Wheel of Fate

FIVE

I stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending, before the sense of her words sank in.

‘Two of them have been killed?’ I repeated stupidly. ‘And an attempt on Sybilla’s life, as well?’

My wife nodded. ‘And now they are inclined to think that Clemency’s illness was more sinister than they all thought it at the time. You see-’

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘We’d better sit down while you explain this to me.’ And I drew her towards one of the settles beside the hearth. The three children had retired to sit around the table, Elizabeth and Nicholas catching up on one another’s news, Adam sucking his thumb, staring into space and contemplating heaven alone knew what mischief. Hercules was still stretched out in front of the meagre fire, asleep and snoring.

‘Now,’ I asked, ‘what is all this about?’

Before Adela could answer, however, the door in the far wall opened to admit a woman also dressed in funereal black, relieved by a white coif and apron, and with a bunch of keys dangling from her belt, which at once proclaimed her status as the housekeeper. She was a tall, handsome woman who carried herself as one with a sense of her own importance, and a pair of widely spaced grey eyes surveyed the world with a certain disdain. I judged her to be somewhere in her early forties or even perhaps a little younger.

‘I thought I heard Oswald’s voice,’ she said, addressing Adela and ignoring my presence.

Adela nodded. ‘Yes. He came in some minutes ago, but he’s taken Sybilla back to her room. She got out of bed, which was very foolish of her, and almost collapsed. I thought you must know that Oswald is home. Clemency went to find you, presumably to say that dinner could be served and to tell you about the new arrivals.’ My wife indicated Elizabeth and me. ‘Arbella, this is Roger, my husband who has brought his daughter with him. I am trying to persuade him to remain here for a while before taking the boys and me back to Bristol. He is very clever at unravelling mysteries and I’m hoping he may be able to solve this one. Roger, this is Mistress Rokeswood, Clemency’s and Sybilla’s housekeeper. They tell me she has been with them for a few years now and is almost like one of the family.’

I rose politely to my feet, but apart from a brief inclination of her head, Arbella Rokeswood accorded me no other acknowledgement.

‘Clemency and I must have missed each other,’ she muttered angrily. ‘I was out in the herb garden looking for some coriander, but there doesn’t seem to be any left. As you know, an infusion of the leaves is good for stomach cramp, and one of the maids is complaining of bellyache.’ She shrugged. ‘Oh well! It can’t be helped. But I do so hate not having dinner ready when Oswald comes in.’ Her rather austere features softened. ‘He works so hard and his sisters have never properly appreciated him.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they do,’ Adela remonstrated gently. ‘They’re all — I mean they’re both extremely fond of him.’ Her breath caught on a little sob, but she recovered her composure and went on, ‘They mother him to death.’

‘Smother him more like,’ was the embittered reply as the housekeeper stalked from the room.

‘Oh-ho! Blows the wind from that quarter?’ I said, as Mistress Rokeswood disappeared through the farther door.

‘Shush!’ Adela whispered. ‘She’ll hear you.’ But as the door closed, she nodded agreement. ‘Yes, you’re right. Poor Arbella is very much in love with Oswald, I’m afraid. Not that it will do her any good. Whatever she does for him — and she waits on him hand, foot and finger — as long as even one sister is alive she stands no chance with him whatsoever. I have never known such devoted siblings. At times, it seems positively unnatural. And I understand that when Charity was alive, it was worse. She was more maternal towards him than either Clemency or Sybilla. And that, my love, is saying something, believe me.’

I sought to put my thoughts in order.

‘This Charity,’ I said, cudgelling my brain to remember what Margaret Walker had told me, ‘was the third daughter of Morgan Godslove’s first marriage. Am I right? But now she’s dead? How did that happen?’

