The Brothers of Glastonbury

Chapter Five

Mark and I both rose at first light, neither of us able to sleep once the sun began to probe the shutters. We were glad to throw these latter wide to allow cool air into the stuffy bedchamber, before descending to the pump between the stable and the kitchen in order to wash away the soil and sweat of night.

While I waited for Mark to finish (for his ablutions naturally took precedence over mine) I seized the opportunity to examine the dusty earth, and noted that it had been scuffed over as if to erase all trace of footprints. I found this strange. Why should my companion have troubled to do this if his were the only ones to be seen?

Mark must have seen me looking at the ground, for he paused in the act of rubbing himself dry to ask edgily, ‘Have you found something?’ I pointed out my curious discovery and there was a moment’s hesitation before he said with forced jocularity, ‘Oh yes! I was just being over-cautious, I’m afraid. I thought the sight of footmarks might upset the women if one of them ventured outside this morning while I was still abed. As it turns out, of course — ’ he shrugged and spread his hands — ‘we are up before them.’

It was an unconvincing explanation, but maybe just unconvincing enough to be true. For now, therefore, I accepted it, but determined nevertheless to keep a close eye on Mark. He had betrayed a hint of resentment when talking about his brother’s inheritance of their father’s second-best bed, which had aroused my ever-ready suspicions. Whether or not I was being unfair to him, only time would tell.

I washed and dried myself, cleaned my teeth with my willow bark and then went to the privy before rejoining Mark in his bedchamber. Fully dressed, I followed him downstairs again to the kitchen to eat breakfast and shave, using water heated by Lydia, the little maid. Seen in daylight, she appeared neither so pale nor so diminutive as she had done the previous evening, but even so, the top of her head barely reached to the middle of my upper arm. By contrast I seemed a giant, and her swift, delicate, birdlike movements made me feel awkward and gauche. The two apprentices, already seated at the table eating their oatmeal, were blear-eyed and only half-awake, tired after yesterday’s long and futile search. Dame Joan and Mistress Cicely had not yet put in an appearance.

While Lydia plied me with bread and ale, oatmeal cakes and a piece of fresh fish, I, too, fought against the desire for slumber. I had had a disturbed night after the fatiguing ride from Farleigh Castle and could willingly have crawled back between the sheets to sleep until noon. But I had work to do, and the sooner I buckled down to it, the sooner I should be free to continue my journey to Bristol.

It was one of the perversities of my nature — and, I suspect, a common characteristic of most people — that, while I had been free to do as I pleased and go wherever the fancy took me I had had little desire to return home, but as soon as I had committed myself to the concerns of others I longed to see my daughter and mother-in-law again. However, I had promised my services to Dame Joan and Mistress Cicely and could not now go back on my word. And I was unable to suppress entirely the thrill of anticipation which always gripped me when faced with an apparently unsolvable problem — and one, moreover, which might prove perilous. If, in this particular case, magic and witchcraft were involved in Peter Gildersleeve’s disappearance, then I could do nothing except guard myself as best I could from the evil spirits responsible. But I did not really believe that God would lead me into that kind of danger; bodily danger, yes, but surely He would not imperil my immortal soul!

When we had both finished shaving, I suggested to Mark that I should inspect his brother’s chest of books before doing anything else.

‘I’ll walk to the stables later and fetch my cudgel,’ I said, ‘but I’m curious to see these folios of his.’

My host laid aside his razor.

‘They’re not all folios. Many are quartos and some octavos.’ There was a certain pride in his voice, mixed with annoyance at Peter’s extravagance. He went on, ‘You can come with me now. I’m off to the workshop.’

He turned to the apprentices, still lolling over their breakfast. ‘Rob, I need you to help with the scraping. John, you get down to the vats and rescue those skins we set soaking last Friday, before all this trouble came upon us.’ As the last named reached the kitchen door, Mark called after him, ‘Mind you act normally! If people start asking about my brother, you’re to say we’re not worried. Tell them you think I know where he is. Have you marked that?’

John Longbones sighed, nodded and went on his way. After a few moments, we followed him across the garden before turning into the workroom at the back of the house. Here I saw various skins, all sheep except for one calf’s hide, laced on to wooden frames and stretched taut, ready to be scraped to a smooth, even surface. Mark and Rob Undershaft donned leather aprons to begin the day’s work, and the former indicated an iron-bound chest in one corner.

‘That’s where Peter keeps his books, Chapman.’ His tone was indifferent, almost as though he no longer cared whether I inspected them or no.

‘Did you find the key?’ I enquired.

