The Invention of Fire. Bruce Holsinger

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СКАЧАТЬ her pulse a low throb in her ears. The nuncius started to speak. ‘Good sir, if you will—’

      ‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’

      ‘Antony!’ she said, pressing his arm, though instantly regretting it. He had done well to question the messenger, to demand an explanation in that gentleman’s tone.

      The nuncius loomed over their table in the small chamber. ‘My horse has gone lame,’ he said flatly. ‘A mile south of here.’

      ‘Oh?’ she said, taking on the same superior tone. ‘And what of it?’

      ‘The gentleman here – his is the best horse in the stable.’

      ‘Not the least surprised,’ said the horse’s rider with a proud nod. ‘Strong fellow, isn’t he?’

      ‘I will be commandeering him,’ said the nuncius, no hesitation or apology in his tone. ‘I have a full day’s ride to the next post, and the need for a swift mount.’

      She felt her chest loosen. ‘There are no other horses suitable to your needs?’

      He looked aside. ‘Others suitable? I would think so. But speedy, strong? No, mistress. And I’ve patents in my pouch that need handing off.’ He fingered the leather bags yoking his chest and shoulders. ‘I’ll take your horse now.’

      ‘If you must.’ She nodded tightly. ‘We will be compensated?’

      ‘Aye, and most generously.’ He opened his palm. On it sat ten – no, twelve nobles. A decent sum for a pressed horse, though the stallion would easily fetch fifteen at one of the larger markets. But she saw no need to quibble, and draw more attention.

      She looked across the table. Take them, Antony. But he sat there like a lump, his mouth half-open, his gaze wide and fixed on the coins. Beneath the table she pressed his foot with her own, then watched as he closed his mouth and gave the nuncius a curt nod. He held out a hand, and the royal messenger let the nobles slip from his palm. Probably a greater sum than Robert Faulk has ever held, she mused.

      ‘Will that be all?’ she asked the messenger, feeling incautious.

      ‘It will. And the king’s thanks.’ King Richard’s messenger turned on his heel, leaving the inn by the yard door.

      The keeper reappeared. ‘Apologies, good gentles.’ He rubbed his palms. ‘No choice, really, not when it comes to one of those Westminster riders.’

      She tried to mask her worry. ‘You have a replacement you will sell us?’

      ‘I do indeed, mistress. Fine mare. Chestnut, four years, broke her myself. Name’s Nellie.’

      His eyes had misted, and she could see what the transaction would cost him. Men and their horses. She gave him as kind a look as she could manage. ‘You have clearly been a good master to her. Nellie will be well taken care of, and you may depend on her safe return upon our own from Durham. We shall purchase you a relic of Cuthbert for your troubles.’

      The keeper’s eyes widened over a spreading grin. He made a silent bow.

      Later, as they prepared for sleep, Robert dawdled outside the door while Margery undressed and nestled in the wide bed. When it was his turn she silently watched him in the candlelight. He had removed his low shoes, which stood toes down against the door wall. His doublet lay loosely over a bench, covered by the fine cotte-hardie of dyed wool he had stolen from a drying fence during their flight. He was bare-chested now, a silent width in the dim light. He went to his knees. She saw a last flash of his face as he bent to the candle, his lips gathering wind then ending the flame.

      She lay back on the raised pallet. This, a luxurious breadth of down and heather more fit for a lady’s chambers than a country inn, gave softly beneath her spine as she stretched the day’s travels away, though her eyes would not close.

      He spoke from the floor. ‘Keeper’s not like to see that pretty mare again, or I’m the poxed Duke of Ireland.’ He grunted, adjusting his lanky frame to the lumps of his travel blanket, his makeshift bed atop the rushes.

      She smiled at the low ceiling. ‘Aye,’ she said, and nothing more. Soon the rhythm of his breath slowed with the coming of sleep.

      It was their sixth night together. She appreciated that he never snored. Not like her dead husband, curse his bones, who’d whistled and wheezed through every pore in his flesh. It wasn’t for snoring that Walter Peveril deserved the death he got, though these quiet nights were a blessing in themselves, despite the pressing peril of their flight.

      Margery Peveril spoke into the gathering dark, thinking of the north, the stretch of the marches, the man on the floor. ‘We’ll sell the mare in Glasgow,’ she whispered to the night.

       SEVEN

      From the great doors the massive hall of Westminster Palace stretched languidly to the east, with partitions of varying heights separating the courts: Chancery, the Exchequer, King’s Bench. England had a leaking hulk for a ship of state, defeating the efforts of the palace’s small army of servants to maintain and improve its fabric. Despite the hall’s condition one could tell at a glance that the opening of that year’s Parliament was nearly upon us. Three glazers worked at a few broken windows overhead, limners touched up wall paintings here and there, and a team of masons trowelled mortar over gaps and holes in the stone.

      The eve of Michaelmas found me in Westminster before the chambers of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk and the lord chancellor. As Strode had told me at St Bart’s churchyard on that first morning, the chancellor was resisting all inquiries from the Guildhall concerning the murders, claiming they were no business of his or of his office. Yet the use of guns made the killings undeniably the business of the crown, a point I intended to press regardless of the chancellor’s reluctance.

      Edmund Rune, the earl’s secretary and chief steward of his sprawling household, stood within the low passage leading to the chancellor’s chambers, expecting me. Rune was a new addition to Michael de la Pole’s familia, his predecessor Edward More having died earlier that year. Where More’s reliable and steady manner had mirrored the best qualities of the earl himself, Rune was known as a gossip and a backbiter. The chancellor, it was widely agreed, could have chosen better.

      Rune had a protective air about him that morning, his eyes hanging open over a brown beard, his large frame angled toward me as I approached. ‘Go gently with him, Gower. He’s feeling it from all sides these days. None of your coiney cant.’

      ‘A peculiar request,’ I said, and an unnecessary one; I felt nothing but respect and admiration for Michael de la Pole, who had always treated me fairly. Yet for other, more powerful men, old King Edward’s most trusted counsellor had lately become an object of passionate resentment, even outright contempt, despite the man’s long service to the crown. The young king’s capricious favours had placed the earl in a precarious position with respect to several of the lords, who would be assembling in Westminster soon for Parliament.

      ‘Surely these rumours of the earl’s impeachment are false, Rune,’ I said. ‘Lordly gossip, nothing more.’

      My СКАЧАТЬ