The Holy Innocents

Chapter Ten

The clatter and hubbub of the ale-room was growing less as the dockers gradually returned to work, leaving only the sailors to while away the rest of the afternoon with drink and sleep before going aboard their now cargoless vessels to spend the night. Tomorrow, the empty holds would be loaded with fresh merchandise, and the following morning, the vessels would weigh anchor for Brittany or Spain or Ireland or wherever else they happened to be bound.

At Jack Carter’s instigation, the landlord refilled our cups, before going to the assistance of his pot-boy who was having difficulty fixing a tap to a new cask of ale. I watched absentmindedly for a moment or two, then turned my head towards my companion.

‘What was she singing?’

‘What was who singing?’ Jack’s attention had plainly strayed during the last few minutes.

‘Mary Skelton. You said you heard her singing while you were bringing Mistress Harbourne’s box downstairs.’

‘Oh, you’re back at that, are you? Yes, I heard the girl, but what she was singing, I couldn’t tell you. A pretty, clear, high-pitched voice she had, but I’ve no ear for music, chapman, and can’t tell one tune from another.’

I murmured sympathetically, being afflicted with the same lack myself, as my fellow novices at Glastonbury used to complain whenever I chanted too loudly during a service.

Nevertheless, I urged, ‘Can’t you recall even a snatch of the words?’

The carter rubbed his chin, already faintly shadowed with black stubble.

‘You’re asking too much of me,’ he complained. ‘I tell you, I’ve difficulty holding a song in my head for three minutes, let alone three months! Oh well, if it’s important to you,’ he added good-naturedly, ‘I’ll see if I can remember something.’ He placed his elbows on the table and cupped his chin in his hands, frowning in fierce concentration. After perhaps a minute, he uttered, ‘I think… Yes, I’m almost sure it was a lullaby.’ He nodded his head vigorously. ‘It was. I recollect a refrain of lollay, lollay, lullow.’

He hummed a few tuneless notes which I could not identify, nor was I any more successful when he whistled them. And there were too many lullabies to soothe sleepless babes for me to be able to guess. Furthermore, did it really matter what Mary Skelton had been singing that January morning? The strange thing was that the child had been capable of singing at all after being at the centre of such a terrible quarrel between her stepfather, herself and her brother, and then between her stepfather and her nurse. Yet Grizelda had told me that both children were playing calmly by the time she left, as though the affair no longer concerned them. Why? What was in their minds? Had they already decided on some desperate course of action before the angry exchange with Eudo Colet took place? Had they deliberately provoked him to a fight for reasons of their own?

There were too many as yet insoluble questions, but Bridget Praule and Agatha Tenter might be able to supply some of the answers. I should be on my way. I finished my ale and rose to my feet.

‘You’re not going?’ Jack Carter demanded, aggrieved. ‘There’s time for another shout before I need collect my next load from the sawmill.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but the afternoon is already advanced. Which did you say was Dame Praule’s cottage?’ That made him laugh, dispersing his ill-humour.

‘Never tell me you’re going to beard Granny Praule in her den?’ he guffawed. ‘She’ll eat a good-looking young fellow like you alive. You’d never think it to see her now, but she was the prettiest girl in these parts, and for miles around, when she was in her prime. I can remember my father saying that when he was a lad, she was the toast of every tavern between here and Plymouth. She finds it hard to forget those days, and to accept that time hasn’t dealt favourably with her. But if you’re set on going, you’ll find her in the last cottage as you go up the hill towards the Lazar House.’ I thanked him, and we parted with mutual goodwill and the promise of seeing one another again before I left Totnes.

The early brightness of the day had dimmed as evening approached. The sun’s radiance was veiled behind a thin, grape-coloured cloud, which spread across the hillside on which the town was built. A trio of gulls, crying desolately, hovered and swooped as they searched for food along the river banks. In the distance, the stockade of the Leper Hospital, which fenced its inmates off from the rest of the world, made it look like some embattled fortress. Which, indeed, I suppose all such places truly are.

Granny Praule’s cottage, the last of four, was crumbling gently into ruin, with a shutter hanging loose from one of its hinges, its thatch badly in need of repair and a gaping hole in one of the walls into which sacking had been stuffed to keep out the draught. The door stood wide to catch the warmth of the day while it lasted. I knocked and entered upon being bidden to do so, the dimness within bringing me to a standstill while my eyes grew accustomed to the contrasting light. Gradually, however, the interior became clear, and I was able to discern that Granny Praule and her granddaughter were provided with only the bare necessities of life, I could not help wondering how Bridget bore with such poverty after the comparative luxury of the Crouchback house.

I was greeted with a cackle of delight, which I would have recognized anywhere after my encounter with Granny Praule yesterday morning.

‘Dang me if it ain’t you again, lad! Come for another kiss, have you? I’ll be only too happy to oblige.’

