Кэндис Робб - The Lady Chapel

He put an arm around her waist, one hand still on her chest, and stared into the cat eyes.

They did not flinch. Alice did not move. Thoresby could hear her heart pounding. He felt his own pounding. He reached down and sank his teeth into her right breast. She screamed and tried to pull away. He held her tight until he tasted the salt of her blood. Then he let her go.

She slumped against the wall, crying out when she looked down and saw the tooth marks. “You’re a monster.”

“No, just a man, seeking vengeance. My King loves breasts. And now you will have to cover one for a while. Or explain. Which might be amusing in itself.”

Alice stared at him, her hand on her wound. Suddenly, she burst out laughing. “Pity we are sworn enemies, John. I would enjoy more rounds with you.”

“I am sure we shall meet again, Alice. You have not won. Not the whole battle.” Thoresby took up his jeweled goblet and left with the pleasant taste of her blood in his mouth.

The Archbishop returned to York in March and sent for Owen.

As Owen entered the Archbishop’s chambers, he noticed that Thoresby looked pale.

“It did not go well, Your Grace?”

“It went well enough – though the King could not be bothered with my claims. Alice Perrers has bewitched him.”

“Anna found no hidden papers, so I could send you nothing to support your accusation.”

Thoresby nodded. “I received your letter.”

“You stayed a good while.”

“I left court last month. I have been visiting some of my deaneries. I think now I shall withdraw to Fountains Abbey to think on my future.”

Owen nodded to the chain of office that glinted in the firelight. “For all that, you are still Chancellor.”

“For now. For perhaps only a little while longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“That is one of the things I must decide. Whether to step down.”

“And then she wins.”

Thoresby closed his eyes, sank back in his chair. “She is the Devil’s creature, Archer. Mark my words. When the King lies dying, she will take what she can and desert him. She is cold and unnatural.” He opened his eyes. “But no, she has not won.”

“With treason she bought her way to court, with murder she covered her trail, but what is it that holds the King?”

Thoresby shook his head. “The illegal wool sales were her uncles’ doing, not hers. And it was they, too, who used information about Enguerrand de Coucy to buy Alice’s introduction to the Queen. But the murders and the hold on the King, yes, that is all Alice Perrers, young as she is. She has eyes like a cat’s, Archer, an intelligence that misses nothing – no nuance of speech, no gesture – and a body clothed to reveal its youthful bloom. But it is her spirit – the power that emanates from her – that arouses.” There was an odd flush to Thoresby’s cheeks as he thought about her.

“She aroused you, Your Grace?” Owen tried to imagine the cold, bloodless man before him in a state of passion. He could not.

Thoresby opened his eyes and laughed. “Another man might take offense at your shock, Archer, but I am pleased by it. My mask is back in place.”

“Are we finished with the deaths of Ridley and Crounce?”

“Yes. Pity we had to lose our best Town Wait in the reckoning. Did you warn him away, Archer?”

“No. Though Lucie and I had decided to. They had already fled.”

“And you’ve never heard another word from them?”

Owen shrugged.

“You know where they are.”

“No.”

Thoresby stared at Owen for a long moment, then shook his head. “You have changed, Archer. You are growing into this life. You are learning to use the ambiguities to your own advantage.”

Owen shrugged. “The money Ridley gave you for the Lady Chapel. Have you decided whether it is blood money?”

Thoresby smiled a little. “I am certain it was, Archer. Yet I am but a man. Is it not fitting that I accept an imperfect tomb?”

Owen stopped at the York Tavern to improve his mood with a tankard of Tom Merchet’s ale. Tom joined him.

“So ’twas our King’s leman ordered the bloodshed.” Tom shook his head.

“Take care you forget that as fast as you’ve learned it, Tom. The King would call it treason to speak of it.”

“But sure she’s too young to have plotted it all?”

“Her uncles put her on the path. It was they who traded the wool illegally and bought the information from Wirthir about the King’s French son-in-law. Either de Coucy or the Princess Isabella then bought their silence by presenting Mistress Alice to the Queen.”

Tom frowned, thinking. “It was Kate Cooper had Scorby chop off hands?”

Owen nodded.

“A woman with a black heart,” Tom muttered.

“She could not forgive her father’s ruin, her brother’s death.”

“Was it her poisoned Ridley?”

“No.”

“Bess had a mind to tell Mistress d’Aldbourg what her Kate did to our John.”

Owen drank down his ale. “I’m sorry for that.”

“Bess didn’t tell her after all. Said it might kill her, and she’d not have such a stain on her soul.”

“Bess is a good woman. And wise.” Owen stood up. “I must get home to Lucie.”

“Aye. Tell Bess to come home. There’s a lad come to see her about working in stable. I’d thought to offer work to Jasper, but Bess says he’s learning to read and write.”

Owen nodded. “He thinks he’d like to apprentice to Lucie.”

“Well, some good will come out of much evil, then.”

“Precious little.”

Tom shrugged. “We must be content with it.”

Many people think of history as mighty figures, epic events, and statistics. But at their best, historians bring the past to life by suggesting the motivations of the mighty, like a biographer with a clear thesis of the subject’s inner life. Historical novelists or dramatists go further by reducing the mighty to human scale. Shakespeare put a human face on Richard III in his fatal battle by using the fact noted by one historian, that the turning point for Richard was when he was unhorsed. The Bard lets us witness Richard’s tragic awareness as he cries, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Novelists and dramatists paint in the detail of the period, set the mighty in motion with imagined dialogue, and create the less than mighty characters missing in the historical records, those Owen Archers and Lucie Wiltons working secretly behind the scenes, those Bess and Tom Merchets providing the lodging and brewing the ale. Believable characters bring history to life.

A key element in any study in character is motive. Motive traces the trajectory of an action from stringing the bow through setting up, aiming and hitting (or missing) the target. What fascinates both historian and the novelist is that any one event seen through the eyes of different participants suggests completely different motives, and it’s the sum of the motives that culminates in the epic events. For a mystery writer, there is an additional fascination in how many people have motives for any crime, innocence being at times little more than a lack of opportunity.

The Lady Chapel’s plot hinges on King Edward III’s manipulation of the wool trade. Motive: to finance his repeated attempts to add the crown of France to his English crown. The wool trade was of vital importance to the economy of Flanders; Flanders was of strategic importance to Edward’s war with France. Edward’s scheme was to influence supply and demand to such an extent that the Flemings would support Edward rather than the French King in order to protect their economy. But Edward did not inspire confidence and trust in his own merchants – he gave them rights and revoked them ruthlessly, and promised monies that his scheme failed to raise; nor did he learn from the failures of the first year – he bullheadedly went on with the scheme. In effect, he pushed the merchants on both sides of the English Channel to devise means to continue their trade illicitly. In general, their motivation was to make a living, but in some, opportunity for unrestricted trade inspired greed. Merchant companies such as Chiriton and Company and Goldbetter and Company steered a daring course, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.