The Midsummer Rose

Six

‘Blue brocade?’ My voice shook a little. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. I remember thinking it was a pretty fancy gown for a maid to be wearing.’ Edgar Capgrave eyed me curiously, then shrugged. ‘Don’t know where they’d been or what they’d been up to, but they both looked like drowned rats. Their skirts were soaking wet for ten or twelve inches above the hem. Leastways, Mistress Hollyns’s was. Didn’t get a proper look at the other’s. Reckon they’d been caught proper by that storm.’

Or been wading in the river, up to their knees, trying to drown some poor sod they’d previously bludgeoned unconscious!

‘Are you absolutely certain that Mistress Alefounder’s companion was Mistress Hollyns?’ I asked all the same.

By this time, there were growing protests from both sides of the archway, where two fresh lines of traders and honest citizens waited to pay their tolls.

‘Who else could it have been?’ the gatekeeper demanded irritably. ‘Bess could have met up with her somewhere and they rode home together. Mind you, Mistress Hollyns must have left by another gate. She didn’t pass through this one on her outward journey. I’d stake my life on it.’

I believed him. Edgar Capgrave’s powers of observation seemed phenomenal. I asked about the red shoes, but he answered that he hadn’t noticed, and that, in any case, they would probably have been too wet for him to say anything with certainty about their colour. I gave him the groat, remounted the cob and rode off across the Frome Bridge, leaving him to deal with his irate customers. I had no doubt at all that he could handle them.

Once across the bridge, I rode sedately along the quayside of Saint Augustine’s Back, past the abbey, to the confluence of the Frome and Avon. There, I turned towards Rownham Passage and the ferry, skirting the steeply rising ground to the north of the city, which culminated in the high plateau of Durdham Down and Lord Cobham’s manor of Clifton.

It was another beautiful day. The sky was blue; little clouds, fragile as blown glass, danced to the tune of a following breeze; sailors and dockers were mostly stripped to the waist, bronzed and fit and enjoying the summer sunshine. But my mind was elsewhere, trying to reconcile Rowena Hollyns with the role of a ruthless killer. Instinct and a knowledge of human nature denied the possibility. But then I remembered whose daughter she was and conviction wavered.

Nevertheless, I still felt uncomfortable with the idea, although I now felt sure that she was the woman in the blue brocade gown, and so, by natural corollary, that Elizabeth Alefounder must be the woman in the brown sarcenet. As for the motive behind the whole murderous episode, now that I knew Robin Avenel might have been involved, I was certain it must have something to do with that perennial thorn in the English Government’s side, the Lancastrian faction’s last and very forlorn hope: the exiled Henry Tudor.

As Adela had reminded me, it was less than a year since Master Avenel had come under suspicion of being a Lancastrian supporter, but nothing had been proved against him. And unless I could prove some connection between him and the old ‘murder’ house at Rownham Passage, there would be no evidence of wrongdoing this time, either.

My mind reverted to Rowena Hollyns, and from her it was but a short step to thinking about Adela. It would have been an exaggeration to say that there was something amiss between us, but I couldn’t deny that there had been a certain constraint this past year, since Adam’s birth. Three months ago, Adela had ceased feeding him at the breast, and from then on had been anxious to avoid conceiving another child. Ironically, for the first time in our lives, we had a bedchamber almost to ourselves, and all the privacy any married couple with three small children could reasonably hope for.

I understood, but still resented, Adela’s lukewarm acceptance of my bedtime advances. She was much more God-fearing than I was, and therefore far more inclined to abide by the Church’s regulations. For me, as, I suspect, for many other people, there are some rules which are simply made to be broken. For instance, according to the Church, married couples should refrain from carnal pleasure on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for forty days before both Easter and Christmas, and for three days before going to Mass. I worked this out once, and it totals at least five months of enforced abstinence every year. Enough to make any red-blooded male resort to the nearest whorehouse!

