The Christmas Wassail (33 page)

I took a deep breath. I was rushing ahead too fast again, letting my theories outstrip the facts, jumping to conclusions. It was my besetting sin, but this time I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was justified. A recollection of Tabitha saying that Master Tuffnel had been good to her and Ned Chorley when they most needed it rose to the surface of my mind. Also that Cyprian Tuffnel had been some years older than herself – which would make him even closer to George Marvell's age …

A sudden blast of icy wind blowing up from both of Bristol's rivers made me shiver violently and get hurriedly to my feet, grabbing my cloak around me. It was time to go home and find out what was happening there. But as I walked through the icy streets and the church bells still ringing out for the later Epiphany Day services, I had a sudden vision of the terrible injuries inflicted on Ned Chorley and Alfred Littlewood by the French, and then of those perpetrated on George Marvell; the lopped off fingers and the gouged-out eyes. The word that kept going around and around in my head was ‘retribution'.

Margaret Walker had not failed us. Luke was on her lap and she and the children were all seated at the kitchen table quietly getting on with the pottage she had heated. Adela was there, too, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen, but only making a pretence at eating. I saw her hand shake as she lifted her spoon.

‘Ah, here you are at last,' my former mother-in-law remarked grimly as I made my entrance. ‘Sit down. Elizabeth, get your father his dinner.'

My daughter heaved a martyred sigh, but nevertheless rose from her stool and filled a bowl with stew from the pot over the fire.

I braced myself and addressed my wife. ‘How are Burl and Jenny?'

‘You may well ask!'

The picture was immediately clear to me. I was to be the scapegoat. I was to bear the burden of being to blame for Dick Hodge's death. No matter that it was Jenny and even Dick himself who had persuaded me – more, begged me – to let him have my old cloak. That wasn't the point and never would be. The point was that I spent my time poking about in affairs that didn't concern me so that people wanted to kill me in order to stop my prying. I sighed. I suppose I might have guessed it.

‘Burl's vowed never to speak to you again,' Adela informed me in trembling accents. ‘And, honestly, Roger, I don't know that I can blame him. He and Jenny are both half-dead with grief. As for Jack, I wouldn't go near him for a while if I were you. You're likely to get a bloody nose if no worse.'

To my surprise, it was Margaret who came to my defence. ‘Well, I think that's very unfair,' she said stoutly. ‘You can't hold Roger responsible for Dick Hodge's death because he did the lad a good turn. In fact, if I know Roger, he's too fond of wearing disgusting old clothes to have parted with that grey cloak unless he'd been begged to. And so I shall tell anyone who says anything of the kind to me.'

I think Adela was as dumbfounded by this unlooked-for partisanship as I was and was silenced. Furthermore, she has a sense of justice and, after turning her cousin's words over in her mind for several minutes, suddenly said, stifling her sobs, ‘You're right, Margaret, my dear.'

She lapsed into silence, pushing away her almost full plate, but I no longer felt, at least in my own home, that I was the object of my family's animosity. True, Adam did murmur his usual, ‘Bad man!' but it was more a term of affection, I felt, than any sort of reproach.

‘Does anyone have any idea who might have killed Dick Hodge and the others?' Margaret asked me.

I shook my head.

She eyed me shrewdly. ‘I really meant do you have any idea? What about the young man Dame Drusilla wanted to marry? What did Bess Simnel say his name is? Miles Deakin? I had an idea you suspected him at one time.'

‘You can forget Miles Deakin,' I said shortly.

Margaret raised her eyebrows. ‘O-ho! You do know something. Don't try to deny it.'

‘I know that he had nothing to do with the murders,' was my answer. I frowned at her and she nodded in reluctant acceptance of the fact that I was going to say no more on the subject.

‘What are you thinking of doing now?' she asked, knowing me too well to suppose that the recent tragedy would have made me falter in my search for the truth.

I smiled, feeling an unexpected rush of affection for her and her understanding and loyalty. I must be fonder of her than I knew. ‘When I've finished my dinner,' I said, ‘I'm going to visit Cyprian Marvell.'

