The Weaver's inheritance

Chapter Thirteen

The young man who accompanied Rowena was a mere half a head taller than she was, stockily built, brown-haired and freckle-faced. His skin had the leathery appearance of the countryman who is out in all weathers, and his clothes were made of grey homespun. He had broad, placid features, blue eyes and a grin which spread almost from ear to ear. Place him, I thought bitterly, among a crowd of other country yokels, and he would never stand out from the ruck. As far as I could tell, seething as I was with jealous disappointment, he had nothing whatsoever to recommend him to a beauty such as Rowena Honeyman, yet twice, before they even reached the gate, she lifted her face for his kiss.

‘Mistress!’ I said, blocking her path and hoping against hope that her eyes would light up when she saw me.

Instead, she looked puzzled as she tried to remember who I was. ‘Your face is familiar,’ she smiled. ‘Have we met?’ But as recollection crowded in on her, the smile faded and she shrank back into the crook of the young man’s arm. ‘My aunt’s not in,’ she said coldly, and turned her head towards the reluctantly dispersing knots of people, some of whom still found it difficult to resume their normal tasks. ‘I don’t think she’ll wish to buy anything today, but if you want to ask her, she’s over there talking to the woman in the blue dress and the linen apron and hood.’

I recognized the description of Dame Janet and, with a sidelong glance, verified that the woman in question was indeed Baldwin Lightfoot’s housekeeper. In that brief moment, however, Rowena and her escort slipped past me and started off down the street towards the open countryside. I half-raised my hand to detain her, to grab at her sleeve, her skirt, any part of her within my reach, but thought better of it and slowly allowed my arm to drop back again to my side. What was the point in trying to claim her attention when she so plainly wanted as little to do with me as possible? In her eyes, I was still the man who had been partially responsible for her father’s death. I had been living in a fool’s paradise all these months, imagining that she would have forgiven me by now; exonerated me from any blame. How self-deluding I had been!

I stared after her as long as she was in sight, then heaved my pack on to my back and turned in the opposite direction. I felt winded, as though I had been dealt a heavy blow to my stomach, and I walked blindly, looking neither to left nor right. I had treasured up the memory of Rowena Honeyman for so many long months, that there was nothing now to take its place. It seemed as if a huge, gaping hole had been torn in my heart and that my life’s blood was slowly seeping away. It was not a sensation that I had ever experienced before and I had no idea how to cope with it. I had never been in love, although once, just over three years ago, I had come close to it — and had married someone else instead! But anything I had ever felt for Cicely Ford was as nothing to the emotions which Rowena had stirred within my breast; and my present dejection was not improved by the knowledge that I had been both arrogant and presumptuous in believing that during our short acquaintance I must necessarily have favourably impressed her. I realized with shame that I was so used to the admiration and friendship of women that I was in danger of taking them for granted and not valuing them as I should. If I was wise, this experience would be a salutary lesson to me.

In this humbled mood, and lost in my own unhappy thoughts, I was not at first aware of someone shouting after me. But suddenly a hand seized my arm, and a breathless voice said, ‘Chapman! Why are you hurrying off without letting me take a look at your goods? I’m in want of needles and thread and also a wooden spoon, if you have one.’

It was Dame Janet, flushed and indignant, and I stammered a half-hearted apology. ‘I–I’m sorry, but I did tell you that I wasn’t selling today. My visit was simply to deliver his cousin’s letter to your master, which I’ve done.’

She snorted angrily. ‘Well, if your business with Master Baldwin’s finished, what’s to stop you doing a little business on your own account? I never knew a pedlar yet who wasn’t anxious to sell the nose off his face if the opportunity should offer.’

I had never felt less like hawking my wares, but Dame Janet was an elderly woman in need of commodities which she might otherwise have to go a mile or so to buy. I therefore urged her to the side of the road, on to the same grassy knoll which I had earlier shared with Timothy Plummer, and spread out the contents of my pack in the shade of the oak. As luck would have it, I was carrying several wooden spoons, from which she was able to take her pick, as well as some good bone needles and a quantity of the best linen thread. She haggled over the cost of every item and patently enjoyed the little concessions she obtained on each, but in truth, I was in no mood for bargaining and was content to let things go for whatever she was willing to pay.

‘You charge near enough London prices,’ she grumbled as she stowed her purchases in the capacious pouch hanging from her belt.

I was no more in the mood for arguing than I was for chaffering, but something about the accusation stung me on the raw. ‘I can assure you that I don’t,’ I snapped, adding ungraciously, ‘and what would you know about London prices?’

