The Christmas Wassail

NINETEEN

Dog mask! As soon as I uttered the words it was as though a great mist which had been clogging my brain for days had been suddenly lifted.

Alyson Carpenter had told me that my attacker at the Clifton house had been wearing a dog mask and Adam had described to me a play about the Sultan of Morocco and his dog which the mummers had performed. I remembered, too, the jumble of masks they had in their possession, including several depicting birds — one of which they claimed had been stolen and then returned, a statement I had never thought to query; at least, not until now.

‘They’ll all be at dinner,’ James said, ‘and I should be with them. We won’t get Father alone till after the meal. And, indeed,’ he added, ‘you must be wanting your own dinner, Master Chapman. Come back later and we’ll confront him together.’

He was right. I realized that I was very hungry, but was loth to go home. Adela would probably have returned from seeing Jenny and Burl by now and I wondered what sort of state she would be in; whether or not she would even have prepared a meal. Then I recollected that Margaret was there and would have taken charge.

All the same, I postponed my arrival at Small Street by going round by the castle and asking to speak to whoever it was who had found Dick Hodge’s body. I had no authority to do this, and was faintly surprised when one of the castle reeves came through from the inner ward, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, an indication that he had left his dinner in order to see me. I couldn’t help reflecting that there were times when my reputation as being in the king’s employ had its uses, however misleading it might be.

‘Master Chapman.’ The man nodded curtly to me, but his tone was civil enough. All the same, it was not his duty to attend upon the whims of a pedlar and I could tell he was resentful of his fear of offending me. ‘How can I help you? There’s nothing further I can say about finding poor Dick’s body than what I have already told Sergeant Manifold and the sheriff, information which I’m very certain the whole town must know by now.’

‘I’m really more interested in the mummers,’ I said. ‘I was informed they’d left.’

‘At first light.’ The reeve shrugged. ‘In fact, the carts were loaded and they were waiting to get away before the gates were open. One of them fetched the horses from the Bell Lane stables last night in order that there should be no delay from that quarter this morning. They should be well on the road by now. They were extremely anxious to get back to Hampshire and their winter lodgings before the weather worsened, which it very often does after Christmas. And the younger woman is, of course, in a delicate condition. So I’m afraid if you were wishful to speak to them, you’re unlucky. It would take a fast horse to catch up with them now.’ A slight smile touched his lips: he obviously knew the stories about me and horses.

‘Their winter quarters, I think Mistress Tabitha told me, are at Sweetwater Manor, between Winchester and Southampton, belonging to a Master Tuffnel.’

The reeve nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. A Master Cyprian Tuffnel.’

‘Cyprian?’

My tone was so sharp that he looked at me curiously. ‘Yes, so one of them told me. Not a common name, I grant you, but a saint’s name for all that.’

‘It’s Master Marvell’s name, chosen presumably by his father, Sir George.’

The reeve fingered his chin. ‘So it is,’ he said. ‘Do you think it has some particular significance?’

I didn’t reply to his question because I wasn’t sure of the answer — not yet, at any rate. But I did feel a growing conviction that God had come back to me and was once more directing my footsteps.

I thanked the man for his help and left him staring after me, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. He was probably trying to work out what help he had given me. In spite of the bitter cold and my gnawing hunger, I went and sat on a wall close to the Mint. (I could hear them hammering away inside, fashioning the new coins needed for King Richard’s reign.) With a concentrated effort of memory, I recalled Tabitha saying that her father had been warrener to Master Tuffnel’s father, and that she and he had grown up together. Which meant that Cyprian Tuffnel was a man of roughly her age and of an age with Sir George Marvell and Alderman Trefusis. Had he, too, been a soldier in the French wars? Had the other two known him? Had they been companions? Could that possibly be why Sir George had given his son the name of Cyprian, in memory of an army friendship?

