The Christmas Wassail

ELEVEN

There was a moment’s complete silence while we all stood, rigid with shock, staring upon the poor man as if he were holding the head of the Medusa.

I think I moved and spoke first, my voice coming out in a kind of hoarse croak ‘Whose … Whose body?’

The steward shook his head. ‘Sergeant Manifold didn’t say, sir. Just … just that a body had been found.’ He turned again to Cyprian. ‘Do come, master. Do come and hear what the sergeant has to say.’

But I was already out of the door before he had finished speaking. Richard was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, his face looking haggard in the flickering light of the fire burning on the hearth of the main hall. He glanced up as I started to descend, a shade of annoyance marring his not unhandsome features as he realized who it was.

‘You!’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

I was saved the trouble of replying by Cyprian’s arrival hard on my heels.

‘Sergeant Manifold,’ he quavered, ‘is the body that of my father?’

Richard shook his head. ‘I don’t know yet, Master Marvell. It was still being hauled out of the water when I left. I thought it right to inform you straight away so that you could prepare yourself for the worst. I didn’t wish you to hear the news from anyone else.’

I reflected silently that such an action was somehow typical of the man: earnest, dedicated, anxious to please but never quite getting his priorities right; always prone to do the wrong thing.

James, joining his father at the foot of the stairs, said furiously, ‘Then why bother us, Sergeant, until you were certain? The shock to Lady Marvell and my mother has been profound. And may prove to be unnecessary. Where is the body?’

‘Saint Nicholas Back,’ was the reply as Richard flushed angrily at this rebuke.

‘Then we’d better waste no more time and go there at once.’ James addressed one of the servants who had crowded into the hall, telling him to fetch his and his father’s cloaks. ‘The warm ones with the fur linings.’ He turned to Bartholomew who, with his mother and Joanna, made a small, huddled group in the middle of the stairs. ‘Bart, look after the women while we’re gone. Try not to imagine the worst.’ He spun round again. ‘Master Chapman, I’d be more than grateful if you would accompany us.’

I didn’t tell him that nothing on earth would keep me away, merely inclining my head graciously. (I caught Richard’s quickly suppressed snort of amusement.)

The cloaks having been brought and I having wrapped myself up warmly in mine, Cyprian and James Marvell and I followed Richard out into the cold December night. The month was ending as it had begun with sharp flurries of wind and sleet.

The four of us half-walked, half-ran through Bear Alley, along Redcliffe Street and across the bridge, turning left into St Nicholas Back, by which time we were having to force a passage through a gathering crowd. News of a dead body found in the Avon had spread fast and people were emerging from their houses, braving the winter weather, to see for themselves. Richard was compelled to use his voice as well as his staff of office to clear a path.

‘In the king’s name, make way for his officers of the law. Stand aside! Stand aside!’

Jack Gload and Pete Littleman were keeping guard over a dimly visible shape lying at full length on the quayside and smelling to high heaven. A couple of stalwart sailors from one of the neighbouring ships who, by their bedraggled appearance, had evidently assisted in rescuing the corpse, were also helping to keep the crowd at bay. Ripples of light, reflections from the various cressets and torches, turned the surface of the river to molten gold.

Richard stepped forward, holding his own torch high above his head so that the face of the dead man was suddenly illumined …

It was not Sir George Marvell.

Cyprian gave a gasp of what could have been relief. On the other hand, it might have been one of disappointment. James gave no reaction whatsoever.

Richard Manifold frowned. ‘Does anyone recognize who it is?’ he asked.

I drew a deep breath. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘It’s an Irish slave trader known as Briant of Dungarvon.’

The body had been carried into St Nicholas’s Church, down into the crypt, and laid out on the lid of one of the larger stone sarcophagi. Most of the crowd had gone home, cheated of their very just hope that another gory murder had been uncovered. Cyprian and James Marvell had also returned to Redcliffe Wharf to reassure Bartholomew and the two women that the drowned man was not Sir George. Before he left, James had reminded me — but, thankfully, out of Richard Manifold’s hearing — of our assignation the following morning.

‘Meet me at the Frome Gate,’ he had said, ‘as soon after the dinner hour as you can. I shall hire a couple of nags from the Bell Lane stables. I’m damned if I’m going to trudge up those hills or ride our own decent horses.’

‘It wouldn’t take much more than an hour’s good, steady walking,’ I protested, knowing how uncomfortable I always was on horseback.

