Kate Sedley - The Weaver's inheritance

Bertha furiously dismissed the notion. ‘Do you think I don’t know a stiffer when I see one? I’ve been doing this job since long before you were born, you young jackanapes!’

I had no wish to provoke her further. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said placatingly. ‘Is there nothing more that you can recollect? Can you remember the two initials embroidered in gold thread on the tunic, here, just below the collar?’

But it was too much to hope for. There had been too many dead bodies between then and now for Bertha to distinguish one from the other. But we had at least established our bona fides as seekers after truth, and when she had recovered from the insult I had offered her, agreed with perfect readiness to direct us where to find Morwenna Peto. And without her goodwill, it could have been many weeks before we were able to track down the lady.

* * *

The thieves’ kitchen, run by the Cornishwoman, was tucked into a noisome little alleyway behind the White Hart, the inn favoured as his headquarters by Jack Cade, when he and his army of rebels had marched on London seventeen years previously. Some of the damage inflicted on the buildings by the Kentishmen was still visible, and added to the general sense of decay and decrepitude. There were, and still are, some very fine mansions in the area, and the Priory church of Saint Mary Overy is always a pleasure to look at; but as London jurisdiction does not extend across the river into Southwark, and as there are more bear-baiting pits, cock-fighting rings and brothels to be found there than in the capital itself, it has always attracted rogues and vagabonds and harlots in vast numbers.

Morwenna Peto was not at all as I had imagined her, being large and fair, with a clear, unwrinkled skin despite the fact that she must have been well into her forties. I had been expecting someone more like Bertha Mendip, who, I suspected, was much of an age, but on whom hardship and deprivation had left their mark in no uncertain fashion. The Cornishwoman, on the other hand, appeared to have weathered the storms of life with little outward show of suffering, whatever her inward turmoil might have been.

Bertha had insisted that her son should accompany Philip and myself to Gibbet Lane and introduce us to Morwenna. This turned out to have been a wise precaution, for no sooner had we crossed the threshold of her house, than two of the most evil-looking men I have ever seen emerged from a door on the left-hand side of the narrow passageway to bar our progress. The fact that they uttered no word, merely standing there in stony silence, only served to make their presence the more menacing. I could feel the hairs rising on the nape of my neck, and Philip shuffled a step closer to me for protection. Matt was the only one of the three of us unaffected.

‘It’s me, you great zanies!’ he apostrophized them crossly. ‘Matt Mendip! Bertha Mendip’s son! These men are her friends. They just want a word or two with Morwenna.’

I was aware that a second door, a little further along the passage, had opened slightly, and that someone was on the other side of it, listening intently. ‘It’s about her adopted son, Irwin,’ I said loudly.

The door was pushed wide and this buxom, smooth-skinned woman emerged to stand, arms akimbo, looking at me with interest.

‘I’m Morwenna Peto,’ she announced. ‘What do you mean, my adopted son? What do you know about Irwin?’

‘I can tell you where he is and what he’s doing,’ I said, ‘if, that is, you don’t know already.’

She glanced towards Matt. ‘Can you vouch for these two?’

‘My mother can. Knows ’em of old.’ He turned to go. ‘I must be off. I’ve done my duty. Got things of my own need seeing to.’

Morwenna nodded and waved away the two bravos standing guard behind us. ‘Off about your business, and make sure there’s no fighting in the ale-room this dinner-time. One dead and three wounded already this week,’ she went on, addressing Philip and myself, and indicating that we should follow her into what appeared to be her private lair at the back of the house. ‘Now then,’ she said, when the door was fast shut, ‘what’s this about Irwin? Ungrateful bastard that he is! After all I’ve done for him, he just ups and leaves one day without so much as a word.’

There was a bench beneath a horn-paned window, which looked out over a noisome courtyard, and Morwenna waved a hand in its direction. She herself sat regally on a backless stool with two rolled, carved arms and a padded velvet seat, now torn and faded, once the property, I guessed, of some noble household. When she was ready, she nodded at me to speak.

When I had finished my story, she pursed her lips. ‘So that’s what it was all about,’ she muttered, more to herself than to us.

I waited for several seconds in mounting impatience before urging her to explain further. ‘Irwin hadn’t confided in you, then, about the sudden recovery of his memory?’

Morwenna shook her head. ‘There wouldn’t be any point,’ she spat viciously. ‘You say he’s claiming to be my adopted son? The ungrateful whelp! After all I’ve done for him! How dare he repudiate his own mother! He’s my own flesh and blood, fathered on me when I was working in one of the local stews. Oh, he wasn’t the first I’d fallen pregnant with, nor he wouldn’t be the last, but there are ways of ridding a woman of bastard children. But for some reason or another, I decided I wanted this one. God knows why, the thieving little toad! Maybe I was lonely. Maybe I needed someone to call my own. How can I tell, after all these years, why I made such a feckless decision? I was young, far from home, unhappy…’ She lapsed into silence, looking back over the years to the green girl she had once been long ago.

I leaned forward eagerly. ‘So you never had a son who died on the gallows? And Irwin wasn’t washed up on the Southwark strand, unable to remember who he was or where he came from? And you didn’t take him in out of pity?’

‘No is the answer to all those questions,’ Morwenna replied grimly. ‘Although I suppose I might yet end up with a son who’s hanged for a felon. Indeed, it seems to be more than likely, from what you tell me.’ She sucked thoughtfully at the end of one of her little fingers. ‘That man must have put him up to this,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Irwin couldn’t have dreamed up such a scheme on his own.’

‘What man?’ I asked, my voice trembling with excitement. ‘Do you mean that you saw your son talking to someone?’

Morwenna nodded abstractedly. ‘On several occasions.’

‘When? What did he look like?’ I demanded.

She stroked her chin. ‘As to when, it would have been sometime last autumn; before Christmas, certainly. But I couldn’t tell you what the man looked like. Irwin and he were never close enough for me to catch a proper glimpse of his face. When I questioned Irwin about him, he told me that the stranger was a potential client, and that he, Irwin, was pimping for some of the Winchester geese.’ This I knew to be a local nickname for the prostitutes of the area, and inclined my head to show that I understood. Morwenna continued, ‘So, naturally, I thought nothing of it. Irwin was often employed on such work. It was a job he did well.’ She added hastily, ‘Not that I mean to decry his pickpocketing skills. He was good at most things he turned his hand to.’ She spoke with a simple pride, and I could see that Philip, for all his new-found respectability, sympathized with her.

‘But this stranger,’ I persisted, ‘how old would you say he was?’

Morwenna Peto grimaced. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t take much notice of him, not after Irwin’s explanation. There are lots of men who return to the Southwark stews whenever they’re in London. Irwin’s father was such a one. He was from your part of the country, that I do remember.’