The Saint John's Fern (26 page)

The thudding of horses’ hoofs and the jingle of harness made me glance to the right as a small, sombrely dressed cavalcade appeared around a bend in the path, a bullish, thick-necked man, arrayed all in black, riding at its head. It needed no one to tell me that this must be Sir Walter Champernowne, apprised of his son’s death and now on his way to Valletort Manor. This surely meant that the Sheriff’s officer – Guy Warren, the swineherd had called him – must have informed Bartholomew’s parents of his murder and of the identity of his suspected killer. And they, in their turn, had probably raised the hue and cry after Jack Golightly. I had to find out as soon as I could what was happening.

Without further ado, I shouldered my pack and left the shelter of my oak, pushing forward, past Sir Walter and his retinue of household officers who, as I expected, did not deign to acknowledge anyone so lowly as myself. A pedlar and one, moreover, on foot, would have been beneath their notice even if they had not had weightier matters on their minds. And by the time that all sight and sound of the horsemen had dwindled and died away, I had, by dint of rapid walking, managed to leave the woods behind. Almost at once, the feeling of impending danger, of evil, of menace, lifted as I stepped from shadow into sunlight; and as I neared Modbury, my spirits insensibly rose as well.

*   *   *

The little town, as I had anticipated, was in a state of ferment, news of the murder having preceded me by some considerable time. All trading and work appeared temporarily to have been suspended, with knots of people gathered on every street corner, at every cottage door and outside every ale house, discussing such unlooked-for tidings. There was about the place the air of excitement, overlaid with the half-genuine horror that such events usually provoke.

My appearance at Anne Fettiplace’s cottage was greeted with a shriek of welcome and relief by the lady herself, and a demand that I immediately tell everything I knew, so that she could pass it on to her neighbours.

‘And don’t pretend you weren’t at Valletort Manor when the murder happened!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sergeant Warren has already told us that there was a chapman present. It couldn’t have been anyone but you.’

I grabbed her arm and shook it urgently. ‘Is there talk of an arrest yet? Have you heard if the Sheriff’s officer named anyone specific in connection with Bartholomew Champernowne’s murder?’

She nodded vigorously. ‘He did. That man you mentioned – I forget what he’s called – but the one you said had a grudge against the whole family.’

‘Jack Golightly?’

‘Ay, that’s right. Sergeant Warren’s gone after him with a posse.’

‘And what will be done with Master Golightly?’ I asked. ‘If he’s unable to prove his innocence, what will happen to him? Will he be hauled off to Plymouth, or is there somewhere here, in Modbury, where he can be confined?’

But she was not attending. Her countenance had lifted into a smile as she glanced at someone behind me.

‘Here are my husband, and son, Simon. They’ll know,’ she said proudly.

It seemed that her menfolk had arrived home from Exeter as expected the previous day, and, having done a morning’s work without stopping at the appointed time for dinner, had now returned to the cottage hungry for a belated meal. They were both easy-going, good-natured men, and the older Fettiplace immediately extended an invitation to me to eat with them.

‘Mother’s told us all about you,’ the son added, shaking me warmly by the hand.

Mistress Fettiplace ushered us all indoors, saying excitedly, ‘You don’t know the half of it, my lad! Roger
did
sleep at Valletort Manor last night, and was still there this morning when Master Champernowne’s body was discovered. Didn’t I say, when there was mention of a pedlar being present, that it must be him?’

‘You did, Mother,’ the young man agreed, treating me to a broad wink as he seated himself at the table. ‘You’ll have to give us all the details, chapman, if you please, so that we can lord it over the rest of Modbury with our superior knowledge.’

My first impulse had been to refuse Master Fettiplace’s kind invitation to join him at table, but my gnawing hunger – for I had had no dinner, none having been offered me at Valletort Manor – combined with the savoury smell of his wife’s cooking, was too strong an inducement to accept. I should be of little use to anyone, I reasoned, with an empty stomach. So, while we ate our meat pasties and drank our ale, I recounted all that had passed during my brief sojourn with Berenice Gifford, and also made the Fettiplaces free of my own version of what I thought had really happened.

When I had finished, Master Fettiplace rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘You may well be right, chapman, in your assumptions, but you’ve precious little proof to go on as far as I can see. Why would Beric Gifford, even allowing for the fact that he’s already a murderer, want to kill Bartholomew Champernowne? He was pleased with his sister’s betrothal. Everyone in Modbury’ll tell you that. While this Jack Golightly, on the other hand, is an avowed enemy of the family, and, if I’ve got the story correctly from my goody here, bore Master Bartholomew an additional grudge for what took place at his cottage a few nights back. I dare say you’ll find yourself called on as a witness.’

