The Saint John's Fern (2 page)

I’m not a good sailor and I’m far happier with my feet planted firmly on shore, so I don’t know why I respond in the way that I do to the smell of the sea. But I’ve noticed throughout my life that I’m not the only confirmed landsman to do so. I can only suppose that it’s because here, in this island, and in neighbouring Ireland, whichever way you travel, the sea is at the end of so many journeys, and has a meaning, a significance, even for those people who have never seen it. The mere thought of it quickens the blood, and the sight of it sends a thrill of anticipation coursing up and down the spine. I think all islanders must have a little salt in their veins, for I noticed that Peter Threadgold also raised his head and sniffed appreciatively as we passed through the Old Town Gate.

‘Here we are then,’ he said, as we traversed the main street of Old Town Ward before turning left into Bilbury Street, where his daughter lived.

This, as both the name of the gate and ward made obvious, was the oldest part of Plymouth, many of the houses and cottages in Bilbury Street having been built, so Master Threadgold somewhat apologetically informed me, well over a hundred years earlier. I had to admit, although not aloud, that most of them looked it, quite a few being almost derelict and others hovering on the brink of decay. One or two, however, were well maintained, the outside walls being washed with that mixture of potash and sulphur which turns them a delicate greenish-grey, and holes in the thatch having been patched with iris leaves, a plant which grew in abundance in some of the gardens.

To my relief, it was in front of one of these better-kept cottages that we finally drew up, having driven almost the entire length of the street.

‘Whoa, boy!’ my companion exclaimed, pulling on the reins, although the cob’s pace was so steady that the order was superfluous, the lightest of touches being sufficient to stop him in his tracks.

Immediately ahead of us was another of the town gates – Martyn’s Gate, Peter Threadgold said – which, as I was to learn later, gave access to the east-bound road that passed the Carmelite Friary just beyond the walls. The cottage before which we had halted was separated from the gatehouse by only one other dwelling, a two-storeyed edifice in excellent repair, its wooden frontage painted red and gold, and with a tiled roof from which no slates appeared to be missing. It was far superior to any other building in the street, money having obviously been lavished upon its upkeep, and no expense spared to ensure that it was at once recognizable as the residence of a gentleman. There was something not quite right about it, however, but it took a moment or two for me to realize just what it was. Then it dawned on me that every window in the house was shuttered in spite of the warmth and brightness of a sunny afternoon, and that the door was not only inhospitably shut, but the knocker had been removed, leaving merely the iron hook from which the clapper had been suspended.

Peter Threadgold, whose eyes had followed my gaze, remarked, ‘That’s strange! Master Capstick must have gone away, although at his age, I shouldn’t have thought—’

He was interrupted by the emergence from the cottage of two very excited small boys, one about five, the other, I judged, a couple of years younger, and, hard on their heels, a woman whose plump, smooth face was wreathed in smiles.

‘Grandda! Grandda!’ The children reached up their little arms, trying ineffectually to drag their grandsire from his seat, while their mother laughingly admonished them.

‘Robin! Thomas! That will do! Behave! Father, what a lovely surprise. Come down before the boys do you a mischief.’ She caught sight of me. ‘And … and your friend, also,’ she added uncertainly.

Peter Threadgold leapt nimbly to the ground, catching up the two boys in turn and tossing them, squealing with delight, into the air. Then, as I was by this time standing alongside him, he turned to introduce me.

‘Master Chapman, this is my daughter, Mistress Cobbold, and these two young imps of Satan are my grandsons. Joanna, my dear, our friend here is looking for a bed for the night, being more or less a stranger to these parts, and I thought you might be able to find him a corner.’

Joanna Cobbold dimpled. ‘If he doesn’t mind sharing a bed with one of the children, he’s more than welcome. Now, come along inside, the pair of you, and Father, I can’t wait to hear all your news. How is Mother and when can we expect to see her again?’

The interior of the cottage was as clean and neat as the exterior had led me to believe it would be, and I was soon settled at the table with a cup of Mistress Cobbold’s home-brewed ale in my hand. And in order to draw off the boys’ overwhelming attentions from their grandfather, I opened my pack and allowed them to rummage through its contents, while Peter Threadgold and his daughter talked, uninterrupted, exchanging all the latest family gossip.

