Kate Sedley: The Midsummer Rose

‘A fine scare you’ve given us!’ Margaret Walker upbraided me, standing at the foot of the bed, her arms akimbo. ‘Falling into the river like that! You could have been drowned! Don’t tell me! I suppose you were drunk!’

My feeble attempts at denial were frustrated by Elizabeth and Nicholas, who clambered on to the bed, hauling Adam up after them. My son promptly gave a scream of delight and threw himself across my face in a determined endeavour to smother me.

‘Ge’m off!’ I mumbled.

Fortunately, Adela was able to interpret this anguished, but muffled cry, and lifted Adam on to the floor, setting him down alongside Hercules, where he immediately gave vent to a howl that could split the eardrums.

My daughter, ignoring her half-brother’s tantrum with practised ease, said reproachfully, ‘You didn’t bring us home any presents like you promised. We know, ’cause Nick and I searched your jerkin pockets. Your scrip was empty, too.’

Her stepbrother nodded in agreement, then sniffed, wrinkling his nose. ‘Why do you smell so funny?’

‘Hercules has been licking me.’ I tried not to sound as irritable as I felt, at the same time trying to remember where I had put the small gifts I’d bought for the children. Memory came flooding back. ‘They’re in my pack …’

My pack! Where was it? It must still be in that house. My cudgel, too! My money, thank God, the takings of a fortnight, had all been in my pouch. But where was that? Had it survived my immersion in the river? I propped myself on one elbow, dislodging Elizabeth and Nicholas. They started to grizzle.

‘My pack, cudgel, money-’ I began frantically, but Adela hushed me, laying a cool, if floury, hand on my forehead.

‘Shhh! They’re quite safe.’ She turned to her cousin. ‘Margaret, would you be kind enough to take the children away, my dear? And that flea-ridden hound.’ Hercules gave her one of his looks. ‘Roger needs rest and quiet. After a week in bed, his strength is bound to be at a very low ebb.’

But her words only started me off again. As Margaret ushered children and dog from the room, I raised myself on both elbows.

‘A week?’ I gasped. ‘You mean I’ve been unconscious for a week?’

‘Not totally unconscious, no. You’ve been extremely feverish, not knowing anyone, not knowing where you were, talking a lot of gibberish.’ My wife leaned forward to kiss my cheek, but paused, grimacing. She reached for the ewer and a cloth, poured water into a basin and proceeded to bathe my face. ‘There, that’s better. You smell a bit less like a sewer and more like your normal self.’ I wondered uneasily what my normal self smelled like, but decided not to ask.

She was trying to keep her tone light, but I could tell that she was still deeply anxious about me. I squeezed her hand.

‘I’m all right. There’s nothing to worry about. I shall be fit and strong again in plenty of time for the midsummer revels, you’ll see. I just want to know what’s happened.’

‘We all want to know that,’ Margaret Walker remarked with asperity, coming back into the room. She seated herself on the opposite side of the bed to my wife. ‘Now then, Roger, how in the name of heaven did you come to fall in the Avon?’

‘Never mind that for the moment,’ I retorted peevishly. ‘What I want to know is who pulled me out. And what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at home, in Redcliffe?’

Margaret was offended, as she had every right to be. My rudeness was unpardonable, but her constant presence, when all I wanted was to be alone with Adela, was beginning to irk me.

‘What do you think I’m doing here?’ she snapped back. ‘I came to help look after you, you ungrateful lump. How do you imagine Adela would have managed with you to care for as well as three children and that idiot hound?’

I tried to look suitably chastened. I must have succeeded, because Adela hid a smile behind her hand.

‘Mother-in-law, forgive me. I’m not myself.’ Margaret liked to be called mother-in-law, even though Lillis had been dead for almost five years. ‘How did I get here? Who rescued me?’

‘It was the Rownham ferryman,’ my wife answered quietly, clinging to one of my hands as though she would never let it go. ‘When he returned to his boat after the storm, he saw you in the water. You weren’t very far out. It seems your leather jerkin had blown up like a bladder and prevented you from sinking, although the ferryman reckoned it wouldn’t have kept you afloat for much longer.’ Her fingers gripped mine even more tightly. ‘The passengers who were waiting for his boat helped him tow you ashore. Thanks be to God, you were still breathing. The ferryman recalled you’d said you were going home to Bristol, so he had you loaded into a farmer’s cart that was coming this way. And, of course, once the farmer reached the city, there was no lack of people who could direct him here.’

Margaret Walker opened her mouth, no doubt to make some caustic remark, but thought better of it and closed it again. I suspected I looked more of a physical wreck than I cared to imagine.

‘My pack! My cudgel! You said they were safe.’

‘It appears they were lying on the mudbank, where you must have dropped them. Or so the ferryman told the farmer. He put them in the cart alongside you. Roger!’ Adela leaned over and kissed me gently between the eyes, but she was frowning. ‘How did you come to fall in? And somehow or another, you managed to hit your head. You’ve a nasty contusion on the back.’

Margaret, who was evidently still smarting from my earlier incivility, repeated waspishly, ‘I suppose you were drunk. Sheltered from the storm in the Rownham alehouse, did you? Too much cider?’

‘No,’ I replied curtly, and said nothing more until I had a grip on my temper. Eventually I continued. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask the ferryman. He was in the alehouse. I started walking home along the Saint Brendan’s Hill track.’

‘But what happened?’ Adela asked, puzzled.

So I told them. I told them everything, and perhaps a bit more than I could actually remember. Where memory was a little frayed around the edges, I filled in the details with what I guessed or thought must have occurred. Then I lay back on my pillows, exhausted, and waited for their horrified exclamations.

These, however, did not come. Instead, the two women looked first at me, then at one another; looks of such significance that I was hard put to interpret them. Finally, Margaret Walker raised two fingers and tapped her forehead, but when she saw me staring at her, pretended to brush aside a strand of hair that had escaped from her cap. I shifted my gaze to my wife, who was regarding me with concern.

‘What’s the matter?’ I demanded. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Roger, dear!’ Adela stood up, freeing her hand from mine and pressing it to my cheeks and brow. ‘He’s still a bit feverish,’ she said anxiously to Margaret.

I pushed her away. ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ I shouted. ‘You’ve seen the wound on the back of my head! You said so!’

‘Hush, sweetheart, hush!’ My wife tried to ease me back on the pillows, but I refused to budge.

‘Why do you both think I’m lying?’ I demanded furiously.

The women exchanged another of those significant glances, then Margaret said, ‘The house that you’re describing … It’s the one where the murders took place half a century and more ago. I remember Lillis telling you about it one evening, when we were sitting round the fire, just before Elizabeth was born. She was a good storyteller, that girl of mine. She made things come alive. The two women knifing the man to death, throwing his body into the Avon … I could see it all so vividly, and so could you. I know you could.’