Chapter Five
I watched from the south-facing battlements as the armed column approached Kirkton Castle, plodding up the steep muddy road from the river valley bottom. I had been gazing out over the drizzle-washed dales, taking a sharp breath of fresh air and trying to find a rhyme for ‘damsel’. The column came on slowly, red-and-gold flags hanging limply above a dozen damp horsemen, watery winter sunlight occasionally breaking through the grey cloud cover and glinting off mail coats and spear points. Above the clop of hooves and the rumble of distant thunder, I could hear the steel accoutrements of battle chinking daintily. But these men in dripping hoods, their bodies slumped by tiredness, were not coming to war. Their approach was too slow, too open for them to be anything other than peaceful visitors of some kind, and, of course, there were too few of them.
Despite their damp clothes I could see that they were travelling in some style – all their horses were big and well fed, their lanolin-impregnated woollen rain cloaks were of the finest quality: clearly this was the entourage of some wealthy noble or courtier. But it was a strange season to be abroad – during the cold, dour month of January many knightly folk preferred to remain at home and bide by a roaring fire rather than venture out into the elements. Whoever it was that had ordered this journey had urgent business with us.
When the damp and muddy horsemen finally arrived at the closed gates of Kirkton Castle, and announced their presence formally with the blast of a trumpet, I was astonished to recognize my old friend and one-time musical mentor Bernard de Sezanne at the head of the column. Bernard was the last person I expected to see braving the chill to pay a call on his friends. He hated to be far from a well-stocked buttery, a friendly young woman or two and a cosy hearth.
Christmas was weeks past, and we had kept the festive season tolerably well at Kirkton with much eating and drinking, and singing and laughter. I had fulfilled my promise to young Thomas, too, and had given him several lessons in the use of the sword. He was talented and I believed that one day he would be a fair swordsman, but he was still too small and weak to wield a blade with any skill – nevertheless he was fast, very fast indeed. He had, in turn, shown me how he had thrown the much bigger boy and explained to me his ideas about wrestling: ‘I try to use the strength of the other man against him,’ he told me gravely. And then he demonstrated how, with quickness and a judicious use of leverage, he used the momentum of his opponent to defeat him. When we grappled, he even managed to have me on my back in the dirt a couple of times before I felt that my dignity had suffered enough for one day at the hands of a small boy.
The weather over the Christmas period had been mild but now we were in the middle of a cold spell, with bleak short days and little to cheer the soul, and with the prospect of spring still several months away. Kirkton was uneasy in itself, too. Unusual things had been occurring in the area; things which the local peasants, as ever, blamed on witchcraft: a calf had been born with two heads, an old man had drowned in his own well, and strange lights had been seen in the sky at night. In the alehouses of Locksley and in the surrounding villages it was whispered that the Hag of Hallamshire, a terrifying black-clad witch with a hideous visage straight from a nightmare, had returned to the area. She was said to steal babies and sacrifice them to the Devil and then feast on their blood. Several villeins from Locksley claimed to have seen the Hag out on the dales shouting curses in a strange tongue at the moon when they were returning home from the alehouse at midnight. I would normally have dismissed such talk as nothing more than the over-stoked imaginations of drunks, were it not for a weird message that the Norman fortune-teller Elise had given me.
Elise had been much praised for her role in the victory against Ralph Murdac’s men, and Robin had given her a fine grey mare and a bag of silver as a reward for spreading terror so well among the besieging troops. She was now, despite her foreign and sometimes alarming ways, a popular figure at the castle: not only for the help she had given against Murdac but also because she had a rare skill as a healer, and several men and women of Kirkton owed their lives to her skill with herbs. On Robin’s advice, she had paid a visit to another famous healer, wise woman, and some said witch, named Brigid, who was an old friend of Robin’s and, it has to be admitted, of mine too.
