12 - Nine Men Dancing (31 page)

‘Rob Pomphrey knows. He says he got the information from Billy Tyrrell.’

‘Billy ain’t got the sense he was born with.’ Ruth was dismissive.

‘But it is true?’

‘I didn’t say so. Not in so many words, anyway.’

‘Lying low in the house, is he?’

‘I’m not telling.’ She up-ended two mazers on the table, using them as props for the bowls and platters that she set to drain.

‘And what does Master Ned say about it?’ I enquired.

‘What do I say about what?’ asked a voice, and there was Ned Rawbone framed in the kitchen doorway.

Ruth screamed and dropped a pot which rolled around the stone-paved floor with an almighty clatter. Even I jumped, not having heard the door open.

Ned came forward and put two more dirty beakers on the table.

‘You forgot these,’ he said to Ruth, before turning once again to me. ‘Master Chapman, I thought you were on your way back to Bristol.’

Now, what had given him that idea? I wondered. Then I recalled the look I had seen pass between him and Maud Lilywhite in church that morning, and it struck me that perhaps she was acting on his instructions. He was the one who wanted me and my prying nose gone before I discovered that Tom had returned to Dragonswick. I now felt convinced that my original guess was the correct one; it was he, not Tom, who had been Maud’s midnight visitor.

‘I leave tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘My journey’s not so urgent as to warrant travelling on a Sunday. I’ve taken shelter here from the storm. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘And where are you off to now?’ He eyed me suspiciously, his body tense, as wary as an animal guarding its lair.

‘Upper Brockhurst woods. I promised Theresa Lilywhite that I’d take another look at the well before I leave tomorrow.’ It wasn’t quite the truth, but no matter. I had no wish to hold myself up to ridicule by admitting my own inexplicable feelings about the place.

‘You won’t find anything!’ He was scornful. ‘When Eris disappeared, the first thought in everyone’s mind was that she might have fallen down the well. She hadn’t, as I’m sure you must know by now. It was empty.’ He echoed Maud. ‘You’re wasting your time. By the way, you haven’t answered my first question. What do I say about what?’

I thought quickly. I saw Ruth’s beseeching glance. Moreover, I had no desire to get Billy Tyrrell into trouble.

‘I’m afraid we were discussing the attacks on Sir Anselm and Lambert Miller,’ I said with apparent frankness. ‘I wondered what your thoughts were on the subject, that’s all.’

How he might have answered me, I have no idea because, just at that moment, Tom Rawbone sauntered into the kitchen.

‘I’m damned thirsty,’ he said. ‘Ruth, my child, get me another stoup of ale.’

Ned cursed fluently before unceremoniously bundling his brother out of the room. He returned almost immediately to demand my silence, a demand that had a quiet but unmistakable undertone of menace to it.

I gave him my word that no one would hear of Tom’s return from me, although I again failed to mention that the news had already leaked out. I silently wondered for how long Rob Pomphrey would be able to keep what he knew to himself.

‘All the same, you won’t be able to hide your brother for ever,’ I said, pointing out the obvious.

My remark, though kindly meant, was not well received.

‘I know that,’ Ned snarled. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot? I just want time to persuade Tom to go away again.’ He thumped the table viciously, making Ruth jump a second time and drop another pot with an even bigger clatter. ‘What does he think he’s doing, coming back here and putting all our good reputations in jeopardy?’ Ned’s eyes had glazed over and I could see that he was really talking to himself. For the moment, he had forgotten my existence. ‘I got him away safely once. The stupid bastard might not be so lucky next time.’

‘Why has he decided to risk it?’ I asked.

Ned gave a nervous start. ‘What …? Oh … Swears he didn’t attack anyone. Insists he wants to clear his name. Not that it’s any of your business, chapman! Can’t keep that great nose of yours out of anybody’s business, can you? It’ll get you into serious trouble one of these days.’

‘Oh, it has, on more than one occasion,’ I answered cheerfully. ‘Unfortunately, I never seem able to learn my lesson.’

Ned crossed to the back door and opened it, peering outside.

‘The rain’s almost stopped,’ he said pointedly. ‘But I don’t think it’s going to hold off for much longer. So, if I were you, I’d get back to the Lilywhites’ while you can and stay in the dry for the rest of the day. You’ll have enough to put up with for the next few weeks.’

