The Three Kings of Cologne

Sixteen

‘So here you are, Chapman,’ said a most unwelcome and slightly breathless voice behind me. ‘Off home, are you? I suppose you thought you’d given me the slip.’ The tone was reproachful.

I turned my head. Jack Gload was only a pace or two behind me.

‘I had no intention of giving you the slip,’ I retorted. ‘Why would I want to do that? I was under the impression that you were spending some days with your daughter. I left you sleeping like a baby and it would have been a shame to wake you.’

‘Well, I ain’t,’ he said. ‘Spending a few days with Cecily, that is. Children and animals, I can’t abide ’em. Besides, can’t be spared for long,’ he added importantly. ‘Too many villains in Bristol for the Sergeant to do without me, and I’m ’is right-hand man. Pete — Pete Littleman — ’e’s all right. A plodder, but ’e don’t have my brains. Leastways that’s what Sergeant Manifold says.’

I had no doubt that Dick Manifold said precisely the same thing to his other henchman. He had enough guile to keep them both happy and subordinate to his authority by playing them off against one another. But my heart sank at the prospect of Jack Gload’s company for my return journey to Bristol and, moreover, I was suspicious of his motive for accompanying me. Fortunately, he had no subtlety and asked almost at once, ‘You been to see this Ralph Mynott, then?’ He didn’t wait for my assent, but continued, ‘What did ’e have t’ say for ’imself?’

As we had reached the West Gate, I was able to postpone my answer until we had negotiated our way through against the incoming tide of traffic, exchanging some good-humoured badinage with the gatekeeper and a few bad-tempered words with a carter, who seemed to think that his load of iron ore for the city foundry entitled him to hog the entire width of the road and drive pedestrians to the wall. And by the time we were out in the open countryside, I hoped that my companion might have forgotten his question.

A forlorn hope, however.

‘So?’ Jack urged. ‘What did you find out?’ And when I did not immediately reply, he pressed again, ‘What did this Ralph Mynott ’ave to say for ’imself?’

Such persistence confirmed me in my steadily growing belief that Jack had been sent after me by Richard Manifold to question me and discover what, if anything, I knew.

The Sergeant could have found out from any number of sources — Adela amongst them — that I was on my way to Bath, and, knowing that Jack Gload had a daughter and son-in-law living in the town, despatched him on the most natural of pretexts to follow me.

‘Master Mynott was certainly acquainted with Isabella Linkinhorne,’ I admitted grudgingly, but without volunteering anything further.

‘And?’ the lawman prompted impatiently.

‘And what?’ I knew how to play stupid when required.

‘Is ’e guilty of ’er murder, or not?’

‘Impossible for me to say with any certainty,’ I confessed. ‘But on reflection, I should hazard the guess that he is not.’

‘Mmm.’ Jack shot me a sideways glance. ‘So that leaves this third fellow you were talkin’ about. You gave ’im some fancy name.’

‘Balthazar.’

Jack showed me the whites of his eyes.

‘But you don’t know ’is real name, do you?’ he asked. ‘If truth be told, you don’t know nothing whatsoever about ’im.’

‘I didn’t know anything about “Melchior” and “Caspar”,’ I pointed out, with the purpose of confusing my dim-witted companion, adding with some satisfaction, ‘But I found them, all the same.’

Jack, however, had a simple philosophy; ignore everything you don’t understand and hammer on with what you do.

‘You was lucky with this Ralph Mynott, though. Sort o’ luck you ain’t likely to run into twice. As for the other, the one what lives in Gloucester, you said you knew ’im to be a goldsmith. That were summat to go on in a town that size. Bound to lead you to ’im in the end.’

‘In twenty years, he might have died or moved away.’

‘But ’e ’adn’t,’ Jack pointed out. The argument was unanswerable, so I didn’t attempt it. He continued inexorably, ‘What I’m saying is, Chapman, you know nothing — absolutely nothing — about this third man and it’d be too much to expect that you’re goin’ to strike lucky again.’

‘True,’ I agreed gloomily, trying not to smile. I had no intention of sharing with Jack Gload the one clue to ‘Balthazar’s’ identity that I thought I might have; that little flash of inspiration that had come to me like a sudden ray of light penetrating an otherwise Stygian darkness.

