The room was empty. Small as it was, it boasted a second door, set in the opposite wall. I reached this in a couple of strides, flinging it open, but there was no one to be seen. Another staircase, no wider than the shoulders of a slender man and unlit by even the faintest gleam of torchlight, descended into the bowels of the castle. Turning sideways, and with my hands splayed against the roughness of the wall, I cautiously eased myself down three or four twisting, slippery steps before deciding that I had embarked upon a fruitless errand. Wherever they led, I should not find my quarry now. The two people who had been in such earnest consultation would have mingled with their fellows, lost in the ant-hill of activity which was Baynard’s Castle.
I retraced my steps, pausing only to cast a brief and unhopeful glance around the chamber. But apart from a single chair there was nothing in it. The floor was innocent of rushes and a coating of dust lay everywhere, indicating that the room was rarely, if ever, used and I remembered how the door hinges had creaked beneath my weight. I stood, racking my brains, trying to recall some word or phrase which might have penetrated my consciousness, but nothing came. All that remained was an impression of urgency and, above all, secrecy, borne out by the rapidity with which the whisperers had vanished when threatened with discovery.
Had it been two men talking? A man and a woman? Two women, even? (No, not the last. Of that I was certain without knowing exactly why.) Of course, it might have been a wholly innocent meeting between two members of either household. But then, if so, why had they so precipitately fled? I sighed. With nothing resolved, but possessed of the strong conviction that had I been quicker to enter the room I should have discovered something of the greatest importance, I descended to the great hall to take up my duties at the supper table.
I was abstracted during the meal, failing to perform my duties properly and, on several occasions, incurring the wrath of the head Yeoman of the Chamber. Twice at least, I encountered Duke Richard’s quizzical glance, the faint arching of the thin, black eyebrows, but he made no comment, not even when, on bended knee, I offered him a dish of prawns in mustard and then withdrew it before he had had time to take any. It was only Humphrey Nanfan’s horrified gasp, and the Lady Katherine Plantagenet’s gurgle of delighted laughter, that brought me to my senses. Red with embarrassment, I quickly rectified my mistake and withdrew to the back of the dais to await the arrival of the next course from the kitchens. Nevertheless, I thought, I must try to have an urgent word with Timothy Plummer. The Duke should be told to treat me as he would the other servants, or their already burgeoning suspicion would flower into certainty.
In spite of my frequent errors, however, I could not stop cudgelling my brains for some sentence, phrase or even word, that surely must have left an imprint on my mind whilst I was listening to that whispered conversation. But what remained was the sense of urgency, of secrecy and, above all, of conspiracy which told me plainly that it had been no ordinary confabulation between two friends or fellow workers. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had been within seconds of discovering our would-be killer and cursed myself accordingly for my tardiness of action.
A line of servers emerged from behind the screen which separated the great hall from the kitchens. As I watched them process down the length of the room towards the dais, bearing aloft their silver salvers, the scents and smells of the next course wafting deliciously about our nostrils and making me hungry all over again, I became aware of Matthew Wardroper hovering at my elbow.
‘Over there,’ he muttered through barely moving lips, ‘standing beneath the torch to the left of the archway. That’s Jocelin d’Hiver, thought by Master Plummer to be in the pay of the Burgundians. And approaching the Duke’s chair now, Geoffrey Whitelock, probably employed by the King to spy on his brother.’
Matthew moved away again, leaving me to study the two young men. Jocelin d’Hiver was small and thin, with sharp, birdlike features in which brilliant black eyes darted here and there with an avian swiftness, watching everything and missing nothing. Geoffrey Whitelock, on the other hand, was as fair-haired as the other was dark; tall, slim and comely, with an attractive air, easy manner and a regularity of feature that was almost patrician. Of all the Squires of the Household on duty that evening, he seemed most at ease with his master, his head bent gracefully over the back of the Duke’s chair, his full lips curled in appreciation of whatever it was that His Grace was saying.
Humphrey Nanfan gave me a nudge as the servers filed on to the dais, and it was time once again to present the Duke and his guests – who, tonight, were only the senior officers of his household – with pike in galentyne sauce and a side-dish of onions, garlic and borage. (I could not help thinking that the latter would produce such a blast of stinking breath as would put paid to all but the most ardently amorous advances during the coming hours of darkness.) This time I managed to keep my mind on what I was doing and discharged my duty without error.
Finally the meal was over, the covers drawn and the tables removed, so that the Duke and his mother could better enjoy the evening’s entertainment. Tonight the talent was home-grown, with the household minstrels providing music for dancing and the Duke’s own troupe of acrobats causing the seven-year-old Lady Katherine to double up with laughter until, loudly protesting, she was carried off to bed by her nurse and two attendant nursemaids. Berys Hogan, however, was not one of them and I noticed that she remained in the hall with the rest of us.
Duchess Cicely, still, at sixty, displaying the remnants of a beauty that had in youth earned for her the nickname of the Rose of Raby, was speaking to her son. The Duke listened, nodded, kissed her hand and turned to scan the ranks of his retainers. Finally he found the face that he was seeking.
‘Ralph!’ he called. ‘A song. Her Grace particularly wishes to hear again the one you sang the other night. The Trouvère song from northern France. Do you have your instrument there or do you need to fetch it?’
‘I have it with me, Your Grace.’ Ralph Boyse beckoned to one of the pages who hovered close at hand, probably hoping to be sent on some errand or other in order to alleviate the tedium of inactivity. The boy advanced and handed Ralph his flute.
I immediately ceased to take any interest in the proceedings for, as I have stated before, I have no ear for music. To me it all sounds much as a tomcat does when serenading his lady-love on the roof-tops; a sad loss, I’ve no doubt, for they say that music is the food of the soul, in which case I’ve known only a lifetime of starvation. But there again, they also say that what you’ve never known you never miss and I can testify to the truth of that observation. I leaned my back against the wall, closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift once more to that sibilantly whispered, definitely sinister-sounding, overheard conversation.
Like a bubble forcing its way to the surface of a pond a single word now rose and burst among my crowding thoughts. ‘Demon.’ I let it float for a moment or two inside my head, considering it from every angle; but in the end it failed to convince me that that was what I had really heard. Who would be talking so urgently about a spirit of darkness? Or was the word ‘demesne’? Had my whisperers been discussing something to do with demesne lands and the disposition of property? Or was my mind simply playing tricks on me, feeding me false information so that it could get some rest from my incessant probing?
Instinct warned me that Ralph Boyse’s song was coming to an end and I readied myself to join in the general applause. Even my unreceptive ear, now that I gave him my full attention, could tell that he had a fine and powerful voice, interspersing the words of chorus and verse with echoing runs of notes upon his shawm. He played a final trill upon the pipe, then his voice soared, clear and unaccompanied.