The crier sucked his teeth and looked portentous. ‘He did let drop to the mayor and aldermen that things were pretty chaotic. The queen’s brother, the Bishop of Salisbury, has been arming his retainers, as has Lord Hastings. And another of the queen’s brothers, Sir Edward Woodville, has been moving some of the royal treasure from the Tower.’
‘What? Was the messenger sure about that?’
‘Appeared to be pretty positive. His Worship and members of the council were as shocked as you seem to be and questioned the man closely on the matter. But there was no shifting him. Said he knew it for a fact. What’s more, Sir Edward is making preparations to put to sea. Says, apparently, it’s to sweep the Channel clear of the French corsairs that have been raiding along the south coast in recent months. But if he takes the treasure with him, we-ell, it puts a different complexion on his actions, I would say.’
I drew a deep breath as the crowd, gathered around the crier and completely silent for the past few minutes, started muttering to one another. Then there was a general shifting of bodies as people moved to get back to work. Kings might come and kings might go, but there was always a crust to be earned in order to keep body and soul together. Life went on whatever momentous events were shaping the future.
Somebody said, ‘Praise be we don’t live in London, eh?’
There was a general murmur of assent, and someone else called out, ‘It’ll be all right once the Duke of Gloucester gets there, lad. He’ll sort ’em out. He’ll know what to do.’
The crier rose to his feet, pushing aside his empty mazer. ‘You never said a truer word, friend. Thank God for Duke Richard! He won’t stand for the Woodvilles’ nonsense.’
There was ragged cheer and, in moments it seemed, the Green Lattis had emptied of all but the usual regulars, the elderly and the young layabouts who spent their days dicing and drinking, desperately trying to avoid anything in the nature of manual labour. I, too, gathered up my pack and cudgel, stirred a sulking Hercules with my foot and left the inn, crossing the busy thoroughfare of Corn Street and starting down Small Street towards my house.
I felt deeply disturbed by the news I had heard. I knew Sir Edward Woodville. He had been with the expedition to Scotland the previous year, and I had seen him in London as recently as last October, peacocking up the steps of Baynard’s Castle as though he already owned the place. But more than that, I knew what I had been sent to France by Richard of Gloucester to discover, and I wondered if the Woodvilles knew it, too. Their spy was dead, but that wasn’t to say they hadn’t made a guess as to what my mission had been.
There was going to be trouble, I felt it in my bones, but exactly what kind of trouble I found it difficult to guess. Were the queen’s family planning a coup against the absent Duke of Gloucester? Were they — heaven forbid! — even considering the possibility of taking his life? But somehow I couldn’t see Earl Rivers, head of the family and an essentially gentle, extremely cultured man who frequently went on pilgrimage to Walsingham, Compostella, Rome or Bury St Edmunds, sanctioning such a move. But then again, was he capable of controlling its more violent and rapacious members? Particularly Edward Woodville, who had never concealed his dislike of the late king’s surviving brother? Lionel, too, might be Bishop of Salisbury, but he was as power-hungry as the rest of his clan. And the queen’s two first-marriage sons, the Marquis of Dorset and his brother, Sir Richard Grey, were a couple of roistering, swaggering young braggarts; at least so I judged from what little I had seen of them. Their stepfather had kept them firmly in their place, but now that he was dead, I could imagine that their self-importance would know no bounds. They were half-brothers to the new young king. They would be a part of the tight circle of Woodvilles who would surround him.
Well, it was none of my business now, thank God. I had played my part — under duress, I might add — last autumn and I would stay safely here in the West Country while the main protagonists played out whatever drama awaited them in London. Nevertheless, knowing what I did, my uneasiness remained and refused to be shaken off, although my step became brisker and my mood lightened as I approached my own front door.
This proved to be locked, but that in itself was not surprising. It simply meant that Adela was at market and the children with her; or, more probably, as I had not spotted them in the crowds around the High Cross, visiting Margaret Walker, my former mother-in-law and her cousin, in Redcliffe. It was disappointing, but had happened often enough before as there was no way my family could ever anticipate my arrival home from one of my journeys. I took my key from the pouch at my belt, leant my cudgel against the wall, hitched my pack to a safer height on my shoulder, unlocked the door and stepped inside.
But once across the threshold, I paused. The house being temporarily empty, naturally I was expecting no noise, but the silence struck me as unusually oppressive. Moreover, there was a mustiness that suggested it had been unoccupied for some time, days perhaps, or even weeks. Hercules had dashed ahead of me into the kitchen, but now re-emerged, looking puzzled. He barked on a querulous, questioning note and then tried to nip my ankle, a sure sign of agitation.
‘All right, lad,’ I said. ‘What is it? Show me.’
He returned to the kitchen and indicated the spot where his feeding and water bowls should be, always left in the same place even if there was nothing in them, so that he could indicate hunger or thirst by pushing one or the other around the floor, then standing back until his needs were attended to. But they were no longer there. They had been washed and stacked neatly on a side bench along with Adela’s other kitchen implements, knives, bowls, choppers, all similarly clean and unused. I stared around, bewildered. There was no fire on the hearth, not even a handful of dead ashes, and no pot hung from the iron tripod above it. The water barrel in the corner was empty, as I discovered when, in response to Hercules’s frenzied importuning, I picked up one of his bowls and went to fill it. The bunches of dried herbs, tied to one of the ceiling beams, were still there, rustling in a slight draught from the still open front door, but the meat skewer with its half side of smoked bacon and the net of vegetables which hung beside it were missing.
I took the stairs three at a time and burst into the bedchamber I shared with Adela. Here, a stripped bed, the patchwork quilt neatly folded in the middle, told the same story. With trembling hands, I flung open the lid of the clothes chest to find it almost empty. All that remained were a few old things of mine, plus the two new outfits I had been given last year to wear to France and which Duke Richard, in defiance of Timothy Plummer’s arguments that the ducal finances could not afford such extravagant gestures, had insisted that I be allowed to keep. The room which the two boys — my son, Adam, now almost five, and my stepson, eight-year-old Nicholas — shared was equally devoid of any sign of recent tenure, as was the little attic at the top of the house, normally occupied by my daughter, Elizabeth.
Slowly, inexorably, it was borne in upon me that Adela and my children were gone. But where? And why?
The silence was appalling. Even Hercules had become conscious of it and had stopped badgering me for water, sniffing around the vacant rooms and whimpering pathetically. I shivered, suddenly feeling cold in spite of the thin April sunshine struggling through the oiled-parchment window panes, and I recognized it as the chill of neglect.
With legs that felt like lead and with my heart beating so fast that it seemed as if I must choke, I turned and went downstairs again. As I reached the bottom of the flight, there was a knock at the still half-open street door. I flung it wide.
‘Adela?’ I croacked.
But the small, neatly coifed, grey-gowned woman who stood there was not my wife, although I recognized her as one of our neighbours; one of those respectable Goodies who had objected so vociferously years ago when Cicely Ford had outraged all their finer feelings by leaving a common pedlar and his family her Small Street house in her will.