Kate Sedley: The Three Kings of Cologne

The workmen found the body on the fourth day.

The first two days had been spent clearing the thickets of brambles, struggling saplings and carpet of weeds that had overrun the site for the past ten years, ever since the Magdalen nuns had abandoned it as a burial ground. Indeed, the plot had never, to anyone’s knowledge, been used for that purpose, the number of Sisters who comprised the cell having gradually dwindled until, in this early spring of the Year of Our Lord, 1481, there were only three of them left.

The digging proper — turning the soil and removing the larger stones — was begun at dawn on the third working day; but it was not until halfway through the following morning that three of the labourers, trying between them to prise loose a particularly solid and obdurate boulder, dug down far enough to uncover what was obviously the skeletal remains of a human foot and leg.

Further investigation revealed the rest of what had undoubtedly once been a woman, with some strands of the long, dark, waist-length hair still clinging to the scalp. As I understood matters later, the workmen at first assumed that a mistake had been made; that at some time or another one of the nuns had been buried in the intended graveyard and the interment had subsequently gone unrecorded. But when the scandalized Sisters had pointed out that no nun would be buried wearing several fine gold finger rings, a gold and amber necklace and a girdle of gold and silver links, boasting an amethyst clasp, this idea was swiftly dispelled. Furthermore, the head man of the gang and two of his subordinates attested to the fact that a swathe of some rich emerald-green material, possibly velvet or silk, had been visible for several seconds after the body was uncovered and before it crumbled to dust as it came into contact with the air.

So! If this was not the skeleton of some long-dead Magdalen nun, whose body was it?

This story, as far as I was concerned, had begun some weeks earlier, when Bristol and the surrounding countryside had still been in the grip of winter; when fingers and noses were still nipped red-raw by the sleet and wind blowing up the River Avon from the sea. To some extent, the city was protected from the worst of the weather by the high ground to the north. But when the snow and frosts of January eventually gave way to the icy rains of February, there was little let-up either in the epidemic of coughs, sore throats and running noses, or in the general depression endemic to short, cold days and long, dark, even colder nights.

It was the time of year, too, when tempers also grew shorter, when domestic tiffs flared into serious quarrels and the constant herding together indoors caused rows out of all proportion to any provocation that might have been offered. I got out and about with my pack and dog as much as I could. But that left Adela cooped up all day with the children; and when I returned at dusk, tired, freezing and hungry, the loving wife I had parted from in the morning had turned into a nagging scold, exhausted as much in mind as in body, and ready to fly out at me over every little thing. The two elder children — my stepson, Nicholas, and my daughter, Elizabeth — were sulky and bored as only six-year-olds know how to be, while two-and-a-half-year-old Adam toddled around getting under everyone’s feet, screaming in frustration each time he was prevented from getting his own way, and endearing himself to no one.

‘Think yourselves lucky that you have a whole house to play in and not a one-roomed cottage, you ungrateful little brute!’ I roared at Nicholas one evening when his whinging had irked me more than usual.

Now, however much you might think you have become one family, it only needs a harsh word from the step-parent to the child that isn’t his (or hers) to prove what a mistaken idea this is.

‘Don’t call my son a brute,’ Adela reprimanded me sharply, ladling out portions of dried fish and lentil broth into our respective bowls.

The day had been an exceptionally long one; a cold, tiring slog the five miles to Keynsham and back, and with not much in my purse to show for such a journey at the end of it. I was in no mood to be taken to task.

‘Oh, your son is he now?’ I retorted nastily. ‘Well, my love, I’d remind you that it’s my efforts that clothe and feed him.’

I watched Adela’s face assume that blank mask it wears when she is deeply hurt or offended.

‘Don’t call me your love when you don’t mean it,’ she snapped. ‘And at the moment, you plainly don’t.’

Elizabeth startled us both at this juncture by bursting into tears. Guiltily, I had half-risen from my stool to go to her, when she sniffed, ‘Why do you quarrel so much?’ She glared accusingly at me. ‘It’s not like this when you’re away and Uncle Richard’s here.’

‘Uncle Richard?’ I asked blankly, thinking fleetingly of my self-avowed friend and occasional employer, the Duke of Gloucester, before rightly dismissing the notion as absurd.

‘Onken Dick! Onken Dick!’ Adam shouted, banging the table with his little spoon.

I glanced at Adela for enlightenment.

Stooping over Elizabeth, murmuring words of comfort, she raised a flushed and defiant face to mine.

‘Bess means Richard. Richard Manifold,’ she said.

‘You invite that man here when I’m away from home?’ I was outraged.

‘Sometimes. I get lonely in your absence,’ she pleaded. ‘Our neighbours, as you know, have never been very friendly towards us, and it’s not always convenient for Margaret — ’ my former mother-in-law and Adela’s cousin — ‘to come all the way from Redcliffe. And Richard is such an old friend. I’ve known him for years.’

There was reason in what she said, but I was in no mood to be appeased.

‘Well, my dear, you’ll antagonize the neighbours even more if you entertain men while I’m gone.’

‘What are you implying, Roger?’ she asked, dangerously quiet.

We both knew what I was implying, and we both knew — or, at least, I hoped I knew — that the implication was unfounded. But I was not prepared, at the moment, to discuss the matter.

‘And I will not have my children calling Richard Manifold “uncle”.’ I banged my fist on the table and then wished that I hadn’t as Hercules started barking and Adam began to thump in emulation. ‘Whose suggestion was it?’

‘Richard’s.’

‘I see.’

By now, a cold fury had me in its grip, and although I knew it to be unreasonable, I was too exhausted to fight it. I had never liked Richard Manifold and clearly perceived that the Sergeant now felt himself so assured of Adela’s friendship, had managed to get his feet so securely under my table, that he was ready to claim a spurious kinship with our children.

I swallowed a mouthful of broth and said thickly, ‘Understand me, Adela! I will not have that man eating here when I’m absent. Nor will I allow either Elizabeth or Adam to call him uncle.’

I deliberately omitted any mention of my stepson. She could make of that what she liked.

What she liked was to resume her seat at the kitchen table without a word and finish eating her supper. But I couldn’t let matters rest.

‘Is that understood?’ I persisted.

‘Perfectly. And I shall, of course, obey your commands to the letter.’ Her tone would have made Hell itself freeze over.

Such obedience was, it goes without saying, due to the head of a household from his dependants; but I had never been the sort of man to expect submissive behaviour from his family. This was just as well as I rarely received it and, as now, was uncomfortable when I did. Normally, I would have made haste to mend fences, but on this occasion I lapsed into a sulky silence, the reason being Richard Manifold and my simmering jealousy of him.