Kate Sedley - The Dance of Death

‘Sweetheart, Master Lackpenny is speaking to you.’ She gave a tinkling little laugh. ‘I’m always having to scold him, Will,’ she apologized, ‘about this bad habit he has of going off into a fit of abstraction when he’s talking to people. Isn’t that so, dearest?’

I smiled weakly and nodded.

‘Oh, I can see you’re a busy man, Master Chapman.’ He indicated the satchel slung over my left shoulder. ‘You’ve been hawking your wares around some of the Paris shops and appraising their goods in return with a view to buying. You’re preoccupied and I mustn’t keep you.’

I started guiltily. Of course, it was exactly what I should have been doing, establishing my presence in the French capital as a prosperous haberdasher, but which, in my usual slipshod fashion, I had forgotten all about. I was never going to make one of Timothy’s little band of spies and foreign agents, not if I lived to be a hundred (which seemed highly unlikely in my present state of jangled nerves and stomach-churning apprehension). I made up my mind there and then that as soon as this jaunt was over, I was going back to my family and to being an ordinary pedlar again, no matter what inducements were offered or what commands were laid upon me, not even if they came from the king himself.

Will Lackpenny finally took his leave of us with a flourish of his blue-feathered hat, and we watched him vanish into the crowds as he made his way back to the Pont Notre-Dame and the Place de Grève. Or would he go straight to the Rue de la Tissanderie to report our meeting? And if so, from what motive? Innocent? Or with a more sinister intention behind it?

As I had anticipated, John Bradshaw was not best pleased with the information that Will Lackpenny and Robert and Jane Armiger were already in Paris.

‘I was hoping we’d seen the last o’ them,’ he grumbled. ‘I trusted we’d have been on the road home by the time they arrived.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Ah, well! It can’t be helped. If they come calling, as I don’t doubt they will, I’ll have time to make myself scarce for a chinwag with Mother Marthe in the kitchen. So, Roger,’ he went on, ‘do you think you can find your way around Paris on your own now?’

‘Why should he want to go on his own?’ Eloise asked, shedding her cloak and draping it elegantly over one arm. ‘I’m supposed to be his wife, and he’s here to escort me. At least, that’s what I understood from Master Plummer.’ She regarded us both with sudden suspicion.

I hurriedly recounted the details of our meeting with the real Raoul d’Harcourt on the Quai des Orfèvres, and if I failed to divert Eloise’s attention completely, I certainly grabbed and held John Bradshaw’s.

‘I always knew there was something smoky about that fellow,’ he muttered. ‘I felt it in my bones.’

He continued to brood about it for several minutes, and even when he finally appeared to shrug the news aside, I could see that it still worried him. When he finally left the room on some pretext or another, I made an excuse to follow him out to the kitchen, where, surprisingly, we found Philip turning two capons on a spit, while Marthe made pastry and smiled approvingly at him and crooned a little tune under her breath.

‘A miracle,’ John grunted, although I got the impression that he was none too pleased by the sudden and apparently ripening friendship between this oddly assorted couple.

He opened the back door and went outside, where there was a tiny yard, surrounded on three sides by a rough stone wall, above which crowded the jumble of sloping roofs and conical towers of the neighbouring houses.

‘What do you want, Roger?’ he snapped, plainly irritated to discover that I had followed him.

I shrugged. ‘I thought maybe there was something you wanted to discuss with me.’

‘Such as?’

‘Master Harcourt. Or the man posing as him, whoever he might be. Because whatever uncertainties we harbour about the Armigers and Master Lackpenny, we now know for sure that Raoul d’Harcourt is not who he claims to be. So what do you think has happened to him?’

John leaned his shoulders against the wall of the house and sighed wearily. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I wish by all the saints that I did, but I don’t. I tell you, Roger, that I shall be thankful when this mission is accomplished and we’re safely back in London. Nothing is going according to plan, and from almost the very beginning we’ve been beset by too many other unexpected players in the game: the Armigers, Master Lackpenny and now this Frenchman — if he is a Frenchman at all, which I’m starting to doubt.’

‘Mistress Gray seems to believe he is, and I should consider her judgement sound in such a matter.’

John snorted. ‘Don’t be taken in by her,’ he advised, adding spitefully, ‘She’s not anywhere near as clever as she thinks she is. And, for the sweet Virgin’s sake, remember she’s your wife!’ He heaved himself away from the back wall of the house and thumped it. ‘Just recollect, these things have ears. Her name is Mistress Chapman until we set foot on English soil again.’

‘And how long will that be?’ It was my turn to sound morose and despondent.

John Bradshaw straightened his shoulders. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if Maître le Daim does arrive in Paris on Monday, then it’s up to Mistress Eloise to make herself known to him as soon as possible after that. Necessary, too, because we don’t know how long he’ll be remaining in the capital. Jules will alert us as soon as he finds out where he’s staying.’

‘And if he won’t see Eloise, or won’t satisfy her curiosity concerning the Burgundian alliance? What then?’

‘Then we return home.’ He shrugged philosophically. ‘We’ve done our best. But I’m willing to wager a considerable sum that she’ll get the information from him. She has a wheedling way with her has Mistress Eloise. She ain’t going to ask him outright, of course, but I reckon she’ll find out what we want to know.’ He took a deep breath and faced me squarely. ‘No, it’s you, Roger, and this secret mission you’re on for Duke Richard that bothers me. Somehow or another you’ve got to get out and about without the lady accompanying you, and without arousing her curiosity any more than it’s aroused already. So what I suggest is this: tomorrow’s Sunday, so just play the good husband and take your “wife” to church and wherever else she wants to go-’

‘In other words, allay her suspicions,’ I interrupted.

John nodded. ‘Exactly. But come Monday, she’ll have to stay at home waiting for word of her cousin’s arrival, and maybe the next day, and even the day after that. Meantime, you take Philip and get on with whatever it is you have to do.’

‘What about Jules?’

My companion shook his head. ‘He won’t be available until Olivier le Daim is safely inside the city. I’m sorry, but I was a bit premature there in offering his services.’ He gave another sigh. ‘I’m afraid I’m getting too old for this job. I’m growing addle-pated.’

‘You’ve too much on your mind,’ I comforted him. ‘But how do we explain my absences to Eloise?’

‘Do I have to think of everything?’ he demanded peevishly. But a moment’s thought gave him the answer. ‘You’re playing your part, of course! The haberdasher buying and selling your goods, trying to establish an overseas market in these peaceful times. You’re merely lulling any suspicion that you might not be what you seem to be. That should satisfy Mistress Eloise.’

‘And if — when — she goes to visit Mâitre le Daim, do I accompany her?’

‘We shall do what seems best at the time.’ The spy flexed his arm joints. ‘Now go away, Roger, and leave me in peace and quiet for a few minutes. Indeed, it was for that reason I came out here, only to find you at my heels. I need to collect my thoughts. Go and make your peace with your “wife”. I don’t doubt but what she’s fretting at your absence.’