The Prodigal Son

Six

There was a brief silence, during which astonishment was gradually replaced by outrage on the faces of Audrea Bellknapp and her younger son. George Applegarth’s expression was more difficult to read, although I thought I saw amusement and a certain flicker of approval light those slate-grey eyes.

‘Thank you, Master Bellknapp,’ I said gravely. ‘You’re very gracious.’

Anthony just had time to flash me a grin and a barely concealed wink before the full torrent of his mother’s wrath broke over his head.

‘How dare you countermand my orders like that? You absent yourself for eight years — eight years, mark you! — without a word as to your whereabouts, leaving us uncertain as to whether you are alive or dead. You return home with no advance warning to disrupt all our lives, and then immediately assume you can usurp the authority which I hold in trust for your brother. Not only that, but you also have the gall to foist your disreputable friend on us’ — I realized with a shock that she meant me — ‘and then expect us to treat him with the same courtesy as we should use towards one of our guests.’

Dame Audrea paused to draw breath, but Anthony gave her no chance to proceed further. In a voice as coldly furious as her own, he reminded her again that he was now the master of Croxcombe Manor. ‘And so that there should be no doubt on that head, on my way here, I took the precaution of calling on lawyer Slocombe and confirming the contents of my father’s will. Croxcombe is left to me provided I claim my inheritance before Simon reaches the age of eighteen.’ He gave a malicious smile. ‘And as I remember perfectly that I was already past my tenth birthday when he was born, and as I am now twenty-five …’ He didn’t bother to finish the sentence, merely shrugging his shoulders and leaving us to draw the inevitable conclusion for ourselves. Simon Bellknapp was still only fifteen. After a moment Anthony went on, ‘I am therefore the master here, my dear mother, and anything I choose to do must, I’m afraid, be acceptable to you and Simon or you can arrange to make your home elsewhere.’

I heard the steward gasp, and had to admit that I was myself taken aback by such plain speaking. Sons, whatever the circumstances or provocation, did not generally treat their mothers in such a forthright and disrespectful fashion. For her part, Dame Audrea, although trembling with anger, recognized that she was, for the moment, beaten, and that it would be beneath her dignity to brawl openly with her son in the presence of her steward and a mere ‘disreputable’ pedlar. She therefore swung abruptly on her heel in the direction of the door.

‘We shall see you then at supper. You, too, Chapman.’ (She turned the word into an insult.) ‘Come, Simon! There’s nothing you can do here.’

‘You shouldn’t have spoken to your lady mother like that, Master Anthony,’ the steward reproved him as the door of his room shut with a thud behind Dame Audrea and her younger son.

Anthony grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, George.’ Although I couldn’t say that he sounded very apologetic. ‘But I have to make my position clear. I know my mother. She’s a high-stomached woman. I have no doubt she’ll have had things all her own way since my father died — and I can tell by your expression that I’m right. As for that brother of mine, he needs putting in his place. He’s a vicious, mean-minded brat, spoilt from the moment of his birth. And dangerous, too. You saw how he went for me. But for you and the chapman here, he might well have throttled me.’ He turned towards me, holding out his hand. ‘I owe you something for that, my friend. I’m holding by what I said. You must count yourself my personal guest for as long as you wish to stay here. And you must certainly remain at Croxcombe until that ankle is stronger. Now, George, tell me in detail this terrible story of the robbery and Jenny’s murder.’

The steward’s account of events that night six years previously differed little in essentials from the version I had pieced together for myself from the various scraps of information that had come my way. John Jericho had entered Dame Audrea’s employ some two years before. No one knew much about his past or exactly where he had come from. He had simply wandered into the kitchen at Croxcombe one day, half starved and looking for employment.

‘An orphan, he claimed, and no other family.’ George Applegarth spread his hands and pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘That was all we ever learned about him, though I felt in my own mind it wasn’t the truth. And the name Jericho … I was always suspicious of that. But for some reason, the mistress took a strong fancy to him and made him her page. The master told her she was being foolish. Mistress Ursula — Lady Chauntermerle, I should say — when she came on a visit, told her mother the same. Sir Damien, too. But she wouldn’t listen.’

‘Mother never took anyone’s advice about anything,’ Anthony interrupted with a laugh. ‘If people gave it, it only made her the more determined to go her own way.’

The steward nodded. ‘But, of course, two years later, when everyone seemed to be proved right, her bitterness against young Jericho was extreme. He’d made a fool of her, and that she could never forgive. Her hatred of him is unrelenting.’

