The Christmas Wassail

FOUR

We did not see Margaret Walker until the following day, when she came to take her Christmas dinner with us.

We were all tired after the excitement of the mummers’ arrival, and Adela decreed we must go to bed as soon as supper was finished, especially the children, if we were to be up at midnight for the first of the day’s three Masses. This, the Angel’s Mass, we always celebrated at St Giles’s Church, in Bell Lane, as it was the shortest distance from our house and entailed the minimum of walking at an hour when none of us was at our best. Strangely, the children always seemed fresher than either Adela or myself, and enjoyed the novelty of being abroad at an hour when they were normally tucked up securely in their beds. This year, the newest addition to our family, eleven-month-old Luke, he of the curly hair and ready smile, protested a little at being roused from his first deep sleep, but, as I have already indicated, he was of too sunny a disposition to be disturbed by anything for long, and the sight of all the other people and the flickering candlelight in the church soon restored him to his normal good humour.

St Giles, as I have explained elsewhere in these chronicles, is built on the foundations of the Jewish Synagogue which stood upon the site for a hundred years and more until the first Edward expelled the Jews two centuries ago, and for me, that knowledge has always added something extra to the sanctity of the place — although that was not a sentiment I dared communicate even to Adela, Or, perhaps, especially not to Adela. We managed to push our way to the front of the crowd thronging the nave, so that even Adam could see everything without being picked up, while my wife and I shared the burden of our foster son between us. The figures of the saint — the mentor, so it is claimed, of Charlemagne — and the deer he rescued from King Flavius’s huntsmen had both been newly painted and glowed in the light from the altar candles and wall cressets. Luke was enchanted, clapping his little hands and dribbling with enthusiasm as he tried to express his joy. Walking the short distance back to our house, he bounced up and down in my arms with sheer exuberance.

Adela groaned. ‘He’s never going to settle, and we must be up again at dawn for the Shepherds’ Mass.’ She added, ‘I thought we’d walk up to All Saints.’

The three older children jibbed a bit at that but, like myself, they knew better than to take issue with the decision. There were times, and this was one of them, when once Adela had made up her mind on some matter, it was useless to argue with her. She could be as stubborn as a mule and invariably carried her point. Consequently, after a few hours sleep, we were all to be found trudging wearily up Small Street and crossing Corn Street to All Saints’ Church.

Yet again, the building was full and we were not so lucky this time in our attempts to reach the front of the nave. This, after all, was not our church and the regular worshippers quite rightly resented our efforts to take precedence over them. As a result, we were some way back, not far from the door, so that my attention was distracted by the arrival of every latecomer (and also of every early departure, if it came to that). To my astonishment, among the former was Lady Marvell, who hurried in about ten minutes after the Mass had started, alone except for a young girl who I guessed to be her maid.

The Marvell family naturally attended the great church of St Mary in Redcliffe — or St Mary Redcliffe as it was commonly referred to, as though the saint had a second name — and I was amazed to see Patience appear on this side of the river, at All Saints. That she was by herself was obvious when, after ten minutes or so had gone by, no other member of the family had joined her. Watching her closely, I thought she seemed anxious not to draw attention to herself, lingering at the back of the congregation and keeping her eyes cast down in an attempt to avoid people’s gaze. She was wearing the same fur-trimmed brown velvet cloak as the day before, and kept the hood drawn close about her face. Her whole demeanour seemed to me to be slightly furtive, and I was not entirely surprised to see her slip unobtrusively out of the church before the Mass was finished. The maid had plainly been told to stay where she was and made no move to follow.

Fortunately, Adela had only recently relieved me of Luke, so I was able go in pursuit without my absence being noticed, for a while at least. I was just in time to catch a glimpse of Patience Marvell’s cloak as she turned into Corn Street and caught her up with very little trouble, keeping a dozen or so paces behind her. She appeared to be heading for the Frome quayside, but then suddenly stopped short a few yards before reaching the entrance to Marsh Street. Here, she cast a quick, furtive glance around, withdrawing into the shadow of an adjacent doorway, huddling even further inside the protection of her cloak and looking extremely ill-at-ease. Almost immediately, a man joined her; a man who must have been loitering in the vicinity awaiting her arrival.

