The Three Kings of Cologne

Eight

It was at this moment that the door of the cottage was flung open and one of the largest men I had ever seen thrust his bulk, not without some difficulty, through the doorway. He was as broad as he was tall and his massive presence filled the cramped space to the exclusion of all else. Even I, who was then over six feet in height (like all old people, I’ve grown shorter as I’ve grown older) and well fleshed out, felt overpowered, squashing myself up against the hovel’s further wall. He wore a greasy, blood-stained apron and smelled strongly of fish, raw meat and garlic.

‘Who’s this?’ growled the giant.

‘No need to get in a taking, Ranald,’ my hostess remonstrated. This, then, was the master of the house. Beside him Jane Purefoy looked like a midget, a wooden doll that he might snap in half with a mere flick of his fingers, but she seemed unafraid of him. Indeed, if anything, she appeared mistress of the situation. ‘Calm down, do. He ain’t after me.’

After her? After her! My self-esteem took a tumble into my boots. It took a further nosedive through the floor when Ranald Purefoy’s belligerent attitude softened a little and he grunted, ‘That’s all right, then. So long as he isn’t bothering you.’

‘He ain’t bothering me. He ain’t the law, neither. But he is asking questions about Mistress Linkinhorne on behalf of Mayor Foster. At least, so he says.’

‘It’s true,’ I confirmed hastily as the scullion rolled a suspicious eye in my direction. And once again I was forced to give an explanation of my interest, adding, ‘As a matter of fact, I was just going. I … I think your wife has told me all she knows.’ I began nervously to edge my way around this man-mountain, making for the door, when a sudden thought gave me pause. ‘Goody Purefoy,’ I added, ‘I know you said that your mistress never disclosed the names of her admirers, but, by any possible chance, do the initials R. M. mean anything to you?’

My hostess gave the question some thought before reluctantly admitting, ‘Can’t say as they does. Why d’you ask?’

I explained about the intertwined initials carved on the tree near Westbury village, but Jane Purefoy shook her head.

‘You’re certain?’ I ventured.

‘She’s said so, ain’t she?’ Ranald growled. He was obviously growing restive. ‘I didn’t sneak home to talk to a blessed stranger, did I?’ He turned to his wife. ‘Get the mattress out, woman, and let’s get on with it.’ He removed his apron and began to unbuckle his belt.

Jane gave him a seductive, if somewhat toothless grin. My mind boggled. I fled.

But I had only gone a few paces down the narrow, twisting street, when I heard the Purefoys’ door scrape open behind me and Jane’s voice call, ‘Wait a minute, Chapman!’ I swung round to find her behind me, while her husband bellowed from inside the cottage, ‘Will you hurry up, you stupid old mare!’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I jus’ remembered. I’d forgotten, but what you said jus’ now jogged my memory. One day she — Isabella, that is — was writing summat on a piece of paper. Later on, she threw it away and I picked it up. I ain’t much good at reading, but this was jus’ letters. “R.M.” she’d written three times, on three different lines, and put a query mark against each set o’ letters. Tha’s all,’ she added abruptly. ‘I gotta get back.’

I should have liked to question her further, but the maddened cries from within the hovel had by now reached fever pitch: Ranald Purefoy would be balked of his mid-morning love-making no longer. Thoughtfully, I went home to Small Street and my dinner.

‘So what now?’ Adela asked when I had finished telling her the story of my morning’s doings and the two older children had vanished about their own nefarious business (which had involved much whispering and giggling throughout dinner). Adam for once was quiet, curled up on Adela’s lap, sound asleep, thumb in mouth, replete with bread and milk and a spoonful of honey to follow. (When I say ‘spoonful’ what I mean is that he was allowed to dip his little fingers in the honey jar, then smear them all over his face in the hope that some of the honey would find its way into his mouth. Some of it actually did.)

‘I’ll have to go to Gloucester,’ I said. ‘At least I know that I’m looking for a goldsmith there, and if I can discover one whose names begin with the letters R and M …’

‘You may have found Isabella’s murderer?’ my wife enquired caustically. ‘I doubt it, Roger. I doubt it very much. Even if you manage to find him after all these years, even if he admits to having known Isabella, there’s no proof that he was the man she was seen with on that last morning of her life.’

‘I know that. But I have to try, now that I’ve taken Mayor Foster’s money. And when I return, I’ll have to go to Bath. Thank goodness Balthazar is reported as living in Bristol.’

‘Who?’ demanded Adela with such force that Adam stirred and grizzled in his sleep.

