The Lammas Feast

Sixteen

Once outside, I untied Hercules and fended off his frantic attempts to jump up and lick my face, as though we had been parted for months instead of minutes. But I did not immediately respond to his efforts to lead me off down Saint Michael’s Hill, towards the tantalizing smells of the butchers’ and hot-pie stalls of the fairground. To his great frustration, I stood staring at the opposite side of the road, picturing the shadowy figure Marion Baldock had seen the previous night, and wondering who he could possibly be. A man of my girth and height! I knew no one amongst my acquaintance who would answer such a description. Small wonder that everyone had leaped to the wrong conclusion, especially after it was discovered that I had the perfect motive. I thanked God devoutly for Philip Lamprey and his fondness for ale. Otherwise, I would most surely now be languishing in prison.

Was this mysterious man Cicely Ford’s murderer? If so, had he also killed the stranger? And did he have any connection with the deaths of Jasper Fairbrother and Walter Godsmark? Four murders now; four murders in eight days. It had been a week ago today that Jasper’s body had been discovered, and still no one seemed to have any idea who had done it, or whether or not it was connected to the three subsequent killings. The chain of events appeared to have started with the arrival of the nameless Breton, but was that really so? Had he truly been a spy? Had he been the Tudor agent that Timothy Plummer had been warned to expect? Or had the genuine man slipped quietly through the net while his pursuers were chasing shadows? There were so many questions still unanswered.

It seemed fairly certain that the dead man was a foreigner — with my own eyes, I had seen him disembark from a Breton ship — but I had never disproved my earlier theory that he might be a Welshman. Nor had I confirmed it, either. In short, four murders had stirred the law to very little activity — although that might change now that Cicely Ford was one of the victims — and my much vaunted powers of deduction to even less.

Hercules growled and, seizing the slack of the rope between his teeth, shook it violently to let me know that he was tired of waiting. He had no patience with all this standing about and staring: he wanted action. I bent and patted his head reassuringly, then began to descend the hill. But grief for Cicely suddenly overwhelmed me, and I found that tears were streaming silently down my face, and that I was quite unaware of the path I was taking. Only Hercules and blind instinct were keeping my feet on the right road.

As we crossed the crowded fairground, I was suddenly seized upon by Philip Lamprey, who darted out from behind his stall. It showed how much my mind was wandering that I had not even noticed he was so close.

‘Roger! What news? Is everything all right? You haven’t been arrested again?’

‘Of course I haven’t been arrested again. Does it look like it?’ I asked irritably. Then, remembering what I owed him, I moderated my tone. ‘You and Brother Nicodemus gave me the perfect alibi.’ I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll never reproach you with your drinking habits again, old friend!’

He shook his head glumly. ‘If only Jeanne would say the same. But it’s an old soldier’s habit, I’m afraid.’ He raised his voice slightly to be heard above the general tumult. ‘Getting drunk kept us from thinking too much about the terrible things we’d seen and done every day. Indeed, very often we couldn’t have carried out what we had to do without being three sheets in the wind.’

His words reminded me of something similar that John Overbecks had said to me quite recently.

‘Were you, by any chance, at the sack of Fougères?’ I asked.

Philip scratched his pockmarked nose. ‘Nah! That was. . when? ’49? I’d only’ve been a youngster at the time. Not more’n about sixteen, I reckon. The Low Countries were my patch. But I’ve heard the sack of this Foogeers — or however you call it — talked about. Nasty old business, by all accounts. It seems the worst of it was, we were supposed to be beating all hell out of the Normans, but had wandered into Brittany by mistake. Leastways, that was the version I heard. Could be wrong, mind you. Probably is. Anyway, old friend, next time I come to Bristol, I shall expect to be invited to stay in this house of yours. A house owner!’ He beamed at me. ‘Whoever would have thought it? Wait until I tell Jeanne of your good fortune! She’ll be as delighted as I am!’

I had no doubt of it: they were a couple who never envied anyone’s luck. But Philip’s mention of the house in Small Street only served to remind me of how it had come into my possession. I felt the tears sting my eyelids again, and used Hercules, who was now yapping furiously at a couple of strays who were roaming the fairground, as an excuse to move on.

‘Leave them alone,’ I instructed him firmly. ‘There, but for the grace of God and my misguided benevolence, go you.’

