The Brothers of Glastonbury

Chapter Four

Dame Joan earned my undying gratitude by insisting that we must eat before retiring to bed. My stomach had been reminding me for the past half-hour that, except for the cinnamon biscuits and medlars, it had had no sustenance since the honey cakes and milk which Cicely and I had bought at the beekeeper’s cottage. To my great relief, Mark Gildersleeve also admitted to being hungry now that he had rested a while, and suggested that his mother and cousin repair to the kitchen to see what they could forage.

But the practical Dame Joan said that we should all go. ‘If the chapman is to be our guest, it’s better he learns his way around the house as soon as possible.’

So Mark and I followed the women down the twisting stairs to the long passage which led from the front door to the back, past the shop and workroom and out into the garden, now shrouded in darkness. The kitchen, a single-storey building, stood at a right angle to the rest of the house, joined to it at one corner but without, apparently, there being any internal door connecting them. Its shutters stood open to the warm night air, and the candlelight spilled out across the slatted wooden walkway which surrounded it. The soft, contented whinny of a horse told me that Dorabella was comfortably settled for the night in her stable which, I judged, was situated somewhere on the other side of the kitchen.

As we were about to enter, an owl swooped low above our heads, screeching like the spirits of the damned. Cicely gave an echoing cry and clutched my arm, clinging to it longer than was necessary. At least, Mark Gildersleeve seemed to think so, roughly detaching her hand from my sleeve and deploring her stupidity.

‘In God’s name, girl, you’ve seen an owl before! What’s got into you?’

‘Leave the child alone,’ his mother chided him. ‘This business has made us all jumpy and uncertain.’

Inside the kitchen, a sleepy maid was still entertaining the two apprentices, who were nodding over the remains of their meal, plainly more than ready for their beds. Mark dismissed them to their pallets in the workshop, but not before I had had time to acquaint myself with their faces and to distinguish one from the other.

Rob Undershaft was the taller of the two, a stringy boy of some fourteen summers who had outgrown his strength, with bad teeth marring a none-too-ready smile, and pale blue eyes almost hidden beneath a fall of lank, fair hair (the sort of hair my mother always used to describe as ‘straight as a yard of pump water’). John Longbones, despite his name and being about the same age, was nearly a head shorter, but no fatter. His hair was red but, unlike Mark Gildersleeve’s, it was that harsh, uncompromising shade which is almost orange. His hazel eyes blinked a little short-sightedly at the world, and he had the pale skin and easy capacity to blush that afflicts most people of his colouring.

When they had gone, Dame Joan began shooing the maid around the kitchen, chivvying her to set more water on the fire to boil, and to fetch the rest of the cold bacon from the larder. This diminutive creature, however, seemed to stand in no awe of her mistress, grumbling roundly about having to work single-handed since Maud’s departure for her father’s cottage in Bove Town.

‘You let Lydia get away with too much, Mother,’ Mark complained angrily. ‘One of these days she’ll go too far and you’ll have to dismiss her.’

‘Lyddie’s a good girl,’ Mistress Gildersleeve retorted. ‘Let her alone. We understand one another. Besides, I don’t want her leaving me as well.’

‘Why has Maud gone?’ Mark demanded, frowning.

‘Black magic, that’s why!’ And Dame Joan hurriedly crossed herself. ‘The circumstances of Peter’s disappearance unsettled her. And she won’t be the only one to give us the cold shoulder if we don’t be quick and find out what’s happened to him.’

Mark sank on to a stool and rubbed his forehead with fingers that were shaking slightly. Dame Joan, on the other hand, bustling around, cutting collops of cold, fat bacon, pouring out measures of ale and heating them over the fire, setting Lydia to slice bread and unwrap a fresh slab of butter from its cooling dock leaves, seemed temporarily restored to cheerfulness.

It was only later, when we had finished eating and drinking, that she again became distressed; but it was a distress caused more by what their neighbours might be thinking than by any conviction that her elder son was dead. In her heart, it seemed, she was still expecting him to walk through the door at any moment, with some perfectly simple explanation of where he had been for the past four days hovering on his lips.

I could see that Mark was less sure of his brother’s fate, and his mother’s words about black magic had worried him. Whatever his affection for Peter — and I was not yet certain how deep this went — he knew that the business would suffer if a member of his family were tainted by any association, however remote, with sorcery, either as practitioner or victim.