‘Who?’ she repeated more quietly.

‘Well, it’s difficult not knowing the names of these three men,’ I explained, a little sheepishly, ‘so I’ve decided to call them after the Magi. I think I told you that when Master Foster’s chapel and almshouses are eventually built, he intends to dedicate the former to the Three Kings of Cologne. The Three Wise Men. So the goldsmith has to be Melchior, who brought the Christ child gold. There’s no obvious choice for the other two, but I’ve decided that the man from Bath will be Caspar, who brought frankincense, and the man from Bristol is Balthazar, who brought myrrh.’

Adela smiled at me in the way that told me she sometimes regarded me as even younger than Adam; a look that comprised humour, approval, but, most of all, indulgence, as though I were a precocious child.

‘That should simplify matters,’ was her only comment. I wasn’t sure that she really meant it, but I chose to take it as a compliment and grinned inanely. ‘Do you intend to walk?’ she asked.

‘If I have to. But I thought I’d call on Jack Nym and see if by any lucky chance he’s going northwards in the next day or two.’

Jack Nym was a neighbour of Margaret Walker, a carter, who, from time to time, travelled to Hereford and the Cotswolds, as well as to London and in more southerly directions.

‘A good idea.’ Adela shifted Adam slightly to ease her aching arms. (Our nearly three-year-old son was, I knew from experience, no light weight.) ‘But what still puzzles me about this business, Roger, is how Isabella came to be buried on that land.’

I sighed. ‘I know. It puzzles me, too. As you said the other day, digging a grave is no easy job. Not something that can be accomplished in a few minutes, nor without making some stir. Ah well! I can’t waste time on that particular mystery just at present. Finding my three kings is the first task.’

‘And if you can’t? Find them, I mean. Or if you find them but can’t prove one of them’s the murderer? What then?’

‘Then, sweetheart, I have to admit defeat and repay Mayor Foster what’s left of his money.’

Adela smiled understandingly at me. ‘You won’t like that. It will hurt your pride.’

I grimaced. ‘It will, indeed. But it might be good for me. I’ve begun to think myself invincible in these matters, and pride is a sin.’

‘Not if you feel you’re doing God’s work. You do still feel that, don’t you?’

I hesitated. Finally I said, ‘Let’s just say that I have to remind myself of the fact more often than I used to. I find myself taking too much credit and not according it where it’s due.’

My wife looked worried. ‘Perhaps you should guard your thoughts more strictly, Roger. I haven’t known you and loved you for over four years without realizing that you hold some …’ She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, as though afraid to speak the words aloud. ‘Well, that you hold some heretical views.’

I couldn’t deny it. There were moments when I even doubted the existence of God; moments when the sheer brutality of what was perpetrated in His name appalled me, or when His seeming indifference to the sufferings of His children denied the claim that He was a God of love. But I would never be irresponsible enough to voice these doubts out loud, not now that I had a wife and family who depended on me. Besides which, if the truth were told, I was far too much of a coward to put my skin in danger. So I smiled reassuringly. ‘That’s all in the past, my love. Being married to you has shown me the error of my ways.’

Adela knew when I was lying: wives always do. But she also knew it meant that I wasn’t going to do anything foolhardy to put her and the children at risk; that I wasn’t even a secret Lollard, like Margaret Walker and so many of Redcliffe’s weaving community. She leaned over and kissed me.

This woke our son, whose roars of disapproval at being squashed between us were accompanied by flailing arms and a face the colour of a crimson rose. For a few seconds outrage threatened to choke him as his breath became suspended and he frothed milkily at the mouth. But nothing could keep Adam quiet for long and he regained his breath to scream even more lustily than before. Adela and I were forced to abandon our fond embrace. She handed him to me — as a punishment for something, although I wasn’t quite sure what — while she began collecting together the dirty dinner dishes for washing.

I was as good as my word, and went to see Jack Nym that very afternoon.