For answer, Mark delved into the pocket of his jerkin. ‘It was in one of the drawers of the bed-head. It occurred to me last night that that was where it would be. It didn’t take long to find. Here! Catch!’ He threw me a small iron key. ‘Now, Rob and I have a lot to do.’

He picked up one of the rounded sticks, which he referred to as a strickle, and started work on the nearest sheepskin, methodically removing all remnants of grease and fat. The apprentice was already busy on another, and between each scraping the skins were doused with a lye of hot water and soda, which simmered in a cauldron over a fire on the workshop hearth. The smell was unpleasant and made my eyes water, but both men assured me that I should grow used to it in time.

But I did not need the key for the chest was, after all, unlocked. Slowly, I raised the lid and peered inside. The musty scent of old books rose to greet me, and I lifted them out carefully, one by one. In order to keep the parchment from cockling, nearly all were bound with heavy boards, some covered in silk, others in velvet, and decorated with tassels or buttons or copper studs arranged in patterns; one lay on a bed of ivory satin in its own special cedarwood box. Several had gilt clasps, but these were easily loosened. There were histories, including Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, devotional works, romances, a very fair copy of Cursor Mundi, and a hunting treatise, The Master of Game, by one of the past Dukes of York. But although I spent until dinnertime turning the pages and reading as much of the contents as I could, I discovered nothing of magic or witchcraft or or any other subject which might link Peter Gildersleeve to the black arts, nor explain the strange way in which he had vanished. Eventually, disappointed and dispirited, I replaced the books in the chest and sat, my back propped against the wall, watching Mark and Rob Undershaft at work.

They had by now finished scraping and dousing, and were scouring the skins with what I thought to be sand, but which, on inquiry, I learned to be finely powdered limestone.

‘You can use sand, but this is the handiest thing for us to use in these parts,’ Mark said, and I remembered that long ago one of the abbey brothers, who knew about such matters, had instructed me that the whole area, including the Mendip Hills, was formed of limestone …

‘So this is where you are!’ Cicely’s voice accused me, and I turned to see her standing in the doorway. ‘I’ve been searching for you for ages.’

‘And now you’ve found me,’ I answered coolly, conscious of Mark’s suspicious glare. ‘What do want with me, Mistress?’

She pouted at this formal mode of address, but merely said, ‘You’re all to come to dinner. Aunt Joan says we’re to eat together in the kitchen until more help can be found for Lyddie. She won’t have her overworked, carrying food upstairs to the solar.’

Mark muttered something under his breath, but made no further protest. He and Rob took off their aprons, running their fingers through their hair in a vain attempt to be rid of the dust, and I copied them, with as little result.

‘What have you been doing?’ Cicely asked as we walked across the garden. It was now well past ten o’clock and the sun was already mounting the heavens. Only a few faint clouds stencilled the relentless blue vault of the sky, and the heat was merciless.

‘With Mark’s permission, I’ve been looking through your cousin Peter’s books.’

‘And what did you discover?’ She spoke a little breathlessly, abandoning her provocative manner.

‘Nothing that need disturb anyone. It’s a perfectly innocent collection, more respectable I should guess than the libraries of many an abbey. At Glastonbury, for example, some books are kept under lock and key, volumes thought too dangerous or too seditious to be viewed by any but the most senior, and therefore most incorruptible, of the monks.’

She glanced sharply at me, as if suspecting me of irreverence towards the Holy Church and its officers, but I smiled blandly back and she was reassured.

So was Dame Joan when I repeated what I had told her niece. ‘That is good news.’ She said a benediction and we began our meal, but she still needed a little reassurance. ‘You’re certain there’s nothing there that could implicate Peter in any form of magic?’

‘Quite certain. You may rest easy on that score.’

‘Then whatever can have happened to him?’ she asked. No one made answer and she looked again at me. ‘What do you plan to do now, Roger?’

I wiped my mouth on the back of one hand. ‘I should like to ride to the Pennards’ farm and have a word with young Abel Fairchild. Would I meet with any opposition from your friends, do you think?’

I had to wait several moments while Mark emptied his mouth of food, but eventually he replied with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘They’re not really friends, just people with whom we have commercial dealings. But they’re all of them pleasant enough, and would probably raise no objections to you speaking with Abel, provided you don’t keep him too long from his work. They must be as anxious as we are to resolve this business. After all, Peter’s disappearance happened on their land, and it may harm their reputation as well as ours if no solution’s found soon.’

‘I’ll ride with you,’ Cicely offered, hurrying to finish her dinner. ‘You’ll need someone to show you the way.’

‘I already know the way,’ I retorted firmly. ‘If you recall, we passed over Pennard land yesterday, and you pointed out the farmstead.’

