Read The Green Man for Free Online

traveller. A heavy, brooding keep stood stark against the skyline. A double moat guarded three sides of this formidable fortress and a river, which I later learned to be the Nene, made up the fourth side of its defences. Within the massive walls was a huge courtyard, around which were grouped the living quarters, including the great hall, chapel and all the workshops necessary to make such a vast edifice self-supporting. In the event of a siege, it could probably have held out for months.
    This, then, was the stronghold of the Yorkist branch of the Plantagenet tree, who now occupied the throne and to whom we all owed allegiance. Here, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had been born nearly thirty years earlier, and here the bodies of his father, Richard, Duke of York, and one of his elder brothers, Edmund, Earl of Rutland – both killed at the bloody battle of Wakefield – had been re-interred with great pomp and ceremony a mere six years ago.
    I have to record that nothing about it alleviated my feeling of deep misery and gloom.
    I had left Bristol the day after Timothy’s unwelcome appearance and accompanied him first to London where I was reunited – if I may call it that – with His Grace, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany. The duke was lodged in Westminster Palace in a suite of rooms that did justice to his importance as a future king of Scotland, and one, moreover, who would be grateful enough to do exactly as he was told by his English ally. (A Canterbury tale if ever I heard one. Who was fooling whom? It was impossible to tell.) To do my young lord justice, he seemed genuinely delighted to see me, and made it plain from the start that I was to be accorded preferential treatment and never to stir far from his side. I was to sleep in his bed and to sit at his table, unless, of course, he was dining with the king or any other of his exalted kinsmen and friends. Even then, I was to remain near at hand.
    Daunted by the prospect of such close and continuous proximity, I consoled myself with the knowledge that it could not possibly last beyond the first few weeks, when the duke would begin to find my ubiquitous presence as irksome as I would no doubt find his. However, his initial dependence on me was bound to make me highly unpopular with the rest of his personal servants, particularly if they had any suspicion of the reason for my inclusion in Albany’s household. Fortunately, although the five of them tended to scowl and mutter whenever they saw me, I had no real idea of what they were saying, for each one talked in a broad Scots dialect that was unintelligible to my west country ears.
    The eldest of the five, James Petrie, was the duke’s body servant, assisting him with washing, dressing, undressing and all other intimate bodily functions. (I was very relieved to know that nothing of that sort was expected of me.) Although roughly of Albany’s own age – the duke was, at this time, twenty-seven years old, two years younger than myself – he looked a great deal older, a tall, emaciated man with lines of care and worry cut deep into his face. His eyes were a fierce, dark blue beneath bushy eyebrows as black as his hair, a combination of colours often to be found in the Celts. He was naturally taciturn, so I was not plagued by his mutterings every time I hove into view, and, indeed, said little to Albany himself. He carried out his tasks quietly and efficiently and even gently, with the minimum of fuss; but whether or not he were fond of his new master it was impossible to say. I felt that he would have behaved in the same way to a stray dog had he decided to befriend one.
    John Tullo was the groom, a weather-beaten man with a passion for horses that made him almost one of them. He would whisper sweet nothings into the ear of the most mettlesome brute that ever trotted on four legs, and these terrifying creatures would drop their heads into his unsavoury bosom and nuzzle him like love-sick