Kate Sedley - The Three Kings of Cologne

He greeted the pair of us with a nod and a grunt and the remark that Jack’s youngest grandchild was giving his lungs an airing.

‘Heard him,’ he said, ‘as I passed the bakehouse not two minutes since. Fact, you could hear ’im right down the bottom of the marketplace.’

‘Ay, he’s a grand little fellow,’ Jack replied proudly.

My heart sank even further, but by the time we had gone a little way down the high street, peace reigned in the two-storey house next to the baker’s shop (now boarded up for the night) and bakehouse with its funnelled chimney.

Mistress Cecily Baker was a surprisingly handsome young woman of perhaps some twenty summers, short and a little on the plump side, but with thickly lashed brown eyes, a sweet, full mouth and a neat, straight nose. I realized at once that she must favour her mother, for she was nothing like Jack. Her husband, Thomas, was as tall as she was short, a thin streak of a man with untidy brown hair, blue eyes and the white, floury complexion of all men of his calling. I soon learned that he spoke seldom but when he did, it was to state his opinions with all the dogmatic forcefulness of the totally uninformed.

My hope of being denied their hospitality was doomed to disappointment. Nothing could have exceeded my hostess’s pleasure at seeing me, and as she obviously ruled the roost, her husband extended an equally warm welcome to both his father-in-law and myself. The dog was inclined to take exception to the presence of strangers, but once he had sniffed Hercules’s scent on my clothes, he seemed to accept me as a friend. The cats, of course, ignored us, as cats the world over do, and continued pursuing their quest for mice and rats, pouncing at every rustle in the straw covering the kitchen floor.

The baby, a fat, red-faced infant of, I guessed, about six months, was breathing wheezily in his cradle which had been brought downstairs and placed next to the hearth, and which Cecily was rocking with her foot. Of the other three children there was no sign, although, now and then, a thump from the upper floor and a quickly suppressed shout of laughter indicated that they might be in bed, but were not yet asleep.

Jack Gload introduced me as his friend from Bristol (a description I secretly took great exception to) and as such I was given the best seat in the room — a simple armchair which I suspected really belonged to the master of the house — and offered two helpings of everything when Jack and I eventually sat down to a very belated supper. Thomas then took himself off to the bakehouse to set the dough to rise for the next day’s bread, while his wife ushered her father and myself into a snug back parlour where she joined us after she had cleared away our dirty dishes. Jack was instructed to fetch in the cradle, the children upstairs were shouted at and threatened with dire consequences if they did not immediately go to sleep, and then father and daughter settled down for a cosy gossip to catch up on family news. I naturally could take no part in this and soon found myself nodding off, drifting in and out of a dream in which I found myself standing on the edge of the great gorge in Bristol, overlooking Saint Vincent’s rocks, and arguing with the hermit about something or another. Unfortunately, although I recognized myself as the taller of the two men, I was also detached from him and unable to hear a word of the conversation. I shouted at myself to speak up — and woke with a cry on my lips that made my two companions start.

‘You been dreaming, Chapman, and no mistake,’ Jack Gload said, grinning, while his daughter looked at me reproachfully as the noise had disturbed the baby, who was beginning to grizzle, flailing his little arms which he had tugged free of his blanket. Fortunately some vigorous rocking from his mother soon quietened him again, and I pulled myself up straight on the narrow window seat on which I was sitting, shaking my head to clear it of the cobwebs of sleep.

‘S’pose you wake yourself up by telling us what you’re doing in Bath,’ Jack continued, the grin becoming slightly more malevolent. ‘It’s got something to do with that there old murder, hasn’t it? That body that was turned up in the nuns’ graveyard.’

Dame Cecily immediately clamoured to know what her father meant by this, and to be told the full story, so I was spared the necessity of replying for the moment. Jack at once puffed out his chest and in his capacity as one of (in his opinion) Bristol’s most important law enforcers told what he knew — which, I was relieved to discover, was no more than, if as much as, I knew myself. I should have hated to think that Dick Manifold was as diligent or as clever as Roger Chapman. On the other hand, honesty compelled me to admit that so far I had found out very little.

‘And you, sir,’ my hostess enquired, turning to smile at me. ‘Do you also work with my father and the Sergeant?’

‘No, ’e don’t!’ guffawed Jack. ‘’E’s nothing but a common pedlar!’

Cecily Baker coloured uncomfortably and glanced askance at her parent, obviously distancing herself from his boorish manners.

‘But you do have some interest in the matter, Master Chapman?’ she urged.

So, reluctantly, I divulged my part in the enquiry and, battered into submission by a volley of questions from father and daughter, Mayor Foster’s interest in the affair, plus a little of what I had discovered and the reason for my visit to Bath.

‘Although,’ I finished lamely, uneasily aware that I had perhaps said even more than I had intended to, ‘I expect very little success here. “Caspar” has no name, no face, no identification of any sort. Even the descriptions I have for the remaining two of Isabella Linkinhorne’s swains could apply to hundreds of men. Furthermore, I have no proof that “Caspar” is living or dead, nor whether, if the former, he is still here in Bath.’

I could tell by Jack’s puzzled expression that he was having great trouble following the bit about the Three Kings of Cologne and was unable to understand my reason for giving the three — now two — unknown men these outlandish names.

‘It helps Master Chapman to identify them in his own mind, Father,’ Cecily explained kindly in the same indulgent tone she might have used to one of her children. ‘Don’t tease yourself about it,’ she added, patting his arm. (She had to take after her mother for intelligence, as well as looks. How on earth, I wondered, had Jack Gload managed to attract such a paragon?) My hostess turned back to me. ‘I fear you have very little hope of success, Master Chapman. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say none at all.’

During the past ten minutes or so, her husband had returned from the bakery and joined us in the parlour, settling himself alongside me on the window seat, sitting down with a thump that sent a fine cloud of floury dust up into the air where the motes whirled around in the candlelight like a miniature snowstorm.

‘Shouldn’t be encouraging the League,’ he announced, fastening on to the one point he had really understood. ‘All this talk of Cologne. Trade with the Rhineland should be outlawed. The King and Council should see to it.’

‘Yes, my love,’ his wife agreed pacifically. No doubt her early years with her father had equipped her for dealing with men of limited intellect without losing her temper. ‘But we weren’t really discussing the Hanse towns. Master Chapman here has a problem.’ She smiled faintly. ‘He’s looking for someone he knows nothing about.’

‘Nonsense! He must know something. He wouldn’t be such a fool as to come searching for a man of whom he knows nothing.’

‘Always thought you was an idiot, Chapman,’ Jack remarked conversationally. ‘Now I’m sure of it.’