The Christmas Wassail (13 page)

‘But if the king says nothing,' Tobias objected, ‘all them lords as don't like him and think he ain't entitled to the throne, they'll just go and join that there Henry Tudor.'

‘No, they won't!' Ned thumped the table in his excitement. ‘'Cos they won't be certain, neither, that the boys are dead.' He glanced triumphantly around him. ‘That's the beauty of it. That's what I mean by strategy! King Richard's a soldier to his fingertips. He knows how to keep the enemy guessing. They'm paralysed now, not sure which way to jump. That's what your true strategist does. He keeps everyone guessing.'

I had to restrain myself from getting up and hugging him. All the same: ‘Where do you think the children are then, Master Chorley?' I asked, refilling his beaker with a generous measure of ale.

‘Still in the Tower?' Adela wanted to know.

‘Nah!' Ned took a drink, then chewed a split fingernail. ‘I reckon as he's had them moved secretly up to Yorkshire, to one of them big strongholds of his. Middleham. Sheriff Hutton, maybe. Travelling under cover of darkness – and at this time o'year there's plenty of that – they could be there before anyone got wind o'the move.'

‘And what happens when they grow up?' Tabitha asked in her practical way. ‘The elder's twelve already. Nearly a man. They won't be content to remain in the shadows.'

Ned snorted. ‘King Richard will've established himself by then. Everyone'll know what a good king he is. They won't want no other.'

Tabitha shook her head. ‘I don't believe that. Oh, not that he won't be a good king! He were a good soldier and strategist, as you said. No need to get up in yer high ropes, Ned. But if Saint Peter himself were king, he'd make enemies of someone. There's always some malcontents wanting a change, no matter how sweet you try to keep them. That there Duke o'Buckingham's a case in point. And the boys' whereabouts aren't going to remain a secret for ever.'

Ned looked irritated, but he knew she was right. ‘That's for the future,' he said, brushing her objection aside. ‘He can't be expected to think of everything right now. He'll take it one step at a time. What d'you think, Master Chapman? If what your dame says is true, you know His Highness a deal better than the rest of us.'

‘I think you're probably correct,' I agreed. ‘In some ways, the king's a very trusting man. Lets his heart rule his head more than he should.
Loyauté me lie
is his watchword as well as his motto, which is why I suspect that Buckingham's betrayal must have hit him hard.'

‘Oh, well, maybe it'll serve as a warning to him,' Tabitha said, pushing back her stool and getting to her feet. ‘That were a tasty meal, Mistress Chapman. All the same, we can't impose on your hospitality any longer. Toby, come upstairs with me and see how Dorcas is going on.'

But when they returned a few minutes later, it was to report that Dorcas was sleeping so soundly they hadn't wanted to wake her.

‘Quite right,' said Adela. ‘You must all stay and have supper with us. I'm sure you'll all be more comfortable here than in that draughty castle.'

I saw the old couple hesitate and glance at one another, refusal in both their faces. But then Tabitha shrugged. ‘That's very kind of you, mistress. I won't deny that the accommodation there leaves a lot to be desired. And it's a cold day. A very cold day.' She looked at her grandson. ‘Toby ought to take a walk, though, and make sure our gear is safely locked away. We didn't bargain on being absent for longer than the Mass at Saint Giles and we took no extra precautions.'

‘I'll go at once,' the young man said, pulling on the thick frieze coat he had dropped carelessly on the floor on entering the house.

‘Good lad.' Tabitha nodded her approval. ‘No need to hurry. Dorcas won't wake for a while yet, I reckon. Sleeping like a babe, she is.'

‘So you three just be quiet and don't go waking the lady up,' I charged my children when he had gone, while Adela took Luke on her lap and began feeding him some frumenty.

Adam regarded me beneath lowering brows. ‘It's Childermass,' he reminded me. ‘That means we can do as we please.' Trust him to get the wrong idea!

I was about to remonstrate with him when Ned Chorley seized him by the wrist and, with the other two in tow, bore them all off to the parlour again, promising a whole lot of new tricks they hadn't yet seen. I saw Adela frown, so, indicating that Arthur Monkton should go with us, I followed them out of the kitchen before she could voice any misgivings.