Later, as we were sitting down to a meal of savoury-smelling rabbit stew, followed by pippin tarts and goat’s-milk cheese and chives, the master of the house returned, greeting his father-in-law with genuine affection and adding his voice to his wife’s, urging Peter to stay with them overnight.

‘No, no, lad, I daren’t.’ The carter shook his head regretfully. ‘I told Martha I’d be straight home after I’d delivered my load at the priory. She’ll have me overturned at the bottom of a ditch as it is. I must be going, I’m afraid, as soon as I’ve finished eating. But you’ll oblige me by looking after my friend Roger Chapman here.’

John Cobbold made no further attempt to persuade his father-in-law to remain, and for the rest of the meal the conversation turned on the present parlous state of the wine trade in Plymouth, my host being employed, as I gathered, by a vintner who had a shop near the market cross. The expulsion of the English from Bordeaux twenty-odd years before, and the subsequent edict forbidding any Englishman to take up residence in that city, had, I learnt, started the rot; and now the trade was fast becoming the monopoly of the hated Flemings and the even more detested members of the Hanseatic League.

‘In fact,’ John Cobbold added gloomily, ‘trade is generally bad altogether at present. Fishing isn’t what it was. Even the hake business is losing money, and you know how plentiful hake’s always been in the waters off this coast.’ He sighed. ‘There aren’t any fortunes to be made from it nowadays, not like old Master Capstick’s, next door.’

‘May God rest his soul,’ Joanna added, making the sign of the Cross.

Peter Threadgold clicked his tongue. ‘He’s dead then, is he, old Oliver Capstick? I noticed when we arrived that the house was boarded up and the knocker removed.’ The carter rubbed his nose. ‘I must say, I’m surprised. He was getting on in years, it’s true, but he was always so healthy and active that I can’t imagine him succumbing to illness. But there, it happens to us all sooner or later. When our time comes, it comes and there’s no escaping it. Poor old fellow! A bit cantankerous and difficult, by all accounts, but he was very polite to me whenever I was here and we happened to meet in the street. And that isn’t always the way of the rich towards the poor, as we very well know. What did he die of?’

I saw John and Joanna Cobbold exchange glances, then the former said, ‘You two boys can go and play, if you’ve finished eating. I can hear some of your friends outside.’ Robin and Thomas needed no further encouragement to leave the table and the tedious conversation of their elders to join the other boys and girls in the street, and were gone like a shot from a bow. But their father waited until the cottage door had closed behind them before answering Peter’s question. ‘Master Capstick didn’t die of any illness. He was murdered – and very brutally murdered – last May.’

Chapter Two

Peter Threadgold flinched visibly, the shock of his son-in-law’s words hitting him with the force of a blow. He was not old, having, I guessed, seen some fifty winters, but old enough to fear the horrors of a brutal death; to identify with the vulnerability that the waning of physical strength brings in its wake.

For my own part, I was unsurprised by John Cobbold’s revelation. The suspicion that here, in Bilbury Street, was the reason for my presence in the town of Plymouth, had been growing steadily upon me ever since I had clapped eyes on the shuttered house next door. Consequently, I settled myself more comfortably on my stool, took another chive from the dish in the centre of the table and, chewing thoughtfully, prepared to listen while all was revealed.

‘What happened?’ Peter Threadgold asked, after a second or two’s horrified silence. ‘How –’ he cleared his throat – ‘how did Master Capstick die?’

‘He was bludgeoned to death in his bed,’ Joanna answered, lowering her voice as though afraid that one of the children might have crept back into the cottage without her noticing. She added impressively, ‘I saw his body,’ and waited for a moment while her father and I looked suitably appalled. She then went on, ‘I was in the yard, spreading out my washing to dry, when I heard Mistress Trenowth start screaming, so naturally, I ran next door to discover what was wrong. I found her upstairs in Master Capstick’s bedchamber.’ Joanna gave an involuntary shudder. ‘It was horrible. Horrible! His head had been beaten to a pulp and the bedclothes were soaked in blood.’ She began to cry, making little whimpering sounds like those of a wounded animal.

John Cobbold got up from his place to walk round the table and sit on the bench beside her, putting a broad, workmanlike arm around her shoulders and giving them a squeeze.

