Doubtful Blood: Part I of The Warbeck Trilogy: The Warbeck Trilogy, #1

CHAPTER ONE:

WINCHESTER COLLEGE. JUNE 1548

‘I’ll walk in Cloisters later tonight,’ White said, glancing through his arched windows at the fine, late June dusk.

‘Yes, Master.’

Jan’s voice was low and soft. He carefully shielded the flame he brought over to White’s desk in the Warden’s study above Middle Gate. The bright glow from the wax candle was still visible through his long fingers.

Gentleman’s fingers. Jan had been White’s personal servant since April, but remained a mystery. His memory had never returned. What was not in doubt was his willingness to work. He had been ready with the candle. He stepped back, quiet and unobtrusive despite the height he had grown to, waiting for White’s nod of approval and dismissal. It was probably obvious to him that his master was worried tonight, but not his place to ask questions.

He knows nothing of politics in London, White thought. To him, London is far from Winchester. He doesn’t know that Bishop Gardiner, whom his master is pledged to support, who has already been imprisoned in the Fleet, will have today preached a sermon at St Paul’s Cross against the new Protestant regime and been arrested again. This time it will be the Tower…

White sighed inwardly, looked down at his books, his parchment and the quills Jan sharpened so well. He stood up, walked to the windows overlooking Chamber Court. Around the mellow old quadrangle were the doorways behind which the scholars in his charge slept in ignorance of the heretic madness sweeping England. If he was arrested for supporting Bishop Gardiner, they would no longer be protected.

Yet in his worse moments he felt the scholars were hardly protected now; there had been so many changes already and then there was Hostarius Forde. If Forde wasn’t closely watched… Thinking about it made him feel ill.

Aware of Jan’s concerned dark eyes on him, he returned to his desk and sat down. ‘You may go, child,’ he said. As he spoke, he realised he had forgotten to hear Jan’s Latin lesson tonight. Jan wouldn’t mind. It seemed to White that he had grown strangely reluctant to learn lately, though his eagerness to please generally overcame this and he had progressed well since April.

‘Yes, Master.’ Jan bowed gracefully, hair bright in the candlelight, an ideal serving man who looked like a gentleman, and left the study.

*

Hostarius William Forde paused, his spider’s legs suspended above his mattress, listening for signs that the two men who shared his chamber had heard the bedclothes rustle. Luckily, both slept soundly. Matthew Cole, the most junior of the ten Fellows in College, was snoring loudly on his back, drooling, his prematurely silvered hair gleaming in the June moonlight. Informator Evered, who had curled cursing beneath his own bedclothes to escape the noise of Cole’s snoring, had himself fallen asleep in that position and was doing it too.

With a last look at Cole, Forde slowly unfolded his legs to the floor, crossed it, knowing which boards to dodge, and slipped out the door then down the circular stone stairs to the ground floor. Stealth was second nature to him; he was used to coming in late from Bessy at the Golden Rose. Besides, he liked being stealthy.

He glided across Chamber Court by the light of a scudding yellow moon, noting with profound dislike that a candle still burned in Warden White’s study above Middle Gate. Perhaps he should have waited till later? White sometimes sought the peace of Cloisters before going to bed. No, he was probably working at his desk and would stay there. Come to think of it, he was probably on his knees begging the saints to intercede for his beleaguered Papist college and would certainly stay there…

Forde stuck his head round the door of Thomas Jolyff’s chamber. Jolyff was one of the three older boys, sharing a bed with his friends Grymston and Born. Born was a problem for Forde, likely to be awake and coughing, but he was also the reason for this moonlight visitation on Jolyff.

His fortune held; once his eyes grew accustomed to the light he saw that Born was sleeping between Jolyff and Grymston. Gentle, red gold Born had never been strong and for months had been growing frail. Jolyff’s concern for him was more frantic than Grymston’s and Forde knew why. It was time to exploit Jolyff’s concern.

He stepped into the chilly chamber. Through the steady breathing of eleven of its occupants and the whistling snores of Grymston, he tiptoed over to Jolyff, whose body was almost bare of covers, which he had piled on top of Born. Tall, chestnut haired Jolyff’s questioning intelligence had been obvious from the moment Forde had come to College as Hostiarius, the lowly Under Master, earlier this year. A slit of light from the narrow window fell on the boy’s angular face. To Forde, it seemed an appropriate omen.

