Geoffrey Condit (8 page)

    “My lord, a runaway horse,” shouted a retainer, standing in his stirrups.

    Peter swung in the saddle.  A wild-eyed farm horse bolted from behind them, eating up two hundred feet with racing strides.  Peter side stepped Gray Harold, shouldering Catharine’s palfrey to the edge of the street.

    “Peter!”  Catharine screamed.   “The man!  In front of us!”

    He jerked up.  Directly in the path of the crazed horse a man walked, unaware.  Peter spoke urgently to Grey Harold.  The giant war horse leaped ahead of the frightened animal.  Peter leaned down, preparing to lift the man out of harm’s way.  Grey Harold’s momentum swept them up against the surprised man, who flung his arms up for protection.  Peter closed an arm around the man’s chest and under his arm, but the man’s raised arms provided no support, and he proved heavier than Peter expected.  His weight dragged Peter from the saddle.  They sprawled on the cobbled street, Peter covering the stunned man.

    Time slowed.  Peter could see the horse’s hooves coming down slowly, slowly, taking forever to arrive.  Then they were there, cutting mercilessly into his flesh.  And the horse was gone.  The man under him moved.  Peter rolled off, his body a sea of pain.

    A  cool hand touched his cheek.  Catharine’s voice broke through the pain.  “My lord?”

    When he opened his eyes, a wet darkness greeted him.  He brushed blood from his eyes with a hand covered with road grit.  Struggling to sit up, fire ran through his legs and right shoulder.  Wiggling his toes, he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving he wasn’t paralyzed.

    Catharine tried to tie a linen bandage around his head wound, but the pain from the pressure made him feel faint and nauseous. He pushed her hand away.

    “My lord?”  The large man bowed. “Thank you.  I owe you my life.”

    “Harry Barristar.”  Catharine exclaimed with genuine pleasure.

    Peter squinted through the blood.  “How do you know each other?”  He fought to breath and concentrate through the pain.

    “Harry is a gentleman servant to the Duke of Buckingham.”

    Peter laughed.  Blood ran into his eyes, blotting his vision.  Gently Catharine wiped the thick red away, bringing everything into focus again.  God, can’t I get away from this plague?  A ward, a duke, and a gentleman.  What next?

    “I am pleased you survived the experience, Mister Barristar,”  Peter said.  One of his retainers helped Catharine bandaged his head, then he tried to stand.  But his legs wound not hold him, and he sank back against someone warm and sheltering.  Catharine.  A wave of nausea welled within, then welcoming blackness took away the pain and everything else.

    He woke to the welcoming smell of chicken broth, and the satisfied cackle of an old crone.  “Abby.”  He sucked in his breath, trying to focus through the pain.  “How long have you served the House of Trevor?”  he murmured.

    “Since your grandfather was a young man, Lord Peter.”  Abby poured steaming liquid into a clay cup.

    “Will I recover?”  he asked, shifting, testing his body.

    “You’ll ride Grey Harold again, if that’s what you mean.”  Abby’s wise eyes examined him.  “There’s nothing that won’t repair with a lot of rest and good sense.”  She cleared her throat.  “Good thing your new lady has a knowledge of herbs.”

    “Where is Catharine?”  he asked, trying to focus on her words through the constant pain.  He eased to a half sitting position, and realized he was in his great bed chamber at Trevor House.

    “Fetching her bag of herbs.”  Abby cracked a toothless smile.

    “What else do you know about my lady?”

    “Be patient.  Catharine’s heart grew into scar tissue long ago.”  Abby wiped her watery eyes, and pushed grey hair back over her thin shoulders. “She blames the pain and agony of having her family ripped apart squarely on York.”  She tested the temperature of the liquid with a clean finger.

    “Do you know anything that will dissolve that hurt?”  he whispered, wincing at the pain.  A crashing headache made concentrating impossible.

    “Time, patience, and a great deal of love,”  Abby said, face creased with concern as she examined his wounds.  “The legacy of your house.  You were born to this, Peter.”

    “Catharine was born Lancaster, raised Lancaster,” he whispered. “She’s so poisoned with hate, nothing else matters.”

    Abby held the cup to his lips.  “Drink this henbane.  It will ease the pain.  A time will come when she will cross the threshold, that terrible boundary she has created.” 

    Peter swallowed.  I hope ...   There has to be a way.  To bring her to that point.

    Anthony came in, and rested a hand on Abby’s thin shoulders.  “Excuse me, but Sir James Caxton is here to see Peter.”

    Abby rose, laughing.  “King Richard’s unnamed second, his man-in-the-know.”  She left.

    Caxton, a square man with salt and pepper beard, strode up to Peter’s high bed.  “I see you survived your encounter with the horse.  The owner was fined for allowing it to run wild.”

