London - Edward Rutherfurd [246]
Dame Barnikel’s red hair was loose; with bloodshot eyes she was staring at her daughter like a beast about to eat its prey. The girl quailed before her.
What Dame Barnikel had been saying, Ducket never discovered, but as soon as she caught sight of him, she turned with a strange half-smile. “You’re just the man we need,” she cried. And before he knew what was happening, Ducket found his arm in a powerful grip. “You too,” she muttered and, seizing her daughter as well, began to haul them towards the storehouse. Taking no notice of their protests, she opened the door and shoved her daughter inside. Then she began to push Ducket as well, and though he was certainly stronger than most young fellows his size, he found that against Dame Barnikel he was completely helpless. She picked him up and tossed him into the store as easily as if he were a child. “Time you two got to know one another,” she growled. A moment later the door was banged shut, and bolted, and they heard Dame Barnikel departing.
It was cold in the store. They both sat in silence for a time. Finally, it was Amy who spoke.
“She wants me to marry you.”
“I know,” he said. For some minutes more, neither said anything.
“Do you think Ben Carpenter’s mad?” she asked at last.
“No.” He waited a while. “Are you cold?” She did not reply, but he moved closer and, putting his arm round her, discovered she was shivering. And there, for another hour, they sat together in silence until Fleming discovered them and let them out.
The mystery began a few days afterwards.
Fleming had seemed rather low of late. With business in the market so meagre, Ducket had several times noticed him drifting into fits of abstraction at the stall; and if he could not find anyone to talk to in the evenings, he would sit by the fire with his head bowed, looking so sad that Ducket informed him: “You look as if you’re waiting for bad news on the Day of Judgment.”
Ducket was glad, therefore, one evening when Fleming seemed about to slip into one of these moods, to see an unexpected figure appear in the tavern. It was Benedict Silversleeves, well wrapped in a large black cloak, who had just returned up the cold road from Rochester.
Though he was rather in awe of the young lawyer, and though the last time they had spoken had been when Silversleeves rebuked him for kissing Tiffany, Ducket did not hesitate now. Fleming was depressed; Silversleeves was exactly the sort of educated man his master liked to talk to. He went across the room, introduced himself, and invited Silversleeves to join his master by the fire.
The lawyer could not have been more obliging. If he remembered Ducket’s crime, he gave no sign of it. With a goblet of mulled wine in his hand, he went over to the little grocer, and in no time at all the two men were so deep in conversation about abstruse matters that Ducket was able to slip away without even being noticed. Several times, however, when he glanced over at Fleming, he saw upon his master’s thin face a look of delight which told him that, tonight at least, the grocer had truly found a man of education.
He did not know what hour it was when he was awoken by the noise. It was nothing much: just the sound of a door being scraped open. A door that should not be opened. He sat up with a start.
Moments later Ducket was out in the yard, moving silently towards the store. The door was ajar and there was light coming from inside. He crept closer, wishing that he had a weapon. Cautiously he looked in.
It was Fleming.
He had not spoken to his master after Silversleeves had left. He had seen him talking to one or two other people, and he had appeared perfectly normal; indeed, he had seemed rather cheerful. Once he had seen him go out with a tall fellow who, Ducket assumed, wanted directions to Bankside. He thought that the grocer had turned in later with the rest of the household. Yet something must have happened. How else could he explain what he saw now?
Fleming was in a trance. He was standing quite alone, facing