I addressed Dame Joan. ‘Mistress, give me a day or two longer to try to solve this puzzle. But if I haven’t done so by then, your niece is right, and I should be on my way.’ All three women, including Cicely, gave a little cry of protest, but I held up my hand to hush them. ‘What else can I do? My family are expecting me in Bristol. My duty is first to my mother-in-law and child. If it proves that I can truly be of no assistance to you, then I can no longer delay my return home.’
‘And desert us in our hour of need!’ Cicely spat at me across the table.
Her aunt sent her a bewildered glance before shrugging her shoulders, evidently abandoning all attempts to understand these violent swings of opinion.
‘You must do as you see fit, Chapman,’ she told me quietly. ‘Whatever you decide, it will be with my thanks and blessing. Meanwhile, do you have any idea at all as to what can have happened to my sons?’
I glanced across the table at the maid, who had just sat down again to resume her own interrupted meal.
‘Lydia,’ I said, ‘it’s time to tell your mistress what you told me this morning.’
Before Lydia could protest, Dame Joan’s head jerked round. ‘My child,’ she asked reproachfully, ‘what have you been keeping from me?’
‘How could you?’ Lydia demanded tearfully of me. ‘You promised you’d keep it secret! You promised! You know I told you Mark would have me dismissed if I betrayed him to the Mistress!’
Dame Joan said firmly, ‘Whatever this is about, you are my maid, Lyddie, not Mark’s. How could you believe that I should let myself be influenced by him in such a matter? You know I promised your mother I’d look after you. Do you really think I would go back on my word?’
Lydia looked uncertain. ‘I … I don’t know,’ she muttered.
‘Then it grieves me very much to hear you say so. Now, what is it that you have to tell me?’
The story was haltingly repeated, and when Lydia had finished, I jogged her memory about the open door.
‘So you see,’ I concluded for her, ‘someone aided and abetted Mark that night. Mark knew he was going to be late, in spite of telling Lydia that he’d unintentionally drunk too much and had had to spend the night at the house of a friend.’
Dame Joan regarded me straitly. ‘This is the reason you were asking all those questions at breakfast this morning, wanting to know if there was any other way into the house without having to rouse a member of the household.’ I nodded. ‘So!’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You obviously don’t believe, Roger, that this was the first occasion Mark had stayed out all night.’
‘To be honest, Mistress, no. I think it had probably happened before, and maybe since. No man anticipates getting so drunk that he cannot ride home, unless he does it regularly.’
Dame Joan nodded her agreement and turned to look at the two apprentices. ‘Which one of you unlocked the door at nights for Mark?’
Neither boy seemed inclined to speak first, but it was obvious that both had lost their appetites. The speed with which they were shovelling the frumenty into their mouths began to slacken, then stopped altogether. After a protracted silence, Rob laid down his spoon and raised his head.
‘We were doing nothing wrong, Mistress. We were only following orders. If Master Mark chose to stay out all night and not let on to you, then that was his business. And if he told us to hold our tongues — well, it was natural that we obeyed him. He’s a grown man, after all, and no harm was done to you or anyone.’
This was unanswerable, and I could see that Dame Joan was nonplussed. She felt she had been betrayed by their silence, but knew also that she had no good reason to feel so. It was true that Mark was a grown man, and that she had no jurisdiction over him, but like most mothers she found it hard to accept that her sons were no longer children. Women will let their daughters go, treat them as equals and companions, but in a mother’s eyes her son is for ever in leading strings, the little boy she dandled on her knee.
‘And where did he go when he stayed out all night?’ she asked. ‘Did he tell you?’
Once again, the two apprentices exchanged sidelong glances. John Longbones raised his sandy brows, and Rob Undershaft gave an infinitesimal shrug of his shoulders. Both were obviously calculating what their chances of escaping a beating would be if Mark were suddenly to reappear in our midst, and realizing that they were slender. But after a few moments’ deliberation, Rob, who seemed to me to be the stronger character of the pair, decided to speak out and brave the possible consequences.
‘He went drinking and gambling. You know, the way men do.’
Dame Joan wrinkled her little nose fastidiously. The washed-out violet eyes held a spark of contempt.
‘Drinking and gambling don’t normally keep a man out all night,’ she said. ‘What else was Mark up to?’
For a third time the two boys silently consulted one another, then Rob unwillingly admitted, ‘He used to visit places.’
‘What places?’ Dame Joan was as close to real anger as I had ever seen her.
Rob fiddled with the spoon on his plate. ‘You know, Mistress, places … women,’ he muttered indistinctly.
The silence stretched like a thin, bright thread, which snapped suddenly when the outraged Dame asked furiously, ‘Whore-houses? Are you telling me, Rob Undershaft, that my son frequented whore-houses?’
‘That’s what he said, didn’t he, Jack?’
John Longbones nodded unhappily.
Dame Joan’s cheeks were scarlet with mortification and embarrassment. It was a second or two before she could catch her breath. ‘No wonder he didn’t want me to know anything about it,’ she said at last. ‘And Master Peter … did he know what was going on?’
‘Couldn’t say, Mistress. Master Mark never said one way or the other.’
My hostess considered the probability, avoiding both Cicely’s eyes and mine. ‘How often did Mark stay out all night?’ she asked.
‘Once a month maybe. Sometimes twice, sometimes not at all.’ It was John Longbones who answered this time.
‘And how long has this … this depravity been going on?’
John wrinkled his forehead. ‘A while now, I reckon, wouldn’t you say, Rob?’
‘A fair while, yes. I’d say so.’
Dame Joan now looked as pale as she had previously looked red. ‘Then unless Peter slept as soundly as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, I don’t see how he could possibly have remained ignorant of these nocturnal excursions. In short, he encouraged his brother by his silence.’ There was a pause before she added tearfully, ‘I am deeply disappointed in both my sons.’
I caught Lydia’s eye and she grimaced, as much as to say ‘I told you so’.
‘Dame Joan,’ I said, carefully picking my words, ‘your sons are men, and men do these things. Otherwise there would be no need for such places. And it’s only natural that one brother should keep the confidences and secrets of the other, especially if Peter understood how much the truth would upset you.’
But Dame Joan refused to be comforted, and continued to sniff and mop at her eyes until Cicely, who had tried to appear unmoved by the revelations, lost patience with her.
‘Oh, Aunt,’ she begged, ‘please stop snivelling. If you’d seen as much of the world as I have in the service of the Duchess, you’d realize that it’s fashionable to visit whorehouses. The brothels of Southwark are all owned by the Bishop of Winchester.’
I hastily covered my mouth with one hand so that Cicely should not suspect that my lips were twitching. The part she was playing at the moment was that of the woman experienced in the ways of the world, and I had to admit that she did it very well. But underneath, I suspected, she was as shocked as Dame Joan. These were her cousins, the chief culprit her future brother-in-law; and, like everyone else, she did not expect members of her own family to be tainted with the same vices as the rest of mankind.