The Midsummer Rose

Seventeen

I had a sense of having watched this scene played out before, but this time, there were differences. To begin with, there was no skirt of pale yellow sarcenet billowing about Marianne Avenel as she ran, merely the sombre swish of a gown of deepest black. And secondly, she made no effort to conceal her true relationship with Luke, throwing herself into her lover’s arms regardless of my presence.

‘What … What are we going to do?’ she asked, sobbing noisily.

Luke smothered her in an all-enveloping embrace, pressing her face against his shoulder.

‘Hush, hush, sweetheart. There’s nothing we can do until the law has run its course. Richard Manifold already has a suspect under lock and key, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now. Master Chapman here doesn’t agree with Burl Hodge’s arrest, but it’s up to him to prove differently, and we shall just have to wait and see who’s right, him or the sergeant.’ Marianne made a little mewling sound of distress, but Luke patted her back and again hushed her gently. ‘Darling, believe me when I say that there is nothing either of us can do except attend upon events. For now, we must be careful. We don’t want to arouse suspicions.’

I privately thought it a bit late for such a precaution — half of Bristol seemed to know of their liaison — but I didn’t say so. What would have been the point? Marianne raised a tearful face from Luke’s shoulder and made an effort to control her overwrought emotions.

‘S-Sorry!’ she gasped. ‘It’s just that everything’s so awful!’

‘It will pass,’ he answered, kissing her gently between the eyes. ‘Trust me. Everything will be all right.’

She gave a tremulous smile. ‘As … As long as I have you,’ she whispered.

And, somewhat to my surprise, I found myself agreeing with her. Luke Prettywood was behaving with a maturity that surprised me. A woman on the verge of hysterics, which was how Marianne appeared to me, can be an unnerving ordeal for a young man. She opened her mouth to say something more, but he sealed it with another kiss.

‘By the way,’ he said lightly, ‘your father has dismissed me from the brewery because of my behaviour on Midsummer Eve. Assaulting an officer of the law is more than he’s prepared to stomach. So it may be easier to avoid one another’s company than we think.’

He had successfully diverted her attention away from her own woes, as no doubt he had intended.

‘Dismissed you?’ The vulnerable, kittenish look had vanished and the pretty, rounded features hardened with fury. ‘Dismissed you? I’ll soon see about that!’

Already, as I could see, calculations were going on behind those luminous grey eyes as Marianne considered how best to persuade Gregory Alefounder to change his mind, without revealing her own intense interest in the outcome.

At this point, Hercules, who had settled down to guard my pack where I had dropped it on entering Saint Giles, ambled across and cocked a leg against one of mine, a warm, wet stream flowing down inside my left boot, while my companions, temporarily forgetting their troubles, burst out laughing.

‘Does he often do that?’ Luke enquired when he could catch his breath.

I sighed. ‘Only when he has a grievance. At present, he’s annoyed at being kept waiting while we visited the crypt.’

Marianne glanced up quickly at her swain. ‘Why were you in the crypt?’

Luke hedged, plainly not wishing to upset her further just at present. ‘It’s … It’s nothing important, sweeting. I’ll tell you later. By the way, how did you know where to find me?’

‘Oh, I was unable to stay in the house a moment longer. It’s stifling in this heat, and I felt I couldn’t bear Elizabeth’s company for another second. She’s in such a peculiar mood. More angry than grieving. Yesterday was dreadful! So I got up early and when I’d breakfasted I decided that I must go out. I went to the brewery first, but you weren’t there. Of course, now I understand why. Father was horrid to me. He yelled and said I was a disgrace, wandering about the city without a maid in attendance and me a widow of only one day. I ought to be at home, keeping to my chamber. All the apprentices and carters were standing around in the yard, listening. It was so humiliating. I just burst into tears and ran away. And then I bumped into that apothecary who keeps the shop near the brothels. He was knocking on our door as I reached home. I don’t know why — some remedy for Elizabeth or Dame Dorothy, I suppose — and he told me that he’d noticed you and the chapman entering Saint Giles’s Church. So I came here.’

Witherspoon!

‘Did you tell him you were looking for Master Prettywood?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, of course not. I mean, I wasn’t, not exactly, but he just seemed to assume that I was. And as soon as he mentioned your name, of course I knew I did want to see you.’ She gazed, misty-eyed, at her lover.

‘Ah well,’ I said, unwilling to intrude any longer upon this touching scene, ‘I must be on my way before Hercules disgraces himself again.’ Without thinking, I clapped Luke on the shoulder and he winced. I apologized. ‘I hope your fortunes are soon on the mend, my friend. Mistress Avenel!’ I gave her a little bow. These polite gestures are greatly appreciated by the gentler sex. Or so my mother always taught me. ‘Please accept my deepest sympathy for your loss. Forgive me if I say that I hope soon to prove that Burl Hodge is not your husband’s murderer. In which case, I might even be able to point the finger at whoever is.’

