A thin-faced man with a watery, defeated eye answered the door. He was accompanied by an equally thin child, about ten years of age, whose white slip of a face beneath a thatch of dark, curly hair registered a lively curiosity and a determination not to be left out of whatever it was that might be going on. It took me some time to explain what I wanted because of frequent, querulous interruptions from the old lady in the bed on the far side of the room; but when the gist of my enquiry eventually sank in, the boy, without waiting for permission from his father, caught hold of my hand and dragged me indoors.
‘I saw them,’ he said, hopping up and down on one stick-like leg. ‘I saw them.’
‘Who did you see?’ I asked, crouching down beside him and gripping him by his bony shoulders in an effort to make him stand still. It was like holding a little bird.
‘What’s that? What’s going on, John?’ chirrupped the voice from the bed. A cane thumped the bare beaten-earth floor.
‘I’ll tell you later, Mother. Just lie still,’ begged her harassed son, turning his attention back to me and the child. ‘Henry, what are you saying? You didn’t see anything. You’re making things up again. Don’t tell lies.’
‘I did see them!’ Henry stamped his feet in their worn, but carefully mended little boots. ‘I tried telling you, but you were too busy talking to that fat woman with the eggs. After, it was too late. There was no point in wasting my breath.’
The elder Master Longstaff made a threatening move, hand raised, towards his offspring, but this had no effect whatsoever on the ebullient Henry, who wriggled from my grasp and danced out of reach, waggling his fingers in his ears.
‘Henry,’ I pleaded, straightening up, ‘tell me what you saw.’
‘Two women,’ he answered excitedly. ‘One of ’em had her skirts hoisted right up round her waist.’ His eyes sparkled lasciviously at some secret recollection. (I could guess what. I’d once been ten years old myself.) ‘They were dragging something across the mud. I couldn’t see what exactly, ’cause it had started to rain again, but I thought it might be a bundle of old clothes they didn’t want.’
I made no comment, but I was tired of being mistaken for a parcel of old rags. There was no help for it: I should have to sharpen up my sartorial image.
‘What did the women do with this bundle?’ I asked.
‘They towed it into the river until they were nearly up to their knees in water, then they shoved and prodded it as far out into the current as it would go before wading back ashore. The one who’d hitched up her dress, well it had worked loose from her girdle and fallen down by now.’ Henry sounded disappointed. ‘She was as soaking wet as the other one.’
‘Was there a man with them? Or anywhere about?’ He regarded me blankly. ‘Right,’ I said, taking his silence to mean no. ‘And after that, what happened?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Dunno. They vanished. Into the house, I reckon. I’d given up trying to tell Father what I’d seen by then, so I lost interest. It wasn’t until the ferryman began shouting and waving and dragging you out of the river that I realized what they must really have been up to.’
‘What’s he saying? What’s he been up to?’ the old lady demanded agitatedly, brandishing her cane to the danger of life and limb.
Her son ignored her and, making a lunge at the boy, roared, ‘Why in the Virgin’s name didn’t you tell me all this at the time, you stupid little brat? Didn’t you stop to think it might have been important? You need a good leathering, that you do!’
Henry skipped behind me as I was the biggest object in the room and therefore afforded the greatest protection. His one aim was to avoid physical chastisement; otherwise, he was not at all put out by his parent’s disapproval.
‘I’m fed up with talking to you when you never listen to me,’ he piped. ‘Ever since Mother died, you take no notice of anything I say. I might as well not be here.’
The fight went out of the older man. His hands dropped to his sides. Tears welled up in the dark eyes.
‘He’s right,’ he admitted sadly. ‘I always confided everything to Margery. I miss her. Henry’s just a child.’
I drew Henry out from behind me.
‘Oh, he’s more than that,’ I said. ‘I think you’d find him rewarding enough to talk to if only you’d make the effort.’ I smiled down at the boy, who grinned back cheekily. ‘Thank you, Henry. You’ve proved the truth of a story no one else believed in. If I asked you to repeat what you’ve just said in front of a Sheriff’s Officer, sometime or another, would you be willing to do so? You wouldn’t be frightened?’
‘Of course not.’ His thin chest swelled with self-importance.
I looked for confirmation to his father.
Jack Longstaff nodded. ‘He doesn’t know the meaning of fear … We live on the other side of the river, in the manor of Ashton-Leigh. Anyone over there’ll tell you how to find us.’
I thanked both him and his son, then turned towards the old lady in the bed, who was regarding me malevolently.
‘My gratitude for your hospitality, ma’am,’ I said.
‘What?’ she screeched in frustration. ‘Who is it? What’s he saying? Why doesn’t anyone tell me what’s going on? I’m not deaf and dumb, you know! I’m not a fool!’
I took my leave, having pressed my remaining half groat into Henry Longstaff’s receptive little fist, and made my way back towards the ‘murder’ house. I must think about returning home if I were to reach Bristol in time for a belated supper. I was tired: it had been many long hours since I had replenished my pack. And I was yet to clap eyes on Elizabeth Alefounder, although I now had no doubt at all that she was the woman in the brown sarcenet. But at least now I had a witness to the fact that I had been set upon and nearly murdered. Richard Manifold would have to listen to me — he could no longer afford to discount my story. I should be completely vindicated in the eyes of the law and in those of my womenfolk.
I whistled tunelessly to myself as I walked along the track.
Someone was lying in wait for me. Someone who was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible behind the stump of wind-blasted tree. I slowed my step and grinned.
‘Come out and show yourself properly, Master Plummer,’ I called as I got within hailing distance. ‘You’re getting too fat to hide behind a tree trunk of such meagre proportions.’
‘Will you keep your voice down,’ he hissed as I drew nearer. He made no attempt to come into the open.
‘What in heaven’s name are you up to?’ I demanded, rounding the tree to confront him. ‘I saw you in the alehouse, trying to look like a part of the furniture. It doesn’t work, you know. In spite of that noisome jerkin and two days’ growth of stubble, you still look what you are. A King’s man.’
‘That’s only because you know who I am,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve a reputation at court as a master of disguise.’ I tried to maintain my gravity. ‘Moreover,’ Timothy added, deeply affronted, ‘I am not getting fat.’
‘Of course not,’ I soothed. ‘Just a little bit plumper than you used to be. A plumper Plummer, shall we say? Now, do you want to speak to me for some reason?’
‘Yes, but not here, where every fool in creation can see us.’
This was a gross exaggeration. Even on a hot summer’s afternoon, Rownham Passage was hardly West Cheap on a festival day. Nor even on a wet Sunday morning, if it came to that. But I curbed my impatience with such posturing.
‘All right,’ I humoured him. ‘There’s a hut just behind you, where I’ve stabled my horse. We can go in there.’
‘A horse?’ he queried as I led the way. ‘You have a horse? But, of course! You’ve come up in the world since last we met. Or so I’ve been told.’
‘I’ve inherited a house,’ I answered shortly, pushing open the door and leading the way inside. The cob whinnied, evidently pleased to know that he hadn’t been forgotten. ‘But no money to go with it. I still have to earn my daily bread by the sweat of my brow. And the horse is hired from the local stable.’