After thinking profoundly for several minutes, he looked across the kitchen table at me. ‘Did you mean what you said, Chapman? Are you willing to stay a while and see what you can discover regarding my brother’s disappearance? It might be better, I agree,’ he went on, turning to address his mother, ‘if Rob, John and I continue to lead as normal a life as possible. If people perceive us to be untroubled, they may think we know more than we do concerning Peter’s whereabouts. Well, Master Chapman? What do you say?’

‘I’m willing,’ I agreed. ‘But, as I told you, I’ve left my pack at Farleigh Castle, expecting to be parted from it for no more than a night. In addition to my wares, it contains my spare shirt and hose. I may therefore have to borrow these articles of clothing from you. Fortunately I have brought my razor and the willow bark I use for cleaning my teeth with me.’ And I patted the pouch fixed to my belt. ‘As for my cudgel, which I left at the livery stable with Barnabas, I shall retrieve that first thing in the morning.’

‘I’m sure Mark will be only too happy to lend you anything you need,’ Dame Joan said firmly before her son could quibble.

Mark hesitated, then grunted his assent and rose to his feet. ‘It’s time everyone was in bed. I’ve been up since dawn and I’m tired.’

‘We’re all tired,’ Cicely told him. She had been silent for the past half-hour, idly toying with the food on her plate, but now she appeared to have recovered her former spirits. Like her aunt, she seemed unable to visualize Peter’s death. At present it was just a game to her; a game which might postpone, for a short while at least, her unwanted marriage. ‘Roger and I have ridden all the way from Farleigh today. You might think of someone besides yourself now and then, cousin.’

Lydia, who was washing the dirty dishes, clattered them loudly as if suggesting that she, too, could do with a little consideration from time to time, and Dame Joan rose from her stool and went to help her. Joan seemed a good-hearted woman and one, I guessed, who had not been born to the creature comforts she now enjoyed — and who, moreover, had not allowed her pride to increase with her rise in status. I warmed to her, and determined to do my utmost to discover what had happened to her son.

Mark, Cicely and I made our way back across the darkened garden to the house, where the lamps and candles were still burning.

‘Leave them,’ Mark instructed. ‘Mother will douse them when she comes in.’ He added angrily, ‘She’ll never get any respect from that girl while she treats her more like a friend than a servant.’

‘She might get love and affection, though,’ Cicely suggested pertly as she preceded us upstairs.

Mark made no answer except to say, ‘You know where you’re sleeping, cousin. Have you unpacked your things?’

‘I shall do so now. I haven’t had time before.’

At the door of her room, Cicely dropped a mocking curtsey and blew us both a kiss. At least, I hoped that it was for both of us, but I could not help suspecting that it was really aimed at me.

I ignored her and followed Mark Gildersleeve into the adjoining bedchamber. It was a pleasant apartment. Its window-shutters were still set wide to the warm, scented darkness, and while Mark lit the wicks of two horn-paned lanterns, I was able to make out that the window itself overlooked the back of the kitchen and Dorabella’s stable. I was also able to determine the bulky, black shape of the neighbouring house.

Turning back into the room, I noticed a substantial clothes chest against one wall, and a good-sized oaken cupboard carved with a pattern of acanthus leaves standing in a corner. The bed, with its blue damask coverlet and rubbed velvet curtains of almost the same colour, dominated the chamber, but it was the bed-head which caught and held my gaze. It was built higher and deeper than most others I’d seen, and between the two bedposts, also decorated with acanthus leaves, were set a variety of small drawers and cupboards.

Mark, who was sitting on the chest pulling off his boots, saw me staring. ‘It was my father’s bed,’ he said, ‘and his father’s and grandfather’s before that.’ He went on in a deliberately flattened tone: ‘He left it to my brother in his will. “To my son Peter, my second-best bed.” This is my half, nearest the wall. You’ll have to take the other.’

I had not realized until that moment that when Dame Joan spoke of the brothers sharing a room, she also meant that they shared a bed. It was a common enough practice and should not have dismayed me as it did, but for some reason I could not fathom I did not relish sleeping with Mark Gildersleeve, and I was relieved to see that a large feather bolster divided the mattress in two.

‘What will happen when Peter and Mistress Cicely are wed?’ I enquired, and was favoured with a wintry smile.

‘Rather, what would have happened, don’t you mean?’ Mark countered. ‘The answer is that I should have been banished to the chamber which my cousin is occupying at present, while she took my place in here. But do you truly believe that they will ever be married now?’

I clambered into bed, having stripped down to my undergarments, and lay back against the pillows, linking my hands behind my head. ‘You feel there’s no hope then of Peter still being alive?’

Mark closed the window, extinguished both lanterns and climbed in beside me. ‘Do you?’ he asked bluntly.

