Read an Excerpt

Wheel of Fate

Severn House Publishers Limited

I have heard it said that when you are first apprised of some great, earth-shaking event, ever afterwards you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing at the time. And I suppose it says something about the general bathos of my life that when I received the first intimations of the death of King Edward IV, I was coming out of the public latrine on Bristol Bridge.

I had spent the previous weeks happily peddling my goods among the villages and hamlets of north Somerset, revelling in the periods of solitude, enjoying the gossip of cottage and hall and the exchange of views with fellow travellers whom I met on the road. I had seen sunsets and sunrises, meadows knee-high in early morning mist, felt the rain on my face, the sun on my back, and watched the gradual greening of trees and hedgerows as March slid into April. And, above all, especially after the restrictions and restraints imposed on me during the previous year, I had known the bliss of being my own man again and the unfettered pleasures of perfect freedom. Now, I was on my way home, refreshed in mind and body, to Adela and the children. I imagined how their faces would light up at the sight of me, and could hear their welcoming, ecstatic cries of 'What have you brought us?'.

I had entered the city by the Redcliffe Gate early that morning, and it was as I was crossing Bristol Bridge that the call of nature became too pressing to be ignored any longer. I headed for the public latrine with an injunction to Hercules to 'Stay there!'. Of course, he followed me in (that dog has no sense of propriety), cocking his leg against the wooden structure in a gesture of male solidarity.

It was as we emerged, a few minutes later, that I was suddenly conscious of people rushing out of the shops and houses on either side of the bridge and running towards the town. And in the distance, I could just make out the clamour of the town crier's bell and the old Norman-French imperative of 'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!' ('Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!') being shouted at the City Cross, at the junction of High Street, Wine Street, Corn Street and Broad Street. I picked up Hercules and began to follow the crowds; but these had grown in such numbers as we crossed the quayside, that even with my height and girth I was unable to make good progress. My arrival at the top of High Street, dishevelled and out of breath, coincided with the crier's closing words.

'The king is dead! Long live our Sovereign Lord, King Edward the Fifth!'

For a moment, I felt winded, but not just from running. I felt stupefied, as though someone had punched me in the guts, and my heart was pounding. More than anyone else in that crowd, I had been preparing myself for this news throughout the past five months, ever since my return from France and the secret mission I had carried out for the Duke of Gloucester. I had known, far better than the anxious people around me, that the king's health was precarious, but I had secretly been hoping for some miracle that would preserve his life for at least several years to come. But God had not granted the miracle. The future was suddenly dark and insecure.

I realized that the crowds were dispersing. A not unfriendly voice in my ear said, 'Oi! Move you great dumb ox! Let an honest man get by.'

A man, a brewer to judge by his pungent smell, was shaking my arm and trying to squeeze between me and the Cross. He glanced at my dumbfounded expression and grimaced sympathetically.

'It's a bugger, eh? I must get home and tell my goody. She weren't able to leave the little 'uns when the bell started ringing. She'll be dying o' curiosity by now. What is it they say? Woe unto the land when her king is a child? Summat like that. Now if you'll excuse me, master!'

I grabbed the brewer's arm. 'Did you see where the crier went?'

He chuckled. 'Oh, aye! Heading straight for The Green Lattis, he was. Understandable after all that shouting.'

I thanked him and, ignoring Hercules's protests – he was all for going straight home now that his nose told him we were so close – I made my way to my own favourite drinking place and pushed my way in.

The main room was full to capacity, the majority of people clustered around the stocky figure of the town crier who was seated in one corner like a king upon his throne, holding court as he was begged for more information than he could possibly impart. And no one was asking the right questions, I could hear that. Most of them – mainly from women – were concerning the 'poor queen', the 'sweet princesses' and the 'dear little king'. This time, using my bodily strength to good effect, I shouldered a path through the crowd, turfed an apprentice off the stool next to master crier and dropped an indignant Hercules on the floor beside me.

There was a sudden lull in the vociferous questioning and the crier turned towards me, displaying a furious frown.

I ignored this and asked abruptly, 'Is the royal messenger still with the mayor?'

'Of course not,' was the truculent reply. 'He was off to Wells as soon as he'd given us the news.' I noted the 'us' and the slight swelling of the chest that accompanied it. 'He has the whole of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall to cover before the end of the week.'

'But he must have given you and the mayor and council –' I was careful to put them in that order, with a slight emphasis on the 'you' – 'some information. For instance, when did King Edward die?'

The crier was mollified, even pleased now by my interruption. Here was his chance to stress his importance.

'Last Wednesday. April the ninth. They'll be moving his body to Windsor sometime this week, for burial in St George's Chapel.'

'Where's the Duke of Gloucester?'