‘We don’t discuss it in front of the boys,’ he said, ‘and most of the time Joanna forces herself to forget all about it. But then, when she does remember, everything comes back afresh, and upsets her.’

‘Who’s Mistress Trenowth?’ I asked, and was told that she had been the old man’s housekeeper.

‘She was with him a very long time,’ Joanna said, pulling herself together and dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her apron. ‘Ever since his wife died, which, I understand from neighbours, was some fifteen or sixteen years ago.’ She gave another sniff and wiped her nose on the back of one hand. ‘Mistress Trenowth was fond of him, I think, in spite of the fact that, when the mood took him, Master Capstick could be an old curmudgeon.’ She smiled tremulously. ‘In truth, we all found him a bit difficult now and then. He used to shout at the children if they made too much noise, playing in the street. But on other occasions, he’d thrown them sweetmeats out of his bedroom window.’

‘And he wasn’t proud,’ her husband added. ‘In spite of his wealth, he stayed here, in the house he’d been born in, instead of moving to Notte Street, where all the new buildings are going up, and where most of the people with money in this town are buying new properties. It didn’t seem to worry him that many of the houses in Bilbury Street are falling into a state of disrepair.’

‘But do they know who did this terrible deed, and why?’ Peter Threadgold demanded. ‘You say the murder happened last May, and here it is October and you don’t mention an arrest. Haven’t the Sheriff’s officers caught the murderer yet?’

‘Yes to your first question, and no to your second,’ John Cobbold answered. ‘The murderer was Master Capstick’s great-nephew, Beric Gifford of Modbury. We know that for certain because Mistress Trenowth met him at the foot of the stairs, as he was coming down, the front of his tunic all stained with blood – or at least, so she remembered later. She says she didn’t really take much notice at the time. It seems she’d just come from the kitchen with the old man’s breakfast, which she was carrying up to him on a tray, and wasn’t expecting to see anyone else at that hour of the morning, not having heard Beric enter the house. He didn’t return her greeting when she spoke to him, but let himself out of the front door without a word. Mistress Trenowth went on upstairs – and found Master Capstick lying there, in all his gore. That was when she started screaming.’

‘She’s sure that it was this – this what did you call him? – Beric Gifford?’ I asked John Cobbold.

He nodded emphatically. ‘Oh, yes! And she wasn’t the only person to see and recognize him, both on his journey from Modbury to Plymouth, and on his ride home again. Any number of people saw him – including Joanna.’

I turned to my hostess, who had by now recovered her poise and was sitting bolt upright on the bench, her hands tightly clasped together on the table in front of her. ‘
You
saw him? And you’d swear that it was this great-nephew of Master Capstick?’

‘Of course I’d swear! I know him well by sight. He and his sister have often visited their great-uncle in the past. Just before I went to spread out my washing, I’d been in the street, talking to Bessie Hannaford, my neighbour on the other side, and as I turned into the yard, Beric Gifford rode up on that big black horse of his.’

‘A huge, showy, very spirited animal,’ John Cobbold put in. ‘Master Capstick told me once that his great-nephew was the only person who could manage the brute. He was quite proud of the fact, even though he strongly disapproved of the boy spending so much on a horse that no one else on the manor could ride. A shocking waste of money he called it—’

Peter Threadgold broke in impatiently, ‘But if it’s known he killed Master Capstick, why hasn’t this Beric Gifford been arrested and hanged?’

His son-in-law shrugged. ‘No one can find him,’ he answered in a hushed voice. ‘Since last being seen on the morning of the murder, he’s seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.’

There was silence for a moment, then I suggested, ‘He’s run away, do you mean?’

Joanna Cobbold stirred uneasily. ‘He would have had to run very fast,’ she said, ‘to outstrip the Sheriff’s men. On my and Mistress Trenowth’s evidence, there was a posse after him within the half-hour, and it seems that when they arrived at Valletort Manor, Beric Gifford’s horse was in the stables, still lathered after its ride. But there was no sign of Master Gifford himself, and he hasn’t been seen since. The general opinion is that his sister’s hiding him somewhere on the manor, for, by every account, the two of them have always been as thick as thieves.’

‘But surely that’s impossible,’ her father protested. ‘The Sheriff’s men must have searched every nook and cranny of both house and demesne. If he’s there, they’re bound to have found him.’