now become obsession. Thorseby would move heaven and earth, if need be, to bring Neville to penitent knees.
Or worse.
But how to do so? Lancaster and his son, Bolingbroke, were powerful men, and Neville enjoyed their full support. If the arch-heretic, John Wycliffe, could escape the Church’s justice through Lancaster’s protection, then there was little Thorseby could do about die less-heretical problem of Thomas Neville. (Thorseby’s personal sense of insult would sway no one to attack the Lancastrian faction on his behalf.) For a time, Thorseby had thought he might be able to use the long-ago deaths of Neville’s paramour, Alice, and her three daughters, to his advantage. Surely Alice had well-connected family who would be pleased to see Neville brought to account for her death? Even her cuckolded husband could be useful.
But Alice’s family and husband proved disappointing. They were all dead: her parents, her sister, and even her husband, who had succumbed to a wasting fever while on a diplomatic mission to Venice four years previously. The family who were left—distant cousins—simply did not care overmuch… and certainly didn’t care enough to take on Lancaster and Bolingbroke.
“I will see you humbled yet, Neville,” Thorseby murmured, then blinked, and looked down at the letter in his hands.
It had arrived an hour ago, and was a summons to Rome where there was to be an Advent convocation of the Dominican Prior Generals. Normally, such a summons would irritate Thorseby; travel through Europe in November and December was never the most pleasant of pastimes, especially when the Advent and Christmas season was so busy here in England.
But now such travel would give Thorseby the perfect opportunity to meet with those who had known Neville in the months when he had apparently decided to abandon completely his Dominican vows.
Somewhere in Europe lay the evidence that would enable Thorseby to extract Neville from Lancaster’s protection. Someone must have seen something that would damn Neville for all time; witnesses to a foul heresy, perhaps.
If there was one thing that Thorseby had learned from his Inquisitor brothers, it was that disobedience never goes totally unnoticed and unremarked upon.
Thorseby very carefully refolded the letter and put it to one side. He paused, briefly drummed his fingers on the desk, then leaned forward, picked up a pen, and began to compose the first of several letters he would send out later that evening.
WHATEVER HE’D said to Neville, neither Wycliffe nor his companions had any intention of traveling to Canterbury in the near future. Tired and, on Wycliffe’s and Tyler’s parts, saddened by their inadequate farewells to a woman both loved in different ways, they’d moved directly from Halstow Hall south to the port city of Rochester.
There, as arranged, they met with several other men—two craftsmen and another Lollard priest—in a quiet room in an inn.
“Well?” Wycliffe said as he entered the room.
“Ready,” said one of the craftsmen. He indicated a stack of bundled papers. “Several hundred, as you requested.”
“Show me.”
The craftsman took a single large sheet of thick paper from the top of one of the piles and handed it to Wycliffe. Tyler, Ball and Trueman crowded about him, trying to read over his shoulder.
Wycliffe relaxed, then smiled at the three men he’d come to meet. “Very good. Wat?”
Wat was already shrugging off his distinctive livery, changing into the clothes one of the craftsmen handed him. Within minutes, he’d lost all appearance of a hardened sergeant-at-arms (save for his face) and looked more the prosperous farmer.
“You have mules for these men?” Wycliffe said.
“Yes,” the priest replied.
“Good.” Wycliffe turned to Tyler, Trueman and Ball. “My friends. You shall have the most troublesome of days ahead of you. Be careful.”
Then he smiled, the expression lightening his normally harsh face. “Remember, when Adam delved, and Eve span—”
“Then,” Wat finished for him, “there were no gentlemen!”
All the men broke into laughter, and, with that laughter, so were the seeds of revolution watered.
CHAPTER IV
The Feast of the Translation of St. Cuthbert
In the first year of the reign of Richard II
(Monday 5th September 1379)
— I —
THE THAMES WAS QUIET—most ships and boats had put into harbor so their crews could devoutly mark the feast day—and its gray-blue waters lapped gently at the side of the small sailing vessel as it passed Wolwych on the southern bank. One more turn in the river and the great, smoky skyline of London would rise above the cornfields and orchards spreading beyond the marshy banks.
