I unhitched the cob’s reins and glanced towards the river. The ferryman had by now accomplished his return journey and was pulling into shore. By great good fortune, no one was yet waiting to cross to the manor of Ashton-Leigh, so I led the horse forward and, remembering that I had been told his name, shouted ‘Master Tyrrwhit!’ as loudly as I could.
The Rownham Passage alehouse was as small and shabby inside as it was out, but the landlord served excellent ale. I handed a mazer to Jason Tyrrwhit, then squeezed in beside him on a dirty corner bench that accommodated two. I had chosen it deliberately as a place where we were less likely to be interrupted by one of his many friends.
The tiny room, with its sanded floor and row of barrels along one wall, was crowded to suffocation. Seafaring types of all shapes and sizes were crammed together around a long, central table or seated on rickety stools or lying prone on the ground, having drunk themselves into a stupor. The stink of the place was enough to knock a grown man senseless, and I felt the bile rise in my throat as soon as we entered. Not so my companion, who was obviously very much at home there; a frequent visitor if the general chorus of greeting from all sides was anything to judge by. A few sips of the landlord’s brew, however, were sufficient to settle my stomach, and I was able to devote my full attention to the ferryman.
‘You’re looking well,’ he observed, ‘for a man who cheated death by inches and gave his head a nasty knock into the bargain.’
‘You were the good Samaritan who rescued me, I believe. This,’ I apologized, ‘is the first chance I’ve had to come back and thank you.’
‘Think nothing of it! I’d’ve done the same for a dog.’ He slewed round on the bench to look at me. ‘But how in Hades did you manage to fall in? You were striding out along the track to Bristol last time I saw you. Mind you,’ he went on, without waiting for a reply, ‘I thought as how you’d got a touch of the sun, the way you were going on about building a bridge between the top o’ Ghyston Cliff and Ashton rocks. Sun’s addled his brain, I remember thinking.’
I let it go. There was no point in trying to explain; it would only confuse him further.
‘When you found me in the water, did you see anyone on the bank? Anyone walking or running in the direction of the old ‘murder’ house?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I was too busy rescuing you, weren’t I? You’re a big fellow. I didn’t have any passengers that crossing, and hauling you into the skiff was hard going fer a little chap like me. Specially when you was waterlogged. It was only air gettin’ in under that jerkin of yours kept you from sinking. First, I thought you was a bundle of old clothes someone had tossed in the river. That’s why I rowed over to take a look. I’ve had some decent finds from the Avon one time and another. These ’ere boots, fer example.’ He lifted a skinny leg, proudly displaying a foot encased in a brown leather ankle boot of surprisingly good quality. ‘See what I mean?’
I didn’t know whether to feel insulted that I could be mistaken for a bundle of old clothes, or grateful for the fact that I had been. In the end gratitude won.
‘You’re sure you didn’t notice anyone – anyone at all? A woman, perhaps, or maybe two, in the neighbourhood of the ‘murder’ house when you fished me out of the water?’
He paused to consider. I regarded him hopefully.
‘Well, I can’t say I saw anyone, no. Oh, I know why you’re asking. That red-headed Sheriff’s man, who came snooping around a day or two later, told me what you’d been saying. It was all nonsense, he reckoned, caused by the pain in yer head. Mind, ’e described you as a pain in the arse!’ The ferryman roared with laughter at this witticism, took another swig of ale and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘All the same, I’ve been thinking about it since,’ he went on, ‘and there were a couple o’ people waiting for the ferry this side of the river. That’s why I rowed over empty from Ashton-Leigh. It was still raining a bit and I didn’t want ’em getting wetter’n necessary. Course, I have me back to the Rownham shore while I’m rowing in this direction, so I wouldn’t have seen anything. But they might have done.’
‘Who were they?’ I demanded excitedly. ‘Do you know?’
Jason Tyrrwhit scratched his scanty grey locks. ‘There were a man and a boy. Didn’t know them. Come from the other side. But I knew the woman. Lives in one o’ them cottages along the foreshore. Goody Tallboys, I think they call her. Got a sister at Ashton-Leigh, so crosses regular.’
‘Do you know which cottage? Could you take me to see her?’
He grinned. ‘Fancy a bit o’ dalliance, do you?’ His sense of humour was easily tickled. ‘All right. But finish yer ale first. This stuff’s too good to waste.’