My wife clasped my arm. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you when Arbella interrupted us. Charity died last year after eating mushrooms. One of them must have been poisonous. But the point is that she isn’t the only member of the family who has died. The year before that, one of the stepbrothers was killed in a tavern brawl, and in the October after Charity’s death, Martin Godslove — that’s their half-brother and Celia’s brother — was set upon by robbers late one night in Cheapside and stabbed to death. Moreover. .’ Adela paused a moment to take a breath and then continued, ‘Moreover, not long after her stepbrother was killed, Clemency became very ill and nearly died. Indeed, she was so ill that she was given the last rites, but by some miracle she recovered. No one thought anything more about it — nothing, that is, except that she had been extremely sick and that their prayers had been answered — until first Charity and then Martin died so unnaturally. Then the rest of them began to get frightened. Three deaths and one near death in just a couple of years began to make them believe that either there was a curse on the family or that someone was deliberately killing them off one by one. And now, only a few days ago, Sybilla was badly injured from a falling block of stone as she was walking by the city wall. (You must have noticed that it’s being repaired.) No one seemed to know how it happened. All the workmen swore they were nowhere near the particular stretch of scaffolding where the accident occurred. Except, of course, no one here really thinks it was an accident. And now they are in fear and trembling as to what will happen next. Oh, Roger, you will help them, won’t you? They have been so very kind to me that I feel I must do something.’

I took both her hands in mine and attempted to soothe her agitation.

‘Adela, my love,’ I said, ‘try to look at things calmly. For a start, why do your cousins believe that some unknown person is out to murder them one by one? Do they have any enemies? Have they offended somebody? Quarrelled with somebody? Injured someone?’

Adela shook her head. ‘No, they say not. But Oswald is a lawyer and a good one so I’m told. He seems to be held in high esteem in the inns of court. Since I’ve been here, I’ve met several of his fellow advocates and they all speak highly of him. Clemency and Sybilla and Celia — that’s the half-sister — think it more than likely that he has made an enemy of some felon who was sent to prison, or otherwise severely punished, thanks to his successful prosecution. Or maybe someone was executed and his family are set on revenge.’

I grimaced. ‘That’s possible, I suppose. Can Oswald recall any case in recent years where the accused made threats against him, or where Oswald himself felt the verdict to have been unsafe?’

‘My dear fellow, don’t let your wife embroil you in our affairs, I beg of you.’ I turned my head to see the lawyer descending the staircase. Reaching the bottom, he came to join us at the fire. ‘It’s all nonsense, I’m sure, dreamed up by my sisters. It’s a series of unfortunate coincidences, nothing more.’

He tried to speak nonchalantly, but I noticed that his voice jumped a little and that the corner of one eye had developed a tic.

I spread my hands. ‘If you’re satisfied. .’

‘No, he’s not satisfied. Don’t believe him,’ said yet another voice behind me, making me start. I rose hastily to my feet to find a rather pretty woman standing with one hand on the back of the settle, smiling at me, and guessed that this must be the half-sister, Celia Godslove. There was a look of her half-siblings about her, a similarity of bearing in the upright carriage, but she was taller and younger — her middle thirties I judged — and the high cheekbones, determined jaw and aquiline nose were somehow softer and rounder, making her seem more approachable and friendly than the others.

‘Hold your tongue, Cecy,’ Oswald told her, but in spite of the reproof he went forward and not only kissed her affectionately but also hugged her, holding her close against him in what seemed to me to be a most unbrotherly fashion. I felt Adela’s eyes upon me and we exchanged a fleeting glance.

The newcomer, freeing herself from her half-brother’s embrace, again turned to me, holding out one hand. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said, ‘but take no notice of Oswald’s protestations. He’s just as worried as the rest of us, even if he likes to pretend he isn’t.’

I took the proffered hand and bowed while Adela introduced me to this latest arrival. ‘I want him to stay and help solve this mystery,’ my wife explained.

Celia smiled and I saw that her eyes were greyish-blue, like smoke, rather than the deeper colour of her siblings’. At the moment, they were twinkling with secret amusement.

‘The. . er. . the erring husband?’ she queried, suppressing a chuckle.

‘That’s all been explained,’ Adela interposed hurriedly. ‘It was a misunderstanding on my part. Roger has come to take me and the boys home, but as I said, I think he should stay for a while if you’ll let him, and try to discover what is going on.’

‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ Celia nodded before Oswald could register an objection. ‘An extra mind brought to bear on the subject is just what we need. And it will be the viewpoint of an outsider who is unaffected by all these accidents and deaths.’ She had quite lost her sunny smile and she pressed a trembling hand to her lips. ‘Martin was my brother, you know,’ she added.

‘Yes, I do realize that,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

At that moment, Clemency came back into the hall, closely followed by the housekeeper.

‘Oh, you’re home,’ she said, addressing her half-sister. ‘Was the city very crowded?’