I wasn’t even sure of finding him. The chances were that he was already away from home, carting goods somewhere or other, but it was worth a try. My fears proved to be well grounded, but then his slatternly wife, blowing her nose on her skirt, informed me that he had only gone as far as Clifton, where he was delivering a consignment of soap and sea coal to the manor, and added that, if I fancied a walk, I might either meet him there or on his return journey. Or else, if the matter were urgent, I was welcome to wait until he came home. I declined this latter offer. A glimpse into the cottage’s interior and a strong smell of burning meat reminded me of the Purefoys’ hovel, and I felt that two such experiences in one day was more than any man should subject himself to. Besides which, with the approach of noon, a certain warmth had displaced the chill of early morning, and an excuse for stretching my long legs and shaking off the noise and dust of the city seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

So I went home, told Adela where I was going and why, buckled the old leather belt around Hercules’s neck and, with the excited animal capering around my legs and threatening to trip me up, set off for the heights of Clifton. With the houses left behind as I started on the second of the hills rising to the north of Bristol, the old sense of freedom returned. The grass beneath my feet was dotted with periwinkles, like a galaxy of pale blue stars, and the misty distances shimmered faint and pale like water under the morning sun. Trees and bushes dotted the landscape, spurting like fountains from the softening April ground and I whistled happily to myself until Hercules, maddened by my inability to carry a tune, turned and barked protestingly at me.

‘Sorry,’ I apologized, stooping to pat his head, but he couldn’t wait for such nonsense and was away again, freed from his collar, chasing imaginary rabbits.

There were plenty of people about and plenty of traffic to be met with on the various tracks, but no sign as yet of Jack Nym, not even on the approaches to Clifton. No doubt I had missed him somewhere in all that broad sweep of the downs, but it was no matter. I knew that he was returning home some time later in the day, and could call on him again after supper. I had achieved my real purpose: freedom of mind and body from the immediate problems and clutter of daily life. I wasn’t even thinking about Isabella Linkinhorne or her possible murderer; I wasn’t even really aware of where I was going, only of the general direction, when the ruined house suddenly appeared before me, like a wraith springing from the ground.

I stopped abruptly, looking about me like someone waking from a dream. I realized that I was within, perhaps, half a mile of Clifton village — I could see the first straggling cottages and outhouses in the distance — and also that I was close to that thick belt of trees, known locally as Nightingale Wood, which crowds along the lip of the gorge. I whistled loudly and imperatively for Hercules’s immediate return and approached the ruin.

I could see at once from the blackened walls that the place had been destroyed by fire, and knew that this must be the remains of the Linkinhornes’ dwelling, burned down some years previously, the result of an ageing man’s carelessness. The land that had once surrounded it, the thriving smallholding that had supported the family, had now returned to wilderness, and the house itself was little better. The roof, or what remained of it, had collapsed, allowing oak and alder to burst their way through, reaching slender boughs, green with budding leaf, to the sky. Brakes of hawthorn already stood within the crumbling palings and bindweed and ivy rioted everywhere unchecked. Another few years would see the ruin lost, swallowed up by the encroaching woodland.

But for now, I could still get in. I could see the smoke-blackened door hanging drunkenly on one hinge and, when I had cautiously pushed it open, I saw a flight of stone steps, its balustrade long since gone, rising to the upper floor. A stone-flagged passage, running the length of the house, led to an open doorway at the farther end, crowded now with foliage that flooded the corridor with an aqueous light, like an underwater cave. Other doorways flanked it on either side, but the rooms beyond were all empty, unless one could count the weeds, grass and saplings that thrust themselves between the flagstones, thin and attenuated as they reached for the light filtering through the greening canopy overhead.

I turned back and slowly and carefully started to mount the stairs, keeping one hand on the moss-covered wall to my left, damp and slippery with oozing slime. Hercules bounded ahead of me, unfazed by the lack of a banister to prevent our falling. I proceeded with equal circumspection along a narrow upper landing, but there was no entering any of the three bedchambers, whose floors had been made of planks and beams and had therefore been destroyed in the fire. Between the blackened rafters, I could see the foliage shooting up from the ground below. There was an air of desolation about the place and it was beginning to make my flesh crawl. I edged my way back to the top of the stairs.

I descended them with even greater care than I had taken going up — Hercules, of course, demonstrated his superior fleetness of foot by leaping the last four treads in a single bound — but having reached the bottom in safety I decided to take a final look around. I have no idea what prompted me to make this decision; perhaps because I felt a little ashamed of the sense of unease that was gripping me. But for whatever reason, I inspected again all the rooms on the lower floor, this time going into each of them in turn.

It was actually Hercules, with his quivering nose and inquisitive eye, who came across the chest, alerting me to its existence by his excited barking. Made of solid iron and banded with copper, it was half-hidden behind a clump of purple loosestrife, not yet in flower, but whose erect stems and hairy leaves had already reached almost their full three feet in height as they pushed their way in profusion through the broken flagstones. And it was the fact that the surrounding flagstones were so fragmented, and that the chest itself lay on its side, that suggested to me the thing had fallen from the chamber above, crashing through the burning floorboards as the fire had taken hold.