‘This man who is now in the bridewell in Bristol,’ I said. ‘This man she has accused of being John Jericho, you don’t agree with her, Master Steward. Or so I understand.’

He glanced sharply at me. ‘Now who do you understand that from?’

‘Before I left Bristol, everyone was talking about it. Sergeant Manifold, the arresting officer, is a friend of mine.’ (Well, sort of.) ‘This man, John Wedmore, declares he was in Ireland at the time of the murder.’

The steward nodded. ‘He’s not the guilty man,’ he said.

‘But can you convince Dame Audrea of that?’

‘She won’t make me testify to the contrary.’

Anthony Bellknapp clapped his old friend on the back. ‘Good for you, George. If, that is, you can hold out against her. But unless she’s altered greatly during the past eight years, my mother can be a formidable enemy if she doesn’t get her own way. You’d do well to take care.’

‘And you’d do well to heed your own advice,’ the steward retorted with a smile. ‘Your return has upset all her plans for the future. She intended to go on ruling this household even after Simon came of age.’

‘He might take a wife,’ I suggested.

‘Only a girl chosen by his mother.’ George Applegarth smiled. ‘Oh, Simon won’t realize it, but the mistress has always been able to twist him around her little finger.’

‘Lord, yes!’ Anthony agreed. ‘That was my misfortune, that I’d never let her. She set my father against me from the moment I lisped my first word of defiance. Otherwise, I believe that he and I might — just might — have been friends. He obviously tried to make some amends to me when he knew he was dying.’ My host paused, staring into space as though reflecting on the past, but then continued, ‘Anyway, if you can bear it, George, tell me about the night of the murder. Why hadn’t you and Jenny accompanied my parents on their visit to my sister?’

The steward shook his head. ‘I can’t rightly remember now.’ He sounded impatient. ‘There was some good reason. Jenny wouldn’t have gone, in any case. Master Simon was nine by then, and declared himself too old to have a nurse.’

‘And why had the page remained behind?’

Once again, George Applegarth made a gesture of dismissal, as though the pain of recollection was almost too much for him to bear. ‘Toothache, earache … some ailment of that nature.’

‘But, of course, whatever he said it was, was faked,’ Anthony protested. ‘He only pretended to be sick in order to stay behind at Croxcombe so he could steal the silver.’

‘Yes.’ George’s voice was barely audible, and I could tell that while he must inevitably relive that night over and over in his mind, he would prefer not to talk about it.

Whether or not my host shared my perception I had no idea, but he persisted with his catechism. ‘You didn’t hear Jenny get out of bed? She didn’t try to wake you?’

‘No.’ The steward took a deep breath. ‘Or if she did try to rouse me, she didn’t succeed. I blame myself. Too much ale with my supper. It always makes me sleep like the dead.’ He clamped a hand to his mouth as he realized the infelicity of this remark, and made a little mewling sound like an injured cat.

It was not my place to say anything, but I glanced at Anthony in an attempt to convey that it was time to stop this questioning. He continued relentlessly, however, apparently oblivious to the other man’s distress in his quest for the facts.

‘So you knew nothing of what had happened until the next morning, when you got up and found her dead and the family treasure and John Jericho gone?’

George Applegarth nodded mutely, unable to speak. His face was the colour of parchment and had a waxy sheen to it. I thought he was going to faint, but to my relief, Anthony saw it, too, and bit his lower lip in contrition. He put an arm around the steward’s shoulders and, as I struggled out of the armchair where I had been sitting all this while, lowered him into it. George began to shudder.

‘My dear old friend, what a crass fool I am! Why in heaven’s name didn’t you tell me to shut up?’ The younger man thumped himself on the forehead with his fist. ‘Why am I such an unthinking blockhead? Chapman, why didn’t you kick me on the shin? No, no! That’s not fair. The fault is mine. Mea culpa. George, can you forgive me, bringing it all back like that? If you want to kick my arse, I’ll bend over willingly and let you do it.’

That produced a faint smile and a shake of the steward’s head. He forced himself to his feet again.

‘It’s only natural you should be curious, Master Anthony; that you should want to know what happened. It’s just that I think I’ve got over it,’ he added apologetically, ‘and then when I’m reminded, I discover that I haven’t. My dear Jenny … We’d no child nor chick of our own and she loved you two lads like she was your mother.’ He made a determined effort to speak more cheerfully. ‘Take no notice of me, my dear boy …’ He choked, coughed, then drew back his shoulders, bracing himself to resume his duties. ‘Now I must go and oversee the laying of the supper table. Your first meal at home, I want everything to be as you would wish it.’

