The Christmas Wassail (19 page)

‘Meet me at the Frome Gate,' he had said, ‘as soon after the dinner hour as you can. I shall hire a couple of nags from the Bell Lane stables. I'm damned if I'm going to trudge up those hills or ride our own decent horses.'

‘It wouldn't take much more than an hour's good, steady walking,' I protested, knowing how uncomfortable I always was on horseback.

But he had proved adamant, and noting that Richard was regarding us with suspicion, I reluctantly agreed. At least the lazy young devil had had the sense to postpone our journey until after dinner.

Now, in the light of a flaring torch held by Pete Littleman, I was staring down on the remains of what had, until so recently, been Briant of Dungarvon. And ‘remains' was the word for what was left of him. His corpse, stripped of its sodden clothing, was shown to be a mass of bruises and broken limbs. There appeared not to be a whole bone left in his body.

‘Somebody made a good job of 'im,' Pete remarked gloatingly. ‘Like a rag doll with no stuffing, 'e be.'

Richard Manifold pursed his lips. ‘I don't believe any person did this,' he said after a while. ‘It's more like he's fallen from a great height. I remember a body we fished out of the Avon some six, maybe seven years ago. A poor fellow who'd been pushed off the top of Ghyston Cliff by his wife's lover into the river below. The other man confessed what he'd done in the end, and was hanged for it. He told us how the first man's body had kept bouncing from one rock to the other as he fell all the way down the side of the gorge before finally ending up in the river. And I reckon that's what's happened to this Irish slave trader of yours, Roger. He was probably carried out seawards by the ebb and flow, then washed back in by the next high tide, right up to Saint Nicholas Back.'

Immediately, I knew that Richard's reading of the situation was right. Briant's body had been battered to pieces. The injuries were greater than any one, or even two, men could inflict. And in order for him to end up in the Avon, a fall from Ghyston Cliff was the most likely answer. But what had he been doing up on the downs? Humility Dyson had told me plainly that Briant had gone to join the Clontarf which, according to his information, had dropped anchor at Rownham Ferry. That would have entailed taking the riverside path around the base of the hills that rose above the city. Why would he have walked up to Clifton perched, as its name implies, high above the gorge? Unless … Unless, perhaps, he had seen and followed someone up there. And who was that someone likely to be other than Sir George Marvell, who might also have left the city that same night?

I checked my wandering thoughts. As I was far too prone to do, I was making unwarranted assumptions, bricks without straw. The only two incontrovertible facts were that the knight was still missing and that Briant of Dungarvon was dead.

‘What will you do with the corpse?' I asked.

Richard shrugged. ‘For the time being he can stay here – decently covered, of course. Then, when the coroner's pronounced him dead of accidental causes, he can be tossed into the common pit.'

This callous pronouncement chilled me to the bone. This was a man with whom I had walked and talked very recently. Now he was nothing but a lump of rotting flesh to be disposed of as soon as possible and with as little dignity as possible, thrown into the common pit along with executed criminals and stray animals. I repressed a shudder.

‘What a Christmas this is turning out to be,' Richard grumbled. ‘Alderman Trefusis murdered, Sir George missing and now this.' He gave a quick glance around the musty-smelling crypt. ‘Well, there's nothing more we can do here until I inform the coroner in the morning. Jack, before you go home find something to cover this thing.' He jerked his head at Briant's lifeless body. ‘And make sure the crypt's locked behind you when you leave. Are you coming, Roger?'

I cast one last look at the dead slave trader before following Richard up the steps and into the church. As we stepped outside into the cold and windy dark, he remarked suspiciously, ‘You and young James Marvell seemed very friendly.'

‘He's easy enough to get along with,' I answered, settling my hat more firmly on my head and turning up the collar of my cloak against a little flurry of sleet. ‘Not like the other one, Bartholomew.'

Richard grunted and said no more, but I could tell he wasn't satisfied. Nevertheless, he wished me an amicable goodnight when we parted in the middle of the High Street, he to walk up St Mary le Port Street in the direction of the castle, I to return to Small Street and Adela. Except that I didn't; at least, not immediately. Instead, I ventured into Marsh Street to seek out Humility Dyson at the Wayfarer's Return.

