The Cardinal's Court Read online

  ‘Put a red linen mat and then no one will notice a few drips,’ I said and George looked at me with admiration.

  ‘What a good idea. See to it, Francis.’

  ‘I suppose that you know Westminster like the back of your hand, George,’ I said as Francis hurried away before any more instructions could be heaped upon him. ‘You spend so much time at York Place with the cardinal, don’t you?’

  ‘He never travels to Westminster without me,’ said George preening himself. ‘He has so much business there what with the Star Chamber and other such matters. Of course I …’

  ‘Would you know a place called Canon’s Row?’ Hurriedly I took Skelton’s poem from my pocket and waved it under his nose for a minute. ‘He wants to have my opinion on his poetry and I’m not sure whether he shouldn’t try a different rhyming sequence. You see,’ I said earnestly, ‘I wonder whether he’s rather forcing a rhyme in places, like for instance where he rhymes the word ‘crow’ with ‘Canon’s Row’ – it does seem as though he couldn’t really think of what else rhymes with crow and bow, doesn’t it? Or is it a real place?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a real place all right, it’s just near to Bridge Street, not far from Westminster Abbey. It used to be for the canons of St Stephen’s Church, but that’s rather derelict now. Most of the old canons are dead and haven’t been replaced.’ George wrinkled his brow over John Skelton’s poem. ‘I see what you mean, but you know he’s supposed to be a very clever man,’ he said dubiously. ‘He was tutor to our king and now he is his poet.’ He scratched his head. ‘Is he making fun of the cardinal?’ He asked the question with a note of rising indignation in his voice and I hastily took the sheet away from him.

  ‘I’ll advise him to abandon this – bad poetry.’ I shook my head sadly over the closely filled pages.

  He regarded me with respect. ‘Do you know about poetry, Hugh?’

  ‘Of course! Every Brehon lawyer has to pass examinations in poetry as well as in law.’ I made a pretence of scanning the rhymes and once again shaking my head sadly.

  ‘Really!’ He was looking at me with respect and I knew that a hundred questions trembled on his lips.

  ‘Well, I think that I had better give him my opinion about this. I’ll get the letter written and then when the barge is going to Westminster it can be taken to him.’ I had to get away from George. Francis had returned with three red napkins, all of slightly different shades, for the gentleman usher’s perusal and I could see that I might be kept here half the day helping him to come to decisions. I waved a casual salute and made my way back down the corridor, opening the door into the court and coming face to face with the king’s serjeant. He had a companion, but she disappeared with a flip of a cloak and toss of a veiled head. I recognised her, of course. There was no mistaking the grace of that walk. They had indeed trained her up very well in the French court. I lifted an eyebrow at the serjeant just to assure him that I knew whom he had been listening to.

  Master Gibson drummed his fingers on the windowsill of the corridor. The pale light from outside drew flecks of silver from his eyebrows and the lines around his mouth looked deeper and harsher than usual. ‘See here, Master Brehon,’ he said abruptly. ‘My task is keep the king’s law in his palaces and anywhere the king visits. Here at Hampton Court on Shrove Tuesday evening a man was killed in the presence of the king himself. It’s all very well for the cardinal to tell his serjeant to delay, to tell him to allow Master Brehon a few days, but why should you have a few days? Why should that young man, seen to commit murder by two good witnesses, one a friend to him and the other almost betrothed to him, why should he be still at liberty, that’s what I ask myself. And you, a judge, a friend of the cardinal, I suspect you of knowing the whereabouts of this young man and refusing to reveal them. What if he is a murderer, and there are men like that, who will not be content just with one death but who will kill and kill again, just like a fox in a poultry house? Where would I be then? What will Sir Thomas More say to me?’

  He had a point and a serious grievance. I set myself to talk to him seriously.

