The Cardinal's Court Read online

  ‘No, he won’t be mourned, will he, Master Pace? Even made himself unpopular in the kitchen and that’s a great mistake in any household.’

  My light tone seemed to give him confidence. He turned his face towards me.

  ‘Did he tell you about me?’

  ‘Who, the cook?’ I knew it wasn’t that, but, as with a nervous dog, it would be better to allow him to approach me. The boy’s face was strained and anxious.

  ‘No, Master Pace. He swore he wouldn’t tell, that he wouldn’t tell anyone. I just wondered.’

  ‘You can talk to me about anything that worries you,’ I said. ‘I’m a lawyer, you know. People pay good money for my advice, but I’ll do it free for you as you are James’s friend. I won’t tell anyone, but blackmail has a habit of spreading. It would be good for you to have someone to approach if anyone tries to blackmail you again.’ What was it that the cook had said about the clerk of the kitchens and the instructor of the wards? Hand in glove with that fellow who has just gone out, that was it.

  ‘He saw me once. I’d been very tired. I was very worried. I was afraid, afraid about things.’ Gilbert gulped heavily, but I didn’t move, just waited and did not look at him. It was very dark in the chapel. The red glass within the cresset in front of the altar sent out a warm glow from the perfumed oil, but little light. We were quite private.

  ‘I fell down and when I came to my senses, he was there. He was standing over me, looking down at me. I tried to pretend that I had just fallen and stunned myself, but he knew better. You see, you see,’ the boy’s voice stumbled. ‘You see …’ now it sunk to a mere whisper. ‘I had lost control of my bladder. That happens, you know. My hose were drenched.’

  I knew instantly what he was hinting at. ‘You suffer from epilepsy?’ I made the enquiry in a cheerful, unconcerned way and I sensed rather than saw him look at me. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of about that, you know. It’s supposed to be a sign of intelligence, of greatness. Julius Caesar suffered from it, you know, according to Tacitus.’

  ‘Really, I didn’t know that.’ There was a moment’s silence and then Gilbert said: ‘I was afraid that I was going mad. Just like my father. Did you know that? Did you know that my father is a lunatic? That’s why I am a ward of the cardinal’s. He manages my father’s estate.’

  ‘There’s no problem there.’ I threw as much certainty as I could muster into my tone of voice. ‘Don’t worry, Gilbert. The two things have nothing to do with each other. The chances are that you take after your mother.’ I knew nothing about Gilbert’s mother, or his father, either, but it seemed to have been the right thing to have said as his voice sounded very cheerful when he spoke.

  ‘Well, she’s full of common-sense, she’s got her head on the right way.’

  ‘And has she met Mistress Blount?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. She liked the little boy, too. She advised me to petition the cardinal to have him until he was five or six years old. She said Bessie would miss him if not. She said that King Henry himself remained with his mother and his sisters until he was six years old.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said heartily. ‘You’re feeling better now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I felt better as soon as I saw that he was dead. The only thing is,’ and then he hesitated, ‘I feel bad that he forced me to tell a secret that was belonging to someone else. He overheard me, you know, he overheard me say that I would never tell anyone. I even swore secrecy. And he overheard me and he forced me to tell.’ Gilbert turned around and said with a deep intensity. ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I know that, but you see, he, Master Pace, said that if the cardinal knew about me having a fit, if he thought that I had inherited my father’s madness, he would immediately cancel the marriage between me and Mistress Blount. He said that the money I had given him wasn’t enough. I had to tell this secret. I knew that he would use it to blackmail … to blackmail my best friend, but I had to tell him. I had to tell him James’s secret. He forced me into it.’

  ‘I see.’ I rose to my feet. My hands and feet were icy and I could feel my heart beat fast. A secret? After all, I tried to tell myself, that secret was only known to two people. But what if one of those two had told a third party.

  ‘Bessie is playing cards, go and join her,’ I said, hoping that my tone hid my feelings, but not caring hugely at the moment. I couldn’t waste any more time on Gilbert. I would have to talk to James, whether he wanted to or not.

