The Christmas Wassail

SEVEN

I was just in the act of leaving when a thought struck me and I turned back. ‘I don’t suppose,’ I said, ‘you know anything about the death, on Christmas Day, of an alderman of this city by the name of Robert Trefusis?’

Briant’s face immediately became suffused with blood and his right hand flew to the evil-looking dagger tucked in his belt. ‘Are you accusing me-?’ he began.

‘No, no!’ I exclaimed hastily. ‘I just wondered if there had been any talk along the Backs concerning it.’

Mollified, he shook his head. ‘Never heard of the man until yesterday when chat of a murder went round. I fancy someone did say that he’d been a deputy sheriff, but why he had been killed, nobody seemed to know. Nor was anyone very interested and there were certainly no rumours as to who might have wanted him dead. But if it matters to you, I can ask around, here and at the Wayfarer’s. Someone could have heard a whisper.’

‘Nothing was said of a man named Dee? Or of a woman, I suppose, if it comes to that. Although throat-cutting isn’t usually a woman’s crime.’

Briant snorted. ‘I’ve known women who would cut a throat without a moment’s hesitation. I grant you such creatures are rare, but they’re to be found, nevertheless. I remember one. Dressed like a man, walked like a man, talked like a man. Swore like one, too. She was a member of the Fraternity. Best slaver on either side of the Irish Sea. So it’s not impossible. Unlikely though, I agree. However, as I said, I can make enquiries for you if it’s important.’

I hesitated a moment, then shook my head. ‘I won’t put you to so much trouble. The death is nothing to me. I wasn’t acquainted with the man. But if you should hear anything before you return to Ireland …’

Briant tapped his nose, ‘I’ll let you know, of course. Humility will get word to you one way or another.’

We shook hands once again and I left the ale-house amid a positive flurry of goodwill. Rogues I had never seen in my life before saluted me or flashed a smile from the depths of their overgrown beards. From now on I would most probably be known in ‘Little Ireland’ as ‘that friend of Briant’s’. I could only trust that such a description did not extend beyond the confines of Marsh Street.

Adela, for some reason, did not appear to have noticed my delay in returning home. She had been too busy keeping an eye on Luke who, at eleven months old, was eagerly exploring everything within the orbit of his peculiarly crablike, sideways crawl. Finally, she had done what she used to do with Adam and tied him to the leg of the kitchen table with a length of old linen.

‘He doesn’t like it, but he’ll have to learn to,’ she said firmly as the child raised an indignant, tear-stained face to mine. ‘Did you get all the things for the Twelfth Night cake?’

With a flourish I lined up my purchases along the centre of the table, taking a piece of the sugared lemon peel from its wrapping and handing it to Luke. His tears turned instantly to smiles as he started to suck it, and Hercules promptly bit my ankle to remind me that he, too, had a sweet tooth.

That afternoon I took the older children to see the second of the mummers’ plays as, in a rash moment, I had promised to do. Adela elected to stay at home in order to make her Twelfth Night cake so that the brandy with which it was laced would have plenty of time to soak into the rest of the ingredients. (This Christmas was costing me a fortune.)

‘Don’t forget to put in the bean and the pea,’ Elizabeth instructed before we left the house, ‘or we shan’t have any King and Queen of the Feast.’

‘How long do you think I’ve been making …’ Adela was beginning furiously when I pulled my daughter outside and firmly closed the door behind us. (Even now, as a mature woman, she still has no sense of danger.)

The outer ward of the castle was once more crowded, although not quite as full as it had been the previous day. And the general talk was still of Alderman Trefusis’s murder, but I could sense that interest was beginning, very slightly, to wane. In a day or two other topics would have superseded it in the public mind.

The mummers’ arrival, too, was greeted with a little less warmth than on their first appearance, but this may have been simply that the choice of play was less popular than that of St George. In spite of featuring Old Man Winter and Beelzebub — both parts taken by the elderly couple — and a very realistic fight between a Saracen Knight and a Christian Knight for the love of the inevitable Fair Maid, it was not as humorous a play as yesterday’s. Adam, for one, whined all the way home because he had not seen the Doctor — ‘that funny man’, as he called him. In the end my patience ran out.

‘Just stop moaning, Adam,’ I admonished him. ‘It’s not my fault the mummers didn’t play Saint George and the Dragon again today. You just have to take what you’re given in this life. You’re five. It’s time you accepted that.’