    “Good to see you, old friend.”  Peter grimaced through the pain.  The effort to concentrate was making him nauseous.  He fought it down.

    “I came as soon as I heard,”  Caxton said.

    “Would you know why Buckingham has taken such an uncomfortable interest in my affaires?”  Peter asked, voice shaking. “First, the marriage he engineered.  Now my warehouse.”

    Caxton shook his head, eyes worried.  “I’m sorry.  I can’t tell you.  Since becoming Lord Constable, he’s showing increasing fondness for other people’s business.  This hasn’t endeared him to the merchants, nobility or the King.”  He stroked his short beard with a square hand. 

    “My new wife says Buckingham is chest deep into the money lenders.”

    “That’s what I hear too.”  He gestured.  “Miles Northrop, my secretary, has people in the duke’s household.  He says the same.  The man is trying to raise a large sum of money.  And I need to know why.”

    Peter made an attempt to laugh.  “So do I.  Considering it’s my money he wants to use.”  He grimaced at the effort to concentrate.

    “I have found out who the duke is employing.”  Caxton sipped his wine from the silver goblet.  His lips twitched, eyes cold.  “A friend from way back.  Butcher Carnahan.”

    Peter sucked in a startled gasp.  God’s blood.  The bastard’s finally come back.  Images of a dying friend, the pain of his damaged face, came roaring back.  The revenge he’s promised himself, framed with hate and pain, stood exultant before him.  He tried to sit up, but the pain and effects of the henbane prevented action.  “God,”  he got out, “I’ve waited how many years.”

    “Carnahan’s trained the duke’s men in the west counties this last year.  I just found out.  Very secretive is our duke.”

    Feeling sleep pull him away, Peter tried to focus.  “Why would the duke keep large masses of troops in constant training?”

    “Exactly, Peter.  Why?”

5

Ten days later sunlight burst through the scattered clouds and streamed in the tall window lining the east side of the Great Hall of Trevor House.  Catharine blinked, eyes hurting from the sudden light.  She stared out over the angry wool merchants sitting around the trestle tables, and said a silent prayer her plan would work.  Tankards, half empty plates of cheese, meat pies, and pastries lay around them on the polished boards.  Low angry conversation hung in the charged air as the meeting waited to begin.

    Calling this meeting of the Fellowship of the Stable had been dangerous, calculated, and against Anthony’s advice.  But she saw no other way.  She wondered if Anthony and Jacob McBride had been as thorough as they discussed and she hoped.  Peter, sick from his injuries, did not have the strength to deal with the crisis.

     Levi Stark, small, pale, grey, simmering with rage, stood.  His high voice quivered with emotion, but did not break.  “We need to do something.  At this rate the Hanseatic League will take all our profits.  They threaten even the Merchant Adventurers.”  His pink mouth working in his short grey beard, he sat down abruptly, exasperation in every move and gesture.

    “Thank you, Mister Stark,”  Catharine said.  Theatrical, but he man summed up the situation neatly.  The Hanseatic League, once favored by Edward IV for its financial support of the Crown, had started secret negotiations with individual members of the Fellowship of the Stable, trying to buy up the raw wool before it went to the Low Countries to be processed.  The League then sold the wool at below market prices, causing the market to fall.  The wool merchants were up in arms, some ready to go out of business.

    She turned to the tall thin man at her right.  “My Lord Mayor.”

    His great gold chain of office laid neatly over his expensive black robe, Sir Edmund Shaa, clean shaven, rose and bowed to Catharine, then addressed his well dressed audience.  “Lady Trobridge.  Gentlemen.”  The goldsmith’s austere features remained blank.  “Legally we can do nothing.  This is a trading matter.  The solution lies with this group.  If you remain steadfast and of one body, you will overcome this crisis.  No laws have been broken.  The King regrets that beyond making suggestions and speaking to both parties, he is powerless in this matter.  He doesn’t feel that intimidating the League would help at this time.”  Shaa sat down amid a rumble of displeasure.

    Schooling her face, Catharine surveyed the unhappy men.  Their mood, resentful and next to violence, showed in their eyes.  Catharine smiled within, pleased at their agitation, and said in a hard voice.  “We have a traitor among us who seeks no less than the ruin of us all.   And this for the sole purpose of enriching himself, with no thought to the pain he inflicts on others.  So great is his greed he will sacrifice anyone and anything to his avarice.”   Loathing and scorn took her voice, and rent the gathered tension in the room.

    The men glanced around, faces suspicious.  Hands fingered dagger and sword hilts.  Wheezing, a tall man heaved his great bulk to his feet.  “Lady Trobridge, my lords, gentlemen.”  His tongue ran around thick lips, piggish eyes gleamed.  He adjusted his fur trimmed robe.  Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.  “I thank your ladyship for calling this meeting to address this unhappy problem.  But surely you exaggerate.”  He bowed to Catharine.  “We are all making a profit.”

