The usher returned to conduct me to another, more comfortably furnished chamber where the two Fitzalan brothers awaited me, curious to know why I wished to see them, but at the same time a little resentful at having been dragged away from whatever it was they had been doing.
‘I hope this isn’t going to take long, Master Chapman,’ Bevis said in a fair imitation of his uncle Godfrey. ‘We’re in attendance upon the king this morning, and it’s very nearly dinner time.’
I could have told him that by the rumblings in my belly.
I explained my mission as briefly as possible and begged them both to think as hard as they could of everything they knew about Gideon. Was there something, however slight, that might set him apart from other boys? Anything at all that would explain his abduction?
The brothers seemed astonished by the request.
‘He’s always been a miserable little fart, if that’s what you mean,’ Bevis said, not mincing matters.
‘Always got something wrong with him,’ Blaise contributed. ‘Always running to old Mother Copley with a headache or a bellyache or earache or some such ache.’
‘And she doses him up with physic and tells the rest of us off for not being more sympathetic towards our dear little brother.’ Bevis made a gagging sound. ‘It makes us all puke.’
‘All of us being?’
‘Well, us — ’ he waved a hand at Blaise — ‘and our other brothers, Thomas and Peter and Maurice and Cornelius. We all call him a whinging little toad.’
I sighed and urged them to think of Gideon with something other than a healthy young man’s contempt for an ailing younger brother. It was quite possible that, as the runt of the litter, the boy was genuinely delicate. Was there something different about him that distinguished him from the rest of the family?
But this appeared to confuse Bevis and Blaise more than ever. They didn’t understand what I meant — which led me, of course, to the reluctant conclusion that there was nothing either peculiar or extraordinary about Gideon Fitzalan which might explain why he had been taken, or, indeed, what he had been taken for.
I was about to return to the attack for one last time, in the vain hope of eliciting some fragment of information, when the door to the room burst open and a young man came in, a petulant grimace on his pretty lips. Although I had only set eyes on him once before — some weeks earlier, riding into his capital between his uncles of Gloucester and Buckingham — I recognized him immediately. It was the king.
Or then again, perhaps not.
For the moment, however, I had no choice but to treat him as the former. Following Bevis’s and Blaise’s example, I sank to one knee and bowed my head.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded querulously. ‘I thought we were playing cards.’ He caught sight of me and gave me an imperious stare. ‘Who’s this?’
Bevis saved me the trouble of replying. ‘Roger Chapman, Sire. He’s enquiring into the mysterious disappearance of our brother, Gideon, at the request of your uncle, the Protector.’
Something very like a scowl marred the delicate features. ‘I don’t like my uncle Gloucester,’ was the petulant reply, but there was also something akin to fear lurking in the blue eyes that were so much like his mother’s. ‘I want my uncle Rivers.’
An icy hand squeezed my bowels. In a very few days his uncle Rivers would be executed at Pontefract along with Edward’s half-brother, Sir Richard Grey, and his cousin, Sir Thomas Vaughan. I stared hard at the floor, watching the royal fleas hopping in and out among the sweet-smelling rushes.
‘And have you found out what’s happened to Gideon Fitzalan?’ asked that small, cold voice which had none of the warmth and bonhomie of the late King Edward’s.
I raised my eyes to that sour little face, then realized with a jolt of compassion that one side of the boy’s jaw was badly swollen and that it was obviously giving him pain. He kept rubbing it with one beringed hand and screwing up the eye above it.
‘Not yet, Sire,’ I said gently. ‘I came to see if either of Master Gideon’s brothers knows anything that could assist me. That’s why I’m here.’
The fair head turned sharply in the direction of Blaise and Bevis. ‘And do you?’ Edward asked abruptly. When they shrugged and looked blank, he gave a high-pitched crow of laughter. ‘I didn’t think you would.’
The door opened once again and the nine-years-old Duke of York — it was difficult as yet to think of him as anything else — entered the room. There was no doubt that he was Edward’s brother; indeed, except for a marked disparity in height, they could have been twins. They were both fair-haired, blue-eyed and displayed the handsome Woodville features of their maternal family. But there the similarity ended. Whereas the elder boy was all gloom and acidity, the younger was sweetness and light.
He grinned at me and gave me a friendly nod before turning to his brother. ‘Ned, it’s almost dinner time and we haven’t finished our game.’ He smiled mischievously. ‘Or don’t you want to finish because you’re losing?’
The other turned on him, the pale face suddenly crimson. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ he screamed. ‘I am your king and don’t you forget it!’
I think we were all shocked and the younger boy flinched. Bastard or not, there was no doubt that Edward had the Plantagenet temper. Wasn’t the whole race reputed to be descended from a daughter of the Devil?
‘Sire,’ Bevis said hastily, ‘His Grace didn’t mean. . He’s only little. .’
‘He’s nine! Old enough to know how to address his sovereign.’ Edward glared at his frightened sibling for a moment, then put up a hand to rub his cheek ‘My jaw’s hurting again. Where’s Doctor Argentine? Why is he never around when he’s needed?’ He waved a hand at Blaise and Bevis. ‘One of you go and find him and tell him I want him. Now!’
Bevis gave me a speaking look and scuttled off, muttering out of the corner of his mouth as he passed me, ‘I’d come with me if I were you.’
I took his advice. There was, after all, nothing to stay for. I had obtained as much from the Fitzalan brothers as I was likely to get and any further questioning would obviously be nothing but a waste of time. So while Edward’s attention was focused on the other two — young Richard of York plainly offering an olive branch and trying to make friends again — I made a deep bow and edged towards the door. I had barely stepped across the threshold, however, when a voice arrested me.
‘Tell my Uncle Gloucester not to send his lackeys bothering my people again! And you haven’t taken proper leave of me! I am your king!’
There was a note of desperation in the last sentence that moved me in spite of myself. The same wave of compassion washed over me as it had done earlier. I went back, knelt and kissed the little hand held out to me. It was stone cold against my lips; almost, I thought, like the touch of dead flesh.
Once outside in the fresh air, I took a deep breath and leant against one of the massive walls, looking at, but not seeing, the archery butts set up on the green, where the boys had been shooting some time during the morning if the abandoned bows and arrows were anything to judge by. My emotions were in a tangle. I didn’t like young Edward and yet I felt deeply sorry for him. He was frightened and in pain, suddenly deprived of all the people he knew best, on whom he had always depended, and surrounded by strangers. Even his brother he did not know well.
I heaved myself away from the wall and gave myself a mental shake. It was no use standing there, worrying about things which I could not alter and over which I had no control. In any case, my loyalty had always been to my lord of Gloucester. I liked him as a man and knew him for a faithful friend so long as one returned that faithfulness. But I suspected he could be an implacable enemy to those who betrayed his trust.