Kate Sedley - The Christmas Wassail

‘Master Chapman.’ The man nodded curtly to me, but his tone was civil enough. All the same, it was not his duty to attend upon the whims of a pedlar and I could tell he was resentful of his fear of offending me. ‘How can I help you? There’s nothing further I can say about finding poor Dick’s body than what I have already told Sergeant Manifold and the sheriff, information which I’m very certain the whole town must know by now.’

‘I’m really more interested in the mummers,’ I said. ‘I was informed they’d left.’

‘At first light.’ The reeve shrugged. ‘In fact, the carts were loaded and they were waiting to get away before the gates were open. One of them fetched the horses from the Bell Lane stables last night in order that there should be no delay from that quarter this morning. They should be well on the road by now. They were extremely anxious to get back to Hampshire and their winter lodgings before the weather worsened, which it very often does after Christmas. And the younger woman is, of course, in a delicate condition. So I’m afraid if you were wishful to speak to them, you’re unlucky. It would take a fast horse to catch up with them now.’ A slight smile touched his lips: he obviously knew the stories about me and horses.

‘Their winter quarters, I think Mistress Tabitha told me, are at Sweetwater Manor, between Winchester and Southampton, belonging to a Master Tuffnel.’

The reeve nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. A Master Cyprian Tuffnel.’

‘Cyprian?’

My tone was so sharp that he looked at me curiously. ‘Yes, so one of them told me. Not a common name, I grant you, but a saint’s name for all that.’

‘It’s Master Marvell’s name, chosen presumably by his father, Sir George.’

The reeve fingered his chin. ‘So it is,’ he said. ‘Do you think it has some particular significance?’

I didn’t reply to his question because I wasn’t sure of the answer — not yet, at any rate. But I did feel a growing conviction that God had come back to me and was once more directing my footsteps.

I thanked the man for his help and left him staring after me, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. He was probably trying to work out what help he had given me. In spite of the bitter cold and my gnawing hunger, I went and sat on a wall close to the Mint. (I could hear them hammering away inside, fashioning the new coins needed for King Richard’s reign.) With a concentrated effort of memory, I recalled Tabitha saying that her father had been warrener to Master Tuffnel’s father, and that she and he had grown up together. Which meant that Cyprian Tuffnel was a man of roughly her age and of an age with Sir George Marvell and Alderman Trefusis. Had he, too, been a soldier in the French wars? Had the other two known him? Had they been companions? Could that possibly be why Sir George had given his son the name of Cyprian, in memory of an army friendship?

I took a deep breath. I was rushing ahead too fast again, letting my theories outstrip the facts, jumping to conclusions. It was my besetting sin, but this time I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was justified. A recollection of Tabitha saying that Master Tuffnel had been good to her and Ned Chorley when they most needed it rose to the surface of my mind. Also that Cyprian Tuffnel had been some years older than herself — which would make him even closer to George Marvell’s age …

A sudden blast of icy wind blowing up from both of Bristol’s rivers made me shiver violently and get hurriedly to my feet, grabbing my cloak around me. It was time to go home and find out what was happening there. But as I walked through the icy streets and the church bells still ringing out for the later Epiphany Day services, I had a sudden vision of the terrible injuries inflicted on Ned Chorley and Alfred Littlewood by the French, and then of those perpetrated on George Marvell; the lopped off fingers and the gouged-out eyes. The word that kept going around and around in my head was ‘retribution’.

Margaret Walker had not failed us. Luke was on her lap and she and the children were all seated at the kitchen table quietly getting on with the pottage she had heated. Adela was there, too, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen, but only making a pretence at eating. I saw her hand shake as she lifted her spoon.

‘Ah, here you are at last,’ my former mother-in-law remarked grimly as I made my entrance. ‘Sit down. Elizabeth, get your father his dinner.’

My daughter heaved a martyred sigh, but nevertheless rose from her stool and filled a bowl with stew from the pot over the fire.

I braced myself and addressed my wife. ‘How are Burl and Jenny?’

‘You may well ask!’

The picture was immediately clear to me. I was to be the scapegoat. I was to bear the burden of being to blame for Dick Hodge’s death. No matter that it was Jenny and even Dick himself who had persuaded me — more, begged me — to let him have my old cloak. That wasn’t the point and never would be. The point was that I spent my time poking about in affairs that didn’t concern me so that people wanted to kill me in order to stop my prying. I sighed. I suppose I might have guessed it.

‘Burl’s vowed never to speak to you again,’ Adela informed me in trembling accents. ‘And, honestly, Roger, I don’t know that I can blame him. He and Jenny are both half-dead with grief. As for Jack, I wouldn’t go near him for a while if I were you. You’re likely to get a bloody nose if no worse.’

To my surprise, it was Margaret who came to my defence. ‘Well, I think that’s very unfair,’ she said stoutly. ‘You can’t hold Roger responsible for Dick Hodge’s death because he did the lad a good turn. In fact, if I know Roger, he’s too fond of wearing disgusting old clothes to have parted with that grey cloak unless he’d been begged to. And so I shall tell anyone who says anything of the kind to me.’

I think Adela was as dumbfounded by this unlooked-for partisanship as I was and was silenced. Furthermore, she has a sense of justice and, after turning her cousin’s words over in her mind for several minutes, suddenly said, stifling her sobs, ‘You’re right, Margaret, my dear.’

She lapsed into silence, pushing away her almost full plate, but I no longer felt, at least in my own home, that I was the object of my family’s animosity. True, Adam did murmur his usual, ‘Bad man!’ but it was more a term of affection, I felt, than any sort of reproach.

‘Does anyone have any idea who might have killed Dick Hodge and the others?’ Margaret asked me.

I shook my head.

She eyed me shrewdly. ‘I really meant do you have any idea? What about the young man Dame Drusilla wanted to marry? What did Bess Simnel say his name is? Miles Deakin? I had an idea you suspected him at one time.’

‘You can forget Miles Deakin,’ I said shortly.

Margaret raised her eyebrows. ‘O-ho! You do know something. Don’t try to deny it.’

‘I know that he had nothing to do with the murders,’ was my answer. I frowned at her and she nodded in reluctant acceptance of the fact that I was going to say no more on the subject.

‘What are you thinking of doing now?’ she asked, knowing me too well to suppose that the recent tragedy would have made me falter in my search for the truth.

I smiled, feeling an unexpected rush of affection for her and her understanding and loyalty. I must be fonder of her than I knew. ‘When I’ve finished my dinner,’ I said, ‘I’m going to visit Cyprian Marvell.’

‘You think he may know something?’

‘I think it possible, but whether or not he will share his know-ledge is a different matter.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’

I hesitated, then, ‘It’s time I took up my peddling again. This is the last day of Christmas and we must all get back to the workaday world.’