11 - The Lammas Feast (27 page)

My blood ran cold and I stared at John Overbecks in alarm.

‘Adam’s gone away for a little while, sweetheart.’ The baker sought for an explanation, then found inspiration in what I had told him the day before about the two older children. ‘He’s gone to stay with his grandmother. When he comes home again, I’m sure Master Chapman will allow you to see him.’

I swallowed, then gave a weak smile. ‘If . . . If my wife agrees,’ I promised, knowing full well that, once I had told her of this incident, Adela would never give her consent.

John Overbecks seemed to read my thoughts, because he directed an odd look at me; a look compounded of both understanding and contempt. But then, he was not a father.

‘Come upstairs now, my love,’ he urged. ‘I’ll find your other baby for you.’

The knowingness had left her face, leaving it smooth and blank. She had reverted, in a matter of moments, to the semi-imbecile she had previously appeared to be. These mercurial changes of mood were more disconcerting than almost anything else, and made me extremely thankful that we had not accepted John Overbecks’s offer of the house across the street. The thought of Jane in such close proximity to Adam was terrifying.

‘I’ll bid you good day, then, Roger,’ the baker said, leading his wife, unresisting, towards the staircase. ‘I’ll see you probably on Saturday, if not before, at the Lammas Procession and Feast.’

‘I look forward to seeing all your wonderful creations,’ I answered dutifully, which was true. But I intended to give the Overbecks themselves as wide a berth as possible.

For the second time that day, Hercules flung himself upon me as though he had thought never to set eyes on me again. I could not help feeling flattered, as he intended me to do, but took good care not to show it.

I tugged on the rope. ‘This way,’ I said, heading along Saint Mary le Port Street towards the tangle of alleyways that lay around the castle. Hercules resisted indignantly, having decided that it was time to go home; but finding resistance useless, still dragged on his rope as hard as he could, making progress very nearly impossible. After a hundred yards or so, I bent down, picked him up and tucked him under one arm. He squirmed furiously, but I only laughed.

‘I’m a lot bigger than you are,’ I whispered in his ear, which he twitched angrily, as though a horsefly had stung him. ‘And a great deal stronger. Don’t you forget it!’

At Goody Godsmark’s cottage, I tied him up again before knocking on the door. A quavering voice, fainter and reedier than I remembered it, bade me enter. I stooped under the lintel and went in.

The goody was seated on the stool by the empty hearth, her thin, stick-like arms wrapped tightly around her body as if for comfort. She was wearing the same gown of black homespun that she had worn before – and which, I suspected, she had worn for Walter’s funeral – but not the linen cap and apron. Instead, draped over her head, with its wispy, greying elfin locks, was a piece of black veiling, its dye now rusty with age. I guessed that it had been her mother’s and had also probably belonged to her grandmother, and had been used at every funeral for generations past by the female mourners of her family. She did not glance round as I pushed open the door and entered, but she knew instinctively who I was, even before I spoke.

‘What do you want, Chapman?’ she asked wearily.

‘To talk to you,’ I answered. ‘About Walter.’

‘Haven’t you done enough harm?’ she snapped, still without moving. ‘Getting him to think! I told you no good would come of it.’

‘You encouraged him to talk to me,’ I countered. ‘You wanted that ivory needle case.’

She did turn to face me then, and I could see that her eyes were full of tears.

‘That’s right! Go on! Taunt me!’ She got up and went over to a wooden chest in a corner of the room. She lifted the lid an inch or two, felt inside and then spun round, something clutched in her hand. ‘Here!’ She threw the needle case at me with more force than I would have imagined her capable of. It hit me a stinging blow on one cheekbone before clattering to the floor. ‘Take it back! I’ll never use it now.’

‘Mistress Godsmark,’ I asked, ‘does this mean that you believe your son’s death was not an accident?’

She gave a dry sob and sat down again, but her manner had softened a little.

‘Everyone tells me it was,’ she answered, ‘and I know he couldn’t swim. But he was up to something, Chapman.’

‘What makes you think that?’

She snorted. ‘Because I knew my son. Just because I loved him, didn’t mean I was blind to his faults. His father was the same; always up to no good. People didn’t care for my Walter, and I’m not denying they had plenty of cause to dislike him. Working for Jasper Fairbrother had made him worse; doing that bully’s dirty work for him, and copying his nasty ways. That man has a lot to answer for. When he was murdered, I was glad! Glad to think my Walter would be free of him at last. Free to work for a good master.’