The intelligent hound lifted his lip and cocked his leg against a convenient whelk stall, before continuing to clear a path for me through the mid-afternoon crush of people visiting the fair. Some of them had spilled over into Lewin’s Mead, where they were engaging in a bout of fisticuffs, making me glad that Adam and Adela had gone to Redcliffe to see Margaret. There was, however, someone standing at the door of our cottage, patiently knocking: Ethelreda the huckster, carrying a basket of bread.

‘There’s no one in,’ I called, approaching her. ‘My wife and children aren’t here.’ I pushed open the door, reflecting that in future, in Small Street, we should have to remember to lock up the house before we left.

‘Your Lammas bread,’ Ethelreda said, producing from the basket on her arm one rose-petal loaf, blush-pink, and one plum loaf, a rich shade of indigo, wrapped carefully in dock leaves to keep them moist. ‘Store ’em out of the sun, Master Overbecks says, and they’ll stay fresh until Saturday. You can pay the master when you see him. It’s bad enough settling up with him for the ordinary bread. I’m not saddling myself with any extra cash.’

‘I’m going that way now,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay him this very afternoon.’

‘There ought to be more like you, Chapman,’ she grinned, swinging her big hips provocatively, as she turned to go. She glanced back over her shoulder and winked. Hercules growled his disapproval. He objected to me being propositioned, even obliquely. I was going to have trouble with that dog, I could tell.

I went into the cottage and put the loaves, still wrapped in their dock leaves, in the earthenware crock that stood at the back of the room, where the sunlight never reached. Then I poured myself a cup of ale and, while I drank it, stood listening to the unaccustomed silence. Soon, within months, maybe, this might become a daily pleasure. I couldn’t recollect much about the Small Street house, and had never seen beyond the ground floor. But I felt sure that, in a gentleman’s residence, there must be more than enough rooms for me to find one which I could call my own, and where I could occasionally be alone without fear of interruption.

Almost as soon as the thought entered my head, I could visualize in my mind’s eye Adela’s faintly mocking smile that told me I was, as usual, being inordinately selfish: for a woman with small children, there was no such thing as solitude. I emptied my cup hurriedly and joined Hercules, who was patiently waiting for me outside the door. Since the storm, the weather had grown a little cooler, but there was still a lot of dust around that made us both sneeze as we set off for the Frome Gate and Bridge.

Some ten minutes later, I entered Master Overbecks’s bakery through the side door, once more leaving Hercules tied up outside, thus avoiding the throng of women milling around the front of the shop. They were, as always, being taken care of by Dick Hodge, while the baker worked in the bakehouse, attending to the batches of fresh loaves, either taking them out or putting them into the ovens.

For the second time in recent days, my meeting with John Overbecks was uncomfortable, but on this occasion, the embarrassment was all his. I had nothing to feel ashamed of.

‘I’ve come to pay for the Lammas loaves,’ I said. ‘Thank you for baking them for us.’ But I didn’t smile and my tone was cool.

‘Roger,’ he pleaded, putting down his pele while he took the money from me, ‘I had no choice but to tell Sergeant Manifold what I knew; what Lawyer Hulin had told me. The news of Mistress Ford’s death was such a terrible shock that I couldn’t think clearly. But even if I had been able to do so, I can’t see how I could have done otherwise when the sergeant confronted me. I was unprepared. “Cicely Ford is dead, murdered, and Sister Jerome tells me you might know a reason to point the finger of guilt at Roger Chapman,” he says, while I was still gathering my wits together.’ The baker looked genuinely distressed and I began to feel less animosity towards him. ‘When I told Marion what Lawyer Hulin had told me, it was in confidence. I didn’t expect her to repeat it without consulting me first.’ He smiled wryly. ‘But then, I don’t suppose Master Hulin expected me to pass it on, either. But there you are. We’re all human, I suppose.’

The hazel eyes which met mine were so full of apology that my heart softened. I gave him credit for having been fond of Cicely Ford and desirous of doing what he could to apprehend her murderer. I would probably have done the same had I stood in his shoes. I still could not bring myself to smile, but I nodded to show that I understood.

John Overbecks breathed a sigh of relief and held out a floury hand.

