The Three Kings of Cologne

Nine

This gave me a free day.

I rejected out of hand Adela’s suggestion — delivered at breakfast as we all came to terms with another sunrise and the prospect of the morning ahead — that I should revert to my usual calling and try selling a few items in the neighbouring streets.

‘I can’t be about my own business while we’re living on Mayor Foster’s bounty,’ I objected. ‘If it came to his ears, he might feel that I was cheating him. But it makes me all the more determined that in the future I shall remain my own man and take money from no one except what I earn by my efforts as a chapman.’

‘We’re like to remain poor folks then,’ my wife retorted, but cheerfully. Passing behind my stool, she stooped and kissed my cheek. ‘But I prefer it that way. I don’t care to be beholden to people either.’

I ignored this lack of faith in my ability as a chapman and, catching her round the waist, pulled her down to return her kiss with interest.

‘Enough of that,’ she reproved me, but giggled like a young girl all the same. ‘What will you do today, then?’ She added in a very wifely spirit, ‘I hope you’re not planning to remain indoors, getting under my feet. I’ve a lot to do.’

After a moment’s reflection, I decided to visit the Magdalen nunnery again. ‘I’ve a fancy to have another word with Sister Walburga. I suppose I could take Hercules with me.’ I glanced enquiringly around the kitchen. ‘Where is he?’

Adela said crisply, ‘There’s a bitch on heat in Bell Lane,’ and seemed to think it sufficient explanation.

Which, of course, it was. Half the dogs in Bristol would be beating a path to the unfortunate creature’s door. I doubted we should see Hercules, except when he was ravenous, for the next few days.

‘Ah, well,’ I said.

‘You can take Adam with you instead,’ my wife decided, ‘in his little cart. It’ll do him good, and Nick, Bess and I can concentrate on their lessons without any distraction. Neither’s reading and sums are as good as they should be.’

The two elder children grimaced ruefully at one another, while I eyed up my son and he gazed limpidly back with the great liquid brown eyes that were so like his mother’s. He was, as usual at breakfast time, smothered liberally with honey, and even as I watched, he put a small, plump arm protectively around the pot, as if in fear of having it wrested away from him.

‘Mine,’ he announced, clearly and defiantly.

‘I can’t take him to a nunnery,’ I protested, but in vain.

‘Nonsense!’ declared Adela. ‘Nuns love little children. And if they don’t, then they should do. He’ll be as good as gold, won’t you, my lambkin?’

The lambkin dipped his fingers once more into the honey pot, managing to smear some of his plunder into his hair before finally locating his mouth.

‘He’ll have to be cleaned up a bit,’ I demurred.

‘Naturally!’ Adela was indignant. ‘You don’t think I’d let him go out of doors like that, do you?’

So it was that, some appreciable time later, a clean and angelic little lad was put into his box on wheels, leaning against an old cushion that Adela had recently pronounced as too rubbed and faded for the parlour, lord of all he surveyed. (This box on wheels, with a long handle for either pulling or pushing the contraption, had been my own invention when Adam was very small, and had proved so useful that I had recently made a second, bigger one for when we were in a hurry and my son’s erratic peregrinations were apt to prove too much of a delay.)

‘Go!’ he shouted, brandishing a little whip that Nicholas had made for him out of a stick and a piece of rope.

‘He’s going to be another Nero,’ I remarked bitterly to no one in particular, but causing Nick and Elizabeth to snigger unsympathetically.

‘He’s a sweetheart,’ my wife chided me. She could afford to be generous with the prospect of an hour or so free of Adam’s disruptive company before her.

I kissed her reproachfully and set out across the Frome Bridge and through the Frome Gate, trundling my son behind me. Edgar Capgrave was not on duty, for which I was truly thankful. I could do without his caustic comments on the subject of legshackled husbands. The smiles of approval I earned from the women we met were bad enough. I felt my reputation was at stake.

We reached the top of Steep Street, however, without incident — apart from Adam once trying to climb out of the cart to chase a stray cat and having to be forcibly restrained. Hob Jarrett and his team were leaning on their spades deep in discussion about something or another, so I didn’t disturb them by attracting their attention. I noticed that very little progress in clearing the site had been made in the four days since I had last visited it, and reflected yet again that foreigners’ strictures on the indolence of the English were not without some basis in fact.

