Part 33 (1/2)

'A change in plans?'

'The men will need to stay in place for now.'

'For how long?'

There was a pause. Millicent edged around one of the great b.u.t.tresses ascending to the undercroft's roof and beyond. She peered around and down a short stair into a wider chamber perhaps three feet below, awash in pale light from an opened trapdoor above. Weldon paced the chamber's width, giving orders to a nuncius wearing the king's colours.

'Next Friday is the feast of St Augustine, no?' the knight finally said, turning away with a hand to his mouth.

'And the third Ember Day.'

'They're to come up that day and camp at Mile End, on the green. Their orders will come Trinity morning, likely by Tierce. Then it's up Aldgate Street as planned.'

'Anything else, Sir Stephen?'

'That's it for now. Keep me posted.'

'Yes, Sir Stephen.'

The man ducked through a low doorway. Millicent watched as the knight took a few slow turns around the dank chamber, one hand on his scarred chin, the other cupping his elbow. She thought about what she had heard, putting it together with the prophecies and the failed attempt on the king's life. It sounded as if Weldon had been planning to bring troops up from Dartford in the aftermath of the planned a.s.sa.s.sination. Who knew what else he had in store. She turned for the river door.

She slipped. She quickly recovered her footing, but not before a small fragment of stone, dislodged by her shoe, tumbled down the stairs. Weldon's head spun round. Frozen in terror, Millicent hesitated long enough for him to meet her gaze. His eyes widened, then narrowed in recognition. She knew that cold stare.

Rose Alley. Weldon had been the leader of the riders, the man challenged by St Cath at the porch of the p.r.i.c.king Bishop. Looking for Millicent, and the book.

Millicent shot up the stairs. Through the door, over the d.y.k.e, down Pepper Alley. She looked back. Weldon was just making the turn.

She ducked between two tanners' stalls on the upper end. Rows of stretched hides gave some cover. An open door, at the end of the second yard. She sprinted through it. A tavern. Low ceiling, small crowd around a far table, the air sour with ale. She stepped from bench to bench and knocked several down on her way out, slowing Weldon a fraction. He stumbled, cursed. She heard his boots on the tables. The street door was also open.

The bankside again. She hesitated. Right, to the high street and the bridge? Or left, and into the stews? She went left.

The right decision, she knew as she sprinted past the mills. On the wide high street the knight would have had the advantage of speed. Here, among the dense and disconnected cl.u.s.ters of shops, houses, tenements, shacks, barns, yards and pens making up the bishop's liberties, she had the advantage of memory.

For though the neighbourhood had undergone many changes in the last ten years, it was all so familiar. Every corner, every turn, every gap between buildings came back to her. Narrow pa.s.sageways appeared right where she expected to find them. Through the twists and turns of the liberties she ran, the very air before her seeming to shape itself into the form of a child leading her on. She was not alone.

The little girl ran wildly before her, golden hair in tangled streams. Dodging barrels, cornering barns, leaping ditches. This way, Millie! Faster, Millie! She never slowed as she led Millicent through the twisted byways of the stews. I will catch you, Agnes, I will catch you! The Southwark breeze chilled the tears on her face, as the unmapped warren of the liberties became an elaborate labyrinth through which only this little girl knew the way. Finally, nearing the mills again, the girl slowed. Turning back, her face shrouded in a blinding pool of light, she rose from the soil like a dove lifted by the wind.

With no breath left in her, Millicent squatted at the corner of a pighouse facing the eastern edge of the larger millpond, the phantasm still burning her eyes. She looked behind her. No Weldon.

Loud voices on Rose Alley, a woman's angry shout. Millicent peered around the corner of the low structure. Weldon stood at the door of the p.r.i.c.king Bishop, having it out with St Cath. His head started to turn.

Millicent hurdled the fence. Squatting beside a great sow, clutching her dress tightly against the muck, she watched through the slats as Weldon looked down the narrow lane to the millpond. The deliberate sweep of his scarred chin, the jewelled scabbard at his side, the devilish gleam of his eyes: all these Millicent took in as she humbled herself with these Southwark pigs. The Overey bell rang None. The knight turned and struck St Cath with the flat of his sword. She collapsed against the doorway. Weldon spun on his heel and entered the p.r.i.c.king Bishop.