Brigid, who lived in seclusion in a small hut deep in Sherwood Forest, thirty miles to the south of Kirkton, had healed my arm when I was bitten by a wolf a few years before; I still bore the scars – a row of pink dimples on my right arm. When Elise announced that she was planning to visit Brigid, I gave her a small bag of dried orange peel to give to Brigid as a present from me. The stick-hard brown skin of the fruit had travelled with me all the way from Spain where I had purchased it from an Arab doctor whom I’d consulted about a troublesome cough and running nose. The man had told me that by steeping the dried peel in boiling water and adding a little honey I might make a soothing liquor to combat my ailments. To be honest, I had not bothered to make the drink and my cold had cured itself, but the little leather sack had remained with me, untouched for many long months in my saddlebag. I thought that Brigid might find it both interesting and medicinally useful.
Elise was gone for a month over the Christmas period, but when she returned she took me to one side in the great hall and, after passing on Brigid’s greetings and thanks for my gift, gave me some disquieting news.
‘My sister-in-craft thanks you for the gift but bids you to beware,’ said Elise. ‘She has cast the runes and she tells me that you must avoid at all costs an ugly woman in black, who wishes you ill.’
‘Is this another silly tale about the Hag?’ I asked, a little alarmed in spite of myself.
‘I know not,’ said Elise. ‘But my sister is a wise woman and I should not take her warnings lightly, were I you.’
Fine, I thought. Fine. Beware a woman in black. Beware the Hag of Hallamshire. I told myself that I was not frightened of witches. Well, only a little.
‘Are you going to let us in then, or do you expect us to freeze to death out here?’ Bernard shouted up at the wooden battlements. I stopped my day-dreaming and hurriedly gave the signal to the porters, who unbarred the huge wooden gates and swung them open to admit my friend; then I ran down the nearest set of steps to greet my old music teacher as he trotted into the bailey.
Bernard’s nose was blue-red with cold, which matched the colours of his rich clothes. As I helped him down from his horse he pretended to be an old man, moving stiffly with many little grunts and sighs. ‘A drink, Alan, a drink – and quickly, for the love of God. I would give my very soul for a sip of wine.’ And so I led him into the hall, leaving the gate guards to succour the horses and men-at-arms of his escort, and installed him on a bench by the central fire that burned all day at that time of the year while a servant was dispatched to bring hot spiced wine for both of us.
‘Welcome to Kirkton Castle, Bernard,’ I said. ‘And what brings you out in our bracing Yorkshire weather?’
Bernard waggled a limp hand in my face. ‘Shhh, shhh, my boy, not now, not now. Let me get a little heat back into my tired old bones.’
Bernard was perhaps in his mid-thirties, but he loved to be dramatic and it pleased him to pretend to be an ancient grand father, victim of gout and the rheumatics and every passing chill.
Fortunately, the servant returned soon afterwards with a flagon of hot mulled wine. After two large restorative cups, Bernard finally deigned to speak to me.
‘Ahhh, that’s better,’ he said, thrusting out his cup to be refilled. ‘Alan, you are a gifted host, a man who knows when to be silent and merely pour the wine. I can feel life returning to my frozen limbs.’ He peered at me closely. ‘How is your music these days? Are you composing?’
I didn’t have the chance to answer, for he continued: ‘I hear things about you, Alan, in my travels about the world. Good things, mostly. I even heard someone attempting one of your tensos the other day, the one about the debate between King Arthur and the field mouse.’ He hummed a snatch of my music. ‘The fool made a complete hash of it, of course, and I had to show him how it should be done. But it is good that people are performing your works. I’m proud of you, Alan. You make a tired old man very happy.’
‘You are not so old, Bernard. Come, tell me your news. What brings you here?’
‘Bad news, Alan. Very bad. The worst kind. I have been dispatched by my royal lady, by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, may she live another thousand years, with an invitation for your master and mistress to join her at Westminster. Sent out into this freezing wasteland to seek you out, with scant thought for the chill it must cause in my old bones. But I’d better deliver my message to the great man himself. Where is the noble Earl of Locksley?’ He looked about the hall in a comical manner, one hand shading his eyes, as if Robin might be hiding like a cutpurse in some dark corner.
‘He’s gone hunting today. He’ll be back soon. What is this terrible news, then?’ I said impatiently.
