Chapter Fourteen
I walked back across the slowly widening causeway of sand that linked Burrow Island to the mainland at ebb tide. Above me, the gulls wheeled and called, or floated aimlessly like scraps of torn parchment, while oystercatchers and redshanks waded in the shallows, pecking hungrily at whatever flotsam had been thrown up by the sea. Ahead of me, thin grasses crested dunes that gave shelter to a cluster of slate-roofed cottages, built just above the high-water line. Boats lay upturned on rocks veined with yellow seaweed, fishing nets stretched across them to dry. And I knew that on the far side of the headland was another fishing community, larger, because more protected, than the one directly in my line of vision, where I could already see and hear signs of life. Smoke rose into the still air through the holes in the cottage roofs and early morning sounds threaded the silence.
I had been in no hurry to reach the mainland, my feet dragging as my thoughts raced, trying to assess the significance of what Brother Anselm had told me. Bevis Godsey was related to Katherine Glover, which solved the problem of how he was acquainted, or had come into contact, with Beric Gifford. It also explained why he would be willing to do some service or favour for a man whom he must know to be wanted for cold-blooded murder. What was less clear was why he had been paid with Beric’s thumb ring rather than with money from Berenice Gifford’s purse.
Enlightenment dawned with the realization that Bevis himself might well have chosen this method of recompense. Such a possession would give him status, confer on him an aura of that prosperity which had, in fact, eluded him. At the same time, he could not admit how he came by the ring without revealing Beric’s presence close at hand, so a story had to be concocted for friends and neighbours that would satisfy their curiosity. But the story with which I, a nosy stranger, had been regaled had been a spur-of-the-moment tale, neither well thought out nor well rehearsed, fading from his memory almost as soon as it was told. This strongly suggested to me that Bevis had not owned the ring for very long, and that he had done the favour for Beric Gifford only that previous day, probably sometime within the last twenty-four hours. Beric, therefore, was not very far away, possibly skulking within the pale of Valletort Manor, which, in itself, would have sparked Bevis Godsey’s emphatic denial of having been there yesterday.
I recalled the strange feeling of lurking evil that I had experienced on waking up in the clearing. Had Beric been close to me then, observing me from some concealed vantage point amongst the trees? And later, when, from the bluff above the manor house, I had seen Katherine Glover crossing the courtyard, had he been hiding in one of the outbuildings? Was it possible that she had actually been on her way to visit him then? At the thought, the hairs rose on the nape of my neck and I shivered.
It was now fully daylight, and a fisherman had emerged from one of the cottages to mend his net, which clearly showed two gaping holes. I hailed him as I approached.
‘Good morning! Do either you or your goodwife need anything from my pack, I wonder?’
He jumped when he heard my voice and demanded belligerently, ‘Where have you sprung from?’
‘The island. I spent the night as a guest of the monks.’
‘It was you, then.’ His tone was surly. ‘I was told that a stranger had crossed the causeway late yesterday afternoon. One who was nearly caught by the tide.’
There was very little, probably nothing, that passed unnoticed, or that was not immediately made common knowledge, in this tiny, tightly knit community of fishermen.
‘I got wet feet, certainly,’ I admitted. ‘But the brothers were hospitable, as always. I was soon fed and made comfortable again.’
The man peered at me suspiciously. ‘Been here before, have you?’
‘Once. A long time ago. Now, would your goody be interested in my wares, do you think, or shall I try elsewhere?’
He gave a nod of his head towards the nearest cottage. ‘You can ask her,’ he conceded grudgingly, and returned to mending his nets.
The goodwife, a plain, almost ugly woman, proved far friendlier and more loquacious than her husband, a fact that was explained within the first few minutes of our acquaintance, when she volunteered the information that she was a ‘foreigner’ from Plymouth.
‘You must find this existence extremely lonely, then,’ I said, drawing up a stool and opening my pack. I spread out its contents on the rough wooden table.
‘I do,’ she sighed, before adding frankly, ‘but when God has given you my looks, and you’ve no money either, you can’t pick and choose a husband. You take what’s on offer and are thankful for it.’
Not for the first time, I reflected how unfairly the dice were loaded against women in the game of life; how brutally their fate was governed by chance. (This is true of men also, I suppose, but to a far lesser degree. Far less.)
I watched while she lovingly fingered some lengths of damask ribbon before sadly abandoning them in favour of more practical considerations, like needles and thread. While she examined the rest of the items, I glanced around the single, sparsely furnished room in search of some means of pushing our conversation in the direction in which I wished it to go, and found inspiration in a row of apples set out to finish ripening on a shelf.
‘Fine fruit! You’ve had Master Godsey here, I can see. He certainly gives value for money.
The goodwife glanced up. ‘Do you know Bevis?’ she asked in some surprise.
‘We spent the night together in the guesthouse on the island. He was caught by the tide because he stayed talking too long with Brother Anselm.’
She laughed. ‘That makes good sense. He’s a great talker, is Bevis.’
‘And a member, or so I’m told, of the Glover family. Are they among your neighbours hereabouts?’
The woman shook her head. ‘They live in the cove on the western side of the headland.’ She looked sideways at me, a furtive gleam in her dark eyes. ‘You know the history of Katherine Glover, I suppose? Nowadays, there aren’t many folk from these parts who don’t.’
I didn’t enlighten her as to my origins. ‘You mean since the murder of Master Capstick,’ I suggested, ‘and the subsequent disappearance of Beric Gifford?’
My companion crossed herself hurriedly and whispered, ‘The Sheriff’s men won’t find him, you know. He’s eaten Saint John’s fern.’
‘So I’ve heard it said.’ I rested my elbows on the table and cupped my chin in my hands. ‘A fisherman’s daughter seems a strange choice of a wife for a young man such as Master Gifford.’
‘Everyone predicted that no good would come of it. But it was really her fault. Berenice Gifford’s, I mean. She was the one who took a fancy to Katherine in the first place, and insisted that she go to live at the manor as her maid.’
‘How did she come to notice the girl?’ I enquired.
‘The Glovers have always supplied Valletort Manor with fresh fish every Friday, and on fast days in general. Whenever it’s been safe for the boats to put to sea, that is. Jonas Glover or his wife used to carry part of the night’s catch up to the house themselves until about a year ago, when Katherine started doing it for them. And not long afterwards, Berenice Gifford asked her to be her personal maid. It was a recipe for trouble, everybody said so. Katherine’s a very beautiful girl. It was inevitable that Beric would be attracted to her, although no one expected that he would want to make her his wife.’
‘Why was Berenice Gifford in need of a maid?’ I wondered. ‘What happened to her previous attendant? She must have had one, surely?’
‘Oh, yes! A woman who had been at the manor in her father’s lifetime. Constance Trim. But Constance’s own father died and his widow was left with very little money to live on. Constance felt it her duty to go back to Modbury and look after her mother. She’s an excellent seamstress, I believe, and can earn enough to support them both.’