The Three Kings of Cologne

Twelve

I took my leave of Master Moresby and his niece after dinner — a splendid meal of roast pork and apple fritters — in spite of Juliette’s attempts to persuade me to stay.

‘As you say you don’t wish to travel on a Sunday, Master Chapman, why return to the New Inn and pay to be far less comfortable than you would be here? We have a chamber, right at the top of the house, under the eaves, to be sure, but clean and warm and private. At the inn you may well have to share, and I’m certain that the food will not rival mine.’

She looked intently at me as she spoke, conveying the message that there would be other comforts on offer as well as those she had mentioned. But that was the trouble. I knew that if I did as she wanted, I would be unable to resist the temptation of her company in bed, even though her uncle would be in the house. Had the quondam goldsmith added his entreaties to hers, I believe that in spite of my overwhelming sense of guilt and betrayal, I would have given in. But Robert Moresby remained silent; nor could I rid myself of the notion that he would be glad to see me go, although, if I were right, I was uncertain of his reason. Did he simply wish to mourn alone, to come to terms with the fact that for so many years he had vilified a woman he now — however mistakenly — thought to have been his one true love? Or was he afraid of revealing too much if he had to put up with my company for the rest of the day?

Of the two possibilities, the former seemed most likely, but there was no way I could be certain until I had paid a visit to Sir Peter and Lady Claypole at Hambrook Manor, and even then I might be none the wiser. They could both be dead by now and someone else in possession of the manor. Or their memories might not stretch back twenty years, at least not with any clarity. Recollections became muddled after a shorter period than that. But I should have to visit Hambrook to satisfy my own curiosity and find out what, if anything, there was to be discovered.

I could tell that Juliette was disappointed by my decision to return to the New Inn, and when she bade me farewell, she hissed the word ‘Coward!’ in my ear. But she blew me a secret kiss behind her uncle’s back She’d soon forget me when the next opportunity to seduce a man offered itself, but I wasn’t so sure that I’d as easily forget her.

Conscience told me that I should go to confess my sins, but I was bad at acknowledging my transgressions. (I always have been and always will be, I daresay, until the day I die; a day not too far off now, perhaps.) But, for the good of my soul, I did go to Mass later on, just one of the crowd of stinking humanity breathing down one another’s necks in the abbey nave in the glory of that great and wonderful building. And I regret to say that my reflections were not on my own shortcomings, but on the fact that much of the glory was due to the burial there of the second Edward, a man condemned in his lifetime for his lack of martial qualities and his preference for male lovers, but whose murder had transformed him from reprobate into martyr, and made his tomb a place of pilgrimage. His hideous death in Berkeley Castle a century and a half previously had made Gloucester Abbey rich.

I returned to the New Inn in time for supper. Hercules, who had been left in the charge of the landlord, demonstrated his excitement at seeing me again by peeing down my leg, a feat which other drinkers found highly amusing, and I had to endure ribald comments for the rest of the evening until I eventually slunk off to bed.

It took me the better part of three days’ steady walking before Hambrook Manor eventually came into sight in the late afternoon of the third day; three days during which the increasingly warmer weather made it possible for the dog and myself to spend the second of two nights in the empty outhouse of a shuttered farmhouse, bedding down on a pile of hay. This was from choice rather than necessity: I have always enjoyed sleeping under the sky and the stars, watching the trees fade and disappear with the encroaching darkness until they are nothing but a faint lacy blackness against an even deeper black. And sunsets — when there are any worth looking at in this grey and murky island of ours — always fill me with a sense of well-being; the distant hills turning gradually to fire, saffron ribbons of light threading the western sky.

We ate well, too, for I still had plenty of money in my purse, thanks to John Foster’s generosity. Where there was no wayside alehouse to satisfy our wants, there was usually a cottage or a landholding where the goodwife was pleased to meet our needs with bread and bacon and small beer. And Hercules never failed to ingratiate himself simply by being the obnoxiously thrusting, cocky little beast that he naturally was. He took his own importance so much for granted that everyone else took it for granted as well.

‘It’ll be a different story at Hambrook Manor,’ I warned him. ‘Sir Peter and Lady Claypole don’t sound to me the sort of couple to extend a hearty welcome to a pair of scruffy travellers like ourselves.’ Hercules wagged his tail confidently and barked. ‘That’s all very well,’ I reproached him. ‘However, we shall see.’

