The Brothers of Glastonbury (26 page)

Cicely and Dame Joan had returned by this time from the scrivener’s house, and the former met me in the passageway.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.

‘I’ve been visiting whore-houses in Cock Lane with Master Honeyman,’ I answered. Ignoring her gasp of astonishment and outrage, I gripped her wrist. ‘Where’s your aunt?’ I demanded.

‘In the shop. Rob’s found a carter going all the way to London, and she’s arranging for him to carry her letter to my father. What do you mean, you and Master Honeyman have been visiting—’

‘Never mind that for now,’ I cut in impatiently. ‘I’ll explain later.’ I shook her arm. ‘I think I’ve discovered how your cousin Peter disappeared!’

Chapter Eighteen

Cicely’s mouth fell open and she stared at me for several seconds in uncomprehending silence, then she gasped. ‘You know what’s happened to Peter?’

‘I think,’ I corrected her, ‘that I know why Abel Fairchild was deceived into thinking your cousin had vanished. What I don’t know is where Peter went after Abel ran away.’

‘You mean Peter wasn’t seized by Old Scratch?’

‘I’ve always thought that unlikely, haven’t you? People abducted by the Devil are always people no one has ever met. Such reports are always hearsay, recounted by the friend of a friend of their cousin’s brother-in-law’s mother’s niece.’ I added soberly, ‘But I’m not holding out any hope that Peter is still alive.’

Cicely giggled nervously, then shivered, her thoughts turning to Dame Joan. ‘We must tell my aunt at once what you’ve just told me.’ She turned, and would have made her way into the shop had I not caught her by the arm.

‘Not yet. I must test my theory first. Come outside with me to the stable.’

She looked puzzled, but did as I asked. The stable, as I have already described, stood between the Gildersleeves’ shop and the neighbouring house, and it was possible to walk freely all round it. It was still empty, Dorabella remaining for the present in Northload Street, cared for by Edgar Shapwick.

‘Well?’ Cicely was puzzled.

‘I want you to pretend,’ I said, ‘that the stable is the shepherd’s hut and that you are Abel Fairchild. I shall play the part of your cousin.’ As I spoke, I moved towards the building. ‘Abel was coming down from the upper slopes of Mendip with his flock when he spied Peter and waved to him. Almost immediately after that, because of the lie of the land, Peter disappeared from his view. So I want you to shut your eyes for the same length of time, and promise that you won’t cheat by peeping.’

‘All right,’ Cicely agreed reluctantly. ‘I give you my word. But what do I do then?’

‘You behave exactly as Abel Fairchild did.’

‘And how was that? I’ve forgotten.’

‘Then listen carefully.’ I was pleased to note that I had her attention. ‘First of all, you look in the “hut” to see if I’m there. When you’re satisfied that I’m not, walk right round the outside of the building, and then walk back again. Repeat this two or three times, remembering that Abel was growing ever more frightened and cautious with each second that passed, and in all probability walking slower and slower. Now, do you think you can do that? Can put yourself into Abel Fairchild’s shoes?’

‘Of course I can!’ was the lofty response. ‘I shall pretend I’m just a silly child who’s convinced himself that something dreadful has happened to Peter.’

‘Isn’t that what we all thought?’ I asked, and she had the grace to blush. ‘Very well,’ I continued, ‘let’s begin. Wave to me and then close your eyes. No looking, mind! You’ve promised!’

Cicely did as I bade her, and after a minute or two, I heard the stable door creak open as she went inside. There were rustling noises from within as she made a pretence of searching among the straw, then a second creak told me that she had come out again. She walked slowly, clockwise, around the stable, before turning and going withershins; but by the time she had repeated this manoeuvre several times more she had no need to simulate Abel’s increasing alarm. She was herself growing frightened.

‘Roger! Roger, where are you?’ When I did not answer, she ran out from behind the stable and stood facing the door. ‘Roger! Stop it! This has gone far enough!’ Her voice was trembling.

Deliberately, I waited a few more seconds before strolling into view.

‘Here I am, as you can see, alive and well.’

