'Hard by Temple Church, near the rope-walk. Knock on any door. Anyone'll tell you where me and my Jenny live.' I left him and his partner struggling with the weight of the red-dyed cloth, fixing it between the two sets of tenterhooks, and retraced my footsteps back through the Redcliffe Gate. I followed the line of the city walls to my right and came eventually to the rope-walk, where two men, one at either end of the stretch of gravel, were twisting strands of hempen fibre into an inch-thick rope.
Temple Church stood on the corner of Temple Street and Water Lane, and I was quickly directed to Burl Hodge's cottage, where the door was answered by a young, fresh-faced woman in a brown homespun woollen gown. In spite of being flushed from the exertions of cooking, for she was obviously preparing the midday meal, she gave me a smile as wide as her husband's and invited me inside.
For the second time that morning I repeated my story, while Jenny Hodge brought me a cup of small ale and two of her oatcakes to sample. When I had finished, she said: 'You're in luck. The boys have gone to fetch my bread from the baker's oven, and they should be back any minute. Thursday,' she added, 'is Water Lane's day for baking.'
Even as she spoke, the door opened and two young lads came in, carrying a large, covered basket. The scent of newly baked bread filled the room, and it was hardly surprising that, ignoring my presence, Jack and Dick Hodge immediately clamoured for a slice off one of the loaves.
'In a minute,' their mother replied sternly, 'when you've spoken to this gentleman. Listen to what he has to say and answer him nicely.'
Two round, freckled faces, small counterparts of their father's, were turned towards me with an inquiring air, and the boys flopped down on the bench beside me. I repeated my request for a third time.
Jack explored his nose with a probing finger while considering his answer. 'It was just a hat,' he said at last, 'wasn't it, Dick? Except there were bloodstains on it.' 'Bloodstains,' his brother echoed with ghoulish satisfaction.
Jack continued, 'We don't usually fish the Frome.
Mother doesn't like us going across the city, so we stay beside the Avon. But that day, well, we thought we'd like a change, didn't we, Dick?'
'Like a change,' Dick assured me dutifully.
'Did you catch anything?' I asked, diverted. 'Apart from the hat, I mean.'
Two heads nodded in unison. 'A cod, that long.' Jack held up his hands to indicate a length of well over two feet, while his brother went one better and spread wide his arms. 'And then we found the hat. It caught on the end of my line.'
'End of his line,' Dick said, smiling.
'What sort of hat?' I returned Dick's smile.
Jack shrugged, a gesture at once copied by his brother.
I wondered how the younger boy would fare when the elder went to live with Master Adelard, the weaver.
'Just a plain hat,' Jack said, 'with a wide brim. All soggy it was, but you could see darker patches on it. We didn't know it was dried blood then,' he admitted reluctantly.
'But you knew who it belonged to?'
'We guessed. We'd all heard about Master Woodward being missing.'
'So what did you do with it?'
'We meant to take it to Mistress Walker, but Master Herepath just happened along at that moment, so we gave it to him.'
'Master Edward Herepath?'
Jack opened his eyes wide at my stupidity. 'Of course.
His brother was in the Newgate prison.'
'Newgate prison,' came the expected echo.
I interrogated them for a few moments longer, but it soon became apparent that they had no more to tell. They could recall nothing other than what they told the sheriff's officers at the time; and even those few details were fading from their minds. Each new day presented them with ever-expanding horizons, and the events of almost a twelve-month since held no interest for them. I thanked them both with solemn courtesy and rose to take my leave. Released from the need to be polite, the boys whooped around their mother, clamouring for a slice of bread, preferably one of the golden-baked crusts.
Fending them off with practised hands, Jenny Hodge escorted me to the door just as someone knocked. A man stood outside, muffled in his cloak against the cold, its hood pulled well forward to conceal his face. Nevertheless, Jenny had no difficulty in identifying her visitor and gave a nervous start.
'Oh!' she said, 'it's you.' She glanced sideways at me, then held the door wide. 'Burl's from home at present, but he'll be back soon for his dinner. You'd… You'd best come in and wait.'
'Thank you, Mistress.' The man stepped across the threshold without sparing me a look, keeping his head lowered so that the hood fell even further forward about his face. He said nothing else before Jenny Hodge ushered me out and closed the door behind me, yet somehow I felt as though I had heard that voice before, and recently.
I racked my brains, repeating the unknown's words over and over inside my head, but gradually I lost the intonation and gave up trying to remember. I told myself that I was probably mistaken.
I returned to Alderman Weaver's counting-house, to find him pacing up and down. The aulnager had been gone a little while, all the alderman's cloth being of the required width, with no thin patches from the use of inferior wool. Each roll now bore the aulnager's seal, and awaited collection by the carter.
'Ah, there you are at last,' was the impatient greeting. 'Here's the letter you wanted for Master Herepath.' The alderman held out a thin sheet of parchment, then snatched it back again. 'He has suffered greatly. You must promise me not to hound him should he refuse to see you.'
I gave my word willingly, for if God did not mean me to solve this mystery, then I could be on the road once more. And without the assistance of the hanged man's brother, I doubted that I should learn very much. I said my farewells and thanked the alderman for his help. My stomach was telling me that it was time for dinner, a sure sign I was getting better, and I turned my feet in the direction of Margaret Walker's cottage.
It was as I made my way along St Thomas's Street that I recalled where, and in what circumstances, I had heard the voice of Jenny Hedge's visitor before. Until that moment, I would have deemed it impossible that it was one and the same, for the voice of Margaret Walker's nocturnal caller during my illness had been muted; nothing more, I would have sworn, than an indistinguishable murmur to my straining ears. Now, however, I realized it must have sounded plainer than I thought, for I knew beyond doubt that on both occasions, the speaker had been the same man.
Chapter Seven
There was leek pottage for dinner, heavily laced with garlic to disguise the lack of other flavours at this dead time of the year; but, eaten with thick slabs of oatmeal bread, it warmed and filled the belly. In addition, there was ale for me and verjuice for the women, made from last autumn's harvest of crab-apples. While we ate, I recounted the history of my morning, but said nothing of the Hodges' visitor, nor of my suspicions concerning him.
Instinct told me that I should learn no more if I did. I should be treated to vacant stares and a fiat denial of any such caller at the cottage. And I had been ill enough at the time for the incident to be attributed to my delirious fancy.
I did, however, ask Margaret Walker about her father's return, and to all my questions she answered with apparent frankness.
'His boots were thick with dust,' she said, 'as though he had been walking for days on tile road. But as for getting any sense out of him as to where he had been, I told you before, that was well-nigh impossible. All he would say, when he was able to say anything, was that he had been captured by slavers and taken to Ireland.