    “Some more than others, Mr. Hatch,”  Catharine said.  The listeners leaned forward, faces curious, alert.

    “What do you mean by that, my lady?”  The beads of sweat began to trickle down his face.  He mopped them with a nervous hand and handkerchief.

    Catharine clutched her hands in her lap.  “Isn’t it true you’ve been in secret contact with the Hanseatic League, and have been taking large shipments of gold and goods to subvert your fellow merchants?”

    The words hung there, then tore the room apart.  Two men jumped to their feet, hands on sword hilts.

    “It is not!  That’s absurd,”  Jeremiah Hatch blustered.  Sweat ran into the collar of his robe.  “You’re only a woman,” he said, face ashen.  “You have no proof.”  Clothes rustled in the stunned silence.  A single clay cup fell to smash on the polished wooden floor.

    “But we have proof,”  Catharine said, smoldering.  She stood, blue skirts straightening around her.  “There are three men in this room that are witnesses to your perfidy.  Four nights ago the cargo ship Damian K docked, and unloaded a large payment to your warehouse.  We have letters.”  She held  up three pages.  “They tell a sordid tale of betrayal for money.”  Hatch glanced around, eyes wide.  “Two men in your employ are ready to swear to your treachery.   You should treat your people better.  Your secretary and a scribe were witness to your meeting with the League.”

    “I have broken no laws,”  he said thickly, mouth working.

    “No, you have not,”  Catharine agreed.  “Not man’s law.”  She beckoned to a dark figure in the kitchen doorway.  A medium-sized man in a worn black gown entered, hat in hand.  When his eyes met Hatch’s hard gaze, he shrank back.

    “You have hurt my Jamie,”  Hatch said, voice artificially loud and worried.  “They have tortured you, haven’t they?”

    “Your secretary has not been touched,”  Catharine said smoothly. “Or threatened.  He has broken no law.  He is aware, however, of certain members of your household who have disappeared after being accused of suspicious activities.   He was even witness to a murder ... ”

    Hatch turned with a quickness, surprising in such a large man.  A long dagger appeared in his fat hand, and he leaped at his secretary.  He bowled over two tables, and three men before he went down in an angry pile of servants, food, drink, and spoiled cloth.  “Witch!”  he screamed, eyes bulging.  “The woman is a witch.  How else could she know?”  He sat there blinking, nursing a bloody nose.

    ’Murder is a crime,“ Catharine said quietly,  ”that requires the King’s justice.“  A grim man in a brown doublet with two armed retainers entered.  ”Sir Richard Arden, Undersheriff of London.  He will escort you to Newgate prison.  There he will ask you questions.  You’d be wise to answer them, Mister Hatch.”  She looked out on the confused men before her, some who turned  away from her gaze.  Servants moved silently, cleaning, righting tables, assisting the injured.

    “Sir Peter is mindful that most of you do not have the resources of our House,”  her voice dropped.  “And some of you, for whatever reason, went along with Mr. Hatch.  We do not seek confession here or retribution.  We need to leave the past in the past.”  She passed a note to Anthony Will.  Keeping her voice level and matter-of-fact, Catharine continued, “Sir Peter believes we must address this problem as one body or in the end we all lose.  For those of you threatened financially, he will help you.  Apply to us privately.  We will see you lose nothing until things are right again.  What say you, Fellowship of the Stable?”  A roar of agreement reverberated to the soaring hammer beam ceiling above.

    Two hours later the last merchant had been escorted to the door.  Anthony knocked at the solar.  “Come in, Anthony.”  Catharine sat back in the cushioned master chair, elated but exhausted, trying to access her feelings toward what had just happened.

    “You took an awful chance, my lady,”  the graying retainer said.  “But Peter could not have done better.”

    “Thank you, Anthony.”  She smiled, feeling drained.  “We did it together.  An extra month’s wages for all concerned.”

    “Thank you, my lady.”  Anthony bowed.

    “How many applied for assistance?”

    “Six. They’ve agreed to let our people check over their ledgers, and to allow themselves to be guided through the troubled times ahead.”  He put a sheaf of a papers on Peter’s desk.  “Jacob will take care of them.”  He paused.

    Catharine arched her eyebrows.  “Yes, Anthony?  Feel free to speak your mind.  If this experience has taught me anything, it is the need to speak openly.” 

    He cleared his voice, and brushed a nonexistent speck off his immaculate grey doublet.  “The Dowager Baroness has just arrived ... ”

    Lady Elenor Trevor swept into the room.   Her erect figure buried in traveling robes.  Anthony bowed and Catharine stood.  Her mother-in-law projected an air of authority and commonsense.  “Catharine.  Anthony.  How is he?”