‘Of course you do.’ Anthony grinned, still looking a little shamefaced; but his natural resilience — or natural insensitivity? — was already convincing him that George Applegarth could not really be as upset as he had seemed. ‘And mind those idiot place-setters put me where I belong, in the centre seat on the dais.’ He added grimly, ‘I’m bound to have my mother and brother one on each side, I suppose. But the seat of honour is mine.’

The steward bowed his head in acquiescence. ‘That is perfectly understood. And now, if you’ll excuse me …’ He took his wand of office from the corner where it was kept and made for the door. But with his hand on the latch, he paused and turned back. ‘Be careful, Master Anthony. You’ve made enemies by this sudden and unlooked-for return.’

As the door closed behind him, Anthony laughed. ‘If George thinks I’m afraid of either Simon or my lady mother, he’s getting senile in his old age. Now, come along, Chapman.’ He offered me his arm. ‘I’ll show you to my chamber. The housekeeper should have had it prepared by this time. Then it’ll be supper. I don’t know about you, but after all this excitement, I’m ravenous.’

Supper was a difficult meal from the moment that Dame Audrea arrived in the hall to find her elder son already installed in her customary place in the centre of the dais; and herself relegated to the seat on his left hand. Simon would have attempted to oust his brother by force had he not been restrained by his mother’s frowns and hissed admonitions to behave.

The tensions and undercurrents among family members and retainers were aggravated by the presence of strangers; two monks returning to Glastonbury, a merchant on his way back to Bath, a royal messenger travelling on the King’s business which had taken him first into Wales and who was now heading south to Plymouth, and a band of mummers touring the surrounding countryside. All had begged asylum for the night and, according to the rules of hospitality, none had been refused. With the exception of the mummers, who, as mere entertainers, were relegated to one of the lower trestles, the guests sat at the high table, where the strain of making normal conversation soon began to show on the faces of the dame and her younger son. The King’s messenger and the Bath merchant were naturally unaware of anything unusual, but the two monks, obviously acquainted with the Croxcombe household, were plainly agog with curiosity.

At Anthony’s instruction, I had been seated among the household officers, one or two of whom made plain their resentment of me out of loyalty to their mistress. Chief of these was a red-haired man of roughly my own age, addressed either as Edward or Master Micheldever, and whom I knew from Josiah Litton to be the receiver. And, again drawing on my recollections of what the landlord had told me, I also knew that the young girl beside him must be his recently acquired bride. She was, indeed, extremely pretty with a peach-like skin, eyes of a deep cerulean blue, a rosebud mouth and, when she smiled, a row of tiny, pearly teeth. Altogether too good to be true; and I decided within the first ten minutes of meeting her that, if I were her husband, I wouldn’t trust her out of my sight. For all her apparently modest demeanour and lowered lids, I noticed the way her gaze strayed constantly towards the high table, her moist lips parting invitingly every time she encountered Anthony Bellknapp’s approving stare. There was going to be trouble there, as Josiah Litton had foreseen.

The man with the thinning grey hair, faded blue eyes and stammering speech sitting opposite me, could only be the chaplain, Henry Rokewood. He, too, kept looking towards the dais with a kind of dreadful fascination, his colourless lips trembling with panic and his stutter growing noticeably worse each time that Anthony glanced in his direction.

To Sir Henry’s left sat a burly fair-haired man, almost as broad as he was tall, bull-necked and generally giving the impression of someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley on a moonless night. He might easily have been somebody’s bravo, but he wasn’t, and the others addressed him respectfully as Master Chamberlain. I racked my brains to remember what the landlord had told me concerning him, and eventually recollected that he had a sister whose bastard son was thought to be the progeny of Anthony Bellknapp, although the girl had never been persuaded to name him as the father. The chamberlain was called Jonathan Slye.

That left, among the senior members of the household, Reginald Kilsby, bailiff, a tall, well-built man with an air of self-consequence that was almost tangible. He was handsome and knew it, with plentiful dark hair just beginning to grey at the temples, and a pair of fine hazel eyes which he opened to their widest extent whenever he condescended to make free with the pearls of wisdom he was convinced fell from his lips. The proprietorial way in which he smiled at Dame Audrea, and the looks of venom that he darted at her elder son, gave credence to the landlord’s assertion that the bailiff entertained hopes of marrying his mistress. I recalled the rumour that he was already her lover and wondered if it were true.

