Kate Sedley: The Three Kings of Cologne

He had once, many years ago and before she married her first husband, Owen Juett, been a pretender to Adela’s hand, but she had preferred her swain from Hereford. And since her return to her native Bristol, she had made it quite plain that she loved me and not him. Yet since our wedding day, he had become a constant presence in our life, which, as a Sheriff’s man I suppose was in some ways understandable, considering my interest in crime. But it was more than that. Richard Manifold had never married and, as a single man, was always open to any invitation from friends for a free meal and company other than his own. Adela, much to my annoyance, had frequently taken pity on him, and allowed him a seat at our table and fireside far too often for my peace of mind.

She told me and showed me that she loved me, but I was a man. I wanted total adoration from my chosen woman, while retaining for myself the freedom to ogle and flirt with any female who caught my fancy. Not that I had ever been unfaithful to Adela, but there was always a chance that one day I might succumb to temptation. But then, as anyone with any sense knows, it’s different for a man.

The meal proceeded in silence, broken only by the two elder children’s mutterings to one another, and by Adam’s discovery that if he hummed loudly and tunelessly — he had inherited my inability to carry a tune — he could ignore the rest of us. Adela and I said nothing, she refilling my bowl with stew and cup with ale without being asked, until the atmosphere between us had become so tense that only an explosion could clear the air.

But I was suddenly too tired to quarrel: it would have to wait for another time.

‘I’m going out,’ I said.

It was dark by now, the short February day having ended in a steady rain that drummed against the shutters. The city gates were long since closed and locked, but the alehouses would be open for honest citizens who wanted to make merry or, like myself, drown their sorrows. I pulled on my boots again, wrapped myself in my cloak with the hood well up, and made my way up Small Street to the warmth and comfort of the Green Lattis, my regular drinking den in the shadow of All Saints Church. (There were other inns in Bristol, and plenty of them, but I had grown accustomed to the Lattis — or Abyngdon’s or the New Inn, whichever you liked to call it — and felt at home there.)

Not being in the mood for convivial conversation, I squeezed on to a stool at a corner table, well back in the shadows, buried my nose in my beaker and prepared to brood on my wrongs as a husband and father. I had just reached the maudlin stage of feeling extremely sorry for myself when my comfortable wallow in self-pity was disturbed by the arrival of a noisy crowd at the central table, among whom I recognized the ship owner, John Jay, and his captain, the Welshman, Thomas Lloyd. The previous summer, these two men and their crew had set sail from Bristol in an attempt to find the Island of Brazil, believed to lie somewhere to the west of Ireland. They had been lost at sea for nine weeks, while relatives, friends and the city’s population in general gave them up for dead. And now, it seemed — for their loud, jovial tones made the whole inn a party to their discussion — they were planning to do it all over again this coming summer. To a confirmed landlubber like me, it was incredible that these fools could be serious in wishing to endanger their lives and everyone else’s peace of mind by setting off a second time to look for an island no one was even sure existed.

I was still staring at them in utter fascination when the man sitting beside me got up and left, and I barely noticed when another customer took his place. It was not until a pleasant voice said, ‘Good evening, Master Chapman,’ that I turned my head and recognized a neighbour of ours, Alderman John Foster.

Now, normally, our neighbours in Small Street avoided recognition of me and my family as keenly as they would have avoided acknowledging a parcel of tinkers, and had never quite forgiven Cicely Ford for leaving her house to me when she died. (Had she not been well known in Bristol for her sweetness and goodness, her generosity might have been more widely misinterpreted. As it was, a few false and scurrilous rumours still persisted concerning my relationship with her.) I had had dealings, however, with Alderman Foster the preceding year when the mystery I had been trying to solve involved a distant kinswoman of his. I had found him not only polite, but friendly; an unusual state of affairs considering the difference in our social standing. I was an indigent pedlar. He was a former Bailiff and Sheriff of the city; a wealthy merchant importing tons of salt each year from the Rhineland (and with a passion for Cologne Cathedral). Moreover, he was Bristol’s Mayor-elect and would shortly take up the reins of that prestigious office. He was not the man I would have expected to encounter in a common alehouse; nor, having done so, would I have expected him to take the trouble to speak to me. Which goes to show, you never can tell.

‘You appear very interested in our friends over there,’ he remarked when I had returned his greeting.

Never shy of stating an opinion, I expressed myself forcibly on the subject of the projected expedition.

‘They’ve already given folk one nasty fright. Now they want to do it again. And for what? Does this so-called Island of Brazil even exist? Most people I’ve ever spoken to seem to believe it’s a myth.’

The Alderman sipped thoughtfully from the beaker of ale that an obsequious potboy, prompted by the landlord, had just placed before him in double-quick time.

‘As far as this island goes, I think you may be right,’ he admitted. ‘But although I’m no seafarer myself — I own no ships and merely hire the vessels bringing my salt from the Rhineland — I still believe there might be territory somewhere beyond Ireland. There are certain accounts of sightings that I find hard to dismiss completely. My own feeling, however, shared by some others, is that this land, whatever it is, lies much further west than has previously been thought. But if it does exist, we, as a trading port, need to find it.’

‘Why?’ My tone was blunt.

My companion chuckled. ‘I could give you a high-flown answer and say that it is our God-given duty to discover all we can about His creation; to extend our knowledge of His world and to spread His message to all who have not yet heard it. But the more prosaic truth, my friend, is that Bristol needs new markets if we are to maintain our prosperity and position as the foremost port outside of London.’

I was sceptical. ‘I should have thought that Bristol was rich enough and busy enough for that not to be in doubt. There are ships from all over Europe and beyond in and out of the city every hour of the day, six days a week. Sometimes the Backs are so crowded you can barely squeeze your hand between the prow of one ship and the stern of the next.’

The Alderman took another sip of ale.

‘That’s as maybe, Master Chapman,’ he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve in a homely fashion. ‘Some days no doubt it is so, but not always. Not now. In the past, yes. Wine was among the chief of our imports. But thirty years ago we lost Bordeaux and Gascony to the French, and the great wine fleets disappeared almost overnight. It’s true that the trade is reviving a little with our imports from Spain and Portugal, but not in sufficient quantities. And, besides, to the discerning palate Spanish wine can never be a substitute for French. But the wine trade is not the only one in danger of decline. Fish,’ he added, beckoning to a passing potboy to refill his beaker and mine.

‘Fish?’ I queried doubtfully. It sometimes seemed to me that more fish were landed on Bristol’s quays than there could possibly be in the entire ocean. There were days when the whole city reeked of them.