The Cardinal's Court Read online

  ‘Come in,’ she said, standing back and we passed in front of her and stood around awkwardly while she shut the door. I went to the window on the north side and looked out upon the busy scene. The boys from the chandlery were delivering bundles of candles to the lodgings: for everyone entitled to a bouche de court there would be one torch, one pricket, two sises, these candles which gave such a very pure illumination, and one pound of white lights. These would have been delivered to my lodgings by the time that I got back – and in the drive for economy commanded by the cardinal, the used candle ends would be collected and melted down in the chandlery to make new candles. Colm, in my absence, would have signed for everything, forming the English letters with pride in his skill.

  ‘Is this knife belonging to you, Madam?’ I heard Ramirez ask the question but I did not turn around. The clerk of the spicery, for some odd reason in charge of the chandlery, had turned up and was checking the amounts in the flat barrows. There was an argument going on about a torch over the door to the fish house. I tried to focus my attention on the scene below, but every nerve was strained to catch her response.

  ‘Yes, it is.’ She sounded puzzled. I had the courage then to turn around and to look at her face. The blue eyes were lightly widened, looking from Ramirez to the sulky face of Tom Seymour. There was no suggestion of alarm or tension in her face. I joined them.

  ‘This young man seems to have borrowed your knife, Madam, to deface some of the putti on the frieze in the queen’s chamber,’ said Ramirez

  ‘Deface …’ The word puzzled her and she looked from him to Tom.

  ‘He cut off their …’ I made a quick gesture towards Tom’s hose and she fastened her teeth into her lower lip. She took the knife gently from Ramirez and then made a sudden lunge at Tom.

  ‘Then maybe I chop you!’

  ‘What!’ He was young enough to feel alarmed. His eyes were widely opened with a mixture of terror and astonishment and suddenly her expression changed. The hint of smile in her eyes vanished. She stared at the boy intently, dropped the knife, snatched up a piece of charcoal and went across to the wall to the wooden panels where a Palestinian lake heaved with fish. As we watched, she sketched in the face of Tom, the tightly curled hair, the widely opened eyes and as the swiftly drawn lines multiplied, the expression of stunned amazement and of terror came out. Now she no longer looked back at him. Everything was focussed on her drawing, on the inner picture that she carried on her mind’s eye of his shock and astonishment. He was to be a model for one of the fishermen of Galilee; I could see that once painted his dark eyes and jet black hair would suit her picture, but the real skill was in the swift capturing of a fleeting expression of astonished alarm when the four fishermen were summoned by Jesus. Ramirez and I watched her at work, and I could see my own admiration mirrored in his eyes.

  By now Tom had recovered his poise and had begun to think that nothing too bad was going to happen. His face had regained its normal, slightly sulky, slightly defiant expression.

  ‘There!’ Susannah put in a final stroke with the charcoal, a line above the left eye, hastily smudged to a shadow with a fingertip and then she turned back to us. The knife lay on the table and absent-mindedly she went to replace it, slotting it into a wooden block. There were, I noticed, several slots empty and some of the knives bore the inscription ‘LH’. Susannah and her brother Lucas seemed to share their knives.

  ‘Master Tom Seymour says that he found the knife in the hall. Or did he steal it?’ I watched her expression as I said the words. Her face did not change in any way.

  ‘No, I’m sure that he did not steal it,’ she said. Her mind was still on the fishermen of Galilee and she picked up the tiny paintbrush and put another coat of verdigris over the gilded skeleton of the fish. Now it was almost indistinguishable from the other fish and yet the half-hidden glint drew the eye. I remembered the queen’s advice to me, last night, to stay with the cardinal. I hoped that I might be still at Hampton Court when the carpenters fastened these panels to the walls of the chamber and the whole large picture sprang into life.

  ‘You think that he is speaking the truth when he says that he just found it in the hall?’ Ramirez was looking sharply from her face to Tom’s.

  She shrugged her shoulders, smudged another of the charcoal lines, looking from her picture back to Tom. Then she frowned as though the words had just penetrated to her brain.