Celia kissed Clemency’s cheek before replying. ‘Not so crowded as you’d expect on St George’s Day, and no plays or mummings, naturally. But a lot of armed bands patrolling the streets and one or two near clashes amongst a few of them. Someone told me that it’s mainly between Lord Hasting’s men and those of the Woodvilles, but I couldn’t say for certain.’

‘Most likely.’ Oswald nodded in agreement. ‘There has never been any love lost between the Lord Chamberlain and the queen’s family. Matters can only get worse now that the king is no longer present to arbitrate and keep them all in order.’ He sighed. ‘I shall be relieved, I confess, when my Lord of Gloucester gets here.’

‘No word of his imminent arrival?’ I asked. ‘I noticed that they were making ready at Crosby’s Place when I passed this morning.’

At this point, Arbella Rokeswood intervened to remark acidly that dinner was on the parlour table and that unless we all came at once the food would be cold.

The parlour was at the back of the house, a large room overlooking a wild tangle of garden; a stretch of unkempt grass dotted with shrubs and trees and shadowed here and there by odd slopes and hollows. It was a children’s paradise, and I could hear my stepson’s excited whispers as he pointed out to Elizabeth the various hiding places it contained and the opportunity it presented for any number of games. Adam eyed them both thoughtfully but said nothing except to insist on sitting next to me at table, from time to time stroking any part of my anatomy that was available to him and smiling at me whenever I happened to glance his way.

‘He’s missed you,’ Adela remarked quietly, as she took her place on his other side.

I realized she must be right, the more so because he was an independent child, not given to overt displays of affection. I felt a sudden surge of guilt. I left my family alone far too much. But I had to earn our daily bread at my chosen calling and furthermore, although in the past I had resolutely refused all offer of financial help from the Duke of Gloucester, of late I had accepted his assistance to a considerable degree, a fact which made all our lives a good deal more tolerable. Affluent, even. But the extra money was not a simple gift. There were always strings attached. And of late that had meant being away from home long periods at a time. More money in my pocket or more time spent with my wife and children, that seemed to be the choice. It was not an easy one.

The dinner was excellent, and it was with relief that I realized that whatever other economies the Godsloves practised, they did not stint on food and drink. A thick cabbage broth was followed by a pair of plump fowls served with a dressing of sage and wild garlic and stuffed with onions and hard boiled eggs, everything washed down with home-brewed ale. A dish of stewed apples and figs completed a meal with which even I could find no fault.

The talk at table was at first desultory, all the women, with the exception of Adela, anxiously concerned with Oswald’s well-being. Did he approve of the new sauce for the fowls? Was that particular chair comfortable enough for him? Was he tired after his morning’s work? How had such-and-such a case gone? Had it been as difficult as he feared? These questions were succeeded by extolling his achievements, both sisters and the housekeeper vying with one another in the extravagance of her praise, all of which the recipient appeared to take as no more than his due. Such adulation was obviously commonplace, and I reflected that I had never before come across so tightly knit and so self-regarding a family. I felt sorry for Arbella and for anyone else who tried to infiltrate their ranks.

After a while, however, there inevitably came a lull in the conversation, so I took advantage of the sudden silence to demand more details concerning the deaths, illnesses and accidents that seemed to be dogging their lives.

‘Do you truly believe that someone is trying to kill you all?’ I asked, allowing a note of scepticism to creep into my voice.

No one answered for a moment or two, the sisters and Arbella looking at Oswald as though waiting for permission to speak. But when he merely shrugged, Celia said firmly, ‘Yes.’

Clemency added, ‘It certainly seems a possibility. First, our elder stepbrother was killed in a tavern brawl. A common enough occurrence you might say, but when added to a sickness that almost claimed my life, to my sister Charity’s death, to my half-brother Martin’s death and now to Sybilla’s near fatal accident, it seems too much to be mere coincidence.’

‘What was your illness, Mistress Godslove?’ I enquired, as two young kitchen maids appeared to clear the board of our dirty plates and to place dishes of nuts and raisins in the centre of the table along with a jug of dark, very sweet wine.

Clemency smiled. ‘If you are to stay and help us,’ she said, ‘you may as well address us by our Christian names or there will be confusion between my two sisters and myself. As for my sickness, it was a fever with a headache so severe that I could not bear light anywhere near my eyes, vomiting and a rash. Roderick Jeavons, who has been our physician for many years now, declared at the time that it was a form of brain fever and that I would die. Indeed, they tell me — ’ she nodded towards her brother and half-sister — ‘that I was delirious for days, and that when my mind finally cleared I was so weak, they were convinced I had not long to live. So while I was lucid, they sent for Father Berowne, our parish priest, who confessed me and administered extreme unction. But in the end, the Lord spared me and I recovered.’

