Sovereign

‘I’d like to play too.’ She frowned slightly as she spoke, as though anticipating being told to go away. But I often longed for playmates, and decided even a girl would do. ‘All right.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Matthew.’

‘I’m Suza

‘Eight.’

‘So’m I.’

She knelt beside me and pointed to a boat. ‘That one’s lopsided. You ain’t folded the paper very well.’

And so, for the next few years, Suza

Our friendship, if it could be called that, ended abruptly when we were thirteen. I had not seen her for some months, except at church on Sunday, and then from a distance as her family had a pew on the other side of the church. Walking home after the service one summer’s day, I saw a little group of girls and boys walking ahead of me in the lane. The girls wore coifs tied under their chins and smart, full-length adult dresses, the boys proper little doublets and caps. The girls were jostling for places next to Gilbert Baldwin, a handsome lad of fourteen who had always been the leader in the boys’ games. Trailing behind the group, alone, holding a long hazel twig with which she was beating the long grasses at the side of the road, was Suza

‘Ho, Suza

She turned on me a face that would have been pretty had it not been red and distorted with anger. I noticed that her dress was shabby and had a tear at the hem, her hair wildly uncombed. ‘Go away!’ she hissed furiously.

I stepped back. ‘Why, Suza

She turned round, facing me. ‘It’s all your fault!’

‘Why – why, what is?’

‘They won’t let me walk with them! They say my clothes smell, I’m dirty, I’ve no more ma

I looked up the lane. The troop of lads and girls had come to a halt and were watching the scene. The boys looked uneasy but there was a ripple of nasty laughter from the girls. ‘Suzy’s rowing with her swain,’ one called.

Suza

BARAK HAD SET HIMSELF to wake at six and shortly after that he knocked softly at my door. I felt unrefreshed by such sleep as I had had, but rose and dressed in the chill damp air. I put on Wre

‘Up again early, sir?’ he asked me.

‘Ay, we have to go into town. You have been on night duty again?’

‘Ay, and for another two days until the King comes.’ He shook his head. ‘That was a strange business yesterday, sir, with the glazier. Sir William Maleverer questioned me about it afterwards.’

Him too, I thought. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You are right, it was a strange matter. When that horse charged out of the mist I did not know for a second what it was – something from hell perhaps.’

‘They say it was an accident, sir. Do you know?’

I could see from his sharp look that he doubted that, perhaps thinking Maleverer was taking a lot of trouble over an accidental death. ‘That is what they say.’ I changed the subject. ‘I expect you have seen a few strange things happen on the way from London.’

‘None as strange as that. Until I was sent here from Pontefract it was all walking and riding alongside the Progress, through thick mud when it rained and great clouds of dust when it didn’t.’ He smiled. ‘Though there was great to-do near Hatfield, when a monkey one of the Queen’s ladies had brought escaped and made its way to a local village.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘The poor heathen folk there thought it was a devil, fled to the church and called the priest to go and send it back to Hell. I was sent with some men to take it. It was sitting in a cottager’s outhouse, happily working its way through his store of fruit.’

Barak laughed. ‘That must have been a sight!’ ‘It was. Sitting there in the little doublet its mistress dressed it in, its tail sticking out behind. Those villagers were all papists, I’d swear they thought the King’s Progress had its own legion of devils in attendance.’ He paused and shook his head.

‘Well, we must be on our way, we have business.’ We passed through the gate and walked to Bootham Bar. ‘Sharp young fellow, that,’ I observed.

Barak grunted. ‘Soldiers should ask no questions.’ ‘Some people ca

‘Can’t let tha in without it, sir,’ the guard said firmly. I asked Barak to go back to Sergeant Leacon and see if he could send someone to vouch for us. He returned in a few minutes with another big Kentishman, who peremptorily ordered the guard to let us through. Grumbling, the man opened the huge wooden gates and we slipped out.

We walked to Stonegate as the sun rose and the city came to life, keeping under the eaves as people opened their windows and threw the night’s piss into the streets. The shopkeepers appeared in their doorways and the noise of their shutters banging open accompanied our passage.

‘You are quiet this morning,’ I said to Barak. I wondered if he had been thinking about our conversation.

‘You too.’

‘I did not sleep well.’ I hesitated. ‘I was thinking about Broderick, among other matters.’

‘Ay?’

‘You know my instructions are to make sure he is safe and well when he is delivered to London?’

‘Is the gaoler making that difficult?’