Coincidence Read online

  I nodded reflectively. ‘And they thought they could make the King agree to reverse the religious changes.’

  ‘Robert Aske was a naïve man for a lawyer. But if the King had not tricked them into disbanding his army I believe they could have taken the whole country.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘The discontent in the north goes back a very long way. To the Striving between the Two Roses last century. The north was loyal to King Richard III and the Tudors have never been popular. The rebellion was about more than religion, too. The Dalesmen sent round tracts by a “Captain Poverty” full of complaints about high rents and tithes. When the religious changes came –’ he spread his big hands – ‘it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.’

  ‘King Richard?’ Barak asked. ‘Yet he seized the throne, and murdered the rightful heirs. The Princes in the Tower.’

  ‘There are those who say it was the King’s father that killed them.’ He paused. ‘I was a boy when King Richard processed through York after his coronation. You should have seen the city then. People hung their best carpets from the windows all along the way, petals were showered on him as he rode by. It is different today. The common folk are reluctant even to lay gravel before their doors to smooth King Henry’s way, for all the council have ordered it.’

  ‘But the quarrels of the Two Roses can hardly have meaning today,’ I said. ‘The Tudors have been on the throne near sixty years.’

  ‘No?’ Wrenne inclined his head. ‘They say after the conspiracy was uncovered this spring, the old Countess of Salisbury and her son were executed in the Tower.’

  I recalled the story of the aged countess’s dreadful death; it had circulated in London that summer. Imprisoned without charge, she had been led to the block where an inexperienced boy had hacked at her head and shoulders; the King’s executioner had been busy in York, despatching the conspirators.

  ‘She was the last Yorkist heir,’ Wrenne said quietly. ‘Was that not done because the King still fears the name Plantagenet?’

  I sat back. ‘But surely the conspiracy this year was mainly about religion, like the Pilgrimage of Grace?’

  ‘Old loyalties played their part too. The King killed the countess and her son to make sure.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And they say his young children have disappeared into the Tower?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘More Princes in the Tower.’

  I nodded slowly. I remembered Cranmer saying, ‘This time they called him tyrant; many meant to overthrow him.’

  ‘I see more clearly now why there is such tight security for this visit,’ I said. ‘And yet, the house of Tudor has brought safety and security to England. No one can deny that.’

  ‘Very true.’ Wrenne leaned back in his chair with a sigh. ‘And for the King to come and set his stamp on the north is an intelligent plan. I only say, sir, do not underestimate the currents that run here.’

  I looked at the old man, wondering where his sympathies lay. I guessed that like many an aged student of the world’s affairs, he was past feeling any great passion. I changed the subject.

  ‘It seems we will be present at the King’s reception on Friday. Sir William Maleverer confirmed it to me yesterday at St Mary’s. We are to hand over the petitions.’

  ‘Yes, I have had a message. We are to take the petitions to the Office of the Great Chamberlain tomorrow. He will see us at nine and take us through our paces for the meeting with the King. He wants me to bring the petitions and the summary half an hour early so he can go through them. So I will start early for St Mary’s, and see you there at nine.’

  ‘I hope we will be properly rehearsed.’

  ‘I am sure we will. The Council will want everything to go with perfect smoothness.’ Wrenne smiled and shook his head. ‘By Jesu, to see the King at my age. That will be a strange thing.’

  ‘I confess I am not looking forward to it.’

  ‘We have only to perform our little duty. The King will barely notice us. But to see him. And that wondrous train of wagons a mile long. They’ve been bringing in hay to feed the horses from as far as Carlisle.’

  ‘It is very well organized. They even have a girl going round the town buying sweet doucets for the Queen.’ I told him of our encounter with Tamasin Reedbourne. Wrenne winked at Barak.

  ‘Pretty, was she?’

  ‘Fine enough, sir.’

  Something struck me then. I remembered the girl had told me she had given her servant leave to choose some cloth for a new doublet from a shop. Yet he had come back empty-handed. I put the thought aside.

