‘Who?’ Timothy’s eager question instantly made me wary.
‘Never you mind. That’s my secret.’
I saw him clench his fists. The cob stirred uneasily.
‘Now, look, Roger, I’m warning you! Go home and forget any of this ever happened. You haven’t discovered a witness to your story. You’re beginning to think it may all have been a dream …’
‘Oh, no! I’m not admitting to anything of the sort,’ I roared. ‘I’m sick of being thought a fool!’
‘Keep your voice down,’ he begged, his own sinking to little more than a whisper. ‘Try to forget what’s happened. Stop talking about it. Stop discussing it with all and sundry. If anyone mentions it, just say you’re bored with the subject. It’s over. You’re not interested. And, above all, stop prying and poking around this village. Stop asking questions. Because if you don’t, I won’t be answerable for the consequences. And I don’t want anything to happen to you, Roger, I really don’t. I’ve grown fond of you over the years, strange as that might seem. And Duke Richard would be most upset … No need to look like that. This has nothing to do with him. He still lives retired on his Yorkshire estates. I’m working for the King. Pity, but there it is. The quiet life and I don’t mix.’
‘That’s all very well,’ I said. ‘But if Robin Avenel and his sister are involved, it’s easy enough to guess that it has something to do with Henry Tudor.’
The Spymaster General managed both to nod and shake his head at the same time, quite a remarkable feat.
‘Yes and no,’ he grunted. ‘There’s more to it than that, my friend. You’ll just have to take my word for it. It’s not that I don’t trust you,’ he continued hastily, recalling past services that I had rendered the Crown, ‘but you might inadvertently let something slip. You wouldn’t mean to, but you might.’
‘Have I ever, in the past?’
‘Not wittingly, no. But you just can’t keep your nose out of trouble. When you scent a mystery, you’re like a dog after a rabbit. I daren’t risk telling you. Be content with that.’
I was hurt, even though I had to admit the truth of what he said. But I was angry, too. It was my life, after all, that had been put in danger.
‘I think I have a right …’ I began hotly, but Timothy interrupted me without compunction.
‘You have no rights at all where the safety of the realm is concerned. I’m warning you, Roger. Forget this entire episode ever happened. Go home to that wife and family of yours and, like I said, pretend it was all a dream.’
‘Or?’
‘Or you might get hurt. Or one of your children might get hurt. Or Adela – is that her name?’
I was beyond anger. I was furious.
‘Don’t you dare threaten me or mine, Timothy Plummer!’ I could scarcely spit the words out fast enough. ‘If necessary, I’ll go to London and appeal to the King!’
The Spymaster laid a placatory hand on my arm.
‘Calm down. Be sensible. You must realize as well as I do, that King Edward wouldn’t lift a finger to protect you or yours if he thought his throne was in danger. Do as I ask, I’m begging you, and no one will get hurt.’
My temper cooled a little. ‘Like that, is it?’
‘Like that.’
I chewed my bottom lip. ‘Very well,’ I said after a pause for reflection. ‘But I shall tell Adela the truth. She’ll say nothing, particularly if she knows that doing so would jeopardize my life or those of the children.’
Timothy hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve met her. She seems a sensible woman. Far too sensible for you,’ he added with gratuitous insult, but then grinned affectionately and squeezed my shoulder. ‘Off you go now, lad, and take care.’
I led the cob outside and mounted. ‘Take care yourself,’ I told him.
He grinned and slapped the horse’s rump. At the bend in the track, I slewed round in the saddle, but, as I had expected, he was nowhere to be seen.
I rode home through the softly shimmering landscape, watching the shadows lengthen and the grasses blacken in their path. It was cooler now, a soft breeze floating inland from the river. But my curiosity was on fire. Something was going on, but I wasn’t allowed to know what it was, in spite of having, albeit unwittingly, become a part of it.
As I rode towards the Frome Bridge, someone was approaching, also on horseback, from the opposite direction. With a jolt to my stomach, I recognized her directly. She was actually wearing the same brown sarcenet gown, while, behind her, rode Rowena Hollyns, demure in grey homespun and a white linen coif.
‘Good evening, Mistress Alefounder,’ I said through gritted teeth.
