The Saint John's Fern (8 page)

‘And did you ever think him capable of murder?’

The goodwife took a sudden, deep breath and looked unhappy. ‘Of course I didn’t! You can’t imagine someone you know –’ she did not add the words ‘and like’ although I could tell that they were on the tip of her tongue – ‘doing something as … as horrible as that.’

‘So why do think he did it?’

She shrugged. ‘There’s talk in the town of a family quarrel. Something to do with his great-uncle wanting him to marry money and Beric wanting to marry his sister’s maid.’

‘Money’s really at the bottom of it, you can be certain of that,’ the man, Jacob, said, patting his pocket and making the coins in it jingle. ‘There are more murders committed for money than love.’

His wife snorted. ‘And what would you know about love, pray? Answer me that!’

I decided it was time I left before a family dispute erupted and entangled me in its coils. ‘Have you found anything you wish to buy?’ I asked the goodwife.

She shrugged. ‘No. Put your stuff away. There’s nothing there that tempts me.’

In normal circumstances, I should have been irritated by this contemptuous dismissal of my wares, especially after so much careless handling of them. But I had not come to sell and had learnt what I wanted to know. The goodwife and her husband were both as sure that they had seen Beric Gifford on the day of Master Capstick’s murder as were Mistress Trenowth and Joanna Cobbold.

As I gathered my goods together and restored them to my pack, I asked, ‘You say that this young man always waved to you as he passed your cottage. Did he do so on the morning of the murder?’

The couple looked at me in some surprise, and then at one another.

‘Yes, I fancy that he did, now that you remind me of it,’ the woman said at last. She laughed. ‘Odd, when you come to think of it, considering what he must have had on his mind.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Can you remember, Jacob? You were with me in the garden when he rode by. Did Master Gifford wave to us? Your memory’s better than mine.’

Jacob thoughtfully scratched one side of his nose. ‘I believe you’re right,’ he finally agreed. ‘He did wave, the first time, same as he always does. Force of habit, I suppose. But not on the way back.’ He slewed round on his stool, repeating Joanna Cobbold’s observation almost word for word. ‘You seem very interested in this murder, chapman.’

I fastened the straps on my pack. ‘It’s an intriguing case,’ I said. ‘From what I learnt in Bilbury Street, the young man has never been brought to justice, although everyone believes him to be responsible for the crime. He has, it seems, disappeared without trace, in spite of the posse being after him before his great-uncle’s body was cold. Some people reckon that he’s eaten Saint John’s fern.’

The goodwife gave another of her raucous laughs. ‘Gone abroad more like. France, perhaps. Or Brittany, to join that troublemaker, Henry Tudor.’

Her husband said nothing, but crossed himself.

‘I’m sorry there was nothing here to your liking, Mistress,’ I said as I shouldered my pack. ‘Another day you could be luckier. If I’m ever this way again, I’ll knock on your door.’ But privately, I vowed never to go near them if I could help it. They had not even offered me a cup of water, let alone a stoup of ale. They might be down on their luck, but most poor people observed the laws of hospitality.

‘We shall be pleased to have your company,’ the goodwife said with a small, secretive smile of satisfaction. And I guessed then that she had managed to pocket some item from amongst my stock while I wasn’t looking. I should discover later what was missing.

At the cottage door, I paused and looked back at the husband, who had taken the coins from his pocket and was once more counting them.

‘You say Beric waved to you when you first saw him, riding into Plymouth, but not on the return journey. On that occasion, did either of you call to him, or try to attract his attention?’

Jacob looked up and frowned. ‘Are you still here?’ He laid a protective hand over his pile of money. ‘There wouldn’t have been any point calling out to him. He was riding as though all the devils in Hell were at his heels.’

The goodwife nodded in corroboration. ‘He was riding so fast that he was having difficulty in controlling that great brute of a horse of his. Just for a minute, I thought he was going to be thrown.’

‘But other than that, there was nothing suspicious in his appearance? You didn’t notice any blood on his clothes, for instance?’