She gave me a faint, watery smile and clung even tighter to Luke. I picked up my pack, took hold of the dog’s leading string and quit the church, leaving them still standing locked together in the nave.

It was nearly ten o’clock. I went home for my dinner.

I recounted the morning’s events so far to Adela. She was unimpressed.

I could guess, by the two horn books lying on the other end of the kitchen table, that she had probably spent a couple of profitless hours trying yet again to teach Nicholas and Elizabeth their alphabet and numbers. But that pair were far more interested in inventing new games than in serious learning. As for Adam, tied into his little chair, he was quiet for once, lost in some mysterious world of his own, thumb in mouth, the brown eyes, so like his mother’s, fixed dreamily on the middle distance. I wondered uneasily what mischief he was plotting.

When the meal — fish stew, as it was Friday — was over, I rose from the table and picked up my cudgel and pack. I glanced at Hercules, but he was pointedly stretched full-length beside his food and water trough, giving a good imitation of a dog exhausted by the heat.

‘It seems a shame to disturb him,’ I said.

‘A great shame,’ Adela agreed sarcastically. ‘I should leave him where he is, if I were you.’

I needed no second bidding to take her at her word, however insincerely it was meant. She didn’t enquire where I was going, for which I was grateful. I preferred her not to know. She would only have worried.

The noise and crowds, like the sun, had not yet reached their zenith, quite a few people being still at dinner, but it would not be long before the summer streets became unbearable. The rain of the previous evening had done little to refresh the atmosphere, and had churned the dust to a thin, gruel-like mud.

I pushed my way along Corn Street, avoiding several importunate hot-pie sellers whose trade was being ruined by the heat, succumbed to the offer of a cup of verjuice, which tasted of vinegar as it always does (I should have known better), then had to treat myself to a large honeyed fig in order to rid my tongue of the sourness. By which time, I had reached my intended destination: Marsh Street.

Marsh Street, which runs parallel with the Frome Quay and is connected to it at right angles by several noisome alleyways, ends with the Marsh Street Gate, which opens on to the great marsh itself. It also boasts one of the town’s three public latrines. Not, I imagine, that this is much used by the many sailors who frequent the alehouses there: pissing against the nearest wall and seeing who can aim the highest is more their usual manner of relieving themselves.

As Jack Nym had warned me, and which I already knew, this was an alien locality for the majority of Bristol citizens, and they only ventured into the Turk’s Head or the Wayfarer’s Return if they had dealings with the men from Waterford. For although many foreign sailors made use of the Marsh Street alehouses, it was essentially Irish territory. You made a nuisance of yourself or asked one too many awkward questions at your peril. People had been known to disappear from Marsh Street, never to be seen or heard of again.

I walked steadily, glancing neither to right nor left, and holding my cudgel where everyone could see it, until I reached the second of the two alehouses, the Wayfarer’s Return, a place I had visited some years before and whose landlord’s name was known to me. Inside, it was much as I remembered it; dark, windowless, lit only by rushlight and tallow candles, whose flames could easily be extinguished should it prove necessary. Wooden trestles were placed at intervals on the beaten-earth floor and casks, three rows deep, were ranged against one wall. A back door, for a swift departure, opened on to the quayside, and a stone staircase led to an upper storey.

As soon as I made my appearance, there was a deafening silence. All heads, without exception, turned in my direction. Everyone could see the hump of my pedlar’s pack, but that, after all, was no guarantee of my calling. It could have been a ruse, and no one there was so gullible as to take me at face value. I could just as easily be a Sheriff’s man. The atmosphere was so charged with menace that I could have cut it with my knife.

I gripped my cudgel tighter and stayed where I was, by the door, ready to beat a hasty retreat if need be. But this proved unnecessary, thanks to the landlord, Humility Dyson, a huge bear of a man whose thick black beard was now showing the first knotted threads of grey. He came forward, rubbing his massive hands on his leather apron.

‘Roger Chapman!’ he exclaimed. ‘And what brings you here?’ He turned to his customers. ‘I know this man. He’s a pedlar all right. Lives in the city. He’ll do you no harm.’

There was a protracted, extremely wary silence, then the rumble of conversation gradually resumed. But I knew I was only there on sufferance. Danger still thrummed in the air. Make one stupid move, and I could end up with a knife in my back.

‘So, what does bring you here?’ the landlord repeated.