‘You think he may know something?'

‘I think it possible, but whether or not he will share his know-ledge is a different matter.'

‘And if he doesn't?'

I hesitated, then, ‘It's time I took up my peddling again. This is the last day of Christmas and we must all get back to the workaday world.'

Adela reared her head at that. ‘You won't go far in January, Roger? The weather is liable to worsen very suddenly. Remember this past autumn.'

‘When you sent me to Hereford on a wild goose chase? No, I shan't forget that in a hurry, nor its consequences.' She had the grace to blush. ‘I may go south,' I continued, ‘into Hampshire. It all depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On what I learn this afternoon from Cyprian Marvell.'

Cyprian Marvell was one of those quiet but stubborn men who, once he has decided on a course of action, refuses to budge from it even for the Archangel Gabriel himself.

James and I had bearded him in the little room which had been Sir George's sanctum and which he had now appropriated as a refuge against the other members of his family. He had retired there after his dinner and was deeply displeased by the sudden appearance of his son and myself. He had been moved to use some very forthright and graphic language which had surprised us both, coming from such a normally mild-mannered and temperate man.

Not that we had let it trouble us, I standing with my back to the door to prevent my unwilling host from leaving, while James pressed his father to say who his nocturnal visitor had been and what he had wanted.

At first, Cyprian had refused to answer either question, but eventually, worn down and desperate to get rid of us, he had admitted that the unwelcome guest had asked for money.

‘Blackmail?' James demanded brutally.

‘If you like.'

‘Why? What for? Something he knew about Grandfather? Something to his discredit?'

Cyprian folded his lips, leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. His attitude implied that we could ask from now until Doomsday and we should get no more information out of him. I decided it was time I took a hand.

‘Master Marvell,' I said, ‘was it one of the mummers?'

His eyes flew open at that and he shot me a startled glance. James, too, turned to stare at me in surprise. There was also something reproachful in his look: he felt that I had been keeping him in the dark.

‘Why do you say that?' he asked.

‘Because Ned Chorley also fought in the French wars. He was an archer; you can tell that by his injuries.' And I repeated what Alfred Littlewood had told me about the revenge exacted by the French on any of the hated English archers who were captured.

‘Dear God!' James exclaimed. ‘And you think—?'

‘I think he may have known both Sir George and Alderman Trefusis and was aware of something to their discredit, either from personal experience or from some tale told to him by a third person.'

James turned towards Cyprian. ‘Father?'

But the older man still refused to say anything further. He folded his hands across his belly and feigned sleep. His son gazed at him with a mixture of exasperation, anger and affection. After a moment or two, he tried again.

‘Father, three men have been killed, and brutally killed, and the body of your own father vilely despoiled. An innocent young man, little more than a boy, has been done to death. Don't you want the villain who did this laid by the heels?' Still there was no reply. James sighed. ‘Then Master Chapman and I have no choice but to go to the sheriff and tell him what we know.'

Cyprian did open his eyes at that, but when he spoke his voice was calm.

‘You know nothing, because I shall deny all knowledge of my night-time visitor. I shall say you were mistaken. If necessary, I shall accuse you and Master Chapman of trying to make yourselves important. I shall say it has been your weakness since childhood, that nowadays you wish to score against Bartholomew and that is your sole motive for these accusations. As for Master Chapman, there are plenty in this town who resent him and would be only too ready to believe such a claim.'

James looked at me despairingly. ‘He means it,' he said, ‘but we'll go anyway.'

‘No.' I shook my head. ‘Leave it. There's nothing to be gained by falling out with your father. Family quarrels are the very devil, and take longer to heal than other disagreements.' I smiled reassuringly. ‘I'll go and leave you to make your peace with Master Marvell.'

Cyprian was suddenly uneasy and was regarding me with misgiving. This abrupt climbdown had obviously aroused his suspicions. I decided to give his thoughts another direction.

