Candace Robb: A Vigil of Spies

‘Good. So would I.’ Geoffrey gave Owen a little bow and returned to his horse.

With very mixed feelings — relief, anticipation, anxiety — Owen led the company into the yard of Bishopthorpe. The procession moved along smoothly and they were whisked within into the expert hands of Brother Michaelo while Bishopthorpe’s grooms and pages helped those of the princess’s party see to the beasts and carts.

Owen watched as a noblewoman, blessed with the vitality and grace of youth, climbed down from the largest cart and offered her arm to one who followed, the one he’d glimpsed veiled and cloaked against the dust of the road. White veil, green cloak — the colours of Prince Edward. Sir Lewis rushed forward and lifted Princess Joan out of the cart and onto solid ground. Owen observed the exquisite fluidity of the veils, the green cloak, and the woman’s lyrical gait as she approached, and he remembered thinking of Princess Joan as moving with the grace of a willow when he’d seen her at court and at Kenilworth, when he was in the old duke’s household. He’d not thought about Kenilworth in a long while, resisting the memories that quickly rose of lost friends.

‘She is a vision, is she not?’

Archdeacon Jehannes must have been standing beside Owen for several seconds. His youthful face and his apparent excitement gave him a boyish air. Owen felt a momentary resentment — Jehannes was able to enjoy the moment because, as Archdeacon of York, he was too valuable to the next archbishop to be anxious about his future. But the feeling passed, for Jehannes deserved all the good that came his way.

‘The Princess of Wales is pleasing to look on, but her presence is troublesome in the circumstances,’ said Owen.

‘I agree.’ Jehannes grew serious, shaking his head as he watched the approaching group. ‘I do not entirely understand why His Grace agreed to this excitement. He has sought calm and equanimity in our evening conversations and in the Bible passages he chooses for me to read. Perhaps he welcomes a fair distraction, eh? It is not my place to judge — nor did he ask for my opinion.’ Jehannes smiled. ‘He desires me to escort Princess Joan to his chamber that he might greet her. Pray that all goes smoothly.’

When the princess lifted her veil to receive Jehannes’s greeting, Owen noticed the lines around her mouth and eyes and a slackening of the flesh — the little that showed within the confines of the wimple. She was Owen’s age or more, in her forties. Yet her eyes, her complexion, the grace, the smile that lit up her face — even now she was, indeed, most fair.

Once she, Jehannes and her ladies passed — one of them carrying a squawking pet monkey secured by a jewelled leash — Owen moved to the body that had been lifted from a cart and placed on the ground. It was wrapped in a heavy cloth. Gesturing towards two squires looking on, Owen ordered them to carry the body to the stables beyond the palace.

‘And bring whatever he’d carried on the horse, including the saddle,’ he said.

To be powerful is to be isolated from most of one’s fellow men — this had been the unhappiest discovery of Thoresby’s career. As Archbishop and Lord Chancellor, he’d learned that few people approached him in sincere friendship, few gestures were uncalculated. Even his long friendship with the king had changed with his higher status; eventually they could no longer agree to disagree.

In his long life in the Church and at court, Thoresby had gathered around him a few people he implicitly trusted. For the rest, he maintained a healthy and self-protecting doubt. Few people were who they would have him believe they were. So it followed that he harboured no illusions about the princess’s visit, nor did he imagine that those who accompanied her were there without purpose.

‘A vigil of spies,’ he muttered.

‘What, Uncle?’ Richard Ravenser said, startled from a doze in the chair beside Thoresby’s bed. ‘Spies?’ Ravenser was Master of St Leonard’s Hospital in York and a canon of York Minster, as well as a prebend of Beverley Minster, and, until Queen Philippa’s death, her receiver. Despite his extensive responsibilities, he’d been most attentive to his uncle in his illness, clearly out of sincere affection. Though Thoresby often chided his nephew for being a peacock in dress, he trusted him implicitly and believed he would have been a good choice for the next Archbishop of York. Ravenser had said little about his lost opportunity, though his disappointment was plain in his subdued manner — and his chronic headaches had increased in frequency.

‘I was reminding myself of what we discussed earlier. We must keep our counsel and pray that the company bides here in peace and then departs in peace.’

‘Amen,’ said Ravenser.

They both looked towards the door as voices crowded the hall outside.

‘It begins,’ said Thoresby.

The stables were the temporary quarters for Owen’s men and those palace servants who’d been shifted to provide space for the guests. Most slept above in the hay, though Owen and a few others would set up their cots on the main floor in the workroom. It was there he’d had them place the body.

Alfred, Owen’s second in command, had appeared, having a good nose for trouble. The balding, gangly man already looked weary. When they were alone, Owen told him what he knew.

‘You doubt it is a simple matter of a clumsy rider,’ said Alfred.

‘Were it anyone else’s servant, I might find it easier to believe, but he was the servant of the emissary from the Bishop of Winchester.’

They exchanged an uncomfortable look. William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, had drawn trouble to himself a few years earlier on a visit to York. When he’d been Lord Chancellor and a favourite of King Edward, he had made many enemies, most importantly the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

‘Ah, trouble indeed.’ Alfred nodded as he touched the wineskin the dead man had carried on his saddle. ‘Perhaps he was drunk?’

‘Then someone will have noticed it,’ said Owen. ‘I hope I am wrong. Come. Let’s see what else we might learn.’

In silence, they unwrapped the body. There was little to see. Bruises on his face, and his head and right arm at odd angles.

‘Pulled his shoulder out of joint,’ said Owen.

They drew off the man’s tunic.

Alfred nodded. ‘If he was not already dead, that must have hurt like the devil.’ He lifted the man’s right hand. ‘See the palm?’

‘Burned by the reins. He held on tightly, eh? I might be wrong, but I would think that a man falling asleep in the saddle would loosen his grip on the reins before falling. Now, if he’d died astride …’

‘Do you mean his heart stopped?’ Alfred considered the corpse. ‘In truth, he was not so young, but not that old.’ Gently, with the back of his hand, he touched the man’s cheek. ‘I’ll be him one day. I don’t like to think of that. Do we have a name for him?’

‘Will.’

‘Poor Will.’ Alfred touched the discoloured neck. ‘We mean no disrespect.’

Owen wondered what event in Alfred’s life had brought on this mood, for he’d often seen dead men before without musing on his own end. It was not like him. ‘What of the saddle?’ he asked, wanting to draw his second back to the world of the living.

Alfred shrugged his shoulders hard and shook out his hands, as if waking himself, and then hoisted the saddle up onto the table. It was worn but quite serviceable, well maintained, the leather supple, with a pouch for a wineskin and a strap that secured a scabbard — though the latter was empty. ‘Look.’ He’d turned over the girth where it had come apart.

‘Perhaps it snapped from his weight as he fell.’