The Cardinal's Angels Read online

  To Ned the room matched the appearance of its master, looking like the abode of a dabbler in dark magicks and necromancy. The walls were covered by a series of charts and drawings pinned to the white washed surfaces. A large bronze astrolabe hung suspended from a beam, and every flat surface was covered with books and manuscripts, along with a scattered array of instruments of unknown intent.

  Ned had attended a few lectures on astrology and geomancy at the university, mainly out of curiosity. Actually he’d been bored and suffering from a temporarily embarrassment in the vicinity of his purse, so since he couldn’t go drinking it had seemed like a good idea at the time. They were mainly intended for the few students who were studying for a medical degree. Another four years on top of their standard qualifications. He’d heard complaints from his fellow students that they should be looking at more modern work like that provided at the great universities of Paris and Bologna, rather than relying on the worn texts of Galen and Hippocrates, dust these fifteen hundred years. Knowing the conservative bent of the masters of the colleges, he’d thought that rather wishful thinking.

  But anyway, from what he remembered astrology revolved around the idea that if given the proper information about when a person was born, a practitioner of the art could ascertain their health, character, opportunities and perils, according to the alignment and influences of the twelve signs of the zodiac and the seven planets. These tools, along with the modern arts of calculation, could aid in the diagnosis of a patient’s illness, and with the grace of God, restore them to health. All the while Ned had been intrigued by the lecturer’s frequent and in fact repetitive nervous references to the intercession of divine aid. This was closely followed by the stern injunction to avoid any straying into what he called the darker area of the occult and arcane practices of this modern science.

  So he was here, and Ned couldn’t see any signs of bat wings, the skulls of virgins or the more oblivious trappings of a man who’d crossed the threshold of the forbidden. But then he suspected such manifestations could be more to gull the incredulous into a generous frame of mind, than be practically useful. Anyway his daemon prompted how could tell it was virgin’s skull and not that of a jester?

  Their aged host, a man named as Dr Agryppa on the parchment, fell into a waiting chair rapidly cleared of its pile of books by his youthful assistant. Ned’s eyes once more strayed to the red headed girl. Damn but she was tasty, possibly a year younger than Mistress Black, and she moved with an economy of grace flicking back her plaited length of hair that to Ned’s growing appreciation terminated just at the curve of her buttocks. His angel as usual tartly observed that her hair colour was remarkably similar in colour to Redbeard’s. Ahh yes. Now there was a good reason for caution.

  They grabbed a few stools at the direction of their host and pulled them close to him. Ned noticed with approval that Rob Black sat between his sister and the old man. Once more the tempting red head stood at his side and Dr Agryppa or, as he seemed to be known to some, Lewys Caerleon, surveyed his guests. This made Ned rather nervous. When those dark eyes bored deeply into his, he flinched as if his soul was being investigated and every transgression measured and balanced.

  After the leisurely inspection of his ‘guests’ Agryppa/Caerleon slumped back into a tall backed chair and wearily waved towards the smouldering Mistress Black. “Margaret Black, you can begin your tirade anew.”

  That did it, but instead of the violent torrent Ned was expecting, it was a voice devoid of passion, as if flattened by passing beyond such emotions into a perilous state of washed out rage. “Where were you? My father needed you! Uncle William had to resort to that charlatan, Hendricks!”

  If Ned thought that Dr Agryppa’s face had been leanly melancholy before, then the grief now apparent made that but a shadow of his true feelings. He nodded at her accusation and Rob edged forward in case she would once more leap to the attack. The old man passed a hand across his face as if to smooth away the lines of pain before replying. “It’s true–I did fail my friends when their need was the greatest.”

  That simple confession almost sparked another flare of violence from the volatile Mistress Black. The man she named as Lewys Caerleon put up a forestalling hand. “Much to my shame my arts did not serve to protect me. When your father and mother were suffering from the Sweats I’d been seized and taken prisoner.”

  It was Rob Black who asked the next question, forestalling his sister who was still mulling over the answer and in Ned opinion probably planning the next assault. “But weren’t you under the protection of the King? You told us your father served Lady Beaufort against the Yorkist usurpers.”

  The old man gave a smile of bitter regret and shook his head. “The memory of princes is short. I recall that this King, within a few months of his assumption of the crown, had executed Sir Richard Empson and Sir Edmund Dudley for faithfully serving his father.”

  Ned remembered one of his painful lessons from Uncle Richard on English history. Those two royal servants had been the old king’s tax collectors. To serve Henry Tudor, the victor of Bosworth Field, in the matter of money a man had have three key attributes; obedience, scrupulousness and efficiency. According to his uncle their fates were a salutary example of the rewards for loyalty, thought to be honest Ned was a bit confused on the moral lesson in that.

  “Men in power, especially princes, find it more expedient to reward their current favourites, than honour past debts.” That was an incredibly astute piece of philosophy. Ned wondered if this man had met with Master Robinson. He thought they might find quite a bit in common to discuss regarding the habits of princes.

  So far Mistress Black had curbed her raging spirit, but the rancour was still strong as she spat out her accusation. “I saw you burnt at Smithfield four months ago, and I praised God for the justice!”

