I thought of Jennet first, her eager flesh, her passionate kisses, but I knew she would have done as much for any young man who took her fancy. She was one of those loving and giving creatures unhampered by morals. My thoughts ran on to this morning and the abandoned shrine in the woods. Who had had cause to visit it recently? Who had picked and left the flowers?
It was a mystery to which I should probably never know the answer and already the interest of it was beginning to fade a little. I put down my empty beaker on the bench beside me and stretched my arms and legs until the bones cracked. By this time tomorrow I should be on the road to London, selling as I went, but with my goal drawing nearer with every passing mile. It would take me well over two weeks to reach the capital, yet I could feel the excitement even now, stirring in my veins.
Chapter Four
It was a Monday morning, late in June, when I crossed the Tyburn and entered Westminster. I held tightly to the shoulder-straps of my pack, for I knew the suburb’s reputation as a breeding ground for thieves and pickpockets. These men and women, so it was said, would snatch anything, even the hood from your head or the cloak from your back, and then make their escape through Westminster Gate. Indeed, although I myself was never molested in such a fashion I have seen the footpads at work, so light-fingered, so agile, so swift in their approach and retreat that the unfortunate victim stood no chance of raising the hue and cry before the thief had vanished, seemingly off the face of the earth.
I have not seen Westminster now for many a long day, but my children assure me that its sprawl of houses and shops grows greater with every passing year and surely must be half as big again as when I last set foot within its walls. All I can say in reply is that I have no wish to pay a visit. Even more than a quarter of a century ago Westminster was nearly as crowded and as noisy as London itself. The streets were full of people selling their wares; and as a large proportion of them were Flemings, the cries of ‘Buy! Buy! Buy! What do you lack? What’ll you buy?’ grated harshly on the ears.
That particular morning, by the time I reached the Clock House, whose great bell rang out the fleeting hours, I had been physically accosted at least three times and lost count of all the other exhortations. I had been importuned to buy a pair of spectacles, a hat, hose, shoes, gloves, pins, a belt, a crucifix made from a splinter of the One True Cross and a fly entombed in a lump of amber. It was on this sort of occasion that my height and girth stood me in good stead, for I was able to deter the would-be vendors simply by saying ‘No’ and drawing myself up to my full six feet. People of lesser stature were not so fortunate and I saw one small man pinned against a wall by two Flemings, who refused to release him until he had purchased a silver necklace. And this right under the noses of half a dozen of the King’s sergeants, magnificently self-important in their striped gowns and silken hoods, just emerging from the law courts in Westminster Hall. The incident reminded me of a man I had once rescued in similar circumstances: Timothy Plummer.
Westminster did hold one great attraction for me, however, and that was the cook-shops close by one of its gates. Set out on trestle tables was an abundance of food – loaves, cakes, pasties, meat pies, steaming-hot ribs of beef and several delicacies new to me, including porpoise tongues – while a nearby vintner’s provided a variety of wines and beakers of hot ale, spiced with pepper. As it was close on dinnertime, I stopped and bought two of the biggest meat pies I could find which, together with a bottle of Rhenish wine, I carried to the shade of some trees where I sat down on the grass to eat and drink my fill.
It was pleasantly warm, but with sufficient breeze to make me glad of my leather jerkin and its lining of scarlet. Clouds sailed majestically across the early summer sky and, once, the transparent sheen of a dragonfly skimmed across my line of vision as it returned to its haunts by the river. A jongleur was singing in a sweet, high voice, entertaining a group of fellow diners. Having finished my meal, but not yet ready to resume the final stage of my journey, I leaned against the trunk of one of the trees and closed my eyes, first ascertaining that the strap of my pack was securely looped around my left wrist and that my cudgel lay within easy reach of my other hand. After a moment or two the voice of the jongleur faded and I slept …
I was awakened by the sound of shouting.
‘Clear the way! Out of the way there! Make way! Make way!’
I heard the tramp of feet and the jingle of harness. Opening my eyes, I was unsurprised to see the procession of some great lord coming from the royal palace on the return journey to London. It was only when I had gathered my wits together and banished the cobwebs from my brain that I recognized the retainers’ livery of blue and murrey and the banners held by the standard bearers: two displaying the emblem of the White Boar and one that of the Red Bull, both badges of the Duke of Gloucester. And there, sure enough, the still, calm centre of all this hubbub, was the young man whose birthday I shared and to whom, in the past, I had rendered two personal services. He was mounted on a richly caparisoned bay horse, the strong, mobile face partially concealed, as it so often was, by the long dark hair which swung to his shoulders. All around him the other riders laughed and joked and talked, but apart from the turn of his head and an occasional smile, Richard of Gloucester contributed nothing to the general conversation. He seemed, from the little I could see of him, preoccupied; shut in on himself and alone with his thoughts.
Riding a few paces behind him, but pressing close enough for his horse’s head to be on a level with the bay’s swishing tail, was another young man of roughly the Duke’s own age, strongly built and sandy-haired, whose eyes constantly and somewhat nervously, or so I thought, scanned the crowds. His face, which I guessed would normally be of a high complexion, was rather pale and his lips compressed as if in pain. Then I saw the reason. He was controlling his mettlesome grey mare with only one hand, his left, while his right arm, from wrist to elbow, rested in a blue silk sling. The bones of his forearm had obviously sustained a fracture not yet mended, which, judging by his expression of suffering, was of fairly recent date.
The head of the procession passed beneath the gate and was lost to view, amidst the ringing cheers and encouraging shouts of the populace at large, with whom the Duke of Gloucester was a general favourite. People never forgot that he had stood loyally by his eldest brother throughout all the vicissitudes of King Edward’s reign, unlike his other brother, George of Clarence, who trimmed his sails to suit every prevailing wind.
Once Prince Richard was out of sight the onlookers, who had crowded the edges of the highway for a closer inspection, began to disperse, indifferent to the tail-end of his retinue. But from my vantage point under the trees, and because I am insatiably curious about everyone, I continued to watch – and was rewarded by the sight of a small, familiar figure, last seen almost two years ago in Exeter, but recalled to mind only that very morning, bringing up the rear and riding a solid brown cob.
Timothy Plummer seemed to have grown in stature. Not physically, but in the way he held himself, in the little air of self-importance which hung about him and suggested that he was now of far greater consequence than he had once been in the Duke of Gloucester’s household. He, too, like the youth I had noted, constantly looked about him, glancing to left and right in a perpetual surveillance of the crowds. But whether he was watching them or wanted to be noticed by them I was uncertain.