  ***

  One of the things that I had always liked previously about Hampton Court was that it was more like a small town than a house. One could so easily remove oneself, get lost among the multitudinous rooms, passages, corridors and courts. A marvellous place to avoid a bore, but a terrible place to conduct an urgent search and today I swore at the place.

  No sign of James anywhere. His servant in his lodgings had not seen him since before the hour of dinner. He was not in any of the rooms where the visitors and the people of the cardinal’s household gathered so merrily, playing games, chattering, inserting the odd stitch into a piece of embroidery, burnishing a weapon, or whispering in dark corners.

  And this morning I did not want to ask any of the servants, or to question any of the lounging yeoman, chosen by the cardinal more for their size than their brain power, but nevertheless gossips to the man. Master James Butler, the name was probably on all lips. And my frantic hunt would give rise to more rumours so I tried to move in a nonchalant way, while thinking hard.

  I searched methodically, court after court and then stood and thought, staring absent-mindedly at the suite of the cardinal’s rooms above my head. I could see the glowing windows of the rooms that I had already searched and the others were in darkness. Where could he be? James was a reserved boy. If he had troubles he tended to go off for a long ride. Or he would sit with his arms around his giant wolfhound, his face buried in the dog’s flank, but Conbeg had died last autumn and James had not wanted to replace him until he was back home in Kilkenny permanently. And surely he would not risk his horse today in this weather.

  Nevertheless, I headed towards the stables, surprising the stable hands who were comfortably playing cards by a red-hot brazier secure in the knowledge that no one was likely to brave ice-covered roads beneath a sky filled with snow clouds. James’s horse, nicely brushed, dozed beneath a warm rug and with a nod at the lads, I left and went into the kennels, causing all of the dogs to bark excitedly as I opened the door. He wasn’t there, either, as I could see at a glance and with a wave at the kennel staff I went back down the narrow passageway and when I emerged, glanced up at the cardinal’s rooms. One of the windows which had been in almost darkness was now lit up. The library. James was not bookish, he took after his mother in his love of the outdoors, but today, feeling that every eye was upon him, he might well take refuge there. With a lightening of my heart, I went inside and climbed the stairs and opened the door softly.

  The room was ablaze with light. It picked out the gold lettering on the book covers of dark blue, brown, tan. And the heavy chairs and tables etched black shadows on the polished wood of the floor. The library was lined with bookcases, each about the height of a man, and there was a row of candelabra on top of each one of them. Every single candle in each one of these had been lit, recently lit judging by the lazy curl of smoke winding up from a long taper thrown carelessly onto the tiled hearth.

  Near to the fireplace there was a low, square chest covered in red leather and filled with small drawers, each with a gold handle. In front of this there was a girl, curled up like a kitten on a huge floor cushion of crimson velvet. One of the drawers was open, empty, showing the white silk of its lining, its handle glinting in the firelight.

  The girl was reading the book that should have been on that silk and reading it so intently that she had not raised her head when I came in. It was easy to see who she was, though I could only see the back of her head. There was something about this girl, some grace of posture, some fineness of bone that none of the other court beaut
ies could emulate.

  ‘You are enjoying your book, Mistress Boleyn,’ I said. She had become bored with the balliards, I reckoned. Not a game for a lady like she. Or perhaps Master Harry had been summoned by his tailor, or his armourer. And then, with amusement, I saw that she was reading some of Rabelais’ bawdy work.

  ‘Well, well,’ I said affably. I pulled over one of the cardinal’s padded needlework chairs and sat down quite close to her. She looked up with a slightly tightening of the lips and then returned to her book. Either she read French with great fluency, or she was pretending. I was inclined to think the former. There was a slight twitch of the lips from time to time as she came to a juicy part of the narrative and her eyes moved down the page in the way that a practised reader goes through a book.