  ‘In the hall?’ she said absent-mindedly. ‘I did not leave it there.’

  ‘And Tom would have no business in your room.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have never seen, never noticed him before.’ Then she seemed to remember why we had brought him to her room and her lips slightly twitched. ‘That was very bad, what you do,’ she said to him. ‘You should not do a thing like that.’

  ‘Sorry!’ Tom was good at this sort of thing. I had noticed him before, getting himself out of trouble for borrowing Harry Percy’s horse and on the occasion when the instructor of the wards had threatened him with a whipping for an unauthorised visit to the man’s own room in order just to borrow, as Tom said plaintively, a glass of wine.

  ‘But the knife, Madam, where did he get the knife? Is he speaking the truth?’ Ramirez brought her back to the question. It did not unduly bother her. I could see that. In fact, I thought that most of her mind was still on her picture, but that, of course, could be what she wanted us to think. It was possible that her mind was busy thinking of an excuse. I was inclined to believe Tom. She had obviously not seen him before so he had not frequented the lodgings that the Horenbouts shared.

  ‘Perhaps Lucas took it,’ she exclaimed and then to Ramirez, ‘That is my brother. But I don’t think so. Why would he? He has his own tools. He is working on some glass now for the new summer banqueting house. He would have no reason to take a knife to the hall. Are you sure you find it in the hall?’

  ‘I swear by the Mass,’ said Tom.

  ‘But the Mass did not tell you to … to mutilate my little putti; that was the devil that made you do that!’ She rounded on him with a sudden return to savagery which made him take a step backwards. ‘Now, you go to the kitchen. Go to the cook and beg, beg on your bended knees, for some more of that fish water and fish skins that he bring me yesterday, fish soup he call it. Two pints boiled and boiled and we make some glue. You, you will stand there,’ she pointed to the brazier basin set into the stone counter by the north facing window, ‘and you will stir and stir until it thickens enough to make good glue, or else …’

  He was gone in an instant and we heard his footsteps scuttle down the stairs. Susannah laughed.

  ‘I have a little cousin like him back in Flanders, a little devil,’ she said and then her expression changed. ‘Why are you so worried about this knife? Has there been another death? James has fled. I heard that.’

  This took my breath away for a moment. She said it in such a calm way, almost as though there were a connection.

  ‘This knife.’ Ramirez took the lead. ‘It’s yours, is it not?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and she watched him carefully. ‘Yes, that is my knife.’ She gave a cursory glance at the initials on the handle.

  ‘What would you use a knife like that for?’ asked Ramirez.

  She shrugged. ‘Many, many things,’ she said evasively.

  ‘To cut paper, cardboard,’ I suggested. And I was conscious of the feeling of betrayal, almost of treachery. James was my concern but I could not help a sensation of guilt. She seemed such a lovely girl.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Her eyes were wary.

  ‘So you might have brought it to the hall in case one of the masks was damaged.’ I hated myself for pursuing the matter, but then there was James. I had to make sure that he was not wrongly blamed in this matter.

  She thought about it and shook her head. ‘No, I did not bring it. Why? It would be useless. A knife does not repair. It cuts.’

  ‘You think that young Tom Seymour took it from here, from your room here? Or does he the
truth tell?’ Ramirez rushed out the question, stumbling a little over the English words.

  She took only a second to answer that. ‘Oh, no. I don’t think that he took it from here. I think that he tells the truth. He has never been here, not even when I was absent. I saw the way he looked around. He was amazed, astonished at everything. And then I frightened him. Boys of that age will tell the truth when they are frightened about what may happen to them. He did not betray that he had stolen it. No, I do think that he just found it.’

  ‘So how did your knife get left in the hall?’

  ‘Was the man killed with a knife, not with an arrow?’ That was not quite an answer, but it deflected attention from her.

  And then when neither of us answered, she said, ‘It makes more sense if the knife killed him, not the arrow. I went into the hall today to see the tapestry. It will need mending, my brother tell me. I hope I might be trusted to do it. And I think to myself it does not make sense. A man behind a tapestry shot with an arrow. He bring down the whole hanging when he fallen is.’ Her English was deserting her as her intensity grew and she sounded worried.

