The Christmas Wassail (32 page)

There was a sudden silence so profound that the crackling of the logs on the hearth sounded like the raging of some great forest fire. Dame Drusilla stared open-mouthed at James, every bone of her emaciated face showing clearly beneath her parchment-like skin. I found I was holding my breath, waiting for her furious denial …

Instead, she leant back in her chair and began to laugh, not defiantly nor in a forced kind of way, but with genuine merriment.

‘Oh dear, oh dear!' she gasped as soon as she could speak. ‘Whoever put that ridiculous notion into your head?'

‘Why ridiculous?' James demanded. ‘Miles Deakin had cause enough to hate Grandfather and Alderman Trefusis, if anyone did.'

Dame Drusilla stopped laughing and her face twisted viciously. ‘Oh, I'll grant you that,' she spat. ‘More than enough. If I'd been a younger and fitter woman, I might have done the murders myself. But I didn't. And neither did Miles.'

James gripped the old lady's shoulder. ‘What makes you so sure of that? He's here, in Bristol, isn't he? How long have you been giving him shelter?'

She looked up at him defiantly, her mouth set in a thin, bitter line. ‘I should tell you to keep your nose out of my affairs. But since you've made this ridiculous allegation against the poor man, I'll make you free of the truth.' Here there was an interruption caused by a servant with her dinner dishes on a tray trying to enter the room. Drusilla waved him away impatiently, saying, ‘Later!' and turned back to James. ‘Miles Deakin has been sheltering in this house for six months or so, long before George and the rest of you moved down from Clifton. He came to me in the summer in a terrible state, ill, diseased and in rags. I took him in and my people have nursed him back to health.'

‘Why didn't he go home to Nibley, to his parents?' James asked contemptuously. ‘Or is it that the living's softer where there's plenty of money?'

The old lady seized hold of the stick leaning against her chair, and for a moment I thought she was going to strike him. Then, with an obvious effort, she controlled herself.

‘He stayed at my request,' she said. ‘I've always been fond of him.' She hesitated. ‘I've always loved him,' she amended. ‘People like you and your grandfather think that people of my age are incapable of those sort of emotions, or that they are indecent in someone over eighty.' Dame Drusilla's hand shot out and she grasped her great-nephew's wrist. I saw him wince. ‘Well, one day, if you live as long as I have, you'll find out your mistake.' She released him and sank back in her chair, breathing heavily. ‘Miles stayed because I asked him to, and because he was happy to oblige me.'

‘Of course he was,' sneered James. He indicated the luxury around him. ‘Who wouldn't prefer such riches to his parents' poor hovel?' He took a deep breath. ‘And while he was lying low here, Deakin plotted his revenge. He must have been overjoyed when Grandfather came to live next door. It must have made things so much easier. He could get to know the old man's habits. Follow him around.'

Dame Drusilla made no answer to this except to jerk herself forward and ring the little silver bell which stood on the table next to her plate.

The servant who had entered before must have been lingering within earshot, waiting for the summons, for he appeared immediately, again bearing the tray in his hands.

‘No, no!' his mistress exclaimed irritably, once more confusing the poor man. ‘Take the food back to the kitchen and tell the cook to keep it hot. Then find Master Deakin and bring him to me.'

The fellow withdrew and Dame Drusilla leant back again in her chair, pointedly closing her eyes and compressing her lips, an indication that conversation was at an end until such time as her orders were obeyed. James stared down at her in bafflement, while I pondered uneasily on her last command. ‘Find Master Deakin and bring him to me.' ‘Bring him' I noted, not ‘send him'.

The room was becoming insufferably hot and the sweat was beginning to stick my clothes to my back. I had a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that for the past two weeks I had been wasting my time following a scent which had been cold from the very beginning. And my worst fears were confirmed from the moment I saw my quarry standing in the doorway, the servant's guiding hand beneath his arm.

Miles Deakin was blind.

James and I stood gawping at him for several seconds, both of us, I think, trying to convince ourselves that the blindness was a sham. At least, I know I did. But a second, closer look at those filmy eyes shattered the hope completely. I had seen that vacant stare too often in blind people not to be convinced. The eyes were half rolled up in their sockets and there was an opaqueness that could not be feigned.