At first, he found it hard to take in the news of Briant's death and even harder to accept Richard's theory of how he met it.

‘What would he have been doing up on Ghyston Cliff, Master Chapman, tell me that! It don't make sense. He'd gone to join the Clontarf at Rownham Ferry. He'd not been up on the heights above.' But he lost interest in the cause of death when I told him what was planned for the corpse. His mouth – or what I could see of it, almost smothered as it was by the profusion of his beard – tightened to a thin red line. ‘I'll tell the lads,' he said. ‘Saint Nicholas crypt, you say?'

‘It'll be locked.'

He managed a smile, albeit a wintry one. ‘Not after midnight it won't be.'

‘Take care. The Watch has been reinforced.'

‘We'll manage.' He laid a hand on my arm. ‘They won't forget this, Master Chapman. In future, they'll look after you like one of their own. If ever you find yourself in serious trouble and in need of help, just come to “Little Ireland”.'

For what it was worth, I thanked him. Finally, I went home.

The last day of December dawned a little brighter than the previous two. It was the Sixth Day of Christmas. We were halfway through.

Neither Adela nor I was at our best: we had sat up late discussing the latest episode in what was turning out to be an all too eventful holiday. Initially, my return had been greeted with the inevitable questions and reproaches as to where I had been and what had taken me so long.

‘The search for Sir George was abandoned more than an hour ago,' Adela had informed me angrily. ‘Jack Nym called in and told me so. He couldn't understand why you weren't back.' But her tune changed to one of concern once I had explained what had happened. ‘Sweetheart, I don't like it. There's something evil abroad, and you're getting drawn, as usual, into whatever is going on.'

I reassured her as much as I could, but the subsequent news that I was riding up to Clifton with James Marvell the following morning very quickly undid all my good work. When we finally went to bed, if we were still on speaking terms, we weren't the best of friends.

The strained atmosphere lasted all through breakfast and hastened the three older children's departure for their eyrie upstairs, where their parents' disagreements were soon forgotten in the games and imaginings of childhood.

I spent the time before dinner coaxing the Yule log to continue burning for the remaining six days of Christmas by piling more straw and small twigs around it. It meant bad luck if it went out before Twelfth Night, and I felt we had had more than our fair share of that one way and another. I blew hard on some still- glowing ashes until they sparked and crackled into a tiny flame, catching the new fuel alight. Next, I cleaned and inspected my boots, making sure that a new patch just above the left heel was watertight, before checking the contents of the water barrel and fetching more logs from the yard. The doing of these ordinary domestic tasks soothed me a little and reminded me that normal life still existed.

Just before ten o'clock, as Adela was laying out the spoons and bowls ready for dinner, Burl Hodge called in to know if we were going to see the mummers' performance that afternoon. He didn't seem particularly disappointed when I said I had other plans; he was too full of news.

‘Such a to-do as you never heard,' he told me, ‘going on at Saint Nick's. Someone's broken into the church and the crypt during the night and taken away that dead body what was there. The one they pulled out the river last evening.' He chuckled. ‘Sergeant Manifold's in a rare taking, I can tell you, wanting to know how anyone knew it was being left there overnight. Berating poor old Jack Gload and Peter Littleman like they was a couple of pickpockets, and both of 'em denying they'd said a word to anybody about it.'

He eventually went on his way, still chuckling.

I wondered how long it would be before my name occurred either to Richard or to one of his henchmen and, once it had, how long before the former realized that he had hit on the truth. Consequently, I hurried my meal, even refusing a second helping of frumenty, some of which still remained from Christmas Day. Adela was plainly suspicious of this abstention, but refrained from comment. Within an hour of first sitting down to table, I was at the Frome Gate, muffled in my good, thick winter cloak and my hat pulled well down around my ears. I hadn't taken my cudgel: it was too unwieldy to cope with on horseback.

