‘What did you do?’
‘What
could
I do in my position but wait for Mistress Alefounder to come looking for her brother? Normally, she wouldn’t have visited me again until early the following morning, when she brought me my breakfast, but I guessed that when Master Avenel failed to return home that night, she would grow anxious and begin to look for him immediately. Which, of course, she eventually did. I don’t know what hour it was when her search finally brought her down here, but it was very late. At first, Elizabeth accused me of murdering Master Avenel –
me!
– and was ready to tear my eyes out. Not, it transpired, because she thought I’d killed her brother, but because I’d jeopardized my chances of remaining hidden and, in due course, of being spirited away to Brittany. By the time I’d managed to convince her of my innocence, the night was even further advanced. It must be nearly midnight, she told me. And the following morning, of course, Robin’s disappearance would become public knowledge. She would have to inform the Sheriff, who would organize an official investigation. Sooner or later, Master Avenel’s body would be found, and the last thing she wanted was for the Sheriff’s men to come nosing about down here.’
Albany stopped to draw breath. ‘Let me guess,’ I interrupted him. ‘You and Mistress Alefounder carried Robin up into the street and left his body in Jewry Lane, where it was found by the Watch patrol, just after midnight.’
The duke shrugged. ‘What else could we do? I’m ignorant of the other details. But, wait a moment!’ He clapped a hand to his forehead in the manner of one who had just recollected something vital. ‘I forgot to tell you that while I was waiting for Mistress Alefounder to arrive, I naturally shut myself in here, out of sight. But, suddenly, I heard a woman’s scream. Naturally, I thought it was Elizabeth, but when no one came to the peephole to speak to me, I grew suspicious and stayed where I was. Which was just as well, as it turned out, because Mistress Alefounder later assured me that, whoever it might have been, it wasn’t her.’
‘And was she worried about this stranger who had accidentally stumbled across her brother’s body?’
Albany frowned.
‘Now you mention it,’ he said slowly, ‘no, she wasn’t. It didn’t strike me at the time, there was too much else to think about … How very odd.’
‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she knew, or guessed, who it was. How soon after you found Master Avenel’s body did you hear this scream?’
His frown deepened. ‘Not very long.’ He pondered the matter for a moment or so, then glanced sharply in my direction. ‘I can see by your face that that is the answer you wanted. That it means something to you. Am I right?’
‘Maybe,’ I agreed, as pieces of the puzzle began falling into place, and I realized what it was that had been troubling me ever since this morning and my visit to Saint Giles’s. ‘You say the murder took place sometime during the evening, after you’d eaten your supper?’
The duke pursed his lips. ‘Two, maybe three hours afterwards, as far as I was able to judge. Maybe longer. I tell you, time is not itself down here. Now, are you satisfied? Has what I’ve told you helped in any way to disprove the charge of Robin Avenel’s murder that has been laid against your friend?’ I nodded and he again clapped his hands, like a child who had been given a sweetmeat. ‘Then
en avant, mon brave
! There is nothing more to wait for. Fetch my ring from wherever you have hidden it and take it to this Irish slave master of yours.’ He clicked his tongue mockingly. ‘For a respectable man, Roger, my friend, you know some very strange people.’
‘Isn’t that the pot calling the skillet black?’ I retorted, sliding off the bed. I indicated the apparently solid wall. ‘You’d better let me out. But before I go, I’d be interested to know what it is you’ve done to be branded a traitor by your brother.’
His face lost its recent good humour and assumed a sullen expression. I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. But then, suddenly, he began to laugh, displaying an upper row of surprisingly healthy teeth, with a single blackened one to spoil their general appearance.
‘My younger brother, Mar, and I were urging James to resume hostilities against England; to break the peace and start raiding across the border once again. He refused, so we began to plot with some of the other lords to bring about his downfall. Unfortunately, one of the bastards betrayed us to the King. The rest you know. Mar is dead, and I have been forced to fly for my life.’
Still chuckling to himself, Albany crossed to join me by the wall, where I was shown first the tiny peephole and then a stone similar to the one on the other side, bearing the faint indentation of a six-pointed star. The duke pressed it and yet again the same section of wall swung inwards with the familiar slight rumble and hiccough.
