‘Oh, it is you,’ she said with a sniff. ‘I thought it might be, but when I noticed the door was open I decided I’d better come over and take a look.’ The brown eyes, set beneath eyebrows which were beginning to go grey, sparkled maliciously. ‘If you’re looking for your wife — ’ she gave the last word an insulting emphasis which indicated some doubt of the fact — ‘she’s been gone these many weeks and the children with her. At least, I don’t know about the girl. I think she may be over with her grandmother, in Redcliffe. She’s not your wife’s child I’ve been told.’
‘Is Mistress Chapman there, too?’ I demanded, choosing to ignore the unpleasant and totally unwarranted innuendo. I hoped my wife had gone to stay with my former mother-in-law.
The woman shook her head. ‘No. I don’t know where she’s gone. Someone said London, but I wouldn’t know about that.’ She gave a small, self-righteous smile. ‘I mind my own business.’
You lying old besom, I thought viciously, but schooled my features to nothing more than a polite scepticism, asking, ‘Do you have any idea exactly when it was that Mistress Chapman left?’
She wrinkled her brow, the furrowed lines bobbing up towards a thin fringe of greying hair, just visible beneath her coif.
‘It must have been about a week after you, or maybe a little longer. I can’t say for certain. As I told you, I’m not one of those who spies on her neighbours.’ A prim smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘But I can tell you it was the day after a woman called here. A young woman,’ she added, ‘carrying a baby.’
The almost opaque brown eyes were suddenly alive with prurient curiosity. A few blobs of spittle had appeared on her upper lip. She was agog with eagerness to winkle out the truth and pass it on — no doubt with her own embellishments — to other neighbours.
My mind was reeling as I tried desperately to think who this woman could have been and what she might have said to make Adela pack up and leave our home, taking the two boys with her. My guilty thoughts immediately turned to my recent lapse from grace with Eloise Grey, but common sense at once told me that even if Eloise had returned to England from France, there was no possible way she could have given birth to a child in the past six months.
I drew a deep, steadying breath. Whatever else I did, I must be sure to give this nosy old busybody no food for further gossip. (I had little doubt that she and her friends had already chewed the matter over daily since Adela’s departure, and had been waiting with impatience for me to make my reappearance.)
‘Ah!’ I said with studied nonchalance. ‘Yes. I think I know who that was. A. . a kinswoman of my wife’s first husband. Adela would not have been altogether surprised to see her. There has been some. . er. . trouble in the family of late and Adela had promised assistance if she could be of any use. Yes, yes! Of course. That would be it. Things must have come to a head during my absence. Adela will have gone to stay with them. The Juetts live some miles off, near. . er. . near Glastonbury.’
The woman seemed disappointed with this ingenious explanation, and she gave me a narrow look as if not entirely convinced by it.
I smiled blandly back at her and hoped that she was unable to hear the thumping of my heart as I waited in a fever of impatience for her to go.
‘Oh well, if that’s all. .’ she muttered sulkily.
‘It is. You say you think my daughter is with Mistress Walker, in Redcliffe?’ I asked as she finally and reluctantly turned away.
Hope flared again in the strangely dark eyes. ‘So I was told. But why would your wife have left the girl, but not the boys? That’s odd, surely?’
‘Not at all. My stepson and son, being also my wife’s children, are related to the Juetts. Elizabeth is not. As you and your friends have doubtless made it your business to discover during the years my family and I have lived in Small Street, she is my child by my first wife, Mistress Walker’s daughter.’
‘Hmmmph.’ The noise was wonderfully indicative of her contempt for me and my household, implying that such domestic irregularities were only to be expected of a low-born pedlar.
‘Thank you for your concern,’ I said, preparing to close the door. ‘But there is no need for you or any of our neighbours to worry any further.’
I think, even then, she was tempted to linger, prompted by a feeling that she had by no means discovered the whole truth, but by this time Hercules, too, had had enough of her unwelcome presence on his doorstep. He suddenly advanced several paces, baring his teeth and growling ferociously. The woman gave a little shriek, snatched at her skirts and ran up the street, letting herself in with more haste than dignity at her own front door.
This ignominious departure afforded me a momentary satisfaction, but it was short-lived. Now that Hercules and I were alone again, all my anxiety flooded back and I felt as if some unseen hand were squeezing my entrails. I glanced down at the dog, who was regarding me with a puzzled stare, then, for the second time, ran upstairs and into the bedchamber, unearthing from a corner cupboard a large canvas sack. Into this, I stuffed all my clothes from the clothes chest, my new garments being thrust unceremoniously in amongst the old, and made certain that the children’s and Adela’s coffers really were empty, ran downstairs again, Hercules at my heels. I was out in the street almost before I knew it, locking the door behind me.
I walked back to Redcliffe as fast as my legs would carry me, the canvas sack somewhat impeding my progress. The crowds around the High Cross and the Tolzey were as thick as usual but there was a subdued air about them. Shoppers were clustered together in little groups of three or four, deep in earnest conversation, speculating, no doubt, on what the future under a boy king was likely to hold and reflecting sadly on the past twelve years of peace and prosperity of the late king’s reign, ever since the spring of 1471 when he had returned from temporary exile to wrest back his crown from the Earl of Warwick and the latter’s attempt to re-enthrone King Henry VI. Several people hailed me, eager to hear my views, but I pretended not to see them and pressed on across the bridge to Margaret Walker’s cottage.
My greatest fear was that she would be from home, but to my relief she answered the door after my first knock, staring at me for a moment as though uncertain who I was — her sight was not as good as it had once been — before her features settled into lines of accusation and disapproval. At the same time, in response to a bark from Hercules, my daughter, Elizabeth, pushed past her grandmother and flung herself into my arms.
‘Father! Father! Tell Mother and Nicholas to come back! And Adam, too,’ she added generously, ‘if we have to have him. I miss them so much!’ And she burst into tears.
My quondam mother-in-law pursed her lips. ‘So you’re home at last, are you?’ she said grimly. She pushed the cottage door wider. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better come in.’
TWO
I picked up Elizabeth — no mean feat for she took after me in both colouring and physique and was nothing like her dark, delicate, small-boned mother — and stepped into the cottage.
‘Where’s Adela?’ I demanded, wasting no time on pleasantries.
But it was a question not destined to be answered immediately. For a start, Hercules’s thirst would no longer be denied and he began barking on a high, shrill, begging note, pawing the ground and refusing to let up until his need was attended to. He had been very patient, but enough was enough.
‘He’s thirsty,’ I said in reply to Margaret Walker’s impatient glance, and Elizabeth, her sobs turning to giggles, wriggled to the ground, found an old bowl of her grandmother’s and filled it from the water barrel. Hercules fell on it, slopping water in all directions and noisily drinking his fill.