A raw, nipping wind made me shiver in spite of being so warmly wrapped up, and I prayed that James Marvell would not keep me waiting long. A sudden thought that perhaps the Marvell family ate at a fashionably later hour than ten o'clock had just determined me to return home if he did not show up soon, when he arrived riding a placid brown cob and leading another on a short rein.

‘Master Chapman!' he hailed me cheerfully. ‘Well met!' He indicated the horses. ‘I hope these fellows meet with your approval. They told me at the Bell Lane stables that you're an uneasy rider.' His grin made me wonder what else had been said to describe my lack of horsemanship, but I thought it wisest not to enquire. He went on: ‘So the stable master recommended these cobs. Nice, quiet beasts, he said they are. I hope you approve.'

‘Thank you,' I said, mounting the second horse and taking the reins. I noticed James eyeing my patched and mended leather gloves with a slightly puzzled frown. Because of my past association with the king, people always assumed that, if not rich, I at least had plenty of money. Many of them thought the way I dressed a deliberate attempt to mislead them as to my true calling, whatever they believed that to be.

There was no sparkle of frost this morning, only a leaden sky and a threat of snow. The landscape was devoid of colour, a monotonous brown and black and grey, and I couldn't help wondering what it was like to live in one of those countries, described by the foreign sailors, where everything blossomed into light and brilliance under the always shining sun. Native sailors, who had visited these climes, assured the stay-at-homes we wouldn't like it. ‘You'd miss the rain,' they said. Or, ‘Too much sun and heat can send you mad.' Or yet again, ‘You'd be crying out to see something green.' Most of the time I suspected they were right. But this morning, I wasn't so sure.

Having crossed the Frome Bridge, we rode westwards for a little way along the northern bank of the river, then turned northwards by St Augustine's Abbey and began to climb the first of the hills that led eventually to the high plateau of ground known simply as the downs. There had been a time when this had been nothing but wild country watered by the little streams that ran downhill to be trapped by the Carmelites in their great water cistern and then piped to various troughs and conduits across the city. Its only population had been outlaws and vagabonds preying on unwary travellers as they made their way southwards to do business in Bristol or visit family and friends. But for the past hundred years or so the town had spread beyond its confining walls, and by now there were little settlements, smallholdings and even quite substantial farms dotting the landscape all the way up to Clifton Manor. This had itself burst its original boundaries to embrace what had formerly been independent homesteads, in many cases nothing more than a cottage and a bit of land on which to grow a few vegetables and maybe keep a pig or goat. Such, I imagined, had been the Deakins' holding until Sir George had used his influence to get them turned off.

Up there, on the high ground, the wind was bitter, and I was thankful when James suggested we take shelter in the nearest ale-house to warm our numbed feet and hands before making any enquiries. There was a small hostelry close by the main track, not particularly well lit nor particularly well patronized on this freezing Wednesday morning when most people were either working or sleeping off the effects of their Christmas wassail. We were therefore able to sit close to the fire and hold our chilled fingers to the cheerful blaze. A quick glance revealed that, apart from ourselves, there was only one other customer in the place – a tough, wiry little man with a brown beard and complexion to match, seated at a nearby table. As we entered the ale-house, I had noticed outside a handcart piled with sacks, and a few candles spilled from the mouth of one of them.

When we had been served with our ale, I spoke to him. ‘'Morning, master. Are you the chandler in these parts?'

He raised his beaker to me in salutation. ‘I'm a chandler, certainly, and I sell my wares hereabouts as well as elsewhere. Plenty o'money in Clifton.'

He looked as though he would like to enquire what my trade was. He was obviously puzzled by the disparity in the quality of my dress and that of my companion.

‘Been selling up here long?' I asked.

‘Five year 'n more, I reckon.'

This caught James's attention. ‘Then, sir, do you remember a family of the name of Deakin? If my information is correct, they had a smallholding somewhere around here.'

The man sucked some ale thoughtfully through his beard. ‘That's right,' he said after a moment or two's reflection. ‘'T'weren't much of a place and the couple didn't do any business with me. Couldn't afford even tallow candles, as I recall. Made their own rush lights. But I remember 'em.'