Millicent hesitated, every part of her wanting to spring out and flee across the bridge, leaving Weldon to do what he wished. She thought of her mother, this woman who had never given her more than a bed to swyve on for her own profit. And why should I give her anything more in return? Then she thought of Prioress Isabel, and how the holy woman would answer this question. Finally she thought of Agnes, her sister's generous, selfless spirit, and it was then that she knew what must be done.

Millicent closed her eyes, said a prayer, and hopped back over the fence. With her fists clenched at her sides she strode down Rose Alley, wondering how on earth she might save her mother's life.

St Cath still lay on the stone, though she looked to be breathing. Millicent edged through the door and stood listening. She moved toward the rear of the building and heard the knight's heavy footsteps above, as he stomped around the upper floors, raising screams of terror from the maudlyns, a few indignant shouts from their unlucky jakes.

'Millicent.' She peered through the gloom. Bess Waller stood at the kitchen door, beckoning her forward. 'In here, girl,' she whispered.

Millicent dashed forward and had almost reached the kitchen when she tripped on the corner of a pallet. With a crash she fell into a deal table against the wall, knocking a bra.s.s ewer on to the floor. The clang resounded throughout the Bishop. The sound of the knight's boots above ceased, then began again with a renewed vigour as he crashed down the side stairs.

'Quickly,' said Bess Waller, pulling Millicent from the floor. In the kitchen the cellar door lay open to the stairs. It was all Millicent could do to stay on her feet as her mother pushed her toward the gaping hole in the floor. Once below she scurried down the steps. Her feet met the dirt floor. She looked back and caught a last glimpse of Bess Waller's face as the door slammed shut above, sealing her in darkness.

FIFTY-THREE.

New Rents Weldon was gone by the time I exited the palace through the postern and reached the market. I stepped up on a half-barrel and peered in both directions. Nothing. The knight had disappeared, absorbed into the thick crowd. A clutch of five street urchins were plucking at my hose, begging for coin. About to swat them away, I thought better of it and stepped off the half-barrel, reached into my purse, and knelt down, a handful of pennies clutched in my palm.

'One for each of you.' Three boys and two girls, their faces grimed in that way only a young Southwark face can be grimed, though they all seemed eager to earn despite the squalor. 'And another if you'll find someone for me.'

'Who, sir?'

'Who?'

'Who?'

'Who's it to find, good sir?'

'Man or woman, I'll find them, that's sure,' said the smallest of them, a girl of five or six.

'You know Sir Stephen Weldon?'

A few tentative nods, but the little girl shook her head truthfully.

'A knight with a curved scar, just here?' I traced it on her small chin.

'Hook on his face, bright as the moon!' crowed the little girl.

Nods all around. 'We know him, sir!'

'Find him for me, then,' I said. 'He left by the postern a little while ago. He can't have got far. First one back gets two pence.'

They sprinted off, getting underfoot of the merchants, pus.h.i.+ng around the corners, spreading like a dropped sack of grain. It wasn't long before the first of them, the little girl, returned. Out of breath, she steadied herself on my leg then looked up in triumph.

'Saw him, sir, saw him I did.'

I knelt in the dirt. 'And where did you see him, my dear?'

'Past the millpond,' she said, 'on that Rose Alley. Going into the p.r.i.c.king Bishop for a swyve, looked like.'

After paying the girl off I headed west past the Overey churchyard and toward the stews. Skirting the millpond I dodged a pighouse and entered Rose Alley. Few residents were about, all drawn to the palace, and no one looked my way as I walked beneath the low awnings and haphazard upper extensions lining the narrow lane. I was halfway up when I saw a figure leaning over a prostrate woman before the front door. Not Weldon, but a much younger man, slight, almost feminine. The old woman gave a gentle moan as he leaned her against the house's outer wall. He stroked her hair then turned for the door, which was unlatched and partially open. He turned, we locked eyes, then he disappeared into the Bishop. After peering up and down the lane I jogged to the house and followed him within.

Edgar heard the shouts from the back of the house, which he approached through the same front room he'd crossed weeks ago, before taking the book. Reaching the kitchen door, he pressed his ear against the rough wood surface.

A man's voice. '... in the rancid stews of Southwark. Home of women and fish.'