The Lammas Feast

Seventeen

I asked, ‘Didn’t you worry when he didn’t return home that night? And all the next day and night, as well?’

‘Of course I worried,’ she snapped. ‘But I didn’t know where he’d gone, and there was no one I could ask to go looking for him. No one hereabouts would care a groat what my Walter was up to on his own account. They didn’t like him. Oh, they came crowding round fast enough once they heard he was dead, but that was just their danged curiosity; poking their noses in, as always, where they weren’t wanted.’

Relief, too, I thought must have played its part, although the neighbours would never have admitted it; a desire to ensure for themselves that Walter was really dead. To most inhabitants of the city, it must have seemed like their lucky day to be rid of both Jasper and his strong-arm bully within forty-eight hours of one another. But I said nothing: it wasn’t the goody’s fault that she had had such an unpleasant son, just her misfortune.

She continued, ‘I did go looking for him, myself, late on Wednesday evening. Of course, by that time he was already dead and you’d found the body, but I didn’t know that, did I? No one thought to tell me!’ Her tone was angry and bitter, understandably so. ‘Anyhow, I went to the Green Lattis and looked in. Someone — Burl Hodge, was it? Yes, Burl Hodge — said my Walter hadn’t been in that night, but he recollected seeing him there the evening before, on the Tuesday. That was the last time he’d clapped eyes on him. I told Burl that Walter hadn’t been home since, but he just shrugged. Said it was none of his business, thank God, what my son got up to, so long as he wasn’t harassing innocent citizens. Said he supposed Walter was looking for another job now that Master Fairbrother was dead. Said that if Walter tried to bully Baker Overbecks into sacking his son, and getting himself taken on in Dick’s place, Burl and Jack, the other son, would cut off his balls and plug his ears with ’em.’ Goody Godsmark tossed her head defiantly. ‘I’d just like to have seen ’em try, that’s all!’

It seemed an unnecessarily harsh remark to have made to the dead man’s mother, most unlike the kindly Burl, until I recollected that only myself and the two brothers from the friary knew at that time that Walter had been drowned. And, of course, the murderer, if there was one.

I finished my second cup of ale, which I had been swallowing slowly to make it last, and asked, ‘Do you know that there’s a way of getting out of the town after curfew?’

Goody Godsmark gave me a pitying look. ‘If you mean that hole in the wall by the Needless Gate, everyone knows about that, Chapman. I can tell you weren’t born and bred in this city.’

I acknowledged this lack of foresight on my mother’s part and queried, ‘Do you think Walter was seeing a woman? Meeting her outside the walls, after dark?’

My companion cackled like a hen about to lay an egg. ‘No, I don’t,’ she retorted. ‘You obviously didn’t know very much about my son. He didn’t care for women, didn’t my Walter. Pretended he did, o’ course. Wouldn’t have been good for him to have said otherwise.’ She gave another raucous laugh. ‘But I was the only woman in his life, believe me! You know what I’m saying, Chapman?’

‘Er — yes,’ I murmured. I knew all about the vice of the Greeks. I had seen it practised amongst some of my fellow novices and the monks at Glastonbury, although it would never have done to have reported it to the master of novices or Father Abbott. Everyone wished to remain in ignorance, and it was the informer who would have been punished. ‘In that case,’ I urged, ‘could he have — er — could Walter have gone down to the river to meet. . another man?’

The goody thought about this for a moment or two before shaking her head.

‘Don’t see why he should. If he brought a friend home, I always made myself scarce for an hour or two in the nearest alehouse. Does that shock you?’

‘N-no,’ I said, not quite truthfully. (Sometimes it worried me that, as someone who secretly questioned many of the Church’s teachings, I was not as open-minded as I would wish to be.) I hurried on, in the hope that she would fail to notice my momentary hesitation. ‘No one else, apart from you, knew about Walter’s — er Walter’s. .’

‘Buggery? There’s no need to be mealy-mouthed with me, young man! Well, his friends knew, the men who were like him. But that’s all.’

‘You never told anyone else? Accidentally? Or because you felt the need to confide in someone?’

She glanced contemptuously at me. ‘Of course I didn’t! You protect the people you love at all costs. You lie and steal and cheat and kill for them. You’re a husband, a father! You don’t need me to tell you that, do you?’

