Nine Men Dancing

Thirteen

I was dreaming.

I knew that I was dreaming in the way that you do when you are very close to consciousness, but not yet quite fully awake. I was dancing with my two elder children as we had danced last August, through the streets of Bristol, at the end of the Lammas Feast. We were celebrating the safe bringing-in of the harvest, the cutting of the ripened corn. Adela was nearby with Adam, not as he was then, but the dark, determined seven-month-old that he had since become.

Abruptly, as things happen in dreams, the crowds and my family vanished and I was standing alone by the well in Upper Brockhurst woods, holding a silver cup, twisting it between my hands. The day was dark and overcast, but suddenly a weak gleam of sunshine pierced the canopy of trees to strike the rim, and I could see that the figures carved around the bowl were moving. Little boys with tails and horns and goats’ legs twisted in and out of a maze of trailing vine leaves and olive branches, picking the silver fruit. From somewhere behind me, Adela’s voice called, ‘She went home … home … home … You promised to come home …’

The scene shifted yet again. I was back in the alehouse, moving with the other players around the Nine Men’s Morris board. Someone – I couldn’t see who – was saying, ‘Line up the three morrells and then you’ll know who killed Eris Lilywhite. Line up the three morrells …’

I woke, sweat pouring down my naked body, just as something heavy landed on my chest. For one brief moment I thought I was in my own bed, enduring one of the daily, early morning assaults of Nicholas and Elizabeth that were fast turning me into the most flat-chested man in Bristol. Then realization dawned that the weight belonged to Hercules, and that I was lying supine on a narrow pallet in Maud Lilywhite’s cottage, as I had done for the past three nights. I had just decided that it must be almost daybreak, when I heard a cock crow, but there were as yet no sounds of stirring from behind the linen curtain. Theresa was snoring gently.

I freed an arm from beneath the blankets and stroked Hercules’s head. He returned my greeting by enthusiastically licking my face and thumping his stubby tail, then settled down until such time as I should rouse myself. I continued to lie still, mulling over my dream and thinking about my promise to Adela that I would be home by the feast of Saint Patrick.

Tomorrow was the last day of February, and if I was to redeem my promise, I should be setting out almost at once. At this time of year, there was no reliance to be placed on the offer of some kind-hearted carter to give me a ride; at least, not for any great distance. It would be a few weeks yet before the improving weather lured people into making lengthier journeys. And if my legs were to carry me home, I should leave Lower Brockhurst today. This morning.

That, of course, would mean abandoning my search for the truth about Eris Lilywhite, and I hated being defeated: unsolved mysteries were anathema to me. But even more than that, I hated breaking my word to Adela. If she had been the sort of wife whose reproaches took the form of beating me over the head with a skillet, or refusing me my conjugal rights in bed, I could have dealt with the situation. I should have asserted my manly authority as head of the household, ranted and postured a bit and generally pranced around like a cock on his dunghill. But I knew very well that, whenever I turned up, Adela would greet me with her customary warmth, listen without comment to my excuses – and enjoy watching me squirm with guilt.

Just thinking about her, picturing that little half-smile that played around the corners of her mouth, remembering the occasional sardonic gleam in her beautiful brown eyes, recalling the feel of her soft body curled up against mine, was having the most embarrassingly physical effect upon me; embarrassing, that is, if either of the Mistress Lilywhites made any sudden appearance, wanting me to get up so that she could stow away my bed. Resolutely, I switched my thoughts back to Eris’s disappearance and the dream from which I had awoken ten minutes earlier.

What had it been about? Something to do with a silver cup with satyrs dancing among vine leaves and olive branches … It made no sense at present, but perhaps it would later. I sighed and tried going back to sleep. I had, however, barely lost consciousness before I caught the low murmur of Theresa’s voice, followed by Maud’s. Immediately I was wide awake and, heaving Hercules off my chest, swung myself out of bed and reached for my hose and shirt, pulling both garments on with expert rapidity. By the time Theresa and Maud appeared from behind the curtain, I had tied my points and was fingering my unshaven chin.

An hour later, having washed and shaved, cleaned my teeth with willow bark and combed my hair, finished dressing and taken Hercules for a trot around the yard – keeping him well away from the geese, to whom he continued to take great exception – I sat down to breakfast. This morning, alas, it was oatmeal and dried herrings yet again (not a favourite meal with me, I’m afraid – I like something more substantial).

