The Burgundian's tale

I was immediately ashamed that I had allowed my bad temper to get the better of me, but while Lionel looked affronted, his mother merely laughed.

‘Feeling sore, are you? In more ways than one? Well, I suppose that’s only to be expected.’ Her sympathy was tinged with a mockery that she couldn’t quite conceal. ‘Come back to the house with us and have some wine.’

I thanked her, but refused. ‘I’m so near the Voyager now that I’ll go on. I need my bed.’ And I thanked both of them again, over-profusely, to compensate for my previous rudeness.

But my refusal was not entirely due either to tiredness or to embarrassment at what had happened. I suddenly found myself wondering if Lionel Broderer could have been my assailant. He had been close at hand.

I was still considering the idea while I stripped and rolled between the blankets, nestling into Reynold Makepeace’s goose-feather mattress. (I had gone straight to my chamber, avoiding the ale room, where a crowd of indefatigable merrymakers continued to drink the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy’s health.) I tried to recall the voice which had whispered in my ear and to match it with Lionel’s, but the difference seemed too great for probability. And yet … And yet I couldn’t have sworn that they weren’t one and the same. Welsh tones are usually soft and soothing. This voice had been neither of those things, just low and sibilant.

I repeated the words over to myself: ‘Mind your own business, chapman, if you know what’s good for you. This is just the first warning. So go back to Bristol, there’s a good boy!’ Boy. Boyo. A Welsh term of address as I well knew from hearing it so often along the Bristol Backs.

I could feel sleep beginning to engulf me, and decided that the problem would have to wait until the morning. I groped for the reassuring feel of my knife beneath my pillow and felt for my cudgel, which I had placed alongside me on the bed. Only then did I close my eyes and allow my mind to drift.

After nine years I had at last trained myself to sleep through the night and not wake in the small hours for the service of matins and lauds, as I had had to do when a novice at Glastonbury. (It had been a habit greatly deplored by Adela.) And that particular night, worn out by the previous day’s events, I had slept even more soundly than usual — with the result that, when I eventually awoke, the sun was filtering through the shutters and people were clattering busily about the inn. For my part, I was feeling fighting fit again.

I was just wondering if I could escape from the Voyager before young Bertram came to find me, when he bounced into the ale room where I was eating my breakfast.

‘There you are!’ he exclaimed unnecessarily, before ordering a mazer of small beer.

‘Not wanted by the Duke or Master Plummer today?’ I asked hopefully.

He shook his head. ‘I’m entirely at your disposal.’ That’s what I’d been afraid of. ‘However, tomorrow I might be needed for other duties. If so, you’ll have to manage without me.’

‘Heaven forfend!’ I exclaimed, but the sarcasm was lost on my companion. I swallowed the rest of my oatcake and honey.

While Bertram finished his beer, I debated whether or not to tell him of last night’s incident. I didn’t want to. It would admit my fallibility and make me seem a bit of a fool. In the end, I decided it would be unfair not to warn him to be on his guard, and to carry a knife or a cudgel at all times.

But the story seemed to excite rather than frighten him, nor did it move him to laughter at my expense.

‘I wish I’d been there,’ he said eagerly. ‘I could probably have caught up with whoever it was. My legs are younger than yours.’

‘Whoever it was wouldn’t have risked attacking me if there’d been two of us,’ I pointed out snappishly. ‘And I’m not yet in my dotage. I’ll thank you to remember that.’

He grinned and was about to make a further rejoinder when I rose from the table and said it was time we were going. The ale room was filling up with my fellow guests, all looking for their breakfasts, and I was in no mood for idle conversation. I wanted to get this case over and done with so that I could be on my way back to Bristol. (Incidentally, I had no intention of riding or of being escorted home. Someone in Duke Richard’s household could arrange for the horse to be returned to the Bell Lane livery stables. I urgently needed the freedom and solitude.)

‘Where are we going?’ Bertram asked as we left the Voyager.

‘Where do you think? To visit Judith and Godfrey St Clair, of course. They are, after all, at the centre of this mystery. Then, if we’re lucky, perhaps we can question their next-door neighbours, the Jolliffes, as well. And if we’re very lucky, we might get a word with their other neighbour, Martin Threadgold, Mistress St Clair’s former brother-in-law.’