The Tintern Treasure (32 page)

As she spoke, recollections of my recent dreams gave me an unpleasant jolt, but try as I would I could still make no sense of them. I stared at the buttons. I fingered them. That they held some significance for me, I was certain, but what that significance was continued to elude me . . .

Joseph Sibley lived in Redcliffe, so unloaded me along with my pack and cudgel close to St Thomas's Church. I thanked him, paid him and then set out with a feeling of relief in the direction of Bristol Bridge. My way took me close to Margaret Walker's cottage, but I had no intention of breaking my journey to pay her a visit. Home beckoned. I just wanted to get there as soon as possible.

Fate, however, decreed otherwise. As I started to cross the bridge, I realized that my former mother-in-law was just ahead of me and no doubt bound for Small Street. I had no option but to overtake her with as cordial a greeting as I could manage.

The pleasantry was not returned. ‘Oh, it's you, is it?' she said grimly. ‘And not before time. It seems to me you're never around when you're most needed.'

‘Why?' I asked uneasily. ‘What's happened?'

‘You mean apart from your house being broken into?'

‘Broken into again?' I was aghast. ‘When . . . When did this happen?'

‘The day before yesterday, in the morning while Adela was at market with the children. She'd foolishly taken that dog of yours along with her because she had a notion in her head that someone had been trying to poison him.'

‘Poison Hercules?' I stopped dead in the middle of a crowded High Sreet, staring at Margaret Walker in horror. At the same time, I recalled a conversation with Sir Lionel Despenser in which he had expressed surprise – and, now I came to think of it, concern – that I owned a dog. I remembered telling him how Hercules had been acquired. ‘Is . . . Is he all right?'

‘Quite unharmed, thanks to Adela, who kept him indoors after he'd been sick on two occasions. Although considering what that animal scavenges from the drains, why she thought –' Here Margaret broke off and seized my arm, urging me forward. ‘For the sweet Lord's sake shift yourself, Roger! You're getting in everyone's way standing there like a great booby with your mouth half-open! Besides, you've a bigger worry than that awaiting you.'

‘Was anything stolen from the house?' I asked as we began to move, her last words not sinking in for the moment.

‘Adela says not, but of course it hasn't stopped Dick Manifold from being round there every five minutes. If you'll take my advice my lad, you want to keep your eye on him.'

‘I do, believe me . . . What did you mean, a bigger worry?'

My quondam mother-in-law snorted. ‘That child's turned up again. He's bigger now, about ten or eleven months I should say, and he's not with the woman who brought him here first, before you came home in April.'

‘What child?' I demanded. But I knew perfectly well what child. I was simply playing for time.

We had by now reached the High Cross and I came to a halt in its shadow. Margaret Walker stood still perforce and turned to face me. ‘The child that woman claimed was yours. Only now it seems the story's changed. It appears that after all the boy is not yours, only has some sort of claim on you.' She gave another snort. ‘I've never heard such nonsense. I told Adela that if this present woman shows up again to send her away with a flea in her ear. I don't know what your connection is with that creature in Gloucester, and I don't want to know, but it's obvious she's trying to force this child on you by one means or another. She's afraid to come here herself for fear of coming face-to-face with you, so she's persuaded her friend to do the deed for her.'

If that were only the case, I thought with a sinking heart, how much simpler things would be. It was apparent to me that Juliette Gerrish had died and that Jane Spicer, according to her promise, had brought Luke to Bristol in an effort to persuade me to take my half-nephew into my family and raise him as my own. I groaned inwardly. I could foresee storm clouds ahead.

We walked down Small Street, in silence on my part but with Margaret giving me a great deal of advice to which I paid not the slightest attention. Indeed, most of it I didn't even listen to, one half of my mind being preoccupied with the break-in and what it meant, and the other with my responsibility to my half-brother's child and how I was going to persuade Adela that we had no choice but to shelter the poor little mite.

