12 - Nine Men Dancing (29 page)

As soon as the service came to an end, the Rawbones left the church in a solid phalanx, Nathaniel walking with his sister, closely followed by Ned and Petronelle with the twins hard on their heels. Once again, they seemed unaware of the muttering among their neighbours and of the inimical looks they were receiving. Elvina Merryman, bringing up the rear of the column, was the only one who appeared at all flurried, tripping over a broken flagstone, one of several such hazards in the church. Being the well brought up and gallant young lad that I was, and being close at hand, I went to her assistance, gripping one of her elbows in a steadying clasp. Had I not done so, I might have missed the sudden turn of Ned Rawbone’s head as he glanced in Maud Lilywhite’s direction. It was a glance so fleeting, apparently so insignificant that I doubt if anyone noticed it but myself. Once alerted, however, I also saw the almost imperceptible nod Maud gave in return. Some sort of signal had passed between them, and I was suddenly convinced that Ned had been the nocturnal visitor of the previous night.

No one else seemed in a hurry to leave the church precincts, and as soon as the Rawbones had vanished across the footbridge on their homeward climb to Dragonswick farm, a deafening babel of conversation broke out, everyone talking at once. Lambert was surrounded yet again by well-wishers, as was Sir Anselm; while Elder Sewter and Elder Hemnall, together with several other grave and grey-haired men, who I guessed to be fellow members of the Village Council, were besieged by demands to know what was being done to apprehend Tom Rawbone. I had no chance to hear their reply as, at that moment, I was claimed not only by the Mistress Lilywhites, anxious to get home to their dinner, but also accosted by Rosamund Bush, who left Lambert’s side for mine, pushing through the intervening crowd with her usual determination.

‘Roger!’ She gave me both her hands and her most attractive smile. ‘Lambert has challenged me to another game of Nine Men’s Morris, tomorrow night, in the alehouse. I want you to be one of my players again. You will say yes, won’t you?’

She lowered long lashes over those beautiful blue eyes, then flashed them open again with practised artifice. At the same time, an involuntary dimple peeped at the corner of her rosebud mouth, as though mocking her own contrivance. Part of her great charm was the mix of contradictions in her nature.

I hesitated, but before I had a chance even to put my thoughts in order, Maud Lilywhite said firmly, ‘You’re out of luck, I’m afraid, Rosamund. Master Chapman will have to be on his way tomorrow if he’s to reach Bristol by the feast of Saint Patrick. He’s promised his wife and children to be home by then and he won’t want to disappoint them. I’m sure,’ she went on acidly, ‘that there are any number of other young men in the village who will be only too anxious to oblige you.’

‘There are not that many young men in the village, Mistress,’ Rosamund retorted sharply. ‘And I think Roger is man enough to answer for himself.’ She turned back to me, laying a slender hand on my sleeve. ‘Roger?’ she queried. ‘What do you say?’

I glanced at Maud. Her lips were set in a thin, determined line, although Theresa was looking bewildered.

‘When did you make up your mind to leave us, Master Chapman?’ she reproached me. ‘You said nothing about it at breakfast.’

‘I … I’ve only just decided,’ I stammered.

‘Then how does Maud know of your intentions?’ the older woman rapped back at me. She rounded on her daughter-in-law. ‘You’re forcing his hand, aren’t you? You’re throwing him out!’

Maud avoided my gaze.

‘No such thing,’ she protested uneasily. ‘Master Chapman has been saying for days that he must go home to his wife and family.’

I could see by the expression on her face that she had suddenly determined to be rid of me. She had been a grudging hostess from the beginning, and now she had had enough. She was telling me as politely as she could that I was no longer welcome in her house. Had it not been Sunday, I suspected that she would have suggested I leave at once. As it was, she would expect me and Hercules to set off immediately after breakfast tomorrow. Theresa was right: I was being thrown out.

I knew that I had no choice but to comply with Maud’s wishes. It was her cottage. I could not stay where I was no longer welcome. The laws of hospitality must not be breached. Besides which, at the back of my mind was the nagging thought that tomorrow was probably the last day on which I could set out with any realistic hope of reaching Bristol by the middle of March. Perhaps God was giving me a sign that there was, after all, nothing further for me to do in Lower Brockhurst; that maybe there had been nothing for me to discover in the first place.