    “Not good. I need your help,”  Catharine said.  “I need someone he feels anchored to.  I don’t fit that.  The wounds infected, and he has been fevered with proud flesh.  We’ve been afraid we’d lose him.  That’s why I sent for you.  I need someone he loves.”

    Elenor’s lips, so like Peter’s, smiled.  “So you’re not there yet,”  she said, shrewd eyes studying Catharine.  “I had hoped.  Well ...   Take me to him.”

    Peter’s fever and infections had forced Catharine to take charge.   Learning about his trading and banking ventures proved unnerving and fascinating.  Anthony and Jacob McBride, Peter’s trading steward, took her through their operation with an enormous amount of information.  She also realized the gaps in their knowledge and insisted on spending long hours quizzing and picking their brains of every forgotten detail, and other employees, too - crusty sea captains, and ink-stained accountants among them.  Indeed she found to her more than mild distaste that she enjoyed and excelled at the experience.

    The household operated smoothly, but pockets of upset required her grim attention.  Once she called the staff together and spoke to them in matriarchal tone, reminding them of their duties.   She made two dismissals; one for stealing, and the other for dereliction of duty.  Thus horrified, the rest of the household pulled together behind her.

    Those days proved the happiest of her young life.  Challenge, the freedom and power, loosened something inside of her, and she blossomed in ways she hardly thought possible.   Peter’s mother encouraged her, but wisely spared advice unless asked for it.   Catharine was the chatelaine of the house and all knew it.  Anthony, always there, seemed pleased.

    “Lass, Lord Peter is in fever again.”

    Catharine straightened in the cushioned master chair in the Great Hall.  The household hummed around her.  She set down her embroidery, and glanced at Agnes.  “When?”

    “Minutes ago.”   Agnes touched the embroidery figure of the hart growing under Catharine’s needle.  The hart raced for the safety of the woods from pursuing hunters.  Spears buried themselves in the ground at his heels.  A horse tripped throwing its rider.

    “Get Abby and ask Lady Elenor if she’d care to come.  I can use all the help I can get.”  She walked to the great staircase, and took a deep breath to steady her nerves as she made her way to the great bedchamber.  These fevers were never pleasant.

    She stepped inside.  The chamber had turned into a sick room with jars and bundles of herbs, fresh folded linen, extra candles, and polished pots and pans by the hearth.  The chamber, bright with candle light in the gathering dusk, smelled of beeswax, sage, and horehound.   A low camp bed stood in one corner.  Catharine had insisted on sleeping on it since Peter’s injury two weeks ago.  A fire in the hearth warmed the room.

    On the high bed, Peter tossed and turned, sweat drenching his nightshirt and bed linen.    His lips worked feverishly, low words, wrought with agony, escaping.  Catharine steeled herself.  Several times a day for two hours fever wracked his wounded body.  Almost always he lived some tortured wrenching time in his past.  Sometimes she had to bend close to hear the words.  She heard his anguish when he relived his uncle’s execution.  She’d learned his fear and desperate anger during the Battle of Tewkesbury.  She bent closer.

    “Good sweet Christ.  Johnny, don’t,” he cried.

    A sigh sounded behind her.  Catharine turned.  Elenor Trevor stood there, face grave.  “Who?”  Catharine asked.

    “John Parr.  His good friend who died while Peter was scarred ... ”

    “You wouldn’t dare ... ”  Peter shook and shivered, his face a horrible grimace.  Tears ran freely down his cheeks.  “God!”  His eyes flew open.  Catharine drew back in shock at seeing no recognition there.  He twisted on the bed, wrestling with invisible bonds.  A low animal scream crawled out of his throat, then a plea more desperate than any prayer.  The  hair stood up on the back of her neck.

    The screaming went on and on.  His body thrashed, sweat drenching everything.  The women struggled to keep him on the bed.  Then his body slumped and deep racking sobs escaped his throat.  His hand stole to his scar on his face.  The sobs stopped.  His eyes darted, searching and seeming to find something.  His face changed.  The grief dragged up from deep inside him, and the almost inaudible words, “Johnny. Johnny. Why?”  The heartbreaking agony brought tears to Catharine’s eyes,

    The fever continued, and Peter continued to shiver, sweat, and mumble incoherently.  Then it stopped.  With the help of servants, they stripped off his sweat-drenched nightshirt, and replaced the bed linen.  Catharine cleaned him.  By now she knew every inch of his body as well as her own.  She’d gotten over the shock of touching, and to her surprise enjoyed the feel of his flesh.  Gritting her teeth, she opened the infected flesh, and drained the pus.  Peter squirmed, then went rigid.  Planes of his face taut with pain, he watched but said nothing.