11 - The Lammas Feast (30 page)

‘Oh . . . Very well. Just keep out of my way, that’s all,’ she answered grudgingly.

I guessed that her unwillingness to let me go with Richard Manifold had less to do with lack of money – she knew that I had done good business at Saint James’s Fair – than with a reluctance to allow her former admirer to benefit in any degree from my thoughts and ideas. The sergeant obviously still had an uphill task to reinstate himself in my wife’s good graces.

But the truth was that I, too, needed someone with whom I could exchange opinions; someone who would test my theories (not that I had many) with counter-arguments; someone who secretly thought me a conceited idiot, but who would listen to me in case I produced a golden nugget of wisdom amongst the dross.

It was Richard’s suggestion that we go to the Full Moon, close by Saint James’s Priory, rather than to the Green Lattis, where we were more likely to encounter friends who would wish to join us for a drink.

Early as it was, the tables at the Full Moon were already crowded with rowdies from the fairground, and I spotted the familiar figure of Philip Lamprey, making the most of his marital freedom before returning to London and Jeanne. I managed to avoid his eye and manipulated my companion on to a bench in a dark corner of the ale room, where I was able to draw back into the shadows. Neither the sergeant nor I was anxious to cloud our intellect with yet more drink, so we were happy to sit unobserved, while an uncooperative pot boy continued to pick his nose and scratch his crotch undisturbed.

‘You believe these four deaths to be connected,’ Richard began without preamble. ‘May I ask why?’

‘All four victims were linked,’ I answered. ‘Walter Godsmark and the stranger were both linked to Jasper Fairbrother in different ways. And Mistress Ford was linked to the stranger in so far as he was murdered in her cottage after she had taken him in. Moreover, she was killed by the same method as the stranger: she was smothered in her sleep. That, surely, cannot simply be coincidence.’

‘You think her death may have something to do with his?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. Her cottage has only one room. She was present when he died, but had fallen asleep after a long night during which she and Sister Jerome had nursed him. I think that, unwittingly, she saw something, or heard something, that made the murderer feel threatened.’

‘But you’ve just told me she was asleep,’ Richard objected.

‘But not soundly. I suspect she was in that state of semi-consciousness when reality and dreams merge together as one. Something was worrying her. She told me so. She thought she might have seen something, but couldn’t remember what.’

Richard leaned his elbows on the table and gnawed the thumb knuckle of his left hand.

‘You don’t think it possible,’ he asked, ‘that, at heart, she was a supporter of the Lancastrian cause? That this Tudor agent, whosoever he might have been, was on his way to visit her when he was jumped on by those two idiots employed by your friend, Timothy Plummer?’

I was immediately angry on Cicely’s behalf. ‘The stranger had passed her cottage when he was ambushed,’ I said. ‘I know. I was there, remember! I saw it all.’ But if I were honest, I was unable to recollect whether he had passed the cottage or not. I wasn’t about to admit it, however. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Cicely was undeserving of the sergeant’s slur. ‘If you want my opinion – and I presume you do, or we shouldn’t be here – I think this business of the stranger being a Lancastrian spy has nothing at all to do with the murders.’

‘Why not?’

I wished to goodness Richard wouldn’t keep asking
why,
because I had no real reason for my assumptions. I just had this feeling that these deaths were the results of a simpler, more straightforward motive than treachery to the crown.

‘I can’t really say as yet. It’s just an intuition, but a strong one.’ Richard snorted his derision. ‘All right,’ I snapped, annoyed, ‘let me hear your ideas, if you have any.’

He stopped chewing his thumb knuckle and tried to look like a man who has come to a momentous conclusion.

‘Well, put it this way, Chapman. Thanks to you’ – I thought his tone slightly acerbic – ‘we’ve established that the stranger couldn’t have stabbed Jasper at the time we think the baker was murdered, because his presence is vouched for in Westbury village by various inhabitants. I’ve verified that for myself. So, Jasper was killed by one of his many enemies in the city.’

‘But no one had ever attacked him before,’ I interrupted. ‘Why should it happen that he’s stabbed to death the very same day that he’s visited by the stranger? It seems like too much of a coincidence to me.’

‘But you’re the one who proved the stranger couldn’t have done it!’ Richard exclaimed in exasperation, slapping his hand down hard on the table.

