‘I’m staying with the brothers in the friary,’ he answered mildly. ‘I’m less conspicuous if I blend in with my surroundings. And could you try not to be so rough? That’s the second time in minutes that you’ve attacked me. What’s making you so angry?’
‘You are,’ I replied in a more subdued tone, but with enough venom to let him know that I was still not mollified. ‘Finished playing the beggar now, have you? Now that your testimony has got a friend of mine arrested and charged with a murder he didn’t commit.’
‘Ah!’ Timothy paused to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his habit. ‘So that’s it. I thought if I started that particular hare, our good friend Richard Manifold might go chasing after it. It seems I haven’t been disappointed.’
‘Burl Hodge did not kill Robin Avenel,’ I hissed furiously. ‘You know he didn’t.’
Timothy laid a restraining hand on one of my arms, and it was only then that I realized my own hands had balled themselves into fists.
‘How do you know your friend is innocent?’ he asked softly. ‘Have you any proof?’
‘Not yet,’ I snapped. ‘But I mean to find some.’ I turned to look at my companion, scrutinizing him narrowly. ‘I’m sure you have a very good idea as to the name of the real murderer.’
He lowered his hood and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t. I wish I had. It might indeed be your friend, this Burl Hodge, for all I know.’
‘And you think I’ll believe that?’ I sneered.
Timothy shrugged. ‘You must believe what you will. It happens to be the truth. I didn’t want Robin Avenel dead. At least, not until …’ He broke off, looking vexed.
‘Until what?’ I asked, feeling daunted. I had counted on being able to prove Burl’s innocence once I had found the Spymaster General. But now he had found me and I was no further forward. My mind was still clogged with my dream, trying to interpret its meaning, and I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying. I just made a stab in the dark. ‘You were hoping he would lead you to the Duke of Albany, I suppose.’
The effect of my words on Timothy was as unexpected as it was startling. Taken unawares, I found myself lying once again flat on my back with my companion’s fingers around my throat.
‘What do you know about the Duke of Albany? Where is he?’
I made a gurgling sound, unable to speak, and felt the blood pounding inside my skull. Recovering from my surprise, I took hold of Timothy’s skinny wrists in a grip of steel and prised his hands from my neck. Then I rolled over, coughing violently and pinioning him beneath my weight.
‘Don’t,’ I said, bringing my face as close to his as I dared without being asphyxiated by his breath, ‘ever do that to me again. I don’t like it.’
I held him down until I could see that he was struggling for air, then freed him. He sat up, every bit as furious as I had been.
‘Don’t threaten me with what you like and don’t like, Roger! I could have you arrested and tried for treason as easily as I could spit in the river there. I hold a warrant and a token of credence from the King. There isn’t a sheriff in the country who wouldn’t acknowledge their authority and do my bidding. So if you’ve any sense, which I sometimes doubt, you’ll answer my question. What do you know about the Duke of Albany, and how do you know it?’
I rubbed my throat and hawked and coughed a bit more, just for appearances’ sake and to make him wait, as well as to impress upon him that he had done me serious injury. But I could tell he was growing impatient and so, without further ado, I explained how I had come by such knowledge as I possessed.
When I had finished, I could sense rather than see his disappointment. He sighed.
‘You don’t really know anything,’ he said. ‘You’ve just been bumbling around in your usual incompetent fashion, nosing out a fact here and a bit of gossip there, then adding a rumour or two and a few lucky guesses to the brew until it’s all bubbling away inside your head like a bad cook’s mess of pottage.’
I knew that when Timothy began insulting me, I was closer to the truth than he liked. I squeezed the water out of the feet of my hose and turned to look at him.
‘Stop waxing poetical and just tell me what’s going on. You ought to know by now that you can trust me.’
He thought about this, staring at the sunlight sparkling on the river, brilliant discs of gold like newly minted pennies. Then he heaved another sigh, this time of resignation.
‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘But I can’t tell you who murdered Robin Avenel, because I don’t know. That is the truth. Of course,’ he added, puckering his thin lips judiciously, ‘my guess, if I had to make one, would be Silas Witherspoon.’
‘Silas Witherspoon? In God’s name, why?’
Timothy shot me a sideways glance. ‘I’m trusting you as you requested, Roger — interfering, disobedient fool though you are. I gave you strict instructions not to get involved in this.’ He gave a short bark of laughter that sounded almost affectionate. ‘I might have known I was wasting my breath!’
‘In the name of Gabriel and all the angels, just get on and give me the facts,’ I begged. ‘Why Silas Witherspoon?’
‘He’s a Tudor agent. Has been for years.’
‘You know this for a fact?’ My companion nodded. I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. ‘But in that case, why haven’t you got rid of him? Even if there’s no positive proof, don’t try telling me you couldn’t manufacture some if you put your mind to it.’
Timothy leaned forward and trailed a hand in the river, frightening a moorhen who had rashly ventured forth from her nest among the reeds.
‘Don’t underestimate me, Roger, by supposing that I don’t know how to do my job. Of course I can tighten the noose around Silas’s neck any time I please. But what would be the point, have you thought of that? Another agent would only be sent from Brittany to take his place; a man who would be unknown to us and whose identity would have to be discovered all over again. As it is, Apothcary Witherspoon is closely watched by the Sheriff and his men and is even, on occasions, given false information to confuse our Lancastrian friends across the Channel. One day his time will come, but not just yet.’
I rubbed my forehead, trying to adjust my mind to this new vision of Silas Witherspoon as an agent of Henry Tudor.
‘So,’ I said at last, ‘he and the Avenels are bedfellows?’
Timothy dried his wet hand by shaking it, the iridescent drops flying in all directions like a miniature rainstorm.
‘They were,’ he conceded, ‘until lately. But not, I fancy, any more.’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged, when he seemed disinclined to continue.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘We-ell, I fancy it’s a matter of loyalties. There have been rumours coming out of Brittany for some months past — you may even have heard them yourself — that Henry Tudor has been ill. He’s always been of a sickly constitution, but recently there have been, or so I’m told, serious worries amongst his followers concerning his general health. In short, there are fears that he might die before he can make old bones. So you see the Lancastrian dilemma.’
I did indeed. The direct male line of Henry of Bolingbroke had come to an end, first at Tewkesbury, with the death in battle of his great-grandson, Prince Edward, and then, subsequently, with the death in the Tower of London of his grandson, the boy’s father, King Henry VI, who had died, we were informed, of ‘pure displeasure and melancholy’. (And if you believed that you had to be the most credulous fool in Christendom.) The Lancastrian cause was in decline, as were its contenders for the English crown. Henry Tudor, who, through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was the great-great-grandson of John of Gaunt and his third wife and former mistress, Katherine Swynford, was the best that supporters of the Red Rose could find. But his claim was thin and tarnished by the Bend Sinister. If he were to die, who could be found to replace him?