  A grimace of pain passed across the old man’s face and he shook his head. “It may have been claimed so, but clearly that wasn’t me Margaret.”

  That answer didn’t satisfy Mistress Black. Tears coursed down her face as she spat out her disbelief. “What? Did the foul practice of your arts whisk you away at the last moment?”

  The grief, bitterness and anger were so raw and plain that Ned found himself examining the chart on the wall instead of witnessing her open pain. His angel approved. After all he wasn’t that heartless or unforgiving.

  Once more the old man shook his head in denial. “Ah Meg, I miss the certainty of youth. If I had such skills I wouldn’t have been taken in the first place, and mayhap would have ended up in a more luxuriously accommodated refuge. No, the explanation is simpler, and darker.” With shaking fingers he pulled back his sleeves exposing the coarse weals that circled his wrists, the mark of heavy manacles.

  “I had scrutinised the stars and their horoscopes with reference to the writings of an ancient philosopher and prepared a physic for your parents that I’d some hope for. I was going to deliver it that night. It may have helped but I don’t know. I’ve seen too many succumb to the fire of the Sweats and nary another real doctor in all the city.” With a rueful shrug the old man dropped his sleeves back over the scars.

  Ned had been away when the Sweats had raged through the streets of London, but like everyone else he knew that the first out of the city gates were the physicians. Only the foolish, greedy or dedicated had remained.

  “More’s men grabbed me in Threadneedle Street and I was hauled off to the Lollard Tower at St Paul’s under arraignment for sorcery from Bishop Stokesley. It was many long days of questioning, but very little was about my supposed dark magical practices. Mostly it was about my patrons and their commissions, and other secrets.”

  The old astrologer focused his gaze on Margaret Black. Ned noted with interest the slightest flicker of her long brown eyelashes and stilled quiver of her hands.

  “Sir Thomas More was very insistent and used all his powers of persuasion.” Dr Caerleon held up his left hand and Ned could see that recently several fingers
had been broken. The index finger went off at an odd angle from the others. He had heard from a few gentlemen at the Inns how fond Sir Thomas was of hunting heretics and was reputed to be ruthless in their questioning.

  Then curiosity got the better of him. “What clients and commissions?”

  That at least got a smile and chuckle from the old man. “Why, good Master Bedwell, the prognostication of the future from the stars.”

  This shook Ned badly–he’d not yet given the old physician his name.

  “Men will give freely of their gold to know their fates.” The doctor gave that answer with the shake of his head and a wry knowing smile. The next was in a quieter voice that made Ned tremble with apprehension. “And even more to know that of their rivals.”

  “What of the burning at Smithfield? I saw it! He looked like you?” The hot anger of Meg Black was still there but a note of doubt mellowed it.

  The old man frowned, tugging at his long gown in visible distress. “It was More’s idea. He taunted me with it after. Some poor soul from St Mary’s Bethlehem, who was afflicted by the belief he was the Saviour was my substitute. More said that once it was known I had died, no one would bother about me.” The doctor then gave a very bitter bark of laughter and scowled with distaste.

  “The fool thought I was secured by his legal legerdemain and cony tricks. The Lord Chancellor heard of his servant’s deception and plucked me from my lion’s den. More and Stokesley were furious, but neither could issue writs since they had arranged my very public execution.”

  Ned’s eyes widened in surprise. He’d heard quiet whispers of such practices in the hidden corners of the Inns of Court, men seized and spirited away. Many loudly claimed it couldn’t happen. Others tapped their nose and stayed quiet. Now he’d seen one visible whisper in the flesh, the next question that sprang to his mind was what of the other darker suggestions he’d heard were also true? There was a rumour, or even if you could call it the shadow of a ghost of a rumour that even brave men hesitated to admit, only two simple words–‘White Rose’.

  Mistress Black’s puzzled voice broke this divergent thought. “Why would Cardinal Wolsey rescue you?” She was calmer now and her voice steadier without the harder edge of anger or passion. Inquisitiveness had won out.

  “Knowledge, dear child, is the key to untold power, and the good Cardinal clutches at it like a drowning man a straw. My task was to save his failing influence with the King and to aid other long held ambitions.”

  “Why here?” asked a now curious Mistress Black. Her anger seemed to have almost completely dissipated.

  Before the astrologer could answer Ned quickly chimed in with an answer. It was time to work on their present problems not relive past grief’s. “Because the Liberties of Southwark are under the supervision of the Bishop of Winchester, and he refuses to let a single man of either Stokesley or More to have any jurisdiction. Or else it would jeopardise his authority.”

  Ned continued. For a few moments he’d been granted a sudden moment of clarity, that revealed part of the complex interplay between the rival factions. “Someone suggested this place, as a refuge to the Cardinal, and that I suspect was you Doctor Caerleon.”

  The astrologer’s small quiet smile hinted at the truth and so Ned pushed off onto another line of speculation. “You… you also gave him, what he wanted.”

  That was actually more of an inquiry, because for a man who seemed to have resisted the persuasions of More, Ned doubted that the doctor would succumb so easily to the blandishments of Wolsey. He wondered if Mistress Black had understood the other implications of the earlier discussion, that the old man had kept ‘her’ secrets safe.