I hushed him urgently as one or two heads turned in our direction. Fortunately, the noise in the ale room had now reached such a pitch that only a few people nearby could overhear us.

‘I’m saying that I think the stranger’s visit was somehow
linked
to Jasper’s death,
not
that the stranger killed him,’ I protested.

My companion spat into the rushes, clearing his throat and showing what he thought of this theory at one and the same time.

He continued without further argument on the subject, ‘Walter Godsmark’s death was definitely an accident. He was drunk, he’d crept out of the city after curfew to meet some girl or other’ – I didn’t bother to enlighten him – ‘and for some reason fell into the river. And because he couldn’t swim, he drowned.’

‘And what about the stranger? This man you and everyone else is convinced was a spy. Who murdered him?’

Richard avoided looking at me. ‘He died of the beating he received from the two King’s men, who were, after all, only doing their duty. Another death by misadventure.’

‘
The poor man was suffocated
!’ It was my voice now that had risen, and Richard who had to hush me. I moderated my tone. ‘You can’t seriously believe what you’re saying, Richard!’

‘I believe what my lord sheriff will find it most convenient to believe,’ he answered shamelessly. ‘The man was an enemy of the state, so no one will care. Right! That’s death number three accounted for. That just leaves Mistress Ford’s murder to solve, and that’s a much more difficult proposition because, apart from you, nobody seems to have had a motive for wishing her dead. And you’ve got this irrefutable alibi, damn you!’ So much for friendship! A good job I hadn’t taken him too seriously. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he finished.

‘And won’t do unless you link it to the other three deaths,’ I persisted. ‘It must be seen as the next and, I hope, the last in a sequence. The culprit, or culprits, are growing too bold.’

The Full Moon’s landlord had at last spotted that neither Richard nor I was drinking and, with a cuff around the ear, had pointed his reluctant pot boy in our direction. The lad slouched over to our table and, with a scratch and a sniff, asked nasally, ‘What’s it to be, then, Masters?’

Richard Manifold got to his feet. ‘You’re too late, boy. We’ve waited too long already and we’re in a hurry. Next time I come in here, bestir yourself a bit sooner if you want my custom.’

I followed him out of the door where we encountered yet another group of merrymakers from the fair on their way in. We were jostled and pushed, with the result that we staggered into the street like a couple of drunks, earning ourselves a censorious glance from the Mother Superior of the Magdalen nuns, who, as bad luck would have it, just happened to be passing by on the opposite side of the road.

Richard let rip with a few choice words which it was just as well that the reverend dame couldn’t hear.

‘She’s bound to complain to the sheriff,’ he grumbled. ‘He’s a particular friend of hers, and she’s one of the busiest old bodies in the city.’

‘If his lordship reprimands you, tell him the truth,’ I advised. ‘I’ll always vouch for your sobriety. And my own.’

The sergeant was scornful. ‘That won’t do any good. He won’t believe you. And, anyway, you’re not in his good books at the moment. You’ve deprived him of his chief suspect and a quick solution to Mistress Ford’s murder.’

Suddenly I recalled what John Overbecks had said to me; that Sister Jerome’s description of the man she had seen on the night Cicely was killed tallied with that of either of the two King’s men. As we made our way down the lane and climbed over the stile into the priory grounds, I offered it to Richard as a possible solution.

‘Could one of them have been left behind for some reason?’ I suggested.

Richard shook his head decisively.

‘I saw them and Master Plummer off myself, and Jack Gload rode with them as far as the King’s Wood. His impression was the same as mine. Your friend, the spymaster, was in such a paddy over their stupidity, that he wasn’t in the mood to trust either of them with so much as doing up their own tunic laces. It’s a good theory, but it won’t hold water, I’m afraid.’

I said nothing, but I wasn’t so sure. The King’s Wood lay only a mile or so outside the city; close enough for someone to sneak back if need be. As for Timothy’s anger, it was the nature of his calling to deceive.