'Way up north apparently. At one of his castles in Yorkshire. So goodness knows when they'll be seeing him in London. He may even send for confirmation of the news. Seemingly he'd received a false report about his brother's death at the end of March, so he mightn't believe this one to begin with.'

'And where's the Prince of W–? I mean the king?' How strange it was to be calling that twelve-year-old child by his father's title. Edward IV had reigned over us for so long.

The crier shrugged. 'As far as anyone knows at present, still at Ludlow with his uncle, Earl Rivers, and the rest of his household. But he's bound to be setting out for the capital soon. So the messenger supposed. Well, I mean, stands to reason.'

I nodded and pushed an importunate Hercules aside as he tried to climb into my lap, just to remind me of his presence. He was extremely annoyed, and he had a nasty habit of peeing down my leg when displeased.

I turned again to my informant. The crowd around us had gone very quiet, hanging on his every word.

'Did the royal messenger happen to say what was happening in London? Is all peaceful there?'

The crier gave a gruff laugh. 'Far from it, I gather. Rumour has it that the late king, as he was dying, forced Lord Hastings and the Marquis of Dorset – that's the queen's elder son from her first marriage —'

'I know who the Marquis of Dorset is,' I said irritably.

He gave me a look, but proceeded affably enough. 'Well, the king insisted on their reconciliation. Seems there's always been bad blood between them, particularly of late, over some woman. One of the king's – the late king, that is – mistresses.' He added on a note of lugubrious satisfaction, 'If there's trouble between men, you can wager your last groat it'll be about a woman.'

I guessed that this lady was Elizabeth (although she was always known as Jane, presumably to distinguish her from the queen) Shore, Edward IV's favourite mistress, long coveted by both his friend and his elder stepson. I wondered which of them she would choose as her protector now that the king was dead. But such idle speculation was for another occasion. There were more important questions to be answered.

'Did the messenger say anything about events in London since His Highness's death?'

The crier sucked his teeth and looked portentous. 'He did let drop to the mayor and aldermen that things were pretty chaotic. The queen's brother, the Bishop of Salisbury, has been arming his retainers, as has Lord Hastings. And another of the queen's brothers, Sir Edward Woodville, has been moving some of the royal treasure from the Tower.'

'What? Was the messenger sure about that?'

'Appeared to be pretty positive. His Worship and members of the council were as shocked as you seem to be and questioned the man closely on the matter. But there was no shifting him. Said he knew it for a fact. What's more, Sir Edward is making preparations to put to sea. Says, apparently, it's to sweep the Channel clear of the French corsairs that have been raiding along the south coast in recent months. But if he takes the treasure with him, we–ell, it puts a different complexion on his actions, I would say.'

I drew a deep breath as the crowd, gathered around the crier and completely silent for the past few minutes, started muttering to one another. Then there was a general shifting of bodies as people moved to get back to work. Kings might come and kings might go, but there was always a crust to be earned in order to keep body and soul together. Life went on whatever momentous events were shaping the future.

Somebody said, 'Praise be we don't live in London, eh?'

There was a general murmur of assent, and someone else called out, 'It'll be all right once the Duke of Gloucester gets there, lad. He'll sort 'em out. He'll know what to do.'

The crier rose to his feet, pushing aside his empty mazer. 'You never said a truer word, friend. Thank God for Duke Richard! He won't stand for the Woodvilles' nonsense.'

There was ragged cheer and, in moments it seemed, the Green Lattis had emptied of all but the usual regulars, the elderly and the young layabouts who spent their days dicing and drinking, desperately trying to avoid anything in the nature of manual labour. I, too, gathered up my pack and cudgel, stirred a sulking Hercules with my foot and left the inn, crossing the busy thoroughfare of Corn Street and starting down Small Street towards my house.

I felt deeply disturbed by the news I had heard. I knew Sir Edward Woodville. He had been with the expedition to Scotland the previous year, and I had seen him in London as recently as last October, peacocking up the steps of Baynard's Castle as though he already owned the place. But more than that, I knew what I had been sent to France by Richard of Gloucester to discover, and I wondered if the Woodvilles knew it, too. Their spy was dead, but that wasn't to say they hadn't made a guess as to what my mission had been.

There was going to be trouble, I felt it in my bones, but exactly what kind of trouble I found it difficult to guess. Were the queen's family planning a coup against the absent Duke of Gloucester? Were they – heaven forbid! – even considering the possibility of taking his life? But somehow I couldn't see Earl Rivers, head of the family and an essentially gentle, extremely cultured man who frequently went on pilgrimage to Walsingham, Compostella, Rome or Bury St Edmunds, sanctioning such a move. But then again, was he capable of controlling its more violent and rapacious members? Particularly Edward Woodville, who had never concealed his dislike of the late king's surviving brother? Lionel, too, might be Bishop of Salisbury, but he was as power-hungry as the rest of his clan. And the queen's two first-marriage sons, the Marquis of Dorset and his brother, Sir Richard Grey, were a couple of roistering, swaggering young braggarts; at least so I judged from what little I had seen of them. Their stepfather had kept them firmly in their place, but now that he was dead, I could imagine that their self-importance would know no bounds. They were half-brothers to the new young king. They would be a part of the tight circle of Woodvilles who would surround him.

