11 - The Lammas Feast (31 page)

‘Take care,’ Adela said anxiously, as she handed me my cudgel.

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I assured her, returning the kiss she gave me with interest.

But as I passed through the Frome Gate and strode up Broad Street, I knew the stirrings of uneasiness. I should have demanded more details of Master Cock-up-spotty. I looked to see if I could find him, but in vain: he had already vanished into the warren of sordid alleyways which was his natural home. I continued on my way to the bottom of High Street and turned right on to Saint Nicholas Backs. There were still a lot of people about, a ship was unloading at the quayside – although not the one I had hoped to see – and there was a strong smell of fish on the air. I should have felt reassured, but, for some inexplicable reason, my uneasiness increased.

Richard had not yet arrived, but, as a sheriff’s officer, he could easily have been delayed. I stood on the corner of Ballance Street and waited, leaning on my cudgel. Houses crowded me in on either side, with their deeply recessed, dark doorways. I couldn’t move into the middle of the street because of the (at that time of day) overflowing, stinking drain. I was peering out over the Backs, looking for Richard, when some instinct, born of my general nervousness, warned me of danger. I half turned, sensing someone behind me – and so received the blow that was aimed at the crown of my head, and meant to kill me, on the right-hand side of my face.

A
lthough a glancing blow, it nevertheless knocked me out.

Fortunately for me – or so I learned later – one of the passers-by on the quayside saw what happened and, in an unwonted display of public-spiritedness, rushed to my assistance, calling on others for help, and a little knot of Good Samaritans soon formed around me. One of these was Dick Hodge, on his way home to supper, so that I was immediately identified and my address supplied. A blanket was fetched from a nearby house, I was rolled on to it and four of the heftier men, taking a corner each, carried me home to Lewin’s Mead.

I remember Adela’s white face bending over me as I was lowered on to our mattress, but nothing after that until the local physician’s measured tones pierced my consciousness, assuring her that I had suffered no lasting damage and that a period of rest was all that was needed to restore me to my usual robust state of health. At the time, just before I drifted off once more into oblivion, I thought him a fool who didn’t know his business. But I awoke next morning feeling very much better.

Adela was lying beside me, propped on one elbow, watching me anxiously.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ I said, aware that the right-hand side of my face was extremely sore and stiff. ‘What do I look like?’

She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘If you can worry about your appearance, you must be improving. You have a black eye and your cheekbone’s badly bruised, but I’ll make you a primrose leaf poultice later on. That should take some of the heat out of the swelling. Also, the doctor left some lettuce pellets for you to take to ease the aches and pains. Roger!’ She put her arms around me carefully, but couldn’t resist giving me a little squeeze. ‘Do you know who did this to you?’

I shook my head. ‘I missed seeing him by inches. But how did I get home? Who brought me?’

She told me briefly what had happened, but when I asked if my rescuer had caught a glimpse of my assailant, it was her turn to shake her head. ‘He was too far away. But after he’d seen you safely home, he alerted the sheriff’s office to the attack. Richard came to see me last night and I told him of the message you’d received. He was highly incensed at having his name taken in vain, but couldn’t hold out much hope of catching the culprit unless we could trace the messenger. He said he trusted you’d soon recover, and that he’d call in to find out how you were going on sometime today.’

‘I suppose I could go to see him,’ I suggested, forgetting to whisper and so rousing both Adam and Hercules together.

‘You are not leaving that bed until tomorrow,’ Adela informed me in a tone of voice I have mentioned before, and which defied any attempt at argument. ‘Even then, I’ll have to see how you are.
Down, Hercules
! The master’s in no mood for your antics.’

She went to fetch Adam and put him to her breast.

Hercules was so astonished at her ferocity, while I was equally astounded at being referred to as ‘the master’, that we both stared silently at one another. Then Hercules removed himself from the mattress and slunk back to his own bed without so much as a whimper of annoyance, but I’ll swear he grinned at me and lifted his lip. That dog knew who ruled the roost in our house.

