‘You don’t think Father Boniface was lying, and he did know what the parchment said?’
‘Again, no. If he had done he would have told Peter, who would then have had no cause to visit either Father Elwyn or Blethyn Goode. And it would mean that he not only has a knowledge of the ancient Ogham alphabet, but also of the old Welsh tongue. And I think that unlikely, don’t you?’
Cicely shrugged despondently. ‘In that case, I don’t understand it. Nothing makes sense. Peter wasn’t dabbling in the Black Arts, so why should he have been snatched the way he was? Abel Fairchild said he vanished into thin air. What could cause that except the hand of the Devil?’
‘I’m not sure.’ It was my turn to frown. ‘A night or two ago we were all talking in the kitchen — you, your aunt, Lydia, me, Rob and John. I think it was after you and I had returned from seeing Father Boniface. Later, during the night, I woke up with the conviction that I had said something of importance during that conversation, but I had no idea what it was. I still haven’t. Can you recollect anything which struck you as significant?’
But she could remember nothing, and I suspected that for her, as for me, the days since our arrival in Glastonbury were beginning to run together in one continuous blur, aggravated by the fact that all our talks had a sameness about them, a single topic inevitably dominating our thoughts and utterances. How could I possibly expect her to recall something which I was unable to pinpoint myself?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I lied. ‘It will come back to me.’
Cicely was suddenly yawning and her eyes looked heavy with sleep. She was young and healthy, and neither blighted love nor the strange disappearance of her two cousins could keep her awake for long. I smiled and gave her shoulders another squeeze. ‘Go to bed. We’ll talk again in the morning. Perhaps by that time inspiration will have struck.’
I had anticipated an argument, but to my surprise she slid obediently to her feet and began to move towards the door. Halfway there, however, she stopped and turned.
‘Just one kiss, Roger,’ she pleaded, ‘and after that, I promise to be good.’
I stood up and gently took her face between my hands. ‘Just one then,’ I agreed, and pressed my lips full on her soft, warm mouth.
I had been half afraid that it was a trick, but she only pouted.
‘That’s not much of a kiss,’ she protested, adding in her usual outrageous fashion, ‘I’m sure even Rob Undershaft or John Longbones could do better than that. I must ask them.’
I unlatched the bedchamber door and propelled her through it. ‘What you could do with, my girl,’ I whispered in my best elder brother tones, ‘is some discipline. It will be a very good thing if you are returned to the care of your father and Duchess Isabel for a little while longer.’
She made a face at me, then crossed the narrow landing to her own room, closing the door softly behind her. I heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief and went back to bed, pausing long enough to undress before clambering between the sheets. And this time, I really did sleep until cock crow.
* * *
I awoke not at all refreshed and with a headache nagging at the back of my eyes. For a moment I was unsure of my surroundings, then memory flooded back. I got up and opened the shutters, expecting to see brilliant sunshine, but the sky was overcast. Clouds had gathered during the night. The eastern horizon, above the Tor and a town just stirring into life, showed a long, ominous streak of crimson, heralding the arrival of unsettled weather. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red in the morning, shepherd’s warning,’ went the old rhyme, and was, in my experience, usually proved to be right. The storm of yesterday had not been a single summer downpour but the harbinger of more to come. Autumn and winter were indeed on their way, and I longed more than ever to solve this mystery and go home.
I descended the stairs, let myself out of the front door and went round to the pump at the side of the house. Here I stripped and began to wash, shielded from the gaze of people already passing up and down the High Street by the wall of Dorabella’s empty stable. The air struck chill and I finished my ablutions as quickly as possible, the contrast reminding me sharply of that morning three days earlier when Mark Gildersleeve and I had bathed here together. That, in its turn, jogged my memory regarding the events of the preceding night, when, leaning from the bedchamber window, I had thought I saw someone moving in the shadows. I recalled how Mark had forbidden me to accompany him when he went to investigate, and also how, the next morning, he had scuffed over the ground in order to erase what he declared to be nothing more than his own footprints. He had explained that he wanted to save the women any anxiety which such marks might have aroused, had they got up and gone to the pump before him. At the time I had considered it a sufficiently unconvincing explanation to be, as is so often the case, true, and in consequence had relegated the incident to the back of my mind.
Now, however, I wondered about it. All at once I felt that I had been reprehensibly foolish in not pursuing the matter. I should have ignored my host’s instructions and crept down after him. Had I done so, should I have discovered him talking to someone? And if so, to whom, and what about?
It could, of course, have been a friend, wanting to know why Mark had not been seen of late at one of his usual haunts in the town, one of the brothels which, as I recalled from my novice days — although not, I hasten to add, from any first-hand knowledge — were grouped about Cock Lane …
I stood staring before me, lost in thought. Then, having scoured my teeth with my willow bark, I went back through this inconvenient house and crossed the garden to the kitchen, where the tireless Lydia was already boiling water for my daily shave.
‘Lyddie,’ I said, taking my razor out of my pouch and laying it on the table, ‘the night you were ill, the night you went out to the privy and met Mark returning from one of his excursions…’
She poured hot water into a wooden bowl. ‘What about it?’ she asked without looking up.
‘You told me — at least I think you told me — that when you first saw Mark he was locking the stable.’
She nodded, pushing the bowl towards me. ‘That’s right. Why?’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes. Does it matter?’
‘I don’t know. I think it might. Rob and John said that Mark visited the local whore-houses, so that must be what he told them — they wouldn’t make it up.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘So why would Mark need Dorabella to go only as far as Cock Lane? A man on horseback attracts more attention than one on foot.’
She sat down on the stool opposite mine and propped her elbows on the table. ‘That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it. And practically everybody in the town knows Dorabella. Tying her up outside one of those places would have told everyone who saw her that he was inside.’
‘Him … or his brother.’
Lydia shook her head decisively. ‘No. No one would have thought of Master Peter. He was a pious gentleman. Mark was always the more unruly of the two, especially when they were younger. According to Dame Joan he was jealous of his brother because he said his parents favoured Peter over himself. And the Mistress also says that after the Master died and left the business and his second-best bed to Peter, Mark grew even more disgruntled. He didn’t show it, I must admit, but she’s his mother and she should know.’
Carefully I began to remove the fine, blond fuzz of hair from my chin and upper lip. ‘All the same,’ I grunted, ‘I find it difficult to believe that even Mark cares so little for his reputation as a respected burgess of this town that he is foolhardy enough to ride Dorabella, and so advertize his presence in the local brothels, when it would make more sense for him to walk.’
‘It does seem strange now you mention it.’ Lydia screwed up her nose in puzzlement. ‘Why are you asking all these questions?’