[Roger the Chapman 06] - The Wicked Winter (10 page)

Phillipa Talke nodded vigorously. 'That is so. I have no doubt at all, Brother, that she simply slipped and fell, and you need have none, either. Come with me to Sir Hugh and tell him that. It is all he wants to hear to be at peace.'
 

Jennifer Tonge, who had been stirring the broth but also listening to the conversation with wide-eyed fascination, suddenly giggled nervously and said, 'She died unshriven.'

The housekeeper rounded on the unfortunate child, dealing her a box on the ear which felled her to the ground.

'There never was a whiter soul than your mistress, and don't you forget it! Always on her knees, morning, noon and night.' I heard the note of contempt, hurriedly suppressed. 'Her passage through Purgatory to the heavenly gates is as certain as the fact that I'll box your other ear if you open your mouth once more while I'm in this kitchen. Now, Brother.' Mistress Talke turned back to the friar. 'Will you accompany me?'

But Simeon did not immediately rise from his seat.

'I should prefer it if the chapman came with me. It was, after all, he who discovered the body. It was his persistence in searching for Lady Cederwell which resulted in our finding her.'

The housekeeper looked properly shocked at his demand, and I moved to one side and knelt down by the friar's stool, where he could see me.

'Brother, Sir Hugh has invited you to sup with him and his family. That is right and proper, but he cannot ask a mere pedlar to sit down with him. I must eat supper in the kitchen with the servants.'

Simeon curled his lip. 'Then I shall eat here with you.' He addressed Phillipa Talke, his chin jutting arrogantly, 'Inform Sir Hugh that I shall willingly tell him all I can after the meal, provided that Roger Chapman is allowed to be present.' He waved an imperious hand, 'Hurry ,along, woman! I have spoken.'

'Why, Brother?' I asked, when an outraged Phillipa Talke had left the kitchen. 'Why do you need me with you? You're quite able to relate events as they happened. I know nothing that you don't know.'

'You are merely an excuse,' he said, indicating with a gesture of one hand his dislike of my proximity, and that I should return to sit on my own stool. 'I have no wish to sup with Lady Cederwell's bastard half-brother, nor with that shrewish wife of his.'

I realised that any notion I had had that the recent tragedy might have softened Friar Simeon was misconceived. With a grimace at Martha Grindcobb I went back to my seat, giving the still weeping Jenny a quick hug on the way while the cook's attention was momentarily diverted.

As the preparations for supper went on around me, I sat staring into the flames of the fire, lost in thought. Although I had no reason to suspect that Lady Cederwell's death was other than it seemed, an accident, three questions nagged at the back of my mind, causing me faint unease. Firstly, what had caused the precipitate retum to Lynom Hall of the groom, Hamon? Secondly, why had Ulnoth repeatedly uttered the word 'death', a word which had proved to be so strangely prophetic? And thirdly, what was the real reason for the friar's urgent summons to Cederwell Manor by its chatelaine? But no answers were forthcoming, and in the end I decided that they were merely three separate incidents which had no bearing one upon the other.

Supper, in the kitchen at least, consisted of beef broth with cheese and oatcakes. The friar and I, together with the cook and Jenny Tonge, were joined by the two young men whom I had already encountered at the mill, introduced by Martha as brothers, Jude and Nicholas Capsgrave. (Other servants and manor tenants, I was informed, lived in the dozen or so huts and cottages which straggled northwestward, towards the higher reaches of the estuary.) The housekeeper did not reappear, and the absence of Lady Cederwell's personal maid, Audrey Lambspringe, was explained by her being so affected by her mistress's death that she was laid down upon her pallet in the women's dormitory. Sir Hugh, Gerard and Adela Empryngham and whoever else might be supping with them, were served at their table in the great hall by the remaining members of the household, two young girls, one called Edith; the other Ethelwynne. Saxon names seemed to be commonplace among the members of this isolated community.

Just as we had finished eating, Simeon sparingly, myself shamefully gorging until I could eat no more, a short, rotund man, with thinning grey hair and slightly protuberant blue eyes, bustled into the kitchen, introducing himself as Tostig the steward and requesting yet again that Simeon should come to Sir Hugh. The friar rose and beckoned me to do the same.

