William Burnett grunted indifferently, too busy smoothing the dark purple satin of one sleeve to have much interest in the Alderman’s worries. Alison regarded him with admiration.
The Alderman suddenly became aware of my presence and transferred his attention from his future son-in-law to me, looking me over with shrewd appraisal. I stood there for a moment or two, the subject of his scrutiny, waiting for the order to get out of his house. But none came; and after a silence which seemed to stretch unbearably, he remarked: ‘So you’re the chapman my daughter had been telling me about. She says you can read and write.’ He nodded thoughtfully to himself. ‘That could be useful.’
I was unsure how my skills of reading and writing could be useful to Alderman Weaver, so I maintained a diplomatic and not unhopeful silence. At least it looked as though my night’s lodging might be safe, after all. He had not reacted like a man who was about to turn me out into the street.
After another pause, he went on painfully: ‘Alison also tells me that you know about . . . about my son’s . . . disappearance.’ I nodded gently. I could see the subject caused him great distress. He swallowed hard and one hand played restlessly with the trimming of budge which edged his gown. ‘I don’t... approve of gossiping with strangers, of making every jack-in-the-hedge privy to my family’s affairs. But in your case my daughter may have been wise to make an exception.‘ I was still in the dark and glanced sideways at Alison, but she looked as mystified as I was myself. The Alderman continued: ‘Do your travels often take you to London?’
‘I - er--’ I cleared my throat. ‘I’ve never been there.’ I hurried on: ‘But I intend to do so. I haven’t been on the road very long, you understand. Mistress Alison must have told you that until recently I was a novice with the Benedictines at Glastonbury. But London is my goal. A man can make his fortune there, if he’s clever.’
William Burnett roused himself from his enraptured contemplation of the tassels on his codpiece and gave me a lofty smile.
‘You fancy yourself as another Richard Whittington, do you? You won’t make that sort of fortune selling needles and thread and ribbons in the Cheap. Besides--’ his condescension was overpowering-- ‘Whittington was, after all, the son of a gentleman.’
Alderman Weaver waved him to silence with an impatient hand. ‘That’s neither here nor there.’ He turned back to me. ‘The point is, boy, when you do get to London, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open for any whisper as to the fate of my son. You can mix with people I can’t in my position. Oh, I’m able to question them, but that’s no good. If they’ve anything to conceal, they’ll lie faster than a dog can run. But with you, they’ll talk openly. You’ll overhear conversations to which I could never be privy. So, if you hear anything, anything at all, which you think might be of value-the slightest indication as to what happened to Clement - go to my old friend, Thomas Prynne at the sign of the Baptist’s Head in Crooked Lane and he’ll see to it that I get your message. Well? Will you do that for me?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ I said, wondering if the poor man realized that he was clutching at straws. But what else did he have to clutch at? He couldn’t just sit back and tamely accept that his only son was dead.
‘And as you can read and write,’ he went on, ‘you have an advantage. You may see something... read something ...’ This was not just clutching at straws, but at straws on the wind.
‘If I can find out anything at all,’ I promised, ‘I shall go at once to your friend Thomas Prynne. But I may not be in London for many months yet. I have only my own two legs, and my living to earn as I go. Villages and hamlets away from the main tracks are my best source of livelihood; distant places, where the inhabitants are far from the nearest market.’
I could see that the Alderman was disappointed. His shoulders sagged and he looked dispirited. He had imagined me being in London within a couple of weeks.
‘Well...’ He drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘Whenever you get there, you would still oblige me by keeping a lookout.’ He made an effort to sound cheerful and my heart warmed to him. He patently wasn’t a man to vent his spleen on underlings for something that was not their fault. I could see why his children were fond of him. Moreover, he hadn’t sent them away to be brought up in other people’s households, like so many of his kind. He had kept them with him and showed them affection; not a very common trait, except among the poor. He smiled and nodded my dismissal, adding: ‘My daughter says she has offered you a bed by the kitchen fire for the night. If you want it, you’re welcome to stay.’
I mumbled my thanks and returned to the kitchen, where Marjorie Dyer was getting ready to carry the pot of stew into the parlour. There was also a meat pie, the plovers’ eggs and a dish piled high with fritters, side by side with a bowl of almonds and raisins. The junket was still only half-set, but Marjorie had produced a plate of fruit tarts to round off the meal. If this were supper, I wondered what they had eaten for dinner.
