‘And is she?’

‘I think so. She likes nothing better than to dig up juicy gossip and take it where it may do most harm.’ She frowned. ‘She is not a stupid woman, I think. Yet she behaves stupidly.’

‘Dangerously.’

‘Yes. It is what she has always done. Yet she has attached herself to the Queen, they are fast friends.’

‘I saw the Queen today.’

She hesitated. ‘At Fulford?’

‘At Fulford. Jack told you what happened to me there?’

She cast her eyes down. ‘It was a cruel thing.’

‘Well, as you say, the sooner we are all out of York the better.’

She rose. ‘I should go, sir. I must see how Mistress Marlin fares.’

‘Does Barak know you are having this conversation with me?’

‘No, sir. It was my idea.’

‘Well, Tamasin, you have charmed me, as I guess you have charmed many. Would you like me to accompany you back to your lodgings?’

She smiled. ‘Thank you, sir, but no. As I said, I am used to making my own way.’

‘Goodnight, then.’

She bowed, then turned and walked confidently away, to be lost in the crowd. I watched her go. I had been wrong about her, she was a girl of mettle. Perhaps Barak had met his match.

Chapter Twenty

TAMASIN’S COURAGE in approaching me with her confidences made me feel rather abashed; after all, I had been less than civil to her these last few days. I rose from the bench, for I was getting chilled, and decided to visit the camp across the road and see if I could find Barak. I went through the door in the precinct wall by St Olave’s church and crossed the lane to where guards stood at a gate in the wicker wall. I showed my papers and was allowed through. My nostrils were at once assailed by a harsh smell of woodsmoke, unwashed bodies and excrement. As I entered the field, where grass was already turning to mud under the pressure of feet and hooves, someone blew a horn nearby. Men began walking to the nearest cooking-fire, carrying wooden bowls and mugs. It was late for dinner, they would be hungry.

I stood and watched as a large group gathered round the fire, a huge blaze of wood set in a rectangular pit under a huge spit, six feet high and a dozen long, an enormous metal construction on which a whole ox turned. Scullions ran up with more wood while others turned the immense handles under the supervision of a sweating cook. The spit was an amazingly complex piece of equipment. Underneath chickens turned on smaller irons, and gallapins darted in and out, pulling out the cooked birds and slicing them deftly on big platters, fat dripping on them from the ox. Wearing leather aprons and neckerchiefs over their faces against the spitting fat, the little kitchen boys moved with extraordinary speed and skill to fill the plates held out by the hungry men. There was joking and catcalling but the men were well behaved; all looked tired for they would have started travelling at dawn, waited during the spectacle at Fulford and then come on here to set up the camp.

Watching the little scullions darting among the flames and hot fat, I reflected that Craike was incorrect. The organization of the Progress was an extraordinary thing, but to sneer at the workmen was wrong; without the discipline and skill of these men, the drivers and cooks and carriers, nothing would have been accomplished at all.

I heard a cough, and turned to find Barak at my elbow. ‘Oh, you’re here,’ I said roughly. ‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ We were silent a moment, watching as the men crouched on their haunches by the fire, eating hungrily.

‘There’s hundreds of great Suffolk horses in the far fields,’ Barak said. ‘I’ve never seen so many.’

‘I saw. Master Craike took me to the belltower. The officials have an eyrie there to watch the camp. In case the men make trouble.’

He grinned. ‘A nightmare, eh?’

‘Ay, a nightmare!’ I laughed.

‘I’m sorry for losing my temper earlier. Being with those arseholes Maleverer and Rich unnerved me.’

‘You had a point. But I do not feel I can abandon this case, not when it seems there may be even a slim chance of winning. Can you understand that?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He was silent a moment, then changed the subject. ‘I was talking to one of the clerks earlier, who was at Fulford.’

I looked at him sharply. ‘Oh, yes?’

‘He said Master Wrenne was taken ill, just after he met the King.’

‘What?’

‘He collapsed in the midst of the city councillors, had to be taken home in a cart.’

‘So that was why he disappeared. I thought he’d run out on me. How is he?’

‘I only know he was taken home to rest. He can’t have been too bad, or they’d have fetched a physician.’

‘I will visit him tomorrow. Did you and Tamasin see the King when he entered York?’

‘Ay. Jesu, he’s a big fellow. The Queen looked tiny next to him, a mouse beside a lion. He smiled and waved merrily, but there were hostile faces in the crowd, and a line of soldiers between him and them.’

‘Yes.’ The cooking-fire was blazing now. I wondered how the four sweating men who turned the handles of the spit could bear the heat. ‘Let’s walk on,’ I said, ‘before we roast like that ox.’

WE WANDERED ROUND the camp. It was quite dark now, though the many cooking-fires and lamps set before the tents gave enough light to see by. A cool breeze had risen, sending smoke drifting into our faces and making us cough.

‘I should tell you,’ I said. ‘I had a fight with Radwinter this afternoon.’

‘A fight? You?’ Barak looked at me incredulously.

I told him what had happened. He whistled. ‘I wanted to fly at him myself after what he said about the York Jews. Jesu, he knows how to provoke.’ He gave me a shrewd look. ‘Do you think that was what he was after, making you lose control?’

‘I’m sure of it. He means to hold it over me. No word among the clerks on the Scotch King’s arrival, I suppose?’

‘No. I’ve been talking to some of the men in the camp. They’re happy to sit it out here for a few days so long as it doesn’t rain and the countryside can bring in enough supplies. They ran out at Pontefract they were there so long, and were put on short rations.’

‘It’s harvest-time. I imagine the farmers will be making money out of the Progress.’

‘They get paid over the purveyance rate, I hear. Part of the plan to win the Yorkers over.’

I looked at the men walking to and fro or sitting by their tents with their bowls, waiting as more cooking-fires were lit around the camp.

‘They’re tired,’ Barak said. ‘They’ve had near three months on the road.’ I nodded, envying the ease with which Barak could strike up conversation with common folk.

We had arrived at a cockfighting ring. Men stood cheering as two black cocks, feathers slick with blood, circled in a clear space next to the fire, slashing at each other with the fierce hooks fixed to their claws.

‘Your bird is losing again,’ I heard a cultivated drawl. ‘You may strive till you stink, Master Dereham, but you will never beat me in a cockfight wager.’ Looking round, I saw the louche handsome face of the courtier Lady Rochford had referred to as Culpeper. A little group of male courtiers stood at the front of the crowd. The rest of the audience, out of respect, had left space around them. Culpeper’s face was lit redly by the flames, as was that of secretary Dereham, who stood next to him, a saturnine smile on his face.

‘No, sir,’ Dereham replied. ‘I took a wager on your bird as well as mine. For two marks.’

Culpeper looked puzzled. ‘But then…’ He still looked puzzled as Dereham laughed in his face. For all his charm with the ladies, young Culpeper had little intelligence.

Then Dereham saw me. He frowned and stepped forward with a bullying swagger. ‘Hey, you!’ he said sharply. ‘You’re Lawyer Shardlake, ain’t you?’