But he had proved adamant, and noting that Richard was regarding us with suspicion, I reluctantly agreed. At least the lazy young devil had had the sense to postpone our journey until after dinner.

Now, in the light of a flaring torch held by Pete Littleman, I was staring down on the remains of what had, until so recently, been Briant of Dungarvon. And ‘remains’ was the word for what was left of him. His corpse, stripped of its sodden clothing, was shown to be a mass of bruises and broken limbs. There appeared not to be a whole bone left in his body.

‘Somebody made a good job of ’im,’ Pete remarked gloatingly. ‘Like a rag doll with no stuffing, ’e be.’

Richard Manifold pursed his lips. ‘I don’t believe any person did this,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s more like he’s fallen from a great height. I remember a body we fished out of the Avon some six, maybe seven years ago. A poor fellow who’d been pushed off the top of Ghyston Cliff by his wife’s lover into the river below. The other man confessed what he’d done in the end, and was hanged for it. He told us how the first man’s body had kept bouncing from one rock to the other as he fell all the way down the side of the gorge before finally ending up in the river. And I reckon that’s what’s happened to this Irish slave trader of yours, Roger. He was probably carried out seawards by the ebb and flow, then washed back in by the next high tide, right up to Saint Nicholas Back.’

Immediately, I knew that Richard’s reading of the situation was right. Briant’s body had been battered to pieces. The injuries were greater than any one, or even two, men could inflict. And in order for him to end up in the Avon, a fall from Ghyston Cliff was the most likely answer. But what had he been doing up on the downs? Humility Dyson had told me plainly that Briant had gone to join the Clontarf which, according to his information, had dropped anchor at Rownham Ferry. That would have entailed taking the riverside path around the base of the hills that rose above the city. Why would he have walked up to Clifton perched, as its name implies, high above the gorge? Unless … Unless, perhaps, he had seen and followed someone up there. And who was that someone likely to be other than Sir George Marvell, who might also have left the city that same night?

I checked my wandering thoughts. As I was far too prone to do, I was making unwarranted assumptions, bricks without straw. The only two incontrovertible facts were that the knight was still missing and that Briant of Dungarvon was dead.

‘What will you do with the corpse?’ I asked.

Richard shrugged. ‘For the time being he can stay here — decently covered, of course. Then, when the coroner’s pronounced him dead of accidental causes, he can be tossed into the common pit.’

This callous pronouncement chilled me to the bone. This was a man with whom I had walked and talked very recently. Now he was nothing but a lump of rotting flesh to be disposed of as soon as possible and with as little dignity as possible, thrown into the common pit along with executed criminals and stray animals. I repressed a shudder.

‘What a Christmas this is turning out to be,’ Richard grumbled. ‘Alderman Trefusis murdered, Sir George missing and now this.’ He gave a quick glance around the musty-smelling crypt. ‘Well, there’s nothing more we can do here until I inform the coroner in the morning. Jack, before you go home find something to cover this thing.’ He jerked his head at Briant’s lifeless body. ‘And make sure the crypt’s locked behind you when you leave. Are you coming, Roger?’

I cast one last look at the dead slave trader before following Richard up the steps and into the church. As we stepped outside into the cold and windy dark, he remarked suspiciously, ‘You and young James Marvell seemed very friendly.’

‘He’s easy enough to get along with,’ I answered, settling my hat more firmly on my head and turning up the collar of my cloak against a little flurry of sleet. ‘Not like the other one, Bartholomew.’

Richard grunted and said no more, but I could tell he wasn’t satisfied. Nevertheless, he wished me an amicable goodnight when we parted in the middle of the High Street, he to walk up St Mary le Port Street in the direction of the castle, I to return to Small Street and Adela. Except that I didn’t; at least, not immediately. Instead, I ventured into Marsh Street to seek out Humility Dyson at the Wayfarer’s Return.

At first, he found it hard to take in the news of Briant’s death and even harder to accept Richard’s theory of how he met it.

‘What would he have been doing up on Ghyston Cliff, Master Chapman, tell me that! It don’t make sense. He’d gone to join the Clontarf at Rownham Ferry. He’d not been up on the heights above.’ But he lost interest in the cause of death when I told him what was planned for the corpse. His mouth — or what I could see of it, almost smothered as it was by the profusion of his beard — tightened to a thin red line. ‘I’ll tell the lads,’ he said. ‘Saint Nicholas crypt, you say?’