She inclined her head, but did not answer. From her demeanour, it would seem that she had never seen me before in all her life.
I
would have made love to Adela that night – God knows I wanted to! – but she held me off, reminding me that tomorrow was Sunday and we should be at church. So, I had to content myself with holding her in my arms while I recounted my day’s adventures.
This was the first chance I’d had since returning from Rownham Passage to be alone with her. Now, at last, the house was quiet, humans and animal exhausted by their own high spirits, asleep in their respective beds; Hercules snoring away in the kitchen, Elizabeth next door, Nicholas and Adam in the small chamber just above ours, for it had been decided during my absence, that our youngest child should join his half-brother on the thick goose-feather mattress that occupied most of the floor of the attic. Adela was tired of getting up each night to attend to his wants, and considered that removed from my snoring, his nights would be less disturbed. What Nicholas made of the arrangement, I didn’t dare ask.
Adela was as alarmed by my intelligence as I had known she would be. She stared anxiously at me through the gloom.
‘If those were Timothy Plummer’s instructions, then promise me, Roger, that you’ll stop your incessant meddling. I won’t have you put anyone’s life at risk. Do you understand me?’
‘I don’t suppose for a minute—’ I began, but she interrupted me with a hand across my mouth.
‘I’ll leave you,’ she threatened, ‘if you endanger your own life or the children’s.’
I tried insinuating a hand inside her nightrail. ‘The Church doesn’t approve of disobedient women.’
She permitted me to cup her breast, but made it plain that tonight that was as far as I was going to get.
‘The Church doesn’t approve of husbands who jeopardize the lives of their families, either,’ she answered tartly.
She fell asleep quite quickly. I, on the other hand, lay awake for a long time, turning over the day’s events in my head. The house was quiet, the noise and bustle of the streets stilled at last, the silence broken only by the occasional ‘All’s well!’ of the Watch or the ululating cry of an owl. It was uncomfortably warm, and I envied Hercules the cool of the kitchen.
I knew I had to respect Adela’s wishes. I was responsible for lives besides my own: it was the penalty for marriage and fatherhood … Did I really mean penalty? But I was uneasily conscious that the sight of Rowena Honeyman had stirred old bachelor yearnings that I had long thought dead.
The word ‘dead’, however, brought me up short. The woman was a cold-blooded murderess. She would have helped her mistress drown me – had in fact aided and abetted Elizabeth Alefounder to that end. And under attack from Eamonn Malahide, she had retaliated with a dagger thrust that would not have disgraced a professional soldier. Once again, I recalled Gilbert Honeyman, a man of few, if any, moral scruples; yet somehow, the same description did not seem so apt when applied to his daughter. But what did I know of her? Nothing, except the manner in which Gilbert had spoken of her, and his concern for her welfare after his death.
The shadows of the room broke up and reformed as I drifted towards the edge of sleep. Rowena’s face and figure swam mistily before me. She was wearing the blue brocade gown and red shoes. She reached out a hand to grasp one of mine, but just as I was about to take it, I realized she was clutching a dagger, whose evil-looking blade was dripping blood …
I was suddenly wide awake, sitting bolt upright. I could swear that something had woken me … Some movement … Some noise … And there it was again! The creaking of a stair.
I slid out of bed, trying not to disturb my wife, and reached for my cudgel. I tiptoed as quietly as possible towards the door, and, easing it ajar, was at once aware of a blast of air which must have originated from an open door or window downstairs. I crept on to the landing and began, stealthily, to descend.
The flight led down to a narrow passageway outside the kitchen. I could hear Hercules’s snuffling and whining which, at any moment, would culminate in a series of ear-splitting barks. After that all hell would break loose as he protested against his incarceration, while an intruder invaded his home.
But I had no wish for my nocturnal visitor to be alerted and escape before I had time to see who he was. I knew the squeaky tread was near the bottom of the stairs, so I crept down as fast as I dared, but to no avail. By now, Hercules was making sufficient noise to waken the dead, and it was therefore only a matter of minutes before Adela called out to ask what was happening. Adam was screaming, and that intrepid duo, Elizabeth and Nicholas, were thundering down to join me. As I turned the bend in the staircase, I was just in time to see a cloaked and hooded figure disappear through the street door, and although I ran out, barefoot, he had already vanished. The Watch was nowhere to be seen. Are they ever, when you need them?
