The Brothers of Glastonbury (5 page)

But when, half an hour later, just as darkness fell, the three returned home, they had nothing more to impart. There had been no further sighting of Peter since Friday afternoon, when he had last been seen by Abel Fairchild.

Mark Gildersleeve joined us above stairs, having first stabled Dorabella and sent his two apprentices to the kitchens in search of their belated supper. He had refused all his mother’s offers of food, being, he said, too tired to eat.

He was very like his uncle to look at, having the same curling red hair and sturdy, thickset body, although he was, I judged, a good half a head shorter than William Armstrong. His expression was also less truculent, but he could be just as surly when unsure of his ground.

‘Who in the devil’s name is this?’ he demanded, suddenly becoming aware of my presence.

So Cicely repeated her story, once again omitting the fact that I was not really one of the Duke of Clarence’s men. But Mark was more astute than Dame Joan.

‘Why doesn’t he wear livery then?’ he grunted suspiciously.

Cicely would have made up some story – I could see the sparkle in her eyes as she warmed to the deception – but I judged the time ripe to admit the truth.

‘I used to be a novice here at the abbey,’ I said, ‘but I renounced my vocation to become a chapman, a calling much more to my liking. I am however known to my lord of Clarence, having done several small services in the past for his brother, the Duke of Gloucester.’

‘He saved Duke Richard’s life,’ Cicely cut in, and smiled admiringly at me across the table.

I saw Mark shoot her a sidelong glance. He plainly felt it his duty to keep an eye on his volatile cousin. ‘If you’re a chapman, where’s your pack?’ he asked, his tone belligerent.

‘I left it at Farleigh Castle. I shall pick it up again when I return with the horse.’

‘What horse?’

Patiently, I explained about the rouncy and where he was stabled.

Mark Gildersleeve continued to stare dubiously at me. ‘You sound a very strange chapman to me. What were these services you rendered my lord of Gloucester?’

Reluctantly, and as briefly as possible, I sketched in my version of the events which had linked me, in the past, to Duke Richard, but my listener’s frown only deepened.

‘If what you tell me is true,’ he said when I had finished, ‘why are you not a rich man? Why are you still a pedlar? God’s teeth! Do you think I’m a greenhorn?’

Cicely was on her feet, spots of colour burning in her cheeks. ‘You may not be green, but you’re very ill-mannered!’ she exclaimed furiously. ‘Roger is not a liar! Do you suppose that my father would have entrusted me to the care of a stranger if that man hadn’t been recommended to him by the Duke himself? And do you also then accuse my lord of Clarence of being a liar?’

I could see that her hot-headed defence of me was making Mark even more suspicious than he had been before, and I hastened to intervene.

‘Your cousin is justified,’ I told her soothingly, ‘in finding my story at odds with my present condition. The fact is, Master Gildersleeve –’ and I smiled placatingly at him – ‘that I prefer to be my own master. I have never taken kindly to being at the beck and call of other people. Nor do I like being confined for any length of time between four walls, which was one reason among others that I quit the monastic life. As a pedlar, I do my own bidding and no one else’s. My existence may sometimes be hard, but in terms of freedom I am a wealthy man.’

Mark grunted, his hostility fading somewhat. He poured himself more wine. ‘I can understand that,’ he conceded grudgingly, but then he grew more expansive. ‘I’ve always known what it is to be my own master – or, at least,’ he amended, ‘to work for nobody except my father – and now for Peter, which is the same thing. Or very nearly the same…’ His voice tailed off as he remembered his brother and, with a great groan, he covered his face with his hands.

Dame Joan, affected by this sign of despair, began to cry quietly, the tears trickling unheeded down her cheeks. Only Cicely seemed unable to express her grief – if, that is, she felt any. Instead, she asked, ‘Where do you mean to spend the night, Master Chapman?’ And I felt her kick her aunt’s leg under the table.

I said hurriedly, ‘I shall find somewhere, never fear. I’ve money in my pocket and can procure a place easily enough at one of the ale-houses in the town. If I recall rightly, there are a vast number of them, so I’m certain of getting a bed. They can’t all be occupied by pilgrims.’

Dame Joan shook her head. ‘You must stay here,’ she said, wiping away her tears with trembling fingers. ‘We have only one guest chamber, which must now belong to Cicely until … until…’ She could not bring herself to add ‘until she marries’, but continued bravely, ‘You may sleep in Peter’s bed in his and Mark’s room.’

