It was a year or more since there had last been an apprentices’ riot in the city, but the long, hot, toilsome day and evening, waiting on others, followed by the release from labour and some heavy drinking, had fuelled tempers and made them ripe for mischief. Suddenly boys were everywhere like a pack of bloodthirsty hounds in full cry, hallooing and hollering to their fellows to join in the hunt. I had seen a few apprentice riots in my time, but this bade fair to be one of the worst. Anyone who stood in their path was knocked down and mauled.
Within ten minutes or so, the whole of Redcliffe was a seething mass of violent, drunken apprentices, and the riot was spreading across Bristol Bridge and into the main part of the city. Someone had ordered the alarm bell to be rung, and its deep notes tolled out, warning all respectable citizens to seek the safety and shelter of their own homes. But even these citadels were not necessarily safe, as pot-valiant youths hammered on windows and shutters and mouthed obscenities through keyholes.
Wishing to heaven that I had brought my cudgel with me, and wondering how long it would take the Watch and the City Militia to arrive and quell the riot, I fought my way through the melee by the simple expedient of knocking heads together and generally making use of my superior height and strength until I reached Margaret Walker’s cottage. There, I discovered a handful of youths banging on the door and laughing uproariously at the sound of my children’s frightened wailing on the other side. But I made short work of them. Furious, I booted one up his backside so hard that I reckoned he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week; I hit another with such force that I heard his jawbone crack, and I drove a third one’s head against the wall so violently that he slid to the ground unconscious. The fourth didn’t stop to find out what I had in store for him, but took to his heels, vanishing into the flame-reddened night.
‘It’s me!’ I shouted. ‘Adela! Margaret! Let me in!’
The cottage door creaked open an inch or two, just wide enough to admit me without doing permanent damage to my limbs and other vital parts. I squeezed inside, but if I had expected to be the hero of the moment after my admirable display of Herculean prowess outside, I was destined to be disappointed.
‘Roger! Where have you been?’ my wife demanded reproachfully.
Margaret Walker was more forthright. ‘Just like a man to go sloping off somewhere when he’s needed. Your womenfolk and children could all have been murdered where they stood.’
I was irritated and showed it. ‘A gross exaggeration, Mother-in-law, and you well know it. No one gets murdered during an apprentices’ riot. Oh, I grant you there’ll be a fair lot of damage to property, broken noses, black eyes, bruised shins, that sort of thing, but nobody will be dead. It’s mostly high spirits and mischief exacerbated by drink. They don’t mean any real harm.’
‘Harm!’ screeched Goody Watkins, and for the first time I became aware of her and Bess Simnel’s presence in the cottage. ‘Harm! The varmints have broken one of my shutters and Bess here has had her door kicked in! If I catch one of ’em what did it, I’ll cut off his balls with my carving knife!’ With which bloodthirsty utterance she burst into tears.
Margaret tried to comfort her, glaring at me as she did so. ‘Now see what you’ve done!’
‘Listen!’ I held up my hand for silence.
The quality of the noise outside had altered. The triumphant yells of the apprentices had changed to cries of dismay. There were sounds of horses’ hooves, the rattling of swords, the upraised voices of Authority. The Watch, the Petty Constable and the City Militia had arrived at last, followed eventually by the Mayor, who climbed on to one of the remaining tables and read the Riot Act. Some youths were rounded up and marched off, under escort, to the bridewell. The rest were claimed by masters whose wrath would only be appeased by beatings and floggings that would continue for many days to come.
At last, we were free to go home.
I
t was a disturbed night. Adela, myself and the three children, not to mention Hercules, were awakened in the small hours of the morning by the thunderstorm that had been threatening the previous day. I went downstairs to calm the dog, and returned to find my place usurped by Adam, who refused point-blank to return to his attic room.
By this time, I was in one of my foulest moods, the bruises and cuts I had received during my fight with Burl Hodge beginning to make themselves felt. I shunted my son to the middle of the mattress, fell in beside him and tried to sleep.
But the events of the previous evening kept going around and around in my head while I tossed and turned and tried to get comfortable. It must have been nearly dawn when I finally drifted into an uneasy doze, from which I was aroused all too soon by the sound of someone banging loudly on our outer door. Groaning and cursing, I heaved myself up, searching for shoes and a cloak with which to cover my nakedness.
