They both stared at me as if I had asked them if they really believed the moon was made of green cheese; then they glanced fleetingly at one another. Finally, Christopher shrugged again and said, ‘Dunno. Never thought about it.’
‘Oh, come! You must have done,’ I protested. ‘It was a puzzle that was occupying everyone’s waking thoughts for weeks.’
‘Not mine,’ Christopher replied with devastating simplicity. ‘She’d gone. That was good enough for me.’
I decided he was telling the truth. Christopher Rawbone had an uncomplicated philosophy of life. His needs, his desires were all that mattered. He was never going to waste time entering into the feelings of others.
I looked at his twin. There was nothing simple about this one, I decided.
‘Do you think your Uncle Tom murdered Eris Lilywhite?’ I asked without preamble.
Jocelyn was shocked by the directness of the question. They both were, as I had intended them to be. But I had defeated my own object: I had frightened them into circumspection. Mumbling some sort of half-hearted denial, Jocelyn scrambled to his feet, followed immediately by his brother.
‘Thanks for your help with the sawing,’ he said ungraciously. ‘Come on, Chris! Everyone’ll be wondering where we are.’
They slouched out of the kitchen, banging the door behind them. The empty bottle and beakers were left where they were, on the floor. With a sigh, Ruth came across and picked them up, carrying them over to the table.
I got up, stretching and yawning, and stood with my back to the fire, enjoying the warmth. Hercules raised his head from his paws enquiringly, but, deciding that I was not yet ready to move, lowered it again and once more closed his eyes. I could hear the vegetables simmering in the pot behind me, and realized that while I had been talking to the twins, Ruth had finished her chores and was now snatching five minutes well-deserved rest, seated on an old, three-legged stool. She gave me the slow, sad smile of someone who was overworked and tired to her very bones. I could almost feel the ache in her weary limbs.
I glanced around for my cloak and cudgel. ‘I must be going,’ I said.
‘I heard what you and the twins were talking about,’ she remarked abruptly. ‘I couldn’t help it.’
I paused. ‘No, I don’t suppose you could.’ I regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Ruth, where were you on the night of the great storm? The night Eris vanished.’
I wondered if she might resent being questioned, but she seemed pleased, rather than otherwise, by my interest. She leaned forward, clasping her hands between her knees.
‘In the early part of the evening, I was helping Eris to serve the Master’s birthday feast. The family was late eating, because Master had waited for Master Tom to arrive, but he hadn’t turned up. The old man was furious. Called Tom all the names he could lay his tongue to.’
‘What was Eris like at this time?’ I asked. ‘Was she excited? Nervous? Upset?’
Ruth considered this, swinging her feet, which failed to touch the ground by some three inches.
‘I don’t remember that she was like anything. Just her normal self, handing the dishes around, filling wine cups, doing whatever Mistress Merryman told her to.’ I had a sudden vision of this beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, composed, self-possessed, efficiently carrying out her orders, waiting for the moment when Nathaniel would make his earth-shattering announcement. Ruth went on, ‘She was always like that when the family was all together.’ Her voice grew more vindictive. ‘But I’d seen her, kissing and cuddling in corners with Master Tom and young Jocelyn. Mind, I never caught her with the Master. I don’t know when that went on.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Nor does anyone else. They were obviously very discreet.’ She made no reply, so I continued, ‘You must have been present when Master Tom returned. You witnessed the terrible row between him and his father.’
‘I saw and heard it all, yes.’ She giggled nervously. ‘I thought someone was going to get killed. I thought Master Tom was going to murder one or the other of ’em. And Mistress Petronelle was screaming so loud I thought she’d have a fit. “Go home!” she kept yelling at Eris, and calling her a slut and a whore and anything else she could think of. It was awful! She frightened me as much as the men did. Then, later on, like the twins were telling you just now, she went for Eris and laid her cheek open with her nails. That’s when I decided I was going to bed. I’d leave the dirty dishes and wash them in the morning.’
‘Do you sleep in the kitchen?’ I asked, knowing this to be the lot of the majority of kitchen maids.
To my surprise, she shook her head.
‘No, in Dame Jacquetta’s bedchamber. I’ve a truckle bed under the window. She doesn’t like sleeping alone because sometimes she gets nightmares. Says she always has, since she was a girl. She likes someone to be there when she wakes up. She’s never married. Never found anyone round here good enough for her, I reckon. Thinks a lot of herself, does Dame Jacquetta.’
Which, of course, was why she could never stomach the idea of being just plain Joan; why she adopted the name of a duchess. And it was also why she would never have been able to tolerate the idea of her brother or nephew marrying Eris Lilywhite.
‘When you went to bed, did you go straight to sleep?’ I asked.
Once again, she shook her head. ‘No. I was too upset. And although I latched the bedchamber door, I could still hear them shouting and shrieking at one another downstairs. The noise was faint, mind you, but I could still hear ’em.’ She swung her feet some more. ‘I saw Eris leave the house,’ she said at last.
‘You saw her leave the house?’ I asked, my pulses beginning to race. ‘How … How did that happen?’
Ruth looked surprised. ‘Dame Jacquetta’s bedchamber window looks out over the front yard. I felt a bit queer, so I opened the shutters to get some air. Not much, mind you. It was blowing and raining too hard to open them very wide. Only a crack. But it was just then that I saw Eris run out. She was struggling to get her cloak on, but the wind almost tore it out of her hands.’
‘You’re sure it was Eris?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I could see her in the light from the open doorway, before someone slammed it shut.’
‘Was there any sign of anyone else?’ I pressed her. ‘Tom Rawbone, for example?’
Ruth shook her head. ‘No. Not that I could tell. But it was raining too hard to see much beyond the front paling. Once Eris was through the gate, I lost sight of her pretty quickly. The storm swallowed her up once she started to run.’
‘But in which direction was she running?’ I gripped one of Ruth’s hands and squeezed it. ‘You must have been able to get some idea. Downhill or up?’
She considered this, wiping her nose absent-mindedly on the back of her free hand.
‘Well?’ I urged. ‘Which was it?’
I was afraid she was going to claim that she couldn’t remember, but after a moment, she announced triumphantly, ‘She went downhill … Yes, I’m almost certain she did, because I thought to myself at the time that she’d taken Dame Petronelle’s advice, after all, and gone home.’
Thirteen
I was dreaming.
I knew that I was dreaming in the way that you do when you are very close to consciousness, but not yet quite fully awake. I was dancing with my two elder children as we had danced last August, through the streets of Bristol, at the end of the Lammas Feast. We were celebrating the safe bringing-in of the harvest, the cutting of the ripened corn. Adela was nearby with Adam, not as he was then, but the dark, determined seven-month-old that he had since become.
Abruptly, as things happen in dreams, the crowds and my family vanished and I was standing alone by the well in Upper Brockhurst woods, holding a silver cup, twisting it between my hands. The day was dark and overcast, but suddenly a weak gleam of sunshine pierced the canopy of trees to strike the rim, and I could see that the figures carved around the bowl were moving. Little boys with tails and horns and goats’ legs twisted in and out of a maze of trailing vine leaves and olive branches, picking the silver fruit. From somewhere behind me, Adela’s voice called, ‘She went home … home … home … You promised to come home …’