[Roger the Chapman 02] - The Plymouth Cloak (7 page)

'You haven't seen or heard the last of me, you know, so don't think it. Here! I've got this for you.'

He was trying to push something into the other man's hand, but Philip hit him in the face, sending Silas sprawling in the dirt, jerked his horse's head around and vanished through the gateway, calling to me to follow. Before I had sufficiently gathered my wits to do so, however, Silas was on his feet again and standing at the cob's head. He raised one hand to mine, his battered features contorted with rage and hatred.

'Here, you give it to him,' he said. 'Tell Philip Underdown one day I'll catch up with him and then he'll be sorry. I know too much about him.'

Once more I gave my horse the office to start, but as the animal moved forward, I glanced down curiously at the thing in my hand. It was a trailing plant stem, with small clusters of white flowers at intervals along its length. Being country born and bred, I recognized it immediately as a common weed of most cultivated ground, which flowered from midsummer until late into the autumn. And it was because of the arrangement of those flowers that it was known as knotgrass.

We reached Plymouth by mid-afternoon, having travelled harder and faster than the day before. In other circumstances, I would have protested and insisted on taking more rest; but with our nameless adversary probably close behind us, I did not dare, and put up with my aches and pains as best I could.

I cursed that I had not asked the fellow his name, but Philip shrugged and said it would have been pointless.

'He would only have given you a false one, which he will change when he gets to Plymouth, so that any inquiries you might make will meet with no success. Forget it. We shall lie at the Turk's Head, where the landlord is a good friend of mine and will see that no one comes near us. He will bring us word, too, the moment the
Falcon
drops anchor.' With this I had to be content, and in any case conversation was necessarily limited. I was forced to concentrate on guiding my mount along the rutted Dartmoor tracks, if I were not to fall off and hinder our progress by injury. It was a beautiful day, as clear and transparent as a bubble, the October sun rimming the tots and distant uplands with fire.

Occasionally we passed an isolated farm or tiny hamlet, whose turf-thatched dwellings threw black wedges of shadow across the sunlit grass. The plaintive call of a solitary bird could now and then be heard high above us. We met very few fellow travellers, and then only those coming in the opposite direction. No one overtook us; and although I kept glancing back over my shoulder, the moor remained empty of pursuers.

Of necessity, we stopped at midday to answer calls of nature and to buy bread and cheese and ale from the goodwife of a nearby cottage. While we ate and drank, sitting in the sun, our backs propped against the rough grey stone wall which surrounded the enclosure, I showed Philip Underdown the stem of knotgrass and asked him what it meant. He stared at it for a moment, then spat.

'How do I know? The man's mad and should be locked up. He tried to give it to me before I took my hand to him. And that's what you should have done, not meekly accepted such rubbish.'

His vehemence, bordering almost on fury, told me that the knotgrass did mean something to him, something he would rather not be reminded of; but as I had little hope of discovering what that was, it was better to hold my tongue. I stared down curiously at the weed I was holding and tried to remember what, if anything, I knew of its properties. The only memory which came to mind was that of my mother seizing a stalk from my mouth when, boy-like, I had started to chew it. 'Don't,' she had said, 'it's poisonous.' But my mother had not always been correct in her knowledge. Like many country women, she had been extremely wise in some things, but also a prey to all kinds of old wives' tales, passed on from generation to generation, accruing a little more misinformation with each retelling. And I had never, either before or since, heard knotgrass spoken of as poisonous.

Suddenly, the plant was snatched from my hand as Philip tossed it away.

'I told you,' he reiterated fiercely, 'Silas Bywater's mad! Forget him. He won't trouble us again. I'll be gone from Plymouth before he can catch up with us. He's on foot. It'll take him all of today and much of tomorrow to get home.'
 

'Was what he said true?" I asked. 'Had you promised him and the Speedwell's crew more money?'

I expected him to turn on me again, but he only shrugged and laughed.

