The Burgundian’s Tale

I think I have already mentioned that my room opened on to a gallery running around three sides of the Voyager’s inner courtyard – a gallery that was easily accessible from the ground by a flight of steps. But entry into the courtyard could only be gained from inside the ale room, and the street door was locked and bolted by Reynold Makepeace as soon as the last customers had left. As far as I knew, none of the guests sleeping at the inn had any interest in me except as a fellow visitor to London. All the same, I slid silently out of bed and crossed the chamber on tiptoe, noiselessly slid back the bolt of the gallery door and eased it open.

There was no one there. Foolishly, still half asleep, I stepped outside. Immediately, the door was pushed violently shut, almost knocking me off my feet in the process, and the top half of my body was muffled in a musty-smelling cloak. By the time I had recovered from my initial shock, I found myself pinned against the gallery wall, being pummelled unmercifully by a pair of sizeable fists. On this occasion, my assailant worked in silence except for intermittent grunts of satisfaction; but after my first futile attempt to free my arms, I let my body go slack, then brought up my right knee with a well-aimed blow to the man’s groin. He yelped with pain. I delivered a second kick and then a third with every ounce of strength at my command. This time he let me go, wrenched open the door to my room and pushed me through it with such violence that I landed sprawled on my back, my head cracking against the bedpost. Then he fled – or perhaps in the circumstances I should say hobbled – along the gallery and down the steps.

With some difficulty, I disentangled myself from the voluminous folds of the cloak and staggered to my feet, tenderly feeling those various parts of my anatomy which felt as if they had been trampled on by a herd of stampeding cows. When I eventually recovered sufficiently to go outside again and look over the gallery paling, it was to see a shadowy figure nimbly scaling the wall on the courtyard’s fourth side and finally disappearing over the top. There was little doubt in my mind that my attacker was yet again William Morgan.

I half-expected that the disturbance would have roused the occupants of the rooms on either side of mine; but Reynold Makepeace’s ale seemed to have acted as an effective soporific, for no one stirred. I returned to my chamber and lay down on the bed, letting my bruised body sink into the goose-feather mattress, which enveloped it with healing warmth.

While I waited for sleep to reclaim me, I thought about William Morgan and wondered why I was the target of his virulent dislike. There was, of course, an obvious answer, but somehow I was unable to connect the Welshman with Fulk Quantrell’s murder. There seemed, on the face of it, to be no satisfactory link between them. Irrelevantly, it occurred to me to wonder why William spoke with such a strong Welsh lilt when, from what I now knew of him, he had never lived in Wales. From the age of eight he had been a part of Judith’s household, and before that, he and his father had been members of Edmund Broderer’s. He must have copied his parents’ speech – and what perhaps more natural in a child? – but it also suggested to me a certain fierce loyalty to a country he had never seen. Perhaps, I thought drowsily, it was this same tenacious loyalty that lay at the core of his nature; loyalty to people, places and things …