I took a deep breath. I was rushing ahead too fast again, letting my theories outstrip the facts, jumping to conclusions. It was my besetting sin, but this time I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was justified. A recollection of Tabitha saying that Master Tuffnel had been good to her and Ned Chorley when they most needed it rose to the surface of my mind. Also that Cyprian Tuffnel had been some years older than herself — which would make him even closer to George Marvell’s age …

A sudden blast of icy wind blowing up from both of Bristol’s rivers made me shiver violently and get hurriedly to my feet, grabbing my cloak around me. It was time to go home and find out what was happening there. But as I walked through the icy streets and the church bells still ringing out for the later Epiphany Day services, I had a sudden vision of the terrible injuries inflicted on Ned Chorley and Alfred Littlewood by the French, and then of those perpetrated on George Marvell; the lopped off fingers and the gouged-out eyes. The word that kept going around and around in my head was ‘retribution’.

Margaret Walker had not failed us. Luke was on her lap and she and the children were all seated at the kitchen table quietly getting on with the pottage she had heated. Adela was there, too, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen, but only making a pretence at eating. I saw her hand shake as she lifted her spoon.

‘Ah, here you are at last,’ my former mother-in-law remarked grimly as I made my entrance. ‘Sit down. Elizabeth, get your father his dinner.’

My daughter heaved a martyred sigh, but nevertheless rose from her stool and filled a bowl with stew from the pot over the fire.

I braced myself and addressed my wife. ‘How are Burl and Jenny?’

‘You may well ask!’

The picture was immediately clear to me. I was to be the scapegoat. I was to bear the burden of being to blame for Dick Hodge’s death. No matter that it was Jenny and even Dick himself who had persuaded me — more, begged me — to let him have my old cloak. That wasn’t the point and never would be. The point was that I spent my time poking about in affairs that didn’t concern me so that people wanted to kill me in order to stop my prying. I sighed. I suppose I might have guessed it.

‘Burl’s vowed never to speak to you again,’ Adela informed me in trembling accents. ‘And, honestly, Roger, I don’t know that I can blame him. He and Jenny are both half-dead with grief. As for Jack, I wouldn’t go near him for a while if I were you. You’re likely to get a bloody nose if no worse.’

To my surprise, it was Margaret who came to my defence. ‘Well, I think that’s very unfair,’ she said stoutly. ‘You can’t hold Roger responsible for Dick Hodge’s death because he did the lad a good turn. In fact, if I know Roger, he’s too fond of wearing disgusting old clothes to have parted with that grey cloak unless he’d been begged to. And so I shall tell anyone who says anything of the kind to me.’

I think Adela was as dumbfounded by this unlooked-for partisanship as I was and was silenced. Furthermore, she has a sense of justice and, after turning her cousin’s words over in her mind for several minutes, suddenly said, stifling her sobs, ‘You’re right, Margaret, my dear.’

She lapsed into silence, pushing away her almost full plate, but I no longer felt, at least in my own home, that I was the object of my family’s animosity. True, Adam did murmur his usual, ‘Bad man!’ but it was more a term of affection, I felt, than any sort of reproach.

‘Does anyone have any idea who might have killed Dick Hodge and the others?’ Margaret asked me.

I shook my head.

She eyed me shrewdly. ‘I really meant do you have any idea? What about the young man Dame Drusilla wanted to marry? What did Bess Simnel say his name is? Miles Deakin? I had an idea you suspected him at one time.’

‘You can forget Miles Deakin,’ I said shortly.

Margaret raised her eyebrows. ‘O-ho! You do know something. Don’t try to deny it.’

‘I know that he had nothing to do with the murders,’ was my answer. I frowned at her and she nodded in reluctant acceptance of the fact that I was going to say no more on the subject.

‘What are you thinking of doing now?’ she asked, knowing me too well to suppose that the recent tragedy would have made me falter in my search for the truth.

I smiled, feeling an unexpected rush of affection for her and her understanding and loyalty. I must be fonder of her than I knew. ‘When I’ve finished my dinner,’ I said, ‘I’m going to visit Cyprian Marvell.’

‘You think he may know something?’

‘I think it possible, but whether or not he will share his know-ledge is a different matter.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

I hesitated, then, ‘It’s time I took up my peddling again. This is the last day of Christmas and we must all get back to the workaday world.’

Adela reared her head at that. ‘You won’t go far in January, Roger? The weather is liable to worsen very suddenly. Remember this past autumn.’