  ‘It may be,’ I said carefully, ‘that the instructor of the wards, Master Edmund Pace, was killed not during the pageant, but after it. When the hall was empty,’ I added and watched the delicate colour in her cheek fade.

  ‘Not when I was there,’ she said. Absent-mindedly she snapped the stick of charcoal that she held and then put it aside.

  ‘I think that I should tell this, but my brother said that we should keep out of trouble. That serjeant, the king’s man, is a bad enemy to have, that’s what my brother say.’

  Why was the serjeant so eager to fasten the murder onto James? Susannah was on the verge of speaking. She glanced again up at the sketch that she had just done. I could tell that she was itching to get back to it, to paint in the face, to make the large brown eyes luminous with excitement and fear at the summons from the man on the shore, the sacred Jesus of whom they all had heard. It was going, perhaps, to be her masterpiece. She looked at the panels for a long moment. And then she looked back at me with resolution on her face.

  ‘There was no man there, no man lying behind the arras, when I was there. I tell you that I stay behind to pick up pieces of arrows, scraps that had fallen, everything is of use to us artists; I even made a mosaic, once, you know, from pieces of eggshell! So everything that I find, I save. But before I leave, then I go back to the hanging. I felt it in my hand, I touched it. I examine the canvas that lined it, if there might, per chance, be a hole in the canvas lining there so that I could look behind it and see how the sketches were made, back to front … And I tell you that there was no hole, and what is more, there was no man there and the hole, the hole that is now in the centre of the wheel of the cart, that hole was not there when I looked.’

  I took in a deep breath. ‘That is very valuable evidence, Mistress Susannah,’ I said. Even if it was true that under English law an accused man was guilty until he could get twelve honest men to swear that he was not present when the crime was committed, nevertheless, surely the evidence of this girl would be enough to clear my poor James. I turned to her, and I knew that my face wore a wide smile.

  But she shook her head. ‘It will not work,’ she said. ‘My brother is right. I should not have said this. The serjeant will not believe. He will not believe what I say.’

  ‘Then I’ll go to the cardinal,’ I said hotly.

  She shook her head again. ‘He will not believe either.’ She looked into my face with a very straight, very direct expression. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘James and I were lovers, once only, but that was once too many. And he, the serjeant, he knows all about it. Master Pace, the instructor of the wards, he tell him. If you go to the cardinal, the serjeant will tell him all about that affair and I might be sent away from Hampton Court. I do ask you,’ she said with her eyes steady upon my face, ‘not to disgrace me.’

  Oddly my immediate reaction was one of anger. What did that young fool James think he was playing at? What if the girl had got pregnant? What did she see in him, anyway? He was nothing but a boy. But my second thoughts were sad. The girl was right. This would not be the way. I had a feeling that I would have to fight hard to get James acknowledged as free of guilt, that it might, perhaps be an impossible task. The king’s serjeant–at-arms was in the pay of St Leger. He would strain every nerve to have the heir to the Ormond earldom declared guilty of murder.

  My anger and jealousy died down. James was in very serious danger. The serjeant had Dr Augustine under his thumb. Like all stupid people, the good doctor would be reluctant to admit that he might have made a mistake about the cause of death. Once again I turned my mind towards getting the boy out of England. Even if the king demanded that he be tried in Ireland, Piers Rua could, as he had often done, set up a court with a Brehon as magistrate and the verdict and punishment, if the crime were to be proved, would be under Irish law. It would cost Piers Rua a large sum of money, but James’s life would be safe.

  I got to my feet. There was nothing more to be gained here. I was reasonably convinced that Tom Seymour had told the truth and that he had picked up the knife in the hall.

  ‘We’d better go,’ I said abruptly to Ramirez. And then, even more abruptly, to the girl, ‘Where is your brother?’

  ‘Gathering willow twigs for charcoal,’ she said instantly. ‘You will probably find him at the bakehouse now. They will have finished baking the bread for suppertime and they will allow that the charcoal can be baked overnight in the warm ovens.’ She had understood that I was going to check on her story. Her manner was quite unlike her earlier easy-going and frank way of speaking. Now she was stiffly self-possessed and her eyes were hard. ‘You can verifieren,’ she added.

