The Lords of Arden (11 page)

 They stood for a moment, the woman's
light blue eyes searching the young man's face. It was a long face, almost
Byzantine in its proportions, sliced by a straight nose, and the eyes, which
were narrowed against the dappling April sunshine, were green and clear,
fringed with fair lashes; it was the face of a stained-glass saint, of a stone
archangel.

 ‘Christine,’ he said and the mask fell,
the angel's face closed over hers and the hands of a horseman and a soldier
were firm and strong upon the dark blue stuff of her gown. The lock of hair
which had escaped from her golden net matched his strand for strand,
silver-blonde, fine and straight.

 Christine Brandstone pushed at his
shoulders. ‘Not here. Tether the horses and I will show you where. I know the
Archer woods as well as I know our own.’ Then she took his hand and pushed a
way through the young leaves until they parted of their own accord to form a
tiny dell, carpeted with lush, dark grass and scattered with late windflowers,
wood sorrel and speedwells. She turned then to face her lover, her hair about
her shoulders and her skirt caught up over one arm to reveal the silver kirtle
beneath. She reminded him of a tapestry in the solar at Warwick, stitched by a
long-dead countess - Guinevere awaiting the coming of Lancelot.

 ‘This week has been seven days too long,’
said Nicholas Durvassal with conventional gallantry. ‘Warwick has kept me
close.’

 ‘Does he suspect? Can he know?’ Christine
was shivering, glancing about her.

 ‘No, I'm sure of it. Oh, we are
underlings, you and I, but he would regard my duplicity as a chink in his
armour and I should have been hauled up before him days ago. Christine, I love
you.’ He dropped down amongst the soft grass and the wood anemones and tugged
her gently to his side.

 ‘Nicholas…,’ she pulled away from him, ‘I
lie awake at night with Hugh at my side and I long for you. I spend days pacing
the solar, listening for the thud of hooves on the road and your coming, afraid
that I betray what I do by a word or a look. I tell myself that I will end what
is between us and when I see you I cannot do it!’ She shrugged helplessly.

 ‘And I will not,’ said Durvassal with
finality.

 ‘It is not a woman's place to be strong
but I should be thinking of my daughters and of the shame I will be bringing
upon them. I should be thinking of Hugh's honour....’

 ‘To hell with your daughters! To hell
with Hugh! Umberslade is lovely in the spring. There's a green bird up on the
cherry, tell me what it is.’ He lay on his back in the windflowers, confident
of his own irresistibility.

 ‘Nicky, I won't be side-tracked.’

 ‘Nor I. Is it a popinjay?’

 ‘Nicky, you will have to let me go!’

 ‘If you abandon me, Christine, I will
come for you in arms beneath the nose of the admirable Hugh and the three
little girls and the assistant cook and the man who cleans out the garderobe
and…’

 ‘Hush, I'm not going to leave you.’ Lady
Brandstone let his lips fasten hungrily upon hers and above them, from the
cherry, a greenfinch bobbed away towards Lapworth, the sun on his wings.

The early morning sunshine had hardly
penetrated Master Scarlet's yard when Stephen Bosco, eyes narrowed with sleep,
groped his way across the cobbles, swinging a leather bucket. When he returned
from the conduit, struggling two-handed with his burden, slopping water across
his path, the enclosed square beside the craftsman's three-storied house was
full of light.

 Stephen stood down his bucket, wiped a
damp hand across his brown forehead and paused to glance up at the west wall
which overlooked Master Gessel's shop next door and where their own apple tree,
squat and stunted, was shedding its prolific blossoms to carpet the alley
between. With a cry of horror Stephen spurted for the door and tore up two
flights of stairs until he was pushing his way by the moth-eaten curtain which
covered the attic doorway. He pounced upon the sleeping figures sprawled on the
row of straw pallets, shaking one, darting to another and pummelling him into
consciousness.

 ‘Dick, Harry, get up! Wake up, please!’