He put his hand over Jolyff’s mouth, stifling any sound as he shook him awake. Jolyff stared up at him, sleep gone instantly, then tried to turn his head towards Born, as though Forde’s presence here meant bad news of him. With hard fingers Forde kept the boy’s face turned towards his.

‘Outside, at once,’ he hissed. Jolyff started to struggle. ‘If you value Born’s soul,’ he added.

Jolyff stopped struggling. Dread is stronger at night and with immense satisfaction Forde saw it in his face.

‘Outside,’ he whispered and retreated to the door lest one of the other scholars waken. From there he watched Jolyff sit up, glance round and slide out his side of the bed. He seemed to take a long time and Forde’s heart hammered against his ribs until the boy was outside, wearing only a thin shift he was outgrowing fast.

‘Hurry!’ Forde hissed, hauling him to the one place which would be safe from White’s gaze should he look out the window: Middle Gate, the archway directly beneath the Warden’s apartments.

Once there, Jolyff looked at him, face barely visible in the darkness. He seemed to have conquered his dread, but still held himself rigid.

‘You were reading at Supper tonight,’ Forde said. ‘Badly.’

Jolyff had the nerve to raise his eyebrows. ‘Am I to be punished for it now, Master Forde?’

Forde itched to cuff him for that, but decided to laugh instead.

‘You were of course reading in English instead of Latin,’ he said. ‘Do you dislike reading in English?’

‘No, Master Forde.’

The boy was clever. He had probably already divined the religious significance to the question, but he gave no sign of alarm.

‘Why, then, was your reading so bad?’

‘I was hungry, Master Forde.’

It was insolent. It was probably also true. It was most of all non-committal.

‘So you have a good appetite, Jolyff?’

‘Who hasn’t?’

Forde pounced on the opening with delight.

‘Born has no appetite,’ he said.

‘He caught cold last week,’ Jolyff answered immediately. Not for the first time, Forde wondered what made him and Grymston so protective of Born, who seemed so colourless.

‘Don’t lie,’ he said. ‘Born is dying.’

‘No,’ Jolyff said, but Forde heard his breathing quicken.

‘You deceive yourself,’ Forde said. ‘He has at most a few weeks to live and then one day when he coughs his blood will burst red from his mouth and he’ll choke to death on it.’

‘It doesn’t always happen that way,’ Jolyff said. Forde heard the pain in his voice and wanted to torment him further, but cunning rather than compassion stopped him. Jolyff’s dead mother, he suspected, would be his strongest card. She would have most effect left till last.

‘So you admit Born is dying?’ he said.

The silence which followed was the nearest to assent he would get.

‘Well then,’ he continued, ‘Born is dying in ignorance and peril, and he knows no better because he has been taught in this superstitious, ungodly hole.’

He heard Jolyff catch his breath in the darkness, then the boy spoke, steadily enough. ‘Do you believe what you say?’

‘I thought my views were well known in this college.’

So they were, but Jolyff was not to be drawn. ‘Your views, Master Forde?’

Forde began to lose patience. ‘You’re not stupid, boy, so don’t pretend to be. Do you care nothing for the fate of your friend when he dies in the false faith in which he has been raised?’

Jolyff did not answer. His fingers were now moving along the rough stone wall, backwards and forwards.

‘Since you have no pity for Born,’ Forde continued, ‘consider your own position. To read the bible in English is an order from the King’s Council. Your bad reading, alas in these sad times, could be taken as unwillingness to obey the Council.’

‘The Council’s in London, Master Forde.’

‘Don’t scoff. If the great Bishop of Winchester can go to the Fleet prison, what more could they do to a poor, unconnected scholar?’

‘Bishop Gardiner was released,’ Jolyff said. There was contempt in his half broken, schoolboy’s voice. ‘You don’t give us the benefit of your religious opinions in the schoolroom, Master Forde. Are you afraid of the Warden?’

For several seconds shock restrained Forde. Then he lashed out.

‘I’m not afraid of that creeping mole! And you are an insolent young fool!’

