Death and the Chapman by Kate Sedley Page B

needed to forget this problem for a while and sleep. In any case, there was nothing further I could do now until I got to London. I determined to set out as early as I could the following morning, but before that, I wanted my bed and the spiritual refreshment of solitude. I lifted my stout ash stick from the floor where I had laid it.
    ‘I really must be on my way,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the answer to this puzzle yet, and I may never do so. Maybe your mistress would do better to place her reliance in the officers of the King, as would Alderman Weaver. Nevertheless, I shall do what I can and perhaps God will crown my endeavours with success.’
    I held out my hand in farewell, but could see at once that I had affronted Robert’s dignity. He was a steward and did not shake the hand of a lowly chapman. It dawned on him, too, that for the last half-hour he had been talking to me as though I were his equal, and he shrank back in his chair as though contaminated. I let my arm sink slowly to my side again, not bothering to disguise my contempt. He did at least get to his feet and summoned the boy to show me out, but that was to ensure that the house was properly locked and barred after my departure.
    I made my way along the track, dimly discernible in the darkness, swinging my cudgel vigorously to discourage attacks from lurking footpads or other prowlers. I was glad to shake the dust of Tuffnel Manor from my feet. Apart from Bess, I had formed no favourable opinion of its inmates and thought it an unhappy household. That did not mean, however, that I would do less than my best to discover what had happened to Sir Richard and Jacob Pender.
     
    I learned much later that had I waited another twenty-four hours in Canterbury, I should have seen King Edward and Queen Elizabeth, together with many of their courtiers, on yet another visit to St Thomas’s shrine. (With hindsight, I should guess that the King’s conscience was troubling him over the necessary death of his cousin and enemy, the late King Henry.) Even so, there was much talk of the royal family among a group of pilgrims returning to London, with whom I travelled the last part of the way. And once again I heard the name of Lady Anne Neville.
    The pilgrims were poor and on foot, like myself, and I had fallen in with them some six or seven miles outside the capital. I had spent a congenial morning discussing with a priest from Southwark William of Ockham’s theory that faith and logic could never be reconciled, and that therefore ecclesiastical authority was the sole basis for religious belief.
    ‘If faith and reason have nothing in common,’ I argued, ‘then God can literally move mountains. Reason tells me that it cannot be done, but William of Ockham insisted that belief is not rational. Yet that means that religion is beyond logic and not subject to the laws which govern nature. I find that difficult to accept.’
    ‘But, my son, you must believe in the miracles of Christ,’ my companion protested, shocked, ‘and in the absolute authority of Mother Church.’
    I grinned. ‘So I have often been told, Father, but somehow or other, there are always too many questions to which I can find no satisfactory answers.’
    A silence succeeded my words while the priest marshalled his forces to deal with this Doubting Thomas. And in the quiet, I caught snatches of a conversation in progress behind me between two women, who, I had decided in my own mind, were mother and daughter. They looked sufficiently like one another to give credence to this theory.
    ‘. . . Lady Anne Neville,’ the younger woman was saying, and immediately the name attracted my attention. Once more, I was back in Bristol, watching that unhappy child ride along Corn Street. ‘It’s common gossip that the Duke of Clarence doesn’t want his brother to marry her because it will mean the division of the late Earl’s estates. As husband to the elder daughter, he hopes to get them all. Or as many of