‘I’ve come for a word with your granddaughter,’ I answered hurriedly, ‘if she’s here.’

A girl rose from the bench at the far end of the room and came towards me. She had been peeling apples and had an apronful of rind, which she tipped out of the open doorway on to the track.

‘It’ll be a bit extra for Tom Lyntott’s pigs when he drives them in from the forest this evening.’

‘Aye, fatten ’era up,’ agreed her grandmother, ‘then maybe Tom’ll give us a leg or a loin for salting, when he kills ’era next Martinmas. That’ll see us nicely through the winter.’ She gnashed her almost toothless gums together. ‘There’s nothing I like better’n a nice bit o’ salted pork. Well, young fellow,’ she added, ‘here’s my granddaughter. What do you want to see her for? I’m very disappointed you’ve not come to see me!’ She gave another cackle. ‘I’d do you a power o’ good, an’ you’d let me. More’n young Bridget ever could. Takes after her father, God rest his soul. A bit too pious for my liking, always on his knees. Couldn’t abide him, if you must know. Nor could my Anne, poor cow, for all she married him. But they managed to produce Bridget between them, though only God and His saints know how.’

Bridget remained unperturbed by these strictures on her parents.

‘Give over, Granny,’ she reproved the older woman calmly. ‘Chapman don’t want to hear all our business.’ She smiled at me. ‘Come and sit up the other end o’ the room. And, Granny, don’t you disturb us.’

‘Thought he’d come to hock me,’ the old woman whined in mock indignation. ‘It’s men’s turn today, chapman,’ she reminded me and screeched like a barn owl.

I escaped to the far end of the cottage, although there was little enough space between us and she could have overheard every word I said, had she been so minded. But she suddenly seemed to abandon all interest in me and, leaning her head against the wall behind her, fell asleep with that special facility of the old and the very young. I sat down beside Bridget Praule on a rough wooden bench drawn up to a table which rocked with each unguarded movement, one of its legs being an inch or so shorter than the other three. Bridget pushed aside her knife and the remaining apples, folded her slender arms on the board and twisted her head to face me.

‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Granny calls you chapman and I’ll take her word for it, but you don’t have a pack with you, so you’ve not come to sell me anything.’

‘I’ve come to ask you some questions,’ I said, ‘and hope that you’ll favour me with some answers, about the disappearance and murder of Andrew and Mary Skelton.’ The thin, childish face looked wary, and I went on quickly, ‘I have the blessing of Mistress Harbourne.’

‘You know Grizelda?’ The pale blue eyes lit with pleasure and the snub little nose wrinkled as she smiled. ‘Are you some distant friend or kinsman come to visit?’ So once again, I recounted the history of yesterday and today, and when I had finished, Bridget sighed.

‘I’m sorry you’re not a member of her kinfolk,’ she said. ‘Grizelda must be lonely with no one of her own. Now that her father and Sir Jasper and Mistress Rosamund are all dead, she’s alone in the world.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Even the children were taken from her. It’s cruel.’ The words became almost inaudible, and some were completely lost. ‘… can God allow it?’ I heard her murmur.

I put one of my big hands over one of her rough and calloused little ones. ‘We have to have faith,’ I answered gently, ‘and put our trust in Heaven.’

She nodded. ‘I know, but sometimes it’s hard.’ She smiled bravely. ‘What is it you want to know?’

‘Anything you can remember about the morning the children disappeared. Take your time. There’s no hurry, and I shall be grateful for the smallest recollection.’

Bridget, becoming aware of her hand still enclosed in mine, blushed and withdrew it before giving her undivided attention to my request. I judged her to have some fifteen or sixteen summers, but she could have been older. She would, I guessed, always look young and immature for her age. There was nothing of her, she was like a little sparrow, with the same brownish colouring and tiny, brittle bones.

‘How long had you been in the Crouchback household?’ I asked, when she seemed not to know how to begin.

‘Oh, it must be four years,’ she said after a good deal of ticking off on her fingers. ‘My mother was alive then, and Mistress Colet was still Lady Skelton. But Sir Jasper was dead. I think he died the year before I went there. My mother was clever with her needle and had done sewing for my lady, and she got me the job when the former girl married and went to live with her husband, over Dartington way.’

‘How many servants did Lady Skelton keep?’

‘Me and Agatha Tenter, the cook, and Mistress Harbourne. I’ve heard my mother say that in Sir Jasper’s time there were two grooms lived in the loft above the outhouses, but Lady Skelton kept only one horse after her father’s death and hired what others she needed from the livery stables near the castle. She also hired one of their stablemen to come in each day to take care of her own mount and tend to its wants.’

‘So you remember the days before Mistress Rosamund married Eudo Colet. Were things very different then?’

