[Roger the Chapman 04] - The Holy Innocents (17 page)

'It doesn't matter,' I reassured her. 'It's not important. Go on with your story. You say Master Colet came down to breakfast when Mistress Harbourne had departed? What happened next?'

'When he'd finished, he said he was going out to see Master Cozin on business. He went upstairs to get his cloak and hat.

Agatha had gone back to the kitchen by that time, but I was clearing the table. I heard him talking to the children, asking them if they were sure they didn't want anything to eat, and heard Master Andrew shout, "We said we didn't! Leave us alone!" And I heard the latch of the bedchamber door rattle as he banged it shut. Master came down looking very upset, and I can't say I blamed him. I asked him if i should go up to the children, but he said to get on with my work and let them be. They might be in a better mood when he got back.

He wouldn't be long away. He asked if I knew anyone who might be a suitable nurse for them, now that Mistress Harbourne had gone, and I said I was sure he'd have no difficulty finding someone among the women of the town or the Foregate who would be willing to take on the job.'
 

'And then he went out?'

'Yes. But before he left he called "God be with you" up the stairs, and Mary answered him.'

'What did she say?'

"And with you, too!" I remember being glad, because it showed that one of them, at least, was willing to end the quarrel and not sulk all day’. Tears welled up suddenly in Bridget's eyes and spilled down the thin cheeks. 'If only I'd known what they were planning, that I'd never see either of them alive again, I'd have defied the master and gone up to them. The silly, little varmints! Why did they run away?'

'You do think, then,' I said quietly, 'that they escaped and were not, as some people believe, spirited out of the house by witchcraft?'

She shuddered and crossed herself. 'I... I don’t know,' she blurted out at last. 'After the master went, I was in the downstairs parlour, dusting and polishing, from the moment he left until he came back, so they couldn't have gone that way, of that I am certain. And Agatha was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She must have seen them if they'd quit the house by either the passage door or the bedchamber door opening on to the gallery. The kitchen door was wide open all the while, she says, because of the steam from the cookpots. But, "also, the children must have gone through the kitchen if they wished to reach the outer courtyard, and Agatha swears that they didn't.'

I frowned to myself. Was it not possible that two determined children might have been able to scuttle across the inner courtyard and through the kitchen without being seen, in spite of Agatha Tenter's being there? A cook, of necessity, is forced to move about while practising her art; there are plates to warm, meat to turn on its spit, herbs to chop, water to boil, spillages to be mopped up, spices to grind with pestle and mortar, and a dozen other distractions almost every five minutes. Could Andrew Skelton and his sister have moved so fleetly and silently, taking advantage of a moment when Agatha's back was turned, that they had escaped her notice? I sighed. It was possible, but barely so. A person alone in a room can sense almost immediately when a second presence has been added. And if Agatha had not actually glimpsed the children, she would have been conscious of the chill blast of air cutting the room in two when they opened the second door into the outer courtyard.

I turned again to Bridget. 'i understand that when Master Colet returned, he sent you to fetch the children. But you couldn't find them.'

The girl started to tremble, and I put my arm about her shoulders for comfort.

'No,' she whispered, and a hand crept up to her mouth. 'At first, of course, when they didn't answer, I thought they were hiding; playing a game. So I kept calling their names and searching for them. But they weren't anywhere to be found. They had completely vanished.'

Chapter Eleven

I wondered how often I had heard that same phrase in the past two days. Completely vanished. The words mocked my impotence to see through them to the truth. How had the Skelton children left the house? Why had they left the house? When I knew the answers to those two questions, it maybe that the mystery would be solved.

The second question was easier of solution than the first, the explanation having already been presented to me on more than one occasion. Andrew and Mary had intended to stay out until curfew in order to teach their stepfather a lesson, and had managed to pass beyond the town walls without being noticed. As the keeper on the West Gate had said, not an impossibility, given the amount of traffic in and out of Totnes. The first question, however, posed greater difficulties unless I could shake the testimony of either Bridget Praule or Agatha Tenter.

'Are you sure,' I asked Bridget gently, 'that there was no moment, no one single instant, when you left the downstairs parlour for any reason, or your attention was so distracted, that the younglings could have crept down the stairs, through the room into the passage and thence into the street?' But before she spoke, I already knew what her reply would be.

'None at all!' She gave a vigorous shake of her head. 'I was in the parlour for the whole time the master was absent, and did not stir outside of it. I must have seen the children had they descended. Master Colet was not gone much above an hour. He liked his dinner promptly at half past ten o'clock and would not have been late returning.'

She had grown agitated, afraid that she was being accused of lying, and again I patted her hand.

'I'm not questioning your word, Mistress Praule, only clearing the last shreds of doubt from my mind. When did Master Colet decide to close up the house and look for new accommodation?'

'After the children's bodies were discovered. Until then, you see, we all hoped and prayed that they would be found alive and well. And if they had made their own way home, they would have come straight to the house, so we had to be there in case that happened.'

'And how did your master seem to you throughout that time of waiting?'

'Oh, he was very upset. Wouldn't eat much. Left half his meals, even though Agatha tried to tempt him with all his favourite dishes. He couldn't sleep, either. I remember, several times, looking out from my room in the loft and seeing, across the courtyard, a chink of light between his bedchamber shutters, which meant his candle must still have been burning. And once, when he shouted at me for some silly mistake I'd made, he apologized and told me to take no notice: he wasn't himself, he said. He said, too, that if anything had happened to the children, people would blame him because he was the only person to gain by their deaths. I told him Agatha and I both knew he could have had nothing to do with it, and if need be, so we'd tell the Crowner.'
 

'What did he answer?'

