The Brothers of Glastonbury (15 page)

‘And desert us in our hour of need!’ Cicely spat at me across the table.

Her aunt sent her a bewildered glance before shrugging her shoulders, evidently abandoning all attempts to understand these violent swings of opinion.

‘You must do as you see fit, Chapman,’ she told me quietly. ‘Whatever you decide, it will be with my thanks and blessing. Meanwhile, do you have any idea at all as to what can have happened to my sons?’

I glanced across the table at the maid, who had just sat down again to resume her own interrupted meal.

‘Lydia,’ I said, ‘it’s time to tell your mistress what you told me this morning.’

Before Lydia could protest, Dame Joan’s head jerked round. ‘My child,’ she asked reproachfully, ‘what have you been keeping from me?’

‘How
could
you?’ Lydia demanded tearfully of me. ‘You promised you’d keep it secret! You
promised!
You know I told you Mark would have me dismissed if I betrayed him to the Mistress!’

Dame Joan said firmly, ‘Whatever this is about, you are
my
maid, Lyddie, not Mark’s. How could you believe that I should let myself be influenced by him in such a matter? You know I promised your mother I’d look after you. Do you really think I would go back on my word?’

Lydia looked uncertain. ‘I … I don’t know,’ she muttered.

‘Then it grieves me very much to hear you say so. Now, what is it that you have to tell me?’

The story was haltingly repeated, and when Lydia had finished, I jogged her memory about the open door.

‘So you see,’ I concluded for her, ‘someone aided and abetted Mark that night. Mark knew he was going to be late, in spite of telling Lydia that he’d unintentionally drunk too much and had had to spend the night at the house of a friend.’

Dame Joan regarded me straitly. ‘This is the reason you were asking all those questions at breakfast this morning, wanting to know if there was any other way into the house without having to rouse a member of the household.’ I nodded. ‘So!’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You obviously don’t believe, Roger, that this was the first occasion Mark had stayed out all night.’

‘To be honest, Mistress, no. I think it had probably happened before, and maybe since. No man anticipates getting so drunk that he cannot ride home, unless he does it regularly.’

Dame Joan nodded her agreement and turned to look at the two apprentices. ‘Which one of you unlocked the door at nights for Mark?’

Neither boy seemed inclined to speak first, but it was obvious that both had lost their appetites. The speed with which they were shovelling the frumenty into their mouths began to slacken, then stopped altogether. After a protracted silence, Rob laid down his spoon and raised his head.

‘We were doing nothing wrong, Mistress. We were only following orders. If Master Mark chose to stay out all night and not let on to you, then that was his business. And if he told us to hold our tongues – well, it was natural that we obeyed him. He’s a grown man, after all, and no harm was done to you or anyone.’

This was unanswerable, and I could see that Dame Joan was nonplussed. She felt she had been betrayed by their silence, but knew also that she had no good reason to feel so. It was true that Mark was a grown man, and that she had no jurisdiction over him, but like most mothers she found it hard to accept that her sons were no longer children. Women will let their daughters go, treat them as equals and companions, but in a mother’s eyes her son is for ever in leading strings, the little boy she dandled on her knee.

‘And where did he go when he stayed out all night?’ she asked. ‘Did he tell you?’

Once again, the two apprentices exchanged sidelong glances. John Longbones raised his sandy brows, and Rob Undershaft gave an infinitesimal shrug of his shoulders. Both were obviously calculating what their chances of escaping a beating would be if Mark were suddenly to reappear in our midst, and realizing that they were slender. But after a few moments’ deliberation, Rob, who seemed to me to be the stronger character of the pair, decided to speak out and brave the possible consequences.

‘He went drinking and gambling. You know, the way men do.’

Dame Joan wrinkled her little nose fastidiously. The washed-out violet eyes held a spark of contempt.

‘Drinking and gambling don’t normally keep a man out all night,’ she said. ‘What else was Mark up to?’

For a third time the two boys silently consulted one another, then Rob unwillingly admitted, ‘He used to visit places.’

‘What places?’ Dame Joan was as close to real anger as I had ever seen her.

Rob fiddled with the spoon on his plate. ‘You know, Mistress, places … women,’ he muttered indistinctly.