And see we did when we finally marched boldly up to the door of the manor house and knocked peremptorily on the oak.

It was a pleasant enough building, surrounded by fertile meadowland and, at the rear, sheltered by a spread of trees that gradually thickened as it merged with the general woodland beyond. There were the customary outhouses and barns, pig and sheep pens, a flower and herb garden for the lady of the manor, and it should have presented a prosperous face to the world. And yet there was a faint air of neglect about the place, a broken down wall that need mending here, a hole in a roof there, and some very scrawny chickens scrabbling for food in the dirt alongside the well where a maid servant was hoisting up the bucket.

‘What do you want, stranger?’ she demanded as I drew abreast.

‘I have business with Sir Peter Claypole,’ I told her.

She laughed. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes,’ I answered firmly.

‘Well, you won’t see him,’ she announced with satisfaction. ‘He’s been dead these ten years and more.’

‘Oh!’ But it had always been a possibility. ‘I must talk with Lady Claypole then.’

The girl lowered her bucket of water to the ground and put her hands on her hips. ‘You must, must you? I doubt she’ll want to talk to you.’ She eyed me up and down, her top lip curling slightly.

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ I retorted briefly, and continued up the path to knock on the door.

It was answered by a young page who, when I repeated my request, seemed inclined to argue the point.

‘My lady don’t see no one, at least not the likes of you. Kitchen door’s round the side if you’re selling summat. Although,’ he added with a sniff, ‘I don’t see no pack.’

‘Fetch the Steward,’ I commanded, drawing myself up to my full height, expanding my chest until it hurt and trying to look as authoritative and menacing as I could.

The boy hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged his shoulders and disappeared.

It was several dragging minutes before a tall, lean man, carrying the Steward’s wand of office and wearing a long robe made of either burel or brocella (both very coarse woollen materials and no longer made today, as far as I know) arrived to order me off the premises. His intention was writ large on his face, so I spoke quickly before he had time to open his mouth.

‘I wish to speak to Lady Claypole. I’m here on the business of His Worship the Mayor of Bristol.’

‘Indeed?’ The thin arched eyebrows conveyed a world of scepticism. ‘And what about the dog?’

‘He’s my assistant,’ I replied tartly.

The man facing me was the last person I would have suspected of harbouring a sense of humour, but at this he threw back his head and laughed.

‘I’ll find out if my lady can see you,’ he said. ‘Wait there.’

It was a full five minutes by my reckoning before he returned, during which time Hercules and I had watched a ragged flock of sheep being penned for the night, and a couple of large, evil-looking boars being driven in from the forest to join the sow in the sty. One herdsman appeared to take care of all the animals; a broken-nosed, wall-eyed man who regarded me malevolently from a distance. I returned his stare with interest, but Hercules growled warningly.

‘My lady will see you, Master,’ said a voice in my ear, making me jump, and I turned to find that the Steward had returned. ‘Follow me, but leave your assistant tied to that bench outside the door if you please.’

I grinned and looped Hercules’s belt around the seat of the bench indicated.

‘Lie down and be good,’ I admonished him. ‘I shan’t be long.’

The inside of the house had the same slightly rundown appearance as the exterior, suggestive of the fact that there was just not quite enough money to keep things as they had once been, although Lady Claypole’s solar, up one flight of stairs and at the side of the house overlooking the flower garden, was comfortable and well-furnished with an armchair, plenty of cushions, a spinning wheel and a small intricately carved chest on which stood a silver ewer and a tumbler made of fine Venetian glass.

The lady herself was a woman well past the first flush of youth — over fifty I guessed — who had once been pretty in a plump and fair-complexioned way, but whose pasty cheeks now sagged and whose blue eyes blinked short-sightedly from beneath lashes that were almost colourless. I noticed, too, that she had grown a little careless, the bodice of her red velvet gown stained here and there with food and splashes of wine.

‘Well, my man,’ she demanded, ‘what is it you want? Master Steward has been babbling some nonsense about the Mayor of Bristol.’ She snorted derisively. ‘You don’t look like a friend of His Worship to me. If I find you’ve been wasting my time …’

She didn’t complete the threat, having had a moment or two to take in my size, and realize that she probably had no one capable of throwing me off her manor. I should have to be humoured if she wanted me to go quietly.