'You'd promise the Devil your soul when you're battling up the Channel with a leaky ship in a storm. Only a fool would take you seriously.' He added, cutting the conversation short: 'Come on. If we go now, we can be in Plymouth in time for supper. The food at the Turk's Head is plain, but plentiful, and I'm hungry. Return the beakers to the goodwife and let's be going.'

I resented his tendency to treat me as a servant, but suppressed my anger. The Duke trusted me to see that his letter got safely to Brittany and that was all that mattered.

We reached Plymouth just in time for supper. The fourth hour of the afternoon was being cried as we entered at one of the gates. The town has no walls, its only danger coming from sea-borne invasion, of which there has been much in the past hundred years. But the four main roads converging on the place all lead to gateways with short stockades on either side, so that people entering and leaving can be noted by the porters, and undesirable elements turned away. This of course is the theory, but in practice there are a dozen paths in and out of the town, and all sorts of rogues and vagabonds come and go at will. Most of the buildings lie along the edge and to the west of Sutton Pool, and the Turk's Head stands in one of the maze of narrow alleys close to the harbour. Its landlord in those days was a Comishman from across the Tamar, John Penryn; a black-haired, taciturn man, who made it his business to give good service, but never to inquire into the concerns of his guests. He knew nothing, saw nothing and heard nothing. As long as he was paid in full, that was all that mattered. Even if murder was committed beneath his roof, the Sheriff and county officers would receive no help from him.

Philip Underdown greeted him as an old friend, and I gathered that their association went back a long way, to the years when Philip and his brother were trading in and out of the town and had used the inn as their headquarters. There was a great deal of noise coming from the ale-room as we passed, but we were shown upstairs to a decent-sized chamber whose only door immediately faced the stairhead.

'You'll be comfortable enough here,' the landlord said, and I fancied there was a hidden meaning to his words.

Philip Underdown nodded. 'We'll take supper and breakfast in our room, if it's all the same to you. I don't wish to be seen more than necessary below stairs.'

John Penryn inclined his head. 'Moll can look after your meals. She's a good girl and doesn't complain at extra work.' He paused with his hand on the latch.' Is there anyone you want me to watch out for?'

'Anyone who's a stranger. Particularly someone who's well-dressed, thin of face, dark-haired. Oh, and keep a weather eye cocked for Silas Bywater, though I doubt he'll be back in Plymouth before I leave tomorrow, unless he gets a lift from a passing carter. He's been to Buckfast for the St Michael's fair and our paths unfortunately crossed.' The landlord curled his lip. 'So that's where he was. I thought I hadn't seen him around for the past week. He's a born trouble-maker. He'll overstep the mark one of these days. I'll watch out for him, don't worry.'

He disappeared and I heard him whistling as he went downstairs. I glanced about me and decided that the room was probably the best the inn afforded. There were two beds, I was happy to note, as I had no wish to share a mattress with my travelling companion, a large carved chest for clothes in one comer, and the rushes on the floor looked fairly clean with no sign of fleas hopping among them. The supper, too, when it came, was plentiful and wholesome, although mainly fish, it being a Friday. Philip grumbled, having had fish broth the previous evening; but, like me, he was too tired from the long day's ride to be very interested in what he was eating. And when the obliging girl called Moll had removed our dirty dishes and brought us our 'all-night' of bread and ale, we both, of one accord, pulled off our boots, removed our outer clothing and fell into bed, sinking thankfully into the comfort of the feather-filled mattresses.

Nothing happened that night to disturb our rest, and the morning sunlight was rimming the shutters before I was even conscious of closing my eyes. As I sat on the edge of the bed, yawning and stretching, I reflected contentedly that today would see me rid of my charge and free to return to Exeter to pick up my pack and resume my normal life, secure in the knowledge that I had successfully carried out the Duke's commission. Philip Underdown would be equally glad to see the back of me as he embarked for Brittany on board the
Falcon
.

