‘And so I will,’ I assured him.
‘What’s happened to him?’ I asked my wife as we went downstairs. ‘He never used to be this fond of me.’
Adela gave me one of those pitying looks that women reserve for men when anything to do with children is mentioned.
‘I told you, he’s growing up. He’s always been a sensitive child.’
I took her word for it, but it wasn’t the boy that I remembered. Then again, perhaps I had never been at home long enough to get to know him.
We decided to go for one last stroll in the wild, overgrown garden and went out through the kitchen, where Arbella was overseeing the washing of the supper dishes.
‘You’ll need a cloak,’ she said to Adela. ‘There’s a breeze sprung up since this afternoon. Take that old blue one of Celia’s that’s hanging on a peg in the passageway.’
She was right. A chill wind was rustling the trees and grasses and making the little clouds scud across the evening sky, chased by darker ones marching up over the horizon. We went as far as the side gate and looked over it into the copse, but all was silent except for the singing of the birds. It was here that Adam had last heard Celia’s voice, talking to someone. But who? After that she had just vanished.
Adela shivered in spite of the cloak which she had wrapped around her, or perhaps because she was suddenly conscious of the fact that it belonged to Celia.
‘Let’s go in,’ she said.
That night, I was barely asleep — or so it seemed — before I started to dream. I was at once back in the house next door to Roderick Jeavons’s, trying to get out of the cellar, but the door was locked fast. I kept hammering on the wood until I could see that my hands were bleeding. No one came although I could hear a voice speaking on the other side of it. I could feel the desperation rising inside of me because I knew that what this voice was saying was important. I knew it had a message for me if only I could make out the words. .
Then, as happens in dreams, I was standing on the other side of the door in the long passage that ran from front to back of the house, and standing beside me were Hastings and the lawyer Catesby. They were both looking straight at me, but didn’t seem to notice I was there.
Hastings was saying, ‘I said eight of us, Will, eight! Eight children! Eight of them! You can imagine the noise! And what’s more, I don’t like that blue cloak you’re wearing. The colour doesn’t suit you and it belongs to somebody else. You’d better get wine for eight. The archbishop’s going to bring the Great Seal.’
‘You can’t do that,’ I said, stepping forward, and Catesby caught me by the shoulders, shaking me hard. .
‘Wake up, Roger! Wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’ It was Adela’s voice and her face that was bending over me, a pale oval in the darkness. I was bathed in sweat.
It took me a moment or two to get my bearings, then I gave an uncertain laugh and stroked her cheek.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart. I was riding the night mare, that’s all.’
‘It felt like it,’ she said. ‘You were tossing and turning and moaning to yourself so much I thought you’d fall out of bed. Are you all right now?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s Arbella’s cooking. It lies heavily on my stomach sometimes. Go back to sleep. You have a long day’s journey ahead of you tomorrow.’
Satisfied, she snuggled into my side and was soon gently snoring. I, on the other hand, lay wide awake, staring into the darkness trying to interpret my dream.
SEVENTEEN
It was still barely light the following morning when I said goodbye to Adela and the children (and of course Hercules) in the courtyard of Blossom’s Inn. St Laurence the Deacon, in his flowery border, looked down benevolently upon us from his sign which swung gently to and fro in a faint, barely perceptible breeze. Jack, anxious to get started, contained his soul in patience while we took our fond farewells.
‘I give you four weeks,’ Adela said as she held me tightly and kissed my cheek. ‘Do you hear me, Roger? If you are no nearer solving this mystery in a month’s time, you are to make your excuses to Oswald and Clemency and Sybilla and start for home. Promise me. I won’t leave unless you do.’
‘Four weeks,’ I agreed, returning her embrace. ‘As near as possible,’ I added as a sop to those uneasy reservations which always plagued me.
She flashed me a suspicious look as, with Jack’s help, she stepped into the back of the empty cart. A basket of food and drink had been supplied by Arbella and I handed over a purseful of money to meet her immediate needs. (I had spent very little in the past three weeks since leaving Bristol thanks to the generosity of the Godsloves — yet another reason why I felt unable to abandon them.) Jack climbed on to the driver’s seat and was about to give the command ‘Gee up!’ when Adam suddenly scrambled towards me, standing up in the tail of the cart.
‘Remembered,’ he announced cryptically, ignoring his mother’s reprimand and leaning over to put his arms around my neck. ‘Woman,’ he said, adding impatiently as he encountered my uncomprehending stare, ‘Woman talking to Celia in the garden. Remembered!’
I took a deep breath. ‘You mean that the day you overheard Celia speaking to someone in the garden at the Arbour it was another woman’s voice you heard? You’re sure of that? Think carefully, Adam. It’s important.’
He nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said.
‘You haven’t been up until now.’
He gave a weary sigh: adults were such a trial. ‘Told you. Just remembered. Didn’t remember before. Do now.’
I kissed him soundly. ‘You’re a very clever boy.’ He shot me the same sort of leery look that his mother had given me (he was unnervingly like her on occasions). He knew when he was being patronized. ‘I mean it,’ I assured him and kissed him again.
Then they were off. I stood waving until they were out of sight, lost among all the early-morning traffic of the streets, before entering the ale-room of the inn and ordering myself a large pot of the very best brew. The place was fairly deserted at such an early hour of the morning and I was able to sit quietly at a corner table without being disturbed by garrulous neighbours, all longing to share their life histories with me.
I was thankful that I had things to think about or parting with my family would have been less bearable. We seemed to have grown exceptionally close during the twelve days I had spent at the Arbour in spite of the doom and gloom surrounding us, and for a brief while I worried that I was losing my taste for freedom. But by the time I was halfway through my second pot of ale, the feeling of being unencumbered, and therefore at liberty to please myself without any restraint being placed upon me, had returned in full force. I was my own man again.
I considered my dream of the previous night, and not only that. In the hour just before dawn, that hour when there is a sudden shift in the light, I had jerked wide awake with the words of Margaret Walker ringing loud and clear in my head: ‘I recollect my poor father going to see them once, on his own. He came back absolutely appalled. I can remember him exclaiming, “Eight children! Eight of them! You can imagine the noise! All of them talking and shouting together!” I think it made him thankful that he only had the one.’ William Woodward had been talking about the Godsloves.
The dream and subsequent memory had plainly been evoked by Lord Hastings’s mention of eight conspirators (and yet again I added the qualification ‘if that’s what they are’) but I was still unsure of the number’s significance. I knew I was being obtuse and that God was prompting me towards a solution of this mystery concerning Oswald and his siblings, but for the moment all was still dark. And why had I dreamed about Celia’s blue cloak? This explanation was also hovering just out of reach, like the butterflies I used to try to catch as a boy in the countryside around Wells, but which always eluded my destructive, grasping fingers. Furthermore, my walk with Adela the previous afternoon kept obtruding on my thoughts just as though it, too, ought to have some special importance for me.