“I was shunned and they put the mark on the door, the red cross of warning. Roger Hawkins found me huddled by the doorstep and brought me to Uncle Williams.”
It was a grim tale, both parents lost, but there was, within it, a deep secret thought. It was mean spirited and bitter, and surely he would do penance for it later. But a part of him wailed that at least she had her own family till now. It may have been the shadow of that regret that helped phrase his next question, or more generously, it may have been professional concern. Either way it did come as a surprise. “So with your parents dead, who got the share of the estate?”
At his question Margaret Black sniffed loudly, dabbed her face with a sleeve and gave a shake of her head, chuckling mirthlessly. “So it is true. That’s as typical a question as I’d expect of any lawyer! No pickings here I am afraid-all settled, witnessed and sealed. So Master Bedwell you’ve heard my tale. Fair’s fair. Why are you learning to prey upon decent folk’s problems?”
Ned raised a single eyebrow. Mistress Black was certainly quick to strike out here, but to be fair, it was a good question and deserved, in return, a good answer. He chewed a lip, deep in thought for a moment. His angel pointed out that this was a perfect chance to prove a degree of honesty, so spontaneity had his tongue. “No, no. I wasn’t going to be lawyer. Originally I was meant for the church. My uncle thought that a cleric would be an asset to the family”.
Ned made a small shrug of part embarrassment. “You’ know, ahh, the costs of exemptions, well they were too high, so it was determined that law was a better course. Uncle Richard needed a cheap assistant, one he could depend upon, so here I am, first year at Gray’s Inns of Court.”
His unalloyed truthfulness was working. Mistress Black nodded, her eyes sparkling, as she once more questioned Ned. “Why did you need an exemption to take Holy Orders? From what I’ve heard, they’re so desperate for clerics who can actually read that so long as you’re breathing, you’re in.”
Ned pursed his lips and tried not to blush. “It is said by my uncle that I suffer from the taint of, ahh, bastardry. So I’m barred from any high office by canon law.”
Mistress Black graced him with a brief, puzzled smile and one more memory of the other night hit him between the eyes. Yes, it was her smile that drew him at the Cardinal’s Cap, like a flash of sunlight after a storm. Ned tried desperately to hold on to any more elusive wisps. No, it was no use. Whatever else had been there briefly was once more gone.
“Well, is it true?”
Coming back from those hazy memories, he gave his head a cautious shake, trying to recover his poise. “Is what true?” Oh no, this sounded more like the drooling response of a Bedlam loon. Mistress Black’s lip turned up in an inquisitive smile, dazzling him once more.
“Are you a bastard?”
This flummoxed him. Before today, most people had assumed it was a fact or he’d evaded the issue. This time it was asked with genuine honest curiosity, he hadn’t had that before. “Well according to my uncle and family, it is.”
This produced a snorted chuckle that that she quickly covered with a hand. “And they have never lied to you before? What about your mother? What does she say?”
Ned was struck speechless. He had not thought of it from this intriguing perspective before now. Up to this instant everyone else naturally accepted his uncle’s word. “Oh, ahh…yes well, my uncle has been known to take a casual stroll around the truth occasionally. As for my mother, God rest her soul, she died soon after I was born I am afraid so I cannot ask her.”
Now it was Mistress Black’s turn to make the sign of the cross. She was plainly unsatisfied with his response and so continued with her inquiry. Strangely, considering their previous animosity, Ned didn’t find this intrusive. If pressed, he may have said it felt like the relief of confession.
“So what we have is a status claimed by those who would profit by your ignorance. That is pretty flimsy evidence. It reminds me of our King’s current problem.”
Now he thought about it, there were a few facts that had always gnawed at him, inconsistencies in the often repeated story and slight lapses from the family servants. If he ever managed to extricate himself from this current morass, then this was something that needed to be resolved. Then the final part of what she had said gained his attention. “What do you know about the problems besetting the King?”
From her expression, this was not something that Mistress Black had meant to say. The frown, absent so briefly, returned again. “Where have you been for the past months-Cornwall? Every soul in London knows about the Papal Commission for the Annulment.”
As he was coming to expect from Mistress Black, her comment was off hand and dismissive. However it set Ned a thinking. It was true that the Legatine Commission, headed by Lord Chancellor Wolsey, and the Pope’s representative, Cardinal Campeggio, had provided the city with a ready source of entertainment since May, as they deliberated on the King’s marriage problems. Just recently, as Will had recounted, the court had been abruptly terminated in a welter of controversy and rancour. Now it was September, and since the recommencement date announced was for early October, there should have been a flurry of activity-letters, summons and the like. Those preparations would have been instantly visible at the Inns of Court. But it wasn’t so. The slackened pace had even prompted a rush of wagers on whether the Commission would reconvene at all. Ned’s flagging brain struggled to link this with his present problems. Slowly a real idea formed out of the fog. This may be a wild shot, but was there something in that delay that caused Smeaton’s death?
Ned had been out of the loop for more than three days, and now had little chance of obtaining information from his usual sources at Gray’s Inn. But maybe Mistress Black could be of assistance. His daemon helpfully noted that any proprietor who had a hidden entrance certainly had access to at least one of the informal networks that made up the many layers of the under strata of the city.
“I was wondering what you may have heard, about the commission that is? Since we have a murdered servant of Wolsey, maybe it has some bearing upon our present situation.”
Mistress Black looked distinctly nervous. Her eyes flitted about the room and when she did reply, it was with great reluctance. “I might have one piece of news.”
Ned nodded for her to continue. There was a very long pause. “It is just a rumour. The King is going to call Parliament to sit over winter to consider a special petition.”
By all the saints, that was a very specific rumour and a dangerous one. It had been several years since the last Parliament, and as far as he could see, the only reason to call it this time would be His Majesty’s ‘Great Matter’, as one of the senior lawyers had called it. If that were so, then it was possible that the stable patterns of power in the land of England were shifting. The Commons of Parliament had proved very truculent in their last dealings with the Lord Chancellor, constantly criticising his taxes and management of the war with France. Even with Cardinal Wolsey’s man, Sir Thomas More, as speaker it had not gone well. He remembered the anger that appointment had caused at home with his uncle. Sir Richard Rich had no liking for More, claiming that the former under-sheriff of the city had a unreasoning prejudice against them. But there could be something to this. A clutch of senior lawyers at the Inns had been shuttling to and from the King’s palace at Greenwich the past couple of weeks, and despite the preening value of a royal summons, they’d been unnaturally silent. That was out of character. Mostly they were as garrulous as a murder of crows. Ned left off his musing and returned to the present. His companion had assumed a demeanour that he could only call reticently coy. To Ned it stoked his smouldering suspicion-she knew something important.