13 - The Midsummer Rose (25 page)

While I debated my next move, I heard myself hailed. ‘Chapman!’

It was Luke Prettywood, looking dreadful with a black eye and a cut running the length of one cheek. Evidence of the filth and ordure thrown at him still clung in places to his shoulder-length fair hair, and his tribulations of the previous day had robbed him of all trace of cockiness. His customary satisfied smile was a travesty of its normal self.

‘Luke! What are you doing in Redcliffe during working hours?’ I clapped him on the shoulder and he winced.

‘I was on my way home. I’ve been dismissed from the brewery.’ He laid an urgent hand on my arm. ‘Roger, have you seen Marianne? I was told you were at the Avenel house sometime yesterday.’

‘But I didn’t see Mistress Avenel. Nor Mistress Alefounder, either, if it comes to that. So! Brewer Alefounder has dismissed you, has he? I’m not surprised. Assaulting a law officer was a stupid thing to do. So why
did
you do it, for heaven’s sake? It’s a few years now since you wore the apprentice’s flat cap. Why get involved in the quarrels of a pack of silly, muddle-headed boys?’

Luke shrugged. ‘It was something Jack Gload said. I can’t even remember what it was, but it got my goat. He’s such a stupid, ignorant fellow. I tell you what, chapman. Come back with me to the Green Lattis and I’ll buy you a stoup of ale. I’ve still a few coins left in my purse.’

I knew I shouldn’t oblige him – I had other, more pressing matters commanding my attention – but he looked such a sorry sight that I didn’t have the heart to refuse. So I accompanied him back across the bridge to the Green Lattis, and settled with him on a couple of stools near an unshuttered window.

It was early and we had the place almost to ourselves. The pot-boy brought us two mazers of ale, Hercules curled up next to my pack and went to sleep, and I spent the next quarter of an hour listening to the sentimental maunderings of Luke Prettywood concerning his love for Marianne Avenel.

The news of Robin’s murder had come not only as a terrible shock to Luke, but also as something of a release. At last he was able to speak openly about his affection for Marianne instead of always being obliged to conceal his true feelings.

‘And you’re quite sure she loves you in return?’ I asked. ‘I mean, Robin Avenel’s death is bound to change things. She’s now a very wealthy widow.’

‘Oh, I don’t know so much about that,’ he said. The colour was returning to his cheeks and, with every sip of ale, he was beginning to leave the torments of the previous day behind him. ‘Marianne always maintains that apart from the money he spent on clothes and his appearance, Robin was a pinchpenny. She had to economize on this, retrench on that. Although she thought that this miserliness was caused by necessity, not inclination.’

‘How could that be?’ I was sceptical. ‘His father’s a very rich man, and gossip has it that he was generous to his only son. Overgenerous, some said.’

‘That’s what Marianne can’t understand. She reckons Peter Avenel settled a lot of money on Robin when he got married. But where it all went, she has no idea. She did confide in me once that she was sure strangers occasionally came to the house, after she was in bed. But when she asked Robin about them, he told her she was imagining things and was so angry that she never dared raise the subject again. Could they have been debtors, or even blackmailers, do you think? She did wonder if he lent money to his sister. He and Mistress Alefounder were always close, even though they didn’t seem to like one another very much. Odd that, when you think about it.’

‘There are ties other than those of affection,’ I suggested. ‘Loyalty to a cause, perhaps. And causes, particularly lost ones, are constantly in need of money.’

Luke stared blankly at me. I changed the subject.

‘So what will you do now? Become the city’s chief beggar?’

‘I shall soon find other work,’ he bragged, his self-confidence returning. ‘If it comes to that, Marianne will undoubtedly persuade her father to take me back into the brewery. She can twist the old fool around her little finger.
If
I want to work for Gregory Alefounder again, that is.’ His self-conceit was very nearly restored to normal.

‘That’s decided then.’ I grinned. ‘But what about you and Mistress Avenel? You’re in no position to offer for her hand.’

‘Of course not.’ He was at least a realist. ‘She’s bound to marry again sometime or other: that’s only to be expected. Some choice of her father’s. Rich, that goes without saying. But she won’t give me up. She’ll keep me as her lover.’

He sounded so confident that I didn’t have the heart to prick his pretty bubble.