‘You’ll stay here,’ Mark informed her roughly. ‘You can help Mother in the house.’ He turned back to me. ‘Will you ride the Duke’s horse?’

‘He was lent to me for my use,’ I answered. ‘Can you think of a good reason why I shouldn’t take him?’

My host was only too anxious to endorse my claim, not wishing to put Dorabella to any further exertion for a while.

Consequently, as soon as dinner was over, I set off in the direction of Northload Street and the stables. As I passed the north gatehouse of the abbey I heard my name called in such quavering accents that they were almost drowned out by the rattle of a passing wagon. Turning my head I saw the fragile, stooping form of Brother Hilarion, who had been Novice Master during my novitiate, and who doubtless still enjoyed that thankless office. It was he, more than any other, who had patiently listened to all my fears and misgivings concerning my fitness for the religious life, and who had tried to answer my questions as honestly as he knew how without straying into the realms of heresy. Moreover, it was he who had persuaded Abbot Selwood that, in spite of my promises to my dead mother, I must not take my final vows, as much for the sake of the abbey as for my own.

He was standing outside the porter’s lodge, and I crossed at once to greet him.

‘Brother Hilarion! Peace be with you!’

‘And with you, my child. What brings you back to Glastonbury?’

‘Chance,’ I said. Then, with those faded blue eyes fixed trustingly upon me, I amended, ‘God’s chance. I am staying with Dame Gildersleeve and her family. I was given the commission of escorting Mistress Cicely home from Farleigh Hungerford when … when her cousin Peter failed to arrive to claim her.’

The gentle old face crumpled in distress. ‘Ah! Yes! We have heard. The whole enclave, indeed the whole town, is buzzing with rumours regarding the strange circumstances of his disappearance. How are Dame Joan and her niece bearing the uncertainty? I hear that Mark and the two apprentices were out searching all day yesterday, but found no trace of Peter. Yet Tom Porter tells me that he saw John Longbones down by the mill stream this morning, lifting skins from the vats, and that the shop is open.’

I laughed. ‘Glastonbury hasn’t changed, I see — gossip is still its staple diet. So, what else are the good citizens saying about how Master Gildersleeve vanished?’

Brother Hilarion looked even more troubled. ‘People are always suspicious of one of their own kind who can read, and especially of one who spends money on books and keeps a chestful of them in his workshop,’ he replied evasively.

‘You mean they’re saying that he was in league with the Devil?’

The old monk was a shade too swift with his denial. ‘No, no! It’s much too soon for that sort of talk. Peter may yet turn up with a perfectly reasonable explanation of what has befallen him.’

‘But if he doesn’t…?’

Brother Hilarion shivered. ‘We won’t think of that, my child.’ Almost involuntarily, he crossed himself. ‘Let us pray that these signs of normality in the Gildersleeve household mean that they have some knowledge of his whereabouts.’

‘They don’t, Brother,’ I told him bluntly, ‘but I ask you to keep that information to yourself. Mark and Dame Joan have entrusted the task of finding Peter to me.’

‘To you?’ Brother Hilarion was naturally astonished. ‘But you are a stranger to them, by your own account thrown in their way by chance.’

‘It would take far too long to make all plain to you now. I have work to do. But I promise to visit you as soon as possible and tell you everything that has happened to me since I left your care. Can you be patient?’

He smiled ruefully. ‘Patience is no inconsiderable part of our calling — as you should know, for you were never much good at practising that virtue.’

I laughed, bade him farewell and continued on my way down the busy thoroughfare, across the bustling market place and so to Northload Street and the stables, where I could almost have sworn that Barnabas was pleased to see me.

* * *

I was equally warmly welcomed by the Pennards when, just under an hour later, I rode into the courtyard of the long, low, single-storey farmhouse, with its slate-tiled roof and ample-sized undercroft, to make known my errand and to beg a word with Abel Fairchild.

‘A bad business. A bad business,’ Anthony Pennard said, rubbing his forehead in perplexity with a workmanlike hand.

He was a smallish man with such gnarled and weather-beaten features that it was difficult to guess his age. But his hair, although liberally streaked with grey, retained much of its original brown colour, and his dark eyes had a direct, unclouded gaze, both of which suggested that it was the elements rather than time that had not dealt kindly with him. Moreover, Mistress Pennard was a sprightly woman with cornflower-blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, who I should not have reckoned to be much more than forty. Therefore, unless she was considerably younger than her husband, Anthony Pennard was still some way short of his fiftieth birthday.