I had been half afraid, after Margaret's warning, of finding myself confronted by Richard Manifold, but my fears proved groundless. In fact, I had rarely known the house so calm and peaceful and we walked through the hall into the kitchen where all three children were seated round the table calmly doing their lessons. Adela glanced up as we entered with a finger to her lips and indicating the old cradle on the floor beside her and which she was gently rocking with her foot.

‘Hush,' she said to Margaret, ‘he's sleeping.' Then she saw me and was immediately on her feet to give me a kiss of greeting.

‘Roger! You're home!'

Immediately all was pandemonium. Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam left their horn books with shouts of, ‘What have you brought us?' Hercules nipped my ankles as a punishment for going away and leaving him behind, while Luke, just as I remembered him, all copper curls and huge brown eyes, sat up and beamed at all and sundry.

Adela stooped, picked Luke up and tucked him under one arm. ‘He's so active,' she explained. ‘You have to watch him every minute.

Margaret Walker and I stared at her.

‘Where's . . . Where's Jane Spicer?' I asked.

My wife smiled. ‘Gone home to Gloucester.' The smile vanished. ‘Mistress Gerrish died two weeks ago.'

‘Adela!' Margaret exclaimed, outraged. ‘You've not agreed . . . You've not been so foolish as to keep that child, have you?'

Her cousin looked surprised. ‘What else can I do? And once I'd seen him . . . He's such a sweet-natured child.'

She turned her head to smile at Luke who grinned in return, revealing two teeth. He patted her cheek.

I sank down on the nearest stool, my head in a whirl. I had been prepared for squalls, but unbelievably all seemed set for fine weather. All the same . . .

‘Sweetheart,' I said weakly, ‘are you sure about this? Another woman's child! And another boy! What . . . What do the children think about it?' I glanced nervously at the three of them as they rummaged eagerly through my pouch and pockets, extracting the small gifts I had had the forethought to buy them in Wells. I recalled a time when Adam was young and the other two had tried to give him away.

Adela shrugged. ‘They don't seem to mind. If anything, Adam is rather pleased, I think, to have a member of the family younger than himself. It means he's no longer the baby . . .'

‘I'm a man now,' my son interrupted. ‘I have a knife.'

‘. . . while Bess and Nick,' my wife resumed, ‘as you well know, have always been wrapped up in one another.'

‘You're a fool, my girl!' Margaret Walker declared loudly, making me jump. I had forgotten she was there. ‘Another mouth to feed! Another child to cook and clean and sew for! And not even yours or Roger's!' She prodded me hard on the shoulder. ‘You'd better go and see King Richard – if king he really is – and tell him you need to be paid more.'

I slammed my fist down on the table. ‘I tell you, mother-in-law –' she still liked me to call her that – ‘I don't work for the king! And what do you mean, if he really is that?'

‘You've no cause to take that aggressive tone with me, Roger. There are plenty of people, I can tell you, who think he has no right to the title, who believe that his claim was a trumped-up one concocted with the help of Robert Stillington. And what has happened to those poor boys, the little king and his brother? Tell me that! Rumour has it –'

‘I know how rumour has it,' I snapped, ‘and rumour lies! I know King Richard! I know he would never harm his nephews.'

I was shouting, Margaret Walker was looking affronted and all four children were regarding me round-eyed, uncertain as to the cause of my displeasure.

‘I shall be going,' Margaret announced. She kissed her granddaughter and nodded at her cousin. ‘You know where to find me, Adela, should you need me. I still think you're the biggest fool in Christendom.'

And with that parting shot she was gone, the street door banging behind her.

‘Oh, Roger!' Adela said reproachfully, but I could see the smile glimmering at the back of her eyes. She handed Luke to me and fetched me a beaker of ale. ‘Have you had any breakfast?'

‘Of a sort, in an ale-house at Whitchurch.' I shifted Luke's weight to my left arm and took a long swallow of Adela's homemade beer. ‘But never mind that. We've things to talk about. First and foremost, are you sure about raising Luke?'

She smiled, a little wryly, I thought. ‘Tell me what else we can do? Mistress Spicer was adamant in her refusal to keep him. And if you're satisfied that he is indeed your half-brother's son . . .'

