Kate Sedley - Nine Men Dancing

The blue eyes sparkled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that first? Men never seem to know what really interests a woman.’ She tilted her head provocatively. ‘Do you have a wife?’

‘I do. And three children.’

‘Mmm … I guess you keep Mistress Chapman happy then. You look the passionate kind.’ It was just as well that the fire was hot or she would have seen me begin to blush. She went on musingly, ‘I was betrothed once.’

‘To a local lad?’ It was not my business, but some response seemed to be required of me.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. (It was a mistake: that member was not quite so small and dainty as she so obviously thought it was.)

‘Believe it or not,’ she said, ‘to that ill-mannered oaf who was in here just now.’

‘Tom Rawbone?’ I asked in astonishment, my interest suddenly aroused.

‘Yes, him. How do you know what he’s called?’

‘I heard someone name him. I’m not surprised you ended the betrothal. A very bad-tempered and belligerent young man by the looks of him.’

‘Oh, I didn’t end the betrothal,’ was the surprising answer. ‘He did. He decided he wanted to marry Eris Lilywhite instead.’

I frowned. ‘The girl someone accused him of murdering?’

‘Yes. Oh, don’t take any notice of that. Whatever else he might be, Tom’s not a killer. He wouldn’t harm a fly.’

‘That’s not the impression he gave me,’ I retorted. Women’s reasoning frequently left me floundering (and still does). ‘He struck me as extremely dangerous.’

‘Only when he’s angry.’ Her logic reminded me forcibly of Adela’s. ‘And I used to take care not to make him angry. It’s different now, of course.’

‘Of course.’ I should have liked to pursue the subject further, but my companion had suddenly tired of it. (Either that, or she decided she had confided too much to a stranger.) She turned a little away from me and began to tap her feet in time to the music. So, instead, I asked, ‘What’s this village called? I didn’t quite catch its name.’

‘Lower Brockhurst.’ She looked round again, relieved that I had voluntarily changed the subject.

Brock Hurst: the old Saxon words meaning Badger Wood. ‘Why “Lower”?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Upper Brockhurst? I haven’t seen another hamlet or settlement for miles past.’

Rosamund laughed, showing small, even teeth like a child’s.

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing now but a ruin, all overgrown. The trees have taken it back for their own.’

For some reason, her words sent a shiver down my spine. Hercules, curled up at my feet, stirred in his sleep and whimpered. Our Saxon forebears worshipped and sacrificed to the gods of the trees long before Saint Augustine brought the Christian faith to these shores, and deep within all of us still lurk some of the old pagan beliefs and superstitions.

The music had stopped again, and one of the men seated behind me – he who had been so earnest an advocate of human manure – had turned the tables by listening in on my conversation with Rosamund.

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed, putting a very dirty and extremely smelly hand on my shoulder. ‘Upper Brock’urst disappeared some year back.’

‘“Some year back!”’ repeated a scathing female voice from my other side. ‘Well over a hundred years back, you silly old fool! Take no notice of anything these idiots tell you, chapman. The entire population of Upper Brockhurst was wiped out in the Black Death, and the place has fallen into ruin.’

I glanced round and saw a tall, gaunt woman, with a thin, lined face, standing beside my stool. She was respectably dressed in a dark woollen cloak that had fallen open to reveal a matron’s linen apron, worn over – as far as I could see in the fire- and candlelight – an unpatched and undarned skirt of another dark material. Her voice had that harsh burr and flat intonation peculiar to the West Country and Cornwall, and which, amongst other things, denotes our almost total lack of Danish ancestry. She also spoke with a clipped precision that indicated urban origins. I suspected her to have grown up in a town or city; Gloucester or Cirencester perhaps.

I got to my feet, offering her my stool, but she declined, pressing me down again.

‘I prefer to stand, thank you, young man.’ She was, I guessed, nearer sixty than fifty, and a wisp of hair peeping out from her linen coif was iron grey.

‘Upper Brockhurst,’ I mused. ‘Would that be the place in the woods, some mile or so uphill from here? Fragments of stone walls buried in the undergrowth? Oh, and a well that’s been very commendably covered over.’

My companion shook her head. ‘That’s not the village,’ she said, ‘which is a bit further to the east. No, what you’ve obviously stumbled across is the remains of the Hall. Its owners, two brothers and the last of their line, also died of the plague. As for the well …’ She broke off, shrugging. ‘There’s a strange story attached to that. But you’d better ask one of these yokels about it. I’ve only lived here for the past six years, since my son, who misguidedly married a local girl, died. So I’m still regarded as a stranger, thank God!’ She added proudly, ‘I was born and brought up in Gloucester.’

She had raised her voice slightly as she finished speaking, and there was a general guffaw at her last words from those near enough to hear them.

‘That ain’t nothin’ to boast about,’ jeered one of the men behind me. ‘City dwellers is ignorant bastards by my reck’ning.’

There was a chorus of agreement.

‘You should think yerself lucky, Theresa Lilywhite,’ someone else chipped in, ‘that yer son married a good country girl like Maud Haycombe, who brought him a decent dowry and his own smallholding when ’er father died. Your Gilbert wouldn’t have done so well in Gloucester, digging wells.’

‘He was a good weller,’ my informant snapped. ‘Gilbert knew his trade inside out, and made a sufficient living to support me and himself.’

‘He came down ’ere looking fer work, though, didn’t he?’ scoffed yet another of the little group seated behind me. ‘Not enough work in Gloucester, was there? And once Maud Haycombe set ’er cap at ’im, he didn’t hesitate. Knew a good proposition when it presented itself.’

The woman addressed as Theresa Lilywhite snorted derisively, but made no further remark except to say, ‘I’m away home.’ she pulled her cloak about her and disappeared into the night beyond the open door.

I swivelled round on my stool, and as the fair Rosamund was now delighting the company by adding her voice to the musicians’ fiddling and piping, I wormed my way into my neighbours’ conversation. Well, to be truthful, I was more impolite than that. I simply cut across what they were saying and asked, ‘That woman! What’s her relationship to the girl somebody claimed was murdered?’

‘She was ’er grandmother,’ answered the shepherd lad, Billy Tyrrell. ‘Ain’t that right, Rob?’

The man to whom he had appealed, nodded.

‘Tha’s right. She’s a widow woman from Gloucester. Come down here some year back, to live with Maud and her daughter after Gilbert Lilywhite died. Don’ think Mistress Lilywhite asked ’er. Just come fer the funeral and stayed.’

‘True enough,’ another of the men corroborated. ‘Reckon she was the one who was lonely, fer all she said she was keeping Maud and young Eris comp’ny. Reckon they didn’t want ’er there, but couldn’t get rid of ’er. Now, of course, there’s just the two of them.’

‘Was this Eris Lilywhite murdered?’ I asked, my thumbs beginning to prick with curiosity.

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ This was the man who had recommended horse dung mixed with straw. ‘But there’s this much certain. She disappeared on the night of the great storm six months ago, and hasn’t been seen nor heard of since.’