Nine Men Dancing

Sixteen

I set Hercules down and he scurried, whimpering, under the nearest bush, his eyes reproaching me for abandoning him so callously. Then, with my cudgel, I slashed out at the last fiery remnants of the wicker cage, hitting them to the ground. They fell in a shower of sparks and charred black specks that clung to my hands and sleeves, the wet grass effectively dousing the rest of the flames. Reluctantly, I approached the remains and stirred them with the end of my stick, prodding cautiously at the burned lump, half expecting to uncover what was left of some small animal or bird. To my relief, however, it disintegrated, and I could only guess that it had been another of the corn dollies that I had previously seen, along with the rag ‘clooties’, tied to the branches of the trees.

I knew what the wicker cage and the corn dolly were meant to represent. It was a re-enactment, in miniature, of the old Celtic practice of human sacrifice, burning the victims alive. Often, the wicker cages had been woven in the shape of a giant man – or, at least, so had said Julius Caesar in his condemnation of the ancient British Druids. (Which, when one considered the barbaric customs of the Romans was like the pot calling the skillet black.)

But that was beside the point; the point being that I was not alone here, on the Upper Brockhurst ridge, as I had fondly imagined. The hairs began to lift on the nape of my neck. Someone had been very close, and recently enough to set light to the little cage so that it was still burning when I found it. Its woven twigs would most probably, at that time of year, have been damp, but nonetheless, it would have burned quite quickly. Had that mysterious someone realized I was near? Was the ‘sacrifice’ a warning to me?

I took my cudgel in a firmer grip, hissed at Hercules to follow me – an injunction he resolutely ignored: did I really think he was that much of a fool? – and walked forward along the track that led out of the opposite side of the clearing. After advancing two or three yards, I paused to listen, but the only sounds were the sighing of the breeze through the leaves, the faint, barely audible rustling of grasses and the twittering of birds among the branches.

A sudden rush of wings made me start, as one of the birds flew low overhead. I called out, ‘Hello! Is anybody there?’ But it was a stupid question, and silence was the only answer. As I had realized once before, endless acres of woodland stretched all about me; and for anyone who was familiar with its secret paths and tracks, overgrown and invisible to the eye of a stranger, remaining concealed would pose no problem. I was wasting my time and possibly endangering my person, as well. It was time I returned to the Lilywhites’ cottage. If I had signally failed in what I had come here to do – to sift through what I knew of Eris Lilywhite’s disappearance – I had at least solved one mystery to my satisfaction, even if the solution was of no benefit to anyone living.

I retrieved Hercules from under his bush and tucked him beneath one arm. He remained unmoved by my accusation of cowardice, licking my face in slavering subservience as we started downhill, across the pasture, heading for the smallholding near the bottom of the slope. The winter day was fading, the darkening sky riven by a shaft of light as cold as steel. It was also beginning to rain, the drops slanting against my face like splinters of ice, yet another reminder that winter had not yet given up the ghost, even though tomorrow, Sunday, would be the last day of February. And the feast of Saint Patrick was only seventeen days away. I had to leave Lower Brockhurst soon or break my promise to Adela.

I tilted my head, looking up at the white sword of light drawn through the leaden clouds, and demanded irritably, ‘Well, Lord? What is it you want me to do? Am I performing Your work here? Or are You simply playing at cat and mouse? Is Eris Lilywhite safe and sound somewhere, while You’re just laughing up Your sleeve to see me running around in circles? I mean, I’d like to keep my word to my wife, if it’s all the same to You. So for pity’s sake, give me a sign!’

But, of course, nothing dramatic happened. Why did I think it might? God doesn’t work like that. Not ever. You have to wait, slowly and painstakingly piecing together the scraps of information that He condescends to give you until, finally, you can see the picture, whole and entire.

The bright day had settled into a stormy night of wind and driving rain. The Mistress Lilywhites and I huddled close to a fire where the logs crackled and sparked across the red-hot sods of peat, while the wind moaned and whistled through the hole in the blackened roof, blowing showers of woodash into our laps and faces, causing our eyes to water and smart.

