‘I didn’t steal it,’ was the indignant reply, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s Beric’s. Not that it’s any of your business, but it was given to me by the mistress after he disappeared. She told me he didn’t want it any more, and as we both have small heads, I might as well have it. It’s my guess he was wearing it when he killed his great-uncle, and now can’t bear the sight of it.’
I digested this, coming to the conclusion that Robert was more astute than he looked. I must be on my guard.
‘Was there an ornament in the hat when Mistress Gifford gave it to you?’ I asked, again already knowing the answer.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Should there have been?’
‘Don’t young men usually wear a jewel of some sort in that kind of hat? They’re so plain, otherwise.’
Robert sniffed. ‘Well, there was nothing pinned to this. I don’t remember that there ever was, although I might be wrong. Beric was a fashionable dresser, I grant you. Liked to follow the London trends, when he could find someone to tell him what they were.’
He closed the shutters tightly, then clambered into bed. A sourish, musty odour emanated from the motley collection of garments he was wearing, and I hurriedly turned my back on him. I am not naturally squeamish — I cannot afford to be in my calling — but this was a particularly unpleasant smell. Some of it came from the clothes, but I suspected that it was many a long month since Robert himself had washed any part of his person. My stomach heaved. The stuffy darkness was all-embracing, and I knew a moment of unaccustomed breathlessness and panic.
‘You have the door key safe?’ I demanded.
I heard him pat the pillow. ‘No one can get in — or out,’ he assured me.
‘In that case, why don’t you lock yourself in every night? Surely, you’d feel safer?’
‘If a person’s invisible, locked doors are no bar,’ Robert claimed, thus revealing Beric to be the source of his fear. ‘But tonight,’ he added confidently, ‘I have you to protect me.’
I was either too tired or too cynical about the magical properties of Saint John’s fern to be alarmed by his words. I merely grunted and let the first wave of sleep wash over me, sinking thankfully into its billowing folds.
* * *
I was awakened by a cock crowing somewhere on the manor, its piercing cry penetrating even the tightly closed shutters of the steward’s by now fetid little room.
I lay quietly for a moment or two, gathering my wits about me, but my overfull bladder was making me extremely uncomfortable and I slid out from beneath the blanket, groping for the chamber pot under the bed. When I had relieved myself, I opened the window and stared down into the still silent courtyard.
In a prosperous household, at this time of the morning, it would have been bustling with life as the servants prepared for the coming day. But Valletort Manor was deserted, and I decided that now was my chance to poke about on my own. Unfortunately, the thought had barely entered my head, when Mistress Tuckett appeared, hurrying across to one of the outbuildings. The groom followed hard on her heels, making his way to the pump that stood in a corner of the yard.
My plans being thus thwarted, I glanced behind me at the figure in the bed, but Robert Steward was still snoring, and I decided to wait until he awoke naturally, rather than ferret about beneath his share of the pillow in order to find the bedchamber key.
It was many years since I had been what my mother scornfully termed ‘a lie-abed’ (with the inevitable rider about laziness and the Devil), but this morning I had an ulterior motive for once more closing the shutters and climbing back beside my night’s companion. I wished to prolong my stay at Valletort Manor, but had no real excuse for delaying my departure. Berenice and Katherine had bought as many of my wares as had taken their fancy the previous evening, and they would therefore expect me to be on my way this morning as soon as it was light. I felt, however, that if I were able to postpone my leaving for as long as possible, something — some unforeseen opportunity, perhaps, or some piece of luck — might eventually lead me to Beric. So I stretched out beside Robert Steward without any expectation of going back to sleep, and with every intention of rousing him within the next half-hour or so if he failed to awaken of his own accord. I closed my eyes and began to mull over the events of yesterday …
It was the babel of upraised voices and the clattering of horses’ hoofs that eventually roused me from this second slumber, and I opened bleary eyes to see my bedfellow, still wearing his motley collection of garments, the shutters flung wide, leaning halfway out of the window, his mouth agape, staring down into the courtyard. The position of the sun told me that the morning must be well advanced; probably almost ten o’clock, and dinnertime.
I sat up and swung my legs out of bed. ‘What’s going on?’ I demanded.
Robert turned. ‘Oh, you’re up at last, are you? You were sleeping like a baby and I didn’t like to wake you.’ He nodded in the direction of the window. ‘I don’t know what’s happening down there, but something’s wrong. I recognize the Sheriff’s man from Modbury. And I heard him say that perhaps he ought to send to Plymouth for more men.’ He sucked his toothless gums in alarm.
My interest was by now thoroughly aroused, and I rather rudely elbowed him aside, taking his place at the open window. Below me I could see an agitated knot of people: Berenice Gifford and Katherine Glover, still, surprisingly, not dressed and with cloaks flung on over their night-shifts; Mistress Tuckett, fully clothed but with her hood slightly pulled awry; the groom, dismounted but holding the reins of Berenice’s bay horse, which showed signs of having recently been ridden hard, judging by its heaving flanks and the flecks of foam around its mouth; and, finally, a man, a stranger to me, whom I presumed to be the Sheriff’s officer, still up in the saddle. He it was who was speaking, his words clearly audible in the windless air.
‘He can’t have got far, although I have to confess neither John Groom nor I had any sighting of him on our way back from Modbury.’ He dismounted abruptly, revealing himself to be a stocky, powerful, barrel-chested man. ‘I’d best take a look at the body.’
His last words failed to register with me as they should have done, and it was without any great sense of urgency that I leant out of the casement and called down, ‘What’s happened, Mistress Gifford? Is anything amiss?’ Five faces were lifted to mine, frozen in amazed disbelief. ‘Is something wrong?’ I repeated.
‘What … what are you doing up there?’ Berenice asked huskily, stammering as though her voice was reluctant to obey her.
‘I slept here,’ I answered. ‘Your steward invited me to share his bed last night. When I refused, he locked me in and hid the key. It didn’t seem worth the effort or discourtesy of forcing him to give it up, so here I am. Isn’t that right, Robert my friend?’
He squeezed under my arm and poked his head out of the window.
‘I don’t like this room, Mistress,’ he complained querulously. ‘You know I don’t. I don’t like being up here all on my own. I’ve told you so a dozen times, but you refuse to listen to me. There’s something evil in this house and it frightens me, so I made the chapman keep me company last night.’ He let out an ear-splitting cackle of laughter. ‘I hid the key. He couldn’t get it from me. I was too cunning for him. I put it under my pillow, where he couldn’t get at it.’
The Sheriff’s officer asked, ‘Master Steward, are you sure the chapman couldn’t have stolen the key and returned it again without your being aware of it?’
Before Robert could reply, Mistress Tuckett cut in, shaking her head and addressing the lawman. Her back was towards me and I couldn’t catch all that she said; but I heard enough to know that she was explaining how the key of the outer door, leading from the kitchen passage to the courtyard, was removed for extra safety once it had been turned in the lock.
I saw Berenice and Katherine glance at one another. Then the former addressed her quondam steward.