Kate Sedley - The Three Kings of Cologne

My luck was in: I had convinced the woman that I was someone of importance. Grudgingly, she stood aside and let me enter.

‘Tell the master he’s wanted,’ she told the girl, who promptly vanished into the back regions of the house.

The hall where we were standing spoke, if not of great wealth, then at least of a comfortable living. The beams and door posts were elaborately carved and painted in shades of blue and red with, here and there, a touch of golden yellow. A fire burned on the hearth, for the April morning was chilly, and the furnishings comprised two fine oaken chests, two armchairs, a corner cupboard containing the family silver and a bench on which were scattered some half-dozen red and green cushions. The walls, it was true, were bare of any coverings, but my impression was that Master Mynott did not suffer from a shortage of money.

The lady whom I presumed to be Mistress Mynott vouchsafed no further word, in spite of a half-hearted attempt on my part to engage her in conversation, staring down her nose at me with a disapproving gleam in her cold blue eyes. She turned with something like relief as the door at the back of the hall opened and a man in a long furred bed robe appeared.

‘Ah, here you are, my love,’ she said sharply, her tone belying the affectionate form of address. ‘This gentleman — ’ the word had a pejorative ring to it — ‘wishes to talk to you. He says — ’ again she threw scorn into her voice — ‘that he is on the business of His Worship, the Mayor of Bristol.’

I could see at once that Ralph Mynott, if he had indeed been one of Isabella’s swains, must be the one described as ‘ordinary’. Of middling height, with brown hair, now greying and going more than a little thin on top, eyes of a non-descript blue, he might have been any one of a score or so men I passed in the street every hour of every day. He must have been the same when young, without any distinguishing feature to mark him out from the crowd; not remarkably good-looking, but not necessarily displeasing either.

He blinked at me several times before saying mildly, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘I’d like to speak to you alone, Master Mynott,’ I suggested tentatively, anticipating furious opposition from the lady.

She did look daggers at both me and her husband, but to my utter amazement, when Master Mynott said in his quiet way, ‘Very well. Alice, my dear, will you please leave us,’ she flounced out of the hall without another word. I began to revise my first impression of ‘Caspar’. He might look downtrodden, but it was plain to me that his wife was a little afraid of him — which, in the circumstances, interested me very much. Was Ralph Mynott capable of violence?

Once we were alone, he motioned me to one of the chairs and himself took the other.

‘Now,’ he enquired calmly, ‘what is this all about? Suppose you start, young man, by telling me your name.’

‘Roger Chapman,’ I said, but hurried on, ‘Before I go any further, sir, did you, twenty years ago, know a young woman by the name of Isabella Linkinhorne?’

He looked shocked, blinking rapidly again. ‘Sweet Virgin!’ he murmured. ‘After all these years to be reminded of her!’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Yes, I knew her. It would be incorrect to say that I had forgotten her, but I haven’t thought about her in a very long time.’ His voice tailed off and he sat staring in front of him for several moments, lost in a reverie. Then, pulling himself together, he repeated, ‘What is this about? And whatever it is, what has it to do with the Mayor of Bristol?’ He added, ‘Isabella must be my age by now and, I should imagine, long since married.’

‘She’s dead,’ I announced baldly. ‘She has been for twenty years.’ And I proceeded to tell my story.

Master Mynott listened in silence, only twice interrupting me with a question. When at last I had finished, he said nothing for a while, sitting with his hand to his mouth, his gaze unfocused, looking at nothing in particular. Finally, he uttered the one word, ‘Murdered!’ before lapsing into silence again. I would have been ready to swear that his dismay was genuine, but as yet I didn’t dare let myself believe it.

‘Yes, murdered,’ I confirmed.

‘You’re certain?’ he asked, suddenly sitting up straighter in his chair and regarding me fixedly. ‘You’re sure the body found was Isabella’s?’

Slowly, I went over the story yet again; the evidence of the jewellery she had been wearing when she met her death; the testimony of the various people I had talked to, including Robert Moresby. ‘I think you must have been acquainted with Master Moresby,’ I added. ‘He was a friend of your sister and brother-in-law, Sir Peter and Lady Claypole.’

Ralph Mynott nodded, confirming what I had already suspected. ‘It was through Robert that I got to know Isabella. I often rode to Hambrook Manor in those days and was introduced to him by my sister. He was in fact no more than an itinerant goldsmith,’ he added somewhat dismissively, ‘whom Araminta and Peter had chosen to befriend. And then one day, on my way from Bath to Hambrook, on the downs above Bristol, I met Master Moresby out riding with this beautiful girl. He introduced her, not without some prompting from me, I might say, as Isabella Linkinhorne.’ Once again, Ralph Mynott breathed deeply. ‘I thought her quite simply the most lovely creature I had ever set eyes on.’

‘You got to know her,’ I suggested, ‘when Master Moresby wasn’t present?’

‘She told me herself that she went riding on the downs every day, and after that …’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘After that, whenever I could be spared from my father’s weaving sheds, I rode north in the hope of meeting her. There were many occasions, of course, when I was disappointed, but she was often to be found in or near Westbury, on the River Trym, where she had a cousin living.’

If Ralph Mynott’s father had been a master weaver, it explained the family’s affluence and how the daughter of the house had been able to ensnare a baronet. Bath was as famous for its cloth as its neighbour, Bristol.

‘You fell in love with Isabella?’ I asked.

He lowered his voice a little, indicating by a gesture of his hand that I should do the same.

‘Yes, I fell in love with her. She was so lovely and so unhappy, like one of the heroines in the romances that my sister used to read. I wanted to rescue her. To take care of her for the rest of her life.’

‘Did she know how you felt? Was she in love with you?’

‘I asked her to marry me. She promised to consider my offer. She told me she returned my affection, but could not leave her tyrannical old parents for the present. I tried to make her see that she couldn’t waste her life and mine waiting for them to see reason or to die. I told her that when my own father died, I would inherit the weaving sheds; that I was able to take care of her, even then, in comfort for the remainder of her days. She knew that my sister was married to Sir Peter Claypole and that I was not unconnected. But she was as good as she was beautiful; a kind, dutiful daughter, mindful of the Church’s teaching to honour her father and her mother …’

‘That her days might be long upon the earth,’ I couldn’t help interjecting ironically. ‘But they weren’t.’

Ralph Mynott smiled sadly and I saw tears start in his eyes. Either he was pretending, or, like Robert Moresby, he had never understood Isabella’s true nature. He had had the money, his rival the good looks. So what quality had ‘Balthazar’ possessed?

But that was a problem yet to be tackled. For the moment, my interest lay with Ralph Mynott.

‘When was the last time you saw Isabella, sir?’ I enquired, trying not to make it sound like an interrogation. It was plain that he had not yet grasped the significance of my visit or of my questioning.