At the nunnery I was informed by the Sister who answered my knock that Sister Walburga had gone to visit a sick woman who lived in Saint Michael’s Hill, but was expected to return shortly. If I cared to wait …

I said I did, but in fairness indicated Adam in his cart. The nun stood on tiptoe, peering through the grille, out and down towards my feet. My son immediately stood up, somewhat precariously, and I held my breath, wondering what was coming next. But he only gave her a beatific smile. The door was opened at once and we were shown into the same little bare, whitewashed room where I had spoken to Sister Walburga. There was nothing there that Adam, even if he climbed out of his cart, could wreck. I heaved a silent sigh of relief.

The nun who had admitted us was a small, middle-aged woman with a gentle face and a retiring manner. Her voice was low and hesitant, and I guessed her to be the Sister referred to by Adela as shy and timid. She smiled tentatively at Adam, but then started to edge in the direction of the door with a muttered, ‘I’ll send Sister Walburga to you as soon as she returns.’

‘I see work goes on apace in the graveyard opposite,’ I said, but the heavy sarcasm was lost on my listener.

‘They’re good workers, all three of them,’ she answered, failing to notice my look of incredulity. ‘And now I must …’

‘Tell me your name, Sister,’ I requested, adding mendaciously, ‘My wife thinks she might know you.’

‘Sister Apollonia,’ was the response. ‘In the world, I was Jessica Haynard, but that’s a very long time ago.’

‘You’ve been here a while?’

Her smile lit up her face, making it suddenly beautiful. ‘Since I was sixteen. All of thirty years. Yes, you might say I’ve been here a while.’ She gazed hungrily at Adam. ‘What a beautiful child.’

The beauteous one, I was delighted to notice, had gone to sleep, lolling against his pillow in his usual abandoned manner, arms dangling over the edge of the box, legs splayed anyhow. Sister Apollonia made once more to leave the room.

Some instinct made me detain her.

‘I daresay you’re pleased to see the old graveyard — ’ I jerked my head in what I hoped was its general direction — ‘put to some good use at last, now that Mayor Foster’s bought the ground.’

A slight frown creased the sweet face and she hesitated before replying in her soft voice, ‘One wouldn’t, of course, wish to rob the poor or begrudge them any alleviation of their lot through Master Foster’s generous foundation …’

‘But?’ I prompted.

She sighed. ‘But I could have wished him to find land for his almshouses and chapel somewhere else.’

It was my turn to frown.

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘My understanding is that the graveyard has never been used for the purpose for which it was intended. There are so few of you now — only three Sisters in all, I believe — that, when the time comes for you to exchange this world for the next, burial can be arranged by your families elsewhere.’

The little nun nodded her agreement. ‘Oh, yes. That’s true. And the money payed by John Foster can be, and will be, put to good use. But — ’ she lowered her voice to an awed whisper, so that I had to incline my head to catch her words — ‘the graveyard, you see, was the site of the nunnery’s miracle.’

‘Miracle!’ I exclaimed, so sharply that Adam opened his eyes in surprise and stared solemnly at me for several seconds before falling asleep again. ‘What miracle, Sister? I can’t say I’ve ever heard tell of one.’

‘Oh, it was a long time ago,’ Sister Apollonia told me. ‘Twenty years or maybe more. As you get older, time passes so quickly that much of it flows together in one great stream. But yes, now I think carefully about it, it must have been twenty years, for it was just after Sister Walburga entered the nunnery as a postulant, and that, she tells me, is the length of time she has been here.’

‘What was this miracle?’ I asked.

‘One of our other Sisters, Sister Justina, had fallen very ill. Her life was despaired of. She had received the last rites, and two of the lay Brothers from Saint Michael’s had dug the grave ready for her, in the graveyard. But she was — indeed, still is — very dear to me, and I determined that all prayer could do to save her should be done. I prayed night and day, barely sleeping. And — ’ the little face was suddenly aglow with an inner light — ‘God heard me. In spite of what the doctor said, Sister Justina recovered, and has remained in good health until this day.’

‘But … but that’s hardly a miracle,’ I cavilled, loath to throw a rub in the way of such simple faith. ‘Even the very best of physicians has sometimes been known to be wrong. People do recover from illnesses from which others have expected them to die.’

Sister Apollonia became animated, waving her hands about like two little white butterflies (albeit calloused ones) and her naturally gentle voice even sounded a note of impatience.