‘You’ll find out in good time. Doubtless His Lordship will tell you it all. But I will keep it till he returns. Give me some more wine, I beg you.’
And, infuriatingly, he refused to say another word on the subject until Robin returned an hour later, wet, happy and tired, with a brace of young fallow deer draped over his saddle as the grey winter day slid imperceptibly into the darkness of true night.
When Robin had washed and restored himself with wine and food, he summoned Bernard to his carved oak chair at the end of the hall to hear the news.
‘I come from Queen Eleanor, esteemed mother of our good King Richard,’ my old music teacher began, ‘with news of the worst, the gravest kind, my lord.’
Robin nodded and made an impatient circling motion with his wrist and hand, urging the French trouvère to get to the point.
‘Calamity has struck,’ went on Bernard, clutching at his brow, ‘disaster is upon us,’ he said, and then he paused.
‘Yes, yes, calamity, disaster, news of the worst kind. I understand. Get on with it, man,’ Robin said with uncharacteristic shortness.
Bernard allowed himself to savour one more moment of drama, testing the patience of my master to the utmost before he said: ‘Richard has been taken. Our noble King is in chains. He has been captured by evil men while he was making his way home to England.’ Another pause. And I could see that Robin was now extremely annoyed.
‘Who has him? By whom has he been captured?’ asked Robin coldly, his face a mask. He was fingering his sword hilt and, I reckoned, was only three heartbeats away from freeing Bernard from the burden of his own head.
‘By Duke Leopold of Austria! He is now languishing in chains at the mercy of his mortal enemy. In deepest, darkest Germany!’
It was appalling news. Disastrous. And I could forgive Bernard for making the most of its delivery. Peace and prosperity in England depended on Richard being alive. His acknowledged heir, his little nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, was a mere child of five, and the whole kingdom knew that his brother Prince John had his eye on the throne. If Richard were to be killed in Germany, England could well erupt into civil war with some of the barons supporting the legitimate heir, despite his extreme youth, and others making the practical decision to follow John, who was more likely to win a contest of military strength. Bloody chaos would follow: there were still grandfathers alive who could remember the dark days of the Anarchy, when King Stephen and the Empress Matilda vied for mastery of the country. It was a time of famine and fear, with marauding bands of soldiers roaming the land, burning cottages and crops, stealing stored food, raping maids and generally despoiling the territories of their enemies.
‘This is going to be very, very costly,’ said Robin.
I was deep in thoughts of the carnage of civil war, and it took me a few moments to grasp his meaning. And then it dawned. Richard was too valuable a captive to be killed out of hand, no matter how much Duke Leopold hated him. His royal person was worth a king’s ransom. And England would have to pay it.
‘Queen Eleanor commands your presence: she wishes you and the lady Marie-Anne to attend her at Westminster as soon as possible,’ said Bernard, in the measured tones of a diplomat, far removed from his excited rendering of the fateful news about King Richard.
‘She wants to discuss what’s to be done, no doubt,’ said Robin. ‘All right, we’ll come to Westminster. Yes, we need to make plans. We leave tomorrow at dawn.’
The next day, as a pale blue light washed over the hills to the east and rolled back the night, our company rode out of the great gate at Kirkton and took the road east towards Sheffield. As I trotted out of the portal, I looked back and saw the first pink fingers of daylight catching the pair of lumpen shapes on long poles either side of the gatehouse: the severed heads of two men-at-arms, impaled on long spears – former Murdac men who had turned deserter.
The men had stolen a few items, including a small bag of coins, and had dropped silently over the walls and headed south in the middle of the night on foot, presumably hoping to become outlaws or possibly rejoin Sir Ralph at Nottingham. When the theft and their disappearance had been noticed in the morning, Hanno was dispatched with half a dozen mounted archers to track them down and bring them home to face Robin’s justice. The shaven-headed Bavarian had taken no more than half a day to catch them, trapping them in a wood near Chesterfield, and he reappeared that evening with two bodies slung over a couple of packhorses. One deserter had died in the mêlée; he was the lucky one. The other man Robin had hanged until he was partially dead, and then flogged with metal-tipped whips – the remaining former Murdac men-at-arms being detailed to perform the punishment – and finally, with his skin hanging off him in bloody strips, and the blood puddling around his feet, he was beheaded in front of a jeering crowd in the centre of the bailey. The heads of both deserters were then stuck on spears and mounted either side of the main gate as a terrible warning to anyone else who might think of betraying Robin.
