I caught my breath. This, then, that I was overhearing was a plot involving the Queen Dowager and her family. If I were to be seen now, I didn’t doubt that my life would be worth less than a groat. I drew back further behind the cellar door, but still keeping it open a crack, enough for me to peer through and see without being seen.
The door opposite was flung open and to my astonishment Lord Hastings, the Lord Chamberlain and lifelong opponent of the Woodvilles, came out. And yet, at the same time, I was not astonished. Only the previous day I had noted his expression of angry discontent and affronted dignity as he was forced to ride behind the king and my lord Gloucester, while the position he had expected to occupy was usurped by the Duke of Buckingham. But what did genuinely astound me was the speed with which he had turned his coat.
He spoke over his shoulder to the lawyer Catesby, still within the room. ‘Follow me out the back way and be sure you lock the door and take the key with you. Don’t forget to send me word of what’s happening and if the morning after next is convenient for all. If it is, you’ll be here in advance of the appointed hour with everything ready for our arrival.’ He added viciously, ‘If you’re not, I’ll have your guts for garters. I mean that, Will. We dare not risk people like the Bishop of Ely and the Archbishop of York being caught skulking around a back alley.’
‘I shall be here, my lord. You need not worry.’
‘Damn well see to it that you are,’ was the ungracious response.
And a moment later, Lord Hastings, one time boon companion of his sovereign in all the excesses of his hedonistic life and now fallen from grace, brushed past my hiding place on his way to the back door with never a glance in my direction. I stayed where I was, hardly daring to breathe, and after a short delay, the lawyer emerged into the gloom of the passage.
From the little I could see in that dim light, I judged him to be somewhere around forty, perhaps more, perhaps less. He stood, briefly, staring towards the back door of the house through which Hastings had vanished, with a total lack of expression on his small, tight face. Then he, too, let himself out of the house by the same way and I heard him lock the door behind him. Breathing a sigh of relief, I gave him a few minutes start before slipping out of the front door as unobtrusively as possible, pausing only to replace its key on the nail, and closing it, unlocked, behind me. Then I walked up the street and turned right into Paternoster Row.
I sat on the grass in St Paul’s churchyard, resting my back against a tombstone, contemplating the conversation I had just overheard, what it meant and what, if anything, I should do about it.
The answer to the second question was simple. Nothing: I refused to get involved. I had no doubt at all that Timothy Plummer would greet me and my information with open arms, but before I knew it I should be up to my neck in the spy’s schemes and everything else would be subordinated to them. My own affairs would have to wait and there would be an even longer delay in getting home to Bristol. Guilt consumed me but I hardened my heart. I had been embroiled enough, more than enough, in the fortunes of my lord of Gloucester.
For I felt sure that this plot — if that was what indeed it was — concerned him. Hastings, arrogant and full of self-importance, could not stomach being overlooked for a man such as Henry of Buckingham, member of the royal family though he might be. But what exactly was the Lord Chamberlain planning? Was it merely a coup to contain the Duke of Gloucester’s powers and oust Buckingham from his suddenly exalted position as the favourite? Or was it more sinister than that? Was the duke’s life in danger?
I caught my breath. If that were the case, then I had no choice but to go at once to Timothy and tell him all that I had overheard, whatever the consequences to myself. But after a few moments quiet reflection — in which, I have to admit, self-interest played no small part — I was persuaded that whatever was being hatched by Hastings and his erstwhile enemies, no physical harm was meant to my lord of Gloucester. They would not dare. As the victor of the Scottish war, the reclaimer of Berwick for English soil, he was too popular with the general mass of people, even here in the south, to run the risk of murdering him. And yet. .
And yet wasn’t that what he claimed had happened at Northampton? Or had the Woodvilles simply intended to take him prisoner until they had established themselves in the chief positions of dominance? I didn’t know. My head reeled. All I knew for certain was that I had no wish to become entangled. Had I not, when I first heard of King Edward’s death, congratulated myself that I was far from London and had no prospect of going there? But God had decreed otherwise; and now here I was, quite by chance (or was it God’s will?) pitched headlong into what seemed to be a treasonable attempt to unseat Duke Richard and prevent him influencing the young king.
I half-rose to my feet, then sank back again against the tombstone as the thought occurred to me that perhaps I had no need to do anything. I remembered the tone of the lawyer Catesby’s voice and the stony expression I had glimpsed on his face as he stood in the passageway, staring after Hastings. I was willing to wager that the Lord Chamberlain, by his contemptuous treatment of his underling, had made an enemy, one who might yet turn on his master. Of course he might not, but I felt the idea exonerated me from any immediate action. I would wait to see what news the next few days brought forth, and meantime I would concentrate on my own business.
Quarter of an hour later I was at Blossom’s Inn, making enquiries as to any carters travelling to Bristol within the next day or two and willing to take a woman, three children and a dog as passengers; the children, of course, being little short of angelic and the hound a model of obedience and good behaviour.
‘And if you believe that, you’ll believe the moon’s made o’ green cheese,’ said a voice behind me.
I swung round and there was a grinning Jack Nym. I stared at him in disbelief, unable to accept that the luck was still running my way, and once more made uneasy by the reflection that it couldn’t possibly last. The wheel was bound to spin soon in the opposite direction.
‘Jack!’ I exclaimed, clapping him on the back, ‘what are you doing here again so soon? Twice to London in less than a fortnight? No, no,’ I corrected myself. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘Never been home yet,’ he grumbled. ‘Got an offer from a glass-maker out Clerkenwell way to carry a load to Clifton, and I’ve been hanging about these past ten days waiting for the bugger to close the deal and make me a fair offer. But he won’t pay my price so now I’ve had enough. I’m showin’ him the two fingers.’ His eyes brightened. ‘Did I hear aright? You and Adela and the children are going home? What a piece of good fortune. I can take you tomorrow. You won’t pay as well as the glass, but you’re better company so I’m not complaining.’
‘Not me,’ I explained. ‘Just Adela and the children. Oh, and the dog.’ He snorted. ‘I shall be making my own way home sometime later.’
Jack groaned. ‘What you got yourself mixed up in now, Roger, eh? Dang me if I ever knew such a man for getting tangled up in other people’s doings. I wouldn’t be married to you for nothing. That wife o’ yourn deserves better, I can tell you!’
‘I know it,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ve given my word to assist some relations of hers who are in trouble. If I can that is. I can’t break my promise.’
He shook his dead despairingly. ‘Don’t bother explaining. It ain’t nothing to do with me, thank the Lord. Just be here with Adela and the children and that wretched cur first light tomorrow and I’ll see ’em safe home. You needn’t worry.’
I insisted on paying him for the family’s transportation there and then and promised to have everyone assembled, without fail, in Blossom’s Inn yard at an early hour the following morning. Then, with a much lighter heart, I returned to the Arbour.