The silence stretched like a thin, bright thread, which snapped suddenly when the outraged Dame asked furiously, ‘
Whore-houses?
Are you telling me, Rob Undershaft, that my son frequented whore-houses?’

‘That’s what he said, didn’t he, Jack?’

John Longbones nodded unhappily.

Dame Joan’s cheeks were scarlet with mortification and embarrassment. It was a second or two before she could catch her breath. ‘No wonder he didn’t want me to know anything about it,’ she said at last. ‘And Master Peter … did
he
know what was going on?’

‘Couldn’t say, Mistress. Master Mark never said one way or the other.’

My hostess considered the probability, avoiding both Cicely’s eyes and mine. ‘How often did Mark stay out all night?’ she asked.

‘Once a month maybe. Sometimes twice, sometimes not at all.’ It was John Longbones who answered this time.

‘And how long has this … this depravity been going on?’

John wrinkled his forehead. ‘A while now, I reckon, wouldn’t you say, Rob?’

‘A fair while, yes. I’d say so.’

Dame Joan now looked as pale as she had previously looked red. ‘Then unless Peter slept as soundly as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, I don’t see how he could possibly have remained ignorant of these nocturnal excursions. In short, he encouraged his brother by his silence.’ There was a pause before she added tearfully, ‘I am deeply disappointed in both my sons.’

I caught Lydia’s eye and she grimaced, as much as to say ‘I told you so’.

‘Dame Joan,’ I said, carefully picking my words, ‘your sons are men, and men do these things. Otherwise there would be no need for such places. And it’s only natural that one brother should keep the confidences and secrets of the other, especially if Peter understood how much the truth would upset you.’

But Dame Joan refused to be comforted, and continued to sniff and mop at her eyes until Cicely, who had tried to appear unmoved by the revelations, lost patience with her.

‘Oh, Aunt,’ she begged, ‘please stop snivelling. If you’d seen as much of the world as I have in the service of the Duchess, you’d realize that it’s fashionable to visit whorehouses. The brothels of Southwark are all owned by the Bishop of Winchester.’

I hastily covered my mouth with one hand so that Cicely should not suspect that my lips were twitching. The part she was playing at the moment was that of the woman experienced in the ways of the world, and I had to admit that she did it very well. But underneath, I suspected, she was as shocked as Dame Joan. These were her cousins, the chief culprit her future brother-in-law; and, like everyone else, she did not expect members of her own family to be tainted with the same vices as the rest of mankind.

At her niece’s unfeeling words, Dame Joan burst into a flood of tears and announced her intention of taking to her bed. ‘I shall be in my chamber if anything should happen,’ she sniffed, ‘if Mark should come home. Not that I ever want to clap eyes on that reprobate again! And you can tell him so, before you send him up to see me! Lyddie, be a good girl and make me another infusion of rosemary and basil. My head feels as if it’s going to split in two.’

With her departure, calm descended on the kitchen. The apprentices finished their supper and slunk away to the workshop, presumably to beguile the hours until bedtime with a few games of hazard. Lydia began washing up the supper things and Cicely offered to dry the dishes. So, left to my own devices, I went into the garden and sat on the stone bench under the workshop window. The casement, was open, and I could hear Rob and John whispering and, occasionally, giggling together, but their voices were subdued. For them, as for the rest of us, it had not been a pleasant day.

Where, I wondered, was I to go from here? How was I going to make good my boast to solve this puzzle? I went back over the apprentices’ revelations concerning Mark Gildersleeve, but could see no way in which they shed any light on his or his brother’s disappearance. It was a common enough story of a young man keeping his youthful sins from his mother in order to be spared her reproaches, and of a brother who kept his own counsel so as not to get drawn in. Mark’s dismay and anger on the morning he encountered Lydia were now easily understood, as was his hurriedly concocted tale of having got drunk and spent the night with a friend.

I sighed, and suddenly realized how tired I felt. The inactivity of the afternoon – those dragging hours when the women had begged me not to leave them because they feared that the hostility of their neighbours might result in some form of physical attack – had fatigued me far more than being up and doing would have done. But up and doing what? I seemed to be in the centre of a maze where all the exits led only to dead ends. There was no way out. Every path was closed. I thought perhaps sleep would help clear my brain, but it was far too early to go to bed. The sun continued to shine and the heat was still intense; Mark’s bedchamber would be even hotter. But I knew that at any moment Cicely and Lydia would finish their chores and most likely join me on the bench. Solitude was suddenly inviting.

