Cyprian was suddenly uneasy and was regarding me with misgiving. This abrupt climbdown had obviously aroused his suspicions. I decided to give his thoughts another direction.
‘Master Marvell,’ I said, ‘a word in your ear. I know for a fact — and I am willing to swear to this as I hope for the life hereafter — that your stepmother has had dealings with the Irish slave traders in the city. I saw her in company with one of them, myself. Now, what her business with him was I’ve no idea, but if I were you I should be on my guard. You and your son.’
And with this, I took my leave, bowing to Cyprian, nodding to James, and left them gaping after me.
I had walked the whole length of Bristol Bridge when suddenly I stopped and retraced my steps halfway to the chapel of the Virgin Mary which spanned its centre. Inside, the chapel was deserted and very quiet, there being no Epiphany service there that day. (The clergy were too busy at the dozens of other religious establishments that gave the town its nickname, ‘The City of Churches’.) The winter light filtered through the stained-glass window, but it was too thin to throw the usual patterns of colour on the dusty floor. I made my obeisance at the altar, then propped myself against the southern wall and gave myself up to thought.
There were things that needed working out.
If Miles Deakin had not been the man in the bird mask standing outside Sir George’s house on Holy Innocents’ — Childermass — Day, who had it been? I cast my mind back to that particular Sunday and recalled that the mummers had spent it with us, in Small Street, after Dorcas Warrener had been taken ill during the service at St Giles’s. But I also remembered that after dinner, Tobias had been despatched by Tabitha to make sure that their gear was safely under lock and key at the castle and that he had been absent for some little time. Was he then the man in the bird mask who had passed the note, which purported to come from Alyson Carpenter, to Sir George?
The mummers would have known about her because of her friendship — or more than friendship — with Tobias when they were performing in Clifton before Christmas. Had they gone there deliberately in the hope of finding the knight? Had they known that was where he lived? Somehow I doubted it or, if I was right in attributing the murders to them, they would have sought him out earlier. I decided, therefore, that they had first heard of his living in Bristol from Alyson. No doubt she had boasted of her conquest to Tobias and he had conveyed the information to the others. The discovery that Alderman Trefusis also lived in the city had probably been a happy accident, at least for them.
To Alyson, too, I attributed the mummers’ knowledge of the empty house at Clifton. I had little doubt that if, indeed, she had managed to seduce young Toby, then they had made use of it for secret meetings. But a note had been written to the knight, a fact which made me hesitate until I suddenly remembered being told that Tabitha could both read and write, perhaps not well, but probably as well as the younger woman. It was more than likely that Sir George had never seen Alyson Carpenter’s writing — there was, after all, no reason why he should have done — so he would not have queried if it were her hand or no. In any case, it had done all that was required and sent him off to Clifton on Childermass night to meet with his murderers. Had he recognized them before he died and known why they exacted vengeance?
The thought pulled me up short as I remembered with a jolt that I had spent that same night in the mummers’ company while Dorcas took my place beside Adela at home. So was it possible that two, or maybe three of them, had been able to leave me sleeping and make their way to Clifton and back again without my being aware of their absence? It’s true, I sleep soundly, but not so sound that at some point during the hours of darkness I don’t wake up and become aware of my surroundings. I would say that at least once a night I’m roused by a full bladder and either make use of the chamber pot or piss out of the window if I feel in need of a breath of air. Why, therefore, would the night of Holy Innocents’ Day have been any different?
But even as the thought entered my head, I recalled the remains of the poppy seed and lettuce juice lozenges on the battered tin plate that I had found beneath my bed. Tabitha had claimed that burning them through the night helped them all to sleep while on the road, the strong perfume making them oblivious of uncomfortable beds in strange places. No doubt she was right, and if you put them directly underneath a sleeper’s bed the fumes would probably render him very nearly unconscious until morning. I remembered, too, a nagging headache that had troubled me throughout the following day.
Tabitha had been awake, dressed and sitting up when I had finally managed to open my eyes that morning. But she had looked tired. Had she been keeping guard over me while the menfolk had gone to lie in wait for Sir George? But what was it precisely that he had done to them? And why had they carved the word DIE into his chest when he was already dead? And why had Alderman Trefusis whispered the word ‘Dee’ when he was dying? And, above all, was I correct in holding the mummers to blame, or was I off hunting yet another mare’s nest while the true answer to these Christmas murders still eluded me?
No; I felt certain that after wasting so much time and effort chasing the false hare that Miles Deakin had proved to be, I was now on the right track. Cyprian Marvell had neither denied nor derided my suggestion that his nocturnal visitor had been one of the mummers, or that the link between them and his father had been their service in the French wars. His silence on the subject seemed only to confirm that my guess was the correct one. He had, moreover, admitted to giving the man money; an admission that had to mean some disgraceful episode in Sir George’s past; an episode shared, presumably with his contemporary, Alderman Trefusis, who had also been a soldier. And there was a final link with the mummers in that Master Tuffnel, the owner of Sweetwater Manor and the benefactor of Tabitha Warrener and Ned Chorley, was called Cyprian, the baptismal name given to his elder son by the knight. And once again the link was that both men had fought in France. There was a very good chance that they had known one another, that they had been friends.
As for the attacks on myself, one or two of the mummers, if not all of them with the possible exception of Dorcas, had surely been in our house during the wassail of St Thomas Becket’s Day when it would have been simplicity itself to slip something into my beaker. They had, of course, been masked, one of them wearing that of the hooked-beak bird; the mask that later, in a little charade, staged, I now felt certain, for my benefit, they pretended had been borrowed and then returned. Had they intended to kill me that time, or had it been merely an attempt to discourage my interest in Robert Trefusis’s murder? But why? Because Adela had frightened them when, so uncharacteristically, she had boasted of problems I had solved for King Richard when he was Duke of Gloucester? And when I had shown no sign of abating that interest, they had decided that I, too, must die before I discovered the truth.
It crossed my mind that as they had left the city so early that morning, they might not have realized that they had murdered the wrong man the previous evening. If they thought me dead, it was equally possible that they considered themselves safe at last and would be travelling to their winter quarters in Hampshire at a more leisurely pace. On the other hand, they might have discovered their mistake at the time of the killing, in which case their progress could have become a flight. But either way, it would make no difference. I fully intended to go after them whatever the winter weather held in store. I had liked the mummers. I had thought them my friends. Now I knew them for what they were — a bunch of murderous cut-throats.
I found the knowledge distressing. Adam had liked them, and they had liked him — or seemed to have done. Could I be wrong? Again? But the longer I thought about things, the stronger the conviction grew that this time I was not mistaken. I suspected that I should now go to Richard Manifold and lay before him my suspicions and my reasons for them. The chase and retribution should now be in the hands of the law, but while the shadow of a doubt lingered I could not bring myself to do so. The sergeant would undoubtedly claim that it was because I wanted all the glory for myself, and who knew but that he might not be right? Had I, over the years, become too set up in my own conceit? Had the general belief that I was an important agent of the king really gone to my head, in spite of all my vigorous denials to the contrary? Certainly, I had been brought to the realization that I had forgotten God, and I recalled Adela’s accusation that I encouraged both Adam and Elizabeth in their somewhat heretical view of religion. The trouble was that I could never bring myself to believe in the great God of Wrath and Retribution. He had blessed us with a sense of humour, the ability to laugh at and mock ourselves: therefore, I was unable to feel that he took himself so seriously …