Bridget chewed her underlip thoughtfully. ‘It was quieter,’ she volunteered at last. ‘We were a household of women, except of course for Master Andrew, who was too little to count. I suppose,’ she added shrewdly, ‘it was too quiet for my lady, who suddenly went off to London and came back married to Master Colet. Took us all by surprise, that did. Though Grizelda was uneasy, and predicted mischief when Mistress Rosamund didn’t return with Goody Harrison and her husband. Goody Harrison …’

I interrupted quickly. ‘Mistress Harbourne has already explained the circumstances to me. She hated her cousin’s new husband on sight, she tells me.’

Bridget lifted her narrow shoulders. ‘She never had much good to say for him,’ she admitted. ‘Said he was an adventurer, after Mistress Rosamund’s money.’ There was a pause, then Bridget continued, ‘Mistress Harbourne was always kind to me, but I think she was unjust to the master. He was a very fond husband, as far as I could see, and let my lady have her own way in most things. He didn’t object when she said she still wanted to be called Lady Skelton, though most of the townspeople addressed her as Mistress Colet in a nasty, sneering way, as much as to say she’d made her bed and now she could lie in it.’

‘You like Eudo Colet?’ I queried.

Again Bridget hesitated. ‘He didn’t treat me ill,’ she said finally. The pale blue eyes met mine. ‘But no, I didn’t truly like him, though I couldn’t tell you why.’

‘Try,’ I encouraged her.

Bridget stared, a little nonplussed, seeking for words to express what had, up until now, been merely an inchoate feeling. She blurted out at last, ‘He… He had no right to the master’s chair. He was no better than me, than Agatha. He couldn’t read nor write, like Grizelda could. His speech was rough, though he wasn’t from hereabouts. Grizelda spoke true when she said he belonged in the stables or the kitchen.’

They had all resented him, this man of whom they knew nothing, but who was so evidently one of their own kind put in authority over them. And Grizelda, who was his superior in every way, had, understandably, resented him more than the others. I straightened my aching back and eased my cramped legs by stretching them out under the table, before harking back to my original request.

‘Tell me about the morning of the children’s disappearance.’

‘Grizelda had gone to church,’ Bridget said, ‘and I was helping Agatha get the breakfast. Master Colet was still upstairs and so were the children. Things hadn’t been easy in the house since the mistress and her baby died. Master was lost without her. He was still bewildered. Still trying to find his feet, not knowing quite where he was or what to do. Most of all, he didn’t know what to do with Master Andrew and Mistress Mary. He didn’t like them, and they didn’t like him. Played all sorts of pranks on him if they thought they could get away with it. Made his life a misery, they did.’

‘Did they play pranks on everyone?’ I interrupted.

‘Master Andrew, he was very high-spirited, and his sister, she followed where he led. But they didn’t mean any harm. It was just their way and we all put up with it. But the master found it hard. Well, as I was saying, I was helping Agatha with the breakfast, which was being laid in the downstairs parlour. It was bread and milk for the children, cold beef and saffron porridge with honey for the master and Mistress Harbourne, ale and small beer for them all. We’d carried the food across from the kitchen and were just putting it on the table, when we heard the master shouting upstairs. Shouting at the top of his voice, he was. Then Master Andrew started shouting back, and Mistress Mary, she began wafting. But the master just yelled louder and louder until both children were crying, and the noise was something dreadful. I looked at Agatha and she looked at me, neither of us knowing what to do for the best. “Ought I to go up?” she asked, but I said no, not to interfere or we might find ourselves turned out of the house.’

‘Could you hear what Master Colet was shouting about? What was he accusing the children of doing? Or not doing?’

Bridget shook her head. ‘I don’t think it was anything in particular. They were always slow getting dressed if Grizelda wasn’t there to chivvy them along, and the master used to get annoyed if they were unpunctual for meals. I think he saw it as a kind of insult to himself, if they came late to table.’

I nodded. A man unsure of his position, aware that he was mocked behind his back, would be sensitive regarding such matters.

Bridget continued, ‘Then Grizelda came in. As soon as she heard what was going on, she just flew up the stairs without even taking off her cloak and began screaming at the master. They must have moved out of the parlour and into one of the bedchambers, because their voices got fainter. But I did hear her yelling that he was a wicked, hard-hearted man to bedevil two innocent children in such a way, and he answered that she was a harpy who should be tied to the ducking-stool. I can’t remember everything that was said. I couldn’t hear a lot of it. But then, suddenly, it all went quiet.’

‘And after that?’ I prompted.

Bridget shivered and wrapped her thin arms around her body.

‘After that Grizelda came to the top of the stairs and asked me to run as fast as I could for Jack Carter. She was leaving, she said, and needed him to carry her box.’

‘Which you did?’