I sucked in my breath. Marsh Street! Otherwise known as ‘Little Ireland’! And even though the light was still poor, the winter sun not yet having climbed above the rooftops, I recognized Patience Marvell’s companion and knew whose face it was that I had seen two nights before in the Green Lattis. It belonged to someone with whom I had had dealings once or twice in the past. His name was Briant of Dungarvon and he was an Irish slave trader.

For a moment I felt thoroughly bewildered, then suddenly everything began to fall into place and make sense. There could only be one reason why Lady Marvell was making secret assignations with an Irish slave trader and that was because she wished to have someone illegally transported to Ireland and sold into slavery. My first thought was of Cyprian Marvell, but I quickly rejected him. He was too old to be of any use as a servant and, I guessed, too astute and too resourceful to allow himself to be caught. But his son, James, the next heir to the Marvell fortune after his father, was, from what I had seen of him the previous morning, the sort of arrogant, self-confident young bravo who might easily be flattered into doing something stupid and lured into a trap. And with James removed, Bartholomew, Patience’s son, would be assured of his inheritance when Cyprian died, for I doubted if Joanna Marvell, from my glimpse of her, was young enough to bear more children.

I stood irresolute, not quite believing what I was seeing and unsure what to do. If I brought myself to the conspirators’ attention — and if they had turned their heads and glanced up the street they could have seen me plainly — then that must surely nip in the bud any transaction they were about to make. On the other hand, Briant of Dungarvon knew me, and although in the past our relationship had been one of mutual, if guarded, respect, he was unlikely to thank me for spoiling a lucrative deal. An attempt at retribution would undoubtedly follow. I decided, therefore, that my best course of action was to make myself scarce before I was spotted and tell my tale as soon as possible to Richard Manifold. And if he were unwilling to accept my interpretation of what I had witnessed, I should have to go to Cyprian Marvell himself. I suspected I should have no difficulty in convincing him.

I was just about to withdraw in the direction of All Saints’ Church, desperately hoping to remain unobserved, when the little drama unfolding before me took a totally unexpected turn. Patience Marvell had just handed her companion a purse which she had withdrawn from beneath her cloak — a very weighty purse by the look of it — and was saying something more to him, probably in the way of information which he might find useful. But then, suddenly, he was violently shaking his head and trying to thrust the purse back into her hands. Patience, plainly as astonished as I was, refused to accept it, and from where I was standing, rooted to the spot, I could hear her voice raised on a high, shrill note of enquiry. Her protestations did no good, however, and the Irishman, having flung the purse at her feet, vanished around the corner into Marsh Street without a backward glance.

I waited no longer, and made my way back to the church as quickly as I could, but not quickly enough for my absence to have gone unnoticed by Adela. In answer to her whispered demand to know where I had been, I pleaded an urgent call of nature.

‘Rather a long one,’ she accused me suspiciously, at the same time thrusting Luke into my arms.

I offered no defence. I was too preoccupied trying to interpret what I had just seen. It was apparent — at least it seemed apparent to me — that Briant of Dungarvon had agreed to some transaction with Patience Marvell, the preliminaries of which had probably been argued out two nights ago in the Green Lattis, only to renege inexplicably on the deal at the last moment. But why, I could not begin to guess and, judging by the lady’s expression when she re-entered the church a few minutes later, neither could she. She was looking angry, confused and more than a little frightened and, touching her maid on the arm, left the church again almost at once, as the Shepherds’ Mass was drawing to its close.

I was still pondering the riddle when we arrived home just as the early morning sun burst forth in all its Christmas splendour over Small Street. There was now no hint of snow, the air being crisp and cold and the roofs of the houses sparkling with frost. By this time, Luke was asleep in Adela’s arms and Adam in mine, while the two older children could barely put one foot in front of the other. Indeed, all four were far too tired to eat any breakfast and my wife immediately took them all off to bed so that they could get some much-needed rest before the third and final Mass of the day — the Mass of the Divine Word — for which we had arranged to walk over to Redcliffe and join Margaret Walker at her parish church of St Thomas.

But when, two hours later, we met my former mother-in-law (and Adela’s cousin) outside her cottage door, it was my suggestion that, instead of St Thomas’s, we go only a little further on, to the church of St Mary Redcliffe.