Hushing Hercules and kneeling down beside it, I inspected the chest, with its patches of flaking rust, and saw that the lock had burst asunder, confirming my theory that it had indeed fallen from the chamber above. I tried to open it, but it seemed to have rusted fast shut, and all that my attempts got me were raw and blackened fingers. The dog did his best to help, but only succeeded in getting in the way, incurring my wrath. Finally, I did what I should have done in the first place: I fetched my cudgel, which, on entering, I had propped against the outside wall of the house, and gave the lid several hearty blows with its lead-weighted end. Hercules thought this great sport and began barking like a fiend. Between us, we must have made enough noise to have awakened the countryside for some miles around, and to this day I cannot understand why nobody came to see what was going on. But no one did, and eventually the lid of the coffer buckled sufficiently for me to be able to force it open.

I don’t really know what I had expected to find, but two undershifts, a pair of brown leather shoes and a gown of moth-eaten purple wool, embellished with fur around the neck, were a terrible disappointment. Further investigation revealed other female garments, and I came to the inevitable conclusion that the chest had been the property of either Isabella or Amorette Linkinhorne, locked up after either the one had disappeared or the other been found drowned, and probably never opened again.

I stood up slowly, brushing my knees and noticing that there were green stains, both on my jerkin and my hose. Adela would not be pleased. Hercules, as though he understood and sympathized, licked my hand and tentatively wagged his tail. He was looking none too dapper himself (well, he never does, but even less so than usual), his rough coat dirty and the fur seemingly standing on end.

I sighed.

‘You’re right,’ I told him. ‘We’re a scruffy pair and we shall no doubt be in serious trouble when we get home.’ He licked my hand again. ‘I know. Come on, lad, we’d better get on to the village and see if we can find Jack Nym.’

There was no sign of our quarry, but my enquiries elicited the fact that he had already delivered his consignment of soap and sea coal at the manor house and had left.

‘Not these many minutes since,’ the housekeeper informed me. ‘A little bit earlier and you’d have caught him.’

It served me right, I thought, for wasting my time investigating old ruins instead of keeping to the job in hand. I could at least have begged a ride home for Hercules and myself in Jack’s cart, for after the long and arduous climb up from the city we were both flagging somewhat, and the freedom of the open road began to appear a trifle overrated. However, it’s no good being a chapman and balking at a little additional exercise, so I took a resolute grasp on my cudgel and, encouraging Hercules in his pursuit of rabbits, set off back the way we had come.

It was a little way past the great tump that I saw a cart that I knew to be Jack’s pulled into the side of the track, and the man himself emerging from a clump of nearby bushes, adjusting his codpiece as he came. This unwonted coyness was explained by the presence of two young and decidedly pretty girls in the vicinity playing a decorous game of handball, watched with an indulgent eye by their nurse.

Jack saw me almost as soon as I saw him.

‘Roger! What you doing up here, lad?’ Then, lowering his voice, he added confidentially, ‘Call o’ nature.’

I grinned. ‘So I’d surmised. And the reason I’m here is because I’ve come looking for you. Your goody said you were delivering soap and sea coal to the manor, so I came to find you.’

He sent me a shrewd, sly grin. ‘You mean you wanted to get away for a while on your own.’ He waved aside my half-hearted protest. ‘D’you think I don’t know all the tricks and excuses? Anyway, why d’you want to see me? What’s so urgent that it couldn’t have waited until I got home, eh? Tell me that.’

At his invitation, I climbed on to the cart’s box seat, beside him, while Hercules leaped thankfully into the back and settled down. The two girls and their attendant waved happily to us before continuing with their game, and as we trundled downhill, I informed Jack of my need to get to Gloucester and my hope that he might be going in that direction some time soon.

‘Or Bath,’ I added. ‘That would be just as helpful.’

‘Well, make up your mind,’ he grunted. ‘Gloucester and Bath, they ain’t exactly close together. Opposite directions altogether, if it comes to that.’

‘Of course they are!’ I responded irritably. ‘I’m not a fool, Jack! It just so happens I need to visit both places. It’s to do with this business I’m engaged in for Mayor Foster.’

Jack nodded. ‘Now, I’ve been hearing something about that.’ Well, naturally he had. He lived in Redcliffe, not far from my former mother-in-law, and his wife was certainly on speaking terms with Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins. ‘It’s about this body they’ve dug up at the top of Steep Street. It’s that Issybelly what’s-’er-name, ain’t it? His Worship the Mayor wants you to find out who done it. Who killed ’er. Before ’e builds ’is almshouses up there. But why? That’s what I don’ understand.’

