24

W e lost count,’ Robin tells Alice next morning.

‘There I was, fast asleep while you two were searching the city!’ she cries. ‘But you must have been exhausted!’

‘Amazing what a pot of ale will do,’ Jay says. ‘Good stuff they brew here.’

‘The main thing is,’ Robin goes on, ‘once they realised we weren’t just comparing prices, most of the tailors didn’t mind telling us where other tailors are. Anyway, they all shut up shop when the light went, so we still have to search around the east end of the city towards the castle and the New Gate.’

‘Then let’s go to it,’ Alice says. The city is long since awake to the new day, the sun well up. A freshness lingers yet in the air, but the hazy sky is as yellow as an old blanket and promises stifling heat as the day advances. From the inn they head into the city centre once again. Robin and Jay know their way, having trodden the streets yesterday, and they are easily able to pick up their search from where they left off. The first tailor’s they enter is busy with a few men cutting and many more stitching, some working at tables, most seated on stools. The floor is clean, free of offcuts, there is an air of quiet industry. All the doors and windows stand open to catch any breeze and the long limewashed room, despite the low beamed ceiling, is bright with sunshine. A few men have taken their stools to the back of the building and are sitting working outside. Robin approaches a man at a table to ask his question, and they can see from the head-shaking that their search will go no further here.

They head gradually eastwards towards the New Gate, quartering right and left until they come to the city wall and turn back on themselves. Alice, breakfastless, has a sudden craving for a deep coffin pie stuffed with juicy chunks of spiced meat and fruit. But there are no pie shops in this part of the city.

At each enquiry they are met with head-shakings, polite denials, occasionally suspicion that they are timewasters, or resentment that they are not come to pay a bill or order vestments. They widen their search and collect more directions to try, but no one seems to know a pointmaker by the name of Turner.

‘Perhaps he was not a pointmaker at all,’ Alice sighs after yet another dead end. ‘Perhaps his name was not even Turner.’

‘It’s all we have to go on,’ Robin says.

‘That church,’ Jay says, pointing. ‘We’ve been past there once, I reckon.’

‘No, not that one,’ Robin says. ‘The tower is different from any we’ve seen.’

Time is getting on, Alice frets. Already it is late morning. ‘I don’t even know where we are any more,’ she says.

Robin agrees. ‘So many streets, it’s confusing.’ They reach an alley barely wide enough for two to walk abreast, one of dozens that link streets all over the city. Robin halts. ‘Perhaps up there? It may lead us back to a road we know.’ They look along the crooked fillet, the walls stretching high on either side, a thin strip of hazy sky above, the rest in shadow. Robin turns into its confined space, Alice and Jay following in single file.

Bringing up the rear, ‘What’s this sign?’ Jay asks, pointing up. ‘Isn’t it a tailor’s?’ The other two turn back to where he stands. If it is, no one has mentioned it to them. The painted sign is peeled and washed out, hanging above a narrow building squeezed between similar others, all mud-splashed along the foot of the walls, mossy where the rain of years has dripped from the tiles. The window is opaque with dirt, its corners harbouring dust and spiders’ webs thick as sheep’s fleece. Robin pushes at the rat-chewed door, which squeaks open on leather hinges. From the dimness within a pasty-faced young man, cloth and needle in hand, approaches. ‘Help you, sir, mistress?’ he offers.

‘I seek one Turner, a pointmaker of this city,’ Robin says. ‘Do you know of one such?’

‘Master Turner? I do… er, I do believe I should ask my master.’ He scuttles away, and the three exchange glances.

The dusty window casts a muted light, and it takes Alice a few seconds to make out features in the gloom. An older man, seated on a stool and sewing a sleeve, eyes the three as the apprentice passes into the shadowy nether regions. From the back of the shop comes the sound of hesitant enquiry and sharp retort, followed by growling words of rebuke. The young man backs out, nodding, ‘Yes, master, yes,’ and approaches to address Robin. ‘I regret sir, I thought my master might know a Turner,’ he tells them, ‘but it seems I was in error. He wishes me to tell you he knows nobody of that name. Has never known anybody of that name. There is no Turner comes here.’

‘Perhaps I should persuade him to think again,’ Jay says, and moves to skirt round the apprentice, but Alice reaches a hand to his arm. ‘Give me leave, if you will, Jay. I’ll join you outside in a moment.’ She turns to the apprentice as the brothers walk away. ‘You look to me like a man of wit,’ she says to him quietly. ‘Perhaps you have heard speak of this Turner?’

‘I do not give away my master’s secrets, you understand, mistress.’ The apprentice glances at the older man as he speaks. The man is head down, sewing.

‘Of course not, I can see you are not of that stamp,’ Alice assures him. ‘But perhaps you pass the time of day with others of your trade?’

The young man shifts uneasily. Alice murmurs, ‘We are not here to make trouble for your master. We have no complaint.’

The apprentice whispers, ‘I shall be released for my midday meal very soon. Tell your friends I take a pot at the sign of the Ship.’ His eyes swivel indicating the direction, and at that moment the voice barks from the back room, sending him scuttling for his stool.

‘The Ship,’ Alice says to the other two waiting outside. ‘That way. He will come in a few minutes.’ They make their way down the alley, which is staggered, blocking the far end from view. ‘He couldn’t speak to us in there, he is not supposed to give information.’