  ‘But, you know, Serjeant, it would be worse if you got the wrong person, wouldn’t it? After all this is not just a matter of a thieving clerk. James Butler is an important pawn in the game. The king doesn’t want any trouble about the Ormond succession and he needs the Butler support in Ireland. Kildare is greedy, Desmond is unreliable, and as for the west and the north of Ireland, well, that’s a tinderbox. All those petty kings: Turlough O’Brien of Thomond, his vassals, and his allies, the O’Byrnes, the MacNamaras, the O’Connors, the O’Carrolls and the O’Kennedys – I could name a dozen more – if Butler was to cease to assist Kildare, well the king might have to say goodbye to his possessions in Ireland.’

  My words impressed him. I could see that. I could visualise thoughts cross his mind and could see his struggle with himself. This was a difficult one. If the instructor of the wards was systematically blackmailing his young charges, then some of the greatest names in the kingdom were involved: Ormond, Northumberland, Arundel, Seymour, Bigod, Derby … I could see those thoughts cross the mind of the man responsible for finding out the truth of this murder. His face darkened.

  ‘Ireland!’ he said contemptuously and a snarl parted his lips as he spat the word out. ‘What about the north?’

  And, of course, he was right. Trouble in the north of England would be worse than trouble in Ireland. However bad it would be to have James Butler dangle from the hangman’s noose or see his head roll from the chopping block, it would be very much worse to have the heir to the earl of Northumberland hauled off to execution in the Tower of London and perhaps have a rising in the north among the Percys, the Talbots, the Dacres and others.

  ‘There’s no easy way out of this,’ he said sombrely, ‘but I have to do my duty and if you obstruct me, then I will arrest you.’

  With that he turned on his heel and strode off. All the camaraderie engendered by our tennis games seemed to have ebbed away. I gazed after him thoughtfully. This threat to me was another reason to leave Hampton Court. Cardinal Wolsey would be very soon heavily engaged in negotiations about the Italian war and would have no time to deal with this domestic issue.

  I would have to be careful about my departure though. I had planned to go to my lodgings and to pack a couple of travelling bags but would that be wise, now? I gazed thoughtfully around the court. A movement at a window caught my eye, a dark shape and then just frost-patterned glass. A man had suddenly stood back. The serjeant probably had given his orders. I would be followed wherever I went, not arrested, nor detained, just shadowed. I bit my lip, undecided as to what to do.

  And then deliberately I walked rapidly across the court, not going towards the clock tower, but towards the north cloister. As soon as I got there I fumbled in my pocket, took out a handful of coins, began to count them and deliberately allowed one to fall to the ground. I moved forward another few steps and then whirled around. One of the yeoman stopped abruptly. I hailed him in a friendly way and he pointed out the piece of silver half disguised by the slivers of ice. He looked slightly embarrassed, stamped his feet energetically, but he did not go away. There was no doubt that he had been ordered to shadow me.

  Thoughtfully I threaded my way down the narrow passageway, stood aside to allow the wood yard boys with their long flat barrows go past me and I looked around for inspiration. A light in an upper window in the Carpenter’s Court caught my eye. I stopped. My shadow stopped also. Like all the yeoman serving the cardinal he was a tall, heavy man, and he made a lot of noise with his footsteps and almost overbalanced when he came to a standstill. I grinned to myself. It might not be too hard to fool him. I got out my knife and took my handkerchief from my pocket and began to scrape a little dust from the brick in the wall, making sure to take only a shaving from each of the crimson bricks. When I had a nice little pile I knotted my handkerchief around it and walked briskly towards a door in the court and knocked energetically.


  To my relief, it was Susannah who opened the door. ‘Got that brick dust for your paint,’ I said in ringing tones, which I was sure would reach to the yeoman lurking in the shadow of the archway.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. She looked bewildered, but that didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to see her face. I went through the door rapidly and closed it behind me instantly. She looked sharply at me, but said nothing until we had mounted the stairs and were in the big, light-filled room under the roof. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said. She bit back a smile and produced a wooden bowl which was filled to almost its rim with the very same crimson brick dust.

