Kate Sedley - The Weaver's inheritance

In this humbled mood, and lost in my own unhappy thoughts, I was not at first aware of someone shouting after me. But suddenly a hand seized my arm, and a breathless voice said, ‘Chapman! Why are you hurrying off without letting me take a look at your goods? I’m in want of needles and thread and also a wooden spoon, if you have one.’

It was Dame Janet, flushed and indignant, and I stammered a half-hearted apology. ‘I–I’m sorry, but I did tell you that I wasn’t selling today. My visit was simply to deliver his cousin’s letter to your master, which I’ve done.’

She snorted angrily. ‘Well, if your business with Master Baldwin’s finished, what’s to stop you doing a little business on your own account? I never knew a pedlar yet who wasn’t anxious to sell the nose off his face if the opportunity should offer.’

I had never felt less like hawking my wares, but Dame Janet was an elderly woman in need of commodities which she might otherwise have to go a mile or so to buy. I therefore urged her to the side of the road, on to the same grassy knoll which I had earlier shared with Timothy Plummer, and spread out the contents of my pack in the shade of the oak. As luck would have it, I was carrying several wooden spoons, from which she was able to take her pick, as well as some good bone needles and a quantity of the best linen thread. She haggled over the cost of every item and patently enjoyed the little concessions she obtained on each, but in truth, I was in no mood for bargaining and was content to let things go for whatever she was willing to pay.

‘You charge near enough London prices,’ she grumbled as she stowed her purchases in the capacious pouch hanging from her belt.

I was no more in the mood for arguing than I was for chaffering, but something about the accusation stung me on the raw. ‘I can assure you that I don’t,’ I snapped, adding ungraciously, ‘and what would you know about London prices?’

‘Hoity-toity!’ Dame Janet, by the look on her face, was about to score yet another triumph. ‘I know what Master Lightfoot pays for the things he brings back from his London visits, for he tells me. “I’m a fool, Janet,” he says to me. “You see this leather girdle that I’ve brought you? I could have bought it in Frome for a fraction of the cost I gave for it, but I know you’ll like to boast that it’s London made.” And he had a silver-gilt cup and some other trinkets that he told me the price of. Extortionate, all of them. But that’s London for you!’

In spite of my private misery, my attention was arrested, and as I fastened the buckles on my pack, I asked casually, ‘Master Lightfoot often journeys to the capital then, does he? I wouldn’t have thought he had the means for so much gallivanting about.’

‘Well, you’d be wrong,’ she retorted, raising her chin and squaring her jaw. ‘He was there only last November. That was when he bought me the girdle from a booth in Cheapside. Oh, I admit he doesn’t go often nowadays, but when the fit comes on him, he’s off to visit his cousin who lives near Saint Paul’s.’

‘And he was there sometime last November, you say? You’re sure of that, Mistress?’

Dame Janet was suddenly uneasy, the first inkling that she might have said more than she should have done beginning to trouble her mind. But she had been too positive to retract her statement: she could only affirm what she had already said.

‘Yes, I’m sure. What’s it to you? Why do you want to know?’

‘No reason at all,’ I lied, and changed the subject. ‘The woman to whom you were talking just now — I forget her name — has a niece, Rowena. Is — er — is the young lady betrothed to that youth I saw her with a few moments ago?’ I tried to sound as casual as I could.

‘You know Mistress Coggins?’ Dame Janet enquired, surprised. Then, without waiting for an answer or an explanation, she carried on, ‘Yes, Rowena’s been promised to Ralph Hollyns these two months or more. Didn’t take him two shakes of a lamb’s tail, once he’d clapped eyes on her, to know what he wanted. The only surprise is that she feels the same way about him. With looks like hers, she could have had the pick of any man for twenty miles around. Mind you — ’ the housekeeper was warming to her theme and growing confidential, her earlier suspicions of me forgotten — ‘there’s something a bit mysterious about her. She doesn’t say much concerning her life before she came to live here with her aunt last year. Talks occasionally about her mother, but clams up when her father’s name is mentioned.’ The eyes grew bright with sudden hope. ‘If you’re acquainted with her, maybe you can tell me something of her past. There’s a lot of people hereabouts who’d like to know.’

But I shouldered my pack, said an abrupt goodbye and strode off along the road, heading back the way I had come. Rowena Honeyman was promised to a young man with a freckled face called Ralph Hollyns, and had been for the past two months while I was living with my hopeless dreams. Well, it served me right! I was growing too vain and was in need of a set-down. I hoped I should be able to learn from it.

* * *

I did not return to Bristol until the end of the following week, partly because I had felt it necessary to make some money by selling my wares, and partly because I needed to be by myself for a while, before returning to my mother-in-law and daughter. As I must have mentioned before, without seeming to pry, Margaret had an uncanny knack of searching out the truth if I appeared in any way unhappy or distressed, and I had no wish to discuss Rowena Honeyman with her. I therefore took my pack into the remoter communities of north Somerset, and, in my idle hours, tried to concentrate on what I was going to report to Alison Burnett.

Baldwin Lightfoot had lied to me about the length of time since he had last been in London. According to Dame Janet, he had visited his kinsman near Saint Paul’s churchyard sometime the previous November, and at the beginning of January, Irwin Peto had turned up in Broad Street claiming to be Clement Weaver. Was there a connection here, or was it simply a coincidence? But if the latter, why should Baldwin have tried to conceal his visits? Why had he not been open with me? It seemed suspicious, but I decided, nevertheless, to reserve judgement on him until I had seen and talked to the rest of the Weaver family.

Mistress Burnett was of the same opinion when I went to see her in Small Street a few hours after my return home.

‘This visit of Baldwin’s may be of some significance,’ she conceded, ‘but my instincts tell me that the real instigator of this wicked plot is either my uncle or one of my cousins. Or maybe all of them are in it together. Indeed, I should have preferred you to go straight to London, once the good weather was upon us, rather than waste your time going to Keyford.’

We were seated in the same parlour where she had received me on that earlier occasion, and in spite of the warmth of the April day, a fire had been lit, a great pile of logs, the flames leaping and curling up the chimney. The heat was searing, and I had to move my stool back a foot or two from the hearth to escape being scorched. Alison, however, did not seem to be affected by it; so little, in fact, that she wore a woollen wrap over her gown. She looked even thinner than when I had seen her last, and it was obvious that the quarrel with her father continued to take its toll on her health.

‘When will you go to London?’ she asked.

I hesitated. ‘In a week or so. I have responsibilities here, in Bristol, which I cannot ignore. I must set my own affairs in order first.’ The words rang hollowly in my ears: when had I ever worried about my responsibilities? And why did they weigh so heavily upon me now?