The Midsummer Rose

Eleven

I called out, ‘Mistress Hollyns!’ and quickened my stride. I thought, from the slight movement of her head, that she had heard me and would wait for me to catch her up. But then she pushed open the church door and disappeared inside.

Bell Lane was quiet at that time of the evening. It couldn’t have taken me more than a minute to cover the ground between myself and Saint Giles’s, but when I entered, the nave was empty.

‘Mistress Hollyns!’ I called again. There was still no answer.

I descended to the crypt. There was no one there either, and I searched the next two chambers, but to no avail. I recalled Luke Prettywood telling me that the old synagogue cellars stretched the length of Bell Lane as far as Saint John’s-on-the-Arch, but the distance seemed twice that length as I cautiously edged my way forward, every nerve tensed in expectation of sudden confrontation. But it soon became apparent that wherever Rowena Hollyns had gone, she was not in the church. She must have walked straight out of the opposite door into Jewry Lane. A short cut to the quayside perhaps? Or had the sound of my voice and the possibility of an encounter with me frightened her away? And if so, why?

I did not linger. The place filled me with the same sense of unhappiness and suffering that I had experienced once before. Grief and despair seemed embedded in the very stones. I shivered and made my way back outside, where the warmth and sunlight were like a benediction.

I went home.

The following morning, we were all up and dressed while it was still dark. Adela saw to that.

The two older children, robbed of their sleep, were fractious, while Adam, in no mood to be trifled with, was vociferous in his disapproval of being awakened so early. And long before we had finished a hasty breakfast, I was feeling positively liverish. Adela, however, with admirable fixity of purpose, ignored our collective bad temper, assembled warm cloaks and sensible shoes for each of us and put slices of honey cake, wrapped in dock leaves, into a basket to sustain us later on. The basket would also hold the necessary herbs.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘you know what we’re looking for. Saint John’s wort, mugwort, plantain, corn marigold, elder, yarrow, ivy and vervain. They’ll all be woven into the garland which I shall hang on the street door tonight to ward off the witches and other evil spirits of the air. And after dark, when the bonfires are lit on the high ground above the city, you may stay up late to see them. If you are good.’

‘Does that include me?’ I enquired caustically.

My wife gave me a look, but made no reply.

We joined the general exodus from the Redcliffe Gate to the meadows beyond, calling for Margaret Walker on our way. She was another staunch believer in propitiating the ancient gods, and together with the toothless Maria Watkins, who had also joined our party, kept up a constant refrain about the good old days and how nothing was the same today. Hercules and Margaret’s dog, a small black and white mongrel to whom she had given a home the previous year after its mistress had deserted it, cavorted at our heels, intoxicated by all the fresh air and the prospect of innocent little rabbits to chase.

By the time we reached the fields beyond the church of Saint Mary Redcliffe, the darkness was lifting to unveil a misty sun. The early morning distances were here fretted with gold, there flooded with shadow. Campion, foxglove and the foaming heads of cow parsley starred the meadows, and the scent of crushed wild thyme, thick as incense, rose from beneath our feet.

I looked for, but failed to find, anyone from the Avenel household except for Marianne, walking sedately beside Luke Prettywood. Her dancing eyes and sudden spurts of infectious laughter belied this decorous behaviour, and I was not surprised, a little later on, to discover that the pair of them seemed to have vanished. However, the crowds were so great by then that I was forced to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they had simply moved beyond my range of vision.

Most of the children ran riot, rolling in the dew-wet grass and being of little help to anyone. Our three were as bad as the rest, and twice we lost Adam, only to have him returned by neighbours who had recognized his indignant roar. (Once heard, never forgotten.) But, eventually, everyone had collected all the herbs and plants they needed, by which time the larks were shrilling overhead in a hot blue sky and the fields, cleared of mist, spread green and gold all around us. We could see the hedgerows bright with white and pink wild roses.

‘Aren’t you going to pick one for me?’ Adela asked as we made our way back to the Redcliffe Gate.

I shook my head. ‘This year I’m buying you a rose from one of the street vendors,’ I announced, enjoying her look of astonishment. ‘You can pull it apart at this evening’s feast and surprise us both.’

‘Does this mean that you, also, need to find out if you still love me?’

She had put an entirely different interpretation on my action to the one I had intended, so I thought it wisest not to answer; in any case, my attention had been distracted. As we passed William Canynges’s great church, I saw Marianne Avenel and Luke Prettywood loitering in its shadow, his head bent to hers, her flower-like face upturned in adoration, the pair of them so close together that, at first glance, they appeared to be a single person. He was talking earnestly to her, and at one point I saw her laugh. Then I was swept along by the crowd and they were once more lost from sight.