‘Hoity-toity!’ Dame Janet, by the look on her face, was about to score yet another triumph. ‘I know what Master Lightfoot pays for the things he brings back from his London visits, for he tells me. “I’m a fool, Janet,” he says to me. “You see this leather girdle that I’ve brought you? I could have bought it in Frome for a fraction of the cost I gave for it, but I know you’ll like to boast that it’s London made.” And he had a silver-gilt cup and some other trinkets that he told me the price of. Extortionate, all of them. But that’s London for you!’

In spite of my private misery, my attention was arrested, and as I fastened the buckles on my pack, I asked casually, ‘Master Lightfoot often journeys to the capital then, does he? I wouldn’t have thought he had the means for so much gallivanting about.’

‘Well, you’d be wrong,’ she retorted, raising her chin and squaring her jaw. ‘He was there only last November. That was when he bought me the girdle from a booth in Cheapside. Oh, I admit he doesn’t go often nowadays, but when the fit comes on him, he’s off to visit his cousin who lives near Saint Paul’s.’

‘And he was there sometime last November, you say? You’re sure of that, Mistress?’

Dame Janet was suddenly uneasy, the first inkling that she might have said more than she should have done beginning to trouble her mind. But she had been too positive to retract her statement: she could only affirm what she had already said.

‘Yes, I’m sure. What’s it to you? Why do you want to know?’

‘No reason at all,’ I lied, and changed the subject. ‘The woman to whom you were talking just now — I forget her name — has a niece, Rowena. Is — er — is the young lady betrothed to that youth I saw her with a few moments ago?’ I tried to sound as casual as I could.

‘You know Mistress Coggins?’ Dame Janet enquired, surprised. Then, without waiting for an answer or an explanation, she carried on, ‘Yes, Rowena’s been promised to Ralph Hollyns these two months or more. Didn’t take him two shakes of a lamb’s tail, once he’d clapped eyes on her, to know what he wanted. The only surprise is that she feels the same way about him. With looks like hers, she could have had the pick of any man for twenty miles around. Mind you — ’ the housekeeper was warming to her theme and growing confidential, her earlier suspicions of me forgotten — ‘there’s something a bit mysterious about her. She doesn’t say much concerning her life before she came to live here with her aunt last year. Talks occasionally about her mother, but clams up when her father’s name is mentioned.’ The eyes grew bright with sudden hope. ‘If you’re acquainted with her, maybe you can tell me something of her past. There’s a lot of people hereabouts who’d like to know.’

But I shouldered my pack, said an abrupt goodbye and strode off along the road, heading back the way I had come. Rowena Honeyman was promised to a young man with a freckled face called Ralph Hollyns, and had been for the past two months while I was living with my hopeless dreams. Well, it served me right! I was growing too vain and was in need of a set-down. I hoped I should be able to learn from it.

* * *

I did not return to Bristol until the end of the following week, partly because I had felt it necessary to make some money by selling my wares, and partly because I needed to be by myself for a while, before returning to my mother-in-law and daughter. As I must have mentioned before, without seeming to pry, Margaret had an uncanny knack of searching out the truth if I appeared in any way unhappy or distressed, and I had no wish to discuss Rowena Honeyman with her. I therefore took my pack into the remoter communities of north Somerset, and, in my idle hours, tried to concentrate on what I was going to report to Alison Burnett.

Baldwin Lightfoot had lied to me about the length of time since he had last been in London. According to Dame Janet, he had visited his kinsman near Saint Paul’s churchyard sometime the previous November, and at the beginning of January, Irwin Peto had turned up in Broad Street claiming to be Clement Weaver. Was there a connection here, or was it simply a coincidence? But if the latter, why should Baldwin have tried to conceal his visits? Why had he not been open with me? It seemed suspicious, but I decided, nevertheless, to reserve judgement on him until I had seen and talked to the rest of the Weaver family.

Mistress Burnett was of the same opinion when I went to see her in Small Street a few hours after my return home.

‘This visit of Baldwin’s may be of some significance,’ she conceded, ‘but my instincts tell me that the real instigator of this wicked plot is either my uncle or one of my cousins. Or maybe all of them are in it together. Indeed, I should have preferred you to go straight to London, once the good weather was upon us, rather than waste your time going to Keyford.’

We were seated in the same parlour where she had received me on that earlier occasion, and in spite of the warmth of the April day, a fire had been lit, a great pile of logs, the flames leaping and curling up the chimney. The heat was searing, and I had to move my stool back a foot or two from the hearth to escape being scorched. Alison, however, did not seem to be affected by it; so little, in fact, that she wore a woollen wrap over her gown. She looked even thinner than when I had seen her last, and it was obvious that the quarrel with her father continued to take its toll on her health.

‘When will you go to London?’ she asked.

I hesitated. ‘In a week or so. I have responsibilities here, in Bristol, which I cannot ignore. I must set my own affairs in order first.’ The words rang hollowly in my ears: when had I ever worried about my responsibilities? And why did they weigh so heavily upon me now?

