Kate Sedley: The Three Kings of Cologne

‘And not necessarily the same one every time,’ Bess Simnel added. ‘As I recall, there were reports of two or three.’

All this while I had been helping myself, unbidden, to Margaret’s oatcakes, but now cleared my mouth to say reprovingly, ‘Isabella’s lovers were nothing but hearsay, in fact. A case of give a dog a bad name and hang him. Or, in this case, her.’

The three women exchanged indignant glances.

‘If that’s going to be your attitude,’ Margaret said, ‘you might as well leave now — and while there are still some oatcakes left for the rest of us,’ she added waspishly.

‘We know what we know,’ Bess Simnel snapped. ‘And we stand by every word of what we’ve said.’

‘Danged impudence!’ shouted Maria, banging her spoon on the table, just the way Adam did when he was angry.

I rose meekly from my stool and fastened the rope leading string around Hercules’s collar.

‘We’d better go, my lad,’ I whispered. ‘I think we’ve offended the ladies.’

We both beat a strategic retreat.

I walked back to the bridge, pausing only for a brief chat with Burl Hodge, on his way home to dinner from the tenting fields where he worked. We had once been firm friends, but my good fortune in being left the old Herepath house by Cicely Ford had soured our relationship; and even the fact that, two years earlier, I had proved him innocent of a charge of murder and saved him from the hangman’s noose, had not been enough to assuage his envy. Nowadays, it was true, he treated me politely and no longer subjected me to the jibes and barbed comments which had, on more than one occasion in the past, nearly brought us to blows; but the old free and easy manner had been lost for good. His wife, Jenny, and his two sons, Jack and Dick, might show me the same courteous affection they had always done, but I had forced myself to accept that Burl would always begrudge me my luck.

After a minute or so, the conversation floundered, and more to keep it afloat than for any other reason, I enquired after his mate and fellow tenter, Hob Jarrett.

‘Oh, him!’ Burl shrugged dismissively. ‘He’s given up tenting. Too cold in the winter, he says, what with the wind and all them ells of wet cloth.’ Burl displayed his raw, chilblained hands with their swollen knuckles and other painful-looking joints. ‘He’s with a labouring gang now. Out all weathers just the same, but he reckons it’s warmer work than tenting.’

Acting on a sudden hunch, I asked, ‘Hob’s not by any chance one of the gang clearing the ground at the top of Steep Street?’

‘You mean what’s now Alderman Foster’s land and used to be the nuns’ graveyard? Strange you should ask. He was round at our cottage night before last telling me and Jenny and the boys about the woman’s body they’ve found there. Hob was the one who uncovered it.’

‘Ah! Do you think he’d be willing to talk to me, then?’

Burl’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your interest, Roger?’

I told him, and saw again the flash of malice before he blinked it away and smoothed out his features.

‘Friends with the Mayor-elect, are we? Of course! I forgot. Alderman Foster’s a neighbour of yours.’

I let this go. ‘Remember me to Jenny,’ was all I said.

I tugged on Hercules’s rope and walked on, stopping only once more to use the public latrine on Bristol Bridge before making my own way home to dinner.

It was yesterday’s fish stew warmed up, but with some fresh cabbage and a fistful of chopped leeks added to the boiled cod and lentils that had comprised our suitably abstemious Friday fare.

‘Sunday tomorrow. Meat,’ Adela promised me, smiling at my unhappy grimace as I swallowed the first spoonful of broth. ‘How was Margaret? Was she able to give you any information about the Linkinhornes that you hadn’t been told already?’

‘Goody Watkins and Bess Simnel were there as well,’ I said. ‘They all three remember the daughter, and all three agree that she was spoiled and wilful. “A crafty piece” was the way Maria described her. Overly fond of the men was the general opinion, although there seemed precious little direct evidence, at least as far as I could gather, to uphold the claim. Only hearsay. One of them — I forget which — reckoned Isabella had an admirer among the Bristol men. Mind you, it all happened twenty years or more ago.’

‘Twenty years! I’d have been ten.’ And Adela heaved a sigh for the lost innocence of childhood. ‘So I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ she added. ‘I don’t even recollect hearing the girl’s name … What will you do next?’

‘First, I’m going to pay a visit to the workmen who found the body. I understand they’re still clearing the ground. Afterwards, I’ll go to the Gaunts’ Hospital and speak with Jonathan Linkinhorne. He’s well into his eighties according to Alderman Foster — eighty-five I think he said — so I’m praying he’s still in possession of all his faculties. Oh, and while I’m at Steep Street I must go to the Magdalen nunnery and have a word with Sister Walburga. You don’t happen to know her, by any chance?’

Adela pursed her lips. ‘I have very little to do with the Sisters, but I fancy Walburga’s the timid, retiring one.’

I finished my stew, drained my beaker and stood up, shrugging myself into my jerkin and arming myself with my cudgel.

‘In any case, there should be no problem in identifying her,’ I remarked. ‘There are only three nuns.’ I hesitated. ‘Do — ’er — do you want me to take Hercules?’

My wife eyed the dog unfavourably, but he was sleeping — or pretending to sleep — so soundly that she hadn’t the heart to wake him.

‘You can leave him here,’ she agreed grudgingly. ‘I don’t suppose either the workmen or the sisters will welcome his disruptive presence.’

As though aware of this slur cast on his character, the dog emitted a faint growl, but his eyes remained fast shut. Probably just a touch of indigestion.

I kissed my children a fond farewell, all three demonstrating their usual indifference to my departure, hugged Adela, who showed a more flattering inclination to linger in my embrace, left the hound to his slumbers and went out again into the chilly morning air.

It was still cold and the thin April sun struggled to make itself felt as it emerged fitfully from behind the clouds. The Frome Gate was crowded with traffic as people from the surrounding districts poured into the city to do their Saturday shopping for the Sabbath. Edgar Capgrave was the gatekeeper on duty, but we had no chance to exchange greetings as my arrival coincided with that of a swineherd driving his pigs to market and violently disputing the amount of toll he was required to pay.

‘Daylight robbery!’ he was shouting as I passed. ‘How are honest men expected to make a decent living?’

I left him to it. He’d get no joy, and no reduction, from Edgar Capgrave, who, in spite of his lack of inches, was quite capable of taking on any malcontent in the kingdom, and winning.

I turned into Horse Street and made my way along the Frome Backs to where the piles of wood for the city’s fires were stored beside the river. From there I began the ascent to the top of Steep Street, not forgetting to make my obeisance to the statue of the Virgin, set in the wall of the Carmelite Friary, on my left. (I reckoned I could probably do with all the goodwill I could get from the Lady.) As I neared the top, where the stone cross and well mark the convergence of Saint Michael’s Hill with the long, eastward-bound track to the manor of Clifton and Ghyston Cliff, I could hear the sounds of men at work; the intermittent thud of picks and spades and the non-stop flow of cursing.