Of course, wise women can always offer remedies against conception, but, frankly, most of their ideas make my hair stand on end. One we consulted advised Adela to eat bees (presumably dead ones, although we didn’t bother to enquire). Another recommended that the wife drink a pint of raw onion juice just before the act itself (on the assumption, I suppose, that no man could possibly perform at his sparkling best whilst being asphyxiated by his wife’s breath). A third tried to convince us that a foolproof method was for the woman to eat a whole cabbage as soon as she got out of bed. (Adela hates cabbage.) So there we were, left with using less traumatic, but more frustrating ways of assuring we had no more children just at present, and with a relationship every bit as loving, but not nearly as carefree as it was of yore …

I realized that my musings had brought me to Rownham Passage. I was abreast of the ‘murder’ house on its rocky promontory, overlooking the slimy grey mud that forms the Avon’s banks on both sides of the river. In the distance, I could see the ferryman plying his trade, but for the moment he was rowing towards the opposite shore. I dismounted, looped the cob’s reins around the lower branch of a stunted, wind-blasted tree and crossed the patch of coarse, dry grass to the ‘murder’ house.

I had half expected the door to be locked, but it wasn’t. As I cautiously pushed it open, I was met once again by the same strong smell of must and damp that I recalled from my first, ill-fated visit. I stood on the threshold, straining my ears for any sound that might indicate occupation, but apart from the inevitable scurrying of mice, all was silent.

I advanced a pace or two along the narrow passageway and entered the parlour. Nothing. Nobody. Yet something was different. The room was much gloomier, and the shapes of its meagre furniture loomed oddly menacing in the darkness. The shutters, previously open, were now closed, blocking out what little light had been afforded by the grimy parchment panes. Someone had been here.

I returned to the passageway. Dust lay in drifts across the floor, but there were no footprints apart from my own. There were, however, other marks which I recognized as strokes made by a broom. Someone had thought it worthwhile to erase as far as possible all traces of occupation. A sensible precaution, I thought, smiling grimly.

I went upstairs. Here, there was just one room, a little larger than the parlour below. Even so, it was cramped and, remembering the family who had once lived here — daughter, mother and tyrranical father — I found it hardly surprising that their story had ended in tragedy. The only piece of furniture was the bed and it took up most of the space. Made of oak and with carvings of angels decorating the headboard, it was, however, devoid of bedding except for a mattress, its covering of grubby, once-white linen torn in several places and goose feathers protruding in handfuls. I walked around it and peered underneath, but there was nothing to be found, not even a chamber pot.

I brushed the dust from the knees of my breeches and was conscious of a sharp pain in the back of my head. I was also feeling a little dizzy, another indication that I was not yet as fit as I pretended to be. I sat down on the bed. The room spun once or twice, then steadied. I felt a little better.

The house was beginning to get on my nerves. The knowledge of what had happened there fifty years earlier, and also ten days ago, was making me jumpy. All the same, I would make a further search of the downstairs before I left.

It was at that moment that my right hand encountered a small, hard lump in the mattress. Through the ticking, and embedded in goose feathers, it wasn’t easy to say exactly what it was, but it felt suspiciously like a ring. The pain in my head and my uneasiness both forgotten, I slewed round to examine the mattress more closely and saw that the location of the lump was about the length of a man’s forearm from a large rent in the covering. Hanging on to my prize with my right hand, I cautiously inserted my left arm into the tear until my fingers met with solid metal. A few seconds later, I was staring at a heavy gold signet ring lying in the palm of my hand.

I brushed the fleas aside and inspected my trophy. It was a man’s ring, there was no doubt about that — it would have fitted easily on any of my fingers. There was no jewel, just a richly chased band and a roundel deeply engraved with the insignia of its owner, whoever that might be. I held it up to the light, but the carving was too elaborate to decipher. I could see that there were two capital letter As entwined, but another concave motif behind them was less distinct.

I debated what to do with my find. If there was an owner of the ‘murder’ house, and there must be somewhere, did it belong to him, by right of having been discovered on his property? On the other hand, it might belong to the unseen man whose voice I had heard, in which case, should I hand it over to Richard Manifold? A third alternative was that it had been the possession of the original owner of the house, but somehow I didn’t think so. The mattress was certainly torn and filthy, but I doubted very much if it were fifty years old.

