I finished my ale and Adela fetched us both more.
‘All the same,’ I pressed, ‘I’d have that Breton ship searched immediately. Unless, as I said earlier, she’s already sailed on this evening‘s tide.’
‘Her captain won’t have risked sailing in the dark,’ Richard said positively.
‘He might,’ I argued. ‘It would depend on how desperate he is to get his additional “cargo” away.’
‘The man you followed?’
‘Yes.’
Richard rose reluctantly to his feet, swallowing his ale in just two gulps. ‘I’d better be off,’ he said.
Adela fetched his cloak and hat and saw him to the door. Then she came back and sat down again at the kitchen table. ‘What is this all about, Roger?’ she asked me.
I shrugged. ‘I’ve no more idea than you have, sweetheart.’
‘Is that the truth? You haven’t. . You haven’t already spoken to Master Plummer?’
I raised one of her hands and kissed it. Adela looked suitably surprised at this wholly uncharacteristic gesture. ‘I promise you,’ I said, ‘that I had no more idea of Timothy being in Bristol than you had. Nor do I know what it is he wants here. Not me, that’s for certain; not if he’s skulking around in disguise.’ I grinned. ‘I wonder what he’s pretending to be this time.’ I thought for a moment, then went on: ‘But I should guess that his presence here — if, that is, the rumour is true and he really is in the city — might have something to do with the man I saw.’
‘You suspect a conspiracy? On behalf of Henry Tudor?’
I bit my lip. ‘I can think of no other explanation. All the same, it doesn’t make sense. What Richard says is true. No invasion fleet would have risked sailing up the Avon, and if troops had landed at the river’s mouth, the city would have had ample warning to shut and bar the gates against them. No, if the man I followed is working for the Tudor, then he’s here for an entirely different reason.’
Adela still looked worried. ‘You say Bristol is notoriously Yorkist in sympathy and I know it to be a fact. But that was in the past when Edward was king. Is there the same loyalty, do you think, to King Richard? Especially since the rumours of his nephews’ deaths?’
I frowned. She had a point, I had to admit. Adherents of the House of York had just risen in rebellion against Richard’s assumption of the crown, and the heart of the revolt had been here, in the south and west. Nevertheless, I still felt sure that if there were indeed a conspiracy in the city it had nothing to do with the landing and invasion of a Tudor force. I had no real reason for this certainty, but I had, over the years, learned to trust my instincts and deliberately closed my mind against the idea that they might be wrong.
Adela changed the subject for one nearer her heart. ‘Roger, this Walter Gurney! You say you were unable to speak to him. That he had run away. There’s no chance then that he could return to Gloucester and offer to marry the woman you mentioned?’
‘Jane Spicer? No.’ I shook my head wearily. ‘Whether he really has run away or whether he’s hiding somewhere on the Despenser manor makes no difference. He’s made it plain that he has no intention of going home.’
My wife took a deep breath. ‘But in that case what will happen when. .?’
I knew what she was going to ask. A question to which, as yet, I had no ready answer, and it was with a feeling of enormous relief that I welcomed the children as they suddenly burst into the kitchen with cries of, ‘We didn’t know you were home!’ followed inevitably by, ‘What have you brought us?’
Fortunately for my already tarnished reputation, I had had the forethought to purchase some sweetmeats — sugared violets and rose petals — before finally quitting Keynsham. They were, by now, a somewhat sorry, sticky mess, wrapped as they had been in a scrap of rag-paper and thrust into the depths of my pouch, but Elizabeth and the boys seemed not to notice as they devoured them in less time than it takes to tell. They made no comment on Richard’s disappearance except to say that they had all beaten him at fivestones, an abstention that pleased me greatly. Nor, I noticed, did they refer to him as ‘uncle’ any more, another cause for satisfaction. I had a sneaking suspicion that this might be Adela’s doing, but I didn’t enquire too closely. I preferred to believe that it was the children’s own choice.
Adela had not long sent them off to bed — after a Herculean tussle to make Adam wash his face and hands, an act he considered altogether unnecessary — and we had retired to the greater comfort of the parlour, when a knock on the street door heralded the return of Richard Manifold.
‘The Breton ship has been searched,’ he announced bluntly, dispensing with the courtesy of greetings, ‘and there’s no one onboard the captain can’t account for.’ Of course there wasn’t, not if he was being handsomely paid for conveying his illicit passenger safely back to Brittany. ‘Nor,’ Richard continued, ‘could we find anyone stowed away in any part of the ship. All right,’ he added grimly, noting the expression on my face, ‘if the man you saw is still aboard, then he’s probably disguised as a member of the crew. But without knowing what he looks like, we can’t accuse him. The sheriff wants to know if there is the slightest chance that you might recognize him.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not to be certain. When’s the ship sailing?’
‘Tomorrow morning, on the first tide.’
‘Well. .’ I was beginning doubtfully, but Adela cut me short.
‘No,’ she said, addressing Richard Manifold, a determined set to her mouth. ‘Roger is not getting embroiled in this. I scent danger, and he’s been in enough of that this past spring and summer.’ She turned to me. ‘I forbid you to have anything more to do with this affair.’
Our guest snorted with laughter. ‘He won’t be able to help himself, my dear. When have you ever known your husband to keep that long nose of his out of any trouble that’s going? It’s against his nature. Roger, if you would only. .’
I suddenly felt extraordinarily weary. There were a number of queries that needed answering, not least what was the connection — if, indeed, there was one — between the man I had followed and Gilbert Foliot? How did the former come to have a key to the goldsmith’s old house over and behind the shop? Why. .? But here my mind balked at any more questions. I had not completely got over my illness of the summer, and although, in a general way, I had recovered my health and strength, there were still times when the lassitude would reassert itself.
‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ I smiled, ‘but you heard Adela. This seems to me like an affair of state, and therefore none of my business. Tender my apologies to the sheriff, but tell him I would be unable to identify this man. I didn’t really see his face.’
Richard looked sceptical, but he knew when he was beaten. Once Adela had ranged herself on my side, there was nothing more to be said. When, finally, he had gone, after one last half-hearted attempt at persuasion, I put my arms about her and kissed her lingeringly.
She was having none of that. ‘Bed,’ she said firmly, ‘but to sleep. You’re worn out.’
She was right. I was snoring almost as soon as my head touched the pillow. I don’t know how much later it was when I felt her hand shaking my shoulder.
‘Wake up, Roger,’ Adela hissed in my ear. ‘There’s someone downstairs. Someone’s trying to get into the house.’
TWELVE
I heaved myself into a sitting position, knuckling my eyes like a child.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ I mumbled.
Adela shook my arm. ‘Listen!’ she urged.
I forced myself awake, resisting the temptation to collapse back on my pillow and be engulfed once more in sleep. After a moment or two, I could hear faint sounds as though someone, somewhere, were rattling a shutter. Sleep went flying. Immediately, I was out of bed, pulling on my shirt and reaching for my cudgel, my trusty ‘Plymouth Cloak’, which I always kept standing in one corner. As I moved towards the door, it opened and a small figure in a nightshirt stood on the threshold.