Last night Mr Tuffnell insisted his family stay at home, fearing the many bonfires lit for Gunpowder Plot Day would lead to riots and assaults. This morning Mr Roach speaks to a neighbour’s groom, who says a party of revellers ran across two papists in the early hours, beat them with staves and left them for dead. Though one was carried to a hospital, the other died upon a stretcher before he reached it.
Young George Goodfellow is due to go home to Keynsham for a holiday, and the intention had been for him to travel on foot, but after this news Mr Roach volunteers to take him on horseback and Mrs Tuffnell says she is content to have him use her own brown mare, adding she would not risk the life of another child, and can manage without her horse a day or two.
On our way home from the market Nell Grey and I witness a negro woman weeping as her child is taken from her, the boy having been sold to a wealthy man who stands idly chatting to the seller, a sea-captain, while the mother grieves and the child, clutching the pommel of his new master’s saddle, cries despairingly.
We walk back through streets where all I see is brutishness: children struck by their fathers; women cursed at by their husbands; horses thin and covered in untreated sores. Not for the first time I wonder if I have left Erlestoke for a city where the sole aim is to make money, heedless of the cost in misery and pain.
Yet rather than run back to Wiltshire I see a lesson to be learned. I think of Abraham’s agony as he lay dying from his wounds, and though I cannot prevent the buying and selling of other children, I am more determined than ever to find out what happened to my young friend, and why.
During the quiet of household prayers I reflect again on this, and decide to ask Mr Espinosa for his opinion of the matter. He is sure to join the funeral procession in the morning and I shall catch him then.
***
Wednesday, 7th November, 1703
At ten o’clock the undertaker and his men shoulder the little coffin, and the bells toll as we begin our walk to church. Mrs Tuffnell leans on her husband and trembles so violently that my master signs for me to take her other arm. The other servants bring up the procession, and the street is lined with onlookers. I notice a dozen negroes in the crowds; one or two may be free men, or sailors, but others must have been granted a holiday, or else they come without permission from their owners, intent on paying their respects to a youngster of their race.
The bells fall silent, and those spectating cross themselves before turning to leave as we file into church. Some benches are filled already by friends of Mr and Mrs Tuffnell; I recognise the ladies who call on my mistress in the afternoons, and wonder which among them Abraham most disliked for their teasing attentions.
At first I do not notice Mr Espinosa, who stands apart with an uneasy air, as if he fears he is not welcome. He takes a seat on a bench at the back of the nave, and I am pleased to see Mr Wharton nod to him, though Mr Wharton himself sits near the front, close to his master.
St Werburgh is not a beautiful church. The walls are drab, and the parson afflicted with a brown wart on his chin, and he cannot say his ‘r’s,’ so that we are enjoined to remember Abwaham, and I wish the parson would not harp on about the God’s love in his sermon, when the world feels empty of that virtue, and I wish the coffin was not so small, and that Mrs Tuffnell and her friends would not weep so loud. I weep too, not only for Abraham but for my brother Tom, and by the time we leave the church I am crying for myself, for the losses I have endured and those to come.
‘Corrie?’ Nell Grey indicates for me to go with the rest. A baked ham waits at Barbuda House, with two dressed chickens and a handsome salmon, and Mrs Hucker set a third fowl aside for the servants since in the flurry of the morning none of us took breakfast.
‘I will come in a moment, Nell Grey. Let me stay awhile, please.’
She takes in my over-wrought state. ‘Very well, but don’t linger, else you will displease her.’
The church falling quiet, I kneel and say a prayer for my father and brother. I had forgotten Mr Espinosa until that gentleman quietly clears his throat and I look up to find him watching me. Excepting the two of us, only an aged stooping verger remains in the chancel, snuffing the candles one by one and no doubt waiting for us to go.
‘Miss Amesbury.’ Again, the familiar catch as he pronounces my name, but whereas the parson’s speech was comic and misplaced, Mr Espinosa’s distinctive way of speaking is pleasant to my ears. I stand and curtsey.
‘Sir.’
‘I’m walking back to Mr Sampson’s. Shall I take you to Wine-street on my way?’
My tears rise afresh. ‘Thank you, Sir. I am ill today. I don’t know why, I only knew the boy a day or two.’
