The Burgundian's tale

Bertram was inclined to cavil at this, wanting action, but he knew better by now than to obstruct me: a tacit acceptance that I usually had good reasons for what I did. I just wished that I had the same confidence in myself as he did. I still felt as though I were groping my way in the dark.

The morning, unlike yesterday, was beautiful, a cornucopia of sunshine and shade spilling its coloured profusion over the busy streets. The sky stretched richly blue above the jagged rooftops, with here and there a moth-wing cloud, pale and translucent in the soft spring air. It was the sort of day that made me glad to be alive, and I experienced that same chilling spurt of anger that I had felt so many times before at the act of murder. To kill, to deprive another human being of life, was the most dastardly of crimes.

Bertram and I passed through the Lud Gate, pushing our way against the general tide of people coming into the city from the fields around Paddington, where the purity of the rills and streams that watered the meadows produced lush harvests of lettuces, peas and beans, water parsnips and early strawberries. The beggars and lepers, already at their stations outside the gate, rattled their tins with a ferocity it was difficult to disregard (although many hardened their hearts and managed it), and both my companion and I dropped a groat into the cup of the legless old man who propelled himself around at amazing speed on his little wheeled trolley.

We crossed the Fleet River, where small boats and barges floated like swans drowsing on the sparkling water in the early-morning warmth. Corn marigolds starred the banks with gold, and little clumps of scarlet pimpernel gleamed like blood among the grasses. All was bustle as maids appeared outdoors with their brooms to brush the doorsteps, raising clouds of choking dust over the muddy cobbles.

The Church of St-Dunstan-in-the-West was on the corner of Faitour Lane, tucked into that little dog-leg where Fleet Street starts to give way to the Strand. Dunstan has always been one of my favourite saints, being Somerset born and bred like myself, and having been Abbot of Glastonbury for many years before finally being raised to the see of Canterbury. A bit of a curmudgeon, judging by all I had ever read and heard tell of him; a man who had never hesitated to give the Saxon kings and thanes the rough edge of his tongue whenever he felt they deserved it; a man who had helped make Wessex the chief kingdom of the Saxon heptarchy and who had crowned Edgar the Peaceable first king of all England at Bath.

By sheer coincidence, the nineteenth of May was his feast day, and when Bertram and I entered the church, preparations were already under way for his patronal mass. A couple of stalwart youths were lifting down his statue from above the altar ready to be borne in procession around the church. Three women were seated on the dusty floor, busy making garlands of flowers and greenery, while the priest himself, a little man whose lack of inches told against him whenever he tried to assert his authority, was here, there and everywhere at once.

I caught his arm as he tried to push past me on his way to remonstrate with a pair of giggling altar boys.

‘A word with you, Father, if you please.’

He stared up at me in indignation, as much, I think, at my height as at my presumption in accosting him. ‘Who are you? Can’t you see I’m busy?’

Once again, I found it convenient to indicate Bertram’s livery. ‘We’re here on the Duke of Gloucester’s business.’

This flurried him a little. ‘The D-Duke of Gloucester?’ he stammered, eyeing me uneasily.

I smiled to put him at his ease. ‘Don’t worry, Father, you’ve not incurred His Grace’s displeasure. Could we talk somewhere? It won’t take long.’

He took a hasty glance around him, trying, I could tell, to think up a way of refusing my request. Had I cited anyone but the King’s brother, and had I not been accompanied by someone in the Gloucester livery, he would undoubtedly have sent me about my business. As it was, he complied, albeit with a very bad grace.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

He led us both outside, after ostentatiously issuing half a dozen orders to his acolytes (just to prove, I imagine, that he was not only in charge, but also a very important and busy man), and round the corner to a modest, two-storey house in the lee of the Chancellor’s Lane side of the church.

‘Well?’ he demanded impatiently, having unlocked the street door and ushered us inside. ‘What does the Duke of Gloucester want with me?’

There was nowhere to sit down in the stuffy parlour except for one stool stowed beneath a rickety table; and as the priest showed no inclination to draw this out, we all stood, half blinded by the motes and specks of dust that danced in the powerful beam of sunlight shining through the unshuttered window. A pewter plate and cup, the former displaying a few crumbs of bread, the latter some dregs of stale ale, bore testimony to our reluctant host’s frugal breakfast.