‘It’ll be locked.’

He managed a smile, albeit a wintry one. ‘Not after midnight it won’t be.’

‘Take care. The Watch has been reinforced.’

‘We’ll manage.’ He laid a hand on my arm. ‘They won’t forget this, Master Chapman. In future, they’ll look after you like one of their own. If ever you find yourself in serious trouble and in need of help, just come to “Little Ireland”.’

For what it was worth, I thanked him. Finally, I went home.

The last day of December dawned a little brighter than the previous two. It was the Sixth Day of Christmas. We were halfway through.

Neither Adela nor I was at our best: we had sat up late discussing the latest episode in what was turning out to be an all too eventful holiday. Initially, my return had been greeted with the inevitable questions and reproaches as to where I had been and what had taken me so long.

‘The search for Sir George was abandoned more than an hour ago,’ Adela had informed me angrily. ‘Jack Nym called in and told me so. He couldn’t understand why you weren’t back.’ But her tune changed to one of concern once I had explained what had happened. ‘Sweetheart, I don’t like it. There’s something evil abroad, and you’re getting drawn, as usual, into whatever is going on.’

I reassured her as much as I could, but the subsequent news that I was riding up to Clifton with James Marvell the following morning very quickly undid all my good work. When we finally went to bed, if we were still on speaking terms, we weren’t the best of friends.

The strained atmosphere lasted all through breakfast and hastened the three older children’s departure for their eyrie upstairs, where their parents’ disagreements were soon forgotten in the games and imaginings of childhood.

I spent the time before dinner coaxing the Yule log to continue burning for the remaining six days of Christmas by piling more straw and small twigs around it. It meant bad luck if it went out before Twelfth Night, and I felt we had had more than our fair share of that one way and another. I blew hard on some still- glowing ashes until they sparked and crackled into a tiny flame, catching the new fuel alight. Next, I cleaned and inspected my boots, making sure that a new patch just above the left heel was watertight, before checking the contents of the water barrel and fetching more logs from the yard. The doing of these ordinary domestic tasks soothed me a little and reminded me that normal life still existed.

Just before ten o’clock, as Adela was laying out the spoons and bowls ready for dinner, Burl Hodge called in to know if we were going to see the mummers’ performance that afternoon. He didn’t seem particularly disappointed when I said I had other plans; he was too full of news.

‘Such a to-do as you never heard,’ he told me, ‘going on at Saint Nick’s. Someone’s broken into the church and the crypt during the night and taken away that dead body what was there. The one they pulled out the river last evening.’ He chuckled. ‘Sergeant Manifold’s in a rare taking, I can tell you, wanting to know how anyone knew it was being left there overnight. Berating poor old Jack Gload and Peter Littleman like they was a couple of pickpockets, and both of ’em denying they’d said a word to anybody about it.’

He eventually went on his way, still chuckling.

I wondered how long it would be before my name occurred either to Richard or to one of his henchmen and, once it had, how long before the former realized that he had hit on the truth. Consequently, I hurried my meal, even refusing a second helping of frumenty, some of which still remained from Christmas Day. Adela was plainly suspicious of this abstention, but refrained from comment. Within an hour of first sitting down to table, I was at the Frome Gate, muffled in my good, thick winter cloak and my hat pulled well down around my ears. I hadn’t taken my cudgel: it was too unwieldy to cope with on horseback.

A raw, nipping wind made me shiver in spite of being so warmly wrapped up, and I prayed that James Marvell would not keep me waiting long. A sudden thought that perhaps the Marvell family ate at a fashionably later hour than ten o’clock had just determined me to return home if he did not show up soon, when he arrived riding a placid brown cob and leading another on a short rein.

‘Master Chapman!’ he hailed me cheerfully. ‘Well met!’ He indicated the horses. ‘I hope these fellows meet with your approval. They told me at the Bell Lane stables that you’re an uneasy rider.’ His grin made me wonder what else had been said to describe my lack of horsemanship, but I thought it wisest not to enquire. He went on: ‘So the stable master recommended these cobs. Nice, quiet beasts, he said they are. I hope you approve.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, mounting the second horse and taking the reins. I noticed James eyeing my patched and mended leather gloves with a slightly puzzled frown. Because of my past association with the king, people always assumed that, if not rich, I at least had plenty of money. Many of them thought the way I dressed a deliberate attempt to mislead them as to my true calling, whatever they believed that to be.

