The Prince's Keeper

A Debt That Has Vanished Richard had counted the same sum three ways before he troubled Walter Ashcombe with it. The difference remained seventy-four pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence, which was too much money for a mistake and too exact a figure to put down to careless rounding. He laid the three pieces of evidence along the counting-room desk. On his left was the account of cloth dispatched the previous autumn, copied in Hugh's broad, impatient hand. In the middle lay Martin Veyne's latest letter from across the water, with its elaborate compliments and its assurance that the balance had been satisfied. On the right was the household's book of outstanding obligations. The book was open where Richard had put a narrow strip of rush between the pages, though he already knew what was written there. From the passage came a succession of small knocks. A porter was carrying a chest upstairs, and each step of the narrow stair obliged him to put it down, lift his end again and invite the boy at the other end to do likewise. Richard tried the figures a fourth time while the porter argued that it would have been quicker to unload the chest in the yard. Walter entered without his cap and found Richard holding two letters up to the light. 'Have you eaten?' Walter asked, although he had already bent to inspect the letters. He had a habit of asking about meals while his mind was on money, and of remembering the answer afterwards. 'Bread and cheese,' Richard told him. 'Your mother says you left the cheese.' Walter placed Veyne's letter beside the account as if it might answer for Richard's breakfast as well as the missing payment. 'Then I have eaten bread.' Richard moved the receipt clear of his father's sleeve. Walter pulled a stool towards him, although he did not sit at once. He was a heavy man with careful hands, his sleeves turned back above the wrists so that a stray drop of ink or wax would not spoil the good cloth. He peered at Veyne's letter, already expecting to dislike whatever had brought Richard into the counting room before the morning's goods were seen to. 'If it concerns that Antwerp account, Martin has answered us,' Walter said. He held the letter nearer the window and followed the elaborate salutation to the sentence about the settlement. 'He says the debt is satisfied.' 'He does, and I would gladly believe him. The trouble is what he claims to have done with the payment.' Richard laid the earlier receipt beside it, taking care that both dates could be read. Walter looked from one to the other. 'Then show me where they disagree.' Richard set a finger below the relevant lines. Veyne wrote that the price obtained for the autumn shipment had been met by transferring a credit to Pieter van Hove, a correspondent through whom several obligations had passed. No coin had to travel to London. In an ordinary year, and between men who trusted one another, there was nothing unusual in settling accounts without moving silver across the Channel. 'The sum is correct,' Richard said. 'I have checked the original sale and what was allowed against the carriage. He has not invented the seventy-four pounds. He says Van Hove received the benefit on the twenty-fifth of March.' Walter read the date again and asked what had been entered against it in their own books. 'Van Hove acknowledged the close of our earlier account before that. The receipt is dated the eleventh,' Richard said, drawing it towards him. 'He may have been settling another debt.' 'That is possible. I have looked for it in every book we keep, and none is entered.' Walter sat down at last. For a little while he turned the old receipt over in his hands and examined the back, as if a clerk might have remembered to put the missing explanation there. 'You have looked in the lesser book?' 'And in the book of purchases. I asked Mathew for the loose bills that came in with the March packets. He remembered one from Bruges which belonged to a different consignment, and was quite offended when I told him so.' 'Mathew is offended by anything that disturbs his boxes.' 'He keeps them well.' 'He keeps himself very well. Van Hove has several principals. Veyne has more. There could be an order outstanding that is not yet entered in our London books.' Walter pushed the letters back towards Richard. 'We have had stranger reckonings settled perfectly honestly.' Richard knew they had. The business ran on voyages, promises and people one seldom saw; a receipt might reach London after the man who ought to have sent it had gone inland to a fair, and payments often took a different road from the cloth which earned them. That was why he had not raised an alarm when Veyne first used the word offset. It was the date that troubled him, placed beside Walter's own copy of the closed account. 'If there is a second obligation, I should like to see where it began,' Richard said. He took a folded draft from beneath the account book. 'I have prepared an enquiry.' 'You might have allowed me the pleasure of suggesting it.' Walter took the sheet, held it a little farther from his eyes and began to read. Richard waited while his father's attention reached the second paragraph. 'It asks for the authority under which he paid Van Hove, and for the person against whose account the credit stood. If he gives us those, the matter will finish itself.' Walter read the draft, making a small sound in his throat at the second paragraph. 'You make it sound as though he has committed a theft.' 'I have said we cannot reconcile his advice with our entries,' Richard replied. The words had seemed perfectly civil when he wrote them. 'And you have made the point more than once. You could leave him room to answer without requiring him to defend himself at the gallows.' 'Twice,' Richard said, under his breath, because Walter was already handing the page back for amendment. Richard took the letter back and crossed out one sentence. Walter watched his son work. His expression changed so little that a stranger might have thought him annoyed throughout; Richard had learned to notice the way his father's hand rested quietly on the desk when he approved of something. 'Will you be at the warehouse this morning?' Walter asked. 