The rest of the day was spent in a little desultory peddling around the town, before abandoning all pretence of work and lending assistance to my fellow citizens, who were setting up trestle tables in the streets ready for the Midsummer Eve’s feast. Adela and I, uneasily conscious of the animosity of some of our Small Street neighbours, had agreed to walk as far as Redcliffe and take our supper with Margaret Walker and her friends. And although this almost certainly meant encountering the ill will of my own erstwhile friend, Burl Hodge, in general the inhabitants of the Redcliffe Ward cared little for my new-found status as a householder.

Consequently, four o’clock found Adela, the children and myself on the other side of the Avon, seated at one of the long tables set up in Redcliffe Street. We sat next to her cousin and opposite Margaret’s closest companions, Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins. Neither dame resented my stroke of luck, and treated me with the same good-natured contempt that they had always shown towards me. Jack Nym and his wife waved to us all as they took their places further along the laden board, while Nick Brimble, Goody Watkins’s nephew, slapped me on the back as he passed. I also recognized two old friends in Ned Stoner and Rob Short, both of whom now worked for Redcliffe masters; but either they failed to hear me when I shouted to them, or, having become aware of my presence, they deliberately refused to glance my way.

Not so Jenny Hodge, who left her seat at a neighbouring trestle to speak to both Adela and myself, displaying all her usual gentleness and good humour.

‘Take no notice of Burl,’ she said on parting. ‘He’ll get the better of his envious feelings given time.’

Looking at her husband’s scowling face, I hoped she was right. I missed his friendship, and also that of his two happy-go-lucky sons, Jack and Dick.

The feast was provided by the master cooks, bakers and butchers of the city and served by their long-suffering apprentices, many of whom muttered mutinously to themselves and to one another as they struggled with the heavy trays of food and beakers of ale in the late-afternoon heat. The Midsummer Eve’s feast had not always been blessed with good weather, but that year the atmosphere was stifling. I saw Luke Prettywood overseeing a couple of brewer’s lads and occasionally lending them a hand, the sweat pouring down his face and nearly blinding him.

‘What are you doing over here?’ I asked him as he refilled my beaker.

‘I live in Redcliffe.’ He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. ‘I might ask you the same question, with better cause.’

‘Oh, I’m a guest of Mistress Walker,’ was my prompt reply. ‘My daughter is her granddaughter.’

I glanced at Elizabeth as I spoke, but she was too busy even to talk to her stepbrother, let alone to notice me. She was trying to cram a whole raston into her mouth at once, the crumbs, butter and honey from its scooped-out interior dribbling down her chin and rendering her speechless. Nicholas himself was little better. He was just reaching for another piece of curd tart, the state of his mouth and fingers betraying the fact that he had disposed of several slices already. As for Adam, he was awash with cream syllabub and junket, which he had managed to get all down his little tunic, up his nose and around his eyes. I shuddered and looked away. He was not a pretty sight.

The feasting over at last — which only happened when we could barely move, even to go and relieve ourselves behind a convenient wall — the dirty dishes were cleared away by the exhausted apprentices and it was time for the games to begin.

The first ceremony was that of the Midsummer Rose itself. Each husband or sweetheart presented his lady-love with the rose he had either bought or picked for her and waited anxiously while she tore it to pieces, petal by petal.

‘He loves me! He loves me not!’

I gave Adela the overblown monstrosity I had purchased from a seller in High Street and watched, with bated breath, as she went through the ritual. I suddenly found that I really cared about the outcome, praying for the correct conclusion as some sort of proof to me, as well as to her, that our marriage was as strong as ever. Margaret Walker, Maria Watkins and Bess Simnel also took a gloating interest in the proceedings, ready to cackle with laughter and overwhelm me with mock reproaches if things failed to work out.

The rose was almost denuded. ‘He loves me … He loves me not … He loves me!’ Adela turned with a triumphant smile and invited my kiss. The three goodies made no effort to hide their disappointment. Further along the board and at neighbouring trestles, other swains and spouses were feebly protesting their devotion and swearing that the Midsummer Rose had lied. There was a lot of laughter, a few tears and some dissension before the head man of each table called for order and we passed on to the next ritual.

Great pans of water were placed on each table by the sweating and hard-working apprentices, and each citizen was handed a paper boat holding a stump of lighted candle. These were floated on the water to the chant: ‘Green is gold, fire is wet, fortune’s told, dragon’s met.’ Good fortune was yours if the boat floated to the opposite side of the pan before sinking and extinguishing its flame.

Both Adela’s boat and mine sank within seconds of each other, but Margaret Walker, by dint of some judicious cheating, kept all three children’s candles afloat long enough to ensure their good luck for the rest of the year.

