11 - The Lammas Feast (12 page)

Replete with two bowlfuls of rabbit stew, freed at last from the incessant attentions of Nicholas and her granddaughter, Adam soothed and sucking at Adela’s breast as though he had never known what it was to have a square meal before, Margaret sat back in our one (very rickety) armchair, belched loudly and patted her stomach.

‘That was good,’ she approved. ‘But then, the Woodward women have always known how to feed their men.’

‘And the men are properly grateful for it,’ I cut in, before any further family reminiscences could thwart my purpose. ‘Mother-in-law, tell us both about the Baldock sisters. And why you think Marion chose to confide in you and not in John Overbecks.’

Margaret stroked her chin. ‘In answer to your last question, how should I know? Perhaps, because of my own tragic history, she thought that I would be sympathetic to the misfortunes of others. Or perhaps, that particular morning, she was lonely and unhappy and wanted to share her experience with another woman. It wasn’t long after she and Jane had arrived in Bristol. I was alone, I remember. Lillis must have gone out somewhere. Marion was employed as a huckster in those days by John Overbecks, who had taken her and her sister to live with him. I always thought, you know, that maybe Marion would marry John. She’d have made him an excellent wife. But, alas, it wasn’t to be. Instead, he fell for the younger, useless one.’

‘What was her story?’ I urged, impatient with this digression.

Margaret fell silent, drumming her fingers on the table-top. After a moment or two, she said, ‘I’ve never told anyone else what Marion divulged to me that morning. Not even when people have been discussing the Baldock girls. Not even when I’ve heard Goody Watkins and her cronies making the wildest guesses as to what might or might not have happened to make them flee their home. Nor have I confirmed their gossip, either, when they’ve come pretty close to guessing the truth. So, why should I tell you now?’

I glanced questioningly at Adela, but she merely hunched her shoulders very slightly, so as not to disturb Adam, who, sensing an interruption to his food supply, sucked even harder.

It had never been any use trying to pull the wool over Margaret’s eyes about anything, so I decided to make a clean breast of the matter. She heard me out in silence, then laughed shortly.

‘He doesn’t change, does he?’ she demanded of Adela.

‘No, thank God. He wouldn’t be Roger if he did,’ my wife replied loyally, and I mouthed her a silent kiss.

‘Oh well, I suppose not.’ Margaret conceded grudgingly, ‘His nosiness certainly did me a good turn, as I daresay it’s done for plenty of others.’

She leaned back again in her chair and gave another belch. I envied her; that was usually my prerogative. Today, however, crouched almost double on a stool, I was feeling all the discomfort of pent-up wind.

‘Go on, mother-in-law,’ I encouraged her.

She pursed her lips. ‘There isn’t much to tell. The story’s not an uncommon one, I should imagine, in such an isolated community as Marion and her sister came from. The two girls were orphaned not long after Jane’s tenth birthday. Marion was twenty by that time and old enough to look after the younger girl without help. But there was pressure on her from the village elders to get married. Begetting children, and as many as possible, was the duty of all the women: it was the only way of ensuring the community’s survival. The man picked out for her was the chief elder’s son, a young man she loathed for his callous, drunken ways. And with good reason, as it transpired.

‘When she refused to have him, he called at the sisters’ cottage one night, after dark, forced his way in with a couple of tipsy friends, and while he and one of the other men took it in turns to have their way with Marion, the third set on Jane. When her own ordeal was over, and Marion realized what had happened to her little sister, she lost her reason. Went temporarily insane, is what she said. She killed Jane’s attacker. She claims she can’t remember doing it, but as soon as she came to her senses and saw what she’d done, she simply grabbed Jane’s hand and they ran. Just as they were, in the clothes they stood up in. Fortunately, the other two men, the chief elder’s son and his friend, were still too drunk to stop them. After that, the girls just kept on running, travelling by night, hiding by day, stealing or begging food when and wherever they could, until Marion reckoned they were far enough from the village to start asking carriers for rides in their carts. Eventually, they reached Bristol, and the rest of the story you both know.’

Adela put Adam across one shoulder and patted his back. He burped loudly and milkily, before his face crumpled in woe. Warned by me, my wife hurriedly put him to the other breast.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, when Adam was comfortably settled once more. ‘Why didn’t the villagers send someone to the nearest town to report the murder and raise a posse to go after the girls? I mean, in the vengeful state of mind they must have been in, it would have seemed the obvious thing to do.’