‘That’s true enough,’ his son agreed, tearing a hunk from the loaf and cramming it into his mouth. He added thickly, his speech only just intelligible through the mass of bread, ‘We must pray that your friend can prove his innocence beyond all doubt, otherwise I’m afraid matters could go very ill with him.’

‘Suppose he can’t,’ I said. ‘Where will he be taken?’

‘To Exeter eventually, most likely for trial at the Winter Assize.’

‘But in the meantime?’ I urged.

Master Fettiplace, whose name I had by this time learnt was Ivo, cleared his mouth with a swig of ale before giving me an answer.

‘Plymouth would be my guess, to the lock-up underneath the Guildhall. There’s only a very small cell here, and if it should happen to be already occupied…’ He shrugged and let the sentence hang.

I chewed my lip. ‘How soon shall I be able to find out if an arrest’s been made?’

Simon Fettiplace snorted with laughter. ‘Don’t worry! You won’t have to wait very long, believe me. News fairly flies around in these parts. I always say we know what’s happening on the other side of the Tamar before the good people of Cornwall know it themselves.’

‘True enough,’ his father concurred. ‘If this friend of yours has been charged with Bartholomew Champernowne’s murder, I reckon you’ll be bound to hear of it before nightfall. But,’ he went on, ‘I don’t know what you can do about it. You won’t be able to alter things, for the reasons I gave you just now. And once that fool Guy Warren has got an idea in his head you won’t shift it easily, not unless you can offer him proof positive to the contrary.’

I glanced at Anne Fettiplace, who nodded in agreement with her husband’s words. ‘Guy’s a stubborn man,’ she added on a note of warning.

I took another pasty and bit into it, letting the juices run down my chin. ‘Then I’ll just have to prove to Sergeant Warren that he’s made a mistake,’ I said.

‘Do you
really
think that Beric Gifford is the killer?’ Simon Fettiplace asked me. ‘I’d have bet my life that he’d fled abroad by now. But I’m forgetting! My mother told us that you claim to have seen him at Oreston, and only a few nights since.’

I nodded. ‘Outside the Bird of Passage Inn.’

Ivo Fettiplace probed his back teeth with his tongue while considering this statement.

‘Are you absolutely certain that it was Beric Gifford you saw?’ he enquired at last.

‘If it wasn’t Beric,’ I answered with some asperity, ‘then Katherine Glover has found herself another lover in a very short space of time.’

‘How was he dressed?’ Mistress Fettiplace wanted to know.

‘It was too dark to see much, and, besides, I was looking through a narrow gap in my bedchamber shutters. He was muffled in a cloak and had one of those flat-crowned caps pulled forward over his eyes.’

‘He did have such a hat, it’s true,’ my hostess confirmed. ‘Made of black velvet. Wore it a lot, he did. In fact, come to think of it, he was rarely without it.’ She paused, staring at me. ‘Now, what have I said to make you look all whichways, like that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered slowly. ‘Indeed, I’m not sure if it was something you said or that I said. Or maybe something we both said.’ There was a silence while I racked my brains, trying to discover what was bothering me. Then, ‘No, it’s no good,’ I sighed. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it.’

We all spent the next few minutes recalling as accurately as we could the more recent utterances of Mistress Fettiplace and myself, but to no avail. My memory refused to be jogged a second time, and, in the end, we were forced to abandon the attempt.

‘You’ll remember whatever it was later,’ Anne Fettiplace said comfortably, beginning to clear away the dirty dishes. ‘That’s the way it always happens. If I can’t recollect where I’ve put a thing, I let it go, and the answer always comes to me when I’m not even thinking about it.’

‘True, true,’ nodded her husband. He refilled all our cups with ale. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘you’re satisfied, Master Chapman, that the man you saw outside the Bird of Passage Inn at Oreston must be Beric Gifford.’

‘I can’t understand why he didn’t escape abroad as soon as he’d murdered his uncle,’ Simon objected, loosening his belt and sighing with repletion. ‘What sane man would wait around to get his neck stretched? Or to spend the rest of his life in hiding?’

