‘Then why don’t the King do summat about it? Why don’t he send men to aid Maximilian?’
‘Because,’ I reminded him, at the same time signalling to a passing pot-boy to refill our beakers and also that of the mummer, ‘Edward receives a big, fat, annual pension from King Louis — as do a number of his friends and cronies — and my guess is that he can’t afford to lose it. Which he surely would if he intervened in the war on Burgundy’s behalf.’
‘Still,’ Jack objected, ‘if not doing so is making him unpopular … if people are rioting, as our friend here says they are, you’d think …’
‘Money’s money,’ I pointed out. ‘Especially when you have all your wife’s family to support. The Woodvilles are a rapacious lot by all I’ve ever heard of them.’
The mummer nodded. ‘By all anybody’s ever heard o’ them,’ he concurred. ‘And then there’s all the king’s doxies and by-blows making claims on him, as well.’ He looked across the table at me. ‘I’m with you, friend. I don’t reckon King Edward’ll be raising any troops. Leastways, not to send to Burgundy.’
‘But somewhere?’ I queried. ‘Where then?’
He grimaced. ‘Scotland’s my guess. There were fighting up north, on and off, all last year.’ He jerked his head backwards at his two dozy companions, now both half asleep, one dribbling ale from the corner of his mouth, the other just beginning to snore with an even, gentle rhythm. ‘We was way up last summer, over the border in fact, before the start of this terrible weather drove us southwards in a hurry. We was near Edinburgh when Lord Howard sailed the English fleet up the River Forth and burned one o’ their Scottish towns to the ground. Blackness, I think they called it — although it ain’t easy to know what those heathenish bastards call anything, the way they mangle the English tongue. And o’ course, that was another reason we had to leave Scotland in double quick time. We Saxons — Sassenachs is their word for it — weren’t popular to begin with, but after Lord Howard’s little foray, as you might guess, we were lucky to escape with our lives.’
‘Is the Duke of Gloucester involved in any of this?’ I asked, my thoughts naturally turning towards that member of the royal family I not only respected and knew well — I didn’t refer to this as it would surely have raised more questions and answers than I was prepared to be troubled with — but whose birthday and age I also shared.
‘Oh lord, yes!’ The mummer was emphatic. ‘As it so happened, both he and the king were at Nottingham when we passed through there last October. There was no official announcement, but all the townsfolk we spoke to said it was to do with the war in Scotland. In fact, it was only a few weeks later when we fell in with a travelling tinker who’d come from the Scottish marches who told us that Berwick has been put under siege.’
‘Where’s this Berwick?’ Jack wanted to know. For once, I couldn’t air my superior knowledge. I didn’t know, either.
‘Scotland,’ our acquaintance informed us kindly with a condescending smile. (We were so obviously west country turnips with very little experience of the wider world.) ‘Right on the border. Mind you, until about twenty years ago, it was English.’
‘So how did them Scots buggers get hold of it?’ Jack demanded, jutting his jaw pugnaciously. ‘Some dopey garrison commander let them in?’
But on this head, the mummer was unable to satisfy our curiosity. So I’ll set down here what I learned later; that two decades previously, the late King Henry and his wife, Margaret of Anjou, fleeing from the victorious Yorkist army, fetched up in Scotland and bartered Berwick for Scottish aid. Now, I presumed — correctly as it turned out — King Edward wanted it back; a sop to those of his many subjects who thought him a mercenary coward not to go to Burgundy’s aid.
‘Ah, well,’ said Jack, scratching himself and disturbing his fleas, ‘if it’s that far away, there’s nothing to worry us.’
‘Nothing at all,’ I agreed.
I really should have known better than to tempt fate. And I should certainly have known better than to treat us all to yet another beaker of ale. Money was scarce and getting scarcer as people saved what little they had for necessities instead of the frippery inessentials of a pedlar’s pack. True, I continued to do a reasonable trade in needles, thread, laces and suchlike articles; but the items that really brought in the money — gloves, lengths of silk, the occasional copper or silver ring, picked up cheap and sold at a profit — now remained unsold week after week. As I have already mentioned, Adela was a clever housewife and had always been able to make one groat do the work of two when needed. And, indeed, during the past five years, since her marriage to me, this particular skill had been much in demand, but never so much as now when even early May had brought little relief to the sun-starved land. But a third beaker of ale, shared with convivial friends and strangers in the Green Lattis, made life appear a little rosier, a trifle more tolerable, than it had done before.
But all good things must come to an end. Our new-found acquaintance, the mummer, announced that he must be on his way, roused his two companions from their drunken slumber and asked for directions to St Augustine’s Abbey. Jack thanked me for my generosity, but regretted that he was unable to stop any longer and return the compliment as his goody would be expecting him home for supper. (Goody Nym was never expecting him, and I doubted if she knew what supper was, but my sneer, indicating the belief that this was a blatant lie, was carefully ignored.) In a shorter time than it takes to tell, I found myself deserted, sitting alone at our table, ruefully counting the depleted contents of my purse and sobering rapidly.
A small, but determined hand clutched my sleeve and shook my arm. I turned in some astonishment to discover my seven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, standing beside me.
‘Bess?’ I queried.
She gave me a leery glance which plainly proclaimed that she thought me as drunk as a wheelbarrow.
‘Who else could it be?’ she demanded impertinently. ‘Do I look like another person?’
I might resent her manner, but I knew full well it was useless me trying to enact the Roman father. I could never sustain the role.
‘Just tell me what you’re doing here before I lose my temper,’ I instructed her sharply.
‘Mother sent me to fetch you,’ she answered, totally impervious to the threat of paternal anger, and adding reproachfully, ‘She guessed I might find you in the alehouse, and I have.’
I frowned. It was unlike Adela, however much she disapproved of my wasting money in such places at a time when it was sorely needed for other things, to send one of the children to winkle me out. She was a tolerant woman and an indulgent wife who would never put me in an awkward situation if she could possibly avoid it. (I noted a couple of grinning faces at a nearby table, and cursed under my breath.)
‘So what does your mother want?’ I asked, loudly enough for my fellow drinkers to understand that I was being called home for a specific purpose and not simply because my wife considered me to be malingering.
But my darling daughter refused to play my game.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, getting ready to leave, with or without me. ‘She just said that I was to fetch you home if I found you.’
I settled myself more firmly on my stool.
‘Something must have happened,’ I argued sulkily. ‘Otherwise, she wouldn’t have sent you looking for me.’
Elizabeth sighed. She was a bright child and observed a great deal more than one imagined. She knew me in this recalcitrant schoolboy mood, and guessed that without further information I would dig in my heels and refuse to move. She pondered a moment or two, staring at me thoughtfully.
‘Well, I don’t know for certain,’ she said at last, ‘but it might have something to do with that funny little man who called at the house earlier this afternoon. About an hour or so ago.’
‘What funny little man?’ All my senses were suddenly alert to potential danger.