I shook my head. ‘These very isolated communities are a law unto themselves,’ I explained. ‘They make their own rules and carry out their own punishments. They have as little to do as possible with the outside world, and the outside world has as little as possible to do with them.’ I had had some experience of these sort of people, both in the forests around Gloucester and among the self-governing fishing villages of Devon. ‘My guess would be that they sent their own people after Marion Baldock, but she was too quick and too clever for them. They never traced her this far, and have long since decided to let the matter rest. After five years, they are hardly likely to be still looking for her . . . Mother-in-law, you didn’t say how Marion killed this man who raped her sister. Did she tell you?’

‘Ye–es.’ There was a pause long enough for me to begin to suspect what was coming. After all, Marion could hardly have strangled a fully grown man, with two others in the room to help him. Margaret continued reluctantly, ‘She stabbed him. Through the heart. With a meat knife.’

‘Now, remember,’ Adela instructed me, as she straightened the pack on my back and kissed my cheek, ‘you’re to be home in good time for supper, so that I can bed the children down before we leave for Vespers at the nunnery. Are you listening, Roger? I don’t want to disgrace Mistress Ford by being the only two guests who are late.’

‘I promise,’ I said, returning her kiss with interest. I reached the safety of the cottage door before adding, ‘But if I should be delayed, go on without me.’ I nipped into the street and shut the door quickly, just as something thudded against the wood. I opened the door again, just a crack, and called, ‘If I’m
very
late, I’ll go straight to Saint Michael’s Hill without coming home first.’ Adela’s other shoe landed close by. I beat a strategic retreat.

I had not mentioned the fact, but it was my intention to see Cicely Ford long before the hour of Vespers. In fact, I was on my way to visit her at that moment. The fairground booths and stalls were now going up fast and furiously all around Saint James’s Priory, and I had to pick my way through piles of newly sawn timber and bags of carpenters’ tools, while their owners cursed me for a big-footed lout or a clumsy oaf, and their wives, even louder and shriller, berated me for my carelessness as I stepped on their cooking pots and upset their food.

As I climbed over the stile into Prior’s Lane and turned towards Saint Michael’s Hill, past the wall of the Franciscan Friary, I met a weary and dispirited posse, led by Jack Gload and Peter Littleman, returning home after more than twenty-four hours on the road. They had, no doubt, spent an uncomfortable night in some barn or even in the open fields.

‘You didn’t find the Breton, then?’ I called good-naturedly as they rode past me, displaying a concerned citizen’s interest in such matters.

Jack Gload snarled something unrepeatable, while Peter Littleman removed one foot from its stirrup and kicked out with his heavy boot. He missed me by inches. Suppressing a grin, I continued my climb, past Saint Michael’s Church and the boundary stone to the gibbet and Cicely Ford’s cottage, opposite.

I had more than half expected her to be out; to be spending this special day at the nunnery in prayer and meditation between services. But she answered my knock, looking, I thought, even more sad and weary than when I had seen her the day before last.

‘Roger!’ she exclaimed, the blue eyes lighting with pleasure in her tired face. ‘Oh! You’ve not come to tell me that you and Adela can’t come to Vespers tonight, have you? Is one of the children ill?’

‘No, no!’ I disclaimed hurriedly. ‘I just wanted to talk to you. It’s to do with Jasper Fairbrother’s murder. You’ve heard about it?’

‘Of course. John Overbecks was at the nunnery yesterday morning, delivering bread. One of the hucksters was ill, it seems.’ She shivered and glanced over my shoulder to the corpse still creaking in its chains. Her eyes filled with unshed tears. ‘Why do such evil things happen? But why do you want to talk to me? How can I help you? I know nothing about the murder.’

‘Were you at the nunnery the evening before last?’ I asked. ‘The evening when Jasper was killed?’

Cicely frowned. ‘Yes. I was there from the beginning of Vespers until the end of Compline.’

‘What time was Compline?’ As the last service of the day, it is always later in summer than in winter.

‘About nine o’clock. The sisters go to bed immediately afterwards.’

‘And all the sisters were present?’

‘Of course. And don’t ask me if I’m sure, Roger. There are so few of them that the absence of just one would be impossible to miss.’

I asked, all the same. ‘Sister Jerome was there? All the time?’