The truth was that for these past few days I had been moving in a kind of dream, where nothing was real except my own emotions. I had temporarily lost interest in the mystery of Clement Weaver, although I understood myself well enough to know that this feeling would not last. I could never resist a challenge nor the lure of London, particularly if someone else was paying for my sojourn there. In the meanwhile, some time was necessary to allow me to pull myself together and accept the situation as it was.

Alison Burnett shrugged. ‘I suppose another week or so will make little difference in the end, but I need your solemn assurance that it will be no longer than that. I want this man proved an impostor as quickly as possible, and it is already well over three months since his arrival. Every day sees him more firmly entrenched in my father’s affections. Dame Pernelle, when I saw her yesterday, told me that the creature feels confident enough now to override the Alderman’s orders where he deems it necessary, and substitute his own. Ned Stoner and Rob Short in particular deeply resent this, and are talking of looking for work at other houses within the town.’

Even this worrying piece of news did not immediately spur me into action. ‘I shall be off as soon as I can,’ I promised. It was time to go and I rose to my feet, anxious to be away. ‘But I shall come again to see you before I leave.’

As I moved towards the parlour door, it opened and William Burnett came in, wearing a very short satin doublet in what seemed to be his favourite colours, black and red. I could smell the highly scented pomade on his long auburn hair and the faint scent of musk that hung about his clothes. I knew that he did not altogether approve of his wife’s decision to employ me in this matter of determining Clement Weaver’s true identity, and was expecting no more than a bare acknowledgement of my presence. Instead, he shot out a hand and gripped my arm.

‘You’ve been in Keyford recently, haven’t you?’ he demanded. ‘Alison told me you’d gone to visit her cousin, Baldwin Lightfoot. So did you hear anything of any trouble there? A woman, they say, was arrested. A woman who had once been in the employ of the late Duchess of Clarence.’

‘I not only heard of it, I saw it happen,’ I answered, and immediately captured both his and Mistress Burnett’s undivided attention. ‘The lady was the Widow Twynyho, formerly attendant upon Duchess Isabel. A number of the Duke of Clarence’s bravos hacked down the door of her house, arrested her and carried her off in the most brutal fashion. Why, and what has since become of her, I’ve no idea, although I’ve wondered many times in the past nine or ten days.’

‘Then I can tell you,’ William said, pleased to be as well informed as myself. ‘She was taken to Warwick, where it seems Clarence was in residence, and summarily hanged, along with another erstwhile retainer of Duke George. There was a trial of sorts, but it would appear that the Duke had both the Justice of the Peace and the jurors in his pocket. These worthies are now saying that they feared for their own lives if they failed to deliver a guilty verdict.’

While I was struggling to come to terms with this hideous sequel to the events that I had witnessed, Mistress Burnett demanded of her husband, ‘How do you know all this?’

‘A party of travellers arrived at the Green Lattis shortly before I left. They were full of the story, and presumed that we would wish to hear all about it, this — this what did you call her? — this Widow Twynyho being a Somerset woman.’

‘But what was the charge against her?’ I asked. ‘Did your travellers happen to mention that?’

‘Oh, yes!’ William Burnett laughed shortly. ‘That’s the crux of the matter. Both of the accused were said to have poisoned the Duchess of Clarence at the instigation of the Queen’s family.’

Alison echoed my gasp of astonishment and horror. ‘The Woodvilles will be up in arms,’ I said. ‘This could lead to civil war if King Edward isn’t careful.’

William nodded. ‘That’s the opinion of these Warwick men. They’re predicting trouble. No one, they say, can take the King’s justice into his own hands like that. Not even the King’s own brother.’

I grimaced. ‘He might if that brother is George of Clarence. King Edward seems to have an infinite capacity for pardoning him.’

Master Burnett shook his head. ‘These men are unanimous in insisting that, this time, the Duke has gone too far. Well, Chapman,’ he added, with an abrupt change of subject, ‘when are you off to London?’

‘In a week or so,’ I answered absently and took a hurried leave of husband and wife, eager to get into the fresh air and cool my head, which was throbbing from the heat. In addition, my mind was reeling from the news of Ankaret Twynyho’s vicious and brutal end. Although I had only glimpsed her that once, I felt a personal anger at her death, and also a terrible guilt. I should have tried at least to stop Clarence’s men abducting her, but, instead, I had played the coward’s part, and it was no consolation to remember that so had every other man in Keyford.

Outside the house, I hesitated, knowing full well that I ought to visit Adela to thank her for all that she had done for my mother-in-law and daughter during my absence. The former had been lavish in her praise almost before I had crossed the cottage threshold.

