Timothy’s eyebrows shot up until they almost disappeared into his receding hairline.
‘My, my!’ he remarked, demonstrating exaggerated surprise. ‘Don’t tell me that there is someone in this benighted city who actually knows what’s going on beyond its walls.’ I shrugged, but said nothing, waiting for him to continue. The bastard was enjoying himself hugely. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, ‘the Scots have been giving us trouble for the past two years. More trouble than usual, that is,’ he amended. ‘Which is why His Grace of Gloucester was made Lord Lieutenant of the North, and why he personally oversaw the rebuilding and repair of Carlisle’s walls the winter before the one just gone. And why he and Percy of Northumberland have been raising the border levies.’
‘And why, I suppose, he and King Edward met at Nottingham last autumn to discuss plans for a full-scale invasion,’ I put in, and once again had the pleasure of seeing Timothy both astonished and disconcerted.
‘Roger, you astound me,’ he admitted with a rueful grin. ‘You have had your ear to the ground.’
‘This is a port and, moreover, the second city in the kingdom,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s always full of sailors and itinerants generally, all bringing news of the outside world.’
‘Which is mostly ignored by your fellow citizens,’ was the immediate riposte, not without some justification. The denizens of my adopted town were an inward-looking, self-sufficient race, not much interested in other people’s problems.
‘Look!’ I exclaimed irritably, conscious of the mounting tension inside me. ‘This is all very well, but it doesn’t explain what you are doing here and why I am being commanded — if that’s the truth — to go to Scotland.’
‘Or why it’s Roger’s own fault,’ Adela added.
‘True.’ Timothy scratched his chin and one or two other, more gruesome parts of his anatomy (where, presumably, the fleas were settling down to their own evening meal) before helping himself, unbidden, to another beaker of ale and leaning forward, his elbows planted squarely on the table. He turned to me. ‘What do you know of King James, third of that name, of Scotland?’
‘Nothing whatsoever,’ I answered promptly, then hesitated. ‘Ah!’ A faint light began to illuminate the dimmer recesses of my mind.
‘Ah, indeed!’ smirked Timothy. ‘So? What have you remembered?’
‘I know King James has — or, rather, had — two brothers,’ I answered slowly. ‘He quarrelled with them both and had them arrested. I think I was told … by someone … that the younger …’
‘John, Earl of Mar,’ Timothy supplied, as I paused uncertainly. His small, bright eyes, reminiscent of a ferret’s, stared at me across the rim of his beaker.
‘Yes. Well … whatever his name was … he died in prison in suspicious circumstances. The elder, the Duke of Albany …’
‘Aha! You have no difficulty in recollecting his name,’ my unwanted guest leered at me from the other side of the table.
I continued doggedly, as if he had not spoken. ‘The elder, the Duke of Albany managed to escape and fled to France.’
‘Oh, France is where he eventually fetched up,’ Timothy agreed, ‘at the court of his dear cousin, King Louis; who, with his propensity for stirring up trouble whenever and wherever he can, was no doubt delighted to see him. Yes; three years ago, Albany fled from Scotland to France. At least, that was the official story. You and I know somewhat better, don’t we, Roger?’
I nodded dumbly.
‘We know,’ the spymaster continued, ‘that a few ardent supporters of the Lancastrian cause brought him to Bristol with a view, when the moment should prove propitious, of taking him to Brittany to replace that uninspiring figurehead, Henry Tudor. Both, after all, are descendants of John of Gaunt’s bastard Beaufort line — the Tudor through his mother, Albany through his paternal grandmother — so one was as good as another. And at the time, as I recall, there were rumours concerning Henry Tudor’s health, which was supposed to be failing. Unfortunately for the conspirators, things started to go wrong when a certain pedlar stumbled into their affairs …’
‘Unwittingly,’ I cut in angrily.
‘Oh, I believe you,’ Timothy laughed. ‘Just as I believe that, once having got the scent of a mystery, you were unable to keep that long nose of yours out of what was going on.’
‘I foiled the plot,’ I muttered sulkily.
‘Oh, undoubtedly. You also helped the central player, Albany, to get away to Ireland with the help of those disreputable slavers you call your friends.’
‘I don’t call them my friends,’ I retorted. ‘And they call no man friend!’
Timothy shrugged. ‘Probably not. I’ll take your word for that. But it doesn’t alter the fact that you helped an enemy of this country to escape. Albany would have been a valuable hostage in our negotiations with Scotland.’
‘I don’t see that,’ I argued. ‘Not if King James wanted him dead. Besides which,’ I added indignantly, ‘a year later he was in London, capering around as King Edward’s honoured guest. I saw him myself when I was there at Duke Richard’s request to solve that business of the young Burgundian … And that’s not the only favour I’ve done His Grace over the years.’
‘The duke is aware of that fact.’ Timothy stretched his arms above his head until the bones cracked. ‘Which is why the whole affair of Albany’s escape from Bristol was overlooked and hushed up. If the king had ever found out … well … that might have been a different tale altogether. However — and here, at last, we come to the nub of the matter — Albany has always remembered you kindly. He trusts you, Roger, as he seems to trust no other person, and he wants you with him on this invasion of Scotland.’
I had to wait a moment or two before replying as the children were, by now, rampaging up and down the stairs like stampeding cattle, but when the game took another direction and the noise faded, I asked tautly, ‘Are you saying that the Duke of Albany is a party to this invasion of Scotland?’
‘We’re going to make him king,’ Timothy smiled, at his blandest. ‘King Alexander the fourth.’
‘And what about his brother, King James the third?’ I demanded. ‘Is he going to stand idly by while the English depose him?’
‘Probably not,’ my guest conceded. ‘But he is very unpopular amongst his nobles and in the country at large — or so I’ve been reliably informed by those who should know. Indeed, members of my own network of spies tell the same story. I believe even his Danish wife isn’t over-fond of him.’
‘And hasn’t he any children?’
‘Three sons, but all minors. The eldest is, I think, eight. But His Grace of Gloucester tells me that in the annals of Scottish history, there is something called the Declaration of Arbroath which states that an unsatisfactory ruler can be removed by the will of the people and someone else elected to fill his place. The Scots, it seems, do not place so much emphasis on the importance of primogeniture as we do in this country.’
I drew in a hissing breath. ‘And you’re telling me that the Duke of Albany wants me — me! — to accompany him on this harebrained adventure?’
‘That is the request he has made of King Edward. And that is the request King Edward intends to grant him. And who are you to decide that it’s a harebrained adventure? Some of the wisest heads in the land have decided it’s a plan that should be pursued.’
‘Then some of the “wisest heads in the land” have the brains of idiots,’ I retorted vehemently. ‘Do they seriously expect the Scots to allow the English to choose their king for them? It hasn’t happened in the past, and it won’t now.’
For a long moment, Timothy and I stared at one another across the table. Then he lowered his eyes and coughed, but I knew in that instant that he agreed with me, although he would never admit it.
‘That’s not for you nor me to say,’ he answered in a flat voice, without any trace of emotion. ‘The likes of us obey orders, Roger, my lad. We don’t query what we’re told to do.’