I plucked up courage and answered him in a ringing tone that could be heard in all four corners of the room. I figured it would be safer to be open about my business than to whisper like a conspirator and arouse greater suspicion.

‘I’m enquiring about an Irish ship that was moored on Redcliffe Back until yesterday afternoon, when, or so I’m told, it sailed on the ebb tide. I don’t know to a day how long since it dropped anchor, but it was certainly there on Midsummer Eve when I saw the captain talking to Master Robin Avenel.’

‘You mean the man who was found murdered in Jewry Lane yesterday morning?’ Humility Dyson had deliberately raised his voice to rival mine. He was making sure that all the occupants of the alehouse were aware of the circumstances of Robin’s death before anyone opened his mouth to reply.

‘That’s right,’ I added. ‘A local man, a tenter, has been charged with the killing.’

The landlord threw back his head and roared with laughter.

‘Don’t be fooled, gentlemen!’ he said, addressing the motley crew of rogues who patronized the Wayfarer’s Return as if they were some noble gathering. ‘If this pedlar is making it his business to ask questions, it means he thinks this tenter innocent, and is trying to pin the crime on somebody else.’

‘Not on anyone here,’ I assured them quickly. (Although how, they might well ask themselves, was I to know that for a certainty? They weren’t fools, any of them.)

‘You’d better not,’ growled a man seated at the nearest table. ‘Or it will be the worse for you, friend chapman.’

There was a general mutter of agreement and I prepared for trouble. But, to my astonishment, the man who had spoken made a place for me at the trestle where he was sitting by the simple expedient of shunting his two companions further along the bench.

He motioned to me to sit down and offered me a drink. ‘Ale or whisky?’

I chose ale. I had heard too many hair-raising stories from men who had tried the fiery water of life so beloved by the Irish — and also the Scots by all accounts — to wish to addle my brain and lose concentration. The Irishman was disappointed, but good-naturedly ordered the landlord to bring me a beaker of ‘cat’s piss’.

‘We’ve met before,’ he said, ‘some years back now. Briant of Dungarvon.’

I recalled him at once. I had encountered both him and his partner when I had been searching for the truth concerning the disappearance of Margaret Walker’s father.

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘You and Padraic Kinsale.’

‘Padraic’s dead,’ he answered shortly, and from his tone I knew better than to ask for details. ‘So! This man who’s been arrested,’ he went on, ‘is he really innocent?’

‘I’d stake my life on it,’ I assured him fervently. ‘Unhappily, our sergeant is-’

‘A dolt!’

I demurred. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘All lawmen were born with brains the size of a pea,’ he said viciously. ‘That’s why they’re lawmen.’ He took a gulp of his whisky. ‘So, what do you want to know about this ship that was moored in Redcliffe Back?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Was she a slaving ship?’

I expected a wall of silence, possibly a request to leave. But having once decided that he could trust me, Briant of Dungarvon was seemingly prepared to be frank.

‘As far as I know, the Clontarf was mainly a slaver, but that isn’t why she was here. At least, not this time. The man you saw speaking with this Robin Avenel wasn’t the captain, either. It must have been the mate. The captain disappeared after rowing himself ashore at Rownham Passage some few weeks ago. A search by his shipmates at the time proved fruitless. I think this visit must have been a second attempt to discover what might have happened to him.’

‘Oh, I can tell you that,’ I said, and proceeded to do so.

Briant of Dungarvon was not the only man to listen with interest to my story. I did not bother to lower my voice and it soon attracted the attention of others, not only the three men seated at our table, but also those at neighbouring trestles. When I had finished, there was a general nodding of heads, sucking of teeth and scratching of backsides, which seemed to be their way of expressing belief in what I had told them.

A big Irishman with an accent so thick I could barely understand what he was saying announced that he wasn’t surprised. Hadn’t he always predicted that Eamonn Malahide would come to a sticky end? (Well, that was the gist of it, anyhow, but more forcefully expressed.) Many of my other listeners vociferously agreed. I turned to Briant for enlightenment.

‘I thought you slavers stuck together. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, etcetera.’ I could have added: ‘Brother outlaws, condemned by Church and State.’ But I didn’t.

If I had hoped to discompose him with a display of my limited learning, I was disappointed. Somewhere inside that rough exterior there was an educated man. I would have given much to know his history.

‘There are rotten apples in every barrel, chapman. You may not like what we do for a living, but we do have a code of conduct. We abide by certain rules. And the first and foremost of those is, never take people’s money and then betray them to their enemies for yet more gold. A man who does that deserves everything he gets.’

‘And this is what Eamonn Malahide did?’

