The Lammas Feast

Three

Immediately, I thought of Master Overbecks’s story about his wife and sister-in-law; how they had fled from their home on Exmoor, and Marion’s fear that they might be pursued. But after due consideration, I dismissed it from my mind.

Coincidences do happen. Of course they do, or there wouldn’t be a word for them. But I simply could not believe that, after a lapse of five years, two men would turn up looking for the Baldock sisters on the very day that I heard the story for the first time. That, surely, was stretching the limits of credulity too far.

Nevertheless, my pair of ruffians did appear to be watching the bakery, but for what reason I was unable to guess. I had just made up my mind to return as far as Saint Mary’s Church and have a word with them, when someone clapped me on the shoulder. Turning, I found myself face to face with Richard Manifold.

Apart from being a former admirer of my wife’s — in the days before she married her first husband and went to live in Hereford — Richard Manifold was also a sheriff’s officer, now promoted to sergeant. During the early days of our acquaintance, after Adela was widowed and returned to Bristol, I had thoroughly disliked him; but I later accepted that this had been because, without realizing it, I was falling in love with Adela myself. Unconsciously I had known that he was a rival for her favours, desperately trying to rekindle her former spark of affection for him. That she had bestowed her love on me — when I had eventually come to my senses and stopped lusting after the blonde beauty of whom I had thought myself enamoured — was totally undeserved, a fact of which Richard Manifold and I were both well aware, and which I suspected he still resented. Nowadays, however, there was a kind of armed truce between us. If he visited the cottage in Lewin’s Mead and I was there, I gritted my teeth and smiled politely while he and Adela recalled their childhood and early youth in Bristol. (I was born and grew up in Wells and therefore had no share in these reminiscences.) In return, he was equally polite to me and treated me, superficially at least, as a friend.

The bright blue eyes were certainly friendly now, as they regarded me curiously from beneath a pair of jutting eyebrows, the same dark red as his hair. Behind him stood his two lieutenants, Jack Gload and Peter Littleman, both smallish, dark men, showing definite traces of the Welsh blood which, in most Bristolians, mingles with that of the English. Constant seaborne traffic, to and fro across the Bristol Channel, has resulted in a good deal of intermarriage between the two races.

‘What’s caught your attention, Chapman, that you’re blocking the path, oblivious to all the poor folk trying to get past you?’

Richard Manifold, as he always did when speaking to me, drew himself up to his full height, even lifting his heels a little way off the ground. But he still only reached to an inch or so above my shoulders.

‘Ah! Sergeant!’ I nodded towards Saint Mary le Port Church. ‘There are a couple of bravos hiding in the porch who seem to be watching Master Overbecks’s bakery.’ And I gave him a brief account of my morning’s encounter with the pockmarked man and his companion. ‘I was wondering what they might be up to.’

Richard Manifold smiled condescendingly and winked at his two henchmen, a wink that I was sure I was meant to see. This idiot, it said, thinks he can do our job for us.

‘Well, well! It doesn’t sound to me as though they’ve done anything very serious. Not yet, at any rate. But I tell you what, Roger. Just to set your mind at rest — ’ another wink — ‘my men and I will go and have a word with them. Meantime, you can get on about your business. You need to, I daresay, now that you’ve yet another mouth to feed.’ He spoke with all the carefree nonchalance of the confirmed bachelor. ‘A boy, I hear. Give Adela my best wishes and congratulations. I’ll call on you both later today, at the cottage, and let you know what I discover. Jack! Peter! Follow me!’

I silently cursed my own stupidity, although I could not really have foreseen that I was presenting Richard Manifold with an excuse to invade my home for the evening. He would be there until the curfew bell, which rang later in summer, monopolizing Adela’s attention, disturbing the children with his loud voice and unrestrained gusts of laughter, sitting in one of our two good chairs and leaving me the discomfort of our rickety stool.