The two women had received news of the invalids’ condition when they had visited the village during the course of the afternoon, in order, so they said, to purchase flour from the mill. Their information was therefore more recent than mine, and they were able to reassure me that both Lambert and Sir Anselm were making good progress. Indeed, the priest insisted that he would able to conduct all services the following day and also to hear confessions first thing in the morning. Mistress Bush, who was still dancing attendance on him, had pursed her lips and shaken her head doubtfully, but her patient was adamant.

‘And she won’t dent the old man’s determination, once he’s made up his mind,’ said Theresa. ‘Sir Anselm’s as obstinate as they come.’ She added reproachfully, ‘We expected you back by dinnertime, Roger. We didn’t anticipate having to go chasing after the news ourselves.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mother-in-law,’ Maud begged her tartly. ‘The walk did us good. Besides, Master Chapman’s our guest, not our errand boy.’

‘No, no! Dame Theresa’s right,’ I apologized. ‘I should have had the courtesy to call in and tell you what I’d learned. But is there any more news, do you know, of Tom Rawbone? Has he been found yet? Have the village elders organized a posse?’

The older woman shook her head. ‘We’ve heard nothing on either count. Between ourselves, I think the Rawbone family – Ned and his father, to be more precise – have brought pressure to bear on members of the Village Council to let matters rest as they are. Or, at the very least, to delay sending anyone in pursuit until it’s far too late to catch up with Tom. No one’s dead, after all-’ her voice faltered for a moment, thinking of her granddaughter no doubt, but she rallied and went on – ‘and, so long as Tom doesn’t return to Dragonswick, there’s no occasion to make an enemy of Nathaniel. Generally speaking, communities like Lower Brockhurst – isolated, dependent on one another’s goodwill, especially in winter – prefer to keep on speaking terms with their neighbours. Tom’s the one people have it in for. His treatment of Rosamund Bush disgusted them: she’s well liked in the village. And in many ways, they secretly admire the old man for being able, at his time of life, to sneak Eris from under Tom’s nose. They feel it served him right.’

I asked, ‘Do you both believe it was Tom who attacked the miller and Sir Anselm?’

‘Of course!’ Maud exclaimed sharply. ‘What other explanation can there possibly be? He’s run away, hasn’t he? And the mask he wore was discovered in the Rawbones’ undercroft.’

‘But why would he beat up the priest? Lambert I can understand, but Tom seems to have had no grudge against Sir Anselm. At least, none that anyone has mentioned to me.’

Maud shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘To make people ask that very question, I should suppose. To throw dust in their eyes so that, like you, they begin to doubt that it was Tom who assaulted either man.’

Theresa gave a snort of derision.

‘Tom Rawbone hasn’t the brains or the subtlety to think up a plan like that.’ She turned to me. ‘So what are you implying, chapman? That someone else wanted to make people believe that Tom Rawbone was the culprit?’

‘Something like that,’ I admitted.

‘But why choose the priest as his second victim, when there’s no known quarrel between Tom and Sir Anselm?’ She laughed again. ‘It seems to me we’re going round in circles.’

‘Perhaps. Or perhaps the priest knows something he shouldn’t. The beating could have been in the nature of a warning.’

‘I’ve never heard such nonsense!’ Maud’s tone was abrasive. She had never spoken to me in so disrespectful a manner before, and it shook me. ‘You’re making a mystery where none exists, Master Chapman! I’ve no idea why. But I’ll tell you now, for what it’s worth! I hold Tom Rawbone responsible for my daughter’s death.’

‘You do believe that Eris is dead, then?’ I intervened quickly, before Dame Theresa could ask the same question, as she was obviously about to do.

The tears welled up in Maud’s tired eyes, overflowed and spilled slowly down her cheeks.

‘Of course, I believe she’s dead! What sort of a fool do you take me for? Do you really think that she wouldn’t have tried to get in touch with me, during all these months, if she was still alive?’

‘And you say you hold Tom Rawbone responsible for her death?’

Maud took a deep breath and closed her eyes. ‘Who else?’ she asked in a stifled whisper.

‘Well, that’s an admission,’ her mother-in-law remarked with quiet satisfaction. ‘But if that’s what you believe, Maud – what you’ve believed from the very beginning – why are you so set against Master Chapman, here, making enquiries? Oh, don’t bother to deny it! It’s been apparent to me, as it must have been to him, that you’d have preferred it if he hadn’t meddled. You’ve encouraged him from the start to be on his way, to go home to his wife. Why?’