Knocked sprawling to the cobblestones, Jolyff struggled wildly when Forde seized him by the throat, vigorous fingers squeezing the breath from his body. He could not call for help, only gasp and shake his head. He was too unready to die, too young, too frightened. But at the last moment, when he was choking, Forde released his throat and hurled him back to the cobblestones.

‘That’ll teach you to cross me!’

Jolyff lay prone and retching for breath. Forde took his hair, forcing him to look up. ‘You will beg forgiveness most humbly for your insolence at some point this night, Thomas Jolyff. I think you should do it now and save yourself pain.’

It was some time, though, before Jolyff could speak.

‘I beg your forgiveness, Master Forde…’ He choked again.

‘Most humbly.’ Forde yanked his hair. ‘You forgot the most humbly, Jolyff.’

‘I beg forgiveness most humbly, Master Forde…’

Forde released his hair so that he fell again.

‘Very sensible of you. You don’t give Born as much consideration as you give yourself.’ Calm once more, Forde smiled in the darkness. ‘When your friend is dying, I will remind you how much you showed yourself his friend in allowing them to perform their mummeries over his dying body.’

Jolyff raised himself from the ground and sank back against the wall, his hands at his throat. ‘How could I stop them?’

That answer, how instead of why, told Forde everything. He felt almost giddy with delight.

‘Don’t doubt yourself,’ he said. ‘The new religion, despite what you’ve been taught here, is not obscure, not a heretic, minority religion. It is little King Edward’s religion, his Council’s religion, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s religion. They’ll send Bishop Gardiner back to prison. England is free from the Roman tyranny and the worship of plaster idols.’

He felt Jolyff’s eyes staring at him in the darkness and became grandiloquent.

‘Your friend Born has lived a pious Catholic and he has been taught that for him to die anything other than a pious Catholic would be abnormal and heretical, condemning him to eternal fire. But there is yet time for him, if he could only understand that for him to die anything other than a pious Catholic would be abnormal only in this college, this frightened, hunted place of superstition.’

‘There is yet time for him?’ Jolyff whispered.

‘Of course.’

‘But Warden White…’

‘The mole?’ Forde gestured dismissively, hoping Jolyff could see. ‘Do you think he doesn’t know he’s becoming more isolated, trying to stop the clock, hold back the tide? Would he be so anxious for the future if he didn’t know that some of his Fellows disagree silently with him? He will lose one day and, I assure you, he knows it. But meanwhile it is his scholars who suffer for his idolatry and Born has no time left to wait for him to lose. Born is dying.’

He brought his voice down on the last word, allowing the silence and darkness of Chamber Court to complete his oratory. Jolyff was looking down at his huddled knees. Perhaps he was weeping.

‘But what can I do?’ he whispered at last. ‘I know little of the new religion…’

‘I have books you might read,’ Forde said, hiding his excitement.

‘What kind of books?’

‘Don’t sound so horrified. Heretical ones, or so the mole would say.’

‘He isn’t a mole,’ Jolyff retorted. ‘He’s a great man.’

Forde cursed silently. The admiration felt for John White in College was one of his greatest problems. He had hoped Jolyff didn’t share it.

‘He’ll send Born to hell,’ he said.

He almost felt Jolyff wince in the darkness. It encouraged him again.

‘Read my books and you’ll learn how to save Born,’ he said.

Silence. Jolyff’s head was bowed once more. Forde knew it was time to play his strongest card.

‘Read them and learn the truth about your mother’s death,’ he said. ‘They tell you here that she needs your prayers. I promise you, you’ve been taught lies.’

He heard Jolyff shudder, suspected that tears were running down his face and smiled in satisfaction.

‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve had no peace since your mother died. My books can give you peace and help you save Born too.’

A little gulp, then the silence of anguish. Jolyff’s head went lower still, his body turning into the wall. Forde waited, hardly able to keep still in the tension he felt. He dimly made out Jolyff dropping his face in his hands. He smiled, but moved closer, cutting off the boy’s escape lest despair made him try to bolt to the Warden.

‘Give me your books,’ Jolyff whispered hoarsely at last.