‘Now!’ Theresa said abruptly, putting down her spoon. ‘Tell us again what you told us yesterday evening. You were too tired then to talk much sense. First, what did you learn from Sir Anselm?’

‘Not a great deal,’ I hedged, not wanting to confess that I suspected the priest of knowing more than he had admitted to. ‘As I said, I learned more from the Rawbone twins and their little kitchen maid, Ruth.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Theresa resumed eating. ‘So how did you come to be at Dragonswick Farm? Something to do with Rosamund Bush meeting Tom Rawbone, wasn’t it? You’d better start again and explain what followed.’

Patiently, I went over the events of the previous day, aware that my fatigue had been so great last evening that I might possibly have been less than coherent. But I suspected the truth to be that Theresa enjoyed any story that redounded to the discredit of the Rawbone family and wanted to hear it for a second time.

‘The twins seem to have been good friends with your daughter when they were young,’ I remarked, finishing my account and turning to Maud.

‘They liked one another well enough when they were children,’ she conceded. ‘But they grew apart in later years.’

‘That was because you discouraged the friendship,’ Theresa cut in disapprovingly. ‘Some stupid notion of Eris not being good enough for the Rawbones. Laughable, considering what followed.’

‘You know nothing about it, Mother-in-law,’ Maud rebuked her sharply. ‘You weren’t here when Eris was small.’

‘I’ve lived with you since Gilbert died,’ Theresa retorted. ‘That’s almost seven years. Eris was ten, still young enough to be sneaking off with Chris and Josh Rawbone whenever she thought she could get away with it. That is, without you reprimanding her and confining her to the cottage.’

‘She was getting too hoydenish,’ Maud replied with heightened colour. ‘It was time she learned a woman’s skills and did her share around the house, especially with Gilbert gone.’

Theresa looked sceptical, but let the matter drop. She rapped my hand with the back of her spoon, to ensure my attention.

‘You made some comment about the Rawbones’ kitchen maid. That she’d seen Eris set off in this direction the night my granddaughter vanished. In the direction of home, was what you said.’

Maud snorted. ‘On such a night, no one could have seen which way Eris went once she was outside the Dragonswick pale.’

‘I think that’s probably true,’ I admitted. ‘Indeed, when I pressed her, Ruth owned that she would be unable to swear on oath that your daughter had set off for home. Nevertheless, it was her impression that Eris was heading this way.’

‘Well, she didn’t arrive,’ Maud said shortly, and began gathering the dirty bowls and spoons together. I thought I saw her blink back tears.

‘So, what next?’ asked Theresa, folding her arms on the table and peering at me intently. ‘What do you propose to do now?’

Her attitude that I was entirely responsible for finding out what had become of Eris irritated me.

‘It’s high time that I returned to Bristol,’ I answered. ‘If I’m to keep my word to my wife to be home by the feast of Saint Patrick, I should leave here today.’

‘You can’t do that!’ Theresa gasped. ‘You promised!’

Before I could speak, Maud sprang to my defence.

‘Master Chapman promised nothing, Mother, other than to do his best. Which he’s done. Like the rest of us, he knows that nothing can ever be discovered now. Thank you for all you’ve tried to do, sir, but you must get back to your wife, I can see that. We shall, of course, be sorry to lose your company, but we understand.’

I guessed that Maud Lilywhite would welcome my going. She had never wanted me to investigate Eris’s disappearance in the first place. She was happier in her ignorance. But my decision did not please Theresa.

‘You promised,’ she repeated.

‘I promised to do what I could in the few days I felt I could allow myself. That was all. My word to my wife must come first.’

‘Of course,’ Maud nodded.

Someone banged loudly on the cottage door, and a female voice called, ‘Maud! Maud Lilywhite! Are you in there? Theresa!’

Without waiting for a reply, the visitor lifted the latch and walked in – a round-faced woman with a coarse woollen cloak flung hastily and somewhat askew over her everyday homespun attire, whose plump features I vaguely recalled having seen in church on Thursday morning. She was pink-cheeked and panting.

‘My good soul, whatever is it?’ Theresa asked, guiding her to a stool and pouring her some ale from the jug on the table. ‘Anne, my dear, calm yourself. What’s the matter?’

The other woman gulped down the ale before gasping, ‘Such terrible doings … Down in the village … Came to tell you.’