‘When you’ve arranged everything,’ he said, ‘come back here. Whisper through the hole and I’ll open the door from this side. I’ll be waiting, ready.’ He laid a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t fail me, Roger. I’m relying on you.’
By curfew, everything was arranged, but I waited until it was properly dark before returning to shepherd Albany through the Bristol streets and handing him over to the tender mercies of Briant of Dungarvon. When, finally, I rolled into bed, I was well nigh exhausted.
I had first been home to collect Albany’s signet ring and fend off Adela’s indignant enquiries as to where I had been and where I was going – it seemed she had decided to speak to me again, but only to point out my shortcomings as a husband. Then I visited Marsh Street, where my reappearance in the Wayfarer’s Return had been greeted with the sort of suspicion that makes a man want to stand with his back to the wall and a long, pointed knife in his hand. By the greatest of good fortune, Briant had not returned to his ship, and although undoubtedly drunk, he was able to hold his whisky well enough to grasp what I was saying. He listened to my story in silence, and although he had some difficulty in understanding the political machinations that formed its background, he was more than willing to assist a fellow Celt in trouble, especially one who might possibly prove an embarrassment to the English crown. His animosity made me wonder yet again what exactly had happened to Padraic Kinsale.
So, having delivered my charge safely into Briant’s hands, and having been assured of Albany’s undying gratitude and patronage should I ever have need of it, I staggered home to a darkened house and a sleeping family, stripped off my clothes and fell into bed beside Adela, expecting the waters of Lethe to close over my head without delay. But sleep proved elusive as the enormity of what I’d done gradually began to sink in.
I had allowed my anger with Timothy Plummer and his political masters to cloud my judgement to such an extent that I had committed what was tantamount to treason. When, earlier that evening, I had left Albany, the man who had urged his brother, the King, to re-invade the northern shires of England, I should have gone, not to Marsh Street and Briant of Dungarvon, but to Timothy Plummer at the Dominican friary. Instead, I had assisted an enemy of my country to escape to France. A great knot of fear started to form in my stoamch.
I tossed and turned, fell into an uneasy doze and dreamed that I was being marched to the gallows by Timothy Plummer, woke with a mouth as dry as tinder and had to creep downstairs to the kitchen to get a cup of water from the barrel. Adela moaned and grumbled in her sleep, but, thankfully, didn’t wake. Finally, as dawn was rimming the bedchamber shutters, I came to the conclusion that regrets were useless. What was done was done, and provided Albany kept his mouth shut, which he had promised me most faithfully he would do, no one need be any the wiser. Elizabeth Alefounder was unlikely to raise the hue and cry, and as for the miscarrying of her plans, I felt not the slightest shred of guilt.
All that remained for me to do now was to concentrate on clearing Burl’s name by pinning Robin Avenel’s murder on the real killer.
It was during breakfast – another silent meal, although I could feel the frostiness in Adela’s manner beginning to thaw – that I suddenly realized it might prove difficult to lay the blame where it truly belonged without revealing what I knew about the moving of Robin Avenel’s body. I cursed silently and sat, my spoon halfway to my mouth, frozen into immobility. The children found this very funny and began to point and laugh. Adela enquired sharply if I were well.
‘Perfectly well, my love, thank you.’ I laid down my spoon and started pulling on my boots. ‘I have to go out.’
‘Then why aren’t you taking your pack?’ my wife demanded as I laced up my jerkin and made hurriedly for the door. ‘And also that dog of yours! Roger!’
But I pretended not to hear her and fled the house, making my way through the already busy streets to Redcliffe and avoiding Broad Street, although glancing along its length as I passed the turning, I thought I saw a flurry of activity outside what had once been Alderman Weaver’s residence.
I hurried across Bristol Bridge, dodging acquaintances and friends who wanted to stop and talk, and hiding under a shop’s awning until Jack Hodge had passed. He looked ill and drawn, and I guessed he was on his way to visit Burl in the bridewell.
I went straight to Margaret Walker’s cottage and knocked on the door.
‘Where does Luke Prettywood live?’ I asked when she answered my peremptory summons. Her two friends, Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins, peered over her shoulders. They were evidently paying her a morning visit.
‘And God be with you, too, Roger,’ she snapped, affronted by my lack of greeting.
