11 - The Lammas Feast (13 page)

It mattered because the real killer, whoever he or she was, would, literally, get away with murder, and that idea was one that deeply offended me. I could have argued that a man like Jasper Fairbrother wasn’t worth troubling myself about; that a nasty man had met with a nasty end, just as he deserved. But I should have been betraying one of my most deeply held convictions. I had once, five years ago, in Plymouth, blinked my eyes at murder, but the circumstances had been exceptional. Generally speaking, however unpleasant the victim, I wanted to see the perpetrator brought to justice. For I have firmly believed all my life that a person who kills for the first time will find it easy to kill again. And again. And probably will.

I shivered, as though a shadow had passed over my grave, and, at the same moment, the sun was lost behind a cloud. A sudden, chill breeze blew down from the heights, ruffling my hair. Then, just as quickly, it died, the sun reappeared and once more the open grassland, with its peppering of gorse bushes, lay hot and still all around me. I told myself sternly that I did not believe in omens, and set my feet to mount one of the many paths that lead to the high plateau of ground to the north of the city.

While I climbed, I mulled things over in my mind. I did not despair of finding some trace of the stranger, in spite of the failure of the posse to pick up his trail. After all, if men will go galloping all over the countryside in a heavy-hooved, official manner that announces to the meanest intelligence,
We are the Law,
they can hardly be surprised when no one owns up to encountering someone obviously suspected of being a criminal. Even if the meeting were entirely innocent or accidental – the giving of directions or a cup of water to a thirsty traveller – who wants to attract attention by admitting it? And especially not to a couple of thickheads like Jack Gload and Peter Littleman, who were so transparently incapable of telling how many beans make five.

Another thought struck me. I had assumed from the start that the stranger was a foreigner, a Breton. Why? In my mind’s eye I pictured the scene when I had first noticed him descending the gangplank of the Breton ship. He had spoken to one of the sailors in the man’s own language and, later, Walter Godsmark had confirmed that his master’s visitor had been a foreigner. (‘He spoke English well . . . but with an accent.’) Yet why would a native Breton choose to work for Henry Tudor? The dynastic struggles of England could mean nothing to him. Money was the simple answer, but there was another.

No name had ever been put forward by Richard Manifold for this Lancastrian spy, and I guessed that it was unknown. Whichever of our own agents in Brittany had issued a warning of the man’s arrival, he had probably been ignorant of it himself. Suppose, therefore, that the spy were a Welshman. The Welsh tongue was closely akin to Breton: it would be easy enough for a Welshman, exiled in the duchy for many years, to pick up his hosts’ language without much difficulty. And his Welsh accent might persuade Walter Godsmark that he was foreign. It might also allow for the fact that the man must be able to speak good English if he were to make contact with Lancastrian sympathizers in this country.

It was now about noon, and the sun, as it had done for the past week or more, shone down relentlessly from a cloudless sky. The English are always unsettled by good weather. We have never trained ourselves to lie down and sleep during the warmest part of the day – mainly because, in general, there is no warmest part of the day, even in summer. (Especially in summer!) But now, worn out by the heat, I was forced to drag my aching feet into the shade of a large oak, beside one of those streams I have already mentioned, that flow downhill to supply the Carmelites’ great cistern. I scooped up some of the water in my hand to quench my thirst, leaned back against the tree trunk and, in little more time than it takes to tell, I was asleep.

The sound of boyish voices roused me. I opened my eyes to see two young lads, who had tied a small, stray dog to a nearby tree and were throwing stones at it. My lethargy went flying. I was on my feet in an instant and had knocked their heads together with a resounding crack almost before I knew I was awake.

‘You young louts!’ I roared, releasing the terrified animal, who at once, shivering and whimpering piteously, leapt into my arms. I cradled it against my chest. At least, unlike Jane Overbecks’s dog, it didn’t repay me by peeing all down my jerkin.

‘It’s only a bloody stray,’ the taller of the two boys grumbled furiously, rubbing his sore crown. ‘There’s dozens of ’em roaming about up here. My father reckons they all ought to be destroyed. He reckons they’re a menace.’

‘That’s right,’ concurred the second boy. ‘My father says the same.’