‘The death so brutal.’ He leaves the sentence tactfully unfinished, and offers me his arm.
The church door slams behind us, and our eyes meet. No need to spell out the verger’s resentment at a Jew who dares to enter a house of Christian worship. We pass an old seaman sitting cross-legged at the lychgate, and Mr Espinosa finds a ha’penny and drops it in the man’s lap. The seaman mumbles thanks, and I note inwardly that Mr Espinosa’s faith is no barrier to Christians accepting his charity.
‘There is still no word of the murderer, Sir.’
‘Or murderers,’ he corrects gently. ‘Mr Wharton says the same. None of the reported sightings came to anything.’
‘Everyone blames Red John.’
He tips his head: of course they do.
‘Did Mr Wharton tell you the house was locked during the attack?’
‘I took it as a false rumour.’
‘I know myself that the windows were fastened tight, Sir, and Mr Tuffnell locks the doors each night before he goes to bed. Mr Roach says someone must have gained entry beforehand, and hid within the house.’
‘Barbuda is not large. Where could they hide?’
‘The puzzle keeps me awake. The other maidservant and I, we can’t help fearing someone in the family is the culprit.’
A moment’s silence.
‘If you believe it, Mistress, you should seek a place elsewhere.’
‘I do not really believe it. The boy was loved.’ My throat narrows and I cannot speak. Mr Espinosa pauses, and when he speaks his voice is low.
‘I am glad to hear you say so, Miss Amesbury. I had the opposite impression when I saw him.’
‘Abraham was a child not nine years old, and a slave. Of course he complained at times.’
‘You misunderstand. I merely saw him out with Mr Tuffnell’s footman. There seemed to be a disagreement, and the footman boxed his ears.’ Mr Espinosa coughs. ‘Boxed his ears is perhaps misleading. The footman struck him hard—knocked him to the ground. The boy lay as if unconscious for several moments.’
A trickle creeps down my spine.
‘The footman walked off. I watched, and eventually the child got to his feet, dazed, and a bystander gave him a rag. The boy’s mouth was bloody where he struck the pavement.’
‘Are you certain it was Jonathan Berwick?’ I want to say: could it truly have been Jonty, who was white and speechless when he saw the body? ‘They went for walks together. I’m told he gave Abraham sugar from his own store when the servants took their tea. The housemaid assured me of it.’
‘I am certain, yes. Berwick is his name, now you remind me of it. He worked for Mr Cheatley, the iron manufacturer, ‘til last Lady-day.’
‘I thought him a fixture at Barbuda House.’
‘He is good-looking and charming, is he not?’ Mr Espinosa sees me redden, and hurries on. ‘He is a footman, it is his role to be smooth and civil. I shall make enquiries as to why he left his last employment. Perhaps you can make some of your own, Miss Amesbury—establish if he was ever seen by others to beat the boy. Here, you had better go in, had you not, else they will suspect you of consorting with a wicked usurer.’ He lifts his hat, watching me until I have unlatched the side-gate and he disappears from view.
***
In common with other merchants Mr Tuffnell keeps a share of imported goods not at his warehouse where they are at risk of theft, but in the cellars of his home, to which he holds the only key. Now and then Mrs Hucker needs a box of tapers or a cask of wine from the pantry, but once she has fetched what is wanted she returns the key to Mr Tuffnell, and I never saw any other venture into the cellars at Barbuda House, unless it were Mr Roach or some carter under my master’s direct orders.
After noon, the funeral behind us and the guests departed, our everyday routines resume, and Mr Tuffnell leaves for the quays and returns an hour later accompanied by a dozen barrels. They are too heavy to be taken through the house, so Mr Tuffnell unlocks the kitchen cellar door and goes below to unfasten the hatch at street level, where the carter unloads the sledges.
I happen to be in the kitchen smoothing a pile of Mrs Tuffnell’s linen, and the range where the irons lie to heat is close by the cellar door, so that each time I pick up or return one to the fire I have a clear view down the stairs and catch glimpses of Mr Tuffnell in his shirt-sleeves as he rolls the barrels across to rest them with their fellows.