And someone had used it recently. There was a definite hollow in the middle of the mattress where a body had lain not too long since. And the man, whoever he was, must have been up here: he wasn’t in the parlour when I was first admitted — unless he had come in through the front door while I was unconscious …

My head was starting to ache again, and I was no nearer a solution as to what to do with the ring than I had been ten minutes ago. For the time being, then, I would do nothing. I would let the course of events and my instincts guide me. Whether the ring had been deliberately hidden in the mattress or accidentally lost was another question altogether. But for the moment, it was not a problem I was prepared to cope with. I dropped the ring into my pouch and went downstairs again.

I opened the shutters, letting in a shaft of sunlight that slabbed the floor with gold, and when I scuffed aside some of the dust near the door, a large dark stain was visible. Blood, I had no doubt, belonging to the Irish sea captain. A sudden vivid picture flashed into my mind of the man falling, the dagger thrust through his heart after his attack on the woman in blue brocade. Rowena? But why would she have been carrying a knife? And it must have been a beautiful stroke, clean, swift, unerring. If only the scope of my vision had been greater instead of confined to a mere few feet above the floor!

I was certain that the man whose voice I’d heard in the background had not been Robin Avenel. Firstly, according to Edgar Capgrave, Master Avenel had returned to Bristol too early for him to have been present during the attack on myself and Eamonn Malahide. Secondly, I remembered thinking that the man’s accent was slightly foreign, or, if foreign was too strong a word, then strange — not the broad, diphthong-vowelled speech of the west country. That was the way in which the woman in brown sarcenet had spoken, but try as I might, I could not recall the voice of the woman in blue brocade. She must have remained silent throughout the entire episode.

I prowled around the parlour once more, but found nothing else. I closed the shutters again before emerging into the sunshine with a feeling of relief. Then I remembered the outhouse where the horses had been stabled, but on inspection this, too, was empty except for a large besom, propped against one wall. I searched for signs of dung or wisps of hay, but there were none. I was up against a thoroughly disciplined, orderly mind, not easily panicked by unforeseen circumstances.

I unhitched the cob’s reins and glanced towards the river. The ferryman had by now accomplished his return journey and was pulling into shore. By great good fortune, no one was yet waiting to cross to the manor of Ashton-Leigh, so I led the horse forward and, remembering that I had been told his name, shouted ‘Master Tyrrwhit!’ as loudly as I could.

The Rownham Passage alehouse was as small and shabby inside as it was out, but the landlord served excellent ale. I handed a mazer to Jason Tyrrwhit, then squeezed in beside him on a dirty corner bench that accommodated two. I had chosen it deliberately as a place where we were less likely to be interrupted by one of his many friends.

The tiny room, with its sanded floor and row of barrels along one wall, was crowded to suffocation. Seafaring types of all shapes and sizes were crammed together around a long, central table or seated on rickety stools or lying prone on the ground, having drunk themselves into a stupor. The stink of the place was enough to knock a grown man senseless, and I felt the bile rise in my throat as soon as we entered. Not so my companion, who was obviously very much at home there; a frequent visitor if the general chorus of greeting from all sides was anything to judge by. A few sips of the landlord’s brew, however, were sufficient to settle my stomach, and I was able to devote my full attention to the ferryman.

‘You’re looking well,’ he observed, ‘for a man who cheated death by inches and gave his head a nasty knock into the bargain.’

‘You were the good Samaritan who rescued me, I believe. This,’ I apologized, ‘is the first chance I’ve had to come back and thank you.’

‘Think nothing of it! I’d’ve done the same for a dog.’ He slewed round on the bench to look at me. ‘But how in Hades did you manage to fall in? You were striding out along the track to Bristol last time I saw you. Mind you,’ he went on, without waiting for a reply, ‘I thought as how you’d got a touch of the sun, the way you were going on about building a bridge between the top o’ Ghyston Cliff and Ashton rocks. Sun’s addled his brain, I remember thinking.’