Adela was already out of bed, shrugging on a long, loose gown over her nightrail and twisting her two thick braids of dark hair up around her head.
‘Whoever can that be?’ she asked, perturbed. ‘I hope Margaret hasn’t been taken ill!’
I ran downstairs, careless of my state of undress, and unbolted and unlocked the street door, expecting to see either Maria Watkins or a distraught Bess Simnel standing outside. Instead, it was one of our neighbours from across the street, a widow who, so far, had steadfastly refused to acknowledge our existence. But now, she was even moved to seize my hand.
‘Have you heard?’ she gasped. But before I had time to shake my head, she continued. ‘Robin Avenel was found murdered late last night in Jewry Lane.’ She shuddered dramatically. ‘Stabbed through the heart, they say. Left to welter in a pool of blood!’
It was Midsummer’s Day, the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, and we were all going to church at Saint Lawrence’s.
Dressing was a difficult business: it was impossible to concentrate with a mind in turmoil. I cut myself twice while shaving because I had forgotten to sharpen my knife, and because I wouldn’t wait for the water Adela was heating over the fire, but used cold from the pump instead. My fingers were all thumbs, and in trying to fasten my shirt to my breeches I tangled the laces and had to stand impatiently while Adela unknotted them.
‘For goodness’ sake, you’re worse than a child,’ she admonished me in a very wifely fashion. ‘This doesn’t concern you, Roger. It’s not your business. What needs to be done will already have been taken care of by the Sheriff’s Officers and members of the Watch. Now, sit down quietly and eat some breakfast before I lose my temper. You look terrible. Your face is covered in scratches, your eyes have black rings under them from lack of sleep and you’re wearing a dirty shirt that I had put aside to be washed. In addition,’ she went on severely, ‘you’ve been warned by Timothy Plummer to steer clear of any matter concerning Robin Avenel.’
‘Bad man!’ Adam shouted at me, banging his spoon on the kitchen table to indicate that his bowl was empty.
He was learning to speak fast, and I wasn’t sure I cared for this latest addition to his vocabulary, especially as it afforded such amusement to his half-brother and sister. But Adela was right. There was nothing I could usefully do besides ascertain the facts. I had been warned to keep my nose clean or face unpleasant consequences for myself and my family.
But fate was busy taking a hand. I was about to become embroiled whether I wanted to or not.
I was just wiping the grease from my chin after consuming a second bacon collop – all the sweeter because we usually fasted before going to Mass, but Adela had decided this morning that I was in need of nourishment – when there was another knock on the street door; a loud, purposeful banging that, to my ears at least, clearly betokened Authority.
‘Now, who can that be?’ Adela asked of no one in particular. She tidied away a few strands of loose hair beneath her linen cap, smoothed down her apron and went to answer the summons. The children, uninterested, continued eating voraciously, not even glancing up from their bowls when she returned.
‘It’s Richard,’ Adela announced, a tinge of uneasiness colouring her tone.
She stood aside to allow Sergeant Richard Manifold into the kitchen, an unwelcome guest who was followed by his two equally unwelcome henchmen, Jack Gload and Peter Littleman. Meanly, I was secretly delighted to note that the former’s weaselly little face was disfigured by a very swollen nose and a black right eye. Someone had set about him with a will. I silently cheered that someone.
‘What a nice surprise,’ I said. Hercules began attacking Peter Littleman’s ankles, but unfortunately made no impression on his thick leather boots. Still, I didn’t discourage the animal; he was only doing his duty as a guard dog, after all. ‘I don’t recall inviting you three to breakfast.’
‘Roger!’ Adela said warningly. She satisfied herself that the children had finished eating, then sent them off to play in the buttery. ‘Please, sit down,’ she invited our intrepid law officers politely. ‘Would you like some ale?’
I frowned, but happily Richard Manifold overruled the eager nods of Jack and Pete with a shake of his head. ‘We’re on official duty,’ he said.
‘What sort of official duty?’ Adela sounded anxious, no doubt recalling the time her former admirer had arrived at our cottage in Lewin’s Mead to arrest me for murder.
The sergeant smiled thinly, obviously reading her thoughts.