  ‘Well,’ Wrenne said, ‘we should begin work. The summaries need only be brief. We can start now and go on till we finish.’

  ‘Yes. I would not like to annoy the Chamberlain’s office. Nor Sir William Maleverer.’

  Wrenne frowned. ‘Maleverer is a boor, for all he comes of an old Yorkshire family. He is like many of those appointed to the Council of the North since the Pilgrimage of Grace. Gentry who did not join the rebellion and now proclaim their loyalty to reform, but have no real religion beyond their own advancement. Ruthless and ambitious men. But tell me, sir, what did you see of the building at St Mary’s?’

  ‘It is extraordinary. Hundreds of carpenters and artists, building great pavilions. By the way, when was the monastery put down?’

  ‘Two years since. Abbot Thornton wrote to Cromwell asking for the monastery to be saved, or if it could not that he be granted lands and a pension. Which he was.’ The old man laughed cynically.

  ‘The abbots of the large houses were corrupt and greedy men.’

  ‘And now St Mary’s is the King’s, the abbot’s house renamed King’s Manor.’ Wrenne rubbed his hand across his cheek thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we shall have an announcement the Queen is with child.’

  ‘The King would certainly welcome a second son.’

  ‘The royal succession.’ He smiled. ‘The bloodline of God’s anointed rolling down the ages. The head and soul of the realm, the peak of the chain of degree that binds man to man and keeps all safe.’

  ‘And where we lawyers hang somewhere in the middle, hoping to rise and fearing to fall.’

  ‘Ay.’ Wrenne laughed and waved a hand round the room. ‘See my table on its dais, nearest the fire, so that when the household servants lay their own table to dine they are lower down and further from the heat. All part of the great chain of earthly rank, this world’s great theatre. Well, so it must be, or we should have chaos.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Though I allow Madge to sit close to the fire, that she may warm her old bones.’

  WE SPENT THE REST OF the day going through the petitions, breaking only for a dish of old Madge’s bland pottage. Some petitions were in elegant calligraphy, impressed with heavy wax seals, others mere scrawls on poor scraps of paper. Barak prepared brief summaries of the points at issue in each case at dictation from myself and Wrenne. The old man proved quick and decisive, ruthlessly separating the wheat from the chaff. Most were relatively trifling complaints against minor officials. We worked companionably, candles lit against the dull afternoon; the only sounds the falcon’s bell as it stirred on its perch and the occasional boom of the Minster bells.

  Late in the afternoon Wrenne handed me a paper filled with a laboured scrawl. ‘This is interesting,’ he said.

  The petition was from a farmer in the parish of Towton, outside the city. He had changed the use of his land from pasture to growing vegetables for the city, and his ploughmen kept digging up human bones which the church authorities commanded he deliver to the local churchyard for burial. He asked for the cost of his travelling to and fro, and time lost, to be defrayed.

  ‘Towton,’ I said. ‘There was a battle there, was there not?’

  ‘The greatest battle of the Wars between the Roses. 1461. There were thirty thousand dead in that bloody meadow. And now this farmer goes to law to be paid for delivering their bones for burial. What do you think we should do with the farmer’s claim?’

  ‘It is
surely outside our jurisdiction. It is a church matter, it should go to the Minster dean.’

  ‘But the church is hardly likely to rule against its own interest and pay the man, is it?’ Barak interjected. ‘He should at least have representation.’

  Wrenne took the petition back, smiling ruefully. ‘Yet Brother Shardlake is right, as a matter of canon law it falls outside the remit of petitions to the King. Church jurisdiction is a sensitive issue these days. The King would not wish to raise a storm on such a trifling issue. No, we must refer the farmer to the dean.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said.

  Wrenne gave his wry smile again. ‘We must all be politicians now. And recognize the law has its limits. You must not expect too much of it, Master Barak.’

