‘As you’re here now, you can look after the hound. He doesn’t like the market and he gets under people’s feet.’
I groaned, but felt I had no option but to take him with me. He didn’t care for being left alone in the cottage, and I was determined to show myself virtuous, spending the rest of the morning doing some work. In the event, I got carried away with a sense of my own rectitude, and occupied the remainder of the day walking as far as Keynsham and back, doing good business not just amongst the villagers, but also with the people I met on the road. For dinner, Hercules and I shared a pie, bought from an itinerant pieman who joined us for a while, and who was so amused by the dog’s antics chasing rabbits, that he gave us another pie free of charge.
The long walk was what I needed to clear my mind of my grief for Cicely Ford, and to come to terms with the fact that I had always been a little in love with her, ever since our first meeting almost five years ago; knowledge that I had buried deep inside me until last week, when I had kissed her. This love had nothing to do with my love for Adela, which was built on the enduring rocks of mutual trust and affection and intense physical desire. My feelings for Cicely had been more akin to the courtly love that had flourished a century and more ago at the courts first of Aquitaine and then of England, achieving its full flowering in the resurrection of the Arthurian myths under the third Edward. It was an insubstantial love, light as thistledown, but none the less real for all that.
It was past suppertime before Hercules and I finally reached home again, with a much depleted pack and pockets weighed down with coins from what we both considered to be a splendid day’s work. After a long drink from his bowl of water, Hercules prostrated himself on his bed, making it plain that it was he who had done the lion’s share of the work and that I had been a mere hanger-on, an estimate of the situation Adela was happy to go along with, feeding him first and making much of him. I endeavoured to enlist Adam’s support, picking him up and snuggling his crumpled little face close to mine. Unfortunately, I needed a shave and he expressed his disapproval of this bristly apparition in his customary fashion — with an earsplitting roar.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ exclaimed my wife, laughing and seizing our son to soothe him. ‘Sit down and I’ll have supper on the table in just a minute.’ She regarded my boots, which were thick with dust. ‘You must have walked a long way.’
‘Keynsham and back,’ I said virtuously. ‘It was hot, but not as hot as it has been. I think the worst of the heat is over.’
‘But we want it fine for Saturday,’ she protested, returning Adam to his crib. ‘Please God the weather won’t break until after the Lammas Feast. Don’t forget you’re going to fetch the children from Margaret’s on Friday.’
‘I haven’t forgotten.’ My mouth was watering at the sight and smell of the two bowls of mutton stew she had just placed on the table.
Adam had dropped off to sleep again, Hercules was snoring, lost no doubt in dreams of rabbiting and chasing sheep, and I was looking forward to an evening dozing out of doors in the sun and, later, when it grew too dark to do anything else, cuddling up to Adela in bed. .
My plans were rudely shattered by a knock on the door. I opened it to find a small, unknown and unsavoury urchin standing on my doorstep.
‘You Roger Chapman?’ he asked. When I nodded, he continued, ‘Sergeant Manifold wants to see you. Says it’s very urgent.’
‘Where?’ I yelled as he was turning away, apparently satisfied that his mission was accomplished.
‘Oh! Yeah!’ He consulted his memory, screwing up his narrow, weatherbeaten face with the effort. He picked a pustule on his chin. ‘Got it! Saint Nicholas Backs, corner of Ballance Street.’ I gave him a coin from my pouch, which he clenched in a dirt-encrusted fist, adding cockily, ‘My name’s Wilfred. Of Bristol.’ He delivered the title with a regal air.
That made me laugh so much that I let him go without further questioning and went back indoors. I told Adela of Richard’s message, and only then began to find it a little odd and unsatisfactory. The corner of Ballance Street on Saint Nicholas Backs seemed a strange place to ask for a meeting. Nevertheless, I could not afford to ignore the summons. It occurred to me that the Breton ship might have returned to the city on the afternoon tide. If so, it was an event I had been waiting and hoping for myself. The master might be able to enlighten us as to the stranger’s identity.
‘Take care,’ Adela said anxiously, as she handed me my cudgel.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I assured her, returning the kiss she gave me with interest.
But as I passed through the Frome Gate and strode up Broad Street, I knew the stirrings of uneasiness. I should have demanded more details of Master Cock-up-spotty. I looked to see if I could find him, but in vain: he had already vanished into the warren of sordid alleyways which was his natural home. I continued on my way to the bottom of High Street and turned right on to Saint Nicholas Backs. There were still a lot of people about, a ship was unloading at the quayside — although not the one I had hoped to see — and there was a strong smell of fish on the air. I should have felt reassured, but, for some inexplicable reason, my uneasiness increased.
Richard had not yet arrived, but, as a sheriff’s officer, he could easily have been delayed. I stood on the corner of Ballance Street and waited, leaning on my cudgel. Houses crowded me in on either side, with their deeply recessed, dark doorways. I couldn’t move into the middle of the street because of the (at that time of day) overflowing, stinking drain. I was peering out over the Backs, looking for Richard, when some instinct, born of my general nervousness, warned me of danger. I half turned, sensing someone behind me — and so received the blow that was aimed at the crown of my head, and meant to kill me, on the right-hand side of my face.
Nineteen
Although a glancing blow, it nevertheless knocked me out.
Fortunately for me — or so I learned later — one of the passers-by on the quayside saw what happened and, in an unwonted display of public-spiritedness, rushed to my assistance, calling on others for help, and a little knot of Good Samaritans soon formed around me. One of these was Dick Hodge, on his way home to supper, so that I was immediately identified and my address supplied. A blanket was fetched from a nearby house, I was rolled on to it and four of the heftier men, taking a corner each, carried me home to Lewin’s Mead.
I remember Adela’s white face bending over me as I was lowered on to our mattress, but nothing after that until the local physician’s measured tones pierced my consciousness, assuring her that I had suffered no lasting damage and that a period of rest was all that was needed to restore me to my usual robust state of health. At the time, just before I drifted off once more into oblivion, I thought him a fool who didn’t know his business. But I awoke next morning feeling very much better.
Adela was lying beside me, propped on one elbow, watching me anxiously.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ I said, aware that the right-hand side of my face was extremely sore and stiff. ‘What do I look like?’
She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘If you can worry about your appearance, you must be improving. You have a black eye and your cheekbone’s badly bruised, but I’ll make you a primrose leaf poultice later on. That should take some of the heat out of the swelling. Also, the doctor left some lettuce pellets for you to take to ease the aches and pains. Roger!’ She put her arms around me carefully, but couldn’t resist giving me a little squeeze. ‘Do you know who did this to you?’