When she returned from serving in the parlour, she, Ned Stoner and I sat at the kitchen table and applied ourselves to our own meal. There was more of the stew and goat’s milk cheese, together with black bread and spring vegetables from the garden. Marjorie also found from somewhere, with a conspiratorial nod and wink, a plate of pastry doucettes, filled with egg yolks, cream, saffron, and sweetened with honey. Of the other man, Rob, there was still no sign.
‘What did the Alderman want you for?‘ Marjorie asked, once she had blunted the edge of her hunger. And when I explained, she sighed gustily and wiped her mouth on a corner of her sleeve. ‘Poor man.’ She echoed my own thoughts with uncanny precision. ‘Clutching at straws. He can’t accept that Master Clement is dead.’
I turned to Ned. ‘When you got back to the Crossed Hands inn that night, were there any signs of a struggle?’ He crammed his mouth with a spoonful of stew and answered thickly: ‘It was raining.’ After a few seconds’ mastication, he added the one word: ‘Hard.’
‘You mean any telltale marks would have been washed away?’
‘‘S right.’ He took a massive bite of cheese which effectually prevented any further conversation with him for at least two minutes.
When he had finally cleared his mouth, and before he could fill it again, I inquired urgently: ‘There was nothing at all? Nothing, for instance, ripped from your master’s clothing? A button? A buckle? A scrap of material perhaps?‘ Ned stared at me, frowning. He plainly considered me mad. ‘It was raining,’ he repeated. ‘I didn’t stand rakin’ about in the mud. Besides--’ he shrugged his shoulders-- ‘I wasn’t lookin’ fer anything, was I? I thought me young master safe at the Baptist’s Head. ‘Tweren’t till I got there, I knew he was missing.’
A sudden thought struck me. ‘What about your master’s baggage? Did he have that with him?
Ned considered the question with as much gravity as if I had asked him to explain some abstruse mathematical theorem. One hand, none too clean and with black-rimmed fingernails, hovered impatiently in the vicinity of his mouth, holding a spoonful of stew. At last, he nodded. ‘His saddlebags were in the coach with Miss Alison, but Rob and I lifted them out fer ‘im and put ‘em down on the road. I remember seeing them by his feet as we rode away. He only had a little distance to carry ‘em.‘ This last was added somewhat defensively, as though Ned were afraid of being accused of failing in his duty. The stew disappeared into the wide, gaping cavern of his mouth. He champed slowly and with satisfaction.
‘And they were never found, either?’
‘Not likely, is it? Emptied and dropped in the Thames.’ Marjorie pushed the plate of pastry doucettes towards me. ‘Have one of these and stop fretting. You’re worrying at this thing like a dog with a rat.’ She lowered her voice, leaning across the table to clasp my hand. ‘Look, lad, forget it. Master Clement’s gone and there’s nothing you or anyone can do about it. He fell among thieves, like the man in the Bible. It’s natural enough that the Alderman should want to think otherwise; that some day, somewhere, Clement will turn up again, but it’s not going to happen, and in his heart of hearts, he knows it. If you want to salve your conscience when you finally get to London, you can ask a few questions at the Crossed Hands Inn, but don’t waste your time doing more than that. There’s nothing to find out and sooner or later my master is going to have to accept the truth.’
Ned nodded in mute agreement, having just refilled his mouth with a whole doucette, the honey and cream running down his chin. Reluctantly, because I found the problem intriguing, I, too, was forced to agree. What Marjorie said made sense. All the same, some nagging worry, which refused to be pinpointed, hovered at the back of my mind.
After supper was finished and cleared away, I went out into the garden. Beyond its walls, the city was quieter, free at last of the clatter of horses’ hooves and the continual braying of trumpets. Presumably, Margaret of Anjou and her troops had gone, continuing their progress northward. Bristol was free of her unwanted military presence and could settle back, in uneasy calm, to await the outcome of the Queen’s clash with King Edward. Where and how it would take place, and who would win, were still unknown factors, and perhaps not much thought about that fine May evening. Life, after all, had to go on.
It was beautiful in the garden. The dappled shadows inched their way across the beds of herbs and flowers, and a bird sang lustily in the branches of the pear tree. The sky was a clear, translucent blue, washed clean by the rain, and promising yet another fine day tomorrow. Not an evening to be thinking of violence and death, and it was easy to forget the fate of Clement Weaver. But Marjorie was right. There was nothing to be done and the Alderman was asking the impossible. I had no wish, I told myself, to be drawn into his affairs and would do well to stay out of them. I went into the privy and closed the door behind me.
