The Hanged Man

Chapter Sixteen

I must have exclaimed aloud, because I suddenly realized that the two women were looking inquiringly at me.

'What is it?' Lillis asked, and when I held out the doublet, she came to peer over my shoulder and I could feel her soft breath against my cheek.

'Bloodstains. Look. These faint, rust-coloured marks around the neck. And see here! Others on the shoulders.' Margaret reached across her daughter and took the garment from me, subjecting it to close inspection. 'You're right,' she nodded at last. 'The doublet's been washed and bleached in strong sunlight, but if you look carefully, you can still make out some of the stains. The velvet has lost its colour and is frayed in patches, as though it has been rubbed between two stones.'

Trembling with excitement, I pulled the shirt out of the chest and held it, in its turn, up to the light. At first I thought there was nothing to see, for linen, especially bleached linen, is easy to clean, and stains of any kind can be removed without much trouble. It was Lillis who thought of the rushlight, holding it so that its pale flame illuminated the material from the other side, to show me a faint tidemark of rusty-brown close to the neck-band.

'I–I don't understand,' Margaret faltered. 'These aren't the clothes Father was wearing when he was abducted.

These are the ones he returned home in.'

I sat back on my haunches, frowning, while Lillis folded the doublet and shirt before restoring them to the chest. She closed the lid.

I said slowly, 'We're seeing things wrongly somehow.

There must be a different way of looking at events which would help make sense of this discovery. Your father must have been attacked while he was wearing these clothes.' I suddenly remembered the mysterious horseman seen by Henry Dando, riding the bay. Why did I think that he might have been wearing the apparel now laid away in lavender and musk in Mistress Walker's oaken coffer? Henry Dando had not mentioned an amber doublet, it was true, but there was also a good frieze cloak, lined with squirrel's fur, and on a cold March morning this would undoubtedly have been worn, concealing what was underneath. I had no proof or valid reason for this assumption of mine, but I felt in my bones that I was right. Maybe Henry Dando, without realizing it, had recognized the cloak as well as the horse, if he had seen Edward Herepath wearing it at some time.

'Did you ever show these things to anyone else?' I asked Margaret Walker. 'To Mistress Ford, for example?' 'Not to her, no. It was good of her to visit Father, but she could only bear to stay a few minutes, and I did not wish to burden her with details. Master Herepath could not bring himself to come at all, but he did send soup from his kitchen. Although it was a bitter brew, undrinkable.'

I suspected another motive for Margaret's reticence, her fear that possession of such costly garments might be considered unlawful on her part and the true owner sought.

She had plans, no doubt, to sell them if her fortunes ever became desperate, and I for one did not blame her.

'To anyone at all, then?' I persisted.

'Nick Brimble was the only person. It was he who advised me to say nothing and conceal them.'

I rose to my feet. 'You've committed no wrong that I can see. Someone gave these clothes to your father to wear, therefore they were his by law and now are yours.'

'I told you so, Mother.' Lillis smiled with mocking affection, then turned her attention back to me. 'But what does it all mean?'

I was unexpectedly moved by the trusting, childlike expression on her face; her confident belief that I would be able to explain. I felt as though I were betraying that trust when I shook my head. 'I'm afraid I can't give you an answer at the moment. Maybe I shall be able to find one when I've thought about things more carefully.'

'You need your supper,' Mistress Walker told me briskly. 'Lillis! Draw a mazer of ale from the barrel while get some of the salted eels from the crock. They'll go well with the rest of the oatcakes left over from breakfast.'

As the two women fussed around me, both anxious for my comfort, I felt truly at home for the first time since my enforced stay with the Walkers, and began to think that, after all, I should do well to make the cottage my winter quarters. What was there for me in Wells? My parents were dead and it was long, anyway, since I had lived there.

Boyhood friendships cool with absence, and I had no living kin. And if I was not allowed to sell within Bristol city walls, there were plenty of surrounding villages where I could ply my trade. Besides, if I married Lillis…

I pulled myself up short. This was indeed running before I had learned to walk. I must give myself time to get used to the idea.

I spent a restless night, tossing and turning on my truckle bed, my mind shifting uneasily between my own problems and those of the mystery I had promised to solve. Eventually, however, personal worries sank beneath the greater complexities of William Woodward's disappearance. There was his bloodstained hat fished from the River Frome, and the bloodstained clothes in which he had returned home, five months after he had last been seen alive. Too much blood altogether. In the meantime, a man had been hanged for his murder, even though no body had been found, such had been the general conviction of Robert Herepath's guilt. Yet there was no doubt about the fact that Robert had stolen his brother's money, nor that he had been an unpleasant young man, wild and debt-ridden. Only one person had loved him, apart from his elder brother, and even she had turned against him at the last.