I glanced around for somewhere to sit, but there was nowhere, so I propped myself against the wall facing her and told my tale as simply and as succinctly as I could. Indeed, I was tired of repeating the story and made it as brief as possible for my own sake as much as hers. To her credit, Lady Claypole listened without interruption until I had finished, when her first question, somewhat to my surprise, was, ‘He’s still alive, then, Master Moresby?’ A faint flush mantled her cheeks. ‘How is he?’

‘In good health, as far as I could tell. But not having met the gentleman before Sunday, I’m unable to say for certain. Lady Claypole, can you remember back twenty years to the last occasion on which you saw Robert Moresby? That day he waited here for Isabella Linkinhorne to join him.’

‘Oh, yes. I recollect the day well and his bitter disappointment, his anger, when she failed to arrive. Both my husband and I tried to persuade him that he had been deceived in her, that she had never intended to go away with him.’ My companion smiled thinly. ‘I could have told him the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so.’

‘The truth?’

Lady Claypole tittered. ‘I had friends in Westbury. I was a good horsewoman in those days and often rode that way. I knew that this woman Robert had set his heart on was playing him false with at least one other man, most likely two.’

‘You didn’t feel it your duty to enlighten him?’

She shook her head. ‘I know men better than that. When a man fancies himself as deeply in love as Robert did with her — that creature — he doesn’t want to hear the truth. The only person who loses by it is the teller. And I had no wish to forfeit his friendship.’

I suddenly realised that Lady Claypole had been in love with Robert Moresby and jealous of Isabella Linkinhorne. But that was not my business. I asked, ‘Can you recollect what the weather was like that day Master Moresby waited here for Isabella and she didn’t come?’

‘Easily. It was early March and the windiest, wettest day we had had for several weeks. Indeed, at first we all — myself, Sir Peter and Robert — thought it was the conditions that were delaying the girl’s arrival. It was only as the day wore on and mid-afternoon was approaching, when the lashing rain and terrible wind had eased considerably, that it began to dawn on us that she wasn’t coming. After supper, Robert — er, Master Moresby,’ she corrected herself, ‘decided to ride out to look for Isabella. But it was getting dark by that time, and I think that in his heart of hearts he had convinced himself that she had never intended to keep her promise. It was what Sir Peter and I had thought all along. But now — ’ Lady Claypole sounded aggrieved — ‘you tell me the girl had been murdered, so perhaps we were wrong.’

I didn’t enlighten her as to the truth of the matter. And in any case, how did I know what the truth was? Maybe Isabella had been on her way to Hambrook Manor to keep her rendezvous with Robert Moresby when she had been waylaid by someone else (one of her other two swains?) with news or information that had caused her to change her plans. I heaved myself away from the wall and prepared to take my leave.

‘Your ladyship has been most gracious …’

‘You can spend the night here, if you care to, Master Chapman. The local hostelry is not one I would wholeheartedly recommend.’ She must have noted my hesitation and added quickly, ‘You would be doing me a favour. I have had little outside company throughout the winter, and I begin to feel cut off from the world.’

‘There is a dog,’ I said, ‘at present tied up, but in general, no respecter of persons.’

That forced a thin smile from her. ‘He can be fed in the kitchens and sleep by the fire. Will you stay?’

I told myself that it would be foolish to refuse, and found it hard to understand my reluctance to accept the offer. I bowed.

‘I should be honoured, my lady.’

She nodded, taking this for granted, and summoned her Steward. I was handed into this gentleman’s keeping and shown to a small chamber on an upper floor where, in due course, a ewer of hot water and a towel were brought to me by the young maid I had seen earlier drawing water from the well. Servants seemed to be in short supply at Hambrook Manor. I dropped my satchel on the bed — a large four-poster whose hangings had seen better days — propped my cudgel just inside the door, poured the water into a basin, then stripped and washed from head to foot, ridding myself of the dust and grime of the last three days’ walk. I took my spare shirt from my satchel, shook it out and dressed again, cleaned my teeth with the willow bark I always carried for that purpose, combed my hair with an ivory comb I had brought with me from my pedlar’s pack and sat down to wait until the Steward should reappear to conduct me to wherever Lady Claypole was taking supper.

