13 - The Midsummer Rose (17 page)

I looked for, but failed to find, anyone from the Avenel household except for Marianne, walking sedately beside Luke Prettywood. Her dancing eyes and sudden spurts of infectious laughter belied this decorous behaviour, and I was not surprised, a little later on, to discover that the pair of them seemed to have vanished. However, the crowds were so great by then that I was forced to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they had simply moved beyond my range of vision.

Most of the children ran riot, rolling in the dew-wet grass and being of little help to anyone. Our three were as bad as the rest, and twice we lost Adam, only to have him returned by neighbours who had recognized his indignant roar. (Once heard, never forgotten.) But, eventually, everyone had collected all the herbs and plants they needed, by which time the larks were shrilling overhead in a hot blue sky and the fields, cleared of mist, spread green and gold all around us. We could see the hedgerows bright with white and pink wild roses.

‘Aren’t you going to pick one for me?’ Adela asked as we made our way back to the Redcliffe Gate.

I shook my head. ‘This year I’m buying you a rose from one of the street vendors,’ I announced, enjoying her look of astonishment. ‘You can pull it apart at this evening’s feast and surprise us both.’

‘Does this mean that you, also, need to find out if you still love me?’

She had put an entirely different interpretation on my action to the one I had intended, so I thought it wisest not to answer; in any case, my attention had been distracted. As we passed William Canynges’s great church, I saw Marianne Avenel and Luke Prettywood loitering in its shadow, his head bent to hers, her flower-like face upturned in adoration, the pair of them so close together that, at first glance, they appeared to be a single person. He was talking earnestly to her, and at one point I saw her laugh. Then I was swept along by the crowd and they were once more lost from sight.

The rest of the day was spent in a little desultory peddling around the town, before abandoning all pretence of work and lending assistance to my fellow citizens, who were setting up trestle tables in the streets ready for the Midsummer Eve’s feast. Adela and I, uneasily conscious of the animosity of some of our Small Street neighbours, had agreed to walk as far as Redcliffe and take our supper with Margaret Walker and her friends. And although this almost certainly meant encountering the ill will of my own erstwhile friend, Burl Hodge, in general the inhabitants of the Redcliffe Ward cared little for my new-found status as a householder.

Consequently, four o’clock found Adela, the children and myself on the other side of the Avon, seated at one of the long tables set up in Redcliffe Street. We sat next to her cousin and opposite Margaret’s closest companions, Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins. Neither dame resented my stroke of luck, and treated me with the same good-natured contempt that they had always shown towards me. Jack Nym and his wife waved to us all as they took their places further along the laden board, while Nick Brimble, Goody Watkins’s nephew, slapped me on the back as he passed. I also recognized two old friends in Ned Stoner and Rob Short, both of whom now worked for Redcliffe masters; but either they failed to hear me when I shouted to them, or, having become aware of my presence, they deliberately refused to glance my way.

Not so Jenny Hodge, who left her seat at a neighbouring trestle to speak to both Adela and myself, displaying all her usual gentleness and good humour.

‘Take no notice of Burl,’ she said on parting. ‘He’ll get the better of his envious feelings given time.’

Looking at her husband’s scowling face, I hoped she was right. I missed his friendship, and also that of his two happy-go-lucky sons, Jack and Dick.

The feast was provided by the master cooks, bakers and butchers of the city and served by their long-suffering apprentices, many of whom muttered mutinously to themselves and to one another as they struggled with the heavy trays of food and beakers of ale in the late-afternoon heat. The Midsummer Eve’s feast had not always been blessed with good weather, but that year the atmosphere was stifling. I saw Luke Prettywood overseeing a couple of brewer’s lads and occasionally lending them a hand, the sweat pouring down his face and nearly blinding him.

‘What are you doing over here?’ I asked him as he refilled my beaker.

‘I live in Redcliffe.’ He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. ‘I might ask you the same question, with better cause.’

‘Oh, I’m a guest of Mistress Walker,’ was my prompt reply. ‘My daughter is her granddaughter.’