I submitted gracefully to Adela’s ministrations while she washed me, fed me a breakfast of oatmeal and dried herring and treated my bruises with the promised primrose leaf poultice. I also swallowed two of the doctor’s lettuce pellets without making too much of a fuss, but insisted both on shaving myself and on getting up to use the chamber pot, rather than suffer the indignity of trying to aim into it while in bed. Finally, I made no protest when my pillow was shaken and I was ordered to sleep while my wife took Adam off to the shops to buy the day’s supply of victuals. As soon as the door closed behind them, Hercules hurtled out of his own bed and into mine, curling up in the crook of my knees and falling asleep almost at once.

I very quickly followed suit as the lettuce pellets did their work, but my slumber was an uneasy jumble of strange dreams. When, eventually, I awoke, the dream that stayed with me, and was uppermost in my mind, was of walking along the river bank with Goody Godsmark, who kept chanting, ‘People lie, you know! People lie to protect the ones they love. People always lie!’

I rolled on to my back, taking care not to disturb the dog, and linked my hands behind my neck. My head was still hurting, but I ignored it. It was time to put my thoughts in order.

I looked back over the past ten days, starting at the beginning with the arrival of the stranger. And there, at once, I picked up one of the main threads that ran all through the subsequent pattern of events – the connection with Brittany. The stranger had disembarked from a Breton ship and, whether or not a Breton himself, he had come from the duchy and was most likely a Tudor agent. (It was, after all, a conclusion I had drawn on sheer probability alone, long before I knew of the suspicions of those in authority.) And then Brittany had cropped up again in my conversation with both John Overbecks, who had been at the sack of Fougères, and with Philip Lamprey. What was it Philip had said, referring to the siege?
That was
. . .
when?
’
49
? Twenty-nine years ago. John Overbecks wouldn’t have been much more than twenty-two or three, maybe not so much, a young man disgusted by the atrocities of war, who, according to his own account, had thought of deserting.

‘It’s all right, you’re not talking to one of those cowards who ran away and left his comrades in the lurch,’ he had said to me in the Green Lattis. But how did I know that that was the truth? ‘All people lie,’ Goody Godsmark had told me, her cry continuing to echo through my head. And, ‘He was soldiering in France for years’ – Adela’s voice came back to me – ‘before he came home and took up baking.’ But that, presumably, was only John’s account of what he’d been doing in the meantime. Suppose he
hadn’t
been soldiering? Suppose . . .

Suppose what? I began to shake. A touch of fever, no doubt, but it was also excitement. I knew I was on the verge of some discovery. Any moment now, I should see the way clear before me . . .

‘I hope you don’t mind me walking in like this,’ said Richard Manifold. ‘I knocked, but you obviously didn’t hear. The door was unbolted, so . . .’ He let the sentence go and stood looking down at me, pursing his lips. ‘You’re a fool, Roger,’ he continued after a moment or two contemplating my bruised and battered face. ‘You should know that I don’t deal in vague messages of that sort. If I’d wanted to see you, I would have invited you to the Council Hall or come to visit you myself, as I’m doing now, when there’s something I need to ask you.’

‘Oh, I see! You haven’t come just to enquire after my health, then!’ I sounded petulant even to my own ears, and he quite naturally looked surprised.

‘Did you expect me to? I’ve more important things to do with my time than run around after numskulls who get themselves beaten up through their own stupidity.’

‘You told Adela . . .’ I began, irritated by his indifference to my plight, but he interrupted me.

‘Oh, Adela! She’s a woman. You tell women all sorts of lies if you want to keep them sweet.’

Lies again! How that word kept on cropping up this morning!

‘What is it you want to ask me?’ I snapped.

‘Yesterday evening, I suddenly remembered that on one occasion, when you were airing your theories about these murders, you referred to the necessity of catching the culprit
or culprits
. What made you think there might be more than one killer?’

The question was unexpected and I was nonplussed. But I was also intrigued, because, now that Richard had brought it to my attention, I recollected using the same phrase to myself more than once. But why? In some secret compartment of my mind, I had evidently considered the possibility that the murders were not necessarily the work of the same person. I needed to think about it, but quietly, and preferably alone.

‘No real reason,’ I replied offhandedly. ‘Just an expression.’

Richard regarded me thoughtfully. I met his gaze with one of limpid innocence.

