‘So,’ I said, straightening up on my stool as Hercules settled down to sleep again, ‘no one has ever discovered why the two wellers were murdered, or by whom. But couldn’t it simply have been footpads? Or outlaws? After all, the Martins must have paid them for their work before they left the Hall. They would have had money on them.’
Maud Lilywhite added another log to the fire, stretching her feet towards the flames.
‘But according to my great-great-grand-mother,’ she said quietly, ‘neither man had been robbed. Their money was still in the pouches attached to their belts. So it couldn’t possibly have been footpads or outlaws.’
‘An intriguing story, eh, chapman?’ Theresa asked, offering me yet another cup of ale, which I declined, feeling I had already consumed enough for one evening. ‘And one to which we shall, I’m afraid, never know the answer.’
‘After well over a hundred years, I’m sure that’s only too true,’ I agreed regretfully, and she laughed.
‘You don’t like unsolved mysteries, I can tell.’
‘No, I don’t.’
I saw her glance narrowly at her daughter-in-law before saying forcefully, ‘Well then, here’s one recent enough for you to be able to unravel. Perhaps you can discover what’s happened to my granddaughter, Eris, who went missing over six months ago on the night of the great storm.’
‘Mother-in-law, leave it! Please!’
‘Nonsense!’ was the robust answer to this heartfelt appeal. ‘Someone’s got to find out what’s become of the girl. If she’s been murdered-’ Theresa’s voice cracked a little on the word – ‘or if she has simply run away. Although, knowing your daughter, Maud, I hardly think that’s likely. She was too much your child in that respect. She knew a good catch when she hooked one. She wasn’t going to throw old Nathaniel Rawbone back into the sea. Not with the fortune he has salted away.’
‘Nathaniel Rawbone?’ I asked. ‘Excuse me, but you must understand that I’ve already heard something of the story-’
‘From Rosamund Bush, I’ll be bound!’ the older woman exclaimed. ‘That one’s going to play the part of the Wronged Woman for the rest of her life. What has she told you?’
‘That she and Tom Rawbone – a member of the same family, I take it – were betrothed, but that he jilted her in favour of your granddaughter. It came out quite naturally in conversation. She didn’t go out of her way to tell me.’ I found myself springing to the Fair Rosamund’s defence.
Theresa Lilywhite snorted disbelievingly, but made no comment.
‘It’s quite true,’ her daughter-in-law put in, evidently deciding that, as I knew so much, I might as well know the rest. ‘A year ago this month, Eris went to work at Dragonswick Farm – that’s the building you can see higher up the hill – for the Rawbone family. They needed extra help in the house, there being seven of them in all, and their housekeeper, Elvina Merryman having recently been sick.’ She added, looking defiantly at Theresa, ‘It wasn’t Eris’s fault if Tom Rawbone fell in love with her and out of love with Rosamund Bush.’
‘Maybe not,’ Theresa retorted grimly, ‘but having stolen another woman’s betrothed, Eris should have been content with having done sufficient mischief. She should never have permitted the attentions of a man old enough to be her grandfather, and also the father of the man she had promised to marry. But, of course, she was never in love with Tom. He was just a way of worming herself into the Rawbone family.’ Theresa sniffed disparagingly. ‘She’d not long turned sixteen, and as crafty as the serpent in Eden. Well, I’ll tell you this, chapman! She didn’t get her mercenary, philandering ways from my side of the family. I wasn’t born a Lilywhite, but my husband’s folk were as honest and God-fearing as any you’ll find in England. There wasn’t a woman in Gloucester who would have turned down an offer of marriage from my Gilbert.’
I said hurriedly, not wishing to be drawn into any quarrel between mother- and daughter-in-law, ‘Are you telling me that Eris – that your granddaughter – jilted Tom Rawbone in her turn, and for the young man’s father?’
It was Maud who answered, refusing to rise to Theresa’s bait.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. No one knew how long the pair of them had been secretly carrying on a courtship. Nathaniel, for all he’s nearly sixty, still has an eye for the women. We all know that. He’s been a womanizer all his life. But no one expected him to look at a girl of Eris’s youth. Nor did anyone know that Tom Rawbone was courting her as well, and secretly plotting to break his betrothal to Rosamund Bush. How in the Virgin’s Name,’ Maud finished on an anguished note, ‘Eris managed to keep everything a secret in this village, whose very walls have ears, I shall never understand. Even I had no inkling of what was going on.’
‘What Eris wanted, Eris was going to get, come Hell or high water,’ her grandmother declared uncompromisingly. Theresa lowered her voice almost to a whisper and her face was suddenly grey with fear. ‘Sometimes, I think Eris might have been a witch.’
Four
Maud was on her feet immediately, shaking with anger or maybe fright, perhaps both. I couldn’t decide. But in the end, anger got the upper hand.
‘You’re a fool, mother-in-law, to say such a thing about your own granddaughter, and in front of a stranger, too! You could do untold harm. Not just to Eris but to us.’
Theresa had already realized the error of her ways and was looking at me, pleadingly.
‘I didn’t mean it, chapman. It was thoughtless of me. We all say stupid things when we lose our tempers.’
‘No one will hear it repeated by me,’ I promised and attempted a feeble joke. ‘Of course, I can’t answer for Hercules.’
They both smiled wanly, but were in some measure reassured.
‘I knew you were a trustworthy young fellow the moment I saw you,’ Theresa told me.
I laughed. ‘Not so young any more. Last October, I was twenty-six. I’ve been married twice and have three children, two of my own and a stepson. So … Tell me about the night Eris disappeared. I’ve gathered it was stormy.’
Theresa glanced across at her daughter-in-law. ‘You’ll have to tell him. I wasn’t here. Perhaps if I had been, things might have turned out differently. But I’d gone home to Gloucester the week before in answer to a summons from my sister, who was sick. When I returned here a month later, it was to find that Eris had vanished and the whole village was buzzing with gossip about her and the Rawbones.’ She glared at Maud. ‘No one had seen fit to send to Gloucester and advise me what had happened.’
Maud Lilywhite sighed wearily, as one who had grown accustomed to the accusation.
‘I’ve told you this many times, Theresa, but I’ll say it again. There seemed no point in worrying you. All that could be done to find Eris had been done. Ned Rawbone and other men from the village had spent days searching the woods and surrounding countryside. Some of them had been to Tetbury and Cirencester and as far afield as Dursley. Ned Rawbone had even climbed down the Brothers’ Well – that’s what we call it in these parts, Master Chapman – but found nothing. There was no trace of Eris, either alive … or dead.’ On the last word, her breath caught in her throat but she forced herself to remain calm.
I repeated my earlier question. ‘What happened on the night your daughter vanished, Mistress Lilywhite?’
She seemed reluctant to answer, but with some prompting from myself and a scolding from Theresa, she eventually told me what I wanted to know.
‘I wasn’t present, of course, either at the Roman Sandal or at Dragonswick Farm on the evening of September the first, which was Nathaniel Rawbone’s fifty-ninth birthday.’