The Burgundian's tale

When I opened my eyes again, daylight was piercing the chinks and cracks in the shutters. Somewhere a cock was crowing and I could hear the sleepy voices of the kitchen maids and ostlers as they crossed the courtyard to begin the day’s work. Then the landlord’s sharper tones chivvied them to get on with things. I turned over on my side, intending to go back to sleep for half an hour, but instead I suddenly threw back the bedclothes and swung my legs to the floor. I was a little unsteady on my feet and aching all over, but forced myself to get dressed before going down to the pump in the courtyard to wash and shave. Then I repaired to the ale room for breakfast.

‘Something put the wind up your tail this morning?’ Reynold asked as he served me with a beaker of his best home-brewed. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

I toyed with the idea of telling him about my nocturnal intruder, but decided against it. If William Morgan wanted to pay me another visit the same way, I had no wish to discourage him. But next time he would find me and my cudgel ready and waiting. I certainly didn’t want Reynold putting an all-night guard on the wall, or baiting the courtyard with a man-trap.

‘I just need to get on with my enquiries,’ I explained, ‘if I’m to solve this mystery before the Dowager Duchess returns to Burgundy. If young Serifaber arrives after I’ve gone, would you be good enough to tell him he’ll find me at the St Clairs’ house in the Strand?’

One or two other early risers were drifting into the ale room by now and seating themselves at the long table in the centre. A dark-eyed man with a faintly foreign accent, whom I recognized as having one of the bedchambers next to mine, sat down beside me and enquired if I had heard anything untoward during the night; but upon my assuring him that I had slept like a log, he seemed more or less satisfied. ‘Just thought I heard a noise, but obviously I must have been mistaken.’

‘Do you always rise at this hour?’ I asked in order to divert his attention.

Reynold returned with a plate of bacon collops in mustard sauce and a dish of hot oatcakes, both of which I attacked with gusto. I never allow bodily discomfort to stand between me and a good meal.

The man smiled. ‘You have to be an early riser if you’re in the employ of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy.’

I nearly dropped my knife in surprise. ‘You’re employed by the Duchess Margaret?’

‘I’m one of her grooms and she likes to go out riding before breakfast in good weather.’ He glanced at me and smiled again. ‘Did you think all her retinue was housed at Baynard’s Castle? There wouldn’t be room. There are over a thousand of us, and even so, My Lady thinks she’s travelling light.’ He swallowed his ale and helped himself to an oatcake and some bacon, but he ate quickly like a man in a hurry. ‘I must get to the castle stables.’

‘You speak excellent English,’ I complimented him, and he laughed.

‘I was born here, but after twelve years abroad, people say I sound like a foreigner.’

‘Only a very little,’ I assured him. ‘Tell me, did you know a young man called Fulk Quantrell?’

‘The Duchess’s favourite? Oh, yes! Him and his mother. He returned to England just after Dame Quantrell died, after Christmas. Someone told me he’d since been killed.’

‘He was murdered two weeks ago.’

My new friend shrugged, cramming the last of his bacon collop into his mouth and starting to get to his feet. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Good riddance, I say.’

‘You didn’t like him. Why not?’

‘No. As to why not, I just didn’t, that’s all. Like mother, like son. And now I have to go. The mare My Lady has chosen to ride this morning is in my charge. If she isn’t saddled and ready when she’s wanted, I shall be turned off and left to starve. The Duchess is a good enough mistress so long as her wishes are obeyed to the letter.’

‘And if not?’

‘Do you need to ask that? She’s a Plantagenet!’ With which succint remark, the groom wiped his mouth on his sleeve and fairly ran out of the ale room.

Thirteen

I sat there for perhaps another minute, enjoying the peace and tranquillity of the ale room in the early-morning sunshine — a peace shared by only one other customer — before suddenly leaping to my feet and rushing after the Duchess’s groom. Of course, he had vanished, and I had no means of knowing which of the many routes to Baynard’s Castle he had taken. I decided that I should therefore have to contain my soul in patience until the next time I saw him to ask what he had meant by ‘like mother, like son’. As far as I knew — which, admittedly, was not as yet very much — no one had spoken the slightest ill of Veronica Quantrell. I went back into the inn and asked Reynold Makepeace for the man’s name.