The steps are not timber like the ones upstairs, but built of stone, and the walls cut into the rock, so the cellars are more like caves than an extension to the house, and judging by the dead-smelling air escaping from them, as dark and damp as any cave. I wonder at Mr Tuffnell undertaking the work himself, instead of calling for Mr Roach.
‘Horrid, ain’t it?’ Nell Grey says when she comes into the kitchen. ‘I know it’s full of slugs and other crawling things.’
There is no risk of Mr Tuffnell overhearing, because the hogsheads rumble like thunder, and he is shouting to the carter.
‘Wait ‘til the Prudence comes in next summer,’ Nell Grey warns me. ‘There’ll be so much sugar in store we’ll have wasps and bees all through the house.’
I point at the whitewashed wall beyond the door. ‘Does Mrs Hucker ever hang game or joints of beef down there?’
‘What is it?’
‘Blood, big splashes of it, see? On the steps, and there, on the wall.’
Nell Grey frowns, but there can be no mistake, for the staircase nearest the top is freshly painted like the kitchen, and the red-brown stains are plain as day.
‘Abraham died in the yard,’ Nell Grey says. Her eyes are wide. ‘He didn’t know what befel him, Jonty swore he didn’t.’
I have broken out in goose-pimples. ‘How did Jonty know?’
‘He said the boy’s eyes were open in surprise.’
‘Nell Grey, did Jonty ever harm Abraham, do you know?’
‘Jonty? He whipped him for stealing cake the other week, but we all did that one time or another. Abraham was forever stealing. He was a boy.’
The blood looks recent, and there is plenty of it. The more I stare, the more I see. ‘Nell Grey, tell nobody of this. If the blood is Abraham’s the killer will be desperate in case the matter is found out.’
She squeaks with fear, for Mr Tuffnell appears at the top of the steps as I finish this speech, and neither of us can be sure how much he heard.
‘Sir. You look warm, Sir. Shall I fetch you a cup of something?’
‘Thank you, Amesbury.’ He shuts the cellar door, and carefully locks it, and if he notices the bloodstains he gives no sign, whistling and eyeing me as I bring across the ale jug.
‘Take some to the carter, Nell Grey.’ As soon as she has left the kitchen he grabs my arm.
‘What were you saying when I came up?’
‘Beg pardon, Sir, I don’t remember.’
‘Beg pardon, Sir, you do remember.’
I lower my eyes and pretend to blush.
‘Come on.’ He shakes me a little. ‘I heard the word “killer.” What were you saying?’
‘Forgive me, Sir. I was telling Nell Grey I had a killing pain. I am sorry, Sir, but I beg you to excuse me.’ I set down the jug and clutch my stomach. ‘Like I told Nell Grey, I have my terms today.’ Before he says a word I run out to the garden, where I seek the privy and remain there long enough I can be sure he will have gone away.
For the rest of the day I long to find Mr Espinosa and tell him of my discovery. Not until the following afternoon does my chance come, Mrs Tuffnell taking to her bed with a headache after dinner, and Mrs Hucker ordering us maids out, saying she will have herself a nap like Mistress.
The weather is wet, but it is rare enough we have a holiday, so Nell Grey, Suke Cross and I put on our bonnets and cloaks and set out for Broad-street, Suke relishing the chance to regale us with stories of her many ailments, Nell Grey and I jumping puddles and dodging dripping eaves while I try to steer the chat away from boils and earaches. I earn myself a gentle nudge from peacemaker Nell Grey, and as we reach the walk Suke rounds on me.
‘I must say, Miss, we were all a good deal more content in the kitchen before you came to Barbuda House, with your carping tongue and your sideways smiles. You think yourself so much better than the rest of us, and yet you are only a country miss who came to Bristol before your landlord threw you on the parish. Don’t look surprised, I met another Wiltshire girl and she told me who you really are, for all your stuck-up ways.’
It takes me but a moment to guess who she means.
‘I shouldn’t be quite so gullible if I was you, Suke Cross. Miss Bridget Lamborne was never told anything about me or my family, and yet I know about hers. She has a father who cares nothing for her, and she was sent here to be Pot-Scrub to a family of parvenus. Upstarts, to the likes of you. Lamborne? Born liar, more like.’
We turn onto the street where Mr Sampson keeps his shop. The door and shutters are locked for early closing.
