Thorn Maker: Part III of Warbeck Trilogy: The Warbeck Trilogy, #3

CHAPTER ONE: LONDON. JANUARY 1559

‘I must see her. I must see Elizabeth crowned…’

Kit Ashton, two days back in England, was drunk, but the January morning was bright and he was not so drunk that he failed to see the scornful pity in Peg Tapener’s black eyes as they stood in the doorway of her Southwark brothel.

‘You’re old enough to be her grandfather,’ she said.

‘Aye, and you her grandmother.’ He and Peg went back a long way, since before Katherine’s death.

Behind Peg, the brothel was quiet, the whores sleeping their work off in their flimsy wooden cubicles. Peg had kept up her standards. They were fine girls, better than French whores any day. Kit was too old for much now, though he had tried hard enough the last two nights. Hence the pity in Peg’s eyes.

Would she tell anyone he was back? He doubted it; she wouldn’t want to admit she had harboured him. Besides, she knew he’d slit her throat. That was why he was still alive and most of his friends were dead in the Tower. If her whores talked, he’d given a false name.

And it didn’t matter now. In three days his starry, redheaded princess would be crowned. All he wanted was to get Fyfield back and die there in his bed.

‘She’ll not see you,’ Peg said. ‘She’ll be too busy. She’s Queen, Kit, and you’re a traitor.’

Kit wished that just for once Peg wasn’t so shrewd. She meant well, it was good advice, but he had no wish to hear it.

‘I never betrayed Elizabeth. I gave up everything for her. She’ll appreciate what I did for her…’ But he couldn’t face Peg’s sceptical eyes any longer and abruptly wheeled out into the Southwark streets like the old sot she thought he was.

Though it was early, the streets were busy. Peg’s half-timbered establishment was near the corner of Long Southwark, the main road this side of the Thames, and he had only gone a few yards before he stumbled into a crowd of shawled women haggling for salted stockfish. They shoved him away and he staggered another few yards into a stinking alley and leaned against the cold, daub wall. He longed to sit, but the alley’s stink came from horse dung. Two apprentices passed him with barrels over their shoulders. One pretended to kick him. They both laughed.

‘I was a Justice!’ Kit roared. ‘I put your sort in the stocks!’

The apprentices laughed harder, went on their way. Kit sank back against the wall, cursing himself for attracting attention. Drunk men were targets for cutpurses. He had to sober up, quickly. Best go back to Peg’s and sleep it off. But then he’d want more. There had been precious little to do the last three years in his French exile; he’d got too fond of wine.

He peered out the alley. Many of the buildings here were smaller and meaner than those north of the river. Bears were baited in Southwark, brothels proliferated and with the Clink prison nearby and the Marshalsea half a mile south, it was one of the rougher areas in a rough city. But the Duchess of Suffolk and the Bishop of Winchester had their town residences here too, so by day there were plenty of respectable folk about, clerics, liveried servants, merchants and ladies with their maids. Kit still looked respectable himself. His thick brown cloak and russet broadcloth were serviceable and his boots were quite new; they had belonged to the husband of a recently widowed gentlewoman who had come to Paris from Lille. She had had a wealthier suitor in view, so he had blackmailed her into providing the boots, a garcon and money for his passage to England and more. He was good at blackmail, though less good at keeping servants. The garcon had run away at Calais.

Kit straightened up, forced himself to concentrate and moved cautiously out into the street, hand on purse inside cloak. Yes, best go back to Peg’s. He’d tell her not to give him any more wine. He looked over, saw her talking in the doorway to two soldiers in buff jerkins.

God’s death!

Coincidence? The coronation days away, there was increased security in the capital anyway. Or had he been followed? Who knew he was back? Peg was smiling, keeping the soldiers’ attention, giving him time to get away. So he did, scampering like a young man round the corner and onto the south bank of the fast flowing Thames, where wherrymen touted for business. He waved, but all the boats were occupied already; with visitors in London for the coronation, they were doing a roaring trade. He glanced behind. The soldiers were still at Peg’s door. She was no longer smiling.

