The Lammas Feast

Nineteen

Although a glancing blow, it nevertheless knocked me out.

Fortunately for me — or so I learned later — one of the passers-by on the quayside saw what happened and, in an unwonted display of public-spiritedness, rushed to my assistance, calling on others for help, and a little knot of Good Samaritans soon formed around me. One of these was Dick Hodge, on his way home to supper, so that I was immediately identified and my address supplied. A blanket was fetched from a nearby house, I was rolled on to it and four of the heftier men, taking a corner each, carried me home to Lewin’s Mead.

I remember Adela’s white face bending over me as I was lowered on to our mattress, but nothing after that until the local physician’s measured tones pierced my consciousness, assuring her that I had suffered no lasting damage and that a period of rest was all that was needed to restore me to my usual robust state of health. At the time, just before I drifted off once more into oblivion, I thought him a fool who didn’t know his business. But I awoke next morning feeling very much better.

Adela was lying beside me, propped on one elbow, watching me anxiously.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ I said, aware that the right-hand side of my face was extremely sore and stiff. ‘What do I look like?’

She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘If you can worry about your appearance, you must be improving. You have a black eye and your cheekbone’s badly bruised, but I’ll make you a primrose leaf poultice later on. That should take some of the heat out of the swelling. Also, the doctor left some lettuce pellets for you to take to ease the aches and pains. Roger!’ She put her arms around me carefully, but couldn’t resist giving me a little squeeze. ‘Do you know who did this to you?’

I shook my head. ‘I missed seeing him by inches. But how did I get home? Who brought me?’

She told me briefly what had happened, but when I asked if my rescuer had caught a glimpse of my assailant, it was her turn to shake her head. ‘He was too far away. But after he’d seen you safely home, he alerted the sheriff’s office to the attack. Richard came to see me last night and I told him of the message you’d received. He was highly incensed at having his name taken in vain, but couldn’t hold out much hope of catching the culprit unless we could trace the messenger. He said he trusted you’d soon recover, and that he’d call in to find out how you were going on sometime today.’

‘I suppose I could go to see him,’ I suggested, forgetting to whisper and so rousing both Adam and Hercules together.

‘You are not leaving that bed until tomorrow,’ Adela informed me in a tone of voice I have mentioned before, and which defied any attempt at argument. ‘Even then, I’ll have to see how you are. Down, Hercules! The master’s in no mood for your antics.’

She went to fetch Adam and put him to her breast.

Hercules was so astonished at her ferocity, while I was equally astounded at being referred to as ‘the master’, that we both stared silently at one another. Then Hercules removed himself from the mattress and slunk back to his own bed without so much as a whimper of annoyance, but I’ll swear he grinned at me and lifted his lip. That dog knew who ruled the roost in our house.

I submitted gracefully to Adela’s ministrations while she washed me, fed me a breakfast of oatmeal and dried herring and treated my bruises with the promised primrose leaf poultice. I also swallowed two of the doctor’s lettuce pellets without making too much of a fuss, but insisted both on shaving myself and on getting up to use the chamber pot, rather than suffer the indignity of trying to aim into it while in bed. Finally, I made no protest when my pillow was shaken and I was ordered to sleep while my wife took Adam off to the shops to buy the day’s supply of victuals. As soon as the door closed behind them, Hercules hurtled out of his own bed and into mine, curling up in the crook of my knees and falling asleep almost at once.

I very quickly followed suit as the lettuce pellets did their work, but my slumber was an uneasy jumble of strange dreams. When, eventually, I awoke, the dream that stayed with me, and was uppermost in my mind, was of walking along the river bank with Goody Godsmark, who kept chanting, ‘People lie, you know! People lie to protect the ones they love. People always lie!’

I rolled on to my back, taking care not to disturb the dog, and linked my hands behind my neck. My head was still hurting, but I ignored it. It was time to put my thoughts in order.

I looked back over the past ten days, starting at the beginning with the arrival of the stranger. And there, at once, I picked up one of the main threads that ran all through the subsequent pattern of events — the connection with Brittany. The stranger had disembarked from a Breton ship and, whether or not a Breton himself, he had come from the duchy and was most likely a Tudor agent. (It was, after all, a conclusion I had drawn on sheer probability alone, long before I knew of the suspicions of those in authority.) And then Brittany had cropped up again in my conversation with both John Overbecks, who had been at the sack of Fougères, and with Philip Lamprey. What was it Philip had said, referring to the siege? That was. . when? ’49? Twenty-nine years ago. John Overbecks wouldn’t have been much more than twenty-two or three, maybe not so much, a young man disgusted by the atrocities of war, who, according to his own account, had thought of deserting.