The darkness was absolute, thick and clinging like a fog, the heat suffocating, and I found it difficult to breathe. My heart beat wildly, and it needed all my will-power not to leap out and reopen the shutters. But I forced myself to remain outwardly calm, and gradually the sense of panic faded.

‘Well, do you?’ he demanded, irritated by my silence.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘No, I don’t think I do.’

* * *

Given the close, fetid atmosphere of the room, it was inevitable that, when I did at last fall asleep, I should dream.

As a child I suffered from frequent nightmares, but as I had grown older these were replaced by normal, if unusually vivid, dreams. My mother, to annoy me, had always insisted that they were due to overeating, but I could never bring myself to admit that this was true, and certainly some of them had an almost prophetic quality. Tonight, I dreamt I was standing on that same ridge of ground upon which I had stood that afternoon, where Abel Fairchild had been last Friday, looking down on the roof of the shepherd’s hut below me. Away to my right, on the very lowest slopes of that part of the Mendip Hills, I could make out the Pennards’ house. Someone was descending from the copse into the lower hollow, but his face was averted from me. I knew, however, without being told, that it was Peter Gildersleeve. Then, with the suddenness that one experiences only in dreams, I was standing outside the hut, staring in through the window. But I could see no one inside, although I felt certain that I was not alone. I started to walk round and round the building, searching frantically for this other person, the sweat pouring down my body. And at that moment, a hand reached out and grabbed my shoulder …

‘Wake up, man! Wake up! You’re tossing and turning and groaning fit to wake the whole house!’ Mark was sitting up in bed trying furiously to rouse me, his fingers digging into the top of my arm.

I propped myself up on one elbow, knuckling my eyes with the opposite hand. I realized that I was indeed sweating profusely on account of the heat of the room, so, still somewhat dazed, I pushed back the bed-coverings, swung my feet to the floor and groped my way to the window to fling wide the shutters.

The night air poured in to bathe my hot face, gratefully upturned to the starlit sky and the pale, cold radiance of a three-quarter moon. I stayed thus for several seconds, before a flicker of movement caught my eye, making me turn my head sharply in the direction of Dorabella’s stall.

‘What is it? What have you seen?’ Mark hissed from behind me, and I realized that he, too, had left the bed and followed me over to the window.

‘I thought I saw someone move, over by the stable, but … no, I can’t see anything now. It must have been my imagination.’

‘Let me look!’ He elbowed me aside, leaning as far as he safely could out of the open casement until, at last, he drew his head and shoulders back into the room. ‘Everything seems quiet to me.’

‘I’m probably still half asleep,’ I apologized. ‘The room’s so hot and stuffy. I’ve been dreaming.’

‘So I gathered.’ His tone was dry. ‘You were moaning loud enough to wake the dead.’

‘I’m not used to sleeping so confined.’ But my explanation fell on deaf ears. Mark was busy with thoughts of his own.

‘Stay here,’ he ordered abruptly, pulling on a woollen bed-gown and pushing his feet into a pair of flat leather slippers. ‘I’m just going to make sure that no one’s out there.’

‘Let me come as well,’ I urged, ‘in case there’s any danger.’

‘No.’ His tone brooked no argument. ‘Two of us creeping about the house in the small hours of the morning are more likely to rouse the women, and they’re sufficiently disturbed by this business already.’

I was a guest in his home, and was therefore forced to accede to his wishes, so I had to content myself with resuming my watch at the open window and trying to oversee his safety as best I could from there. After a few moments, during which he must have let himself out through the street door, I saw him turn the right-hand corner of the house and walk towards Dorabella’s stable, which stood alongside the pump and the privy. The mare gave a soft whinny of recognition as he approached, then was silent again. Mark merged with the shadow thrown by the rear wall of the kitchen and vanished behind her stall, his passage marked only by a faint ripple of blackness.

The time seemed endless before he reappeared, but in reality I suppose it was no more than two or three minutes. He glanced up and shook his head, a gesture he repeated, along with a shrug of his shoulders, when he joined me once more in the bedchamber.

‘You were mistaken,’ he said. ‘There’s no one there. You must have dreamt it.’

He insisted on closing the shutters again in spite of my protests, and we both climbed back into bed, the thick feather bolster between us. However, I could tell by his restless tossing as he tried to find a comfortable position that he was now as wide awake as I was.

I rolled on to my back and asked, ‘What do you think your brother was doing on the Pennards’ land?’

‘We buy our sheepskins from them.’ Mark heaved himself over on to his left side so that he was facing me. ‘What’s so strange about that?’

