Brian Wainwright - The Adventures of Alianore Audley

I burned the package I had taken from Berkeley without even bothering to read it. I had no interest in his pathetic attempts at forgery.

The authorities duly descended upon us. The Coroner, sundry Justices, and the Undersheriff of Gloucestershire. All expecting to be fed and wined, of course.

‘It was a remarkable piece of archery that killed Sir Humphrey,’ said the Undersheriff, during a brief pause in the filling of his face.

‘Never seen such a close grouping of arrows in a corpse,’ agreed the Coroner. ‘Like something you see at an archery contest when someone is showing off.’

‘There are hosts of outlaws hereabouts,’ I told them. ‘My husband’s park was attacked by the rogues only the other day.’

‘Your Steward, Guy Archer, used to be quite a man with the bow, didn’t he?’ asked the Undersheriff.

‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed. ‘None better. But that was in the old days. His eyes are so dim that he can scarcely keep his accounts. He’s not shot on the professional circuit for a good ten years.’

‘Perhaps he has trained others in his skills?’

‘Indeed he has. All our young men practise their archery regularly, in accordance with statute. There are many able archers on this manor.’

‘I understand that your daughter was to marry Sir Humphrey? Is that so?’

‘It was suggested,’ I agreed.

‘Forgive me, but she seems less than distraught.’

Constance was chatting to Geoffrey, smiling for the first time in weeks. It was careless of her.

‘Sir,’ I said briskly, ‘I don’t know how matters stand in your household, but my husband is accustomed to the obedience of his family. My girl will marry where she is bidden. We are not so unreasonable that we expect her to love the man into the bargain.’

He dipped his nose into his wine again. (It was my best Gascon, far too good for a petty Tudor hireling.)

‘Sir Humphrey was carrying a most interesting letter,’ he said, ‘addressed to the pretended Duke of York. Pledging his loyalty to the impostor.’

‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘Sir Humphrey mentioned that fellow to me. Parkin Windbreak. Something like that. People with silly names are always traitors. Look at that Lambert Simnel for example…’

‘There must be some mistake,’ Thomas objected. ‘Sir Humphrey was known to all as the King’s loyal man.’

‘Indeed he was,’ agreed the Coroner, ‘which makes his defection all the more shocking.’

‘You really cannot trust anyone these days,’ I cried. ‘My husband always says that we should go back to the basics of the Knightly Code.’

‘The men who killed Sir Humphrey did the King a great service,’ said the Undersheriff. ‘They’ll not just be pardoned, but rewarded. If we can but find them.’

‘Virtue is its own reward,’ muttered Harry, looking up from his legal textbook.

‘Quite,’ agreed the Undersheriff. ‘It’s pleasing to add that the letter specifically urged the wretch, Warbeck, not to approach Sir Roger Beauchamp. On the grounds that Sir Roger’s loyalty to King Henry had been tested, and was unshakeable. Not that Berkeley referred to our noble sovereign by his proper title. He described him as “The obnoxious Tudor Slimebag”.’

‘Shocking,’ I said, wiping the gravy from my mouth with my largest napkin. ‘I really don’t know what the world is coming to, with all this disrespect for authority.’

A few months have passed. Christmas is behind us, and we have the snows piled up at the back door. The winter parlour is cosy, although all that wainscoting I had installed does tend to make it rather gloomy for those of us who wish to write. Still, we have to be modern, don’t we?

Life goes on, and still brings its surprises. Roger has been restored to the Commission of the Peace, for the first time since 1485. There’s some talk that he’ll be High Sheriff before long. Amazing how things turn out, isn’t it?

Another surprise is that Sir William Stanley has been arrested and executed for high treason. He said that he’d not fight Perkin Warbeck if the young man turned out to be King Edward’s son, and that was enough to convict him. Sounds a bit thin to me. I suspect there must have been more to it than that.

Roger says that it’s better not to know everything. I’m not sure that I like the way he says it. He never has explained exactly what he was doing all those weeks in London.

The biggest surprise of all has been a family matter. On Twelfth Night Geoffrey and Constance walked into the parlour together, knelt in front of Roger, and asked permission to be wed, mumbling some nonsense to the effect that they loved one another.

I was amazed that Roger sat still and heard them out. I was even more amazed when, instead of snatching up the very suitable stick that was to hand, he began to talk to them about terms and conditions.

Geoffrey is to complete his training as a lawyer. He is to establish himself in London, where men of that sort flourish like fat maggots on a corpse. Then, and only then, if they are both still of the same mind, will Roger give his consent.

‘Your brain must be softening,’ I said, when they had run off together, delighted. ‘The boy’s mother was a shepherdess, for Christ’s sake. He’s got no pedigree, no coat of arms, no lands, nothing.’

Roger shook his head. ‘Such things can be purchased, nowadays,’ he yawned, stretching himself. ‘Geoffrey promises well. One day the Archers will be every bit as famous in England as the Beauchamps. I call it getting in on the ground floor.’

‘The girl is young,’ I pointed out. ‘What if she changes her mind?’

‘She’s still free to do so. I didn’t speak of betrothal, did I?’

The very next morning I wrote to Bessy, asking her to find a place for Constance in her household, a request that was granted by return of post. It will do the girl no harm to see the wider world, and learn some better manners. She will also have the chance to meet someone more suitable. (Although there are plenty of unsuitable people around nowadays, even in the Queen’s household.)

But if it comes down to it, I suppose it’s true that a woman could have a worse son-in-law than Geoffrey. He’s a bright boy, and will end up as a judge at the very least. Perhaps we’ll be able to buy him a seat in Parliament. Like most lawyers, he’s good at talking without saying very much, so he should fit in there well enough. I really will have to do something about his pedigree, though. Possibly we can graft him onto the Nevilles somewhere.

Roger and I have been lazing in the garden. Our new neighbour, Richard Berkeley, Humphrey’s cousin, rode over earlier with his only daughter, Philippa, to pay us a friendly visit. She has hazel eyes, and they never left Thomas’s face all the time she was here. Rick is quite put out. I have the odd feeling that she will be back. I approve of a girl who is sensible enough to pick out an heir at first sight.

‘Strange how those outlaws seem to have vanished from the face of the earth,’ said Roger, scanning the horizon.

‘Outlaws?’

‘The ones who killed Berkeley.’ He paused significantly. ‘I don’t suppose, by any remote chance, that you had anything to do with it?’

‘Roger! What are you saying?’

‘That you know how to defend your own, my love.’

I turned my head from him. ‘Humphrey Berkeley accused you of treason.’

‘I know. He had good cause.’

‘You mean that you have really given your support to Perkin Warbeck?’ I was shocked. Roger had sworn his allegiance to Tudor, after all, and it was not his style to break his word except in an absolute emergency.

‘No, but I gave him cause to believe that I had. He was one of those whose loyalty I was ordered to test.’