Kate Sedley - The Christmas Wassail

But even as the thought entered my head, I recalled the remains of the poppy seed and lettuce juice lozenges on the battered tin plate that I had found beneath my bed. Tabitha had claimed that burning them through the night helped them all to sleep while on the road, the strong perfume making them oblivious of uncomfortable beds in strange places. No doubt she was right, and if you put them directly underneath a sleeper’s bed the fumes would probably render him very nearly unconscious until morning. I remembered, too, a nagging headache that had troubled me throughout the following day.

Tabitha had been awake, dressed and sitting up when I had finally managed to open my eyes that morning. But she had looked tired. Had she been keeping guard over me while the menfolk had gone to lie in wait for Sir George? But what was it precisely that he had done to them? And why had they carved the word DIE into his chest when he was already dead? And why had Alderman Trefusis whispered the word ‘Dee’ when he was dying? And, above all, was I correct in holding the mummers to blame, or was I off hunting yet another mare’s nest while the true answer to these Christmas murders still eluded me?

No; I felt certain that after wasting so much time and effort chasing the false hare that Miles Deakin had proved to be, I was now on the right track. Cyprian Marvell had neither denied nor derided my suggestion that his nocturnal visitor had been one of the mummers, or that the link between them and his father had been their service in the French wars. His silence on the subject seemed only to confirm that my guess was the correct one. He had, moreover, admitted to giving the man money; an admission that had to mean some disgraceful episode in Sir George’s past; an episode shared, presumably with his contemporary, Alderman Trefusis, who had also been a soldier. And there was a final link with the mummers in that Master Tuffnel, the owner of Sweetwater Manor and the benefactor of Tabitha Warrener and Ned Chorley, was called Cyprian, the baptismal name given to his elder son by the knight. And once again the link was that both men had fought in France. There was a very good chance that they had known one another, that they had been friends.

As for the attacks on myself, one or two of the mummers, if not all of them with the possible exception of Dorcas, had surely been in our house during the wassail of St Thomas Becket’s Day when it would have been simplicity itself to slip something into my beaker. They had, of course, been masked, one of them wearing that of the hooked-beak bird; the mask that later, in a little charade, staged, I now felt certain, for my benefit, they pretended had been borrowed and then returned. Had they intended to kill me that time, or had it been merely an attempt to discourage my interest in Robert Trefusis’s murder? But why? Because Adela had frightened them when, so uncharacteristically, she had boasted of problems I had solved for King Richard when he was Duke of Gloucester? And when I had shown no sign of abating that interest, they had decided that I, too, must die before I discovered the truth.

It crossed my mind that as they had left the city so early that morning, they might not have realized that they had murdered the wrong man the previous evening. If they thought me dead, it was equally possible that they considered themselves safe at last and would be travelling to their winter quarters in Hampshire at a more leisurely pace. On the other hand, they might have discovered their mistake at the time of the killing, in which case their progress could have become a flight. But either way, it would make no difference. I fully intended to go after them whatever the winter weather held in store. I had liked the mummers. I had thought them my friends. Now I knew them for what they were — a bunch of murderous cut-throats.

I found the knowledge distressing. Adam had liked them, and they had liked him — or seemed to have done. Could I be wrong? Again? But the longer I thought about things, the stronger the conviction grew that this time I was not mistaken. I suspected that I should now go to Richard Manifold and lay before him my suspicions and my reasons for them. The chase and retribution should now be in the hands of the law, but while the shadow of a doubt lingered I could not bring myself to do so. The sergeant would undoubtedly claim that it was because I wanted all the glory for myself, and who knew but that he might not be right? Had I, over the years, become too set up in my own conceit? Had the general belief that I was an important agent of the king really gone to my head, in spite of all my vigorous denials to the contrary? Certainly, I had been brought to the realization that I had forgotten God, and I recalled Adela’s accusation that I encouraged both Adam and Elizabeth in their somewhat heretical view of religion. The trouble was that I could never bring myself to believe in the great God of Wrath and Retribution. He had blessed us with a sense of humour, the ability to laugh at and mock ourselves: therefore, I was unable to feel that he took himself so seriously …

I heaved myself away from the chapel wall and found that I was shivering. A man could think too much and never get any satisfactory answers. In the end, I could only be guided by instinct and hope that it was sound; that it was God’s way of working through me. Action was what I needed now. Epiphany had come: the Christ Child had been shown to the Magi. It was the Twelfth Day and Christmas was over.

‘You’re sure about this?’ Adela asked anxiously. ‘Going as far as Hampshire at this time of the year?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I’ll take my pack. It won’t be a wasted journey. People are glad to see pedlars at this time of year when the Christmas festivities are behind them and spring is still a long way off. They’re so happy to see a fresh face, they’ll part with their money all the more easily.’

Adela sighed. ‘We could do with all you can earn,’ she admitted. ‘This Christmas has emptied our purse. Everything seems to have cost so much more than last year. All the same, you would be able to sell as much if you worked the hamlets and villages hereabouts. If the weather should turn bad, you might find yourself trapped in Hampshire for months.’

She still looked pale and unhappy. I knew why she wanted me to stay; the thought of Dick Hodge’s brutal death still lay like a bruise on her spirit, as indeed it did on mine. She needed comforting, but she knew why I had to go: I had explained my reasons to her. She had been shocked and, at first, disbelieving, having looked on the mummers as friends, but I had finally convinced her by my arguments that I must at least go after them and satisfy myself that I was right.

‘And what will you do if you are?’ she asked.

I admitted that I didn’t know and said it depended. ‘On what?’ she might have asked, but she knew as well as I did that I had no answer. I made her promise to say nothing of the matter to anyone until my return, when I would know more; when I could decide what had to be done.

We celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany that evening at St Giles and said goodbye to Christmas for another year. And in the morning I set out for Hampshire, warmly wrapped up in my new blue cloak against the January weather, and with my pack on my back and my cudgel in my hand.

It was a fortnight later when I finally discovered the community of Sweetwater, with its moated manor house, tucked away in the countryside between Winchester and Southampton.

The journey had taken me longer than I had expected; though perhaps no longer than I had any right to expect, it now being past the middle of January. The weather had indeed worsened the further the month progressed, with heavy snow showers and driving winds forcing me to seek shelter in friendly monasteries and other religious houses for as much as up to two days at a time. Added to this, of course, I had been peddling my goods around the villages and hamlets through which I had passed, and often been detained by their inhabitants, who were starved of news from the outside world once passing traffic had grown scarce on the frozen roads. Wayfarers were few and far between in the depth of winter, and I was a welcome presence in nearly every dwelling at which I stopped, whether manor, smallholding, cottage or hovel. With Christmas over for another year, and with the days not yet sufficiently longer so as to be noticeable, the inevitable pall of depression was clouding the minds of country folk; and so my advent was hailed with relief and the chance to hear of other people’s doings or to discuss such news as had reached them in the summer months rarely passed up.