‘Let me congratulate you, Roger, on your good fortune, however unhappily come by. You didn’t need my help after all, you see. Fate’s stepped in and made you a householder in spite of yourself. And a householder with no strings attached. You’re a very lucky fellow. All right! Don’t fly out at me. I know you’d rather not have inherited the house in these appalling circumstances, but that’s not turned out to be your fault, thank God! Praise be, you had an alibi! Twice lucky! Let me congratulate you yet again.’ His mood sobered. ‘Does Sergeant Manifold have any idea who might have killed that poor girl?’

‘I have neither seen nor spoken to the sergeant since he left us this morning,’ I answered. ‘I have spoken to your sister-in-law, however. I went to pay my last respects to Mistress Ford, and Sister Jerome was sitting with the body.’

‘Ahh. . And what did Marion have to say to you?’

I shrugged. ‘She told me what she had told Richard Manifold, about the man she had seen climbing Saint Michael’s Hill last night; that he had my height and build and that he vanished somewhere in the vicinity of Cicely’s cottage. Do you know of anyone, Master Overbecks, who might look so much like me from a distance?’

The baker regarded me with pursed lips, then shook his head.

‘You’re a distinctive size and shape, Roger. You don’t see many men as tall and as well-built as you. Except,’ he added with sudden inspiration, ‘those two strangers who were here; the two who turned out to be King’s men from London. They were even bigger than you.’

I recollected the brutish pair with a jolt of surprise. So much had happened during the past week that my encounters with them now seemed the stuff of dreams; something recalled from the dim and distant past, instead of events that had taken place only a few days previously. But they had been escorted back to London, in disgrace, by Timothy Plummer — or so, at least, everyone had been led to believe. But supposing one of them had been left behind for some reason, lying low somewhere outside the city, who would be any the wiser? Yet, even if that were so, what possible connection could such a man have with Cicely Ford? What possible connection with her murder?

‘Ha!’ John Overbecks exclaimed in satisfaction. ‘That’s given you something to think about, I can see!’

‘I must admit it has,’ I confessed. ‘No one knows for certain that both men returned to London.’

‘Just what I was thinking.’ The baker slapped me on the back, more friendly than he had been for a while, pleased that he had been able to offer a solution to a problem that might have left a tiny, lingering doubt of my innocence in anyone’s mind.

The house door into the bakery was pushed open and Jane Overbecks came in. I was shocked by the deterioration in her appearance; by the unkempt state of her hair that straggled, unbraided, across her shoulders; by the fact that she was naked above the waist except for the tattered shawl, which she had fastened so loosely that the pin had come undone and was now in danger of scratching her; by the wild expression in her eyes, which darted all around the bakery, as though she was frantically searching for something.

‘The baby!’ she muttered. ‘The baby! Where’s it gone?’

John Overbecks went to her and put his arms around her. He was a man who, for all his pleasant, friendly ways, could sometimes look and sound harsh and impatient. But with his wife, he was always tenderness itself.

‘Hush! Hush, sweetheart.’ He rocked her gently to and fro. ‘The baby’s all right. It’s upstairs somewhere. We’ll find it, don’t you fret.’

Jane shook her head violently and struggled to free herself from his restraining arms.

‘Not that baby!’ She turned to look at him with a sudden shrewdness that was almost shocking in its normality. ‘That’s only a doll. I want the real baby.’ She turned to stare at me. ‘Your baby! It’s your baby I want,’ she said. ‘You used to let me take him for walks, but I haven’t seen him lately. Adam!’ She nodded and gave a wild laugh as she remembered his name.

My blood ran cold and I stared at John Overbecks in alarm.

‘Adam’s gone away for a little while, sweetheart.’ The baker sought for an explanation, then found inspiration in what I had told him the day before about the two older children. ‘He’s gone to stay with his grandmother. When he comes home again, I’m sure Master Chapman will allow you to see him.’

I swallowed, then gave a weak smile. ‘If. . If my wife agrees,’ I promised, knowing full well that, once I had told her of this incident, Adela would never give her consent.

John Overbecks seemed to read my thoughts, because he directed an odd look at me; a look compounded of both understanding and contempt. But then, he was not a father.

‘Come upstairs now, my love,’ he urged. ‘I’ll find your other baby for you.’

