The Lammas Feast

Fourteen

John Overbecks was in the bakehouse, shovelling hot loaves, fresh from his oven, into the basket of one of his hucksters. She was a huge woman, nearly as tall as I was and just as brawny. She had forearms the thickness of young trees and hands that would not have disgraced a fairground wrestler. All in all, she was bigger and stronger than most men I knew, and I reflected that I should not be keen to meet her in a dark alleyway at night. Her hair and skin had the sheen of permanent good health, and when she grinned at me, I saw that she also had nearly perfect teeth.

‘Master Overbecks,’ I said tentatively, still unsure of my reception, ‘I’ve come to ask if Mistress Overbecks has returned home. I trust she’s safe?’

The answer, of course, was self-evident. Had she not been, her husband would not now be going about his normal tasks in the bakery. At the sound of my voice, he paused in the act of stooping once more to the oven and glanced round, an odd expression, half surprise, half contrition, on his face.

‘Roger!’ He straightened, sighing with relief and pressing his free hand into the small of his back. ‘It. . It’s good of you to take the trouble to enquire. Yes, she’s safe enough. She was here when I got home. She said she’d been with Jenny Hodge, and why I didn’t think of that for myself, I shall never know. The truth is, I panicked when I discovered she wasn’t here, and my first thought was to run to Marion.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. ‘We. . We’d had a few words, you see, about that bloody dog. Its constant yapping unnerves me.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. ‘You can hear it now.’ A thin, shrill barking was indeed audible from the upper rooms, and the baker gestured impatiently with his pele. ‘Ethelreda, my dear, close that door for me, if you’d be so kind. Thank you,’ he added courteously as the huckster flicked the heavy wooden house door shut with — I swear — the tip of one finger. ‘That’s better. Well, as I was telling you, Master Chapman, we’d had a few words and it always upsets Jane if she thinks I’m angry with her. So, later, when I couldn’t find her anywhere indoors, I was so frightened, I just couldn’t think properly and went rushing off to consult Sister Jerome. But all’s well that ends well, as they say.’ And he bent again to the oven.

‘I’m very glad Mistress Overbecks has come to no harm,’ I said formally and turned to go.

‘Hold hard a minute, lad, if you will.’ The baker tossed the final two loaves into the huckster’s basket, put down his pele and rubbed the palms of his hands on the sides of his breeches. ‘I want to speak to you, if you’ll spare me the time.’

I loitered by the street door, wondering if I should offer to assist Ethelreda to lift the enormous basket on to her shoulder. But any such gallant gesture would have been wasted: she hoisted it up with contemptuous ease, nodding to us both as she departed.

‘A very strong girl, that,’ I remarked, to break an awkward silence, and the baker nodded.

‘Strong as a horse,’ he agreed. ‘Never had a day’s illness in her life.’ He advanced a step or two towards me and held out his hand. ‘Chapman, I just want to apologize for my behaviour last Friday. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. It was unforgivable of me. I just felt so disappointed for you and for myself. I should have liked you and your family as near neighbours. But, of course, it’s entirely up to you and Mistress Chapman whether or not you want to commit yourself to such a scheme. Am I forgiven?’

I grasped his outstretched hand, feeling ashamed of the suspicions I had entertained concerning his motives. ‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s a blessing.’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, everything’s in a fair way to being settled now. I saw my lawyer and man of business, Master Hulin of Back Street, just this morning and he tells me he knows of several people who might be anxious to buy the property across the street. So that’s all right. Here! You must take some of the children’s favourite buns for their supper.’

I declined regretfully, explaining that Nicholas and Elizabeth were staying with Margaret Walker until the end of the week, whereupon he promised to send the buns by his Redcliffe huckster when she came to collect the bread for her evening round. I thanked him, and after expressing once again my relief at his wife’s safe return, I took my leave, uncomfortably aware that I may have misjudged him. I was beginning to be angry with myself for having allowed Adela and Cicely Ford to influence me.

As I emerged from the bakery, I ran, literally, into Jenny Hodge, as she approached along Saint Mary le Port Street from the general direction of the castle. For a moment, we clung together while we regained our balance, then released each other, laughing. I noticed with some surprise that she had her good clothes on, which she normally only wore on high days and holidays; a grey gown made of what, in those days, we called bysine, a mixture of linen and wool, and her best linen hood, crisply laundered.