Drusilla got to her feet and held out her hands. ‘Come to me, Miles,' she said gently. ‘I'm standing by the table near the fire. You can feel the heat. Try, my dear, and later we'll have dinner together.'

He took a few stumbling steps towards her, then stopped, head cocked to one side, listening. ‘There's somebody here,' he said.

‘Only my great-nephew and his friend.' She sent us a mocking glance. ‘They won't hurt you. They're going now.'

‘How long have you been blind, Master Deakin?' James asked.

The man's head turned as he tried to locate the voice. ‘About a year, sir. It came on me sudden-like. One day I could see all right and then the next morning, I woke up blind. I could see nothing but shadows. After a while, I couldn't even see those.'

It flitted through my mind that we could question the servants and ask them to confirm Miles Deakin's condition six months ago, when he first sought sanctuary with Drusilla. But even as the thought occurred to me, I knew it was pointless. I could recognize genuine blindness when I saw it and, furthermore, the murders had only been committed in the past two weeks. I looked across at James.

‘We might as well go,' I said quietly. ‘We know now that the truth lies elsewhere.'

The old lady gave a snort of laughter. ‘Some common sense at last, thanks be to God!' She gently led the blind man to a chair at the opposite end of the table and seated him in it. He lifted his sightless eyes gratefully towards her.

James, however, still hesitated. ‘How does Deakin go out alone at night, if he's blind?' he asked. ‘And don't deny it, Aunt. Baker Cleghorn saw him.'

Drusilla stood with one hand protectively on the back of the man's chair and regarded her great-nephew with a contempt as chilling as his own.

‘If Baker Cleghorn' – her tone was as scorching as the heat from the fire – ‘had bothered to look harder, he would have noticed one of my servants just behind Miles. He never goes out unaccompanied, but he naturally prefers night to day. The darkness makes him less aware of his blindness. And now, perhaps you and Master Chapman would go and leave us in peace. I've always been reasonably fond of you, James. You and your father have seemed to me the best of an unpleasant bunch. But I am fast changing my mind. And from there,' she added darkly, ‘it's a very short step to changing my will.'

While James was absorbing this threat, I stepped forward and asked, ‘Dame Drusilla, are you sure you don't have any idea who the man in the bird mask might have been that afternoon? The one watching your or your brother's house on Childermass Day?'

She stared at me for a second or two, then threw back her head and laughed. ‘You thought that was Miles, did you?' Her great age hadn't dimmed her wits. ‘Oh dear, oh dear! You have been wandering all around the churchyard and getting nowhere fast, haven't you? Even the dead must be laughing. No, my lad, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've no idea at all. As I told you at the time, Christmas is the time for young idiots to put on masks just for the sheer pleasure of frightening people.'

I thanked her politely and then, without waiting for James, turned and left the house. He caught me up a minute or so later to find me, oblivious of the cold, leaning against the wall beside the street door, staring into space. I was not even aware of him until he shook my arm.

‘Master Chapman! Are you all right?' His voice eventually penetrated my dark and swirling thoughts.

‘No,' I said, ‘I'm not all right. I'm sick to my very guts.' I turned on him savagely. ‘Do you realize that I've wasted two weeks blindly' – and how appropriate that word was – ‘following a trail which has led me nowhere. All around the churchyard, as Dame Drusilla phrased it. Small wonder she thought even the dead were laughing.'

‘There's no need to blame yourself. It always seemed possible it might be Deakin.'

‘Possible!' I repeated angrily. ‘But there's the rub. I turned “possible” into “probable” and then into almost a certainty. I've been the stupidest fool in Christendom. I! I, who should know better!'

And what were you doing, God, I thought bitterly to myself, that you didn't nudge my elbow to bring me to my senses? He'd let me make an idiot of myself, but perhaps, I reflected uneasily, he'd been right to do so. I'd been getting too set up in my own conceit and, because of that conceit, young Dick Hodge was dead. I couldn't remember at any time during the past twelve days asking for God's guidance. I suddenly felt I had been humbled and, what was more, that I deserved it.