In spite of the mummer's sleight of hand, I must at some point have fallen asleep, for I came to with a start as the parlour door opened and Tobias Warrener slipped into the room. I realized that it must be well past noon by the quality of the light filtering through the unshuttered window. Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam were still sitting in a spellbound semicircle at Ned Chorley's feet, so I went in search of the women, only to bump – literally – into Tabitha Warrener as I stepped out into the hall. She smiled at me before putting her head around the door.

‘Everything all right, Toby?' she asked.

‘All's well, Grandmother,' was the answer. ‘The truth is I don‘t think anyone thinks we have anything worth stealing.'

Tabitha laughed. ‘More'n likely,' she agreed.

The short afternoon wore away and, after supper, the two women went upstairs again to see how the invalid was faring. Their report was not as encouraging as it might have been.

‘Mistress Warrener is feeling well rested,' my wife told Tobias, ‘but a little sick and dizzy when she moves her head. I'll take her up some broth and a sup of ale which should revive her, but I think she should remain here tonight. I can lend her a night-shift and she can sleep with me. Roger, you'll either have to bed down with the boys or sleep in the parlour in a chair.'

‘Don't make the poor man do that,' Ned Chorley protested. ‘He can come back to the castle with us. The bedding's clean and there's enough beds to go round. I think they must've been expecting a bigger troupe than ours.'

There was no way I could gainsay these arrangements without appearing churlish. Nevertheless, I gave Adela a very speaking look as she passed me on her way upstairs to collect my nightshirt, and I promised myself that I should have something to say when I returned home the following morning on the subject of my wishes being consulted in future before plans were made on my behalf. I fancy Tabitha felt much the same, for on the short walk to the castle she was apologetic.

‘Not what you're used to, Master Chapman,' she said more than once.

I assured her, truthfully, that I had slept in many worse places in the course of my travels. And, indeed, I was pleasantly surprised by the room in which I eventually found myself. I had never, so far as I could recall, been in the castle's inner ward before and was surprised to find it in as great a state of disrepair as the outer ward with crumbling walls and the door into the orchard hanging drunkenly on one hinge. I reflected that there was little point in locking the gates at night, as Dick Manifold had once told me they did, when anyone could simply walk in and out at will through the gaping holes in the masonry.

But, as I say, the building in which the mummers were housed was rain- and windproof with a roof of solid lead tiles, and was afforded additional protection by standing in the lee of the orchard wall. The beds, too, had good straw palliasses and clean, if coarse, linen sheets as well as blankets, and I had to admit to myself that I had not expected such consideration from the city fathers for a group of travelling players. There was, of course, no privacy, but as Tabitha and Ned fell into bed more or less fully clothed, and the two younger men did the same, I followed suit, merely removing my outer garments, tunic and boots. I did think longingly for a moment or two of my own goose feather mattress and Adela's comforting presence and wonder if I was going to be kept awake by the others' snores. But within five minutes I was soundlessly and dreamlessly asleep.

F
or a few moments after waking, I was at a loss to know where I was.

A cock was crowing somewhere in the distance and through a hole in one corner of the roof, where a tile had broken away, I could see a single star shining high and far off in a patch of sky lightening towards dawn. The room stank of bad breath, stale sweat and unwashed bodies, while to my right someone was snoring loud enough to waken the dead. I forced my eyes wide open, staring at the rafters overhead and trying to remember where I was. Slowly, memories of the previous day's events came crowding back to me, and I knew that I was in an outbuilding of the inner ward of Bristol Castle while young Dorcas Warrener slept in my bed at home. As for what day it was, I gradually and painfully worked out that it must be the twenty-ninth of December, the Feast of the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket, the day on which, all those centuries ago, the ‘holy, blissful martyr' was hacked to death in his own cathedral of Canterbury by four knights come from Normandy to carry out what they thought to be the wishes of King Henry II; that same Henry who had spent part of his boyhood in this very castle where I was now lying.

There was the sudden scrape of a flint and, seconds later, a candle flared into brightness. I rolled on to my left side to find Tabitha Warrener, fully clothed and seated on the edge of her bed, regarding me with some amusement.

‘You slept well,' she said.

I grunted. ‘I don't think I stirred all night.' I pushed back the bedclothes and swung my feet to the floor, thankful that I had removed only my outer garments the night before. (I felt sure that Tabitha would have appreciated my manly charms, but there was a cynical gleam in her eyes that made me uncomfortable.) ‘My mouth is so dry I can barely speak. Is there anything in this barn of a place to drink?'

