Wheel of Fate by Kate Sedley Read Free Book Online Page B

at the foot of the palliasse without disturbing Elizabeth, who seemed not to have stirred since I left her. I removed my boots and slithered down beside her, at the same time casting a leery eye at Jack. But he was snoring away, dead to the world, his mouth wide open and spittle dribbling on to the straw-filled pillow beneath his head. An unlovely sight, in comparison with which my daughter’s deep, sweet breathing made a heart-stopping contrast. I bent over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. She murmured in her sleep, but did not wake.
    I, on the other hand, lay stretched out on my back, staring into the darkness, unable to sleep, remembering . . .
    Remembering that five years ago, although he had been released after a comparatively short spell, Robert Stillington had been incarcerated in the Tower at the same time that the late Duke of Clarence had been tried and condemned to death. Remembering, two years further back, how the couple, bishop and duke, had walked and talked together at Farleigh Castle in Somerset, heads inclined towards one another, voices low, for all the world like two conspirators. Remembering the well-known story that when, nineteen years ago, the late king had finally disclosed his hitherto secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, Cicely Neville, Dowager Duchess of York, had offered to declare her eldest son a bastard, the son of one of her Rouen bodyguard of archers, conceived while her husband was absent, fighting the French. Remembering, above all, my own secret mission to France the previous year, in an attempt to contact, on the Duke of Gloucester’s behalf, another member of the Rouen garrison who might possibly be able to confirm the truth of a tale which Duchess Cicely had since refused to repeat. I had never managed to speak to Robin Gaunt, but his wife, a Frenchwoman, had told me of the odd affair of the two christenings.
    She had recalled that Edward, the first surviving son and his father’s heir, had been christened very quietly in a small chamber in Rouen Castle with little pomp and less ceremony, whereas the second son, Edmund, had received a lavish christening in Rouen Cathedral, attended by French and English dignitaries with no expense spared. The Rouen Cathedral Chapter had even been persuaded to allow the ducal couple to use the font in which Rollo, the first Viking Duke of Normandy, had himself been baptised, and which had been kept covered ever since as a mark of respect. Moreover, Edmund, later Earl of Rutland, had gone everywhere with his father, finally dying beside him at the bloody battle of Wakefield. Not incontrovertible evidence that the duchess had been speaking the truth, but . . . But what? A straw in the wind?
    Remembering . . . But at this point I must finally have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew was Jack shaking me by the shoulder and urging me to ‘shift my arse’.
    â€˜We’ve still got nigh on forty miles to go, Roger, and I must deliver this cloth by Thursday at the latest or Their Worships may cancel the order, and I don’t fancy humping it all the way back to Bristol at my own expense. So, come on, my lad! Rouse Elizabeth and let’s get breakfast.’
    Grumbling, I did as I was bid.
    And less than an hour later, we were on the road.
    We made good enough time to reach London by Wednesday, April the twenty-third, St George’s Day. But there were none of the usual mummings and play-acting to celebrate England’s national saint, only sober suits and long faces and a general air of unease over all. We had stopped first at Westminster to get some breakfast, having spent the previous night in a barn, but even in that notoriously lax city, the pimps and thieves and pickpockets, with which the place abounded, seemed more subdued and less busy than normal, the shopkeepers and stall-holders less inclined to harass you into buying their goods with threats of bodily harm. This might in part