My straw-filled mattress seemed suddenly full of lumps, and I sat up with a silent curse. On the other side of the curtain, Margaret Walker was snoring, and Lillis, I guessed, was also asleep. She had seemed tired after supper, retiring early and giving me a shy, swift peck on the cheek. Happiness at my change of attitude towards her had made her sleepy, and I realized uneasily that she drew her strength from anger and aggression. All the same, I had given my word to teach her her letters, and that at least I would do before finally making a decision about marriage.

In the past, I had sometimes known inspiration to strike in the quiet of the early hours, but that night I was too confused to set my mind in order. There were thoughts just below the surface, like fish glimpsed beneath the ice of a frozen stream, but as yet I was unable to crack the ice to free them. I said my prayers again, repeating the familiar words and phrases to give myself comfort, but finally I added a plea of my own. 'Lord Saviour,' I said, not without a note of severity in my tone — for I have never believed that God demands grovelling sycophancy, whatever the Church might say — 'if you wish me to solve this mystery, you will have to give me a helping hand. It isn't fair to leave everything up to me.' I added a little petulantly: 'I haven't been well, remember!' After that, I lay down once more, curled on to my right side, and was sound asleep within minutes.

I had finished breakfast and was sitting at the table, shaving. Lillis had gone to the dyer's to fetch more wool for her mother, and Mistress Walker herself was at the other end of the table, about to start the day's cooking. She was making black pudding, mixing oatmeal and fat and sheep's blood together in equal proportions. I paused to watch her for a moment or two before removing the last of my beard. I was putting my razor back in my pack when Lillis returned with the laden basket. She gave me her wide cat's grin.

'Black pudding,' she said. 'Good. My favourite.' I pulled on my leather jerkin. 'I'm afraid I shan't be sharing it with you. I'm going away for a few days, to Gloucester.'

'Gloucester?' Margaret Walker looked up, dismayed.

'What do you want to go there for?'

'You've no horse,' Lillis objected.

'I don't need one,' I answered, 'while I've my own two legs. It will only take me two or three days. I know the road. I've walked it more than once. Thirty miles, perhaps, as the crow flies.'

'But why?' Mistress Walker insisted.

I debated for a moment whether or not to tell them, but could see no reason why they should not know. 'I want to find out if Edward Herepath really spent Thursday and Friday night in the city, as he said he did, last March; the night of the Annunciation of Our Lady and the following one. Maybe, even after all this time, someone will remember him.'

'But why should you doubt his word?' Lillis demanded.

'I need to find out if he was speaking the truth,' I answered stubbornly. 'You asked me to unravel this mystery, and that is what I'm trying to do.'

She turned impetuously to Margaret for support. 'Tell him not to go, Mother! He's been ill. The weather's bad. He'll kill himself.'

'I doubt that. Not a great lad like him.' Mistress Walker eyed me levelly. 'Will you be coming back?'

I returned her glance, look for look. 'You have my promise.'

At that, she relaxed, and continued making her black pudding with renewed vigour. 'In that case, you must do as you see fit.' She wiped her hands on her apron. 'You'll need money. You've paid me well over the weeks. Let me return some to you.'

'No,' I said firmly. 'I have a little of my own store left, enough to start me on my way. I shall take my pack and sell as I go. I have been idle far too long.'

'It will delay you,' she argued. 'You will be gone longer than you need.'

'I have given my word to return.' I began fastening the pack on my back. 'You have no cause to be uneasy. But I need to feel the road beneath my feet again; to feel free and not bound by charity; to feel space all around me instead of being confined by city wails.'

I saw the sudden look of comprehension on Margaret Walker's face as she realized that I would never wholly settle down to a life of domesticity; that I was a rover by choice and not of necessity. I had of course told her and Lillis some of my past history, during the evenings when we had been gathered round the fire together, but I think, until that moment, she had not quite accepted that my decision to become a chapman had not, in some way or another, been forced on me by circumstances. It therefore came as a shock to her to discover that wanderlust was in my nature, at its very core.

'Even wanderers over the face of the earth need a place to return to,' I said quietly, arranging my cloak around myself and the pack, until I looked like a monstrous hunchback. I saw that she understood me, and guessed that she would come to terms with things as they were, not as she would like them to be. She was a practical woman who had learned not to expect too much of life.

She wanted a husband for Lillis and grandchildren to dandle on her knee. She had also, I suspected, wanted the comfort of a man's constant presence in the cottage, for she had had to cope too long on her own; but if that was not God's will, she would settle for what she was offered.

Not so her daughter. Lillis threw herself at me and locked her thin arms about my neck. 'You shan't go! I forbid it!' she said fiercely.

I laughed as I looked down into the angry little face so close to mine, lips parted to reveal small, sharp teeth, eyes blazing with fury. I put up my hands and ruthlessly tore hers apart, freeing myself from her clasp. 'I'm going,' I said calmly, 'and neither you nor anyone else can stop me.'

