Before I knew it, I found myself in the clearing where the old Hall and its courtyard had once stood. I wrapped my cloak tightly around me and sat down on the low rim of the well, first of all stretching out my legs and feet in front of me, then drawing my knees up to my chest and locking my arms around them.
It was not a comfortable position, but comfort was not conducive to serious thinking, which was what I had come here to do. It had been my intention to sort my thoughts and put in order such scraps of information concerning Eris Lilywhite’s disappearance as had come my way. Instead, I was unable to concentrate on anything but the discovery I had made that afternoon; the Roman bowls locked in Saint Walburga’s aumbry. How had they got there, among the church plate? Who had put them there? Sir Anselm and I both thought that we knew the answer to what was really a single question. And perhaps that answer could also solve a 130-year-old mystery to my satisfaction.
But my theory hinged on one as yet unverified fact: the period when the priest known as ‘Light-fingered’ Lightfoot had been the incumbent of Saint Walburga’s church. But who could I ask? Dame Jacquetta was old enough for her memory to reach back into the past, to recall something perhaps that she had been told by her grandmother, or even her great-grandmother, when she was a child. But it was not a good time to approach a member of the Rawbone family, with Tom a hunted fugitive, suspected of attacking the priest and Lambert Miller, and the rest of them tainted by association. They would have other worries on their minds and would be impatient, to say the least, with queries about a long-dead priest.
That Father Lightfoot was long-dead, I was very nearly certain; as nearly certain as I was that he had discovered the Roman chalices in the deserted Upper Brockhurst Hall after the great plague, when it was at last safe to enter and dispose of the bodies. Maybe his subsequent reputation and soubriquet had hinged solely on this one incident; the sudden appearance of the silver bowls among the rest of Saint Walburga’s small store of treasure.
I thought it doubtful, however, that any of the then inhabitants of Lower Brockhurst would have commented on the fact. Those fortunate survivors of the worst pestilence ever experienced so far by man must surely have been too busy themselves, thanking God for their survival and picking over the contents of the Upper Brockhurst houses, to care much about what their priest was up to. And who could blame them? Pots and pans, chairs and stools, knives and blankets are of no use to the dead. And when finally, the goods and chattels of their deceased neighbours had been removed and shared amongst them, there were the empty houses themselves to provide extra building material for many years to come, and the Draco to be diverted in order to improve the lower village’s water supply. And when all was said and done, the chalices benefited all of Lower Brockhurst, their beauty enhancing every service, their silver bowls a pleasure to drink from, their graceful lines a feast for beauty-starved eyes.
But if all these conjectures of mine were correct – and they were only conjectures I reminded myself severely – there still remained the question of how the Martin brothers had come by their treasure trove in the first place. Had they, or one of their forefathers, come across the bowls accidentally while digging somewhere? For truffles in the woods, maybe? Beneath their cellar floor, like the Roman sandal in the alehouse? Or – and here my imagination really did catch fire with the utter certainty of having hit upon the truth – had the two wellers from Tetbury dug them up while excavating the new well for the courtyard?
But if that were indeed the case, to whom had the right of ownership belonged? To the men who had found them? Or to the men on whose land they had been discovered? I could imagine only too well the dispute that might have arisen, the Martin brothers claiming the bowls as theirs, the wellers, seeing a potential fortune in silver slipping through their fingers, adducing the old law of ‘finders keepers’.
So stalemate would have ensued. Perhaps one bowl each would have been the answer; but men confronted by the prospect of sudden wealth are not that reasonable. Probably the Martins would have won the day. They were on home ground, after all, always an advantage. But perhaps the wellers, having finished the job and been paid for their labours, had started for home, only to return by stealth, purloin the Roman bowls and set out once more for Tetbury, hoping against hope that the theft would go undetected until they had put enough distance between themselves and Upper Brockhurst Hall to make successful pursuit impossible.
But, unluckily for them, the Martin brothers had discovered their loss in plenty of time to go after their former employees, whom they ambushed and bludgeoned to death in the forest. They had then carried the silver bowls home again with a triumph that had proved shortlived. Within days, a week at the most, they had both died of the bubonic plague that had spread like wildfire throughout Upper Brockhurst, leaving not a single soul alive.
And many months later, scavenging with his pastoral flock through the possessions of their dead neighbours, the Lower Brockhurst priest, Father Lightfoot, had come across two magnificent silver chalices that would not only grace Saint Walburga’s altar, but also greatly enhance and augment her insignificant store of plate. It would have been an opportunity too good to miss. The bowls would be used to the greater glory of God, and I doubted if the priest would even have thought of his actions as a sin.
Had ‘Light-fingered’ Lightfoot realized that the bowls were Roman? If so, would he have cared? As I had discovered on occasions in the past, in remote, isolated communities such as this, the people made their own rules, judged by their own standards and, while they were aware of the wider world beyond their boundaries, nevertheless considered themselves exempt from its laws. In times of trouble, they closed ranks against the outsider who would have imposed the King’s justice upon them and theirs, and, when necessary, meted out their own punishments. Tom Rawbone had fled from the wrath of his fellow villagers, not from the threat of trial and imprisonment in Gloucester.
I stood up, stretching my cramped limbs, slowly looking around me. I felt sure, in my own mind, that I had solved the mystery of the wellers’ murder, although I should never be able to prove it. Nor would my solution arouse much interest if I could. Most likely, it would only inspire incredulity and derision. The story was a part of the folklore of the district, and if there is one thing that people dislike more than another, it is having a good mystery ruined with a rational explanation. It is no longer any fun.
Instead, I reconsidered the totally groundless, but intuitive feeling that I had entertained since the very beginning of this case: that the disappearance of Eris Lilywhite was somehow linked to the 130-year-old murder of the wellers. So, now that I had, or thought I had, a solution to that particular problem, how were the two events connected? There was, of course, only one answer, provided that my instincts were correct, and that was the well. But I had climbed down the shaft and inspected it closely. There was nothing there. Nor, according to those who had helped in the search for Eris, had there ever been. This had to mean that the two were unconnected. My much-vaunted intuition had played me false …
Hercules came hurtling out of the undergrowth, whining and climbing up my leg in palpable distress. I picked him up.
‘What’s the matter, boy?’ I asked.
But even as I spoke, I could smell burning on the air and saw smoke curling up amongst the distant trees. I made my way towards it, the dog gibbering and struggling in my arms. Then I saw the flames.