‘I can’t stop to gossip, Roger,’ she advised me briskly. ‘I want to get home before the rain comes and spoils my headgear. I think we’re in for a storm at last.’

She was right. While I had been in the bakery, the clouds that I had noticed earlier in the afternoon, as I was descending Saint Michael’s Hill, had all but obscured the sun, and there was a cooler, fresher feel to the air.

‘Oh,’ I remarked, somewhat foolishly, ‘you’re going home, are you? I thought you’d come to see if Jane Overbecks had returned safely.’

Jenny stared at me in perplexity. ‘And why should I do that?’

‘Mistress Overbecks went missing today. When she came back she told her husband she’d been with you.’

The tenter’s wife pursed her lips. ‘Now, why should she say that? I haven’t seen her. I’ve been to Walter Godsmark’s funeral. Not that I had any time for the great bully, you understand, but I feel sorry for Goody Godsmark. She’s no one else.’

‘So. . You haven’t seen Jane Overbecks all day?’

‘I told you! No!’ The first drops of rain pattered on to the cobbles, and Jenny let out a squawk. ‘All the hours I took starching this hood!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’ll be ruined and I’ll have to do it all over again. That’s your fault, Roger, for keeping me talking.’ And she turned the corner, setting off at a smart pace down High Street.

I started walking along with her, moderating my stride to her small, quick steps.

‘But why would Jane Overbecks say she was with you when she wasn’t?’ I demanded.

The raindrops were getting bigger and more frequent. I took off my own hood and flung the garment over Jenny’s to protect it. Even so, its starched perfection had begun to wilt in the damp.

Answering my question, my companion replied with some venom, unusual in one naturally so sweet-natured, ‘Because the girl’s a congenital liar, that’s why.’ We hurried towards Bristol Bridge and the shelter of the overhanging shops and houses. Jenny continued on a less sour note, ‘To be fair, I don’t think she realizes that lying is sinful. Indeed, I don’t think Jane has much sense of the difference between right and wrong at all. She’s just never been taught it. She’s queer in the head, that’s obvious, even to Master Overbecks himself. But what John doesn’t accept is that she’s cunning and devious as well. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could see her, and neither would Burl.’

It was now raining heavily. There was a flash of lightning, followed almost at once by a clap of thunder, and we took refuge against a shop wall, beneath an upper-storey window.

‘What does Dick think of her?’ I asked.

Dick’s mother snorted. ‘Dick doesn’t trouble his head with anything as strenuous as thinking. All he’s concerned about is when his next meal will be on the table. He’s always been a featherhead, unlike Jack.’

I laughed, ignoring the discomfort of water trickling down the back of my neck. ‘I remember them when they were younger,’ I nodded. ‘When I was enquiring into that business of Margaret Walker’s father. Dick always repeated the last few words of everything his brother said, as though he didn’t have any ideas of his own.’

‘And he still hasn’t,’ Jenny agreed, adding, in case she had given me the wrong impression, ‘But I love him dearly.’

‘I never doubted it,’ I told her. ‘He’s a lovable fellow.’

When the rain eased a little, I saw her home to her cottage near Temple Church, received back my soaking hood and refused her pressing invitation to step inside and take a cup of ale before going home to supper. The thunder had moved away, rolling over the distant hills, and the sun was reappearing from behind the clouds, which were now beginning to disperse. I needed to be on my own, to mull things over.

I walked home to Lewin’s Mead deep in thought, hardly conscious of the crowds of people re-emerging from shelter now that the brief summer storm had passed, nor of the gently steaming cobbles and piles of rubbish in the middle of the road. My earlier feelings of guilt concerning Master Overbecks were swamped by relief that I had, after all, listened to Adela’s and Cicely Ford’s advice and refused his offer of accommodation. He may well have intended no harm towards me or mine, but after talking to Jenny Hodge, all my misgivings about his wife had been revived. It struck me forcibly that John Overbecks did not always know where Jane was or what she was up to; that his control over her was less than I had imagined. Where, for instance, had she been today, and what had she been doing during the hours when she claimed to have been with Jenny? Did she often manage to slip away, sometimes without him noticing her absence? Had there been other occasions when the baker had thought her safely in Jenny’s company, when she had really been about business of her own? But what business? Jenny had called her cunning and devious, ‘queer in the head’. I found myself wondering about the deaths of both Jasper Fairbrother and Walter Godsmark. If they had been blackmailing Jane, neither a knife in the back nor a push into the river was beyond her capability.