Well, it was none of my business now, thank God. I had played my part – under duress, I might add – last autumn and I would stay safely here in the West Country while the main protagonists played out whatever drama awaited them in London. Nevertheless, knowing what I did, my uneasiness remained and refused to be shaken off, although my step became brisker and my mood lightened as I approached my own front door.

This proved to be locked, but that in itself was not surprising. It simply meant that Adela was at market and the children with her; or, more probably, as I had not spotted them in the crowds around the High Cross, visiting Margaret Walker, my former mother-in-law and her cousin, in Redcliffe. It was disappointing, but had happened often enough before as there was no way my family could ever anticipate my arrival home from one of my journeys. I took my key from the pouch at my belt, leant my cudgel against the wall, hitched my pack to a safer height on my shoulder, unlocked the door and stepped inside.

But once across the threshold, I paused. The house being temporarily empty, naturally I was expecting no noise, but the silence struck me as unusually oppressive. Moreover, there was a mustiness that suggested it had been unoccupied for some time, days perhaps, or even weeks. Hercules had dashed ahead of me into the kitchen, but now re-emerged, looking puzzled. He barked on a querulous, questioning note and then tried to nip my ankle, a sure sign of agitation.

'All right, lad,' I said. 'What is it? Show me.'

He returned to the kitchen and indicated the spot where his feeding and water bowls should be, always left in the same place even if there was nothing in them, so that he could indicate hunger or thirst by pushing one or the other around the floor, then standing back until his needs were attended to. But they were no longer there. They had been washed and stacked neatly on a side bench along with Adela's other kitchen implements, knives, bowls, choppers, all similarly clean and unused. I stared around, bewildered. There was no fire on the hearth, not even a handful of dead ashes, and no pot hung from the iron tripod above it. The water barrel in the corner was empty, as I discovered when, in response to Hercules's frenzied importuning, I picked up one of his bowls and went to fill it. The bunches of dried herbs, tied to one of the ceiling beams, were still there, rustling in a slight draught from the still open front door, but the meat skewer with its half side of smoked bacon and the net of vegetables which hung beside it were missing.

I took the stairs three at a time and burst into the bedchamber I shared with Adela. Here, a stripped bed, the patchwork quilt neatly folded in the middle, told the same story. With trembling hands, I flung open the lid of the clothes chest to find it almost empty. All that remained were a few old things of mine, plus the two new outfits I had been given last year to wear to France and which Duke Richard, in defiance of Timothy Plummer's arguments that the ducal finances could not afford such extravagant gestures, had insisted that I be allowed to keep. The room which the two boys – my son, Adam, now almost five, and my stepson, eight-year-old Nicholas – shared was equally devoid of any sign of recent tenure, as was the little attic at the top of the house, normally occupied by my daughter, Elizabeth.

Slowly, inexorably, it was borne in upon me that Adela and my children were gone. But where? And why?

The silence was appalling. Even Hercules had become conscious of it and had stopped badgering me for water, sniffing around the vacant rooms and whimpering pathetically. I shivered, suddenly feeling cold in spite of the thin April sunshine struggling through the oiled-parchment window panes, and I recognized it as the chill of neglect.

With legs that felt like lead and with my heart beating so fast that it seemed as if I must choke, I turned and went downstairs again. As I reached the bottom of the flight, there was a knock at the still half-open street door. I flung it wide.

'Adela?' I croacked.

But the small, neatly coifed, grey-gowned woman who stood there was not my wife, although I recognized her as one of our neighbours; one of those respectable Goodies who had objected so vociferously years ago when Cicely Ford had outraged all their finer feelings by leaving a common pedlar and his family her Small Street house in her will.

'Oh, it is you,' she said with a sniff. 'I thought it might be, but when I noticed the door was open I decided I'd better come over and take a look.' The brown eyes, set beneath eyebrows which were beginning to go grey, sparkled maliciously. 'If you're looking for your wife –' she gave the last word an insulting emphasis which indicated some doubt of the fact – 'she's been gone these many weeks and the children with her. At least, I don't know about the girl. I think she may be over with her grandmother, in Redcliffe. She's not your wife's child I've been told.'

'Is Mistress Chapman there, too?' I demanded, choosing to ignore the unpleasant and totally unwarranted innuendo. I hoped my wife had gone to stay with my former mother-in-law.

---

Excerpted from Wheel of Fate by Kate Sedley. Copyright © 2010 Kate Sedley. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---