The Tintern Treasure (15 page)

I was about to get myself a drink of water at St Peter's fountain when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I had been aware for several moments of a more than usually pungent smell – more pungent even than the alleyway's normal aroma of stale urine, dead cats and dog turd – and, turning, found myself staring down into the rheumy eyes of a small man whose verminous head reached to just the middle of my breastbone.

‘I been a-watching of thee,' he announced. ‘Not that anyone could miss such a gert lump. I reckon thee's looking fer where that there pedlar were murdered Friday evening.'

‘How do you know it was Friday evening and not early Saturday morning?' I asked, taking a step or two backward in order to distance myself from the stench of the man's clothes. (Clothes? More like a bundle of very old unwashed rags.)

‘'Cos I saw him set on, that's why. I were looking out the door of me mother's house down there –' he waved a sticklike arm towards the opposite end of the lane – ‘and I seed him walking down on t'other side, coming my way. He were being followed, I seed that at once. Two gert big fellows they were and they meant mischief. I seed one of 'em twisting a rope a-'tween his hands. Thee's for it, me old acker, I thought – and sure enough he were. Mind, he put up the devil of a struggle, kicking and clawing and squirming, but it weren't no good. He were dead as mutton in minutes. Quicker than the hangman c'n do it, I said to meself. Then they stripped his pack from his back and were off, like greased lightning.'

‘And you made no attempt to go to this poor man's assistance?' I demanded furiously, and without really stopping to think.

My informant soon put me straight. ‘Me? Thee's out thy mind! How tall dost 'ee think I am? They were gert big fellows, I tell 'ee! They'd 'ave made mincemeat out of I. I ain't risking me life fer no stranger. I ain't that stupid, Maister.'

I could see his point of view and apologized for being so foolish, whereupon he flashed me a toothless grin and offered to show me the exact spot where the murder had taken place. I declined – there didn't seem any point – but asked him to confirm that the killers were indeed nothing other than two common footpads looking for an easy mark. ‘For I can't see why they needed to kill him,' I said. ‘Oliver Tockney wasn't a big man. Moreover, there were two of them to his one. They could have overpowered him easily.'

My companion considered this.

‘Maybe they didn't mean to kill him,' he volunteered after a while. ‘Maybe one jus' meant to hold him with the rope round his neck while t'other robbed him. But, as I told 'ee, he put up such a fight that I reckons they had no choice.'

I nodded and, taking a coin from my purse, put into the man's greasy palm. His fist closed round it tightly and he disappeared almost at once, no doubt heading for the nearest ale-house. The alacrity with which he received the money made me wonder how true his story was. Had he really been a spectator to Oliver's murder or had he simply made it up, loitering around the alley, waiting for some gullible fool to show an interest in the crime?

There was, unhappily, no way of knowing for certain, so there was nothing to be done. I had my drink at the fountain and went back to Small Street.

‘You're just in time,' said my wife, ‘to make yourself useful and put out the dishes and spoons for supper. I hope you haven't forgotten that we have company.'

‘If you mean Dick Manifold, why don't you say so?' I countered bad-temperedly. ‘I don't call him “company”. And where's Elizabeth? It's high time she took her share of the household chores.'

‘She's gone to the market for me and taken Adam and Hercules with her to get them out from under my feet.' Adela considered me thoughtfully. ‘Now, what's happened to put you in such a bad mood?'

I told her and she was immediately all concern. ‘Roger, I'm so sorry! What a dreadful thing to have happened. And the poor man, not in the city above a day, if that! No wonder you're upset. Sit down and have some ale. We must question Richard more closely about it, at supper.'

But Richard, spruce and shining, gobbling down his hearty portion of beef stew – beef was a rare treat in our house, and I felt highly incensed to be sharing it with Dick Manifold – was disinclined to pursue the subject. The death of a pedlar, and a stranger at that, was of small importance to him. As a man of the law, he had news of far greater substance to impart. ‘If I should happen to be called away during the course of this evening,' he said, ‘don't be offended.' (I shouldn't have been offended, not in the least.) ‘It will be on official business.' He paused here to give the rest of us – well, Adela, then – sufficient time to look both admiring and interested before continuing, ‘All ports in the south-west have been warned to be ready to repel invasion by Henry Tudor and his troops.'