I shook my head, thinking of Adela and the children and how, if necessary, I’d commit any crime to prevent harm coming to any one of them. Even that wretched dog, who I could hear whining pathetically outside Goody Godsmark’s door, had so insinuated himself into my affections that I’d lay about any person trying to hurt him. None of this, however, solved the problem of why Walter had left the city after curfew last Tuesday night, or who he had gone to meet.

But was I right in assuming that his death had indeed occurred on Tuesday night, and not some time during the following day? It had, after all, been late on Wednesday evening when I had found his body. Yet, if he had been murdered, it seemed improbable that it had happened during daylight hours, when his cries might well have attracted attention not only from the brothers at the friary, but also from the sentinels on the castle ramparts. And where had he been all Tuesday night if he had not already been dead?

But suppose he had not been killed deliberately? Suppose it really had been just an unfortunate mishap? There again, during the day, wouldn’t someone have heard his calls for help? And if he had tumbled in accidentally the night before, I was back to the same two questions: why had he been there and what had he been doing?

Goody Godsmark’s voice cut across my tumultuous thoughts.

‘You said just now, Chapman, that you have some doubts about the manner of my son’s death. What reasons do you have for thinking it might not have been an accident?’

I felt she had a right to know, even though Richard Manifold would probably curse me for passing on the information.

‘One of the brothers at the Dominican friary saw a man crossing the Broad Meads just around dusk. He couldn’t swear it was Walter, but it might well have been him. Brother Thomas also thought he saw another figure — man or woman, he couldn’t be certain — standing on the river bank. In addition, there’s what you yourself told me, only five minutes since. You said that on the first occasion he left here after my departure last Tuesday, Walter told you that his errand was about making money, not spending it. Do you think it possible that he was blackmailing someone? Someone who arranged to meet him down by the Frome, and who then pushed him in, knowing your son couldn’t swim?’

She turned on me at that, her little face as tightly muscled as a clenched fist.

‘You’ve no right to say things like that!’ she flung at me, and every word was like a stone, each one hurled with increasing ferocity. ‘Get out of my cottage now!’ She jumped up and grabbed the besom from its corner, advancing on me with the obvious intention of using it to good effect.

I retreated to the door. ‘Don’t you want my help in finding out the truth about Walter’s death?’ I demanded, one hand already on the latch.

‘I can do without your kind of help!’ she shouted. ‘Insulting my Walter! Blackening his name! Go on! Get out, before I lay about you. Blackmail, indeed! My son wouldn’t stoop so low!’

I remembered her recent remark, that people would lie to save the skin or the reputation or the peace of mind of those they loved. And I had no doubt that Goody Godsmark had loved her son, however low his credit had sunk in the eyes of the rest of the world. She might suspect that my suggestion was close to the truth, but she would never admit to it. I honoured her for her loyalty.

I got out of the cottage just in time. I heard the besom’s handle strike the wood of the door as I pulled it shut.

Hercules ignored me. He had decided that his wishes had been disregarded for long enough, and was sulking. He had stopped whining and was lying full length, his nose between his paws. When I untied the rope from the nail in the wall and gave it a tug, he refused to move. I twitched it again with the same result.

‘If you don’t behave yourself,’ I warned him angrily, ‘you’ll go back where you came from to run wild on the downs.’

He didn’t believe me. Why should he? I didn’t believe myself. With a sigh, I picked him up and once again put him under my arm.

‘I can do without this sort of behaviour,’ I told him severely as I marched off down the street. ‘I’ve had a very disturbed night and a terrible day. I’ve been accused of murder and had to clear my name. I’ve lost a friend, whose death I ought to have been able to prevent. I’ve offended an old woman, who doesn’t deserve it, through telling her the truth about her no-good son, and I’m no nearer discovering the facts behind these killings than I was this time last week. So, I’m in no mood for your antics, my lad!’

Hercules squirmed a little, almost as if he knew what I was saying, then managed to reach my chin with his tongue and licked it. I looked down at him, squinting through half-closed eyes.

‘All right,’ I said at last. ‘I may be all sorts of a fool, but you’re forgiven. Just stop thinking that you can twist me around one of your paws. Now,’ I continued, ‘as we’re so close, we’d better call on Margaret Walker. You’ll be able to see the children. And, if we’re lucky, Adela and Adam may not have left for home yet.’

