'But handsome,' sighed Lillis, a predatory light gleaming in her cat-like eyes. 'One of the best-looking young men in the city.'
'Oh, I don't deny that,' agreed her mother. 'And to give him his due, I don't believe he was aware of, or even cared about, his looks or the effect they had on women.
Leastways, not until Cicely Ford came on the scene.'
'Cicely Ford?' I queried, storing away yet another name in my memory and wondering where the story was leading me.
'A truly beautiful girl,' Margaret said with decision. 'Beautiful by nature as well as in person.' Lillis gave a little sniff, but did not contradict her mother's description.
Margaret went on. 'Her father, John Ford, was one of the wealthiest burgesses of this city. He was an exporter of soap, wine, cloth; anything you care to name. He owned nine ships and employed above eight hundred souls. His merchant's mark, they say, was known the length and breadth of Europe. And one of his ships, the Cicely, was part of an expedition that sailed westwards to find the great Western Isles men talk about, the islands of Brazil.
But storms turned the ships back some way off the Irish coast.'
She sat a moment, staring into the heart of the fire, lost in contemplation of those lands far out in the Atlantic Ocean; those fabled shores which sailors used to swear they had glimpsed, or knew of some other ship's crew which had almost made landfall on them. (Nowadays, of course, we know that they are there, those strange, far-off lands peopled by red-skinned men. The Italian, Christopher Columbus, and Bristol's own Venetian adventurers, Giovanni Cabot and his son Sebastian, have set foot in them.)
The resin of a twig caught flame and sent up a shower of sparks. Margaret Walker jumped and laughed. 'I was day-dreaming,' she said. 'I've forgotten where I was. What point in the story had I reached?'
'You were singing the praises of Mistress Ford,' her daughter answered drily. 'The perfect, the ever-lovely Cicely.'
'And so she is!' Margaret declared roundly. 'One of the kindest, sweetest, prettiest, most devout ladies to grace this earth.' I had — then — reservations that anyone could be so perfect, but I held my tongue and allowed my hostess to continue uninterrupted.
It seemed that Master John Ford had died of a sudden apoplexy four years previously, leaving Cicely, his only child, orphaned, Dame Ford having departed this life some time earlier. John Ford had been a close friend in his youth of Giles Herepath, and had always deeply admired Edward, the elder son. And in spite of what might have been seen as Edward's mishandling of his brother, Robert, Master Ford had nonetheless left Cicely to Edward's care for the remaining years of her minority, trusting, no doubt, in his ability to handle her vast fortune with the same skill with which he managed his own business affairs.
'And Master Edward's wife was a sober, decorous woman,' Margaret told me, 'a great benefactress of the Church and altogether a fitting preceptress for such a girl as Cicely Ford.'
'And constantly ailing,' Lillis put in; her high-pitched tones, sharp as a needle, stabbing the momentary silence.
Her mother glanced reprovingly at her. 'Are you suggesting, Miss, that she was shamming?' Margaret turned to me. 'Many people thought that during her lifetime, but they had to eat their words. The poor lady died in her thirtieth year, less than nine months after Cicely went to live in the Herepath house in Small Street.'
Chapter Four
A flurry of hailstones rattled the shutters and fell through the hole in the roof to hiss among the burning twigs and sea coal, sending a thin column of smoke towards the ceiling. Margaret placed another turf on the fire, while Lillis sat upright on the mattress, pulling one of the blankets about her shoulders. The room had grown chilly and I was glad of my leather jerkin, lined with scarlet, which had been given me in exchange for goods by a widow who had fallen on lean times. It had belonged to her husband, and the warm, cochineal-dyed wool helped preserve my bodily warmth as it had once done his.
'So,' I said, 'Edward Herepath found himself again saddled with the responsibility of a minor, this time a young girl and not of his blood. What did he do about it?' 'He hired a good, sensible woman of the town to be Cicely's companion, and probably hoped that the girl's influence would have an improving effect upon his brother.'
