I begged the two men to sit down, waving them to the armchairs, one on either side of the hearth, and offered them refreshment.
‘I don’t keep wine,’ I said, refusing to make it sound like an apology, but then ruining the effect by assuring them that Adela’s home-brewed pear and apple cider was, if not nectar of the gods, not far short of it.
‘By all means let’s try it,’ Gilbert Foliot said. ‘I’m sure, Master Chapman, it’s every bit as good as you say.’
I detected a patronizing note, but ignored it and went off to the kitchen to find clean beakers and broach an unopened keg. When I returned to the parlour, I found Adam there. He must have wandered downstairs and entered, unaware that I was entertaining visitors.
‘Your younger son, Master Chapman?’ the wine merchant queried and I nodded, deciding it was high time I accepted Nicholas as also my own. Henry Callowhill smiled. ‘A smart little fellow. Now, Roger, what is it you wish to speak to me about?’
The awkward moment had arrived. Whilst in the kitchen, I had been cudgelling my brains to think of a subject of sufficient moment to warrant my having sought him out. But my mind was still a blank. I handed each man his beaker of cider and desperately sought some distraction.
And, miraculously, found it.
In one of Adam’s hands he was clutching the worn leather bag with the drawstring of faded and ragged blue silk that belonged to Elizabeth. Sternly, I held out my hand.
‘Give that to me, Adam! You know very well it’s not yours. You’ve been in your sister’s chamber again, stealing her things. I told you earlier this morning that you are not to do it. This time it means a whipping.’ He looked defiant. ‘What’s in the bag, anyway, that it holds such fascination for you?’
For a long moment I thought he was going to refuse and make me look a fool in front of our visitors. I could see him turning it over in his mind, whether or not it was worth a beating just for the sheer pleasure of defying me, or whether it was more dignified to capitulate gracefully. Thankfully, he decided on the latter course.
In answer to my question, he said, ‘Buttons.’
‘Buttons?’
‘Yes.’
‘What buttons?’
He looked faintly surprised. ‘The ones Bess took, o’ course.’
‘Took?’
My son heaved a sigh, plainly exasperated by my lack of intelligence.
‘When you forgot,’ he explained laboriously, ‘to bring us home any presents, you said we could take anything we liked from your pack. I took my knife. Forget what Nich’las took. Bess took the buttons.’
Vaguely, my memory stirred, then sharpened. Of course! I recollected now. Two weeks ago, on my return from Hereford, I had omitted to bring the children anything. (My mind had been too much occupied with other matters.) Moreover, I had forgotten Elizabeth’s birthday. All three had all been upset and I had lost my temper, storming out of the kitchen and shouting at them to take what they pleased from my pack. Neither Adela nor I had seen what they had chosen, but Nicholas claimed to have taken some tags for his belt, Adam the ivory-handled knife — which he had been brandishing under our noses ever since — and my daughter the buttons. .
But what buttons? The set of carved bone buttons I had bought in Gloucester, of course!
And yet she couldn’t have done! Twice my pack had been emptied, once by myself all over the kitchen floor and the second time by Sir Lionel Despenser when he had invited me in to display my goods to his housekeeper. And on both occasions, if I shut my eyes and concentrated, I could clearly recall seeing the buttons amongst my other wares: six prettily carved buttons threaded together on a length of ribbon. The very set of buttons I had given to the farmer’s wife the preceding Sunday in return for a dish of pig’s trotters stewed in butter, an apple dumpling and a beaker of homemade cider. .
I realized suddenly that this was what all my dreams had been trying to tell me. And Adam’s remarks about belly buttons — they too had been jolts to my memory, but I had been too dull, too stupid, to see their significance.
I held out my hand.
‘Give me that bag at once, Adam,’ I said sternly.
He hesitated, but recognizing the note of authority in my voice, the tone which meant I was deadly serious and not to be trifled with, surrendered his prize. For a moment I stood weighing the bag in my right hand, then, loosening the drawstring, upended its contents into my left.
There was a flash of white light, a rainbow of colour, and I stood staring at what I was holding like a man in a dream.
I heard the sharp intake of breath from both Henry Callowhill and the goldsmith. Then the latter murmured in an awestruck whisper, ‘Dear Mother of God, the Capet diamonds!’
There were eight of them, the largest and most perfect stones I had ever seen, and each one had been set in a cup of gold, exquisitely shaped like flower petals, with a tiny, pierced shaft so that they could sewn on to a garment and used as buttons.
I looked at the goldsmith. ‘What. . What did you say they are?’
He took one from my hand and stood twisting it reverently between his fingers.
‘The Capet diamonds,’ he breathed. ‘They belonged to Philip IV of France.’ He laughed shortly. ‘Probably looted from the Templars. When Isabella Capet married Edward II, the goldsmiths of Paris turned them into buttons which she brought with her to England to adorn her coronation robes. Alas, they suffered the same fate as most of her other jewels. Edward seized them and gave them to his Gascon favourite, Piers Gaveston.
‘After Gaveston was murdered by the barons, the diamonds disappeared. No one knew what had happened to them. Gaveston was related in some degree or other to the great banking family of the Calhaus, and it has been generally assumed that the buttons were deposited with them and never reclaimed.’ Gilbert Foliot paused, turning the gem this way and that, watching the light flash and sparkle before going on, ‘But it would seem that this assumption was wrong. Edward must have taken back the diamonds after all. And when he and Hugh le Despenser fled into Wales, escaping from Mortimer and Isabella’s invading army, he took them with him, leaving them eventually with the abbot of Tintern for safe-keeping and until he should need them. Of course, he never did, and there they remained in the secret hiding place in the abbot’s old lodgings, no one suspecting their existence.’
‘Not,’ I said, ‘until Walter Gurney went to work for Sir Lionel when, in view of their families’ shared history, he told him about the tradition amongst the Gurneys of Edward having tried to bribe his gaolers to let him escape.’
‘How did you know about that?’ the goldsmith asked sharply.
‘I didn’t. It was something I worked out for myself. Sir Lionel told you. You remembered the secret hiding place and began to wonder if it had contained more than the original documents discovered fourteen years ago. Peter Noakes overheard the conversation between you, and. . Well, the rest we know.’ I dropped the buttons back in the bag, taking the final one from Gilbert Foliot’s hand and putting it in with the others. ‘And now,’ I continued, ‘we’d better take these to the Lord High Sheriff without delay. They’re far too precious to remain in my keeping.’
The two men glanced at one another, then Henry Callowhill smiled.
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘We’ll take the diamonds, Master Chapman. They’ll make a valuable contribution to Henry Tudor’s war chest.’
TWENTY
I laughed. I thought he was joking. Then I saw that he wasn’t. He was perfectly serious and there was a hard look in his eyes that I had never seen before. The genial wine merchant had vanished. This was a man with a purpose.