The Weaver's Inheritance (20 page)

‘In short, it was a Woodville plot,’ I said, sipping my ale.

‘What else? But there’s more to it than that,’ my new-found friend continued, while his sons nodded in agreement. ‘Duke George is out to prove himself King in all but name. And King in name sooner or later, if he can manage it. He’s never forgiven his brother for spoiling his chances of marriage with the Duchess of Burgundy, and there have been rumours in our part of the country for months that Clarence is arming his retainers like a man ready to rebel.’

‘But on what grounds could he possibly take up arms against the King?’ I demanded. ‘Even if Edward were killed in the conflict, he has two sons to succeed him.’

My acquaintance from Warwick hunched his shoulders. ‘If Clarence were successful, I wouldn’t give a fig for the lives of any of the Woodvilles, including those of the little Prince of Wales and Duke of York, for they’re both half Woodville, after all.’

‘They’re also Clarence’s nephews,’ I protested.

‘Maybe,’ put in one of the sons, ‘but there have been odd stories floating around Warwick for some time now. We’ve a kinsman who is one of the Duke’s Yeomen of the Chamber, and he talks of messengers who come from parts hereabouts, from Robert Stillington, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. It would seem that the Bishop and the Duke have much to say to one another.’

At his words, I was transported back in my mind to the previous August, to Farleigh Castle on the other side of Bath, and to the almost royal reception accorded by Clarence to Robert Stillington. I remembered, too, thinking it more than a coincidence that the Duke should be spending twenty-four hours in Somerset at the same time that the Bishop was visiting his diocese; and I had also wondered why, with such little time at their disposal, they had found it necessary to spend it together. Afterwards, I had considered myself unduly cynical, but here was proof that I had been right to be suspicious. However unlikely an alliance it might seem, something was being hatched between those two.

We talked a little longer about the possible future intentions of the Duke of Clarence, then I finished my ale, thanked the men from Warwick for their time and patience and wished them God speed on the final stage of their journey to Glastonbury the following day. The late April afternoon was already somewhat advanced when I emerged from the inn, and my womenfolk would be on the lookout for me, for I had promised my mother-in-law that I would not stay long in Small Street. And I had still not visited Adela to tender my thanks. I debated for a moment or two whether or not to leave my call on her until the next day, but conscience won and I walked down Broad Street, under Saint John’s Arch and across the Frome Bridge to Lewin’s Mead.

As I approached the cottage, I saw Adela framed in the doorway, talking to someone. It was not, as I had half-expected, Richard Manifold, but a stranger, a thin wisp of a man with greying hair, bandy legs and clothes which were clean and carefully mended, but which had seen better days. He had a slightly bewildered air, staring around him in confusion and biting his nails as though he didn’t quite know what do to. Just before I reached the door, he finally shuffled off, with a number of backward glances over his shoulder.

‘Who was that?’ I asked, stooping to give Adela a brotherly kiss on the cheek.

‘A kinsman, or so he claimed, of Imelda Bracegirdle. He’d come from Oxford, looking for her,’ Adela said thoughtfully, ‘and at first refused to believe that she was dead. The news appeared to distress him, and he kept saying, “She can’t be. What’s he going to do?”’ She smiled up at me. ‘I’m so pleased to see you, Roger. Don’t stand there on the doorstep. Come inside.’

Chapter Fourteen

I stepped inside a little warily and was immediately embraced about the knees by Nicholas, who seemed as delighted as his mother at my unexpected reappearance. I swung him up into my arms and returned his embrace, but something must have shown in my face, for Adela laughed.

‘Set your mind at rest,’ she said bluntly. ‘As I’ve told you before, a woman can be pleased to see a man without expecting a proposal of marriage.’

I could feel the colour rising in my cheeks. ‘I … I didn’t imagine…’ I began, but being unsure how to proceed, I gave Nicholas a hearty kiss and lowered him gently to the floor.

The brown eyes mocked me. ‘No, of course you didn’t.’ Adela motioned me to a stool and busied herself fetching me a cup of ale from the barrel. ‘How was your journey? What did you discover in Keyford? Is Mistress Burnett’s cousin behind this plot to defraud her, do you think? Or are you still as much in the dark as ever?’