She would doubtless have treated me to a lecture on manners had I not protested that I was on an urgent mission to prove Burl Hodge’s innocence.
Her eyes brightened. ‘You know who really killed Master Avenel?’
I nodded. ‘I believe so. But proving it might be another matter.’
Margaret’s lips set in a determined line, as did those of Goody Simnel and Goody Watkins. ‘Not if I can help it.’ She glanced at me suspiciously. ‘But why do you want to know where Luke Prettywood lives? What’s
he
got to do with it? You know very well he can’t be guilty. He’d assaulted Jack Gload and been taken into custody by the time the body was discovered.’
‘Just tell me where he lives,’ I pleaded. ‘I know it’s somewhere in Redcliffe, but not which street.’
Her sharp-featured face was suffused with doubt, but eventually she directed me to a cottage near the rope walk, where the former brewer’s assistant lived with his parents.
‘And don’t go upsetting Goody Prettywood,’ Maria Watkins admonished me. ‘She’s a friend of mine.’
I reflected grimly that in a close-knit community like Redcliffe, everyone was a friend of everyone else. That was the trouble with murder; it harmed more lives than just those of the killer and his victim.
As I approached the Prettywoods’ cottage, I could see the ropemakers in their stout leather aprons and caps, two at either end of the walk, their roughened, red hands twisting and re-twisting the lengths of hemp into the thick ropes necessary for binding bales of goods, before they were hoisted aboard ship for despatching overseas.
The summer heat showed no sign of abating, and the cottage’s single window was wide open to the air. As I passed, I could see Luke sitting at a table in the despondent manner of someone who no longer has employment to go to, playing idly at fivestones, one hand pitted against the other. He seemed to be alone, so, without knocking, I lifted the latch and went inside.
He glanced up as I entered, but the dead-eyed look with which he greeted me altered when he saw who it was, to be replaced by a wariness and a tensing of his body that told me he was suddenly afraid.
‘What do you want, chapman?’ he demanded, his voice cracking.
I said quietly, ‘I’ve come to tell you that I know it was you who murdered Robin Avenel.’
His hands closed tightly over the fivestones. I could see sweat glisten suddenly across his forehead. But he had recovered his composure sufficiently to try a little bluster.
‘That’s ridiculous and you know it.’ He managed a convincing laugh. ‘I’d been arrested by the time the Watch found the body. And before Edgar Capgrave closed the Frome Gate and went home.’
I walked over to the table, pulled another stool from underneath it, and sat down.
‘But Robin Avenel wasn’t murdered in Jewry Lane, was he? He was killed downstairs, in the furthest one of the old synagogue cellars. I showed you the bloodstain, and you tried to convince me that it was two hundred years old, remember?’ It was my turn to laugh.
‘So? I was teasing you. There’s nothing in that to make me a murderer.’
‘You and Marianne Avenel are lovers. You admitted it to me yourself. You meet secretly in Saint Giles’s crypt, and I’ve seen the pair of you down there with my own two eyes. It’s the sort of secret that everyone knows about, or at least suspects – except, of course, the poor, cuckolded husband.’
Luke reddened, but jutted his chin defiantly. ‘All right. I was a fool to confide in you, of all people, I can see that now. But it doesn’t mean I killed Master Avenel.’
‘It gives you a very strong motive.’
He shrugged and began tossing the stones again, his confidence returning. ‘I’ve told you, I was in custody when the murder took place.’
I let that go for the minute and regarded him straitly.
‘I did wonder,’ I said, ‘why you became involved in an apprentices’ riot. You’re no longer one of them. You don’t share their grievances. And why pick on Jack Gload, a Sheriff’s man? What stupidity! Unless, that is, you were anxious to be arrested.’
‘Why would I want that?’ he sneered.
‘Because you’d killed a man, a man you were cuckolding, as quite a lot of people knew. You were sharp enough to realize that if you drew attention to yourself in some other way – in a big enough way – no one would then think to connect you with Robin Avenel’s murder. You couldn’t have known, of course, that his body would later be moved, making this deception of yours unnecessary.’
He looked up sharply at that, about to ask a question, but thought better of it. He was a clever lad. He knew better than to admit curiosity.