‘No, no! Of course I’m not so foolish as to call that the miracle. Although, in its way, it was one, I assure you. But no, the miracle was that the grave which had been dug for Sister Justina filled itself in overnight — the night of her recovery — and was completely invisible by the morning.’

My heart was pounding in my throat as the full implication of what Sister Apollonia was saying hit me. For a moment I was unable to speak and let her chatter on, her shyness forgotten. At last, however, I interrupted.

‘Sister, can you remember exactly which night the grave was filled in?’

‘I’ve already told you.’ She was reproachful. ‘It was the night Sister Justina regained consciousness and started on the long road back to health.’

‘What sort of night was it?’ I persisted. ‘What had the day been like? What time of year?’

She looked astonished by my urgency and the fact that I had actually seized her by the arm and was shaking it. Another woman, Sister Walburga for example, would have given me a sharp set-down, but Sister Apollonia was too sweet and kind for her own good, and wrinkled her forehead in an effort to oblige me.

‘I think the time of year was early spring,’ she said. ‘March, I believe, and nasty, inclement weather. Yes, yes I remember now. We had had several days of wind and rain. I recollect listening to both while I was sitting beside Sister Justina’s bed and thinking of the poor sailors trying to bring their ships up that treacherous river from the Avon mouth. Now, fancy my recalling that after all this time.’

My palms were sweating. ‘Sister,’ I begged, ‘try to remember some more. It’s important or I wouldn’t ask it of you. When exactly did you discover that the grave had been filled in? Are you certain it was the very next morning after Sister Justina had begun to get better? Or was it a day or so later, when you and the other nuns were finally convinced that it would no longer be needed?’

‘It was the following morning.’ She was indignant, or as indignant as one of her gentle nature could be, to think that I could doubt her word. ‘I’ve told you; it was a miracle. It was a sign sent by God, in answer to my prayers, that Justina was going to recover. Because even then, fully conscious at last and managing to drink a little broth, who could have said that she might not relapse into her former state? But as soon as one of the lay Sisters informed me that the grave had disappeared, I knew for certain that God had spoken. Sister Justina would live out her full span of years. And she has!’ The little nun was quietly triumphant.

‘Did the other Sisters regard the closing of the grave as a miracle?’

‘Of course! What else could it have been?’

I shook my head, waiting for my companion to make the connection between the ‘miracle’ and the discovery, over a week ago now, of Isabella Linkinhorne’s body. But Sister Apollonia merely smiled serenely at me, her faith unshaken. The raising of the door latch made her turn.

‘Ah! Here is Sister Walburga. Sister, you have a visitor. In fact, two,’ she added, gazing down fondly at Adam, who had not stirred. ‘I trust you found Goody Lewison on the road to recovery?’

‘Better,’ was the terse reply. Sister Walburga eyed me suspiciously. ‘What are you doing here again, Chapman? You had all the information I could give you concerning my cousin last time you called.’

‘The Sister here has been telling me about the nunnery’s miracle,’ I said pointedly.

I felt sure that the significance of the recent find in conjunction with this story could not have been lost on Sister Walburga, but she waited until Sister Apollonia had fluttered happily out of the room before closing the door and saying, ‘You think the grave was used to bury Isabella’s body?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘The thought has crossed my mind in recent days.’

‘I’m right in believing that the two events tallied?’ I asked, making certain of my facts. ‘I mean the disappearance of your cousin and the recovery of Sister Justina.’

Sister Walburga drew down the corners of her mouth. ‘I’m afraid so. I had not long entered the nunnery when the “miracle” happened. It never occurred to me to connect it with Isabella vanishing like that.’ She shrugged. ‘Indeed, why should it? It never occurred to me, either, that any harm had come to my cousin. The miracle seemed just that — a miracle!’

‘You didn’t mention it when I was here four days ago.’

‘I’d forgotten the incident. As a matter of fact, it was only yesterday, when Apollonia was bemoaning what she sees as the desecration of the graveyard, because of the miracle, that I suddenly saw that it had been no miracle at all, but a gift from the Devil to my cousin’s murderer.’ She spoke with great bitterness, and I noticed that there were unshed tears in her eyes.

I asked, more gently, ‘Who would have known about the grave? The nuns themselves, obviously. I don’t know how many of them there were in those days.’

Sister Walburga put a hand to her forehead. ‘No more than at present, I fancy. Another joined the order some years later, Sister Jerome, but she left suddenly some three years ago. Just ran away. I forget the circumstances.’