'Roger Chapman will accompany me,' he said.

The steward, although plainly annoyed by my companion's insistence on this condition, shrugged and capitulated.

'Very well, but you must delay no longer. Sir Hugh has already been more than patient, considering the tragic circumstances of this day.'

We followed him out of the kitchen, past pantry, buttery and counting-house, turned left down another, shorter stone-flagged passage just inside the main porch, and entered the great hall. I had no opportunity then to look about me, merely noting that the room had a central hearth beneath a hole in the smoke-blackened rafters, and that the rushes covering the floor were stale, littered with bones and emitting a strong odour of dog piss. The family had finished their meal, but were still seated at the high table on the dais at the far end of the hall. As we approached, I recognised Sir Hugh, Adela and her husband, Gerard Empryngham, whom I had seen earlier when he was summoned in from the stables, but not the other young man who sat with them. It was not difficult, however, to guess that he was the son of the house, for he had the same curling brown hair, dark eyes and heavy build as his father, although he was perhaps an inch or so taller. Maurice, I remembered Dame Judith had called him.

Simeon halted some few feet from the dais and consequently Sir Hugh was forced to rise from his place at table and come down to us. That he was none too pleased was obvious, but just as he opened his mouth, presumably to voice his annoyance, there was an interruption. After a commotion in the passage outside, the door behind us was flung violently open and Ursula Lynom, her cloak wet with snow, rushed into the hall. Oblivious to everyone else, she seized Sir Hugh's hand.

'I had to come!' she exclaimed. 'When you did not send to me with the news of Jeanette's death, I could wait no longer!'

Chapter Seven

There was a momentary silence, broken only by one of the hounds snuffling amongst the rushes to retrieve a half-concealed bone. Then Sir Hugh gave an uncertain smile, at the same time releasing his hand from Mistress Lynom's hold.

'Ursula! What... What are you doing here? Travelling in the dark and.., and in such vile weather!' Mistress Lynom looked disconcerted and took a step backwards. Beyond the open door, I could see the two grooms, Hamon and Jasper, who had ridden with her.

'I have been waiting since early this afternoon,' she said reproachfully, 'for you to send me word of Jeanette's unhappy accident. When Hamon returned and informed me of what had occurred, I naturally assumed that as your oldest and ... that as your oldest friend, you would wish to let me know what had happened.'

Maurice Cederwell, Gerard and Adela Empryngham had by now descended from the dais and were ranged behind Sir Hugh, expressions of perplexity on all their faces. Sir Hugh himself looked very pale, although this, I conceded, might be due to the flickering torchlight. The hall was not well lit, being poorly supplied with wall cressets, and the candles in the candelabra of latten tin, which was suspended from one of the rafters, had burned low in their sockets. The fire, too, needed replenishing.

'How could I possibly send to tell you of Jeanette's death, when I did not know of it myself until an hour or more ago? What in God's name are you talking of, Ursula?' It seemed to me, standing on the edge of the group, that Sir Hugh, with both voice and eyes, was desperately trying to convey a warning to Mistress Lynom. She also became aware of it and gave a high, forced laugh.

'How very foolish of me.' She pressed a hand to her breast as if to calm the beating of her heart. 'It was just.., that I had sent my man, Hamon, here - ' she turned towards the door, beckoning Hamon to show himself ' - to Cederwell with a present of buttons that I bought from a chapman who called at Lynom this morning. But on the way, Hamon met with.., someone who told him that Jeanette was dead.' Gerard Empryngham stepped forward. 'Who could have known such a thing?' he demanded of her. 'As Hugh says, it is not two hours since my sister's body was discovered. It cannot be much longer since the accident happened.'
 

I could not let this pass without argument and said respectfully, 'That is not so, Master Empryngham, under your sufferance. The rigor affecting Lady Cederwell's body, even allowing for the coldness of the weather, is sufficiently advanced to mean that she must have died well before noon.' I found myself the focus of all eyes, some haughty, some angry at my unasked-for interference, some disbelieving.

