Tombland

Bone looked at it. He was silent a long moment, then said, ‘Edith was wearing it when she came to us. She took it off soon after – her hands did not get bad till much later – but kept it in a drawer.’ He paused, then gave a bitter laugh. ‘I see I must tell the whole story. Before, I was frightened of being dragged before the court, accused of kidnapping by her father. But the gentlemen of Norwich can hardly do that now.’

‘Did you kidnap her?’ I asked sharply.

He looked at me, his eyes prominent in his thin, lined face. ‘No.’

‘Did you kill her?’

He spoke angrily. ‘If I knew who did, then I would kill them with this.’ He produced a knife from his belt and held it up.

‘Give that to me,’ Barak said quietly. Reluctantly, Bone passed it over.

I said, ‘If what you say is true, I promise there will be no trouble. Now please, for Edith’s sake, tell me what you know.’

Peter Bone leaned back against the wooden wall. I thought at first he was not going to speak, but then he said, ‘My father was a weaver, and farmed a small plot of land towards Wymondham. He had three children, first me, then my sisters Mercy and Grace. Some weavers are wealthy, others just small men, like my father. He died, God save his soul, in 1531, the year after our mother. The lease on his house and bit of farmland ended with his death, and my two sisters and I were left only with his equipment and a little money. I had learned the weaving trade from him and the three of us, who were young then, agreed that I should come to Norwich and try to make my way in the trade, while Mercy and Grace, who had been trained in the skills of serving women by our mother, would try to find employment as ladies’ maids in gentry houses. So, I came to Norwich, rented a house, and for a while I was successful, employing my own spinners and cloth finishers. I moved to the house where you first met me. I married a good Norwich girl.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘That was a happy time, but it didn’t last. She died of the smallpox. Trade became more difficult – the great men of Norwich were taking more and more of the cloth-making processes into their own hands, limiting what small men could do.’ He closed his eyes, and sighed. ‘But I worked on, I kept a-doing. Everyone knew that I had two sisters away in service. Serving the gentry families, Grace and Mercy had to behave, though by nature both were noisy, friendly, sometimes a little provoking.’ He smiled sadly.

‘Would you like some beer, Goodman Bone?’ I asked gently.

He shook his head. ‘No, thank you. What you want me to do is get on with my story, isn’t it? Well, my sisters served in various houses. Grace, as you know, eventually went to serve Edith Boleyn. That was in ’thirty-eight. But it was Mercy who had the sadder story.’ He wrung his thin hands together. ‘I told you my sisters were alike in their ways, and both had lovely dark hair and large blue eyes. But in one way they were different – Grace seemed to have no interest in men, while Mercy – well, she liked them. She was working for a family on an estate over near Cromer, and in ’thirty-three, only two years after our father died, I was summoned there by the owner. He told me his son had got Mercy pregnant – oh, I don’t doubt she’d encouraged him – and she had had a baby son. She died in childbirth.’ He was quiet again for a moment, then said, in little more than a whisper, ‘I saw my nephew just once, a little newborn, in the hands of his wet-nurse. I saw his father, too, a good-looking young man. I could see he, too, was grieving. For the boy’s father, though, it was all about business.’ His tone darkened. ‘He said he had already had Mercy quietly buried. His son would look after the boy and see to his education; it’s a common enough arrangement. But what I can never forgive is him saying I must never come near his family, nor mention what happened, or he would cut the child off. Mercy, after all, had shown herself a wanton and a sinner.’