C Sansom - Sovereign

‘She will be busy preparing for the Queen’s arrival. I might walk into town, see the Progress enter.’ He looked at me. ‘Tamasin thought you were a little sharp with her, when we were talking about the Queen.’

‘I cannot forget her trickery. But also, I had had bad news.’ I told him of Giles Wrenne’s illness, his request that I help him find his nephew.

‘Poor old arsehole.’ Barak shivered. ‘That’s hard.’

‘I said you would help him too, when we get back to London.’

‘Ay. All right. I wish we were there now.’

‘Me too.’ I paused. ‘When Mistress Marlin was talking about Tamasin, she mentioned the girl had no one in the world. She said her mother was dead, but made no mention of her father. She has a little money, apparently, from her grandmother.’

‘Tamasin does not know who her father was. Her mother would never tell her. Someone around the court, though, for that was the only world her mother knew, working in the Queen’s sewery. She has some ideas, but does not know.’

‘Oh?’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘Girlish fancies.’

I smiled. ‘Fancies she is a nobleman’s daughter, perhaps?’ He shrugged, and I saw I had hit the mark. ‘Will you see more of Tamasin, when we are all back home?’ I asked with deliberate casualness.

‘Perhaps.’

I think you will, I thought. I think you are smitten, perhaps for the first time in your roisterous life. I wondered if this meant he would stay with me.

‘Tamasin has seen the Queen, you know,’ he said.

‘Yes, she told me.’

‘Says she is more like a girl than a woman. There is some trouble because she has given her old friend Dereham a job and now he has come here trying to give Lady Rochford orders about the arrangements. Tamasin says it has put the old witch in a fine temper.’

I shrugged. I was not interested in the gossip that went on in the royal household.

Barak was silent a moment, then said in more serious tones, ‘I have been thinking about Master Craike, wondering what he was up to last night.’

I nodded slowly. ‘Yes. If anyone has a free run of St Mary’s it is him. And he was up and about when Oldroyd was killed. And in his post he could get keys easily. Like the keys to the chapterhouse.’

‘Yet as you said, nothing was found when he was searched.’

‘What if he had an accomplice? What if they spoke to Oldroyd and he refused to give up the papers? They kill him. Then I turn up with them at King’s Manor.’

‘And the accomplice hit you and got away, while Craike stayed there. But why not kill you, knowing you’d seen some of the papers at least?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said heavily. ‘And somehow I can’t see Craike involved in the conspiracy. I can’t see him having the nerve for dangerous work. And what’s the connection to Broderick? Is it the same people trying to poison him?’

‘Why? If they’re on the same side, the side of the conspirators?’

‘Perhaps he asked for poison to be brought,’ I said slowly. ‘At the moment he is speaking in riddles. If he was given a way to kill himself, that would stop him ever talking. But how was it done?’ I sat frowning a moment. ‘These damned papers, I think they hold something of value to the conspirators. They must do, to have the Privy Council involved. People involved in the conspiracy, seeking the papers and also trying to put Broderick out of the way so he can’t tell what he knows.’

‘If they were conspirators, why did Oldroyd not give up the papers to them?’

‘Perhaps he was unsure of them. Jesu, they gave him a dreadful death. And yet spared me. By accident or design. By God, I hope they meant to spare me.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Someone from the Privy Council is to interview me tomorrow, no doubt after the presentation to the King. That I am not looking forward to.’

‘They might send us home,’ Barak said.

I smiled wryly. ‘That’s what I hope. I’d not mind that, even if it’s in disgrace. I want no more of this matter. A pox on Cranmer for involving me with Broderick.’ I stretched my arms above my head. ‘Dear God, Barak,’ I said passionately. ‘I wish tomorrow was over.’

I WAS WAKENED BY cocks crowing. Not one or two but dozens, a tremendous cacophony. I lay puzzled for a moment, then realized it was the fighting cocks in the monastery church. All round the cubicles people coughed and groaned and cursed the birds.

The sun was rising in a sky of unrelieved blue and when I opened the window I felt warm air for the first time in York. As the song had promised, the King had banished rain. So superstitious folk would say. I looked up at the great bulk of the church, realizing it was the first morning the huge spire had not been wreathed in mist. It pointed to the sky like a huge dead finger.

I dressed in my best robe, adjusting the fur trim, then put on my coif and above that my new cap, for which I had hunted out a new pin. Arranging it carefully, the brim leaning to the left to hide my bruise, I left the cubicle.

All around the clerks were smoothing clothes and checking their faces in steel mirrors. There was none of the usual bantering conversation today; everyone was preoccupied, serious, preparing mentally for their allotted role. Barak, dressed in a red doublet, stood leaning on the door of his cubicle, watching the clerks with a sardonic smile.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Watching these fellows. Thought I’d wait for you, see if you wanted to take breakfast in the refectory. You should have something to eat, you do not know when you may get lunch.’

‘Ay, let’s eat,’ I said, touched by his concern. ‘How do I look?’

‘Dressy. Doesn’t suit you. But that bruise is well hidden.’

We walked across to the refectory, which was full of clerks and minor officials, likewise snatching a meal while they could. The carpenters were no doubt all abed, their work done at last. Here too there was an air of tension, and little talk. Everyone jumped and looked round when a groom dropped a plate of cold meat and it clattered on the floor. ‘God’s body!’ he yelled. ‘There’s grease all over my damned tunic now!’

Barak grinned. ‘It’s getting too much for some folk.’

‘All right for you,’ I murmured. ‘Don’t tire yourself out walking round the town,’ I added sardonically, as we parted on the refectory steps. He gave me a mock salute and I turned, joining a steady stream of the well-dressed heading for the manor house. I felt as though I were on a ship, leaving for a voyage to a far, unfamiliar shore.

IN THE COURTYARD the rising sun was reflected in flashing streaks from the gold leaf woven into the fabric of the tents and from the polished breastplates of the soldiers standing before the pavilions, pikes raised and bright plumes in their helmets. The pennants with the Scotch and English flags waved in a warm breeze. Grooms were leading horses out of the church, saddling them and tying them up to await their masters, each with a number round its neck. I looked for Genesis but could not see him.

By the manor house dozens of men in colourful doublets, coats and robes stood talking in groups. There was an occasional burst of nervous laughter. I went inside.

Within, soldiers lined the walls of the Great Hall, standing rigidly to attention. At each of the two staircases a group of servants was struggling to haul up pieces of a large bed to where the King’s and Queen’s privy chambers would be. Lady Rochford and the Queen’s secretary, Dereham, were berating two men as they tried to manoeuvre an enormous, richly decorated wooden headboard into the narrow staircase on the Queen’s side. Lady Rochford wore a red brocade dress decorated with a fleur-de-lys design, a jewelled pomander dangling from her waist, and her face was painted thickly with white ceruse, hiding her high complexion.