‘When you sent me to Hereford on a wild goose chase? No, I shan’t forget that in a hurry, nor its consequences.’ She had the grace to blush. ‘I may go south,’ I continued, ‘into Hampshire. It all depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On what I learn this afternoon from Cyprian Marvell.’

Cyprian Marvell was one of those quiet but stubborn men who, once he has decided on a course of action, refuses to budge from it even for the Archangel Gabriel himself.

James and I had bearded him in the little room which had been Sir George’s sanctum and which he had now appropriated as a refuge against the other members of his family. He had retired there after his dinner and was deeply displeased by the sudden appearance of his son and myself. He had been moved to use some very forthright and graphic language which had surprised us both, coming from such a normally mild-mannered and temperate man.

Not that we had let it trouble us, I standing with my back to the door to prevent my unwilling host from leaving, while James pressed his father to say who his nocturnal visitor had been and what he had wanted.

At first, Cyprian had refused to answer either question, but eventually, worn down and desperate to get rid of us, he had admitted that the unwelcome guest had asked for money.

‘Blackmail?’ James demanded brutally.

‘If you like.’

‘Why? What for? Something he knew about Grandfather? Something to his discredit?’

Cyprian folded his lips, leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. His attitude implied that we could ask from now until Doomsday and we should get no more information out of him. I decided it was time I took a hand.

‘Master Marvell,’ I said, ‘was it one of the mummers?’

His eyes flew open at that and he shot me a startled glance. James, too, turned to stare at me in surprise. There was also something reproachful in his look: he felt that I had been keeping him in the dark.

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

‘Because Ned Chorley also fought in the French wars. He was an archer; you can tell that by his injuries.’ And I repeated what Alfred Littlewood had told me about the revenge exacted by the French on any of the hated English archers who were captured.

‘Dear God!’ James exclaimed. ‘And you think-?’

‘I think he may have known both Sir George and Alderman Trefusis and was aware of something to their discredit, either from personal experience or from some tale told to him by a third person.’

James turned towards Cyprian. ‘Father?’

But the older man still refused to say anything further. He folded his hands across his belly and feigned sleep. His son gazed at him with a mixture of exasperation, anger and affection. After a moment or two, he tried again.

‘Father, three men have been killed, and brutally killed, and the body of your own father vilely despoiled. An innocent young man, little more than a boy, has been done to death. Don’t you want the villain who did this laid by the heels?’ Still there was no reply. James sighed. ‘Then Master Chapman and I have no choice but to go to the sheriff and tell him what we know.’

Cyprian did open his eyes at that, but when he spoke his voice was calm.

‘You know nothing, because I shall deny all knowledge of my night-time visitor. I shall say you were mistaken. If necessary, I shall accuse you and Master Chapman of trying to make yourselves important. I shall say it has been your weakness since childhood, that nowadays you wish to score against Bartholomew and that is your sole motive for these accusations. As for Master Chapman, there are plenty in this town who resent him and would be only too ready to believe such a claim.’

James looked at me despairingly. ‘He means it,’ he said, ‘but we’ll go anyway.’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Leave it. There’s nothing to be gained by falling out with your father. Family quarrels are the very devil, and take longer to heal than other disagreements.’ I smiled reassuringly. ‘I’ll go and leave you to make your peace with Master Marvell.’

Cyprian was suddenly uneasy and was regarding me with misgiving. This abrupt climbdown had obviously aroused his suspicions. I decided to give his thoughts another direction.

‘Master Marvell,’ I said, ‘a word in your ear. I know for a fact — and I am willing to swear to this as I hope for the life hereafter — that your stepmother has had dealings with the Irish slave traders in the city. I saw her in company with one of them, myself. Now, what her business with him was I’ve no idea, but if I were you I should be on my guard. You and your son.’

And with this, I took my leave, bowing to Cyprian, nodding to James, and left them gaping after me.

I had walked the whole length of Bristol Bridge when suddenly I stopped and retraced my steps halfway to the chapel of the Virgin Mary which spanned its centre. Inside, the chapel was deserted and very quiet, there being no Epiphany service there that day. (The clergy were too busy at the dozens of other religious establishments that gave the town its nickname, ‘The City of Churches’.) The winter light filtered through the stained-glass window, but it was too thin to throw the usual patterns of colour on the dusty floor. I made my obeisance at the altar, then propped myself against the southern wall and gave myself up to thought.

