There was silence for a moment before Mark said curtly, ‘I see no reason why they should lie.’
‘Maybe not, but people aren’t always as honest as they seem.’ I raised my arms above my head and kicked aside some of the coverings in an effort to keep myself cool. ‘Peter was last seen by Abel Fairchild some distance from the house, so it would appear to be impossible that any of the Pennard household could have had a hand in the way he vanished.’
My companion shivered. ‘What do you think has happened to him?’ he asked, his voice catching in his throat.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you?’
There was no answer for several seconds. Finally Mark admitted, ‘Like you, I’ve no idea.’ He spoke so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. ‘Perhaps … perhaps, after all, my mother’s right, and the Devil has laid him by the heels.’
‘For what reason?’
‘How can I tell?’ His tone sharpened. ‘I have no truck with Old Nick. But my brother is able to read. The monks taught him. Oh, they taught me too, but I was never the scholar that he is. Like my father before me, I know my letters well enough to run the business, to write out a bill or understand an invoice, but Peter reads for pleasure. He buys books.’ Mark’s tone was incredulous.
‘You make the stuff on which they’re written,’ I pointed out. ‘Maybe that explains his interest. All the same, why should the fact that he can read mean that a man is in league with the Devil?’
Mark repeated, more or less, what Dame Joan had said to me the previous evening: ‘Who knows what’s in those books he keeps in the workshop? There’s a chest of them there, full to the brim.’
‘Then, if you’ll permit,’ I suggested, ‘my first task tomorrow morning will be to go through the lot of them and see what they contain.’
‘You can read?’ His surprise was hardly flattering.
‘I was taught by the monks, as you were. If you recall, I told you that at one time I was a novice here in the abbey.’
‘So you did.’ Mark began to settle himself for sleep. ‘I was right. You’re a very unusual chapman.’
‘Perhaps. But do you give me your permission to look at your brother’s books?’
He yawned, suddenly tired. ‘Yes! As you please! You have my blessing and a free hand to do whatever you think necessary. I must open up the shop again tomorrow so that the people of this town can see that everything is normal. Goodnight.’ And he yawned for a second time.
I tried to compose myself in order to snatch what few hours of the night were left to me, and had just succeeded in drifting across the borderline of sleep when Mark Gildersleeve once more shook me awake.
‘What now?’ I murmured irritably.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘and it’s occurred to me that Peter’s attitude towards his books has changed in the past few months.’
I was puzzled, and suddenly fully alert. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Well, he used not to mind who took them out and read them — not that any of us did; Mother can’t read, and neither can Rob or John, and as I’ve said, I wasn’t interested — but he used to encourage all of us to look at the pictures if we wanted to. He even made the attempt once to teach Rob Undershaft his letters. Anyone who came into the shop was welcome to inspect his latest acquisition.’
‘But no longer?’ I prompted when he paused for breath.
‘No, not for some while. I remember that one day I saw him locking the chest, a thing I had never known him do before. When I questioned him as to the reason he flew into a rage and told me to mind my own business. And that was unlike him; Peter was usually a placid man. It took a lot to upset him.’
‘Has he been short-tempered about any other things?’ I asked.
‘Not that I can recollect. No, I’m sure he hasn’t. On the contrary, he’s been … happy … excited, I suppose, is the only way I can describe it. I thought that it was because of his approaching wedding, but he and Cicely have never been that fond of one another. The marriage was arranged years ago by Mother and my aunt Katherine, and I half expected Peter to repudiate the match when he grew older. He didn’t, however…’
Once again, I had to intrude on my companion’s reverie. ‘This excitement, then, that you thought you detected in your brother — it had nothing to do, in your opinion, with Mistress Cicely?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I came to realize after a while that it wasn’t that sort of anticipation. Peter was like … like a child hugging a secret,’ Mark added with a flash of inspiration. ‘Yes, that’s what it was. How stupid I’ve been not to see it before. He had a secret.’ And Mark sat bolt upright in bed, his fingers picking restlessly at the coverlet.
‘And it had to do with his books?’ I suggested.
He turned to peer at me through the darkness. ‘It must’ve done, don’t you think? Why else had he started to lock the chest in the workshop?’
‘You could be right,’ I agreed. ‘Now, lie down again and get some sleep, or neither of us will be good for anything tomorrow. I’ll look at those folios of his first thing in the morning, after breakfast.’
My companion grunted. ‘The chest may still be locked,’ he said, ‘but I think I might know where Peter keeps the key.’
Chapter Five
Mark and I both rose at first light, neither of us able to sleep once the sun began to probe the shutters. We were glad to throw these latter wide to allow cool air into the stuffy bedchamber, before descending to the pump between the stable and the kitchen in order to wash away the soil and sweat of night.
While I waited for Mark to finish (for his ablutions naturally took precedence over mine) I seized the opportunity to examine the dusty earth, and noted that it had been scuffed over as if to erase all trace of footprints. I found this strange. Why should my companion have troubled to do this if his were the only ones to be seen?
Mark must have seen me looking at the ground, for he paused in the act of rubbing himself dry to ask edgily, ‘Have you found something?’ I pointed out my curious discovery and there was a moment’s hesitation before he said with forced jocularity, ‘Oh yes! I was just being over-cautious, I’m afraid. I thought the sight of footmarks might upset the women if one of them ventured outside this morning while I was still abed. As it turns out, of course — ’ he shrugged and spread his hands — ‘we are up before them.’
It was an unconvincing explanation, but maybe just unconvincing enough to be true. For now, therefore, I accepted it, but determined nevertheless to keep a close eye on Mark. He had betrayed a hint of resentment when talking about his brother’s inheritance of their father’s second-best bed, which had aroused my ever-ready suspicions. Whether or not I was being unfair to him, only time would tell.
I washed and dried myself, cleaned my teeth with my willow bark and then went to the privy before rejoining Mark in his bedchamber. Fully dressed, I followed him downstairs again to the kitchen to eat breakfast and shave, using water heated by Lydia, the little maid. Seen in daylight, she appeared neither so pale nor so diminutive as she had done the previous evening, but even so, the top of her head barely reached to the middle of my upper arm. By contrast I seemed a giant, and her swift, delicate, birdlike movements made me feel awkward and gauche. The two apprentices, already seated at the table eating their oatmeal, were blear-eyed and only half-awake, tired after yesterday’s long and futile search. Dame Joan and Mistress Cicely had not yet put in an appearance.
While Lydia plied me with bread and ale, oatmeal cakes and a piece of fresh fish, I, too, fought against the desire for slumber. I had had a disturbed night after the fatiguing ride from Farleigh Castle and could willingly have crawled back between the sheets to sleep until noon. But I had work to do, and the sooner I buckled down to it, the sooner I should be free to continue my journey to Bristol.