‘What do we do now?' James asked miserably.

I opened my mouth to say that I didn't know, that we now had no choice but to leave it to the sheriff and his men, but found myself saying something quite different.

‘We must go to see your father,' I said. ‘You must persuade him to tell us who it was who came to see him, wearing the dog mask.'

D
og mask! As soon as I uttered the words it was as though a great mist which had been clogging my brain for days had been suddenly lifted.

Alyson Carpenter had told me that my attacker at the Clifton house had been wearing a dog mask and Adam had described to me a play about the Sultan of Morocco and his dog which the mummers had performed. I remembered, too, the jumble of masks they had in their possession, including several depicting birds – one of which they claimed had been stolen and then returned, a statement I had never thought to query; at least, not until now.

‘They'll all be at dinner,' James said, ‘and I should be with them. We won't get Father alone till after the meal. And, indeed,' he added, ‘you must be wanting your own dinner, Master Chapman. Come back later and we'll confront him together.'

He was right. I realized that I was very hungry, but was loth to go home. Adela would probably have returned from seeing Jenny and Burl by now and I wondered what sort of state she would be in; whether or not she would even have prepared a meal. Then I recollected that Margaret was there and would have taken charge.

All the same, I postponed my arrival at Small Street by going round by the castle and asking to speak to whoever it was who had found Dick Hodge's body. I had no authority to do this, and was faintly surprised when one of the castle reeves came through from the inner ward, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, an indication that he had left his dinner in order to see me. I couldn't help reflecting that there were times when my reputation as being in the king's employ had its uses, however misleading it might be.

‘Master Chapman.' The man nodded curtly to me, but his tone was civil enough. All the same, it was not his duty to attend upon the whims of a pedlar and I could tell he was resentful of his fear of offending me. ‘How can I help you? There's nothing further I can say about finding poor Dick's body than what I have already told Sergeant Manifold and the sheriff, information which I'm very certain the whole town must know by now.'

‘I'm really more interested in the mummers,' I said. ‘I was informed they'd left.'

‘At first light.' The reeve shrugged. ‘In fact, the carts were loaded and they were waiting to get away before the gates were open. One of them fetched the horses from the Bell Lane stables last night in order that there should be no delay from that quarter this morning. They should be well on the road by now. They were extremely anxious to get back to Hampshire and their winter lodgings before the weather worsened, which it very often does after Christmas. And the younger woman is, of course, in a delicate condition. So I'm afraid if you were wishful to speak to them, you're unlucky. It would take a fast horse to catch up with them now.' A slight smile touched his lips: he obviously knew the stories about me and horses.

‘Their winter quarters, I think Mistress Tabitha told me, are at Sweetwater Manor, between Winchester and Southampton, belonging to a Master Tuffnel.'

The reeve nodded. ‘Yes, that's right. A Master Cyprian Tuffnel.'

‘Cyprian?'

My tone was so sharp that he looked at me curiously. ‘Yes, so one of them told me. Not a common name, I grant you, but a saint's name for all that.'

‘It's Master Marvell's name, chosen presumably by his father, Sir George.'

The reeve fingered his chin. ‘So it is,' he said. ‘Do you think it has some particular significance?'

I didn't reply to his question because I wasn't sure of the answer – not yet, at any rate. But I did feel a growing conviction that God had come back to me and was once more directing my footsteps.

I thanked the man for his help and left him staring after me, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. He was probably trying to work out what help he had given me. In spite of the bitter cold and my gnawing hunger, I went and sat on a wall close to the Mint. (I could hear them hammering away inside, fashioning the new coins needed for King Richard's reign.) With a concentrated effort of memory, I recalled Tabitha saying that her father had been warrener to Master Tuffnel's father, and that she and he had grown up together. Which meant that Cyprian Tuffnel was a man of roughly her age and of an age with Sir George Marvell and Alderman Trefusis. Had he, too, been a soldier in the French wars? Had the other two known him? Had they been companions? Could that possibly be why Sir George had given his son the name of Cyprian, in memory of an army friendship?