Had it not been necessary to keep quiet, William Forde would have leaped and whooped with triumph. After the trials of his months in College, the sniggers from the scholars which Evered pointedly didn’t discourage, the coldness from Warden and Fellows, the insults from Evered and Cole in their chamber, this was glorious. Clever, questioning, haunted Thomas Jolyff was going to be his instrument for chaos.

‘I’ll fetch them,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

No sooner had he spoken than he heard a sound from above. He looked up at the blackness of the archway. There were more sounds now, of two men carefully descending a spiral staircase, and of the robes of one of them rustling on the stone steps behind him.

‘The mole!’ Forde hissed. ‘To your bed, quickly!’ He had already pulled Jolyff to his feet, was preparing to flee himself. ‘Hurray!’ he said. ‘I’ll give you my books tomorrow!’

Then he saw that Jolyff was not going to go. The boy looked calm. The sweat of panic broke out on Forde’s body. Was he staying out of treachery? Dear God, he should not have choked him like that…

‘Move!’ he hissed.

But Jolyff tore free of him and it was too late. The door at the foot of the staircase creaked wide, throwing light from the torch within out onto the cobblestones. Warden White was in Chamber Court. His slight, dignified figure came into view, followed by the much taller one of Jan, the kitchen boy who had recently become his servant, holding the torch. White took the torch from Jan and sent him back upstairs, himself setting off in the direction of Cloisters.

‘Go on then,’ Forde taunted Jolyff, who seemed suddenly paralysed by indecision, his face in his hands and his back pressed against the wall. ‘Betray me. Show me you think your mother beyond God’s grace.’

Out in Chamber Court, White stopped walking, as though he had heard something. Forde jumped back beneath Middle Gate, peered out. White seemed to listen for a while, began to walk on, and stopped again. For a man of thirty-eight, his hearing was acute; he had heard something.

Swiftly, Jolyff walked past Forde and sank on his knees before White, his head bowed. Surprised, White surveyed him by the light of the torch. Forde bit down on his knuckle so hard he almost whimpered.

‘What are you doing out here, Jolyff?’

Jolyff said, calmly, ‘I was unable to sleep, Master.’

Forde removed his knuckle from his mouth, a grin spreading slowly across his face. Jolyff had lied, an n. His doubts about his faith must be real, and his duplicity meant that he would be unable to betray Forde in the future without compromising himself. Truly, an instrument of chaos…

‘What troubles you?’ White asked.

The boy should not have been out of bed, yet there was no harshness in White’s voice. Forde found himself resenting this. A scholar in the days when White had been Informator, he knew how severe he could be. But what schoolmaster was not severe? White at least was also just and many of Forde’s fellow scholars, with less loathing of authority, had revered him for it. Jolyff might have lied for the sake of conscience, but nothing in his demeanour showed anything but the same reverence.

‘Born is worse, Master,’ he said.

Forde tensed.

‘Then continue to pray for him,’ White said, ‘but do not distract him. Remember his own great devotion to God.’

Hearing that remote, measured quietness in White’s voice, Forde almost wished he could step out of the shadows and tell him Jolyff had lied to him. That would bring down on Jolyff the severity he had known himself. But it would also have ruined his plan. The important thing was that the cleverest scholar in College had agreed to read his books.

‘Return to your chamber,’ White told Jolyff.

The boy got to his feet. At full height he was already taller than White. He vanished from Forde’s view. White stood looking after him sadly, then continued on his way to Cloisters.

CHAPTER TWO

Next day, dressed alike in their traditional gown, the toga talaris, so called because it reached to the ankles, the scholars were gathering to go in to supper. The gowns of the older ones scanty and out at elbow, the faces of almost all of them thin, they queued in the evening sunshine around the old flint walls of Chamber Court.

The college community ate in Hall, on the first floor, at the top of a flight of steps leading straight up from the quadrangle. At the base of these steps, two younger boys had begun to bicker and then to scuffle. Thomas Jolyff detached himself from the company of his two companions higher up the steps and came down to the scufflers, knocking their heads together and reminding them that the Warden was nearby. Warden White, however, was listening to a messenger newly arrived from London. Jolyff therefore contented himself with cuffing both small boys and went back up the stairs to his friends. The Statues laid down for the college by its founder William of Wykeham had decreed that no scholars were to take precedence over others as they processed into Hall to dine, but in practice, after a century and a half, the older ones led the way by virtue of their greater strength.

