‘Well, well! It doesn’t sound to me as though they’ve done anything very serious. Not yet, at any rate. But I tell you what, Roger. Just to set your mind at rest — ’ another wink — ‘my men and I will go and have a word with them. Meantime, you can get on about your business. You need to, I daresay, now that you’ve yet another mouth to feed.’ He spoke with all the carefree nonchalance of the confirmed bachelor. ‘A boy, I hear. Give Adela my best wishes and congratulations. I’ll call on you both later today, at the cottage, and let you know what I discover. Jack! Peter! Follow me!’
I silently cursed my own stupidity, although I could not really have foreseen that I was presenting Richard Manifold with an excuse to invade my home for the evening. He would be there until the curfew bell, which rang later in summer, monopolizing Adela’s attention, disturbing the children with his loud voice and unrestrained gusts of laughter, sitting in one of our two good chairs and leaving me the discomfort of our rickety stool.
But there was nothing I could do to retrieve the situation, so I forced a smile and told him that he would be welcome, crossing my fingers, schoolboy fashion, as I did so. Then I went reluctantly on my way, dragging my feet and glancing back over my shoulder until the sergeant and his officers disappeared into the church porch to question the two strangers. I loitered on the corner of Saint Mary le Port Street for a while, expecting all five men to reappear very shortly; but when, after several minutes, there was no sign of them, I decided that I could hang around no longer. Richard Manifold was right: with a growing family to provide for, I needed to earn a crust or two in order to put food on the table, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs — particularly if I were to keep my hidden hoard a secret.
By four o’clock, I was on my way home to supper. The heavy July heat coupled with the noise and the crowds (two factors that normally did not worry me) were beginning to make me bad-tempered. My feet, sweltering inside my boots, were aching unbearably. I had removed my tunic and was wearing only my breeches and shirt, but the sweat still coursed down my back in rivulets. My fair hair had turned several shades darker and was plastered to my head. My shirt clung damply to my body.
In the last few hours, I had tramped all over the city to very little purpose. With the start of Saint James’s Fair only days away, no one wanted to waste his or her money on purchases from a chapman’s pack when traders would soon be arriving with their goods from all around the country, from every part of Wales and even from abroad. (As I trudged along Welsh Back a few minutes earlier, I had noticed at least two of the flat-bottomed barges the Welsh call trows tied up at the wharfside.)
For the second time that day, I was walking up High Street. At that hour of the afternoon, the drain in the middle of the road had become blocked with refuse and stank to high heaven. Again, this was something I did not usually notice, but which now, irritable and tired as I was, offended my senses. I was feeling extremely sorry for myself, and I could just picture Adela’s wry smile as I staggered into the cottage wanting to be petted and cosseted and told what a brave young fellow I was to be working in all this heat.
As I once more drew abreast of Saint Mary le Port Street, I glanced across the road to Master Overbecks’s bakery. There seemed to be nothing amiss. Women were still crowding round the counter, and both Master Overbecks and Dick Hodge were serving them pies and cakes and pastries. I wondered what had happened concerning the two strangers, and would have gone across to enquire, but business was so brisk that I decided against it. The baker wouldn’t thank me for the interruption: I should just have to wait for news until Richard Manifold called on us, as he had promised, that evening.
A yard or so further on, to my left, was Jasper Fairbrother’s bakery. He had already ceased trading for the day, the counter drawn up, the shop shuttered. This did not surprise me. Jasper had so many other irons in the fire — gambling, extortion, whoring and having innocent citizens beaten up — that it was a constant source of wonder to his fellow inhabitants that he found time to run a bakery at all. I think most people secretly hoped that he would one day be caught selling underweight loaves, and be dragged through the streets with the offending bread hung round his neck, a target for all the stinking rubbish that could be thrown at him. Unfortunately, if he did give short measure, or flout the city ordinance regarding the hucksters, he got away with it. His victims were too frightened of him and his bravos to complain.
As I passed the shop, a door opened and Walter Godsmark came out, crossing the street with his long-legged stride. He entered the shadows of Saint Mary le Port Street and I guessed that he was hurrying home, for I knew that he lived with his widowed mother near Saint Peter’s Church, in the lee of the castle.
If Walter had a saving grace it was his care for this elderly parent, who, so I was told, had been almost past the age of childbearing when her only son was born. Her husband had died shortly afterwards, and, with the help of a daughter, some twelve or so years older than Walter, had managed to rear him from a sickly infant to the strapping great lout he was today. Now it was his turn to look after her, his sister having long ago departed from the town. What Goody Godsmark thought of her son’s association with Jasper Fairbrother no one knew, for she would never be drawn on the subject; but he was the apple of her eye, and I doubt that she would have blamed him had he been in league with Old Nick himself.
I slowed down a little as I reached the top of High Street, then skirted the High Cross before entering Broad Street, almost directly opposite. Here stood a house I knew well, the former home of the late Alderman Weaver; a house which, since the Alderman’s death just over a year ago, had stood shuttered and empty while his brother and heir decided what to do with it. But now, at last, it had a new occupant. One of Bristol’s richest citizens, Peter Avenel, who made his money from making soap, had bought it for his son, Robin, recently married to the daughter of another wealthy local merchant. (Bristol is a very rich city, and approves of its sons and daughters marrying one another. That way, Bristol money remains in Bristol pockets and doesn’t find its way into those of strangers.)
I knew Robin Avenel well by sight and had once, four years earlier, had some dealings with him. He had fancied himself in love with a young woman whom I fancied myself. Not that I ever stood a chance with someone so far above me socially as Cicely Ford; but I had resented the fact that this cherubic-faced little dandy, with his prancing gait and the roving eye, had dared even to aspire to Cicely’s affection.
There was the usual congestion in Broad Street, with the customary procession of carts and pedestrians going in and out by Saint John’s Arch and the Frome Gate, and I almost missed the sight of Robin Avenel opening his door to usher out a guest. I also very nearly missed seeing the guest’s face because a smallholder, returning home with the remains of the vegetables he had failed to sell at market, stopped alongside me, blocking my view. The line of traffic passing through the Frome Gate had come to a halt as it so often did at that time of day. Then the smallholder suddenly dropped the reins on his horse’s neck and jumped down from his seat to answer a call of nature in the drain in the middle of the road. I could now see plainly that the visitor taking his leave of Robin Avenel was the same man who had previously visited Jasper Fairbrother; the man who had disembarked that morning from the Breton ship in Saint Nicholas Backs.
As soon as I pushed open the cottage door and heard a strange voice, I knew we had a visitor. Happily, it didn’t speak with the self-assertive tones of Richard Manifold, but in soft, feminine cadences that still had the power to make me shiver with pleasure.