‘It’s all right, you’re not talking to one of those cowards who ran away and left his comrades in the lurch,’ he had said to me in the Green Lattis. But how did I know that that was the truth? ‘All people lie,’ Goody Godsmark had told me, her cry continuing to echo through my head. And, ‘He was soldiering in France for years’ — Adela’s voice came back to me — ‘before he came home and took up baking.’ But that, presumably, was only John’s account of what he’d been doing in the meantime. Suppose he hadn’t been soldiering? Suppose. .

Suppose what? I began to shake. A touch of fever, no doubt, but it was also excitement. I knew I was on the verge of some discovery. Any moment now, I should see the way clear before me. .

‘I hope you don’t mind me walking in like this,’ said Richard Manifold. ‘I knocked, but you obviously didn’t hear. The door was unbolted, so. .’ He let the sentence go and stood looking down at me, pursing his lips. ‘You’re a fool, Roger,’ he continued after a moment or two contemplating my bruised and battered face. ‘You should know that I don’t deal in vague messages of that sort. If I’d wanted to see you, I would have invited you to the Council Hall or come to visit you myself, as I’m doing now, when there’s something I need to ask you.’

‘Oh, I see! You haven’t come just to enquire after my health, then!’ I sounded petulant even to my own ears, and he quite naturally looked surprised.

‘Did you expect me to? I’ve more important things to do with my time than run around after numskulls who get themselves beaten up through their own stupidity.’

‘You told Adela. .’ I began, irritated by his indifference to my plight, but he interrupted me.

‘Oh, Adela! She’s a woman. You tell women all sorts of lies if you want to keep them sweet.’

Lies again! How that word kept on cropping up this morning!

‘What is it you want to ask me?’ I snapped.

‘Yesterday evening, I suddenly remembered that on one occasion, when you were airing your theories about these murders, you referred to the necessity of catching the culprit or culprits. What made you think there might be more than one killer?’

The question was unexpected and I was nonplussed. But I was also intrigued, because, now that Richard had brought it to my attention, I recollected using the same phrase to myself more than once. But why? In some secret compartment of my mind, I had evidently considered the possibility that the murders were not necessarily the work of the same person. I needed to think about it, but quietly, and preferably alone.

‘No real reason,’ I replied offhandedly. ‘Just an expression.’

Richard regarded me thoughtfully. I met his gaze with one of limpid innocence.

‘It wasn’t a considered opinion, then?’ He sounded doubtful.

‘No.’ That, at least, was the truth.

‘Right.’ He held out his hand. ‘In that case, I’ll let you get back to sleep. I hope you’re better soon. And don’t answer any more bogus summonses, from me or from anyone else. Think next time, before you go rushing off to get your head broken.’

I swallowed my indignation at this schoolmasterish reprimand because I was anxious to see him leave. Hercules, who had woken up on Richard’s entry, now decided that he, too, had had enough of this intruder. He got to his feet, stretching and baring his formidable array of sharp little teeth. The sergeant took the hint and went.

‘Good dog,’ I said, patting him.

We both settled down again, he to go back to sleep, I to continue thinking things through. Culprit or culprits? No, I must let that be for the moment. I returned to the time when I had first observed the stranger. I remembered my impression of him; somewhere in his mid-twenties, stockily built, brown hair, hazel eyes. A common enough appearance, but one which, apart from his age, had found an uncanny echo a few minutes later in John Overbecks, as Adela, the children and I had entered the bakery. And when we had emerged after giving our order for the Lammastide bread, the young man had stared at me from across the street. At me? Or had he really been looking at somebody else? Had he, too, seen a reflection of his own features in the baker? A man old enough to be his father. .

I put a hand to my forehead and realized that I was sweating profusely as my excitement mounted. A pattern of sorts was beginning to emerge. It was all speculative, but there was also a kind of logic to it. First, there was a man who, in his youth, had fought in France and who, on his own admission, had been so revolted by the cruelty of war that he had been tempted to desert (as many another man had done, on both sides, before and after him). I remembered thinking at the time that perhaps he had deserted, but he had taken great pains to refute any such accusation. All the same — ‘You protect the people you love at all costs,’ Goody Godsmark had told me. ‘You lie and steal and cheat and kill for them.’