I knew all about the woman who had been called Marion Baldock and the reason for her sudden flight.

‘You can discount Sister Jerome,’ I said and, ignoring my companion’s raised eyebrows, went on, ‘Apart from the nuns, then, who else would have been aware that a grave had been prepared for Sister Justina?’

‘The men who dug it, one would suppose. But it’s no use asking me who they were. I had not long arrived here, as I said. The names of people attached to the nunnery in a lay capacity were unknown to me in those days.’

I sighed. I was at a standstill again, but at least one question that had been worrying both Adela and myself was answered. The difficulty of how anyone could dig a grave, even after dark, without attracting attention had been solved. But, as so often happened, a solution posed yet more queries. How did the murderer know of the grave? How did he (or perhaps she) convey the girl’s body to the top of Steep Street? From which direction did he or she come; up from the city or down from the heights above?

I told myself severely not to be greedy, but to be grateful for one problem the less. I turned to thank Sister Walburga and found her standing by the door, holding it open, impatient for me to be gone. I took hold of the handle of Adam’s little cart and, with a ‘God be with ye’ to my companion, took my leave.

But as I made my way home, trundling my still sleeping son behind me, I couldn’t help reflecting that there had been something more than impatience in Sister Walburga’s manner. It was almost as though she had been afraid of me — of what I might find out if I was allowed to probe any further. Did she know more than she had so far admitted about her cousin’s death? Or was I, as I was so often accused by my wife of doing, simply letting my imagination run away with me?

But there was no time to pursue these thoughts, for the present at any rate. Some uneven cobblestones jolted Adam suddenly awake, and he did what he always did when he considered that an unspeakable outrage had been committed on his person; he screamed with annoyance at the top of his voice, and continued screaming all the way to Small Street.

‘Have you ever heard of the miracle of the Magdalen nunnery?’ I asked Jack Nym.

It was a beautiful morning, spring having at last decided to favour us with her undoubted presence. One would have dared hazard that winter had gone for good (or at least for the next four or five months) except that no Englishman would be so foolish as to wager on such a likelihood, experience having taught us that one can swelter in April and freeze in July. ‘Island weather,’ as people used to say.

Jack, together with his cartload of soap, which he was to drop off at Gloucester before continuing further afield to pick up a consignment of Cotswold wool, had called for me at the crack of dawn, wanting to make good progress before dinner. He had been none too pleased that Hercules was to accompany me (furious at being forcibly separated from his lady love) but when I whispered to him that Adela insisted, he accepted the explanation without further argument, merely uttering the word ‘Women!’ under his breath. He knew all about strong-minded wives.

An hour later, we had left the city behind, climbing up out of Bristol, past the windmill, in a north-easterly direction. Trees, like gilded statues, rose out of the mist ahead of us as the sun rose to full glory over the horizon. The white light of dawn had been replaced by glass-green distances, shot through with shadows of blue and plum; and the rippling and lapping of a boulder-studded stream had given Jack’s old nag the chance of a much needed drink, and ourselves the opportunity to alight and stretch our limbs. It was while we were doing this that I asked my question.

‘Miracle?’ Jack queried as he climbed back on to the seat of the cart and once again took up the reins. ‘What miracle?’

I told him the story as Sister Apollonia had told it to me, and when I had finished, he at first shook his head very decidedly, but then had second thoughts.

‘Mmm. Maybe I do recall some talk among the older folks about summat that’d happened at the nunnery. P’raps that was it. But nothing much could’ve been reckoned to it because it never, so far as I know, made much of a stir. And if it’d been summat as us Bristol folk could’ve made money out of, it wouldn’t’ve been let drop, as you well know, Chapman.’

I laughed. ‘Come on, Jack! As someone not having the privilege of being born in the city, you don’t expect me to agree with you, do you? You’d cut my head off.’

It was his turn to laugh, displaying his broken and blackened teeth. ‘True enough. We don’t generally take to strangers. You’ve been lucky to be as well accepted as you are. But this ’ere miracle you’m talkin’ about. Are you thinking it’s got summat to do with this Issybelly what’s-’er-name?’

Jack, I admitted to myself, was no fool. He could put two and two together better than most men.

‘I’m thinking it might. Indeed, I feel certain of it. Sister Walburga, Isabella Linkinhorne’s cousin, confirmed that both events — the murder and the filling in of the grave — happened at around the same time.’

