12 - Nine Men Dancing (3 page)

‘It’s all right if it’s mixed with wood ash,’ protested a fourth man. ‘I don’t see nothing wrong with it. Although, myself, I use sheep dung. Plenty o’ that in these parts.’

The babel of talk increased until one voice, louder and more insistent than the rest, suddenly demanded, ‘’Ere! What d’you think this young fool’s been doing?’

I eased round on my stool so that the group were at last within my range of vision. There were indeed four men, skin like leather, cropped hair, dressed in rough, serviceable countrymen’s clothing, and a young lad, whose cherubic, normally ruddy face beneath a shock of unkempt brown hair, was now as scarlet as a rose in summer.

The speaker continued, ‘Only putting the Rawbones’ sheep in the same pasture as Mistress Lilywhite’s geese.’

‘
What?
’ His listeners were united in horror and condemnation.

‘Don’t you know, you stupid young fool, that geese droppings is death to sheep?’

‘Ar! Gets in their innards and kills ’em, it does. D’you mean to say you don’ know that, Billy Tyrrell, and you born and bred in these parts?’

‘Boy’s a bloody idiot! Ned Rawbone and old Nathaniel’ll have his guts fer tripe if he ain’t more careful.’

‘It was only once and it were an accident,’ the boy pleaded, close to tears. ‘The flock were over by the stream and Mistress Lilywhite’s geese had somehow wandered in. ’Tweren’t on purpose.’

‘Well, you’d best be carefuller than that,’ said the first man, ‘or Ned Rawbone’ll be looking fer another shepherd lad.’

There was a general murmur of agreement from his companions, while Billy Tyrrell looked both defiant and ashamed. ‘Weren’t my fault,’ he kept muttering.

The two musicians now started up again, a jolly jig of a tune that soon had all the customers stamping their feet, and it was no longer possible to eavesdrop. I finished my third bowl of stew and decided that enough was enough. Even Hercules had only eaten half of his second helping and was now stretched out in front of the hearth, exhausted after his long, wet tramp through inhospitable woodlands. I wondered idly who the Rawbones were, remembering that the lad who had been forced to give up his stool to me had been of the same name. A local family, obviously, and one, I guessed, of some importance. But a family that had its enemies: William Bush and his womenfolk did not seem to like them. Or, maybe it was just the young man, Josh or Jocelyn, however he was known, who had incurred their ill-will.

The thought had barely taken shape in my mind, when a man stormed furiously through the open doorway and, ignoring everyone else, walked up to William Bush, seizing him roughly by the throat.

‘What do you mean,’ he snarled, ‘by turning my nephew out of this piddling alehouse? He’s as much right to drink here as anyone else in this village.’ He gave the landlord a shake. ‘Well, answer me!’

There were murmurs of protest from the assembled company, but the young man, toughly built and somewhere around my own age of twenty-six, I reckoned, was in an ugly mood. For the moment, at least, there was a general reluctance to go to Master Bush’s assistance on everybody’s part, except one. Rosamund Bush flung herself on her father’s assailant from behind, scratching viciously at his neck and face, and spitting like a cat.

‘Leave him alone, you great bully! You beast! You treacherous bastard!’ The ladylike mask had slipped to reveal a virago underneath.

But her onslaught had the desired effect. The young man was forced to release his prey in order to protect himself from her nails and teeth (the fair Rosamund was not above biting as well as clawing) and eventually managed to get hold of her wrists. This time, however, there were plenty of would-be rescuers, all seeking an excuse to wrest that seductive body from his unchivalrous grasp. Those too slow or too far away to be of any practical use, contented themselves with a volley of insults.

‘Let her go, Tom Rawbone! You’re a bloody bully, like she says!’

‘You got no right coming in here, abusing people, not after what you done to this family, you fucker!’

‘Murderer, more like! Ask ’im what ’e did with Eris Lilywhite. What d’you do with ’er after you killed ’er, Tom, eh?’

‘Yeah! What d’you do with her body? Answer us that!’

The young man released Rosamund into the arms of her champions and turned furiously on his accusers.

‘I did
not
murder Eris Lilywhite!’ he roared. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know what happened to her any more than the rest of you! Maybe she isn’t even dead! Can’t you get that fact into those turnips you call your heads? Perhaps she’s still alive, living in Gloucester or some other place.’ He dabbed ineffectually at the bleeding scratch marks on his face, then rounded once more on William Bush. ‘I warn you, landlord, don’t throw out any other member of my family, or you’ll be hearing from me again. And next time, I won’t be alone. Ned and Josh and Christopher will all be with me. Yes, and my father, too.’