  BY FIVE O’CLOCK we had all the petitions briefly summarized. It was getting dark, and I heard rain pattering on the windows. Wrenne looked over the summaries. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think that is all clear.’

  ‘Good. And now, we must get back. We have some business at King’s Manor.’

  Wrenne looked out of the window. ‘Let me lend you a coat, it is raining hard, pewling down as we say. Wait there a moment.’ He left us in the hall. We went and stood again by the fire.

  ‘He is a good old fellow,’ Barak said.

  ‘Ay.’ I stretched out my hands to warm them. ‘Lonely, I would guess. No one in the world but his old housekeeper and that bird.’ I nodded at the falcon, which had gone to sleep on its perch. Wrenne returned, bearing a coat, good and heavy but far too large for me, the hem nearly scraping the floor. I promised to return it on the morrow. We set off into the rain, to find out if poor young Green had said anything about a hiding place in Oldroyd’s wall.

  Chapter Nine

  WE WALKED THROUGH dark empty streets, tired again. The air was full of autumnal smells of wood-smoke and the dank odour of fallen leaves.

  ‘So you’ll see the King?’ Barak shook his head in wonder.

  ‘You never saw him when you worked for Cromwell?’

  He laughed. ‘No, it was the back ways for the likes of me.’

  ‘Would you like to see him?’

  ‘Ay.’ He smiled thoughtfully. ‘Something to tell my children one day.’

  I looked at him. He had never spoken of having children before; always he had seemed one who lived from day to day.

  ‘Perhaps we could help Master Wrenne find this nephew of his,’ I said. ‘You could ask around the Inns for me.’

  ‘Might be best to leave well alone. Might find this nephew doesn’t want to see him.’ A hard note crept into Barak’s voice, and I remembered he had cut himself off from his mother when she remarried, with much bitterness.

  ‘Perhaps. But we could try. It was sad his only child died.’

  ‘Ay.’ He paused. ‘Master Wrenne runs on a bit. All that talk of kings and the old wars.’

  ‘I remember a talk I had with Guy, just before we left.’

  ‘How is the old Moor?’

  ‘Well enough. I was talking of the King’s Progress, and he told me the story of the last king of his country, Granada. When he was a boy it was still a Moorish kingdom, independent from Spain. The last ruler, King Boabdil the Small—’

  ‘There’s a name! ’

  ‘Listen, will you. Guy saw him as a child carried through Granada in a litter, everyone bowing and showering him with flowers, as Brother Wrenne said the Yorkers did for King Richard. But Boabdil lost his kingdom to Spain, and had to flee in exile to the land of the Moors.’

  ‘What became of him?’

  ‘Guy said it was rumoured he died in a battle in Africa. The point is, no one knows. His power and glory were gone.’

  As we walked up the street called Petergate, we heard a commotion of cries and shouts. Turning to look, we saw four ragged-looking beggars running towards us, holding up their arms to ward off blows aimed at their shoulders by three men in official-looking robes carrying stout birching-rods. They passed us and were driven on towards the river that divided the city. ‘Clearing the beggars from the city,’ I observed.

  Barak watched as the ragged men were driven on to a large stone bridge. ‘And how are they supposed to live outside?’ he asked. ‘Beg alms from the trees and bushes?’

  We were silent as we walked under the barbican at Bootham Bar. I saw that the heads on their poles, and the disgusting hank of flesh, had been removed. ‘No beggars, no rebels’ carrion,’ Barak observed. ‘The city’s to look its best for the King.’

  I wondered if they would take Aske’s remains down from the castle. But probably the King would not visit that decayed and doleful spot.

  DESPITE THE RAIN and darkness at St Mary’s, the workmen were still labouring away. Sounds of sawing and hammering came from the pavilions, while beside them men were working at putting up the gigantic tents, smoothing canvas and tautening ropes. I remembered seeing enormous tents in pictures of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The courtyard was a sea of mud. I had never seen men work in such conditions before. Evidently there was a problem with drainage, for a group of labourers, caked in mud, had excavated a trench around the second pavilion and were extending it into a long channel, with much shouting and cursing. Officials stood arguing over plans in the doorway of the manor house; we squeezed through them and told the guard we needed to see Sir William Maleverer.