So I said gently to Rosamund, ‘You’ll have to hold me excused from your game tomorrow evening, Mistress. Dame Maud is right. I must go home. It’s true; I’m bound by a promise I made to my wife.’

The glow of that flower-like face dimmed. The blue eyes lost much of their sparkle and became dull, like pebbles; the rosebud mouth grew petulant. Women such as Rosamund Bush do not expect to have their requests refused; it is a negation of their beauty and of that beauty’s power to subdue and hold sway over men. I could see that her rejection and humiliation by Tom Rawbone must have led to a nightmare of the soul. She withdrew her hand abruptly from my sleeve, as though I had suddenly been struck by the plague.

‘Oh, very well, then,’ she said, with a toss of her head. ‘If you must go home, you must. Never let me be accused of coming between husband and wife.’

She swung on her heel and returned to Lambert Miller, hanging affectionately on his arm and raising her eyes to his in worshipful adoration. The poor fool, already weak from his injuries, almost swooned at her feet. I suppressed a smile and saw that Theresa was doing likewise.

But not for long. Her good humour evaporated very quickly once we reached the smallholding and entered the cottage.

Maud, carefully looking at neither of us, went to kneel by the fire where a clay pot sat among the glowing sods of peat. Seizing a cloth, she lifted the lid an inch or two, letting the tantalizing aroma of roasting coney linger briefly on the air before closing it up again. She set a pan of water to boil and went across to the chopping board in order to prepare the leeks, onions and garlic that would accompany the rabbit.

Theresa maintained her silence on the subject of my departure until I returned from giving Hercules a run around the yard. As I stooped to pat him, she demanded fiercely, ‘You’ve given up hope then, have you, of finding out what happened to my granddaughter?’

I glanced at Maud’s rigid back, as she gathered the chopped vegetables into the skirt of her apron and carried them over to the pan of boiling water, tossing them in.

‘Mistress,’ I said, ‘I’ve been here the better part of five days and know little more regarding Eris’s true fate than when I arrived. That she was murdered, most likely by one of the Rawbones, I have small doubt, which seems to be the opinion of most other people I’ve talked to. But I have no proof of it. Nor any solid proof that Eris is dead. I very much doubt that all the Rawbones know the truth of the matter, either. One or two of them might. Perhaps even three,’ I added, remembering my illogical conviction that I needed three morrells in a row to complete the game of Nine Men’s Morris that I had been playing in my dream.

Theresa regarded me straitly. ‘But was it really your intention to leave tomorrow had not my daughter-in-law made it plain that you were no longer welcome here?’

Still Maud kept her back to us, fussing over the pot hanging from the trivet and poking at the vegetables with a long-handled spoon. The smell was delicious. My mouth began to water.

I had no desire to be the cause of more animosity than already existed between the two women, so I said, ‘I have little option, Mistress, but to set off for home very soon if—’

‘If you are to keep your promise to your wife,’ Theresa interrupted mockingly. ‘I know. Everyone knows. If that promise was ever made, of course.’

‘Mother-in-law!’ Maud was shocked into breaking her self-imposed silence.

‘And why should I lie about it?’ I asked Theresa angrily.

‘It’s better than admitting failure, isn’t it?’ she sneered. ‘The first night you were here, you told us – no, boasted to us – of the problems that you’ve solved for other people. So you made sure that if this one proved too difficult for you, you could sneak off on the excuse of a promise to your wife.’

‘That’s most unfair—’ I was beginning hotly, but broke off, suddenly aware of Theresa’s game.

She was trying to goad me into staying. Even if Maud had given me my marching orders, there must be other lodgings to be had somewhere in Lower Brockhurst, and Theresa would willingly help me find them. She was taunting me with failure; and the word ‘boasted’ had been unkindly and undeservedly used to flick me on the raw. Maud, too, realized what her mother-in-law was up to and swung round to face her, arms akimbo.

‘The chapman leaves tomorrow, and that’s the end of it. It’s my wish. It’s also his. Please don’t insult our guest with the suggestion that he’s been lying to us, Mother-in-law. We had no right to ask his help in the first place. Now, sit at the table, both of you. Dinner’s almost ready.’

Theresa took her place, looking suddenly old and defeated. I drew up a stool beside her, feeling that I had let her down. But my excuse was genuine, and she knew it. She did not really think me a liar.