  Dr Caerleon continued to look enquiringly towards Ned and crooked a questioning eyebrow as if in encouragement. So it would seem that it was Ned’s turn to prove his worth. In fact all of them were now looking curiously at him. Since the conversation with Master Robinson at the Tower he’d begun to work through the conflicting interplays of loyalty, duty, obligation, honour and power that bound all the great lords of the land together in a dangerous and deadly dance. He had seen some shadows of that dance at the Courts, one man’s writ of prosecution withdrawn as the strings and levers of influence and connection were applied. As he had been frequently drilled, one should never confuse law with justice.

  But this was subtly different, or was it actually? A man was a man whether rich or poor. All still had the same frailties and foibles, though in the powerful, such faults could be accentuated. He’d seen his uncle at work with his clients. It required delicate poise and negotiation. One had to avoid offence and at the end always had to give satisfaction. Or at least the public guise of compliance and agreement. The client was always right, except as Uncle Richard had sniggered, when they were completely wrong.

  “No Doctor you didn’t. I think you gave Wolsey the predictions he wanted to hear, not the charts he needed.”

  Dr Caerleon gravely nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Master Bedwell you are correct. For, as you know, only the truly wise accept that they know nothing. The Lord Chancellor however believes he knows everything.”

  “What of Smeaton? Did you know they were closing in?”

  The old astrologer’s face grew seriously grave. “The pattern of the stars can chart a map of what a man can expect, threats, opportunities and influences, but nothing is ever set as the dance of the stars shifts and changes in the crystal spheres. I knew he was vulnerable soon, but Smeaton, like others, was too arrogant to listen to counsels of prudence.”

  Now it came time for the vital question. “What was the Cardinal’s commission?”

  That one met with approval for Dr Caerleon’s eyes lit up with pleasure. “Master Bedwell, you will make a lawyer yet. It was horoscopes, some to be picked up by the deceased Smeaton, but these few were to be kept for another to acquire, an Italian, Rodolpho Campeggio.”

  Ned’s throat dried up. They were now deeply enmeshed in the perilous game. He’d a horrible suspicion that the three small books indicated by the astrologer’s waved hand held more trouble than all their other discoveries to date.

  And now Mistress Black spoke up once more with her own question. “Whose are they?”

  What was she doing? Ned resisted the temptation to muzzle Mistress Black who had now completely lost what little sense remained to her. If you wanted to avoid the Tower you didn’t voice dangerous questions like that! It was perilous enough just thinking them. Ned whispered a silent prayer for divine intercession.

  The saints and angels weren’t listening. Dr Lewys Caerleon, physician and astrologer to kings, lent forward and in a quiet but firm voice uttered their damnation. “Henry, King of England, Wales, Ireland, and France, his queen, Catherine of Aragon, the Lady Anne Boleyn, and his holiness Pope Clement VII, along with accompanying notes concerning their mutual influences.”

  Like the rest of the band, he had gasped at the roll of names–what else could you do? By all that was holy, they were really for it now, two definite counts of treason and depending on what was happening at Court, possibly three and excommunication. Ned could see the scaffold at Tower Hill before his eyes, or maybe for an event like this they would hold it at Smithfield, more space there for the expected crowds.

  While the rest of them still had visions of the scaffold wheeling through their imaginations, it was Gruesome Roger who was the first to recover from the shock and gasped out the question they were all thinking. “How…how could you do it? What of the punishment?”

  The old astrologer shook his head and gave out a very grim chuckle before he answered. “You forget, Master Hawkins, Doctor Lewys Caerleon has already been consigned to the flames. They could try for Doctor Agryppa though that would risk the spilling of all manner of secrets.”

  Ned was impressed with the old man’s reasoning. It was a handy out. In the case of any investigation it would certainly muddy the waters and at least drag the complicity of More and Stokesley into plain view. They may even hesitate to
publicly acknowledge the present existence of Doctor Agryppa.

  Something nagged on the edge of his memory about the name. Ned had heard it before. He was just trying to figure out where. No, this was going to have to wait until later. He drew his attention back to the here and now and found Rob had entered the discussion with his own question. “But why didn’t Smeaton pick them all up? Wouldn’t it have been less complicated?”

  That was very good. He gave his large friend a considered look. Rob was proving to think faster than his looks would suggest. However Ned answered that one. He wanted to steer this section of the conversation. Both his daemon and angel agreed this was his chance to seize the leadership of this company, both for wildly differing reasons. “Because my friend, if Smeaton touches them he’s guilty of treason as is his lord. As for Rodolpho, well he’ a foreigner and also protected by his father’s legatine status.”

  There was, Ned suspected, also a darker rationale. If Smeaton didn’t know about the existence of the three treasonous charts, if captured and put to the ‘Question’ he could reveal nothing of importance. But something else pulled at his memory, a dissonance from what the old astrologer had said before. It was almost an admission. So Ned reviewed the conversation and cursed at his stupidity. The wily old astrologer had deflected them by the scary revelation of treason. “Hang on. You arranged for the Cardinal to put you here. How, if you’ve no influence and are a prisoner?”