As we crossed the footbridge over the nameless stream and cleared the surrounding belt of trees, I could see that Lower Brockhurst was a slightly larger hamlet than I had at first imagined in the fading daylight of yesterday evening. There were ten cottages, not half a dozen, and besides the church, the mill and the alehouse, there was also a forge, albeit a modest one.
Together with Maud and Theresa Lilywhite, I joined the flow of people entering the little thatched church, where the priest – Anselm I remembered Rosamund had called him – was waiting to greet his flock in a rusty black gown that had seen better days. The interior was gloomy and musty smelling: there were a couple of side altars, one supporting an image of the Virgin, but the other I was unable to see very clearly. Saint Walburga must usually have graced the central altar, but she had been removed ready to be carried in procession around the church. Lamps and candles burned in various wall niches, and in spite of its small size, there was a general atmosphere of peace and prosperity that characterized most of the Cotswold churches I had visited during the past few weeks.
Someone pushed past me wearing an amber-coloured cloak and hood, her nose held high in the air. Rosamund Bush was pointedly ignoring me as she swept forward to stand at the front of the congregation, in what I assumed was her accustomed place, closely followed by her parents. William gave me an apologetic smile as he went by, obviously embarrassed by his daughter’s behaviour. He paused to whisper, ‘Take no notice of her, Master Chapman. She’s annoyed that you’ve chosen to stay with the Lilywhites. She’ll get over it, never fear.’
I liked him, so I forbore to say that his daughter’s airs and graces made no difference to me. I was not in the market for female approvaclass="underline" I was a happily married man. I smiled to myself as I noticed Lambert Miller edging his way forward through the crowd – for three dozen people were a crowd in that tiny church – to stand beside Rosamund.
There was a stir behind me and a murmuring amongst the congregation as though somebody important had come in. Turning my head, I saw that it was not one person, but seven or eight, and realized without Theresa Lilywhite hissing the name in my ear that this must be the Rawbone family. The rest of the people parted like the Red Sea before Moses to allow them to take their place at the front.
The leader had to be Nathaniel, tall, well set-up and with a spring in his step that might have belonged to a much younger man. But the abundant reddish-brown hair was iron grey at the temples and threaded with silver all over the leonine head that sat so proudly on his broad, sturdy shoulders. The handsome, weather-beaten face was seamed with the deeply carved lines of fifty-nine winters and summers, and his intensely blue eyes looked out on the rest of mankind with a certain contempt. This was a proud man, a confident man, a man who needed no convincing of his merit and worth. In this particular little pond, he was, in his own estimation, a very big fish. How others viewed him, remained to be seen.
Immediately behind him walked a man who could only be his son. Slightly shorter and stockier, Ned Rawbone nevertheless had the same shock of reddish-brown hair, the same very blue eyes, the same handsome, weathered face as his father. He did not display quite the same ease and self-confidence, but that was only natural in someone who must always have been overshadowed by his father.
Clinging to her husband’s arm was Petronelle Rawbone, a thin, nervous woman, who was probably younger than Ned, but could have been older. Sharp-featured, with a sallow complexion and eyes of a nondescript colour that might have been grey or a very pale shade of blue, I doubted that she had ever been more than passably good-looking, and guessed that her marriage with the heir of Dragonswick Farm had been for commercial, rather than romantic, reasons. Her twin sons, however, had inherited the Rawbone looks and colouring. I discovered later that they had just passed their fourteenth birthday and were as arrogant as their grandfather, encouraged by a mother who thought them as perfect as they thought themselves.
The second and much younger of Nathaniel’s two sons, Tom, I had already encountered. Suffice it to say that he was a Rawbone to his fingertips, although his hair was a little less red and his eyes fractionally less blue than his sibling. But he was handsomer than both his brother and father. I could see why Rosamund Bush had set her cap at him.
Bringing up this little procession, but only because she walked slowly and used a stick, was Jacquetta Rawbone, Nathaniel’s elder sister. Her expression was every bit as proud as her brother’s, and she stared haughtily down the long, straight nose that was such a prominent feature of all her family. With her upright carriage, she followed the others to the front of the church and imperiously waved away the stool that the priest had hurried to offer her.
‘I’ll stand, man, like everyone else.’
Father Anselm beamed around at his flock. Now that the Rawbones were present, the service could begin.
Five
I’m afraid I paid scant attention to the service, moving through the ritual like a sleepwalker, with my mind on earthly instead of spiritual things. I have only the vaguest recollection of the shabby and faded statue of the saint being processed around the church. And even Father Anselm’s short address on Walburga’s life made no impression on me; I knew the story too well. I did realize that he had made no mention of the saint’s later, and undeserved, association with witchcraft, but other than that, the Mass had ended before I was hardly aware that it had begun.
I had spent much of the time thinking about Eris Lilywhite’s disappearance. Even from the little I had heard of her, I agreed with her grandmother: Eris did not sound to me like the sort of girl to vanish tamely just because life had grown too difficult, especially as the difficulties had been of her own making. She had obviously aimed to become a member of the wealthiest family in the district. Having snared the younger son, and having persuaded him to break his promise to marry Rosamund Bush, Eris had not scrupled to throw him over when a bigger prize was offered. The discovery that Nathaniel Rawbone had been smitten by her charms, and was also intent on proposing marriage, must have seemed like an opportunity that a girl as ambitious as she was could not possibly refuse. And she must have been prepared for Tom’s reaction once he learned the truth, as well as for opposition from the rest of the family, all of whom could only have seen the union as a threat to them and theirs.
The first and most important consideration for the Rawbones had to have been that Eris was a young and nubile woman of childbearing age, while Nathaniel, at fifty-nine, was not yet too old to father children (one of the many unfair advantages that Nature has given men over women, who lose their fertility so much earlier in life). Any son born to the couple would not, of course, displace Ned as his father’s heir, but off-spring of either sex would mean more mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, dowries to find, both before and after Nathaniel’s death.
Ned must already have suffered one such blow when Tom was born so many years after himself. He was therefore unlikely to take kindly to a second. And then there were his sons, almost on the brink of manhood, and whichever of them was the elder twin stood in direct line to inherit Dragonswick Farm in his turn. The more dependants to be provided for, the less for him and his heirs. Petronelle, too, would be alive to this danger to her sons’ patrimony, and only the most unnatural of mothers is indifferent to her children’s interests.