‘He also intends erecting a chapel for the inhabitants of the almshouses,’ I explained. ‘So Master Foster understandably wishes the ground to be re-consecrated before he builds anything to the glory of God. A sacred building must stand upon holy ground.’

Jack sniffed. ‘And ’ow will it help, knowing who killed her and sending the poor sod to the gallows after all these years?’

‘Justice will have been done.’

I was half-inclined to agree with my companion. Twenty years is a long time. People change. The guilty man was probably married. He might have a loving family, be a pillar of his community, looked up to, revered. Could any good be served by destroying the life of such a person? I had to remind myself sharply that this was murder we were talking about; the destruction of a fellow human being; the most heinous of all sins.

It was getting on towards late afternoon. The light was beginning to drain from the day and the sky on the horizon was a whitish opalescent glow. Silken shadows inched across the grass and a sharp, salty tang freshened the air, as though to remind us that we had not yet done with winter.

‘I don’ know about justice,’ Jack retorted. ‘P’raps she were askin’ for it.’

‘Who?’ I had momentarily lost the thread of our conversation.

‘’Er! That Issybelly what’s-’er-name. Can’t remember it. Never could. But I remembers ’er all right. A bold piece with a roving eye. The sort who played fast and loose with a man’s affections.’

‘You remember her?’

‘That’s what I said. Why shouldn’t I? I weren’t much more’n a lad at the time, ’tis true, but old enough. She and I were much of an age, I guess. I was a bit the younger in years maybe, but in all other ways, she could o’ been my grandmother. There weren’t no trick known to womankind she didn’t employ, not from the time she were old enough to understand that men and women was different from one another.’

‘When and where did you meet her?’

‘I didn’t meet her, exactly, but I saw her often enough when ’er father and mother brought her to market from Clifton. She were a pretty little thing, even when she were young, and she grew into a beauty. But with a temper and a will of iron. If she’d been mine, I’d’ve whipped some respect and obedience into ’er, but as far as I can remember, neither parent lifted a finger against ’er.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘At least that’s the story everybody tells.’

‘Probably true, then. Mostly, folks’ memories don’t agree on nothing.’

‘There’s a rumour,’ I said, ‘that Isabella had an admirer in Bristol. Do you know anything about that?’

Jack shrugged and narrowly avoided another cart, loaded with turnips, making its way up the track from the city.

‘Never saw ’er with anyone particular that I can recall. She turned heads, mind, wherever she went. Strange,’ he mused, pulling on the reins to slow his horse for a sudden steep descent, ‘I’d forgotten all about ’er. It was like she’d never been. But now people are talking about ’er again, I can picture ’er as plain as though I’d just seen ’er yesterday.’ He drew his breath in sharply. ‘And now I comes to think on it … Get out the way, you blithering fools!’ he shouted furiously at a band of travelling musicians, who were progressing jauntily along the middle of the track, playing their latest catchy little tune.

Without even faltering, and without any break in the melody, the five of them formed a single file, but as the cart passed, the man playing the nakers paused long enough to bite his thumb at us in a highly offensive manner.

‘Ignore it,’ I said to Jack, who showed every sign of wanting to alight and have it out with the man. ‘It’s five against two — well, three if you count Hercules — and just at present I don’t fancy the odds. Besides, brawling on the King’s highway could land us in the bridewell. Go on with what you were saying.’

‘And what was that?’ Jack glanced longingly over his shoulder, still hankering for a fight.

‘I asked you if you’d ever seen Isabella Linkinhorne with a particular man. You said no, but then you seemed to recollect something.’

Jack turned back and settled down, keeping his eyes on the track ahead (for which I was truly thankful). ‘Well, you saying that reminded me all of a sudden about an incident I’d dang near forgotten about. I did see ’er once, kissin’ a fellow. In the porch of All Saints Church, it were. And not just kissin’ neither,’ he added darkly. ‘As I recall, there were a fair bit o’ groping going on.’

‘Did you see the man’s face?’ I asked excitedly, but after a moment’s agonized reflection, Jack reluctantly shook his head.

‘Nah! He were in the shadows. Recognized her, but not him. Pity, but there you are! ’Fraid I can’t help you, Chapman. But as luck would have it, I am going to Stowe the day after tomorrow, so you can travel as far as Gloucester with me.’