‘Tomorrow,’ announced my stepson, ‘is Childermass. You have to be especially kind to us all day.’ Nicholas could be annoyingly sententious when he wanted to be.

‘Specially kind,’ echoed Adam severely, thrusting out his lower lip.

‘You can’t scold us or be nasty or anything like that,’ said my daughter, adding her mite to the conversation.

It was true that tomorrow, as well as being Sunday, was also Holy Innocents’ Day on which the children slaughtered on the orders of King Herod were remembered. And, if one were not careful, it could also be a time of extreme bad luck. It was, I reflected bitterly, just my sort of day.

We went, next morning, to our customary church of St Giles for the Childermass service, and were early enough to find ourselves places near the front of the nave. All four children were dressed in their best clothes and shone with cleanliness, even Luke honouring the occasion by managing to dribble a little less than usual. At Adela’s behest, I wore one of the two decent suits of clothes bestowed on me a year earlier by our present king when he was Duke of Gloucester. Consequently, in my brown woollen hose and green tunic with its silver-gilt buttons, I already felt miserably overdressed long before I realized that the five mummers had entered the church and were standing next to me.

I had been conscious of some little commotion, a sudden whispering amongst the congregation, but had not bothered to turn my head to discover its cause. Now, however, a certain smell assailed my nostrils; the smell of very old clothes which have been washed, then put away without being properly dried. Glancing to my left, I saw the puckered skin of the older man’s right eye and his right hand with its missing first two fingers raised to scratch his cheek. Next to him stood the old woman and, beyond her, the three younger members of the troupe. All five had obviously taken trouble with their appearance, shabby though it was, and the young woman had tied a knot of red ribbon in her long fair hair which she wore loose under a veil of white lawn (an unconventional headdress for a married woman and one which was causing hushed comment amongst the matrons).

It became apparent why they had pushed their way to the front of the crowd thronging the nave, to stand with the parents and children, when it came time for the latter to be blessed. As each child went forward to receive the priest’s benediction, the girl followed them, thrusting out her swollen belly so that her unborn child would also receive a blessing. And although, in general, mummers were regarded as on a par with rogues and vagabonds and outside respectable society, there was a murmur of approval from the gathering.

I thought that the young woman — whose name I suddenly recollected to be Dorcas — looked extremely pale as she returned to stand beside her husband, so it came as no surprise when, a moment or two later, she gave a queer little sigh and fainted. There was immediate consternation, and several of the women standing close by, including Adela, who pushed Luke unceremoniously into my arms, stepped forward to lend their aid. This was not needed, however, as the husband, who must have been a great deal stronger than he looked, stooped and, picking his wife up as if she had been a featherweight, carried her out of the church, closely followed by the other three mummers.

And closely followed, also, by my wife.

I sighed. I might have known it, I thought: at present, anything and everything to do with babies had Adela’s undivided attention. With a jerk of my head, I indicated that Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam should accompany Luke and myself outside to where Adela was already insisting that the five mummers must return home with us to share our dinner and allow the younger woman to rest.

‘For you can see that the poor child is quite worn out,’ my wife was saying, one arm about the shoulders of the girl, who seemed to be recovering a little, revived by the cold, fresh air. ‘You can’t be very comfortably housed in the castle. The place is falling to bits.’

The old couple demurred, not wanting to be beholden to anyone not of their own kind, but the two younger men, who were plainly anxious concerning Dorcas’s well-being, accepted with alacrity.

‘Our lodgings aren’t what a woman in Dorcas’s condition should have to put up with, and that’s a fact,’ the man who was her brother admitted. ‘Truth is, we’d all be glad of a meal and a rest in a decent home.’

The husband — Tobias Warrener? Was that what he was called? — nodded in agreement. The old woman would have made more difficulties if she could, but the excitement of our children at the prospect of having the mummers actually under their roof put paid to any further argument. We set off without further delay for Small Street.

Fortunately, because it was Christmas we had a greater store of food than usual; in addition to which, Adela was never without a supply of pottage kept in a small iron cauldron and ready to be heated over the fire at any time of the day. Furthermore, the girl, Dorcas, professed herself uninterested in food for the moment and was swept off upstairs by Adela to lie down upon our bed, a proceeding I regarded with the greatest misgiving.