‘When was this?’ I asked.

It was Celia who answered. ‘The year before last, towards Christmas.’

I looked at Clemency. ‘And at the time, did you accept the diagnosis that it was brain fever?’

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. Certainly. None of us made any connection then between our stepbrother’s death and my illness. It was only last spring when Charity died after eating mushrooms, and when, the following autumn, my half-brother, Martin, was set upon by a gang of youths near Cheapside and killed, that we began to question whether my sickness really had been brain fever or some form of poisoning; when we began to wonder if someone is taking some sort of revenge against us.’ She returned my gaze steadily. ‘You’re sceptical. I can see it in your face. You think, like Oswald — or as Oswald says he thinks — that these events, occurring one after the other, are nothing more than coincidence. But I would remind you that now Sybilla has almost been killed by a block of stone falling from the scaffolding around the Bishop’s Gate. It bruised her right shoulder very badly. An inch or two more to the left and she would undoubtedly have been crushed to death.’

There was silence while I pondered my hostess’s words. Out of the corner of one eye, I could see Adela regarding me anxiously, afraid that I was going to refuse to help her cousins. And it was on the tip of my tongue to do so. I had no wish to linger in the capital. I wanted to go home and take my family with me. I felt no interest in any of these people and had not the slightest desire to get embroiled in their affairs. It would be easy enough to convince myself that these disasters had nothing to do with one another; that they were simply isolated incidents which, although they might appear sinister when taken all together, were really unconnected. And indeed I had no need to convince myself. I was almost sure that that was the case. But it was the ‘almost’ that bothered me.

Even so, I was just about to declare my opinion in no uncertain terms when Celia said, ‘Of course, it really started, not with your sickness, Clem, but with Reynold being knifed to death in that fight in the Voyager.’

‘I did mention that,’ her half-sister excused herself.

‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed. ‘Reynold? The Voyager?’ A memory stirred. I suddenly recollected Margaret Walker mentioning the fact that Morgan Godslove’s second wife had been the Widow Makepeace, whom he had met in London. ‘Are you telling me that your stepbrother was Reynold Makepeace, the landlord of St Brendan the Voyager in Bucklersbury?’

‘Our elder stepbrother, yes.’ Clemency frowned. ‘You speak as though you knew him.’

‘We did know him,’ Adela chimed in. ‘Roger and I stayed at the Voyager, oh it must be more than five years ago now. It was before Adam was born.’

‘It was five years ago,’ I confirmed. ‘It was at the time of the little Duke of York’s marriage to Anne Mowbray and the trial of the Duke of Clarence. But I’ve stayed there since, three years back when Margaret of Burgundy was here. And I heard of Landlord Makepeace’s death when I went looking for him at the Voyager last October. I was never more shocked in my life than to learn he’d been killed. He was a fine and very kind man.’

‘He was,’ Clemency agreed, and both Oswald and Celia nodded.

‘A good man,’ the housekeeper added.

‘And now you all think that his death might not have been an accident?’

‘Yes.’ The three women spoke as one. Only Oswald said nothing, holding aloof from comment.

‘It was the first of our misfortunes,’ Clemency pointed out. ‘The start of everything.’

This changed the complexion of things as far as I was concerned. I had counted Reynold Makepeace as much a friend as an acquaintance, and had been fond of him; fond enough at least for the news of his death, when it had finally come to my ears last autumn, to have saddened me beyond all expectation. If, therefore, there was a possibility that he had been murdered rather than killed accidentally, I felt I had to ferret out the truth.

‘Are you saying, in all seriousness,’ I asked Clemency, ‘that you now believe your stepbrother’s death to have been planned? That someone paid some ruffians to set on him and kill him?’

She returned my look steadily. ‘It is precisely what happened to my half-brother last year, in Cheapside. It seemed like an attack by pickpockets, and indeed it was regarded as such by members of the Watch who brought his body home to us. The coroner, too, had no hesitation in accepting such a verdict.’

‘You didn’t, however?’