I put Hercules down and he trotted docilely at my heels, the very model of canine good behaviour (except for one or two hopeful sniffs at the carcass of a dead sheep, lying amongst the rest of the garbage in the drain), while we pushed our way through the crowds and crossed Bristol Bridge into Redcliffe. But we were still within a hundred yards of Margaret’s cottage when our ears were assailed by the noise of my younger son’s screaming. Something had obviously upset his little lordship, and he was intent on letting the entire neighbourhood share in his annoyance.

I paused and looked down thoughtfully at Hercules. He sat on his haunches and looked questioningly up at me.

‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘we’ll postpone this visit for a while and pay a call on Burl Hodge instead. He’ll be at the tenting grounds this time of day.’

We cut through one of the alleyways into Redcliffe Street and left the city by the Redcliffe Gate. Then we turned right, past the gravel pits and the fulling ground — where the fullers were busy soaking and pounding Master Adelard’s newly woven cloth in a mixture of river water and urine — and on to the tenting field, which overlooked the Avon and the Great Marsh on the opposite bank. There were at least two dozen or so men, working in pairs, stretching the rolls of fulled cloth on to the tall wooden tenting frames, but I recognized Burl without any difficulty as one of the two men in the farthest corner of the ground. He and his partner, a thin ascetic-looking fellow whom I remembered as a neighbour of Margaret Walker’s, had just finished fixing the selvedge of a piece of crimson cloth — the red cloth for which the city was famous throughout the country and beyond — to the crossbar of a frame, and were now struggling to fix the other selvedge to the tenterhooks of the lower and free-swinging bar, whose weight would pull and stretch the dripping material into shape as it dried and tautened.

When this had been accomplished, to the accompaniment of much grunting and swearing, Burl Hodge straightened up and turned to look at me. His shirt and hose were soaked with sweat and water from the cloth, which had showered all over him. It was an unpleasant job even on a warm summer’s day like today, when the urine smelled to high heaven, but truly awful in the bleak conditions of winter.

‘Hello, Chapman,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’ I thought his tone unusually terse, but put it down to the fact that he was busy. (Another cartload of wet bales had just been driven through the gate of the tenting field.) But when he spoke again, I realized, with a sinking heart, what the real trouble was. ‘I hear Mistress Ford has left you her house in Small Street. Congratulations! A householder, no less. You’ll be too fine for the likes of Jenny and me now, then.’

‘I’ve never heard such foolishness in all my life,’ I snapped, silently cursing the speed with which news and gossip travelled around this city. ‘I’ll still be a chapman, peddling goods all round the countryside to keep body and soul together. All right! I don’t deny it’ll make a difference, but with my growing family, I’d have had to rent a bigger cottage sooner or later, anyway.’

‘Ah, but in future you won’t have to spend money on rent, though, will you?’ His honest eyes were full of envy and he rubbed his raw red hands — hands that in the winter were covered with chilblains — up and down his thighs, snagging his already torn hose on a broken fingernail. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’ He nodded at his companion, by now impatiently shifting from one foot to the other. ‘We can’t afford to stand around idle for long. Master Adelard likes to get his money’s worth, like Alderman Weaver before him.’

I could see that he wasn’t going to be easily reconciled to the idea of my new-found prosperity, and it was a chilling intimation of what I could expect from many of the people whose friendship I valued. I could have pointed out that there was many a slip between cup and lip, and that nothing was settled until probate was granted, but I could tell he was in no mood to listen. And I had an uncomfortable feeling that I should have felt the same if the circumstances had been reversed.

‘It’s about Walter Godsmark,’ I said. ‘You told his mother that you’d seen him in the Green Lattis on the Tuesday evening before he was found drowned. It must have been the same night he met his death.’

‘Well?’

‘John Overbecks also told me that he’d seen Walter in the Lattis that evening. Shared a table with him, or so he said. Did you see them together?’

‘I might have done.’

‘Yes or no?’ Irritation with his still-hostile attitude made me abrupt.

There was a warning glint in his eyes that hinted at his readiness for a bout of fisticuffs if I overstepped the mark, but he answered levelly enough.