I wondered if it had ever crossed her mind that Walter, big bully as he had been, would have found working for a good master very tame after the excitement and power of intimidating Jasper’s unfortunate victims. But I said nothing, merely enquiring, ‘That day I came to see you, the day that Master Fairbrother’s body was discovered, what happened after I left?’

Goody Godsmark sniffed, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her gown and sat up a little straighter on her stool.

‘Why are you snooping around again, Chapman? Is it because
you
don’t think my son’s death was an accident, either?’

‘Let’s say that I have my doubts,’ I answered after a moment’s hesitation. ‘There have been four deaths now, three of them definitely murder. It seems possible to me that Walter’s death could well be connected, if only I could work out why.’

‘
Four
deaths?’ she queried, alarmed. ‘I heard that that foreigner had died, the one you were quizzing Walter about, but who else?’

‘Cicely Ford was found dead this morning. Smothered in her sleep.’

The goody cried out at that. Like almost everyone who had ever had any dealings with Cicely, she had felt some affection for her. She put a hand, which was visibly trembling, to her mouth and sat, unmoving, for perhaps half a minute. Eventually, she said, ‘There’s someone very evil in this city, Chapman. I’m not a fool. I can see why a lot of people wanted Jasper Fairbrother dead, and might have had cause to dislike my Walter. As for the stranger, the good Lord alone knows what he was up to. But Cicely Ford, no! She was as good and gentle and kind a maid as you’d ever wish to meet. Always treated me with respect, she did, whenever we happened to meet. And I’ll tell you that, when you’re old and ugly, like me, that’s more’n you can expect from most young women. And the lads are worse! You just become a figure of fun to them and a target for their nasty tricks. I was lucky. A lot of ’em were afraid of Walter. But I don’t know how I’ll fare now he’s gone.’

She looked so frightened and forlorn that I went across to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

‘You just tell me if anyone gives you trouble. I’ll make sure they don’t do it again.’

She made a noise that was halfway between a sniff and a sob.

‘Oh, get away with you! I know when I’m being buttered up. You want me to talk about Walter.’ All the same, despite her words, she squeezed my hand gratefully. ‘Just give me a moment to get over this news about Mistress Ford. Pour yourself some ale. There’s plenty in the barrel. I’d just brewed a fresh gallon for Walter.’

I did as she instructed. The afternoon was getting hot and the interior of the cottage was extremely warm. I was by now very thirsty, and Goody Godsmark made a fair enough brew to make me forget my manners and draw myself a second cup unbidden.

‘That’ll do, Chapman!’ The Goody’s voice was as sharp as her eyesight. ‘Men do too much drinking. It saps the will for doing other things. I know! My son was always in the tavern, one or the other of them. There are too many alehouses in this city.’

Her words suddenly reminded me of something that had lain dormant in my mind for the past week, like a needle carelessly left in clothing will suddenly prick and let you know it’s there.

‘When I was here last time, you complained that the previous night – the night that Jasper must have been killed – Walter didn’t come home from the bakery until well after curfew. But I’d seen him much earlier in the day, leaving the bakery, which was all closed up, and crossing High Street to Saint Mary le Port Street. I had assumed that, the day’s work being finished, he was coming home.’

Goody Godsmark rubbed the tip of her nose reflectively, but her memory was not as good as mine. (I had always had a remarkable memory, which was the only reason that I had acquired so much knowledge from the monks who had taught me at Glastonbury. Otherwise, I had been as inattentive and lazy as the rest of my fellow pupils.)

‘If I said that, then it must have been true,’ she conceded, ‘and Walter couldn’t have been on his way home when you saw him. But where he’d have been going in Saint Mary le Port Street, I can’t tell you. The Green Lattis was his favourite haunt. Or sometimes the Full Moon or the sign of the White Hart. But mostly the Lattis. Jasper drank there, as well, as do a lot of others.’

I nodded, remembering my meeting with John Overbecks. I was also remembering Walter Godsmark on that Monday afternoon striding out across High Street and disappearing into the shadows cast by Overbecks’s bakery. If not home, where had he been going in such a hurry?