There were things that needed working out.

If Miles Deakin had not been the man in the bird mask standing outside Sir George’s house on Holy Innocents’ — Childermass — Day, who had it been? I cast my mind back to that particular Sunday and recalled that the mummers had spent it with us, in Small Street, after Dorcas Warrener had been taken ill during the service at St Giles’s. But I also remembered that after dinner, Tobias had been despatched by Tabitha to make sure that their gear was safely under lock and key at the castle and that he had been absent for some little time. Was he then the man in the bird mask who had passed the note, which purported to come from Alyson Carpenter, to Sir George?

The mummers would have known about her because of her friendship — or more than friendship — with Tobias when they were performing in Clifton before Christmas. Had they gone there deliberately in the hope of finding the knight? Had they known that was where he lived? Somehow I doubted it or, if I was right in attributing the murders to them, they would have sought him out earlier. I decided, therefore, that they had first heard of his living in Bristol from Alyson. No doubt she had boasted of her conquest to Tobias and he had conveyed the information to the others. The discovery that Alderman Trefusis also lived in the city had probably been a happy accident, at least for them.

To Alyson, too, I attributed the mummers’ knowledge of the empty house at Clifton. I had little doubt that if, indeed, she had managed to seduce young Toby, then they had made use of it for secret meetings. But a note had been written to the knight, a fact which made me hesitate until I suddenly remembered being told that Tabitha could both read and write, perhaps not well, but probably as well as the younger woman. It was more than likely that Sir George had never seen Alyson Carpenter’s writing — there was, after all, no reason why he should have done — so he would not have queried if it were her hand or no. In any case, it had done all that was required and sent him off to Clifton on Childermass night to meet with his murderers. Had he recognized them before he died and known why they exacted vengeance?

The thought pulled me up short as I remembered with a jolt that I had spent that same night in the mummers’ company while Dorcas took my place beside Adela at home. So was it possible that two, or maybe three of them, had been able to leave me sleeping and make their way to Clifton and back again without my being aware of their absence? It’s true, I sleep soundly, but not so sound that at some point during the hours of darkness I don’t wake up and become aware of my surroundings. I would say that at least once a night I’m roused by a full bladder and either make use of the chamber pot or piss out of the window if I feel in need of a breath of air. Why, therefore, would the night of Holy Innocents’ Day have been any different?

But even as the thought entered my head, I recalled the remains of the poppy seed and lettuce juice lozenges on the battered tin plate that I had found beneath my bed. Tabitha had claimed that burning them through the night helped them all to sleep while on the road, the strong perfume making them oblivious of uncomfortable beds in strange places. No doubt she was right, and if you put them directly underneath a sleeper’s bed the fumes would probably render him very nearly unconscious until morning. I remembered, too, a nagging headache that had troubled me throughout the following day.

Tabitha had been awake, dressed and sitting up when I had finally managed to open my eyes that morning. But she had looked tired. Had she been keeping guard over me while the menfolk had gone to lie in wait for Sir George? But what was it precisely that he had done to them? And why had they carved the word DIE into his chest when he was already dead? And why had Alderman Trefusis whispered the word ‘Dee’ when he was dying? And, above all, was I correct in holding the mummers to blame, or was I off hunting yet another mare’s nest while the true answer to these Christmas murders still eluded me?

No; I felt certain that after wasting so much time and effort chasing the false hare that Miles Deakin had proved to be, I was now on the right track. Cyprian Marvell had neither denied nor derided my suggestion that his nocturnal visitor had been one of the mummers, or that the link between them and his father had been their service in the French wars. His silence on the subject seemed only to confirm that my guess was the correct one. He had, moreover, admitted to giving the man money; an admission that had to mean some disgraceful episode in Sir George’s past; an episode shared, presumably with his contemporary, Alderman Trefusis, who had also been a soldier. And there was a final link with the mummers in that Master Tuffnel, the owner of Sweetwater Manor and the benefactor of Tabitha Warrener and Ned Chorley, was called Cyprian, the baptismal name given to his elder son by the knight. And once again the link was that both men had fought in France. There was a very good chance that they had known one another, that they had been friends.