‘If he’s willing to risk eventual madness by eating Saint John’s fern and constantly making himself invisible,’ Ivo Fettiplace said after a moment’s silence, ‘then I suppose there’s no reason why he shouldn’t defy the law and stay at Valletort Manor until he dies.’

‘Do either of you know him well?’ I asked.

Father and son exchanged glances, each waiting for the other to speak, then the older man shrugged.

‘I suppose everyone in Modbury knows him and Berenice. They are – or rather were, before this terrible business – in and out of the town ever since they could ride a pony. And I suppose we, as a family, took a greater interest in them than most folk, on account of Anne’s sister being housekeeper to old Master Capstick.’

‘Do you like them?’

‘They’re a civil enough young couple,’ Simon Fettiplace conceded. ‘She can be bad-tempered if anyone thwarts her or she isn’t treated with the deference she thinks she’s due, but I’ve never had a cross word from Beric. I’ve always thought him a pleasant young fellow, and I was shocked beyond measure when I heard what he’d done.’

‘We all were,’ his mother added, overhearing this last remark as she came back into the cottage with a full pail of water. She poured some of the liquid into a pan which she then hung over the fire to heat, and set down the bucket and the rest of its contents on one end of the table, announcing her intention of making water-cider with the pippins she had bought the day before yesterday from Bevis Godsey. ‘It’s high time you two were getting back to the sawmill,’ she reprimanded her menfolk.

But neither man seemed inclined to heed her words, turning deaf ears to her suggestion.

‘Beric’s always been a good horseman,’ Ivo Fettiplace remarked cutting himself a wedge of the goat’s-milk cheese that had not yet been cleared from the table.

‘He is that,’ agreed Simon, following his father’s example. ‘When he bought that horse of his – that great black brute with as evil an eye as I’ve ever seen in an animal – everyone said as how he’d break is neck. But not Beric!’ Simon crammed the cheese into his mouth. ‘He had that creature eating out of his hand before he’d had it a fortnight. Together, they were like one of those mythical beings I’ve heard tell of, half man, half horse. But I forget their name.’

‘You mean centaurs,’ I said.

‘Do I?’ He swallowed convulsively, regarding me with some curiosity. ‘You’re probably right. You’ve pretty good book learning for a chapman.’

‘I was given an education by the monks at Glastonbury,’ I explained. ‘My mother intended me for the religious life, but I had other ideas.’ I turned to Ivo. ‘Would you agree, Master Fettiplace, that Beric Gifford is as good a horseman as your son claims he is?’

The elder man helped himself to another slab of cheese. ‘I would that. There’s not been the horse foaled that he couldn’t ride. Never a second’s trouble with any of them that I’ve ever seen.’

‘And what about Mistress Berenice? Is she as fine a horsewoman as her brother is a horseman?’

‘Very nearly,’ Mistress Fettiplace cut in. ‘Though you won’t find men giving her the credit that’s her due.’ She whisked the cheese off the table and put it away in a cupboard, with a muttered animadversion about insatiable appetites.

Husband and son ignored the stricture and continued to dwell on the riding skills of the Giffords.

‘Mistress Berenice is a good enough horsewoman, I grant you,’ Simon admitted. ‘But she hasn’t the same confidence as her brother.’

‘Almost!’ Anne Fettiplace protested indignantly as she ladled some of the hot water into a bowl in order to begin washing the dirty dishes.

‘But not quite.’ Her husband rose from his stool and stretched his arms above his head until the bones cracked. ‘Come on, Simon, my lad. This won’t get the wood cut. At this rate it’ll be nightfall before we’ve sawn up that load of timber.’ He held out a calloused, leathery hand. ‘In case we don’t meet again, Master Chapman, I’ll wish you God’s blessing. Will you be staying much longer in Modbury?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I answered. ‘I must certainly remain until I get definite news of my friend.’ I did not add that if Jack Golightly had indeed been arrested, then my self-appointed mission to track down Beric Gifford would become of the greatest urgency.

‘Of course! Of course!’ agreed my host genially. ‘And you must remain here with Anne for as long as you wish. She’ll be glad of your company, won’t you, my dear?’

‘I’m depending upon his staying for a while at least,’ his wife responded. ‘I want you to meet all my neighbours, Roger, and tell them the story of your visit to Valletort Manor. Only,’ she cautioned, ‘I wouldn’t repeat your theory concerning Beric Gifford until you have amassed more proof. Besides, they won’t be interested in that.’ She gave me her most winning smile. ‘I hope you’ll agree to do this for me.’