Adela sank wearily into our one good chair, loosened the lacing of her bodice and lifted her younger son to her breast.
‘I give in,’ she sighed. ‘Now they’ve clapped eyes on the wretched animal, they’ll never let him go without a fuss. And I’m too tired to stand up to them.’
My former mother-in-law fixed me with a look that plainly said I should do battle with our offspring on my wife’s behalf, but I had grown attached to the dog. I knew how short and brutal his life would be as a stray, and I was indebted to him for saving mine.
‘All right,’ I told the children. ‘He can stay, as long as you promise me you won’t make his life a misery, and save some scraps from your own meals to help feed him.’ They nodded eagerly, although I didn’t trust them an inch. They would have promised to be on their best behaviour from then until next Christmas if they had thought the dog’s survival depended on it. I went on, ‘I’ve named him Hercules, because he isn’t, but he thinks he is.’ I saw my daughter’s mouth open and hurriedly laid a finger on her lips. ‘I’ll explain another time, Bess, but just now, you and Nick are going back to bed, while Hercules and I go for a bathe in the river. We could both do with sluicing down.’
Margaret and Adela agreed with such wholehearted enthusiasm that I knew they were dying to talk about me behind my back. My general fecklessness and lack of backbone would provide fertile ground for the next hour, at least. So I tucked Hercules under one arm, took my cudgel in my free hand and departed as quickly as possible.
‘One of the first lessons you have to learn in this life,’ I told my new friend, as his tongue explored the nap of my jerkin, ‘is that when your womenfolk turn hostile, it’s as well to beat a swift retreat.’
I walked through the Broad Meads and turned down by the Dominican friary to the banks of the Frome, opposite the weir and the castle mill. Behind the mill, the castle walls towered up like cliffs, and I could see members of the garrison patrolling the battlements, small and far away. I set Hercules on his feet, and he followed me as I scrambled down the bank to a secluded spot I knew of; a kind of little foreshore, fringed with willows, tall spears of loosestrife, cuckoo plants and marsh marigolds.
I stripped off and entered the water, which, after a day of hot sunshine, was still faintly warm. It caressed my skin like silk. Hercules remained hesitating on the bank, looking suspicious. I found a floating stick and hurled it as far as I could upstream. He dashed in after it, gave one or two outraged barks, then, overcoming his fear of this unknown element, began to swim strongly. Before long, he was enjoying himself as we got rid of our fleas and the day’s grime together.
I rolled on to my back and began floating. Hercules paddled after me, then decided that he had had enough and swam back to keep guard over my clothes. He shook himself vigorously, showering them with drops of water. I shouted at him, so, to pay me out for my ingratitude, he abandoned watch and disappeared into the long grasses and abundant vegetation that bordered the river. I wasn’t worried. He had more sense than to abandon me, now he’d found me. I closed my eyes against the still bright rays of the setting sun.
I must have dozed off for a second, because I suddenly became aware of Hercules barking furiously. I forced myself upright and started treading water, scanning the bank as I did so. There was no sign of him, but I could see a violent agitation of the reeds and grasses some three or four yards from the little foreshore where I had left my clothes. I began swimming towards the disturbance, incurring on my way the wrath of two brothers from the friary, who had come down to the river for some after-supper fishing, hoping, no doubt, to augment the brothers’ meagre breakfast with a couple of carp.
‘If that’s your dog, my son,’ one of them called piously, ‘strangle the little bugger! He’s frightening the fucking fish.’
I had long ceased to be shocked by the holy fraternity’s knowledge, and use, of uncouth language, so merely waved in acknowledgement. Hercules was not difficult to locate, but in case I was in any doubt of his whereabouts, his indignant face suddenly appeared framed by a clump of meadow sweet and crowned by a trailing stalk of bindweed. I hauled myself out of the water and on to the bank, shivering a little as the rapidly cooling air caressed my bare skin.
‘What’s this all about?’ I asked severely. ‘What’s up, eh? These two brothers from the friary would like to mince you into fish bait.’
Hercules was unimpressed and started growling, nosing among the profusion of rushes, starred with yellow iris, that grew at the water’s edge. Using both hands, I ruthlessly flattened them — and saw what it was that had so upset the dog.
A man’s body was floating face down in the river, moving gently with the current that had carried it this far. But it was unable to make further progress because of something that had entangled its legs below the surface of the water. A clump of weed, growing close to the bank, its coiling tendrils just visible, appeared to have trapped it, holding it down. I crossed myself, but didn’t flinch. A drowned person was not an unusual sight in these parts. Bristol’s two rivers, the Avon and the Frome, claimed their fair share of victims during most months of any year; mainly drunks who slipped and missed their footing after a convivial evening’s drinking at one of the city’s many taverns.
I hushed the dog, who now seemed content to let me take charge. He lay down, nose on paws, watching with interest while I reached out and hauled the body as close as possible to dry ground. Then, balancing on my haunches, I grabbed the body under both armpits and heaved with all my might, at the same time throwing myself backwards among the grasses, so that the entangling weed was suddenly uprooted, and the dead man thrown forward, almost on top of me. Cursing, I struggled out from underneath his weight and turned him face uppermost.
Even before I did so, I knew that there was something familiar about him. The shape of the head, the way the hair was cut in a straight line across the back of the neck, the rough homespun jerkin, cinched by an extra-wide, important-looking leather belt, the fingernails bitten down to the quick, the big, powerful hands — all these, together and separately, were nudging my memory and prompting me to recognition.
It was Walter Godsmark.
Even so, in spite of my expectation, it still gave me a jolt to see him lying there, so obviously dead, a young man who had been so brimming with life and energy when I had spoken to him only yesterday. There were no marks of violence on the body: Walter had simply fallen in the river and drowned. Simply? Coming so soon after the murder of his master, how could I be sure of that? I shivered and Hercules, catching something of my mood, whimpered, inching foward on his belly and nudging me with his cold, wet nose. I smoothed his head reassuringly.
‘Good dog!’ I pointed to the corpse. ‘Guard,’ I ordered. ‘I won’t be long.’
To his credit, he did as he was told. I slithered into the water again and swam back to where I had left my clothes, making certain on the way that the friars were still at their fishing, in spite of the breeze that had sprung up with the waning light. I dried myself roughly with my shirt, then scrambled, not without difficulty, into it and my remaining clothes, before mounting the bank and running to intercept the brothers, who, having caught nothing, were preparing to pack up and return to the friary. I seized the older man’s arm.
‘Dead body,’ I panted. ‘Over there, by the water’s edge. I know him. Young fellow called Godsmark. Drowned.’
The two Dominicans, glad of a little excitement at the end of an uneventful day, followed me almost eagerly. Hercules growled at them and, mindful of my instructions, would have prevented their intervention if he could. I had to clap them both on the back and introduce them as friends before he would allow either of them near poor Walter’s corpse. He was proving to be an excellent watchdog.