13 - The Midsummer Rose (26 page)

I privately thought it a bit late for such a precaution – half of Bristol seemed to know of their liaison – but I didn’t say so. What would have been the point? Marianne raised a tearful face from Luke’s shoulder and made an effort to control her overwrought emotions.

‘S–Sorry!’ she gasped. ‘It’s just that everything’s so awful!’

‘It will pass,’ he answered, kissing her gently between the eyes. ‘Trust me. Everything will be all right.’

She gave a tremulous smile. ‘As … As long as I have you,’ she whispered.

And, somewhat to my surprise, I found myself agreeing with her. Luke Prettywood was behaving with a maturity that surprised me. A woman on the verge of hysterics, which was how Marianne appeared to me, can be an unnerving ordeal for a young man. She opened her mouth to say something more, but he sealed it with another kiss.

‘By the way,’ he said lightly, ‘your father has dismissed me from the brewery because of my behaviour on Midsummer Eve. Assaulting an officer of the law is more than he’s prepared to stomach. So it may be easier to avoid one another’s company than we think.’

He had successfully diverted her attention away from her own woes, as no doubt he had intended.

‘Dismissed you?’ The vulnerable, kittenish look had vanished and the pretty, rounded features hardened with fury. ‘
Dismissed you?
I’ll soon see about that!’

Already, as I could see, calculations were going on behind those luminous grey eyes as Marianne considered how best to persuade Gregory Alefounder to change his mind, without revealing her own intense interest in the outcome.

At this point, Hercules, who had settled down to guard my pack where I had dropped it on entering Saint Giles, ambled across and cocked a leg against one of mine, a warm, wet stream flowing down inside my left boot, while my companions, temporarily forgetting their troubles, burst out laughing.

‘Does he often do that?’ Luke enquired when he could catch his breath.

I sighed. ‘Only when he has a grievance. At present, he’s annoyed at being kept waiting while we visited the crypt.’

Marianne glanced up quickly at her swain. ‘Why were you in the crypt?’

Luke hedged, plainly not wishing to upset her further just at present. ‘It’s … It’s nothing important, sweeting. I’ll tell you later. By the way, how did you know where to find me?’

‘Oh, I was unable to stay in the house a moment longer. It’s stifling in this heat, and I felt I couldn’t bear Elizabeth’s company for another second. She’s in such a peculiar mood. More angry than grieving. Yesterday was dreadful! So I got up early and when I’d breakfasted I decided that I must go out. I went to the brewery first, but you weren’t there. Of course, now I understand why. Father was horrid to me. He yelled and said I was a disgrace, wandering about the city without a maid in attendance and me a widow of only one day. I ought to be at home, keeping to my chamber. All the apprentices and carters were standing around in the yard, listening. It was so humiliating. I just burst into tears and ran away. And then I bumped into that apothecary who keeps the shop near the brothels. He was knocking on our door as I reached home. I don’t know why – some remedy for Elizabeth or Dame Dorothy, I suppose – and he told me that he’d noticed you and the chapman entering Saint Giles’s Church. So I came here.’

Witherspoon!

‘Did you tell him you were looking for Master Prettywood?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, of course not. I mean, I wasn’t, not exactly, but he just seemed to assume that I was. And as soon as he mentioned your name, of course I knew I
did
want to see you.’ She gazed, misty-eyed, at her lover.

‘Ah well,’ I said, unwilling to intrude any longer upon this touching scene, ‘I must be on my way before Hercules disgraces himself again.’ Without thinking, I clapped Luke on the shoulder and he winced. I apologized. ‘I hope your fortunes are soon on the mend, my friend. Mistress Avenel!’ I gave her a little bow. These polite gestures are greatly appreciated by the gentler sex. Or so my mother always taught me. ‘Please accept my deepest sympathy for your loss. Forgive me if I say that I hope soon to prove that Burl Hodge is not your husband’s murderer. In which case, I might even be able to point the finger at whoever is.’

She gave me a faint, watery smile and clung even tighter to Luke. I picked up my pack, took hold of the dog’s leading string and quit the church, leaving them still standing locked together in the nave.

It was nearly ten o’clock. I went home for my dinner.

I recounted the morning’s events so far to Adela. She was unimpressed.