Who did John Overbecks love enough to lie and steal and cheat and kill for? The answer was simple. His wife: the young, fey girl who had captured his heart in late middle age and whom he adored, worshipped almost. But, once again, why? Why would it be necessary for him to kill to protect her? Suddenly, I thought I knew. Suddenly, everything began to take shape in my head. I could see, too, why, away in Brittany, a young man — not Welsh, but half-English — might enter the service of Henry Tudor in order to get back at the man he hated, a man he knew to be a loyal Yorkist. I also thought I understood why, when an agent was needed to visit known supporters of the Tudor cause in the west country, particularly in and around Bristol, this young man had volunteered. He had a special interest in the city. .

I dragged myself up and out of bed and began to dress. I felt worse than I had expected, and had to stop and rest on several occasions in order to give the room, which was spinning round and round in a disconcerting way, time to settle. Hercules roused himself and barked reproachfully. His dream of a day snuggled up beside me had been rudely shattered.

The door opened and Adela came in.

‘I’ve left Adam at Margaret’s,’ she announced, putting her basket on the table and starting to unpack it. ‘I went to see her before I did my shopping. She said to leave him with her for the rest of the morning. It would give Nick and Bess a chance to get used to him again, before they’re fetched home tomorrow.’ She broke off, suddenly aware of what I was doing. ‘Get back into bed this minute,’ she stormed. ‘You’re not fit to be up and about yet!’

‘I have to go out,’ I argued, struggling to lace my shirt to my breeches. ‘I have to see John Overbecks.’

‘John Overbecks? In heaven’s name, why?’

‘I can’t explain. Not yet, anyway. It would take too long. But I think he may be our killer. Or one of them, at least.’ I pulled on my tunic, then stood still until everything calmed down around me. ‘I’ll be all right once I get outside.’ I buckled on my belt and pouch, then pulled my hood and cape over my head, letting the hood fall back. I picked up my cudgel.

Adela was staring at me aghast. ‘You can’t do this, Roger. You look terrible. Don’t be a fool! If you have any suspicions concerning Master Overbecks — though heaven alone knows why you should — tell them to Richard. I’ll find him and bring him here, if you’ll just be sensible and lie down again. Please! This instant!’

I saw my chance and took it. ‘Very well. You fetch Richard.’

I sat down on the nearest stool, panting a little more than was strictly necessary. I was careful not to add, ‘And I’ll stay here,’ but Adela, triumphant at her apparently easy victory, simply assumed that’s what I’d meant, although, knowing me, it was unlike her to be so careless. I sent up a small prayer of thanks to God.

I walked up Broad Street, my tottering footsteps making me weave from side to side, to people’s great annoyance.

‘Look where you’re going, can’t you?’ was the universal refrain, but I was too intent on my own thoughts to feel any embarrassment. As I crossed over into High Street, someone took my arm.

‘Roger, should you be out? Dick told me what happened yesterday. This can’t be good for you. Does Adela know?’

It was Jenny Hodge, her face puckered in concern and obviously not sharing in her husband’s resentment at my possible future good fortune. ‘Where on earth are you going?’

Just at that moment, ahead of us, I saw Jane Overbecks emerge from Saint Mary le Port Street, her little dog at her heels, and set off down High Street in the direction of Bristol Bridge. I ignored Jenny’s question and countered with one of my own.

‘Jenny, you know Jane Overbecks well. Does she ever go out without John’s knowledge?’

Seeing that the answer was important to me, Jenny forbore to lecture me further and said, ‘I’ve never known her do so. Oh, he doesn’t keep her on a leash, but she likes him to be aware of what she’s doing and where she is. If she gets into trouble, she depends on him to get her out of it. He can’t do that if he doesn’t know where to find her.’ I staggered and she held my arm more tightly. ‘Let me fetch Dick from the shop to help you home. It’s only a step or two.’

I nodded. ‘Thank goodness. I’m going there myself.’

‘Oh! Well, in that case. .’

She looked at me curiously, but when we reached the bakery door and I made it plain that I wanted to go in alone, she left me to it, good soul that she was. Jenny was never one to poke her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.

