The Weaver's Inheritance (23 page)

I gave her my word and, leaving my pack in a corner of their room, but armed with my cudgel and also Philip’s knife, which he insisted that I borrow, I set out eastward through the evening dusk for the inn which stood just inside the city gate, on the southern side of the wall.

It was an inn greatly favoured by travellers and merchants from East Anglia, being the first hostelry they happened across after entering the city, and consequently was always busy. That evening was no different from any other, and I was forced to share a room with a tailor from the Fens, who had come to London in search of a runaway daughter. I was compelled to listen to his unhappy chronicle of filial disobedience well into the night, and, when he did at last fall asleep through sheer exhaustion, to his snoring. However resolutely I closed my eyes or stuffed my fingers in my ears, I could not sleep, nor could I block out the noise. In the end, I stopped trying to do either, linking my hands behind my head and staring into the smoke-scented darkness.

As my body began to relax, and as I was at last able to ignore the snorts and snuffles coming from the opposite side of the bed, my vacant mind was suddenly preoccupied with another worry; one that I was familiar with and had experienced many times before. It was the feeling that something had been said by someone that should have had significance for me, if only I had had the wit to realize it at the time. I cudgelled my brain, trying to recollect my conversation with the butcher and the woman outside Westminster Hall. Was it something one of them had said? Or the Duke of Clarence? Or Doctor John Goddard? Or was it some words uttered by Jeanne or Philip Lamprey? But the more I thought, the more my head ached and the less I was able to recall.

At last, as I teetered on the brink of sleep, I was seized by the conviction that it was somehow something that all of them had said; that there was a thread linking the various conversations which was eluding me. And my final thought, as I tumbled into the pit of unconsciousness, was that this thread, if it could only be traced, would lead me straight to the heart of the mystery surrounding the impostor who claimed to be Clement Weaver. And even as this thought came to me and was lost again in the mists of sleep, Adela’s face swam in front of my eyes. She was smiling and beckoning me forward, into her cottage …

I sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake, the tailor still snoring on the other side of the bolster which separated us. I had almost had the answer. It was there, somewhere, hovering in the darkness all around me. I had had it, but now it was gone, slipping away into the night like a puff of smoke when the candle flame is doused. I lay down again. Perhaps it would come back to me in the morning. Meanwhile, there was nothing else to do but give my companion a nudge and try once more to sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Philip and I were rowed across to the Southwark side of the river early the following morning.

I was no wiser as to what was troubling me than I had been the previous evening. No great revelation had burst upon me when I awoke. My bed companion from the fen country was still snoring loudly, so I had dressed, paid my shot for the night’s board, resisting the landlady’s pressing invitation to stay to breakfast, and made my way back to Cornhill. There, Jeanne Lamprey, as neat and bright-eyed as ever, having offered me hot water to wash and shave in, regaled me with a meal of bread and salt bacon, washed down with ale. Philip, for a small man, had eaten and drunk with exceptional heartiness, and had then sat picking his teeth while Jeanne bustled about, getting the booth ready for opening. I had offered a helping hand, hoping to shame him, but he had only grinned. He knew his wife better than I did.

‘No, no!’ she had said, almost angrily, waving me to one side. ‘You and Philip get on about your business and let me get on about mine. And, Roger, you’d best leave that leather jerkin behind. Both of you would do well to do as I suggested last night and borrow something from the stall.’

Now, as the oarsman rowed us across the river, skilfully riding the incoming tide, I thought to take notice of what Philip had on, and saw it to be an extremely old and disreputable camlet tunic, with tattered remnants of fur at neck and wrists. It might have been a garment of quality once, but I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to buy it in its present condition, and said as much.

Philip laughed. ‘It isn’t off the stall, you great lummox! Can you see my Jeanne selling anything as tattered and torn as this?’ He leaned towards me from his seat in the stern. ‘Don’t you recognize it?’ I shook my head, bewildered. ‘Look closer,’ he urged. He pointed to just below the collar; or rather to where the collar had once been, for it was now more than half ripped away. ‘At one time, there were two initials there, worked in gold thread, but nothing’s left of ’em now except the stitchmarks.’