I agreed with him. In fact it was good enough for me to treat us both to another beaker apiece. While we drank, I asked him how long he had been the Avon ferryman.
He shrugged. ‘Ten year, p’raps. Maybe more. I was a sailor fer most of me life.’ His puny chest swelled with pride. ‘I was with Warwick’s fleet when we beat the Spaniards in ’58. Keeper of the Seas he was, and never a man before nor since deserved the title better. Twenty-eight men-o’-war them Spaniards had. All we had were three carvels, four pinnaces and five forecastle ships. Outnumbered by more’n two to one! But we drove our little fleet in amongst them and taught ’em a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry! Six hours that battle lasted, but we beat ’em hands down in the end. Over two hundred Spanish were killed, hundreds more wounded. We sunk two of their ships and captured six others. The rest limped back to the Flanders ports, their tails well and truly between their legs. Those were the days!’ He sighed regretfully. ‘Then, when I was too old to go adventuring any longer, I came home. The job of ferryman had just fallen vacant, so I took it. It’s a living. Can’t complain.’
‘You must know a lot about the sea,’ I said respectfully.
‘I know a lot about a lot of things. Fer instance, I know that from Bristol boundary stone to Rownham is a mile in length, two if you measure from the city’s High Cross. I know Ghyston Cliff is sixty fathoms high. I know from here to the Hungroad is near on two mile—’
‘What’s the Hungroad?’
He gave me a withering glance. ‘You ain’t no Bristol man, I can tell. If you were, you’d know that out there, in a direct line with Ghyston Cliff, are the Leads – great, jagged rocks on the bed of the Avon. If you try to navigate up this river into Bristol at low tide, the Leads’ll rip yer vessel open from bow to stern. So ships anchor in the Hungroad and wait for the incoming tide.’
‘Which side of the river is this anchorage?’ I asked.
My companion jerked his head towards the window. ‘Ashton-Leigh,’ he said.
I thought about this. ‘If a ship was anchored in the Hungroad, and the captain wanted to be put ashore over here, would he be rowed across by his own crew? Or would he use the ferry?’
Jason Tyrrwhit grinned. ‘You’re a landlubber all right. ‘Course he wouldn’t need to use the ferry. Chances are, he’d row himself. Partic’ly if he wasn’t sure what time he wanted to return aboard. Mind you, don’t know why anyone’d want to visit Rownham Passage; leastways, not if he was sailing upriver to Bristol. Who’re we talking about, anyway?’
‘Does the name Eamonn Malahide mean anything to you?’
The ferryman shook his grizzled head. ‘No. But sounds like an Irisher to me.’
‘He is. Or rather was. He’s dead. Knifed through the heart. He was the man I saw killed in the “murder” house last week.’
‘Oh, him! The Sheriff’s man said you was having delusions.’
‘No delusion,’ I answered tersely. ‘His body was fished out of Bristol docks this morning.’
‘Drowned?’
‘He’d been stabbed.’
‘Had he now?’ Jason Tyrrwhit whistled through broken teeth. ‘Seems like you could’ve been telling the truth, after all, chapman. Wait here a minute while I ask around. Somebody might have some information worth knowing.’
He got up from the bench and began moving amongst our fellow customers. Some he merely slapped on the back or exchanged a cheery word with. But beside others, he paused for a confidential chat. There was no way, from where I was sitting, that I could hear what passed between them: the noise in the alehouse was deafening. But I could tell from the expression on his face, as he resumed his seat on the bench, that he had learned something worth the telling.
‘Old chap in the corner,’ he said, ‘the one with the broken nose—’
‘Next to the young lad who’s just been sick?’
‘That’s the one. Lives in the manor of Ashton-Leigh. Just comes across for the ale. He says there was an Irish ship, the Clontarf, anchored in the Hungroad sometime last week.’
‘The Wednesday,’ I suggested.
‘Dunno. Probably. He can’t recollect for sure. But here’s the interesting bit. He remembers it dropping anchor, but it didn’t go on upriver on the next high tide. Stayed in its berth three days before slipping its moorings and tacking about.’
‘You mean it never went into Bristol. Just sailed for home?’
‘Seems like it. And old Josh there had an idea there was some trouble on board. Didn’t know what. Didn’t ask. But the landlord –’ he indicated a tall, cadaverous-looking man in a leather apron ‘– said there were a couple of Irish seamen in here a week ago yesterday – that’d be the Friday – nosing around. Asking a lot o’ questions without really saying what they wanted. He reckoned they were looking fer someone, but wouldn’t admit it right out.’
