The Weaver's Inheritance (30 page)

Richard Manifold sighed: it was a complicated story. He was coming to the end of a long and tiring day, and there were still reports to be made, bodies to be disposed of, depositions to be taken down. ‘And do you really believe,’ he asked me, ‘that Master Burnett murdered Imelda Bracegirdle in order to steal a horoscope you think she may have cast for his wife?’

I nodded. ‘I do. But as he probably burned it straight away, I doubt if we’ll ever really know.’

*   *   *

But I was wrong. A search of William Burnett’s papers revealed all Mistress Bracegirdle’s charts and predictions, including both Alison’s and her father’s horoscopes, the latter plainly showing that Alison would die four months before the Alderman.

My mother-in-law, hastily crossing herself, said with a shiver, ‘To know when you are going to die must be very frightening.’

‘Only if you truly believe that such events can be foretold,’ Adela reproved her. ‘But that’s expressly against the teaching of the Church. Only God can determine the hour of each person’s death.’

A few days had elapsed and she and Nicholas were paying their customary visit on their way home from the weaving sheds, where they had deposited Adela’s newly spun yarn and collected more raw wool for spinning. Elizabeth and Nicholas had settled down to play like the familiar friends they had become, laughing and quarrelling and rolling around the floor, instantly comfortable in one another’s company. I saw my mother-in-law glance at them and then at me, as if to make sure that I was aware how happy the two of them were together. She valiantly forbore to comment, however, merely wondering aloud what the Alderman and Mistress Burnett would do, now that each had been rudely deprived of a dream, betrayed by those in whom they had most trusted.

‘Oh,’ said Adela, ‘I meant to tell you as soon as I came in. The weaving sheds are buzzing with the news this morning that Mistress Burnett has closed her house in Small Street and is going to sell it. She’s moved back to Broad Street to live with her father, for as long as they both have on this earth. And the Alderman has rewritten his will, leaving everything to her, just as before.’

My mother-in-law sighed sentimentally. ‘I do so like a happy ending.’

Adela looked at me, quirking one eyebrow, and I knew what she was thinking. Was it really possible for two people to forgive and forget the hurts that lay between them; the betrayal, the bitter insults, the realization on Alison’s part that her father had always loved her less than her brother? And I realized that Adela and I often did know what the other one was thinking, because our minds were so much in tune. Like our children, we were comfortable together: we had no need to explain things. Nor would Adela ever demand to know where I was going, where I had been, or why I hadn’t come home when I said I would. There would be no silent reproaches as there were with my mother-in-law. She wouldn’t cling to me and refuse to let me out of her sight as Lillis had done, during our brief married life together. And I remembered Rowena Honeyman as I had last seen her, hanging on the arm of her country swain, and knew suddenly that she was another such, needing constant attention and reassurance, uneasy when her man was not at her side.

I heaved a secret sigh of relief as though I had had a lucky escape, even though, the next moment, honesty forced me to admit that I had never stood a chance with her. I could not help smiling in self-deprecation, only to become aware that both women were watching me, my mother-in-law with a certain amount of puzzlement, Adela with a mocking tilt to her lips.

I rose hastily to my feet and offered to escort our guest and her son home, if they were ready to leave. Margaret, who, womanlike, must have divined something of my intentions from my general demeanour, hustled us on our way without even offering Adela any refreshment, a most serious lapse in her code of hospitality. Elizabeth, protesting vociferously at being robbed of her playmate so soon, was told sharply to be quiet; and was so surprised at being spoken to in such a manner by her grandmother that she did as she was bidden.

Adela, too, was unusually tongue-tied as we walked back to Lewin’s Mead, and our journey was saved from embarrassment only by Nicholas’s artless prattle. Once inside the cottage, I decided that I must waste no more time in order to save us from further awkwardness.

‘Adela,’ I said, turning her about to face me, ‘will you marry me?’

‘As second best?’ she asked levelly, holding my eyes with hers.

