‘Very well, Sir William.’ I bowed and turned to go. As I reached the gateway he called me back.
‘Master Shardlake!’
‘Yes, Sir William.’
His face was angry, troubled. ‘Sir Richard Rich is right. You are a bothersome man.’
OVER THE NEXT couple of days the weather remained fine, if a little colder each day. Leconfield was a pretty place, the castle and the surrounding meadows enclosed by woodland bright with autumn colour. Nonetheless the time passed slowly. Barak and Giles and I spent hours in my tent playing cards, swathed in coats. When we had lost all our money to Barak we switched to chess, and Giles and I taught him the game using chesspieces I drew on scraps of paper. We did not see Tamasin, for it would not have been proper for her to come to our tents. Barak met her most evenings, stumping round the camp with her; he had progressed to a stick now. Tamasin had been avoiding me since our quarrel in the field. She must have told Barak, for he had been a little uncomfortable with me since then.
On the morning of the third day I stood with Giles in front of my tent, looking at the woods in their autumn colours. I thought he seemed noticeably thinner now, less a solid oak of a man.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘I have some pain,’ he said quietly. ‘But the cold in these tents is the worst thing. It saps my energy.’ He looked at his big hands, adjusting his emerald ring. ‘I am losing weight. This ring will fall off if I am not careful. I would be sorry to lose it; it was my father’s.’
‘Perhaps in Hull we will have brick walls around us again and a fire. ’Tis a large town, I believe.’
‘I have already taken care of that.’ He winked at me. ‘Some gold has passed from me to one of Master Craike’s underlings, it has secured me a room at an inn. You and Barak too.’
‘That is generous, Giles.’
‘No.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I might as well put my money to good use. Soon enough I will have no need of it. Jesu, but I miss my fire, and Madge to wait on me.’ He looked at me. ‘I have left her well provided for in my will, she will end her old age in comfort. And you will have my library.’
‘Me?’ I was taken aback.
‘You are the only man I know who will appreciate it. But give those old lawbooks to Gray’s Inn library. I should like my old Inn to have them.’
‘But – your nephew…’
‘Martin will have my house, and everything else. I made a new will before I left York. But I want to see him, to tell him.’
I put a hand on his arm. ‘You will.’
For a moment he looked sad. Then we both jumped at the blast of a hunting horn. We saw, some way off, a procession of brightly robed riders heading for the woods, a huge pack of greyhounds loping along beside the horses.
‘The King is going hunting,’ Giles said. ‘I hear he walks and rides so badly now he has to stand in a hide with his bow and arrow, and shoot at the stags as the hounds and keepers drive them by. He that was called the greatest athlete in Europe in his youth.’
The King. The true King, I wondered again.
NEXT AFTERNOON we were told to make ready, we would be moving on to Hull the following day, the first of October. The new month came in with winds and heavy rain from the east, making it a miserable business getting the Progress together in the early morning, finding our horses and our place in the cavalcade. The fields had turned to mud, all the cart wheels and even the hems of the senior officials’ robes were spattered with it. Barak was better able to ride now, the enforced rest had helped his leg. He probably wished he was back in his covered cart, though, as we rode slowly along with our heads bent against the driving rain.
Mercifully it stopped later that morning as we approached the town of Beverley. We passed through quickly, then went on through more flat countryside, white church steeples marking the occasional villages. The road began descending slowly, past fields of rich black soil, and late in the afternoon we saw a wide grey estuary in the distance, broader than the Thames at London and dotted with sails.
‘Nearly there.’ Giles, riding beside me, spoke with relief.
‘Just the boat home now,’ I said. My own heart lifted at the thought. ‘That is the Humber, then? ’Tis wide.’
‘It is. We will sail down there, past Spurn Head, and into the German Ocean.’
‘Have you visited Hull before?’
‘Once or twice, on legal business. The last time near twenty years ago. See, there are the walls.’ I followed his pointing finger and saw, bounded by the grey estuary and a smaller river running into it at right angles, a walled town. It was smaller than I had expected, not half the size of York.
‘The walls are an odd colour,’ I said. ‘Reddish.’
‘They’re brick,’ Wrenne said. ‘All the bricks in Yorkshire come through Hull.’
As we approached the city I saw a large group of dignitaries standing outside the walls, waiting to greet the King on this his second visit. The Progress drew to a halt and we sat waiting for some time as the royal party was welcomed in. Because of the press of people ahead I could not see them. I was glad, for even the sight of the assembled dignitaries had brought Fulford back to me, the thought of which still made me hot with shame and anger. I glimpsed Dereham and Culpeper, sitting on horseback among the courtiers.
At length officials began moving to and fro among us, directing people where they were to spend the night. I saw Master Craike among them, checking queries against papers on his portable desk. It was as well they were held down with a clip, for the wind was ruffling them. He came over to where we sat.
‘Master Shardlake,’ he said. ‘You are to have accommodation at an inn. You and Master Wrenne and your man Barak. It seems someone has approved it.’ He gave us a suspicious look and I wondered if he smelt bribery. Some of the other lawyers nearby, who would be sleeping in tents in the fields again, looked on enviously.
‘I am to escort those with town lodgings into Hull now, if you would walk along. Your horses will be taken and stabled.’
So Giles and Barak and I walked into the city with Craike. We were among a fortunate group of officials, mostly far more senior than us, who had billets in Hull. As we approached the red-brick walls I saw another skeleton hanging in chains from the ramparts. Sir Robert Constable, I guessed, in whose mansion the King had stayed at Howlme. Wrenne averted his eyes, distaste clear on his face.
We walked under the gate and down a long main street Craike told me was named Lowgate. The buildings seemed in better repair than in York, the people a little more prosperous. They looked at us with a lack of interest as they stepped out of the way. This was the King’s second visit; they had seen it all before.
‘How long do we stay here?’ I asked Craike.
‘I do not know. The King wants to make plans for the new defences.’
‘Where is he staying?’
Craike pointed to our left, where a clutch of tall chimneys overtopped the red-roofed houses. ‘His manor house here. It used to belong to the de la Pole family.’
Yet another house he has taken, I thought. Craike seemed reluctant to converse, but I persisted. ‘We have to get back to London by boat. Will many return that way?’
‘No, after Hull the Progress will cross the river and ride to Lincoln. It breaks up there.’
‘We have to return to London as soon as possible.’
Craike flattened his papers with a plump hand as the wind lifted them again. He looked up at the sky where grey clouds were scudding along. ‘Then I hope the weather allows you to sail.’ He stopped before the door of an inn. ‘Well, here you are.’
Inside a number of gentlemen were already waiting. They looked down their noses at our lawyer’s robes. Craike bowed to us. ‘I must get back, my staff will doubtless have messed up the allocations. It is a nightmare.’ He turned and left.
‘Not the friendliest of men,’ Wrenne observed.