All the same, her accusations and my own failure continued to haunt me throughout a largely silent meal. The roast coney and vegetables might have been sawdust for all the notice I took of their taste, in spite of the fact that I ate two helpings (although, to be fair to myself, I shared the second one with Hercules). Finally, as I pushed my plate aside and took a swig of ale, I put one of my hands over Theresa’s, where it lay, fidgeting restlessly with a knife, on the table. The brown blotched skin of advancing age was dry and rough to the touch.

‘I must start for home in the morning, Mistress. Dame Maud is in the right of it. But there’s still the rest of today. I’ll take one last look along Upper Brockhurst ridge, particularly at the well. I’ve no good reason to offer you for doing so, except a deep-rooted and completely unjustified feeling that it could hold the key to Eris’s disappearance.’

‘Why do you want to visit the ridge again?’ Maud snapped. ‘A waste of time and effort, if you ask my opinion, Master Chapman. We all know there’s nothing up there. Ned himself searched the whole area, including the well, the morning after Eris’s disappearance. So wherever she is, it isn’t in the ruins of Upper Brockhurst Hall, a fact to which half the village can testify.’

Theresa nodded. ‘I wasn’t here, myself, but it’s what everyone will tell you. And that well’s been empty for years. It really ought to be filled in,’ she added, her thoughts momentarily diverted. ‘It’s a danger to all the children of the village. Not so much at this time of year, I grant you, but in the summer months when the more adventurous of them go up on the ridge to play. Oh, I know the canopy’s been removed and it has a lid,’ she went on hastily, forestalling her daughter-in-law’s objection, ‘but children are perfectly capable of opening it, even if it takes two or three of them to do it. The village elders are fortunate that there have been no further accidents since Ned Rawbone was a lad. That rusty ladder’s most unsafe. It was partially eaten away the last time I saw it, and that’s some while ago now.’

‘It still is,’ I agreed. ‘I can vouch for that. I’ve climbed down it. It’s just that …’ I shrugged unhappily, finding it impossible to explain the conviction that gripped me every time I visited the Upper Brockhurst woods that Eris was somehow close at hand.

Maud said again, ‘It’s a waste of your time. You might as well spend the rest of the day here, with us, by the fire. Conserve your strength. You’ll need to be up and about first thing tomorrow morning if you’re to make the most of the daylight hours. They’re still short this time of year. Go early enough and you might fall in with a cart travelling in the direction of Bristol.’

‘Oh, let him visit the ridge if he wants to,’ Theresa grunted. ‘A great lad like him doesn’t need to worry about saving his strength. It stands to reason he doesn’t want to be sitting around here all day, chatting to a couple of women, and one of them old enough to be his mother. He won’t find anything up there on the ridge – at least, he hasn’t so far – but if it keeps him happy, where’s the harm in it?’

Maud opened her mouth as if she would argue the point; then, seeming to change her mind, shut it again.

I glanced at Hercules’s recumbent form. Having finished his dinner, he had retired once more to his place by the hearth and was now stretched full length, fast asleep.

‘I’ll leave the dog with you, if I may,’ I said. ‘His little legs will find themselves overtaxed, I’m afraid, in the next week or so. I’ll let him rest while he can.’

‘He’s no trouble.’ Maud pushed the ale jug towards me, inviting me to pour myself another drink, which I did, not needing a second bidding. The simple action nudged my memory and I turned to the older woman with a smile.

‘You overcame your scruples during this morning’s Mass, Dame Theresa. You drank from the Roman chalice, after all.’

She pursed her lips in disapproval, partly, I suspected, at her own lack of backbone.

‘There are times, chapman,’ she said, ‘when you know that taking a stand will achieve you nothing. You might just as well grin and bear whatever it is. And as, according to you, Sir Anselm has consecrated the cups to the greater glory of God, I’ve decided that this is one of those occasions. That must be my excuse for not speaking out.’

‘But you have the added consolation,’ I comforted her, ‘of knowing that many generations of men, women and children have drunk from those cups without, apparently, having incurred the wrath of the Almighty. Ever since, if I’m right in my supposition, the priest known as Light-fingered Lightfoot chanced upon them in Upper Brockhurst Hall after the great plague.’

‘This is only guesswork on your part, Master Chapman,’ was Maud’s acid comment.