I glanced quickly at Mark to see how he would respond to this invitation to share his bedchamber, but, to my surprise, he raised no objection. He seemed rather to be sunk in a reverie of his own, not even looking up when Cicely exclaimed, with a clap of her hands, ‘Good! That’s settled! You deserve our hospitality after squiring me all the way from Farleigh.’

I tried to quell her exuberance with as stern a glance as I could muster, but she ignored me, laying a hand on her cousin’s arm and giving it a little shake. ‘Mark! Why don’t we persuade Roger to remain with us for a day or two? On his own admission, he has solved other mysteries. Why shouldn’t he give us the benefit of his past experience and try to discover what has happened to Peter?’

‘Eh?’ Mark blinked at her, obviously not having listened to a word she’d said, and Cicely was obliged to repeat her question. When at last he understood, Mark looked at me doubtfully. ‘Would you be willing to delay your journey?’ he asked. ‘As I understand it, you were on your way home when you reached Farleigh. And what about this cob that has been lent to you from the Duke of Clarence’s stables?’

I hesitated. Here was my chance – the one chance God always gave me – to extricate myself from whatever it was that He had planned. But, as on all the previous occasions, I could not do it. God had bestowed on me the gift of solving puzzles as well as endowing me with an insatiable curiosity. ‘Nosiness’ my mother had called it, and she was probably right.

‘I can spare a few days,’ I said. ‘The weather is still very warm and the evenings light; my mother-in-law and child can do without me a little while longer. As for the rouncy, I doubt it’s one of the more valuable horses in His Grace of Clarence’s stables. Its absence won’t worry the Farleigh grooms as long as they hold my pack in exchange for it. Besides, the groom who was instructed to saddle it for me and Mistress Cicely will probably have moved on with the Duke, and those left behind may care nothing for the transaction, or even know of it.’

‘You’ll stop then?’

It was impossible to tell from Mark Gildersleeve’s tone whether he was pleased by my decision or not. But there was no mistaking the pleasure on Cicely’s smiling countenance, nor Dame Joan’s tearful gratitude, although I did not delude myself that either had any special belief in my abilities to unravel the problem of Peter’s disappearance. I could only hazard a guess at Cicely’s reason for wishing me to stay, and I resolved to keep a wary eye on that young woman. Dame Joan simply looked upon me as just another person to join in the hunt.

‘I’ll stop,’ I agreed, ‘for a day or two at least.’

Mark nodded. ‘Well, the lads and I will be up at first light tomorrow morning to continue the search. Rob and John will go the shorter distances on foot. I shall ride Dorabella to Wells and beyond, so you’d better join me on that rouncy.’

I shook my head. ‘I prefer to go my own way. Pardon me for saying so, Master Gildersleeve, but this aimless wandering about the countryside is achieving nothing. You have been looking for your brother for four days now, and have found no trace of him. It’s time to try other methods, to start asking questions, which you can, if you wish, leave to me. You and your apprentices would surely do better to pay attention to the business rather than Master Peter’s return. He won’t thank you to find it neglected, particularly as he is soon to be married.’

My advice was received with varying degrees of approval. Dame Joan stopped crying and roundly declared that it was the most sensible thing she had heard all day; Mark looked offended, but said that he would sleep on my offer; while Cicely appeared suddenly glum, presumably at the prospect of having Peter restored to her unharmed. It was all I could do to repress a smile.

But my mood sobered when I reflected on the unlikelihood of such an event ever taking place. I felt in my bones that if I did manage to find Peter Gildersleeve, he would no longer be alive.

Chapter Four

Dame Joan earned my undying gratitude by insisting that we must eat before retiring to bed. My stomach had been reminding me for the past half-hour that, except for the cinnamon biscuits and medlars, it had had no sustenance since the honey cakes and milk which Cicely and I had bought at the beekeeper’s cottage. To my great relief, Mark Gildersleeve also admitted to being hungry now that he had rested a while, and suggested that his mother and cousin repair to the kitchen to see what they could forage.

But the practical Dame Joan said that we should all go. ‘If the chapman is to be our guest, it’s better he learns his way around the house as soon as possible.’

