11 - The Lammas Feast (28 page)

‘N–no,’ I said, not quite truthfully. (Sometimes it worried me that, as someone who secretly questioned many of the Church’s teachings, I was not as open-minded as I would wish to be.) I hurried on, in the hope that she would fail to notice my momentary hesitation. ‘No one else, apart from you, knew about Walter’s – er Walter’s . . .’

‘Buggery? There’s no need to be mealy-mouthed with me, young man! Well, his friends knew, the men who were like him. But that’s all.’

‘You never told anyone else? Accidentally? Or because you felt the need to confide in someone?’

She glanced contemptuously at me. ‘Of course I didn’t! You protect the people you love at all costs. You lie and steal and cheat and kill for them. You’re a husband, a father! You don’t need me to tell you that, do you?’

I shook my head, thinking of Adela and the children and how, if necessary, I’d commit any crime to prevent harm coming to any one of them. Even that wretched dog, who I could hear whining pathetically outside Goody Godsmark’s door, had so insinuated himself into my affections that I’d lay about any person trying to hurt him. None of this, however, solved the problem of why Walter had left the city after curfew last Tuesday night, or who he had gone to meet.

But was I right in assuming that his death had indeed occurred on Tuesday night, and not some time during the following day? It had, after all, been late on Wednesday evening when I had found his body. Yet, if he
had
been murdered, it seemed improbable that it had happened during daylight hours, when his cries might well have attracted attention not only from the brothers at the friary, but also from the sentinels on the castle ramparts. And where had he been all Tuesday night if he had not already been dead?

But suppose he had not been killed deliberately? Suppose it really had been just an unfortunate mishap? There again, during the day, wouldn’t someone have heard his calls for help? And if he had tumbled in accidentally the night before, I was back to the same two questions: why had he been there and what had he been doing?

Goody Godsmark’s voice cut across my tumultuous thoughts.

‘You said just now, Chapman, that you have some doubts about the manner of my son’s death. What reasons do you have for thinking it might not have been an accident?’

I felt she had a right to know, even though Richard Manifold would probably curse me for passing on the information.

‘One of the brothers at the Dominican friary saw a man crossing the Broad Meads just around dusk. He couldn’t swear it was Walter, but it might well have been him. Brother Thomas also thought he saw another figure – man or woman, he couldn’t be certain – standing on the river bank. In addition, there’s what you yourself told me, only five minutes since. You said that on the first occasion he left here after my departure last Tuesday, Walter told you that his errand was about
making
money, not spending it. Do you think it possible that he was blackmailing someone? Someone who arranged to meet him down by the Frome, and who then pushed him in, knowing your son couldn’t swim?’

She turned on me at that, her little face as tightly muscled as a clenched fist.

‘You’ve no right to say things like that!’ she flung at me, and every word was like a stone, each one hurled with increasing ferocity. ‘Get out of my cottage
now
!’ She jumped up and grabbed the besom from its corner, advancing on me with the obvious intention of using it to good effect.

I retreated to the door. ‘Don’t you want my help in finding out the truth about Walter’s death?’ I demanded, one hand already on the latch.

‘I can do without your kind of help!’ she shouted. ‘Insulting my Walter! Blackening his name! Go on! Get out, before I lay about you. Blackmail, indeed! My son wouldn’t stoop so low!’

I remembered her recent remark, that people would lie to save the skin or the reputation or the peace of mind of those they loved. And I had no doubt that Goody Godsmark had loved her son, however low his credit had sunk in the eyes of the rest of the world. She might suspect that my suggestion was close to the truth, but she would never admit to it. I honoured her for her loyalty.

I got out of the cottage just in time. I heard the besom’s handle strike the wood of the door as I pulled it shut.

Hercules ignored me. He had decided that his wishes had been disregarded for long enough, and was sulking. He had stopped whining and was lying full length, his nose between his paws. When I untied the rope from the nail in the wall and gave it a tug, he refused to move. I twitched it again with the same result.

‘If you don’t behave yourself,’ I warned him angrily, ‘you’ll go back where you came from to run wild on the downs.’

He didn’t believe me. Why should he? I didn’t believe myself. With a sigh, I picked him up and once again put him under my arm.