The older woman, who reintroduced herself as Tabitha Warrener, proved to be very handy in the kitchen, skilled at making a little go a long way by adding a bit of this to that, or that to this, ideas over which my wife enthused to me later. (‘I suppose she’s had to skimp and scrape all her life, but she’s certainly a remarkable cook.’) The old man, Ned Chorley, was also worth his weight in gold by keeping our three imps and myself amused with tricks and ‘magic’ in the parlour while the women prepared the food. (I couldn’t help reflecting that Adela wouldn’t approve of such things on a Sunday, but unless one of the children informed her, she would never know. And what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.) Meanwhile, Tobias Warrener and his brother-in-law, Arthur Monkton, sat with Dorcas until they were called downstairs to dinner.

During the meal, Adela and I tried to draw them out about their life in general, but although they were all perfectly willing to recount amusing anecdotes of their life on the road, and although Tabitha was happy to talk about her girlhood in Hampshire, where her father had been head warrener on one of the manors near Southampton and a young Ned Chorley one of his assistants, I couldn’t help feeling that there was a large part of the older couple’s lives that remained veiled in mystery.

(‘You’re imagining things, as usual,’ Adela said tartly when, later, I suggested this to her.)

But I was satisfied I wasn’t. They had both talked perfectly freely about their younger days with her father, but then, suddenly, her parents were dead and she was married with a child. And I remembered distinctly her telling us that she was quite old when her son was born. Indeed, she reckoned she was well past twenty, maybe nearer thirty. So what happened to the years in between?

Tabitha went on to tell us how her ne’er-do-well husband had deserted her shortly after the birth of their only child, never to be seen again; how she had reverted to using the surname of her girlhood; how she had been helped in those dark days by her old friend, Ned Chorley; how her son, who had borne my name, Roger, had married very young ‘a sweet, pretty little maid, but with no strength in her’, who had died when Tobias was born. ‘And poor Roger, he took and died of a broken heart less than a twelvemonth later,’ she concluded. ‘So I set to and reared Tobias all on me own. Not that it were any hardship,’ she added, smiling fondly at her grandson on the other side of our kitchen table. ‘I’d done it once. I could do it again.’

‘And a very good job you done of it, too, my old sweetheart,’ endorsed Ned Chorley. ‘’E’s a credit to you, and that’s the truth.’

‘When did you decide on the mummers’ life?’ I asked.

The old man shrugged. ‘Some twenty years back, maybe. Times were hard. The nobles were still fighting each other. Sometimes we had one king, sometimes another. A man didn’t know where he was. We’ — he jerked his head at Tabitha — ‘were living near Romsey at the time trying to keep body and soul together, selling a few vegetables, taking in washing. And then this troupe o’mummers arrived and every single one o’them died of the plague. Terrible summer for plague, it were.’ Tabitha nodded gravely. ‘So there was their stuff all left with no one to claim it, lying rotting in a field. I says to Tabitha, why not? Shall we try our luck? May make a better living at it than what we’re doing now. She said yes and we’ve been on the road ever since. Young Toby then were only two. He ain’t ever known any other way o’life.’

‘You can read?’ I asked.

‘Grandmother can,’ Tobias answered, spearing a slice of goat’s milk cheese on the end of his knife. ‘She teaches the rest of us our parts. Tried to learn me my letters once,’ he added cheerfully, ‘but I ain’t got no head for words. Not written down, that is. I’m all right at reciting.’

They went on talking for quite a while after that, answering the children’s eager questions as to how certain stunts and tricks were done, while I poured more ale for us all and watched with anxious eyes as the level in the barrel slowly dropped. And it was about that time that I began to reflect that there was a gap, quite a big one, in both Tabitha Warrener’s and Ned Chorley’s life histories that they hadn’t told us about. And neither had mentioned how the latter came to be so maimed, even though he obviously had difficulty using a knife with his right hand. He had seen me looking curiously at him, too, but had offered no explanation.

Not, of course, that it was any of my business. And to be fair, I’d noticed how they all stared curiously around them, obviously wondering how a mere pedlar — for I had told them that much — could afford such a house. So, in the hope of encouraging equal frankness, I briefly recounted how I and my family came to be living in Small Street and the service I had rendered Cicely Ford which had provoked this generous return.

‘You’m clever with your brain, then,’ Ned Chorley remarked admiringly. ‘Can read and write.’

I have no idea what made Adela say what she did next, for she is normally as reticent concerning my achievements as she is about her own.

‘Oh, he’s clever all right.’ She smiled proudly at me. ‘He’s done favours for a lot of people, including our present king. Indeed, he was given a place at the coronation and at the feast afterwards as a reward for his services.’

