Ellis was exercising his brain, an activity to which it had grown unaccustomed, and he was finding his conclusions more confusing than enlightening.
If what he had heard from the discussions between his master and Sir Baldwin were correct, someone had been trying to kill his sister and not the Queen after all. But who could have wanted Mabilla dead? She was a sweet girl, no one’s enemy.
Except the Queen’s, he thought with a start.
And then there was Jack’s death.
The only people who’d known about Jack were him, his master, and Jack himself — and Ellis knew full well that Jack would never have told anyone about his mission. Equally, he knew that he himself had said nothing, and so perhaps the confession from Sir Hugh that he might have given away the plan to Piers was not so wide of the mark.
Piers was a spy. His trade was lying and passing on news to others. Perhaps he had sold Sir Hugh’s plot to someone else. Earl Edmund was his master when he wasn’t with Sir Hugh, so had he mixed his loyalties and found solace in the fact that for once he was acting in some form of good faith by aiding the Earl? The only alternative to that was that the Queen herself had plotted to remove Mabilla.
And surely that was unthinkable.
Simon and Baldwin soon found their way to the gaol. It was down a dank corridor far beneath the King’s chambers, close to the river itself, and as the gaoler opened the door to the cell, Simon was very aware of the great river just a short distance beyond the walls. There was a perpetual trickling, tinkling sound, and it was impossible for him to ignore it. He had never much liked being underground. The thought of the weight of stone and timber overhead was always unpleasant to him, and never more so than here.
There was a scattering of straw on the ground, but not enough. A bucket held some water, brackish and foul from what he could see, and there was a stench of urine and excrement about the place.
Not that the occupant appeared to care. He lay crouched in the far corner, his eyes on them like those of a whipped hound, his arms wrapped about him against the cold.
‘Dear God,’ Baldwin murmured. ‘Are you Arch?’
At first Arch didn’t seem to understand. Simon saw him shake his head and pull his arms tighter, ducking his chin to his breast as though that would hide him from his tormenters.
They had been busy on him. Blood marked him, and mucus and slobber had drawn trails in the filth on his face. His hair was awry, but there was more blood among it, and Simon thought that clumps had been wrenched out. And then he saw the missing fingernails and felt sick.
‘Leave me, masters, please leave me. I know nothing.’
His whine was pathetic. Although his eyes looked towards them, it was plain to Simon that he did not see them. Instead, he saw his tormentors returning to inflict more pain.
Baldwin crouched near him, sniffing at the bucket. Suddenly angry, he stood and would have kicked it over, but for the fact that it would have added to the chilly misery of the cell. Instead he gritted his teeth. Arch, I want to know what happened on the night that the maid was killed.’
‘I’ve told you all …’ Arch was huddled away from them, rocking gently.
‘Not me, my friend. Just tell me: did you see anyone up there on the wall that night?’
‘I was just looking out over the river, and I heard a rat. That was all. But I didn’t have a drink, not that night. I was sober. It was just a rat.’
‘Arch, look at me. What sort of noise?’
‘It was a rat eating at wood. I heard the crunching. You hear them down here. They’re all over the place.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t drink anything? You were still sleeping the next morning.’
‘I was just so tired. And my head hurt.’
‘You had a hangover?’
‘No. My head hurt.’
Baldwin shrugged and glanced up at Simon helplessly.
But Simon was convinced. ‘This headache — is your head sore?’
‘Ach!’ Arch rolled into a ball, his hands gently covering his head. ‘No more, please, no more …’
Patting him gently on the shoulder, Baldwin signalled to Simon that they should go, and leave this poor fellow in peace.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Was that any help?’ Baldwin wondered. ‘I should have liked to take a look at his head, but the poor fellow was terrified.’
Simon was more sanguine. ‘If Alicia’s right, and he didn’t get any drink from anyone, then why would he have a headache? I think Joan was right. I knew a miner once. He was struck on the head by a felon, and he was found out on the moors because he was snoring so heavily. Sometimes a man who’s been knocked out will snore like that. I don’t think it was a rat that Arch heard: I reckon it was someone creeping along the walkway behind him, and who then knocked him down.’
‘The assassin? Unless it was the other killer, the one who killed the assassin,’ Baldwin mused. ‘Who on earth was that, though?’
As he spoke, he was leading the way to the stairs that gave onto the walkway about the inside of the palace walls. After speaking to another guard, Simon and he learned exactly where Arch would have been standing on duty. There was another man there already.
Baldwin explained who they were and asked for the man’s name. He was wary, but gave his name as Will Fletcher, and was helpful enough when he realised that they were only interested in the morning when Arch was found.
‘He was often drunk up here, I know, but I never heard of him still sleeping the next dawn.’
Simon listened as Will said a little about Arch, how he was always scrounging ale and wine, and was looked down upon for his laziness. ‘But he’s no traitor, I’d wager. He’s honest enough in his own way, but he’s too old for this job; at his age he needs a warm fireside rather than a chilly, wet wall like this.’
Simon was peering over the walls at the wetlands beneath. From the look of it, the mud there would be waist-deep. No one could clamber across that without making a row about it and broadcasting his presence to all the guards on the walls. When he looked eastwards, there was only the Thames itself. Even a quiet boat would alert guards. No, Simon was convinced the man hadn’t come from the south wall or the east. Which meant that either he had climbed over the north wall, or the western one. Since there was no point approaching from the north and having to pass all the other guards on their rounds, surely he had come from a nearer post.
Satisfied that his logic was solid, Simon walked to the nearer part of the western wall and peered over into the Abbey’s grounds. ‘What’s happened here?’
‘That? They had a fire there thirty-odd years ago. They’re still trying to clear the ruins and rebuild them.’
Simon could see the ladders and ropes, and, like Ellis before him, knew that this was how the assassin had entered the precinct. He said so.
‘I agree. It is likely,’ Baldwin said. ‘The abbey grounds would be easier to enter than the palace walls by the river. There must be several places to enter the abbey quite easily.’
‘And not even clandestinely,’ Simon noted. ‘A man could have entered the place pretending to be a workman, hidden himself until nightfall, and then climbed up here.’ He drew away from the wall, peered back into the Palace yard. ‘So we can be sure that the man came up here, struck down the guard Arch, and then sneaked into the Queen’s cloister, before perhaps losing his way in his panic following Mabilla’s death, and heading to the Great Hall by accident,’ Simon theorised.
‘Unless he had been paid not to harm the Queen — whom he didn’t approach — but instead to kill another. Eleanor? Cecily? Joan, or Alicia? Or was he meant to kill Mabilla?’
Simon shrugged. ‘Who could have wanted Mabilla dead?’
‘Earl Edmund is the obvious man.’
‘And he is not fond of Despenser.’