'I will stop you! I will!' She beat with the full force of her strength against my chest. 'You're not to leave me!'

Margaret looked on, a cynical smile twisting her mouth, for she knew already who would win the battle. My strength and height have always given me an unfair advantage, and so it proved then. I simply picked Lillis up and put her to one side as I made for the door, leaving her sobbing with impotence.

Grinning, I went back and, tilting up her small pointed chin, planted a kiss firmly on her lips. They tasted faintly salty. 'You'll see me when you see me,' I told her, 'and not before. But you will see me.' I kissed her once more and then was gone.

I was free. I was an my own.! had escaped the petty tyrannies of the women. There was a spring in my step, in spite of the overcast morning, as I walked across the Frame Bridge and under the arch of Frame Gate into Lewin's Mead. This indeed had once been a meadow, belonging many years ago, or so I had been told, to one of the castle reeves; but dwellings had now encroached on the open space, including some of the outbuildings of the Franciscan friary. It was the fate, even then, of so much of our land, as towns began to spread outside their walls. And nowadays, of course, in this year of Our Lord 1522, towns are stretching their tentacles even further into the countryside, and I can foresee the time when walls will cease to be of any practical use. But everything changes, and I suppose it is only old men, like myself, who regret the past.

From Lewin's Mead I made my way through Silver Street to Magdalen Lane, past the nunnery, which made me think at once of Cicely Ford. My heart lurched a little at the memory of her hand tucked into the crook of my arm and her sweet, gentle face turned confidingly up to mine. But I had seen God at work there; she was not for me nor for any man. I turned into Stony Hill, the path the mysterious horseman had travelled that March morning of last year, and, with St Michael's Church on my left, I climbed steadily in the direction of the windmill, perched on the high ground above the city. Its sails were mining in a freshening breeze, for there is always a wind blowing on the heights surrounding Bristol. I paused for a moment, looking back at the town, at the houses clustering, as they had for centuries, around the confluence of the Frome and the Avon. Then I set my face resolutely nor-nor-east, towards Gloucester.

By nightfall, I had reached only as far as the old Cheap town of Sodbury, where I was able to sell some of my wares in the market-place, and so buy myself a night's lodging at a respectable inn. The next day being Sunday, I attended both the services of Tierce-Sext and None before deciding to wait until the morrow before resuming my journey. I also attended Vespers at the parish church, much to the amusement of the landlord and his wife, who were well aware that my piety had much to do with their beautiful daughter, who was herself a model of religious devotion.

The next morning, however, early, I prised myself away, and with the family's good wishes ringing in my ears, as well as two of the landlady's chicken pasties nestling in my pocket, I took once more to the road. My boots were soon mired with filth from the uneven track, and a sudden flurry of sleet caused me to pull up my hood and wrap my cloak more securely about me. Everything was dank, gloomy and miserable; a passing horseman in a scarlet cloak was the only splash of colour in the landscape.

There were far fewer people travelling in the depth of winter, all those who had no need to sensibly remaining mewed up at home by the fireside. And, as a carelessly driven cart splashed me to the thighs, discomforts I had borne for the past three winters without complaining suddenly seemed an unnecessary penance. Well, Margaret and Lillis Walker were waiting for me…

My journey, in the end, took five days, for I carried my pack into isolated hamlets and villages where the inhabitants were delighted to receive any traveller at that season of the year, and particularly one who was able to replenish the women's store of needles and thread, offer the men a new hunting-knife, and the young girls ribbons for their hair. I could have sold three or four times as much as I had in my pack, but my stock had been low when I set out, and I often cursed myself that I had not replenished it at Bristol dockside before leaving. But I suppose it would have delayed me even more and, as it was, on reaching Gloucester, my purse was as full as it would hold.

It was almost dusk on Thursday as I passed beneath the porch of the West Gate into the still busy street, where the bustle of the day's market was just beginning to wane. I stopped at a haberdasher's, where I bought a fresh pair of hose — the ones I was wearing being soaked through — and a jaunty russet hat which cost me sixpence; then at a pie-stall for my supper. The refilling of my pack, I decided, could wait for the moment, and I went in search of St Oswald's Priory, which I discovered in the shadow of the great cathedral church of St Peter. Here I slept on the floor of the guest hall, with several other travellers who were seeking a night's asylum from the elements, and awoke in the morning to a breakfast of dried fish and oatmeal, a reminder that Friday had come round again. As I doused my head under the pump and tried to hack the beard from my chin with a blunt razor, I thought of Lillis, of warm water and a knife-blade always carefully sharpened. I was missing her; I was missing my bodily comforts. To my amazement, freedom was beginning to pall a little. I was actually looking forward to going… yes, to going home.