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‘Don’t know. The fellow ran off as soon as she was dead.’

‘There were witnesses?’ Simon asked.

‘Four or five of them. It was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and the Queen was there with the others when it happened.’

‘Did the man show any evil intent towards our Queen?’ Baldwin demanded quickly. Coming straight after the news that the King might seek to annul his marriage, it appeared to be the logical conclusion.

‘No, not that I heard. He just jumped out and stabbed Mabilla, and then fled the scene.’ The fellow clearly had nothing more to tell, other than vague allegations and suppositions.

‘What do you think of that then, Simon?’ Baldwin asked.

Simon belched, leaned back against the wall and spread his legs luxuriously. ‘Me? I think I’m as pleased as a hog in shit that for once, this is nothing to do with us. We can stand back and watch some other poor bastard get on with the work of finding out who was responsible. It’s none of our concern. And in the meantime, let’s have another ale, eh?’

There was one man who was concerned about the death of the maid though, and he was in the Queen’s chapel with Mabilla’s corpse.

‘Oh, Mabilla! How could you have come to this? Mabilla, my sister, I miss you! I shall avenge you, I swear it, on the Gospels!’

And with that Ellis Brooke, Sir Hugh’s most trusted henchman, stood, wiped his face, and made his way from the room.

Despenser left Bishop Stapledon and headed back to the Exchequer through the Green Yard. At least here it was peaceful. This little sanctuary was shielded from the madness and busyness of the main court north of the Great Hall. It might not be as restful as the Queen’s cloister, but it was damn near as quiet.

Sir Hugh stopped for a moment. Indecision assailed him, and he stood for quite some little while, simply staring at the Exchequer buildings while a great lassitude washed over him. Never before had he felt so enfeebled. All his life, he had been driven by his passions. He could still remember when he had been a young man, saying to a friend, ‘I desire nothing so much as money. One day I will have plenty of it. I will be rich.’

Well, that prophecy had come true. Yet for every new pound or mark which he accumulated, he grew ever more aware of the risks of his method of acquiring it and the likelihood that he would lose all.

Once he had. When those bastards the Lords Marcher decided to clip his wings, they did so by taking his castles and laying waste all his manors. It was a typical chevauchée, a fast ride over all his property, stealing or burning everything. The bastards first wrecked him and then saw him condemned to exile. Well, never again. No mother-swyving churl would ever be able to take away what he had built up, and he didn’t give a damn who knew it.

But something was going wrong here for him. Jack should never have attacked Mabilla, and if he did, why should it have stopped him from carrying on and killing the Queen? Although, thank God he hadn’t. Jack had been in tougher situations before, and being thwarted by a clutch of women would not normally have prevented him from finishing the job.

Someone else must have killed Mabilla. But who, in God’s name? Perhaps the story he had spun before the Queen, of Earl Edmund getting his revenge, had not been so wide of the mark, after all …

The thought gave him a new spirit of resolution, and he straightened his back just as a familiar face came the other way.

‘Sir Hugh.’

‘My Lord Kent. How very pleasant,’ Despenser said with a brief baring of his teeth that could have been a smile or a snarl. ‘I was just thinking of you.’

Chapter Thirteen

Eleanor de Clare was almost recovered now. She had been forced to drink a great deal of wine last night, just to try to eradicate the sight of all that blood, but it had only served to give her a waspish temper and sore head. Since visiting her husband, that had grown into an ache that encompassed her entire upper body.

Now she sought an answer as to why her husband should have wished to kill poor Mabilla. She had always thought that Sir Hugh was on perfectly amiable terms with her. He wouldn’t have permitted Mabilla to be involved with the Queen otherwise, surely? She had been a mild, pleasant enough young woman.

Alicia was with her, placing a cooling cloth on her forehead. ‘There, mistress. Be calm.’

‘Calm? When I’ve witnessed Mabilla slaughtered like a hog before me?’

Of course, she knew that Alicia had been there too. Alicia was the one who did not fly or faint. She alone had behaved impeccably, running to block the assassin’s path before he could launch himself either at the Queen or at Eleanor. She had acted with a natural courage, and now she was the only one of all who had any ease of mind.

‘Oh, get off me, woman!’ Eleanor snapped and rose to her feet, a hand to her head.

‘Would you like some wine?’

‘No. I would like to know why poor Mabilla is dead! I would like to know why someone should have taken her away from me!’

‘Surely the man wasn’t trying to kill her. He struck at the first woman he could barely see in the dark.’

‘Then he was a fool! Why should he do that?’

‘Madam, he wanted her out of his path so he could attack another, I feel sure of that.’

Eleanor nodded tiredly. That was what she had thought too. ‘You think he was after the Queen.’ However, she did not add her private fear: that it was her own husband who had commanded someone to try to kill the Queen. His enraged response when she had accused him was proof to her of his guilt. She could still feel his fingers at her throat.

‘Perhaps the Queen, yes,’ Alicia said.

Rubbing gently at her neck, Eleanor almost missed her tone at first — and then, when she realised what Alicia meant, a wave of horror broke over her, her eyes rolled up, and she slipped away into a dead faint.

Earl Edmund of Kent looked quite taken aback to see Sir Hugh le Despenser. He cast a quick look behind him, then one over Despenser’s shoulder. ‘Lost your little alaunt?’ he said insolently. ‘I thought Ellis was always at your heel, Sir Hugh.’

‘I don’t need constant protection,’ Despenser said coolly. ‘You have heard about the incident last night? The murder of Ellis’s sister?’

‘You call it an “incident”? A deplorable failure of palace security, I’d have said!’

‘Nowhere is entirely safe. Perhaps you would care to have responsibility for the safety of the King?’

Kent hesitated. He could do a better job than this upstart, of course, but there was something in his eyes that said that Despenser was sure he could embarrass him. He was a conniving, devious, lying shite, that man. Instead, Kent decided to attack on safer ground. ‘I have heard that the Bishops are all beginning to agree among themselves that the best course of action may be to have the Queen herself go to negotiate with her brother.’

‘To set her loose could be an interesting solution,’ Despenser said mildly.

‘Yes. You would like to have her out of your reach, wouldn’t you? You would be content to see her go across the Channel and tell her brother all that has happened here?’ Kent said, openly scornful. ‘You think that the French King would be happy to learn that you have advised the King to take away her lands and give her only a pittance as an allowance? What is it she is permitted? One pound each day?’

‘That is nothing to do with me,’ Despenser said smoothly.

‘And I suppose the despatch of Robert Baldock and Thomas Dunheved to petition the papal Curia for a divorce, that is not your working either? I fear, my friend, that my sister-in-law believes you may have been responsible. What did she say? Ah, yes, that her husband could never have been so vindictive or cruel to her. Her brother Charles will be fascinated to hear that.’

‘What he likes or dislikes is none of my concern.’