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

son.
    Edward, who apparently had no interest in the manufacture of soap, had disposed of the business to a friend of his father, one Peter Avenel, and with the money thus obtained, bought up a number of properties in and around Bristol, which returned him a handsome profit in rents.
    As far as the baby brother - with whom he had been saddled at so young an age - was concerned, everyone agreed that his devotion was exemplary. Nothing that could make up for the lack of a mother and father had been denied Robert; his every wish had been his brother's command. Even when Edward married, no children of his own had come along to challenge Robert's supremacy in the household.
    'With the result,' snorted Margaret, 'that you may well guess at. Robert grew from a wilful, spoilt child into an even wilder and unbiddable youth, a constant source of worry to his brother and, above all, a gambler, forever in debt.'
    'But handsome,' sighed Lillis, a predatory light gleaming in her cat-like eyes. 'One of the best-looking young men in the city.'
    'Oh, I don't deny that,' agreed her mother. 'And to give him his due, I don't believe he was aware of, or even cared about, his looks or the effect they had on women.
    Leastways, not until Cicely Ford came on the scene.'  
    'Cicely Ford?' I queried, storing away yet another name in my memory and wondering where the story was leading me.
    'A truly beautiful girl,' Margaret said with decision. 'Beautiful by nature as well as in person.' Lillis gave a little sniff, but did not contradict her mother's description.
    Margaret went on. 'Her father, John Ford, was one of the wealthiest burgesses of this city. He was an exporter of soap, wine, cloth; anything you care to name. He owned nine ships and employed above eight hundred souls. His merchant's mark, they say, was known the length and breadth of Europe. And one of his ships, the Cicely, was part of an expedition that sailed westwards to find the great Western Isles men talk about, the islands of Brazil.
    But storms turned the ships back some way off the Irish coast.'
    She sat a moment, staring into the heart of the fire, lost in contemplation of those lands far out in the Atlantic Ocean; those fabled shores which sailors used to swear they had glimpsed, or knew of some other ship's crew which had almost made landfall on them. (Nowadays, of course, we know that they are there, those strange, far-off lands peopled by red-skinned men. The Italian, Christopher Columbus, and Bristol's own Venetian adventurers, Giovanni Cabot and his son Sebastian, have set foot in them.)
    The resin of a twig caught flame and sent up a shower of sparks. Margaret Walker jumped and laughed. 'I was day-dreaming,' she said. 'I've forgotten where I was. What point in the story had I reached?'
    'You were singing the praises of Mistress Ford,' her daughter answered drily. 'The perfect, the ever-lovely Cicely.'
    'And so she is!' Margaret declared roundly. 'One of the kindest, sweetest, prettiest, most devout ladies to grace this earth.' I had - then - reservations that anyone could be so perfect, but I held my tongue and allowed my hostess to continue uninterrupted.
    It seemed that Master John Ford had died of a sudden apoplexy four years previously, leaving Cicely, his only child, orphaned, Dame Ford having departed this life some time earlier. John Ford had been a close friend in his youth of Giles Herepath, and had always deeply admired Edward, the elder son. And in spite of what might have been seen as Edward's mishandling of his brother, Robert, Master Ford had nonetheless left Cicely to Edward's care for the remaining years of her minority, trusting, no doubt, in his ability to handle her vast fortune with the same skill with which he managed his own business affairs.
    'And Master Edward's wife was a sober, decorous woman,' Margaret told me, 'a great benefactress of the Church and altogether a fitting preceptress for such a girl as Cicely Ford.'
    'And constantly ailing,' Lillis