‘What’s happened to poor Master Gildersleeve is a mystery, and that’s a fact,’ Mistress Pennard chimed in, her mouth puckered with anxiety. ‘And it occurred on our land, too! I was in Wells market earlier this morning and I fancied several people tried to avoid me. I saw one or two whispering behind their hands. But what am I thinking of? Won’t you sit down and have a stoup of ale, Master…?’

‘Stonecarver,’ I said, reverting to my original name before it seemed to have been changed for ever by my calling. I had agreed with Mark, before leaving, that there was no need to be too frank about my connection with the Gildersleeves, and to introduce myself as a friend (albeit a recent one) of the family. ‘My father pursued that trade,’ I added. ‘He was killed by a fall whilst working on the roof of the cathedral nave, here in Wells.’

‘You’re a local man, then?’ Mistress Pennard said, wrinkling her brow. ‘Wait … I seem to remember a Widow Stonecarver. Blanche, her name was. She had a son called … called-’

‘Roger,’ I smiled. ‘Yes, I’m he.’

After that she could not do enough for me, almost forcing me to sit at the table and drink with her and her husband before setting out to find Abel. She rejected the sallop she had been about to offer me, and sent Anthony to broach a new cask of ale. While he was gone, I learned that the house and pastures were episcopal property and that the original lease had been her father’s. When William Jephcott died, however, it had been granted to Anthony Pennard, a Priddy man whom Anne Jephcott had married when she was made pregnant by him at the age of sixteen.

‘Not the marriage that my parents would have chosen for me,’ she whispered confidentially, ‘but he’s proved a good man none the less, and very few people the wiser that Gilbert, my eldest, wasn’t conceived between clean sheets, as they say.’

I doubted this. Anyone who could confide such intimacies to a stranger, and all within ten minutes of making his acquaintance, was not the woman to keep a still tongue in her head about anything. I saw Anthony Pennard give her a swift, sideways glance as he returned with the cups of ale, and guessed that he was wondering what fresh indiscretions his wife had committed.

‘Been giving you the family history, has she?’ he asked in a resigned tone as he resumed his seat at the table.

‘I’m just being friendly, that’s all,’ Anne Pennard rebuked him.

I smiled and swallowed my ale almost in one gulp. I had had a hot ride from Glastonbury and was thirsty.

‘Do you have any thoughts yourselves on what might have happened to Master Gildersleeve?’ I asked them. ‘This boy, Abel Fairchild — is he given to odd fancies or making up stories?’

They shook their heads in unison.

‘He’s been helping Gilbert and Thomas tend our flocks these two years past,’ Anthony said, ‘and never a complaint about him that I’ve heard. You can question my lads though, if you like. You don’t have to take my word for it.’

‘A thoroughly sensible young boy,’ Anne Pennard confirmed. ‘Neither Gil nor Tom hesitate to leave all in his charge when they’re away to Priddy with their father.’

‘So you wouldn’t doubt that things happened just as he described them?’

‘Peter’s missing, isn’t he?’ Anthony Pennard demanded. ‘And his horse was left tethered in that stand of trees. Why should we think that the boy’s lying about what he saw?’

His logic was irrefutable. Even if Abel Fairchild was known to be the biggest liar unhung, it wouldn’t alter the fact that Peter Gildersleeve was missing, and had been since the previous Friday. Today was Wednesday. Nothing had been seen or heard of him for almost five days.

I repeated my earlier question. ‘What then do you think has become of your friend?’

Anthony Pennard was as quick as Mark had been to deny any friendship between the two families.

‘We do business together, that’s all. Peter and his brother have been good customers over the years, like their father before them. We go rarely to Glastonbury. Will you take some more ale?’

I refused, regretfully, and, pushing back my stool, rose to my feet. ‘Where shall I find Abel Fairchild at this time of day?’

Anthony Pennard also stood up. ‘He’ll most likely be on the lower slopes as it’s close on noon, looking for some shade amongst the trees and scrub. It’s too hot higher up in this weather. I’ll come with you at least a part of the way.’ He addressed his wife, ‘I need to have a word with Gilbert.’

Mistress Pennard made no demur, and the two of us set out across the steeply rising pastures to locate our quarries. Clumps of gorse and clusters of trees dotted these lower slopes of Mendip, and the undulations of the ground made heavy going, especially as I had to limit my stride to the shorter steps taken by my guide. Clinging veils of heat shrouded the hilltops and made us both sweat in the midday glare. Then, suddenly, as we crested a rise and entered the grateful shade of a circle of stunted oaks, Anthony Pennard gripped my arm and pointed downwards into the dip below us.

‘This is the place,’ he whispered. ‘There’s the shepherd’s hut. This is where Peter Gildersleeve disappeared.’