I’m not sure that any of them really believed her, but they had the good manners to pretend that they did and exclaimed suitably. But the conversation then naturally drifted to the dramatic events of the past year and to the fact that this same time last December no one would have believed that King Edward would be dead by now.

‘And if we had believed it,’ Tabitha said, ‘no one would’ve thought to see the old king’s brother wearing the crown instead of his little son.’

Ned Chorley then proved himself to be a man after my own heart. ‘Well, a good job Richard o’Gloucester did take the crown,’ he said positively. ‘We didn’t want no Woodville brat on the throne and all his family ruling the roost. Like cocks on a dunghill, they’d have been. And a very good king King Richard’s proving to be.’

‘I dunno about that,’ Arthur Monkton demurred. ‘What about this here story that he’s had the boy king and his brother killed?’

Before I could say anything, the old man spluttered, ‘You don’ want t’believe shit like that, lad. That’s a lot o’moonshine, that is.’

‘Then why don’t he produce the boys and say, “Look! Here they are, so stop yer chattering!”?’ demanded the other man.

I waited with bated breath to hear what Ned Chorley’s answer would be, for the question was still troubling me.

‘Strategy!’ he exclaimed scathingly. ‘Strategy, son! Something what you young fellows knows nothing about. He’s a good soldier is our present king. Fighting in the field, he were, long before he were our Toby’s age.’

‘What strategy?’ Monkton scoffed.

Ned stabbed at him across the table with the point of his knife. ‘There’s been one rising already on behalf o’them boys, and if King Richard produces them and says, “Look, here they are!” like what you want him to do, there’ll be another. So, he don’t say nothing.’

‘But if the king says nothing,’ Tobias objected, ‘all them lords as don’t like him and think he ain’t entitled to the throne, they’ll just go and join that there Henry Tudor.’

‘No, they won’t!’ Ned thumped the table in his excitement. ‘’Cos they won’t be certain, neither, that the boys are dead.’ He glanced triumphantly around him. ‘That’s the beauty of it. That’s what I mean by strategy! King Richard’s a soldier to his fingertips. He knows how to keep the enemy guessing. They’m paralysed now, not sure which way to jump. That’s what your true strategist does. He keeps everyone guessing.’

I had to restrain myself from getting up and hugging him. All the same: ‘Where do you think the children are then, Master Chorley?’ I asked, refilling his beaker with a generous measure of ale.

‘Still in the Tower?’ Adela wanted to know.

‘Nah!’ Ned took a drink, then chewed a split fingernail. ‘I reckon as he’s had them moved secretly up to Yorkshire, to one of them big strongholds of his. Middleham. Sheriff Hutton, maybe. Travelling under cover of darkness — and at this time o’year there’s plenty of that — they could be there before anyone got wind o’the move.’

‘And what happens when they grow up?’ Tabitha asked in her practical way. ‘The elder’s twelve already. Nearly a man. They won’t be content to remain in the shadows.’

Ned snorted. ‘King Richard will’ve established himself by then. Everyone’ll know what a good king he is. They won’t want no other.’

Tabitha shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that. Oh, not that he won’t be a good king! He were a good soldier and strategist, as you said. No need to get up in yer high ropes, Ned. But if Saint Peter himself were king, he’d make enemies of someone. There’s always some malcontents wanting a change, no matter how sweet you try to keep them. That there Duke o’Buckingham’s a case in point. And the boys’ whereabouts aren’t going to remain a secret for ever.’

Ned looked irritated, but he knew she was right. ‘That’s for the future,’ he said, brushing her objection aside. ‘He can’t be expected to think of everything right now. He’ll take it one step at a time. What d’you think, Master Chapman? If what your dame says is true, you know His Highness a deal better than the rest of us.’

‘I think you’re probably correct,’ I agreed. ‘In some ways, the king’s a very trusting man. Lets his heart rule his head more than he should. Loyauté me lie is his watchword as well as his motto, which is why I suspect that Buckingham’s betrayal must have hit him hard.’

‘Oh, well, maybe it’ll serve as a warning to him,’ Tabitha said, pushing back her stool and getting to her feet. ‘That were a tasty meal, Mistress Chapman. All the same, we can’t impose on your hospitality any longer. Toby, come upstairs with me and see how Dorcas is going on.’

But when they returned a few minutes later, it was to report that Dorcas was sleeping so soundly they hadn’t wanted to wake her.