  ‘Oh, well,’ I said and tipped in my contribution. I walked across to the table and carefully examined her knives, taking them out one by one, replacing each in its slot and then I took out the narrowest and smallest of them and brought it to the window facing to the south. The sky was grey and there was no sun, but there was enough light to be able to see it clearly, the shining steel of the blade and the well-scrubbed wooden handle.

  ‘You keep your knives very clean.’ It was a stupid comment. And a stupid action. I had already inspected this knife. What did I hope to find? This was a workroom where there was every kind of scrubbing soap and cleansers available. She would probably make her own – varying degrees of fat, ley and ashes, according to the strength required. And there were graters, stiff bristled brushes and scrubbers, too, on that table in the corner of the room.

  ‘Like a good craftsperson.’ She replied to my remark with a quick smile. I didn’t think that it worried her. She took the knife from me and replaced it within its slot. ‘Now, tell me, what is this brick powder for?’

  ‘I just wanted an excuse to come and see the fish.’ I walked across to the ‘Fishermen on the Sea of Galilee’ panels. I scanned the picture, at first absent-mindedly and then focussed intently upon it.

  ‘Yes, I see what you meant,’ I said after a long moment when I swept a glance from bottom to top of the picture and then back again. Just that little hint of gold and a slightly more substantial presence due to the skeleton beneath the paint, both of these drew my eye immediately. She was watching my face, a half smile came and went on her lips and her very blue eyes widened suddenly with a look of pleasure.

  ‘You like?’ she queried.

  ‘Very much,’ I said. It would have to be Calais. A murderer in the abstract was one thing; in the flesh was another.

  ‘I need to get away from Hampton Court without being seen,’ I said turning around to face her.

  ‘James?’ she queried. I could see how her colour paled and her eyes darkened for a moment. Still in love with him, I thought with a slight pang.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked abruptly.

  ‘The same age as Mistress Boleyn.’ She faced me and there was an angry glint in her blue eyes.

  ‘Mistress Boleyn.’ I smiled to myself as I placed the two girls side by side in my mind’s eye. The one tall, well-made, blonde, blue-eyed with a straightforward gaze, an artist and a craftswoman; the other slight, small-boned, dark, subtle, sly, mysterious and, I had to admit, alluring.

  ‘Can you help me?’ I brushed aside all other thoughts. Only James and his safety mattered now. The cardinal had shown the way and now it was up to me to follow the path. This brother and sister might have parcels delivered, large pieces of wood for panels, panes of glass for painting upon, clay for modelling … They would know all about boats, about ways of transporting goods.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  I would have to trust to her. She, above all people could not wish any harm to James. I suddenly remembered my father in front of a class of scholars telling them that preservation of the self was the strongest emotion within the human soul but I brushed the thought aside.

  ‘I want to go to London without being seen, or followed,’ I said.

  ‘The cardinal,’ she began.

  ‘He has given me a note for his barge,’ I interrupted, ‘but …’

  ‘But you are afraid that you will be followed and will bring disaster with you. You know where James is hiding.’

  There was no hint of a question in her voice and she left me instantly and went to stare out of the window. I joined her there, glancing sideways at the thoughtful face. We both looked down up the figure of the patient yeoman, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands.

  ‘I have to trust you,’ she said after a minute.

  I smiled to myself. ‘I’m trusting you,’ I pointed out.

  ‘The clerk of the greencloth, he and the serjeant, they want to check everything, charge big sums for everything, not allow people to make a little profit,’ she was stumbling over her words. ‘We need oil, you see, all sorts of oil, lamp oil, mainly. We use it for making our paints, for a mordant, for all sorts of uses, we use barrel loads of it, but the clerk, you, you saw him, everything, money, money and we have to pay money, extra money, big money to buy it and people us do not pay until at end of process and we …’

  ‘So you have a private way sometimes of getting free supplies,’ I put in. I had thought that when I saw her in the kitchen. She was, I noticed, just purchasing very small amounts, enough to last her a few days, only. Looking at the activity going on in this large workroom, the room so full of projects, I could see that they would need large amounts of supplies. The goods placed on barges for Hampton Court would not be as meticulously checked as they were when they arrived. Cardinal Wolsey’s all-seeing eye had not yet reformed the activity at the docks. But once goods arrived at the Hampton Court jetty they were meticulously recorded on their journey from storehouse, to kitchen, to plates, even the leftovers from the last sitting, which were given to beggars, were checked by one of the many clerks.

