I paused and looked down thoughtfully at Hercules. He sat on his haunches and looked questioningly up at me.
‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘we’ll postpone this visit for a while and pay a call on Burl Hodge instead. He’ll be at the tenting grounds this time of day.’
We cut through one of the alleyways into Redcliffe Street and left the city by the Redcliffe Gate. Then we turned right, past the gravel pits and the fulling ground — where the fullers were busy soaking and pounding Master Adelard’s newly woven cloth in a mixture of river water and urine — and on to the tenting field, which overlooked the Avon and the Great Marsh on the opposite bank. There were at least two dozen or so men, working in pairs, stretching the rolls of fulled cloth on to the tall wooden tenting frames, but I recognized Burl without any difficulty as one of the two men in the farthest corner of the ground. He and his partner, a thin ascetic-looking fellow whom I remembered as a neighbour of Margaret Walker’s, had just finished fixing the selvedge of a piece of crimson cloth — the red cloth for which the city was famous throughout the country and beyond — to the crossbar of a frame, and were now struggling to fix the other selvedge to the tenterhooks of the lower and free-swinging bar, whose weight would pull and stretch the dripping material into shape as it dried and tautened.
When this had been accomplished, to the accompaniment of much grunting and swearing, Burl Hodge straightened up and turned to look at me. His shirt and hose were soaked with sweat and water from the cloth, which had showered all over him. It was an unpleasant job even on a warm summer’s day like today, when the urine smelled to high heaven, but truly awful in the bleak conditions of winter.
‘Hello, Chapman,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’ I thought his tone unusually terse, but put it down to the fact that he was busy. (Another cartload of wet bales had just been driven through the gate of the tenting field.) But when he spoke again, I realized, with a sinking heart, what the real trouble was. ‘I hear Mistress Ford has left you her house in Small Street. Congratulations! A householder, no less. You’ll be too fine for the likes of Jenny and me now, then.’
‘I’ve never heard such foolishness in all my life,’ I snapped, silently cursing the speed with which news and gossip travelled around this city. ‘I’ll still be a chapman, peddling goods all round the countryside to keep body and soul together. All right! I don’t deny it’ll make a difference, but with my growing family, I’d have had to rent a bigger cottage sooner or later, anyway.’
‘Ah, but in future you won’t have to spend money on rent, though, will you?’ His honest eyes were full of envy and he rubbed his raw red hands — hands that in the winter were covered with chilblains — up and down his thighs, snagging his already torn hose on a broken fingernail. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’ He nodded at his companion, by now impatiently shifting from one foot to the other. ‘We can’t afford to stand around idle for long. Master Adelard likes to get his money’s worth, like Alderman Weaver before him.’
I could see that he wasn’t going to be easily reconciled to the idea of my new-found prosperity, and it was a chilling intimation of what I could expect from many of the people whose friendship I valued. I could have pointed out that there was many a slip between cup and lip, and that nothing was settled until probate was granted, but I could tell he was in no mood to listen. And I had an uncomfortable feeling that I should have felt the same if the circumstances had been reversed.
‘It’s about Walter Godsmark,’ I said. ‘You told his mother that you’d seen him in the Green Lattis on the Tuesday evening before he was found drowned. It must have been the same night he met his death.’
‘Well?’
‘John Overbecks also told me that he’d seen Walter in the Lattis that evening. Shared a table with him, or so he said. Did you see them together?’
‘I might have done.’
‘Yes or no?’ Irritation with his still-hostile attitude made me abrupt.
There was a warning glint in his eyes that hinted at his readiness for a bout of fisticuffs if I overstepped the mark, but he answered levelly enough.
‘Well, yes then. I saw them together. They were sitting at the same table.’
‘Was the Lattis crowded?’
Burl shrugged. ‘I’d say about normal for a Tuesday evening. Full, but empty stools here and there. What’s this all leading up to, Roger?’ At least he was calling me Roger now and not the cold, impersonal Chapman of his greeting.
‘Bear with me a little longer,’ I pleaded. ‘Was Walter very drunk?’
Burl glanced at his companion. ‘What would you say, cousin?’ (I recollected that, as well as being Margaret Walker’s neighbour, the man was also a kinsman of Burl’s. But then, practically everyone in Redcliffe was related to everyone else in one degree or another.) ‘Was Walter Godsmark very drunk last Tuesday?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Can’t rightly remember,’ was the taciturn response. Burl grunted. ‘He was drunk most nights, but I didn’t concern myself overmuch with him. Godsmark was a bully and a rogue, and I can’t pretend I’m sorry he’s dead. So, what’s your interest?’
‘I’ve been wondering about the manner of his death, that’s all. Whether or not it really was an accident.’
Burl turned towards the cart, where his fellow workers were already manhandling the soaking bales of cloth on to hurdles, ready to drag them across to their respective frames.
‘Well, all I can say is that if someone did do away with him, then he has my gratitude and the gratitude of the whole city. Henry! We’ll be accused of shirking in a minute, if we don’t get over there fast.’ Burl nodded briefly to me. ‘I daresay we’ll be seeing one another around the town.’
He walked off across the tenting field, followed by the shambling figure of his cousin, and, in spite of the day’s warmth, I was left feeling chilled to the bone.
‘Come on, Hercules,’ I said, jerking the rope. ‘Let’s go and visit someone who will be pleased with our good fortune.’
‘You’re going to have to get used to people’s resentment,’ my former mother-in-law announced briskly, when I had told her and Adela of my recent encounter with Burl Hodge.
Adam’s tantrum appeared to have tired him out, for he was sleeping peacefully in his little cart, while my wife, perched on a stool, gently wheeled him to and fro. Nicholas and Elizabeth, after their first effusive greeting, prompted by the hope of sweetmeats, had retired to the back of the cottage in a huff once they discovered that my pouch was empty.
‘I do not know how these things get around so quickly,’ Adela complained. ‘It was only yesterday that that poor girl made her new will, and we ourselves knew nothing of it until this morning. I’ve never known a town where everyone knows so much, so soon, about everyone else’s business. I’m sure Hereford wasn’t half so bad.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ Margaret answered shortly. She could never tolerate any criticism of her native city, unless, that is, she made it herself. ‘But the fact remains, that you must expect people to be envious.’ She hesitated, then continued, ‘There might also be. . speculation.’
‘What sort of speculation?’ Adela and I asked with one voice.
‘Well. . You know. About Roger and — er — Mistress Ford.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ I demanded hotly.
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just trying to put you on your guard. I mean. . Think about it.’ She was growing flustered. ‘Why would Mistress Ford leave her house to you, Roger?’
‘She was fond of him,’ my wife put in quietly. ‘She was grateful to him for finding out the truth about Robert Herepath’s death. She knew that we were overcrowded in that cottage. She was going to rent us the house as soon as the present tenants quit, in any case. That’s probably what gave her the idea of leaving it to Roger when she died. She just didn’t know it would be so soon.’