Death and the Chapman Read Online Free PDF

reach of the Portsoken ward, where the weavers had their dwellings.
    ‘You were both to stay with your uncle and aunt?’ I queried, when Alison paused for a moment. ‘Both you and your brother?’
    But this, apparently, was not the case. John Weaver and his wife, Dame Alice, had two grown sons, one of whom was married and had not yet left home to set up on his own.
    Although a truckle bed could therefore be offered to Alison, there was no room for Clement. He was to lodge, as the Alderman himself did when in the capital, at the sign of the Baptist’s Head in Crooked Lane, off Thames Street; an inn owned and run by his old friend from Bristol, Thomas Prynne.
    ‘You remember, I told you,’ Marjorie said with a nudge, ‘he was landlord of the Running Man before he decided to try his luck in London.’
    I recollected and nodded. ‘You were reluctant to recommend the inn now that Thomas Prynne is no longer there.’
    ‘A good man,’ Marjorie confirmed. ‘Greatly liked and very much missed in Bristol. He and the Alderman were close friends. They grew up together in Bedminster village. ‘
    Alderman Weaver had plainly outstripped his boyhood companion and, by the same token, was a self-made man, not the heir of inherited wealth as his children were. Children? Or child? I glanced again at Alison, which prompted her to continue.
    ‘As I was saying--’ here she darted a look at the housekeeper as though resentful of being interrupted - ‘ Clement was to stay at the Baptist’s Head.‘ She conceded: ‘Marjorie’s right about Thomas Prynne. My father has known him all his life. When we were little, Clement and I used to call him Uncle Thomas, although my mother objected. She was a de Courcy, you see.’ She spoke as if this explained everything, as in some ways it did. The name indicated descent from the old Norman aristocracy, and the Alderman, on his way up, had no doubt considered such a marriage advantageous. I wondered idly how much dowry the lady had brought him. I suspected little. My guess was an impoverished family with pretensions, but fallen on hard times, forced to ally itself with ‘new’ money. I speculated on the probable happiness of such a union. Alison continued, recapturing my wandering attention: ‘Father would never let Clement stay anywhere else in London. And especially not on that occasion. It was absolutely necessary that my brother should lodge with someone he could trust.’
    I took another gulp of ale. ‘Why?’ I asked, although I could already guess the answer.
    Alison Weaver twisted the black and gold cramp ring on her finger. ‘He was carrying a great deal of money on him, money for me to buy my bride-clothes with.’
    ‘How much?’ I asked, forgetting in my eagerness for details that I was a lowly chapman and she the daughter of an Alderman. I felt Marjorie kick me under the table.
    Alison, however, was too wrapped up in her story to notice my impertinence, or to make anything of it if she did. She must, during the past months, have gone over and over the events in her mind.
    ‘A hundred pounds,’ she said in an awed voice. ‘One hundred and fifty marks. Some of it, mind you, was for payment to the Easterlings at the Steelyard. My father told me afterwards that he had unintentionally overcharged them for a consignment of cloth and had instructed Clement to reimburse them while he was in London.’
    ‘A great sum of money for a young man to be carrying.‘ Marjorie interrupted. ‘It was asking for trouble if you want my opinion.’
    ‘Nobody does!‘ her mistress replied tartly. ‘And in any case, no one knew how much he was carrying, not even me. There was no reason for anyone to suspect that he had such an amount about his person.’
    ‘Footpads and thieves,’ I pointed out gently, ‘take their chances. Anything and everything is grist to their mill. Two marks are as much worth stealing as twenty. And if the haul turns out to be a large one, that’s simply their good