It was a strange meal, with an air of unreality about it, stemming from the fact that there was one burning topic uppermost in everybody’s mind, but no one felt able to discuss it in so public a location. Even when George Applegarth, his duties done, joined us, squeezing in alongside me on the bench, the talk was of a desultory nature. Someone ascertained that I came from Bristol and asked about John Jay’s missing carvel, but the interest was perfunctory. It was not local enough to concern them in this part of the world. What might be big news in Bristol and Waterford (and other Irish towns) was of little concern in rural Somerset. Young Mistress Micheldever, whose name, she informed me, was Rose — she had by this time discovered that I was worth her attention — asked me if I knew anything of Queen Elizabeth’s latest pregnancy, but when I said no, she lapsed once more into a bored silence. I could have told her that I had seen the Queen and other members of the royal family only two or three months earlier, in London, but that would only have involved me in explanations that I would rather avoid. It might have aroused suspicions of my real reason for being at Croxcombe, and I wished to remain a chapman who had twisted his ankle and was waiting for it to mend.

The business of eating and drinking was at last at an end. If the guests had thought it odd that they were offered no entertainment after the meal, they were too polite to comment. They bowed over their hostess’s hand, thanked their host and followed the steward as he conducted them to the guest chamber or (in the case of the mummers) to the kitchen. Not sure what to do, and feeling at a loss, I wandered outside to breathe the fresh air of the August evening. It was still hot, and the hazy sunshine lay across lawns and formal flower-beds, byre and fields and distant pasture like the bloom on an overripe plum. Somewhere a bird was singing and there was the bittersweet tang of new-mown grass. I wandered over to the edge of the manor’s encircling moat and watched the swans swimming regally up and down, their proud necks arched in two feathered question marks, reminding me that I had a problem to solve.

I found a rough wooden bench, nothing more than a plank linking two stumps of trees, but in a spot shaded by a willow and where the bank was starred with buttercups and daisies and the small, creamy-white flowers of meadowsweet scented the air like honey. A lady’s nook, I guessed, but one equally acceptable to a weary traveller whose ankle was aching uncomfortably and who needed peace and seclusion to gather his wandering thoughts together.

Someone sat down on the bench beside me.

‘I thought I saw you come out here, Chapman,’ Rose Micheldever announced with all the satisfaction of having run me to earth; and although there was plenty of room on the bench, she wriggled along its length until our shoulders were touching.

Mindful of her jealous husband, I shifted my buttocks another two or three inches to the left. Then I turned my head and observed her as closely as I dared without giving her the wrong idea. She was gazing out over the moat, apparently absorbed, as I had been, in the movements of the swans; but it didn’t take me long to to realize that her interest in ornithology was negligible. The flutter of her eyelashes told me that she was presenting her profile for my consideration — and, of course, delectation.

It was a profile well worth regarding, I had to admit. She was just as pretty side-faced as full on, with the small, straight nose above the delicate mouth showing to even greater advantage. As a beauty, she would be a catch for any man, but I thought I had detected a note of patronage, a slight air of condescension, in the receiver’s dealings with his wife, and I wondered who she was and where she came from.

‘All alone, Mistress, on such a lovely evening?’

As openings go, it was trite and definitely not up to my usual standard. I need not have worried, however. It was the sort of coy banality that she was used to, judging by her answering, provocative giggle.

‘Oh, Edward’s working,’ she said, closing the gap between us as we again rubbed shoulders. (And more than shoulders. I could feel her soft little posterior nestling into mine.) ‘He’s in the counting-house. He has to enter up his ledger; the number of people entertained today, the extra food consumed, the fodder and stabling for their horses. Tomorrow, he’ll record the tally of candles used in the guest-chamber overnight, damage to bedding, if any, what they eat for breakfast. The receiver is a very important member of the household,’ she added on a note of pride, before concluding with a sigh, ‘but he always seems to be busy.’

I gave my most sympathetic smile. ‘That’s hard on a bride. I’m assuming you and Master Micheldever haven’t long been married?’

‘About six months, I think.’ She continued with apparent artlessness, ‘It seems much longer.’

I say ‘apparent’ because, with another little squirm, our posteriors seemed to be making firmer friends than ever. I moved further along the bench again, but I was running out of space.

‘Do you come from around here?’ I asked, stretching out my legs and supporting myself on my hands, thus managing to keep an arm’s width between us.

She giggled. ‘Of course. My father, Thomas Bignell, keeps the butcher’s stall in Wells.’