But there was nothing I could do to retrieve the situation, so I forced a smile and told him that he would be welcome, crossing my fingers, schoolboy fashion, as I did so. Then I went reluctantly on my way, dragging my feet and glancing back over my shoulder until the sergeant and his officers disappeared into the church porch to question the two strangers. I loitered on the corner of Saint Mary le Port Street for a while, expecting all five men to reappear very shortly; but when, after several minutes, there was no sign of them, I decided that I could hang around no longer. Richard Manifold was right: with a growing family to provide for, I needed to earn a crust or two in order to put food on the table, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs — particularly if I were to keep my hidden hoard a secret.

By four o’clock, I was on my way home to supper. The heavy July heat coupled with the noise and the crowds (two factors that normally did not worry me) were beginning to make me bad-tempered. My feet, sweltering inside my boots, were aching unbearably. I had removed my tunic and was wearing only my breeches and shirt, but the sweat still coursed down my back in rivulets. My fair hair had turned several shades darker and was plastered to my head. My shirt clung damply to my body.

In the last few hours, I had tramped all over the city to very little purpose. With the start of Saint James’s Fair only days away, no one wanted to waste his or her money on purchases from a chapman’s pack when traders would soon be arriving with their goods from all around the country, from every part of Wales and even from abroad. (As I trudged along Welsh Back a few minutes earlier, I had noticed at least two of the flat-bottomed barges the Welsh call trows tied up at the wharfside.)

For the second time that day, I was walking up High Street. At that hour of the afternoon, the drain in the middle of the road had become blocked with refuse and stank to high heaven. Again, this was something I did not usually notice, but which now, irritable and tired as I was, offended my senses. I was feeling extremely sorry for myself, and I could just picture Adela’s wry smile as I staggered into the cottage wanting to be petted and cosseted and told what a brave young fellow I was to be working in all this heat.

As I once more drew abreast of Saint Mary le Port Street, I glanced across the road to Master Overbecks’s bakery. There seemed to be nothing amiss. Women were still crowding round the counter, and both Master Overbecks and Dick Hodge were serving them pies and cakes and pastries. I wondered what had happened concerning the two strangers, and would have gone across to enquire, but business was so brisk that I decided against it. The baker wouldn’t thank me for the interruption: I should just have to wait for news until Richard Manifold called on us, as he had promised, that evening.

A yard or so further on, to my left, was Jasper Fairbrother’s bakery. He had already ceased trading for the day, the counter drawn up, the shop shuttered. This did not surprise me. Jasper had so many other irons in the fire — gambling, extortion, whoring and having innocent citizens beaten up — that it was a constant source of wonder to his fellow inhabitants that he found time to run a bakery at all. I think most people secretly hoped that he would one day be caught selling underweight loaves, and be dragged through the streets with the offending bread hung round his neck, a target for all the stinking rubbish that could be thrown at him. Unfortunately, if he did give short measure, or flout the city ordinance regarding the hucksters, he got away with it. His victims were too frightened of him and his bravos to complain.

As I passed the shop, a door opened and Walter Godsmark came out, crossing the street with his long-legged stride. He entered the shadows of Saint Mary le Port Street and I guessed that he was hurrying home, for I knew that he lived with his widowed mother near Saint Peter’s Church, in the lee of the castle.

If Walter had a saving grace it was his care for this elderly parent, who, so I was told, had been almost past the age of childbearing when her only son was born. Her husband had died shortly afterwards, and, with the help of a daughter, some twelve or so years older than Walter, had managed to rear him from a sickly infant to the strapping great lout he was today. Now it was his turn to look after her, his sister having long ago departed from the town. What Goody Godsmark thought of her son’s association with Jasper Fairbrother no one knew, for she would never be drawn on the subject; but he was the apple of her eye, and I doubt that she would have blamed him had he been in league with Old Nick himself.

I slowed down a little as I reached the top of High Street, then skirted the High Cross before entering Broad Street, almost directly opposite. Here stood a house I knew well, the former home of the late Alderman Weaver; a house which, since the Alderman’s death just over a year ago, had stood shuttered and empty while his brother and heir decided what to do with it. But now, at last, it had a new occupant. One of Bristol’s richest citizens, Peter Avenel, who made his money from making soap, had bought it for his son, Robin, recently married to the daughter of another wealthy local merchant. (Bristol is a very rich city, and approves of its sons and daughters marrying one another. That way, Bristol money remains in Bristol pockets and doesn’t find its way into those of strangers.)

