Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [147]
Within two days, Flaw Valleys received her. Kate Somerville, about to leave for London on an errand of mercy of her own, took a quick look at her daughter’s angular face and decided, with a brief prayer, to set out as planned and to take Philippa with her.
London, in an armed turmoil since the Earl of Warwick had seized full power and flung the King’s uncle and Protector into the Tower, was not the obvious place, it had to be said, for a holiday. But her husband, had he lived, would have been there, out of pure concern for the safety of the boy-King he had served, and out of an exasperated loyalty to Grey of Wilton, his lordly general in the north, now sharing the Protector’s captivity.
A nondescript Northumberland widow, Kate could do nothing to help the King or the thirteenth Baron of Wilton, but it seemed to her that Lady Wilton might be glad of a friendly Somerville at hand.
So Kate stayed in London at the Somerville house, but took the first chance of sending Philippa out of the city to Gideon’s brother, an ageing courtier with a toehold in both camps. Thus, in the last days of October, Philippa Somerville found herself with her elderly nurse Nell staying upriver with her uncle at Hampton Court Palace, where he had, he said, Household business to contract. By no sixth sense was it understood by either Philippa or her mother what shattering results this family visit might have.
To begin with, it seemed to Philippa mournfully pleasant, wandering over the rain-drenched lawns and through the late Cardinal Wolsey’s big, beautiful palace, vacant but for the scattered permanent staff and the small State offices, such as her uncle’s, in sporadic use.
Uncle Somerville had little to say. He was busy, Philippa suspected with State business of his own, better transacted away from prying eyes in London. Visitors came and went in the back parlour of his house in the palace grounds, with its view of the smoothly flowing yellow Thames, while Philippa sat and read in the front.
Only once was he unexpectedly put out: when news came from the palace that the Queen Dowager of Scotland had landed on her way home from France, and was to break her journey at Hampton Court on her way to Westminster to be received by the King. Then Anthony Somerville, a high-coloured, placid man with thick, silvery hair, had asked one or two sharp questions, had appeared reasonably pleased with the answers, and had given orders for the royal boatmen, without livery, to be ready the following day to take a passenger up-river to London Port. The Queen Dowager, it appeared, was not due at the palace for four days, but Uncle Somerville was not taking any chances.
Philippa would not have been human, and certainly would not have been thirteen, if she had not taken good care next day to catch a glimpse of Uncle Somerville’s private visitor. She saw him arrive about midday, after dinner, a tall spare man with a big nose and hollow cheeks exposing the muscular promontory of mouth and chin.
She knew then why Uncle Somerville had no wish that the Scottish court and this gentleman should meet. This was George Paris, secret agent between Ireland and France, and negotiator for those Irish lords who, paying lip-service to England, had never lost hope of persuading the King of France to help them overthrow English rule. She had met him once on a Scottish visit to Midculter: he had come straight from the Queen Dowager, whose fondest wish was to see France reign over Ireland as well. It would interest the Queen Dowager, now, to see George Paris, with a price on his head, supposedly sought high and low by the English Government as an enemy and a spy, in safe and secret conclave with an official of the English King’s entourage. For George Paris was a double agent, it seemed.
Philippa wished, suddenly, that she had not witnessed the visit. Since the war had ended, she had given her friendships, as Kate had, on both sides of the Border without stint. She would take the problem, when she got back, to Kate.
But she had to take her own decision sooner