I could guess, by the two horn books lying on the other end of the kitchen table, that she had probably spent a couple of profitless hours trying yet again to teach Nicholas and Elizabeth their alphabet and numbers. But that pair were far more interested in inventing new games than in serious learning. As for Adam, tied into his little chair, he was quiet for once, lost in some mysterious world of his own, thumb in mouth, the brown eyes, so like his mother’s, fixed dreamily on the middle distance. I wondered uneasily what mischief he was plotting.

When the meal – fish stew, as it was Friday – was over, I rose from the table and picked up my cudgel and pack. I glanced at Hercules, but he was pointedly stretched full-length beside his food and water trough, giving a good imitation of a dog exhausted by the heat.

‘It seems a shame to disturb him,’ I said.

‘A great shame,’ Adela agreed sarcastically. ‘I should leave him where he is, if I were you.’

I needed no second bidding to take her at her word, however insincerely it was meant. She didn’t enquire where I was going, for which I was grateful. I preferred her not to know. She would only have worried.

The noise and crowds, like the sun, had not yet reached their zenith, quite a few people being still at dinner, but it would not be long before the summer streets became unbearable. The rain of the previous evening had done little to refresh the atmosphere, and had churned the dust to a thin, gruel-like mud.

I pushed my way along Corn Street, avoiding several importunate hot-pie sellers whose trade was being ruined by the heat, succumbed to the offer of a cup of verjuice, which tasted of vinegar as it always does (I should have known better), then had to treat myself to a large honeyed fig in order to rid my tongue of the sourness. By which time, I had reached my intended destination: Marsh Street.

Marsh Street, which runs parallel with the Frome Quay and is connected to it at right angles by several noisome alleyways, ends with the Marsh Street Gate, which opens on to the great marsh itself. It also boasts one of the town’s three public latrines. Not, I imagine, that this is much used by the many sailors who frequent the alehouses there: pissing against the nearest wall and seeing who can aim the highest is more their usual manner of relieving themselves.

As Jack Nym had warned me, and which I already knew, this was an alien locality for the majority of Bristol citizens, and they only ventured into the Turk’s Head or the Wayfarer’s Return if they had dealings with the men from Waterford. For although many foreign sailors made use of the Marsh Street alehouses, it was essentially Irish territory. You made a nuisance of yourself or asked one too many awkward questions at your peril. People had been known to disappear from Marsh Street, never to be seen or heard of again.

I walked steadily, glancing neither to right nor left, and holding my cudgel where everyone could see it, until I reached the second of the two alehouses, the Wayfarer’s Return, a place I had visited some years before and whose landlord’s name was known to me. Inside, it was much as I remembered it; dark, windowless, lit only by rushlight and tallow candles, whose flames could easily be extinguished should it prove necessary. Wooden trestles were placed at intervals on the beaten-earth floor and casks, three rows deep, were ranged against one wall. A back door, for a swift departure, opened on to the quayside, and a stone staircase led to an upper storey.

As soon as I made my appearance, there was a deafening silence. All heads, without exception, turned in my direction. Everyone could see the hump of my pedlar’s pack, but that, after all, was no guarantee of my calling. It could have been a ruse, and no one there was so gullible as to take me at face value. I could just as easily be a Sheriff’s man. The atmosphere was so charged with menace that I could have cut it with my knife.

I gripped my cudgel tighter and stayed where I was, by the door, ready to beat a hasty retreat if need be. But this proved unnecessary, thanks to the landlord, Humility Dyson, a huge bear of a man whose thick black beard was now showing the first knotted threads of grey. He came forward, rubbing his massive hands on his leather apron.

‘Roger Chapman!’ he exclaimed. ‘And what brings you here?’ He turned to his customers. ‘I know this man. He’s a pedlar all right. Lives in the city. He’ll do you no harm.’

There was a protracted, extremely wary silence, then the rumble of conversation gradually resumed. But I knew I was only there on sufferance. Danger still thrummed in the air. Make one stupid move, and I could end up with a knife in my back.

‘So, what
does
bring you here?’ the landlord repeated.

I plucked up courage and answered him in a ringing tone that could be heard in all four corners of the room. I figured it would be safer to be open about my business than to whisper like a conspirator and arouse greater suspicion.