'And did it?'
Margaret shook her head. 'Not a whit. Robert carried on his reprehensible way just as before. But…' and here she paused significantly, 'he fell in love with her. What is more, Cicely fell in love with him.'
'And yet she held no sway over him?'
'None whatsoever. He continued drinking and gambling and idling away his days, and still she would look at no other man. It seemed that nothing he did gave her a disgust of him. I have no doubt that many people tried to persuade her to give him up, especially as there were so many other young men anxious for her favours. Everyone knows that Robin Avenel, whose father bought the Herepath soap-works, is mad for love of her, and has been for many a long day. She tried to influence Robert, of course, but her gentle persuasions fell on deaf ears and, much as he loved her — or said he loved her — he never even attempted to please her in that way.'
'How do you know all this?' I asked curiously.
Margaret shrugged. 'How does anyone get to know such things? Gossip gets around, in the market-place, in the shops. Dame Freda, Cicely's companion, told friends, who told other friends, who were overheard talking by their servants.' She smiled. 'If you're thinking I might have received the information from my father, you're wrong. The one person I could reasonably have expected to give me details of the Herepaths was the one person who took no interest in them. But then, my father was incurious about the day-to-day lives of his fellow human beings. His only interest was in the state of their souls.'
'He was a pious man?'
Margaret's lips thinned until they were almost invisible.
'Oh, yes,' she answered shortly.
Lillis looked up from the huddle of blankets. 'When my father and little brother were killed, Mother's faith was sorely tested.'
Margaret glanced uneasily across her shoulder, as though afraid someone might be listening. 'Hold your tongue, girl! Do you want me accused of heresy? Not,' she added, turning to me, 'that it isn't partly the truth.
Since Adam and Colin died, I have had difficulty in believing in a just and merciful God. I've confessed it to my parish priest and he assures me that faith will come back if I pray for it. When I point out that it is almost seventeen years since they died, he says either that I am not praying hard enough or that I am not sufficiently contrite for my backsliding. Either way, it is my fault and not God's, and of course he's right.'
'No he's not,' Lillis said fiercely, her strange cat's eyes glowing in the firelight. 'A God of love wouldn't allow such things to happen.'
'Hush, hush, you stupid child!' Margaret exclaimed in an agony of apprehension. 'Do you want to bring more trouble down upon our heads than we have already? You shouldn't say such things in front of Roger.' Lillis gave her small, secret smile. 'I trust him,' she replied calmly. The childish upper lip curled to reveal her little white, very even teeth. 'He has doubts sometimes, too.’
I stared at her in consternation. How in Heaven's name did she know that? No word on the subject had ever passed between us. Was she a witch? Had she supernatural powers that she could read the secret places of my heart? Or was it that she simply had an instinctive ability to draw the right conclusions from little things that people said or did? I could never make up my mind with Lillis.
I said hurriedly: 'You may trust me, at all events, to keep your confidence.' I avoided a further glance in Lillis's direction and continued, 'You were talking, Mistress Walker, about Robert Herepath and Cicely Ford.' She nodded, relieved to turn the conversation away from dangerous topics. 'I was, although there is little else to add on that score.' She took a deep breath and settled herself more comfortably on her stool, leaning forward to hold her hands to the slumbering fire. 'Now we come to the heart of the story, to the strange happenings which began on Lady Day of last year and only ended with the death of my father before Christmas. Although to say the tale is ended is wishful thinking on my part, for until the mystery is resolved there will never be an end, not for me and Lillis, nor for Edward Herepath and Cicely Ford. Lillis, there's small ale in the jug on the table. Pour Roger a cup while I get on with the story.' Lillis did as her mother bade her, then returned to her seat on the mattress and once again burrowed inside my blankets, like a small animal going to ground. Her eyes gleamed at me from inside the cave of rough wool she had fashioned around herself. I looked away quickly and concentrated on Mistress Walker.