  I kept quiet for a few minutes, leaving it to her to break the silence, but she made no move to break to speak, but continued calmly and unselfconsciously to enjoy the book. I had not too much time to waste, though, and when a small chuckle escaped her, I decided it was time to open a dialogue.

  ‘Queen Katherine permits her maids-in-waiting to read Rabelais, is that correct?’

  She raised her fine brows, but did not look at me, deliberately turning over the page and allowing another smile to light up her face. She certainly had pretty teeth, tiny and pearl like, but beautifully shaped. Only when she had finished that page, did she pick up a book marker and place it carefully to mark the spot. Then she closed the book, replaced it within the drawer and looked at me politely.

  ‘Je vous dérange?’ she queried.

  ‘Not at all. I am glad to have an opportunity to talk with you.’ I replied in English. I had no time to waste. It was a bit of shock to find her reading Rabelais, but then she had served in the court of Margaret of Austria with her famous collection of books and then was under the care of Marguerite of Navarre. I had heard a lot about Marguerite of Navarre, sister to King François of France and about the book of stories that she wrote, and read aloud to her ladies in waiting. When the match between James and Mistress Boleyn had first been mooted, Piers Rua had chuckled over the rumours of this scandalous book and had wondered what the little Boleyn girl would be like.

  ‘Do you miss France?’ I enquired and was surprised to see that she had tears in her eyes. Very, very beautiful eyes, otherwise not as pretty as her sister Mary, or the buxom Bessie Blount but in her own way, seen like this, curled up on the cushion at my feet, she excelled them. Exquisite was the right word for her. She shook her head, wordless – less perhaps as a negative reply than to dislodge the tears from her eyes without having recourse to a handkerchief.

  ‘You know, you and James could have a very good marriage,’ I said. ‘He’s a very nice fellow. He would treat you well. You could have your own library of books in French at Kilkenny Castle. You could make the place beautiful.’

  She pursed her lips with a moue of disbelief, gave a long look around the Hampton Court library, the pictures from Italian painters in their golden frames, the panels of exquisite needlework, framed in a lovely bluish green, aqua green wood; she looked at the candelabra of embossed silver and at the Turkish carpets on floor and tables. And then she moved her hands, quite flat, with the delicate fingers spread wide.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘It does remind me …’

  ‘You can’t marry the cardinal,’ I said jokingly. But I knew what she meant. She would like to create, but I had been to the court of the French king and I knew that to create in that style would take a fortune that would far exceed whatever she could command as the wife of James Butler, even if he were heir to the Irish part of the earldom of Ormond. And, of course, the Earl of Northumberland was vastly richer than the Butlers, or should be at any rate.

  ‘Hampton Court is a little like Mechelen. The brick, the patterns, it does remind me …’ she waved her hands in the air.

  ‘I loved France when I visited the court there about five years ago,’ I said impulsively and saw her turn eagerly towards me. This girl had imbued the French belief in their own absolute superiority in every aspect of life, whether writings, buildings, paintings or sculpture. For her, everything French was perfect. Her only chance of happiness in this northern isle was to reproduce a little of what she had seen in France

  ‘I would put a statue in the centre of this room,’ she said speaking almost to herself. ‘It would be a beautiful girl, the spirit of wisdom, perhaps, just as it says in the Bible. I remember the line; I’ve read it in Isiah. Or perhaps it could be that branch of fruit that came forth from Jesse.’

  ‘You have read the Bible?’ My eyes were widening. Not many girls read Latin.

  ‘Of course! We, her maids, were helping Madame Marguerite to translate it, to turn the Bible into French. She is a great friend of Erasmus.’

  ‘How old were you when you went to France,’ I asked. Erasmus? I’m not sure this is the right wife for James. And the cardinal would definitely not approve.

  ‘Twelve,’ she said. She got to her feet gracefully, with a spring of young limbs. She shook herself a little, rather like a fastidious cat, examined her reflection carefully in the gold-framed mirror of polished steel and then went towards the door.

