"This is the man, my lord, who wrote the placard on Saint Paul's door," he cried.
The Duke started, his grip loosened, and the clerk, twisting suddenly free, would have made off but a score of retainers had come up, and he was surrounded. He stood still in the central gutter and pulled his hood down over his face.
"Bind him," said the Duke in a deadly quiet voice. A squire jumped forward with a leather thong and tied the clerk's wrists behind his back.
"Take him to my inn!" cried Lord Percy. "We'll deal with him there."
The clerk suddenly found his voice. "You can't," he shrilled. "You haf no right to touch me! I know my rights. I claim the City's protection!"
"Hark at him!" roared Percy. "Hark who speaks to the Marshal of England. Take him, men!"
The clerk was picked up and rushed down the street to Percy's gate. The Duke and Percy followed. The courtyard gate closed behind them. They dragged the clerk into the house and flung him down on the floor of the Hall. He hitched himself slowly to his knees, then to his feet. He stood swaying; his chin sunk on his chest, his bound hands opening and closing spasmodically behind his back.
The retainers of both lords crowded around, staring curiously, eager to inflict more punishment. As it was, blood dripped from the long ferrety nose, and a lump big as a chestnut rose from the bald spot on the tonsure.
"We'd best flog him, afore he's put in the stocks," said Percy with relish. "What's he done, by the way?" He looked at the Duke, who was standing six feet from the clerk and regarding him fixedly.
The Duke held his hand towards the friar without answering, and Brother William gave over the large square of parchment.
"Bring me a light," said the Duke. A varlet ran up with a torch. The rustlings and murmurings ceased, the Hall grew still while they watched the Duke read, until he raised his head and said, "This time it seems that I - John of Gaunt - for reason of my base birth am therefore without honour, so have made secret treaty with King Charles of France to sell him England."
There were a few gasps, Percy's red face grew redder, but nobody moved. The Duke took the torch from the varlet and bending down held it near to the prisoner.
"Let me see your face!"
The clerk's knees began to quiver, he hunched his shoulders higher around his ears and the sound of his breath was like tearing silk.
The Duke knocked his head up with a blow of the fist beneath the chin and stared down by the torchlight. Suddenly he reached out and yanked the clerk's collar from his stringy throat. A jagged white scar ran from the jaw to the Adam's apple.
"And so it is you, Pieter Neumann," said the Duke softly. He handed the torch back to the varlet. "You still bear the mark a boy made on you thirty years ago at Windsor."
"I don't know what you mean, Your Grace. I am Johan, Johan Prenting of Norvich. This scar is from a wound I got in France, I fought well in France for England, Your Grace. I know not what is on the parchment, it vas the monks at St. Bart's wrote it. I've done no harm - -"
"He lies, my lord," interrupted Brother William solemnly. "For I myself saw him writing on the parchment."
"He lies - -" said the Duke. "As he always lied - lied - -" he repeated, but in the repetition of the word, the friar heard a wavering. He noted this with astonishment. What could it be that the Duke doubted, what uncertainty had caused that stumbling inflexion, and what earlier association could there have been between these two?
"We'll hang him!" cried Lord Percy, who had finally comprehended the situation. "Haul him out to the courtyard!" Four of his men sprang forward.
"Wait - -" The Duke held up his hand. "Take him to some privy place, put him in the stocks. I would talk to him alone first."
Percy's men hustled the clerk through the kitchens and below stairs to the cellars, where in the darkness there was a small dungeon. The clerk's wrists and ankles were clamped into the holes in the wooden stocks, and the men pulled savagely on his twisted leg to make it fit in the hole.
The Duke had followed them. He watched impassively while the prisoner groaned and cursed and tried to ease his dangling rump on the dungeon paving-stones. Then he said, "Leave a torch in the bracket and go." Percy's men obeyed. The Duke, clanging shut the iron door, leaned against the wall.
"You suffer now, Pieter Neumann," he said, "but you will suffer far more than this before you die, if you don't speak truth to me. Where have you been since that day at Windsor Castle when you did steal your mother's purse and ran away?"
Pieter's eyes slithered to a heap of rusty chains and fetters and he said sulkily, "In Flanders."
"Where?"
"In Ghent jail and at the Abbaye de Saint Bavon vere you were born, Your Grace. The monks taught me to write." A sly hope came to him as he noted a change in the Duke's face when he mentioned the abbey. He rested his chin on the rough plank-top of the stocks and waited.
"What brought you to London?"
Pieter considered quickly. He had fled from Flanders after stealing a gold chalice from, the abbey church, landed off a fishing boat in Norfolk and made his way here, knowing there would be more scope for his talents. He had not been disappointed. "I longed to see England again," he said, "the country vere my poor mother died - Isolda, who nursed you and loved you so, my lord," he added in a sort of hissing whine.
The Duke's breathing quickened, he bent over crying, "And who has paid you now to write these placards? Who?" He clutched the skinny shoulder, his fingers dug in until the bones crunched.
The clerk whimpered and twisted, finally gasped out, "Courtenay."
The Duke straightened up. "By God," he said softly under his breath. "Would even the Bishop of London stoop so low?"
"If you set me free, my lord, I could write another placard," whispered Pieter. "I could say that after all you're no changeling, that-" He broke off and screamed, "Ah - Your Grace
- haf mercy - nay, nay don't!" Plain in the torchlight he had seen murder leap in the Duke's eyes.
John folded his arms and leaned back against the dripping fetid wall stones. "Did you think that the King's son would kill you as you hung there trussed like a fowl on a spit, my poor Pieter? Nay, 'tis not so you shall die - though how you shall die I've not yet decided." He smiled quietly and turned.
"Your Royal Grace, dear sweet lord, don't leaf me hare like this, I - I'll crawl on my hands and knees, I'll kiss your feet, I'll - -"
The Duke opened the iron door and going out into the cellar, banged the door behind him and shot the bolt. He walked down the passage between rows of piled wine casks until he reached the steps up to the kitchens. From there he could no longer hear the echo of Pieter's hysterical screams.
Katherine and her companions duly arrived at the Savoy that afternoon. The bowing chamberlain met them in the Outer Ward and informed them that His Grace would not be there this night, he was staying with the Lord of Northumberland in the City. The chamberlain had been given no special messages for either lady, and doubted whether His Grace would even return on the morrow, since it was known that he intended to sup in the City after the trial at St. Paul's.
Philippa let out a long sigh of relief. No marriage talk for the present anyway.
But Katherine followed the chamberlain to the Monmouth Wing with a dragging step. If this banishment to a part of the Savoy so remote from him were truly a symbol of the way he wished it to be between them, why then had he summoned her here at all?
The next day she sent Hawise to fetch Robin from the squire's dormitory and when he eagerly presented himself, she told him that she wished to attend the trial today in the cathedral and asked him to accompany her. She felt that she must see John again, no matter what the circumstances, and that then perhaps she would know what was amiss between them.