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IV’s death on April the ninth. Certainly, by the time I rode in through the Lud Gate on St George’s Day, there was a febrile atmosphere that was hard to explain. Even the arrival of the Duke of Gloucester with the young king three days after May Day had done nothing to dispel the general sense of uneasiness. Duke Richard’s perhaps over-excessive gratitude to his cousin, Henry of Buckingham, for riding to warn him of the Northampton plot, had put many noses out of joint; and, as I said before, I knew for a fact that Lord Chamberlain Hastings had begun plotting almost at once with his old enemies, the Woodvilles, and some of their adherents to overthrow the Protector.
    Nothing, however seemed to have come of it. If Joshua Bullman were telling the truth – and there was no reason whatsoever why he should not be – all was quiet in the capital and plans going ahead for the young king’s coronation and the calling of his first parliament. And yet . . . I repeat that no one knew better than I that Duke Richard strongly suspected, even if he were not entirely convinced, that the late king had been his mother’s bastard by an archer, named Blaybourne. Had he not sent me to Paris the previous year in an attempt to discover the truth of the matter? Unfortunately, the evidence I had uncovered had been sufficient merely to bolster the duke’s suspicions without amounting to proof. And as long as the Dowager Duchess of York refused to confirm or deny the allegation she had once made, on the occasion of the late king’s marriage to Dame Elizabeth Woodville, then my lord of Gloucester had no alternative but to accept his elder nephew as his rightful sovereign.
    I swallowed the dregs of my ale and rose to my feet. But even as I did so, a memory obtruded itself; a memory of the night I had spent at Reading Abbey on my recent journey to London and the sudden flurried arrival, which I had accidentally witnessed, of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. My lord had appeared unnecessarily agitated, as he had also done when I saw him just over a week later on his way to the service of thanksgiving, for the king’s safe entry into his capital, at St Paul’s. A third sighting of him leaving Crosby’s Place in Bishop’s Gate Street, where the Duke of Gloucester had been temporarily lodging, convinced me that my lord bishop had something on his mind. And this, in turn, had provoked the recollection that Robert Stillington had not only been a close friend of George of Clarence, but had briefly been imprisoned around the time of the duke’s execution.
    I sat down again, much to the annoyance of a man who had been waiting to take my seat, and stared sightlessly ahead of me, twisting my empty beaker between my hands. Here was certainly food for thought. But then, suddenly, resolutely, I once more stood up and made my way outside, breathing in the balmy evening air. What concern was any of this of mine? I asked myself. The capital and its affairs, its intrigues and secrets, were none of my business. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me back there. I was home and that was where I was going to stay.
    I had been hawking my wares around the manor of Clifton with some success – enough, at any rate, to make me feel at peace with myself and life in general – and was seated on the edge of the gorge, eating the dinner of bread and cheese with which Adela had provided me. Far below me it was low tide, and the sluggish Avon was a narrow thread between its glistening banks of mud, while on the opposite side of the river, as on my own, the towering cliffs were cloaked in the green of trees and shrubs that clung perilously to the rock face. As I watched, a faint breeze tossed the sun-bronzed leaves into patterns of silver and jade and slate-blue, and the distant hills were awash with light, waves of beaten copper rolling towards some celestial shore. The June day was playing at being high