‘Quite right,’ said Adela. ‘You must all stay and have supper with us. I’m sure you’ll all be more comfortable here than in that draughty castle.’

I saw the old couple hesitate and glance at one another, refusal in both their faces. But then Tabitha shrugged. ‘That’s very kind of you, mistress. I won’t deny that the accommodation there leaves a lot to be desired. And it’s a cold day. A very cold day.’ She looked at her grandson. ‘Toby ought to take a walk, though, and make sure our gear is safely locked away. We didn’t bargain on being absent for longer than the Mass at Saint Giles and we took no extra precautions.’

‘I’ll go at once,’ the young man said, pulling on the thick frieze coat he had dropped carelessly on the floor on entering the house.

‘Good lad.’ Tabitha nodded her approval. ‘No need to hurry. Dorcas won’t wake for a while yet, I reckon. Sleeping like a babe, she is.’

‘So you three just be quiet and don’t go waking the lady up,’ I charged my children when he had gone, while Adela took Luke on her lap and began feeding him some frumenty.

Adam regarded me beneath lowering brows. ‘It’s Childermass,’ he reminded me. ‘That means we can do as we please.’ Trust him to get the wrong idea!

I was about to remonstrate with him when Ned Chorley seized him by the wrist and, with the other two in tow, bore them all off to the parlour again, promising a whole lot of new tricks they hadn’t yet seen. I saw Adela frown, so, indicating that Arthur Monkton should go with us, I followed them out of the kitchen before she could voice any misgivings.

In spite of the mummer’s sleight of hand, I must at some point have fallen asleep, for I came to with a start as the parlour door opened and Tobias Warrener slipped into the room. I realized that it must be well past noon by the quality of the light filtering through the unshuttered window. Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam were still sitting in a spellbound semicircle at Ned Chorley’s feet, so I went in search of the women, only to bump — literally — into Tabitha Warrener as I stepped out into the hall. She smiled at me before putting her head around the door.

‘Everything all right, Toby?’ she asked.

‘All’s well, Grandmother,’ was the answer. ‘The truth is I don‘t think anyone thinks we have anything worth stealing.’

Tabitha laughed. ‘More’n likely,’ she agreed.

The short afternoon wore away and, after supper, the two women went upstairs again to see how the invalid was faring. Their report was not as encouraging as it might have been.

‘Mistress Warrener is feeling well rested,’ my wife told Tobias, ‘but a little sick and dizzy when she moves her head. I’ll take her up some broth and a sup of ale which should revive her, but I think she should remain here tonight. I can lend her a night-shift and she can sleep with me. Roger, you’ll either have to bed down with the boys or sleep in the parlour in a chair.’

‘Don’t make the poor man do that,’ Ned Chorley protested. ‘He can come back to the castle with us. The bedding’s clean and there’s enough beds to go round. I think they must’ve been expecting a bigger troupe than ours.’

There was no way I could gainsay these arrangements without appearing churlish. Nevertheless, I gave Adela a very speaking look as she passed me on her way upstairs to collect my nightshirt, and I promised myself that I should have something to say when I returned home the following morning on the subject of my wishes being consulted in future before plans were made on my behalf. I fancy Tabitha felt much the same, for on the short walk to the castle she was apologetic.

‘Not what you’re used to, Master Chapman,’ she said more than once.

I assured her, truthfully, that I had slept in many worse places in the course of my travels. And, indeed, I was pleasantly surprised by the room in which I eventually found myself. I had never, so far as I could recall, been in the castle’s inner ward before and was surprised to find it in as great a state of disrepair as the outer ward with crumbling walls and the door into the orchard hanging drunkenly on one hinge. I reflected that there was little point in locking the gates at night, as Dick Manifold had once told me they did, when anyone could simply walk in and out at will through the gaping holes in the masonry.

But, as I say, the building in which the mummers were housed was rain- and windproof with a roof of solid lead tiles, and was afforded additional protection by standing in the lee of the orchard wall. The beds, too, had good straw palliasses and clean, if coarse, linen sheets as well as blankets, and I had to admit to myself that I had not expected such consideration from the city fathers for a group of travelling players. There was, of course, no privacy, but as Tabitha and Ned fell into bed more or less fully clothed, and the two younger men did the same, I followed suit, merely removing my outer garments, tunic and boots. I did think longingly for a moment or two of my own goose feather mattress and Adela’s comforting presence and wonder if I was going to be kept awake by the others’ snores. But within five minutes I was soundlessly and dreamlessly asleep.