Kate Sedley: The Saint John's fern

Peter Threadgold leapt nimbly to the ground, catching up the two boys in turn and tossing them, squealing with delight, into the air. Then, as I was by this time standing alongside him, he turned to introduce me.

‘Master Chapman, this is my daughter, Mistress Cobbold, and these two young imps of Satan are my grandsons. Joanna, my dear, our friend here is looking for a bed for the night, being more or less a stranger to these parts, and I thought you might be able to find him a corner.’

Joanna Cobbold dimpled. ‘If he doesn’t mind sharing a bed with one of the children, he’s more than welcome. Now, come along inside, the pair of you, and Father, I can’t wait to hear all your news. How is Mother and when can we expect to see her again?’

The interior of the cottage was as clean and neat as the exterior had led me to believe it would be, and I was soon settled at the table with a cup of Mistress Cobbold’s home-brewed ale in my hand. And in order to draw off the boys’ overwhelming attentions from their grandfather, I opened my pack and allowed them to rummage through its contents, while Peter Threadgold and his daughter talked, uninterrupted, exchanging all the latest family gossip.

Later, as we were sitting down to a meal of savoury-smelling rabbit stew, followed by pippin tarts and goat’s-milk cheese and chives, the master of the house returned, greeting his father-in-law with genuine affection and adding his voice to his wife’s, urging Peter to stay with them overnight.

‘No, no, lad, I daren’t.’ The carter shook his head regretfully. ‘I told Martha I’d be straight home after I’d delivered my load at the priory. She’ll have me overturned at the bottom of a ditch as it is. I must be going, I’m afraid, as soon as I’ve finished eating. But you’ll oblige me by looking after my friend Roger Chapman here.’

John Cobbold made no further attempt to persuade his father-in-law to remain, and for the rest of the meal the conversation turned on the present parlous state of the wine trade in Plymouth, my host being employed, as I gathered, by a vintner who had a shop near the market cross. The expulsion of the English from Bordeaux twenty-odd years before, and the subsequent edict forbidding any Englishman to take up residence in that city, had, I learnt, started the rot; and now the trade was fast becoming the monopoly of the hated Flemings and the even more detested members of the Hanseatic League.

‘In fact,’ John Cobbold added gloomily, ‘trade is generally bad altogether at present. Fishing isn’t what it was. Even the hake business is losing money, and you know how plentiful hake’s always been in the waters off this coast.’ He sighed. ‘There aren’t any fortunes to be made from it nowadays, not like old Master Capstick’s, next door.’

‘May God rest his soul,’ Joanna added, making the sign of the Cross.

Peter Threadgold clicked his tongue. ‘He’s dead then, is he, old Oliver Capstick? I noticed when we arrived that the house was boarded up and the knocker removed.’ The carter rubbed his nose. ‘I must say, I’m surprised. He was getting on in years, it’s true, but he was always so healthy and active that I can’t imagine him succumbing to illness. But there, it happens to us all sooner or later. When our time comes, it comes and there’s no escaping it. Poor old fellow! A bit cantankerous and difficult, by all accounts, but he was very polite to me whenever I was here and we happened to meet in the street. And that isn’t always the way of the rich towards the poor, as we very well know. What did he die of?’

I saw John and Joanna Cobbold exchange glances, then the former said, ‘You two boys can go and play, if you’ve finished eating. I can hear some of your friends outside.’ Robin and Thomas needed no further encouragement to leave the table and the tedious conversation of their elders to join the other boys and girls in the street, and were gone like a shot from a bow. But their father waited until the cottage door had closed behind them before answering Peter’s question. ‘Master Capstick didn’t die of any illness. He was murdered — and very brutally murdered — last May.’

Peter Threadgold flinched visibly, the shock of his son-in-law’s words hitting him with the force of a blow. He was not old, having, I guessed, seen some fifty winters, but old enough to fear the horrors of a brutal death; to identify with the vulnerability that the waning of physical strength brings in its wake.

For my own part, I was unsurprised by John Cobbold’s revelation. The suspicion that here, in Bilbury Street, was the reason for my presence in the town of Plymouth, had been growing steadily upon me ever since I had clapped eyes on the shuttered house next door. Consequently, I settled myself more comfortably on my stool, took another chive from the dish in the centre of the table and, chewing thoughtfully, prepared to listen while all was revealed.

‘What happened?’ Peter Threadgold asked, after a second or two’s horrified silence. ‘How — ’ he cleared his throat — ‘how did Master Capstick die?’

‘He was bludgeoned to death in his bed,’ Joanna answered, lowering her voice as though afraid that one of the children might have crept back into the cottage without her noticing. She added impressively, ‘I saw his body,’ and waited for a moment while her father and I looked suitably appalled. She then went on, ‘I was in the yard, spreading out my washing to dry, when I heard Mistress Trenowth start screaming, so naturally, I ran next door to discover what was wrong. I found her upstairs in Master Capstick’s bedchamber.’ Joanna gave an involuntary shudder. ‘It was horrible. Horrible! His head had been beaten to a pulp and the bedclothes were soaked in blood.’ She began to cry, making little whimpering sounds like those of a wounded animal.

John Cobbold got up from his place to walk round the table and sit on the bench beside her, putting a broad, workmanlike arm around her shoulders and giving them a squeeze.

‘We don’t discuss it in front of the boys,’ he said, ‘and most of the time Joanna forces herself to forget all about it. But then, when she does remember, everything comes back afresh, and upsets her.’

‘Who’s Mistress Trenowth?’ I asked, and was told that she had been the old man’s housekeeper.

‘She was with him a very long time,’ Joanna said, pulling herself together and dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her apron. ‘Ever since his wife died, which, I understand from neighbours, was some fifteen or sixteen years ago.’ She gave another sniff and wiped her nose on the back of one hand. ‘Mistress Trenowth was fond of him, I think, in spite of the fact that, when the mood took him, Master Capstick could be an old curmudgeon.’ She smiled tremulously. ‘In truth, we all found him a bit difficult now and then. He used to shout at the children if they made too much noise, playing in the street. But on other occasions, he’d thrown them sweetmeats out of his bedroom window.’

‘And he wasn’t proud,’ her husband added. ‘In spite of his wealth, he stayed here, in the house he’d been born in, instead of moving to Notte Street, where all the new buildings are going up, and where most of the people with money in this town are buying new properties. It didn’t seem to worry him that many of the houses in Bilbury Street are falling into a state of disrepair.’

‘But do they know who did this terrible deed, and why?’ Peter Threadgold demanded. ‘You say the murder happened last May, and here it is October and you don’t mention an arrest. Haven’t the Sheriff’s officers caught the murderer yet?’

‘Yes to your first question, and no to your second,’ John Cobbold answered. ‘The murderer was Master Capstick’s great-nephew, Beric Gifford of Modbury. We know that for certain because Mistress Trenowth met him at the foot of the stairs, as he was coming down, the front of his tunic all stained with blood — or at least, so she remembered later. She says she didn’t really take much notice at the time. It seems she’d just come from the kitchen with the old man’s breakfast, which she was carrying up to him on a tray, and wasn’t expecting to see anyone else at that hour of the morning, not having heard Beric enter the house. He didn’t return her greeting when she spoke to him, but let himself out of the front door without a word. Mistress Trenowth went on upstairs — and found Master Capstick lying there, in all his gore. That was when she started screaming.’