‘But he didn’t go to the house to find Anthony Pennard or either of the sons. Not if we can trust the testimony of Mistress Pennard and the maids, that is.’

There was silence for a moment before Mark said curtly, ‘I see no reason why they should lie.’

‘Maybe not, but people aren’t always as honest as they seem.’ I raised my arms above my head and kicked aside some of the coverings in an effort to keep myself cool. ‘Peter was last seen by Abel Fairchild some distance from the house, so it would appear to be impossible that any of the Pennard household could have had a hand in the way he vanished.’

My companion shivered. ‘What do you think has happened to him?’ he asked, his voice catching in his throat.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you?’

There was no answer for several seconds. Finally Mark admitted, ‘Like you, I’ve no idea.’ He spoke so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. ‘Perhaps … perhaps, after all, my mother’s right, and the Devil has laid him by the heels.’

‘For what reason?’

‘How can I tell?’ His tone sharpened. ‘I have no truck with Old Nick. But my brother is able to read. The monks taught him. Oh, they taught me too, but I was never the scholar that he is. Like my father before me, I know my letters well enough to run the business, to write out a bill or understand an invoice, but Peter reads for pleasure. He buys books.’ Mark’s tone was incredulous.

‘You make the stuff on which they’re written,’ I pointed out. ‘Maybe that explains his interest. All the same, why should the fact that he can read mean that a man is in league with the Devil?’

Mark repeated, more or less, what Dame Joan had said to me the previous evening: ‘Who knows what’s in those books he keeps in the workshop? There’s a chest of them there, full to the brim.’

‘Then, if you’ll permit,’ I suggested, ‘my first task tomorrow morning will be to go through the lot of them and see what they contain.’

‘You can read?’ His surprise was hardly flattering.

‘I was taught by the monks, as you were. If you recall, I told you that at one time I was a novice here in the abbey.’

‘So you did.’ Mark began to settle himself for sleep. ‘I was right. You’re a very unusual chapman.’

‘Perhaps. But do you give me your permission to look at your brother’s books?’

He yawned, suddenly tired. ‘Yes! As you please! You have my blessing and a free hand to do whatever you think necessary. I must open up the shop again tomorrow so that the people of this town can see that everything is normal. Goodnight.’ And he yawned for a second time.

I tried to compose myself in order to snatch what few hours of the night were left to me, and had just succeeded in drifting across the borderline of sleep when Mark Gildersleeve once more shook me awake.

‘What now?’ I murmured irritably.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘and it’s occurred to me that Peter’s attitude towards his books has changed in the past few months.’

I was puzzled, and suddenly fully alert. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Well, he used not to mind who took them out and read them — not that any of us did; Mother can’t read, and neither can Rob or John, and as I’ve said, I wasn’t interested — but he used to encourage all of us to look at the pictures if we wanted to. He even made the attempt once to teach Rob Undershaft his letters. Anyone who came into the shop was welcome to inspect his latest acquisition.’

‘But no longer?’ I prompted when he paused for breath.

‘No, not for some while. I remember that one day I saw him locking the chest, a thing I had never known him do before. When I questioned him as to the reason he flew into a rage and told me to mind my own business. And that was unlike him; Peter was usually a placid man. It took a lot to upset him.’

‘Has he been short-tempered about any other things?’ I asked.

‘Not that I can recollect. No, I’m sure he hasn’t. On the contrary, he’s been … happy … excited, I suppose, is the only way I can describe it. I thought that it was because of his approaching wedding, but he and Cicely have never been that fond of one another. The marriage was arranged years ago by Mother and my aunt Katherine, and I half expected Peter to repudiate the match when he grew older. He didn’t, however…’

Once again, I had to intrude on my companion’s reverie. ‘This excitement, then, that you thought you detected in your brother — it had nothing to do, in your opinion, with Mistress Cicely?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I came to realize after a while that it wasn’t that sort of anticipation. Peter was like … like a child hugging a secret,’ Mark added with a flash of inspiration. ‘Yes, that’s what it was. How stupid I’ve been not to see it before. He had a secret.’ And Mark sat bolt upright in bed, his fingers picking restlessly at the coverlet.

‘And it had to do with his books?’ I suggested.

He turned to peer at me through the darkness. ‘It must’ve done, don’t you think? Why else had he started to lock the chest in the workshop?’

‘You could be right,’ I agreed. ‘Now, lie down again and get some sleep, or neither of us will be good for anything tomorrow. I’ll look at those folios of his first thing in the morning, after breakfast.’

My companion grunted. ‘The chest may still be locked,’ he said, ‘but I think I might know where Peter keeps the key.’