'Hugh said he wanted me to find the discrepancy in the September tally. I believe he wants to prove there is no discrepancy.' 'Hugh is in the habit of being right about cloth.' 'I hope he is right about this.' Walter had already risen, called back to a day which included a visit from a customer, two small debts and the disposition of woollen pieces whose owner expected to be paid promptly. At the door he paused. 'When you write again, send the gentler version. We have lost enough good customers without quarrelling with a factor who still has their ear.' Richard promised he would. When his father was gone, he put Veyne's letter in its fold and copied the date of the supposed settlement into his own narrow book, beside the earlier receipt. The two dates did not prove anybody dishonest. They were nevertheless the sort of difference he disliked carrying from one day to the next. The warehouse smelled of wool, timber and the sour damp of old rope. In a clear space near the doors Hugh Ashcombe had laid out two lengths of cloth, one a deep blue and the other a brown whose colour seemed to change every time a man passed between it and the window. The cloth cutter was kneeling at a table with his measuring stick, while a younger labourer attempted to pull a bale towards the wall without moving the four bales stacked upon it. 'If you want something from the bottom,' Hugh called to the labourer, 'take down what is above it. You'll have every piece on your head, and then I'll have to pay to mend them.' 'I had it almost free, master.' 'You had your foot beneath it. Those are different matters.' Richard waited until Hugh had finished discussing a customer's preference for a darker dye. In matters of cloth his brother was a different man from the one who left wet boots in the kitchen and ate the last piece of pie without asking whether anyone else wanted it. Hugh could examine a length and find a flaw where Richard saw only the weave. A shipment would be marked, wrapped and weighed correctly under his eye, and he remembered which men needed supervision without making them fear him. 'Have you found my lost September piece?' Hugh asked when Richard came within hearing. He finished his instruction to the cutter before turning fully towards his brother. 'I believe it was never lost.' 'Then there will be no fee for finding it. What else have you brought me?' Hugh looked down at the packet beneath Richard's arm. His expression altered as he recognised the Calais dispatch. 'I want to know what you authorised. And before you ask, your handwriting is worse than Mathew's.' 'It has never prevented a bale arriving at its proper destination,' Hugh said. 'Come inside, then.' They moved into the adjoining office, where there was just enough space for two stools and a narrow table stained by generations of wax. Hugh checked the dispatch quickly, turning the sheet sideways to compare the numbers with a later tally. Twenty-two pieces had been made ready in two lots, their marks recorded against the names of the carters who took them down towards the river. The sale had been undertaken through Veyne's connections; Hugh had supervised the outward account at Walter's direction. 'It was sound cloth,' Hugh said. 'There were two blue pieces which needed another pressing, and I sent them back before the carts were loaded. The rest went out as it should.' 'Was anything added at Calais?' 'Nothing of ours. Whatever Martin did after that, he will have used the advice Father sent him.' 'You signed the copy.' 'As I sign a great many things. I counted them, Richard. I checked the weights against the carrier's tally, and the man who took the goods acknowledged them. If someone has since misplaced a bale, I cannot be in two places at once.' 'There is no missing bale.' 'Then why are we going through this?' Richard showed him Veyne's letter. Hugh read it standing, with one hand against the doorpost. He was quicker at recognising the quantities than the intricacies of the overseas credit, and he went back twice to the sentence naming Van Hove. 'If Martin paid one man with what another owed us, he must explain the transaction,' Hugh said. 'Though I doubt he'll thank you for making him write the explanation twice.' Richard put the earlier receipt beside Veyne's account. 'Our books say that Van Hove had already been paid.' Hugh read the receipt, then looked at the endorsement. 'I know you trust that hand. I should still rather hear it from the man himself than accuse a factor who handles half our business.' 'So would I. I am trying to discover which of them can tell us where the credit went.' Hugh handed him the letter. 'Then ask Van Hove. Martin will take six weeks to tell you that you misunderstood his words, and Van Hove will take another six to tell you Martin was right. By the time we get an answer, every clerk in Antwerp will have charged us for sending it.' 'What would you have us do?' 'Keep asking, if you must. Just don't send the man a letter that makes him tell everyone we think him a thief.' Richard nearly smiled. 'Father has already given that advice.' 'You should listen to him more. It will be a novelty.' The two of them went through the bale marks with the cutter, who was called away twice to settle an argument about a piece of cloth that would not lie flat. Nothing was missing. One entry in Hugh's hand had been altered after a defective length was withdrawn, but the change was accounted for by a second tally, and Richard was careful to say so. Hugh made a point of repeating this to the younger labourer, though the boy had no idea why two grown men were disputing a mark on a piece shipped months before he entered the house. By the time they emerged, the first customer had come to examine the brown cloth. Hugh left Richard to show him the piece while he fetched a better sample. The buyer was a quiet man who pulled at the selvedge and complained about a knot near the edge. He did not mention the knot at all when Hugh returned and began explaining the price. Richard watched his brother bargain with the patience of someone who believed the proper figure existed and could eventually be discovered by both parties. When the customer had agreed to take the cloth, Hugh offered Richard a crust of honeyed bread he had saved from breakfast. 