New Blood From Old Bones (6 page)

‘Is my chin still bleeding where I nicked it with my knife when I shaved?' Will demanded of his servant, voicing trivialities to conceal his anxiety. ‘Are you sure my coat is clean?'

‘Have done, Master Will,' said Ned Pye, giving his shoulder a clap that served both to convey encouragement and to remove some dust he had omitted to brush off. ‘You'll pass muster. I'll see you safe inside, and after that I have business of my own to attend to. If you need me afore dinner, you'll find me at the sign of the Green Man.'

They had come to the house built by Lawrence Throssell's father, who had made his fortune in the cloth trade in the reign of King Henry VII. The house was built of timbers infilled with brick, the same size as the Acklands' but much finer in construction and detail, with two chimney stacks on the tiled roof, each stack supporting a cluster of chimneys, and each chimney differently built in a twisting pattern of bricks. Its garden was at the back, and its many-paned windows looked out directly on Northgate street.

Preparing himself for the difficult meeting with Anne's father, Will drew a deep breath before knocking on the heavy door. It was opened by a serving man, who made way immediately for a small, upright gentleman with a wisp of grey beard, wearing a skull cap and a long gown of fine worsted cloth.

‘Godfather –' said Will, making him the reverence that was his due.

‘William,' returned Lawrence Throssell, standing on tip-toe to embrace his godson. His voice was small and his movements bird-like in their quickness. ‘I thank God you are safe home.'

His welcome held warmth, but at a distance. He did not smile wholeheartedly until he turned to Will's servant. ‘And you, sirrah – you must be Ned Pye who saved my godson's life! Come, let me greet you.'

Ned came forward, red-faced, wiping his hands down the back of his jerkin.

‘'Twas no more than any good servant would have done,' he mumbled, enveloping the small hand Justice Throssell held out to him. ‘In truth, Master Will was as valiant a soldier as any on the battlefield, and I am proud to serve him.' Then he leaned forward and added in a loud whisper, ‘But I dare not tell him so, or he would dock my wages.'

Lawrence Throssell gave a chirrup of a laugh. ‘I see you are as big a knave as he wrote to tell me. Take this for my thanks, Ned Pye,' he added, handing him a well-filled purse, ‘And God keep you.'

Ned's eyes rounded as he felt the weight of the purse. ‘I thank you, sir! And I would have you know that your town of Castleacre is as fine as any I have seen in England. Aye, and in Europe, too! I was saying so to Master Will only this morning …' And with a great grin at both of them he strode off jauntily towards the market place.

His godfather's embrace had not reassured Will, for the old gentleman was too courteous to show displeasure in front of a servant. Despite his seeming fragility, Lawrence Throssell was stern in judgement. The matter between them would have to be resolved. It could not be ignored, on either side, in a pretence of forgetting.

But the presence throughout the house of the justice's own servants, peering round doorways to bob and smile sadly at the husband of their late young mistress Anne, hindered private conversation. As they went through the oak-panelled hall, Will could do no more than make enquiry after his godfather's health.

‘I hope I see you well, sir?'

‘Tolerably well, I thank God, though the east wind that blows up the valley vexes my bones.'

‘Ah yes,' Will offered a sympathetic pleasantry: ‘The lazy Norfolk wind, that never troubles to go round but blows straight through you. My grandfather used to complain of it.'

They had entered the parlour at the back of the house, and a servant followed bringing wine. He was about to pour it, but Lawrence Throssell dismissed him and left the wine unpoured. Still standing he turned, straight-faced, to Will. The room was warm, with a flickering log in the hearth and sunlight coming through the windows, but a distinct coolness lay between them.

‘Sir,' said Will, pulling off his cap and gripping it in his fingers. He felt as uneasy as when he had come here, with nothing but his eventual prospects as a lawyer to commend him, to ask Anne's father for her hand in marriage. The fine room, with its linenfold panelling round the walls, and the entwined initials of Lawrence Throssell's parents carved among foliage on the bressumer above the deep chimney place, was sadly familiar. ‘I beg you to hear what I have to say.'

