I leaned forward, my hands dangling between my knees. Hercules got up and licked them, just to reassure himself that I was still there, then settled down again with a sigh of contentment.
‘But Eris didn’t come home?’ I asked softly.
Once more, Maud covered her face with her hands. But her mother-in-law, who plainly had no patience with such displays of emotion, said sharply, ‘No, she didn’t. And she hasn’t been seen since. She might have run away, but I don’t think that’s likely. Eris was a strong-minded girl. If she’d made up her mind to become mistress of Dragonswick Farm, that’s what she’d have done. She may have been a bit upset at the time, but she’d have gone back next day and faced down the lot of them, especially with Nathaniel to back her.’
‘You believe she was murdered?’
‘Of course I do! Tom Rawbone had already tried to strangle her once that evening. And he was out there somewhere, in the dark. He probably saw her leave the house. He was probably lying in wait for her.’
‘Mother-in-law! You must not say such things!’ Maud cried despairingly. ‘There’s no proof against Tom! If he killed her, what did he do with the body? Why has no one been able to find it? Where has he hidden it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Theresa said shortly, then added defiantly, ‘But I’m convinced he murdered her, all the same.’
I asked Maud, ‘When Eris didn’t come home, what did you do?’
She shivered. ‘Around midnight, when the storm had eased a little, I went up to Dragonswick Farm and roused the household. Ned … Ned dressed and came out with me. He made another search, around the pastures and up into the woods, but there was still no sign of her. He said he’d have another look as soon as it was daylight, which he did, although the weather had worsened again by then. He opened up Brothers’ Well and climbed down the ladder, right to the bottom, but it was empty, except for a foot or two of water. A couple of other men from the village were with him. They didn’t do more than peer in, but they confirmed that Ned was telling the truth; that there was nothing there. So, if Eris was murdered …’ Maud broke off, shrugging.
‘Her body wasn’t concealed in the well,’ I finished for her.
‘More’s the pity,’ remarked Theresa, getting up and starting to damp down the fire before we went to bed for the night. ‘If it had been, we could have been sure that Eris was dead. There was no way she could have fallen in accidentally, because of that great lid … So, Master Chapman, I ask you once more, will you help us find out what really happened to my granddaughter?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I agreed. ‘But I can’t promise anything, and my time, as I told you, is limited.’
Theresa seemed content with that, but I suspected Maud would prefer me to leave matters as they stood. I didn’t blame her. She had no doubt come to terms with her daughter’s disappearance and would rather not know the truth. While this remained hidden, she could persuade herself that Eris was still alive somewhere, perhaps even happy and contented. It was better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
But she didn’t know me, nor that terrible curiosity the good God had given me in order to use me as His instrument in bringing felons to justice. I used to resent deeply the Almighty’s deplorable habit of pushing me in the way of unresolved crimes and mysteries, but I had learned, gradually, the futility of either arguing with, or trying to ignore, Him. He always won, so nowadays I just got on with it. Of course, He had me by the short hairs, anyway, because He knew I enjoyed solving puzzles.
The two women dragged a narrow pallet bed from behind the linen curtain and positioned it close to the dying fire. Maud fetched a pillow and blankets from a wooden chest and piled them on the mattress, took me outside to show me the privy and the pump in the courtyard, then vanished with her mother-in-law into the farther recesses of the room.
Their preparations for the night were made in almost complete silence, with only an odd murmur here and there, and I wondered if they were always as quiet when they were on their own. I suspected that they were. The antagonism between the two couldn’t be mistaken.
I went to bed in both shirt and breeches, in case of any unforeseen accident during the hours of darkness that might throw me into my hostesses’ company (as Adela said, there was no point in making a laughing-stock of myself unnecessarily). But I lay awake for a while, listening to Hercules snuffling and snoring, and watching the shadows, made by the last flare-up of the fire, tremble and curtsey across the walls. My mind was full of all that I’d been told that evening, but, for the moment, the facts were like bits of flotsam bobbing around on the incoming tide of sleep. Suddenly, however, I found myself sitting bolt upright, asking myself a question that seemed, on the face of it, utterly absurd, but which had popped into my head as sharp and as clear as the chime of a bell.
What did the disappearance, last September, of Eris Lilywhite have to do with the murder of two men over a hundred and thirty years ago?
The answer, of course, in the sane light of morning, was nothing. How could it? The idea was preposterous. And yet, the question continued to vex me.
I was awakened by Maud Lilywhite, in a chaste house-robe of the same unbleached linen as the curtain, shaking my shoulder and telling me that there was hot water in the pot over the newly made-up fire if I wished to shave. I thanked her, and she then retired to dress, reappearing once more by the time I had visited the privy and held my head under the pump. The jet of water was icy but not freezing, waking me up sufficiently to chase Hercules indoors before he could wander off to inspect the geese and trade a few insults with them. Theresa had also emerged from behind the curtain and was busy coiling two long, grey plaits of hair around her head, preparatory to putting on her cap.
‘Did you sleep well, chapman?’ she asked.
‘I did, thank you. I hope I didn’t snore too loudly and disturb your rest.’
‘I snore myself. Or so Maud complains. I hope you’ll be coming to church with us this morning.’ She saw my look of enquiry and smiled. ‘It’s the twenty-fifth of February. Saint Walburga’s Day. Saint Walburga is the patron saint of our church in Lower Brockhurst.’
Of course! I recollected that Rosamund Bush had mentioned the fact the previous evening, but I hadn’t taken much notice at the time. Saint Walburga, like Saint Dunstan and Saint Alphege (or Aelfeah to give him his proper name), had been a West Saxon, Wessex born and bred. The daughter of an Ealdorman of Devon, she had been educated at a nunnery in Dorset, and had eventually embraced the religious life herself. Later, she and her brother, Winebald, had answered Saint Boniface’s call to go to Germany and convert its heathen tribes. She was so successful, and became so beloved, that when she died, on the twenty-fifth of February in the year of Our Lord 779, her fame had spread throughout the whole of Europe. But there was a curious postscript to the story of Saint Walburga. On the first day of May following her death, it was decided to transfer her body to a more prominent tomb at Eichstatt, but the eve of May Day was a great pagan feast, when witches and wizards were said to ride the skies on their broomsticks and hold their revels. By some odd twist of fate, Walburga became associated with this pagan feast, which is still known by a corruption of her name, Walpurgis Night.
I thought of the corn dolly and the bunch of mistletoe laid at the foot of the oak in the woods above, and again experienced a little shiver of unease, as though someone had walked over my grave. I told myself not to be so foolish: as long as I had God’s protection, the forces of darkness could not hurt me.
After a breakfast of oatmeal and fried bacon collops, and after the dogs and geese had been fed, I walked with the two women down across the gently sloping pasture to the village, leaving Hercules to guard my pack and enjoy yet another snooze, curled up beside the Lilywhites’ fire. The weather had improved somewhat from the stormy conditions of the previous night. Through a watery break in the clouds could be glimpsed a shaft of iridescent light and the broken stump of a rainbow that seamen call a wind-dog. But rain still hung in the air. The outlines of the hills on the opposite side of the valley were smudged and misty, as though they had been flattened by a giant hand. A flight of crows circled above the distant trees, cawing and beating the air with black, sweeping strokes of their wings, and to our left, the Draco glistened with a faint silver radiance as it purled its way down from the ridge above.