Maud’s eyes flew open again. Still tearful, she looked, in the firelight, like Niobe, the very personification of maternal grief. It was the first time I had seen her display any great emotion about her daughter’s fate.

‘Why?’ she spat at Theresa. ‘Why? Because I’ve come to terms with the idea that Eris is dead. Because I’ve learned to accept it. Because I don’t want to hurt Ned by accusing his brother. Oh, yes! I hold Tom Rawbone responsible for killing my child! If he hadn’t been faithless to Rosamund Bush, if he hadn’t put ideas into Eris’s head about marrying into the Rawbone family, she would never have encouraged Nathaniel. And the whole sorry mess would never have happened.’

‘Wait a moment,’ I expostulated. ‘What exactly are you saying, Mistress? Just now, you spoke as though you believed Tom Rawbone to be your daughter’s flesh-and-blood murderer. But now, it sounds as if you merely regard him as precipitating a situation that might have provoked someone else to kill her.’

‘What does it matter?’ Maud demanded angrily. ‘Whichever way you look at it, Tom’s to blame! Without him, nothing would have happened!’ She burst into noisy sobbing.

Theresa got up from her stool and went to kneel beside her daughter-in-law, putting her arms around her.

‘If you’d give us a moment, chapman,’ she said quietly.

I left them alone, wrapping myself in my cloak and going outside, sheltering from the wind and rain as best I could by flattening myself against the cottage wall. But the front of the building was receiving the brunt of the storm, so I walked round to the back, immediately setting the dogs off barking and the geese cackling, while I mulled over the recent scene indoors. I was almost certain that Maud’s earlier remarks had been intended as an outright condemnation of Tom Rawbone; a naming of him as her daughter’s killer. But she had had second thoughts, modifying her accusation against him from a specific to a general one. I wondered why.

I stared across the cottage palings into the windy darkness beyond. It was difficult to see much, the driving rain blotting out most of the landscape. And yet … Was there something, or someone, moving higher up the slope, on the shoulder of the hill where the Rawbones had their farm? I crossed the muddy yard in a couple of strides to stand beside the fence, screwing up my eyes and peering into the distance until my head ached. But all to no avail: it was impossible to tell if I had seen anything or not.

A gust of wind tore at my cloak, almost whipping it from my shoulders. I made a grab at it, then looked again with even greater intensity than before. It was useless, however. The rain had suddenly increased, blotting out all but the immediate vicinity from view.

Had I seen anything? And if so, what? Nothing more, probably, than a sheep that had strayed and failed to be rounded up for the night making its errant way back to shelter, waiting for someone to hear its bleating and take it in. But the greatest likelihood was that it was nothing more than my imagination, and, on reflection, I decided to keep my fancies to myself. I had no desire to be thought a fool by either of the Mistress Lilywhites.

It seemed to me that I had allowed Maud sufficient time to pull herself together and master her belated outpourings of grief for Eris. If I sounded mean and unfeeling to myself, I could no longer ignore the fact that I was getting soaked to the skin. I returned to the front of the cottage, tapped on the door and, without waiting for a response, went inside.

Dame Theresa rose from her knees beside the younger woman’s stool and nodded in my direction. As for Maud, she now appeared perfectly composed, and only the redness of her eyes indicated that she had recently been weeping.

‘Dear life! Is it raining that hard?’ Theresa, shocked by how wet I was, relieved me of my cloak and urged me closer to the fire. ‘As soon as you’re dry,’ she went on, ‘we’ll go to bed. Maud and I are both extremely tired. There’s a spare chamber-pot under the chopping bench, Master Chapman, if you need it during the night. It’ll save you having to go outside in this dreadful weather.’

It was plain that there was going to be no more discussion of events for that evening. Maud had reverted to her usual taciturn self, and I guessed that Theresa’s conscience was troubling her. She intended, for the moment, to leave her daughter-in-law in peace. I could have prolonged our parley by telling them of my day’s adventures: of the two Roman bowls I had found among Saint Walburga’s plate, and of the conclusions I had drawn from that discovery, the possible solving of an ancient mystery. But I decided, for the time being at any rate, to keep the knowledge to myself. I wasn’t sure why, except that I, too, was tired and possessed by a sudden desire for my bed.