‘No.’ It was Oswald’s turn to speak and he did so with the authority of a lawyer. ‘Loath as I am to contribute to this idea of a conspiracy against our family, I have to admit that there were a couple of suspicious circumstances connected with Martin’s death. Firstly, although London’s streets are, regrettably, infested with bands of armed robbers at night, very few, if any, of these men set out deliberately to kill their victims. They might knock them unconscious, and in so doing fatally wound them, but death is not their intention. Martin, on the other hand, was stabbed simply and cleanly through the heart. Secondly, although he had a full purse of money on him and was wearing a silver chain as well as several valuable rings, only one of the rings and a little loose change in one of his pockets were taken. This was attributed by the coroner to the fact that Martin’s attackers had been disturbed. He chose to ignore the other far more significant fact of the way in which my half-brother had been murdered. A knife through the heart can be no accidental killing.’

‘In short,’ I said, just so that there could be no misunderstanding, ‘you think that these apparent robbers were really hired assassins?’

Oswald Godslove hesitated for a second, then, reluctantly, nodded.

‘Well, thank the sweet Lord you’ve confessed as much at last,’ breathed Clemency. ‘You see, Roger, we need you,’ she added, turning to me. ‘Already you’ve persuaded my brother to declare openly that he agrees with us, which, up until now, he has refused to do.’

‘Nonsense!’ Oswald retorted, nettled. ‘I’ve always said that there was something odd about Martin’s death. But that doesn’t mean I believe it’s connected to the other mishaps that have befallen us.’

Clemency and Celia threw up their hands in disgust. ‘Of course they are connected,’ the former declared almost angrily. ‘We have never discovered who it was who left that basket of mushrooms outside the kitchen door a year ago.’

I had temporarily forgotten the death of Charity Godslove. An unsolicited gift from an unknown person did sound suspicious, I had to admit.

‘Did you all eat the mushrooms?’ I asked.

‘All except Oswald,’ Celia answered, smiling faintly at her half-brother on the opposite side of the table.

That made sense. Picking, selling, buying and eating mushrooms was legally forbidden, although it was a law that many people ignored and whose flouting the authorities were inclined to wink at. But it was for this very reason — that the average man or woman was unable to tell the difference between a poisonous and a benign mushroom — that the ban had first been imposed. It was all too easy to make a murder look like an accident where mushrooms were concerned.

‘So,’ I said, ‘if, as seems most probable, a highly poisonous variety of mushroom had been concealed amongst the others, any one of you, including Master Godslove, here, could have been the intended victim. In other words, there was no particular target, just whoever was unfortunate enough to eat it.’

Celia shivered suddenly. ‘Yes,’ she agreed with a nod. ‘That’s what makes us think that someone has a grudge against the whole family.’

‘And also someone who is extraordinarily callous,’ Clemency put in. ‘Someone who doesn’t care who gets harmed as long as he achieves his ends. The victim in that particular instance could just as well have been Arbella or one of the kitchen maids.’

‘Why do you assume this unknown enemy is a man? It could as easily be a woman,’ I pointed out. ‘Poison, they say, is a woman’s weapon. And a woman is as capable of hiring assassins to do her work for her as a man. In fact she would be more likely to do so.’

‘And Sybilla’s “accident”?’ the housekeeper asked, speaking for the first time since the discussion began.

I shrugged. ‘Again, money may have changed hands. One of the workmen repairing the city wall could have been bribed. I imagine you are all in and out of the Bishop’s Gate fairly frequently. There would be no difficulty in recognizing any one of you, I should think.’

There was a sudden silence around the table, broken only by the subdued muttering and giggling of Elizabeth and Nicholas, totally oblivious to the rest of the world and its problems now that they were together again. Adam sat round-eyed and quiet, listening to everything that was said.

‘Well, we know at least two things about this would-be murderer,’ I suggested finally, when the silence became too uncomfortable to maintain any longer.

‘And what are those?’ Celia asked eagerly.

‘That he or she has enormous patience. It’s two years or more since Reynold Makepeace was killed. Nearly as long since your illness.’ I nodded towards Clemency. ‘Another year since your sister, Charity, died and six months since your half-brother was murdered. Also, he or she is persistent. Out of five attempts, two have failed, but that hasn’t stopped further attacks nor, I imagine, will it. As far as our unknown killer is concerned, there is no urgency. Indeed, I suspect that the slow unravelling of events is a part of the enjoyment.’

‘Are you saying that Sybilla and I can expect further attempts on our lives?’ Clemency asked unsteadily

‘I’m afraid so,’ I answered. ‘You are all in danger.’