‘Tell us what?’ Maud demanded, exasperated by the delay. ‘What doings in the village? What’s happened?’ She muttered for my benefit, ‘Goody Venables. Wife of the blacksmith.’

Mistress Venables nodded in confirmation and made a determined effort to impart her news.

‘Lambert Miller … Someone broke into the millhouse during the night and tried to kill him. Beat him half to death with an iron bar.’

‘Who? Who was it? Who did it?’ I asked, the Mistress Lilywhites being temporarily bereft of words.

The blacksmith’s wife shook her head. ‘Lambert couldn’t see. It was dark.’

‘But he would have some idea, surely … Is he incapable of speech?’

‘Oh, no! Far from it. His mother says he’s cursing and swearing fit to bring the roof down. He’s blaming Tom Rawbone, although as far as I can gather he’s no shred of proof. According to Goody Miller’s story, the man who attacked him had his hood on back to front, covering his face, with slits torn for his eyes.’

Maud’s hand crept up to her mouth.

‘Tom did take a beating from Lambert Miller yesterday. Ask Master Chapman, here. He witnessed it. So did Landlord Bush and Ned. Perhaps Tom was getting his own back.’

This was obviously news to Goody Venables, who struggled gamely to her feet, in spite of her former state of collapse, and made for the door.

‘I must get home,’ she said, ‘and see what’s happening. I thought you’d want to know.’

She was gone to spread her newly acquired knowledge around the village. I glanced reproachfully at Maud, then admitted to myself that her lack of caution was no great matter. William Bush and Lambert would be making everyone free of the information at some time or another.

Maud unhooked her cloak from its peg beside the door. ‘I must go and warn Ned,’ she said.

‘Heaven knows why!’ her mother-in-law exclaimed resentfully. ‘We owe the Rawbones nothing. Nothing! That wastrel, Tom, most probably murdered your daughter. Now he’s half-killed Lambert Miller. Don’t be such a fool, Maud!’

‘Ned has always been my friend,’ the younger woman answered quietly. ‘The rest of them can rot in Hades for all I care, but I won’t have Ned suffer because of his family.’

As she left the cottage, Theresa beat her hands impotently against her sides.

‘What can you do with her? The truth is,’ she went on, quietening down a little, ‘that Maud has always felt guilty because she fell in love with my Gilbert and refused to marry Ned Rawbone. He wanted to marry her, you know.’

‘So I was told. But didn’t his father object?’

‘Probably. But it was of no consequence in the end. Maud knew a better bargain when she saw one.’ Theresa put water to heat over the fire, giving me a shrewd glance as she did so. ‘If you’re leaving us, chapman, you’d better get started while the day’s still young.’

I hesitated, then laughed and gave in. ‘Perhaps I’ll stay a little longer, after all. I’ll go down to the village and have a word, if I can, with Lambert Miller.’

I was not the only one with this idea. There was a crowd of villagers gathered around the millhouse, all hoping to visit the invalid, and little knots of people the length of the village street, talking earnestly and gesticulating violently in a way that boded no good for the miller’s attacker. Lambert was popular in his loud, rather bombastic fashion, and there was no intention of allowing his assailant to go unpunished. There was also an undercurrent of menace which made the hairs lift on the nape of my neck, and I heard the name of Tom Rawbone muttered more than once as I pushed my way through the mêlée. I banged loudly on the mill door, without much hope of being invited inside by Mistress Miller.

It was, however, not Lambert’s mother, but Winifred Bush who answered my knock.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, taken aback, then gestured at me to enter. ‘You’d better come and talk to the village elders. You were witness to the fight between Lambert and Tom Rawbone yesterday afternoon. They’ll wish to hear what you have to say.’

My admission was not well received by the people left outside, all of whom had known the miller far longer than I had, and all of whom wanted to proffer their condolences and satisfy their burning curiosity at the same time. But Mistress Bush had no compunction in shutting the door firmly in their faces.

She led me upstairs to Lambert’s bedchamber, a narrow, sparsely furnished room on the second floor. Judging by the unaccustomed silence in the working section of the mill, there was no one in Lower Brockhurst who could grind the corn until Lambert had recovered.