‘How is Nathaniel?’ the landlord enquired mildly, working, presumably, on the principle that a soft answer turns away wrath. ‘He hasn’t been too well of late, I hear.’

The tactic was not a success.

‘Mind your own business!’ Tom Rawbone shouted; and, having made the point, he departed as precipitately as he had entered.

There was a collective sigh of relief. The musicians retuned their instruments (not that this made the slightest difference to their tooting and scraping) and started playing again; conversations resumed where they had been broken off; William Bush submitted to his shaken wife’s embraces, before strolling off to broach another cask of ale as though nothing at all had happened; while Rosamund Bush freed herself from her admirers’ clutches and came to sit beside me, pulling up another stool to the fire.

‘So, Master Chapman,’ she smiled, a little breathlessly and smoothing back a strand of corn-coloured hair that had come loose from one of her plaits, ‘what’s been happening out there, in the big, wide world?’

‘Nothing much, Mistress,’ I said, returning her smile with interest, and accepting her implicit ruling that the recent incident was not open to general discussion. ‘Things have been quieter in the country this past year than I can remember for quite some time. The Duke of Gloucester has retired to his Yorkshire estates, and, from what I can understand, won’t be shifting from them unless forced to do so by a royal summons from his brother, the King. His other brother, of course, is dead and buried—’

‘Oh, I know
that
!’ Rosamund interrupted scornfully. ‘Tewkesbury Abbey, that’s where the Duke of Clarence is buried. Though how he died is more than anyone seems to know.’ She pouted prettily. ‘Is that all you have to tell me? It’s not very exciting news.’

‘Thank God,’ I answered, adding in reply to her raised eyebrows, ‘Exciting news usually means trouble. More fighting. More Tudor plots … Ah, I nearly forgot. I met a friar in Cirencester who’d come from London. The Queen’s given birth to yet another baby girl.’

The blue eyes sparkled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that first? Men never seem to know what really interests a woman.’ She tilted her head provocatively. ‘Do you have a wife?’

‘I do. And three children.’

‘Mmm … I guess you keep Mistress Chapman happy then. You look the passionate kind.’ It was just as well that the fire was hot or she would have seen me begin to blush. She went on musingly, ‘I was betrothed once.’

‘To a local lad?’ It was not my business, but some response seemed to be required of me.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. (It was a mistake: that member was not quite so small and dainty as she so obviously thought it was.)

‘Believe it or not,’ she said, ‘to that ill-mannered oaf who was in here just now.’

‘Tom Rawbone?’ I asked in astonishment, my interest suddenly aroused.

‘Yes, him. How do you know what he’s called?’

‘I heard someone name him. I’m not surprised you ended the betrothal. A very bad-tempered and belligerent young man by the looks of him.’

‘Oh, I didn’t end the betrothal,’ was the surprising answer. ‘He did. He decided he wanted to marry Eris Lilywhite instead.’

I frowned. ‘The girl someone accused him of murdering?’

‘Yes. Oh, don’t take any notice of that. Whatever else he might be, Tom’s not a killer. He wouldn’t harm a fly.’

‘That’s not the impression he gave me,’ I retorted. Women’s reasoning frequently left me floundering (and still does). ‘He struck me as extremely dangerous.’

‘Only when he’s angry.’ Her logic reminded me forcibly of Adela’s. ‘And I used to take care not to make him angry. It’s different now, of course.’

‘Of course.’ I should have liked to pursue the subject further, but my companion had suddenly tired of it. (Either that, or she decided she had confided too much to a stranger.) She turned a little away from me and began to tap her feet in time to the music. So, instead, I asked, ‘What’s this village called? I didn’t quite catch its name.’

‘Lower Brockhurst.’ She looked round again, relieved that I had voluntarily changed the subject.

Brock Hurst: the old Saxon words meaning Badger Wood. ‘Why “Lower”?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Upper Brockhurst? I haven’t seen another hamlet or settlement for miles past.’

Rosamund laughed, showing small, even teeth like a child’s.

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing now but a ruin, all overgrown. The trees have taken it back for their own.’

