Maud paused momentarily alongside the mattress, probably aware of the dog’s eyes glittering in the darkness. But then, seemingly satisfied that he had not roused me, she continued her delicate progress towards the door. I heard her draw the bolt and lift the latch, letting in a sudden stream of icy air before closing it again behind her. The tapping at the window ceased abruptly.
Carefully, I raised my head from the pillow, but could hear no sound. Who on earth, I wondered, would be paying Maud a visit in the middle of the night? Could this event be connected with my earlier experience outside the cottage, and my conviction that I had seen movement in the neighbourhood of the Rawbones’ farm? Maybe that had not been my imagination, after all.
I eased myself upright from the pallet and tiptoed across to the door, pressing my ear against one of the cracks in the wood. Hercules joined me, sniffing eagerly along the gap at the bottom, where the planking had shrunk away from the threshold.
‘Silence!’ I hissed and, to his great annoyance, returned him to the mattress, where I dared him to follow me a second time. Disgruntled, he lay down, burying his nose between his paws, but watching me, nevertheless, with those big, liquid brown eyes of his.
I went, this time, to the window in the forlorn hope that some faint murmur of sound might penetrate the shutters, but all I could hear was the steady dripping of the rain from the overhanging slates. Short of walking into the yard and catching Maud and her nocturnal visitor red-handed, there was nothing more I could do to satisfy my burning curiosity. And if I did confront them, what excuse could I give? That I needed the privy? But Theresa had forestalled me there, pointing out the benefits of using the chamber-pot on a night of such inclement weather. Besides, I should have to dress first and I doubted I had time for that.
My misgivings were immediately confirmed. While I stood, undecided, I was aware of movement outside the door and a shadow flickering across the gap at the bottom. Maud was coming back. Almost before I knew it, I was stretched out on the pallet, the blanket drawn up anyhow to cover my nakedness.
This time, I was facing away from the hearth, as though I had turned over in my sleep. As Maud passed by, I opened my eyes a slit and could see that the hem of her nightshift was liberally spattered with mud. Her shoes, too, were filthy. She vanished behind the curtain, there was a rustle of movement, then silence. I presumed she had returned to bed without her mother-in-law being any the wiser. Certainly, Theresa’s snoring had never once faltered.
I waited as long as I dared before again easing myself up from the pallet. I wrapped my cloak around me, slid my feet into my boots and padded softly to the door. There, as Maud had done some ten minutes earlier, I slid back the bolt, lifted the latch and, with a warning gesture at Hercules to stay where he was, stepped outside. (And unless you have been out of doors on a wet and windy night in nothing more than a cloak and a pair of boots, let me advise you now not to try it. The chill will cut you to the marrow.)
The yard in front of the cottage was, as I had expected, empty, so I edged my way cautiously around to the back. Both guard dogs, chained to the fence, raised their heads briefly, treating me to a cursory glance, but they were too busy gnawing the meat from a couple of enormous bones to evince any real interest in someone whose smell and shape they had come to recognize during the past four days. The geese might have been a different matter had they not been greedily pecking at the decent sized mound of grain which had been tipped into their pen. Our visitor had come well prepared to silence any warning of his approach.
But whoever he or she was – and why should it not have been a woman? – was long gone. I could see the back gate of the little compound swinging gently on its hinges, as though the last person to pass through had been in too much of a hurry to close it properly. And the gate had been shut, I would swear to it, when I had been in the yard the previous evening.
Just as I had done earlier, I went over to the paling and stared into the darkness, but this time, with the almost total cessation of the rain, I was able to see further. A figure was climbing the slope at a good, round pace in the direction of the Rawbones’ farm; a figure draped in a hooded cloak that billowed around it in the wind, making it impossible for me to make out a specific shape. But there was something about the way in which the figure moved that told me my first assumption had been correct. The length of stride that carried the person uphill at such a rate could only be that of a man.
He had moved too rapidly, was already at too great a distance, for me to go after him, not allowing for the fact that I should first have to dress: and there was no way I could confront a possible adversary in nothing other than a cloak and a pair of boots. The indignity of such attire would have put me at an immediate disadvantage.
I returned indoors as quietly and as circumspectly as I had left, although I half-expected Maud to be waiting for me. Had she been, I would have pleaded that something had wakened me and, as the storm had abated, I preferred to use the outside privy to the chamber-pot. (I cursed myself that I hadn’t thought up that excuse earlier on, but, in mitigation, I must point out that it was the middle of the night and my brain was not at its sparkling best. Nevertheless, I knew I had missed an opportunity to identify the visitor through my slow-wittedness.)
Maud, however, was nowhere to be seen. The linen curtain still hung demurely between the two women and myself as I took off my cloak and boots and once again rolled, teeth chattering, on to the lumpy ticking of the mattress. I invited Hercules to join me and the pallet’s lively colony of fleas under the blanket, which he was nothing loth to do, and I was able to use his bodily warmth to augment my own, like a hot brick wrapped in sacking. In my absence, Theresa’s snoring had grown louder, but I found it difficult to believe that Maud had yet fallen asleep. Surely she must have heard me leave the cottage, but she hadn’t challenged my reason for doing so.
The remaining embers of the fire made a glowing patch of red in the smoky gloom. I turned to face the hearth again, Hercules snuggling with a contented sigh into the crook of my body. Had the night visitor been Tom Rawbone? I wondered. Had he come sneaking back to the farm under cover of darkness? Had that been what I had seen the previous evening while I was loitering in the yard?
But why would he want to visit Maud? She had made it clear to both Theresa and myself that she held him, either directly or indirectly, responsible for her daughter’s disappearance. He must be aware of her hostility. So it was unlikely to be Tom. Ned, then? There seemed, from what different people had told me, to be an enduring friendship between him and Maud, in spite of the fact that she had once rejected him in favour of Gilbert Lilywhite. Ned Rawbone, then, was more likely. But why? What would he possibly have to tell her that could not wait until their next meeting? And that must be at Mass tomorrow morning. No, this morning, for it had to be well past midnight, judging by the progress of the storm …
It was at this point that I must have drifted across the borderline of sleep, for I found myself, still repeating the words ‘well past midnight’, standing beside a giant Nine Men’s Morris board in the main room of the alehouse, now the size of Westminster Palace. On the board were the players, consisting of the Rawbone family – the twins, Nathaniel, Jacquetta, Tom, Ned, Petronelle and Elvina Merryman – Rosamund and her parents, Lambert Miller, Sir Anselm, even Billy Tyrrell and the village whore, Alice Tucker.