John Overbecks was there as usual, his back towards me. He was contemplating a long trestle table, recently set up against one wall, on which stood all his bread and pastry sculptures for Saturday’s feast. They were truly marvellous creations: crenellated castles, ships in full sail, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the coats of arms of the Bristol guilds, Saint George slaying the dragon, alongside trays of buns, some thick with raisins, others sticky with honey. The centrepiece was the Lord Mayor flanked by all his aldermen, their civic robes glazed red, their chains of office painted gold. There was no doubt about it, John Overbecks was a master craftsman and his works of art would not have disgraced the royal table; indeed, they would probably have exceeded anything that the King’s bakers could have produced. But I was in no mood for offering praise.

He glanced round as I closed the street door and stood with my back to the neighbouring wall. We looked steadily at one another for several seconds before I turned my head and showed him my bruised and swollen face.

‘Your work, I fancy,’ I said mildly. But he wasn’t deceived.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he answered. ‘Yes, my handiwork. It was meant to kill you. I realized that you were getting too dangerous. You were seen yesterday in the company of Richard Manifold. You have the luck of the devil, Chapman.’

‘Perhaps.’ I smiled. ‘But yours has just run out. I’m on to you. You and Marion. You, too, have been fortunate. You’ve had an equally ruthless partner in crime in your sister-in-law.’

It was his turn to smile. ‘Would you care to explain what you’re talking about?’

‘Oh, come! Don’t let’s play games, John. Four deaths. Two, I think, to be laid at your door. Two at Sister Jerome’s.’

He dropped the bluster. ‘Shall we go upstairs and discuss the matter?’ he asked. ‘The bakehouse is too close to the shop.’

I shook my head. I didn’t trust him an inch. He knew that at last I had his measure and was as dangerous as a cornered rat. I settled my back more firmly against the bakery wall.

‘I’m going to talk,’ I told him, ‘and you are going to listen. When I’ve finished, you can tell me if I’m right or not.’

He inclined his head mockingly and leaned against the edge of the trestle table. ‘Get on with it, then,’ he sneered.

‘Very well. Let’s go back ten days, to Monday of last week. .’ I hesitated, then continued. ‘No. Let’s go back to the very beginning. Let’s go back nearly thirty years to Brittany, to the sack of Fougères, where, let us suppose, a young English soldier was so sickened by the horrors of warfare and the atrocities being carried out all around him, that he followed the example of many of his fellow recruits and deserted. (Of course, in later life, he would deny this, making out that he had stayed at his post.) Now, having deserted, what would he do? Where would he go? Well, in our particular soldier’s case, I should guess — and it is only a guess — that some young Breton girl took a fancy to him and gave him shelter. Or her family gave him shelter and she fell in love with him. Later on, he married her and settled down to become a good Breton citizen, husband and father. Am I correct so far?’

John Overbecks laughed, but made no comment.

I went on. ‘The years passed, the English lost more and more of their French possessions, until their presence was no longer a threat to the many deserters they’d left behind. Some of them, including the hero of our story, became homesick and wanted to return to their native land. But it wouldn’t do to return with a foreign wife and children: people might ask awkward questions and guess what had really happened. So, one day, our Englishman just disappeared. He made his way to the coast and found a ship to take him across the Channel and then went home to Bristol, with the story that he’d been soldiering all this while in France. His father was a prosperous baker with a thriving business to pass on to his son. Also, during the young man’s absence, he had bought up various properties in the city. .’

John Overbecks interrupted me. ‘Why didn’t our hero’s wife follow her errant husband, eh? Answer me that.’

‘I imagine because she couldn’t afford to. She was left in poverty to bring up her child or children. She most certainly had at least one son, who, I guess, grew up to hate the father who’d deserted him. Incidentally, this son looked very like his father: stocky, similar colouring of hair and eyes. Later on, he saw a way of getting back at the parent he so despised. He entered the service of Henry Tudor, willing to do anything that might disrupt the security and stability of England.

‘Meanwhile, the older man had carved out a new life for himself in his native town. On his father’s death, he had inherited the business and the properties, the latter all let out at very good rents. Of course, he’d never married, in spite of the snares laid for him by the scheming Bristol women. He couldn’t: it would have been bigamous. And, besides, he was quite happy as he was. He’d probably had enough of domestic responsibilities. Until, one day, a young woman and her even younger sister turned up in the city, seeking refuge from the vengeance of their Exmoor community. Our hero gave the older sister employment as a huckster — and fell headlong in love with the younger, something he hadn’t foreseen.’