When I emerged, Rob was coming in at the garden gate, and had plainly been drinking. He had taken his supper, mostly liquid, I guessed, at the inn at the end of the street and was now rolling slightly from side to side. He grinned inanely when he saw me, before pushing past into the warmth of the kitchen. I heard Marjorie’s voice upraised reproachfully, but by the time I went indoors myself, Rob was already curled up by the side of the fire, his head resting on one arm, fast asleep and snoring loudly.
It was Rob’s snoring which roused me in the middle of the night. I raised my head slowly from where it rested on my pack, and stared around the shadowed kitchen.
The fire was burning low, but not yet out, and there was no light filtering between the slats of the shutters. I could make out Ned’s humped form, where he lay huddled in one corner, but he made no sound except for his quiet, regular breathing. Rob, on the other hand, snorted and whistled and tossed restlessly from side to side, his mouth wide open to emit gusts of stinking breath. Even from where I was lying, I could smell the stench of sour ale.
I eased myself into a sitting position, stretching my cramped limbs. I must have been sleeping awkwardly because I had pains all down the back of my left leg and a tingling sensation in my left arm. I suddenly felt wide awake, which was something that happened frequently, and I knew the reason for it. It was about that time of two hours past midnight when I had been used to dragging my unwilling body from the dorter to the choir for the singing of Matins and Lauds.
I lay down again and tried to sleep, but my eyes refused to stay closed. I stared into the heart of the crumbling logs, where a fringe of thick grey ash trembled in a draught from the door. A fairy world of caverns and grottoes opened up before me, and each time a bead of resin caught fire, a flame would spurt, blue and yellow, up the chimney. A shadow moved, and the kitchen cat, sleek, fat and purring, came to make his bed beside me, but daring me to touch him with a fiercely gleaming eye. He had evidently eaten well because he was licking his lips and exuded contentment.
There was one mouse or rat the less to raid the flour and Corn bins.
Gradually, my eyelids drooped and I began drifting towards the edge of sleep...
I was standing outside the Crossed Hands inn: I could see the sign of the two crossed hands quite plainly. It was raining hard and my jerkin clung soggily to my back. Above my head, fixed high on the wall near a shuttered window, a torch hissed and flared in its sconce, the flames torn sideways by the driving wind. At my feet were two saddlebags. I bent down to pick them up, all my movements hampered and leaden, as though I were moving through water. But just as my hand reached to grab them, something stopped me. I straightened slowly, peering into the darkness. Someone or something was coming towards me out of the murk, but strain my eyes as I might, I could make out no features. I only knew that whoever or whatever it was, it was evil...
I awoke with a start, jerking upright and bathed in sweat. Rob was snoring even louder, but apart from that, all was quiet in the kitchen. The cat was cleaning itself before bedding down for the rest of the night among the rushes. The rushes themselves smelled stale. Marjorie would no doubt change them in the morning. I tried to keep my mind on such mundane things in order to stop myself shaking. The dream was still so vivid in my mind that I could sense the lingering aura of evil and it took all my strength of will not to wake one of the others.
After a while I lay down again, but this time sleep eluded me completely, The truth was, I did not want to lose consciousness in case the dream returned. The fire was nothing now but a dim glow on the hearthstones and the room was growing cold. Yet still there was no slacking of the darkness and there were many hours to go before dawn.
Above my head, a board creaked, once, twice, three times. At first I thought it was nothing more than the beams settling, the way they do in houses at night when it begins to get chilly. But then I realized that someone was moving about, padding across the room directly overhead. At any other time, in any other circumstances, I should have taken no notice. There are many reasons why people leave their beds at night, and it was none of my business. But because my nerves were stretched to breaking-point, because I needed the reassurance that someone else in the house was awake besides myself, because I needed to shake off the effects of my nightmare and, above all, because I have always suffered, and still do, from an insatiable curiosity, I got silently to my feet and tiptoed across to the kitchen door. Carefully lifting the latch, while keeping a wary eye on my sleeping companions, I stepped through into the darkness of the hall beyond. All was quiet now, and when one of the wall hangings bellied in the draught, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Getting a grip on myself, I moved stealthily towards the staircase spiralling upwards into the gloom of the second storey, and set a foot cautiously on the lowest tread. To my relief, it did not creak and I crept up, cat-footed, until my head was on a level with the first landing. A door into one of the bedchambers was standing ajar, and as my eyes were by now thoroughly accustomed to the darkness, I was able to make out the outline of a handsome four-poster bed. No great feat of deduction was needed to know that this must be the Alderman‘s room, nor that it was probably he who had been moving about.