She laughed. ‘You don't think they supply us with “all-night”, do you? We take our meals in the common refectory with the reeve and other castle officials, and I can tell you, Chapman, that they are meagre and generally undercooked. That's why it was such a pleasure to eat with you and your dame and family yesterday. She keeps a plentiful table.'

‘Adela's a good housekeeper,' I agreed, swallowing hard to moisten my mouth. ‘Where do you go after Christmas, when you leave here?'

‘Back into winter quarters.' Tabitha fished in the pocket of her ancient skirt and produced a small bottle from which she removed the stopper before handing it to me. ‘Try this. It's strong but it's wet.'

I sipped cautiously, recognizing the liquid as mead, a drink I generally found too sweet for my taste. But it eased the dryness of my throat. ‘Where are these winter quarters of yours?' I asked, handing back the bottle.

‘'Tween Winchester and S'ampton. Sweetwater Manor. Master Tuffnel gives us all shelter there every year without fail twixt Our Lord's Birth and Resurrection.'

‘This Master Tuffnel, you know him well?'

‘All my life. My father was warrener to his father. Ned worked on his land.'

‘You grew up together, then?'

‘In a manner o'speaking. Apart from him being the master's son and me the warrener's daughter – he's a few years older 'n me. But he was always good to me and Ned. Helped us when we needed it most.'

I waited for her to enlarge on this last remark, but she offered no more information, getting abruptly to her feet, lighting a second candle and shuffling over to wake the other three men who were still asleep.

‘Wake up, you lazy bastards,' she said affectionately, prodding each one in the back with a bony forefinger. ‘You'll be late for breakfast.'

‘I'd better be getting home for breakfast, too,' I remarked, pulling on my boots and tunic. ‘I'll escort young Mistress Warrener back here as soon as she's ready.'

Tabitha shook her head. ‘We won't put you to so much trouble, Master Chapman,' she said. She nodded at her grandson. ‘Toby and I'll come and get her when we've eaten. We need to thank Mistress Chapman for all her kindness.'

‘As you please.' My foot hit against something and, bending down, I picked up a battered tin plate on which reposed the remains of something black and sticky. A faint, sickly-sweet aroma drifted up to me. ‘What's this?'

Tabitha smiled and held out her hand. ‘That's my poppy seed and lettuce juice lozenges. Or what's left of 'em. I always carry a supply when we're on the road. Set light to them and they burn slowly all night. The perfume helps us sleep when the accommodation's poor and the beds are hard.'

‘I wouldn't have thought you needed them here,' I said. ‘I've slept on far worse mattresses than these.'

Tabitha shrugged. ‘Force of habit. And Dorcas is finding it difficult to drop off just now. She's getting to be an awkward shape.'

I said my goodbyes and went home to find our unexpected guest much recovered and anxious to be reunited with her husband. I assured her that he and Tabitha would be coming to collect her as soon as they had had breakfast and settled down to my own with a will. I also promised myself a change of clothes and a wash under the pump as soon as I had eaten. Adela, bustling around the kitchen, reminded me that she would need a further supply of apples fetched down from the loft.

‘You haven't forgotten it's Wassail Day, have you?'

I had, as a matter of fact, and my spirits lifted. This was the fourth day of Christmas and my neighbours and I would be calling on one another throughout the afternoon and early evening with bowls of hot, spiced ‘lamb's wool' in order to drink each other's health; an ancient Saxon custom which the Normans had never quite managed to stamp out.

Waes Hael!

Drink Hael!

By nightfall we should all be as drunk as lords.

We went to church again that morning to celebrate the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket and to beg for his intercession in heaven, then walked home through a sudden, but brief flurry of snow. Adam wanted to know if we were going to see the mummers again in the afternoon but, much to his disgust, I said no. It wasn't that I didn't like them or find their plays amusing, but I felt that I had had a surfeit of their company for the time being. Besides which, I had a nagging headache. Adela left us at the street door, saying she had to walk on up to the market and to set the pottage over the fire to heat. ‘I might be a little while,' she added – which meant that she had arranged to meet Margaret Walker and possibly other friends for a gossip. So I was astonished when, only a very short time later, she reappeared in the kitchen accompanied not only by her cousin, but by the latter's two cronies, Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins, as well.