‘He certainly knows something,’ Robin says.

They pass a ragged man staring at them with resentful eyes, step over the legs of another sitting with his back to the wall, an empty pipe in his mouth. A woman leans from an upper window and her shift slips, baring her shoulder, as she calls to Jay and Robin. Rounding the dogleg in the narrow way, the rest of the alley comes into view and there at the far end, over a door flanked by bulging plaster walls, hangs a weathered, faded sign. Traces of sails and waves are just discernible. The building is fellow to all the others in the alley, decrepit, dusty, dark. Beyond, the alley issues into a sunlit street.

‘A moment,’ Jay says, and pushes open the door, glances in, pulls it closed. ‘Mistress Jerrard, this is no place for a lady.’

There are times, Alice reflects, when retreat is the better part of resolve. It is not that her reputation is at risk, as it would be in Hillbury, for instance, if she entered the inn’s taproom. The crux here is that a well-dressed woman will not only draw notice that could scare away their informant, she could attract unwelcome attentions that would put Robin and Jay at risk in defending her.

‘That’s all right, Jay,’ she says, and passes him a coin. ‘Do you give him this, with our thanks.’

‘I shall stay outside with Mistress Jerrard,’ Robin says. ‘Look, here he comes now.’

Jay turns to enter the ale house and the apprentice follows.

‘Let’s hope he knows the Turner we seek,’ Alice says. She regards a red-faced man in soiled shirt and threadbare breeches, weaving his way along the alley. As he comes alongside, he pauses wavering, eyes unfocused, and she catches the waft of strong ale. Robin steps between and lightly prods his stick at the man. ‘Away with you, oaf!’ The fellow staggers, bumping into the wall. He turns and punches it, cursing it for being in his way. A second man, using the distraction, makes a grab at Alice. She elbows him into grunting retreat.

Robin pulls his jerkin straight. ‘I believe we should quit this alley, mistress. Too many doubtful sorts.’ Together they walk to the end and pace along the adjacent street while they wait. ‘Ah, isn’t this the street where Master Norrys lives?’ he asks.

‘You’re right, that house at the far end.’

They walk up and down the street while they wait, their eyes continually returning to the alley from which Jay will appear. The city has warmed once more, and they pass buildings where the trapped heat seeps out as from a bread oven. Even in the shade there is no escape; the oppressive heat emanates from the very walls; the brick is warm to the touch.

‘Robin,’ Alice asks, ‘may I ask you a very private question about Wat? You need not answer if you do not wish to,’ she adds.

‘I don’t know that much. He never talks about himself, but ask away,’ he says.

‘I’m not sure how to put this as it might offend you,’ she says. ‘Let me start with this. Where I live in Surrey, I have a neighbour, a kindly, courteous man of whom I know only good.’

‘Ye-es?’

‘I respect him and I like him well. I would never give away the fact that I know he prefers the company of men.’

She can see that Robin is approaching this very cautiously.

‘But?’

‘No buts. He is a valued neighbour and he is safe because there are enough of us locally who refuse to condemn him. You see what I’m saying?’

‘I think so,’ Robin says, ‘but go on.’

‘By rights I shouldn’t even think this, let alone say it, but it seems to me that to be hanged because you love someone cannot achieve any good. There is a rumour threatening Wat. I want to know if it’s true or a lie. Is Wat Meredith such a man?’

‘I’d say no, but that’s just my opinion. Why don’t you ask Jay?’

‘Jay knows Wat better?’

‘Jay has his own opinions.’ He says no more and Alice senses she should leave it there.

Five minutes go by, ten. People pass, fanning themselves with anything that will flap cool air in their faces; kerchiefs, sheets of paper, a cabbage leaf. Men of all sorts come and go at the inn, but not Jay, and Alice begins to wonder if they have missed seeing him emerge. Robin himself is glancing this way and that. Edgy.

‘Mistress,’ he says at last, ‘I believe we should check the passage to see if he has gone that way.’

The last thing she wants to do is go back down that noxious way. She feels nauseous enough just standing here. ‘If he has, he’ll come back when he sees we’re not down there,’ she says.

After a few minutes more of fretting, ‘It’s a very rough-looking place, that inn,’ Robin says.

‘Jay seems to me the sort of man who can look after himself,’ she assures him. As though summoned, Jay emerges from the inn at that moment and looks around. He catches sight of them and dodges between two carts, crossing the street to where they wait in the shade. He is smiling broadly. ‘He knows Turner, all right. He comes into the shop occasionally. He sells his lacing points, gets paid and never speaks to any other than that fellow’s master. Our fellow’s tried engaging him in talk but he’ll have none of it.’

‘It all sounds rather sly, doesn’t it?’ Alice asks.

‘He wouldn’t say it straight out, but it sounds as if the points are the sort that come apart if you tug them a bit hard. Our apprentice is told to use them on the breeches they send for export. From what he left out, I’d say the breeches are made from poor cloth dressed with flour to make it feel more substantial.’

‘It’s a common trick with exported goods,’ Robin says. ‘Makes it difficult for us to find markets abroad for our dyed cloth, they think we’re all at it.’

‘So that’s why his master didn’t want us enquiring about Turner,’ Alice says.

‘He thought we were coming to accuse,’ Jay says. ‘At all events, we’re in luck. That’s the ale house where Turner drinks. Better still, he’s in there now.’