After supper was finished and cleared away, I went out into the garden. Beyond its walls, the city was quieter, free at last of the clatter of horses’ hooves and the continual braying of trumpets. Presumably, Margaret of Anjou and her troops had gone, continuing their progress northward. Bristol was free of her unwanted military presence and could settle back, in uneasy calm, to await the outcome of the Queen’s clash with King Edward. Where and how it would take place, and who would win, were still unknown factors, and perhaps not much thought about that fine May evening. Life, after all, had to go on.
It was beautiful in the garden. The dappled shadows inched their way across the beds of herbs and flowers, and a bird sang lustily in the branches of the pear tree. The sky was a clear, translucent blue, washed clean by the rain, and promising yet another fine day tomorrow. Not an evening to be thinking of violence and death, and it was easy to forget the fate of Clement Weaver. But Marjorie was right. There was nothing to be done and the Alderman was asking the impossible. I had no wish, I told myself, to be drawn into his affairs and would do well to stay out of them. I went into the privy and closed the door behind me.
When I emerged, Rob was coming in at the garden gate, and had plainly been drinking. He had taken his supper, mostly liquid, I guessed, at the inn at the end of the street and was now rolling slightly from side to side. He grinned inanely when he saw me, before pushing past into the warmth of the kitchen. I heard Marjorie’s voice upraised reproachfully, but by the time I went indoors myself, Rob was already curled up by the side of the fire, his head resting on one arm, fast asleep and snoring loudly.
It was Rob’s snoring which roused me in the middle of the night. I raised my head slowly from where it rested on my pack, and stared around the shadowed kitchen.
The fire was burning low, but not yet out, and there was no light filtering between the slats of the shutters. I could make out Ned’s humped form, where he lay huddled in one corner, but he made no sound except for his quiet, regular breathing. Rob, on the other hand, snorted and whistled and tossed restlessly from side to side, his mouth wide open to emit gusts of stinking breath. Even from where I was lying, I could smell the stench of sour ale.
I eased myself into a sitting position, stretching my cramped limbs. I must have been sleeping awkwardly because I had pains all down the back of my left leg and a tingling sensation in my left arm. I suddenly felt wide awake, which was something that happened frequently, and I knew the reason for it. It was about that time of two hours past midnight when I had been used to dragging my unwilling body from the dorter to the choir for the singing of Matins and Lauds.
I lay down again and tried to sleep, but my eyes refused to stay closed. I stared into the heart of the crumbling logs, where a fringe of thick grey ash trembled in a draught from the door. A fairy world of caverns and grottoes opened up before me, and each time a bead of resin caught fire, a flame would spurt, blue and yellow, up the chimney. A shadow moved, and the kitchen cat, sleek, fat and purring, came to make his bed beside me, but daring me to touch him with a fiercely gleaming eye. He had evidently eaten well because he was licking his lips and exuded contentment.
There was one mouse or rat the less to raid the flour and Corn bins.
Gradually, my eyelids drooped and I began drifting towards the edge of sleep…
I was standing outside the Crossed Hands inn: I could see the sign of the two crossed hands quite plainly. It was raining hard and my jerkin clung soggily to my back. Above my head, fixed high on the wall near a shuttered window, a torch hissed and flared in its sconce, the flames torn sideways by the driving wind. At my feet were two saddlebags. I bent down to pick them up, all my movements hampered and leaden, as though I were moving through water. But just as my hand reached to grab them, something stopped me. I straightened slowly, peering into the darkness. Someone or something was coming towards me out of the murk, but strain my eyes as I might, I could make out no features. I only knew that whoever or whatever it was, it was evil…
I awoke with a start, jerking upright and bathed in sweat. Rob was snoring even louder, but apart from that, all was quiet in the kitchen. The cat was cleaning itself before bedding down for the rest of the night among the rushes. The rushes themselves smelled stale. Marjorie would no doubt change them in the morning. I tried to keep my mind on such mundane things in order to stop myself shaking. The dream was still so vivid in my mind that I could sense the lingering aura of evil and it took all my strength of will not to wake one of the others.
After a while I lay down again, but this time sleep eluded me completely, The truth was, I did not want to lose consciousness in case the dream returned. The fire was nothing now but a dim glow on the hearthstones and the room was growing cold. Yet still there was no slacking of the darkness and there were many hours to go before dawn.
Above my head, a board creaked, once, twice, three times. At first I thought it was nothing more than the beams settling, the way they do in houses at night when it begins to get chilly. But then I realized that someone was moving about, padding across the room directly overhead. At any other time, in any other circumstances, I should have taken no notice. There are many reasons why people leave their beds at night, and it was none of my business. But because my nerves were stretched to breaking-point, because I needed the reassurance that someone else in the house was awake besides myself, because I needed to shake off the effects of my nightmare and, above all, because I have always suffered, and still do, from an insatiable curiosity, I got silently to my feet and tiptoed across to the kitchen door. Carefully lifting the latch, while keeping a wary eye on my sleeping companions, I stepped through into the darkness of the hall beyond. All was quiet now, and when one of the wall hangings bellied in the draught, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Getting a grip on myself, I moved stealthily towards the staircase spiralling upwards into the gloom of the second storey, and set a foot cautiously on the lowest tread. To my relief, it did not creak and I crept up, cat-footed, until my head was on a level with the first landing. A door into one of the bedchambers was standing ajar, and as my eyes were by now thoroughly accustomed to the darkness, I was able to make out the outline of a handsome four-poster bed. No great feat of deduction was needed to know that this must be the Alderman‘s room, nor that it was probably he who had been moving about.
I suddenly realized that if anyone were to find me there, stealing around the house like a thief in the night, it would look bad for me. And rightly so. I had kindly been offered shelter, and was abusing the Alderman’s hospitality by spying on him and his family. And for no good reason; nothing that I could even explain to myself.
Yet I made no attempt to go, lowering my weight to sit on a stair and continuing to peer over the top one. After a moment or two, there came the whisper of voices and then another noise which sounded like kissing. Seconds later, Marjorie Dyer, in a billowing white nightshift, appeared in the doorway like a voluminous ghost and softly closed the bedchamber door behind her. She tiptoed past me, only inches from my face, and vanished up the second flight of stairs to her own room in the attics.
The blood rushed into my face, and I cursed myself roundly for a Peeping Tom. What more natural than that the widowed Alderman should find comfort of a sort with his housekeeper, who was also his cousin? I felt deeply ashamed of myself and began easing my way downstairs. How could I have been so foolish as to imagine that anything sinister was happening? I blamed the nightmare, although it was difficult to understand why I had been so frightened. It now seemed nothing more than an unpleasant dream.