I was along the passageway and mounting the stairs almost before I was aware of my actions. Dame Joan’s door was closed, but I could hear her muffled sobs. Lydia had guessed correctly why Mark and Peter kept secrets from their mother: her reproaches would, in the end, wear down even the most heartless of sons.

I entered Mark and Peter’s room and shut the door behind me. Somewhere in here, Mark had chanced upon the mysterious paper belonging to his brother. I had almost come to believe that he had lied when he told Father Boniface that he had not taken it with him to Beckery – but suppose, after all, he had been telling the truth … Where then had he hidden it?

Common sense argued that he would have left it where he had found it, if the original hiding place had been a good one. I stared once more around the room but could see nowhere more likely than the little drawers and cupboards of that fantastic bed-head. Yet I had thoroughly searched every one of them the previous evening. Nothing could be lost, however, by trying once again. If I still did not find it, I should know that any further search would be a waste of time. I pulled off my boots, knelt up on the bed and began, slowly and methodically, to open the tiny cupboards and drawers.

I explored each cavity in turn, some of them no wider than half the span of my hand, and eventually arrived at the centre drawer at the top of the bed-head. I had noticed before that it appeared larger than its fellows, yet when I examined it more closely, it seemed shallower than it should be. My heart began to beat a little faster and I groped around feverishly, feeling for … feeling for what?

But when I found it, I knew at once that this was what I sought. There was a small metal catch at the back of the drawer, on the right-hand side, and how I had come to miss it last night I could not imagine. My fingers were trembling as I pressed it …

Immediately the floor of the drawer slid back to reveal a secret compartment in the base and, more importantly, what it contained. Carefully, as though it were a rare and precious jewel, I lifted out a piece of folded parchment.

Chapter Eleven

I understood at once why Peter Gildersleeve had not wanted the parchment touched by less careful hands than his own, and also why Mark would have been wary about carrying it upon his person. It was very old and extremely fragile, its mottled, yellowing surface overlaid with the patina of age, one corner already beginning to crumble into dust. I could see where Father Boniface had cut the seal, but the hard medallion of wax bore no imprint to indicate where this ancient document might originally have come from, or to whom it had belonged.

Gently and with the utmost care I began to unfold it. When it was finally laid flat upon the bed it proved to be far larger than I had expected: probably some eighteen inches square and chequered with creases, many of which had cracked, leaving rents in the parchment. But its contents were surprisingly clear. The ink, however it was made – with blackthorn bark and gum or with oak galls – had retained its colour despite the passage of time. The writing with which the paper was covered was still readable; if, that is, you knew how to interpret what it said …

And there was the rub. I knew no more than Father Boniface how that could be done. The priest’s description had been a good one, and accurate as far as it went. The parchment was ruled from top to bottom with horizontal lines, and either above, below or aslant them, groups of vertical pen-strokes were arranged, ranging in numbers from one to five. Some of the strokes were longer, some thicker than others, and there were also (which Father Boniface had failed to mention) a saltire cross, a double saltire cross, a small circle, a symbol which resembled a figure six and another like two little dots, placed side by side.

I stared long and hard at the parchment in growing frustration, and at the end of an hour or more, had reached only one conclusion. It was probable, I thought, that each group of lines or symbols represented a single letter, separated from its neighbours by a gap of less than quarter of an inch, and that the longer gaps of double that length indicated the spaces between words. For a moment or two after hitting upon this idea I experienced a wild sense of elation. If, I told myself, I could work out short, regularly repeated words that might very well prove to be ‘the’ and ‘and’, then I should at least be able to recognize specific letters, and from this small beginning it would be possible, eventually, to decipher others. My mood of self-congratulation was however short-lived when cold reality raised its ugly head. This was a very ancient document, and therefore almost certainly not written in English; and even if, by some remote chance, it were, it would be in the old, pre-Conquest form of our language, before the coming of the Normans changed it for ever.