Richard and I parted company in Lewin’s Mead, neither of us having gained much from our interchange of ideas except to clarify and harden our own opinions; which, I suppose, is as much as all such discussions generally achieve. Adela was only just setting off for the Tolzey as I entered the cottage, having been delayed by Adam’s being sick all down his clean robe – the natural consequence, in my view, of the disgustingly greedy way in which he had gulped his breakfast milk. I gave him the benefit of my thoughts, at the same time tickling the top of his dark, curly head as he lay in his little cart, sleeping off the result of his debauch. Adela handed me the rope tied around Hercules’s neck.

‘As you’re here now, you can look after the hound. He doesn’t like the market and he gets under people’s feet.’

I groaned, but felt I had no option but to take him with me. He didn’t care for being left alone in the cottage, and I was determined to show myself virtuous, spending the rest of the morning doing some work. In the event, I got carried away with a sense of my own rectitude, and occupied the remainder of the day walking as far as Keynsham and back, doing good business not just amongst the villagers, but also with the people I met on the road. For dinner, Hercules and I shared a pie, bought from an itinerant pieman who joined us for a while, and who was so amused by the dog’s antics chasing rabbits, that he gave us another pie free of charge.

The long walk was what I needed to clear my mind of my grief for Cicely Ford, and to come to terms with the fact that I had always been a little in love with her, ever since our first meeting almost five years ago; knowledge that I had buried deep inside me until last week, when I had kissed her. This love had nothing to do with my love for Adela, which was built on the enduring rocks of mutual trust and affection and intense physical desire. My feelings for Cicely had been more akin to the courtly love that had flourished a century and more ago at the courts first of Aquitaine and then of England, achieving its full flowering in the resurrection of the Arthurian myths under the third Edward. It was an insubstantial love, light as thistledown, but none the less real for all that.

It was past suppertime before Hercules and I finally reached home again, with a much depleted pack and pockets weighed down with coins from what we both considered to be a splendid day’s work. After a long drink from his bowl of water, Hercules prostrated himself on his bed, making it plain that it was he who had done the lion’s share of the work and that I had been a mere hanger-on, an estimate of the situation Adela was happy to go along with, feeding him first and making much of him. I endeavoured to enlist Adam’s support, picking him up and snuggling his crumpled little face close to mine. Unfortunately, I needed a shave and he expressed his disapproval of this bristly apparition in his customary fashion – with an earsplitting roar.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ exclaimed my wife, laughing and seizing our son to soothe him. ‘Sit down and I’ll have supper on the table in just a minute.’ She regarded my boots, which were thick with dust. ‘You must have walked a long way.’

‘Keynsham and back,’ I said virtuously. ‘It was hot, but not as hot as it has been. I think the worst of the heat is over.’

‘But we want it fine for Saturday,’ she protested, returning Adam to his crib. ‘Please God the weather won’t break until after the Lammas Feast. Don’t forget you’re going to fetch the children from Margaret’s on Friday.’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ My mouth was watering at the sight and smell of the two bowls of mutton stew she had just placed on the table.

Adam had dropped off to sleep again, Hercules was snoring, lost no doubt in dreams of rabbiting and chasing sheep, and I was looking forward to an evening dozing out of doors in the sun and, later, when it grew too dark to do anything else, cuddling up to Adela in bed . . .

My plans were rudely shattered by a knock on the door. I opened it to find a small, unknown and unsavoury urchin standing on my doorstep.

‘You Roger Chapman?’ he asked. When I nodded, he continued, ‘Sergeant Manifold wants to see you. Says it’s very urgent.’

‘Where?’ I yelled as he was turning away, apparently satisfied that his mission was accomplished.

‘Oh! Yeah!’ He consulted his memory, screwing up his narrow, weatherbeaten face with the effort. He picked a pustule on his chin. ‘Got it! Saint Nicholas Backs, corner of Ballance Street.’ I gave him a coin from my pouch, which he clenched in a dirt-encrusted fist, adding cockily, ‘My name’s Wilfred. Of Bristol.’ He delivered the title with a regal air.

That made me laugh so much that I let him go without further questioning and went back indoors. I told Adela of Richard’s message, and only then began to find it a little odd and unsatisfactory. The corner of Ballance Street on Saint Nicholas Backs seemed a strange place to ask for a meeting. Nevertheless, I could not afford to ignore the summons. It occurred to me that the Breton ship might have returned to the city on the afternoon tide. If so, it was an event I had been waiting and hoping for myself. The master might be able to enlighten us as to the stranger’s identity.