  She nodded. ‘Master Beasley is very kind. He help us. He tell us. We have a place, a secret place, there is a skiff, a so small skiff, we … I will be ruined, we will be ruined if you tell …’

  ‘I won’t tell.’ I hoped that my voice would quieten her. Her own had begun to rise. These windows filled with glass were elegant and useful, but they did not block sound in the way that a good wall, or even shutters would do.

  ‘’There’s a stream that joins the river, just by the pond where they keep the fish for the kitchen. They have a boat there. Master Beasley told us.’ She had lowered her voice and I nodded encouragingly – yes, the kitchen would have to have a supply of fish for times when bad weather would cut off supplies. And it made sense for the kitchen to keep a boat there, much easier to transport large quantities of fresh fish by boat and land it just next to the fish larder. And a boat could be used to meet the barge on its way with the supplies.

  I could see what Susannah and her brother did now in order to get their supplies without the knowledge of the clerks, and I could see how this could work. The Thames wound its way with loops and twists between London and Hampton. I could just imagine that there might be a little concealed place where goods could be unloaded secretly. There might not the same strict system of checking the loads from the docks. Hampton Court was the size of a small town. And the consumption of oil for cooking and for lighting myriads of lamps and torches for corridors and courts would be enormous. One barrel here and there would not be missed.

  ‘How do you get there?’ I asked aloud.

  ‘You go down the gallery, past the terracotta roundels of the Roman emperors. This is what I always do. I pretend to be checking that there is no injury to the clay.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘And then I slip out the far door. Go through the south-easterly garden, keep facing south until you reach a little patch of willow trees. If you go through these you will find the stream. The skiff is tied to one of the trees. Row towards the river and then wait for the barge.’

  There was one more question that I needed to ask. If the attempt to get to Calais failed, then I needed to save James in some other way.

  ‘Mistress Horenbout,’ I said, ‘would you be very unhappy if you had to go back to Flanders?’

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sp; She gave me a long and enquiring look and eventually she said, ‘If I had to, well, I would go. There is still plenty of work for someone like me in Flanders. I would go back to doing illustrating, I think. It would be a change to work small again.’ She gave a glance over towards the fishermen picture and half-smiled to herself. She did not look too concerned. Perhaps for an artist like her the most important thing was the work.

  I kissed her quickly, impulsively, on her soft lips, and then went down the stairs, opened the door and stood for a moment pretending to examine the sky. My shadow was still hanging around, pretending not to look in my direction and after my one quick glance, I did not look at him again. I walked briskly through the gatehouse, through the Base Court, under the clock tower and heard him behind me, but then he stopped as I turned in through a door. The gallery was quite empty and I slammed the door loudly behind me. My watcher would not dare to follow me in here; he would be too conspicuous. He would, I guessed, lurk beside the clock tower, waiting to see whether I returned to the jetty. There was no one but me there in the empty gallery, but I took care not to come out too quickly. I followed Susannah’s example and studied the eight roundels of the Roman emperors, fashioned from baked clay, London clay, apparently, and each had cost the cardinal about three pounds sterling. I could see how one could study them for a long section of time as they had such intricate detail. I could write a treatise on those roundels, I stayed so long gazing at them.

  Eventually I took a chance and stole out by the far door. Some boys were pushing wood barrows towards the cardinal’s quarters and I ducked behind them and slipped through the clock tower archway and stood in its dark shadow. Colm had just finished putting away the wood and was idly sweeping up some scraps of bark from in front of the door. He was on edge, uneasy, I could see that, and when I softly said the Gaelic words ‘anseo, Colm!’ he started violently, but he was a quick-witted lad and he gave a cursory glance around before sauntering over towards me.