‘Not even when you found him to be a Woodville adherent?’ She regarded me quizzically for a second or two, then burst out laughing. ‘Confess it, Roger! You were afraid of a tongue-lashing because you’d omitted to mention him earlier.’ She adopted Timothy’s scathing, pompous tone when he was riding his high horse. ‘“Nothing is ever too small or too insignificant to be kept to oneself in this business. Your safety and the safety of others may well depend on sharing every single scrap of information. Do I make myself clear?”’
I had intended strenuously to deny being afraid of Timothy, but her impersonation was so vivid and so accurate that I could only join in her mirth and smile ruefully. ‘Perhaps,’ I admitted.
She reached over and patted my hand where it lay on the coverlet. ‘I shouldn’t let it worry you,’ she advised. ‘I feel certain that you’ve merely stumbled on a secret love affair that has nothing to do with anyone or anything else but themselves. The fact Will is a member of Sir Edward Woodville’s household is probably just a coincidence.’
Like the fact that he was on his way to France? Like the fact that he had been lying in wait for us — for that was how it was beginning to seem to me now — at Rochester? Like the fact that he had arranged to meet the Armigers, also making their way across the Channel, at Canterbury? I said none of this to Eloise, but as I have remarked before, she was nobody’s fool.
‘If the Armigers are going to France,’ she pointed out, reading my thoughts, ‘to visit her kinfolk, then don’t you think her lover — if that’s really what he is — would find some excuse to go, too? Will and the lady would have arranged this rendezvous here, in Canterbury. I doubt if Master Armiger had anything to say in the matter. A wily woman — and I can tell you that Jane Armiger is neither so silly nor so ingenuous as she looks: I know the sort — could easily persuade a doting husband of almost anything. She may seem afraid of him, and doubtless, in some respects, she has reason to be, but she can twist him round her little finger when she wants. You saw tonight how she coaxed him to play at three men’s morris when all he wanted was to sit by the fire and read.’ Eloise gave my hand another pat. ‘No, no! I don’t think there’s any mystery about those three, not now you’ve told me about that meeting on the water-stairs. When he saw us at Rochester, Will must have considered how much more innocent his and Jane Armiger’s meeting here would appear if he were attached to another party.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I agreed.
But my relief was limited. Her reasoning, as far as it went, was good, except that I knew she was only in partial possession of the facts. Once again, I was tempted to take her fully into my confidence: she looked so pretty, sitting there a few inches away from me, those violet-blue eyes regarding me so limpidly, her mouth so soft and tender. Although I even had my own mouth open to speak, common sense reasserted itself at the crucial moment. I forced myself to think of the last time I had seen her before our recent meetings in London. There had been nothing vulnerable or yielding about her then, and however much she protested the opposite, I still couldn’t bring myself to believe in her innocence.
She abruptly withdrew her hand from mine. She had sensed my change of mood and was not a woman to waste time trying to recover lost ground. She probably told herself that there would be other opportunities. She could wait.
‘I’m tired,’ she said, lying down with her back to me and nestling into the pillows. ‘Goodnight. God be with you. Sleep well.’
I grunted something ungracious in reply, feeling conscience-stricken and yet annoyed with myself because I had no cause to be. I blew out the solitary candle I had left burning on the table on my side of the bed, pulled the curtain to shut out the draughts and the glow from the dying embers of the fire, and settled down myself, my back also turned towards her.
It must have been an hour or so later when I felt her hand on my shoulder, shaking me awake. My first thought was that this was an approach I could well do without, but there was something about the urgency of her voice as she whispered, ‘Wake up!’ that made me revise my opinion.
‘What is it?’ I mumbled, heaving myself into a sitting position.
‘There’s someone in the room,’ she hissed.
I listened but could hear nothing. ‘Nonsense!’ I said loudly.
‘Quiet, you fool,’ she breathed in my ear, but then cursed. ‘There! You’ve frightened them away. Didn’t you hear the door being opened and closed? Whoever it was has gone.’
I got out of bed, pulling back the curtains and lighting the candle. Long shadows leaped up the walls, but nothing else stirred. ‘You must have been mistaken,’ I said.
She also had got out of bed and now came to stand beside me. ‘No. I distinctly heard someone moving.’
I went to the door and, opening it, peered into the blackness of the passageway outside. I held the candle aloft, but within its flickering radiance nothing moved. The only sound was the rhythmic snoring from behind one of the other closed doors. Master Armiger, or perhaps William Lackpenny, was sleeping off a too-large supper, partaken of too greedily and speedily for good digestion.
I withdrew into our bedchamber, closing, and this time not only latching but also bolting the door.
‘There’s no one there,’ I said. ‘You’re imagining things. If someone had entered, I should have heard them. I’m a light sleeper.’
‘You sleep like the dead,’ Eloise retorted angrily. ‘Even when you’re tossing and turning and mumbling to yourself in your sleep, it’s impossible to rouse you. You’re like a log.’
The criticism stung me. I had always prided myself that I slept with one ear open, ready for any trouble that might be brewing — a man on the alert for any danger menacing himself or his family. I was on the verge of an indignant protest when I noticed that she was shivering, whether from cold or fear I had no means of knowing. But I did the instinctive thing and put an arm about her, drawing her close. She responded by returning the embrace.
‘It’s all right,’ I comforted her. ‘You saw me bolt the door. Nobody can get in.’
I was suddenly very aware of the warmth and shape of her body beneath the thin night-rail. I was also horrifyingly conscious of my own reaction, a reaction that must come to her attention at any moment. I hastily released her.
‘Get back to bed,’ I ordered harshly. ‘The sheets will be like ice and we’ll never get to sleep again.’
She made no move to obey, but did step away from me so that she was no longer sheltering within my arm.
‘I can smell something,’ she complained, sniffing delicately.
‘What?’ If I sounded irritable, it was because I was not only furious with myself for the way in which I had responded to her closeness, but also because I was beginning to suspect her motives. Was this whole episode simply an attempt to seduce me? Had she really heard anything, or was it all a fabrication?
‘What can you smell?’ I repeated, walking round to the opposite side of the bed. The fire was now quite out, the remains of the logs bearded with flaking ash.
‘Dung, horses, the stables,’ she answered. Her tone was as cold as the dead fire on the hearth.
I was about to tell her not to be stupid when I noticed the smell myself. There was definitely a whiff of something equine. Then I recollected and, by the light of the candle-flame examined my boots, which I had discarded, along with my other clothes, in a heap at the end of the bed. The soles were still caked with mud and straw and manure from my visit to John Bradshaw. Silently, and a little defiantly, I held them out for Eloise’s inspection.
Her strictures on my grosser habits, such as not wiping my feet before coming indoors, were delivered with all the venom of a woman whose schemes had again been thwarted. At least, that was how it appeared to me.
But as she got back into the cold bed, she reiterated, ‘Someone was in this room, Roger, whatever you may think. And I know exactly what you think! But try not to be misled by your own conceited wishes.’