  ‘He’s not here, sir,’ the man said. ‘He’s ridden off to meet the Progress. At Leconfield, I believe.’

  ‘How far is that?’

  ‘Thirty miles off. He had an urgent summons. But he’ll be back tomorrow morning.’

  I thought a moment. ‘Is the King’s coroner here? Master Archbold?’

  ‘He’s gone with him.’

  I bit my lip. ‘There was an apprentice boy taken in the town by Sir William this morning, held for questioning. Perhaps a female servant too. Do you know what happened to them?’

  He looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘We were there when the apprentice was taken. I need to speak to Sir William about it.’

  ‘The boy’s been locked up, with strict orders he is to be held close till Sir William returns. The woman-servant was sent home; Sir William had just finished questioning her and was about to start on the boy when the summons came.’

  ‘Can I get a message to Sir William?’

  ‘In this weather it would take hours even for a fast messenger to reach the Progress and find him, sir. It would be just as well to wait until tomorrow morning. He is setting off first thing, I believe.’

  I thought a moment. ‘All right. We’ll wait. Could you have a message left for Sir William, that Master Shardlake needs to see him, in connection with that boy? I shall be here tomorrow morning.’

  There was nothing left to do but return to our lodgings. We walked along the side of the church – I was not going to take any shortcuts through that church again, even if it got us out of the rain. I saw the glazier’s cart had been removed.

  ‘I said I should have come back and given Maleverer a message,’ Barak said.

  ‘Thank you for reminding me,’ I answered drily. ‘I’ll probably get into trouble now. Why has he gone to meet the Progress? God’s wounds, is this matter important enough for him to need to consult the Privy Council?’

  ‘Richard Rich is on the Privy Council, isn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’ I sighed deeply. ‘God’s death, I wish I’d never got entangled in this!’ I kicked out in anger at a discarded piece of wood on the duckboards, then reddened with embarrassment as I saw the stout figure of Master Craike approaching through the gloom. He was walking carefully along the slippery duckboards, swathed in a fur-lined coat with a hood up against the rain. He smiled, affecting not to notice my outbreak of temper.

  ‘Foul weather,’ he said.

  ‘Ay, it is. I see the glazier’s cart has gone.’

  He nodded. ‘It was ordered to be searched, Jesu knows why. But are you all right, I heard you got locked in the chapterhouse?�
�� His eyes were alive with curiosity.

  ‘A foolish accident. I must thank you, sir, for your help this morning.’

  ‘It was nothing. But the glazier’s death seems to have caused a great stir. I was brought before Sir William earlier. He made me tell him everything that happened. Something is going on, sir,’ he said portentously.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There seems to be. Tell me, Master Craike, how well did you know Oldroyd?’

  He gave me a sharp look. ‘Not well,’ he answered quickly. ‘When he came to start work last week he asked if there was a place he could keep his horse and cart overnight, and I had to tell him he must leave the cart in the open, and take the horse home each night. There is so little room, you see. Afterwards, if I was passing I would exchange a few words with him. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, and I was curious to talk to a Yorker. I have scarcely been into the town,’ he added; it seemed to me a little too quickly.

  ‘He seemed to regret the passing of the old ways.’ I looked keenly at Craike.

  ‘Perhaps. I did not discuss that with him. I have little time for talk, the amount of work there is. The Knight Harbinger has arrived, to see all is ready for the King. I am on my way to meet him.’ He wiped a drip of water from his hood. ‘In fact, I must be off.’

  ‘Ah well, no doubt I shall see you later. We must have that drink.’

  ‘We must,’ he said hastily. He stepped off the duckboards to walk round us, his feet squelching in the grass, and was gone.