‘Why?’ Margaret demanded bluntly. ‘The children look exhausted, and anyway I’ve arranged to see Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins at Saint Thomas.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘You mean you haven’t already seen them twice this morning? I know you, Mother-in-law. You’re not one to shirk your Christmas worship.’ She looked pleased and flattered, so I pressed home my advantage. ‘I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Marvell family to make sure that they were all present, because Lady Marvell and her maid favoured us at All Saints for the Shepherds’ Mass earlier this morning.’

This was as much news to Adela as it was to her cousin as, in her usual devout way, she had been concentrating too hard on the service to notice what had been going on around her. I mentioned no more of what had happened and what I had witnessed in Corn Street, but I had said enough to intrigue both women and to win their approval of my suggestion. So, in spite of some grumbling from the three older children, we arrived at St Mary’s in good time for the impressive entrance of the entire Marvell family.

Sir George, resplendent in a fur-lined russet velvet cloak over a knee-length tunic of yellow brocade and boots of the very finest Cordovan leather, embroidered gloves clasped in one hand, led the way to places reserved for them at the front of the congregation. The two women were also dressed in their best attire. As befitted their estate, jewels glowed on their fingers, flashed on their wrists and winked among the gauze of their headdresses. Furs and silks gleamed in the candlelight and, from where I was standing, I was able to get a good look at Joanna, Cyprian’s wife. My first impression of a thin-faced woman of about forty, with dark eyes and eyebrows was confirmed, and I could see now the thin-lipped mouth set in a discontented, almost straight line.

Cyprian Marvell was plainly dressed with no ostentation of any kind, but the two younger men more than made up for this lack on his part. Both wore tight, particoloured hose, shoes with pikes so long that they had to be chained around the knees, and tunics so indecently short that the elaborately decorated codpieces were well displayed. I saw a number of elderly ladies hurriedly and modestly avert their eyes as James and Bartholomew passed them by, their velvet cloaks flung well back over their shoulders.

‘Disgusting,’ Margaret Walker hissed to Adela as she forcibly turned Elizabeth’s head away from the interesting spectacle.

But there was still more to come. The Marvell family had scarcely taken their places when there was a fresh disturbance at the main door. It was again thrown open, this time to admit the astonishing figure of Sir George’s older sister, the eighty-five-year-old Drusilla Marvell.

She wore the high, double-horned headdress fashionable many years earlier but no longer, or very rarely, seen. Her cloak, which was held up by a diminutive page boy, was made of rich purple velvet — probably prohibited by the sumptuary laws to all but royalty — and lavishly trimmed with sable. Her face was thin and deeply lined with a sharp beak of a nose and dark, glittering eyes that darted from side to side as her steward, wearing the same red and gold livery as the page boy, forced a passage for her through the interested crowd of worshippers. She leant heavily on an ebony stick.

But it was the quantity of jewels adorning her skinny person that commanded attention. Rubies, sapphires and emeralds sparkled in the candlelight and turned her into a veritable rainbow of colour. Every arthritic finger and both thumbs displayed a magnificent ring of heavily chased gold supporting a gemstone the size of a walnut. Diamonds hung in clusters from her earlobes and encircled her neck and wrists, while the front of her silk gauze gown — most unsuitable for both her age and the winter weather — shimmered with silver medallions. If she had had a herald walking before her crying, ‘This is a woman of very great wealth and importance,’ her message could not have been more plainly delivered.

Her steward having conducted her to the head of the congregation, she ostentatiously ignored her brother and his family, taking up a position immediately opposite where she could look right through them as though they didn’t exist. Whispered details of this highly entertaining comedy were passed from front to back of the assembly and resulted in so much inattention that the priest was forced to reprimand us in no uncertain terms and to remind us that it was Our Lord’s Nativity, one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar.

Sir George, it was reported later, had turned scarlet with mortification and rage, and even, after the service, attempted to remonstrate with his sister. This had been a mistake, giving the lady a chance to show yet more disdain by informing him, through her steward, that she had no wish to bandy words with him.

‘Well, I did enjoy that,’ I remarked as we walked home to Small Street, taking Margaret Walker with us for her Christmas dinner. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

‘I wish I could believe you meant the service,’ Adela reproached me, shifting Luke from one arm to the other.

But Margaret only laughed and agreed with me that it had been worth walking the extra distance to St Mary’s for such a piece of unlooked-for entertainment.