Stiffly straight, his hands clasped, Master Justice Throssell prepared to listen – as he would to any defendant brought before him. Though he was smaller than his godson by a head, there was no doubting his authority.

‘Well, William Ackland?'

‘Sir –' repeated Will, his voice firm but deeply sincere. ‘I caused you much grief by leaving your daughter – my wife – to go to the wars. Truly, I know not how to ask your forgiveness. But I beg you to believe this: it was not for want of love for Anne that I left, nor for want of love for you that I failed to return before now. And though my grief for her untimely death cannot outweigh a loving father's, yet it has caused me more pain than you could ever wish on me.'

Lawrence Throssell's eyes had clouded. His first words were low with sadness. ‘I never wished pain on you, Will.'

Then his eyes cleared to a piercing blue and his voice grew stern. ‘But I was angry with you. Many a carefree student leaves his books to go to the wars, and that I could forgive. But for a new-married man to leave his wife when she was with child – that was the work of a common rogue!'

Will nodded wretchedly, having scourged himself with the same accusation often enough. ‘I do not deny it, sir.'

In truth he had an argument in his own defence, with which he had sometimes tried to comfort himself. Too proud to put it forward now, he waited for the expected dismissal from his godfather's house.

But Lawrence Throssell's demeanour had changed. His shoulders had lost their stiffness, and his face took on a wry smile.

‘It was Anne herself who saved you from my wrath. She told me she had agreed to your leaving. You were too spirited, she said, to stay buried in your law books when other young men were fired with the excitement of war. Loving you as she did, she would not persuade you to stay – for fear, she said, that you might regret it as you grew old.'

Will felt reprieved, but no less guilty. ‘True, she consented to my going. But I was wrong to press for it, with Anne in her condition. I was a young fool, and had no thought of being wounded, nor of being away from her beyond a month or two. As for regret – God knows I have lived with that ever since.'

‘Ah, William –'

Lawrence Throssell came close and reached up to embrace him again, this time with wholehearted warmth. ‘We have both suffered enough over our sweet Anne – let us not spoil our friendship any longer.'

The old gentleman bustled about, filling two glasses. ‘Come, sit with me and drink a little malmsey wine. I'faith, we had all feared you dead in battle. Knowing you to be alive, and engaged abroad in the service of the Crown, was relief enough. And besides' – his eyes brightened – ‘in your absence I have had the joy of visits from my granddaughter. She is a fine child.'

Will smiled at once. ‘Indeed she is,' he said proudly, ‘and more like her mother than like me, I thank God!' Then he paused. ‘I do desire, sir, to see the place where Anne is buried.'

‘We shall go there before noon. And afterwards you shall join me at dinner – I have ordered your favourite dish of trout, fresh from the Nar.'

Recalling his most recent sighting of the river, Will accepted with some caution. ‘I'll dine with you gladly, godfather. But as for eating fish new-caught from those waters …'

Lawrence Throssell chuckled. ‘You need not fear for your stomach – I gave orders that the trout should be caught well upstream of where the dead body lay! It was you who found it, so the constable sent me word.'

‘Not I, but a dancing bear. I merely sent to tell of it. Did the constable recognise the body – or was it some vagabond, drunk or dead of disease, as I thought from the rags?'

‘It was neither accident nor a natural death,' said the justice. ‘The man was murdered, it seems. As to who he is, the constable knows not – and I thank God for that. I have feared these past few months that murder would be done in Castleacre.'

‘My sister Meg seemed to fear it too,' Will agreed, ‘when I told her of the dead body. I talked last night with my brother, and I know what you both feared – that it was the prior's bailiff who lay dead, and by Gilbert's hand.'

‘True, true.' His godfather sighed. ‘Your brother has brought dishonour on the Ackland name. He drinks too much, ill-treats his men, and abuses anyone who crosses his path. It's well known that he has uttered threats against Walter Bostock, the bailiff. If Bostock were done to death, the whole town would name Gilbert his murderer without benefit of trial.'

‘Then I am thankful it was a man in rags who died,' said Will. ‘A quarrel between vagabonds, do you suppose?'

