The Prodigal Son (15 page)

‘I daresay you're right, but I don't imagine that occurred to us at the time.' He laughed. ‘All we thought about was not being discovered ourselves. The three of us just sloped off by another path as quietly as we could.'

‘You're sure the page was drunk? He couldn't have been ill or – or wounded?'

Ronan Bignell shrugged, trailing his fingers in the water of the moat. ‘We did talk it over next day, of course, when the news of the murder came out, and we decided that perhaps he might not have been drunk after all, just horrified and sickened by what he'd done. We even discussed whether or not we ought to tell anyone what we'd witnessed, but, quite honestly, what would have been the point? John Jericho had killed Jenny Applegarth and run away. Everyone knew that, and all we'd seen was him escaping. We didn't know where he'd gone, so we couldn't put the sheriff's men on his track. We'd just have landed ourselves in trouble if we'd owned up to being in the woods after curfew.'

The argument was reasonable enough. John Jericho would have been well on his way by the time news of his crime reached Wells. The three lads had had nothing to gain, but everything to lose by being honest.

I stared thoughtfully at the walls of the Bishop's palace, shimmering in the heat of the August morning. Echoes of the town from beyond Bishop Beckington's arch were borne on a gentle breeze. I glanced up at the side of the cathedral where the painted statues of the saints glowed jewel-bright in their niches.

‘When you saw the page,' I asked suddenly, ‘did he have anything with him?'

‘Anything with him?' My companion was puzzled.

‘Yes. The murder, as I understand it, was incidental to the robbery. He'd made off with a considerable amount of plate as well as jewels. Therefore he must have been carrying his spoils in something. Did you see a sack or a knotted cloth lying anywhere around?'

Ronan Bignell began to laugh. ‘Do you know, in all these years that's never occurred to me? It's never even crossed my mind. Nor Rob's, nor Dick's that I know of. No, we didn't see any sack, but unfortunately I don't think that tells you anything except that it was darkish in the woods, in spite of it being a moonlit night, and that we were in a panic. We were only concerned that the page didn't see us and report us to Dame Audrea. What I'm saying is that there
might
have been a sack, but if there was, we simply didn't notice it.'

I could see that further questioning on that score was useless. Even if I persuaded him to introduce me to his two friends, Rob and Dick, I doubted they could tell me more. And if they did, it made no odds. There had never been any dispute about the identity of the murderer.

‘Rose hinted that you also saw someone else in the woods that night,' I suggested hopefully.

‘No, that was the next night. We saw one of the charcoal burners, but as they tend their fires day and night, there was nothing unusual in that. Except, that is, that this one wasn't tending his fire, but standing and surveying the ground around Hangman's Oak as though he were looking for something.'

‘Hangman's Oak? That was where you saw the page.'

‘But this was a day later and the page had long since disappeared, so there's nothing in that to get excited over.'

‘Doesn't it strike you as a coincidence?'

Ronan shook his head. ‘No. Why should it?'

There was no really satisfactory answer that I could give him. Nothing logical; it just seemed to me to be of some significance.

‘Did you recognize the man?'

‘Oh yes! It was that rogue Hamo Gough. We didn't worry too much about him. He's not above doing a bit of poaching himself.'

‘You say he was surveying the ground—'

‘He seemed to be. I couldn't say for certain.'

‘All right. But was that all?'

‘What else would he be doing?'

‘He wasn't perhaps … by any chance … digging?'

‘No. Why in heaven's name would he have been doing that?'

I shook my head. ‘Just a foolish thought. Forget it.'

Ronan stroked his chin, regarding me thoughtfully. ‘It's odd, though, that you should ask me that question. It's brought back something that until this minute I'd completely forgotten. A few days afterwards, I was taking meat from our stall to the manor house kitchen and had taken a short cut through Croxcombe woods when I met Hamo Gough not far from his cottage. And now I come to think about it, he was carrying a spade over one shoulder. It obviously didn't strike me as odd at the time, or it would have stuck in my memory. He can be a surly bastard when he chooses, and my recollection is that he didn't even return my greeting. Then again, he does sometimes go digging for truffles.'

‘And that's probably what he was doing,' I agreed glumly.