‘It wasn’t a considered opinion, then?’ He sounded doubtful.

‘No.’ That, at least, was the truth.

‘Right.’ He held out his hand. ‘In that case, I’ll let you get back to sleep. I hope you’re better soon. And don’t answer any more bogus summonses, from me or from anyone else. Think next time, before you go rushing off to get your head broken.’

I swallowed my indignation at this schoolmasterish reprimand because I was anxious to see him leave. Hercules, who had woken up on Richard’s entry, now decided that he, too, had had enough of this intruder. He got to his feet, stretching and baring his formidable array of sharp little teeth. The sergeant took the hint and went.

‘Good dog,’ I said, patting him.

We both settled down again, he to go back to sleep, I to continue thinking things through. Culprit or
culprits
? No, I must let that be for the moment. I returned to the time when I had first observed the stranger. I remembered my impression of him; somewhere in his mid-twenties, stockily built, brown hair, hazel eyes. A common enough appearance, but one which, apart from his age, had found an uncanny echo a few minutes later in John Overbecks, as Adela, the children and I had entered the bakery. And when we had emerged after giving our order for the Lammastide bread, the young man had stared at me from across the street. At me? Or had he really been looking at somebody else? Had he, too, seen a reflection of his own features in the baker? A man
old enough to be his father
. . .

I put a hand to my forehead and realized that I was sweating profusely as my excitement mounted. A pattern of sorts was beginning to emerge. It was all speculative, but there was also a kind of logic to it. First, there was a man who, in his youth, had fought in France and who, on his own admission, had been so revolted by the cruelty of war that he had been tempted to desert (as many another man had done, on both sides, before and after him). I remembered thinking at the time that perhaps he
had
deserted, but he had taken great pains to refute any such accusation. All the same – ‘You protect the people you love at all costs,’ Goody Godsmark had told me. ‘You lie and steal and cheat and kill for them.’

Who did John Overbecks love enough to lie and steal and cheat and kill for? The answer was simple. His wife: the young, fey girl who had captured his heart in late middle age and whom he adored, worshipped almost. But, once again, why? Why would it be necessary for him to kill to protect her? Suddenly, I thought I knew. Suddenly, everything began to take shape in my head. I could see, too, why, away in Brittany, a young man – not Welsh, but half-English – might enter the service of Henry Tudor in order to get back at the man he hated, a man he knew to be a loyal Yorkist. I also thought I understood why, when an agent was needed to visit known supporters of the Tudor cause in the west country, particularly in and around Bristol, this young man had volunteered. He had a special interest in the city . . .

I dragged myself up and out of bed and began to dress. I felt worse than I had expected, and had to stop and rest on several occasions in order to give the room, which was spinning round and round in a disconcerting way, time to settle. Hercules roused himself and barked reproachfully. His dream of a day snuggled up beside me had been rudely shattered.

The door opened and Adela came in.

‘I’ve left Adam at Margaret’s,’ she announced, putting her basket on the table and starting to unpack it. ‘I went to see her before I did my shopping. She said to leave him with her for the rest of the morning. It would give Nick and Bess a chance to get used to him again, before they’re fetched home tomorrow.’ She broke off, suddenly aware of what I was doing. ‘Get back into bed this minute,’ she stormed. ‘You’re not fit to be up and about yet!’

‘I have to go out,’ I argued, struggling to lace my shirt to my breeches. ‘I have to see John Overbecks.’

‘John Overbecks? In heaven’s name, why?’

‘I can’t explain. Not yet, anyway. It would take too long. But I think he may be our killer. Or one of them, at least.’ I pulled on my tunic, then stood still until everything calmed down around me. ‘I’ll be all right once I get outside.’ I buckled on my belt and pouch, then pulled my hood and cape over my head, letting the hood fall back. I picked up my cudgel.

Adela was staring at me aghast. ‘You can’t do this, Roger. You look terrible. Don’t be a fool! If you have any suspicions concerning Master Overbecks – though heaven alone knows why you should – tell them to Richard. I’ll find him and bring him here, if you’ll just be sensible and lie down again. Please! This instant!’