I knew Robin Avenel well by sight and had once, four years earlier, had some dealings with him. He had fancied himself in love with a young woman whom I fancied myself. Not that I ever stood a chance with someone so far above me socially as Cicely Ford; but I had resented the fact that this cherubic-faced little dandy, with his prancing gait and the roving eye, had dared even to aspire to Cicely’s affection.

There was the usual congestion in Broad Street, with the customary procession of carts and pedestrians going in and out by Saint John’s Arch and the Frome Gate, and I almost missed the sight of Robin Avenel opening his door to usher out a guest. I also very nearly missed seeing the guest’s face because a smallholder, returning home with the remains of the vegetables he had failed to sell at market, stopped alongside me, blocking my view. The line of traffic passing through the Frome Gate had come to a halt as it so often did at that time of day. Then the smallholder suddenly dropped the reins on his horse’s neck and jumped down from his seat to answer a call of nature in the drain in the middle of the road. I could now see plainly that the visitor taking his leave of Robin Avenel was the same man who had previously visited Jasper Fairbrother; the man who had disembarked that morning from the Breton ship in Saint Nicholas Backs.

As soon as I pushed open the cottage door and heard a strange voice, I knew we had a visitor. Happily, it didn’t speak with the self-assertive tones of Richard Manifold, but in soft, feminine cadences that still had the power to make me shiver with pleasure.

Cicely Ford! Now here was a true coincidence. I had been thinking of her as I walked along Broad Street and through the Frome Gate, only to find her seated at my table, drinking a cup of Adela’s elderberry wine, her left arm cradling Adam. He, needless to say, was behaving perfectly, peaceful and quiet, even though awake. All his life, he has known how to please women and earn their adoration. Many’s the time I’ve wished that I could learn the trick.

Cicely Ford was a lay sister at the Magdalen Nunnery, which stood on the rising ground a little way north-west of Saint James’s Priory and opposite the church of Saint Michael-on-the-Mount-Without. The nunnery had been founded three centuries earlier by the wife of Sir Robert Fitzhardinge as a house of retreat and a seminary for young women, and dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalen. When Cicely Ford had entered the community four years before, following the deaths of her betrothed and his elder brother, it had been her intention to join the order. But in the end, for reasons I had never discovered, she had abandoned this idea and stayed on as a lay sister, helping to instruct the merchants’ daughters who attended the seminary, or waiting on any rich woman who felt she would benefit from a few days’ peace and quiet in retreat, away from the company of her nearest and dearest.

It was a very small cell of the Augustinian Order, and until Marion Baldock had joined their number, as Sister Jerome, the previous year, there had been no more than three nuns in residence for quite some time, leading an unexciting and blameless existence; a far cry from the preceding century, when stories of their daring and courage in taking food to the beleaguered villagers of Bedminster during the Black Death had made the community famous throughout the city and beyond.

As I entered the cottage, Cicely turned her head and smiled at me. Her corn-coloured hair was strained back beneath a grey veil, but the severity of the style in no way detracted from the beauty of her almost perfect oval face, which, with its soft, creamy skin, was as flower-like as ever. Her blue eyes lit with pleasure at seeing me.

She murmured, ‘Roger!’ and held out one small hand which I gallantly kissed. I avoided Adela’s cynical gaze; a look that told me she understood exactly what was going on. She knew that I liked to keep these little shrines to my past goddesses brightly lit in the secret recesses of my mind, even though I was fully aware that, given the chance, I could never have lived with any one of them. Adela was the only woman I had ever met capable of the sort of love that demanded no ties or promises, but let me be myself and allowed me the freedom to wander the open road whenever the fancy took me. She was totally altruistic, the only possible wife and helpmeet for someone as selfish as I was. In return, she had all my heart — but I did like to pretend sometimes that I was still a lad-about-town, an attitude she regarded with her customary indulgence.

‘Mistress Ford has come to invite us to be her guests, the day after tomorrow, at Vespers,’ Adela said.