There was silence between us for a moment or two while we listened abstractedly to the noises of the marketplace and I wondered idly where Rose had gone. To visit her mother and friends and tell them the great news, no doubt.

Ronan, who seemed to have gone into a reverie of his own, said suddenly, ‘I know what Rose must have been thinking of when she told you I'd seen someone else in the woods that night. The night of the murder, that is. She's confused it with something Father saw. It was all of six years ago and it's no wonder if things have got a bit muddled in her mind.'

‘Master Bignell also saw somebody in Croxcombe woods?'

‘Not in the woods, no! I wouldn't have been there if I'd thought there was the smallest risk of encountering
him
. It was some time later, two or three days perhaps, and of course we were all still talking about Jenny Applegarth's murder – well, I suppose it was the main topic of conversation for months – and Father suddenly recalled seeing a man on horseback in the neighbourhood of the house on the night she was killed. He – my father – had ridden over to Shepton to visit a friend and was returning home by the track that runs along the manor's northern boundary. It was dusk and he couldn't see the horseman at all clearly. He remembered that Master Bellknapp and Dame Audrea were away, visiting their daughter and her husband at Kewstoke Hall, and that young Simon and most of their household had gone with them. He said he thought of riding after the stranger to warn him that he wouldn't be able to secure a bed for the night as the master and mistress were both absent, and, indeed, he turned aside from the track with that end in view. But by the time he reached the moat gate, the man and his horse had vanished. So he assumed he had mistaken the man's intention, rode on home and thought no more of the incident until a day or so after the murder, when he suddenly wondered if what he'd seen might have some significance.'

‘Master Bignell didn't say anything to the sheriff's men?'

‘There seemed no point. We all knew who the murderer was and everyone was trying to find him. There were enough posses out to capture ten men – Rob and Dick and I went on two of 'em – but even so, John Jericho outsmarted us all. My own guess is that he lay low by day and travelled by night, but even so, it wouldn't have been easy for him, not on foot with a sack to carry. But he did it. He fooled everyone and hasn't been heard of again from that day to this. At least, that is to say, not unless this half-brother of yours turns out to be him. And if Dame Audrea thinks he is, God help him! She's a woman who knows she's always right.'

‘I suppose this business of Anthony Bellknapp's return might distract her,' I suggested hopefully.

‘Don't you believe it,' my companion spluttered. ‘She won't be easily deflected from anything she undertakes. She's perfectly capable of carrying on two or three vendettas at once.'

‘You don't think, in the light of what your father saw that evening, that John Jericho might not have been Jenny Applegarth's killer? You don't think this stranger, whoever he was, could have had anything to do with it?'

‘Lord, no!' Ronan Bignell was scathing. ‘Why else would the page have disappeared? What was he doing in Croxcombe woods when we saw him, if not running away? Why did he pretend to have something wrong with him so as to stay at home, instead of accompanying Dame Audrea to Kewstoke Hall?'

‘But how do you know – how does anyone know – that he was only pretending? Perhaps his illness was genuine.'

‘Well, even if it was, he took advantage of it for his own fell purpose,' Ronan insisted.

I sighed inwardly. Further argument was fruitless in more ways than one. I wasn't here to prove John Jericho innocent of the crime of which he stood accused, but to disprove, somehow or another, that he and my half-brother were one and the same person. And Ronan Bignell's stories, interesting though they were, were of no help on that score whatsoever.

‘So this is where you two are hiding,' said Rose's voice, and, turning our heads, we saw her tripping towards us through Bishop Beckington's archway. ‘Father's been asking where you've got to, Ronan.' She dimpled at her brother as seductively as she would have smiled at any man. ‘You don't mind my having told Master Chapman about what you saw all those years ago, do you? I didn't think it would matter after such a long time.'

‘You mean you couldn't resist a handsome face,' her brother retorted, then smiled and pinched her cheek. ‘But if I hear of you confiding in anyone else, there'll be trouble. And there'll be trouble, too, with Edward if you don't watch your step, my girl. And don't give me that innocent stare. You know quite well what I mean.'

And as if on cue, another voice, swollen by the echoing archway, boomed out, ‘Here you are, Mistress Micheldever. What a dance you've led me. Why didn't you ask
me
to accompany you to Wells?'