  ‘Kilkenny can be lovely in the summer,’ I said hopelessly. Unless I could turn this girl from the dizzy heights of a match with the eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland, then she would persist in the effort to incriminate poor James. And yet, in a way, I was sorry for her. Her mind was full of dreams. I had briefly met Margaret of Austria and could imagine her effect on a clever, ambitious young girl. And then to come under the influence of the most learned woman in Europe, Marguerite of Angouleme, of Navarre, for the next five or six years of her life. I was beginning to understand Anne. She saw herself holding court, writing poetry and stories, encouraging men of letters, commissioning artists, embarking on great schemes for building a splendid house, perhaps something like a minor version of Hampton Court, and filling it with tapestries and gleaming mirrors. Have a northern court, up there in Northumberland, a court as cultured and as brilliant as anything that the cardinal had achieved here in the south.

  But my business was to save James, and if possible save the way of life mapped out for him.

  ‘You could achieve a lot with the castle at Kilkenny,’ I said. ‘The grounds are beautiful and it has a beautiful river flowing beside the castle.’ I added, but it was no good. Her glance slid away from me and I knew that I had lost her.

  ‘You know that they will never allow Harry Percy to marry you.’ It was my final shot.

  She opened the door, smiled over her shoulder. ‘You forget that I have now been rechristened Perseverance,’ she said.

  4

  The king’s serjeant was looking for me.

  Three different yeoman passed that message to me, and when I was passing beneath the clock tower I met the man himself.

  ‘I was looking for you,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘And now you have found me, Master Gibson,’ I said pleasantly, but I was wary.

  He ignored this. ‘I need to question that young man, but His Grace says that you must be with him. Well, I must go by what His Grace says, but I will tell you to your face that I am not happy about this. In fact, Master, I’ll have you know that at the moment, there is no other suspect. And, before you come to complain, I will tell you also that I have a man watching James Butler at the moment to make sure that he doesn’t escape before I get my hands on him.’

  ‘But you will remember that the cardinal has told you to make sure that I am with James before you question in him.’ His news had momentarily left me without breath, but I rallied quickly. It was important not to allow the man to suspect how worried I was. Of course it would be important for the king’s serjeant to make an arrest as soon as possible. News of this murder was bound to leak out and soon all of London would know about it. The king would not be a patient man, I surmised, and would expect instant action in the case of a murder reputed to take
place in his presence.

  ‘Why do you have to be with him?’ he said aggressively. And then when I didn’t reply, he turned his question into a statement. ‘I don’t see why you have to be with him. None of the other lads have a lawyer with them and no one tells me not to talk to them.’ His tone was unpleasant and suggestive. I responded equally aggressively.

  ‘And have you? Talked with them?’

  ‘There’s something going on,’ he said abruptly. ‘Young Master Percy – and Mistress Boleyn, of course – but of all the young wards, Master Percy is the only one who will admit to seeing James Butler take an arrow from his bag. But I can tell from Gilbert Tailboys that he is lying when he says that he knows nothing. He was stuttering and stammering and his face got red when I pressed him to make a statement. And the other youngster, young Arundel, he was looking guilty, too.’

  ‘Perhaps the other lads should have a lawyer with them,’ I said, my tone as unpleasant as his. ‘I don’t suppose that you bullied the Earl of Derby, though, did you? He usually has a servant or two hanging over him. George Cavendish tells me that he has five men attending on him.’

  ‘No one saw the little Earl of Derby take a deadly arrow from his bag,’ he said unpleasantly.

  ‘Something my client denies,’ I came back swiftly, feeling that rush of exhilaration that always came to me when defending a client at a court. ‘Anyway, why on earth should he want to murder an instructor of the wards? His schooldays are over. Soon he will be a married man and perhaps return to Ireland.’ It wasn’t a question of any instructor, though, I knew that, but hoped the serjeant did not. It was a question of this particular man, Edmund Pace, who was a blackmailer and that might be something that would supply a motive for this killing. It might hang James. I gave him a stiff nod and walked off.