For some reason, her words sent a shiver down my spine. Hercules, curled up at my feet, stirred in his sleep and whimpered. Our Saxon forebears worshipped and sacrificed to the gods of the trees long before Saint Augustine brought the Christian faith to these shores, and deep within all of us still lurk some of the old pagan beliefs and superstitions.

The music had stopped again, and one of the men seated behind me – he who had been so earnest an advocate of human manure – had turned the tables by listening in on my conversation with Rosamund.

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed, putting a very dirty and extremely smelly hand on my shoulder. ‘Upper Brock’urst disappeared some year back.’

‘“Some year back!”’ repeated a scathing female voice from my other side. ‘Well over a hundred years back, you silly old fool! Take no notice of anything these idiots tell you, chapman. The entire population of Upper Brockhurst was wiped out in the Black Death, and the place has fallen into ruin.’

I glanced round and saw a tall, gaunt woman, with a thin, lined face, standing beside my stool. She was respectably dressed in a dark woollen cloak that had fallen open to reveal a matron’s linen apron, worn over – as far as I could see in the fire- and candlelight – an unpatched and undarned skirt of another dark material. Her voice had that harsh burr and flat intonation peculiar to the West Country and Cornwall, and which, amongst other things, denotes our almost total lack of Danish ancestry. She also spoke with a clipped precision that indicated urban origins. I suspected her to have grown up in a town or city; Gloucester or Cirencester perhaps.

I got to my feet, offering her my stool, but she declined, pressing me down again.

‘I prefer to stand, thank you, young man.’ She was, I guessed, nearer sixty than fifty, and a wisp of hair peeping out from her linen coif was iron grey.

‘Upper Brockhurst,’ I mused. ‘Would that be the place in the woods, some mile or so uphill from here? Fragments of stone walls buried in the undergrowth? Oh, and a well that’s been very commendably covered over.’

My companion shook her head. ‘That’s not the village,’ she said, ‘which is a bit further to the east. No, what you’ve obviously stumbled across is the remains of the Hall. Its owners, two brothers and the last of their line, also died of the plague. As for the well …’ She broke off, shrugging. ‘There’s a strange story attached to that. But you’d better ask one of these yokels about it. I’ve only lived here for the past six years, since my son, who misguidedly married a local girl, died. So I’m still regarded as a stranger, thank God!’ She added proudly, ‘I was born and brought up in Gloucester.’

She had raised her voice slightly as she finished speaking, and there was a general guffaw at her last words from those near enough to hear them.

‘That ain’t nothin’ to boast about,’ jeered one of the men behind me. ‘City dwellers is ignorant bastards by my reck’ning.’

There was a chorus of agreement.

‘You should think yerself lucky, Theresa Lilywhite,’ someone else chipped in, ‘that yer son married a good country girl like Maud Haycombe, who brought him a decent dowry and his own smallholding when ’er father died. Your Gilbert wouldn’t have done so well in Gloucester, digging wells.’

‘He was a good weller,’ my informant snapped. ‘Gilbert knew his trade inside out, and made a sufficient living to support me and himself.’

‘He came down ’ere looking fer work, though, didn’t he?’ scoffed yet another of the little group seated behind me. ‘Not enough work in Gloucester, was there? And once Maud Haycombe set ’er cap at ’im, he didn’t hesitate. Knew a good proposition when it presented itself.’

The woman addressed as Theresa Lilywhite snorted derisively, but made no further remark except to say, ‘I’m away home.’ she pulled her cloak about her and disappeared into the night beyond the open door.

I swivelled round on my stool, and as the fair Rosamund was now delighting the company by adding her voice to the musicians’ fiddling and piping, I wormed my way into my neighbours’ conversation. Well, to be truthful, I was more impolite than that. I simply cut across what they were saying and asked, ‘That woman! What’s her relationship to the girl somebody claimed was murdered?’

‘She was ’er grandmother,’ answered the shepherd lad, Billy Tyrrell. ‘Ain’t that right, Rob?’

The man to whom he had appealed, nodded.

‘Tha’s right. She’s a widow woman from Gloucester. Come down here some year back, to live with Maud and her daughter after Gilbert Lilywhite died. Don’ think Mistress Lilywhite asked ’er. Just come fer the funeral and stayed.’

‘True enough,’ another of the men corroborated. ‘Reckon she was the one who was lonely, fer all she said she was keeping Maud and young Eris comp’ny. Reckon they didn’t want ’er there, but couldn’t get rid of ’er. Now, of course, there’s just the two of them.’