Kate Sedley - The Brothers of Glastonbury

I shook my head. ‘I prefer to go my own way. Pardon me for saying so, Master Gildersleeve, but this aimless wandering about the countryside is achieving nothing. You have been looking for your brother for four days now, and have found no trace of him. It’s time to try other methods, to start asking questions, which you can, if you wish, leave to me. You and your apprentices would surely do better to pay attention to the business rather than Master Peter’s return. He won’t thank you to find it neglected, particularly as he is soon to be married.’

My advice was received with varying degrees of approval. Dame Joan stopped crying and roundly declared that it was the most sensible thing she had heard all day; Mark looked offended, but said that he would sleep on my offer; while Cicely appeared suddenly glum, presumably at the prospect of having Peter restored to her unharmed. It was all I could do to repress a smile.

But my mood sobered when I reflected on the unlikelihood of such an event ever taking place. I felt in my bones that if I did manage to find Peter Gildersleeve, he would no longer be alive.

Dame Joan earned my undying gratitude by insisting that we must eat before retiring to bed. My stomach had been reminding me for the past half-hour that, except for the cinnamon biscuits and medlars, it had had no sustenance since the honey cakes and milk which Cicely and I had bought at the beekeeper’s cottage. To my great relief, Mark Gildersleeve also admitted to being hungry now that he had rested a while, and suggested that his mother and cousin repair to the kitchen to see what they could forage.

But the practical Dame Joan said that we should all go. ‘If the chapman is to be our guest, it’s better he learns his way around the house as soon as possible.’

So Mark and I followed the women down the twisting stairs to the long passage which led from the front door to the back, past the shop and workroom and out into the garden, now shrouded in darkness. The kitchen, a single-storey building, stood at a right angle to the rest of the house, joined to it at one corner but without, apparently, there being any internal door connecting them. Its shutters stood open to the warm night air, and the candlelight spilled out across the slatted wooden walkway which surrounded it. The soft, contented whinny of a horse told me that Dorabella was comfortably settled for the night in her stable which, I judged, was situated somewhere on the other side of the kitchen.

As we were about to enter, an owl swooped low above our heads, screeching like the spirits of the damned. Cicely gave an echoing cry and clutched my arm, clinging to it longer than was necessary. At least, Mark Gildersleeve seemed to think so, roughly detaching her hand from my sleeve and deploring her stupidity.

‘In God’s name, girl, you’ve seen an owl before! What’s got into you?’

‘Leave the child alone,’ his mother chided him. ‘This business has made us all jumpy and uncertain.’

Inside the kitchen, a sleepy maid was still entertaining the two apprentices, who were nodding over the remains of their meal, plainly more than ready for their beds. Mark dismissed them to their pallets in the workshop, but not before I had had time to acquaint myself with their faces and to distinguish one from the other.

Rob Undershaft was the taller of the two, a stringy boy of some fourteen summers who had outgrown his strength, with bad teeth marring a none-too-ready smile, and pale blue eyes almost hidden beneath a fall of lank, fair hair (the sort of hair my mother always used to describe as ‘straight as a yard of pump water’). John Longbones, despite his name and being about the same age, was nearly a head shorter, but no fatter. His hair was red but, unlike Mark Gildersleeve’s, it was that harsh, uncompromising shade which is almost orange. His hazel eyes blinked a little short-sightedly at the world, and he had the pale skin and easy capacity to blush that afflicts most people of his colouring.

When they had gone, Dame Joan began shooing the maid around the kitchen, chivvying her to set more water on the fire to boil, and to fetch the rest of the cold bacon from the larder. This diminutive creature, however, seemed to stand in no awe of her mistress, grumbling roundly about having to work single-handed since Maud’s departure for her father’s cottage in Bove Town.

‘You let Lydia get away with too much, Mother,’ Mark complained angrily. ‘One of these days she’ll go too far and you’ll have to dismiss her.’

‘Lyddie’s a good girl,’ Mistress Gildersleeve retorted. ‘Let her alone. We understand one another. Besides, I don’t want her leaving me as well.’

‘Why has Maud gone?’ Mark demanded, frowning.

‘Black magic, that’s why!’ And Dame Joan hurriedly crossed herself. ‘The circumstances of Peter’s disappearance unsettled her. And she won’t be the only one to give us the cold shoulder if we don’t be quick and find out what’s happened to him.’

Mark sank on to a stool and rubbed his forehead with fingers that were shaking slightly. Dame Joan, on the other hand, bustling around, cutting collops of cold, fat bacon, pouring out measures of ale and heating them over the fire, setting Lydia to slice bread and unwrap a fresh slab of butter from its cooling dock leaves, seemed temporarily restored to cheerfulness.

It was only later, when we had finished eating and drinking, that she again became distressed; but it was a distress caused more by what their neighbours might be thinking than by any conviction that her elder son was dead. In her heart, it seemed, she was still expecting him to walk through the door at any moment, with some perfectly simple explanation of where he had been for the past four days hovering on his lips.

I could see that Mark was less sure of his brother’s fate, and his mother’s words about black magic had worried him. Whatever his affection for Peter — and I was not yet certain how deep this went — he knew that the business would suffer if a member of his family were tainted by any association, however remote, with sorcery, either as practitioner or victim.

After thinking profoundly for several minutes, he looked across the kitchen table at me. ‘Did you mean what you said, Chapman? Are you willing to stay a while and see what you can discover regarding my brother’s disappearance? It might be better, I agree,’ he went on, turning to address his mother, ‘if Rob, John and I continue to lead as normal a life as possible. If people perceive us to be untroubled, they may think we know more than we do concerning Peter’s whereabouts. Well, Master Chapman? What do you say?’

‘I’m willing,’ I agreed. ‘But, as I told you, I’ve left my pack at Farleigh Castle, expecting to be parted from it for no more than a night. In addition to my wares, it contains my spare shirt and hose. I may therefore have to borrow these articles of clothing from you. Fortunately I have brought my razor and the willow bark I use for cleaning my teeth with me.’ And I patted the pouch fixed to my belt. ‘As for my cudgel, which I left at the livery stable with Barnabas, I shall retrieve that first thing in the morning.’

‘I’m sure Mark will be only too happy to lend you anything you need,’ Dame Joan said firmly before her son could quibble.

Mark hesitated, then grunted his assent and rose to his feet. ‘It’s time everyone was in bed. I’ve been up since dawn and I’m tired.’

‘We’re all tired,’ Cicely told him. She had been silent for the past half-hour, idly toying with the food on her plate, but now she appeared to have recovered her former spirits. Like her aunt, she seemed unable to visualize Peter’s death. At present it was just a game to her; a game which might postpone, for a short while at least, her unwanted marriage. ‘Roger and I have ridden all the way from Farleigh today. You might think of someone besides yourself now and then, cousin.’