Cicely looked as angry as it was ever possible for her to do. ‘I’ve just told you. I’m not a liar. What is this about, Roger? What does it have to do with Master Fairbrother’s murder?’

‘Nothing,’ I sighed. Which was, unfortunately, the truth. By the time Compline ended, even if Marion Baldock had been able to quit the nunnery on some pretext or another, it would have been too late. The curfew bell would have been rung and the city gates shut against her.

Cicely laid a hand on my arm. ‘You look tired and hot,’ she said. ‘Come in and let me give you a drink.’

I accepted gratefully. It was cool and dark inside the cottage after the heat and glare outside. Its one room was as spartan as her old home had been luxurious. I wondered how she survived in such surroundings, she who had been so cosseted, so gently reared, so spoiled and adored.

She brought me a cold, pale drink, smelling of elderflowers. As she handed me the cup, our hands touched. The next moment, my free arm was around her waist. I bent my head and kissed her.

W
e both sprang apart as though hit by a bolt of lightning. I was blushing furiously. Cicely was as white as I was red.

‘For–forgive me,’ I stammered. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

I did, of course. Some long-buried, almost wholly forgotten desire to know what it would feel like to kiss her had suddenly surfaced, prompting me to this outrageous behaviour. ‘Forgive me,’ I begged again.

Cicely clasped both hands to her face. ‘It wasn’t all your fault,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to kiss me.’

I had known that, from the way her lips had momentarily clung to mine, but I had not expected her to admit it. She was, however, a totally honest woman, and I was grateful for it. But the guilt belonged to me. I had taken the initiative. I had taken advantage of a very lonely and vulnerable soul.

‘I must go,’ I muttered, yet not wishing to leave before I had made my peace with her. ‘Do you – do you still want me to be your guest at Vespers?’

To my surprise, instead of keeping her distance, Cicely came across and put her arms around me, giving me a brief hug.

‘Of course. Dear Roger, you and I have been friends for a very long time. I’ve always liked you, and I believe that you’ve always liked me.’ She touched my cheek. ‘Perhaps we should have done this years ago and got it over with. It means nothing, you know. You love your wife. I’m still in love with a ghost.’

She was wise beyond her years. I kissed her again, but this time it was a chaste, brotherly peck on the forehead.

‘You must tell Adela,’ she insisted.

I grinned ruefully. ‘I promise. That will be my punishment.’

‘Where are you going now?’ she asked, coming with me to the cottage door and helping me to settle my pack on my shoulders.

‘Up to the downs, to some of the bigger houses and farmsteads.’

I was hoping to be luckier than Jack Gload and Peter Littleman and find someone who had seen the Breton, or given him shelter, sometime between Monday evening and today.

‘God be with you, then,’ she said quietly. ‘And remember! I shall look for you and Adela at Vespers this evening.’ I assured her we should be there and would have apologized again, but she anticipated me and laid a finger against my lips, shaking her head. ‘Go and find your witnesses to the Breton’s innocence,’ she urged me. ‘Don’t let it be too late, as it was with Robert.’

I strode away up the hill, but after a short distance I paused to glance behind me. Cicely had wandered over to the gibbet and was staring at the cadaver, hanging in its chains. Just for a moment, I wanted to go back, not, this time, to fold her romantically in my arms, but to shake sense into her; to tell her not to be a fool! Not to spend the rest of her life mourning a dead man! To live and be young while she could! But it wouldn’t have done any good. I should have been wasting my breath. So I turned and continued climbing the hill.

My visit to Cicely Ford had established one thing – apart from the fact that I was, myself, in a strangely disturbed and volatile mood – and that was the fact that Marion Baldock could not have been the killer of Jasper Fairbrother. However ruthless she might have proved herself in the past with a handy meat knife, she had not murdered the baker. But if I could also prove the Breton’s innocence, as I seemed intent on doing, who
had
killed Jasper? Well, for a start, half of Bristol possessed a motive, as had been pointed out by me and others from the very beginning. So, if I were able to clear the stranger’s name to my own and the sheriff’s satisfaction, I could drop the case with an easy conscience, let my interest evaporate and concentrate on being the family man again. (And, judging by this recent episode, I badly needed to concentrate.) On the other hand, if the Breton were eventually to be arrested as a Tudor agent, which appeared likely, why bother anyway? What did the charge of homicide matter?