Kate Sedley - The Burgundian's tale

‘What now?’ I asked myself.

I was sweating profusely, panic adding its toll to the heat of the cupboard. Then, with something akin to hope again lifting my spirits, I recollected Bertram, in similar circumstances next door, running his finger over the panneling until he could feel the inside lock …

Several agonizing minutes must have elapsed before I found this one — before a finger of my left hand travelled round a strip of metal so thin that I was at first unaware that I was touching it. With my heart pounding, pressing my finger to the spot, I once more drew my knife in my other hand and brought up the blade …

It was hopeless. I don’t know how long I kept trying, using every trick of lock-picking that Nicholas Fletcher had taught me, and that had never failed me before. But in the end I had to admit defeat. I was growing short of breath, my head was swimming unpleasantly and my throat was parched. Unconsciousness threatened to overtake me and I was forced to sit on the floor, my chest heaving. This was it, then. This was death, which I had faced on so many occasions in the past, but always cheated until now.

Until now! The true implication of the words hit me with all the force of a blow to the heart. I should never see Adela again. I should never see my sons and daughter again. What would they do without me? Life was not easy for widows or fatherless children. Perhaps Adela would marry for a third time, once she had recovered from my loss. A picture of Richard Manifold rose up before me. He had wanted her from the start. A sheriff’s officer, a sergeant, he would be a good provider, but somehow I could not bear the thought of him taking over my family as his own. I remembered the many times they had seemed a burden to me; my sense of freedom as I took once again to the open road and put the miles between myself and them. I remembered how often Elizabeth and Nicholas had driven me to the limits of my endurance, and how frequently Adam had inspired me with thoughts of infanticide …

But sitting there in the dark, feeling my senses being gradually overpowered, I vowed that if I ever got out of this dreadful trap alive, I would be a reformed character. I would treat each member of my family with the loving tenderness that he or she deserved. Even Margaret Walker, Adela’s cousin and my former mother-in-law, would receive her share of appreciation and esteem.

I gave a gasp, a desperate sucking in of fetid air, halfway between tears and laughter, as darkness began to close in. Even in extremis , my old, cynical self told me that, if I did survive, everything would be exactly as it was before. But I hoped that, somehow, Adela and the children would know that I loved them, and had died thinking about them, their names on my lips …

But, strangely, it wasn’t Adela standing beside me, looking down at my supine form, but Lillis, my first wife, who had died after our all too brief marriage, giving birth to our daughter, Elizabeth. She bent over me, smiling.

‘Go back, Roger,’ she said. ‘Go back. It’s not time yet … not time.’

The vision of her faded with her voice and she was replaced by my mother, who stood, hands on hips, regarding me in that exasperated fashion I recalled so well from my childhood — a kind of despairing ‘what are we going to do with you?’ look. She said nothing, but shook her head and warded me off as I tried to wriggle in her direction. She took a step backwards and was gone, and a small, dark man with weather-beaten features, stood there in her stead. I recognized him vaguely as my father, who had died when I was barely four, after a fall from scaffolding as he worked on the ceiling of Wells Cathedral nave. He had been a stone carver by trade and by name, and throughout the early part of my life, I had been known either as Roger Stonecarver or Roger Carverson (and a lot of other names, besides, far less complimentary; but we won’t go into that). I couldn’t remember much about him; he had made very little impact on my young life compared with my mother, and then he was gone. I had the vaguest recollection of finding my mother in tears on more than one occasion, and associating her grief with my father. But she told me, during one of our rare conversations about him, that, unlike a lot of men, he had never beaten her or used any other sort of violence towards her. So her sorrow must have had a different cause …

The visions faded as I briefly regained consciousness. I became aware of a great weight on my chest, as though someone had placed a heavy stone there. I tried to push it off, but was unable to shift it … I was drifting now, down a long, dimly lit passageway, at the end of which was a peculiarly bright white light, and I suddenly felt very calm and peaceful, as though all my life I had been waiting to get to the end of that corridor and lose myself in that light. Indeed, so strong was the urge to complete this journey that when someone shouted in my ear, ‘Roger! Roger! Wake up! Wake up!’ I was angry and resentful at having been robbed of my goal …

I was suddenly awake. The ‘fly trap’ was open and Bertram was bending over me. The bedchamber beyond appeared to be extraordinarily full of people: men-at-arms, wearing the blue-and-murrey livery of the Duke of Gloucester, and Sheriff’s officers.

‘What … What’s going on?’ I murmured dazedly, and a voice I thought I recognized said, ‘Thanks be to God. He’s alive. Carefully, now! Carefully! Carry him out and put him on the bed.’

It was the Duke of Gloucester.

I would have struggled to my feet, but was told peremptorily not to be a fool and lie still. Someone — Bertram? — brought wine and held it to my lips while I drank greedily.

Meantime, all around me chaos reigned. Sheriff’s men — there were probably only some three or four of them, but to my still disordered senses it seemed like a cohort — went in and out of the bedchamber as Duke Richard issued his orders. A bewildered Godfrey St Clair and an equally bemused Jocelyn and Alcina were summoned into his presence, but had little to contribute by way of answers to his questions. Paulina Graygoss and the two maids arrived, breathless and scared half out of their wits from the kitchen regions, but had equally little to say, except that William Morgan had disappeared. According to Nell, he had run into the garden and heaved himself over the wall into the alley as soon as the first loud, authoritative knocks on the outer door had heralded the arrival of officialdom. (‘’E buggered off out the garden an’ over the wall as soon as ’e ’eard that there banging,’ were her precise words, but we all knew what she meant.)

Judith, too, seemed to be missing, to the great distress of her husband, who found it impossible to comprehend what was going on, and was overwhelmed by the invasion of his house by the King’s brother and various representatives of the law. I whispered to Bertram, who, following my instructions, slipped inside the ‘fly trap’, emerging a few seconds later with Judith’s confession. This he handed to the Duke, who read it without comment, before passing it to Godfrey St Clair.

Godfrey’s whole body was shaking so much that Duke Richard ordered a stool to be found for him, and, when this had been brought, he read his wife’s confession with Alcina and his son looking over his shoulder. Of course, all three refused to believe it, but there was a desperation in their denials reminiscent of people spitting against the wind. There was no refuting, either, that the confession was written in Judith’s own hand, no matter how much they would have liked to prove it a forgery. Even so, they would have continued to express their doubts, had not one of the Sheriff’s men brought word that Mistress St Clair was to be seen sitting beneath the willow tree at the bottom of the garden, apparently either asleep or gazing out across the Thames. At this information, Godfrey gave a great cry and, oblivious to protocol, rushed from the bedchamber without so much as glancing at the Duke or asking his permission. He had guessed the truth, of course: Judith had taken her own life.