Robert Moresby, Ralph Mynott. Both had the same initials: R.M. And at the same moment that this realization hit me, I recollected Jane Purefoy’s revelation of finding the piece of paper on which Isabella had written three sets of initials, every set the same, with a question mark against each. At the time, I had assumed it was the sort of idle repetition that indicated a preoccupied mind; that she had been thinking of one man, and one alone, and whether or not to marry him. But now it suddenly occurred to me that, by one of those coincidences Fate throws up every now and then, all three men — ‘Melchior’, ‘Caspar’ and ‘Balthazar’ — had baptismal names and surnames beginning with the letters R and M. So the man I was looking for, the final one of the three, most probably was also an R.M. And, if my memory served me aright, he had reddish hair.

I suppose I should have seen the truth, which was staring me in the face, right away, but I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t. I was feeling too smug and pleased with my brilliant deductions to pursue them further, and was wallowing in a veritable sea of self-congratulation.

‘You’ve thought o’ something,’ Jack Gload accused me. ‘I can see it in your face.’

‘That’s just indigestion,’ I told him. ‘Your daughter gave me too much breakfast. Which reminds me,’ I added, glancing up at the sky, ‘it’ll be dinnertime soon. I intend stopping at the nearest cottage and buying whatever the goodwife can spare me. Furthermore, Jack, I have no intention of trying to complete this return journey in one day. I was exhausted yesterday evening by the time we entered Bath.’

But if I had hoped to shake off my unwanted companion, I was again to be disappointed.

‘Couldn’t do it, Chapman,’ he agreed. ‘Didn’t start off early enough today, not after you’d been to visit Master Mynott and Cecily had rolled me out o’ bed. Take our leisure, that’s what I say. Sit down and admire the view sometimes. The Sergeant ain’t expecting me back until tomorrow. And I know a neat little tavern this side o’ Keynsham where we c’n rack up for the night. Belongs to a friend o’ mine.’

My heart sank, but I could think of no way to rid myself of him. Whatever ploy I tried, I could tell that he was going to stick closer to me than a burr to a sheep’s fleece. There was nothing for it but to accept the inevitable and guard my tongue against Jack’s probing questions.

But, somewhat to my surprise, he seemed to have accepted defeat on this point; and while we ate a dinner of black bread, goat’s cheese and buckrams (or bear’s garlic, as some country people call it), washed down with a cup of homemade ale, all provided by a cottager’s wife while her man toiled in a nearby field, Jack did no more than quiz me on various problems I had solved in the past. I was, of course, only too happy to provide him with the details. (Well, I’m only human, after all, and what man can refrain from boasting now and then, especially about past success?) And by the time the soft April evening began to draw in, the sun slowly sinking amidst streamers of pale rose and gold, I was almost in charity with him. We had pursued a leisurely course along the valley floor, stopping to exchange greetings with anyone who spoke to us, and learning such snippets of news as the fact that the Princess Mary had become betrothed to the King of Denmark (not an item of much interest to either Jack or myself, but something for me to tell Adela, nonetheless) and now we were pleasantly tired and ready for our beds.

‘And here’s the alehouse I was telling you of,’ my companion remarked suddenly, indicating a small hostelry set back from the main Keynsham track by perhaps a dozen yards or so.

It appeared clean and wholesome enough with a general chamber behind the taproom where travellers could sleep for an extra charge on the price of a meal, and more again for the hire of a blanket and pillow if they didn’t fancy a night spent only on straw. The food, too, was well enough: a rabbit pottage with boiled orache and rampion added to the vegetables already in the stew. Jack chose a rough red wine to drink, but I stuck to ale; then, it by now being dark and both of us being extremely tired, we adjourned to the back chamber, where we were the only two wayfarers staying overnight.

We didn’t bother to undress. I stowed my satchel beneath my pillow, placed my cudgel where it was ready to hand should I need it, bade Jack a sleepy goodnight and knew nothing more until morning.

It was a cock crowing somewhere, answered by the bark of a dog, that woke me. The early light of dawn was seeping through a very small window, set high in the wall behind my head, but the thing that struck me most forcibly was how quiet the room was. There was no sound of breathing but my own, and none of the snores and gurgling noises that I knew from the previous night’s experience Jack could make. I sat up and turned my head. The straw mattress was empty, the blanket tossed to one side, but while the pillow still bore the impression of my erstwhile companion’s head, of Jack Gload himself there was no sign.

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.

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?