The inn was not one of those along the main route which travellers had long taken on pilgrimage to Canterbury. Nicholas had chosen a small bustling hostelry in a shadowed alley where the customers were still drinking heavily long after dark. Jerrid Chatwyn was waiting for Nicholas, sitting back against the wall, legs spread over one of the pallets, cup in hand. He waved to the larger stool. “There’s beer, and there’s cold pork, black bread and cheese. Help yourself, my boy. Tuck in, all of you. But I’ve already helped myself to the two best blankets.”
“Knowing, of course,” grinned Nicholas, tossing his small bundle to another of the pallets, “that the biggest lice, fleas and spiders always nest in the best blankets.”
“I shall squash the lot,” replied his uncle, “as I snore my way to dreams of soft white arms, heaving breasts and a sweet plump mouth searching for mine.” He nodded to David, but eyed the other three with amusement. “Been exploring the rubbish tips again, Nick my boy?”
Wolt muttered into his shirt collar, “I ain’t no raker’s snotboy, I’s respektibal.”
Rob, however, was not offended. “My tenement’s bin called worse afore now,” he said. “But we seen his lordship proper looked after when he come there sick as a castrated cockerel with the pestilence.”
Leaving the confines of Southwark the next morning as the dawn hesitated behind the black silhouetted treetops, a slow lime wash of creamy pastels splashed with gold, the small party headed across open scrub and fields to the winding lanes, the little chilly streams and the stretching haze of southern England. Skirting townships, they took the narrower paths then left the roads completely and took the horses through farmland onto paths barely scratched in the earth and under the fluttering shade of the woodlands. Eventually it was a bluster of coastal wind that brought them the perfumes of stinging brine and the tang of the sea. A meadow lark was singing, but in the distance were the high wild calls of the gulls.
Nicholas smiled. “We are nearly there. Do we sleep here in the open tonight, and keep watch? The grass is dry and the stench of the fields is behind us.” He dismounted, pulling out a well wrapped parcel from his saddle bags. The previous night’s wayside inn had supplied a simple supper packed for the morrow, and now they sat under the trees to eat.
“I’ve no objection to a well fertilised field,” Jerrid said, clamping a wedge of cold bacon between two slabs of dark bread. “Manure in, manure out. And it’s manure we’re chasing, far as I can tell.”
“I doubt the good marquess would be pleased to hear your description of him, uncle.” Nicholas grinned, drinking his wine straight from the leather sack. “Urswick, on the other hand, can presumably be described no other way.”
“A turd amongst turds,” nodded Jerrid. “How pleased I’ll be to meet him again.”
“If we manage to intercept him,” David said. “Remembering he’s evaded us more than once before.”
Nicholas, his uncle and David Witton lounged, talking softly together as the sun sank low. “Christopher Urswick, a good Lancastrian chaplain, and loyal to his lord and that lord’s mother,” Nicholas sighed. “Yes, I’ve met him before. He loathes me, of course.”
“Fears you.”
Nicholas smiled back at his uncle. “Perhaps. Since his loyalties make him our enemy.”
“Because his loyalties lie with that young fool Henry Tudor. Or more particularly to his lady mother who inspires such loyalty. She’s indomitable. Her servants adore her.”
“Loyalties are never simple,” murmured Nicholas.
David looked up suddenly and frowned. “Loyalty is never so complicated, my lord, being my lifelong cape and my chosen armour. Loyalty first to God, then to the anointed king, and then to my master. I know where my loyalties lie, and I sleep well because of it.”
“Which is why I call you friend,” Nicholas smiled. “But remember this, if Urswick has the sense I think he has, that wretched letter he carried will already have been passed on to the messenger entrusted to deliver it in the north. So we are looking for strangers, furtive or belligerent, and not the good chaplain himself.”
A little apart, Rob and Harry leaned against the ant infested bark behind them. The conversation they now heard was the first explanation they had been given of where they were going, and why. Rob looked up and said, “This be for our ears too, is it m’lord? There’s folks to be killed or captured prisoner?”
“Which is precisely what you’re here for,” Nicholas said. “Since I have no clear idea of their numbers. Crossing in secret from France, they’ll not be many. But once here, we could be looking for one man, or ten.”
“No matter the numbers, m’lord,” grinned Harry. “If that’s the job, then I’m ready. My line, you might say.”
Nicholas shook his head. “It’s the king’s business we’re on, and no rout. If there’s a fight, I want no wanton slaughter.”
Jerrid spoke softly, as though reciting old stories. “Urswick’s no fool, and nor is the woman who rules him. We’re speaking of a man originally sent to Flanders with money and secret messages from Tudor’s mother, who evaded all our royal guards, spies and envoys, and got himself right where he wished and into the hands of John Morton, the hypocrite of Ely. Urswick came backwards and forwards a few times it seems, and always without us knowing until afterwards. Then he was the wretch who somehow warned Tudor when Brittany’s duke was about to take him under house arrest. Morton sent out the alert, Urswick carried the news, and Tudor got away to France. That Tudor’s now in French favour with enough plots up his arse to turn turds into custard, is largely thanks to Mister Urswick.”
“So it’s this Urswick you’re after?” Harry rubbed his nose. “Ain’t never heard of him. And this Tudor – not rightly heard of him neither.”
“Once of no account whatsoever,” Nicholas answered, “now, with French backing, he is fast becoming a dangerous man.”
“But it’s the mother supplied the ambition,” added Jerrid.
“Urswick, on the other hand,” Nicholas continued, “is simply a messenger, who will pass his responsibility onto another messenger. We have reliable information that he’s bringing with him a letter from Henry Tudor addressed to the Earl of Northumberland. This is, somewhat incongruously, a request from Tudor to marry with one of the Herbert girls, who are the earl’s sisters-in-law.”
“We’re here just to stop a bloody wedding?” demanded Rob, aggrieved.
“A little more than that.” Nicholas smiled as he helped himself to bread and cheese. “His highness finds it highly suspicious that an exile and enemy feels it both safe and advantageous to himself to approach one of England’s senior nobility on a private matter such as this. Seemingly he expects Northumberland to back him in making a good marriage, in spite of having neither home nor title to offer a bride. Certainly Urswick would be an interesting guest should we manage to intercept and take him. But it’s just how friendly and involved the Earl of Northumberland has become with Henry Tudor that is of far greater importance.”
“Northumberland. I’ve heard of him.” Harry was pleased.
Wolt, sitting alone, had heard of none of them, but smiled, assured of companionship. “Loyalty,” he mumbled to himself. “Traitors. Kings. Grand lords and foreign countries. Me Ma’d be proud, I reckon.”
The sun was setting behind the trees with a smudge of pink beyond the clouds, and a sudden streak of vermillion. The horses were loosely tethered and grazing as each man kicked out a place to lay his saddle blanket and lie warm wrapped in cloak and shaded by leaf. But they still talked as twilight hooded the treetops and the darkness folded them into greater secrecy.