I was suddenly awake, lying on my right side, facing the hearth and the dying embers of the fire. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep, but I reckoned it must have been for some little time, because the wind had dropped and the rain had eased to a steady drumming against the window shutters, together with a faint pattering, like ghostly fingers, on the roof. The storm had blown away to the west, across the Severn into Wales.

I lay still, wondering what had roused me. Whatever it was had been sufficient to jerk me fully conscious without any of that slow and drowsy emergence from sleep that is a part of natural waking. So I continued to lie unmoving on my narrow pallet, my ears straining to distinguish the slightest sound …

Gradually, I realized that what I could hear was not the rain, but someone outside the cottage tapping on the shutters; a slow, cautious, intermittent rapping which, with luck, and trusting to the fact that the other occupants were heavy sleepers, would only awaken the person for whom it was intended.

Hercules, who was lying across my feet, raised his head and growled softly. Hastily I shushed him, at the same time wondering why the Lilywhites’ own two guard dogs had given no warning of a stranger’s approach. The only conclusion I could draw was that whoever it was was known to them.

On the other side of the linen curtain, someone was moving with such careful stealth that I found myself holding my breath. I could hear Theresa snoring in the loud and snuffling way she always did; which meant, as I had already surmised, that it was Maud who was creeping out of bed to answer the summons. I continued to lie as still as possible, unable to see her because I was facing the other way, but fully conscious of the quiet movements behind me that caused little more disturbance than a draught of air passing through the room. I felt Hercules shift restlessly, but to his credit, he made no sound, showing an unaccustomed willingness to obey instructions.

Maud paused momentarily alongside the mattress, probably aware of the dog’s eyes glittering in the darkness. But then, seemingly satisfied that he had not roused me, she continued her delicate progress towards the door. I heard her draw the bolt and lift the latch, letting in a sudden stream of icy air before closing it again behind her. The tapping at the window ceased abruptly.

Carefully, I raised my head from the pillow, but could hear no sound. Who on earth, I wondered, would be paying Maud a visit in the middle of the night? Could this event be connected with my earlier experience outside the cottage, and my conviction that I had seen movement in the neighbourhood of the Rawbones’ farm? Maybe that had not been my imagination, after all.

I eased myself upright from the pallet and tiptoed across to the door, pressing my ear against one of the cracks in the wood. Hercules joined me, sniffing eagerly along the gap at the bottom, where the planking had shrunk away from the threshold.

‘Silence!’ I hissed and, to his great annoyance, returned him to the mattress, where I dared him to follow me a second time. Disgruntled, he lay down, burying his nose between his paws, but watching me, nevertheless, with those big, liquid brown eyes of his.

I went, this time, to the window in the forlorn hope that some faint murmur of sound might penetrate the shutters, but all I could hear was the steady dripping of the rain from the overhanging slates. Short of walking into the yard and catching Maud and her nocturnal visitor red-handed, there was nothing more I could do to satisfy my burning curiosity. And if I did confront them, what excuse could I give? That I needed the privy? But Theresa had forestalled me there, pointing out the benefits of using the chamber-pot on a night of such inclement weather. Besides, I should have to dress first and I doubted I had time for that.

My misgivings were immediately confirmed. While I stood, undecided, I was aware of movement outside the door and a shadow flickering across the gap at the bottom. Maud was coming back. Almost before I knew it, I was stretched out on the pallet, the blanket drawn up anyhow to cover my nakedness.

This time, I was facing away from the hearth, as though I had turned over in my sleep. As Maud passed by, I opened my eyes a slit and could see that the hem of her nightshift was liberally spattered with mud. Her shoes, too, were filthy. She vanished behind the curtain, there was a rustle of movement, then silence. I presumed she had returned to bed without her mother-in-law being any the wiser. Certainly, Theresa’s snoring had never once faltered.

I waited as long as I dared before again easing myself up from the pallet. I wrapped my cloak around me, slid my feet into my boots and padded softly to the door. There, as Maud had done some ten minutes earlier, I slid back the bolt, lifted the latch and, with a warning gesture at Hercules to stay where he was, stepped outside. (And unless you have been out of doors on a wet and windy night in nothing more than a cloak and a pair of boots, let me advise you now not to try it. The chill will cut you to the marrow.)

