Michael Jecks - Dispensation of Death

Bishop Stapledon was already seated at his table on the great dais. A proportion of his servants were sitting and eating in the lower part of the hall. As soon as he saw Simon and Baldwin, he beckoned for them to join him. The two men had to wait while a servant scurried for seats and trenchers for them both. Then the laver arrived with a bowl, and both washed their hands and dried them on the proffered towel before setting to with the bowls of meat at the table before them.

‘Did you get anywhere, Sir Baldwin?’ the Bishop asked when they had taken the edge off their appetites.

‘We have learned a little,’ Baldwin said, using a piece of bread to soak up gravy, ‘but there is more we need to find out. The identity of this strange assassin would be a help to us. However, I have no idea how to find out anything about him. Without a clue as to where he came from, it is hard to imagine that we can get any further.’

‘Then perhaps this is the end to your investigation?’

Simon was looking at the Bishop as he said this, and could have sworn he saw a gleam of hope in his old friend’s eye. ‘Surely not, Bishop!’ he exclaimed, shocked. ‘How could we give up when the Queen’s life may be in danger?’ He drank deep from his mazer.

‘But if you can learn nothing more …’

‘We shall,’ Baldwin said firmly. ‘This was our first afternoon, and already we have discovered much. Tell me, do you know anything about the Chaplain to the Queen?’

‘Brother Peter?’ The Bishop’s tone altered subtly, lost some of its warmth. ‘He is a rather disreputable man, from what I have seen and heard. I would not find him a particularly reliable witness.’

‘Why not?’

‘I cannot say,’ the Bishop said flatly. ‘However, I repeat: I would trust little that he says.’

‘I see,’ Baldwin said.

‘Now. Tomorrow is Candlemas,’ their host said briskly. ‘There will be no work in Thorney Island, but if you wish, you may join me in visiting the great Cathedral of Saint Paul’s for Mass.’

‘It would be an honour,’ Baldwin said. The Festival for the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary was always an important festival in the Christian year. Simon was delighted, keen to see how this great day would be celebrated in one of the country’s greatest cathedral churches.

‘Good,’ the Bishop said, and stared down at the linen on the table before him. There were some breadcrumbs, and he toyed with them, rolling them into a ball and then pushing them forwards and backwards.

All about them the servants were tidying tables, and men were rising for the second servings of food, when those who had already eaten would serve those who had served them.

‘You know,’ Walter went on after a short pause, ‘it cannot be easy to be a king.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘I expect not.’ He waited for the other man to explain.

‘There are enemies all about. Some are obvious, others less so, but a man who would be King must learn to be distrustful, no matter how much his heart craves the companionship of a friend. Sometimes, rulers pick excellent advisers, and sometimes they don’t. But the worst enemies, dear friends, are those whom God has provided — a man’s family. No man can pick his family — except perhaps his wife. And for a king, even that choice is taken away.’

‘You are thinking of our King?’ Simon asked discreetly.

Bishop Stapledon looked at him. ‘Yes. I was.’

‘You do not trust her,’ Baldwin said quietly. ‘We have discussed this before.’ Vividly into his mind sprang the picture of Isabella as she caught sight of Bishop Stapledon at the far end of the Old Palace Yard when Baldwin was escorting her back to her cloister.

‘She could be enormously dangerous to the nation,’ their host stated. ‘She is not to be trusted.’

‘Which is why you advocated action against her?’

The previous year, after the sudden French attack on the English territories in France, Baldwin knew that Walter Stapledon had worked with Despenser to have the Queen’s lands taken from her. Now, instead of being one of the country’s greatest landowners and magnates in her own right, Isabella was reduced to the status of humble pensioner living from the King’s largesse. She had not even been allowed to keep her household. All her servants, her clerks, her maids, even her two chaplains, as Peter had told them, had been removed from their offices. The final atrocious act was the removal of her three youngest children.

‘She is the sister of the French King,’ Stapledon reminded him. ‘We could not run the risk that she might find herself … confused over her loyalties. Naturally we would like to think that her primary loyalties lie with her husband the King, but it is always possible that she might forget that in preference to those to her brother, Charles the Fourth, King of France. It would be natural enough.’

‘I have to object,’ Sir Baldwin said bravely. ‘I think that the actions taken against her have ensured that her loyalties will have been affected, where before they were not.’

The Bishop waved a hand, then leaned nearer and spoke with more caution, eyeing his servants to ensure that he was not overheard. ‘You have not seen how they bicker and argue recently. Until two, maybe three years ago, she was as good and dutiful a wife as any man could hope to possess, but since then she has grown more distant. It is jealousy, I think, which has done this.’

‘Sir Hugh le Despenser?’

‘You have guessed it. A woman must naturally find it hard to understand the fondness one man might feel for another. Entirely innocent, of course, but still, a man like the King is very affectionate. He craves the companionship of strong, bold men like himself.’

‘Sir Hugh has come between the King and his wife?’

‘Perhaps she may have perceived that to be the case. But women can get the strangest notions sometimes.’

‘And often they can be more perceptive than men give them credit for,’ Baldwin said quietly.

The Queen’s Chambers, Thorney Island

Lady Eleanor felt better when she had eaten a little supper. She couldn’t eat too much, but a slice or two of capon with some wine to wash it down was perfect. It lay happily in her belly, and she settled herself back on her cushions with a sigh.

Alicia was a strange child. She seemed so considerate towards the Queen, almost to the point of fawning on her, even though she knew that their job was to act the gaoler and watch every move the Queen made so as to ensure that no communications escaped from the Palace without their knowing.

And she did have a good brain, it had to be admitted. Others would have automatically assumed, from the way Mabilla died, that the Queen was in danger. But Alicia was the only person other than Eleanor herself to wonder whether another could have been the target.

Of course, Mabilla herself could have been the intended victim. There were plenty of women who flirted outrageously with the men of the King’s household, and although Mabilla had seemed quite stable in the past, that was no proof that she actually had remained chaste and sensible when the candles were out. Eleanor only hoped that the killer could be shown to be a jealous lover.

But if it was a jealous lover, who had then executed him in that foul manner? One possibility was that Mabilla had a second lover, one who had sought to protect her, or who heard of her death and then chose to avenge it.

Of course, the Queen was only too ready to spread rumours and cause trouble. Hugh had only a short while ago tried to entice Isabella into his bed, so she claimed. He had apparently proposed that she should join him and the King. If she refused, he vowed he would take her on her own at the least. She had told Eleanor all this, although at the time Eleanor had not chosen to believe her. The woman was partly deranged by the removal of her children, and she would have said anything to cause a rift between Eleanor and her Hugh.