‘You’ll just go on meeting in Saint Giles’s crypt, eh?’ I teased him. ‘Even when you’re both old and grey and have to use crutches to get up and down the steps.’

‘You wouldn’t know anything about romantic love, now would you, chapman?’ he asked me lightly. ‘Not a staid old married man like yourself.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought the old synagogue cellars very conducive to comfortable love-making,’ I smiled. ‘But then, I suppose once Mistress Avenel’s got rid of her sister-in-law, she’ll be able to invite you to the house.’

But he refused to be drawn, merely giving me a small, secretive smile.

‘So, where was Master Avenel’s body found?’ he asked, after he had summoned the pot-boy and ordered two more cups of ale.

‘In Jewry Lane. Outside Saint Giles’s Church. He’d been stabbed, as no doubt you’ve heard by now.’

‘I did hear some talk, yes, when I was standing in the pillory. But my mind wasn’t really on what was being said, as you can well imagine.’

I could imagine. And if I needed any confirmation of his suffering, I could see it in the renewed pallor of his cheeks and his sudden, shallow breathing.

‘Mind you,’ I continued, in an effort to divert his thoughts, ‘I don’t think that’s where he was killed. I believe he was murdered in the church.’

That made him laugh and he at once looked better again. ‘What makes you think that? Been snooping, have you, chapman?’

‘Why does everyone accuse me of snooping?’ I demanded irritably. ‘I don’t snoop. I just try to discover the truth about things.’ That made him laugh even harder. ‘And as to why I think so, there’s a bloodstain on the floor.’

‘Really?’ He was intrigued. ‘Have you told Sergeant Manifold?’

I shook my head. ‘Not yet. On its own, it’s not evidence that would clear Burl Hodge … Did you know, by the way, that he’s been arrested?’ Luke nodded. ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘as I say, it’s not enough by itself to convince Richard Manifold that Burl is innocent. Once that man has made up his mind, he’s capable of twisting every fact to fit his theory and arguing black’s white and winter’s summer. So, I’ll wait until I have more facts.’

Luke swallowed the dregs of his second mazer. ‘Do you think you’ll find any?’

‘I don’t know. But one thing’s for certain! I won’t do so sitting here chatting to you.’

I rose to my feet, woke Hercules, shouldered my pack and took my departure. Luke caught me up outside the alehouse.

‘Hold hard,’ he begged. ‘I’d like to see this bloodstain you’ve discovered. Could you spare the time to show it to me?’

His thin features were full of ghoulish curiosity, and I realized afresh that he was still quite young. Only those with small experience of life’s cruelty can get excited by the prospect of viewing the spot where someone met a violent end. He had recovered with almost shocking rapidity from his purgatory of the previous day and I found myself envying him his ability to slough off misfortune without a second thought, safe in the conviction that it would never happen again, that the world was still a place of hope and the promise of adventure.

I knew I should waste no more time, but I was unable to resist that eager, boyish charm. Nor, if the truth be told, could I resist showing off my find to someone.

‘Very well,’ I agreed. ‘On one condition. You mention it to no one else until I give you leave. I don’t want Sergeant Manifold claiming the discovery as his own.’

Luke was scathing. ‘I wouldn’t talk to that piece of human excrement if he were the last man on Earth! Who do you think was responsible for having me put in the pillory?’

I laughed and we walked in companionable silence down Broad Street to the Bell Lane entrance of Saint Giles. I had chosen to avoid Small Street in case I was spotted by Adela. She could tell when I had been to the Green Lattis from behind closed doors. I was supposed to be working.

The church was, as ever, deserted. Luke advanced to the sacristy and from the shelf outside the door took down two candles which we lighted from a taper burning before the altar.

‘Be careful as you descend the steps,’ he advised me, for all the world as though I were his elderly uncle.

We padded through the crypt to the third chamber, holding our candles high. Silence prevailed except for our own muffled footfalls. Today, there was no phantom woman staring at me from beneath the archway. My imagination was playing no tricks.

I showed Luke the stain and the scuffed-up dust by which it was surrounded. It appeared a great deal fainter than it had the previous afternoon and my companion had to crouch down to see it properly. He rubbed it just as I had done, but today no dried flakes of blood adhered to his fingers.

