Free [Roger the Chapman 03] - The Hanged Man by Kate Sedley Page B

good clothes. Rich clothes. The hose were pure wool, the doublet velvet, the shirt and drawers of fine, bleached linen.
    Gentleman's garments, every one. The boots, although well-worn and rubbed, were made of Spanish leather, and there was also a hooded cape, lined with silk and scalloped round the edges.'
    'Don't forget the cloak,' Lillis reminded her mother.
    'Oh yes, the cloak.' Abstractedly, Margaret Walker stirred the remains of her soup around the bottom of her wooden bowl. 'It's true it was made of frieze, but it was fur-lined, and none of your sheepskin or badger or cat! It was squirrel, a delicate grey colour and beautifully soft.'
    I was intrigued. 'What happened to them when your father died?'
    'I still have them. They were too good to part with and I folded them in lavender and put them away in the chest.' She nodded towards the stout oaken coffer ranged against one wall. 'I'll show you them if you'd like.' She rose, selecting one of the keys from the bunch which hung at her belt, inserted it in the chest's iron lock, and lifted the lid. The room was immediately filled with the sweet intermingled scents of musk and violet and lavender. Having removed her own and Lillis's best gowns from the top, she stooped and brought out, almost reverently, the pile of clothes beneath.
    I went to stand beside her. We once more closed the lid of the chest and placed them on top. Gently I picked up each garment, shook it out, and held it up to the light filtering through the parchment of the window. The velvet doublet was a dull amber colour, very rich, but lacking the tightly nipped waist which had become so fashionable among the wealthy in recent years. The drawers and shirt, as Margaret had said, were of fine, bleached linen, the hood and cape lined with scarlet cendal. And the frieze cloak was indeed lined with the soft grey fur of squirrel.
    The apparel of a gentleman, and one more reason, if another was needed, to doubt that William Woodward had come by them as a slave in Ireland. But there was nothing else, alas, to suggest where they might have come from, or how William had obtained them. I did notice one thing, however, on closer examination. The seams of the garments were strained and in some places beginning to part.
    The boots, also, showed the imprint of feet slightly too large for them. The soiled Spanish leather had been pushed out of shape at the base of each big toe, and the toes themselves had bulged in protest against their too rigid confinement. A well-built man had owned these boots and clothes, but not so well-built as William Woodward.
    Beyond that, however, they told me nothing, and I helped Margaret return them to the chest, covering them again with the two women's gowns. There were other things in the chest; I noticed sheets, neatly folded, and a woollen blanket such as the one I used at nights, a pair of old shoes, some spare hose and a cloak of that thick, coarse material we used to call burel. There was also the edge of what looked like a book: I had a fleeting glimpse of rubbed velvet binding and the protruding edges of vellum. But before I could be sure of what I had seen, Margaret had replaced the clothes, slammed the lid of the chest and locked it. Had I been mistaken? I asked, and Margaret Walker laughed, but to my ears there was something forced about the sound. 'What would poor people, who can neither read nor write, be doing with books?' she mocked. 'Why would they spend good money on something that would be of no use to them?' Lillis, who was heating water over the fire in order to wash the dishes, said nothing. A small, contemptuous smile tilted the comers of her mouth, but whether the object of her disdain was myself or her mother, I had no means of knowing. And the more I thought about what I had seen, the less able I was to picture it clearly. As Margaret had pointed out, a book or folio would be an unlikely item to find in such a dwelling. I noted, however, that she did not offer to unlock