That made sense if their captain had gone missing and the crew was on some secret mission that no one was supposed to know anything about. I stood up.
‘Thanks for all your help,’ I said. ‘Now, if you’d just point me in the direction of this Goody Tallboys’s cottage …’
My voice tailed off as I stared, transfixed. Once on my feet, I could easily see across the crowded taproom. In the corner, on the far side of old Josh, sat another, smaller man, wearing a tattered, wine-stained jerkin, who glanced up and caught my eye, then hurriedly looked away again, coyly trying to pretend that he didn’t know me, but I could see annoyance shadow his sharp little features as he recognized my unwelcome face.
His shoulders hunched and his whole body tensed as I moved towards him, just to give him a fright. But he needn’t have worried. I’d play his game if that was what he wanted. I followed the ferryman outside and listened to his simple directions for getting to Goody Tallboys’s cottage.
All the same, I would have given a great deal to know what Timothy Plummer, the Spymaster General, was doing in Rownham Passage.
G
oody Tallboys’s dwelling was the end one of a row of four that teetered on the edge of the riverside track. A small, fenced-in patch of ground beside the cottage was home to five or six hens, all clucking noisily or pecking greedily in the dirt.
The woman who answered my knock seemed familiar to me, and I thought I recognized her as the passenger who had been waiting for the ferry on the day of the storm – the fat woman with the basket of eggs. When I asked if this were indeed the case, she acknowledged the fact with a cheery, gap-toothed grin.
‘And well soaked I got,’ she complained, ‘old Tyrrwhit pushing off to the alehouse like that. Although, to be fair, there wasn’t much else he could’ve done, the storm was that bad. So I came home and dried myself, then went across later. Anyway, who are you? And why do you want to know?’
I explained that I was the man Jason Tyrrwhit had rescued from the river and she was immediately all concern, inviting me in and offering me a seat at her table.
The cottage was of the single-roomed variety that I had been used to for most of my life. A mattress was rolled up against one wall, a pillow on top of it. A hearth, on which a small fire burned, occupied the central floor space beneath a blackened hole in the roof, while a table and two stools stood close to the tiny window. A spinning wheel, a water barrel and a cupboard, where, presumably, she kept her meagre store of food, comprised the rest of the furnishings. A solitary shelf was sufficient to hold her tinderbox, a couple of tin plates, a knife and two beakers. These last, she reached down and filled with elderberry wine, which she poured from a cracked pottery jug.
‘So,’ she said, seating herself on the second stool, ‘you’re the young man Jason pulled out of the river, are you? We thought you were dead. You’d hit your head a nasty blow on something or other when you fell in.’
‘
I
thought I was dead,’ I answered with feeling. ‘But I hadn’t hit my head on anything. Someone did it for me. Tell me,’ I added, ‘from where you were standing, did you see anyone else on the shore before Master Tyrrwhit fished me out of the Avon?’
‘What are you saying?’ she asked. ‘That someone deliberately threw you in?’ I nodded. ‘That’s a very serious accusation.’
‘It’s a very serious crime,’ I retorted, ‘and one I take great exception to. Let me explain what happened.’
She listened carefully to my story, which was patently new to her. It was obvious that Richard Manifold hadn’t paid her a visit; had probably not even been aware of her existence. He had accepted the ferryman’s assessment of my condition – a touch of the sun – and enquired no further. Typical!
‘And you say that all this happened in the old Witherspoon house?’ Goody Tallboys sounded doubtful. ‘Impossible! That place has been empty these fifty years and more. Ever since Silas Witherspoon was murdered by his wife and daughter.’
‘I know that,’ I said, irritated. ‘But that’s not to say the house couldn’t have been occupied for a night or two. Or even for a few hours. Who does it belong to now?’
My companion rubbed her cascade of chins. ‘I think it was the nephew who inherited. Old Witherspoon’s brother’s son. What was he called, now? John? James? That was it. James Witherspoon. He was a young man back then, but he must be getting on by now. Might even be dead, for all I know. He was an apothecary, if I remember rightly. Had a shop in Bristol, near the castle somewhere. Never came to live in Rownham Passage. Said his wife couldn’t bear the thought of the house, not after what had happened there. Or so my mother told me. Tried to sell it, but no one would buy it. So it’s just stood empty, rotting away.’