‘Maybe he’s offering James a choice between peace terms and invasion.’
‘If this is what it is all about, perhaps Queen Catherine is not pregnant after all.’
I looked round the courtyard, less crowded now the building work was finished. Men were loading surplus building material on to carts, while more flagstones were being laid near the manor house, covering the earth so the King – the Kings – should not get their robes muddy. I shivered, feeling tired again. ‘Come, let us go back through the church. We can see how the horses are doing.’
The monastic church was also full of workmen. Row upon row of wooden stalls had been set up along the nave now for the horses, and men were piling up bales of hay for fodder and setting straw in the stalls. The banging down of the bales, the swish of the straw being laid, echoed round the place. As we walked down the church another sound became audible, an angry crowing from the chapterhouse. There must be hundreds of fighting cocks, I realized, and wondered what they made of the holy statues, whether they took them for real men as Barak had. I looked around. For all the great vaulting arches this was the corpse of a church, a corpse set out to be mocked and desecrated as they said Richard III’s was after the Battle of Bosworth. I felt suddenly giddy, and went over to a bench that someone had left in the middle of the nave. ‘I must rest a moment,’ I said.
Barak joined me. We sat in silence for a minute, then I turned to him, wincing at a spasm in my neck.
‘I wonder if I am safe now,’ I said.
‘You mean your assailant would have killed you had Craike not interrupted him?’
‘I’m not sure Craike did interrupt him.’
‘You mean he was the attacker?’
‘No. Otherwise the cudgel, or whatever else he used, would have been found on him when he was searched. And those damned papers. No, I mean my assailant had already left the room when Craike arrived in the corridor. Think about it. That is a long corridor, whoever attacked me would have heard Craike’s footsteps as he arrived at the far end. He could not have left the room and run down the other staircase without Craike seeing him. And Craike said he heard footsteps descending, not running.’
‘So the attacker thought he had killed you.’
‘Unless he did not mean to kill me, just knock me out.
Say he entered the room just as I lifted that confession by
Blaybourne from the box, and hit me before I could read it.’
‘If it’s that important, surely he’d kill you to make sure.’
I sighed. ‘Yes, unless he thought I was already dead. If
so, he showed carelessness. And when he sees I am alive, he
may try again.’
‘But the damage has been done. You’ve told Maleverer everything you saw.’
‘The attacker may not know that.’
‘Then we’ll have to keep watch,’ Barak said.
‘Thank you for the we. I wonder what those papers signify. An orthodox-seeming family tree, a copy of the Mouldwarp legend, an Act of Parliament Maleverer says is a fake and a confession by someone called Blaybourne whose name appears to strike terror into the hearts of the mighty. There were other papers too, quite a few, they looked like statements of some sort. And who was the thief? A conspirator, trying to keep the papers out of the King’s hands? But if so, why did Oldroyd not give them to him – I am assuming that was why he was killed.’
‘I don’t know. Jesu, I wish we could go home.’
‘So do I.’ I shivered in a cold wind that came through an empty window-arch. I looked through it at the grey sky, just beginning to darken. Oldroyd would have removed that glass. I wondered what would happen to his house and business; he was another who had died without heirs.
‘What are you thinking of?’ Barak asked.
‘How since we got here my mind has run on genealogies. Those like the King’s that have heirs and those like Wrenne’s and Oldroyd’s that have run out. And mine, perhaps.’ I smiled sadly. ‘Your tree I suppose will go back to Abraham, through your father’s Jewish blood.’
He shrugged. ‘And we all go back to Adam, the first sinner. I am my father’s only child too. I would like the line to go on.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘The secret line of Jewish blood.’ He turned back to me. ‘You could still marry. You are not yet forty.’
‘I will be next year. Then people will start to think of me as an old man.’
‘Ten years younger than the King.’
I sighed. ‘After Lady Honor, last year –’ I changed the subject. ‘So, you have made up with Tamasin?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled, then looked at me seriously. ‘She was frightened at being hauled up before Maleverer, I think, though she tried to hide it. She said Mistress Marlin was sharp with her, but has promised she will not tell Lady Rochford.’
I nodded. ‘That is in her own interest. Lady Rochford might blame Mistress Marlin for not keeping proper control of the girl. Mistress Marlin is a strange creature. What does young Tamasin think of her?’
‘That she is mostly a kind mistress, oddly enough. It was she who chose Tamasin to come to York. I think Tamasin feels sorry for her, because the other ladies mock her. Tamasin has a kind heart.’
‘Well, that is a virtuous thing in a woman.’ I massaged my neck again. ‘Jesu, I am tired. I should go to the prison tonight, but I cannot face trailing through York again in the dark.’
‘Hardly surprising, after being knocked out. You should rest tonight.’
‘I shall go tomorrow, and call on Master Wrenne as well. I grow fond of that old man.’ I was quiet for a moment then said, ‘He is alone. That reminds me of my father, and then I feel guilty for not visiting him for a year before he died.’
The events of the day seemed to have put us in a rare mood for confidences, there in the huge desecrated vault of the church, the swish of straw and crowing of fighting cocks echoing in the background. ‘I dream of my father sometimes,’ Barak said. ‘When I was small he always wanted to hold me and I would squirm away because I could not stand the smell of his trade. The emptying of cesspits. I often dream he comes to me with arms outstretched, but I catch the smell of him and draw back as I did then, I cannot help myself. Then I wake with that smell in my nostrils. I thought of it when they brought that apprentice into Maleverer.’ He fingered his breast, where I knew he carried the ancient mezuzah his father had bequeathed him. ‘Perhaps such dreams are sent to punish us,’ he concluded softly. ‘To remind us of our sins.’
‘You are a Job’s comforter.’
‘Ay.’ He rose. ‘’Tis this grim place.’
‘I wonder what will happen to that boy.’
‘Young Green?’
‘That was a cruel humiliation Maleverer visited on him, sending him bare-arsed into the town.’
Barak suppressed a laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but it did look funny. The Yorkers will probably sympathize. He’ll find another place. Come, shall we get some supper before you retire?’
‘Yes.’ I rose and we walked to the far door.
He turned to me. ‘I am sorry for causing you to lose the papers, more than I can say.’
I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come, no recriminations. There is no point.’
We went to look at the horses, complimenting the stable boy on how well they were cared for, then went and ate companionably in the refectory. As we walked we were both on the alert, looking into shadowed corners. The refectory was busier and noisier than the night before. The carpenters, their work done, were in boisterous mood. If they were allowed into the town tonight there would be revelry and probably bloody noses too. I was tired again, glad to return to my cot. Barak said he was going into the town, ‘to see what I can see’.
‘No adventures.’
‘No, I’ll save those for Tamasin tomorrow. Shall I wake you at six in the morning?’
‘Ay.’ He left me then, and I sank into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep, disturbed only when the lawyers and clerks returned late and went to bed. Yet it was not Barak who woke me next morning but a soldier, a hand shaking me roughly awake. It was still dark, he carried a lamp. I stared at him. It was young Sergeant Leacon. His face was serious. My heart leaped in terror, and I feared for a second that Maleverer might have put me under arrest.