 Harry Holt stirred, squinted at the light
shafting in through the tiny window in the eaves, scratched his red head and
yawned. ‘You're not sleep-walking again, young Stephen? No? Then stop prancing
about at this unholy hour. If I've caught two hours sleep I'll count myself
lucky!’ With that he lapsed into silence. In desperation and with the
conclusion that Harry was sleeping again, Stephen punched his master's eldest
apprentice. Richard Latimer, once awake, was wide awake; he lunged out with a
right hook. Stephen backed away to dance excitedly at the foot of the bed.

 ‘Come out into the yard, quickly! It’s
our back-drop for the last scene; they've ruined it! It’s been slashed to
pieces! It’s all in ribbons!’

 Harry was awake again and even Wat
Stringer, the new journeyman, was knuckling his eyes, resigned to the fact that
it was time to rise. Latimer grabbed for his clothes and, still belting his
cote, followed Stephen down the dark tunnel of the attic stairs. In the yard
the boy was jigging up and down, pointing wildly. The backdrop, so carefully
stitched by Wat, so lovingly painted by the apprentices to grace the Mystery
Play of the Master Fletchers' Guild in two day's time, had been wilfully
destroyed. Stephen was nearly in tears over the tree on which he had
painstakingly daubed a pan of violent green paint only the day before.

 ‘Oh, who'd do such a thing?’ he wailed.

 ‘Someone with no cause to love the
Fletchers; someone who acknowledges the superiority of our plays over theirs,’
Harry began as Richard Latimer leant forward and plucked a nail from the
tattered cloth, holding it up for his companions to see. Impaled upon it,
rotting before the eyes, was a small kipper.

 ‘We have our answer!’ He tossed the
offending object onto the midden and in two strides was out of the gate and
into the narrow street, Harry speeding after. Stephen heard their shouts as he
went slowly back to the house, dragging his feet miserably.

 ‘Fletchers, Bowyers, 'Prentices - Clubs!’
It was a young clear voice already carrying the ring of authority.

 ‘What, at this hour?’ muttered the child
but, surprisingly, a dozen or so answered the familiar call, running with the
weapons nearest to hand, the tools of their trade. They clustered about Simon
Scarlet's fair-haired apprentice; Richard Latimer had been their leader for
some time now. Casually leaning with his back against the house wall, thumbs in
his belt, he related young Stephen's findings and the treachery of the Fishmongers
- for it was they, no doubt about it from their reeking trade-mark.

 ‘And Corpus Christi's the day after
tomorrow,’ someone calculated.

 ‘What can we do now to take our revenge?’
added another.

 ‘Come on Latimer, we'll have them out of
bed, we'll make mincemeat of
Jonah and the Whale
!’

 ‘That's just what they'll expect of us,
they'll be on their guard all day,’ Latimer said thoughtfully. ‘We'll wait
until dark and raid their props depot; it's that old warehouse down-stream from
the bridge. Our friend Arthur Chigwell is bound to have a picket on guard
throughout the night but with our numbers he'll be easily dealt with.’

 ‘Then where shall we meet?’ quavered a
stocky youngster from the fringe of the group.

 ‘What about Clerkenwell, the conduit?’
said Harry. It was a local landmark, but Richard shook his head:

 ‘By the time we reached the bridge we'd
have the wardens of every soke between here and the Cheap up in arms. No, we'll
assemble down by the river......’

 Simon Scarlet and his wife lay side by
side in their great bed, listening to the swelling murmur and shouts in the
street below.

 ‘Emma, the lads are up to something,’
sighed the Master Fletcher, pulling himself up onto one elbow.

 ‘Oh, leave them be,’ his wife counselled,
‘they've worked hard enough lately.’

 ‘Nothing in their heads but play-acting
at the moment.’ Scarlet was on his feet now, flexing his arms and legs,
reaching for a cloak. ‘I'll find 'em something to keep 'em occupied.’ He opened
the chamber window and leant out into the street. ‘The guild charges me with
preventing an unlawful assembly of apprentices. They'll not say my boys are
always nattering like wenches on street corners.’ He threw the words back over
his shoulder at his wife.