‘Ha!’ Suke Cross says. ‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you, Miss? You was hoping to pass the time of day with your dark-eyed Jew-friend, wasn’t you?’
‘Leave off, do,’ Nell Grey says. But before we have time to stop her, Suke Cross sprints to Mr Sampson’s door and hammers with all her strength. From a distance Nell Grey and I watch as an elderly gentleman cautiously emerges. Suke says something, he replies and retreats, and she comes dancing back to us, bright-eyed.
‘Be prepared for shocking news, Coronation Amesbury. Your favourite is in a “dangerous condition”.’ She smiles mockingly, savouring her power, until Nell Grey says, ‘Come on, Suke, tell us the matter. I hope you’re not taking pleasure in another’s misfortune.’
‘I’m curious is all, same as you two. Mr Espinosa left work late last night. Mr Sampson had a long list of accounts for him to copy, and it took ‘til nearly nine o’clock before he finished. He set off for his lodgings, whereupon some bully, a footpad or robber, set on him, beat him black and blue, stole his coat, and threw him in a ditch. If his friend Mr Wharton had not gone looking for him the Jew would have died from loss of blood. The surgeon dressed his wounds and forbid him leave his bed for a week. Mr Sampson himself is nursing him. Oh, Coronation Amesbury, you look done in. I am so sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.’
Nell Grey, God love her, takes my arm. ‘Never mind, Corrie. Mr Espinosa has a good nurse, I’m sure he’ll recover.’
‘Though he is certain to be badly scarred,’ Suke says, with relish. ‘It was his own fault, from what his master says. It was pitch black last night, no moon. He should have known better than to walk the streets alone. Did you ever see such an out-and-out Jew as Mr Espinosa, with his yellow face and hooked nose and sly black eyes?’
‘And did you, Nell Grey, ever see such a good-for-nothing bedraggled little scrubber as Miss Suke here, with her face like dirty paper and her eyes goggly as a frog’s, and her nose so big I can’t help myself.’ God save me I shall have such a beating from Mrs Hucker, but I seize that misshaped snotty nose and pull it ‘til Suke screams. Nell Grey has to push between us to prevent an outright fight, Scrub having dragged me down to her level at last, which I swore she would never do.
‘I knew she was sweet on him, the brazen,’ Suke screeches.
‘I’m not sweet on him, you toad. I’m sorry he’s hurt, that’s all. Your crowing over it makes me seethe.’
‘All right, Suke, you come home with me and tell Mrs Hucker you had one of your nose-bleeds, and need a poultice, and Corrie, you must stay out another hour ‘til tempers cool. What a pair, one full of silly spite, the other a hot head who’ll be lucky to keep her place if Mrs Hucker hears of this.’
‘Which she will,’ Suke spits.
‘She’d better not. Mr Espinosa is a friend of Mr Wharton, and Mr Wharton is Mr Tuffnell’s agent.’
Suke makes a feint at me, but Nell traps her hand firmly beneath her arm and drags her away while I, overtaken by giddy shakes, sit down on a stone and forbid myself to cry.
***
Mrs Hucker is standing in the scullery door when I return.
‘Baggage,’ she snaps. ‘Fighting in the street like a Redcliffe washer-woman. Bringing your master’s house into disrepute. You’re lucky you didn’t break Suke Cross’s nose and find yourself on a charge of common assault. Lady’s maid! I’ll whip your arse with my lady’s riding crop if there is ever a repeat of what you did today.’
I clamp my tongue between my teeth so I cannot answer back.
‘Stay out, girl, ‘til Mr Tuffnell locks the house, and serves you right if you get cold and wet. Tomorrow you’ll be wetter still, scouring the floors while Mrs Tuffnell makes her visits. Suke can have my mistress’s fireside for the afternoon.’
Mrs Hucker would love to see my shoulders quiver as I cross the yard but I shall not give her that pleasure, and when I see the gargoyle at the corner of our neighbour’s house, the one of a woman’s head with two fat chins, I stick out my tongue and say, ‘There, you are nearly as ill-favoured as Ma Hucker, and you talk more sense than she does too.’