Bitch, he thought, she’s known me for years, but she’ll betray me. I’ll slit her throat, I’ll slit the bitch’s throat…

He started a long, stumbling run along the south bank, keeping his eye on the river. On the north side St Paul’s spire gleamed in the sunshine, London Bridge further right. Elizabeth would come to the Tower before her coronation, but he couldn’t even get across the river. There would be guards on the bridge. The gulls, crying for fish, seemed to mock him. He looked round, saw the soldiers had left Peg’s. They were following him. He was sure of it now.

A tall, tawny haired young nobleman in black velvet emerged from the ancient palace of the Bishop of Winchester, a page and a liveried servant a few paces behind him carrying rush baskets and blankets. Suddenly Kit knew exactly what to do. The soldiers wouldn’t touch him if they thought him in the nobleman’s company.

‘My lord…’ He approached the young man and bowed, remembering in time the manners of a gentleman usher who had been married to the daughter of an earl. ‘Forgive this impertinence, my lord…’

The young man had turned towards him in surprise. He was of royal height, with chiselled features and quiet, dark eyes. But it was not his appearance which made Kit gasp and forget what he had meant to say. It was recognition. There was simply no mistaking him.

‘What is it?’

He had no arrogance about him, merely reserve proper to his rank. Kit gaped at him, soldiers forgotten. What was Richard Warbeck doing here, dressed like this? How could he be here at all, alive? He had been dead in a ditch near Winchester at fifteen, limp and still in his outgrown boy’s rags, his head covered in blood, the quivering terror of his last moments ended. Katherine’s grandson, whom she had known nothing about, whom he had taken years to track down after old Babb’s message came, had had a claim to Fyfield and had had to die for it.

‘Nothing, my lord,’ Kit got out now. ‘No matter…’

At least Warbeck wouldn’t know him. He had waited behind an oak.

‘Forgive me, my lord…’

He stumbled away and Warbeck watched him briefly with Katherine’s eyes, before heading in the direction of the Clink. He must be visiting prisoners. Perhaps the rush boxes contained food. It was the kind of charity Katherine had done too. Kit shivered with guilt, wondering if she could see him from heaven. Then, the soldiers gone – he had panicked over nothing - he fled back to the comfort of Peg, who had not betrayed him after all.

*

‘He’s not supposed to be a lord, but they say he’s a bastard Courtenay,’ Peg said, once Kit was ensconced in her small but surprisingly homely parlour, more wine in his hand. ‘His name’s Jan. Bishop White took an interest in him and adopted him and he stays in the bishop’s palace when he’s in London. He’s lucky to be alive.’

‘Eh?’ Kit’s heart took an extra beat.

‘Well, if he’s a Courtenay, his brother was murdered by the Spaniards in Italy, wasn’t he? I remember that earl, just a boy. He used my girls, never away from the place. For all his blood, he was nothing but a poor lost soul…’

Kit remembered the pathetic, strutting earl too, from the court as well as the stews. He knew perfectly well this Jan was no Courtenay, though he did not say so to Peg. If Warbeck was living under an assumed name he must be afraid of discovery. Interesting. It meant he didn’t have Fyfield, because he had not revealed his claim to it. It also meant he might be blackmailed.

On the other hand, how much would Elizabeth Tudor pay for knowledge of the young man? If his grandfather Perkin Warbeck, Katherine’s first husband, had been telling the truth, he had had a far better claim to the throne than Elizabeth’s grandfather. The grandson looked the part too. There was peril here for Elizabeth even now. Kit realised it would give him the chance to serve his princess and it would be worth a pardon at least. He’d ask for Fyfield back. His spirits rose.

‘Does this Jan have lands?’

Peg nodded. ‘My girls live in hope that he’ll pay a visit, but they say he’s practically a monk for all he’s so handsome and he’s always in black. At least he’s still allowed out. Bishop White’s under house arrest for speaking ill of the new Queen in his sermon at her sister’s funeral.’