‘Well, yes then. I saw them together. They were sitting at the same table.’

‘Was the Lattis crowded?’

Burl shrugged. ‘I’d say about normal for a Tuesday evening. Full, but empty stools here and there. What’s this all leading up to, Roger?’ At least he was calling me Roger now and not the cold, impersonal Chapman of his greeting.

‘Bear with me a little longer,’ I pleaded. ‘Was Walter very drunk?’

Burl glanced at his companion. ‘What would you say, cousin?’ (I recollected that, as well as being Margaret Walker’s neighbour, the man was also a kinsman of Burl’s. But then, practically everyone in Redcliffe was related to everyone else in one degree or another.) ‘Was Walter Godsmark very drunk last Tuesday?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Can’t rightly remember,’ was the taciturn response. Burl grunted. ‘He was drunk most nights, but I didn’t concern myself overmuch with him. Godsmark was a bully and a rogue, and I can’t pretend I’m sorry he’s dead. So, what’s your interest?’

‘I’ve been wondering about the manner of his death, that’s all. Whether or not it really was an accident.’

Burl turned towards the cart, where his fellow workers were already manhandling the soaking bales of cloth on to hurdles, ready to drag them across to their respective frames.

‘Well, all I can say is that if someone did do away with him, then he has my gratitude and the gratitude of the whole city. Henry! We’ll be accused of shirking in a minute, if we don’t get over there fast.’ Burl nodded briefly to me. ‘I daresay we’ll be seeing one another around the town.’

He walked off across the tenting field, followed by the shambling figure of his cousin, and, in spite of the day’s warmth, I was left feeling chilled to the bone.

‘Come on, Hercules,’ I said, jerking the rope. ‘Let’s go and visit someone who will be pleased with our good fortune.’

‘You’re going to have to get used to people’s resentment,’ my former mother-in-law announced briskly, when I had told her and Adela of my recent encounter with Burl Hodge.

Adam’s tantrum appeared to have tired him out, for he was sleeping peacefully in his little cart, while my wife, perched on a stool, gently wheeled him to and fro. Nicholas and Elizabeth, after their first effusive greeting, prompted by the hope of sweetmeats, had retired to the back of the cottage in a huff once they discovered that my pouch was empty.

‘I do not know how these things get around so quickly,’ Adela complained. ‘It was only yesterday that that poor girl made her new will, and we ourselves knew nothing of it until this morning. I’ve never known a town where everyone knows so much, so soon, about everyone else’s business. I’m sure Hereford wasn’t half so bad.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ Margaret answered shortly. She could never tolerate any criticism of her native city, unless, that is, she made it herself. ‘But the fact remains, that you must expect people to be envious.’ She hesitated, then continued, ‘There might also be. . speculation.’

‘What sort of speculation?’ Adela and I asked with one voice.

‘Well. . You know. About Roger and — er — Mistress Ford.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ I demanded hotly.

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just trying to put you on your guard. I mean. . Think about it.’ She was growing flustered. ‘Why would Mistress Ford leave her house to you, Roger?’

‘She was fond of him,’ my wife put in quietly. ‘She was grateful to him for finding out the truth about Robert Herepath’s death. She knew that we were overcrowded in that cottage. She was going to rent us the house as soon as the present tenants quit, in any case. That’s probably what gave her the idea of leaving it to Roger when she died. She just didn’t know it would be so soon.’

‘Well, we know that, of course,’ Margaret agreed hastily. ‘I’m only trying to warn you what others might hint at, that’s all. I don’t believe it, of course.’

‘What don’t you believe, Margaret?’ I asked bluntly. ‘That Cicely Ford and I were lovers?’ Adela tried to hush me, glancing across at the children, but they were absorbed in their game. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that anyone could really think such a preposterous thing?’

‘They might. That’s all I’m saying. Be warned.’

I realized with a sinking heart that she could be right. Envy makes people unreasonable. I was beginning to wish that Cicely had willed the Small Street house elsewhere. So, obviously, was Adela.

‘Perhaps the Church court won’t grant probate,’ she said, almost hopefully. ‘There may be some kinsman of Mistress Ford or the Herepaths that we know nothing about, who might successfully contest the will.’

