I thought of Jennet Marlin. Even now I could not help but feel sorry for her. Her love for Bernard Locke must have been an obsession since childhood. She had not been unattractive, she could have made another match had she not fixed her heart so desperately on Locke. What manner of man was he, I wondered. A charismatic rogue perhaps, who could get women to do anything he asked. I had come across those in my career, usually when they had bled some woman of all her money and she was trying to recover it at law. Had Locke used that obsessive love of Jennet’s to turn her into a murderess, to save him from execution? If so, he was worse than her. I shuddered as her face came to mind, her expression as she looked at me over the crossbow.

I looked at the box. Who did you originally belong to, I wondered. Someone rich. I leaned forward and opened it, looking into the empty interior. There was still a faint smell of old, musty papers. Had Jennet Marlin destroyed them all? If she had, anything there about the Queen and Culpeper was gone. How little I care about that, I thought; I have no loyalty left to Henry. Perhaps a false King. He will be relieved indeed if that was what the Blaybourne papers said.

I jumped violently as the door banged open and Maleverer reappeared. He shut the door and frowned down at me.

‘What are you fiddling with that box for?’ He threw himself down in his seat. ‘There’s no sign of the papers in her quarters. Just letters from Bernard Locke in the Tower, tied up with ribbon. They say nothing, they just say how much they love each other. Like turtle-doves.’ He snorted. ‘I’m having the ladies questioned to see if they remember anything that might help us, but I doubt they will. I think you were right, she destroyed those papers. Perhaps threw them on to one of the campfires in York. ‘Go back to your tent now, I’ll call you if need be. There’s a soldier outside. He will take you back.’

‘Very well, Sir William.’ I rose, bowed and left the room. A soldier waiting outside led me out of Howlme Manor. It was a relief to be back in the open air.

‘Is the King abed?’ I asked the soldier, to make conversation.

‘No, sir, he is playing chess with the gentlemen of the bedchamber. He will not sleep for many hours, I think.’

The soldier led me into the camp. The cooking fires were dying down now, the soldiers and servants fed. Men sat before their tents talking or playing cards.

‘Is it far?’ I asked. ‘I am sore tired.’

‘Not far. You have a tent by the fence. Your man and the old lawyer are next to you.’

He came to a halt where three small conical tents were set together in a corner of the field. There were others dotted around, some lit from within by flickering candlelight; the other lawyers, perhaps, whose status merited their own tent. I thanked the soldier, who walked away to the manor, and opened the flap of the only tent of the three that was lit from within.

Inside, Giles lay on a truckle bed which had been set on the bare grass. Barak sat on a box beside him, his injured leg up on another box and his crutch beside him, drinking beer.

‘This is a homely scene,’ I said quietly. ‘How are you both?’

‘Master Wrenne is asleep,’ Barak answered. ‘He told me what happened. Is Jennet Marlin truly dead?’

‘Ay, she is. I have been with Maleverer; he has searched her belongings for the papers, but found nothing.’

‘She destroyed them, then?’

‘He thinks so. How is your leg?’

‘All right so long as I don’t put any weight on it. Tammy had to go back to her quarters.’

‘Maleverer is going to question her about Jennet Marlin. And the other ladies. Lady Rochford too.’

‘Tammy will be shocked,’ he said seriously. ‘She was fond of Mistress Marlin.’ He sighed.

‘Still no word from your friend in London? About her father?’

‘Only a note to say he is following some leads.’

‘Have you told her?’

‘No. And if it’s bad news in the end, as I suspect, I won’t.’

I nodded, then went over and looked at Giles. He seemed deeply asleep.

‘He saved my life,’ I said. ‘But I think it was all too much for him. He can only take so much. We must take care of him.’

‘We will.’ Barak looked at me. ‘So. It is all over.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘There’s something – but I am tired, I must go to my tent, sleep. I can’t think straight now.’ I laughed suddenly.

‘What?’

‘The soldier who brought me across told me the King is playing chess with his gentlemen. It struck me, this whole Progress is like a great chessboard, with a real king and queen trying to outmanoeuvre the people of the north.’

He looked at me seriously, eyes glinting in the candlelight. ‘A real king?’ he asked quietly. ‘Or a cuckoo in the royal nest?’

‘Either way we three are the humblest of pawns, easily dispensable.’

Chapter Thirty-five

WE WERE TRAVELLING DOWN a long stretch of road. I was still on the horse I had been given yesterday, for Genesis’ cuts were not healed sufficiently for me to ride him. He was at the back of the Progress, with the spare horses. Alongside me, Barak sat wearily in Sukey’s saddle; he had insisted on riding today, despite his leg. Giles was not with us; he had wakened feeling ill and weak, his face grey. I suspected he was in pain and had begged a place for him to travel in one of the carts. I too was feeling the effects of the previous night. Although I was thickly swathed in my coat, I felt cold.

We had an even longer ride today: to Leconfield Castle, five miles north of Hull. The country beyond Howlme was less flat, with low round hills capped with trees whose leaves glowed red and yellow this bright, cold autumn morning. It made a pretty picture. Away to the east I could see a line of hills I heard someone call the Yorkshire Wolds. All around us the Progress thundered and clattered. Behind, the procession of carts disappeared out of sight beyond a bend in the road. Ahead, the feathers in the caps of the officials bobbed up and down, while on either side the soldiers in their bright uniforms rode, with harnesses jangling, and the messengers ran up and down the verges.

The picture of Jennet Marlin with her head staved in kept coming into my mind. I guessed Giles’s state of health this morning was at least partly a reaction to what he had had to do. I recalled his shocked expression and his words, ‘I have never killed another person.’

‘Penny for ’em,’ Barak said.

‘I was thinking of last night. Mistress Marlin lying dead on that hill.’

‘I saw Tammy this morning, before we set off. She said Lady Rochford had looked terrified when Maleverer came to question her. He questioned Tammy too, but there was nothing she could tell him.’ He glanced at me. ‘She was sore upset to learn the truth about Mistress Marlin. She was in tears when I saw her.’

‘Upset that her mistress was a murderess?’

‘And that she was dead.’

‘Lady Rochford must have been scared the Queen’s foolery had been discovered.’

‘Ay. But none of the ladies knew anything. Mistress Marlin had no friends apart from Tamasin. She used to go off for walks on her own sometimes, but no one knew where she went.’

‘To spy on me,’ I said.

Barak lowered his voice. ‘You were right all along not to tell Maleverer about Culpeper. Cheer up, you are safe. It’s over. And you can stop worrying about that family tree, and who Blaybourne was.’ He grinned. ‘Stop moithering, as the Yorkers say.’

‘I wonder,’ I said quietly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jennet Marlin never actually admitted to taking the papers.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Surely she of all people would have made sure I was dead when I was struck down and the papers stolen at King’s Manor.’

‘You mean she had a confederate?’

I shook my head. ‘No, she worked alone on her mission.’