At first sight, the little room seemed inordinately full of people, but after a minute or two these sorted themselves out into Mistress Miller, an unsurprisingly large woman for an equally well-built son, Rosamund Bush and her parents and a couple of solemn grey-haired, grey-faced men who were introduced to me as the two senior members of the Village Council.

Lambert himself was propped up in bed looking decidedly the worse for wear. His face was a discoloured mass of bruising and one eye was so swollen that it was completely closed, while he could just about squint out of the other. His lips, too, were puffed up to twice their normal size, while his bare chest was covered in weals and welts where he had received a savage beating. What was on view below the decorously drawn up sheet, I could only guess at, but from what I could see, I immediately dismissed the iron bar theory of Goody Venables’s overheated imagination. These injuries had been inflicted with nothing more lethal than a good, stout cudgel.

For now, Rosamund’s sympathies seemed to have veered once more in Lambert’s direction, and she was intent on demonstrating her womanly skills in the sick chamber, sponging her swain’s fevered brow with a mixture of water and vinegar and fluttering her eyelashes at him in a way that must have been seriously inhibiting his crying need for rest.

William Bush was giving the village elders an account of the previous afternoon’s quarrel between Tom Rawbone and the miller, the latter either nodding in agreement or making inarticulate grunts of disapproval if the landlord suggested that he, as well as Tom, might have been to blame. Rosamund was evidently refusing to endorse her father’s half-hearted claim that the miller had been the aggressor. I had no such scruples.

‘Nevertheless,’ I admitted in conclusion, after I had said my piece, ‘It’s no excuse for breaking into a man’s house and belabouring him while he’s asleep and defenceless.’

‘Did you see anything at all of the man’s face?’ one of the elders enquired of Lambert.

He shook his head and said something through his swollen lips that I could make neither head nor tail of. His mother, however, appeared to have no difficulty in understanding him.

‘He says the bugger had his hood on back to front,’ she interpreted. ‘He’d cut slits for his eyes and … and what, dear?’ She bent closer as her son again attempted to explain some detail. ‘Yes.’ She straightened up. ‘Lambert knows it was back to front because the liripipe hung down like a long, thin nose.’

I could imagine the effect in the dark: grotesque and possibly frightening in those first uncertain minutes after being so rudely awakened.

The two elders were muttering to one another, their expressions serious. Once again, I heard the repetition of Tom Rawbone’s name: it was obvious they were considering no other suspect.

‘We must go up to Dragonswick Farm,’ the taller and greyer of the pair decided. ‘We shall confront Tom with his crime and see what he has to say. If he admits it, it will be up to the Council to decide his punishment. I see no need, at present, for this matter to go beyond the village boundaries. And Lambert!’ He fixed the invalid with a gimlet eye. ‘We bind you over to keep the peace until we have completed our enquiries. It would seem that you have not been entirely blameless in this quarrel.’

The miller let rip with an obscenity that shocked the men but which appeared to have no effect whatsoever on the ladies present. Indeed, Rosamund and his mother hushed and crooned to him in a manner that was guaranteed to turn the average stomach, and certainly caused mine to churn.

The second elder now spoke up. ‘We should be obliged, Master Chapman, and you, too, Landlord Bush, if, in view of your evidence, you would both accompany us to Dragonswick Farm. Thomas Rawbone needs to know we are in possession of all the facts.’

I thought that if Tom had sunk to being Thomas, he was already adjudged guilty in the elders’ eyes. But they looked like a couple of fair-minded men, and with Ned Rawbone’s additional testimony of the provocation suffered by his brother the preceding day, Tom’s punishment – in all probability a fine, which Nathaniel would no doubt pay – should be light. Perhaps it was as well, for his sake, that I had not acted on my intention of quitting the village after breakfast.

I glanced at Rosamund Bush with what I liked to think of as my quizzical look, but she pointedly ignored me, giving a little toss of her head and once more bending solicitously over her patient. I wondered how fairweather a friend to Tom Rawbone she might turn out to be; but simple justice reminded me that the initial wrong had been his. She owed him no debt of loyalty.

I stood aside to allow the two village elders and William Bush to precede me out of the room. (I was a well brought up young lad: first my mother, then the monks at Glastonbury had taught me good manners with fist and rod. I still bear the scars of some of their lessons.) Before they could take advantage of my politeness, however, we were all arrested by the sound of someone running up the stairs, an urgent clatter that boded ill news. A moment later, Lambert’s bedchamber door was thrust open and the man called Rob Pomphrey burst into the room.

