‘You took long enough,’ the first man hissed accusingly. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’
‘I heard an owl screech twice,’ his companion muttered, ‘but I’ve told you before, you need to be careful in this game. It wasn’t until the third call that I thought it safe to reveal myself. I had no certainty that the friar would have been able to pass on my message.’
They were standing on a level with the hawthorn bush and every word spoken, though whispered, was plainly audible. Then they moved on to the grass and into the lee of the Priory outbuildings, where the darkness was almost impenetrable. But they were now just a few feet away from my hiding place and for a moment or so my whole attention was focused on remaining motionless. By the time I was able to listen again with any degree of concentration I had missed several sentences.
‘You mean you have no positive news for us?’ the man with the sling was asking. I knew it to be him, for he spoke much faster than the other, who was inclined to be slow and ponderous of speech. ‘For God’s sake, Thaddeus, we must have a name, and soon! Time is running out.’
Thaddeus grunted. ‘I can’t do the impossible, Master Arrowsmith, and my informant is himself having difficulties in finding out what you want to know. His source of information is proving mute until another payment is made to him.’
The imprecation which greeted this remark was delivered with such savagery that it made me start, deflecting my mind from trying to remember where, and by whom, I had recently heard the name of Arrowsmith mentioned.
‘Money! Money!’ the Duke’s officer continued. ‘A great man’s life is at risk and all you can do is talk about money! I’ve a good mind to have you arrested. A taste of the rack and thumbscrew would soon persuade you to reveal the identity of your informer.’
There was a snort of derision. ‘So it might, but the news that I’d been taken would drive the others into hiding and you’d never track them down. It would be no use asking me to put a name to any but my own men, for no one knows more than that. You’d have first to discover, then arrest, then put each one in turn to the question before you came to the end of the chain.’
There was a moment’s silence while Master Arrowsmith swallowed his ire. A guard came to the door of the gatehouse and looked casually about him, before stretching his arms and returning inside. Plainly he saw nothing amiss, both the men and myself remaining perfectly still throughout his brief appearance.
‘So, when will you have a name?’ Master Arrowsmith demanded as soon as he judged it safe to resume the conversation.
‘Tomorrow night, if you’ve brought the money with you.’ A faint chinking of coins reached my ears as a purse or pouch was handed over. ‘I promise that by then I’ll have the information you require.’
‘Very well. Where do we meet? Here again?’
‘I’ve told you my rule, never the same place twice running. Do you know Three Cranes Quay, west of the Steelyard? It’s the vintners’ wharf, where the ships from Bordeaux tie up.’
‘Timothy Plummer’ll know it. He was born and bred in London.’
‘Very well. That’s where you’ll find me, but it must be earlier in the evening. I have need to be elsewhere by curfew.’
‘You have other business?’ The hissing voice was ragged with suspicion.
‘Aye. I’ve a woman in London who’s deserving of my attention now and then. It’s precious little I see of her in the normal way of things, but tomorrow night I’ve given my word to visit her. She means enough to me to take a chance or two.’
‘Chance?’ Once again the man Arrowsmith’s tone had an edge of panic to it.
‘It stands to reason there’s more risk when it’s light than when it’s dark, but the meeting will be brief. One name, that’s all you want and, once given, we can go our separate ways. All the same, it might be better to send a two-armed man in case of any trouble. A right-handed man who can only use his left is at a severe disadvantage in a dangerous situation.’
‘Fine talking!’ the other snarled angrily. ‘Whom am I to trust? Tell me that! There’s Timothy Plummer, but he’s too valuable to imperil his hide.’
I heard the second man’s impatient shifting of feet. ‘You can’t suspect every member of the Duke’s household, surely! It doesn’t make sense!’
‘Until I get a name I do, and so does Master Plummer. All right. Perhaps there is just one other I’d trust, but he’s too young and too green. No, no! You’ll have to put up with me. I’ll be with you again tomorrow evening. What o’clock?’
‘Just after Compline. There’s a warehouse lying empty near the right-hand corner of the quay as you face the river. Left if you’re looking inland towards the Vintry. I’ll force the side door and leave it unlatched. Now I must be off. It makes me nervous standing out in the open for too long.’
‘You’re sure you’ll have the name for me tomorrow?’
‘This should smooth out all difficulties.’ Once more I heard the chink of coins. ‘God be with you, Master Arrowsmith.’
‘And with you, Thaddeus Morgan.’
The whispering stopped. A shadow detached itself from the deeper blackness by the Priory wall, crossed the grass with a light, cat-like tread and melted into one of the alleyways on the opposite side of the road. Moments later, a second shadow, moving with equal stealth, took the road to the Leadenhall granary and the heart of the city, presumably returning by devious ways to Baynard’s Castle. Although beginning to suffer cramp in legs and feet from crouching behind the brake of hawthorn for so long, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to wait for several minutes before making any attempt to rise. I wanted to give both conspirators time to get clear away.
I was just about to stretch my left leg, which had borne the brunt of my weight, when I was arrested in mid-movement by the cautious emergence of a third shadow from the shelter of a buttress supporting the orchard wall. The figure advanced to the edge of the grass and glanced furtively in both directions, before also taking the Leadenhall road, in the wake of Master Arrowsmith. Who was this man? And what was he doing there? Was he an innocent eavesdropper like myself? Someone else who could not sleep and had braved the night air? Or had he followed Master Arrowsmith from Baynard’s Castle with the fixed intention of spying on him and overhearing his conversation with the man named Thaddeus Morgan?
If the latter, why had I not noticed his arrival? But on reflection, the answer to that question was simple. My whole attention had been focused upon the two central characters in the drama unfolding before me. If this third man had kept close in to the orchard wall, deep within its shadow, I would not have observed him. If the former, however, he might have witnessed my emergence from the Saracen’s Head and have been aware of my presence. Yet, once Lionel Arrowsmith and Thaddeus Morgan had departed, he had given no indication of knowing that I was there, not by so much as a turn of the head in my direction. Therefore I was more inclined to believe my second theory to be the correct one: that the unknown had tailed the Duke’s man in order to discover where he was going and whom he was meeting.
Not that it was any of my business whatever the answer, I told myself severely. I struggled to my feet, flexed my limbs, picked up the courtyard key from the grass where I had dropped it and returned to the inn. Everything was more or less as I had left it half an hour earlier. The same horse stamped restlessly in his stall, the man on the other side of the kitchen still snored loudly and had now been joined in chorus by the pieman, while the rest of my fellow lodgers were sprawled in various attitudes of abandon on their pallets of flea-ridden straw.