I returned indoors and, ignoring the questioning of my loved ones, knelt down to inspect the lock, peering into its mechanism.
Adela now appeared. ‘Roger, what’s going on?’
I straightened up. ‘We must get a bolt for this door. Someone has managed to pick the lock.’
‘How do you know?’ My wife gave a sudden scream as she sighted Adam, who was negotiating a perilous descent of the stairs entirely on his own, his yelling having attracted no attention. He was unused to such treatment.
‘Well, for a start,’ I answered acidly, ‘I locked this door before I went to bed and now it’s open. And it hasn’t been forced. So, someone managed to pick it. With what purpose, I’m unable to guess, but I suspect it wasn’t to kiss us all goodnight. And secondly, I’m an expert at picking locks, myself. Nicholas Fletcher, a fellow novice at Glastonbury, taught me how. This one would have been easy.’ The question is, who did it and why?’
‘That’s two questions,’ Adela retorted huffily, preparing to shepherd the children back upstairs and settle them down again. ‘And I must say that lock-picking is hardly an accomplishment I’d have expected you to acquire during your novitiate …’
She didn’t continue, but made her way upstairs for the second time that night, carrying Adam, with the other two children trailing in her wake. I was aware that her bad temper, like mine, stemmed from acute anxiety as to why our home had been broken into. It was well known that we had nothing valuable enough to steal …
I almost shouted aloud, but restrained myself in the nick of time. The ring that I had found in the ‘murder’ house and subsequently forgotten all about! How could I have been so absent-minded? I could have – and probably should have – given it to Timothy Plummer, to whom it might have meant something.
But my moment of euphoria was short-lived as common sense reasserted itself. There was no way anyone could know that
I
had the ring. No one had seen me find it, and there was a good chance that its owner had no idea where or when it had been mislaid. The ring couldn’t possibly be the reason for our intruder.
Hercules, who had been sniffing around the front door, whined suddenly and prodded something with his front paw.
‘What is it, lad?’ I stooped to examine his discovery, which he presented to me with all the air of an intelligent and highly trained bloodhound. He dropped it in my outstretched hand.
I was looking at a shoe made of very soft, scarlet leather.
I slept fitfully for the rest of the night; a sleep broken by dreams in which a blue brocade gown swept past me as I lay on the floor of the old Witherspoon house, revealing a glimpse of scarlet leather shoes.
Adela had been dead to the world when I finally crept back to bed, so I had not woken her with the news of Hercules’s find. But I showed it to her the following morning as we sat in bed, adjusting our minds and bodies to the rigours of the day ahead.
‘A shoe?’ She was incredulous. ‘How could anyone lose a shoe? Unless it was too big, of course. But surely no one would set out to rob a house in shoes that were too large. Loose shoes can cause all sorts of difficulties. And accidents.’
‘Precisely. But suppose a person removed the shoes in order to make less noise, placing them just inside the door—’
‘Which he’d left open—’
‘For a quick escape should he need it—’
‘Which he did, thanks to Hercules!’
I felt somewhat annoyed at being denied my share of the credit. ‘So, having been discovered, our thief turns and runs, grabbing his shoes, dashes outside only to find that, in his haste, he’s left one behind. Does that make sense?’
Adela leaned against my shoulder. ‘You’re quite clever,’ she conceded, ‘when you want to be.’
I let that go, although I felt like the prophet in his own country: I didn’t always get my due. I picked up the shoe from where it lay, like a drop of blood against the white counterpane, and handed it to my wife.
‘Could that belong to a woman?’ I asked.
‘Do you really suspect the intruder might have been a woman? I thought you said it was a man.’
I tried to conjure up a mental picture of the figure I had seen disappearing through the door. An all-enveloping cloak and hood viewed from the back – what could that tell me with any certainty? In different circumstances, I would have sworn it was a man. Something in the general bearing, in the economy and decisiveness of movement seemed more masculine than feminine. But I had seen red shoes on one of my attacker’s feet: Rowena Hollyns.
‘I can’t swear it was a man. So, what do you think? Could this shoe belong to a woman?’