Finally, a huge pastry subtlety, in the shape of a dragon, was set in the middle of every trestle and, at a given signal, a ‘Saint George’ leaped on to each table and ‘killed’ it. Our table’s Saint George was Luke Prettywood, and a fine, dramatic job he made of it, ripping the pastry beast apart with his sword — well, his knife, more accurately speaking — until a shower of coins spilled out across the board. There was an undignified scramble for this gift of money from the Mayor and aldermen of the city, most of it ending up, as usual, in the purses and pockets of the elderly, who were utterly unscrupulous in the methods they employed to obtain more than their fair share of booty. The younger folk nursed bruised ribs, cracked knuckles and scratched hands for many a day afterwards.

By now, it was beginning to grow dusk, and the first of the bonfires had been lit on the heights above Bristol — those ‘bone-fires’ on which our pagan forefathers, the Druids, had burned the bones of animals in honour of their great god Bel. One by one, they pricked the gathering darkness, and the acrid smell of burning was carried on a cloud of sparks down to the ancient city below, cradled in its marshy bed.

Bonfires were also lit in the streets, and it was time to form the midsummer processions. As I helped Adela to rise from the bench on which we had been sitting, I saw something flutter to the ground, something she had been concealing in the palm of one hand and accidentally released as she reached for mine. I stooped to pick it up — and found myself looking at a crimson rose petal, as soft as velvet.

‘He loves me not.’

The revels were nearly over and people were reluctantly beginning to disperse. But movement was necessarily slow as neighbours stopped to laugh and exchange titbits of gossip. Adela, with Adam asleep on her shoulder, had joined the group of women gathered around Margaret Walker. Nicholas and Elizabeth, together with several other children, were chasing in and out amongst those tables that had not yet been dismantled and carried away. I allowed my attention to wander.

A man, coming from the direction of Bristol Bridge, was weaving his way swiftly through the crowds, making himself as unobtrusive as possible by hugging the walls of the houses bordering the quay, head well down, hat pulled forward over his eyes, a cloak enveloping him from neck to ankles. Now and then he collided with a passer-by, but for the most part people were too busy about their own concerns to take much interest in him.

He interested me, however. Robin Avenel had evidently left the feasting and merrymaking on the other side of the Avon to cross into Redcliffe, where, judging by his purposeful gait, he was on his way to some rendezvous. Abruptly, he turned down one of the many alleyways that led on to Redcliffe Back.

I touched Adela’s arm. ‘Go home with Margaret and wait for me there. I’ve just seen somebody I know. I shan’t be long.’ And I took my departure as quickly as I could, deaf to her questions and protests.

Redcliffe Back had obviously been the scene of as much revelling and feasting as the inner streets. More, perhaps, as residents there had been joined by many of the foreign sailors whose ships were berthed at the wharfside. Scraps of food, rose petals, paper boats and stumps of candle littered the cobbles so thickly that my boots squelched on the debris with every step I took. Some tables had been overturned, a noisy crowd was still roistering around the bonfire in the middle of the quay, while others were heaving up the contents of their stomachs into the Avon. The river itself seemed to be a sheet of flame, reflecting the light from the many fires on Saint Brendan’s Hill and the heights leading to Durham and Clifton.

A disturbance had broken out — a drunken brawl, by the sound of things — but for the moment, there seemed to be no cause for concern. Wall torches and cressets had now been lit, adding their smoky glow to that of the bonfires.

I paused in the mouth of the alleyway before locating Robin Avenel almost straight ahead of me. He was talking to a man who stood, listening impatiently, one foot on the quayside, the other on the gangplank of a ship. This, together with his mode of dress, told me he was a sailor, and a foreign one at that. Irish? French? Breton? I was too far away and there was too much noise to hear anything that might have given me a clue. But I could see that Robin was importuning the other for a favour, which the sailor appeared loath to grant. There was urgency in every line of Robin’s body and in the general earnestness of his demeanour, but his companion shook his head and would have continued mounting the gangplank if Robin had not tightened his grip on the other man’s wrist.

I edged a little nearer, my quarry seemingly unaware of anything going on around him. The commotion further along the quay was beginning to escalate and to attract general attention: no one would be interested in my movements. But I had left it too late. Even as I took a step forward, someone shot past me through the alleyway, seized Robin Avenel by the scruff of his neck and whirled him round.

‘What do you mean, you revolting piece of frippery, by telling my Jenny to keep away from your wife?’ roared Burl Hodge’s unmistakable tones. When Burl was angry, everyone knew it.

It took Robin Avenel several seconds to realize what was happening. The sailor, seizing his chance, hastened up the gangplank to the refuge of his ship.

I could hear Robin’s furious bleats of protest at this rough handling, and hurried forward myself, not so much to save his skin, as to prevent Burl doing something he would later regret.

‘My wife,’ Burl was yelling at the top of his voice, ‘is every bit as good as that empty-headed little whore that you married! And if you’re ever rude to my Jenny again — ’ he began punching Robin in the chest with a vigour that made me wince — ‘I won’t be responsible for the consequences. Do …’ (thump) ‘you …’ (thump) ‘understand me?’ (Yet another thump.)