'Have you never noticed,' I continued undeterred, 'that the stiffening of a body, starting in the face, neck and jaw and gradually spreading to all other parts, does not take hold until several hours after death? But in the case of my lady, her shoulders and arms were already rigid when we found her. Therefore she must have fallen from the tower much earlier in the day.'

'You seem to know a great deal about dead bodies,' Adela Empryngham remarked suspiciously.

I smiled at her. 'I know as much as the next man who has eyes in his head. Death is all around us.'

'What the pedlar says is true,' Maurice Cederwell put in, speaking for the first time since Simeon and I had entered the hall. 'But it's something no one thinks about in the normal way, when the laying out of a body is completed before the rigor commences.'

'This is all beside the point,' Gerard said impatiently. 'The fact is that no one here knew of Jeanette's death until less than two hours since, yet Mistress Lynom says that her groom told her of it early this afternoon. How is this possible?'

Sir Hugh looked annoyed at this assumption of authority by one he plainly regarded as no more than a poor relation, but was too anxious himself to hear the answer to administer a reproof. So he merely frowned angrily at Gerard before bending an inquiring gaze upon his unexpected guest. The lady, however, seemed confused and unable to reply, turning instead to Hamon who stood, uncomfortably shifting from one foot to the other, just inside the doorway.

Friar Simeon prodded me in the ribs.

'Did you not tell me, Chapman, that some hermit had been babbling to you of Lady Cederwell's death? Ulnoth, I think you said his name is.'

'He did not speak of death in connection with Lady Cederwell,' I amended hurriedly, 'but only in a general way.' I silently cursed the friar for his untimely intervention, for I was afraid that because of it, we should have difficulty now in learning the truth. And I was right. Hamon, like a drowning man clutching at a straw, seized upon this fortuitous explanation of his strange pre-knowledge.

'I, too, met with Ulnoth,' he confirmed eagerly, 'who informed me that Lady Cederwell was dead, and I rode straight home with the news. You recall, Mistress, that that was what I said.'

Ursula Lynom pressed a hand to her forehead. 'Of course,' she agreed. 'lt's just that... I had forgotten it in my distress,' She smiled trenmlously at Sir Hugh. 'My dear friend, forgive me for intruding at such an unseemly moment, before you have even had time to come to terms with your grief. What must you think of me?'

He returned the smile warmly. 'There is nothing to forgive. For heaven's sake, what am I thinking of? You must be chilled to the bone. Come to the fire.' He turned to the steward.

'Get someone to bring wine for Mistress Lynom, and broth if there's any left. And her horses must be safely stabled. They must be rubbed down and fed. Tell Jude and Nicholas to look to it and also to see her men safely billeted for the night.' At Ursula's slight murmur of protest, he added, 'You cannot possibly return to Lynom Hall in this weather. It's snowing hard. Tomorrow, I shall ride back with you. Tostig ! Request Mistress Talke to prepare the guest bedchamber.'

The steward bowed and withdrew through a second door near the dais; a door I had not previously noticed. From the blast of cold air accompanying his exit, I guessed that it must open into a triangular courtyard which, by my calculations, had to lie between the great hall and the rest of the house. In the meantime, Mistress Lynom allowed herself to be relieved of her cloak and installed in the one armchair the great hall boasted, placed close to the fire by Sir Hugh himself. I saw the resentful, almost malevolent glance that Gerard Empryngham gave them, and wondered how well the real relationship between the pair was known at Cederwell.

'Tell me, then, exactly what has happened,' Ursula Lynom entreated, a little breathlessly I thought, and twisting her hands together in her lap.

Sir Hugh explained as briefly as he could the circumstances of his wife's death, adding, 'But I do not understand how the hermit could have known.'
 

Hamon said quickly, 'He rambles abroad looking for food. Maybe, this morning, he followed the track down through the scrubland leading to the foreshore and the tower and.., and saw Lady Cederwell's body lying on the ground. He is a simple soul. It must have frightened him and he ran away.'

'Yes. Yes, that would doubtless be it,' Sir Hugh agreed with relief. He turned back to Ursula Lynom. 'Brother Simeon here was about to answer some questions concerning his discovery of... of...' He seemed unable to complete the sentence.