The Weaver's Inheritance (22 page)

As I headed towards one of the many cookshops, their goods displayed enticingly on trestle tables set up in front of their booths, I recalled the last time I was in Westminster, two years previously, when, on the eve of the English invasion of France, I had seen the Duke of Gloucester, at the head of his retinue, ride by on his way to London. The thought was barely formed, before I and my fellow citizens found ourselves being unceremoniously pushed to one side in order to make room for another lordly procession, this time entering, not leaving, Westminster, its banners and pennons all bearing the insignia of the Duke of Clarence. The Duke himself led the cavalcade, his handsome, florid face contorted with an anger that was akin to hatred. In front of Westminster Hall, he reined in with a violence which must have torn at the delicate skin of his horse’s mouth, and almost threw himself from the saddle, beckoning furiously to a man who rode just behind him. A palace official tried to bar his way, but was thrust roughly from his path.

‘I must and will see my brother!’ declared the Duke, his voice carrying clearly to our straining ears.

‘His Highness has left for Windsor,’ spluttered the outraged steward, still valiantly trying to prevent Clarence’s entry.

‘But the Council is still in session?’

‘It is.’ The affirmation was reluctant. ‘But I have no authority to admit Your Grace.’

The Duke, however, balked of his chief prey, was in no mood to give in gracefully. ‘I don’t give a toss for your authority,’ he snarled. ‘Where are they sitting? Upstairs?’ He addressed the hang-dog man at his elbow. ‘Doctor, stay close and follow me.’

The palace official made one last attempt to halt this uninvited guest, but was immediately pinned back against the open door by two of Clarence’s bravos, two whose faces I swore I could remember from the arrest of Ankaret Twynyho.

I turned to my neighbour who, judging by his bloodied apron and the cleaver fastened to his belt, was a butcher delivering meat to the pie-shops. ‘What’s it all about?’ I asked him.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more than you, friend, but I suspect it’s to do with that man of the Duke’s who was hanged on a charge of trying to procure the King’s death by necromancy. I was told that before his execution, he read out a long statement on the scaffold, passionately protesting his innocence.’

‘No doubt like the Widow Twynyho,’ I commented bitterly.

‘Who?’ My companion was nonplussed. I explained and the butcher sighed. ‘There’s bad blood between those two brothers, no doubt about it. Small wonder really, when you consider how King Edward’s had to put up with the Duke’s carryings-on for all these years.’

‘Who’s the man with him, the one he called Doctor?’ I wanted to know.

Neither the butcher nor anyone else in the immediate vicinity could enlighten me, but an elderly woman, standing just within earshot, said that he was that same Doctor Goddard who had proclaimed the late King Henry’s right and title to the crown seven years earlier. ‘You know! When the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick tried to oust King Edward and put King Henry back on the throne.’

This was disturbing news if Clarence were indeed stirring up old treacheries, and consorting with past comrades from those days of his greatest betrayal. I studied the rest of the Duke’s retinue, patiently awaiting their master’s reappearance, and saw with alarm that some of them wore breastplates and leg armour, and carried both sword and dagger at their belts. I wondered if others had also noticed.

The crowd began to disperse as people quickly grew bored with inactivity. It had been interesting for a moment or two while it seemed as if the Duke’s retainers might start brawling in the street, with the hint of possible bloodshed to come. But all was now quiet and they started to drift away, anxious to pursue their own affairs once again. Just at that moment, however, the Duke of Clarence erupted from the hall, literally dragging the unfortunate Doctor Goddard behind him.

‘Read it!’ he screamed at the poor man, who was white-faced and shaking. ‘Read it! Loudly, you stupid fool, so that everyone can hear you!’

What Doctor Goddard was being forced to declaim was Thomas Burdet’s protestation of innocence, which, according to the butcher, the condemned man himself had proclaimed just before he was hanged. When the quavering voice eventually died away, the Duke cleared his throat and yelled, ‘You all heard that! My man was not guilty! But that didn’t protect him from the vengeance and spite of the Woodvilles. Let me inform you, however, that they are the ones who are exponents of the Black Arts, not Thomas Burdet! They are the ones who have put a spell upon my brother in order to turn him against me! They are the ones whose agents poisoned my wife and newborn child! They are the ones who, if they have their way, will consume me as a candle flame is consumed by the wind!’ He paused for a moment, blinking, as though he had surprised himself by this flight of poetic imagery. Then he continued, ‘But I shall not let them. I shall be requited. That creature who calls herself Queen of England shall be proved an impostor when the time is ripe! And that will be sooner than she thinks!’ After which diatribe, he remounted his horse, wheeled it about and galloped off back to London, his retinue streaming in his wake.