As I looked back at the gruesome display, I shivered slightly, and not just from the cold of dawn. Their faces had been pecked by carrion crows over the past few weeks until they were barely recognizable as men at all. And yet they seemed to be silently cursing us, hating us, casting an evil spell over our departure from Kirkton.
Four days later, the city of London lay before us, a dirty smudge of smoke on the southern horizon. I fancied I could already smell the stink of twenty thousand busy folk all crammed into a few square miles. But, mercifully, we were not planning to enter its maze of twisting streets and cramped dirty houses amid the deafening babble of its thronging crowds. Instead, we turned off Watling Street, the great Roman artery that had taken us all the way from Coventry to the north-western edge of the capital city, and rode south through the sleepy hamlet of Charing, and past green fields and orchards along the side of the slow-rolling River Thames to a rich Benedictine abbey, inhabited by sixty learned monks, overshadowed by the high bulk of Westminster Hall, the huge palace of the kings of England.
We were a large company, more than fifty souls in all, well mounted and guarded by a score of Robin’s men-at-arms and a dozen mounted archers. Robin, myself, Hanno and Tuck were in the vanguard, while Marie-Anne, Goody, little Hugh and a couple of nursemaids trundled along in the centre of the column, shielded from the elements by a covered wagon. As well as a strong force of soldiers, Robin had also brought cooks and bakers, farriers, maids, serving men and all the staff he would need to support his dignity as an earl while he was a guest of Queen Eleanor.
It had taken us four days to ride from Kirkton to Westminster, staying overnight at the castles of friends and allies, our pace much slowed by the wagons, and I was glad to be at our destination. My horse, a well-schooled grey gelding that I called Ghost, who had been with me all the way to Outremer and back, had picked up a stone in his right forehoof outside St Alban’s, and though I had speedily removed it, he was still limping. Fearing that the frog of his hoof had been bruised, I longed for the shelter of a nice quiet stable where he could rest and I could take a proper look at the offending limb.
A little royal hospitality would have been most welcome too, and Queen Eleanor did not disappoint. When we had shed our damp, travel-stained clothes in the dormitory of the Abbey and changed into something more fitting for regal company, we were ushered across the road into the great high hall where we were received by the Queen herself. A feast had been prepared for us, and we gorged on baked swan, lamprey stew and roast boar, with sweet white bread, and refreshed ourselves with the delicious light red wine of Bordeaux, part of Eleanor’s ancestral fiefdom. When the meal was done and we had sluiced the grease from our hands, Robin, Tuck and I were ushered into a private chamber off the side of the hall overlooking the river, along with a couple of the other guests: Walter de Coutances and Hugh de Puiset, two of King Richard’s most loyal supporters in England.
‘Good of you to come so swiftly, Robert,’ said the Queen in French, allowing Robin to stoop and kiss her heavily ringed hand. She had a wonderful voice, deep, rich and a little husky, that sent a delicious ripple down the spine of any man who heard her speak. ‘I know you have your own troubles at present.’
‘He is my King, Your Highness, in chains or out of them,’ replied Robin gravely in the same language. ‘He made me what I am, and I do not forget his kindness.’
Eleanor smiled at me. ‘And if I remember rightly, you are Alan Dale, my scapegrace trouvère Bernard’s old pupil. We met at Winchester, I recall, in rather dramatic circumstances.’ And she favoured me with a nod and twinkle from her bright brown eyes. I was struck once more by how beautiful Eleanor was; she must have been nearly seventy but she remained slim and lithe and her skin was as unlined as a girl’s. Her memory was still excellent, too. She was referring to a time three years ago when I had been publicly unmasked as an outlaw under her roof, a cuckoo in the nest, you might say, and had been unceremoniously slung into the deepest dungeon.