‘Master Marvell,' I said, ‘a word in your ear. I know for a fact – and I am willing to swear to this as I hope for the life hereafter – that your stepmother has had dealings with the Irish slave traders in the city. I saw her in company with one of them, myself. Now, what her business with him was I've no idea, but if I were you I should be on my guard. You and your son.'

And with this, I took my leave, bowing to Cyprian, nodding to James, and left them gaping after me.

I had walked the whole length of Bristol Bridge when suddenly I stopped and retraced my steps halfway to the chapel of the Virgin Mary which spanned its centre. Inside, the chapel was deserted and very quiet, there being no Epiphany service there that day. (The clergy were too busy at the dozens of other religious establishments that gave the town its nickname, ‘The City of Churches'.) The winter light filtered through the stained-glass window, but it was too thin to throw the usual patterns of colour on the dusty floor. I made my obeisance at the altar, then propped myself against the southern wall and gave myself up to thought.

There were things that needed working out.

If Miles Deakin had not been the man in the bird mask standing outside Sir George's house on Holy Innocents' – Childermass – Day, who had it been? I cast my mind back to that particular Sunday and recalled that the mummers had spent it with us, in Small Street, after Dorcas Warrener had been taken ill during the service at St Giles's. But I also remembered that after dinner, Tobias had been despatched by Tabitha to make sure that their gear was safely under lock and key at the castle and that he had been absent for some little time. Was he then the man in the bird mask who had passed the note, which purported to come from Alyson Carpenter, to Sir George?

The mummers would have known about her because of her friendship – or more than friendship – with Tobias when they were performing in Clifton before Christmas. Had they gone there deliberately in the hope of finding the knight? Had they known that was where he lived? Somehow I doubted it or, if I was right in attributing the murders to them, they would have sought him out earlier. I decided, therefore, that they had first heard of his living in Bristol from Alyson. No doubt she had boasted of her conquest to Tobias and he had conveyed the information to the others. The discovery that Alderman Trefusis also lived in the city had probably been a happy accident, at least for them.

To Alyson, too, I attributed the mummers' knowledge of the empty house at Clifton. I had little doubt that if, indeed, she had managed to seduce young Toby, then they had made use of it for secret meetings. But a note had been written to the knight, a fact which made me hesitate until I suddenly remembered being told that Tabitha could both read and write, perhaps not well, but probably as well as the younger woman. It was more than likely that Sir George had never seen Alyson Carpenter's writing – there was, after all, no reason why he should have done – so he would not have queried if it were her hand or no. In any case, it had done all that was required and sent him off to Clifton on Childermass night to meet with his murderers. Had he recognized them before he died and known why they exacted vengeance?

The thought pulled me up short as I remembered with a jolt that I had spent that same night in the mummers' company while Dorcas took my place beside Adela at home. So was it possible that two, or maybe three of them, had been able to leave me sleeping and make their way to Clifton and back again without my being aware of their absence? It's true, I sleep soundly, but not so sound that at some point during the hours of darkness I don't wake up and become aware of my surroundings. I would say that at least once a night I'm roused by a full bladder and either make use of the chamber pot or piss out of the window if I feel in need of a breath of air. Why, therefore, would the night of Holy Innocents' Day have been any different?

But even as the thought entered my head, I recalled the remains of the poppy seed and lettuce juice lozenges on the battered tin plate that I had found beneath my bed. Tabitha had claimed that burning them through the night helped them all to sleep while on the road, the strong perfume making them oblivious of uncomfortable beds in strange places. No doubt she was right, and if you put them directly underneath a sleeper's bed the fumes would probably render him very nearly unconscious until morning. I remembered, too, a nagging headache that had troubled me throughout the following day.

Tabitha had been awake, dressed and sitting up when I had finally managed to open my eyes that morning. But she had looked tired. Had she been keeping guard over me while the menfolk had gone to lie in wait for Sir George? But what was it precisely that he had done to them? And why had they carved the word DIE into his chest when he was already dead? And why had Alderman Trefusis whispered the word ‘Dee' when he was dying? And, above all, was I correct in holding the mummers to blame, or was I off hunting yet another mare's nest while the true answer to these Christmas murders still eluded me?