There was no sparkle of frost this morning, only a leaden sky and a threat of snow. The landscape was devoid of colour, a monotonous brown and black and grey, and I couldn’t help wondering what it was like to live in one of those countries, described by the foreign sailors, where everything blossomed into light and brilliance under the always shining sun. Native sailors, who had visited these climes, assured the stay-at-homes we wouldn’t like it. ‘You’d miss the rain,’ they said. Or, ‘Too much sun and heat can send you mad.’ Or yet again, ‘You’d be crying out to see something green.’ Most of the time I suspected they were right. But this morning, I wasn’t so sure.

Having crossed the Frome Bridge, we rode westwards for a little way along the northern bank of the river, then turned northwards by St Augustine’s Abbey and began to climb the first of the hills that led eventually to the high plateau of ground known simply as the downs. There had been a time when this had been nothing but wild country watered by the little streams that ran downhill to be trapped by the Carmelites in their great water cistern and then piped to various troughs and conduits across the city. Its only population had been outlaws and vagabonds preying on unwary travellers as they made their way southwards to do business in Bristol or visit family and friends. But for the past hundred years or so the town had spread beyond its confining walls, and by now there were little settlements, smallholdings and even quite substantial farms dotting the landscape all the way up to Clifton Manor. This had itself burst its original boundaries to embrace what had formerly been independent homesteads, in many cases nothing more than a cottage and a bit of land on which to grow a few vegetables and maybe keep a pig or goat. Such, I imagined, had been the Deakins’ holding until Sir George had used his influence to get them turned off.

Up there, on the high ground, the wind was bitter, and I was thankful when James suggested we take shelter in the nearest ale-house to warm our numbed feet and hands before making any enquiries. There was a small hostelry close by the main track, not particularly well lit nor particularly well patronized on this freezing Wednesday morning when most people were either working or sleeping off the effects of their Christmas wassail. We were therefore able to sit close to the fire and hold our chilled fingers to the cheerful blaze. A quick glance revealed that, apart from ourselves, there was only one other customer in the place — a tough, wiry little man with a brown beard and complexion to match, seated at a nearby table. As we entered the ale-house, I had noticed outside a handcart piled with sacks, and a few candles spilled from the mouth of one of them.

When we had been served with our ale, I spoke to him. ‘’Morning, master. Are you the chandler in these parts?’

He raised his beaker to me in salutation. ‘I’m a chandler, certainly, and I sell my wares hereabouts as well as elsewhere. Plenty o’money in Clifton.’

He looked as though he would like to enquire what my trade was. He was obviously puzzled by the disparity in the quality of my dress and that of my companion.

‘Been selling up here long?’ I asked.

‘Five year ’n more, I reckon.’

This caught James’s attention. ‘Then, sir, do you remember a family of the name of Deakin? If my information is correct, they had a smallholding somewhere around here.’

The man sucked some ale thoughtfully through his beard. ‘That’s right,’ he said after a moment or two’s reflection. ‘’T’weren’t much of a place and the couple didn’t do any business with me. Couldn’t afford even tallow candles, as I recall. Made their own rush lights. But I remember ’em.’

‘There were three of them,’ I said. ‘There was a son called Miles.’

‘So there was.’ The chandler drained his beaker. ‘Bit of a braggart and a swaggerer, he were.’

‘In what way?’

‘Always boasting he was going to do better for himself than work himself to death on a bit o’barren land that was only fit for pigs.’

‘And did he?’ James asked.

‘Did he what?’

‘Better himself.’

The chandler shrugged. ‘I dunno. The whole family disappeared from hereabouts sudden-like about four years ago. No, I tell a lie. It were three years since. T’were the year Thomas Lloyd and John Jay set sail to find the Isle of Brazil and were lost at sea for so many weeks everyone thought they were drowned.’

‘Has anything ever been heard or seen of them since?’ James wanted to know. ‘The Deakins, I mean.’

The chandler shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t know, master. Not by me, they haven’t, but you’d need to ask around the manor. I’m only up this way once a month. At the time, the story was that the old couple had been turned out on account of something that feckless Miles had done, although no one knew for certain what. It was said that that Sir George Marvell — him that used to live in that great house near Ghyston Cliff — was behind it.’ The man’s eyes narrowed suddenly and he leant forward, peering more closely at James. ‘Here! I recognize you, don’t I? You’re one of ’em. The Marvells. You’re one of the two young lads I used to see about when I called at the house. Wax candles only your housekeeper bought. Nothing but the best for Sir George and his family.’