I merely bowed and mumbled: ‘Your Highness, I’m honoured that you remember me …’ and then trailed off, unsure whether or not it would be the proper thing to comment further on my former humiliation in Winchester.
Robin saved me from having to say more: ‘My lady, would you be kind enough to share with us the latest information that you possess about King Richard,’ he said.
‘Yes, you are right, Robin – to business. Walter, what do we know so far?’ said the Queen, looking over at the short, rather dumpy middle-aged churchman standing to her left.
Walter de Coutances might not have seemed very impressive, and his speaking voice was the dull, inflectionless monotone of a dusty scholar, but he was said to be the cleverest man in England, and he was surely one of the most powerful. He had been a vice-chancellor under the old King Henry, and then had been made Archbishop of Rouen by him. When old Henry died, Walter had invested Richard as Duke of Normandy and had helped to crown him King of England three years ago. I knew him by sight, as he had accompanied Richard on the Great Pilgrimage, but he had been sent back to England from Sicily to act for the King at home in his absence, and we had never actually spoken to each other.
Walter cleared his throat. ‘The truth is that we do not know very much,’ he began. ‘We understand that Richard took ship from Outremer in October of last year and that, as most of Europe was closed to him, he attempted to travel in secret up to Saxony in eastern Germany, where he was sure of a friendly welcome from his brother-in-law Duke Henry. He landed, we think, somewhere to the east of Venice, near Aquileia on the Adriatic coast …’
As Walter continued in his dry voice, I reflected how unfortunate it was that Richard had made so many enemies among the powerful men of Europe while taking part in the Great Pilgrimage. As well as a falling out with King Philip of France and Duke Leopold of Austria, he had alienated Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold’s overlord and ruler of most of Italy, by making a treaty with Tancred of Sicily, a rich island that the Emperor coveted. With France and Italy barred to him, Richard had little choice but to take the long eastern route home. And this apparently had been his downfall.
‘… he wanted to travel in secret,’ Walter droned on, ‘and so, unwisely as it turned out, the King dismissed all but a handful of his men, and travelled in disguise as a Templar knight, north from the Adriatic coast towards Saxony. He didn’t get very far. It seems he was betrayed, or discovered somehow in a, um, a brothel – I fear His Highness has little talent for acting the part of a lesser mortal – and taken by Duke Leopold’s men. At that point we lost track of him and as of now we have no idea where he is. Our spies have, however, intercepted a copy of a letter dated last month from the Emperor to King Philip of France boasting of Richard’s capture.’
Walter rummaged in a stack of documents on the table in front of him and pulled out a curled parchment. He then began to read:
‘Because our Imperial Majesty has no doubt that your Royal Highness will take pleasure in all those providences of God which exalt us and our Empire, we have thought it proper to inform you of what happened to Richard, King of England, the enemy of our Empire and the disturber of our Kingdom as he was crossing the seas on his way back to his dominions …’
The letter proceeded to recount what Walter had just told us about Richard’s journey and ended:
‘Our dearly beloved cousin Leopold, Duke of Austria, captured the king in a disreputable house near Vienna. He is now in our power. We know this news will bring you great happiness.’
‘I’ll wager it will!’ exclaimed Hugh de Puiset, a small, shrill, bouncy man, who seemed rather too excitable to be a bishop. ‘He must be the happiest man in Christendom! And you will note that there is no acknowledgement, no mention at all in the letter that the Germans are breaking the Truce of God that protects all Christian knights who fought in Outremer. We must complain to His Holiness the Pope at once: the person of a knight taking part in a holy pilgrimage, or returning from one, and all his lands and property are sacrosanct! This is an outrage! Both Emperor Henry and Duke Leopold must be excommunicated at once!’
I thought of the Templars’ threat to Robin, and wondered how much an Emperor would care about being excommunicated; if Robin, a mere earl, could safely ignore it, was it much of a sanction for a great European monarch?
‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Walter slowly. ‘Excommunication – certainly, we are already working on His Holiness to achieve that. But will that threat alone bring King Richard safely back to us? I very much doubt it.’
‘The real problem is Philip of France,’ said Robin. Everyone in the room stared at him. It seemed an odd thing to say. But Walter de Coutances was smiling and nodding at my master, who continued talking into the amazed silence: ‘Both Henry and Leopold need silver, some would say they need it very badly. But King Philip’s treasury is well stocked; what Philip wants is land. He wants Normandy – in truth, he wants all of King Richard’s possessions on that side of the Channel. And this is his best chance to get it. Philip may well attempt to buy Richard from the Germans and then force our King to give up his lands across the sea.’
There was a pause while we digested Robin’s words.
‘Richard would never willingly cede any of his patrimony. Not a single acre. Never, not while he draws breath,’ said his mother stoutly.
‘And what of Prince John?’ asked Robin. ‘If Richard were dead, would he cede Normandy to Philip in exchange for the English crown?’
There was an uncomfortable silence, which no one appeared to want to break. John, too, was the son of Eleanor, and no one wished to offend her with a candid expression of their opinion of him.
‘Where is the Prince now, by the way?’ said Robin. He seemed to want to make a point of some sort.
The silence in that royal chamber was like a physical presence; an uncanny emptiness of noise. Finally, Archbishop Walter let out a long sigh and said: ‘He is in London at the moment, but we have information that he is making plans to pay a visit to Paris.’
‘Ah,’ said Robin.
Robin and Queen Eleanor and her counsellors met several times over the next few days, but feeling out of my depth surrounded by so many great and wise folk, and having little to contribute to the discussions, I begged Robin to excuse me from joining in their further deliberations. This left me kicking my heels in the echoing space of Westminster Hall, for Ghost was unable to put any weight on his lamed foot and I owned no other mount except an elderly mule, a pack animal unsuitable for riding. To counter my boredom, I set out to explore the area around Westminster – by boat.
I had made friends with a local waterman named Perkin, a snub-nosed, red-headed fellow of about my age who was the proud owner of a sixteen-foot skiff. I was not a good sailor and had unhappy memories of travelling by sea during the Great Pilgrimage, but being carried downstream on the current of the Thames was a wholly different and quite pleasurable experience. With Perkin manning the long steering oar, we would be wafted gently down around the bend in the river to the City of London. These journeys gave me a sense of serenity: alone on the water with my new friend, and nary a sound but the slap of waves against the sides of his skiff and the harsh cry of a seagull or perhaps the occasional friendly hail of a passing boatman, I felt all my cares slip away, washed downstream, along with Perkin and myself, by the grey-brown waters of the Thames. At that time, I found it a novel experience to see the city from the water, sweeping slowly past quays where merchants unloaded their wares, their cloths and spices, and crates of exotic fruit; floating gently past the high walls of grand townhouses, past markets with fishermen crying their catch of the day, right up to the half-built stone bridge where the current, squeezed between the tall arches, speeded up in the centre of the river and we were shot through the dark tunnel on a wave of green spume and laughter. I liked to look upwards at the vault of the bridge’s arches, and the chapel dedicated to St Thomas à Becket in the centre of the structure, as we were swept under it, until Perkin quietly informed me that some of the wooden buildings that jutted out of the side of the bridge were privies and that I must be wary of falling ordure. We would return, Perkin and myself hauling on an oar each, up the calmer side of the river near the southern bank, where the bridge had yet to be completed, past the bustling Augustinian Priory of Southwark and the wide foul-smelling mud flats and miniature forests of bulrushes, and then the long pull round the bend on the side of the open heathland of Lambeth moor and finally back across the river to Westminster.
One day, I took Goody with us in Perkin’s boat, thinking she might enjoy a day out away from the chattering women of the Queen’s court.
It was a disaster.