The awkward moment passed, her deliberate spate of questions allowing me time to recover my composure, and I settled down to give her all my news, and to thank her for looking after Elizabeth and Margaret during my absence. This last she dismissed with a wave of her hand and an exhortation not to be so foolish. But for the rest of my story, it was perhaps natural that the arrest and subsequent execution of Ankaret Twynyho should claim the largest share of her interest, for its consequences might well plunge the country into another bout of civil war.

I tried to reassure her. ‘The King has never rounded on Clarence yet, however often Brother George has betrayed him.’

‘But according to you, the men from Warwick think that the Duke is plotting open rebellion, and planning to take the crown for himself.’

I leaned forward and squeezed her hand. ‘In my opinion they’re being unduly pessimistic. King Edward has always been more than a match for his brother. He’s always been able to mollify Clarence before matters went too far, and he’ll do so this time, mark my word. Forget it, and tell me about this man who came looking for Mistress Bracegirdle.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she protested. ‘He was only a minute or two before you, and when I answered the door, his surprise at seeing me was obvious. He asked for Imelda. When I said she was dead, murdered last January, he at first refused to believe me and declared I must be mistaken. Finally, when he’d accepted that I was speaking the truth, he just kept repeating, “She can’t be! What’s he going to do?” Then he saw you coming and moved away. Poor man! I should have invited him in. He seemed completely broken by the news.’

‘And you say that he’s a kinsman of Mistress Bracegirdle?’

‘I think that’s what he said. I can’t really remember now, the whole conversation was over so quickly, but I’m almost sure he claimed to be a cousin of her mother’s. Oh, and he was holding a bundle of something under one arm, wrapped in sacking.’

Now that she mentioned it, I, too, recalled noticing the bundle, although the fact had made little impression on me at the time. I wondered where the stranger had gone and if I could search him out. But the effort of enquiring all over the town and its suburbs for a man whose name I did not even know suddenly proved too much for me, as the lethargy that had held me prisoner for the past ten days renewed its grip.

‘Are you feeling well?’ Adela was regarding me with concern. ‘You seem out of spirits.’

I denied the imputation vigorously, but then, somehow or other – and I still, to this day, have no idea how it came about – I was pouring out the whole sorry story of Rowena Honeyman; my part in her father’s death; how, before he had died, he had charged me with taking her to her aunt’s house at Keyford; my passion for her, which I had nursed all winter; my arrogance in assuming that she could ever return my affection; her patent dislike of me and her betrothal to Ralph Hollyns. Adela let me talk, hearing me out in silence, but when I had finished, she came to kneel beside my stool, putting a friendly arm around my shoulders.

‘You’ll recover,’ she said gently. ‘Believe me, people often do, however heartbroken they may feel at the time. I know that my words sound callous, but unrequited love is very difficult to keep alive.’

I smiled thinly. ‘Do you speak from experience?’

‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ She rose from her knees and fetched me another cup of ale, then drew up a second stool and sat down alongside me. I had never noticed before how graceful all her movements were. ‘I was very much in love with my husband when I married him. My friends and family advised me against going away to live in Hereford with a man I hardly knew, but nothing any of them said could have stopped me. I would have gone barefoot with Owen Juett to the world’s end. He was a kind, gentle soul, the sort of man I’d always dreamed of, and I was certain that he loved me as much as I loved him. Oh, he liked me well enough, I’m sure of that, and he’d never been the object of so much adoration in his life before. Who can blame him if he was flattered? But at heart he was a cold man, a little afraid of all women – as he was of his old harridan of a mother, who was slowly dying of some wasting disease or other. What he really wanted was a housekeeper and a nurse for her, to make her last days comfortable. And when she died within three months of our marriage, his greatest need of me was gone. I’d realized by then, of course, that Owen didn’t love me as I loved him, and I thought I should never recover from the pain. But I did, in a surprisingly short space of time. And so will you.’

Naturally, I didn’t believe her, in spite of a lurking suspicion that she might be right. But just talking to her, just the act of sharing my unhappiness and burdening her with part of my sorrow, had in some strange way made me feel better. And when I eventually took my leave, we parted as friends in the deepest and truest meaning of the word. I kissed her lips, and she returned the salutation in the same passionless manner. Then I set out for Redcliffe and home.