This revelation did, most gratifyingly, catch and hold our attention. Adela cried out and I dropped my spoon on the floor. (Hercules had licked it clean before I could pick it up again.)

‘Henry Tudor?' I queried stupidly.

Richard nodded. ‘Royal messengers brought the news express this morning. Henry Tudor with a Breton fleet and an army of mercenaries is off the Dorset coast, at Poole, seeking access to the town.'

‘An unwalled town,' I put in swiftly.

‘As you say, Roger. However, a further messenger arrived late this afternoon to inform His Worship the Mayor that the invasion had been repulsed by the loyal citizens of Poole and that the Tudor was sailing on westwards, probably – or so King Richard guesses – making for Wales. Henry's grandfather, Owen Tudor, was, as I am sure you know, a Welshman. And the Welsh are very loyal to their own. All ports, therefore, along the south coast and, particularly, those on the English side of the Bristol Channel have been instructed to be extremely vigilant.'

He looked so pleased with himself that I couldn't resist pricking his bubble of self-importance. ‘Well, if the invaders have only just quit the Dorset coast, they'll hardly reach this far for several days, at least,' I said nastily. ‘So you're unlikely to be called away this evening. We may look forward to many hours of your company yet.'

Adela looked daggers at me, but I was rewarded by guffaws from the three children, two of whom knew perfectly well when I was being sarcastic. (Adam simply followed their lead.)

Richard flushed with annoyance, but long practice had taught him to ignore my jibes. He replied with dignity, ‘This is a serious situation, Roger.' He smiled up at Adela as she removed his dirty bowl and placed a clean wooden trencher in front of him, preparatory to cutting him the largest slice of her pear and apple pie. He shovelled a good portion of this into his mouth – he was a greedy man – before turning once again to me. ‘What,' he asked, ‘do you make of these rumours that the king has had his nephews put to death?'

Richard Manifold could have asked no question more likely to send my temperature soaring. ‘Arrant nonsense!' I shouted so loudly that poor Adam, who was sitting next to me, nearly fell off his chair and Hercules started barking like a fiend. When order had been restored and I had received a timely rebuke from my wife, I continued on a less aggressive note, ‘One can see how and why they arose, of course.'

‘Of course,' Richard agreed at once. But then added cautiously, ‘what's your theory?'

Not loath to air my opinion, I laid down my spoon and proceeded to give it – it being, of course, the same as I had already tendered to Oliver Tockney and others. ‘As far as I can gather from everything I've heard while on my travels, there has been not just one rebellion, but two. The first was in the south and west by disaffected Yorkists on behalf of the late king Edward's sons. They're outraged by Richard's seizure of the crown and their intention was to restore the elder boy as King Edward the fifth. The second rebellion was fomented in Wales by the remnants of the Lancastrian faction who see King Richard's accession – which hasn't, let's face it, been welcomed by everyone – as a heaven-sent opportunity to stir up trouble on behalf of Henry, their one remaining claimant to the throne. The very last thing they want is the restoration of the House of York in the person of young Edward. So they've spread the rumour that the two children have been murdered on the orders of their uncle. At one fell swoop, this tears the heart out of the Yorkist cause and, in many cases no doubt, wins the Yorkist rebels over to the Tudor's side. There's a very subtle brain at work, and I've a shrewd idea whose it is. The Bishop of Ely has always hated King Richard and he was under house arrest at the Duke of Buckingham's home in Brecknock when all this trouble began. He undoubtedly persuaded Buckingham to throw in his lot with Henry just out of a sense of pure mischief. God knows where both of them are now.'

‘Oh, I can tell you that.' Richard's chest once more swelled with the importance of the well-informed official. ‘The bishop's reported to have fled abroad, to Brittany. The duke's been captured near Salisbury.'

‘He'll receive short shrift from the king then,' I said. ‘If there's one thing Richard won't forgive it's disloyalty.'

