The Burgundian's tale

Our progress through the streets to Baynard’s Castle was punctuated by the catcalls and rude remarks of passers-by, my fellow countrymen being, as always, deeply resentful of foreigners, whom they have always regarded with the greatest suspicion and derision — fair game for any insult they can lay their tongues to. Fortunately, our Burgundian friends seemed ignorant of most of the expressions hurled at their heads, for which I was truly thankful. They looked a couple of tall, stout lads who wouldn’t hesitate to crack a few skulls together in defence of their own and their duchy’s honour.

We finally reached the castle to find it in the grip of its usual hustle and bustle, but magnified several times over. There were torches and flambeaux everywhere; men-at-arms polishing their daggers and halberds until they positively shone; the kitchen quarters in a ferment, with scullions and pot boys and cooks frantically dashing in and out of doors, rushing from bakery to butchery to buttery and back again; groups of jongleurs and acrobats and minstrels all practising their various arts in different corners of the courtyard, and setting up such a cacophony that even the palace rats ran squeaking in agony back to their holes.

My tentative enquiries elicited the fact that the King and Queen were riding over from Westminster to dine at Baynard’s Castle that night, and were expected in about an hour, so Bertram and I were hurried in through a side door to a small and very chilly ante-room and told to wait. Our fine Burgundian friends then disappeared while we kicked our heels and tried to keep warm — exactly the sort of treatment I had grown to expect from my ‘betters’.

‘“When Adam delved and Eve span, / Who was then the gentleman?”’ I muttered darkly to Bertram; but he obviously had never heard that seditious rhyme and looked at me as though I had taken leave of my senses.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably no more than a lapse of ten minutes or so, a gentleman-usher made his appearance to inform us that Her Grace the Dowager Duchess was not yet ready to receive us, but that My Lord of Lincoln would be grateful for a word — ‘grateful for a word’ being, of course, just another euphemism for, ‘John de la Pole has spoken. Come at once!’

Needless to say, we didn’t keep him waiting, but meekly followed the gentleman-usher into the royal presence. This proved to be in Lincoln’s bedchamber, where he was wallowing in the scented water of a sponge-lined bath. As we were announced, he heaved himself into a sitting position and gave me his friendly smile, at the same time waving a well-manicured hand in the direction of an exotic-looking personage to whom he had been talking as we entered.

‘Are you acquainted with Captain Brampton, chapman?’ he asked in the free and easy way that assumed I would be on speaking terms with anyone and everyone at court.

As it happened, I did know who this tough, swarthy, swashbuckling gentleman was, having come across him five years earlier during my attempts to foil a plot on the Duke of Gloucester’s life, and having learned his history then. Edward Brampton was a Jew, a rarity in England since the expulsion of his race by the first Edward almost three centuries earlier. Duarte Brandeo (his original Portuguese name) had, however, embraced Christianity and lived in the House of the Convertites in the Strand. At his baptism, the King himself had stood as godfather, and Brampton had taken his sovereign’s Christian name along with his new surname. (I mention him here, not because he played any significant role in this particular story, but because, in a few years’ time, he and I would find ourselves unexpected allies against the usurper Henry Tudor. But that is to anticipate …)

I murmured that I had indeed once had the honour of the Captain’s acquaintance, but as he obviously had no recollection of me, I said no more, waiting silently to know why the Earl had summoned me. Captain Brampton kissed Lincoln’s hand and took himself off in a flurry of good wishes and gusts of jovial laughter that made everyone in the room grin in sympathy — even the Earl’s Master of the Bath, an ascetic, stern-looking gentleman who kept a beady eye on the three young pages whose job it was to keep the tub topped up from the large pan of water heating over the bedchamber fire.

I eyed the Earl a little warily, wondering if, this evening, he was his mother’s or his father’s son — Plantagenet or de la Pole; the descendant of Alfred and Charlemagne, or Geoffrey Chaucer’s great-great-grandson. I was relieved to find it was the latter and that My Lord was all smiling condescension and affability.

‘Pull up a stool, Roger,’ he invited, waving an arm from which water dripped in a sparkling arc. He indicated in an equally moist fashion that Bertram could make himself scarce, much to that young gentleman’s ill-concealed chagrin. (He felt himself to be quite as much a part of this investigation as I was, and resented his exclusion.)