‘You promised to tell me what happened after I left here last Tuesday,’ I reminded Goody Godsmark hopefully.

She frowned. ‘I don’t recall promising exactly, but as far as I can recollect, he sat on this stool, not saying anything for quite a long time.
Thinking,
’ she reproached me. ‘Then, after a while, he suddenly jumped up and said he had to go out. “Not toping again?” I said. He laughed. “No,” he said. “Don’t worry, Mother. This is about making money, not spending it.” I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t answer, just told me to mind my own business. Later on, he came back, looking like a cat that’s been at the cream.’

‘And did he go out again?’ I asked.

Goody Godsmark nodded. ‘After curfew, when it was dark.’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘That was the last time I saw him alive. The next day, he was dead.’

I
asked, ‘Didn’t you worry when he didn’t return home that night? And all the next day and night, as well?’

‘Of course I worried,’ she snapped. ‘But I didn’t know where he’d gone, and there was no one I could ask to go looking for him. No one hereabouts would care a groat what my Walter was up to on his own account. They didn’t like him. Oh, they came crowding round fast enough once they heard he was dead, but that was just their danged curiosity; poking their noses in, as always, where they weren’t wanted.’

Relief, too, I thought must have played its part, although the neighbours would never have admitted it; a desire to ensure for themselves that Walter was really dead. To most inhabitants of the city, it must have seemed like their lucky day to be rid of both Jasper and his strong-arm bully within forty-eight hours of one another. But I said nothing: it wasn’t the goody’s fault that she had had such an unpleasant son, just her misfortune.

She continued, ‘I did go looking for him, myself, late on Wednesday evening. Of course, by that time he was already dead and you’d found the body, but I didn’t know that, did I? No one thought to tell
me
!’ Her tone was angry and bitter, understandably so. ‘Anyhow, I went to the Green Lattis and looked in. Someone – Burl Hodge, was it? Yes, Burl Hodge – said my Walter hadn’t been in that night, but he recollected seeing him there the evening before, on the Tuesday. That was the last time he’d clapped eyes on him. I told Burl that Walter hadn’t been home since, but he just shrugged. Said it was none of his business, thank God, what my son got up to, so long as he wasn’t harassing innocent citizens. Said he supposed Walter was looking for another job now that Master Fairbrother was dead. Said that if Walter tried to bully Baker Overbecks into sacking his son, and getting himself taken on in Dick’s place, Burl and Jack, the other son, would cut off his balls and plug his ears with ’em.’ Goody Godsmark tossed her head defiantly. ‘I’d just like to have seen ’em try, that’s all!’

It seemed an unnecessarily harsh remark to have made to the dead man’s mother, most unlike the kindly Burl, until I recollected that only myself and the two brothers from the friary knew at that time that Walter had been drowned. And, of course, the murderer, if there was one.

I finished my second cup of ale, which I had been swallowing slowly to make it last, and asked, ‘Do you know that there’s a way of getting out of the town after curfew?’

Goody Godsmark gave me a pitying look. ‘If you mean that hole in the wall by the Needless Gate, everyone knows about that, Chapman. I can tell you weren’t born and bred in this city.’

I acknowledged this lack of foresight on my mother’s part and queried, ‘Do you think Walter was seeing a woman? Meeting her outside the walls, after dark?’

My companion cackled like a hen about to lay an egg. ‘No, I don’t,’ she retorted. ‘You obviously didn’t know very much about my son. He didn’t care for women, didn’t my Walter. Pretended he did, o’ course. Wouldn’t have been good for him to have said otherwise.’ She gave another raucous laugh. ‘But I was the only woman in his life, believe me! You know what I’m saying, Chapman?’

‘Er – yes,’ I murmured. I knew all about the vice of the Greeks. I had seen it practised amongst some of my fellow novices and the monks at Glastonbury, although it would never have done to have reported it to the master of novices or Father Abbott. Everyone wished to remain in ignorance, and it was the informer who would have been punished. ‘In that case,’ I urged, ‘could he have – er – could Walter have gone down to the river to meet . . . another man?’

The goody thought about this for a moment or two before shaking her head.

‘Don’t see why he should. If he brought a friend home, I always made myself scarce for an hour or two in the nearest alehouse. Does that shock you?’