I looked about me, at my surroundings. The chamber, as I have said, was a small one, but not so small as it seemed, on account of the size of the bed. This took up most of the floor space with just enough room left over for a carved oak chest on which stood the basin, a candle in its holder and a tinderbox. There was a single window, at present unshuttered, the pale, late-afternoon sunlight filtering through the oiled parchment panes. The bed curtains and counterpane, no doubt once vibrant with colour, were all faded to a uniformly greyish hue so that it was almost impossible to make out what story they had once depicted. However, I managed to trace with one finger what looked like a head on a plate and guessed it to be that of Salome and Saint John the Baptist.

For some reason I was unable to fathom, I felt a strange sense of unease. The whole house depressed me and I discovered, to my consternation, that I was shivering. Was I ill? I didn’t think so. My cheeks were cool, my heart beat as strongly as ever. I sprang up and went for a walk along the corridor outside the chamber. This led to a flight of steps at the far end, which in turn led to an unbolted door opening into the garden. Somewhere close at hand I could hear the grunting of the boars and sow. I returned to my room and once more waited for Master Steward to fetch me to supper.

‘And you say,’ Lady Claypole remarked, picking delicately at a curd flan, which was short on cheese, butter and saffron to my way of thinking, ‘that Mayor Foster, when he has built his almshouses, intends also to build a chapel dedicated to the Three Kings of Cologne. Surely that will prove to be most unpopular with the good citizens of Bristol? Does he not know that Cologne is part of the Hanseatic League? Does he not appreciate that the Rhinelanders are poaching much of England’s trade? You see that I am not entirely unaware of what is happening in the world outside these walls.’

‘You are very well informed, my lady,’ I flattered her. ‘But Mayor Foster is a great admirer of the Rhinelanders, although not, I hasten to add, of the League itself. He knows perfectly well the damage that is being done, particularly to Bristol’s fish trade with Iceland. But I think he is a man who will not let prejudice cloud his judgement. He wishes, in his own fashion, to pay a small tribute to what he considers to be one of the finest buildings in Europe: Cologne Cathedral.’

My hostess snorted and speared another piece of curd flan on the tip of her knife, inspecting it from all angles until she finally put it in her mouth.

‘I doubt very much if your fellow townsmen will see it in that light. The people of Bristol are noted for their parsimony.’

I smiled. ‘Indeed they are. I am not myself one of them, coming as I do from the town of Wells, at the foot of the Mendips, but my wife was born in the city and knows how to hoard the pennies.’

But speaking of Adela, I was once again overcome with shame and panic. (Well, not shame perhaps, that was the trouble, but certainly panic.) I had little doubt that she would be able to prise my guilty secret from me if I lowered my guard for a single instant. And if I managed not to lower my guard, she would sense the tension and grow suspicious that something was wrong. I was caught in the jaws of a trap.

I became aware that my companion was offering me more tart, which I declined, claiming a full belly. But the truth was that the food at Hambrook Manor was of the same quality as the rest of the place. The pork which had comprised the first course had been swamped in a green sauce — sauce vert, as my former mother-in-law liked to call it when she was trying to put on airs. But green sauce, as I knew very well, made as it was from mint, parsley and other strong-tasting herbs steeped in peppered vinegar, was mainly used to disguise meat or fish that was not quite fresh, and in some cases downright stinking. And the dried pea puree that had accompanied the pork had also been of a very poor quality. It struck me forcibly before the end of the meal that financially matters at Hambrook were worse than I had at first thought them.

After supper, the table was cleared and I was invited to play at three men’s morris with my lady until bedtime, but I could see by the way she was yawning that she was accustomed to early hours.

As the board was placed in front of us by the page boy who had answered the door to me on my arrival, Lady Claypole asked, ’Am I to understand that, in view of what I have told you, you have eliminated Master Moresby from the people you suspect of this poor girl’s murder?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

And indeed I was almost certain that I could acquit the goldsmith of being Isabella’s murderer. He seemed not to have spoken to her on the day she was killed. He had been here with the Claypoles from early morning, when he had arrived from Gloucester, until it was almost dusk, when he had ridden out in the forlorn hope that she still might be on her way to keep their assignation.

