Stolen Lives (The Alice Chronicles #3)

20

J ay Harker and his brother are waiting in the kitchen court when Alice comes out of the house early the next morning. Jay is of no more than average height, but chest and arms strain at the seams of his jerkin, and his neck rises in a straight line to the close shaven head. If they meet opposition on the journey, assuredly he and his brother are the men to resolve it quickly and effectively.

‘Master Jay knows the route to Exeter, Alice,’ Ursula has assured her, ‘and will be able to select the right inns.’

Because Alice has said she would prefer to do the journey in as short a time as possible, Ursula has also provided a spare horse for each of them. ‘There is just a chance,’ Ursula says, ‘that you can reach Exeter by tomorrow afternoon. In fact, if you could have waited a day I’d have sent men ahead with changes, so that you are not burdened with having them with you in a string, and they would be the fresher.’

‘Not at all, Ursula,’ Alice hastens to assure her, ‘I would not hear of you taking so much trouble for a little journey. You are already doing me a great kindness in sending two of your people with me. We shall see you within the week.’ She is anxious to get on her way, to avoid further chances of being ambushed by Ursula’s generosity. And at last they can mount and clatter out of the court, heading out to Westover, there to pick up the old Roman road that will take them north to Yeovil. Lying on the main London road, Yeovil has good inns, where the name of Cazanove is known and the service will accordingly be exceptional. It will give them one good night’s rest in an otherwise uncertain journey.

Although the sun is not yet high, the day is already warm, and the haze on the horizon promises greater heat. Once they meet the Roman road it is an easy run and they alternately canter and walk the horses for several miles until, dropping down to a stretch of woodland, they halt at a streamlet that allows the horses refreshment. Alice is keen to push on and the road continues straight and fairly level for most of the day. As the land takes on a reddish hue from the soil of these parts, Jay advises her, ‘We are not far from Yeovil here, mistress, and we can turn off just south of there to pick up the Exeter road, unless you would prefer to stop in the town for the night?’

Alice pulls up her mount and the two men slow to a halt beside her. A slight breeze lifts and flaps the horses’ manes. Escaped tendrils of her hair flick in her face. ‘Master Robin, Master Jay, I have something to tell you about this journey that I could not say before. I am not going to Exeter.’

The two look at each other and at her.

‘You’re not?’ Robin says. ‘Then, mistress, why are we here?’

‘Because I am for Bristol, Master Robin. And before we go any further, I shall tell you why and you may decide whether you wish to come with me or return to Hillbury.’

‘My mistress will not like it that she has been misled,’ Robin says.

‘You’re right, she will not, but I hope when she knows why, she will understand and forgive me.’

Jay says, ‘You had best tell us what’s afoot, mistress. If we are to go to Bristol, I need the latest news on the condition of the roads and I can best get that in Yeovil town.’

And here, Alice thinks to herself, is a man who can adapt to changing needs and think his way to a solution quickly and efficiently, and she is grateful for Ursula’s choice of this brother of Robin.

‘Master Robin,’ she says, ‘when I visited the dye works the other day, I hope you do not mind that Wat Meredith told me your history at the hands of Master Cazanove after your accident. Wat holds you in high respect and I believe he was grateful for the support you offered when that man deliberately brushed the nettles across his arm.’

Jay looks in concern at his brother. ‘Who was that?’

‘Messer. I caught him a clout he won’t forget in a hurry. Troublemaker, that’s what he is.’

‘He’ll make trouble once too often, that one. Master Wat all right, is he?’

‘Sore arm for a day or so.’ Robin turns back to Alice. ‘Tell us what’s to do with Master Wat and going to Bristol, mistress.’

More confidently now, she tells them, ‘I believe Wat Meredith is in trouble. He is threatened by something in his past in Bristol, and unless I can counter it, Wat could be thrown into jail. In fact, he could find himself accused of the murder of Master Goldwoode.’

‘Murder?’ Robin says, aghast. ‘Not possible.’ And Jay adds, ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Nor I, Master Jay,’ she says. ‘That’s why I have let it be known I am going to Exeter. As long as no one knows I am for Bristol, I have a week to find out the truth.’

‘Surely my mistress can help him?’ Robin says. ‘The name of Cazanove carries weight round these parts.’

‘I fear it may be the very name Cazanove that brought this trouble on him in the first place,’ Alice tells him.

‘Is that why my mistress does not know where you are going?’ Robin says.

‘I told her a lie so that she will not knowingly lie in her turn. If it became known, Wat could be a dead man before we get back.’

Jay says, ‘Why don’t we tell you what we know and you tell us what you know and let’s see what we make of it. Perhaps it would be easier if we find an inn in town.’

In the end they agree to aim for Ilchester, to get as far as they can in the daylight. After a brief stop in Yeovil, where Jay makes his enquiries about the road north, they ride on the few miles to Ilchester. Just past the church, in the angle where two roads meet, is an inn, a long building in yellow and grey stone at which Jay secures lodgings for the night. In the warm evening, they choose a fallen tree on the green outside to sit down and talk. Robin starts.

‘If Master Wat has a high respect for me, it’s no more than I have for him,’ he tells her. ‘You know he only came here last year?’

‘I do. I understood he was Master Cazanove’s body servant.’

‘Latterly, yes. Before that he was a clerk of some sort when Master Cazanove engaged him. The body servant at that time was called Aled.’

‘Yes I knew of Aled. He died, didn’t he?’

‘As he lived, violently – not far from here, actually.’