‘I can do without this sort of behaviour,’ I told him severely as I marched off down the street. ‘I’ve had a very disturbed night and a terrible day. I’ve been accused of murder and had to clear my name. I’ve lost a friend, whose death I ought to have been able to prevent. I’ve offended an old woman, who doesn’t deserve it, through telling her the truth about her no-good son, and I’m no nearer discovering the facts behind these killings than I was this time last week. So, I’m in no mood for your antics, my lad!’

Hercules squirmed a little, almost as if he knew what I was saying, then managed to reach my chin with his tongue and licked it. I looked down at him, squinting through half-closed eyes.

‘All right,’ I said at last. ‘I may be all sorts of a fool, but you’re forgiven. Just stop thinking that you can twist me around one of your paws. Now,’ I continued, ‘as we’re so close, we’d better call on Margaret Walker. You’ll be able to see the children. And, if we’re lucky, Adela and Adam may not have left for home yet.’

I put Hercules down and he trotted docilely at my heels, the very model of canine good behaviour (except for one or two hopeful sniffs at the carcass of a dead sheep, lying amongst the rest of the garbage in the drain), while we pushed our way through the crowds and crossed Bristol Bridge into Redcliffe. But we were still within a hundred yards of Margaret’s cottage when our ears were assailed by the noise of my younger son’s screaming. Something had obviously upset his little lordship, and he was intent on letting the entire neighbourhood share in his annoyance.

I paused and looked down thoughtfully at Hercules. He sat on his haunches and looked questioningly up at me.

‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘we’ll postpone this visit for a while and pay a call on Burl Hodge instead. He’ll be at the tenting grounds this time of day.’

We cut through one of the alleyways into Redcliffe Street and left the city by the Redcliffe Gate. Then we turned right, past the gravel pits and the fulling ground – where the fullers were busy soaking and pounding Master Adelard’s newly woven cloth in a mixture of river water and urine – and on to the tenting field, which overlooked the Avon and the Great Marsh on the opposite bank. There were at least two dozen or so men, working in pairs, stretching the rolls of fulled cloth on to the tall wooden tenting frames, but I recognized Burl without any difficulty as one of the two men in the farthest corner of the ground. He and his partner, a thin ascetic-looking fellow whom I remembered as a neighbour of Margaret Walker’s, had just finished fixing the selvedge of a piece of crimson cloth – the red cloth for which the city was famous throughout the country and beyond – to the crossbar of a frame, and were now struggling to fix the other selvedge to the tenterhooks of the lower and free-swinging bar, whose weight would pull and stretch the dripping material into shape as it dried and tautened.

When this had been accomplished, to the accompaniment of much grunting and swearing, Burl Hodge straightened up and turned to look at me. His shirt and hose were soaked with sweat and water from the cloth, which had showered all over him. It was an unpleasant job even on a warm summer’s day like today, when the urine smelled to high heaven, but truly awful in the bleak conditions of winter.

‘Hello, Chapman,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’ I thought his tone unusually terse, but put it down to the fact that he was busy. (Another cartload of wet bales had just been driven through the gate of the tenting field.) But when he spoke again, I realized, with a sinking heart, what the real trouble was. ‘I hear Mistress Ford has left you her house in Small Street. Congratulations! A householder, no less. You’ll be too fine for the likes of Jenny and me now, then.’

‘I’ve never heard such foolishness in all my life,’ I snapped, silently cursing the speed with which news and gossip travelled around this city. ‘I’ll still be a chapman, peddling goods all round the countryside to keep body and soul together. All right! I don’t deny it’ll make a difference, but with my growing family, I’d have had to rent a bigger cottage sooner or later, anyway.’

‘Ah, but in future you won’t have to spend money on rent, though, will you?’ His honest eyes were full of envy and he rubbed his raw red hands – hands that in the winter were covered with chilblains – up and down his thighs, snagging his already torn hose on a broken fingernail. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’ He nodded at his companion, by now impatiently shifting from one foot to the other. ‘We can’t afford to stand around idle for long. Master Adelard likes to get his money’s worth, like Alderman Weaver before him.’

