Kate Sedley - The Three Kings of Cologne

I heaved myself to my feet and went into the ale room, where the owner, stretching, scratching and yawning, had just entered by a side door leading from his cramped living quarters overhead.

As soon as he saw me, he grunted, ‘Your friend’s gone. Roused me before it was even light to say he had to be on his way. Said you’d pay.’

For several moments, I was rendered completely speechless, taken aback by Jack’s unexpected duplicity. Although I had never liked him, I hadn’t thought him capable of playing such a mean and low-down trick. Then uneasiness set in. The more I thought about it, the more out of character it seemed. He was a law officer: he wouldn’t want it spread around Bristol that he was a cheat and a sponger, even if it was only my word against his. There were, after all, plenty of people only too ready to believe the worst of anyone in authority.

The solution to the problem, however, eluded me for the present and I told the landlord that I was ready for my breakfast. Dried herring, stale oatcake and a pot of even staler ale did nothing to improve my temper, and I called for the reckoning as soon as I had finished this unsavoury repast.

It was then that I discovered my purse was missing. The thongs which attached it to my belt had been cut through as neatly as you please while I slept and I hadn’t felt a thing. I hadn’t even missed its weight since I got up, so busy had I been dwelling on Jack Gload’s perfidy. My first reaction was that the alehouse keeper had purloined it, but my accusation was met with such a furious and resentful denial that I believed him. Foolish, perhaps, but intuition told me that this was also Jack’s handiwork. And still I couldn’t see why.

‘I can’t pay you,’ I told my host, showing him the cut thongs and explaining my predicament.

He took a little persuading that I was indeed telling the truth, but once convinced that it was so, he merely shrugged and said, ‘Then you’ll have to work for what you owe me.’

I protested vehemently, but he was adamant.

‘That’s my rule and I ain’t altering it for no one.’ And just to prove that he was serious, he locked the alehouse door and pocketed the key.

I considered him foolhardy for he was not a big man and someone of my height and girth could easily have overpowered him, but he was evidently a good judge of character and had gambled that I wouldn’t offer him violence. I might bluster and threaten a bit, but he would come to no harm.

As it happened, I had already decided it would be a waste of time to resist in any way, and asked resignedly, ‘What must I do?’

He jerked a thumb towards a trapdoor set in the alehouse floor.

‘There are a dozen or so barrels of ale in the cellar that want bringing up and standing along the back wall. I’m not an unreasonable man, and if you do that for me, I’m willing to call it evens.’

‘I should just think you would be!’ I exclaimed bitterly when I had lifted the trapdoor and surveyed the steep, almost vertical ladder that descended into the cellar’s depths. But I had no choice. I stripped down to hose and shirt and began.

It was well past dinnertime — almost noon I guessed by the position of the sun, which I could see through the window — before I had finished this labour of Hercules. It had taken a good deal of cajoling — and a solemn promise not to escape — to persuade my host to open the shutters, and it was only when I genuinely appeared in danger of lapsing into unconsciousness from the heat that he finally agreed. But in the end, all the casks — and there were fourteen of them, not twelve — were lined up against the back wall of the ale room and I was at last free to resume my journey. I was drenched in sweat; every stitch I had on clung to me in such an indecent and revealing fashion that I hoped I should encounter no females for an hour or two until I was once again fit to be seen. (Mind you, I can’t answer for the ladies. It might have given them the treat of their lives.)

To the landlord’s credit, he had plied me with ale throughout my ordeal, and pressed another, final stoup into my hands just before I wished him farewell.

‘I’d have a word with that so-called friend of yours,’ he advised me on parting. ‘If what he did was meant as a joke, it’s a mean sort o’ trick, that’s all I can say. He’s been here afore and he knows my rules, cause he asked me once what I’d do if someone couldn’t pay.’

‘Oh, I shall be having a word with him, you needn’t worry about that,’ I responded grimly. ‘I shall also be reporting him for theft.’

‘I shan’t be worrying,’ my host chuckled as he held the door wide for a couple of dusty travellers (both men, thankfully) who were making their way up the grassy incline from the track. ‘I’m darned grateful to him. Between you, you’ve saved me a back-breaking job. God speed you, friend.’

The warmth of the April day and a slight breeze dried my clothes faster than I had expected, and by the time I had passed through Keynsham, I presented a more or less respectable sight, but I was, of course, unable to stop for any refreshment, having no money. I did, however, pause in a sheltered spot on the banks of the little River Chew, strip to the waist and wash away the dust and sweat of the morning as well as I was able. After which, feeling somewhat better, in body at least, I settled down to walk the remaining five or six miles to Bristol.

I had ceased wondering what Jack Gload’s game might be. Physical strain had taken over to such an extent that my mind felt numb, and all my effort was centred on putting one foot in front of the other. My cudgel saved me on more than one occasion from actually falling over, while my satchel felt as if it were packed with stones instead of the few necessities Adela had insisted I carried with me. Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, I would seek out the errant law officer and lay a charge of theft against him. But until then, I had enough to cope with in my aching back and arms and my general fatigue.

This all-encompassing tiredness is the only excuse I can offer for the way I walked into the trap without even the smallest presentiment as to what was coming. The walls of the city were within sight, the din and the stench reaching out to fill my ears and nostrils as they do with every big town in the kingdom. I had approached from the east and could already make out, from certain vantage points of high ground, the people passing in and out of the Redcliffe Gate. Although I guessed it to be late afternoon, the days were lengthening apace and there was still plenty of traffic, both of the two-legged and four-wheeled variety, on the roads. But there were also those pockets of quietness which every traveller experiences, where both people and carts suddenly, and for no apparent reason, thin out, leaving one almost alone in the landscape.

This happened as I descended into a hollow with thick scrub on either side. I had deviated from the main track by some yards on to a narrower path where the going was softer for my aching body. As I dropped down between the banks of the hollow, I was aware of nothing except the overmastering desire to reach home; certainly not that I must have been followed for the last half mile or so. Normally, my senses would have alerted me to danger, but, as I said, my mind had ceased to function. I was thinking of nothing but a hot supper and one of Adela’s concoctions of primrose leaves and honey which, applied externally or taken internally, would ease my joints and muscles of the worst of their pain.

A pair of heavy hands fell on my shoulders, nearly bringing me to my knees.

‘I want a word with you, Chapman,’ said a surly voice, and I was swung around with no more difficulty than my daughter had when she manhandled the bundle of grubby rags she called a doll.