As for the attacks on myself, one or two of the mummers, if not all of them with the possible exception of Dorcas, had surely been in our house during the wassail of St Thomas Becket’s Day when it would have been simplicity itself to slip something into my beaker. They had, of course, been masked, one of them wearing that of the hooked-beak bird; the mask that later, in a little charade, staged, I now felt certain, for my benefit, they pretended had been borrowed and then returned. Had they intended to kill me that time, or had it been merely an attempt to discourage my interest in Robert Trefusis’s murder? But why? Because Adela had frightened them when, so uncharacteristically, she had boasted of problems I had solved for King Richard when he was Duke of Gloucester? And when I had shown no sign of abating that interest, they had decided that I, too, must die before I discovered the truth.

It crossed my mind that as they had left the city so early that morning, they might not have realized that they had murdered the wrong man the previous evening. If they thought me dead, it was equally possible that they considered themselves safe at last and would be travelling to their winter quarters in Hampshire at a more leisurely pace. On the other hand, they might have discovered their mistake at the time of the killing, in which case their progress could have become a flight. But either way, it would make no difference. I fully intended to go after them whatever the winter weather held in store. I had liked the mummers. I had thought them my friends. Now I knew them for what they were — a bunch of murderous cut-throats.

I found the knowledge distressing. Adam had liked them, and they had liked him — or seemed to have done. Could I be wrong? Again? But the longer I thought about things, the stronger the conviction grew that this time I was not mistaken. I suspected that I should now go to Richard Manifold and lay before him my suspicions and my reasons for them. The chase and retribution should now be in the hands of the law, but while the shadow of a doubt lingered I could not bring myself to do so. The sergeant would undoubtedly claim that it was because I wanted all the glory for myself, and who knew but that he might not be right? Had I, over the years, become too set up in my own conceit? Had the general belief that I was an important agent of the king really gone to my head, in spite of all my vigorous denials to the contrary? Certainly, I had been brought to the realization that I had forgotten God, and I recalled Adela’s accusation that I encouraged both Adam and Elizabeth in their somewhat heretical view of religion. The trouble was that I could never bring myself to believe in the great God of Wrath and Retribution. He had blessed us with a sense of humour, the ability to laugh at and mock ourselves: therefore, I was unable to feel that he took himself so seriously …

I heaved myself away from the chapel wall and found that I was shivering. A man could think too much and never get any satisfactory answers. In the end, I could only be guided by instinct and hope that it was sound; that it was God’s way of working through me. Action was what I needed now. Epiphany had come: the Christ Child had been shown to the Magi. It was the Twelfth Day and Christmas was over.

‘You’re sure about this?’ Adela asked anxiously. ‘Going as far as Hampshire at this time of the year?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I’ll take my pack. It won’t be a wasted journey. People are glad to see pedlars at this time of year when the Christmas festivities are behind them and spring is still a long way off. They’re so happy to see a fresh face, they’ll part with their money all the more easily.’

Adela sighed. ‘We could do with all you can earn,’ she admitted. ‘This Christmas has emptied our purse. Everything seems to have cost so much more than last year. All the same, you would be able to sell as much if you worked the hamlets and villages hereabouts. If the weather should turn bad, you might find yourself trapped in Hampshire for months.’

She still looked pale and unhappy. I knew why she wanted me to stay; the thought of Dick Hodge’s brutal death still lay like a bruise on her spirit, as indeed it did on mine. She needed comforting, but she knew why I had to go: I had explained my reasons to her. She had been shocked and, at first, disbelieving, having looked on the mummers as friends, but I had finally convinced her by my arguments that I must at least go after them and satisfy myself that I was right.

‘And what will you do if you are?’ she asked.

I admitted that I didn’t know and said it depended. ‘On what?’ she might have asked, but she knew as well as I did that I had no answer. I made her promise to say nothing of the matter to anyone until my return, when I would know more; when I could decide what had to be done.

We celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany that evening at St Giles and said goodbye to Christmas for another year. And in the morning I set out for Hampshire, warmly wrapped up in my new blue cloak against the January weather, and with my pack on my back and my cudgel in my hand.