Kate Sedley - The Green Man

The man called Clement turned on her furiously. ‘Well if you know who’s stolen my best mask, you can save your reproaches for him.’ He picked up the one he had been wearing and dangled it by its strings. ‘This is only my second best. I was still hunting for the other right up to the moment of our entrance, and even so I had to go on without it. And it’s still missing.’

The woman was immediately all concern.

‘Oh, that’s too bad!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s a beauty, that other one. I thought something didn’t look right about you. “Not enough foliage,” I remember thinking to myself at one point, but there was so much else to be worrying about, I didn’t give it more’n a passing thought. Come and speak to Matthew,’ she added, nodding towards the man counting the money. ‘If someone’s playing a stupid prank, he’ll soon give ’em short shrift.’

They went off together, arm in arm, animosity and professional jealousy forgotten. I went back to my post behind Albany’s chair.

By the greatest of good luck, he and Lord Hastings had been so deep in a ribald assessment of ‘Mother Earth’s’ physical charms that he had failed to notice my absence. Not so the page, who whispered in my ear, ‘And where’ve you been?’

I spun round. ‘So you’re back, are you? And suddenly you can speak English. Well, understandable English.’

‘Oh, I’ve always been able to speak English,’ Davey replied in that cool, light tone of his. ‘It’s just that I don’t always choose to. Where have you been?’

‘I might ask you the same question.’

He smiled his sweet, effeminate smile. ‘There’s no mystery about that. His Grace sent me to the kitchens to get something to eat. Unlike yourself, I don’t go wandering off on my own, but wait until I’m bidden. It’s easy to see that you’ve never been in service to the nobility. Which raises the question why exactly are you here?’

There was a slightly contemptuous note in the young voice that flicked me on the raw. I longed to tell him the truth, but managed to bite my tongue. Instead, I retorted with equal contempt, ‘You ought to listen more carefully, Davey, when your royal master speaks. He told you, I heard him, when I first joined the household in London, that I’m his personal bodyguard. It’s my job to protect him from harm. He fears his brother’s assassins.’

‘He has good reason,’ the page nodded, adding, ‘Well, mind you do protect him, or it will be the worse for you.’

Before I could take exception to this threat, the king rose from his seat, announcing it was time for bed, and everyone else rose with him. Albany turned and beckoned to me at the same moment that his two squires emerged from a doorway at the back of the dais. Davey fetched a couple of torchbearers to light us all back to the royal chambers where James Petrie was waiting to assist his master to undress, while I took the opportunity to divest myself of the hated yellow shoes, hose and amber tunic, stripping down to my shirt and climbing in beside Albany in the massive four-poster bed. The page dragged his own truckle-bed from underneath it, assured himself that the ‘all-night’ of bread and ale had been placed on the table next to his master, pulled the curtains around us and bade us goodnight. Donald Seton and Murdo MacGregor likewise made themselves scarce, leaving the bedchamber for the ante-room where they both slept.

Albany was in buoyant mood and disposed to talk. He was delighted with his reception by the English nobles and by the way in which King Edward had embraced him before the feast, hailing him with all the familiarity of a fellow monarch. I think that for a moment even his natural cynicism had evaporated, and he was allowing himself to believe that he would indeed be crowned as King Alexander IV.

‘I’ve come to the conclusion, Roger,’ he said, linking his hands behind his head and staring up at the canopy above us, ‘that maybe I’ve nothing to fear from the English, after all.’ This was the wine talking, and I had no doubt that he would sing a different song in the morning. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘the danger lies, as I always thought it did, with my dear brother.’ He turned his head on the pillow. ‘You’ve not discovered anything yet?’

I hesitated, then answered slowly, ‘I’m not sure.’

He was alert on the instant, heaving himself up onto one elbow and peering anxiously at me through the darkness.

‘Out with it, man! What is it?’

‘A silly incident, Your Grace. Nothing more.’

‘Tell me!’

So, somewhat reluctantly, fearing what I felt would be his quite justifiable ridicule, I told him about the man in the Green Man mask.

‘I thought it would prove to be one of the mummers late for his entrance,’ I said. ‘But that turned out not to be the case.’ And I proceeded to describe my meeting with ‘Mother Earth’ and her ‘consort’. ‘So Your Grace can see,’ I concluded, ‘that I was right to call it a silly incident and not to wish to worry you with it. It’s nothing, in my opinion, but a stupid jest being played by one of the mummers’ troupe on another of their number. Your Highness has nothing to fear. You may sleep easily in your bed.’

To my surprise, Albany seemed to be genuinely concerned by my story and interrogated me closely regarding the details. Did I think the attack had been deliberate? Where had I been standing exactly when the man had pushed past me? From which direction in the castle had he come? Was I sure that I had had no glimpse of his face? Was it certain that he had not been one of the mummers’ troupe?

I did my best to answer these and other questions, but my knowledge of the castle was as limited as his, never having set foot in it — never, indeed, having set foot anywhere north of Hereford — before the previous day. I had to admit to myself that repetition of the incident had convinced me how very trivial it had really been, and that I had built a mountain out of a molehill. What did it really amount to, when all was said and done? A man wearing a mummer’s mask — at a time when mummers’ masks abounded in the castle — had given me an ill-natured shove because I was in his way. That was all there was to it.

Or was it?

Later, when my bedfellow had fallen into what appeared to be an uneasy slumber, judging, at any rate, by his tossing and turnings, I found myself lying wakeful in the darkness. The mummer playing the Green Man had either mislaid or had his best mask stolen. But why? For what reason? Was there a sinister motive? And, if so, what was it? Did it really have anything to do with me? On reflection, wasn’t it far more likely to have been taken as a prank by another member of the group who had a grudge against the leading player? That was a much more plausible explanation. Clement, as ‘Mother Earth’ had named him, had struck me at once as a man with a large opinion of himself, and therefore one who had probably made many enemies amongst the troupe’s younger generation. Moreover, it was just the sort of silly trick a boy would play, and there was no doubt that the figure I had seen so briefly had been shortish and lacking in bulk.

With this finally settled in my mind, I heaved a sigh of relief and turned over, presenting my backside to my unquiet companion. Beyond the drawn bed-curtains, Davey gave the occasional gurgle and snort as he wriggled around on his truckle-bed, but other than that all was quiet except for the occasional shout of ‘All’s well!’ from the watchmen guarding the castle walls. The closed chamber door shut out all sounds from the ante-room where the two squires were presumably sleeping the sleep of the just.

I was slipping across the borderline of sleep, having lain awake for quite some time, when something roused me. I had no idea what it was, but it brought me sitting upright in the bed, every faculty alert, my ears straining, my eyes trying desperately to pierce the stuffy, all-embracing gloom. Then I was on my feet, the flagstones striking chill on my bare soles, and out into the room at large, where the page still slept peacefully at the foot of the four-poster, his young limbs sprawled anyhow, his mouth open, saliva dribbling down his chin.