Кейт Седли - Death and the Chapman

The three of us were so engrossed, each in his or her own thoughts, that no one heard the opening and shutting of the street door. The first any of us knew of the Alderman’s return was his voice raised in question.

‘Alison? Marjorie? Are you there?’

‘God’s Body!’ Marjorie turned from her junket-making with a flurry of skirts. ‘Your father’s home, and not a plate on the table. And gone supper-time by now, I shouldn’t wonder!’ She waved an agitated hand at me. ‘Out of my way, you! You’ve kept me gossiping too long.’ She turned to Alison. ‘You’d best go and greet him.’

But the girl was already moving towards the door, calling out: ‘I’m here, Father! Supper will be on the table presently.’ The kitchen door shut behind her.

‘Presently, is it?’ Marjorie grumbled. ‘It’ll be more like half an hour before I’m ready.’

She bustled about, much faster than I should have expected, given her bulk and the bad legs of which she had complained. She loaded plates and knives and pewter beakers on to a tray of beaten copper which she then bore off to the parlour, where the family took their meals. Afraid of hindering her, I resumed my seat beside the fire and waited patiently until she should have time to spare for me again. A few moments later she was back, muttering furiously.

‘Here’s Master Burnett returned with the Alderman and asked to share the meal. Am I ever given warning? No, I’m not! I’m just one of the servants as far as they‘re concerned.’ She seized hold of the ladle, a piece of cloth wound around her hand, and gave the stew another vigorous stir. ‘You’d never think, would you, that I’m the Alderman’s cousin?’

So that was it. She was a poor relation of the Weaver family, which explained the peculiar relationship which seemed to exist between her and Alison; on one hand that of mistress and servant, on the other that of family friend.

The back door opened and two men came in, both short and stocky, with the heavy, lantern-jawed faces, swarthy skins and dark hair which are prevalent among the inhabitants of Bristol. There has been much intermarrying over the centuries between them and the people of southern Wales, and the Celtic colouring has predominated over that of the Saxon. One man, the smaller of the two, was obviously the elder, and I guessed him to have something more than thirty summers. The younger was probably about my age. I suspected that they were Ned and Rob, the Alderman’s menservants.

‘It’s no good looking for your victuals yet awhile,’ Marjorie scolded them. ‘I’m late as it is, and Master William come for his supper, and no warning. Out of my way, you great oafs! Sit by the fire, with the chapman.’

The older man shrugged and muttered, ‘I’ll be back later,’ making his way once more into the garden, where the storm had blown itself out, stopping as suddenly as it had started. The sun had reappeared from behind the clouds, and I could sniff the sweet-smelling herbs and grasses. The younger man, however, did as he was bidden and came to sit by me, dragging another stool, covered with the same green and red cloth, out of its corner.

He nodded briefly, regarding me askance, as though uncertain as to what I was doing there.

‘My name’s Roger,’ I said, offering my hand.

‘Ned Stoner,’ he grunted, squeezing my fingers until the bones cracked.

So this was the young man who had returned to Crooked Lane to find Clement Weaver missing; vanished from the face of the earth as though he had never been. I took covert stock of him and liked what I saw. He was somewhat slovenly in his general appearance; there were grease and food stains down the front of his jerkin, a tear in the left knee of his thick woollen hose and his leather shoes were scuffed and dusty. But he had an honest, open face and a particularly friendly smile, which tended every now and then to broaden into what I can only describe as a joyous grin. He obviously loved life and I could no more have suspected him of harming a hair of anyone’s head than I could have suspected myself. He knew nothing about his young master’s disappearance, I decided.

An arbitrary decision, you might say, and you’d be right. But you have to remember that I was green in those days; a callow youth who knew nothing about the world, but thought he knew everything. In the long years between then and now, I’ve learned more than once that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Alison reappeared in the kitchen doorway.

‘It’s no good looking for food on the table yet,’ Marjorie snapped at her, putting a pan of plovers’ eggs on the fire to boil. ‘I can’t work miracles.’

The girl ignored her and crooked a finger at me. ‘My father wants to see you.’

There was an astonished silence, while the three of us, the housekeeper, Ned and myself, gaped at her stupidly. It was Marjorie who found her tongue first. ‘Why would the Alderman want to see a chapman?’

Alison raised eyebrows which I noticed, for the first time, had been inexpertly plucked in order to emulate the almost non-existent eyebrows of great and fashionable ladies. ‘If that were your business, Marjorie, I’d tell you.’ She looked at me. ‘Well,’ she asked impatiently, ‘are you coming?’

I rose to my feet, glancing apologetically at the housekeeper, and smoothed down my shabby doublet with awkward hands. I had considered the possibility that the Alderman would rescind his daughter’s promise of a night’s free lodging, but not that he would wish to do so face to face. After all, it was not I who had broken the rules of his household.

I followed Alison into the hall, off which parlour, kitchen and buttery all opened. In spite of my trepidation, I noticed that although the windows giving on to Broad Street had wooden shutters below, the top halves were made of glass. Nowadays we think far less of glass in private houses, but it was quite a new thing in England then, and very expensive. The Alderman was plainly a man of substance. The doorposts and ends of the roof-beams had birds and faces and flowers carved on them, and were painted red and gold. There was a big, equally ornate cupboard in one corner, in which the family silver and pewter were displayed, and two carved armchairs one on each side of the fireplace. The Alderman was seated in the larger of these, his future son-in-law in the other.

Alderman Weaver was a florid, thickset man with eyes the same green-flecked hazel as his daughter’s, and dark hair already going thin on top. He wore it in a style long gone out of fashion, cropped short above his ears, with a few strands plastered carefully across his pinkly shining pate. His long, fur-trimmed gown was also of a previous age, with a hood attached to it, as had been fashionable earlier in the century. I say this with hindsight, you understand. I had been too short a time out in the world to understand then what was modish.

Mind you, I had a pretty good notion when I looked at Alison Weaver’s betrothed. William Burnett’s auburn hair hung to his shoulders, with a thick fringe cut so low across his eyes that he could barely see. His smooth-skinned face was clean-shaven, a fact which immediately made me conscious of my own day-old stubble of beard, and his fiercely padded doublet, half purple, half red, with its narrow belted waist, was indecently short, revealing a codpiece decorated with tassels. But the chief point of focus was his shoes, made of soft scarlet leather and with toes so long that they had to be fastened with thin gold chains around his knees. These toe-pieces were known as pikes and made walking difficult. A few years earlier, a papal Bull had limited pikes to two inches in length, on pain of a papal cursing. But English cordwainers had ignored this edict on the grounds that ‘the Pope’s curse would not hurt a fly’, and continued to make shoes in this fantastical fashion.