Justice Throssell frowned. ‘From what my servants have heard, there may be more to it than that. I have sent word to the constable to meet me at the mortuary at noon, so that I may view the body before burial.'

The old gentleman hesitated, his authority less sure. ‘Go with me, Will, I pray you, and lend me your eyes, for mine are no longer as sharp as once they were.'

Will had brought his godfather the gift of an Italian pen knife, a fine blade with a handle of carved ivory. Having admired it and given his thanks, Lawrence Throssell called for his cloak against the late September breeze. Then the two set out for the place of Anne's burial, Will shortening his stride to suit the old gentleman's trotting pace.

As soon as they left the house in Northgate street they could hear music and the buzz of enjoyment from the centre of the town. The solemnities at the priory church would have been completed by now. The great processional service of the Festal Mass would be over, and the bloodstained bones of St Matthew would have been returned to their shrine. The pilgrims, in high spirits after witnessing the holy miracle, would be flocking to the market place in search of earthly pleasures, food and drink and entertainment and gaudy things to buy. But Will and his godfather were going no further than the parish church, and they entered quietly by a small north door.

Lawrence's late father, John Throssell the clothier, had been a devout man and a good citizen. He had bequeathed money to build and endow the free grammar school for the education of poor boys of the town, and also to build and endow almshouses for twelve poor old men and women. But during his lifetime he had spent much of his wealth on the parish church, enlarging it with a new chancel and a south porch, building the lofty tower, and filling the great east window with a richness of stained glass.

In the year 1495, John Throssell had built a chantry chapel at the east end of the north aisle. Here, in a plain marble tomb chest, he had laid to rest the mortal remains of his parents to await God's judgement day. And he had given an endowment of land, to provide in perpetuity for a chantry priest to say a daily Mass for the souls of his parents, and in the fullness of time for his own soul and those of his descendants.

Using the chantry priest's door – when he was not at prayer in the chapel the priest taught the youngest of the grammar school children to read – the men entered a small outer chamber. From there, first crossing themselves with holy water from the stoup by the inner door, they entered the stone-vaulted chantry chapel.

It was divided from the chancel of the church by an open archway. The glass of the east window above the altar-cross was plain, the better to show the paintings of the saints on the plaster walls, their vivid colours shining in the light of the candles that burned before them. One wall showed the folly of earthly vanity, with three kings sumptuously attired yet skeletal beneath their jewelled crowns. And every part of the chapel's plaster without a painting was decorated with the green of leaf-tendrils and the red of Tudor roses.

Will was familiar enough with the chapel, and with the older memorials. What he had come to see was the brass plate in memory of his dead wife, and her father quietly withdrew to let him see it alone.

The engraved brasses of John Throssell's parents were set on top of their tomb chest. Later brasses – including John's own, with his wife, and that of his granddaughter Anne – were set in the stone-flagged floor. All of them faced east, as did the bodies beneath, to await resurrection.

Will knew from his travels that the plates were not in fact brass but latten, an alloy, cast in Flanders and shipped to London for engraving. He knew, too, that the engravers could not be expected to produce a likeness of their subject. They had no means of knowing Anne's appearance, and all they could provide was the figure of a lady of similar years, dressed according to her rank and the fashion of the time. Will was prepared for disappointment. Even so, he found himself staring down at the brass in dismay.

The stiff figure standing with her hands together in prayer, with a fully dressed infant praying at her feet, was older than Anne by ten years. She was a wealthy London gentlewoman, dressed far too elaborately for Norfolk. Her face and nose were long and melancholy, quite unlike those of his sweet, smiling Anne.

Will shook his head, unmoved except by regret for a wasted memorial. It gave him no sense of Anne's presence. But then he began to read the words engraved beneath the figure.

Here lyeth buryed ANNE ACKLAND, wyf of WILLm ACKLAND gent. of Castleacre, dau. of LAWRENCE THROSSELL, Justice of the Peace in the County of Norfolk. She dyed ye 18 of May Ao Dni 1526 aet. suae 20

His eyes had become unaccountably dim, and he went down on one knee the better to see what he was reading.