‘How Elizabeth and I would have managed without my cousin’s attentions, I really don’t know, for I haven’t properly recovered from my illness,’ Margaret had proclaimed, standing there, hands on hips, and looking the very picture of health and strength.

But instead of turning towards Bell Lane and the Frome Bridge, I walked up Small Street into Corn Street and crossed over to the New Inn (alias the Green Lattis) behind All Hallows church. Once in the tap-room, it wasn’t difficult to identify the strangers in our midst by their accent, so different from our own West Country burr, and I approached the four men to ask for more details of Widow Twynyho’s death, explaining my personal interest in their story.

They were friendly men, pausing for a night’s rest and refreshment on their way to Glastonbury, the elder of the four (father, he explained, to the other three), expressing his wish to see the tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere before he died. They identified the man executed along with Mistress Twynyho as one John Thuresby, but the name meant no more to them than it did to me, except that he, too, had been employed in the ducal household.

‘What was the exact charge against them?’ I enquired, for although I had heard it from William Burnett, I wished to have it afresh from the strangers’ own lips.

‘Why, that they had poisoned both Duchess Isabel and her newborn child,’ the older man answered, handing me a pot of ale which he had generously ordered and paid for on my behalf. ‘And if you’re going to ask me why two apparently faithful and loyal retainers should do such a wicked thing, what advantage they gained by these murders, don’t bother, for I’ll tell you. The implication is obvious to the meanest intelligence. They had been suborned by those who wished to be revenged upon the Duke of Clarence, and had been bribed by them to kill his wife and child.’

‘In short, it was a Woodville plot,’ I said, sipping my ale.

‘What else? But there’s more to it than that,’ my new-found friend continued, while his sons nodded in agreement. ‘Duke George is out to prove himself King in all but name. And King in name sooner or later, if he can manage it. He’s never forgiven his brother for spoiling his chances of marriage with the Duchess of Burgundy, and there have been rumours in our part of the country for months that Clarence is arming his retainers like a man ready to rebel.’

‘But on what grounds could he possibly take up arms against the King?’ I demanded. ‘Even if Edward were killed in the conflict, he has two sons to succeed him.’

My acquaintance from Warwick hunched his shoulders. ‘If Clarence were successful, I wouldn’t give a fig for the lives of any of the Woodvilles, including those of the little Prince of Wales and Duke of York, for they’re both half Woodville, after all.’

‘They’re also Clarence’s nephews,’ I protested.

‘Maybe,’ put in one of the sons, ‘but there have been odd stories floating around Warwick for some time now. We’ve a kinsman who is one of the Duke’s Yeomen of the Chamber, and he talks of messengers who come from parts hereabouts, from Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. It would seem that the Bishop and the Duke have much to say to one another.’

At his words, I was transported back in my mind to the previous August, to Farleigh Castle on the other side of Bath, and to the almost royal reception accorded by Clarence to Robert Stillington. I remembered, too, thinking it more than a coincidence that the Duke should be spending twenty-four hours in Somerset at the same time that the Bishop was visiting his diocese; and I had also wondered why, with such little time at their disposal, they had found it necessary to spend it together. Afterwards, I had considered myself unduly cynical, but here was proof that I had been right to be suspicious. However unlikely an alliance it might seem, something was being hatched between those two.

We talked a little longer about the possible future intentions of the Duke of Clarence, then I finished my ale, thanked the men from Warwick for their time and patience and wished them God speed on the final stage of their journey to Glastonbury the following day. The late April afternoon was already somewhat advanced when I emerged from the inn, and my womenfolk would be on the lookout for me, for I had promised my mother-in-law that I would not stay long in Small Street. And I had still not visited Adela to tender my thanks. I debated for a moment or two whether or not to leave my call on her until the next day, but conscience won and I walked down Broad Street, under Saint John’s Arch and across the Frome Bridge to Lewin’s Mead.

As I approached the cottage, I saw Adela framed in the doorway, talking to someone. It was not, as I had half-expected, Richard Manifold, but a stranger, a thin wisp of a man with greying hair, bandy legs and clothes which were clean and carefully mended, but which had seen better days. He had a slightly bewildered air, staring around him in confusion and biting his nails as though he didn’t quite know what do to. Just before I reached the door, he finally shuffled off, with a number of backward glances over his shoulder.

‘Who was that?’ I asked, stooping to give Adela a brotherly kiss on the cheek.

‘A kinsman, or so he claimed, of Imelda Bracegirdle. He’d come from Oxford, looking for her,’ Adela said thoughtfully, ‘and at first refused to believe that she was dead. The news appeared to distress him, and he kept saying, “She can’t be. What’s he going to do?”’ She smiled up at me. ‘I’m so pleased to see you, Roger. Don’t stand there on the doorstep. Come inside.’