I reached home to find the cottage strangely quiet without the two older children, but this blessed peace was shattered as soon as my presence was detected by the dog and the baby. Hercules hurled himself at me, barking like a fiend, while Adam set up a squalling fit to deafen less sensitive ears than mine.

‘They were both asleep. You’ve disturbed them,’ Adela accused me, laughing as I tried vainly to detach the dog from my left leg, to which he had taken a sudden and highly embarrassing fancy. ‘He’s pleased to see you,’ she chuckled.

‘I can tell that,’ I snarled. ‘Just help me get rid of him, will you? What’s for supper?’

‘Oyster broth.’ She surveyed my bedraggled appearance with a wifely frown. ‘Your hair’s soaking wet. Why aren’t you wearing your hood?’

While I dried myself and rubbed my head with the linen cloth she threw me, I gave her a rough outline of the events of my afternoon, and then, over my dish of oyster broth, I filled in the details. Adela did her best not to assume an I-told-you-so look, but when I had finished speaking, she could not resist remarking, ‘I hope you’re convinced now that living so close to Jane Overbecks wouldn’t have been a good idea.’

I nodded, but continued eating in silence. I was suffering from a feeling I had often had before; that something had been said or done that day of some significance, but which, at the time, had passed me by, unnoticed. In my mind, I went back over the events of the past ten hours, from my successful, early-morning transactions at the fair to my walk, with the children, to Margaret’s cottage; from my subsequent meeting with Cicely Ford to taking her home and our encounter with Marion Baldock and John Overbecks; from my visit to the bakery to my talk with Jenny Hodge. But none of these recollections yielded the hoped-for clue, and I remained as much in the dark as ever. My thoughts did linger over that sense of recognition I had experienced when witnessing the brawl in Horse Street, but nothing came of it and I reached the conclusion that I must, after all, have been mistaken.

I felt suddenly, desperately weary, and when, after our meal, Adela and I took our stools outside to enjoy the evening sunshine, I fell asleep almost at once, my back propped against the cottage wall. But it was an uneasy slumber, punctuated by moments of consciousness when I was aware of the growing rowdyism of the fair as the day’s frenzy reached its height; as the crowds drank themselves into fighting mood and from that into eventual stupor. My dreams were broken and senseless, a jumble of all the events of the past seven days since I had first noticed the stranger disembarking from the Breton ship. In the end, just as Cicely Ford seemed on the point of revealing something vitally important, Hercules renewed his love affair with my left leg, and Adam set up in competition with the raucous din coming from Saint James’s Barton. I awoke with a curse and a mouth as dry as tinder.

‘You’d better go to bed early,’ my wife advised. ‘You’re worn out. Go now. I’ll see to Adam and that wretched dog. You can sleep on Nicholas and Elizabeth’s mattress if you want, then I shan’t disturb you.’

But this was an offer I declined. ‘I’ve no objection to being disturbed by you,’ I informed her, grinning lasciviously. She chased me off to bed.

When I told Adela that I had no objection to being disturbed by her, I certainly didn’t mean being prodded violently in the back in the middle of the night.

‘Whassup? Whassa matter?’ I asked stupidly, roused abruptly from a deep, dreamless sleep and struggling to come to terms with my surroundings.

‘Roger! Wake up!’ my wife’s voice whispered in my ear. ‘Someone’s tapping on the door.’

If I had not been fully conscious before, Hercules’s infuriated charge across my recumbent body, breathing fire and brimstone, would surely have done the trick. I scrambled out of bed, reaching for my cudgel just as Adam, deciding that it must be morning and therefore time for his breakfast, contributed his own cries of protest to the dog’s barking, destroying any chance of lying low in the hope that our caller would despair of waking us. I unhooked my cloak from the peg on the wall, covered my nakedness and opened the door the merest crack, my stick at the ready in case of trouble.

‘Who’s there?’ I asked.

‘It’s Brother Nicodemus from Saint James’s,’ came the reply. And in the soft glow of light afforded by a three-quarter moon and the monk’s horn lantern, I had no difficulty in recognizing the Benedictine robes and tonsured head of one of the priory’s inmates.