It was Anthony Bellknapp.

I
saw Ronan Bignell frown as the newcomer slipped an arm familiarly around Rose's waist, but his disapproval turned to excitement as he recognized Anthony Bellknapp.

It was one thing to be told of the prodigal's return, but quite another to see him in the flesh. That small corner of Ronan's mind that had retained a vestige of disbelief was now forced to accept the truth of my and his sister's story. After eight years without a word, the best part of a decade with no knowledge as to whether he was alive or dead, the elder of the two Bellknapp brothers stood before us, bronzed, fit, his dark brown curls well combed, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief. Well dressed, too, and if his hose and tunic were not the extreme of fashion – and, let's face it, the extreme of male fashion at that time was enough to make your average citizen laugh himself silly – they were made of good cloth and yarn and had been cut by an expert tailor. His riding boots gleamed with the gloss of the best Cordovan leather. Whatever else had, or had not, happened to Anthony during the years of his self-imposed exile, he hadn't starved. In fact, he seemed to have done very well for himself. I wondered idly what he had been up to, and made a mental note to ask him whenever the moment seemed propitious.

Rose hurriedly introduced her brother, and immediately Anthony's manner towards her underwent a change. It became jocular, almost fraternal, as he pinched her blushing cheek and then released her.

‘Ronan Bignell! Yes, I do remember you, even though you must still have been a lad at the time I left Croxcombe. Mind you, I wasn't much past my seventeenth birthday myself, when I come to think of it.' He turned back to Rose. ‘As I was saying, Mistress Micheldever, you should have waited for me before riding into Wells. I would have mounted you on a decent horse instead of letting you traipse around the countryside on a donkey.'

‘I didn't know you were intending to visit the town, sir,' was the demure reply, ‘and Master Chapman was anxious to speak to my brother.'

Anthony raised his eyebrows at me in a look of enquiry, but I shook my head, sending what I hoped was a warning glance at Rose.

‘Only some queries about old acquaintances of mine.' I thought quickly. ‘The Actons.' The name just came into my head, apparently from nowhere, and it took me some seconds before I recollected that it was an Acton who had been my father's mistress and my half-brother's mother.

To my astonishment, Ronan Bignell said promptly, ‘Oh, there are no Actons in Wells nowadays, but I know of a couple of that name living out towards Wedmore.'

‘Th-thank you,' I stuttered. ‘If you'll be good enough to give me more precise directions, I-I'll pay them a visit.'

Anthony Bellknapp's eyebrows rose even higher. He wasn't deceived. ‘It's taken you both a long time to establish that fact,' he remarked drily, then let the matter drop. He offered Rose his arm. ‘Mistress Micheldever, now that I've found you, allow me to buy you a favour, some trinket or other, from one of the market stalls.'

Rose hesitated, but only for a moment. She obviously guessed that such a gift would be frowned upon by her husband, but she was unable to resist the lure of some free finery to adorn her person. She took the proffered arm, and Ronan and I followed her and Anthony back under the archway into the hubbub of the marketplace, which was now at the height of the morning's trading.

Bakers, butchers and brewers, tinkers, tailors and weavers, shepherds and herdsmen, with animals they were hoping to sell, hot pie vendors yelling the attractions of their wares – ‘Pies piping hot! Good meat! No gristle! Come and dine! Come and dine!' – and vintners shouting, ‘White wine, red wine to wash the food down. A beakerful free with every one you buy!' made for a crescendo of noise that hurt my ears. I had forgotten how rowdy Wells market could be. It could compete with Bristol's any day of the week.

The sensation created by news of Anthony Bellknapp's return, followed by his actual appearance in their midst, seemed to be evaporating. People continued to stare at him as he moved among the stalls, and to whisper behind their hands, but business had resumed with its customary briskness. Ronan went off to join his father, and to receive, by the look of things, a furious reprimand for his prolonged absence. Meantime, I rescued Hercules from a confrontation with an angry goose, an encounter he was in serious danger of losing. As compensation for being again tucked unceremoniously under my arm, I let him share the meat pie I had bought and was eating.