I glanced at Elizabeth as I spoke, but she was too busy even to talk to her stepbrother, let alone to notice me. She was trying to cram a whole raston into her mouth at once, the crumbs, butter and honey from its scooped-out interior dribbling down her chin and rendering her speechless. Nicholas himself was little better. He was just reaching for another piece of curd tart, the state of his mouth and fingers betraying the fact that he had disposed of several slices already. As for Adam, he was awash with cream syllabub and junket, which he had managed to get all down his little tunic, up his nose and around his eyes. I shuddered and looked away. He was not a pretty sight.

The feasting over at last – which only happened when we could barely move, even to go and relieve ourselves behind a convenient wall – the dirty dishes were cleared away by the exhausted apprentices and it was time for the games to begin.

The first ceremony was that of the Midsummer Rose itself. Each husband or sweetheart presented his lady-love with the rose he had either bought or picked for her and waited anxiously while she tore it to pieces, petal by petal.

‘He loves me! He loves me not!’

I gave Adela the overblown monstrosity I had purchased from a seller in High Street and watched, with bated breath, as she went through the ritual. I suddenly found that I really cared about the outcome, praying for the correct conclusion as some sort of proof to me, as well as to her, that our marriage was as strong as ever. Margaret Walker, Maria Watkins and Bess Simnel also took a gloating interest in the proceedings, ready to cackle with laughter and overwhelm me with mock reproaches if things failed to work out.

The rose was almost denuded. ‘He loves me … He loves me not … He loves me!’ Adela turned with a triumphant smile and invited my kiss. The three goodies made no effort to hide their disappointment. Further along the board and at neighbouring trestles, other swains and spouses were feebly protesting their devotion and swearing that the Midsummer Rose had lied. There was a lot of laughter, a few tears and some dissension before the head man of each table called for order and we passed on to the next ritual.

Great pans of water were placed on each table by the sweating and hard-working apprentices, and each citizen was handed a paper boat holding a stump of lighted candle. These were floated on the water to the chant: ‘Green is gold, fire is wet, fortune’s told, dragon’s met.’ Good fortune was yours if the boat floated to the opposite side of the pan before sinking and extinguishing its flame.

Both Adela’s boat and mine sank within seconds of each other, but Margaret Walker, by dint of some judicious cheating, kept all three children’s candles afloat long enough to ensure their good luck for the rest of the year.

Finally, a huge pastry subtlety, in the shape of a dragon, was set in the middle of every trestle and, at a given signal, a ‘Saint George’ leaped on to each table and ‘killed’ it. Our table’s Saint George was Luke Prettywood, and a fine, dramatic job he made of it, ripping the pastry beast apart with his sword – well, his knife, more accurately speaking – until a shower of coins spilled out across the board. There was an undignified scramble for this gift of money from the Mayor and aldermen of the city, most of it ending up, as usual, in the purses and pockets of the elderly, who were utterly unscrupulous in the methods they employed to obtain more than their fair share of booty. The younger folk nursed bruised ribs, cracked knuckles and scratched hands for many a day afterwards.

By now, it was beginning to grow dusk, and the first of the bonfires had been lit on the heights above Bristol – those ‘bone-fires’ on which our pagan forefathers, the Druids, had burned the bones of animals in honour of their great god Bel. One by one, they pricked the gathering darkness, and the acrid smell of burning was carried on a cloud of sparks down to the ancient city below, cradled in its marshy bed.

Bonfires were also lit in the streets, and it was time to form the midsummer processions. As I helped Adela to rise from the bench on which we had been sitting, I saw something flutter to the ground, something she had been concealing in the palm of one hand and accidentally released as she reached for mine. I stooped to pick it up – and found myself looking at a crimson rose petal, as soft as velvet.

‘He loves me not.’

The revels were nearly over and people were reluctantly beginning to disperse. But movement was necessarily slow as neighbours stopped to laugh and exchange titbits of gossip. Adela, with Adam asleep on her shoulder, had joined the group of women gathered around Margaret Walker. Nicholas and Elizabeth, together with several other children, were chasing in and out amongst those tables that had not yet been dismantled and carried away. I allowed my attention to wander.

A man, coming from the direction of Bristol Bridge, was weaving his way swiftly through the crowds, making himself as unobtrusive as possible by hugging the walls of the houses bordering the quay, head well down, hat pulled forward over his eyes, a cloak enveloping him from neck to ankles. Now and then he collided with a passer-by, but for the most part people were too busy about their own concerns to take much interest in him.

