Will Davenport - The Perfect Sinner

That removed any chance that he was guessing. ‘It’s supposed to be a secret. Who told you?’

‘Calm down. It is a secret. Lancaster told me. Is that high enough authority for you? This young man has been sent to give you a hand on the grounds that, many qualities though you undoubtedly have, fluency in Italian is not known to be one of them.’

‘I speak some Italian,’ I said, a little stung.

‘Enough to order food. Not enough to conduct high level negotiations.’

‘But why is he here now? We’re not leaving until the beginning of April.’

‘You mean nobody told you?’

‘Told me what?’

‘The King sent word last week. There’s a rush on. It’s all been brought forward. You really didn’t know?’

I shook my head.

‘You’re leaving in three days time from Dartmouth on the afternoon tide, on board your ship, Le Michel, captained by John Hawley, although why you should trust yourself to that rogue is a mystery to me. You are sailing up channel to Dordrecht in Flanders where you will join Sir James di Provan and John di Mari, two of the most irritating and self-regarding clots it has ever been my misfortune to meet, and with them you head south as soon as you possibly can.’

‘William, you know as well as I do nobody travels across the Alps in winter. Even the Brenner Pass is tough going now.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘It seems the King believes in your ability to do it. Someone apparently has to and he thought sending you would give the best chance.’

I knew him well enough to make an accurate guess. ‘Come on, you know more about this than you’re saying. What’s it really all about?’

He squirmed. At least he gave a tiny involuntary wriggle which is as close to a squirm as a man of William’s size and experience is ever likely to get.

‘I’ve heard a few things,’ he said eventually and I just waited.

‘It’s his bankers,’ he said in the end. ‘You know he still owes those Florentines a huge fortune?’

‘The Bardi family? Yes, I have heard.’

‘They’re pressing him hard. The Genoa deal is something to do with it. He has promised them agreement by the end of February, otherwise he is in default.’

I knew all too well what default would mean. Humiliation for the English crown. We all remembered the last time he’d had to pawn the crown and the shame that brought, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d done the same again. I loved my king, but sometimes he behaved like a complete idiot.

I rubbed my brow, suddenly aware of the enormous practical difficulties of this whole enterprise.

‘Three days to get all this ready? I don’t even know if Hawley’s in Dartmouth and the Michel hasn’t left his mooring since October.’

‘Hawley’s ready. I saw him on the way. The King’s messenger got that far, at least.’

‘Well, he didn’t get here. Oh, wait a minute. They found a man on the rocks below Strete. He’d been thrown off the cliffs, stripped of everything but his jerkin.’

‘That was him. Someone’s killed a King’s messenger in your lands. There’ll be a big fuss about that.’

‘There’s no time to lose. Is Hawley provisioning the ship?’

‘Yes. I told him to do it well. I can’t eat that vile stuff you usually serve on board.’

I stared at him in astonishment. ‘You’re coming to Dordrecht?’

‘No, no. What would be the point of that? I’m coming all the way to Genoa.’

‘Why?’ The thought of getting William’s great bulk over the Alps in the snow was appalling.

‘It sounded like fun,’ was all he would say, then before I had a chance to argue, the priest played his trump card.

‘I also hear, if the masons are to be believed, you’re going to leave your message on the walls here for all to see, and as far as the future of your soul and come to that, your neck, is concerned that seems to me to be the more pressing concern right now.’

That made me blink. ‘You know about that?’ I had thought the Declaration was a secret. There was nothing of it yet to be seen. It was all still forming in my head and the words had to be right before I would let the carver pick up his chisel. Second thoughts are best avoided when you set your words in stone.

‘I get to hear most things. Is that something to do with the clerks? I keep wondering why a Chantry needs all those clerks.’

He was a perceptive man and he knew me better than any now alive, perhaps better than anyone bar Elizabeth ever had done.

‘To a point. I have a great work in mind. The message, as you call it, is a small part of it. The clerks will work to draw together the thoughts that lie behind it.’

‘Has it struck you that the only ones likely to have learning enough to read your message are also the ones most likely to disapprove?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘And if the King reads it?’

‘Does the King know about it?’

‘Not yet, but when he does…’

‘All the better.’

‘Where’s it going to go?’ he asked. ‘If it’s going to be displayed on my church for all the world to see and disapprove, then I’d better know.’

‘I’ll show you.’

The plaque lay ready on the stonecutter’s bench. Its surface was smooth to the touch and the border had been chased out in folds to frame it.

‘Either you’ve got a lot to say or it’s going to be carved in big letters,’ said the priest. ‘What exactly is it going to say?’

‘You can read it when it’s finished. It’s too close to me, too raw. I can’t tell you yet.’

‘You don’t trust me?’

How could I not trust him, the man who came closest to understanding, the man who had risked the King’s fury to back me up in the days when we were all young, when he was a mere deacon, without the age and reputation to keep the royal wrath at bay?

‘I’ll tell you the first line,’ I said.

‘I’m listening.’

Elizabeth’s words came to me fresh. ‘Senes qui domi manent, nolite juvenes verbis belli accendere.’

‘Oh dear,’ said the priest. ‘I was afraid it would be something like that. Where exactly is it going?’

I turned around and gasped as the old wound in my knee caught at me. I pointed at the chapel porch. ‘Right above the door,’ I told him, ‘for all to see.’

The priest looked where I pointed and then cocked his head up to follow the height of the tower as it soared high into the air.

‘I predict trouble,’ he said. ‘If you want to enjoy a quiet old age, you should put it higher up.’

‘How much higher?’

The priest looked at the rooks wheeling around the summit of the tower, a dizzy height above us.

‘What about up there,’ he suggested, ‘right at the top. That might just save your neck.’

This is not a complaint, but I have spent more than half my life away from my own bed and probably a quarter of it away from any bed at all. This past year I have served Edward mostly at sea in the Channel against the Castilian galleys and I have now been granted the extra responsibility of Admiral of the Western seas. Oh, and I also had to address Parliament on his behalf, asking them for still more money. The King is no longer quite the active man he was, but a year or two ago he told me that if I had wanted a quiet life, I should have taken care to seem more of an idiot and more of a coward. I think it was a compliment.

When I began to notice the discomfort, I realised the King’s business took me along some well-worn routes and there was no good reason why I should put up with strange beds. I have therefore bought myself houses on some of those frequented paths, personal hostels for a personal pilgrim carefully spaced at a day’s travelling distance and now, most of the time, I can sleep in one of my very own beds. That’s England I’m talking about. Now we were going abroad and it was back to the bad old ways.