John Overbecks straightened his back. ‘All right, Chapman,’ he said, ‘you can stop playing games now. All that you’ve said so far is fairly close to the mark. Yes, I deserted. Yes, I married a Breton girl — although, in my own defence, I have to say that she tricked me into marriage by pretending to be pregnant when she wasn’t. The birth of our son, Jean, came later. Much later. He was our only child. Her father was a pig farmer and I was expected to run the holding and do all the heavy, dirty work as the price of their silence for sheltering me. But I soon grew tired of poverty and heavy labouring, especially when I knew what sort of life I could be living in Bristol. As soon as it was safe for me to do so, I did just as you said. I left them, knowing they couldn’t possibly follow me, and came home. I had no intention of ever marrying again. As you pointed out, I couldn’t without committing bigamy. But then Jane came into my life and I knew from the very first moment I saw her that I wanted her more desperately than anything I’d ever wanted in my whole existence. I loved her — I still love her — with a passion even I find it hard to understand. And when, eventually, Marion told me that she wished to enter the house of the Magdalen nuns and asked me if I would be willing to marry Jane, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse. However, I told Marion the truth. Her answer was that if no one knew of my previous marriage, and was never likely to know, what did it matter? In the world’s eyes, Jane would be my wife. That was when I began to realize just how ruthless a woman Marion was when it came to pursuing her own ends. What attracted her to the holy life, I’ve no idea, except that she likes power and probably plans to become Mother Superior at some time in the future. She didn’t want to remain a huckster and a nobody for the rest of her days.’

‘And all would have been well,’ I continued as his voice ebbed into silence, ‘if your son hadn’t turned up in Bristol?’

John Overbecks nodded. ‘I didn’t recognize him, when he was staring at us across the street. I thought, as you did, that he was looking at you. But, later in the afternoon, Walter Godsmark came across to say that Jasper wanted to see me’ — that, then, was where Walter had been going when I saw him, not home, as I had fondly imagined — ‘and would I pay him a visit that evening. I guessed it to be something to do with the fact that I was proposing to put up his rent, and agreed quite cheerfully. I’d prepared all my arguments and he didn’t frighten me. Never had.’

‘But it wasn’t about his rent.’

John Overbecks gave a twisted smile. ‘Not directly, although he was proposing that he should, from then on, occupy the premises rent free. And not merely rent free, but that I should pay him to live there. Blackmail, in other words. He informed me that the young man I had seen with him that day was not merely my son, but also a Tudor agent, who had spilled out his history to Jasper as soon as Jasper had confirmed my identity. (It makes one wonder about poor Jean’s discretion as a spy, but there you are!) Moreover, my son was coming back to confront me as soon as he had finished his work in the surrounding countryside. I enquired when that would be. Wednesday, Jasper told me, so I had nearly two days to consider his proposition. If I agreed, and I’d be a fool not to, he would dispose of Jean for me on his return to the city. To my credit, I tried reasoning with him. I pointed out that now Jasper had admitted to being a Lancastrian supporter himself, I would keep quiet about that, if he would say nothing of what my son had told him and leave Jean to me. But Jasper refused. He said there was nothing to connect him to Henry Tudor, neither of us being aware that Jean’s presence in Bristol was suspected by the authorities and that counter-spies had already arrived in the city. So, I was faced with a stark choice. Either I became one of Jasper’s victims for the rest of my life, or I would be put in prison and Jane would be taken away from me for ever.’

‘But you decided there was a third choice. And took it.’

He laughed. ‘I don’t think I even paused to consider it as a choice or otherwise. It was just instinctive. Jasper had been eating his supper when I arrived. The knife was lying on the table. I had despatched so many enemy watchmen and sentries in my year as a soldier that the deed was done before I was even aware of thinking seriously about it. I picked up the knife, stepped up behind him and the next thing I knew, he had crashed face down on the table. I went home and awaited developments.’

‘And the following morning,’ I cut in, ‘you came across to make sure that Richard Manifold entertained no suspicions about you. Later, you went up to the nunnery to tell your sister-in-law what had happened. When I saw you in the Green Lattis, you informed me that one of your hucksters was ill and that you had taken the bread to the convent yourself, out of the goodness of your heart. But the huckster was Ethelreda, and you later informed me that she had never had a day’s illness in her life.’

John Overbecks hunched his shoulders as though they were aching.

‘Did I? I don’t remember. But all might have been well, even then, except that, at that point, Chapman, you started to poke your long nose into my affairs. A very grave mistake, I do assure you.’