He interested me, however. Robin Avenel had evidently left the feasting and merrymaking on the other side of the Avon to cross into Redcliffe, where, judging by his purposeful gait, he was on his way to some rendezvous. Abruptly, he turned down one of the many alleyways that led on to Redcliffe Back.

I touched Adela’s arm. ‘Go home with Margaret and wait for me there. I’ve just seen somebody I know. I shan’t be long.’ And I took my departure as quickly as I could, deaf to her questions and protests.

Redcliffe Back had obviously been the scene of as much revelling and feasting as the inner streets. More, perhaps, as residents there had been joined by many of the foreign sailors whose ships were berthed at the wharfside. Scraps of food, rose petals, paper boats and stumps of candle littered the cobbles so thickly that my boots squelched on the debris with every step I took. Some tables had been overturned, a noisy crowd was still roistering around the bonfire in the middle of the quay, while others were heaving up the contents of their stomachs into the Avon. The river itself seemed to be a sheet of flame, reflecting the light from the many fires on Saint Brendan’s Hill and the heights leading to Durham and Clifton.

A disturbance had broken out – a drunken brawl, by the sound of things – but for the moment, there seemed to be no cause for concern. Wall torches and cressets had now been lit, adding their smoky glow to that of the bonfires.

I paused in the mouth of the alleyway before locating Robin Avenel almost straight ahead of me. He was talking to a man who stood, listening impatiently, one foot on the quayside, the other on the gangplank of a ship. This, together with his mode of dress, told me he was a sailor, and a foreign one at that. Irish? French? Breton? I was too far away and there was too much noise to hear anything that might have given me a clue. But I could see that Robin was importuning the other for a favour, which the sailor appeared loath to grant. There was urgency in every line of Robin’s body and in the general earnestness of his demeanour, but his companion shook his head and would have continued mounting the gangplank if Robin had not tightened his grip on the other man’s wrist.

I edged a little nearer, my quarry seemingly unaware of anything going on around him. The commotion further along the quay was beginning to escalate and to attract general attention: no one would be interested in my movements. But I had left it too late. Even as I took a step forward, someone shot past me through the alleyway, seized Robin Avenel by the scruff of his neck and whirled him round.

‘What do you mean, you revolting piece of frippery, by telling my Jenny to keep away from your wife?’ roared Burl Hodge’s unmistakable tones. When Burl was angry, everyone knew it.

It took Robin Avenel several seconds to realize what was happening. The sailor, seizing his chance, hastened up the gangplank to the refuge of his ship.

I could hear Robin’s furious bleats of protest at this rough handling, and hurried forward myself, not so much to save his skin, as to prevent Burl doing something he would later regret.

‘My wife,’ Burl was yelling at the top of his voice, ‘is every bit as good as that empty-headed little whore that you married! And if you’re ever rude to my Jenny again –’ he began punching Robin in the chest with a vigour that made me wince – ‘I won’t be responsible for the consequences. Do …’ (thump) ‘you …’ (thump) ‘understand me?’ (Yet another thump.)

‘Leave him, Burl!’ I seized the tenter’s wrists. ‘He isn’t worth it.’

‘What? What the …?’ Burl turned to see who had so rudely interrupted his sport, and in the glow from the fires I could see his eyes darken with anger. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? I might have guessed. You never can keep that great nose of yours out of other people’s business. It’s high time someone taught you a lesson, chapman, and I’m in just the mood to do it.’

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ I told him, indicating with a jerk of my head to Robin that he should go while the going was good.

He didn’t need a second bidding and sloped off into the night, but not before he had given Burl a vicious kick on the shins. And that about summed up the man: valiant only so long as there was no risk to himself.

Burl, robbed of his prey, was beside himself with fury. As soon as I released his wrists, he took a wild swing at my jaw but missed me by miles. I made the mistake of laughing. He came for me then, throwing all his weight against me and bearing me to the ground, where we rolled over and over in the dirt, writhing and kicking and hitting each other like two gutter urchins. How long this undignified spectacle might have continued is difficult to say, but the sudden yells of ‘Riot! Ware riot! Apprentices! Apprentices!’ made us leave off and scramble hurriedly to our feet.