Neville sat impatiently on a wooden bench in the stern of the vessel.
They had ridden from Halstow two days past and had taken ship in Gravesend at dawn today, leaving several men from Roger Salisbury’s escort with the horses to follow more slowly by road. The roads leading toward London from Kent and the other southern counties were crowded with merchant and grain traffic at this time of year, and the wheels and hooves of this traffic churned up the soft surface of the roads until they were nigh impassable in places. The Thames provided the faster and smoother course, and Salisbury had offered no objection when, the previous evening, Neville had suggested they complete their journey via the river; not only was it faster and more commodious, the river was safer and they could dock directly at the river gate of the Savoy rather than ride through the dust-choked London streets.
Margaret sat by Neville’s side, Rosalind asleep in her arms. She was content and fearful in equal amounts: content because the river wind was cool and soothing as it whispered across her face and through her hair; fearful because of the inevitable travails and treacheries ahead. She glanced at her husband. He was fidgeting with a length of rope, his body leaning forward slightly, his eyes fixed on the river ahead.
Margaret shuddered and looked to where Rosalind’s nurse slouched, dozing against a woolsack. Agnes Ballard was a homely woman in her late thirties who, three months previously, had in the same week lost her infant son to a fever and her husband to the savagery of a boar. Struggling to cope with her tragic loss, Agnes had been weepy-eyed with gratefulness when Margaret had suggested she wet-nurse Rosalind, replacing the nurse who had originally accompanied Margaret and Neville from London and who had wanted to return to her home. Agnes also acted as maid to Margaret herself, and Margaret enjoyed Agnes’
motherly attentions almost as much as she believed Rosalind did. Agnes was a simple woman (but not so simple that she did not harbor her own strange secrets), but she was honest and giving, and she allowed Neville’s occasional impatient or ill-meaning remarks to pass straight over her head.
Beyond Agnes, toward the prow of the vessel, sat Robert Courtenay with Roger Salisbury, who was laughing quietly with the remaining men of his escort and the three crew. They were rolling dice, and sharing a flask of wine between them.
Margaret shifted slightly, adjusting Rosalind’s sleeping weight in her arms, and hoped the flask contained only weak drink. This boat held those two people most important to the forthcoming battle between the angels and the demons—Thomas and herself—and Margaret’s mouth quirked a little as she imagined the stratagems of angels and demons alike drowning uselessly in the mud of the Thames if the drunken crew lost control of the sails and tipped everyone out.
Who would arrive to save us, she thought, as we flailed about? Would both the minions of heaven and hell shriek in a horrified chorus at the careless ruin of their conspiracies?
“At what do you smile?”
Margaret jerked out of her reverie and looked at her husband. “I was hoping Roger will not let the crew get too drunk, for it would be a disaster if the boat overturned.”
Her arms tightened slightly about Rosalind as she spoke, and Neville did not miss the movement.
He laid his hand on her arm. “There is no danger, Margaret. Nothing can—”
Margaret gave a low cry of terror, and gathered Rosalind so tightly against her breast that the baby awoke and cried out with protest.
Neville frowned, opening his mouth to speak, and then realized that Margaret was staring at something in the water on her side of the vessel.
He looked, and his breath caught so violently in his own chest that it felt as if his heart had stopped.
Beneath the rolling surface of the river spread a great golden glow.
Neville jerked his head around to look across the deck. The glow spread underneath the vessel to radiate an equal distance beyond on its other side.
“Tom!” Margaret said.
“Hush!” he said, and his hand gripped her arm tighter. “Hush!”
He looked toward Agnes, and to Courtenay Roger and their companions beyond her.
Agnes continued asleep, and the men were still engaged in their dicing as if nothing at all supernatural was gathering beneath the boards of the boat.