Margaret snorted angrily. ‘You mean you’d rather be a laughing stock than lose a few friends who aren’t worth keeping anyway? Incidentally, what’s happening to all the money Edward Herepath left her? It was a tidy fortune, by all accounts.’

‘I haven’t asked, nor do I intend to,’ I answered shortly. ‘I expect Mistress Ford has left most, if not all, of it to the Magdalen nuns. Master Hulin did not see fit to confide in me, nor did I expect him to. But if we ever do move into the Small Street house, at least we have money enough to furnish it. I have the two gold pieces the Duke of Gloucester sent me for the service I rendered him in London last winter.’

Margaret had barely time to frame an indignant protest that this was the first she had been told about any such money, before she was interrupted by the appearance, one on either side of my stool, of Nicholas and Elizabeth. They had obviously been paying more attention to our conversation than I had thought. Their faces were creased into worried frowns, and a small pair of hands pressed urgently into each of my thighs.

‘Won’t we have a new house?’ Elizabeth demanded. Although still something over three months short of her fourth birthday, she was showing every sign of being as sharp as her mother had been, and as her grandmother still was. Little escaped Nicholas, either: in intelligence, he was Adela’s son. He fixed me now with his brilliant, dark eyes.

I put an arm around each child.

‘We hope so. But we might not,’ I answered gently. ‘It will rest with the decision of the Church court in the end.’

‘Why? Does it matter?’ Adela asked them.

Neither replied immediately, but I saw two pairs of eyes flicker towards the sleeping Adam. Elizabeth, who was closer, surreptitiously kicked his little cart.

‘In the new house, we wouldn’t have to sleep in the same room as him, would we?’ she enquired.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Probably not.’

‘What’s wrong with sleeping in the same room as your baby brother?’ Margaret Walker wanted to know. ‘People like us, my girl, should be thankful to have a roof over our heads, let alone separate rooms. I’ve never heard such nonsense.’

‘He screams,’ Elizabeth muttered rebelliously, and aimed another half-hearted kick in Adam’s direction, while her stepbrother nodded vigorously in agreement.

‘We could put him out with the rubbish,’ Nicholas suggested, earning himself a stinging slap from his mother and the promise of a whipping if she ever heard him express such sentiments again.

Later, as we walked home together through the jostling crowds of late afternoon, pulling Adam and a reluctant Hercules behind us, my wife remarked sombrely, ‘You were right, after all, sweetheart. Bess and Nicholas do dislike Adam. What can we do about it?’ She was plainly upset.

‘Just give them both time to get used to him,’ I answered. ‘We have to be honest and admit that he does scream a very great deal. I must say that, on occasions, I find the noise he makes more than I can bear myself. Have patience. There’s nothing else to be done that I can see.’

Adela sighed and took my arm with her free hand. ‘I suppose we can also pray that we get the house; that probate will be granted.’ She gave my arm a squeeze. ‘Would it be wrong of us to walk down Small Street, instead of Broad Street, and take a look?’

‘At the house, you mean?’ She nodded. ‘Why not? We’re as free to look at it as anyone else, provided we don’t try to go inside. And as we haven’t a key, we’re unable to do so, anyway. There are tenants living there at present.’

It was strange, standing on the opposite side of the street, and looking again at Edward Herepath’s old home, where so much grief and pain had ruined so many lives during that first winter I had spent in Bristol. It was four and a half years ago now, and the story had begun long before my arrival. .

Robert and Edward Herepath, Lillis, all dead who were living then. And now Cicely. .

Grief is a strange emotion. You can keep it at bay, forget it almost, for hours at a time, only for it to strike when you least expect it. Cicely was dead! It was as though I was hearing the words for the very first time. They echoed round and round in my head and I could feel myself beginning to shake, racked by the effort of trying to control a desire to burst out crying. I was also filled with self-disgust. That sweet, gentle creature had been wantonly murdered and all I could think about was whether or not I might profit by her death, whether or not a Church court would eventually grant me the right to inherit her house, when what I ought to be doing was trying to find her murderer.

‘Come home,’ whispered Adela, pressing my arm again, conscious of my distress.

I nodded, unable to speak. She was right. It was time to go home; time to apply my mind seriously to the whole sorry sequence of events that had culminated in Cicely’s death.