 ‘Harry, Wat has a job for you in the
shop. Richard, lad, old Tom Gilpin promised me two sacks of grey-goose, could
you nip down for them before we break our fast? You boys, haven't you homes to
go to, work to do?’

 Slowly, the apprentices’ ‘unlawful
assembly’ broke up and each youth wandered away upon some errand of his own. The
sun rose higher, the shops were unshuttered and goods displayed. Bishopsgate
began upon the business of the day.

~o0o~

A yellow moon, gibbous, misshapen, rose
above the Thames, sending shafts of golden water threshing through the arches
of the old bridge, lengthening the shadows, eclipsing the rose-glow of the
fading sun, dipping below Ludgate. Richard Latimer slipped softly through the
yard gate of the Master Fletcher's house and out into the cobbled street, old
mulberry suit black in the dusk, battered cap pulled down over his blond hair. He
ducked low beneath the lighted windows of the shop. Wat was working late at his
bench, stripping shafts of ash wood. Master Scarlet, silhouetted before the
lamp, was intent upon his paper-work; the accounts had always been a source of
trial to him. Beginning life as an apprentice, he had never had any
book-learning, couldn't write his name when he set up as Master Craftsman and
became one of the City's burgesses. It was a sign of the marching times that
there were many such as he amongst the new bourgeoisie.

 A casement creaked open below the eaves
and Harry's red head came up over the sill.

 ‘Give me a few moments, then follow.’ Richard’s
words hardly rose above a whisper and, with a wave of his hand, he slipped
through the maze of alleys which were London at night; through St. Helen's Ward
and Clerkenwell, down Lime Street and on towards Billingsgate and the wharves. From
all parts of the Fletchers' quarter, slinking figures converged upon the
warehouses and sheds which huddled along the river bank. Sometimes, they
narrowly missed the sharp eyes of the watch. Occasionally they were challenged
by a warden and ordered back home.

 Richard assembled his motley army in a
disused sail-loft, and gave his orders.

 ‘Raymond, Lambert, you'll render the
picket 'hors de combat' as silently as possible. You've rope? You'll need to
bind and gag him. I'll be waiting just below the bridge and when I get your
signal the rest of us will follow.’

 Raymond and Lambert slipped away and, a
minute or two later, Richard left the loft to saunter out into the night to
await their pre-arranged signal. The lights winked down at him from the crazy
jumble of houses atop the bridge, their gables and upper storeys leaning out
perilously above the water which swirled and eddied about the starlings of the
piers. A heavy hand on his shoulder and the young man reached automatically for
his knife. The Warden of Billingsgate smiled grimly down at him.

 ‘Richard Latimer - And what brings the
fletchers down to the wharves at curfew hour?’

 ‘Good evening, sir, and only this
particular fletcher - and Master Scarlet. He's been invited to sup with Burgess
Chigwell.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the fishmonger's imposing
house. ‘I usually go along to see him safe home - him not being as steady on
his feet coming back as going - Chigwell keeps a fine malvoisie in his cellar.’
He smiled conspiratorially.

 ‘You're a little forthcoming tonight,
Latimer.’ The warden's suspicions showed plainly upon his face. ‘Why aren't you
within doors attending your master?’

 Richard gave him a smile, dazzling in its
innocence. ‘I'm a fletcher's 'prentice, sir, as you said yourself. I've no nose
for your trade. The Fleet smells sweeter than yon house of Chigwell's! I
suppose you've nostrils attuned to it.’ He dodged the blow aimed at him with a
deftness born of long practice. The warden was hampered by his torch and
decided to let the insult pass.

 ‘You'll be off the street by the time I'm
round this way again,’ he warned.

 ‘I'll be gone.’ Richard watched the man
as he strode away into the shadowy direction of the Cheap.