Richard Manifold nodded, but returned to his original subject of concern. ‘If your theory is correct, why has His Highness not repudiated the claim? Why has he not produced the two princes in order to prove that they are both alive and well?'

‘Because he's been otherwise employed crushing two rebellions,' I answered tartly. ‘And I wouldn't in future refer to them as princes, if I were you. The lords Edward and Richard Plantagenet suit their bastard status better.'

I spoke more hotly than I intended and saw my guest raise his eyebrows. ‘You're a loyal partisan, Roger, I'll say that for you. Or is it,' he added shrewdly, ‘that you're not quite as convinced by our new king's claim to the throne as you would like to be?'

I was about to launch a vigorous denial when Adam saved me the trouble by banging loudly with his spoon on the table and commanding, ‘No more talk!'

Richard Manifold stared at him in shocked surprise. This was a side of my son that he had not seen before and it was not the way in which children were supposed to behave. Nor did they in any other house that I had been in. It was, however, Adela, not I, who dismissed Adam from the table with an admonition for being rude, but even she had a quaver in her voice which our astute little son instantly detected, for he bounced off quite cheerfully while the other two clamoured to go with him. So while we three adults spent a quiet hour or two in the parlour, the usual noisy game was played out overhead; a game which neither my wife nor I did anything to curtail as soon as it became apparent that the incessant shouting and thumping of feet were likely to speed Richard Manifold's departure.

And when, finally, he took his leave, without the usual threat of honouring us with another visit, Adela wound her arms about my neck, kissed me soundly and said, ‘You're right, sweetheart. Richard is becoming wearisomely pompous.'

I was so taken aback by this admission that I was struck dumb for a full half minute. But at last I found my voice for long enough to make a highly appropriate suggestion.

Adela laughed and kissed me again. ‘Well, I suppose you have been away from home for quite some time,' she conceded.

‘And in quite a lot of danger, too,' I reminded her pathetically. ‘Moreover, I wouldn't have gone in the first place if you hadn't sent me.'

‘Oh, very well,' she agreed and led the way upstairs.

But she still managed to make it sound as if she were doing me the favour. (How do women do that?)

The next week passed in the hurly-burly of domestic life, getting out and about with my pack, doing odd jobs around the house, making it secure against the onset of colder weather. The days were getting progressively darker and shorter and there were window catches to be made fast, an adequate supply of fuel to be laid in, the tiler to be summoned to fix a loose tile on the roof. Adela, too, was busy, salting meat and fish for the winter, wrapping and storing apples in the tiny loft above Elizabeth's bedchamber, drying fresh herbs while they could still be got and generally preparing for that time of year when people burrow deep inside the four walls of their houses and listen to the elements doing their worst outside.

Nearly eight days had passed before we heard of the execution of the Duke of Buckingham at Salisbury on Sunday, November the second. This intrusion of great events into our small domestic circle was a reminder, to me at least, of a larger world outside demanding my attention. The rebellions were now well and truly over, retribution (surprisingly little considering the provocation) exacted and the king, so far as I could gather, settled in London and, for the present, resisting all temptation to return to his beloved north. The rumours about his nephews had died down, although Richard still seemed reluctant to make any statement concerning their well-being. I found this somewhat surprising, but had no time to let it worry me, having suddenly realized that I had not yet honoured my promise to Juliette Gerrish and Jane Spicer to visit Walter Gurney at Keynsham.

‘You're not going away so soon?' Adela demanded indignantly when I had made my plans known to her.

‘Only for a night. Two nights at most. As long as it takes me to walk to Keynsham and back again. I won't carry my pack. I'll be quicker that way.'

‘Well, see that you are. And you can take Hercules with you. The walk will do him good. He's getting far too fat and lazy.'

The sagacious animal, sprawled inelegantly beside the fire, opened one eye and gave her a baleful stare.

Nevertheless, he seemed willing enough to accompany me when I set out early the following morning. It was still dark as we passed through the Redcliffe Gate and a sickly sliver of moon rode high in the heavens, appearing and disappearing between the storm-driven clouds. A strong wind, soughing through the scrubland on either side of the track, sounded like the hushing of the sea.