout the market. Grimes himself was in the lead, a pompous air about him, full of his own status as the unofficial leader of the guildless Southwark meaters. Eleanor saw the wild look in his eyes as he fingered the two large knives strapped to his side. Gerald walked at the rear of the bunch, loping after the last cart as it drew toward the smaller postern a ways up from the gate.

Eleanor dashed to the far side of the street past the fishwives' tables, the custard-mongers and bakers along the drainage. After a careful look in both directions, she stepped forward and grasped Gerald's arm as Grimes disappeared through the postern.

Gerald looked at her, surprised. 'Not a place for you to be, Ed-Eleanor,' he murmured beneath the market din. 'Not today, at all rates.'

'Nor you, Gerald,' she whispered, pressing his arm. 'It's all known to the bishop's men.'

The third butcher and his apprentice wheeled the second handcart through the postern.

'What's known?'

The third cart was stuck, a wheel wedged between two stones. Three of the men worked to free it. 'Give a hand, Rykener,' grumbled one of them, seeing Gerald idling with a woman.

'All of it,' she said. 'Who, how, when.'

He looked at her as he backed toward the postern, a shade of doubt in his eyes. She stepped toward him, chin out as she breathed a last warning into his ear. 'And they're ready for it, Gerald. You have to get out of this somehow, prophecy and Grimes be d.a.m.ned. Disappear, while you can.'

'What's the hold-up, boys?' Grimes, his greasy face reappearing at the postern. His eyes darkened when he saw Eleanor. 'Get that swervin' ganymede outta my boy's way,' he said to one of the guards. He pulled Gerald inside the walls.

A guard pushed her roughly from the cart, now freed and rolling forward. The bell of St Mary Overey shuddered above them. The guard started closing the door from within. As she backed away from the postern Eleanor caught a last glimpse of her brother's face, a wan circle of fear.