This histrionic performance left his audience in two minds; some seemed to be genuinely worried at the prospect of renewed civil strife, while others merely sniggered.

‘He’s a windbag, that one,’ laughed the butcher. ‘He’ll soon come to heel when the King whistles him up.’

‘But suppose the King doesn’t whistle him up this time,’ I suggested. ‘Suppose that, at long last, Edward’s had enough.’

My companion considered this idea for a moment or two before confidently dismissing it. ‘No, he’ll forgive his brothers anything. Duchess Cicely’s children have always been a closeknit brood.’

‘So have the Woodvilles,’ I retorted grimly.

But we parted friends, agreeing to differ, and when I had eaten my dinner, bought from a pieman’s stall near the London Gate, I set out along the Strand, past the Chère Reine Cross, to the capital, where my first business would be to look up my old friend, Philip Lamprey, in his second-hand clothes shop, west of the Tun-upon-Cornhill.

*   *   *

The evening meal – a simple stew made special by some secret ingredient of Jeanne Lamprey’s own – was finished, the dirty plates pushed aside and our cups brimming with ale. Sitting opposite me at table was my host, his small, pock-marked face, illuminated by the single rushlight, intent and interested. When I had first met him, six years earlier, he had been thin to the point of emaciation, a beggar on the London streets, deserted by his wife who had run off with another man while Philip was soldiering abroad. In those days, his friends, if they could be dignified by such a name, had been found among the dregs of humanity in East Cheap and Southwark. But between then and our second encounter, four years later, he had prospered, saving enough money from his begging to rent a stall in Cornhill, where he sold second-hand clothes, and was now living very happily with his second wife in the daub-and-wattle hut at its rear.

Jeanne Lamprey, a little, round, bustling body, with bright brown eyes and a mop of unruly black curls, was young enough to be Philip’s daughter, being at this time, as far as she knew, some twenty years of age, compared with his forty-three. But in everything except years, she was far older than he. Her obvious love of him was not uncritical; she was not blind to his faults. She knew he was fond of strong liquor and therefore kept a wary eye on the amount he consumed, scolding him gently when he drank too much. Her business sense, too, was greater than his, although she was too partial and too clever to make him aware of it. Meeting her again, I was reminded of someone else, not in looks but in ways, and it was a long time before I realized that it was Adela.

‘So,’ breathed Philip, sighing with contentment at a well-filled belly, ‘here’s a puzzle. I can tell from your manner what you think, Roger, without even having to ask. You think this man who claims to be Clement Weaver is definitely an impostor. But he could have escaped in the way he says he did, you know.’ My host spoke with all the authority of one who had played a part in the original mystery, and made a contribution, however small, to its unravelling. ‘I knew a man once who struck his head a severe blow, and knew nothing of who he was, or where he came from, for months after he recovered consciousness.’

I shook my head. ‘You haven’t met this Irwin Peto. There’s something about him I just don’t trust.’

‘Something you don’t want to trust,’ Philip surmised shrewdly, ‘because, foolishly, you feel it to be somehow your fault that the Alderman has suffered his son’s absence all these years. You blame yourself for not having thought of the possibility of escape and your failure to search further.’

‘No,’ I insisted stubbornly. ‘The real Clement was fond of his sister, everyone who knew him says so. He wouldn’t have allowed his father to rob Alison of her share of their inheritance, however badly she behaved. He wouldn’t have been so unfair.’ I wiped my forehead with my hand. The hut was small and the May nights were growing warmer.

Philip gulped more ale. ‘Yet this friend of yours,’ he continued in his rasping voice, ‘this Widow Juett, is of the opinion that he
is
Clement Weaver. According to her account he recognized her without any prompting, although if he was an impostor, he couldn’t have known her. What do you make of that?’