The knowingness had left her face, leaving it smooth and blank. She had reverted, in a matter of moments, to the semi-imbecile she had previously appeared to be. These mercurial changes of mood were more disconcerting than almost anything else, and made me extremely thankful that we had not accepted John Overbecks’s offer of the house across the street. The thought of Jane in such close proximity to Adam was terrifying.

‘I’ll bid you good day, then, Roger,’ the baker said, leading his wife, unresisting, towards the staircase. ‘I’ll see you probably on Saturday, if not before, at the Lammas Procession and Feast.’

‘I look forward to seeing all your wonderful creations,’ I answered dutifully, which was true. But I intended to give the Overbecks themselves as wide a berth as possible.

For the second time that day, Hercules flung himself upon me as though he had thought never to set eyes on me again. I could not help feeling flattered, as he intended me to do, but took good care not to show it.

I tugged on the rope. ‘This way,’ I said, heading along Saint Mary le Port Street towards the tangle of alleyways that lay around the castle. Hercules resisted indignantly, having decided that it was time to go home; but finding resistance useless, still dragged on his rope as hard as he could, making progress very nearly impossible. After a hundred yards or so, I bent down, picked him up and tucked him under one arm. He squirmed furiously, but I only laughed.

‘I’m a lot bigger than you are,’ I whispered in his ear, which he twitched angrily, as though a horsefly had stung him. ‘And a great deal stronger. Don’t you forget it!’

At Goody Godsmark’s cottage, I tied him up again before knocking on the door. A quavering voice, fainter and reedier than I remembered it, bade me enter. I stooped under the lintel and went in.

The goody was seated on the stool by the empty hearth, her thin, stick-like arms wrapped tightly around her body as if for comfort. She was wearing the same gown of black homespun that she had worn before — and which, I suspected, she had worn for Walter’s funeral — but not the linen cap and apron. Instead, draped over her head, with its wispy, greying elfin locks, was a piece of black veiling, its dye now rusty with age. I guessed that it had been her mother’s and had also probably belonged to her grandmother, and had been used at every funeral for generations past by the female mourners of her family. She did not glance round as I pushed open the door and entered, but she knew instinctively who I was, even before I spoke.

‘What do you want, Chapman?’ she asked wearily.

‘To talk to you,’ I answered. ‘About Walter.’

‘Haven’t you done enough harm?’ she snapped, still without moving. ‘Getting him to think! I told you no good would come of it.’

‘You encouraged him to talk to me,’ I countered. ‘You wanted that ivory needle case.’

She did turn to face me then, and I could see that her eyes were full of tears.

‘That’s right! Go on! Taunt me!’ She got up and went over to a wooden chest in a corner of the room. She lifted the lid an inch or two, felt inside and then spun round, something clutched in her hand. ‘Here!’ She threw the needle case at me with more force than I would have imagined her capable of. It hit me a stinging blow on one cheekbone before clattering to the floor. ‘Take it back! I’ll never use it now.’

‘Mistress Godsmark,’ I asked, ‘does this mean that you believe your son’s death was not an accident?’

She gave a dry sob and sat down again, but her manner had softened a little.

‘Everyone tells me it was,’ she answered, ‘and I know he couldn’t swim. But he was up to something, Chapman.’

‘What makes you think that?’

She snorted. ‘Because I knew my son. Just because I loved him, didn’t mean I was blind to his faults. His father was the same; always up to no good. People didn’t care for my Walter, and I’m not denying they had plenty of cause to dislike him. Working for Jasper Fairbrother had made him worse; doing that bully’s dirty work for him, and copying his nasty ways. That man has a lot to answer for. When he was murdered, I was glad! Glad to think my Walter would be free of him at last. Free to work for a good master.’

I wondered if it had ever crossed her mind that Walter, big bully as he had been, would have found working for a good master very tame after the excitement and power of intimidating Jasper’s unfortunate victims. But I said nothing, merely enquiring, ‘That day I came to see you, the day that Master Fairbrother’s body was discovered, what happened after I left?’

Goody Godsmark sniffed, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her gown and sat up a little straighter on her stool.

‘Why are you snooping around again, Chapman? Is it because you don’t think my son’s death was an accident, either?’