‘In this particular instance, I cannot say, but certainly on several occasions in the past. It was only a matter of time before he himself was betrayed and he ended up as you’ve described, with a knife through his heart.’

‘Who was he deceiving this time?’ I asked eagerly, but the Irishman shook his head.

‘I’ve told you, I don’t know. I had as little to do with the man as possible.’ He glanced at the faces around him. ‘Does anyone here present know?’

But no one did. And enquiries in the further corners of the room, among those who had not listened to my tale, or not heard it properly, produced no additional information. Eamonn Malahide seemed to have been given a wide berth by his fellow slavers. But at least I now understood a little better the reason for his death. Someone had warned Elizabeth Alefounder and Rowena Hollyns that Eamonn Malahide was about to play them false. What about was still a mystery, but I hoped to find that out in due course. It explained their treatment of myself when they had mistaken me for him, and his subsequent speedy despatch at Rowena’s hands.

But the women had obviously not known of his perfidy for any length of time before my arrival, or they would have left Rownham Passage and the ‘murder’ house without waiting to encounter their betrayer. So who had warned them?

I suddenly remembered Edgar Capgrave telling me that Robin Avenel had left on the morning in question by the Frome Gate some two hours after his sister, and had returned an hour or so before her. He must have carried the news. But why had the two women not come back with him? It had to be that something or someone had delayed their departure …

Briant of Dungarvon dug me sharply in the ribs.

‘Have you finished asking questions then, chapman? Because if so, we’d like you to be on your way.’ There was a vigorous nodding of heads. ‘We’ll pass your message on to the crew of the Clontarf whenever we come across them.’ He added in a lower tone, ‘And if I should learn anything more from them, I’ll send a message to Humility Dyson. He’ll call on you at home. Don’t come here again. You might bring the Law trailing in your wake.’

I shook my head. ‘The Law knows better than to interfere with the “Irish trade”.’

‘There’s always one mad, zealous fool with his eye on promotion,’ Briant retorted, adding with a face-splitting grin, ‘And for your information, my friend, across the water we refer to it as the “Bristol trade”.’

On which half-friendly, half-admonitory note, we parted. Briant called for more whisky and resumed his interrupted conversation with his companions in the lilting and, to me, totally incomprehensible Irish tongue, while I slipped quietly from the alehouse, breathing a sigh of relief that I was still alive and unharmed, and headed for the public latrine.

Having rid myself of the effects of fright and too much ale, I went back to Broad Street and, for the second time in two days, knocked on the kitchen door.

It was too much to hope that I should again be able to avoid Dame Dorothy, the dragon-like housekeeper, but my luck was in. It was the intelligent, if dour-faced Jess who answered my summons.

‘Oh, not you again,’ she groaned, starting to shut the door, a move which might have succeeded had I not swiftly shoved my foot into the gap. ‘Go away! I nearly lost my place here yesterday after spending all that time with you in the garden.’

‘Just one more question, that’s all,’ I pleaded. ‘It won’t take long, I promise.’

A face appeared over her shoulder. The freckle-faced girl hissed delightedly to her fellow kitchen maids, ‘It’s Jess’s admirer!’

There was a chorus of giggles and several more faces joined the first, eager and bird-like, twittering with anticipation.

‘Anything in your pack, chapman?’ asked one with a significance of tone that caused an immediate snigger. I felt myself blushing and cursed silently.

Jess rounded on them furiously, giving the nearest girl a vicious prod in the chest and sending her and the others staggering back into the kitchen.

‘Oh, get on with your work, do!’ she cried. ‘And if the dragon returns, tell her I’m in the jakes. Again!’ She pulled me round to the back of the privy and addressed me, hands on hips. ‘What is it this time? It had better be something important. And be quick about it!’

‘Can you remember as far back as the beginning of the month?’ I asked. ‘Saint Elmo’s Day, I think it was. Mistress Alefounder went out very early in the morning, just after dawn. A couple of hours later, Master Avenel went out as well. Do you have any recollection?’

Jess puckered her brows. ‘That’s three weeks and more ago,’ she reproached me. But then, just as I would have spoken again, she held up an imperious hand and nodded. ‘Wait a moment! Yes, I do recall the day you mean. The mistress had had belly gripe all night and I remember telling her it was sure to get better as it was Saint Elmo’s Day, him being the patron saint of belly and gut disorders. But she just went on whining, especially about being disturbed by her sister-in-law, who’d gone out at the crack of dawn. “No consideration for anyone else,” I remember her saying. “She knows what a light sleeper I am.” Then she wanted the master. Mistress Marianne, that is. He knew she was unwell. Why hadn’t he come to see her? And so on. She sent me to look for him, but he wasn’t in his chamber, so I went downstairs to get the mistress a bowl of thin gruel that she fancied. That was when Dame Dorothy told me that Master Robin had also gone out. I asked why, because the mistress was sure to want an explanation. She said she didn’t know why, except that someone, a man she thought, had called about half an hour previous, asking for the master most urgent, and as soon as Master Robin had spoken to him, he didn’t wait even for his dinner, which was almost ready, but yelled that he had to leave right away. Which he did.’