Kit wasn’t interested in the bishop’s house arrest. He was thinking of Warbeck’s lands. Elizabeth might slip some his way. Better and better. He swirled the wine gently in his pewter cup. The fire was relaxing him, its glow taking years off Peg’s age. Her voice was husky. She had been attractive once, dark haired, dark eyed, a comfort after Katherine’s coldness.

‘I was never a monk, was I?’ he said, putting his cup down on the hearth with intent. It had been a long time, but suddenly Peg seemed more attractive than her young whores. He gave her a smile, hoping it wasn’t an old man’s leer.

*

‘Hugh? How are you today?’

An attempt at a smile. ‘Ain’t good, my lord…’

Even before Hugh gasped out the words, Jan had seen by the light of the lamp which Dominic set down that he was worse. Hugh was in his thirties, but three years in the Clink had given him the appearance of a man twenty years older, his bones prematurely twisted, his emaciated body covered in sores, and now he was dying. The canker eating at him was not visible, but his belly was distorted and his toothless mouth hung open as he panted with pain.

In the Clink, the lowest ranking prisoners were kept low, beneath the Thames waterline in large, crowded cells where there was no natural light or fresh air. Jan had never grown accustomed to the cries and groans, the stench, the vermin, the glutinous damp on the walls and pillars, the bone-chilling cold and the human waste puddled in corners, but they were familiar to him now. He had been visiting the Clink for two years, once a week or more, since John White’s translation from Lincoln to Winchester.

The foulness was by now familiar to Harry too. At Jan’s nod, the serving man began to move through the cells, distributing the maslin bread and cheese they had brought. Welsh Harry was big and bulky, able to fend off those prisoners with the strength to try for more than their fair share. If they persisted, he was also big enough to take their fair share off them and hand it to a weaker neighbour.

Jan, with Dominic beside him, made for the smallest cell, where the dying now lay in relative peace. When he had first come here, they had died pestered among the noisy living. So he had used White’s influence to give them privacy and brought them pallets. He saw to it that the earthen floor was swept, the rats were kept out and a decent pottage was made for them every day. Of the three men here, Hugh had the greatest suffering, but there was no possibility of his release even in a new reign. He was a traitor, lucky not to hang. He must have reflected, often enough, that would have been easier.

‘I’ve brought you new blankets,’ Jan said. ‘I’m going to roll you over. I’ll try not to hurt you…’

Dominic knew what to do. As Jan gently lifted the whimpering Hugh, he whisked the soiled blankets off the pallet and replaced them with clean ones, smoothing them with his boy’s quickness. Jan set Hugh down again.

‘Thank you, my lord…’

I’m not a lord. But Jan didn’t say it; he had grown tired of denying an assumption everyone seemed to make, and Hugh had enough to worry about.

‘Can you eat?’ He lifted Hugh’s pottage.

‘No, my lord.’ Hugh clenched his teeth against a spasm. ‘My lord, I need your forgiveness, I need to confess…’

‘Father Deverell will be here soon,’ Jan said softly.

‘Suppose… suppose I don’t last, my lord?’ Hugh’s fists were clenched in agony and hope.

Jan glanced round. The other dying men were drifting in and out of sleep. There was no one else except the wide-eyed Dominic, who was ten.

‘Please, my lord… you being religious and that…’

I’m not religious. But again Jan did not say it. He was remembering his own plight in prison five years before when, fever mounting, he had needed to confess to his cellmate that he was Perkin Warbeck’s grandson. And his cellmate, vital, Protestant Ralph Heathcote, had heard him out. It had been a comfort.

Besides, he felt responsible for Hugh, the prime mover in whose treason against Queen Mary had been Sir Christopher Ashton, who had escaped to France. Ashton had been the last husband of Lady Katherine Gordon, whose first husband had been Warbeck.

‘I’ll do it.’ Jan turned to Dominic. ‘Go find Harry and stay with him.’