‘We’ve told you,’ the man said crossly, reaching for his tin cup and draining the dregs, ‘he was riding so fast there wasn’t time to notice anything.’ And with that, he hunched the shoulder nearest to me, indicating that I should get no more from him. I had outstayed my welcome.

I said my farewells and, a few minutes later, was back on the road and once again walking eastwards.

Chapter Six

It was, by now, late afternoon, and the golden-blue haze of the middle distance had lost its radiance. A fine mist was moving in from the sea, and it would soon be time to find shelter for the night.

On the advice of a passing cowherd, whose instruction I sought, I struck out in a south-easterly direction across the Cattedown peninsula that divides Sutton Pool from the mouth of the River Plym.

‘Ferry’ll take you over the Cattewater,’ the man told me, ‘to Oreston, on the other side. There’s a decent inn there, if you’re able to pay your board.’ He looked me up and down, while his cows, anxious to be milked, pushed and jostled one another along the homeward track, leaving him behind. ‘On the other hand, a strapping, good-looking young fellow like you could well get free lodgings if he’s civil to the landlord’s wife. She’s an eye for a handsome youth.’ And with a nod and a wink, he set off in pursuit of his cattle.

I called my thanks after his rapidly retreating back and continued along the path he had indicated. There had been a time, and what an age ago it seemed now – although, in truth, it was far more recent than I imagined – when I might have been excited by the prospect of an older woman’s admiration, but no longer. Nowadays, I was a happily married man, in love with my wife; and at the memory of Adela, I found myself striding out, grinning like an idiot. Then, as there was no one to hear me, I pursed my lips and began to whistle happily, if tunelessly. (For as I have said somewhere before in these chronicles, I’ve absolutely no ear for music, and my pitiful attempts at it can drive listeners into a frenzy.)

After a while, however, I fell silent and my pace slowed as my thoughts again reverted to the murder of Oliver Capstick. I was by now thoroughly convinced that Beric Gifford had not rendered himself invisible by eating the leaves of Saint John’s fern. Only the previous year, I had proved to my own satisfaction, as well as to that of others, that there could be a logical explanation for the disappearance of a young man, as if by magic. No, for me the most probable answer to the mystery was still that Beric had escaped to France or joined Henry Tudor in Brittany, and that he would presently send for Katherine Glover to join him. As for money, Berenice would see to it that her young brother and his future wife did not starve.

Yet the problem remained, why had Beric put himself in such an untenable position? He had gained nothing but a lifetime of exile and financial dependence upon his sister; a sister who was shortly to marry a high-stomached Champernowne. Of course, if it should prove necessary, there were plenty of ways in which a young man, in possession of his health and strength, could earn his living abroad, but why had Beric chosen to give up a pleasurable, leisured existence for one of constant hard work and insecurity? The simple answer, I supposed, was anger; that instant, uncontrollable rage which has caused many a man and – though far less frequently – woman to put a noose around his or her neck for the satisfaction of a single, brief moment of revenge.

But although Beric Gifford’s instant rage had resulted in his almost choking the life out of Oliver Capstick, he had been prevented from killing his great-uncle partly by Mistress Trenowth’s intervention, and partly, surely, by his own good sense and better judgement. ‘Suddenly, he dropped his hands to his sides and stood back,’ the housekeeper had told me. So why had he gone away, only to return the next morning in order to resume his murderous business? Something must have happened that last day of April, after he reached Valletort Manor, to rekindle his anger and make him determined to complete the deed; something that had so inflamed him that he had grown careless of all normal precautions to conceal his identity, causing him to ride out there and then to finish what he had failed to do the previous afternoon.

Following this line of reasoning, it was possible to assume that Beric, filled with an all-consuming hatred, had not paused to consider the consequences of his action until he was on his way home again. The realization that he had been seen and recognized beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, and the knowledge that, in the circumstances, it would not be long before a Sheriff’s posse was hard on his heels, must have hit him like a thunderbolt, making him urge his mount forward at breakneck speed. Small wonder, then, if the resentful animal had tried to throw him, for the horse was probably unused to such harsh treatment from his master.