My feelings for Goody were muddled at that time. Having known her since she was a child, I tended to forget that she was now a young woman, and found myself treating her with the rough friendliness and condescension due to a younger sister. On that misty February morning, when I took her down to Perkin’s skiff and introduced her to the waterman, she seemed out of sorts, bad tempered and snappish, and I noticed that she had a very small spot on the end of her nose. Much later, it occurred to me that it might have been her time of the month. As I handed her into the boat she stumbled slightly and I had to catch her to stop her falling into the muddy shallows of the Thames. Accidentally, I swear on the bones of Christ, as I grabbed her body, I found myself clutching at her small hard breasts. When she was righted again, and safely on board, she slapped me, a hard stinging blow that left my head ringing. I was astounded, speechless. I had not meant to manhandle her in a lascivious way, I was merely trying to save her splashing into the filthy river water.
‘You keep your rough soldier’s hands to yourself, Alan Dale,’ she said tartly as she sat down and arranged her skirts around her in the prow of the skiff. ‘I’ve been warned about this sort of thing: men who come back from a war with only one thing on their minds. I don’t know what strumpets you encountered on your travels in the East, but you are in Christian lands now and here you may not so easily paw a lady for your pleasure.’
Perkin began laughing so hard he almost fell overboard. I flushed with sudden impotent rage and took my seat in the centre of the boat, silent, seething. At that moment, I could have happily picked her up and tossed her in the mud. Instead, I ground my teeth and looked out to the far Lambeth shore, pretending to study a heron that was flapping lazily along a stretch of marshland. I should have made a joke about it, or apologized, but instead we set off in an awkward, burning silence.
I had chosen a bad day for seeing the sights of London; as we glided along downstream, a low bank of fog began to roll in from the distant sea. Soon we could barely see beyond the end of the skiff, let alone make out the sights of the city, bar a few occasional glimpses through the drifting smoky grey mist.
‘Keep a sharp eye out for other craft, master,’ said Perkin to me. ‘Many a good man has drowned after a careless collision mid-river.’
Seeking to make a joke, but also perhaps, in my heart of hearts, trying to take some revenge, I said: ‘Those other boats won’t have any difficulty in seeing us’ – I grinned at Goody – ‘not with that giant pimple glowing bright as a beacon on my lady’s nose! Ha-ha!’
I was trying to lighten the atmosphere. To be honest, Goody had only a minuscule pink blemish, but I saw that my jesting remark had hit home – and hard. Goody gasped as if I had struck her, her hand flashed to her face to cover the spot, and to my astonishment she suddenly burst into tears, sobbing and snuffling and covering her face as the tears streamed down it. Once again I was speechless – I had seen this very girl once stab a dangerous madman in the eye with a poniard; and in so doing save my life – how could she be crying over a silly jest from an old friend? I felt the immediate urge to go up to the prow and put my arm around her to comfort her, but I feared she would think I was making advances again. And so I did nothing. I merely said gruffly: ‘Are you quite well, my lady? Is there anything I can do for your comfort?’ At which she burst into a fresh bout of sobbing.
We continued downstream, with Goody quietly weeping, myself feeling wretched and useless and Perkin struck dumb with embarrassment at the antics of his two passengers. After a decent interval, I turned to Perkin, and said briskly: ‘Well, we won’t be able to see much today, waterman – shall we go back?’ Then I looked to the prow, saying: ‘Goody?’ and she nodded but said nothing, her face tear-streaked, red and blotched.
We rowed back to Westminster with both Goody and me in abject misery. I could not wait to be out of the boat and away from my shame. What was the matter with the girl: was she ill? Why couldn’t she tell me? As we tied up at the wharf, I offered my hand to Goody, to help her out of the boat, but she ignored my arm and jumped nimbly on to the wooden jetty and without another word, and without any sort of escort, she hurried away into the misty morning making for the haven of the women’s quarters of Westminster Hall.
I was just turning to Perkin to pay him for the boat ride when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw two figures in the crowds by the wharf that triggered a half-memory. There, not twenty yards away, was a very tall, thin man, standing next to a huge, broad man. I knew them, but where had I seen them before? Before I could place them, the two men turned and melted away into the thick banks of river mist and I soon forgot their presence as I tried to make amends for my clumsiness towards Goody by overpaying Perkin.