‘I think Adela was pointed out, and her history made known to him at some time or another without her being aware of the fact. That seems to me the most likely answer.’

Philip grinned. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We won’t waste time arguing. So what do you want of me?’

I glanced guiltily at Jeanne Lamprey as I answered, ‘To help me find this Morwenna Peto who lives in the Southwark stews. I want to hear what she has to say; to see if her story tallies with Irwin’s.’

Philip, too, looked towards his wife, as though asking for her approval, but Jeanne kept her eyes lowered, apparently absorbed in the task of picking at one of her nails. Denied her authority, my host said cautiously, ‘I’m not sure … It’s a long time since I was in those parts. I doubt I’d be remembered.’

‘Bertha Mendip would remember you,’ I insisted. ‘And as far as Morwenna Peto’s concerned, Bertha’s a West-countrywoman herself, and would surely have heard of any other such in the neighbourhood.’

‘That’s possible,’ Philip admitted, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. He knew from past experience that my appearance in his life invariably meant trouble, and that his wife also knew it.

Jeanne stopped picking her nail and looked up, fixing her big brown eyes sternly upon her husband. ‘You must do what Roger asks, Philip,’ she said, surprising both of us. ‘He is a friend, and he needs our help. As long as you carry your knife with you and Roger takes his cudgel, you should come to no harm. Wear your oldest clothes. Better still, you can pick the worst items from the stall.’

Philip was unable to restrain the face-splitting grin which cut his sharp little features almost in two. I guessed that, just occasionally, he pined for the freedom of his old way of life and the companionship of his former comrades. Not for long and not very often, respectability had become too deeply ingrained in him by now to be lightly abandoned, but every now and then he needed some excitement in an existence which had become a little too humdrum.

‘We’ll go to Southwark tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, drink up and let’s hear the rest of your news.’

So I recounted the episode I had witnessed at Keyford the preceding month, also the one at Westminster that selfsame morning, and the conversation immediately turned to the likelihood of renewed civil strife, this time not between Yorkist and Lancastrian, but the possibility of internecine war between two royal brothers.

‘Timothy Plummer predicted it,’ I said gloomily, ‘when I saw him at Tewkesbury last January, after the funeral of Duchess Isabel and the news of Charles of Burgundy’s death at Nancy. He said Clarence would propose himself for Mary’s husband, and blame the Woodvilles if he were thwarted, and that’s exactly what has happened. Either he or the Queen will eventually be destroyed in the process, but in the meantime, other innocents on both sides are being sacrificed.’

‘That’s all very well, but how d’you know they’re innocents?’ argued Philip, who liked to take the opposing view, often for no better reason than sheer cussedness. ‘Take this clerk, this Stacey, who accused Blake and Burdet! I was chatting to a man in Leadenhall Market only yesterday morning. He was from Oxford, and he said Stacey’s well-known among the undergraduates as a caster of horoscopes. His whole family’s been involved in the business at one time or another.’

‘Maybe, but that doesn’t make Blake and Burdet equally guilty,’ I insisted, started to get heated.

‘No smoke without fire,’ Philip countered belligerently, slapping his empty cup down hard on the table.

‘Nonsense!’ I snapped. ‘I’ve seen plenty of smoking fires where there was never so much as a wisp of flame.’

‘You’ll tell lies just to win your point,’ my host retorted, and was about to thump me, not altogether playfully, on the shoulder, when his wife leaned over and grasped his wrist.

‘Stop it, the pair of you! Why can men never talk seriously without losing their tempers? In any case,’ Jeanne added, ‘it will soon be time for bed. Roger, you know you’re welcome to share our quarters if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.’

‘I’ve slept in far worse places,’ I assured her heartily, while Philip, a little shamefaced, poured us both more ale, ‘but tonight I’ll walk as far as the Ald Gate and the Saracen’s Head. I’ve stayed there before, two years since.’

Philip at once demurred, urging me to remain, but Jeanne was too sensible to contest my decision. She knew as well as I did that the hut was not big enough to be shared by a husband and wife, not yet out of love with one another, and a comparative stranger.

‘You’ll be comfortable at the Saracen’s Head,’ she agreed. ‘But you must promise to return here for breakfast.’