‘What is it, Brother?’ I could barely suppress my annoyance. ‘What do you want at this time in the morning?’

The Watch-within-the-walls was just calling two o’clock, echoed almost immediately by the Watch-without-the-walls naming the same hour.

Brother Nicodemus coughed apologetically. ‘Could you come up to the priory, Master Chapman? We have one of the fairground stallholders there. He’s been beaten up in a fight and he’s also very drunk. The point is,’ the monk went on hurriedly as I shifted impatiently, ‘he claims to be a friend of a Roger Chapman of Bristol, although he doesn’t know where the man lives. Forgive me, but you’re the only Roger Chapman I could think of. The man’s name, or so he says, is-’

‘Philip Lamprey!’ I interrupted, suddenly realizing whose face it was that I had recognized in Horse Street the previous afternoon. ‘Of course! That’s who it was!’

Brother Nicodemus breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You do know him, then? That’s a blessing! Father Prior says, if you are the man, could you possibly come and take Master Lamprey away? He’s made his way into the church, you see, and positively refuses to budge until we find you. He’s being very obstreperous and noisy. Vigils is due to begin at any moment, but we can’t hold the service with Master Lamprey shouting and throwing up all over Lord Robert’s tomb. He’s fastened himself to one of the pillars and we can’t move him without resorting to violence, which we should be extremely loath to do.’

‘I’ll come,’ I said, ‘as soon as I’ve dressed. Go back and tell Father Prior I’m on my way. I shan’t be long.’

While I was pulling on my shirt and hose and lacing up my jerkin, I explained the situation to Adela. Practical as always, she said, ‘Bring Philip here. If he doesn’t mind being disturbed by the baby, he can have Nicholas and Elizabeth’s mattress for a night or two.’

I lit a lantern and picked up my cudgel again. ‘It doesn’t sound as if he’s in a fit state to object to anything,’ I retorted grimly. ‘It’s plain that Jeanne isn’t with him, or he wouldn’t be drinking and getting into fights. She must have stayed behind to look after their stall in London.’

It took only a few minutes for me to reach the priory, skirting the fairground, which was now reasonably quiet, with just one or two camp fires around the perimeter flaring in the darkness. The shouting and singing of a particularly bawdy song coming from inside the church was therefore all the more shocking.

Philip, although a sorry spectacle, was, nevertheless, instantly recognizable. He had indeed, as Brother Nicodemus had told me, fastened himself to the tomb of the priory’s founder, Robert of Gloucester. This, as befitted the bastard son of King Henry I, the half-brother of the Empress Matilda and the uncle of King Henry II, was a splendid monument, with a canopy of green jasper supported by six marble pillars. It was to one of these that the battered and disreputable figure of my friend was attached by a length of rope, so cunningly knotted that even he couldn’t remember how to undo it; and, in the end, after much fumbling on both our parts, and a good deal of swearing on his, I had to draw my knife and cut it through.

‘Roger, ol’ friend,’ Philip muttered, falling on my neck and clinging on for dear life as his legs gave out beneath him. ‘Goo’ t’see you again.’

‘Wish I could say the same,’ I answered shortly, as he was sick all down my tunic. ‘Come on! I’m taking you home to Adela.’

I had to carry him to Lewin’s Mead slung across my shoulder, thanking heaven that he was a slight man who weighed very little for his age and strength. He was out cold by the time I reached the cottage, and the next hour or so was spent in cleaning up both him and me and tucking his inert form between the sheets of the children’s bed. Brother Nicodemus, who had insisted on accompanying me — largely, I suspected, because it was far more interesting than the repetition of a service he knew like the back of his hand — proved himself adept at nursing Adam to sleep and soothing Hercules, who had at first taken violent exception to him, trying to bite his ankles or any other part of his anatomy that offered itself. But once the monk had shown himself a friend, the dog did nothing worse than chew his sandal straps and lick his dirty feet.

At last, shortly before dawn, with the watch shouting four in the morning, Brother Nicodemus took his leave, while Adela and I fell into bed, exhausted by our labours and with my wife moaning over the pile of extra washing with which she had been burdened. When we woke again, it was fully daylight. We had overslept, worn out by the events of the night, and I guessed that the world had been up and about its business for several hours. Adam was screaming to be changed and, as usual, fed, the dog was lying on my chest, gazing soulfully into my face, and Philip was sitting up in bed, holding his head and groaning.