'He thanked me, but said that people would still try to blame him by accusing him of evil practices. Which is just what they did do. After it was known that the children had been murdered, even though it was plain to anyone of sense that the outlaws must have killed them, poor little lambs, the neighbours began to shun him, and make the sign to ward off evil if they passed him in the street. It didn't seem to matter that the Crowner decided he was innocent, people still believed him guilty, including Mistress Harbourne. She was one of the ones who stirred up most hatred against him.'
 

'You sound sorry for Master Colet, in spite of not really liking him.'

'I am,' Bridget retorted warmly. 'I don't care to see anyone wrongly accused. Liking or not liking has nothing to do with it.'

I smiled and squeezed her hand before releasing it. 'You've a gentle heart, Mistress Praule, and a sense of justice. So, when Master Colet decided to shut up the house, you returned here to live with your grandmother, and he went to lodge with Mistress Tenter and her mother?'

'Yes. It's not easy to find new berths in a town this size, though I'm hopeful of a fresh place before the summer's out. And the master needed a billet while he cast about him for a new home and sold the old one. He'd no friends in Totnes to turn to, and had no wish, he said, to stay at an inn. But neither did he want to quit the district altogether, so when Agatha offered to take him home with her, he agreed most readily.'

'But surely Mistress Tenter and her mother - although I speak as one knowing nothing about them - surely they are unable to offer Master Colet any of the comforts he has been accustomed to?'

Bridget rubbed the tip of her nose with a forefinger stained brown from the constant peeling and preparation of vegetables.

'I don't think that would worry him. It's... Well, I think it's more what he was used to before Lady Skelton married him. He might even prefer it.'

She was far shrewder than her innocent, childish face suggested. Eudo Colet had very probably found solace in adversity in being with his own kind, as many another man had done before him.

I thanked her and stood up, glad to stretch my legs properly at last, but almost banging my head against the cottage roof.

Bridget giggled, and a voice from the far comer cackled, 'Dang me, if you ain't one of the tallest fellows I ever laid eyes on, chapman! What was your father? One o' they Dartmoor giants?'

'No, a small man, and dark with it if my mother was to be believed. Of Celtic stock. It was the men of her family who were tall and fair-haired.'

Granny Praule snorted. 'I'd accuse no woman of playing her man false, but I'm willing to swear there's no Celtic blood in you. Saxon, you are, m'lad, through and through.' She added peevishly, 'You're not going already? Bridget, have you given the lad a cup of my damson wine?'

Bridget started guiltily and began to apologize for her oversight. I hastened to her rescue.

'Granny, I need to keep a clear head on my shoulders at the moment, and I'm sure your damson wine is too potent to allow any such thing. In fact, I'll wager yesterday's takings against anything anyone likes to name, that you make the best and strongest damson wine this side of the Tamar.'
 

She gave a toothless grin which split her wrinkled face from ear to ear. 'You're not wrong. It's a recipe I had of my mother and she of hers, and she again of hers. You'll taste none better anywhere in the kingdom. So bide awhile,' she wheedled, 'and try a drop.'

I refused, however, thanked Bridget Praule for her help, asked for more exact directions to Dame Tenter's dwelling than Ursula Cozin had been able to give me, and took my leave, stepping into the roadway and breathing deeply to clear my stuffy head of the rancid smells of the cottage. The Priory bells were ringing for Vespers, and I judged, therefore, that I still had an hour of daylight in which to visit Agatha Tenter and regain the town before sundown and the closing of the gates.

But here I was confronted by a problem. Eudo Colet lodged with the Tenters, and his presence could prove a hindrance to my mission. Indeed, as mother and daughter had taken him in, it was to be presumed that they championed him against all comers, and would resent as greatly as he would himself; any questioning on my part. Both Sheriff and Coroner had exonerated him of any blame for the children's deaths, and here was I, a stranger, once again muddying the waters. I should be lucky to escape without the handle of a broom broken across my back. If I had foreseen this difficulty earlier, and I took myself severely to task for not having done so, I could have brought my pack and knocked on Dame Tenter's door with good, if not honest, reason. Yet if I toiled back up the hill and then down again, much precious time would be lost. I could, I supposed, wait until the morrow, but I had made up my mind to speak to Agatha that day and was set on doing so, against all rhyme or reason. I therefore turned my feet towards the bridge and trusted that God would send me inspiration.

He did not fail me. Halfway across the narrow, uneven span of arches which linked the west and east banks of the Dart, I realized that I could, with a clear conscience, introduce myself to Eudo Colet as his tenant, What might lead on from that, I once more trusted in God to reveal. He had surely brought me to Totnes in order to uncover the truth of this matter, and therefore He could not disappoint me.

On the opposite bank of the river was the township which both Ursula Cozin and Bridget Praule had referred to as the Brigg, its cottages stretching away on either side of a dusty track, towards the forest and the castle built by Henry de Pomeroy two centuries earlier. Bridget had told me that Dame Tenter occupied a dwelling close to the river, downstream a little, beyond the ford used by all horse-drawn traffic, which the bridge was too dangerous to bear. So I turned my feet along a narrow path edging the bank, until I came to an isolated cottage, its pink clay walls glowing in the late afternoon sunshine. It stood in the middle of a neatly fenced garden, where a bed of herbs gave forth a heady, aromatic scent. A patch of stitchwort, growing by the gate, was already in flower, the white-starred petals beginning to furl against the waning of the light the lance-shaped leaves and fragile stems supported by the woven slats of the wattle. In the clear April evening, the whole place looked warm and welcoming, unlike Sir Jasper Crouchback's house, which seemed perpetually in shadow, as though happiness and laughter had been little known within its walls.

I was being fanciful. I pushed open the gate, walked up the short path to the door and knocked. After a moment or two, it was opened by an elderly woman, who I guessed to be Dame Tenter.

A voice from within called, 'Who is it, Mother?'