I laughed. ‘A bit of rain doesn’t bother me. I’m used to being out in all weathers. I’m a pedlar, remember? However,’ I added, as though deciding to humour him, ‘maybe you’re right. It’s a long walk to Bristol.’ I held out my hand. ‘I doubt, then, we’ll be seeing one another again, Master Rawbone, so I’ll wish you goodbye.’

Something like relief lit the blue eyes, but was swiftly repressed.

‘God be with you, also,’ he said, grasping my proffered hand. ‘I’m afraid Dame Theresa will be disappointed that you haven’t been able to help her with the matter of Eris’s disappearance. But my own feeling is that the little vixen is still out there somewhere, laughing at us all, just as she always did.’

‘Perhaps.’ There was no point in arguing with him. I doubted very much that he believed what he had said himself.

I bade farewell to Ruth, let myself out and walked round to the front of the house, then began climbing again towards Upper Brockhurst ridge. After I had gone some distance, I paused, looking back over my shoulder. A man was standing by the farm palings, watching me. To begin with, I assumed that it was Ned, who had come outside to check on my movements; to see if I really had decided to return to the Lilywhites’ cottage. But it wasn’t. After a moment or two, I realized that it was Tom.

It had stopped raining altogether by the time I reached the Upper Brockhurst ridge. Trees were outlined in bold, bare shapes against a sky clearing slowly from the west, and a misty sunlight, soft as a blanket, was already cloaking the hills on the opposite side of the valley. As I turned and looked over my shoulder, they quivered, like a mirage that might disappear at any second.

Once I had entered the belt of trees, however, it was a different story. Water still dripped dismally from the interlacing branches overhead, and my boots squelched noisily among the matted bracken and long stretches of sodden, slippery grasses. Wine-dark shadows assumed the forms of hobgoblins and the sprites of the woods, lying in wait for the unwary traveller, while drifts of last year’s leaves made blood-red pools among the roots of the scrub. I felt suddenly as if I were suffocating in a cloud of silence and obscurity …

I pulled myself up short, both literally and figuratively. Such imaginings were ridiculous in a man of twenty-six, lord and master of an adoring wife and three equally adoring small children, hero to a dog of rare intelligence. (Well, a man could dream, couldn’t he? There was no law against it that I knew of.) I paused to look around me, sternly identifying things for what they really were, then drew myself up to my more than six feet in height, squared shoulders that have been described by my admirers as broad, and by my detractors as hefty, renewed my grip on my cudgel and moved forward again with a determined, no-nonsense stride.

But there was no denying that my solitude had become oppressive by the time I reached the clearing where Upper Brockhurst Hall had once stood; and it was with an overwhelming sense of relief that I stepped into the open space of the courtyard, the trees giving place to knee-high grass, studded with thickets of whin and stunted alder. Unable to shake off the feeling that I had passed safely through some sort of extreme danger, I sank down heavily on the ivy-covered stump of an ancient oak.

After a moment or two, my mind reverted to Rob Pomphrey’s words – or rather to the reported words of Gilbert Lilywhite – concerning Maud. ‘Whatever else she is or isn’t, Maud’s a good cook.’ So what wasn’t she? Or, rather, what hadn’t she been in those far-off days when she was Gilbert’s wife? And hard on the heels of that recollection came another; a remark made by William Bush while we were eating our dinner the previous day. ‘I always thought Maud Haycombe a bit wild in her youth. Not as good as she should have been, if you know what I mean.’ And as I mulled this over, something else, said by Alice Tucker, also came back to me. Alice had been speaking, if I remembered correctly, about Ned Rawbone. ‘Oh, Master Edward’s settled down right enough since his marriage. He never was as wild as Tom or the old man, but he sowed his wild oats in his youth.’

