‘I’m off t’ Rattlebones now,’ she said, ‘t’ get yer breakfast.’ She hesitated as though she would add something, then, obviously deciding against it, left the hut without further remark.
During her absence, I got dressed, although it cost me a greater effort than I had anticipated. I felt as weak as a kitten. I was getting too old, I decided, for these sort of adventures.
I wandered across to the doorway and looked out at the busy scene as Southwark stirred into early morning life. A part of London and yet outside the city’s jurisdiction, it was a place of contrasts; a warren of noisome alleyways, an absolute haven for criminals, cheek by jowl with the splendid houses of various abbots and bishops. St Thomas’s Hospital and the church of St Mary Overy were two of its more imposing buildings. The Tabard and the Walnut Tree were respectable enough taverns, but others, like the Rattlebones, were of a more dubious nature, patronized by thieves and whores and others not anxious to be noticed by officers of the law. Overhead, the sky was a clear, cloudless blue. It was going to be another warm day.
After a while, I went back inside. The heat of the fire and the stench of the drying clothes suddenly turned my stomach, and I began to retch. My own clothes, too, seemed to have a smell about them previously unnoticed, and they felt stiff and uncomfortable. I wondered irritably where Bertha was and what was keeping her. She seemed to have been gone an unconscionable time, and I was longing to be off. My head ached, and I was no nearer finding out what had become of Gideon Fitzalan, or why he had been taken, than I had been a week ago.
I knew that my dream had been telling me something, but what it was I had no notion. God was speaking to me, but I was too stupid to understand. I remembered what Bertha had said, that I was shouting out names — the names, obviously, of the Fitzalan tribe. I could recall the events and circumstances of the dream quite clearly. It was interpreting them that presented a problem.
The nausea was beginning to pass, but my legs still felt too fragile to support me, so I pulled Bertha’s abandoned stool well clear of the fire and sat down near the door, trying to marshal my thoughts. I had been in the chamber below St Etheldreda’s crypt when I had been assaulted. Someone had either followed me with such stealth that I had been unaware of pursuit, or else somebody had already been down there and had concealed him — or herself before I had time to descend the steps. Of the two, I favoured the latter theory.
I also recalled that, just before I was struck, I had thought there was something different about my surroundings; that there was something there I had not noticed on my previous visit. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to picture the scene, but try as I might, I could recollect nothing, only the blow to the back of my head which had sent me plunging into oblivion.
So what had happened next? Someone — more than one person? — had dragged me across the floor and bundled me bodily into the drain which connected with the Wallbrook culvert. Judging by the bruises with which my body was covered, it had been a tight squeeze, although wide enough to prevent me from becoming stuck, and I must have been helped on my way by a good shove from above. (I concluded that the drain itself was fairly short in length and had been made to stop the underground chamber from being flooded when the Thames was in spate.) But I was a big man and a heavy weight. It must surely have taken more than one person to shift me.
Bertha entered the hut, nearly falling over the stool in the process, carrying a covered dish in one hand and a jug of ale in the other. The first smelled deliciously of hot bacon collops and the other made me realize that I had a raging thirst which, until that moment, I had been too preoccupied to notice.
When she had finished cursing me for getting in the way, Bertha handed me the dish and placed the jug on the floor where I could reach it, along with the beaker she had brought yesterday from the Rattlebones. This she wiped out with a handful of straw picked up from the floor. I decided to drink from the jug.
‘Gettin’ nice all of a sudden, ain’t we?’ she jeered, throwing more sticks on the fire and pulling one of the racks of drying clothes nearer to the blaze. Then she sat down on the floor, arms locked around her knees. I offered her the stool, but she shook her head. ‘You finish yer breakfast. But you’ll ’ave t’ give it up in a minute. I’ve invited someone in t’ see you.’
‘What do you mean? Who?’
She shook her head. ‘Jus’ eat and don’ ask so many questions.’
With this I had to be content as she plainly intended to say nothing further. The sunlight coming through the open doorway had strengthened and it was now full daylight, while the sounds from without had steadily increased. The denizens of Angel Wharf were up and busy. I thought again of Lord Hastings in the Tower watching the dawn of his last day on earth and wondered what it must feel like to know the hour of one’s death; to hear the birds and feel the warmth of the sun on one’s face and accept that in a while it would all be gone. I thought, too, of Earl Rivers, young Sir Richard Grey and old Sir Thomas Vaughan as yet, probably, unaware of their fate, but soon to learn that they also must die. Twelve short weeks ago, when King Edward had breathed his last, how could they possibly have known how soon they would be following him into the grave?
‘Cheer up,’ Bertha said. ‘You’ve got a face as dismal as a week o’ Fridays. Which reminds me, I s’pose, bein’ Freya’s day I oughta brought you fish, but you don’ look to me like one what takes fastin’ very serious.’
‘Not when my wife isn’t here to keep me up to it,’ I admitted, which made her give yet another cackle of laughter.
‘Like that is it? Well, I can’t say you looks too bad on married life. I reck’n you’m one o’ the lucky ones.’
A shadow fell across the door, blocking out the sunlight. Bertha got to her feet and went to welcome her visitor.
‘Come in, me dear an’ this gert lump ’ere’ll give you the stool t’ sit on.’ I lumbered awkwardly to my feet, trying to prevent my head from hitting the hut’s roof and provoking my hostess to even further mirth. ‘I told you ’e were a big un.’ (Her chosen calling had never dimmed her sense of humour.) She turned to me. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is Audrey Owlgrave.’
I found myself facing a small, sharp-featured woman of indeterminate age — she could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty — but who, I suspected, appeared older than she probably was. Her weather-beaten skin was seamed with lines and her lips were the thinnest I have ever seen, almost non-existent. She was poorly dressed — I could see at least two darns in the skirt of her homespun gown — but everything about her was clean and neat and, astonishingly for Angel Wharf, sweet-smelling. Her eyes were a very dark brown and dominated her little pinched face.
‘Mistress Owlgrave.’ I made her a bow and indicated the stool. ‘Please, sit down.’
She thanked me, and the most surprising thing of all about her was her voice. She spoke with a quiet, ladylike accent that would have done credit to the Duchess of York herself.
‘Mistress Mendip has been telling me of your adventure,’ she said. ‘I trust you are feeling better?’
‘A little,’ I acknowledged.
She smiled gently. ‘I understand that when you were so cruelly assaulted, you were in St Etheldreda’s Church in Dowgate?’
‘Not in the church itself, but in a chamber beneath the crypt, which I think might be Roman, perhaps a part of the Temple of Mithras, which originally stood on that site.’
She nodded in concurrence. I had obviously told her nothing that she did not know already.
‘The cult of Mithras was not itself a sacrificial one,’ she said, ‘although some of its followers did interpret it as such because of the cutting of the bull’s throat by the god. In the Christian faith, it is, of course, God Himself who is the sacrifice.’