But however much panic Beric was in, he must have decided on his course of action by the time he reached Valletort Manor, where Berenice and Katherine Glover would presumably have been awaiting his return in great anxiety. (It seemed to me unthinkable that they could have been ignorant of his intention towards Master Capstick, or of the reasons for it.) And whatever instructions had been issued by Beric had been carried out quickly and efficiently – perhaps even anticipated? – by his sister and her maid. Certainly, there was no sign of him by the time his pursuers arrived not long afterwards.

But this was as far, at present, as I was prepared to speculate. I must rein in my imagination for a while, until I had accumulated some facts to support my theory. And there were more important things to think about just at the moment, for while I had been descending Cattedown towards the stretch of shore where the ferry boat was beached, the sea mist had thickened and was now turning to a persistent drizzle. The breeze had freshened, too, and the daylight grown murky, presaging an evening of wind and rain. It never ceases to astonish me how swiftly the weather of that south-western coast can change, as happened on that October afternoon. It was less than an hour since it had been warm and sunny, but now, although the day was not greatly advanced, I was eager to seek out food and shelter and be under cover as soon as possible.

The ferryman, fetched from his cottage, was none too pleased to be called out in such inclement conditions, particularly as I was the only person in need of his services. But I promised to pay him double his usual fare if he would row me to the Oreston side, whereupon, although still muttering grumpily under his breath, he returned to his cottage, reappearing a few moments later in a thick, hooded frieze cloak. I had in the meantime wrapped my own cloak about me, and together we dragged the boat into the choppy water.

It was not a pleasant crossing, the wind and rain getting stronger and heavier with every minute, the waves lapping over the sides of the little vessel and drenching our feet. But, thanks to the ferryman’s skill, we arrived safely on the opposite shore, where I paid him his promised fee before waving him off on his journey homewards, silently thanking Heaven that I had not to endure it a second time. Then I turned and walked towards the inn, whose outline I could just make out, looming through the mist.

*   *   *

The Bird of Passage Inn stood in the lee of some arthritic, wind-blasted trees, whose remaining leaves were floating sadly to the ground to add to the piles already there. In sunlight, no doubt the place had a welcoming enough appearance, but in the murky dankness of a late, wet and misty autumn afternoon, its granite exterior looked somewhat cheerless. I approached it with no great enthusiasm, but a night’s lodging was all I required and it would probably prove sufficiently comfortable for that.

The inn was of modest proportions, but there was a stable to the left of the building; a row of three stalls that, I suspected, were rarely occupied, the Bird of Passage being primarily frequented by travellers on foot, using the ferry. But even as the thought entered my head, and just to prove how fallible my deductions could be, I heard the whinny of a horse coming from the stall closest to the inn. So, unless the animal belonged to the innkeeper, I was confident of having company at supper.

Sure enough, as I ducked my head beneath the lintel, I could see a woman sitting at a bench near the fire holding her slender hands to the blaze, the skirts of her coarse, woollen gown steaming gently in the heat. She looked around as I entered, and I was surprised to see again the person I had encountered an hour or so earlier, outside Oliver Capstick’s house. My fellow guest was none other than Katherine Glover.

For a moment or two, I was nonplussed as to why she was not much further ahead of me on the road to Modbury, until I realized that, travelling on horseback, she must have ridden some way northwards after passing through Martyn’s Gate, in order to cross the Plym. But, having done so, why she had returned to Oreston instead of striking out across country, I had no idea.

I took off my cloak and shook it, the raindrops iridescent in the firelight, before advancing to warm my own hands at the leaping flames.

‘We meet once more,’ I said, smiling.

Katherine Glover frowned. ‘I’m not aware that we have met before, sir,’ she answered.

This was a severe blow to my self-esteem, for most people remember me, if only because of my height. I should have to remember, when I got home, to tell Adela, who would laugh and say that I needed to be shorn of some of my conceit.

‘Outside Master Capstick’s house, in Bilbury Street,’ I reminded my companion. ‘You were having trouble turning the key in the lock of the front door, and I was able to do it for you.’ She inclined her head slightly, but made no response, so I continued with an assumed ignorance, ‘I imagined you to be well ahead of me by this time.’