  Ramirez took a polite leave of her, but I said no more. It was barely worth seeing the brother, but I followed my Spanish friend through the carpenter’s yard and towards the enormous bake house. By now the chet loaves and the manchets had all been baked for supper and, swathed in towels, were being carried in wicker baskets towards the kitchens.

  I recognised Lucas Horenbout instantly. Very like his sister, tall, Flemish-looking, the very same blue eyes, the same blonde hair. He did not look at Ramirez, but eyed me warily and I knew instantly that he had identified me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He had an iron casserole in one hand and its lid in the other. The basin was full of small pieces, each about four inches long, of willow twigs. I looked at them with a feigned interest.

  ‘Your sister told us that you would be here,’ I said. ‘You are going to bake these twigs.’

  He was wary, but he followed my lead. There were many bakers and kitchen boys around.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The ovens are still piping hot. These casseroles will stay until morning and then the twigs will be turned to sticks of charcoal. If we are lucky!’ and then he added with shrug, ‘And if we are not lucky, well, we try again tomorrow morning after the dinner.’

  We waited in silence as he handed the iron casserole over to one of bakers and slipped a coin into the man’s hand, and then as he turned to go back, we fell into step, one on either side of him.

  ‘We’ve been talking to your sister,’ I said after a minute and then as his suspicious eyes flashed towards me, illuminated by the torch still burning on the corner of the carpenters’ yard, I said hastily, ‘We wondered about a knife found in the great hall. The knife had her initial on it, the letter S.’

  ‘And …’ He sounded hostile and I hastened to put him at ease.

  ‘As you know, there was a man murdered there and we were anxious to know whether someone could have stolen the knife. It was found by a boy, Master Tom Seymour, one of the cardinal’s wards, but he denies that he stole it. He says that he just picked it up in the hall. Your sister,’ I said, with an eye on him, ‘does not think that the boy stole it, but she wondered whether you might have borrowed it for some work in the hall.’

  ‘I have no wo
rk in the hall.’ Like his sister, his voice, under stress, became more Flemish and the smooth v sound in the word ‘have’ sound much more like a sharp Flemish ‘haf’.

  ‘So you can’t tell why the boy should have picked up, in the hall, the knife with the letter S engraved on its handle?’

  ‘No.’ His voice was curt and unwelcoming, but I persisted.

  ‘Your sister, like you, has no idea why one of her knives should have been found in the hall.’ I watched him carefully, but his lips were compressed and his eyes, hooded by drooping lids, were fixed on the shadows at our feet.

  ‘I’m not sure why you are so interested in this knife, Master Lawyer. I understand that the man was killed by an arrow, by one of the young wards of Cardinal Wolsey,’ he said and his eyes darted a sudden glance at me. A moment later they were, once again, fixed upon his feet, but we had just passed beneath a flaring torch and I had caught the sudden gleam from those pale blue eyes so like his sister’s.

  ‘There is no evidence as to that, no real evidence – what triggered this supposition was false information,’ I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that I can’t help you. I haven’t the slightest idea of how my sister’s knife came to be left in the hall.’ He turned from us abruptly then, crossing the carpenter’s yard on the diagonal and seconds later I heard the door click.

  ‘Suspiciously uncooperative,’ said Ramirez.

  ‘Or perhaps he just doesn’t want his sister mixed up in a scandal,’ I said, remembering what Susannah had said regarding her relationship with James. I could not blame the brother for not wanting his sister’s name tied to this murder.

  ‘Well,’ said Ramirez, ‘we don’t seem to have got too far, today, after that interesting evening yesterday.’ He sniffed the air, full of the sweet smell of newly baked bread. The wine, ale and manchet allowance for each of the lodgings was being trundled down the narrow passageway on these narrow flat barrows and the pungent smell of wood smoke rose from the tall brick chimneys with their twisted patterns outlined with icy traces of sleet.