They both spoke in the rough, local dialect; two young bravos in the making, swaggering about the countryside and terrifying the wildlife.

‘We managed to catch him and were getting rid of him,’ explained the first boy self-righteously.

‘Not while I’m around,’ was my terse reply.

I was relieved to discover that they seemed unresentful of my interference. Judging by the various bruises on their faces and bare forearms, I guessed they were accustomed to submitting to adult authority. The little dog was calmer now, so I put him down and he scampered away. With my eyes upon them, daring them to give chase, the boys made no effort to follow.

On a sudden impulse, I enquired, ‘You haven’t seen any strangers in the neighbourhood these past few days, by any chance?’

‘Only you,’ grunted the shorter boy, pointedly rubbing his head again. ‘And that’s one too many.’

‘Wait a minute, Will!’ The first boy, having assessed my height and girth, seemed anxious to propitiate me. ‘There was that man with the funny way of talking. Foreign-sounding. The one we met day before yesterday when we were on our way home to supper. You remember! Asked us which was the path for Westbury College.’

‘Oh, ah!’ Will agreed. ‘Yeah! I do remember him, now you’ve jogged my memory.’

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

This seemed a harder question to answer. They glanced at one another, scratched their heads and then shrugged dismissively.

‘Ordinary.’

‘Tall? Short? Fat? Thin?’

‘Shortish,’ volunteered the boy, who answered to the name of Will.

‘Thickset,’ added his companion.

The description, poor as it was, fitted my memory of the stranger.

‘You say he had a funny way of talking. A foreigner? Could he have been Welsh?’

‘I suppose.’ The taller boy sounded doubtful, but added defiantly, as though I had somehow accused him of lying, ‘Well, the Welsh are foreigners, aren’t they?’

‘You’re certain it was Monday afternoon you met him? Not yesterday?’

‘Certain. I wasn’t allowed out yesterday.’ The taller boy rubbed his buttocks reflectively, and the shorter one grinned.

‘Get another beating, did you, Tom? Been after that girl again?’ He turned to me. ‘Can’t keep his hands off girls, he can’t. He’s always trying to––’

‘Yes, I’m sure he is,’ I cut in, not wishing to hear the sordid details of their burgeoning love lives. I’d been young myself, once. I knew what growing lads got up to. ‘And this meeting would have been around suppertime?’ They both nodded. ‘And the man asked you the way to the college at Westbury?’ More nods. ‘When you’d shown him the right path, did he take it or turn back towards Bristol?’

They were both quite adamant on that score. The stranger had continued climbing, and they had watched him until he was out of sight. So I requested their names – Will Shapely and Tom Lovat – found out which holdings they came from, warned them against baiting any more dogs, at least while I was around, thanked them politely for their help and resumed my walk to the high ground above the city.

I knew a little about the college at Westbury, the village some few miles outside Bristol, situated on the river Trym. I knew that in Saxon times it had been a Benedictine monastery, but had eventually become wholly collegiate, control of the establishment passing from the abbot into the hands of a dean and canons. In recent times, under the auspices of Bishop Carpenter, who had died two years previously, the college had been rebuilt, and was now a much more imposing edifice, surrounded by a turreted wall. William Canynges, the great benefactor of Saint Mary Redcliffe Church, had retired there to be a canon, finally becoming dean in 1469, two years before I first arrived in Bristol. The college’s most dubious connection had been with the arch heretic John Wycliffe, who, in the last century, had been given a prebendal stall at Westbury by Pope Urban V. But, so far as I was aware, that was the only breath of scandal that had ever touched the college’s good name, and no one at the time could have foretold the future course of the young prebend’s life.

That was not to say, however, that there was no one among the present priestly brotherhood who had Lancastrian sympathies, or who was prepared to take orders from the Tudor court. There were probably more people, throughout the country, than I cared to think about who would be only too eager to help bring down the House of York. But, for the moment, my sole object was to establish the stranger’s innocence of the murder of Jasper Fairbrother; to satisfy myself that he had indeed been out of Bristol on the night of the killing. Whatever else I learned in the course of my enquiries I could pass on to Richard Manifold and leave him to deal with any sedition involved.