James smiled uncomfortably. ‘I’m his grandson.’

The chandler looked resentful. ‘Living down in Bristol now, I’m told. Leaving that great place to rot and moulder. Cost me half my takings in this part o’the world when you lot moved away.’ He called for another beaker of ale, then went on: ‘Rumour says people have been seen of late in and around that house.’

‘What do you mean?’ James asked sharply.

‘Just what I say. Mind you, it’s only what I’ve been told by customers. I’ve not noticed anything, myself. But then, I’m not here that often, am I? And in any case, I don’t go that far up nowadays.’

‘What sort of people have been seen there?’

Our fellow traveller received his fresh beaker of ale from the landlord and took several gulps before replying.

‘Don’t know. But there’s talk of people and lights having been seen in and around the house only recently. Within the past few days. Some folk are beginning to say the place is haunted. Or else it’s being used by smugglers or slavers for their own wicked purposes.’

I laughed at that. ‘Smugglers and slavers aren’t going to use anywhere this high up,’ I protested. ‘Who’s going to bring goods either up or down Ghyston Cliff? It’s absurd.’

‘All right! All right!’ the chandler said pacifically. ‘No call to get heated about it. I’m only telling you what people have been saying. It may all be moonshine. Still, don’t alter the fact that it’s a wicked shame to let a house like that just fall to pieces. If Sir George don’t want to live there himself, why not let his son and daughter-in-law live there?’

‘Because he likes to have his family under his thumb,’ James said bitterly.

‘I’ve heard that.’ The chandler finished his second drink and got to his feet. ‘Well, this won’t do. Must be about my business. Nice to have talked to you, masters.’ He pulled on his hat, wrapped his thick frieze coat around him and disappeared out of the door. We heard his handcart rattling over the uneven pathway.

I looked at James. ‘Do you think we should investigate these rumours that people have been seen around, or near, your grandfather’s house?’

He grunted. ‘I think we must. It’ll turn out to be a mare’s nest, I daresay, but we ought to satisfy ourselves that no one’s broken in. Although it would serve the old man right if someone had. I’m afraid it will be filthy and infested with rats.’ He regarded my old and darned clothes critically. ‘But I don’t suppose you’ll mind that too much.’

I smiled. Adela had urged me to wear one of my decent suits of clothes, but I could see no reason to do so for an expedition such as this.

We left the manor behind, riding even higher up to where the track branched off to the right, going towards Westbury. Instead, we veered left on to rougher ground, past the remains of the ancient hill-fort which local legends reckon was built before the time of the Conqueror by either the Saracens or the Jews. (All nonsense, of course. What did folk imagine a bunch of Saracens were doing in the West Country? And the Jews had come in William’s wake.) Others say the fort was built by a giant named Ghyst in the time of the two great giants, Vincent and Goram, who had hewed the gorge through the living rock. Be that as it may, passing the place has always given me a tingle down the spine — an eerie feeling, as of something evil. That day the sensation was even stronger as I looked at the circle of large, upright stones and the smaller ones scattered among them. A vision of human sacrifice flitted into my mind and refused to go away.

The Marvell house — or Ghyston House, as James informed me it had always been known — stood on the flat plateau at the very summit of the high ground before it began to slope away again towards the mouth of the River Avon and the open sea. In the wintry afternoon light it looked forbidding, surrounded by leafless trees and dripping bushes which were starting to run riot for want of pruning. Paths were becoming overgrown with yellowing grass pushing through cracks in the paving stones, while everywhere there was a stench of rotting vegetation. A bleak, lonely and inhospitable place it must have been, I thought, even when the family were living there.

As though he could read my thoughts, James said, ‘Miserable heap, ain’t it? Cold all the year round, even in the height of summer. I can’t tell you how happy we all were three months ago when Grandfather decided to move down to Bristol.’

‘Can you get inside?’ I asked.

He grinned. ‘I don’t have a key, if that’s what you mean. But there’s a window at the back with a loose shutter belonging to the bakehouse. Bart and I used to use it for getting in and out unseen. Just follow this path round …’

I interrupted him, gripping his arm. ‘There’s no need,’ I hissed. ‘Look! The door’s open.’

And just as I spoke, a gust of wind caught the heavy, nail-studded leaf, swinging it on its hinges.