Only Anthony, among those at the top table, appeared to be enjoying himself, eating greedily and occasionally smiling to himself in a way consciously intended to aggravate anyone foolish enough to display an interest in him. As this included everyone except his mother and the steward, both of whom studiously ignored him, he could be said to have achieved his object.
It was still raining, but less heavily than it had been when the storm first broke. Indeed, gleams of sunlight were beginning to pierce the clouds and make patterns among the rushes. One of the servants, under Dame Audrea’s direction, pushed the shutters wide again, allowing the air to flow into the hall. As everyone rose from table, the Bignells began to mutter about taking their leave. Anthony made no effort to detain them.
‘You must see Rose first,’ Dame Audrea said, and offered to conduct them to the Micheldevers’ chamber.
Her words were interrupted by the arrival of a lay brother from the cathedral, seeking hospitality. The main track to Wells, he explained, was flooded and a narrow plank bridge across a stream had been washed away by the violence of the recent storm. He himself was on horseback and would be able to continue his journey later, when the waters had subsided a little, by using the ford a mile or so upstream, but he would advise anyone on foot to delay their journey until tomorrow. The man having delivered and been thanked for his warning, George Applegarth conducted him to the kitchens, where a meal would be found for him from the remains of our own.
This news, I could see, left the Bellknapps in a quandary; whether to offer the butcher and his family horses from their stables or invite them to remain at Croxcombe for the night. The two donkeys would hardly be able to carry the three of them, and horseflesh was precious; too precious to entrust to comparative strangers in the dangers of a swollen stream.
I watched these considerations flit across Anthony’s face as he silently deliberated the problem, but it seemed to me there was more going on behind that polite façade than was immediately obvious. In the end, he came to a sudden decision.
‘You must stay the night, Master Bignell, you and your family. Mother, will you see that the guest chamber is prepared?’
Dame Audrea flushed at this casual command, for all that it was framed in the shape of a question, but Mistress Bignell was too busy expressing their thanks to notice her host’s rudeness.
‘For you must know, Master Bellknapp, that Thomas has never learned to swim, and has a great dread of water in general, and floods in particular. Why, walking here this morning, he found it quite an ordeal to walk across that narrow bridge, for there’s no rail to it, and his balance isn’t what it was, is it my dear?’
The butcher reluctantly agreed, although he plainly would have preferred his wife to be less forthright about his limitations. Nevertheless, he, too, thanked the Bellknapps for their proffered hospitality. Only Ronan appeared less than happy with the prospect of a day spent on his best behaviour instead of being able to sneak away for some Sunday fun with his friends.
He had good reason. The day dragged. Rose recovered sufficiently to join her family, walking with them by the moat, attending yet another of the chaplain’s sermons, preached in the chapel at midday, or chatting quietly to her mother, sitting on a bench in the sunshine watching the swans. The board games that had passed the time so pleasantly between breakfast and dinner were not suggested again. Indeed, Anthony disappeared for the rest of the day, taking Humphrey Attleborough with him, so I rescued Hercules from the kitchen and took him for another walk in Croxcombe woods in the hope of encountering Hamo Gough once more. But he, also, was making himself scarce. His hut stood empty, the fire smouldered away unattended and there was no sign of him anywhere in the area surrounding Hangman’s Oak. The pit he had been digging in the morning had been hastily filled in and the spade left propped against the tree; but although I called several times, the charcoal burner, whether he heard me or not, failed to materialize.
I contemplated the ground around the oak and prodded it with my cudgel, but in spite of the rain, it was too well protected under the trees to have more than a surface softness. Hercules assisted me to the best of his ability, snuffling and rootling at the base of the tree, scrabbling furiously with his paws until, suddenly tiring of what seemed to be a pointless exercise, he sidled off about his own concerns. Eventually I, too, got bored, stretched my length on the damp woodland floor and was almost immediately asleep …
It was one of those dreams that I experience from time to time, when I’m aware that I am dreaming and can watch myself almost as an onlooker, detached and impersonal. I know the dream is trying to tell me something and that it will be up to my waking self to discover what it is. In this instance, I was back in the hall of Croxcombe Manor, but it was night-time and dark. There was moonlight seeping in around the frames of the shutters and, at first, I thought I was alone. Then I had a growing feeling that someone was there with me; I gradually became conscious of a woman’s shadowy figure standing slightly behind me. I couldn’t see her face and was unable to turn my head to do so. But in spite of this, I knew who she was without being told. I knew that she was Jenny Applegarth.
She remained motionless for what seemed like an age, before suddenly staggering backwards and falling to the floor, as if she had been struck by some unseen hand. I attempted to go to her aid, although I knew perfectly well that I couldn’t move, being chained by the rules of my dream to the spot where I stood. But then the steward was kneeling beside her — in spite of the fact that I had neither seen nor heard him enter the hall — his right arm in a sling. With his left hand, he was shaking her by one shoulder, but as he opened his mouth to speak, the scene dissolved and reformed, becoming George Applegarth’s private chamber. Anthony Bellknapp was questioning the steward about Jenny’s murder. He was going on and on, while all his questions were parried with a stubborn politeness that hid a deep and inexpressible sadness, seeing which, I stepped forward to intervene … And was at once wide awake, looking up into the branches of the oak, while Hercules blew hotly in my left ear and licked my face, indicating that he had finished his business and was ready to move on.
‘What is it? No more rabbits around here that you haven’t scared shitless?’ I asked, heaving myself to my feet and all the time trying desperately to hang on to the rags of my dream. But although it took no great effort to recall it in total, I was at a loss how to interpret it, so stored it away in my memory to think about later when Hercules wasn’t threatening to trip me up with his silly antics. I seized my cudgel and began walking back along the half-hidden track that led eventually to the edge of Croxcombe woods.
As we approached the clearing where Hamo Gough had his hut, I could see him crouched over his fire, feeding in more twigs and bits of coppiced timber from a basket on the ground, and which he had evidently collected during the course of the day. I was just going to hail him, when another man emerged from the trees opposite, calling his name. In the ordinary course of events, there would have been nothing in this to surprise me: there must have been plenty of people in the neighbourhood who knew the charcoal burner well enough to exchange greetings with him. But what pulled me up short and made me grab Hercules with a terse injunction to be quiet — he always understands when I’m in earnest, and I could feel him quivering with silent excitement under my arm — was the fact that the newcomer was the ‘lay brother’ from Glastonbury who had warned us all of the effects of the storm on the road to Wells.