I let it go. There was no point in trying to explain; it would only confuse him further.

‘When you found me in the water, did you see anyone on the bank? Anyone walking or running in the direction of the old ‘murder’ house?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I was too busy rescuing you, weren’t I? You’re a big fellow. I didn’t have any passengers that crossing, and hauling you into the skiff was hard going fer a little chap like me. Specially when you was waterlogged. It was only air gettin’ in under that jerkin of yours kept you from sinking. First, I thought you was a bundle of old clothes someone had tossed in the river. That’s why I rowed over to take a look. I’ve had some decent finds from the Avon one time and another. These ’ere boots, fer example.’ He lifted a skinny leg, proudly displaying a foot encased in a brown leather ankle boot of surprisingly good quality. ‘See what I mean?’

I didn’t know whether to feel insulted that I could be mistaken for a bundle of old clothes, or grateful for the fact that I had been. In the end gratitude won.

‘You’re sure you didn’t notice anyone — anyone at all? A woman, perhaps, or maybe two, in the neighbourhood of the ‘murder’ house when you fished me out of the water?’

He paused to consider. I regarded him hopefully.

‘Well, I can’t say I saw anyone, no. Oh, I know why you’re asking. That red-headed Sheriff’s man, who came snooping around a day or two later, told me what you’d been saying. It was all nonsense, he reckoned, caused by the pain in yer head. Mind, ’e described you as a pain in the arse!’ The ferryman roared with laughter at this witticism, took another swig of ale and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘All the same, I’ve been thinking about it since,’ he went on, ‘and there were a couple o’ people waiting for the ferry this side of the river. That’s why I rowed over empty from Ashton-Leigh. It was still raining a bit and I didn’t want ’em getting wetter’n necessary. Course, I have me back to the Rownham shore while I’m rowing in this direction, so I wouldn’t have seen anything. But they might have done.’

‘Who were they?’ I demanded excitedly. ‘Do you know?’

Jason Tyrrwhit scratched his scanty grey locks. ‘There were a man and a boy. Didn’t know them. Come from the other side. But I knew the woman. Lives in one o’ them cottages along the foreshore. Goody Tallboys, I think they call her. Got a sister at Ashton-Leigh, so crosses regular.’

‘Do you know which cottage? Could you take me to see her?’

He grinned. ‘Fancy a bit o’ dalliance, do you?’ His sense of humour was easily tickled. ‘All right. But finish yer ale first. This stuff’s too good to waste.’

I agreed with him. In fact it was good enough for me to treat us both to another beaker apiece. While we drank, I asked him how long he had been the Avon ferryman.

He shrugged. ‘Ten year, p’raps. Maybe more. I was a sailor fer most of me life.’ His puny chest swelled with pride. ‘I was with Warwick’s fleet when we beat the Spaniards in ’58. Keeper of the Seas he was, and never a man before nor since deserved the title better. Twenty-eight men-o’-war them Spaniards had. All we had were three carvels, four pinnaces and five forecastle ships. Outnumbered by more’n two to one! But we drove our little fleet in amongst them and taught ’em a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry! Six hours that battle lasted, but we beat ’em hands down in the end. Over two hundred Spanish were killed, hundreds more wounded. We sunk two of their ships and captured six others. The rest limped back to the Flanders ports, their tails well and truly between their legs. Those were the days!’ He sighed regretfully. ‘Then, when I was too old to go adventuring any longer, I came home. The job of ferryman had just fallen vacant, so I took it. It’s a living. Can’t complain.’

‘You must know a lot about the sea,’ I said respectfully.

‘I know a lot about a lot of things. Fer instance, I know that from Bristol boundary stone to Rownham is a mile in length, two if you measure from the city’s High Cross. I know Ghyston Cliff is sixty fathoms high. I know from here to the Hungroad is near on two mile-’

‘What’s the Hungroad?’