‘You think so?’ My hostess caught me up short.

‘Very well,’ I smiled. ‘I exonerate him.’

I thought she suppressed a sigh of relief. ‘He isn’t married?’ was her next question.

I reassured her on that point, and saw a faint, predatory gleam in the short-sighted eyes. I wondered how soon after my departure my lady would suddenly find it imperative to pay a visit to Gloucester.

She yawned again, more pointedly than before and missed an obvious move with her counters that might have prolonged the game. So I, too, gave a good imitation of a man who could barely remain awake and waited for her suggestion that we should retire and seek our rest. This was not long in coming, but she insisted that we first take some wine.

‘It will help us sleep,’ she said, ringing a small handbell that stood on the parlour table.

Now, I don’t know if it was the speed with which this was brought by the Steward, as if he had been waiting for the summons, or the fact that it was this worthy himself who brought it, and not the page, or the fact that this whole burst of hospitality seemed out of keeping with the generally straitened circumstances of the manor, but my sense of unease increased. I took a sip or two from the glass Lady Claypole handed me, then managed to pour the remainder back into the ewer while my companion’s attention was momentarily elsewhere. I then wished her a deliberately slurred goodnight and took myself off to the chamber that had been allotted to me.

As I closed the door behind me and made for the tinderbox and candle on top of the chest, I heard a slight noise from the direction of the bed. The hairs rose on my scalp and I groped for my cudgel which, thank God, was still where I had left it, leaning against the wall, just inside the door.

‘Who’s there?’ I hissed, trying to sound menacing and praying that my voice didn’t quaver.

A short, snuffling bark answered me, and the next moment something cold and wet was thrust against my hand.

Hercules!

I picked him up and hugged him, almost squeezing the breath out of the poor animal, I was so pleased to see him.

‘How did you find your way here?’ I demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be spending the night in the kitchen.’

But however he had made his escape and discovered my whereabouts, I had no doubt that he had done so because he, too, was unhappy and ill at ease. He also had his doubts about this place and had come to tell me so.

‘You’re right, my lad,’ I said. ‘I think I’d prefer to sleep under a hedgerow than spend the night in this place. And it seems you feel the same.’

He whimpered and licked my face. I set him down on the bed while I lit the candle and started to pack my satchel. Not that there was much to pack; only the shirt I had discarded after washing, my willow bark and the sharp, narrow-bladed knife I used for shaving. Then I inched open the door of the bedchamber and glanced up and down the corridor. It appeared deserted.

‘Right,’ I whispered. ‘I know a way out of here without disturbing the rest of the household, so let’s go.’

There was a sudden low rumbling sound and the floorboards began to shake. Then came a grinding noise as of slightly rusty cogs engaging and disengaging. Wheels began to whir somewhere, but whether above my head or beneath my feet I couldn’t be certain. Then, as a terrified Hercules sprang clear of the bed, it began to tilt until the base was almost vertical, revealing a gaping black pit underneath. A terrible stench arose as the bedclothes and mattress disappeared into its depths, and I realized that, most probably, had I drunk that wine as I had been intended to do, I should have been too befuddled to know what was happening to me. I should have been smothered in the darkness below. Even as I watched, with yet more grinding and whirring, the bed righted itself.

I had heard of these contraptions for the unwary traveller to be murdered and robbed, but never thought to see one. The originals, I had been told, came from somewhere far away in eastern Europe, on the borders of Muscovy, but craftsmen in France, England and Spain had soon learned to copy them, and it was known that in some of the wilder parts of the country certain inns possessed these beds. So seriously was this menace taken that owners suffered the full rigours of the law, being pressed to death between two great stones.

But to find such a machine in a respectable country manor was beyond belief. I had no doubt that the motive in my case was robbery. I had guessed that Lady Claypole had fallen upon hard times, and I had no doubt let my tongue run away with me as usual when speaking of Mayor Foster’s generosity. One thing was certain, however: I had no intention of remaining in this house a moment longer than I had to. I grabbed Hercules, my satchel and my cudgel, and was out of the room, along the corridor, down the stairs and through the door at the bottom faster than I had ever moved before in my life.