The violet eyes widened. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Only two or three steps either behind or in front of you all the while.’ I smiled at her confusion. ‘There’s really precious little mystery about it. We have to assume that your cousin was on Pennard land not on business, but for some purpose of his own, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t be seen by any member of the Pennard household. He may even have known, by some means or another, that Anthony and his sons had gone to Priddy that afternoon. But unluckily for him, he was spotted by Abel Fairchild. He returned the boy’s wave, but as soon as Abel was out of sight, in the hollow, Peter hid behind the hut, trusting that when the boy found him gone, he would simply proceed on his way. After all, why should he bother to search for your cousin when he had his sheep and their welfare to attend to?

‘But your cousin reckoned without Abel’s natural curiosity and his sense of duty. Abel wanted to discover what Peter was doing, roaming around so far from the farmhouse on his own, so he started to look for him. First he searched inside the hut, even peering round the door, in order to make certain that his quarry wasn’t hiding behind it, then he began walking around the outside. After a while, Abel must have begun to grow uneasy because he couldn’t understand how Peter could possibly have vanished in so short a time, and he was probably moving cautiously enough for your cousin to keep several steps either ahead of or behind him. As Abel turned one corner of the hut, Peter disappeared around the next, as I was doing just now.’

‘But I turned and went in the opposite direction as well,’ Cicely objected. ‘You told me to. So why didn’t we meet? Why didn’t Peter and Abel Fairchild bump into one another?’

‘Because it’s possible to peep very quickly around each corner to see what the other person is doing. If your quarry moves with sufficient speed to begin with, he is behind the hunter, watching his back. But when the hunter shows signs of retracing his steps, the quarry does the same, quickening his pace until he is again following the person who is looking for him. Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Cicely nodded solemnly. ‘In my case, of course, there was no danger of our meeting because I knew in advance what you were going to do, that as soon as you had circled the stable once you would turn and go withershins, as I had instructed. Had your cousin and Abel come face to face, however, Peter could easily have claimed to be playing a joke on the lad. He would then have offered some excuse for his presence so far from the house, mounted Dorabella and ridden away, postponing whatever it was he had gone there to do until another day.’

Cicely’s eyes narrowed as she thought about what I had said. ‘You mean Peter didn’t disappear at all?’ she asked at last. ‘At least, not just then. And if anyone had been watching from a distance, he would merely have seen two people stalking each other round and round the hut?’

I nodded and she started to laugh, a little wildly. ‘But why didn’t one of us think of that before? It’s such a simple explanation.’

I grimaced. ‘When it’s been pointed out to you, yes. But the answer didn’t fully occur to me until half an hour ago, in the abbey, when one of the pilgrims swore she’d seen a mouse by King Arthur’s tomb. The Brother who was with her went all round the shrine but could find no sign of it, and swore that the woman had been mistaken. But my neighbour and I had seen the animal scuttling around just ahead of his pursuer, until he finally broke away and vanished behind a pillar.’ I made no mention of my half-dream, half-vision, but went on, ‘I think that at the back of my mind I must have worked out the answer already. I knew that something I’d said a night or so ago, at supper, should have alerted me to the truth, but I couldn’t remember exactly what that something was.’

‘So you mentioned before. And have you remembered it now?’

‘As far as I can recall, your aunt asked me if there was any other means of concealment near at hand, in the hollow. And I answered no, not apart from the hut, and that Master Peter was not inside it.’

‘So?’

‘So, I should have realized that if he was not
inside,
he had to be
outside.
And if there was no time for him to make good his escape without being seen by Abel, then he still had to be where the lad had first spotted him.’

‘Unless he had been snatched by the Devil.’

I smiled down at her. ‘I thought we’d agreed that that was most unlikely.’

She eyed me askance, uncertain whether or not I was speaking heresy. A denial of the Devil might logically mean a denial of God, although Cicely perhaps would not think of it quite like that.

I hastened to reassure her. ‘It’s just common sense,’ I said, adding, ‘Our Saviour had a lot of common sense.’

‘Did He?’ she queried doubtfully, and again regarded me uneasily, still not certain that it was permissible to speak of the Lord in such terms.

I smiled and held out my hand. ‘Let’s go to dinner,’ I said. ‘It must be well past ten o’clock, and Lydia will grumble if we’re late.’

At this moment Dame Joan came out of the shop with Rob Undershaft and a swarthy-looking man with a weather-beaten face who was clutching a letter in one hand and several coins in the other, obviously the carter bound for London. The Dame was still issuing a number of confused instructions, but the man cut short her meanderings.