He gave me a withering glance. ‘You ain’t no Bristol man, I can tell. If you were, you’d know that out there, in a direct line with Ghyston Cliff, are the Leads — great, jagged rocks on the bed of the Avon. If you try to navigate up this river into Bristol at low tide, the Leads’ll rip yer vessel open from bow to stern. So ships anchor in the Hungroad and wait for the incoming tide.’

‘Which side of the river is this anchorage?’ I asked.

My companion jerked his head towards the window. ‘Ashton-Leigh,’ he said.

I thought about this. ‘If a ship was anchored in the Hungroad, and the captain wanted to be put ashore over here, would he be rowed across by his own crew? Or would he use the ferry?’

Jason Tyrrwhit grinned. ‘You’re a landlubber all right. ‘Course he wouldn’t need to use the ferry. Chances are, he’d row himself. Partic’ly if he wasn’t sure what time he wanted to return aboard. Mind you, don’t know why anyone’d want to visit Rownham Passage; leastways, not if he was sailing upriver to Bristol. Who’re we talking about, anyway?’

‘Does the name Eamonn Malahide mean anything to you?’

The ferryman shook his grizzled head. ‘No. But sounds like an Irisher to me.’

‘He is. Or rather was. He’s dead. Knifed through the heart. He was the man I saw killed in the “murder” house last week.’

‘Oh, him! The Sheriff’s man said you was having delusions.’

‘No delusion,’ I answered tersely. ‘His body was fished out of Bristol docks this morning.’

‘Drowned?’

‘He’d been stabbed.’

‘Had he now?’ Jason Tyrrwhit whistled through broken teeth. ‘Seems like you could’ve been telling the truth, after all, chapman. Wait here a minute while I ask around. Somebody might have some information worth knowing.’

He got up from the bench and began moving amongst our fellow customers. Some he merely slapped on the back or exchanged a cheery word with. But beside others, he paused for a confidential chat. There was no way, from where I was sitting, that I could hear what passed between them: the noise in the alehouse was deafening. But I could tell from the expression on his face, as he resumed his seat on the bench, that he had learned something worth the telling.

‘Old chap in the corner,’ he said, ‘the one with the broken nose-’

‘Next to the young lad who’s just been sick?’

‘That’s the one. Lives in the manor of Ashton-Leigh. Just comes across for the ale. He says there was an Irish ship, the Clontarf, anchored in the Hungroad sometime last week.’

‘The Wednesday,’ I suggested.

‘Dunno. Probably. He can’t recollect for sure. But here’s the interesting bit. He remembers it dropping anchor, but it didn’t go on upriver on the next high tide. Stayed in its berth three days before slipping its moorings and tacking about.’

‘You mean it never went into Bristol. Just sailed for home?’

‘Seems like it. And old Josh there had an idea there was some trouble on board. Didn’t know what. Didn’t ask. But the landlord — ’ he indicated a tall, cadaverous-looking man in a leather apron ‘- said there were a couple of Irish seamen in here a week ago yesterday — that’d be the Friday — nosing around. Asking a lot o’ questions without really saying what they wanted. He reckoned they were looking fer someone, but wouldn’t admit it right out.’

That made sense if their captain had gone missing and the crew was on some secret mission that no one was supposed to know anything about. I stood up.

‘Thanks for all your help,’ I said. ‘Now, if you’d just point me in the direction of this Goody Tallboys’s cottage …’

My voice tailed off as I stared, transfixed. Once on my feet, I could easily see across the crowded taproom. In the corner, on the far side of old Josh, sat another, smaller man, wearing a tattered, wine-stained jerkin, who glanced up and caught my eye, then hurriedly looked away again, coyly trying to pretend that he didn’t know me, but I could see annoyance shadow his sharp little features as he recognized my unwelcome face.

His shoulders hunched and his whole body tensed as I moved towards him, just to give him a fright. But he needn’t have worried. I’d play his game if that was what he wanted. I followed the ferryman outside and listened to his simple directions for getting to Goody Tallboys’s cottage.

All the same, I would have given a great deal to know what Timothy Plummer, the Spymaster General, was doing in Rownham Passage.