‘What of it?’
‘When we spoke to Eleanor earlier, you pointed out that the killer must have been aware of the Queen’s movements to ambush them all. We spent time thinking of Ellis and Pilk, but what if it wasn’t the Despenser’s man, but another. Perhaps the Queen had a man come to help her.’
‘Which allies does she have here?’ Baldwin mused.
‘Her Chaplain mentioned one, didn’t he? A man-at-arms about the palace, maybe?’ Simon stood still, staring up at the grey sky. Alicia was not keen to describe the killer … and Peter told us she is having an affair with Blaket.’
Baldwin peered at him narrowly. ‘What of it?’
‘Baldwin, you remember the other day, when we got to the Bishop’s palace and the Bishop had Rob serve us in uniform? I didn’t recognise him at all at first, even though that was a well-lighted room. There are times when you may not recognise a man, aren’t there? When you look at a man in uniform, you may see the uniform, not the man beneath. And since many will always wear the clothes bought for them by their master, if they were to go abroad in different clothes, they might not be recognised.’
‘I suppose so. Why — what are you thinking?’
‘If the Queen wished a man to do her this favour, she has a limited fund of men from which to draw. Her household is disbanded.’
‘True.’
‘But there is one man who has been intensely loyal to her. That guard on the door, Blaket. He has been hard to get past, hasn’t he? He’s been determined to protect his mistress. She has turned his head, perhaps. Or his wallet.’
‘He’s in the King’s pay.’
‘Maybe he was, Baldwin. But recalclass="underline" we met him twice, and did not realise at first that it was the same man, because he was in different places each time. We just thought him a guard by his clothing. Yet if he was not in uniform, would we have recognised him at all?’
‘The Queen sees him every day,’ Baldwin said. ‘He could hardly be unknown to her.’
‘No. Nor to most of her ladies,’ Simon said. ‘But think what descriptions we’ve had from Eleanor and the others: that the man had the slighter build of one who fights on foot. No great thickened neck like a knight. Like Blaket. And yes, he would be known well enough in daylight — but how many of the ladies had seen him at night, in strange clothes, with a mask covering his features?’
‘Why should he try to kill Mabilla?’
‘As I said a minute ago, just think how loyal he was to the Queen. When we tried to see her in her chapel, he refused us entry. He was enormously protective of her.’
‘True enough — yet I ask you again: why should he kill Mabilla?’
‘Because he learned, perhaps, that she was not so loyal to the Queen as he would expect?’
Baldwin looked away. Although he was reluctant to admit it, he wanted to see Despenser accused and convicted. There was something about his swaggering arrogance, his conviction that no matter what, he was safe from any form of justice, that made Baldwin’s hackles rise. It was obscene for any man to consider himself above the law. Even the King had his powers restricted by the barony. The law existed to protect all free men from persecution.
‘Baldwin, I believe that the Bishop was trying to explain it to us. Perhaps he was telling us the Despenser was innocent of this.’
‘And then what? That he was also innocent of ordering the murder of the innkeeper and his wife at the Swan at Chelchede?’ Baldwin snapped. ‘Simon, you’ve seen the man, he will take anything he wants and never count the cost to others. All that matters to him is his own intolerable greed.’
‘Yes. But Baldwin, are you looking to have him gaoled no matter what? Gaoled for a crime he did not commit?’
‘I would see his powers ripped from him, yes,’ Baldwin admitted heavily.
‘And what happened to the man who said that it was better that ten guilty men go free than even one innocent man be unfairly captured and slain?’
‘Ouch! You use my own words against me? Is that kind? Is that fair?’
Simon grinned. The dark mood was leaving his friend. ‘So how do we learn what we need to?’
‘Do you recall Ellis, just before he died? He told us that the assassin entered by Arch on that part of the wall,’ Baldwin said.
‘Which was what we thought.’
Baldwin was frowning. ‘Yes. Except all the guards were looking for someone climbing in. The trick would be to get in past the guards and do so without being seen. What if that was not how he climbed in, but how he intended to get out? Perhaps the man was not foolish enough to think that he could get away with climbing in and making his way all over the palace. Easier by far to get in during the day and hide, and then escape that way.’
‘But he didn’t escape.’
‘No. He was stuck in the palace. He died in the King’s chamber, if the blood in there was telling us the truth.’
Simon shrugged. ‘Perhaps Despenser found his man and slew him himself? He would be one man Jack would trust, surely.’
‘Not if he knew Sir Hugh.’ Baldwin considered darkly. ‘And then, what of the maid?’
Simon shook his head. ‘No. It cannot have been Despenser. He would hardly have Jack emasculated and treated in that manner. No, it must have been another, someone who had reason to loathe him.’
‘And who sought to … Simon, I think I understand at last!’
Chapter Forty
The King sat in his little parlour to the side of his main chamber and waited.
At other times he might have tapped his fingers on the table or the arm of his chair, but not today. Today he felt regally calm. All the tension of the last few days was gone with that confession.
It wasn’t what he had wanted, of course. No, he’d wanted to be kept in sublime ignorance of the death, left to assume that the assassin was just another one of those sent to hurt him or his wife. For a while, he had entertained the thought that the man Jack atte Hedge was a murderer sent by the French to kill his wife. There could be no better disincentive for his journey to France than for the French themselves to have had his wife’s corpse to point at. Perhaps the French courtiers like that murderous bastard Charles, Count of Valois, had decided that she would serve more use to them dead than alive. After all, if she died and the English King was unable to travel to France for fear of his security, the dukedom would revert to the French Crown, and those who had helped secure it would be able to anticipate a reward.
The knock came and the King motioned to his steward to open it, and then sat back to consider the man as he walked inside. Such black treachery was repugnant.
‘You have betrayed me, my Lord.’
Earl Edmund looked about him with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘Your friend Despenser isn’t here? Doesn’t your little knight want to be here when you try to destroy me?’
‘Do not seek to insult my intelligence,’ King Edward said with icy calm. ‘You have murdered, and sent the evidence here to my court — nay, to my own bloody room! You had the effrontery to murder and then confess it to me, your King!’
‘And my brother. Yes, I did so. And I would do so again, if I found that the man who was supposed to be my vassal had taken the coin of another. Especially if he was supposed to be my own adviser — especially if he was taking Despenser’s money to make me look a fool!’
‘You need no help, my Lord. You are fully competent to do that on your own.’
‘My Lord King, I am your loyal and devoted servant. We have the same blood in our veins …’
‘No.’
The denial was so firm that Edmund hesitated. They had the same father, King Edward I, but Edmund was conceived by the King’s second wife. ‘We are brothers.’
‘No longer. You are a fool. You lost me my dukedom, and now I must scrabble for every troop I can find to try to reinvade, or I must bow to the French King and abase myself before him. Me! Your King! All because of your incompetence and wilful foolhardiness. I know how you lost me the war. I know why I have lost Guyenne.’