Dominic looked crestfallen, but trotted off obediently.

Hugh had fallen back on the pallet. For a moment Jan thought he was dead, but he was only trying to catch his stinking breath.

‘I’ve brought you cordial,’ Jan whispered. ‘I’m no apothecary.’

Hugh nodded, bloodshot eyes suddenly fixed on him. He knew what the words meant. The dose of poppy juice might kill him.

‘You’re an angel, my lord…’

‘I’m not.’ He took Hugh’s hand. ‘What is it you want to say?’

Hugh nodded, fingers clutching Jan’s so hard they hurt, and raised himself on the pallet. His words came out stronger. ‘I need to tell you, my lord. Forgive me, my lord…’

‘I’ve nothing to forgive you for, Hugh.’

‘No, my lord. Ashton…’

‘Ashton, yes,’ Jan said gently. No point reminding him his old master had died in France. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s on my soul, what I did to you. I can’t see you, my lord, it’s growing black, but I seen you when you’ve come before. I know you, my lord. It was Ashton made me help them…’ He fell back, whimpering, rocking from side to side with pain.

Jan was puzzled, but he could bear the man’s suffering no longer. He raised him, unstopped the poppy juice and put it to Hugh’s bleeding lips. ‘Take it now. It’ll let you tell me…’

‘Not yet, my lord…’ But Hugh’s convulsing, misshapen fingers grasped the phial with desperate strength. He gulped the priceless liquid so fast Jan feared he would choke, fell back. ‘Forgive me, my lord….’

‘You needed it, there’s nothing to forgive.’ Jan laid him down gently on the pallet. As he did so, Father Deverell entered the little cell.

Jan left priest and prisoner alone.

CHAPTER TWO

Even bright January days were short.

John White, writing slowly in his small study, saw the light dimming on the winter stricken orchard outside his windows. His panelled study, generally referred to as his closet, faced south, warmer and quieter than Gardiner’s old study on the Thames side of Winchester House – Gardiner had always itched to see who was travelling on the river - and a fire blazed in the hearth. But it was a desolate season at the best of times.

A knock at the door. John Okeland came in to light the candles. A quietly efficient priest with a faintly prim air, he was an ideal secretary and had been with White since his Lincoln days. He was running the household now, too, the steward having died in September of the flu which had ravaged England this past year and more.

‘My lord, Bishop Watson and Bishop Scot have confirmed their coming tonight. And Mr Secretary Boxall to supper also, my lord.’

John Boxall had been Mary’s Secretary of State and was not Elizabeth’s, but in private Okeland still used his title out of defiance and courtesy, for Boxall was one of White’s closest friends and had succeeded him as Warden of Winchester College. He was also, like Watson and Scot, an opponent of the new regime.

‘Thank you, John.’

Okeland inclined his head. ‘My lord.’

When the secretary had gone, White put down his quill and stood up to move the aching joints in his legs. Though he would be forty-nine in July, God had been good to him. Despite his intellectual’s life the pain was only now reaching his fingers. He could still use a pen, if with a difficulty he refused to admit.

So, again, visitors. A bishop in favour was never alone, expected to maintain a large household and give hospitality. He had supposed – it hadn’t troubled him much since he was not gregarious – he would be isolated when he had praised Queen Mary so warmly in his sermon at her funeral. Watson, Scot and Boxall were in London for the coronation anyway, but by coming here when he was under house arrest, they declared their support for him.

He had never expected to be a leader. There had been Gardiner as Lord Chancellor, Pole at Canterbury. With both of them dead, it unnerved him that men might look to him. He had heard himself called courageous for taking a stand at Mary’s funeral, but he had done nothing save speak the truth.

Down in the freezing orchard, one of the palace mousers stalked a starving robin. In the twilight he could not see which cat it was, but he watched nevertheless, smiling to himself when the robin grew aware of its danger and found strength to fly away. Then, reluctantly, he turned back to his desk and the letter he had been writing to Archbishop Heath of York.