'You look as though you have been set to mourn somebody,' Hugh said. 'It is seventy-four pounds.' 'Then mourn properly. Have the bread.' Richard took it. Hugh had been calling him brother since the first winter Richard spent in the house. He had accepted Walter's account of an orphaned kinsman without asking to be shown any proof; as far as Hugh knew, Richard Ashcombe was the boy he had always appeared to be. Richard remembered when he had been called Richard of Shrewsbury, before the Tower and the escape from it, but he had no wish to set that earlier life between them now. They stood for a few minutes in the warehouse doorway, eating while a cart came too far into the yard and had to be backed out amid detailed criticism from everyone present. Hugh made no more effort to settle the account-book mystery, but when Richard asked for the original inward note from the carrier he sent one of the boys to fetch it without argument. At supper, Walter was in a less accommodating humour. The man who had promised to pay for a parcel of scarlet cloth had offered a portion now and the rest after Midsummer. Walter had accepted the first part because rejecting it would have done him no good, but he could find no pleasure in the arrangement. Joan listened to his account while she cut the heel from a loaf for herself. She was not a woman who took an interest in every customer a man mentioned. She knew, however, which customers sent their apprentices to the door hoping for another fortnight, and which ones could afford to delay because they were certain Walter would rather wait than make trouble. 'He can pay his dyer,' she said. 'He paid him yesterday. What he wants is another month of our money.' 'He will be good for it.' 'He was good for it at Candlemas. It is now May.' Walter pointed his knife towards Richard. 'There's another of your sort at the table. Numbers and no comfort.' 'If they gave you comfort, you'd spend them,' Joan said, and passed the salt to Hugh. The meal was plain, and the servants were coming and going through the adjoining room with plates and a fresh jug. Richard had meant to wait until they finished, but Walter caught sight of the folded letter beside his plate. 'What have you there?' Walter asked. 'The revised enquiry. I should also like to write to a correspondent who has dealt with Van Hove independently.' Richard drew the sheet back before a drop from Hugh's spoon reached it. 'Martin cannot be the only person able to say whether the credit was ever entered for us.' Hugh set down his bread. 'Which correspondent?' Richard named a man who had answered Walter's letters before, someone accustomed to settling cloth and wool accounts on that side of the water. Walter recognised him immediately and became more cautious, warning that a merchant who heard they could not find their own payment might reconsider the credit he allowed them. 'I can ask about the March entry without telling him what we fear,' Richard said. 'He will guess you have an interest in his answer, whatever words you choose.' Walter pushed back his plate. 'And I will not have us accused of making enemies of honest correspondents.' 'Then I shall ask a precise question and let him give a precise answer.' Joan set down her knife. 'Is it money we expected to have before the end of this month?' Walter began to explain that they had expected the account to be discharged rather than a chest of coin delivered to their door, but she stopped him before he finished. Richard told her what the figures showed: a substantial obligation said to be settled abroad and nothing in the London books relieved by that settlement. Joan let her eyes move from father to son. 'Then before another man offers to pay us at Lammas, you had better discover which debts we actually have.' Walter complained that he was being beset in his own house and asked Hugh whether the brown cloth had gone. Hugh said it had, at a price better than the one his father would have accepted. They argued about the price long enough for the last of the stew to be cleared, and Richard let them. There were matters on which Walter needed to exhaust himself before he could return to the first question. Later, with the servants occupied elsewhere and Joan measuring out what would be needed for the next day's meals, Walter fetched the small chest in which he kept the wax seals for overseas correspondence. 'You may write to the other man,' Walter told Richard. 'Ask about the balancing of our accounts and leave the rest alone. You needn't put Van Hove's name on the outside of a packet for every clerk along the road to read.' 'He must know whose entry he is checking.' 'Inside the letter. On the outside, an address is enough.' Walter found the proper seal among those in the chest and laid it beside the fresh paper. Richard composed a shorter enquiry than the one he had drafted for Veyne, asking whether a stated March credit had been received for Walter Ashcombe's benefit and which original obligation it had been intended to discharge. He offered to meet the ordinary costs of a reply by the merchant packet. When he had finished, Walter amended a phrase and made him add a word of thanks for a favour done the previous winter. Neither change touched the question Richard needed answered. Walter tested the seal with his thumbnail while the wax cooled. 'It may be nothing.' 'I hope it is.' 'Then you'll oblige me by not looking so pleased at the prospect of proving otherwise.' Richard took the sealed letter into the passage where outgoing packets were kept. Hugh was there, balancing a basket of cracked apples on his knee and eating one while he decided which were fit for the kitchen. He raised his eyebrows at the packet. 'Another complaint?' 'An enquiry.' 'Of course.' Hugh held out an apple whose bruised side could be cut away. 'Here. That is your reward for all this diligence.' Richard carried the letter downstairs to the clerk, who would place it with the next dispatch. Then he returned for the apple. He was still trying to work out why a debt supposedly settled in March had left the household with every obligation it had possessed before.