Кейт Седли - The Goldsmith’s Daughter

It was a bitterly cold day, with low-scudding clouds and a sleety rain that stung the face and hands, and I flung what alms I could spare to the blue-faced beggars, shivering in their scanty rags. I found Adela huddled over the fire in our bedchamber, her long, thin hands spread to the blaze, but otherwise contented and cheerful. She had been dozing, for pregnancy made her extremely sleepy, and was quite happy to doze again when I had gone. But first she wanted to hear all that had passed between the Duke and me.

When I had finished telling her, she grimaced. ‘He’s asking too much of you, Roger.’

Her assumption that I might fail Duke Richard irritated me and blew away my own pessimistic mood.

‘Well, I shan’t learn anything new by wasting my time here,’ I answered briskly, and bent to kiss her. She laughed, but refused to tell me what it was that she found so amusing. Instead, she patted my cheek and instructed me to run along, just as though I had been Elizabeth or Nicholas. (I sometimes had the impression that she regarded me as another of her children.)

Having once again obtained her assurance that she could manage very well on her own for the next few hours, I promised that I should be back before nightfall.

‘Send to Paternoster Row if you need me, to the house of either Mistress Barbara Perle or to that of Gregory and Ginèvre Napier,’ I told her.

Paternoster Row, which, as I have already said, is where rosaries are chiefly made, is on the north side of Saint Paul’s churchyard. But interspersed with the shops are several private dwellings, one of which I instantly recognised, four storeys high, the carved timbers of its gable picked out in scarlet, blue and gold. The upper windows were made of glass, three of them decorated with leaded trefoils and three with circles within triangles, both signs of the Blessed Trinity. This was the Napiers’ house, and I had last been inside it three years earlier, when I was investigating the disappearance of a brother and sister from their home in Devon. Circumstances, as I had told Master Babcary, had brought me to London to question Ginèvre Napier, who had been a friend of the children’s mother.

Before renewing my acquaintance with Mistress Napier, however, I first wished to speak to her next door neighbour, Barbara Perle, but realised that I had no idea if her house were to the left or to the right of the Napiers’. I was still trying to decide which dwelling to approach first, standing well back in order to view them better, and unconsciously edging further out amongst the traffic, when the rattle of wheels and the sound of people shouting assailed my ears. The next moment, I was caught unceremoniously around the waist and dragged out of the path of a runaway horse and cart.

‘That was a close run thing,’ panted my rescuer, a stocky youth with a broken nose. ‘You want to watch what you’re doing, Master. You could’ve been killed.’

I acknowledged the fact and grasped his hand in gratitude; but it was not until after more passers-by had come to congratulate me on a narrow escape from death that a feeling of unease began to possess me. Despite my well-wishers’ assurance that such accidents were commonplace in London owing to the general carelessness of the drivers, I was unable to rid myself of the suspicion that someone might deliberately have tried to kill me. No one seemed to have taken particular note of the carter’s appearance, or be able to describe him, but considering the speed at which he had been travelling, this was hardly surprising.

I told myself that I was being foolish. Running me down would be a risky method of trying to dispose of me, and as far as I knew, the Babcarys owned neither horse nor cart. And yet, surely by now the murderer of Gideon Bonifant should have made some move to stop me enquiring further …

‘Have you come to interrogate Mistress Perle?’ a voice asked in my ear, and swinging round, I found Christopher Babcary standing at my elbow.

‘Where have you sprung from?’ I asked.

He looked at me, obviously surprised by my belligerent tone, and indicated the basket he was carrying.

‘I’ve been delivering her coronet to Mistress Shore, in the Strand,’ he answered, preparing to move on. ‘If you want Barbara Perle’s house, it’s that one, there.’ And he pointed to the one to the right of the Napiers’.

I thanked him mechanically, and stood staring after him as he turned away and continued walking along the street.

The skinny young maid who answered my knock informed me that the mistress had stepped out for a moment or two to visit a sick neighbour, but that she would return before long if I cared to come inside and wait. I accepted the offer, following the girl up a flight of stairs to a parlour on the first floor, a room similar in size and content to that of Master Babcary’s house. On the face of it, there would seem to be little difference between his and Mistress Perle’s respective fortunes.

The maid bade me be seated, but then, instead of leaving to continue with her household chores, she lingered, looking at me with suppressed excitement, plainly desirous of talking to someone.

‘Do you know what today is, sir?’ she asked shyly.

‘The Feast of Saint Sebastian?’ I hazarded.

‘It’s also the Eve of the Feast of Saint Agnes,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. ‘They do say that on this night, if you do what you’re told, you’ll dream of your future husband.’ She giggled nervously. ‘I hope he’s as handsome as you.’

‘And what is it that you have to do?’ I enquired, laughing.

‘It’s not a joke, sir,’ she reproved me. ‘Young girls like me do see things in dreams, you know. First of all, I have to fast throughout the day – though that’ll not be easy – and I mustn’t let anyone kiss me, not even a little child. Then tonight, before I go to bed, I have to take a hard-boiled egg, scoop out its yolk and fill the hollow with salt, then eat it, shell and all. After that, I’ve to put on a clean nightgown and walk backwards towards the bed – I can’t turn round and look at it, or the spell will be broken – and I must say this verse.’ She screwed up her face and, with a great effort of memory, recited.

The sound of the street door opening and closing recalled her to her duties.

‘That’ll be the mistress now,’ she said hurriedly. ‘You won’t mention anything about what I’ve been telling you, will you sir? She’d say it’s all nonsense and the waste of a good egg, but I say you never know! I’d like to see the man I’m going to marry, whoever he is.’

I promised faithfully that her secret was safe with me, and was still smiling and shaking my head, like some old greybeard, over the naivety of young girls, when the parlour door opened and Mistress Perle came in.

She was a good-looking, well-built woman with a broad, handsome face marred only by the fleshiness of her nose. It needed a second, possibly a third, glance to notice the network of fine wrinkles around the blue eyes, and to realise that she was not quite as young as she at first appeared. She was, I finally decided, in her middle fifties, just the right age for Master Babcary.

‘You must be Master Chapman,’ she said taking a seat at the table and motioning me to sit opposite her. ‘Miles sent to warn me you might be arriving sometime or another, and here you are! What is it you want to know?’ She evidently intended to waste no time on the usual courtesies.

I explained as briefly as I could the circumstances and reasons for my visit while she listened attentively, not revealing by so much as the flicker of an eyelid whether or not she was already in possession of these facts. Indeed, there was something unnatural about her general stillness, although I was conscious of the uneasy clasping and unclasping of her hands, as they rested on the table-top in front of her. But when she spoke, her voice was full and steady.