John Penryn had promised to let us know the minute the
Falcon
was sighted as she made sail into the Cattewater beyond the Sutton Pool barrier. It was a fine day with the sea like a millpond, and there seemed to be no reason why the Master should not bring her in on time. But the morning passed, its brightness fading slowly into a more overcast afternoon, and still there was no sign of the ship. As four o'clock and supper-time approached once more, and as Philip Underdown and I grew yet more frustrated and edgy, we threw caution to the wind and went down to the harbour to ascertain for ourselves that the
Falcon
had indeed failed to arrive..

'Where the hell is she7' Philip demanded through clenched teeth. 'The Duke assured me that the Master had his orders and would be here on Saturday with the tide.'

I had no words of consolation to offer, and was busy reconciling myself to another evening and night in Philip Underdown's unwelcome company. I was quite as distressed by the turn of events as he was, and moved away abruptly before I showed my feelings too plainly. As I did so, I thought I saw a figure withdraw furtively into one of the alleys which ran between the houses lining the quay. But although I moved swiftly, when I peered into the noisome little street, its gutter thick with the rotting detritus of everyday life, I could see no one. At that time of day, with everyone at supper, all was as quiet as the grave.

CHAPTER 6

Neither of us slept well that night. To begin with, we were not tired. A day spent lazing in our room, with nothing to do but eat and doze, had left us wide awake and full of energy.

Both of us were men used to hard work and constant activity, and such a state of idleness did not agree with our constitution.

Over and above that, however, the
Falcon's
failure to arrive on time was an irritating delay which we could well have done without, disliking as we did each other' s company. But even that we might have endured with stoicism - for there are many reasons why a ship can be detained at sea - had it not been for my growing conviction that someone had been spying on us at the quayside.

My first inclination had been to blame an overheated imagination, but the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I had indeed seen a man loitering in the mouth of the alleyway.

'Then where did he go?" Philip demanded, with all the truculence of one willing himself not to believe. 'You say that when you looked, there was no one there.'
 

'There were plenty of houses for him to step inside, on both sides of the street.'

Philip Underdown snorted. 'Hovels, all of them. A finical man like our friend from the Abbey would be disinclined to trust himself inside one of those.' He laughed mockingly. 'He might dirty his fine clothes.'

But he was talking to convince himself. He knew as well as I did that if the man were a hired assassin, or a Woodville retainer, the fine clothes and delicate deportment were nothing more than a blind to mislead us. Such a man would not be put off by the consideration of muddying his dress.

These thoughts continued to haunt us throughout the evening, and proved the basis for a spasmodic, but acrimonious, discussion as we sat in our bedchamber, listening to the shouts and noisy laughter drifting up from the aleroom downstairs. And although these grated on our overstretched nerves, the comparative silence which followed the curfew bell was even worse. We finished the ale which the obliging Moll had brought us, and decided that it was time to sleep, neither of us anticipating much success.

Strangely enough, I was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow, but immediately I began to dream. It was the same dream ! had had a month or so earlier, in the Hospital of St Cross, in Winchester. I could again feel the wind on my face as I walked slowly forward beneath the interlacing trees, see the crescent moon above the clouds, feel the rough, stony path beneath my feet. And I was seized by the same all-pervading fear as I stumbled over the body...

I awoke once more in a state of sweat and panic, unsure for the moment of my surroundings. Then I heaved myself out of bed and crossed the room to open the shutters, which gave on to the yard at the back of the inn, taking in great gulps of salt sea air.

'What is it? What's the matter?'

I turned my head to make out Philip Underdown, his feet already out of bed, his dagger clasped in his right hand.

'Nothing,' I said, feeling rather foolish. 'A nightmare, that's all. I've suffered from them since childhood.' My description was not strictly accurate, but I felt that to tell the truth, that my dreams were often like glimpses into the future, would be to lay myself open to even more of his contempt and scorn. As it was, he laughed derisively before lying down again.