A knock on the door, more hesitant than Okeland’s. The knock of an adopted son who had never ceased to be grateful for kindness.

‘Come in, child.’

Jan entered in his customary black. More devoted to White than most sons to their real fathers, he often sought a blessing around this time. He was a source of immense comfort to White, but also of anxiety. An educated, uncommonly good looking young man, who was also loyal and modest, living a chaste and charitable life in a palace full of celibates and shunning the antics of the court gallants might be the Christian ideal, but White worried about his future.

As the servant he had been until five years ago, Jan had been terrified others would find out he was Warbeck’s grandson, but he had also been secure in the knowledge of his own supposed worthlessness. Now, as a gentleman, it appeared he had turned his entire life into a penance. And despite the effect he had on young women in Lincoln, Winchester, Farnham and London, many from good Catholic families, he seemed resolved that Warbeck’s line die with him. White knew the reason. Why would Jan wish on any child of his the trouble his ancestry had brought him? But it still seemed a matter for regret.

‘Did you visit the prison?’

‘Yes, master.’

In private Jan preferred to address White thus, as though he were a servant still. Before he knelt, too, he cast a professional eye over the stock of quills on the desk, which it had been his job to sharpen in College. He still liked doing it, but Okeland’s efficiency usually denied him the opportunity.

‘How was Hugh Crichton?’

‘He died today,’ Jan said.

‘Then his earthly suffering is over. Was he shriven?’

Jan nodded, dark eyes soft. ‘He spoke of something on his soul. I don’t know what it was, but Father Deverell came just in time.’

*

Up in his attic refuge, his old servant’s stool drawn up to the window so that he could watch the river traffic, Jan had a little time to himself. Even now visitors made him nervous, but the prospect of such learned ones more so; like White they were as comfortable in Latin as English and when together intellectuals tended to lapse into it. To White’s way of thinking, it was good practice for him to be in such company and they were all charitable men who would overlook any mistakes, but all the same….

He didn’t want to let White down. It was thanks to White’s infinite patience over the last five years that he had any learning at all. And his adopted father, mentally acute as ever, seemed to grow physically frailer every day. The burden of bishopric in such times, which he had never wanted, had aged him. Queen Mary’s reign had proved too short to undo the damage done to England by her father and brother. Though White never spoke of it, Jan guessed he was haunted by the fate of those he had had to sentence to the fire. And now Mary’s sister was set to break him if he did not bend to her will and do more damage to England.

Down below, the river traffic was lessening. A figure very different to White was standing on the bank. Older, possibly, swaying with alcohol certainly, once hawk-like features now pouchy, but the eyes still black despite the untidy grey hair beneath a battered hat. Others hurried past him to be home before dark, but he stood motionless, thick brown cloak wrapped round him, gazing up at the palace. Gazing up, Jan saw with misgiving, at himself.

Instinctively, he retreated from the window, in the same moment realising that he had seen the figure before. It was the man who had approached him this morning and staggered away.

*

Kit Ashton saw Richard Warbeck draw back from the window. The young man was wary, evidently, had probably spent his life in fear. His height must be a hindrance, and the look of him. Not just Katherine’s beauty, but something else, his own attractiveness, the regal quality Warbeck must have had to deceive so many. Katherine had gone on believing he had been the Duke of York to the end of her life. She had established a chantry chapel in the monastery of St Mary Overy in Southwark. Perhaps she had prayed there secretly for Warbeck’s soul. Ironic that their grandson was living next door.

‘So, you’re afraid, lad?’ Kit mused aloud. ‘That means you’re more likely to make a mistake…’

He was afraid himself. This afternoon he’d begun to put the word out about his return and it was growing dark. When someone barged into him he shoved back instinctively – for all he knew it was a dagger coming at him – and saw an elderly woman fall to the ground. Guiltily, he got her to her feet, straightened her coif for her and made himself scarce before she set about him with her stick.

