Kate Sedley: The Prodigal Son

‘Your half-brother,’ he amended. When I didn’t answer immediately, he went on timidly, ‘I assure you that it’s true. My mother told me so, and she wouldn’t lie. Why should she? She had nothing to gain by it. She …’

‘You’ve no need to go on,’ I said quietly. ‘I believe you. I remember him. You’re his spitting image.’

‘Am I?’ he asked eagerly, leaning towards me, his nervousness forgotten. ‘I never saw him, of course. He’d been dead eight months when I was born. My mother said he didn’t even know of my existence. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him … You don’t favour him, then?’

I shook my head. ‘No. I look like my mother. Big and fair.’ Memories, like a half-remembered dream, were coming back to me; things long buried and forgotten. Although not quite forgotten and not buried quite deeply enough. I had a sudden vivid recollection of finding my mother with tears running silently down her cheeks, while she stood at the table in our cottage, preparing a meal. Childlike, when confronted by an adult’s distress, I had started crying, too. She had gathered me up in her arms and rocked me to and fro until I was soothed. Later that day, curled up on my straw mattress in a corner of our single room, I had heard my parents arguing violently outside, but I had been too young to relate the two incidents. I reckoned that I was about three years old at the time, possibly already four, so it would have been shortly before my father was killed. His adultery with this young man’s mother must have been the cause.

‘You’re blaming me.’ John Wedmore’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘It’s natural, I suppose. But, truly, it’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to be born.’

‘What?’ I blinked stupidly at him, trying to adjust my mind, first to the notion of my father having been unfaithful to my mother, and secondly to the idea of having a brother. All right, half-brother. But I had grown so used to the fact that I was alone in the world, apart, of course, from Adela and the children, that I couldn’t immediately accept the shackles of another blood tie.

‘I said you blame me for being alive. I daresay I’d feel the same if I were you.’

I turned to look at him. He was slumped forward dejectedly, his bony hands and wrists dangling between his knees. He was the picture of misery, and in spite of myself, my heart was wrung. I didn’t dare stop to question if this was a deliberate ploy on his part — Adela always vowed that I was much too cynical — but flung an arm about his shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

‘Of course I don’t blame you,’ I assured him with a little too much fervour to sound completely sincere. ‘How could I?’

‘You didn’t take much convincing.’ I could tell he was worried.

‘I told you. You’re extraordinarily like him. When I first saw you in the Green Lattis the other day, I was certain that we’d met before somewhere.’

He drew a deep breath. ‘I have to confess I knew who you were as soon as I heard your name mentioned. I made some enquiries about you. And got some surprising answers. It seems you’re not just a chapman. You have a reputation for solving mysteries. So when this happened’ — he made a comprehensive gesture to indicate our bleak surroundings — ‘I wondered … well, I wondered …’

‘If I’d help you,’ I supplied, when he seemed unable to continue. He nodded mutely. ‘But I must be sure,’ I went on, ‘that what you’ve told me so far is the truth. You didn’t come here on purpose to find me? You came to Bristol in search of news of your brother?’

‘Colin. Yes. My other half-brother,’ he corrected me with a wry smile.

‘Your-? Oh, yes, of course.’ I understood now the reference to ‘my mother’s husband’ that he had made the other day. ‘Ralph Wedmore was really your stepfather.’

‘Yes, although I didn’t realize it at the time. It wasn’t until she married Matthew O’Neill and we were living in Ireland that my mother told me the truth.’

‘It must have come as a shock.’

‘Yes … and no. It explained a lot of things. It explained why my fa- why Ralph had always preferred Colin to me; why my Wedmore grandparents disliked me, and made it plain that they did so; why I never had anything to do with my mother’s people, the Actons, even though some of them lived at no great distance. Nevertheless, you’re right, it was a shock. I’d always thought of myself as a Wedmore, and discovering at the age of sixteen that I wasn’t, gave me a strange feeling of … of not belonging.’

I could understand that. Prince or pauper, people need to know who they are. ‘Go on,’ I encouraged him. ‘You seem to have been made aware of my existence.’

‘Yes. Of course my mother knew all about you and your mother. And she told me she’d always asked any visitor to the farm about you both. She knew that you’d entered Glastonbury Abbey as a postulant. And she heard that Mistress Stonecarver had died just before Christmas the year that the Earl of Warwick invaded and put King Henry back on the throne. Then, a month or so later I think it must have been, someone told her you’d left the abbey without taking your vows and turned pedlar. That was around the time of the battle at Tewkesbury, and also around the time that she met my stepfather. After that, everything happened in a hurry and Colin and I went to Ireland to live. I didn’t even know you were in Bristol when I came here. It was only by chance someone mentioned a chapman called Roger. So, like I said, I started asking questions and from the replies I received, I came to the conclusion that you were the man. My half-brother, I mean. Even so, I don’t suppose I’d have claimed kinship if this hadn’t happened.’

‘Or if I hadn’t had a reputation for solving mysteries. Why not?’

He shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘Why would you want to be saddled with an unknown younger half-brother?’ He gave the ghost of a grin. ‘They can be a damn nuisance, as I know only too well.’

That made me laugh. I found my initial, instinctive hostility turning to liking as I saw in him traits of character that I recognized in myself. I had always known that my cynical view of the world must have come from my father: my mother had been far too simple and devout a soul to see life with a jaundiced eye.

I settled my buttocks more comfortably — or as comfortably as possible — on the stone bench. ‘Tell me all you can about this Dame Bellknapp,’ I invited.

‘That’s just the point.’ He threw out his hands in despair. ‘I can’t tell you anything about her. I don’t know her. I’ve never seen her before in my life.’

‘Then tell me what happened yesterday.’

‘What can I say …? Well, to begin with, I’d realized it was useless hanging around Bristol any longer. I could wait for days … weeks … and there might be no more news of John Jay and his crew than there is today. Which is to say, nothing. And if I stayed away too long, my poor mother would also begin to worry about me. So, I decided to go home. There was an Irish ship tied up at Welsh Back that was sailing for Waterford this morning, on the early tide.’ His voice caught momentarily in his throat and I could see that he was near to tears. ‘It’s gone now,’ he went on gamely, mastering his emotion.

‘So?’ I prompted.

‘So I arranged my passage with the captain and then I went to the fair to find a present for my mother. I knew most of the traders and stallholders had packed up and gone by that time, but there were still enough of them left to make a visit worthwhile.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I was just haggling over the cost of a gilt chain — the rogue who was trying to sell it to me wanted twice what it was worth — when I heard this woman shouting, “Stop that man! That’s John Jericho!” Of course, I looked around like everyone else, to see who it was that she was talking about. Then to my utter astonishment, I realized she was pointing straight at me. The next thing I knew, one of the two men with her — her servants I guessed them to be — was holding me with one of my arms up my back and one of his arms clamped round my neck. The second man had gone haring off, and returned a few minutes later with a sheriff’s officer, this Sergeant Manifold. Meanwhile, the woman was ranting on about how I was a robber and a murderer and should be arrested immediately. I think if she’d had her way, I’d have been strung up there and then on the nearest gallows.’