‘Of course, Drusilla Marvell will never forgive her brother,’ she added with a chuckle. ‘If she disliked him before — and I may say that they never got on — she hates him now.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

My former mother-in-law laughed. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she promised.

She was as good as her word, but the excellence of the meal, and doing it justice, delayed the story for some while.

We started with plum porridge followed by the capon, roasted on a spit over the fire earlier that morning, between the Shepherds’ Mass and the Mass of the Divine Word, and kept hot in a box of warm hay. It was, admittedly, a very small bird, but Adela made it stretch amongst seven of us without making it too apparent that her portion was smaller than that of anyone else except Adam. Our son, who has always had an extremely sweet tooth, was far more interested in what was to follow, namely frumenty — he loved the spices and honey mixed with the wheat — and a plate of ‘Yule dolls’. He picked out all the currant ‘eyes’, ‘noses’ and ‘buttons’ before eating the little gingerbread figures themselves. A minced pie apiece rounded off the meal, the sweet and savoury combination of fruit and meat making the perfect ending to a repast which otherwise might have left a cloying taste in the mouth.

By this time the three older children were almost asleep, suffering from the effects of an exhausting morning and more food than they were used to, so Adela drove them all upstairs to take another much-needed rest. Even Adam went without a backward glance. She then put Luke, stuffed with plum porridge, down in the large rocking cradle which I had made for our younger son, and she and Margaret carried it into the parlour while I made the three of us a large jug of ‘lamb’s wool’. This, together with the necessary beakers, I took into the parlour after them, and we settled around a fire of logs and branches gathered by myself some days before from the many trees to be found on the downs above the city.

‘Now, Mother-in-law,’ I said, pouring out the ‘lamb’s wool’, ‘tell us about this quarrel between Dame Drusilla and Sir George.’

‘How do you know all these things, Cousin?’ Adela asked admiringly. She was sitting on the window seat, rocking the cradle with one foot and, when not drinking, keeping her hands busy mending a rent in one of Elizabeth’s gowns. (It has always intrigued me how women manage to do several different things at the same time.)

‘My dear child,’ Margaret laughed, ‘I’ve lived in Redcliffe all my life, as you very well know. You lived there yourself until you married that first husband of yours and went off to Hereford with him — something I never approved of, but we’ll say no more about that. You must know what a hotbed of gossip it is! You can’t sneeze without someone calling round to find out if you’re suffering from a rheum. And Drusilla Marvell has lived there longer than I have. In fact, she’s lived in that old house on the waterfront all her life. She was born there, as was her brother. And after he went away to London and then to fight in the French wars, and her parents died, she just stayed on. She’s a very rich woman, you know. Not only did she inherit money from her father, but an uncle — a brother of her mother’s, I believe — who had no children of his own and was very fond of Drusilla when she was young, left her all his fortune. She’s wealthier than Sir George. Who will get her money when she dies — and that can’t be far off, she’s eighty-five now — is a matter of great conjecture in Redcliffe. The rumour is that she favours Cyprian Marvell’s son, James. Certainly, he seems to be the only member of the family she has any time for.’

I immediately found myself thinking of Lady Marvell’s meeting with Briant of Dungarvon. Had she indeed been making arrangements to have her step-grandson abducted and sold into slavery, as I had conjectured, in the hope that with his disappearance her sister-in-law would be forced to leave her fortune elsewhere? But whatever had been her intention, it had gone awry.

I took a gulp of my ‘lamb’s wool’, Adela’s excellent pear and apple cider warming my throat and belly, and wiped away the froth from the roasted apple with the back of my hand.

I addressed Margaret again. ‘You said that Dame Drusilla and her brother never got on.’

She nodded. ‘That’s true. He’s a great deal younger than she is. She was twelve or thereabouts when George was born and had been the only child until then. But naturally the arrival of the much longed-for son very quickly relegated Drusilla to second place in her parents’ affections. Her resentment of him descended rapidly into dislike and, later, into something more akin to hatred.’

‘Natural enough,’ I said, a remark that earned Adela’s instant disapproval. She believed that you should never give in to the baser instincts of your nature.

Margaret, however, merely nodded. ‘Understandable, I agree. But then, of course, relations improved somewhat between them. When he was grown, George went away and was away for some years. When he eventually came back to Bristol, he was married to his first wife, Lydia Carey, and Cyprian had been born. They didn’t return to the family home on Redcliffe Wharf but settled outside the city in that big house in Clifton Manor, close to the great gorge.