As I trudged wearily on through the heat of the afternoon, I laid my plans. Approaching the dean directly would be useless. He would immediately be suspicious, and rightly so, of my interest in the stranger, and, anxious for the good name of the college, would deny all knowledge of him. The canons would be similarly instructed; and whatever internal enquiry the dean might instigate afterwards, I should be sent away no wiser than when I arrived. I should do much better, therefore, to call on the villagers, hawking my wares from door to door, and find out what they knew. In my experience, a stranger in any village was instantly spotted and became the immediate focus of all eyes and ears.

As it turned out, Westbury villagers were no exception to this rule, and within five minutes of knocking on the door of the first cottage, next to the forge, I had a full description of my stranger and knew the precise hour at which he had arrived on Monday evening. I visited five cottages, including the blacksmith’s and the miller’s, sold a satisfactory number of items from my pack – enough to convince Adela of my industry, at any rate – and learned that the ‘foreigner’ had stayed two nights at the college, finally departing only a short while before my arrival.

‘I reckon he passed by here less than half an hour ago, going towards Bristol,’ the blacksmith’s wife told me, bringing me a cup of cider fresh from the press. And to corroborate her story, she called on a neighbour who was spreading some washing over a hawthorn bush to dry.

‘That’s right. Saw him myself not an hour since,’ the woman agreed. ‘Same man we saw Monday evening and who’s been mewed up at the college ever since.’

I cursed silently. The stranger and I must have passed one another, but not close enough for me to recognize him. The downs were a vast open space and there were many different paths criss-crossing the plateau and descending the slopes to the river-basin that cradled the town.

I discovered that the stranger had not spoken to anyone on his way through the village, either on arrival or departure, so I was unable to test my theory that he might be a Welshman. In any case, I was now anxious to be on my way, not only because I hoped to catch up with my quarry, but also because the afternoon was well advanced, and if I didn’t hurry, I should be late for Vespers. As it was, I should be too late to return home first, and thanked my lucky stars that I had instructed Adela to carry on to the convent without me. I was resigned to the fact that I was going to be in bad odour with my womenfolk, and that the subject of my unreliability would prove a fruitful topic of conversation between Margaret and Adela during the coming days, if not weeks and months.

I set out, back the way I had so recently come, lengthening my stride and trying to ignore the heat, which had not yet begun to slacken in spite of the creeping shadows. I kept my eyes on the horizon in the hope of seeing the stranger ahead of me, and subjected every dwelling I passed to careful scrutiny, in case he had stopped at one of them for refreshment. But although I met or overtook a number of people, not one of them was the man I was looking for.

Perhaps, after all, he was not heading back towards Bristol. Maybe he was travelling north, in the direction of Gloucester, in order to spread his message – whatever it might be – further afield. If that were indeed the case, there was nothing I could do about it. But at least I now had sufficient names and directions of witnesses to convince Richard Manifold and his superiors that the stranger was innocent of Jasper’s murder. What action they took concerning his other activities was up to them. I could make my peace with Adela and settle down to enjoy both Saint James’s Fair and, on the first of August, the Lammas Feast.

As I began the long descent of the track that would eventually lead me to Saint Michael’s Hill, I became aware that I was not alone. From time to time, small, snuffling noises made themselves heard, and when at last I glanced down, I saw the stray dog that I had rescued trotting at my heels. I stopped.

‘Go away!’ I ordered firmly, pointing up the hill. ‘I don’t want you!’

Liquid brown eyes were raised soulfully to mine. I hardened my heart.

‘You’re nothing to do with me,’ I said, raising my voice. ‘Go home!’ Of course, I knew very well he had no home to go to.

He sat down in the dirt and wagged a stumpy, flea-bitten tail, but made no attempt to move.

I tried ignoring him and started walking again. He was up and following at my heels in an instant. I turned and took a swipe at him. The wretched animal dodged the blow, then continued the chase, keeping just out of range of my arm. I stopped for the second time to pick up a piece of broken branch lying beside the track. I threw it as hard as I could, back up the hill, and had the satisfaction of seeing the dog scamper after it. I began to run. Moments later, I almost fell headlong as the branch was dropped in front of me by a demented little creature, barking like a fiend from Hell.