‘That is a bloodstain,’ I insisted. Luke straightened up.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘In fact, I think you’re right. But it could be an old one.’ When I raised my eyebrows in enquiry, he went on, ‘Don’t you know what happened in this chamber, nearly two hundred years ago?’

I shook my head. I guessed it must have something to do with the expulsion of the Jews from England: there had been many atrocities in that year of Our Lord, 1290. Or many acts of zealous Christianity, depending on your point of view. I knew what mine was, but I pushed it down into the pool of other heretical thoughts and ideas swirling around just below the surface of my mind. When you’re a married man with children you can’t afford to be anything other than a coward.

‘So what did happen?’ I prompted.

Luke wriggled his shoulders as though they were hurting him. A day’s stooping in the pillory, pinioned by neck and wrists was sufficient to give anyone backache.

‘Well, according to my grandfather,’ he said, ‘who got it from
his
grandfather, or maybe his great-grandfather, most of the Bristol Jews fled the city early. They seemed to have foreseen what was coming and jumped before they were pushed, as the saying goes, taking ship from the Backs to France or Portugal or Spain. Apparently, the King had decreed that they should be allowed to take all money and movable goods with them – only land and property were to be forfeit to the crown – but of course this infuriated the local population everywhere. Everyone had hoped to grab a cache of the spoils for himself. The people of Bristol were no exception, and when word got round of the King’s decision, they stormed the synagogue. But, as I say, most of the Jews had already gone. However, about twenty or so were trapped down here in the cellar and hacked to pieces.’ Luke nodded at the floor. ‘That might just be a relic of this place’s grisly past.’

I understood now why I had always felt that sense of revulsion and misery in Saint Giles’s crypt and its adjacent chambers. Murder, hatred and grief were a part of the very stones, not only of these cellars, but also of the church itself. I wondered if other people felt it. Maybe that was why, for most of the time, it was so deserted …

All the same, I thought Luke was mistaken about the stain on the floor. I raised my candle and looked more closely at it. It was too dark, too fresh, to be two hundred years old. And there was also the evidence of the dust, disturbed and scuffed as it was. There had been a struggle here, but recently.

‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘This is where Robin Avenel was killed, I’m sure of it.’

Luke frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘But why would his murderer bother to remove the body to Jewry Lane? Where would be the sense in that? Why not just run away? And there was the extra risk of being discovered while he was trying to lug the carcass up the steps from the crypt. As it happens, he wasn’t seen, but he might have been.’

I told him what I had told Adela earlier. ‘If I knew that, I’d probably have the solution to the killer’s identity. Now, don’t forget,’ I reminded him, ‘you’ve promised to say nothing about this to anyone.’

‘Oh, you can trust me,’ he assured me fervently. ‘If there’s anything I can do to put a spoke in Richard Manifold’s wheel, you can be certain that I’ll do it.’

There was no questioning his sincerity. His dislike of the sergeant made those brilliant blue eyes of his sparkle in the light from his candle.

I nodded and squeezed his arm gratefully. ‘Let’s go, then. Let’s get out of this place.’

We mounted the steps to the nave, snuffed out our candles and were about to take leave of one another, when the Bell Lane door creaked open.

There was a flurry of black draperies and Marianne Avenel came rushing in.

I
had a sense of having watched this scene played out before, but this time, there were differences. To begin with, there was no skirt of pale yellow sarcenet billowing about Marianne Avenel as she ran, merely the sombre swish of a gown of deepest black. And secondly, she made no effort to conceal her true relationship with Luke, throwing herself into her lover’s arms regardless of my presence.

‘What … What are we going to do?’ she asked, sobbing noisily.

Luke smothered her in an all-enveloping embrace, pressing her face against his shoulder.

‘Hush, hush, sweetheart. There’s nothing we
can
do until the law has run its course. Richard Manifold already has a suspect under lock and key, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now. Master Chapman here doesn’t agree with Burl Hodge’s arrest, but it’s up to him to prove differently, and we shall just have to wait and see who’s right, him or the sergeant.’ Marianne made a little mewling sound of distress, but Luke patted her back and again hushed her gently. ‘Darling, believe me when I say that there is nothing either of us can do except attend upon events. For now, we must be careful. We don’t want to arouse suspicions.’