Kate Sedley - The Three Kings of Cologne

To my utter astonishment, I found myself staring into the face of Ranald Purefoy, and what he could want with me I was unable even to guess.

‘A word? What about?’ I mumbled.

‘What about? What about!’ he shouted, the noise reverberating through my head almost as if I were recovering from a bout of drunkenness. ‘Comin’ the innocent won’t help you, Chapman.’

Anger began to steady my nerves and make me forget my weariness.

‘This is stupid!’ I said, trying to turn away, but his big, shovel-like hands still held me fast.

‘You been after my wife!’ he exclaimed. ‘Goin’ t’ my house when I weren’t there and making up to her.’

The charge was so absurd that I was bereft of speech and could only goggle at my assailant for several seconds before bursting into laughter.

‘Why in the name of all that’s holy should I want to make up to Mistress Purefoy?’ I managed to gasp at last. Then I made my fatal mistake by adding, ‘She’s as ugly as sin!’

His hands tightened their grasp. ‘So now you’re insulting her as well as trying to deflower her!’ he stormed, and brought up his right foot to kick me in the groin.

Fortunately for Adela’s and my future happiness, my instinct suddenly raised its hitherto dormant head and I twisted sideways just before his boot landed with a bruising thud against my hip. The impact, however, felled me to the ground, and he threw himself on top of me, rolling me over to lie face downwards and grinding my nose and mouth into the dirt. Next, he seized me by the hair — my hat having fallen off during the encounter — and started to bang my head up and down against some stones that had, over the years, accumulated in the hollow. I could feel blood trickling down my cheek. I recall wondering feebly where my cudgel was — I had dropped it as I fell — but had no means of groping for it, both my upper arms being pinioned to my sides by Ranald Purefoy’s massive thighs and knees. Such was my weakened state after my morning’s exertions that I began to lose consciousness.

‘This’ll teach you to leave my goody alone,’ I heard him say, his voice seeming to recede into the distance. I even remember chuckling to myself in a stupid, hysterical, meaningless way as darkness threatened to close in around me. But before it quite did, I received a blast of foul breath on one half of my face and up my right nostril as my attacker lowered his head to whisper in the ear that was uppermost. ‘And you leave off askin’ questions about that there Isabella Linkinhorne. D’you hear me? Jane don’t like it. And there’s others don’t like it, neither. So you do as you’re asked like a good fellow-me-lad and don’t you go upsetting Jane no more!’

My hair was once more tugged at ruthlessly, my head was raised and crashed down on one of the larger stones, and the weight was finally removed from my back as Ranald heaved himself to his feet. But he hadn’t altogether finished with me, landing me two hefty kicks in the ribs before pounding away to join the main Bristol track and make his way home.

I lay still, staving off an urgent desire to throw up and wondering how many ribs were broken. I was also afraid that I was about to pass out, but, as with the nausea, I managed to overcome it, fighting my way back to full consciousness by the sheer power of will. Slowly and cautiously I rolled on to my back and, even more slowly and cautiously, sat up. There was no sharp jab of pain, only a feeling of being black and blue all over, my general tiredness adding to my overall malaise. For a while, I was tempted to lie down again and wait for someone to find me, but two factors militated against this desire. The first was that very few people seemed to frequent this narrow sidetrack between the humps and hollows of uneven ground, and the second was that righteous anger was beginning to flood through me like a healing tide. Understanding, too, as I started to realize just what had been going on.

But there was a further realization, as well. In his eagerness to discourage me from discovering his identity, ‘Balthazar’ had made a number of very foolish mistakes, and upon reflection, I decided that this was typical of the man and only what I would have expected had I known who he was from the outset. R.M. Never as clever as he thought he was.

I dragged myself to my feet, using all my reserves of strength, and, leaning heavily on my cudgel — which I discovered a few feet away from where I had fallen — resumed my painful trudge towards the Redcliffe Gate.

‘This job is becoming too dangerous,’ Adela grumbled, rubbing me all over with her primrose and honey ointment and viewing the extensive bruising in the area of my ribs with deepest disapproval. ‘You go to Bath for a couple of nights and come home looking as though you’ve been trampled by wild horses. I want you to give it up, Roger. Give Mayor Foster back his money — or what’s left of it — and tell him that I don’t wish you to continue with this investigation.’

‘That makes two of you,’ I said, submitting to having the growing lump on my forehead bathed with comfrey juice, and allowing the application of sicklewort ointment to the cuts and scratches on my face.

‘Two of us? What are you talking about?’ She helped me pull my nightshirt over my head and put an arm about my waist as I lifted myself higher in the bed. Then she started to undress herself.

My bedraggled appearance, just before suppertime, had created a sensation among my nearest and dearest, but my wife, ever practical, had fed me first and asked questions afterwards. She had also, to their great disgust, packed the children off to bed as soon as possible, then waited while I fell asleep over the kitchen table before eventually rousing me and leading me upstairs with orders to strip while she assessed the damage. A sharp intake of breath had told me that it was as bad as I feared.

Now, however, I felt comforted and cared for and was ready to answer Adela’s questions, so I started with the one she had just asked.

‘There’s someone else, my love, besides yourself, who wishes me to abandon this investigation, and that’s the man I have so far nicknamed “Balthazar”. But at last I believe I know who he really is.’

And so I did. First of all, there were the initials R.M. and a conviction amounting almost to a certainty that, by an odd coincidence, all three of Isabella Linkinhorne’s swains had had Christian and surnames beginning with the same letters. But whereas prayer and a certain amount of clever deduction on my part had led me to both Robert Moresby and Ralph Mynott, sheer, unalloyed stupidity by ‘Balthazar’ himself had revealed his true identity.

Who else would have detailed Jack Gload to pay a visit to his daughter in Bath as soon as he had been made aware of my destination? Who else would have instructed him to keep me under his eye and find out what I knew concerning the three men in the murdered girl’s life? And who else would have primed Jack to delay me on the road home so that he could get ahead of me, if he thought I knew too much, and deliver a warning? And who else would have tried to scare me off by employing the rough and ready tactics of Ranald Purefoy? Who else, indeed, would have been aware of any connection between the castle scullion and myself?

Who, in general, would have been so heavy-handed and lacking in subtlety?

Who else but Richard Manifold?

‘Richard!’ my wife exclaimed, when I finally spoke the name aloud. ‘What do you mean, Roger? Are you saying that Richard is mixed up in this business?’

I rolled over on to my left side so that I was facing her, at the same time trying to ease my aching body. I felt as though there wasn’t a sinew that hadn’t been stretched to snapping point.