‘Now if my memory serves me aright, old Brewer Marvell died the following year and his wife a few months later, leaving Drusilla the sole occupant of what, for some obscure reason, has always been known as Standard House. When I say “sole occupant”,’ she added, ‘I’m not including the army of servants who attend upon Drusilla. She likes to be pampered and to tyrannize over people.’

‘Why did she never marry?’ I asked. ‘I can’t imagine it was for lack of suitors. Not with a fortune the size of hers.’

‘You’re a cynic,’ Adela told me, pausing in her stitching. ‘Or you pretend to be.’

I laughed but said nothing, merely looking at Margaret, waiting for her reply.

She drank some more of her ‘lamb’s wool’, emptying the beaker and holding it out for me to refill. ‘You’re right, Roger. There were suitors in plenty when she was young, and I understand from Maria Watkins that she was betrothed at least twice. But, mysteriously, these affairs never came to fruition and Drusilla remained a spinster. She seemed content enough.’

‘And her relationship with Sir George?’

‘It was always distant, and she took very little interest either when he was widowed or when he married again. My guess is that she never really forgave him for being born. But there was no open animosity until three years ago when a handsome young cockerel of about your own age came on the scene and laid siege to her.’

‘My age?’ I demanded incredulously. I was thirty-one.

‘Your age,’ Margaret confirmed. ‘Drusilla was by then, even by her own calculations, at least eighty-two and should have known better, but madness set in. Whether or not her brain had softened because of her great age is a matter for speculation, but suddenly she announced she was getting married.’

Adela frowned. ‘I heard nothing of this.’

Margaret chuckled. ‘Hardly surprising, my love. It was all over before the gossip had time to spread to this side of the river. Once Sir George got wind of what was happening, he descended in Jehovian wrath from Clifton and the young man was gone in a cloud of dust. No one knows if he was bought off or simply succumbed to good, old-fashioned threats, but either way he disappeared and has never been seen again. What he had managed to wheedle out of the old lady before he was so summarily dismissed is anybody’s guess, but those few who had contact with him described him as a knowing one, so no doubt he didn’t depart empty-handed.’

‘And Dame Drusilla blames her brother for this destruction of her plans?’

‘Blames him!’ Margaret almost choked over her beaker. ‘Blames him? Word is that she threatened to kill him with her own two hands when she discovered what he had done. She hasn’t spoken to him since, but if necessary addresses him through a third party. And when she found out, after her neighbour, an elderly, childless bachelor, died, that Sir George had bought the house and was moving in next door to her, it was reported that she actually foamed at the mouth and fell down in a fit. It’s probably an exaggeration — but not much of one.’

‘Why did he do it?’ Adela asked, laying aside the mended gown and removing her foot from the cradle’s rocker as Luke was now fast asleep. ‘He must have known that his sister wouldn’t thank him for it.’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Of course he knew. But she is eighty-five now and bound to be getting senile. His conscience may have pricked him. Perhaps he felt she needed caring for. And after the affair of three years ago, maybe he thought he should keep a closer eye on her in case madness seized her again. After all, Sir George has young Bartholomew to provide for as well as Cyprian. He won’t want Drusilla’s fortune falling into anyone’s hands but his own.’ She leant back in her chair — the one usually occupied by Adela, opposite my own — and regarded me shrewdly through half-closed eyes. ‘You’ve suddenly gone broody, Roger. Something’s bothering you. What is it? What do you know?’

‘Know? Why, nothing,’ I denied hastily.

But she wasn’t fooled. ‘There’s something going on in that head of yours,’ she accused me. After a few moments’ silence, she added with a sigh, ‘But you’re not going to tell me, are you?’

‘I was just mulling over what you’ve been telling us,’ I protested feebly. ‘An interesting story.’

She glanced at Adela, looking for support, but my wife was almost asleep, her head fallen forward on her breast, worn out by the exigencies of the morning and lulled by the warmth and the intoxicating effects of the ‘lamb’s wool’.

I leant back in my own chair and smiled sleepily at Margaret. ‘I know nothing,’ I lied, closing my eyes.

She didn’t believe me.

She knew me too well.