‘Good dog! Good dog!’ my companion encouraged him. ‘They’m in there somewhere. They do sometimes bite me of a night when I’m asleep. But they be God’s creatures, too, I s’pose. They got to live.’ With which philosophical utterance, he took a couple of horn beakers from a shelf above the doorway and disappeared outside again. When he came back, he had filled them full and brimming over from a barrel that he presumably kept out of doors where it was cooler. I guessed, also, that he must keep it uncovered, for the ale tasted of smoke and a few other suspicious flavours like old leaves and dead animals. I couldn’t help wondering how many woodland creatures, like the late Duke of Clarence in his butt of malmsey, had drowned in drink. I sipped cautiously.
‘How’st thy ankle?’ the man asked after a momentary silence. ‘Thou c’nst remain here the night if thou wishes.’
‘I’m hoping to get to Croxcombe Manor. Do you know of it? Is it far?’
He chuckled as though I had said something amusing. ‘No, it ain’t far. About a furlong or so beyond them trees.’ He jerked his head towards the open door and the woods beyond. ‘This is Bellknapp land th’art on.’
‘You know the family then?’ I asked excitedly.
‘I know of them. Not to speak to, thee understands. I pay my dues for coppicing these woods to Master Kilsby, the bailiff. I don’t have no truck with family.’
I gave him a knowing wink. (Well, that’s what it was meant to be.) ‘I daresay you know most of the gossip about them, though.’
‘Thou couldst say that.’ He finished his ale and smacked his lips with a relish I was far from sharing. I continued to sip heroically, trying to ignore a certain pungent aftertaste that lingered on my tongue.
‘All the same, perhaps I can give you some news concerning the Bellknapps that you might not yet have heard,’ I said, and proceeded to inform him of my previous evening’s encounter with Anthony Bellknapp.
When I’d concluded, he sat staring at me, his mouth wide open, ale coursing down his chin. Gradually, a slow smile broke across his face, eventually becoming a chuckle before flowering into a full-bodied roar of laughter, as he sat on the beaten-earth floor, rocking himself to and fro in a fit of uncontrollable mirth.
‘Oh, that does my heart good!’ he managed to gasp at last. ‘That’ll teach Master Simon a lesson! That’ll put his nose out of joint, the cocky, bad-mannered little bastard that he is! Oh my! Oh my! Thou’s sure, Chapman? Th’art not making it up?’
I shook my head. ‘No, on my honour. I’m glad to have afforded you some pleasure in return for your hospitality.’ I surreptitiously poured the rest of my ale on to the ground. ‘You’re not fond of the younger Bellknapp brother, I fear.’
‘No one is. Spoilt from his cradle, that one.’
‘You’ve known him a long time?’
‘All his miserable life. I’ve been coppicing these woods nigh on thirty years, although I weren’t so old when I started. I was nought but a boy when my father — he were called Hamo Gough, same as me — died and I took over the charcoal burning to support my mother. She’s long dead now, God rest her!’
‘You know all about the robbery and murder, then, at Croxcombe Manor six years ago?’
There was a sudden lull in the conversation, and I could sense my new friend’s reluctance to proceed. He eyed me warily for several seconds, almost as though he suspected me of knowing more than I was admitting to.
‘Oh aye, I remember it,’ he finally conceded. ‘Everyone in these here parts knows about it. It was the talk of the neighbourhood.’
‘The landlord of the alehouse where I stayed last night told me about it,’ I said. ‘It intrigued me. Did you ever set eyes on the young page who was responsible? What was his name, now? Something strange.’
‘John Jericho,’ my companion answered gruffly.
‘Ah, yes. That’s it. An odd name, wouldn’t you agree? Do you think it was his own?’
‘Never thought anything about it,’ my companion answered. There was something defensive in his attitude that I could not understand.
‘Did you know him?’ I enquired, trying to sound offhand.
‘Saw him about when I went to the house to take them wood for the fires.’
‘Did you like him?’
‘I told thee, I never thought of ’im. No reason to. Didn’t push ’imself forward. Quiet little fellow. Not the sort thou’d expect t’ murder a woman. No, nor rob anyone, neither.’
‘It couldn’t possibly have been anyone else?’
The charcoal burner stared at me as if I were mad. ‘There weren’t ever any doubt about that. If it weren’t the page, why did he run away and why hasn’t ’e been seen since? Oh, no, ’e done it all right, I’d stake my life on that.’
He spoke with a conviction that puzzled me; a conviction that suggested he might know more than he was telling. Coupled with his previous insistence that he was unfamiliar with this John Jericho, I found it a little odd to say the least. On the other hand, was I allowing my imagination to run away with me, as I was so often accused of doing?
As though suddenly afraid that he had said too much or too little, or simply that his perfectly innocent remarks might have been misconstrued, Hamo Gough jumped to his feet, spilling the dregs of his ale on the ground.
‘This won’t do,’ he muttered. ‘Got to attend to my fire. Sit thou there until thee can stand on thy foot again, then thou can be off. If thou stays a while at Croxcombe, maybe I’ll be seeing thee now and then.’
It was a clear dismissal and I had no choice but to remove myself and Hercules from his hut. He had offered hospitality to the injured stranger within his gates, but now he wanted me gone. Something had made him uneasy. I just wished that I knew what it was.
I found that my ankle was indeed considerably less painful when I stood up than I had expected, but I wasn’t about to admit the fact to anyone. I needed an excuse to stay at Croxcombe Manor for as long as possible, so I shouldered my pack once more and hobbled out of the hut, leaning heavily on my cudgel. The charcoal burner took his leave of me with, I felt, a distinct air of relief. By the time Hercules and I quit the clearing, he was crouched once again over his fire.
I found Croxcombe Manor quite easily, as Hamo Gough had assured me I should. As the woodland thinned, I came into open pastureland and the foothills of the Mendips sloped away to the Somerset levels around Wells and Glastonbury; blue-rimmed distances hazy with summer heat. A cluster of cottages round a pond, whose glassy surface mirrored my laboured progress, were the only habitations I passed until I reached the manor house surrounded by its moat, its tiled roof immediately indicative of the fact that here lived a family of wealth and substance. The house itself stood at the centre of other buildings, chapel, brewhouse, wash-house, bakehouse, windmill and dovecote. A couple of swans sailed regally on the moat and pigeons disturbed the air with a constant flurry of wings. Geese and poultry pecked for food in the dirt at the back of the house, and as I made my way to the kitchens, I found not only a commodious stable, but also various other enclosures for sheep, pigs and cows. This was, indeed, an inheritance worth having, and I couldn’t help wondering, in spite of the increased pain in my left leg, how Simon Bellknapp was bearing up under the blow of his elder brother’s unexpected homecoming.
The kitchen door stood wide open, as most do during the summer weather, but whereas the chatter of cook and attendant maids is usually little more than a subdued hum while they are working, on this occasion, the noise was like that of a flock of starlings whose peace had been disturbed by a slingshot in their midst. I didn’t need to ask myself why.
I rapped as loudly as I could on the door, but it was not until my third knock that anyone heard me. Then, gradually, silence filled the kitchen as all heads were turned slowly in my direction. The clacking tongues were stilled and the last ragged murmurings died away as one of the maids — a big, red-faced country girl — came forward to greet me.