I shook my head. ‘No. Over the last few months, I’ve come to realize that what I thought was love was nothing more than moonshine; a foolish dream. But my love for you has grown steadily, against the odds, against my own resistance to it, because Margaret made it so plain from the start that our marriage was what she wanted.’

Adela smiled. ‘I know. I know. I could see it in your eyes. It was why I encouraged Richard Manifold for a time, hoping to cure myself of loving you, which I have done almost from the first moment we met.’

I took her in my arms then and kissed her, and went on kissing her until I thought I should never stop. Nicholas must have thought so, too, and, annoyed at being ignored for so long, he came across and tugged furiously at his mother’s skirts. Adela broke free, laughing, and scooped him up into her arms. ‘Will you mind having a son as well as a daughter?’

‘No.’ I managed to embrace them both. ‘And I promise you, most solemnly, that Nicholas will be as my own son to me. You need have no fears on that score.’

She raised her mouth to be kissed again. ‘I haven’t,’ she answered. ‘If I had, as much as I love you, I wouldn’t marry you. But I’ve always known you for a good, kind man. And now,’ she added with a chuckle, ‘before all this flattery turns your head and makes you utterly unbearable, you’d better go back to Redcliffe and tell Margaret the news.’

*   *   *

Adela and I were married in the porch of Saint Thomas’s Church early in July, and received our nuptial blessing at the altar. Together with Elizabeth, I went to live in the cottage in Lewin’s Mead, leaving Margaret to enjoy the freedom of being on her own without the responsibility of a young child to look after. But, of course, we saw her every day, and she rapidly became grandmother to Nicholas as well as to my daughter. And as Adela was an orphan, I continued to think of, and refer to, Margaret as my mother-in-law, a title which she retained for me until the end of her life.

Alderman Weaver didn’t outlive his daughter, dying three weeks before her, at the beginning of September, which meant that all William Burnett’s evil scheming had been for nothing. Had he not believed in Imelda Bracegirdle’s ability to forecast the future, he would have inherited the Weaver fortune through Alison, and been a widower very shortly afterwards. But Margaret’s faith in horoscopes wasn’t shaken, as she argued that had Irwin Peto not been introduced into their lives, matters might have fallen out differently.

There was an odd postscript to the affair. One evening in August, when I returned home after a day’s peddling in the surrounding villages, Adela told me that she had had a visit from Dame Pernelle.

‘Poor soul! Now that John Weaver has inherited the Alderman’s fortune and sold the Broad Street house, she’s very lonely. She stayed talking for what seemed like hours. I think I listened to the whole of her life’s history, and the history of everyone connected with her, as well. Sometimes I had difficulty keeping awake. But one thing she did tell me which struck me as rather significant. Apparently, when he was younger, Alfred Weaver had a reputation amongst his family as something of a libertine. It wasn’t generally known, and I gather he didn’t visit the whore-houses here, in his own home town. But when he went to London on business, he used to frequent the Southwark stews. He confided this information to his brother, who, in his turn, told his wife, who passed it on to her sister, Dame Pernelle.’ Adela leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table, where she had spread our supper. ‘Do you think it possible that he and Morwenna Peto, once … a long time ago…?’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

We looked at one another, a long, speculative stare. At last I said, ‘Perhaps. Who knows? After all, it would explain Irwin’s likeness to Clement. And didn’t Alderman Weaver always declare that a man couldn’t fail to know his own son?’

A
LSO BY
K
ATE
S
EDLEY

Death and the Chapman

The Plymouth Cloak

The Weaver’s Tale

The Holy Innocents

The Eve of St. Hyacinth

The Wicked Winter

The Brothers of Glastonbury

THE WEAVER’S INHERITANCE
. Copyright © 1998 by Kate Sedley. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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ISBN 0-312-27684-2

First published in Great Britain by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

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First St. Martin’s Minotaur Edition: October 2001

eISBN 9781466870369

First eBook edition: March 2014