Our uninvited guest pushed aside a bowl of oatmeal and shuddered at the sight of my pickled herring.

‘Just a cup of hot water, that’s all I need,’ he begged Adela.

‘And all you deserve,’ I admonished him. ‘What Jeanne will say when she hears of your behaviour, I dread to think.’

‘And who’s going to tell her? You?’ Philip demanded loudly, then wished he hadn’t, nursing his head and retching.

Adela fetched him a bucket, her face registering all the disapproval she was feeling, but refused to put into words. Philip gave a weak smile of thanks and repaid her by refraining from actually being sick.

I relented. ‘All right. I promise she won’t hear a word from me when next we meet up. But for goodness’ sake, man, pull yourself together and stop brawling with the other stallholders. They’re doing you no harm.’

‘All those north-country nobodies,’ was the truculent answer. ‘Think they’re as good as Londoners! They’re not! Got to be taught a lesson!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ I exclaimed in exasperation. ‘Is that what it’s all about? You ought to be ashamed of yourself! I thought Bristol men were bad enough, believing themselves to be God’s special gift to the world. Now, it seems that Londoners are worse.’

He had the grace to look a little ashamed of himself, fingering his right eye, which was swollen and bloodshot. Adela rose and went to her medicine shelf at the back of the cottage, returning with a flask of lotion made from the crushed leaves of the houseleek, which she placed in front of him, together with a bowl.

‘Bathe your eye with that,’ she instructed our guest. ‘It’ll soothe it. And you’d better have some of this for your stomach.’ From a small pot, she spooned a mixture of limestone and chalk into a beaker and then mixed it with water from the jug. ‘Drink it!’ she ordered, as Philip grimaced.

I could not suppress a shudder of sympathy. She had administered it to me on several occasions when my belly had been disturbed, and it was vile. If Philip had been married to my wife, he would never voluntarily have risked an upset stomach.

‘You’ll stay with us for a few days,’ I said. ‘At least, until Friday, when our two elder children return from their grandmother’s.’

But Philip, trusting soul, had just swallowed a hearty mouthful of the lime and chalk concoction, and was spluttering and coughing as though he were about to vomit. When at last he recovered, he shook his head and said, ‘No thanks. If I’m going to be murdered, I’d rather take my chance at the fair than be poisoned by you and your goodwife here. No offence, Adela, my love, and don’t think I’m not grateful for all you’ve done for me! And now I know where you live, Roger, I’ll certainly come to see you both again before the fair is over. I’d have done so before this if I’d realized your cottage was so near at hand.’

‘And we’d certainly have visited your stall if we’d known you were in Bristol.’ I clapped him on the back, making him wince and raise a hand to his throbbing head. ‘Whereabouts are you?’

‘Prime site,’ he boasted. ‘Next to the priory gate. Some very good stock, I can assure you. Jeanne sorted it out herself. Some of the clothes are nearly new. You and Adela could set yourselves and the children up for the winter at extremely reasonable prices.’

‘We’ll see what you have,’ I promised. ‘If Jeanne really did make the selection-’

I was interrupted by a knock at the door. This was not the timid rapping of Brother Nicodemus or the tentative, almost apologetic tapping of a neighbour, but a loud, self-confident, self-assertive thump undoubtedly made by somebody’s not inconsiderable fist. Adela, who had turned her back on Philip Lamprey in order to feed Adam, glanced over her shoulder in surprise. Hercules, it goes without saying, promptly went berserk, clawing at the door and barking fit to burst.

‘For God’s sake, shut the bloody dog up!’ our guest entreated, clutching once more at his aching head.

I moved Hercules unceremoniously out of the way, unbolting and unlatching the door before swinging it open. The sight of Richard Manifold, flanked by Jack Gload and Peter Littleman, standing four-square on my doorstep, did not altogether surprise me — the self-important knocking, if it had heralded anything, had heralded officialdom — but what he could want at this hour of the morning, advanced though it admittedly was, was beyond me.

I was about to invite him and his henchmen inside, but he stopped me by laying a hand on my shoulder.

‘Roger Chapman,’ he said. ‘You are under arrest for the murder of Dame Cicely Ford.’