‘It’s all right, my dear.’ Who asked him to call my wife his
dear
? My hackles rose. ‘On this occasion Roger is a witness, not a suspect.’ A witness? To what? I was mystified. Richard continued. ‘You’ve no doubt heard the news?’
‘About Robin Avenel’s murder, you mean?’ I leaned forward, suddenly all attention. ‘A neighbour told us earlier this morning. Stabbed to death in Jewry Lane, I understand. Do you have any idea when it happened?’
Richard looked annoyed at this turning of the tables on what, after all, was his interrogation.
‘It has to be some time between nine o’clock and midnight,’ he answered grudgingly. ‘Members of the Watch passed along Jewry Lane on their way to help quell the prentices’ riot. The body wasn’t there then. And Edgar Capgrave says he saw nothing after he’d locked the Frome Gate at curfew, when he walked along Jewry Lane to his home in Fish Lane. But at midnight, when the Watch were back on normal patrol, they found Master Avenel’s body sprawled outside Saint Giles’s Church.’
‘So how can I help you?’ I asked. ‘To what am I supposed to have been a witness?’
‘Not
supposed
to have been,’ was the retort. ‘According to my information, you
were
.’ Richard Manifold’s chest swelled importantly. ‘We think we already know the murderer. Burl Hodge.’
‘Burl Hodge?’ I was scathing. ‘You must be joking! Burl wouldn’t murder anyone. Oh, he has a hot temper, I grant you that, but he’d never kill someone. Why in the name of Hades do you think it’s Burl?’
‘He deliberately picked a fight with Robin Avenel last night. Accused him of insulting his wife, or some such thing. You can’t deny it, Roger. He would have assaulted Master Avenel even more violently if you hadn’t arrived to prevent him. Then he turned on you. But during your little scuffle, his intended victim escaped. Burl must have sought him out later and finished what he’d started.’
‘How do you know all this?’ I demanded. ‘Who’s been spying on me?’
‘No one’s been spying on you.’ Richard snorted contemptuously at the very idea of such a waste of his and his men’s precious time. ‘You were seen. There was another witness who saw everything. An old beggar who’s been hanging around the town for a week or two now. Comes and goes, but I’ve noticed him about on several occasions.’
Timothy Plummer! Perhaps his disguise was better than I’d thought. Richard apparently hadn’t recognized him, in spite of having encountered Timothy the previous summer in the latter’s official capacity as the King’s Spymaster General.
Where had he been yesterday evening? Standing somewhere behind me in the alleyway leading to Redcliffe Back. I hadn’t been aware of him and I offered him a silent apology: he was obviously better at his job than I’d given him credit for. But what underhand game was he playing? It was plain to me that Timothy was the person subtly directing the sergeant’s attention towards Burl Hodge. He had observed Burl’s attack on Robin Avenel and his subsequent tussle with me, and was using both incidents for his own nefarious ends.
Which were? I was unable to say for certain, but I suspected it was a diversion of some sort to distract attention from the Avenels’ other, more treasonable activities. Would Timothy care if a man were hanged for a murder he didn’t commit? I reached the reluctant conclusion that he probably wouldn’t.
‘So, where does Burl say he was last night?’ I enquired.
Richard shrugged. ‘Where you’d expect. Says he was at home in bed with his wife. Says they both headed for their cottage as soon as the riot became serious, and stayed there.’
‘That sounds like good sense. Jenny confirms this?’
‘Naturally. But it’s just what she would say, isn’t it? In these circumstances, her testimony is useless.’
I curled my lip. ‘You know Jenny Hodge as well as I do, Sergeant. Probably better. Do you really think her a woman who would lie to save a murderer? Even her own husband?’
Richard Manifold shifted uncomfortably on his stool and made no answer. I guessed that the Sheriff and other civic eminences had pressed for an early arrest. An important and wealthy citizen had been done to death, and such a killing called for swift, if not immediate, retribution.
‘Where is Burl?’ Adela asked, speaking for the first time. I could hear the anger trembling in her voice.
Richard cleared his throat, a little too noisily. ‘He’s in the bridewell.’
‘And you’ve pursued no other lines of enquiry?’ I didn’t bother to hide my disgust.
Richard flushed angrily. ‘We don’t believe in wasting public time and money. There are no other suspects. With the beggarman’s testimony and yours, why should we search any further?’