*   *   *

During the next two weeks, I lay low, avoiding all contact with Alison and William Burnett.

On the first occasion when Mistress Burnett called at the house, I was fortunately from home, and although she left a message with my mother-in-law, requesting me to wait upon her as soon as possible, I ignored it. The second time, I was not so lucky, but Margaret, returning from the weaving sheds where she had deposited her basket of yarn, was able to warn me of Alison’s approach. Elizabeth was spending the day with Adela and Nicholas Juett, so I was able to roll beneath the bed without any fear of my presence being innocently divulged by my little daughter. Mistress Burnett was invited by mother-in-law to enter the cottage and check for herself that I was nowhere to be seen.

Her message was peremptory. ‘Tell the chapman that I want to know when he’s setting out for London. It’s high time he was thinking of going. I’m not in the mood to brook further delay.’

‘You heard that,’ Margaret remarked when the visitor had departed. ‘I don’t know what you’re playing at, Roger,’ she reproved me as I scrambled, dusty and dishevelled, from beneath the bed, ‘but I won’t tell lies for you again. As it is, I shall have to do penance for those I’ve already told on your behalf. If you don’t want to continue poking your nose into Alderman Weaver’s affairs, then just tell Mistress Burnett so and have done with it. You know you’ll have my blessing.’

I hesitated, almost succumbing to an impulse that had become familiar to me over the past fortnight or so. But always, just as I was about to reach a definite decision to have nothing further to do with the case, I drew back from the brink. Even in the moments of my greatest despondency, I could not quite resist a mystery, and particularly not one with which I had been so closely connected in the past. I said, surprising myself as well as Margaret, ‘I shall start for London in two days’ time. But tomorrow is May Day and I’ve promised to go maying with Adela, if you’ll look after the children for us.’

No such arrangement had been made between us, and I should now have to make good my lie in order not to disappoint my mother-in-law, whose delight at the news was palpable. She was immediately off to market to buy all those ingredients necessary for a May Day breakfast; parsley, lettuce, endive and fennel; cider, apples, cream and butter. Adela, when I explained what had happened, earned my lasting gratitude by agreeing to get up at the crack of dawn. She would be happy, she said, to accompany me into the surrounding countryside in order to bring in the branches of hawthorn, birch and rowan that were used to decorate the various maypoles set up around the city.

She and Nicholas slept with us in the cottage overnight, and as soon as the Redcliffe Gate was opened at sunrise, we were two of the first people to venture out into the open fields beyond. As we climbed Redcliffe Hill, William Canynges’s great church rose out of the mist like a milky cloud, and to our right, the snaking line of the river glittered silver-grey in the uncertain morning light. The hem of Adela’s gown was quickly saturated with dew, and my boots were wet almost to their tops. Birds shrilled the dawn chorus from the branches of the trees, daisies spangled the grass like snowflakes, and cobwebs, spun overnight between blades of grass, trembled with a myriad diamond drops. A distant orchard caught the first rays of the rising sun, a froth of pink and white foaming up through the mist to bewitch our eyes; and a flock of sheep, newly released from the fold, turned to watch us with their silly, vacuous faces.

‘I think we must be the oldest couple here,’ Adela protested, laughing, surveying our companions who did indeed seem young; boys and girls for the most part, hardly one of them above the age of sixteen and all in their holiday clothes. They cheered us on as though we were in our dotage, solicitously helping us over the rougher patches of ground and assisting us to gather our armfuls of rowan and may.

The young girl who had been chosen to be their Queen was carried home in triumph on my shoulders – for I, as the tallest man present, had been singled out for this honour – and I was physically exhausted as I settled down to the breakfast that Margaret had prepared. But I also felt curiously content, as though this morning’s jaunt had purged me of the sadness that had plagued me for the past few weeks. While we ate, my mother-in-law decked the house with some of the boughs that we had brought back with us. She also decorated the children’s hoops with garlands of trailing leaves and swags of ivy, adding bows of coloured ribbon and little bells, bought the previous day in the market, so that they flashed and twinkled as they were bowled along. Afterwards, the five of us went to join in the dancing around the nearest maypole, and later still, as the sun began to sink in a blaze of crimson glory, I accompanied Adela and Nicholas home to Lewin’s Mead.