Then there is nothing to be done save trudge to Liz and Bill’s for shelter from the rising rain, and pass off the occasion as a half-holiday granted by Mrs Tuffnell as a perquisite.
The days being short and dark, both Bill and Liz are home when I arrive. Bill answers the door, grinning unpleasantly when he sees who calls.
‘Ho! I told Liz you’d be back within the week. Mind, I don’t blame you.’
Liz appears, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘We heard what happened. Come in, Corrie.’
‘You needn’t worry, Brother, I’m not stopping. My mistress sent me to town, and I thought I’d call on my way back.’ I sit on the stool Liz pulls up to the hearth, and watch her pour a cup of small beer.
‘Go on then.’ She passes me the cup. ‘Tell us everything. Bill knows a fellow who works for Mr Tuffnell, don’t you, Bill? He reckons the house was broken into overnight.’
I had hoped for news of the death at Mr Elliott’s; I had reckoned without news of Abraham’s death spreading so fast. ‘It looks that way.’
‘Roach says he’s sure of it,’ Bill says. ‘The black boy was in the house when the rest went to bed.’
I might have known Mr Roach would be a friend of Bill’s. ‘So we believe.’
‘I should watch out if I was you, Corrie,’ Bill says. ‘Could be you next.’
‘Thank you, Brother. I sleep in the garret with the housemaid.’
Liz casts a nervous glance at Bill. ‘All the victims have been young boys. I would be frightened to go back to Mr Elliott’s otherwise.’
‘In Wine-street all the servants blame Red John,’ I tell her. ‘None can explain how he broke in, but he’s the only culprit.’
Liz sends Bill another anxious look. ‘Some say Red John is John Hench. Bill knows John Hench, don’t you, Bill? Not that I’m saying I agree with them.’
‘John Hench,’ Bill begins, his voice thick and slow as though he corrects a half-wit, ‘is a pedlar and a one-time sea-faring man who has lived through five attacks by pirates. For every wagging female tongue that names him as the murderer, ten strong men would knock those women down for slander. So shut your mouth.’ To my relief Bill uses his disgust as an excuse to get up and leave.
The scrape of his boots has barely faded when Liz grips my arm. ‘Bill can say all he likes, but John Hench is wicked, Corrie. He walked into the Sailor’s Rest on Marsh Street the night Mr Tuffnell’s page-boy died, and his hands were red with blood.’
My heart thuds. ‘Bill told you that?’
‘Only he said John had been fighting and come off worse. Bill woke me up to make a poultice to take to Hench. Mr Elliott lets me pick some of his comfrey to make knitbone.’
‘Why does Bill help such a man?’
‘He owes him money. They gamble, and Bill loses. And I think John Hench blackmails him. Bill sells some of the conies he kills, and the farmers would take him up for poaching if they knew. He brags in his cups, and John threatens to turn him in.’
I begin to see why a man like Bill Eardley bullies his wife, if he is bullied by other men.
Liz rises. ‘I wish I could offer you a better supper.’ She looks ruefully at the pot, which smells as if it holds the usual thin brew of greens.
‘I would love to eat with you, Liz, but I must go home. Can I ask you something? What happened to the knife found in the bothy?’
Instantly, her face closes. ‘I threw it in the river.’
‘Why?’
‘In case anyone started saying it was Bill’s. It looked like one of his. It wasn’t, but it looked as if it was.’
‘Hasn’t Mr Elliott asked for it?’
‘No. He said he never wanted to see it again. Poor man.’
I want to say that Bill is more likely to be suspected if the knife cannot be accounted for. ‘Liz, can I ask a last question before I go? Will you tell me any future gossip you hear about John Hench?’
‘You always was a nosy beak, Corrie Amesbury. Remember when you found out the old squire was seeing a woman down in Westbury?’ She chuckles.
It is pleasant to part on good terms, but I am not ready to talk on that subject.
‘It was not very difficult to find out. Horrid old hypocrite.’
‘But no one knew until you spotted him creeping home on Back-lane, and put two and two together. Yes, I will tell you anything I hear, but only if Bill’s out.’
Liz being so proud of her quick-witted sister, I baulk at lowering myself in her eyes by telling her what happened when I met the old squire that day. Thankfully she does not know the tale of the maid he despised yet tried to ruin.