So Mark and I followed the women down the twisting stairs to the long passage which led from the front door to the back, past the shop and workroom and out into the garden, now shrouded in darkness. The kitchen, a single-storey building, stood at a right angle to the rest of the house, joined to it at one corner but without, apparently, there being any internal door connecting them. Its shutters stood open to the warm night air, and the candlelight spilled out across the slatted wooden walkway which surrounded it. The soft, contented whinny of a horse told me that Dorabella was comfortably settled for the night in her stable which, I judged, was situated somewhere on the other side of the kitchen.

As we were about to enter, an owl swooped low above our heads, screeching like the spirits of the damned. Cicely gave an echoing cry and clutched my arm, clinging to it longer than was necessary. At least, Mark Gildersleeve seemed to think so, roughly detaching her hand from my sleeve and deploring her stupidity.

‘In God’s name, girl, you’ve seen an owl before! What’s got into you?’

‘Leave the child alone,’ his mother chided him. ‘This business has made us all jumpy and uncertain.’

Inside the kitchen, a sleepy maid was still entertaining the two apprentices, who were nodding over the remains of their meal, plainly more than ready for their beds. Mark dismissed them to their pallets in the workshop, but not before I had had time to acquaint myself with their faces and to distinguish one from the other.

Rob Undershaft was the taller of the two, a stringy boy of some fourteen summers who had outgrown his strength, with bad teeth marring a none-too-ready smile, and pale blue eyes almost hidden beneath a fall of lank, fair hair (the sort of hair my mother always used to describe as ‘straight as a yard of pump water’). John Longbones, despite his name and being about the same age, was nearly a head shorter, but no fatter. His hair was red but, unlike Mark Gildersleeve’s, it was that harsh, uncompromising shade which is almost orange. His hazel eyes blinked a little short-sightedly at the world, and he had the pale skin and easy capacity to blush that afflicts most people of his colouring.

When they had gone, Dame Joan began shooing the maid around the kitchen, chivvying her to set more water on the fire to boil, and to fetch the rest of the cold bacon from the larder. This diminutive creature, however, seemed to stand in no awe of her mistress, grumbling roundly about having to work single-handed since Maud’s departure for her father’s cottage in Bove Town.

‘You let Lydia get away with too much, Mother,’ Mark complained angrily. ‘One of these days she’ll go too far and you’ll have to dismiss her.’

‘Lyddie’s a good girl,’ Mistress Gildersleeve retorted. ‘Let her alone. We understand one another. Besides, I don’t want her leaving me as well.’

‘Why has Maud gone?’ Mark demanded, frowning.

‘Black magic, that’s why!’ And Dame Joan hurriedly crossed herself. ‘The circumstances of Peter’s disappearance unsettled her. And she won’t be the only one to give us the cold shoulder if we don’t be quick and find out what’s happened to him.’

Mark sank on to a stool and rubbed his forehead with fingers that were shaking slightly. Dame Joan, on the other hand, bustling around, cutting collops of cold, fat bacon, pouring out measures of ale and heating them over the fire, setting Lydia to slice bread and unwrap a fresh slab of butter from its cooling dock leaves, seemed temporarily restored to cheerfulness.

It was only later, when we had finished eating and drinking, that she again became distressed; but it was a distress caused more by what their neighbours might be thinking than by any conviction that her elder son was dead. In her heart, it seemed, she was still expecting him to walk through the door at any moment, with some perfectly simple explanation of where he had been for the past four days hovering on his lips.

I could see that Mark was less sure of his brother’s fate, and his mother’s words about black magic had worried him. Whatever his affection for Peter – and I was not yet certain how deep this went – he knew that the business would suffer if a member of his family were tainted by any association, however remote, with sorcery, either as practitioner or victim.

After thinking profoundly for several minutes, he looked across the kitchen table at me. ‘Did you mean what you said, Chapman? Are you willing to stay a while and see what you can discover regarding my brother’s disappearance? It might be better, I agree,’ he went on, turning to address his mother, ‘if Rob, John and I continue to lead as normal a life as possible. If people perceive us to be untroubled, they may think we know more than we do concerning Peter’s whereabouts. Well, Master Chapman? What do you say?’

‘I’m willing,’ I agreed. ‘But, as I told you, I’ve left my pack at Farleigh Castle, expecting to be parted from it for no more than a night. In addition to my wares, it contains my spare shirt and hose. I may therefore have to borrow these articles of clothing from you. Fortunately I have brought my razor and the willow bark I use for cleaning my teeth with me.’ And I patted the pouch fixed to my belt. ‘As for my cudgel, which I left at the livery stable with Barnabas, I shall retrieve that first thing in the morning.’