‘Leave him, Burl!’ I seized the tenter’s wrists. ‘He isn’t worth it.’

‘What? What the …?’ Burl turned to see who had so rudely interrupted his sport, and in the glow from the fires I could see his eyes darken with anger. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? I might have guessed. You never can keep that great nose of yours out of other people’s business. It’s high time someone taught you a lesson, chapman, and I’m in just the mood to do it.’

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ I told him, indicating with a jerk of my head to Robin that he should go while the going was good.

He didn’t need a second bidding and sloped off into the night, but not before he had given Burl a vicious kick on the shins. And that about summed up the man: valiant only so long as there was no risk to himself.

Burl, robbed of his prey, was beside himself with fury. As soon as I released his wrists, he took a wild swing at my jaw but missed me by miles. I made the mistake of laughing. He came for me then, throwing all his weight against me and bearing me to the ground, where we rolled over and over in the dirt, writhing and kicking and hitting each other like two gutter urchins. How long this undignified spectacle might have continued is difficult to say, but the sudden yells of ‘Riot! Ware riot! Apprentices! Apprentices!’ made us leave off and scramble hurriedly to our feet.

It was a year or more since there had last been an apprentices’ riot in the city, but the long, hot, toilsome day and evening, waiting on others, followed by the release from labour and some heavy drinking, had fuelled tempers and made them ripe for mischief. Suddenly boys were everywhere like a pack of bloodthirsty hounds in full cry, hallooing and hollering to their fellows to join in the hunt. I had seen a few apprentice riots in my time, but this bade fair to be one of the worst. Anyone who stood in their path was knocked down and mauled.

Within ten minutes or so, the whole of Redcliffe was a seething mass of violent, drunken apprentices, and the riot was spreading across Bristol Bridge and into the main part of the city. Someone had ordered the alarm bell to be rung, and its deep notes tolled out, warning all respectable citizens to seek the safety and shelter of their own homes. But even these citadels were not necessarily safe, as pot-valiant youths hammered on windows and shutters and mouthed obscenities through keyholes.

Wishing to heaven that I had brought my cudgel with me, and wondering how long it would take the Watch and the City Militia to arrive and quell the riot, I fought my way through the melee by the simple expedient of knocking heads together and generally making use of my superior height and strength until I reached Margaret Walker’s cottage. There, I discovered a handful of youths banging on the door and laughing uproariously at the sound of my children’s frightened wailing on the other side. But I made short work of them. Furious, I booted one up his backside so hard that I reckoned he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week; I hit another with such force that I heard his jawbone crack, and I drove a third one’s head against the wall so violently that he slid to the ground unconscious. The fourth didn’t stop to find out what I had in store for him, but took to his heels, vanishing into the flame-reddened night.

‘It’s me!’ I shouted. ‘Adela! Margaret! Let me in!’

The cottage door creaked open an inch or two, just wide enough to admit me without doing permanent damage to my limbs and other vital parts. I squeezed inside, but if I had expected to be the hero of the moment after my admirable display of Herculean prowess outside, I was destined to be disappointed.

‘Roger! Where have you been?’ my wife demanded reproachfully.

Margaret Walker was more forthright. ‘Just like a man to go sloping off somewhere when he’s needed. Your womenfolk and children could all have been murdered where they stood.’

I was irritated and showed it. ‘A gross exaggeration, Mother-in-law, and you well know it. No one gets murdered during an apprentices’ riot. Oh, I grant you there’ll be a fair lot of damage to property, broken noses, black eyes, bruised shins, that sort of thing, but nobody will be dead. It’s mostly high spirits and mischief exacerbated by drink. They don’t mean any real harm.’

‘Harm!’ screeched Goody Watkins, and for the first time I became aware of her and Bess Simnel’s presence in the cottage. ‘Harm! The varmints have broken one of my shutters and Bess here has had her door kicked in! If I catch one of ’em what did it, I’ll cut off his balls with my carving knife!’ With which bloodthirsty utterance she burst into tears.

Margaret tried to comfort her, glaring at me as she did so. ‘Now see what you’ve done!’

‘Listen!’ I held up my hand for silence.

The quality of the noise outside had altered. The triumphant yells of the apprentices had changed to cries of dismay. There were sounds of horses’ hooves, the rattling of swords, the upraised voices of Authority. The Watch, the Petty Constable and the City Militia had arrived at last, followed eventually by the Mayor, who climbed on to one of the remaining tables and read the Riot Act. Some youths were rounded up and marched off, under escort, to the bridewell. The rest were claimed by masters whose wrath would only be appeased by beatings and floggings that would continue for many days to come.

At last, we were free to go home.