‘Yes. I ran down to his house in the Foregate without even stopping to put on a cloak or pattens. It was a very cold morning, but I didn’t think about it at the time. I was that upset, I didn’t know properly what I was doing. Jack’s wife lent me a shawl and I rode on the cart coming back.’

‘And when you got home?’

‘Mistress Harbourne was standing at the top of the stairs, all white and shaking. She had her box ready, beside her, and Jack and the stableman lifted it out to the cart.’

‘There were no further exchanges between her and Master Colet?’

Bridget shook her head. ‘The master didn’t come down for breakfast until after she’d gone. And the children didn’t come down at all. The master said they were too upset, but I reckon they did it just to spite him, ’cos I heard one of them singing.’

‘Ah!’ My attention sharpened. ‘Jack Carter said it was Mistress Mary. He heard her, too, but couldn’t recall what she was singing. He thought it was a lullaby, with a refrain of “lollay, lullow”, or some such matter. Can you remember?’

Bridget nodded. ‘But I’m not certain it was Mary who was singing. I thought it was Master Andrew. It sounded more like a boy to me.’

‘But did you know the song?’

‘It was a lullaby Grizelda used to sing them to sleep with. I’ve heard her sing it many times, but I can’t recollect the words.’ Bridget paused, thinking hard. ‘There was a refrain, remember, which began “Lollay, lollay, little child, little child, lollay, lullow…”’ A longer pause ended in a regretful shake of her head. ‘No, the words have gone. I was never any good at learning. Grizelda used to try to teach me my letters, but I can’t hold things in my head.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I reassured her. ‘It’s not important. Go on with your story. You say Master Colet came down to breakfast when Mistress Harbourne had departed? What happened next?’

‘When he’d finished, he said he was going out to see Master Cozin on business. He went upstairs to get his cloak and hat. Agatha had gone back to the kitchen by that time, but I was clearing the table. I heard him talking to the children, asking them if they were sure they didn’t want anything to eat, and heard Master Andrew shout, “We said we didn’t! Leave us alone!” And I heard the latch of the bedchamber door rattle as he banged it shut. Master came down looking very upset, and I can’t say I blamed him. I asked him if I should go up to the children, but he said to get on with my work and let them be. They might be in a better mood when he got back. He wouldn’t be long away. He asked if I knew anyone who might be a suitable nurse for them, now that Mistress Harbourne had gone, and I said I was sure he’d have no difficulty finding someone among the women of the town or the Foregate who would be willing to take on the job.’

‘And then he went out?’

‘Yes. But before he left he called “God be with you” up the stairs, and Mary answered him.’

‘What did she say?’

‘“And with you, too!” I remember being glad, because it showed that one of them, at least, was willing to end the quarrel and not sulk all day’. Tears welled up suddenly in Bridget’s eyes and spilled down the thin cheeks. ‘If only I’d known what they were planning, that I’d never see either of them alive again, I’d have defied the master and gone up to them. The silly, little varmints! Why did they run away?’

‘You do think, then,’ I said quietly, ‘that they escaped and were not, as some people believe, spirited out of the house by witchcraft?’

She shuddered and crossed herself. ‘I… I don’t know,’ she blurted out at last. ‘After the master went, I was in the downstairs parlour, dusting and polishing, from the moment he left until he came back, so they couldn’t have gone that way, of that I am certain. And Agatha was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She must have seen them if they’d quit the house by either the passage door or the bedchamber door opening on to the gallery. The kitchen door was wide open all the while, she says, because of the steam from the cookpots. But, also, the children must have gone through the kitchen if they wished to reach the outer courtyard, and Agatha swears that they didn’t.’

I frowned to myself. Was it not possible that two determined children might have been able to scuttle across the inner courtyard and through the kitchen without being seen, in spite of Agatha Tenter’s being there? A cook, of necessity, is forced to move about while practising her art, there are plates to warm, meat to turn on its spit, herbs to chop, water to boil, spillages to be mopped up, spices to grind with pestle and mortar, and a dozen other distractions almost every five minutes. Could Andrew Skelton and his sister have moved so fleetly and silently, taking advantage of a moment when Agatha’s back was turned, that they had escaped her notice? I sighed. It was possible, but barely so. A person alone in a room can sense almost immediately when a second presence has been added. And if Agatha had not actually glimpsed the children, she would have been conscious of the chill blast of air cutting the room in two when they opened the second door into the outer courtyard.

I turned again to Bridget. ‘i understand that when Master Colet returned, he sent you to fetch the children. But you couldn’t find them.’

The girl started to tremble, and I put my arm about her shoulders for comfort.

‘No,’ she whispered, and a hand crept up to her mouth. ‘At first, of course, when they didn’t answer, I thought they were hiding, playing a game. So I kept calling their names and searching for them. But they weren’t anywhere to be found. They had completely vanished.’