Swinging on his heel, the Duke urged the Bishop forward towards the greater privacy of the inner courtyard, where, no doubt, Duchess Isabel and her ladies would also be waiting to extend their greetings. As they neared the bridge across the barbican ditch, my pack, which I had eased from my shoulders and was holding by its straps, slipped from my hand and fell to the ground. As luck — or divine providence — would have it, there was not a single person to screen me from the Duke, and the sudden movement caught the corner of his eye, making him turn his head. For a moment his stare was one of haughty displeasure, but then it changed to a puzzled frown. In the glare from the overhead torch he recognized, but could not place, my face; and as he assessed my clothes and calling the frown grew more pronounced. How could he possibly be acquainted with such a common pedlar? Still patently bewildered, and with a last, fleeting, backward glance, he vanished from my sight.
* * *
The castle kitchens were situated on the other side of the inner ward, close to the bakehouse and the well, in the vicinity of the north-west tower. I had been allowed to pass unhindered once the ducal party had entered the great hall, and was in fact less in the way than I had expected to be in the circumstances, the cooling ovens and quiet spits indicating that although the Bishop might be treated to a substantial all-night beside his bed, he and his retinue were not being fed on any lavish scale. Trays of wine and sweetmeats were being prepared, pastry coffins stuffed with dates and honey, apple turnovers and marchpane doucettes, but nothing that a man could get his teeth into. My heart sank. I had been looking forward to a share of the episcopal feast, but it was not to be. I should have to be content with such cold pickings as I was offered.
‘His Grace sent word that he and his party would eat before leaving Wells,’ one of the kitchen-maids informed me as she settled down to rummage through the contents of my pack. ‘You haven’t much left,’ she accused me.
‘I’ve been on the road all summer,’ I protested. ‘I’m on my way home to Bristol now. Stocks are low — like the food in this kitchen.’
She giggled. ‘I’ll get you something,’ she volunteered, and was as good as her word, returning after some ten minutes with a trencher of bread and a leg of cold fowl. In her other hand she carried a tankard of ale, all of which she placed carefully on the floor beside me.
‘Is that all right?’ she asked.
I nodded gratefully. ‘You’re very kind.’ Realizing suddenly how hungry I was, not having eaten for several hours, I took a large bite out of the meat before enquiring thickly, ‘What brings the Bishop here on such a flying visit?’
A pair of big, rounded, pale grey eyes were turned towards me. ‘How should I know? The Duke doesn’t confide in me!’ And she burst out laughing.
‘You might have been privy to a rumour or two. In my experience, most gossip reaches the kitchens before anywhere else in a house — or a castle.’
My companion shrugged. ‘Not here. My lord keeps his private business very close.’
This didn’t tally with anything I had ever heard reported of George of Clarence, but I refrained from arguing the point. In any case, the girl had lost interest in the subject, picking up a small bone needle-case and hopefully asking its price. I guessed she was unable to buy it however cheap it might be, for I had never yet met a kitchen-maid with money in her pocket. I hesitated for a second or two, but I had had an excellent summer and could afford to be generous, so I closed her fingers round it.
‘It’s yours,’ I said, ‘if really you want it. But not a word to your companions, as I can’t do the like for them. I have a mother-in-law and baby daughter waiting for me at home.’
She breathed her thanks with shining eyes and reached up shyly to kiss my cheek.
‘You’re married, then?’ she whispered.
‘A widower. By the way, what’s your name?’
But I was destined never to know it, because just at that moment one of the cooks bawled at her to stop idling her time away and go to the bakehouse with the order for the morning’s bread. The girl scrambled to her feet, blew me another kiss and went running, the precious needle-case safely stowed in the bosom of her dress.
I settled myself in a corner of the great room, unrolling my cloak from my pack and draping it over my legs, for even the warmest of summer days are likely to grow chill as the shadows lengthen. All around me scullions continued to work, banking down the fire for the night (but leaving just sufficient embers to be blown easily into life the following morning), preparing the all-nights of bread and cheese and ale for the most important members of the household, making sure the water barrels and log baskets were filled ready for the next day, and cleaning the spits on which the Duke’s dinner had been roasted. The cooks checked their supplies of fish and meat for breakfast, knowing how displeased their lord would be if his table failed to impress the Bishop. Once, a chamber-maid, her arms full of bed linen, looked in for a chat with a friend, but soon scurried off again when an irate housekeeper came searching for her. Later, near midnight, three or four of the Bishop’s lesser servants, those for whom there was no room in the guest hall or stables, arrived to find themselves a corner in which to sleep, either in the kitchen itself or the adjacent scullery.
I had by that time dozed and woken again, my rest being only fitful, in sharp contrast to the untroubled nights of the past three months. Guiltily, I recognized the reason. It was because I was nearing home and the curtailment of my freedom. Autumn and then winter would soon be closing in, and I had sworn to my mother-in-law, Margaret Walker, not to leave her and my child again during the bitter weather. Indeed, I had similarly sworn to myself as well, after the experiences of last January; and I knew that there was enough money to be earned in and around Bristol for all our modest wants, and more than enough with Margaret’s wages as a spinner. But I knew also that those long, seemingly endless weeks cooped up within four walls, even though I could escape by day, would try my patience and good temper to the utmost.
As a young man I had hated confinement, the reason why I had been unable to become a monk at Glastonbury, thus flouting the dearest wish of my mother’s heart. I had not completed my novitiate but, with Abbot Selwood’s blessing, had quit the religious life for that of a chapman, and for the best part of three years I had been footloose and carefree. And then, as readers of my previous chronicles will already be aware, in the February of 1474 I had married Lillis Walker, who had died giving birth to our daughter eight months later.
My mother-in-law was pressing me to marry again. She wanted someone to share the responsibility with her for little Elizabeth, then three months short of her second birthday and growing daily more active. I had promised Margaret to think seriously on the subject, with the result that every eligible single woman and widow in Redcliffe’s weaving community had been paraded for my inspection and, whether willing or not, inveigled into my company, the two of us then being left alone together. With the arrival of spring, I had thankfully made my escape and taken to the road.
I both understood and felt the necessity for a wife, but this time I wanted to make sure that there was more than mere liking and a sense of obligation on my part. On the second of October I should be twenty-four years old, at that period in my life between the callowness of youth and the harder-headed realism of middle age, and I was looking for love. Because the monks of Glastonbury had taught me to read and write I was familiar with several of the great romantic epics concerning such characters as Robin Hood and Maid Marion, Lancelot and Guinevere, and also with the Roman de la Rose.