He addressed the two elders.

‘Best come right away to the priest’s house, Master Sewter, Master Hemnall! Miller, here, ain’t the only one who’s been set upon. Sir Anselm, he’s in a bad way.’

This was more serious. This was an attack unmitigated by provocation. If the priest died, or was already dead, this would mean the full panoply of the law and a noose for the culprit at the end of it.

As I followed the elders and William Bush downstairs, and was myself followed by Rosamund and her mother – whose curiosity, I noted, outweighed their concern for Lambert Miller’s health – I recalled uneasily my conviction that Sir Anselm knew more about Eris’s disappearance than was good for him. For there seemed no other reason for an assault upon his person.

He was lying unconscious on the floor of his kitchen, half frozen to death, the door to the back yard having been left swinging on its hinges. The parishioner who had discovered him and then run screaming into the street had not thought to close it, nor had the gaping fools who had subsequently crowded into the house to see the priest for themselves. The senior of the two elders – Master Sewter, as I now knew him to be – immediately cleared the room of its uninvited occupants and requested Rosamund to run for the village wise woman.

‘Tell her to bring all her pills and potions,’ he instructed. ‘And, my child, shut that door as you leave.’

Winifred Bush volunteered to find blankets, but Master Sewter decreed that Sir Anselm should be carried upstairs to bed.

‘It will be too painful for him once he recovers his senses. Master Chapman, you’re a big, strong lad. I feel sure you could do it single-handed and without any difficulty whatsoever.’

Sir Anselm may have appeared a featherweight, but, believe me, he was nowhere near as light as he looked. By the time I had negotiated the stairs to the second storey – with a confused Hercules circling round my feet and twice nearly tripping me up – and deposited the priest on his bed, I was beginning to have serious doubts about my future ability to father any more children. But once my task was successfully accomplished and the two village elders, Landlord and Mistress Bush together with myself were able to take a good look at him, it became very obvious that whoever had attacked Lambert Miller had also carried out the assault on the priest. The injuries were almost identical: a severe beating inflicted with a good, stout cudgel which, in Sir Anselm’s case, had resulted in unconsciousness.

The village wise woman arrived carrying a large basket containing what must have been her entire store of salves and ointments, healing draughts and potions, tut-tutting in horror at the sight of her patient. Even Rosamund’s description had not prepared her for Sir Anselm’s condition. He was still breathing, but only just.

Master Sewter and Master Hemnall, having conferred together in whispers, decided that there was no likelihood of the priest regaining his senses yet awhile and that we were wasting our time at his bedside.

‘We must go to Dragonswick Farm and apprehend Thomas Rawbone,’ Master Hemnall said. ‘William, you and the chapman will accompany us as planned.’

The wise woman – a much younger woman than I had expected, with a round, pleasant face and a pair of workmanlike hands – looked up from her ministrations.

‘You’d better hurry,’ she advised, ‘if you want him in one piece. There was a mob setting out for the farm as I came along the street.’

The two elders exchanged glances and Master Hemnall pulled down one corner of his mouth.

‘We shall need weapons, I think, Master Chapman, I see you have a cudgel, not to mention that pesky little dog, who seems willing to bite anyone and everyone, including yourself.’ He turned to the landlord. ‘William, you live next door. Can you find Colin and me a couple of clubs? Strong ones. We’ll set out now. Catch us up as fast as you can.’

The landlord nodded and parted from us at the church. The village elders and myself crossed the bridge over the stream and began the ascent to Dragonswick Farm, but long before we got there, we could see the angry mob surrounding the house, baying mindlessly for Tom Rawbone’s blood. By the time we had forced a path through the crowd to where Nathaniel, Ned and the twins stood, snarling defiance and brandishing bigger and stouter cudgels than William Bush had been able to provide, the general atmosphere had turned uglier than ever.

‘Nathaniel!’ Master Sewter had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Where’s Tom? It’s no good trying to shelter him. Tell him to come out and face us like a man. Philip Hemnall and I will guarantee his safety until he’s safely under lock and key.’

Nathaniel raised his voice in reply.

‘Don’t make me laugh! You two old women couldn’t guarantee his safety from this pack of vultures however hard you tried. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Tom’s gone! Left an hour and more ago. Took one of the horses. You won’t catch up with him now.’