‘I’m enquiring about an Irish ship that was moored on Redcliffe Back until yesterday afternoon, when, or so I’m told, it sailed on the ebb tide. I don’t know to a day how long since it dropped anchor, but it was certainly there on Midsummer Eve when I saw the captain talking to Master Robin Avenel.’

‘You mean the man who was found murdered in Jewry Lane yesterday morning?’ Humility Dyson had deliberately raised his voice to rival mine. He was making sure that all the occupants of the alehouse were aware of the circumstances of Robin’s death before anyone opened his mouth to reply.

‘That’s right,’ I added. ‘A local man, a tenter, has been charged with the killing.’

The landlord threw back his head and roared with laughter.

‘Don’t be fooled, gentlemen!’ he said, addressing the motley crew of rogues who patronized the Wayfarer’s Return as if they were some noble gathering. ‘If this pedlar is making it his business to ask questions, it means he thinks this tenter innocent, and is trying to pin the crime on somebody else.’

‘Not on anyone here,’ I assured them quickly. (Although how, they might well ask themselves, was I to know that for a certainty? They weren’t fools, any of them.)

‘You’d better not,’ growled a man seated at the nearest table. ‘Or it will be the worse for you, friend chapman.’

There was a general mutter of agreement and I prepared for trouble. But, to my astonishment, the man who had spoken made a place for me at the trestle where he was sitting by the simple expedient of shunting his two companions further along the bench.

He motioned to me to sit down and offered me a drink. ‘Ale or whisky?’

I chose ale. I had heard too many hair-raising stories from men who had tried the fiery water of life so beloved by the Irish – and also the Scots by all accounts – to wish to addle my brain and lose concentration. The Irishman was disappointed, but good-naturedly ordered the landlord to bring me a beaker of ‘cat’s piss’.

‘We’ve met before,’ he said, ‘some years back now. Briant of Dungarvon.’

I recalled him at once. I had encountered both him and his partner when I had been searching for the truth concerning the disappearance of Margaret Walker’s father.

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘You and Padraic Kinsale.’

‘Padraic’s dead,’ he answered shortly, and from his tone I knew better than to ask for details. ‘So! This man who’s been arrested,’ he went on, ‘is he really innocent?’

‘I’d stake my life on it,’ I assured him fervently. ‘Unhappily, our sergeant is—’

‘A dolt!’

I demurred. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘All lawmen were born with brains the size of a pea,’ he said viciously. ‘That’s why they’re lawmen.’ He took a gulp of his whisky. ‘So, what do you want to know about this ship that was moored in Redcliffe Back?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Was she a slaving ship?’

I expected a wall of silence, possibly a request to leave. But having once decided that he could trust me, Briant of Dungarvon was seemingly prepared to be frank.

‘As far as I know, the
Clontarf
was mainly a slaver, but that isn’t why she was here. At least, not this time. The man you saw speaking with this Robin Avenel wasn’t the captain, either. It must have been the mate. The captain disappeared after rowing himself ashore at Rownham Passage some few weeks ago. A search by his shipmates at the time proved fruitless. I think this visit must have been a second attempt to discover what might have happened to him.’

‘Oh, I can tell you that,’ I said, and proceeded to do so.

Briant of Dungarvon was not the only man to listen with interest to my story. I did not bother to lower my voice and it soon attracted the attention of others, not only the three men seated at our table, but also those at neighbouring trestles. When I had finished, there was a general nodding of heads, sucking of teeth and scratching of backsides, which seemed to be their way of expressing belief in what I had told them.

A big Irishman with an accent so thick I could barely understand what he was saying announced that he wasn’t surprised. Hadn’t he always predicted that Eamonn Malahide would come to a sticky end? (Well, that was the gist of it, anyhow, but more forcefully expressed.) Many of my other listeners vociferously agreed. I turned to Briant for enlightenment.

‘I thought you slavers stuck together.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
, etcetera.’ I could have added: ‘Brother outlaws, condemned by Church and State.’ But I didn’t.

If I had hoped to discompose him with a display of my limited learning, I was disappointed. Somewhere inside that rough exterior there was an educated man. I would have given much to know his history.