‘Let’s say that I have my doubts,’ I answered after a moment’s hesitation. ‘There have been four deaths now, three of them definitely murder. It seems possible to me that Walter’s death could well be connected, if only I could work out why.’

‘Four deaths?’ she queried, alarmed. ‘I heard that that foreigner had died, the one you were quizzing Walter about, but who else?’

‘Cicely Ford was found dead this morning. Smothered in her sleep.’

The goody cried out at that. Like almost everyone who had ever had any dealings with Cicely, she had felt some affection for her. She put a hand, which was visibly trembling, to her mouth and sat, unmoving, for perhaps half a minute. Eventually, she said, ‘There’s someone very evil in this city, Chapman. I’m not a fool. I can see why a lot of people wanted Jasper Fairbrother dead, and might have had cause to dislike my Walter. As for the stranger, the good Lord alone knows what he was up to. But Cicely Ford, no! She was as good and gentle and kind a maid as you’d ever wish to meet. Always treated me with respect, she did, whenever we happened to meet. And I’ll tell you that, when you’re old and ugly, like me, that’s more’n you can expect from most young women. And the lads are worse! You just become a figure of fun to them and a target for their nasty tricks. I was lucky. A lot of ’em were afraid of Walter. But I don’t know how I’ll fare now he’s gone.’

She looked so frightened and forlorn that I went across to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

‘You just tell me if anyone gives you trouble. I’ll make sure they don’t do it again.’

She made a noise that was halfway between a sniff and a sob.

‘Oh, get away with you! I know when I’m being buttered up. You want me to talk about Walter.’ All the same, despite her words, she squeezed my hand gratefully. ‘Just give me a moment to get over this news about Mistress Ford. Pour yourself some ale. There’s plenty in the barrel. I’d just brewed a fresh gallon for Walter.’

I did as she instructed. The afternoon was getting hot and the interior of the cottage was extremely warm. I was by now very thirsty, and Goody Godsmark made a fair enough brew to make me forget my manners and draw myself a second cup unbidden.

‘That’ll do, Chapman!’ The Goody’s voice was as sharp as her eyesight. ‘Men do too much drinking. It saps the will for doing other things. I know! My son was always in the tavern, one or the other of them. There are too many alehouses in this city.’

Her words suddenly reminded me of something that had lain dormant in my mind for the past week, like a needle carelessly left in clothing will suddenly prick and let you know it’s there.

‘When I was here last time, you complained that the previous night — the night that Jasper must have been killed — Walter didn’t come home from the bakery until well after curfew. But I’d seen him much earlier in the day, leaving the bakery, which was all closed up, and crossing High Street to Saint Mary le Port Street. I had assumed that, the day’s work being finished, he was coming home.’

Goody Godsmark rubbed the tip of her nose reflectively, but her memory was not as good as mine. (I had always had a remarkable memory, which was the only reason that I had acquired so much knowledge from the monks who had taught me at Glastonbury. Otherwise, I had been as inattentive and lazy as the rest of my fellow pupils.)

‘If I said that, then it must have been true,’ she conceded, ‘and Walter couldn’t have been on his way home when you saw him. But where he’d have been going in Saint Mary le Port Street, I can’t tell you. The Green Lattis was his favourite haunt. Or sometimes the Full Moon or the sign of the White Hart. But mostly the Lattis. Jasper drank there, as well, as do a lot of others.’

I nodded, remembering my meeting with John Overbecks. I was also remembering Walter Godsmark on that Monday afternoon striding out across High Street and disappearing into the shadows cast by Overbecks’s bakery. If not home, where had he been going in such a hurry?

‘You promised to tell me what happened after I left here last Tuesday,’ I reminded Goody Godsmark hopefully.

She frowned. ‘I don’t recall promising exactly, but as far as I can recollect, he sat on this stool, not saying anything for quite a long time. Thinking,’ she reproached me. ‘Then, after a while, he suddenly jumped up and said he had to go out. “Not toping again?” I said. He laughed. “No,” he said. “Don’t worry, Mother. This is about making money, not spending it.” I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t answer, just told me to mind my own business. Later on, he came back, looking like a cat that’s been at the cream.’

‘And did he go out again?’ I asked.

Goody Godsmark nodded. ‘After curfew, when it was dark.’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘That was the last time I saw him alive. The next day, he was dead.’