Enlightenment dawned. ‘CW,’ I breathed. ‘That’s the tunic you bought all those years ago from Bertha Mendip, after she’d stripped it from a corpse she found in the river. It’s Clement Weaver’s tunic. Fancy you keeping it all this while!’ I wrinkled my nose. ‘Particularly as it still stinks of fish.’

Philip gave another of his raucous laughs. ‘That’s what my Jeanne says, but she knows better than to throw it away because it’s always brought me good luck. Mind you, we never knew for certain that it belonged to Clement Weaver. We only thought it might have done because of the initials.’

‘That’s true enough,’ I admitted grudgingly. ‘And Alison Weaver, as she was then, confirmed that her brother had possessed such a garment and thought he might have been wearing it on the day that he disappeared. But come to think of it,’ I added, ‘a camlet tunic, trimmed with grey squirrel’s fur, was mentioned to me not so long ago by none other than “Clement” himself. But he claims it was stolen from him by the thief who stripped and robbed him after he had swum ashore.’

The oarsman gently beached his craft on a narrow strip of sand and Philip and I disembarked. We climbed the flight of steps to the quayside above, but had barely reached the top before we were surrounded by half a dozen whores, immediately identifiable by their striped hoods. (Most of the Southwark stews are owned by the See of Winchester, whose yearly income is greatly enhanced by these women’s earnings.) They seemed in no way deterred by our impoverished appearance, but turned violently abusive when Philip and I declined their services. For a moment, I was afraid for our safety, but my companion grabbed me by the arm and we took to our heels through a warren of narrow, filthy alleyways fringed by dark and desolate dwellings, whose inhabitants turned to stare suspiciously after us as we ran. I was thankful on more than one occasion for my good stout cudgel and the gleaming steel of Philip’s unsheathed knife.

But finally, without mishap, we reached Angel Wharf, long since abandoned for all commercial purposes, and still looking much as it had done six years earlier. The same collection of hovels and near-derelict houses provided shelter of a sort for the tribe of beggars, thieves and vagabonds who lived and found sanctuary from the law there. As Philip and I got closer, shrill whistles gave warning of our approach, just as they had done on our first visit; and as we emerged on to the quayside, I noted again the little fleet of boats moored alongside the shallow flight of well-worn steps leading up from the river. The denizens of Angel Wharf took no chances: they made sure that they could escape by both land and water.

I could sense that Philip was far less at ease in such a community than he had once been, but he put on a good show of bravado, turning with a flourish to a little knot of onlookers who had gathered outside the door of one of the hovels. ‘Can someone tell me where I can find Bertha Mendip?’ he asked.

They all shuffled their feet and stared vacantly at him, as though he were speaking in Turkish instead of good plain English, and when he repeated his question, they looked even more bewildered.

‘God’s breeches, we’re old friends of hers,’ Philip said impatiently. ‘Bertha knows us.’

A young man, so wizened and stunted in growth that he might have been any age from twelve to twenty, stepped forward. ‘And what names shall we give these friends of hers?’ he demanded.

Before either of us could reply, a voice from inside the nearest hut called out, ‘It’s all right, Matt! I know ’em. One of ’em, at least, and I think I remember the other.’ Bertha Mendip emerged into the daylight, smaller and more emaciated than when we had last met, and with a skin like well-tanned leather. The elf locks that straggled, unkempt, about her shoulders had once been chestnut-brown, but were now almost completely grey. ‘You’re a pedlar,’ she said, addressing me. ‘Leastways, you were, although you look as if you’ve come down in the world since then.’

‘We’re in disguise, Ma,’ Philip grinned, circling her waist with his arm and planting a smacking kiss on her unsavoury cheek. ‘We were afraid that if we came smartly dressed, we might be set on by cutpurses and murderers, although I can’t for the life of me think what should have given us that idea! Not when we’re surrounded by so many honest faces.’

Bertha made a strange gargling noise in her throat which seemed to indicate amusement, for she punched him in the chest and protested, ‘Get away with you, do! So why are you and the pedlar looking for me?’

‘We’re trying to trace a Morwenna Peto,’ I said, ‘and hoped that you might be able to tell us where to find her.’