‘It’s the twenty-second of July, the feast day of Saint Mary Magdalen,’ Cicely explained. ‘The lay sisters can each invite two visitors for the evening service. And just now, as I was passing your door, I suddenly thought of you, Roger. And Mistress Chapman, of course!’ She gently withdrew her hand, which I had retained for far too long, with a faint frown of disapproval and a small, apologetic smile at Adela.

‘We shall be delighted to be your guests, shan’t we, Roger?’ my wife demanded peremptorily.

‘We shall, indeed,’ I concurred. ‘But what about the children? What about feeding Adam?’

They were cries becoming more familiar to me with each passing day. But I could always rely on Adela to be one step ahead of me.

‘I shall feed Adam before I go. As for the other two, I shall naturally ask Margaret to come and look after them. I’m sure she’ll agree. She can stay here the night, in our bed, with Elizabeth and me. You can share Nicholas’s mattress.’

I grimaced. My stepson was a lively sleeper and I could foresee precious little rest for either of us that night. Adela, without a single look or word of reproach, had got her own back. That would teach me to hang on to other women’s hands beyond the call of duty.

‘And now, dearest,’ my wife added, ‘I think you should make yourself respectable. Put on your tunic and walk Mistress Ford home.’

Cicely protested, but Adela was adamant. ‘The paths and alleyways around here aren’t safe, even in broad daylight. And I know whereabouts you live.’

So did I. Although Cicely was a wealthy young woman, having inherited her guardian’s fortune as well as her father’s, when she decided against becoming a nun, she had rented a tiny cottage, a little higher up Saint Michael’s Hill than the nunnery, facing the public gallows. It was not a spot many people would have chosen, but I could guess her reasons for selecting it, and not simply because it was close to the nunnery. It was on those gallows that the man she had loved, Robert Herepath, had died, deserted by everyone, including herself, protesting his innocence to the last; innocence that had been amply demonstrated a few months later, when the man he was supposed to have murdered, Margaret Walker’s father, had returned to Bristol, alive and well. Having subsequently married Margaret’s daughter, Lillis Walker, and solved the mystery of William Woodward’s disappearance, I had, like my mother-in-law, always felt some sort of responsibility for Cicely Ford.

Adela knew this and had therefore forestalled me with the suggestion that I would, sooner or later, have made myself. And it gave me an excuse to be absent when Richard Manifold called.

Quarter of an hour later, Cicely and I left the cottage, and only just in time as far as I was concerned. Glancing behind me as we turned into the alley alongside the house, I saw the sergeant emerging from the shadows of the Frome Gate, so, taking my companion’s arm, I hurried her forward. The open ground around Saint James’s Priory was already half-covered with booths and stalls in various stages of construction, ready for the opening of the fair in five days’ time.

Cicely must have read my thoughts. ‘By this hour next Saturday afternoon,’ she said, ‘this place will be crowded with people buying, selling, dancing, cramming the side-shows-’

‘Drinking, thieving, throwing up,’ I interrupted, and incurred her displeasure.

‘That’s a very jaundiced view, if I may say so, Roger. Don’t you like people to enjoy themselves?’

‘Of course! Just so long as they don’t pick my pockets or try to steal my children away. We live in perilous times, Mistress Ford.’

She laughed. ‘We always have. I used to listen to my father talking when I was a child. There never were such perilous days as he lived through.’ I grinned in acknowledgement of her argument, and she smiled up at me. ‘I’m so glad you’re happy, Roger. I can tell that you and Adela were made for one another. I was sad when you married Lillis Walker. I never thought her the right wife for you. But Adela’s different. You are happy, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Only I heard the note of hesitation in my voice.

Her beautiful eyes filled with tears. ‘Then mind you don’t have anything to reproach yourself with. If only I’d believed in Robert! I could have comforted his final hours, let him know that one person, at least, had faith in him.’

I tried to console her. ‘It might only have made things worse. His death would have seemed even more pointless and unjust.’

We had climbed halfway up Saint Michael’s Hill to where the gallows stood. Some poor lost soul was hanging there in chains, part of his face already pecked away by the crows.

