But having started to confide in me, the Sergeant seemed unable to stop. ‘It was arranged between my wife and sister when Cis was a baby. Peter was then eight years old and his brother four years younger. Mark would have been a more suitable match for her, being nearer to her in age, but Katherine, my wife — well, she knew that it was Peter who would inherit the parchment-making business when my brother-in-law died — which he did a twelvemonth since — and it gave the two women something to plan for. I was away a great deal, being then in the pay of my lord’s father, the Duke of York. When he was killed at Wakefield, the December after Cis was born, I joined the household of my lord of Warwick; and after his death, His Grace of Clarence took me into his service. So I wasn’t at home to say whether I approved of the match or no. But now I’m all in favour of it. Cicely was too young when Katherine died to marry Peter, and it wouldn’t have been fair on my sister to saddle her with a headstrong child of thirteen. However, three years in Her Grace of Clarence’s household has worked wonders. It’s taught Cis discipline and how to serve others. She’s ready for marriage now.’
A sudden frown creased William Armstrong’s brow. ‘But whatever has happened to Peter? Why hasn’t the damned fellow shown up? I arranged it all by letter with Joan, my sister: the date, the place, the time. The Duke’s chief clerk wrote and dispatched it for me, and both my nephews can read and write.’
‘Some last minute business deal, a lame horse, a sudden indisposition,’ I suggested. ‘Any one of these explanations might be the reason. I’m sure there’s no cause for alarm. Indeed, your nephew could still appear at any moment.’
* * *
But when dinner was over and the Duchess already ensconced in her litter, the Duke impatient to depart, there was still no sign of either of the Gildersleeve brothers. If Peter had been forced to send Mark as his deputy, it seemed that he must have been delayed as well.
Just before noon, therefore, I accompanied William Armstrong and his daughter to the stables in the outer ward of the castle, where a solid, broad-backed brown rouncy was standing patiently, Cicely’s modest possessions already stowed in its two capacious saddle-bags. A groom held the animal’s head while I mounted and then lifted my charge up behind me. Finally my cudgel, without which I refuse to stir a step, was handed to me and laid awkwardly across my knees.
‘What’s his name?’ I asked, referring to the horse.
‘Barnabas.’ The groom watched contemptuously my inexpert fumblings with the reins. ‘And you’re to bring him back here tomorrow. Duke’s orders.’
I doubted very much if His Grace had bothered his head with any such instructions, but did not say so, merely nodding in compliance.
William Armstrong clutched at Cicely’s sleeve. ‘Get your aunt to send word after me to let me know that everything’s all right. We shall be in London for a day or two, and if I’ve heard nothing by the time we move on I’ll leave word of our next destination.’
Cicely bent and kissed his cheek. ‘Yes, Father,’ she answered meekly; but the way she wrapped her arms about my waist and cuddled into my back belied her timidity. I decided I should do well to be wary of Cicely Armstrong. Had Peter Gildersleeve somehow learned that his intended bride was wilder than he had been led to expect, and got cold feet? I thought it improbable, but at least it offered a reasonable explanation for his non-appearance. (I did not know then that reason was not destined to be the most notable feature of what was to follow.)
It took me a while to get used to handling even so docile a horse as the brown cob, but as nothing I did appeared to throw him out of his stride or upset his calm good nature, Barnabas and I soon became friends. He responded in the most gentlemanly fashion to the slightest touch upon the reins, and his thick-crested neck and strong, sloping shoulders imbued me with a confidence which soon had me at ease in the saddle.
We had gone only a few miles before I felt able to strike up a conversation with my passenger and attempt to satisfy her insatiable curiosity as to how I came to be known by the Duke and his brother, my lord of Gloucester. I answered some of her questions and stalled others, eventually telling her bluntly that I had no intention of saying more.
‘Well, it all sounds very exciting to me,’ she said. ‘A lot more exciting than making parchment!’ Her scorn was withering.
‘Making parchment is a very interesting job,’ I reproved her, ‘and requires great skill.’
‘It may require skill,’ she retorted, ‘but it certainly isn’t interesting. I used to watch my uncle doing it when I was a child. Scraping sheep and calf skins for hours on end is very, very boring.’
‘Your cousins make vellum too, do they?’ I asked.
She did not bother to answer, but pressed her little chin between my shoulder blades and worked her lower jaw up and down.
‘Stop that!’ I commanded. ‘It’s extremely irritating.’
Cicely giggled. ‘I’ll tell you something else about Peter,’ she said. ‘He reads a lot. He has a chest full of dull old books and manuscripts that he’s bought at fairs or from pedlars, and one or two that have been given him by the monks at Glastonbury. By the Librarian.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with reading,’ I said sternly. ‘It improves the mind. You’d do well to get Master Gildersleeve or his brother to teach you.’
‘Can you read?’ she inquired.
‘Yes, and write,’ I answered foolishly.
‘Mmm. I thought perhaps you might. You’re the strangest chapman I’ve ever met.’ She cuddled closer. ‘There’s mystery about you, and I like that. You can teach me to read. How would that suit you?’
‘It wouldn’t suit me at all,’ I replied, not mincing matters. ‘In any case, once I’ve delivered you to your aunt, we shan’t be seeing one another again. I shall find a stable for the horse, share his stall for the night, ride him back to Farleigh tomorrow and continue with my journey home to Bristol.’
There was silence for a moment, then, ‘God may dispose matters quite differently,’ was the sententious response.
It made me uneasy. Peter Gildersleeve’s mysterious failure to show up at Farleigh Hungerford, coupled with my opportune presence in the castle, suggested that God did indeed have other plans for me, plans which undoubtedly included some element of personal danger if past experiences were anything to go by. Well, I had felt cheated when I had suspected that God, after all, had no need of me, so it would be hypocritical of me now to complain. Nevertheless, as always, my excitement was tinged with apprehension and resentment at this divine intervention in my affairs.
We stopped mid-afternoon to rest and refresh ourselves, buying milk and honey cakes from a beekeeper’s cottage, and turning Barnabas loose to crop the surrounding grass. The sun was long past its zenith, but it was still extremely warm. On a nearby pond, ducks were swimming. One of the females was chasing another, squawking and quacking, neck arched in fury, water flying from the spread and speckled wings in a spindrift of iridescent drops. The fronded reeds, the colour of ripe barley, rippled as they passed. Cicely laughed and clapped her hands, encouraging the aggressor.
The shadows were beginning to lengthen as, later that afternoon, we made our leisurely way across the lower slopes of the Mendips. Sheep dotted the hills.
‘These animals belong to the Pennards,’ Cicely informed me. ‘Peter and Mark buy some of their skins from Anthony and his sons. That is, I expect they do because my uncle always used to do so. This part of the holding is called the Sticks. I don’t know why. That’s the Pennards’ house in the distance, and that’s their shepherd’s hut, there, in that dip below us.’
As she spoke, both house and hut disappeared from view as we descended into another fold of ground, then reappeared as we mounted the opposite slope. Once more we descended to where the grey stone shelter, with its roof of moss and twigs, stood in the lee of a mound topped by a small, wind-blasted copse, before continuing down the stony track and skirting my home town of Wells.