‘I shan’t have any difficulty in discovering where the Duke of Clarence is lodging, Mistress, don’t you trouble your head about that. And if he and his household have already left the city, I’ll make certain someone gets your letter and knows that it’s to be passed on urgently to your brother, Sergeant Armstrong.’

He nodded perfunctorily at Cicely and me before wishing Dame Joan farewell and disappearing into the hurly-burly of the High Street.

My hostess twisted her hands together. ‘He didn’t want to take it, you know,’ she whispered. ‘He didn’t want anything to do with me, in case he might be jeopardizing his immortal soul. It wasn’t until Rob here –’ she summoned up a watery smile for the apprentice – ‘reminded him that we had put plenty of work his way in the past that he agreed, but then only with the greatest reluctance.’ She wrung her hands again. ‘We are becoming outcasts in this town.’

Cicely linked one of her arms through her aunt’s. ‘Come and have dinner. Lyddie had it ready ages ago. Roger and I have something to tell you.’

*   *   *

‘You mean … you mean there isn’t anything strange about what happened to Peter?’

In spite of her immense relief, Dame Joan sounded almost as if she had been cheated, an emotion reflected on the faces of Lydia and the two apprentices. They were all finding it difficult to accept my explanation.

‘It’s the fault of that stupid boy,’ Lydia exclaimed wrathfully, ‘frightening us with his talk of the Devil!’

‘I don’t think that’s being fair to Abel Fairchild,’ I reproved her gently. ‘After all, Peter
has
disappeared. This solution resolves only a part of the mystery: how he escaped Abel’s vigilance before going off about his own concerns.’

‘Ay, that’s true enough,’ John Longbones said thickly through a mouthful of goat’s milk cheese. ‘What was Master doing over at Pennard’s, anyway? He said nothing to us about needing more skins, and by my reckoning we had plenty in store.’

Dame Joan nodded her agreement. ‘And if it was on business,’ she added, repeating what had been said before, ‘why didn’t he go to the house or the sheds?’

I caught Cicely’s eye across the table and almost imperceptibly shook my head. I was not yet sure myself that Peter’s foray on to the Pennards’ land necessarily had anything to do with his quest (although I found it hard to believe otherwise; I suppose I was tired of the incredulity with which my theory was constantly greeted), nor did I want Rob Undershaft and John Longbones spreading the story all over town. To my relief – and, I have to admit, somewhat to my surprise – Cicely remained silent.

Lydia said, ‘There’s Master Mark as well. He’s vanished too. You seem to have forgotten him.’

‘How can you suggest such a thing, Lyddie?’ Dame Joan reproached her. She began to cry again. ‘When my brother comes, he’ll know what to do.’

I felt my hostess was being over-sanguine. Furthermore, it could be many weeks before William Armstrong reached her, depending upon whether or not my lord of Clarence had moved on before the carter arrived in the capital. Moreover, Dame Joan was right: an uneasy atmosphere had permeated the town for several days now whenever she or her niece had appeared in public, and I was sure that the continued calm was only a result of the influence exerted by such friends as Edgar Shapwick. This fear proved to be well-founded when, shortly after dinner, a dead cat, with a halter tied about its neck, was found lying outside the front door. Lydia’s scream brought us all running to see what had caused it, and one look at the gruesome discovery was enough to send Dame Joan into strong hysterics.

‘I knew it! I knew it!’ was all she could utter coherently between sobs which racked her from head to foot.

The practical Lydia, although badly shaken, was more concerned for her employer than for herself, and insisted that Dame Joan drank an infusion of herbs in order to calm her overstretched nerves, followed by a draught of lettuce juice in order to make her sleep. Consequently it was more than an hour later, when the household was at last quiet and its mistress laid down upon her bed, that I was able to take myself off to the garden and sit on the bench beneath the medlar tree, where I could think undisturbed.

But I had barely managed to get even the most trivial of my thoughts in order when I looked up to see Cicely treading purposefully towards me across the grass. I sighed audibly as she sat down beside me.

She ignored this mark of disapproval. ‘You haven’t told me yet,’ she said, in the determined tone of voice I was beginning to dread, ‘what you and Master Honeyman were up to, visiting the whore-houses in Cock Lane earlier this morning.’