‘Something like that,’ I admitted.
‘But why choose the priest as his second victim, when there’s no known quarrel between Tom and Sir Anselm?’ She laughed again. ‘It seems to me we’re going round in circles.’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps the priest knows something he shouldn’t. The beating could have been in the nature of a warning.’
‘I’ve never heard such nonsense!’ Maud’s tone was abrasive. She had never spoken to me in so disrespectful a manner before, and it shook me. ‘You’re making a mystery where none exists, Master Chapman! I’ve no idea why. But I’ll tell you now, for what it’s worth! I hold Tom Rawbone responsible for my daughter’s death.’
‘You do believe that Eris is dead, then?’ I intervened quickly, before Dame Theresa could ask the same question, as she was obviously about to do.
The tears welled up in Maud’s tired eyes, overflowed and spilled slowly down her cheeks.
‘Of course, I believe she’s dead! What sort of a fool do you take me for? Do you really think that she wouldn’t have tried to get in touch with me, during all these months, if she was still alive?’
‘And you say you hold Tom Rawbone responsible for her death?’
Maud took a deep breath and closed her eyes. ‘Who else?’ she asked in a stifled whisper.
‘Well, that’s an admission,’ her mother-in-law remarked with quiet satisfaction. ‘But if that’s what you believe, Maud – what you’ve believed from the very beginning – why are you so set against Master Chapman, here, making enquiries? Oh, don’t bother to deny it! It’s been apparent to me, as it must have been to him, that you’d have preferred it if he hadn’t meddled. You’ve encouraged him from the start to be on his way, to go home to his wife. Why?’
Maud’s eyes flew open again. Still tearful, she looked, in the firelight, like Niobe, the very personification of maternal grief. It was the first time I had seen her display any great emotion about her daughter’s fate.
‘Why?’ she spat at Theresa. ‘Why? Because I’ve come to terms with the idea that Eris is dead. Because I’ve learned to accept it. Because I don’t want to hurt Ned by accusing his brother. Oh, yes! I hold Tom Rawbone responsible for killing my child! If he hadn’t been faithless to Rosamund Bush, if he hadn’t put ideas into Eris’s head about marrying into the Rawbone family, she would never have encouraged Nathaniel. And the whole sorry mess would never have happened.’
‘Wait a moment,’ I expostulated. ‘What exactly are you saying, Mistress? Just now, you spoke as though you believed Tom Rawbone to be your daughter’s flesh-and-blood murderer. But now, it sounds as if you merely regard him as precipitating a situation that might have provoked someone else to kill her.’
‘What does it matter?’ Maud demanded angrily. ‘Whichever way you look at it, Tom’s to blame! Without him, nothing would have happened!’ She burst into noisy sobbing.
Theresa got up from her stool and went to kneel beside her daughter-in-law, putting her arms around her.
‘If you’d give us a moment, chapman,’ she said quietly.
I left them alone, wrapping myself in my cloak and going outside, sheltering from the wind and rain as best I could by flattening myself against the cottage wall. But the front of the building was receiving the brunt of the storm, so I walked round to the back, immediately setting the dogs off barking and the geese cackling, while I mulled over the recent scene indoors. I was almost certain that Maud’s earlier remarks had been intended as an outright condemnation of Tom Rawbone; a naming of him as her daughter’s killer. But she had had second thoughts, modifying her accusation against him from a specific to a general one. I wondered why.
I stared across the cottage palings into the windy darkness beyond. It was difficult to see much, the driving rain blotting out most of the landscape. And yet … Was there something, or someone, moving higher up the slope, on the shoulder of the hill where the Rawbones had their farm? I crossed the muddy yard in a couple of strides to stand beside the fence, screwing up my eyes and peering into the distance until my head ached. But all to no avaiclass="underline" it was impossible to tell if I had seen anything or not.
A gust of wind tore at my cloak, almost whipping it from my shoulders. I made a grab at it, then looked again with even greater intensity than before. It was useless, however. The rain had suddenly increased, blotting out all but the immediate vicinity from view.
Had I seen anything? And if so, what? Nothing more, probably, than a sheep that had strayed and failed to be rounded up for the night making its errant way back to shelter, waiting for someone to hear its bleating and take it in. But the greatest likelihood was that it was nothing more than my imagination, and, on reflection, I decided to keep my fancies to myself. I had no desire to be thought a fool by either of the Mistress Lilywhites.
It seemed to me that I had allowed Maud sufficient time to pull herself together and master her belated outpourings of grief for Eris. If I sounded mean and unfeeling to myself, I could no longer ignore the fact that I was getting soaked to the skin. I returned to the front of the cottage, tapped on the door and, without waiting for a response, went inside.
Dame Theresa rose from her knees beside the younger woman’s stool and nodded in my direction. As for Maud, she now appeared perfectly composed, and only the redness of her eyes indicated that she had recently been weeping.
‘Dear life! Is it raining that hard?’ Theresa, shocked by how wet I was, relieved me of my cloak and urged me closer to the fire. ‘As soon as you’re dry,’ she went on, ‘we’ll go to bed. Maud and I are both extremely tired. There’s a spare chamber-pot under the chopping bench, Master Chapman, if you need it during the night. It’ll save you having to go outside in this dreadful weather.’
It was plain that there was going to be no more discussion of events for that evening. Maud had reverted to her usual taciturn self, and I guessed that Theresa’s conscience was troubling her. She intended, for the moment, to leave her daughter-in-law in peace. I could have prolonged our parley by telling them of my day’s adventures: of the two Roman bowls I had found among Saint Walburga’s plate, and of the conclusions I had drawn from that discovery, the possible solving of an ancient mystery. But I decided, for the time being at any rate, to keep the knowledge to myself. I wasn’t sure why, except that I, too, was tired and possessed by a sudden desire for my bed.
I was suddenly awake, lying on my right side, facing the hearth and the dying embers of the fire. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep, but I reckoned it must have been for some little time, because the wind had dropped and the rain had eased to a steady drumming against the window shutters, together with a faint pattering, like ghostly fingers, on the roof. The storm had blown away to the west, across the Severn into Wales.
I lay still, wondering what had roused me. Whatever it was had been sufficient to jerk me fully conscious without any of that slow and drowsy emergence from sleep that is a part of natural waking. So I continued to lie unmoving on my narrow pallet, my ears straining to distinguish the slightest sound …
Gradually, I realized that what I could hear was not the rain, but someone outside the cottage tapping on the shutters; a slow, cautious, intermittent rapping which, with luck, and trusting to the fact that the other occupants were heavy sleepers, would only awaken the person for whom it was intended.
Hercules, who was lying across my feet, raised his head and growled softly. Hastily I shushed him, at the same time wondering why the Lilywhites’ own two guard dogs had given no warning of a stranger’s approach. The only conclusion I could draw was that whoever it was was known to them.
On the other side of the linen curtain, someone was moving with such careful stealth that I found myself holding my breath. I could hear Theresa snoring in the loud and snuffling way she always did; which meant, as I had already surmised, that it was Maud who was creeping out of bed to answer the summons. I continued to lie as still as possible, unable to see her because I was facing the other way, but fully conscious of the quiet movements behind me that caused little more disturbance than a draught of air passing through the room. I felt Hercules shift restlessly, but to his credit, he made no sound, showing an unaccustomed willingness to obey instructions.