Time to head back to Peg’s and see whether Parry’s man Fessard turned up. Sir Thomas Parry was the new Comptroller of the Royal Household, but he had been the Princess Elizabeth’s man of business for years before that. He had kept Fessard for the murkier side of her business affairs.

When he reached Peg’s, Fessard was already there. With the change of regime and Parry’s rise to greatness, he was no longer under suspicion by the authorities, but that did not mean Peg liked him in her parlour. She met Kit on the stairs with a wine jug in her hand.

‘Why must you speak to him, Kit?’

‘I told you. I want Fyfield back.’

‘Why can’t you just write to Parry, or the Queen?’

He had to throw her off the scent. ‘The number of petitions they’ll get, I’ll be dead before they read mine. It’s all about connections at court, Peg.’

‘Well, that connection’s a murdererous…’ She broke off lest Fessard hear her through the parlour door.

‘We’re old friends, Fessard and I,’ he said.

But before he went into the parlour he unsheathed his dagger and held it behind his back.

Fessard sat in Peg’s best chair, half in shadow, firelight catching the exposed side of his scant face. He turned slowly as Kit entered, for even he must be curious about a man risen from the dead. His eyes, still oddly bright above a straight nose and tapering chin, surveyed Kit. At length he unpursed his lips and spoke softly, as was his habit.

‘You’re in a French grave, Kit.’

‘I’m not. I’m here.’ Since Fessard had the best chair, Kit did not sit in the other. He closed the door, leaned against it nonchalantly.

‘And Henry?’

‘Just me. Henry died.’

‘How?’ To Fessard natural death wasn’t natural.

‘Plague. In Amiens.’

‘Poison?’

Kit did not much regret his fellow conspirator Henry Dudley, but he would not have been the means of his end. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There was plague all round town.’

Fessard smiled. ‘Makes poison harder to spot.’

Kit gave up. ‘No one poisoned me. I’m back in England, as you see. Tell me what’s been going on.’

Fessard lifted Peg’s best wine goblet from the hearth with his skeleton’s fingers. He was better dressed than usual. Good fustian and new, reflecting Parry’s rise. ‘I don’t talk to the dead,’ he said and drank slowly.

‘I’m not dead,’ Kit said. Sweat broke out on him. ‘I’m alive, standing here! Don’t you recognise me?’

Suddenly he understood. A dead man needed no lands. They would deny him Fyfield. And if he wasn’t dead now, he would be soon.

‘God’s death, Fessard,’ he said. ‘I risked everything for Elizabeth. I gave up everything for her…’

‘And now you want rewarded for it,’ Fessard sneered.

The sweat on Kit turned colder. Peg had known what would happen, but he hadn’t been sober since reaching England and had paid no attention to her. Parry was a great man now, privy councillor to his new queen. Her plots against her sister must be forgotten. And he, Kit Ashton, was part of her past.

Fessard would have men waiting outside.

‘Why shouldn’t I look for reward?’ He was thinking quickly as Fessard put the goblet down and regarded him malevolently. ‘It doesn’t mean I can’t still be of use. There’s something I need to check, someone I saw today…’

‘Who? Another dead man?’ Uninterested, Fessard began to stand up.

‘In a way, yes. But I’m the only person you could trust to check.’

As if Fessard had ever trusted anyone. ‘You’re gabbling like the dotard you are, Kit.’ He was upright now, a small, deceptively skinny man, reaching for his cloak. Kit darted forward and snatched it up.

‘Listen to me. It could threaten the Queen. I need to speak to Parry.’

Fessard never got angry. He smiled. ‘Parry’s helping organise the coronation. He doesn’t concern himself with your sort now, Kit.’

‘Then it’s on your head if you ignore me,’ Kit said savagely. ‘Kill me and you’ll never know your danger.’

He saw the surprise in Fessard’s face with satisfaction. He’d show them he was still a man to be reckoned with.

‘What do I tell Parry?’ Fessard asked, less mockingly.

‘You tell him Kit Ashton, and