The yard in front of the cottage was, as I had expected, empty, so I edged my way cautiously around to the back. Both guard dogs, chained to the fence, raised their heads briefly, treating me to a cursory glance, but they were too busy gnawing the meat from a couple of enormous bones to evince any real interest in someone whose smell and shape they had come to recognize during the past four days. The geese might have been a different matter had they not been greedily pecking at the decent sized mound of grain which had been tipped into their pen. Our visitor had come well prepared to silence any warning of his approach.

But whoever he or she was – and why should it not have been a woman? – was long gone. I could see the back gate of the little compound swinging gently on its hinges, as though the last person to pass through had been in too much of a hurry to close it properly. And the gate had been shut, I would swear to it, when I had been in the yard the previous evening.

Just as I had done earlier, I went over to the paling and stared into the darkness, but this time, with the almost total cessation of the rain, I was able to see further. A figure was climbing the slope at a good, round pace in the direction of the Rawbones’ farm; a figure draped in a hooded cloak that billowed around it in the wind, making it impossible for me to make out a specific shape. But there was something about the way in which the figure moved that told me my first assumption had been correct. The length of stride that carried the person uphill at such a rate could only be that of a man.

He had moved too rapidly, was already at too great a distance, for me to go after him, not allowing for the fact that I should first have to dress: and there was no way I could confront a possible adversary in nothing other than a cloak and a pair of boots. The indignity of such attire would have put me at an immediate disadvantage.

I returned indoors as quietly and as circumspectly as I had left, although I half-expected Maud to be waiting for me. Had she been, I would have pleaded that something had wakened me and, as the storm had abated, I preferred to use the outside privy to the chamber-pot. (I cursed myself that I hadn’t thought up that excuse earlier on, but, in mitigation, I must point out that it was the middle of the night and my brain was not at its sparkling best. Nevertheless, I knew I had missed an opportunity to identify the visitor through my slow-wittedness.)

Maud, however, was nowhere to be seen. The linen curtain still hung demurely between the two women and myself as I took off my cloak and boots and once again rolled, teeth chattering, on to the lumpy ticking of the mattress. I invited Hercules to join me and the pallet’s lively colony of fleas under the blanket, which he was nothing loth to do, and I was able to use his bodily warmth to augment my own, like a hot brick wrapped in sacking. In my absence, Theresa’s snoring had grown louder, but I found it difficult to believe that Maud had yet fallen asleep. Surely she must have heard me leave the cottage, but she hadn’t challenged my reason for doing so.

The remaining embers of the fire made a glowing patch of red in the smoky gloom. I turned to face the hearth again, Hercules snuggling with a contented sigh into the crook of my body. Had the night visitor been Tom Rawbone? I wondered. Had he come sneaking back to the farm under cover of darkness? Had that been what I had seen the previous evening while I was loitering in the yard?

But why would he want to visit Maud? She had made it clear to both Theresa and myself that she held him, either directly or indirectly, responsible for her daughter’s disappearance. He must be aware of her hostility. So it was unlikely to be Tom. Ned, then? There seemed, from what different people had told me, to be an enduring friendship between him and Maud, in spite of the fact that she had once rejected him in favour of Gilbert Lilywhite. Ned Rawbone, then, was more likely. But why? What would he possibly have to tell her that could not wait until their next meeting? And that must be at Mass tomorrow morning. No, this morning, for it had to be well past midnight, judging by the progress of the storm …

It was at this point that I must have drifted across the borderline of sleep, for I found myself, still repeating the words ‘well past midnight’, standing beside a giant Nine Men’s Morris board in the main room of the alehouse, now the size of Westminster Palace. On the board were the players, consisting of the Rawbone family – the twins, Nathaniel, Jacquetta, Tom, Ned, Petronelle and Elvina Merryman – Rosamund and her parents, Lambert Miller, Sir Anselm, even Billy Tyrrell and the village whore, Alice Tucker.

Someone I couldn’t see, but who I presumed was the other captain, was saying, ‘It’s your turn, Roger. Come along! You know what you have to do. Line up three of your “morrells” in a straight line, and those three will lead you to Eris. Get on with it, now! You’ve asked for my help, so do as I tell you. And when you’ve discovered the answer, you can go home to Adela. You might even be there by the Feast of Saint Patrick. Come along, Roger! Come along …’