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The man nodded cheerfully and tucked the letter inside his greasy, food-stained jacket. ‘Your cousin, is it? Never fear! I’ll see it gets there. What about His High and Mightiness? Payment as usual, I suppose, after the job is done.’

Marjorie smiled. ‘What else did you expect? You know the way the Alderman works as well as I do.’

‘It was worth asking, just in case, one day, a miracle happens. I’ll be off, then. Tell Alderman Weaver I’ll see him in a week’s time, when I get back.’ He nodded briefly at me and disappeared once more inside the warehouse. Further along the wharf, some sailors were acting the fool, lurching perilously close to the edge and singing a drunken shanty. ‘Hail and howe, let the wind blow! The Prior of Prickingham has a big-’

My companion gave an unconvincing shriek and clapped both hands over her ears.

‘It’s all right,’ I assured her gravely. ‘Has a big toe is what they’re singing.’

‘I dare say. It’s what they mean that matters.‘ She added with mock severity: ‘The fools will be in the water in a moment and then they’ll find themselves up before the Watch. However, that’s their lookout, not ours. So, if you’ll give me your arm again, we’ll be off to Broad Street and that meal I promised you. By the way, what’s your name?’

‘Roger.’

‘And mine is Marjorie Dyer. That was my father’s trade. He’s dead now, God rest him!’ She squeezed my arm and shuffled along beside me. ‘I’m sorry to be so slow, but this warm weather affects my legs. Cheer up! Not much farther to go now.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘It’s been hours since my last meal. I’m starving.’

Chapter 2

I realize that, as yet, I’ve offered no explanation for the political events which were unfolding in Bristol on that warm May morning. Well… politics are boring. As are dates and facts. But in so far as those happenings and their sequel of some months later impinged, however slightly, upon my own story and the unravelling of my first mystery, I feel obliged to paint in the larger background. Briefly. I promise. And I can hardly expect the young tyros of the present generation, in their feverish preoccupation with New Worlds and New Learning, to try to unravel the tangled skein of events which was England in the last century. I knew precious little about it, myself, at their age. What I know now is the result of age, of reading, of piecing together fragments of conversation and knowledge gleaned over many years.

In the year 1399, King Richard the Second was deposed, and eventually murdered, by his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, who usurped the crown as King Henry the Fourth.

The childless Richard’s acknowledged heir was his cousin, Roger Mortimer, grandson of Edward the Third’s third son, Lionel. Henry was the son of John of Gaunt, a younger son of that same monarch, and from this situation there arose, half a century later, a bloody dynastic struggle. Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, direct descendant of Roger Mortimer, claimed the crown from his cousin, King Henry the Sixth, Bolingbroke’s grandson. York was driven to it by the unrelenting enmity of Henry’s Queen, Margaret of Anjou, and was supported by his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, and Salisbury’s eldest son, the Earl of Warwick.

The first blow was struck on May 22nd, 1455, and, five years later both York and Salisbury lost their lives at the battle of Wakefield. Six months after his father’s death, York’s eldest son was crowned King Edward the Fourth in Westminster Abbey.

At first, all went well, and this apparently easy-going young man of eighteen showed proper gratitude and respect for the architects of his victory, his mother’s family of Neville, chief of whom was her nephew, the mighty Earl of Warwick.

In the year 1464, however, while Warwick worked tirelessly to bring about a French alliance through Edward’s marriage to Bona of Savoy, Edward secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of the Lancastrian Lord Grey; a woman five years his senior and already the mother of two sons.

The marriage estranged not only the Earl of Warwick, but also Edward’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence. The King’s youngest brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, remained loyal, in spite of his hatred of the Woodville family.

Eventually, in 1469, the Nevilles kidnapped the King and attempted to rule the country through their prisoner. When this failed, Warwick tried to adduce Edward’s bastardy and put the Duke of Clarence, who had married the Earl’s elder daughter, Isabel, on the throne instead.

When this plan also foundered, Warwick, Clarence and their wives, together with Warwick’s younger daughter, Anne, fled to France. Here, the Earl, completely changing his tactics, made peace with the exiled Margaret of Anjou and agreed to restore the imprisoned Henry the Sixth to the throne. Anne Neville was married to Edward of Lancaster, Henry and Margaret’s son.

In the autumn of 1470, the year before my story opened, three months before my mother died, eight months before I walked from Wells to Bristol, Warwick and Clarence returned to England with men and money supplied by King Louis of France. Partly through King Edward’s own folly, he was out-generalled and caught in a trap. With the Duke of Gloucester and a handful of loyal friends, he fled to Burgundy, throwing himself on the mercy of Duke Charles, his sister Margaret’s husband.

Elizabeth Woodville and her three little daughters, together with the Duke of Gloucester’s two young children, sought sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, where the erstwhile Queen gave birth to a boy, named after his father.

Then, in March of the following year, Edward of York returned to reclaim his throne. Landing at Ravenspur, he and his youngest brother marched south almost without opposition. At Banbury, the Duke of Clarence joined them, deserting his father-in-law, and by early April Edward was in London.

Warwick, who had been in Coventry, suddenly moved against them, but on Easter Sunday was defeated and killed at Barnet. The next day, Margaret of Anjou, her son and daughter-in-law, landed at Weymouth to be met by the terrible news. Instead of attacking London, the Queen and her army marched north-west in an attempt to link up with King Henry’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor, in Wales, entering Bristol at the end of April. A few days later she learned that King Edward was already at Malmesbury, racing across country to intercept her, and on May 2nd, that warm, sunny Thursday when I first heard the name of Clement Weaver, she and her troops left the city in a hurry; in a frantic bid to outpace King Edward.

We approached Alderman Weaver’s house in Broad Street from the back and the narrow confines of Tower Lane. There was a little walled garden, as I remember, with a pear and apple tree, both thick with blossom, a bed of herbs and simples, a border of flowers along one wall and a lean-to privy. Marjorie Dyer produced a key from the heavy bunch attached to her belt and unlocked the door which led into the kitchen.

This was stone-flagged and strewn with rushes. An iron pot suspended over the fire was obviously full of a stew intended for the family’s supper. An iron frying-pan, a mortar-and-pestle, various ladles and spoons, basins and ewers were grouped together on the wooden table. Sides of salted beef and mutton hung from hooks in the ceiling. It reminded me of my mother’s kitchen, except that it was much bigger. Well, let me be honest. We only had one living-room in my mother’s house. I had never known the luxury of a parlour.