‘Morwenna Peto, eh?’ The shrewd eyes, whose bright blue had clouded with the passing years, regarded me straitly. ‘Now what would you be wanting with Morwenna?’ But when I would have made shift to explain, Bertha held up her hand imperiously. ‘If it’s going to be a long story, you’d best come indoors. We don’t want all these knuckleheads gawping at us. Matt!’ she yelled to the young man who had first spoken to us, and jerked her head towards the door of the hovel immediately behind her. ‘You remember my son, I expect,’ she added as the three of us followed her inside, and I hadn’t the heart to admit that I had failed to recognize him.

Bertha earned her living from ‘corpsing’; fishing dead bodies out of the Thames, stripping them of their clothes and other belongings (which she then dried and sold) and tipping the denuded cadavers back into the river. The inside of the hut reeked with the stench of decaying flesh and salt water, as garments from her latest catch dried on poles hanging above a smoky, slow-burning fire. The smell was so unpleasant that I was forced, from a fear of being sick, to refuse her offer of ale, saying that I wasn’t thirsty, but Philip accepted with alacrity. Little seemed to upset
his
stomach.

‘Right,’ she said, when she had discharged her duty as hostess and directed us to sit on a couple of very rickety stools, ‘what’s this about then?’

She listened carefully to all I had to say, sucking thoughtfully on the couple of good teeth still left to her, and, every now and then, spitting with remarkable accuracy into the fire, several feet away. When I had finished, she drank up the rest of her ale and said belligerently, ‘Well,
I
never said the owner of that tunic Philip bought of me belonged to this Clement Weaver.
I
don’t deal in names.’

‘No, of course not,’ I agreed hastily. ‘But do you recollect anything about the body you took it from?’

‘After all this while?’ she asked scathingly. ‘I expect he was too nibbled away by the fishes to be recognizable, anyway.’

I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat and shook my head. ‘No, at the time you said he hadn’t been in the water long enough for the fish to get at him.’ I turned towards Philip, catching at his sleeve. ‘This sorry-looking garment is the actual one, still preserved. Look at it carefully. It might bring back a memory or two.’

Bertha rose from her seat and peered closely at the tunic, fingering the cloth and examining it around the neck and down the seams, her face growing ever more lined as she furrowed her brow in concentration. ‘I don’t know how you expect me to remember anything,’ she whined at last, ‘considering the amount of garments I deal with in a twelvemonth. And this happened six years ago, you say?’ She shook her head. ‘No, I can tell you no more than what I’ve told you already.’

‘You said, back then, that the man you took it from was young and had been stripped of all his valuables. He’d been caught in a fisherman’s net, and he was one of three corpses you’d recovered from around the same spot in the river. Is it possible,’ I went on, ‘that this particular man was not dead, but only drugged, both when you dragged him out of the river and when you tipped him back in?’

Bertha furiously dismissed the notion. ‘Do you think I don’t know a stiffer when I see one? I’ve been doing this job since long before you were born, you young jackanapes!’

I had no wish to provoke her further. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said placatingly. ‘Is there nothing more that you can recollect? Can you remember the two initials embroidered in gold thread on the tunic, here, just below the collar?’

But it was too much to hope for. There had been too many dead bodies between then and now for Bertha to distinguish one from the other. But we had at least established our bona fides as seekers after truth, and when she had recovered from the insult I had offered her, agreed with perfect readiness to direct us where to find Morwenna Peto. And without her goodwill, it could have been many weeks before we were able to track down the lady.

*   *   *

The thieves’ kitchen, run by the Cornishwoman, was tucked into a noisome little alleyway behind the White Hart, the inn favoured as his headquarters by Jack Cade, when he and his army of rebels had marched on London seventeen years previously. Some of the damage inflicted on the buildings by the Kentishmen was still visible, and added to the general sense of decay and decrepitude. There were, and still are, some very fine mansions in the area, and the Priory church of Saint Mary Overy is always a pleasure to look at; but as London jurisdiction does not extend across the river into Southwark, and as there are more bear-baiting pits, cock-fighting rings and brothels to be found there than in the capital itself, it has always attracted rogues and vagabonds and harlots in vast numbers.