Free The Brothers of Glastonbury by Kate Sedley Page A

of its original brown colour, and his dark eyes had a direct, unclouded gaze, both of which suggested that it was the elements rather than time that had not dealt kindly with him. Moreover, Mistress Pennard was a sprightly woman with cornflower-blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, who I should not have reckoned to be much more than forty. Therefore, unless she was considerably younger than her husband, Anthony Pennard was still some way short of his fiftieth birthday.
    ‘What’s happened to poor Master Gildersleeve is a mystery, and that’s a fact,’ Mistress Pennard chimed in, her mouth puckered with anxiety. ‘And it occurred on our land, too! I was in Wells market earlier this morning and I fancied several people tried to avoid me. I saw one or two whispering behind their hands. But what am I thinking of? Won’t you sit down and have a stoup of ale, Master…?’
    ‘Stonecarver,’ I said, reverting to my original name before it seemed to have been changed for ever by my calling. I had agreed with Mark, before leaving, that there was no need to be too frank about my connection with the Gildersleeves, and to introduce myself as a friend (albeit a recent one) of the family. ‘My father pursued that trade,’ I added. ‘He was killed by a fall whilst working on the roof of the cathedral nave, here in Wells.’
    ‘You’re a local man, then?’ Mistress Pennard said, wrinkling her brow. ‘Wait … I seem to remember a Widow Stonecarver. Blanche, her name was. She had a son called … called—’
    ‘Roger,’ I smiled. ‘Yes, I’m he.’
    After that she could not do enough for me, almost forcing me to sit at the table and drink with her and her husband before setting out to find Abel. She rejected the sallop she had been about to offer me, and sent Anthony to broach a new cask of ale. While he was gone, I learned that the house and pastures were episcopal property and that the original lease had been her father’s. When William Jephcott died, however, it had been granted to Anthony Pennard, a Priddy man whom Anne Jephcott had married when she was made pregnant by him at the age of sixteen.
    ‘Not the marriage that my parents would have chosen for me,’ she whispered confidentially, ‘but he’s proved a good man none the less, and very few people the wiser that Gilbert, my eldest, wasn’t conceived between clean sheets, as they say.’
    I doubted this. Anyone who could confide such intimacies to a stranger, and all within ten minutes of making his acquaintance, was not the woman to keep a still tongue in her head about anything. I saw Anthony Pennard give her a swift, sideways glance as he returned with the cups of ale, and guessed that he was wondering what fresh indiscretions his wife had committed.
    ‘Been giving you the family history, has she?’ he asked in a resigned tone as he resumed his seat at the table.
    ‘I’m just being friendly, that’s all,’ Anne Pennard rebuked him.
    I smiled and swallowed my ale almost in one gulp. I had had a hot ride from Glastonbury and was thirsty.
    ‘Do you have any thoughts yourselves on what might have happened to Master Gildersleeve?’ I asked them. ‘This boy, Abel Fairchild – is he given to odd fancies or making up stories?’
    They shook their heads in unison.
    ‘He’s been helping Gilbert and Thomas tend our flocks these two years past,’ Anthony said, ‘and never a complaint about him that I’ve heard. You can question my lads though, if you like. You don’t have to take my word for it.’
    ‘A thoroughly sensible young boy,’ Anne Pennard confirmed. ‘Neither Gil nor Tom hesitate to leave all in his charge when they’re away to Priddy with their father.’
    ‘So you wouldn’t doubt that things happened just as he described them?’
    ‘Peter’s missing, isn’t he?’ Anthony Pennard demanded. ‘And his horse was left tethered in that stand of trees. Why should we think that the boy’s lying about what he saw?’
    His logic was irrefutable.