[Roger the Chapman 03] - The Hanged Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

was told that the castle or the abbey or any of the many wealthy houses would hand out dried fish or grain. No one starved, although many might go hungry, in bad weather.
    Lillis had brought my mattress as near to the hearth as she dared, and was curled up on it, more like a cat than ever. Margaret Walker and I sat on the two stools, supporting our backs when necessary against the table edge, but for the most part leaning towards the glowing warmth of the fire. Outside, the day's noise and bustle had dwindled to an occasional shout, a dog's bark and the distant call of the Watch as it patrolled the icy streets. Now and then, a bitter draught penetrated the smoke-blackened hole in the roof, bringing with it a spatter of rain, but we merely huddled closer to the heat.
    While Margaret Walker searched for words with which to begin her story, I had time to study her. Lillis resembled her mother more closely than I had realized, for Margaret, too, was small and thin with large brown eyes which dominated her face, and the wisps of hair which strayed from beneath her hood were as black as her daughter's.
    But it was not just her added years which gave the impression of a greater maturity. There was a solidity and common sense about Margaret which I felt sure that Lillis would never achieve, and I could tell by the way the older woman kept a vigilant watch upon the younger that she also felt this way. There was something lacking in Lillis, a sense of responsibility, of morality, which made her seem almost fey.
    'My father,' Margaret said abruptly, as though deciding that if she didn't speak now, she might change her mind altogether, 'died at the beginning of last month, some three or four weeks before Christmas. His name was William Woodward, and in his youth he was a weaver by trade.'
    The story came out piecemeal, with interruptions from Lillis, questions from me, events omitted only to be recalled later and recounted out of place, or incidents recollected too soon, leading to involved explanations and recriminations from one at least of Margaret's listeners.
    So I will tell the story here as I came to understand it when her narrative was finished and I had had time to put the facts in order in my mind.
    William Woodward had been born, during the last years of the reign of King Henry IV, into the close-knit weavers' community of Redcliffe in Bristol. He had been apprenticed as a boy to Master Jocelyn Weaver, the head of one of the city's wealthiest families concerned in the cloth trade. William had lived for seven years in the Weaver household, as a good apprentice should, and, at the end of his time, had become a journeyman weaver. Unfortunately, when he had applied to join the Weavers' Guild, his masterpiece had been rejected as of inferior standard, and he had therefore been unable to set up in business on his own account, a state of affairs which he deeply resented. A grudging man, he had, I gathered, blamed his failure on everyone but himself and his own poor workmanship.
    At the age of twenty-two or thereabouts - he was never quite sure of his exact age - he had married Jennifer Peto, a young Cornishwoman, who had travelled to Bristol with her parents a few years earlier. Of the couple's four children, only Margaret, the eldest and the only girl, survived infancy. Jennifer died when Margaret was in her middle twenties and Lillis some six years old. Margaret had dutifully taken her father to live with her and the child, for by then she herself was a widow.
    In her nineteenth year, she had married, within the weaving community, Adam Walker; in her own words 'as good and kind a man as ever breathed.' Lillis had been born two years later and a son, Colin, a twelve-month after that. It needed no great skill to discern that this boy had been the apple of Margaret's eye, and I stole a sidelong glance at Lillis to see how she took such overt partiality. But her face was untroubled; and if she realized that her long-dead little brother