‘Why do you choose to live here?’ I demanded violently, chasing off two of these scavengers as I spoke. But I knew the answer before she made it.

‘It’s close to the nunnery. And I feel closer to Robert. Sometimes, I feel he’s there in the cottage with me. Do you think that foolish?’

‘I think it unwise to encourage such morbid fancies.’

A man had just passed Saint Michael’s Church and the boundary stone that marked the city’s limit, and was climbing steadily uphill towards us; a man dressed in hose and tunic of brown burel, carrying a cloak made of the same material, together with his pack; a man I had seen three times before that day, the last time in Broad Street well over an hour ago. What, I wondered, had he been doing in the meantime that it had taken him so long to get this far?

I must have exclaimed involuntarily, because Cicely asked, ‘Do you know him, Roger?’

I shook my head. ‘No. But he’s been haunting me ever since this morning. This is the fourth occasion that I’ve seen him today.’

Cicely stared curiously at the man.

The stranger, however, did not return our interest. He strode purposefully past us without a glance, although he did falter for an instant at the sight of the felon dangling from the gibbet. It appeared to startle him and I glimpsed the whites of his eyes as he shied away from the corpse. It crossed my mind that it might hold some special significance for him; but then, I suppose that might be said about all of us when there are so many crimes that carry the penalty of death.

He recovered quickly, walking on towards the high ground above Bristol, known as Durdham Down, and the road to Gloucester.

‘He looks as though he knows where he’s going,’ Cicely commented, watching the stranger dwindle to a speck in the distance. She turned back to me. ‘Thank you for bringing me home, Roger.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. But I wasn’t fooled for a minute into thinking it anything other than a chaste, sisterly peck. Her heart belonged to a dead man and would do so until the day she died. ‘You and Adela won’t forget to come to Vespers on Wednesday evening?’

‘We shan’t forget,’ I promised. Then I saw her safely inside her cottage, with its grisly outlook, took the liberty of kissing her cheek — another chaste peck — and set off home, more than ready for my delayed supper.

The first thing I smelled when I entered the house was the delicious aroma of mutton stew, flavoured with cinnamon and saffron. The first thing — or, rather, person — I saw was Richard Manifold, sitting in my chair, eating from my bowl with my spoon. Adela was a worthy opponent: she could always teach me a salutary lesson. But, also, she knew when she had taken matters far enough.

She came forward, smiling a welcome, and kissed me full on the lips. There was nothing chaste or sisterly about this kiss, and I noticed our guest’s squirm of embarrassment. That put me in a better mood, and I sat down opposite him, while Adela brought me a brimming plate of mutton stew and a slice of barley bread.

‘Well?’ I demanded. ‘What did you discover about those two ruffians, Richard? Why were they watching Baker Overbecks’s shop?’

The sergeant’s manner became distinctly cagey.

‘Nothing of any moment,’ he said, answering my first question. ‘A couple of strangers just passing through.’ He added more positively, ‘They certainly weren’t spying on Master Overbecks.’

‘It looked like it to me,’ I argued stubbornly. ‘What’s more, the pockmarked one was looking for a quarrel. They had no respect at all for any upright local citizen who happened to get in their way.

‘Meaning you, I suppose?’

‘Meaning me.’

‘I can assure you, Roger, they are both innocent of doing anything wrong. It isn’t a civic offence to jostle someone, you know.’

I bristled menacingly.

‘That’ll do, both of you!’ Adela rebuked us as she took her place at the table. ‘Stop squaring up to each other like a pair of fighting cocks. You’ll upset the children. I’ll have to ask you to leave, Richard, if you can’t behave.’

‘Then Roger will have to accept what I say. I know a felon when I see one.’

‘Roger?’ my wife queried sharply.

‘Oh, very well!’

What else could I say? I had no proof that the men were villains. Indeed, I wasn’t sure that they were. I was certain, however, that Richard Manifold was holding something back; that he had gleaned some information about them that he wasn’t going to share with me. But the expression on Adela’s face warned me not to pursue the matter further. I should just have to contain my soul in patience and see what transpired.