I noticed the ring which adorned his left thumb immediately, but it was some while before my hunger was sufficiently assuaged to allow my attention to wander for any length of time. When it finally did, however, I saw how the candlelight caught the ring and made it sparkle, and I began to suspect that tiny diamonds were set in the duller lustre of the gold. This fact intrigued me because it was surely too expensive a bauble for a man of my companion’s worldly standing, even if he had accumulated some money over the years.
‘A very fine thumb ring,’ I commented, nodding towards it.
Bevis Godsey stopped eating and held his left hand close to the candle flame, spreading his fingers and regarding the ring admiringly.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said. He turned his hand so that its back was towards me, and I could see that the gold of the ring had been worked into an intricate pattern before being studded with the gems. ‘Look closer,’ he urged, ‘and you’ll note that the setting is in the form of my initials.’ He advanced his hand closer to my face. ‘There you are. B. G. Bevis Godsey. What do you think of that?’
What I thought, with a sudden, excited lurch of my stomach, was that I had seen the same arrangement of those two letters a day or so ago, in a hat brooch with a pendant, teardrop pearl; an ornament that was now nestling deep in the belt-pouch at my waist.
I reached out and took hold of my companion’s hand, drawing it nearer to me, and my examination revealed that I had not been mistaken.
‘A fine jewel, indeed,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. ‘Was it made for you? A present, perhaps?’
He hesitated before replying, and his eyes could not quite bring themselves to meet mine.
‘It … it belonged to my father,’ he stammered. ‘And his father before him. A family heirloom, in fact.’ He must have seen my expression of incredulity, because he flushed painfully and jerked his wrist free of my grasp. ‘It was given to my grandfather in thanks,’ he said, ‘by a gentleman to whom he had supplied some especially fine fruit for a special meal that he was giving. It so happened that their initials were the same.’
It must have sounded as lame an explanation to his own ears as it did to mine, and he looked even more uncomfortable than he had done hitherto. But, wisely, he decided that further embroidery of so improbable a story could only do more harm than good, and folded his lips together in defiant silence.
To his obvious relief, I made no attempt, for the time being at least, to press him further on the subject, and steered the conversation into less contentious waters. But although we chatted easily enough of this and that, and I was treated, inevitably, to his views on the present state of affairs between the King and his brother, the Duke of Clarence, my thoughts were busy elsewhere.
That the ring, like the hat brooch, had belonged to Beric Gifford, I had few doubts, but whereas I felt certain in my own mind that the latter had been accidentally lost, the thumb ring might well have been given to Bevis Godsey for a service rendered or to ensure his silence, or, in the absence of ready cash, in payment of a debt; and the coincidence of the two men’s initials being the same would make the gift that much more acceptable. But first, for my personal satisfaction, I had to make sure that Bevis Godsey’s story of his grandfather’s acquisition of the ring was false.
This, in the event, proved to be much easier than I had anticipated, for he was a man seemingly unused to lying, and, having made up the story on the spur of the moment in order to combat my patent disbelief, he had failed to lay any foundations in his memory for it. An hour and some several cups of ale later, I managed, by devious means, to bring the talk round to the subject of given names, and the predilection of most parents for having their male offspring christened after husband or father or grandfather, thus sowing confusion in nearly every family.
‘No doubt, you were so called for that reason,’ I added with apparent innocence. ‘Bevis is an uncommon name.’
‘It’s from an old Norman word, meaning “bull”,’ my companion said proudly. He went on, ‘My mother heard it somewhere or the other, and liked it. It was entirely her choice, and had nothing to do with either my father or grandfather. They were not so baptized.’
‘You surprise me,’ I lied.
Bevis shook his head reminiscently. ‘My father always complained that it was far too fancy a name. He and his father were both called John, which, he maintained, being the name of Our Lord’s most beloved disciple, was good enough for any man.’
He seemed completely unaware of the fact that he had just destroyed his explanation about how his family had acquired the thumb ring, and continued to smile at me, more than a little drunk by now, from the opposite side of the table.
To make assurance doubly sure, I said, ‘Your grandfather was a fruit grower, you say, as you are. Who was the gentleman he served?’
Again, no warning bells sounded in my companion’s sleepy head; no recollection, however hazy, of the story of the matching initials.
‘He was one of the very last of the Oxton family,’ he answered. ‘A distant kinsman, I believe, of the Oxtons who were Lords of the Manor of Modbury after the de Valletorts and before Champernownes.’
‘Ah, yes! I’ve heard of them.’ I rose and stretched my arms above my head. ‘I’m bone-weary. I think I’ll go to bed, if you’ve no objections?’
Bevis also got to his feet, having swallowed the dregs of his ale.
‘I’m ready to join you. I don’t think we shall see Brother Anselm tonight, after all, and it’s been a long day. I was abroad before first light this morning. Come with me, and I’ll show you where to sleep.’
I followed him into a neighbouring room, where two straw-filled mattresses had been laid side by side on the floor and covered with rough woollen blankets. Bevis and I appeared to be the only guests staying in the hostelry that night, for which mercy I was thankful.
I began pulling off my boots. ‘Which route did you travel today,’ I asked, ‘to get here?’
And now, unexpectedly, he grew wary. In the flickering radiance of the candle that we had brought with us from the ale-room, I could see the sudden tension in his face. Those alarm bells which had failed to alert him twenty minutes since, were now ringing loudly.
‘Oh,’ he answered vaguely, ‘I kept to the usual paths. They’re safest.’
I remembered something he had mentioned earlier. ‘You said that you’ve left your cart on the mainland. What about your horse? Where is it stabled?’
‘It’s — er — it’s a handcart,’ he replied as casually as he could, but I heard the note of chagrin in his voice.
I mentally reassessed his position in the social scale, as he must have known I should. Bevis was not as well off as I had supposed. He did not own a horse, and it was therefore highly probable that neither his father nor his grandfather had done so either. This information made it even less likely that the latter, presented with a valuable gift such as the thumb ring, would not have sold it and turned it into money. I needed no further proof. I was totally convinced by now that the ring had been, until recently, the property of Beric Gifford. But where had Bevis met him, and under what circumstances?