“I bear with me, your grace, royal warrants granting to you the authority to break crown seals and to enter into rooms or buildings so sealed and secured. When once these have been placed in your hands, your grace must proceed posthaste to the episcopal palace of his grace, Harold, Archbishop of York, there to be assigned a mission and a task. This is as much as I know of the matter, your grace.”
“Am I supposed to go alone, Sir Richard?” asked Bass.
The big guardsman smiled. “1 doubt that his majesty would ask or expect his Lord Commander of the Royal Horse to go galloping off northward alone. But 1 was given a sense of some urgency.”
As the tables were being cleared, about three hours before dusk, Bass was already giving orders, sending riders out to the cavalry camp and to the port. He had trained his staffs well, so that all was in readiness for his departure at dawn of the next day.
Two years ago, he could have ridden off alone or with a couple of companions and covered the intervening ground in jigtime. Last year, even, he could have ridden it with only Nugai and his gentlemen. But no more. Now no one, from the lowliest to the highest, would hear aught of his riding forth with less than at least two hundred galloglaiches, a pack train, a score of servants, and every officer who could manage to wangle a place in the resulting column.
Given his head and his choosing, Bass would have taken a cross-country route, camping under the stars, breaking those camps ere dawn. But burdened as the column was with baggage and civilians, they were forced to travel by road, and though he pressed them all as hard as was possible, the trip became a progression and did not come within sight of York for three weeks and two days.
Understanding the uncertain temperaments and tempers of his galloglaiches, Bass established his camp on part of the now weedgrown site of the royal encampment, with Sir Calum and the two hundred Irish mercenaries to guard it.
Having often expressed a desire to see firsthand Captain Buddy Webster’s stock-breeding experiments, Bar6n Melchoro and his small entourage rode southwest toward the episcopal estate, taking Don Diego with them. Consequently, Bass arrived at the fine palace of the archbishop with a minimal escort—Nugai, Sir AH, Sir Liam FitzAlfred, his bannerman, four squires, a dozen lancers, and Fahrooq, who had come along on the ride north that he might see more of this land called England.
Although he had been aware that conferences of a politico-religious nature had been going on for almost a year in York, Bass had not realized how deadly serious and how international the flavor of those discussions was until he entered within the walls of that city. It was well that he had brought his pavilion and adequate provisions for his entourage, for every inn was jammed full, and food, drink, and supplies seemed to be both scarce and dear.
Making toward the archepiscopal palace, the column could not manage any pace faster than a slow walk through streets thronged with foreigners—Scots, Irish, Burgundians, Germans from several parts of the Empire, Livonians, a scattering of Kalmyks or Tatars.
When finally reached, the palace complex was found to be much more heavily guarded than Bass recalled from any previous visit, nor would the grim, businesslike guards allow his lancers, mounted or dismounted, through the gate into the outer courtyard. At the gate between inner and outer courtyards, the party found itself stripped of squires, bannerman, and all of the horses, to then proceed under guard of a half-dozen pikemen to the gate of the actual palace.
Within the guardroom just inside that gate, a richly dressed, rapier-thin officer behind an ornate desk barely glanced at the warrants before casually shoving them back toward the bearer, shrugging languidly, and announcing in a tone little shy of rank insubordination, “Well, your grace, it were much better had you stayed in your camp until his grace, the archbishop, sent for you. There is but the barest chance that I could have an audience arranged for you any time this week . . . and if I can, it will be most expensive, most expensive indeed.”
Dark face working, Sir Ali started to take a pace forward, but Bass laid a restraining hand on the Arab’s sinewy arm. “Very well, what is the tariff for an audience today?” From within his buffcoat he withdrew a velvet purse that clinked musically as he bounced it in his palm.
The officer’s thin lips parted to reveal bad teeth. “Your grace is most perceptive. Let us say that three onzas of gold would virtually guarantee an audience with his grace before sundown, tomorrow . . . ?”
Bass shook his head. “Not soon enough, man. I was sent here by order of both his grace and the king. I know—you will immediately escort us to his grace’s presence, whereupon he and I will decide the actual worth of your services.”
Shielded by the bodies of the men grouped around the desk, only the officer saw the second item that Bass withdrew from beneath the front of his buffcoat—a small-framed wheellock pistol boasting a half-inch bore in a two-inch barrel.
The officer’s scornful “Impossible!” trailed off into a very weak squeak and the gaze of his two eyes locked upon that deadly cyclops now staring at him in all its inhuman coldness. All the blood drained from his face and his fine, soft-palmed hands began to tremble like leaves in a gale.
The guards lounging about at the other end of the big room saw nothing unusual in their noble-born officer’s departure through the double doors leading out into the palace complex with this new-come lord and his gentlemen. One of the gentlemen, the dark-skinned, crooked-nosed one, had an arm thrown about the officer’s narrow shoulders and was talking in a low tone but most animatedly to him. The lord himself walked close by the officer’s other side, one arm looped in his, the other hand thrust within the front opening of his dusty buffcoat. The other gentleman—Scot or Irisher, by the look of him—and the Tatar trailed close behind the leading trio.
His skinny legs become weak as water, it was all that Guards Officer Edmund Bridges could do to place one foot before the other as the murderous duke and his Arab henchman supported the most of his weight and bore him along with them. He was keenly aware that, hidden by the buffcoat, the small pistol was pointed directly at his quaking body, and the Arab had assured him, besides, that he had ready an envenomed dagger. One tiny prick of the point would ensure him a protracted and agonizing death which no physician could ease or cure.
The small party trooped along corridors and through halls and smaller rooms without Bass’s seeing anyone he recognized. He was getting desperate when they passed into yet another long, broad hall. A few yards down it to the right, a knot of men stood in converse. A brief glimpse of the face of one of them—a cleric, by his garb—tugged at Bass Foster’s memory, and so he guided his party in that direction.
So immersed in their own affairs were the group that no notice was taken of the newcomers until Bass spoke. “Your pardon, it’s Father Peter Aleward, isn’t it?”
A beefy, broad-shouldered man in a floor-length cassock spun about to disclose raised, very bushy black eyebrows on a florid face from which a bulbous nose thrust out like the metal boss from a targe. Upon catching sight of Bass, his face lit up in a broad smile. “Your grace of Norfolk! Thank God you are arrived. His grace has been beside himself. He had expected you far sooner.”
Turning briefly back to the group, he said, “We’ll continue these matters at a later time. Just now, it is most urgent that I conduct the Duke of Norfolk, here, to his grace.”
To the guards officer, he said, “Thank you for bringing these gentlemen to me, but now there is no further need for your guidance. You may return to your desk.”
Sir Ali retained his grip on the unfortunate officer, however, looking questioningly at Bass, who said, “That might not be wise, Father Peter . . . unless it is your wish that this man go on with his odious little enterprise of selling audiences with Hal . . . that is, with his grace.”
“Is this true, Bridges?” asked the priest sadly.
The officer shook his head violently, opened his mouth to protest his innocence of the charge. Then he took a single look at Sir Ali’s cold black eyes, remained silent, and began to tremble again.
“He offered,” attested Bass, “to arrange me an audience by sundown tomorrow for my payment of three ounces of gold to him. That’s a bit steep, I feel, so I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” He drew out from his buffcoat his right hand and the small wheellock pistol it held.