Going, I guessed, first to the stables in Bell Lane and then on to Rownham Passage. It all fitted.

‘Did Dame Dorothy happen to see the man who called?’ I asked.

Jess shrugged. ‘She didn’t say. I know the mistress took on something awful when I told her. Called Master Robin an unfeeling brute and lots of other things far worse. After a while, I stopped listening. Then Mistress Hollyns knocked on the bedchamber door. Said she was going out and asked if she could fetch anything for the mistress at the apothecary’s. Mistress got all petulant and threw a pillow at her.’ Jess giggled. ‘So that was that. Mistress Hollyns went off in a huff and left me to it. Course, Mistress Avenel should have an attendant of her own, but like I said, the master was a tight-fisted man in some respects. We four girls, we’re maids of all work.’

I was listening with only half an ear by now. What Jess had told me confirmed Edgar Capgrave’s information. Rowena had not left with Elizabeth Alefounder in the morning, but had been with her when she returned later in the afternoon. She had quit the house not long after Robin. So, before leaving, had he instructed her to follow him as soon as she could? Had he confided in her the reason for his hasty departure? I suspected that he must have. She was certainly privy to whatever had been going on and as deeply involved in it as Master Avenel and his sister. She, too, must have gone to the Bell Lane stable for a mount and then made her way to Rownham Passage. But how had she managed to evade Edgar Capgrave’s vigilant eye at the Frome Gate? If she had left by the Redcliffe Gate, at journey’s end she would have found herself on the wrong side of the Avon, in the manor of Ashton-Leigh and been forced to take the ferry across the river. Too much time would have been wasted. And I could vouch for the fact that she was in the ‘murder’ house when I made my ill-fated appearance at midday. So somehow or another she must have left the city using the Frome Gate without being spotted by the gatekeeper. I must have another word with Edgar Capgrave.

I was suddenly aware that Jess had finished speaking and was regarding me indignantly as the realization dawned that I had not been listening — at least, not for the last few minutes.

‘Have you heard a word I’ve said?’ she demanded angrily.

I leaned forward and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘Of course,’ I protested. ‘The important part. And that’s all that matters.’

I delved into my pack and brought out a fine ivory comb that I had been saving as a Midsummer present for Adela, but had somehow forgotten to give her. Guiltily, I handed it to Jess, whose glow of pleasure in some measure compensated for the fact that I was becoming a neglectful husband. But then, I always had been. I thanked God that Adela was an understanding wife.

‘I must go,’ Jess said as we heard the kitchen door open and an urgent voice call softly, ‘Jess! She’s coming!’

Jess swung hurriedly on her heel, but as she did so, I grabbed her arm.

‘Does Mistress Hollyns have a blue brocade gown and a pair of red leather shoes?’ I asked.

Jess freed herself with an impatient gesture and reached the kitchen door in three long strides. But with her hand on the latch, she turned.

‘No, not her. Mistress had a blue brocade gown but it got mislaid. No one seems to know what happened to it. She blames us, of course. But she’s never had a pair of red leather shoes. They belonged to the master.’

‘I tell you, Mistress Hollyns, or whatever she’s called, did not leave by the Frome Gate that morning.’ Edgar Capgrave was adamant. ‘I know which morning you’re talking about, chapman, and I didn’t see her, I tell you.’

My luck was still in and I had found Edgar at his post when I had gone looking for him on leaving the Avenel house in Broad Street.

‘Try to remember,’ I pleaded, ignoring the fact that I was holding up four increasingly irate carters and a shepherd with a flock of sheep who, most unusually, seemed to have wills of their own and were wandering all over the street, fouling the cobbles. ‘Mistress Alefounder went out very early …’

‘Just after curfew was lifted,’ Edgar agreed, ‘like I’ve already told you.’

‘And then about two hours later — ten o’clock, would that have been? — Robin Avenel left.’ Edgar nodded. ‘And very soon afterwards, Mistress Hollyns.’

The gatekeeper shook his head.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I keep telling you, no! I would remember. She came back with Mistress Alefounder about an hour after Robin returned. But I’ve already told you that, as well. Now, will you please get out of the way, chapman? You’re holding up the traffic.’