I could see that he wasn’t going to be easily reconciled to the idea of my new-found prosperity, and it was a chilling intimation of what I could expect from many of the people whose friendship I valued. I could have pointed out that there was many a slip between cup and lip, and that nothing was settled until probate was granted, but I could tell he was in no mood to listen. And I had an uncomfortable feeling that I should have felt the same if the circumstances had been reversed.

‘It’s about Walter Godsmark,’ I said. ‘You told his mother that you’d seen him in the Green Lattis on the Tuesday evening before he was found drowned. It must have been the same night he met his death.’

‘Well?’

‘John Overbecks also told me that he’d seen Walter in the Lattis that evening. Shared a table with him, or so he said. Did you see them together?’

‘I might have done.’

‘Yes or no?’ Irritation with his still-hostile attitude made me abrupt.

There was a warning glint in his eyes that hinted at his readiness for a bout of fisticuffs if I overstepped the mark, but he answered levelly enough.

‘Well, yes then. I saw them together. They were sitting at the same table.’

‘Was the Lattis crowded?’

Burl shrugged. ‘I’d say about normal for a Tuesday evening. Full, but empty stools here and there. What’s this all leading up to, Roger?’ At least he was calling me Roger now and not the cold, impersonal
Chapman
of his greeting.

‘Bear with me a little longer,’ I pleaded. ‘Was Walter
very
drunk?’

Burl glanced at his companion. ‘What would you say, cousin?’ (I recollected that, as well as being Margaret Walker’s neighbour, the man was also a kinsman of Burl’s. But then, practically everyone in Redcliffe was related to everyone else in one degree or another.) ‘Was Walter Godsmark very drunk last Tuesday?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Can’t rightly remember,’ was the taciturn response. Burl grunted. ‘He was drunk most nights, but I didn’t concern myself overmuch with him. Godsmark was a bully and a rogue, and I can’t pretend I’m sorry he’s dead. So, what’s your interest?’

‘I’ve been wondering about the manner of his death, that’s all. Whether or not it really was an accident.’

Burl turned towards the cart, where his fellow workers were already manhandling the soaking bales of cloth on to hurdles, ready to drag them across to their respective frames.

‘Well, all I can say is that if someone did do away with him, then he has my gratitude and the gratitude of the whole city. Henry! We’ll be accused of shirking in a minute, if we don’t get over there fast.’ Burl nodded briefly to me. ‘I daresay we’ll be seeing one another around the town.’

He walked off across the tenting field, followed by the shambling figure of his cousin, and, in spite of the day’s warmth, I was left feeling chilled to the bone.

‘Come on, Hercules,’ I said, jerking the rope. ‘Let’s go and visit someone who
will
be pleased with our good fortune.’

‘You’re going to have to get used to people’s resentment,’ my former mother-in-law announced briskly, when I had told her and Adela of my recent encounter with Burl Hodge.

Adam’s tantrum appeared to have tired him out, for he was sleeping peacefully in his little cart, while my wife, perched on a stool, gently wheeled him to and fro. Nicholas and Elizabeth, after their first effusive greeting, prompted by the hope of sweetmeats, had retired to the back of the cottage in a huff once they discovered that my pouch was empty.

‘I do not know how these things get around so quickly,’ Adela complained. ‘It was only yesterday that that poor girl made her new will, and we ourselves knew nothing of it until this morning. I’ve never known a town where everyone knows so much, so soon, about everyone else’s business. I’m sure Hereford wasn’t half so bad.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ Margaret answered shortly. She could never tolerate any criticism of her native city, unless, that is, she made it herself. ‘But the fact remains, that you must expect people to be envious.’ She hesitated, then continued, ‘There might also be . . . speculation.’

‘What sort of speculation?’ Adela and I asked with one voice.

‘Well . . . You know. About Roger and – er – Mistress Ford.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ I demanded hotly.

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just trying to put you on your guard. I mean . . . Think about it.’ She was growing flustered. ‘Why would Mistress Ford leave her house to you, Roger?’

‘She was fond of him,’ my wife put in quietly. ‘She was grateful to him for finding out the truth about Robert Herepath’s death. She knew that we were overcrowded in that cottage. She was going to rent us the house as soon as the present tenants quit, in any case. That’s probably what gave her the idea of leaving it to Roger when she died. She just didn’t know it would be so soon.’