It might have been apparent to the scholars in Chamber Court, to judge by the exhausted state of the messenger in Bishop Gardiner’s livery and the Warden’s descending in person to hear him, that an event of some significance had occurred. Warden White listened, standing very still, only his well-finished robes stirring in the breeze, hearing out the man’s story. But it was almost time for supper and, growing boys, they never seemed to get enough to eat, so to the scholars the food was of much greater importance.

*

The Warden’s study was a square, rather ascetic room, heated by a brazier in winter. Besides White’s desk, chair and bookshelves, it contained only two chests and two stools. Its best features were windows on either side, giving views of both quadrangles.

Jan stood looking down into Chamber Court where White was listening to Bishop Gardiner’s messenger as the scholars queued for supper. The Warden’s small, red bearded secretary Hugh Bartelett waited nearer the study door.

‘He would have told me,’ Hugh said. ‘Not you, of course.’

Jan doubted Hugh’s claim - the messenger had asked to speak to Warden White alone - but did not reply. He had been White’s personal servant only since April and Hugh had been secretary since the time of Warden More.

White returned. When he appeared in the doorway, he looked as self-contained as ever.

‘Warden?’ Hugh said sharply.

White glanced at him, moved further into the room. ‘Bishop Gardiner has been sent to the Tower.’

The Tower. Jan’s world darkened. He had seen the bishop once, when Gardiner had visited his nearby episcopal palace of Wolvesey and he, Jan, had been sent over to help in the kitchens there. Gardiner was hawk nosed, domineering and brave. The idea of such a man being in the Tower made his own end there likelier. His head swam. It was as well neither of the others was looking at him.

‘The Tower?’ Hugh said. ‘But Gardiner’s already been in the Fleet. What do they accuse him of this time?’

‘Sedition.’ White sat behind his desk, took off his spectacles as if his eyes hurt. ‘Preaching at St Paul’s Cross in defence of the true religion. Arrested as he came down the pulpit steps.’

Hugh gasped. ‘That’s outrageous!’

White, who was known to support Gardiner’s views and must now be in danger himself, did not reply directly. He seldom wasted words. ‘This can do College no good. Call a meeting of the Fellows tonight.’ He put his spectacles back on.

My master expected this, Jan thought. He must have known the bishop intended to preach this sermon. It’s why he was anxious last night…

‘A meeting of the Fellows. Of course,’ Hugh said. White’s apparent coolness was already calming him enough to think of their stomachs. He looked at Jan. ‘Warden, it’s time for supper.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ White murmured and put his head down to his work.

Naturally abstemious, more and more absorbed by the struggle to save College from a king’s minority council intent on its revenues, White was notorious for caring nothing for meals. Getting him to eat was the hardest part of Jan’s new duties. If he failed, as he frequently did, Hugh was first to blame him.

‘You need to eat, Warden,’ Hugh said now and glared at Jan.

White looked up. ‘I’ll take something later.’

He wouldn’t. He never did. Hugh glared at Jan again.

‘Oh, very well,’ White said and stood up.

*

Hall was long and lofty, with a sense of space unrivalled anywhere else in College, and lit by three gracefully arching windows on the south side and two on the north side, glass panes inlaid with crests in colours of ruby, sapphire and emerald. The floor had been repaved six years ago. The oak panelling on the walls was only eight years old and until a few months ago heating had come from an open hearth in the centre; an iron stove had replaced it.

The scholars, Wykeham’s Children, sat to eat on stout benches running the length of Hall and dating, like the long tables in front of them, from the Founder’s time. The benches were by now worn smooth. Each scholar had his own wooden trencher and half a pound of bread to go with tonight’s supper of broth, boiled mutton and beer.

White sat at the top table, eating little, the recently appointed Fellow Matthew Cole, a traditionalist, trying and failing to engage him in indignant conversation about the Bishop’s arrest. The other Fellows were silent, not least John Phillips, whom Cole suspected of reforming tendencies. Jan, standing behind White, knew his master could not afford to trust anyone around him. In these difficult times for