That explained her husband’s attitude. Rose Micheldever was not only very pretty, but she had probably brought a substantial dowry with her as well. But as an illiterate tradesman’s daughter, she wasn’t of the same social standing as the man she had married. It might have been a good match for the receiver, but it was an even better one for her and her family, who could now boast a connection, however tenuous, with the Bellknapps of Croxcombe.

‘Have you known your husband long?’ I probed.

She considered this. ‘Since I was about ten years old.’ There was a pause, while she did certain calculations on her fingers. ‘I think he must have been twenty or thereabouts when he first arrived here. My father always reckons Edward came to Croxcombe Manor the same year as Master Anthony quarrelled with the old master and left home.’ She gave a little shiver of excitement. ‘Fancy him turning up again after all this time. I can’t really believe it. Wait until my parents hear about it. My mother and her friends won’t be able to talk about anything else. And fancy you being a friend of his!’

So that was my attraction for her. And there had I been imagining that it was my physical charms.

‘Hardly a friend,’ I admitted with foolhardy honesty. ‘To be truthful, we only met for the first time last night, in the Litton alehouse. But tell me,’ I went on, ‘if you were ten in the year that Anthony Bellknapp left home, you must remember the murder, here at Croxcombe, two years later.’

‘Of course I do. Nobody talked of anything else for weeks. My mother wouldn’t allow me out on my own for months afterwards. Although that was silly. John Jericho was long gone by that time, along with all his plunder.’

‘Do you recollect this John Jericho?’ I asked.

She pursed her little rosebud mouth. ‘I can’t say I ever took much notice of him. He used to accompany Dame Audrea to the market and to the cathedral on occasions, but otherwise I didn’t see much of him. In those days I never came to the manor. Never dreamed that one day I’d be living here.’

‘Can you recall what he looked like?’

Rose shrugged prettily. (Everything she did was pretty. Her mother had trained her well.)

‘Not really. I think he was small and dark, but I certainly wouldn’t know him again, if I saw him.’ She looked round and fixed me with those great blue eyes. ‘Edward — that’s my husband — says he’s turned up again after all these years. Dame Audrea recognized him when she was at Saint James’s fair, in Bristol. He’s changed his name, of course. Well, he would have done, wouldn’t he? And he speaks with an Irish accent. But Edward says that’s just to throw people off the scent. He’s sure it’s John Jericho.’

‘I know all about it,’ I said. ‘People in Bristol are very incensed about the arrest’ — well, I was — ‘because he hasn’t been charged with this crime. There seems to be some doubt about his identity. Neither your husband nor Master Applegarth, who were with Dame Audrea at the fair, seem prepared to back her up.’

‘Oh, Edward’s sure,’ Rose asserted. ‘It’s just George who isn’t. He persuaded Ned at the time not to make a positive what-d’you-call-it? Thingummy …’

‘Identification?’ I suggested. She nodded. ‘Why not? Do you know?’

‘George declares this man isn’t him. John Jericho, that is. But my Ned’s thought it over and he says it is. Two against one. He’s going to Bristol again with Dame Audrea next week. At least, he was. I don’t know how this business of Master Anthony’s return will affect their plans.’

This was bad news. But Rose could be right; the confusion and upheaval attendant upon the prodigal’s reappearance was bound to upset even the most fixed of intentions. I wondered cynically what bribe Edward Micheldever had been offered to make him ready to support his mistress’s allegations against my brother. By contrast, my respect for the steward grew even greater. Here was that rare man whose integrity and probity were not to be compromised.

Rose had been prattling on while my thoughts wandered, wrapped up as I was in my feelings of contempt for her husband. But something she suddenly blurted out caught my attention.

‘What was that? Somebody you know saw John Jericho and someone else abroad the night of the murder? In the woods around here?’

She looked stricken. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t know what made me say it. I’ve never uttered a word to anyone else before, not even to Edward.’

‘You mentioned a name, Ronan.’

‘My brother,’ she admitted. ‘Ronan’s always been fond of a bit of poaching with his mates. Still is. Nothing much,’ she added hurriedly. ‘A rabbit or two. Maybe a pheasant now and then. It’s just for the thrill of it. He gives what he snares to his ackers. His friends,’ she corrected herself as she fell into the local vernacular. ‘He daren’t bring anything home. Father would half kill him. Ronan’s been doing it for years and so far he’s never been found out.’ She clasped her hands together in real perturbation. ‘I don’t know why I’ve said anything now. Promise me, please promise me that you won’t tell anyone. That you won’t mention it to my husband!’

I saw my chance and, meanly, took it. ‘I won’t say a word if you’ll undertake to introduce me to your brother.’