‘And not a soul regrets him,’ Jay adds.

‘That was last summer,’ Robin goes on, ‘and Master Cazanove, he made Wat his body servant as a result. One of his first tasks was an errand to the dye houses. He’d never been allowed up there before and it was the first we saw of him. He arrived one evening as we finished work and requested one Mistress Harker to attend his master. I expect you can guess what for. My wife was so angry she could hardly speak. “You apple-squire!” she called him.

‘You’re saying Wat pimped for Master Cazanove?’

‘I told Wat to get out. I didn’t know him then, thought he might be another Aled. Aled used to come. The women dreaded refusing because they knew it meant dismissal for their husbands. In the end we men banded together and threatened Aled and he stopped coming. Couldn’t dismiss the lot of us. Don’t know what excuse he gave his master, but it stopped. Cazanove clearly thought it worth trying on again through Wat. After Wat left, my wife cursed his name in front of them all, I won’t repeat the words she used.’

The things I have done . ‘Dear God,’ Alice whispers.

‘Can you believe it, Cazanove sent him back. Wat came straight to our home and apologised to my wife. He said his master had meant “the other Mistress Harker”. I was all for giving him a taste of my stick but my wife told me to stay put. She went and roused the other women from the dye works. They all came out and surrounded Wat on the green. Talk about threatening. We men had nothing on that.’

‘What was going on?’

‘The only other Mistress Harker is Mistress Ruth Harker,’ Robin says.

‘Your daughter,’ Alice breathes. ‘How could he?’

Robin says. ‘Before the women sent Wat packing, my wife fetched Ruth and showed him. I tell you, he looked grey as he left. It was clear he had no idea he was asking for an eight-year-old child.’

‘They must have hated him with a vengeance,’ Alice says.

‘He never came back, not for that purpose.’

‘I wonder he is still alive,’ she says.

‘A day or two later,’ Robin says, ‘I was checking the nettles for flowering and I saw him by the stream. He thought he was on his own, nobody around. He stripped off his shirt and breeches and stepped into the stream to wash the blood off his back. My guess is, Cazanove beat him for defiance.’

‘Your guess?’

‘He wasn’t the first one to be beaten in that household. Jay and me, we taxed Wat with it, but all he would say was, as soon as he saw Ruth he realised he’d been gulled. He said he was sorry he could not undo the harm he had done, and he could assure us it would never happen again. The way we see it, Cazanove knew he had him cornered whichever way it fell. As he wouldn’t deliver a child to his master, he lost the skin off his back. Who knows how many times?’

Alice feels slightly sick.

‘We did what we could to set the matter straight at the dye houses,’ Robin says, ‘but that sort of mud sticks.’

‘There’s those at the dye works hold Wat to blame for anything that goes wrong,’ Jay says. ‘But most of us can see he was never a Cazanove man the way Aled was. Wat’s a good man, mistress.’

Alice wonders if that was part of the “betrayal” Wat spoke of in Cazanove’s chamber. The gift of being snatched from the gallows, only to find himself lost in a cruel game with his mind? Being lied to – being sent all unknowing to procure a child?

‘No wonder he is reluctant to talk of it,’ she says. She reaches into her pack. ‘This is what I know about what brought him into this net.’ She reads them the broadsheet version of Wat’s trial for thievery, and his conviction.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Robin says stoutly. ‘Wat never would.’ He bats the broadsheet. ‘These lying toads!’

‘I feel bad about this,’ Jay says. ‘The Harcourt boys used to have a tutor. Stout fellow, he was. He’d get hold of these sheets sometimes and read them to us. We used to have such a laugh at the stories. When it’s someone you know, it’s not funny any more. How dare they print this?’

‘I don’t believe the half of it, Master Jay,’ she says. ‘But at least it tells us about the trial and gives us the names of his accusers. These are the people I need to find in Bristol. There’s more to the story, of course.’ She tells them of Rupert Cazanove’s eleventh hour intervention at the gallows. Leaving out Luella’s personal interest in Wat, she explains the trading connection between Goldwoode and Kemp that spawned a marriage contract and completed the link between Wat’s former master and the murdered man. Kemp was master of Wat, who became servant to Cazanove, who traded with Goldwoode who married Luella, daughter of Kemp.

‘So just because Wat worked for this Master Kemp, they will accuse him of killing Master Goldwoode?’ Robin asks.

Alice nods. ‘You see, unless I can find out what really happened that led to his trial, the connection will be too easy for justice to resist, and instead of looking for the truth, they will settle on Wat.’

‘And here you are doing their investigating for them,’ Jay says, ‘while they spread their arses and save themselves the cost of a trial. Why doesn’t my mistress have a quiet word with Sir Thomas?’

Alice hesitates. The trap Sir Thomas is baiting for Ursula, his ambition making play with her reticence, coupled with Ursula’s protectiveness towards Wat, make for very muddy waters that are best left alone. ‘The fact remains that the trial took place, it’s on the court rolls,’ she says at last, and hopes it will answer. ‘Only if we prove false witness can we overturn that.’

As she says it, she realises that this is the task she has set herself – not only to break the evidence that first convicted him, but more, to discredit the accusation of theft itself. And always the question keeps rising. Why?

‘It’s all wrong,’ Jay says.

‘It is, Master Jay, but if they take Wat, there will be no trial and they will hang him within days. The least I can do is try to prevent that.’

Robin and Jay regard each other. A question appears to pass between them, and a decision. Jay turns to Alice. ‘Right, we’re for Bristol, then.’