C Sansom - Sovereign

Master Tanner cast his eyes to the ground. Genesis pulled at the reins.

‘We must go,’ I said. ‘We are due at St Mary’s. Come, Barak, they will be waiting like everyone else to tell us we were expected yesterday.’ I settled matters by bowing to Mistress Reedbourne. She curtsied again.

‘I am lodged at St Mary’s too,’ she said sweetly. ‘Perhaps I shall see you again.’

‘I hope so.’ Barak replaced his cap, then winked, making the girl turn scarlet. We rode off.

‘That was a bit of excitement,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Not that there was any danger, they were just ragamuffin lads. Must have thought there was something valuable in that basket.’

‘You did well.’ I smiled sardonically. ‘Rescuing the Queen’s doucets.’

‘The girl’s a little doucet herself. I’d not mind a game of hot-cockles with her.’

AT THE TOP OF Coneygate we passed into another road that ran alongside the high walls of the abbey. The King’s guards patrolled the top of the walls, and beyond them I saw the high steeple we had seen on our way in, almost as high as the Minster. The monasteries had all had enclosing walls, though I had never seen any so high as this; St Mary’s must have been an enormous site. Such a wall would greatly help security and I wondered whether this was why the abbey had been chosen for the King’s base in York.

Once again we passed under the barbican at Bootham Bar, this time turning left to join a queue of riders and pedestrians waiting to go into the abbey. My commission was scrutinized with care before we were allowed to pass. Inside, we dismounted. Barak took the panniers containing our belongings from the horses’ backs and slung them over his shoulders, then joined me in staring at the scene before us.

Directly ahead was a large manor house that must once have been the abbot’s residence. It was splendid even by the standards the abbots of the large monasteries allowed themselves, a three-storey building in red brick with high narrow chimneys. Beds of small white roses lined the walls. There had once been a lawn too but it had been turned to muddy earth by the passage of innumerable feet and cartwheels. Some men were excavating what turf was left, replacing it with flagstones, while a little way off others were digging up what must have been the monks’ graveyard, hauling up the gravestones and manhandling them onto carts. Above the main door of the manor the royal arms had been hung on a large shield.

Beyond the manor house stood an enormous monastic church of Norman design, one of the largest I had seen, its square tower topped by an enormous stone steeple, the façade decorated with ornate buttresses and carved pillars. The manor house and the church made two sides of a great courtyard, an area perhaps a furlong in length. There an amazing spectacle was taking shape. Outbuildings had been demolished, leaving trenches where foundations had once stood. Dozens of tents had been planted on the space, and hundreds of men were labouring in the open, working on the final stages of the construction of two enormous pavilions. Forty feet high, they had been built to resemble castles, complete with turrets and barbican gates; all in wood but painted and designed to resemble stone. Workmen on ladders swarmed over the extraordinary buildings, fixing plaster images of heraldic beasts, painting the walls in bright colours, glazing the windows. As I watched, I thought there was something familiar about the designs of the pavilions.

Trestle tables stood everywhere in the yard, carpenters hewing and planing huge lengths of wood. A pile of perhaps fifty trunks of young oak was stacked against the abbey wall, and sawdust lay everywhere. Other workmen were carving ornamental cornices in complex designs, the colours bright in the dull afternoon.

Barak whistled. ‘God’s wounds. What are they planning here?’

‘Some spectacle the like of which I’ve never imagined.’

We stood a moment longer watching the extraordinary scene, then I touched Barak’s arm. ‘Come. We have to find the man in charge of the accommodation. Simon Craike.’ I smiled. ‘I knew him, a long time ago.’

Barak shifted the weight of the panniers on his shoulders. ‘Did you?’

‘He was a fellow student at Lincoln’s Inn. I haven’t seen him since, though. He never practised, he went into the royal administration.’

‘Why’d he do that? The pay?’

‘Ay. He had an uncle in royal service who got him a post.’

‘What’s he like?’

I smiled again. ‘You’ll see. I wonder if he’s changed.’

We led the horses over to the manor house, which seemed to be the centre of all the great bustle; people were running in and out, officials standing on the steps giving orders, arguing and looking over plans. We asked a guard where Master Craike might be found, and he told us to wait, calling a groom to take the horses. As we stood there a high officer of state in a green velvet robe waved us out of the way, then another barged between us, as though we were dogs in his path.

‘Arseholes,’ Barak muttered.

‘Come, let us get out of their way.’

We walked to the corner of the manor house, near to where two women were arguing with an official who held a floorplan of some sort. He was bowing and scraping almost to the ground, risking his plan falling in the mud, as the more richly dressed of the two ladies berated him loudly. She was in her thirties, with brown hair under a French hood set with pearls, and a high-collared robe of red silk. A woman of status. Her square plain face was red with ill-temper.

‘Is it too much for the Queen to know how she may leave her lodgings in the event of a fire?’ I heard her say in a deep, sharp voice. ‘I ask again, which is the nearest door and who has the key?’

‘I am not sure, my lady.’ The official turned his plan round. ‘The privy kitchen may be nearest -’

‘I’m not interested in may be.’

The other woman saw us looking and raised her eyebrows in an affronted stare. She was slim, with a face that might have been attractive but for its cold, haughty expression. The brown curly hair beneath her plain hood was unbound, signalling unmarried status, though she too was in her thirties. She wore an expensive-looking engagement ring, however: a diamond set in gold. She frowned again and I nudged Barak out of hearing. Then I smiled at the sight of a man in a brown robe who had come out of the manor house and stood on the steps, staring round him. A little portable writing desk was tied round his neck with blue cord. An inkpot and a quill were set there, and a thick sheaf of papers was pinned to it.

I remembered Simon Craike by his anxious, harried air. But for that I might not have recognized him, for the years had changed my old fellow student greatly. The good fare of court had given him a plump face and wide girth, while the shock of fair hair I remembered was mostly gone, leaving only a yellow fringe. As he turned at my call, though, his careworn features lit up. Barak and I doffed our caps as he crossed to us, one hand on the little desk to keep it steady. He shook my hand with the other.

‘Master Shardlake! I recognized you at once. The years have dealt kindly with you, sir. Why, you still have your hair. Not even grey.’

I laughed. ‘’Tis a wonder, given some of the affairs I have had to deal with.’

‘By Our Lady, it must be near twenty years.’ Craike smiled sadly. ‘The world has seen many changes since then.’

‘Truly it has.’ I thought: a revolution in religion, the end of the monasteries and a great rebellion. And my father now dead, I remembered with a sudden stab. ‘So,’ I said. ‘I hear you are in charge of accommodating the gentlemen in York.’