Other snippets of information, that I had gleaned haphazardly over the past few days, began floating to the top of my mind, in the same way as all sorts of debris rises to the surface when you stir up mud at the bottom of a pond. For instance, Dame Jacquetta had told me that when Tom announced his betrothal to Eris in front of his horrified family, Petronelle had shouted, ‘You can’t do that, Thomas!’ An odd remark, now I came to think about it. I would have expected a barrage of protests, cries of dismay, but not the stark reprimand, ‘You can’t do that.’ Why couldn’t he? And the twins, as well as their great-aunt, had reported the fact that Petronelle had screamed at Eris to go home, not just once, but many times. ‘Go home and tell your mother!’ had been one phrase quoted by Jacquetta. And Ruth, the Rawbones’ little kitchen maid, had claimed that from the window of Dame Jacquetta’s chamber, where she had her truckle bed, she had seen Eris leave the house, running downhill, in the direction of the Lilywhites’ cottage. Doing as she had been advised. Going home.

There were other things, too. Now that, at last, I had done what I had been intending to do for the past twenty-four hours, namely marshalled my thoughts into some sort of order, memories came flooding back. I recalled Theresa saying that, when the children were young, Maud had discouraged the friendship between Eris and the Rawbone twins; a friendship so close that, as Christopher had told me, strangers to the village had thought them all to be siblings. And despite her inimical feelings towards Tom and his family in general, Maud had never let them influence her fondness for Ned.

An idea was taking shape at the back of my mind, which, to begin with, was nothing more than a glimmer of light at the end of a long and winding tunnel, but which grew brighter by the minute the more I considered it. I might have reached a final, firm conclusion then and there, perched on that tree stump, but I was suddenly jerked out of my reverie by the scurrying of some small animal in the undergrowth, nearby.

How long I had been sitting, lost in thought, I had no idea, but judging by the stiffness of my joints, it had been for some considerable length of time. I found that I was shivering in spite of being wrapped in my cloak, and realized that if I were to avoid being laid up with an unwelcome and unwanted rheum, action was called for. I stamped my feet and clapped my arms around my body until I began to feel warmer, then decided it was time to make my second exploration of the well.

What I hoped to achieve by this, I had no clear idea. I had been down the shaft once and knew that there was nothing to be seen but an inch or so of mud at the bottom. Nevertheless, I could not shake myself free either of the notion that I might have missed something on that first occasion, or of the persistent fancy that in the well I was very close to the missing girl. There was no good reason why I should feel that way, so I reached the conclusion that maybe God was prompting me.

‘I just hope you’re not having a joke at my expense, Lord,’ I grumbled peevishly as I unwrapped myself from my cloak and flung it across the tree stump. I dropped my cudgel in the grass alongside and cursed roundly as I tripped over one of the many loose stones lying about.

By the time I had struggled to lift the heavy lid of the well clear of the rim, I had stopped shivering and was sweating profusely. The iron ladder nailed to the wall of the shaft looked even rustier than I had remembered it. Indeed, it appeared positively dangerous, but I had negotiated it safely once before and presumably could do so again. I was thankful that I had decided to leave Hercules behind, with the Lilywhites: his large anxious eyes and reproachful expression would only have worried me further.

I swung both legs over the top of the well and cautiously began to descend. Once again, jagged flakes of rust adhered to the palms of my hands, and, as on the earlier occasion, I had to grope around in order to find a footing. The missing rungs, the diminution of the light as I climbed further down the shaft and the perilous swaying of the ladder as it worked loose from the brickwork, all told me that what I was doing was extremely foolhardy. And what should I discover when I reached the bottom? Exactly what I had discovered before. Nothing. Or, at least, nothing that gave me any clue to Eris’s whereabouts.

And so it proved. There were the same ferns and mosses sprouting between the bricks and the same inch or so of mud and water still seeping through the rough patch of stones and mortar that had been used to shore up the well close to its base. I might have saved myself the time, the trouble and the possible danger to life and limb for all the good this second exploration had done me. Eris wasn’t there, and never had been there as far as I could tell. I swore. My instincts were wrong. My sense of her presence, my conviction that she was close at hand, was not God-given intuition, but a trick of my own imagination.

Deflated, angry with myself for being such a fool, angry with God for what I saw as His cat-and-mouse games, I leaned against the wall of the shaft and stared up at the distant circle of sky, overlaid with its tracery of interwoven branches. In a minute or two, when I had calmed down and got my second wind, I would ascend the ladder, make my way back to the Lilywhites’ cottage and, tomorrow morning, begin my homeward journey to Bristol. Failure was a bitter pill to swallow, but I made myself face up to the unpalatable truth that I would probably never now discover what had happened to Eris …