‘And nobody thought of one havin’ anything to do with the other?’

I shook my head. ‘Jonathan Linkinhorne and his wife were so sure that Isabella had run away with one of her lovers.’

‘And one o’ these men you think lives in Gloucester?’

‘He did, according to Goody Purefoy. Whether he does now is another matter and something I have to find out. If he’s still there, he’s a goldsmith and his names may begin with the letters R and M.’

Jack considered this, his head a little to one side. The horse plodded along at a steady pace, while Hercules whimpered and grunted and shifted around in the back of the cart, letting me know that he was not enjoying the ride. Sacks of soap made uncomfortable bedding.

‘Not an impossible task,’ my companion eventually decided. ‘Not, that is, if the man’s still livin’ in Gloucester, not if ’e’s still a goldsmith and not if his names do begin with the letters R and M. But take away one o’ those three and it ain’t goin’ to be so easy. Take away two and you’re in trouble.’

‘I know it,’ I answered glumly.

We stopped and ate our dinner — bread and cheese with raw onion and a flagon of cheap wine, provided for the two of us by Adela — in the shadow of a little copse, where the ground was damp and slippery with recent rain. But the sun overhead was now growing so warm that we were glad of the shade. Hercules ran around, barking and upsetting the horse, who was munching in his nosebag, found a small stream to lap from, scared a water rat back into its hole, and finally finished any food that Jack and I had been foolish enough to leave.

We spent a night on the road, in a flea-bitten inn huddled in the lee of Berkeley Castle, and arrived at our destination late in the evening of the second day just before Gloucester city gates were shut against us.

After some discussion, and after I had made it plain that I would pay Jack’s shot as well as my own, we made our way to the New Inn, not far from the abbey. Although still called the New Inn, the hostelry had been built some thirty years previously to house the ever growing number of pilgrims who wished to visit the tomb of the second Edward (his murdered body having been buried in a splendid marble sarcophagus in the abbey’s north ambulatory).

The inn was, as usual, uncomfortably full, but Jack and I were allotted a small but perfectly clean chamber opening off the gallery that ran round the main courtyard. For a generous extra payment the horse was stabled and fed, and the landlord undertook to see that the cart and its contents were safely bestowed in a neighbouring barn. Hercules was provided with a large ham bone and some clean water to drink and allowed to share our room, and Jack and I enjoyed a supper of baked carp (it being Friday) followed by apple fritters and a jug of good ale. Jack smacked his lips and had second helpings of everything, on the principle that as he was not paying, he might as well make a pig of himself — although that didn’t stop him grumbling indignantly when he discovered that Hercules insisted on sharing the bed with us.

‘Can’t you make this pesky animal sleep on the floor?’ he demanded irritably after the dog had wormed his way between us and laid his head on the pillow. (His breath was atrocious.)

‘No,’ I answered shortly, remembering the amount of money, on top of what I had already paid, that mine host had pocketed for our supper. ‘Lie still and he won’t bother us.’

There was silence for perhaps ten minutes or so while I drifted towards sleep; my face turned well away from Hercules. I thought vaguely of ‘Melchior’ and how, when I had parted company from Jack in the morning, I must start making enquiries for a city goldsmith. Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar; the names swam around aimlessly in my head like three fish in an abbot’s fish pond …

‘Chapman! I say, Chapman! Are you awake?’ Jack’s voice cut across my slumbers.

‘I am now,’ I answered crossly. ‘What d’you want? If you’re going to complain about Hercules again …’

‘No, no, it ain’t that.’ With a muttered oath, Jack heaved himself into a sitting position to avoid the animal’s stinking breath. ‘You remember I told you that I’d once seen that Issybelly what’s-’er-name with a man in All Saints’ porch?’

‘What of it?’ I was fully awake and listening now.

‘I said I didn’t see ’is face.’

‘That’s right. He was in shadow, you said.’ There was a silence while I could almost hear Jack’s brain working. ‘Go on!’ I exclaimed impatiently.

‘We-ell,’ he continued after a second or two, ‘I s’pose I must’ve seen more’n I thought I did, because …’

‘Because what? For the sweet Virgin’s sake, spit it out, man!’

‘Because — well — I’ve seen a face recently that makes me think it might’ve been ’im.’

‘Whose face?’

‘Dunno. That’s the trouble. Can’t remember.’