 Raymond's head emerged round a corner and
the party from the sail-loft scrambled down and followed their leader into the
huge warehouse, property of the Master Fishmongers. Jars of paint, brushes and
cloths were littered about the floor and there were cursed mutterings and
stubbed toes. The moon obligingly sailed out of the clouds and, with morning
brightness, light streamed in through the high, shutterless windows, full onto
the huge effigy of a whale - sail-cloth stretched over a wooden frame, jagged
teeth bared in a grotesque grin.

 ‘Smash it,’ Harry said dispassionately
but Richard grabbed for a youngster advancing with cudgel raised.

 ‘No!’

 ‘You'll not stop us having our fun!’

 ‘Set a finger on it and I'll lay you out!
Do we want it put abroad that the fletchers are so afraid of competition that
they would completely wreck another Guild's chances? Smash that smiling
leviathan and without a whale there'd be no
Jonah
. An eye for an eye;
all we can afford to ruin is their back-drop.’ He stood aside as Raymond and
two lanky thirteen-year-olds were happily slicing through the painted cloth.

 ‘That'll do, fletchers, let's be away. We'll
split up at the old sail-loft and plan our return home with a minimum of
arrests by the watch.’ Harry at his side he opened the warehouse door and
stepped out into the street, the fletchers behind him. Ringing the building,
arm in arm, cudgels and knives at their belts, stretched a human chain of
grinning apprentices.

 A youth of about eighteen detached
himself from his fellows and strode forward, swaggering before them. ‘I've just
been having a little tete a tete with the warden. He came along to check that
Simon Scarlet was supping with my father. Of course, I told him that was the
case to assure a reduction of panic on the part of the wardens. I think we've
all been waiting for a chance like this. My greetings, Richard Latimer.’

 Richard inclined his fair head. ‘Arthur
Chigwell - if anyone was in doubt,’ he flashed back at his own followers. Arthur
was a dark, well-built young man; he tested his knife blade on a broad, chapped
thumb.

 ‘Unfortunately for you, we outnumber your
little force by about three to one,’ he said conversationally.

 ‘I'd call the odds even,’ Richard said,
with a smile.

 ‘And I'd say we outnumbered them!’
muttered Raymond. ‘One fletchers worth a dozen fish-gutters!’

 ‘Offal-mongers!’ yelled someone else and
the fight was on...

 No one saw a window open in a house
nearby or heard what was shouted; no one perceived a distraught officer of the
watch pleading with his warden to bring in hands from another soke, and no one
noticed a lighted barge shooting the bridge in a welter of foam, pulling into
the north bank. Who in their senses would be out on the river at that time of
night, and who would dream of shooting the bridge in the darkness? Madness! But
then, the man issuing his orders from the bows, sending men hurrying hither and
thither like demented ants was no ordinary mortal.

 Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of
Warwick, son of Black Guy, the Hound of Arden and scourge of the middle shires,
stepped down upon terra firma and sent his own men-at-arms into the fray. Beauchamp,
at twenty-eight, was reckoned a worthy successor to the legend of his father; tall,
broad-shouldered, with eyes of clear blue which could nevertheless darken to an
opaque and slatey grey when roused to anger. Yet Thomas was possessed of a
personal magnetism which had somehow eluded Guy. Men served this man because he
was Thomas Beauchamp, not because he was Warwick and thus demanded their
allegiance.

 Striding forward now, limned by the
wavering torchlight of his clustering entourage, he cut a splendid, terrible
figure, smouldering in red; his mantle, caught upon his right shoulder with a
great jewel as smooth as a pebble, large as a pigeon's egg, was lined with the
silver fur of Russian squirrel, soft and sleek to the touch. His accoutrements
glittered, from the gold links of the belt which bound his narrow hips and
supported the sheath of his baselard, its haft set about with balas rubies, to
the gold spurs at his heels, the gold circlet about his dark brow.