I hesitated, then nodded. ‘I feel sure he must be.'

‘Then there's no more to be said, is there? Talking is simply a waste of breath. Besides, he's a very lovable child.'

And as if to confirm this, Luke gave me a beaming smile and put up a hand to tweak my nose, an action which caused his foster siblings a great deal of amusement.

This argument having been settled with far less aggravation than I could possibly have imagined, even in my most sanguine dreams, I turned to the second and far more serious matter. ‘Margaret says the house has been robbed again.'

Adela gathered up the horn books and put them away. ‘Not “robbed”,' she demurred, ‘and not “again”. On the first occasion, if you recall, whoever it was didn't manage to get in, thanks to Hercules, and this time nothing was taken. Oh, everything had been turned upside down, the contents of every drawer and cupboard strewn about the floor, but neither the children nor I could discover a single thing that was missing.'

Elizabeth, Nicholas and Adam vociferously confirmed this statement.

‘When did this happen?'

‘The day before yesterday, Wednesday, while we were all at market.'

‘Margaret said you'd taken Hercules with you. She had some story that you thought he was being poisoned.'

Adela suspended a pot of stew from the hook over the fire, to heat. ‘I thought he might have been. He was sick twice, each time after Bess had reported seeing a man giving him meat.'

I turned to my daughter. ‘What was he like, this man?'

Elizabeth wrinkled her forehead. ‘A big man. Not anyone that I knew.'

‘Did he have a scar or scratch marks on his face?'

Again she furrowed her brow, but to no avail. ‘I can't remember.'

‘Did either Nicholas or Adam see him?'

But my stepson and son denied all knowledge of the stranger.

‘If I'd seen him,' Adam declared stoutly, ‘I'd have run him through with my knife. Right through the belly button.'

There it was again, that jolt of recognition that told me he had, as once before, said something of importance, something of significance. And if I remembered rightly, he had used almost exactly the same words. But try as I would, the memory refused to resolve itself. I could only sit there, fuming with frustration.

I
spent the rest of the morning until the dinner hour going around the house, satisfying myself that nothing had been taken that Adela and the children had failed to remember was there. This was not as difficult a task as it sounds for, whatever other people imagined, we were not rich and our possessions were few. The rest of the world might think me an agent of King Richard and assume I was paid accordingly, but most of the missions I had undertaken on his behalf had happened either by accident or out of a sense of loyalty to a man I greatly admired. That I had received very little payment was entirely my own fault because I preferred to keep my independence and be beholden to no man. It was all the more ironic, therefore, that people now assumed I was the very thing I had striven so hard to avoid.

Nothing, however, appeared to be missing. This did not surprise me. It merely confirmed my belief that the intruder – or intruders – had not been intent on general robbery but were searching for something in particular – the Tintern treasure. Whoever was behind these break-ins – and everything, to my mind, pointed to Sir Lionel Despenser and Gilbert Foliot – was growing desperate. The trouble was, of course, that like myself they had no proof that the treasure even existed. We might all be chasing our tails.

I had no doubt that the knight, with the assistance of his friend the goldsmith, had reached the same conclusion as I had done: that there was a strong possibility that Edward II, during his flight into Wales, had left something of value in the care of the then abbot of Tintern, hoping to return later to retrieve it. Unfortunately, there was no proof so far that this had actually happened. Nor was there any real proof that Sir Lionel Despenser and Master Foliot had transferred their loyalty to Henry Tudor and were working on his behalf.

My thoughts were interrupted at this point by the sound of Elizabeth shouting at the top of her voice and Adam yelling in return. My temper being at that moment not of the best, I descended wrathfully from what was now the former's little attic room under the eaves, where I had been completing my inspection of the house, to the chamber next door to mine and Adela's which was shared by the two boys.

‘Be quiet, both of you!' I commanded. ‘What is this all about?'

‘He keeps stealing my things,' Elizabeth said, pointing an accusing finger at her brother.

Adam, red-faced and mutinous, had his hands behind his back. His expression left no possible doubt as to his guilt.