16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (16 page)

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 The white light of dawn had been replaced by glass-green distances, shot through with shadows of blue and plum; and the rippling and lapping of a boulder-studded stream had given Jack’s old nag the chance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.’

I
, too, sat up in bed with a furious jerk that disturbed the bedclothes.

‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, incensed. ‘First, you tell me you never saw the man’s face. Then you say you’ve seen him lately, but you can’t remember who he is! You might as well be speaking Portuguese for all the sense you’re making.’

Hercules, recognizing that I was angry, but not with him, quietly farted in support and thumped his tail. Jack and I, as one man, covered our noses.

‘Hell’s teeth!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘What’s ’e been eating?’

‘Never mind that,’ I retorted. ‘Just explain what it is you’re trying to say.’

Although my eyes had by now grown accustomed to the darkness of the shuttered room, my companion’s face was still more or less invisible, but he sounded unhappy.

‘I wish I could explain …’

‘Try!’ I commanded. ‘Because you won’t get to sleep until you do.’

Jack called me by a name I prefer not to repeat before stigmatizing me as a tyrant. But finally, after much head scratching, he did his best to make things plain.

‘S’far as I know, I didn’t see the man with Issybelly what’s-’er-name in All Saints’ porch that day. His face were in shadow. I saw ’is hands, mind. They were all over ’er. But the point is, I must’ve seen something, ’cause on Wednesday, walkin’ across the bridge, going home to Redcliffe, minding me own business and thinking about nothin’ in particler except what my good woman had managed to burn for dinner –’ Jack’s wife was a notoriously bad cook – ‘I suddenly found meself thinking ’bout Issybelly, jus’ like she was there beside me.’

‘We had been talking about her the day before,’ I reminded him.

‘Everyone’s been talkin’ about ’er for best part of a fortnight,’ Jack pointed out, ‘ever since they discovered ’er body at the beginning o’ the month, but I ain’t felt like that afore.’

‘Like what, exactly?’

‘I told you! Don’ you listen? Like she was there, with me. Or like I was back in the porch of All Saints’ with ’er, all those years agone. So, bein’ an intelligent sort o’ fellow, I ask meself why’m I feelin’ this way.’

‘And what answer did your mighty intellect come up with?’ I asked spitefully, but sarcasm was always wasted on Jack.

‘I decided summat must’ve jogged me memory, recent-like. But then I recollected seein’ a face sometime earlier in the morning, and yet not seein’ it. If you know what I mean.’

‘A familiar face?’

My bedfellow considered this while Hercules scratched for fleas, a few of which, no doubt annoyed at being disturbed, hopped into the bed in search of fresh company. Clad only in our shirts, Jack and I had also been scratching ever since we lay down.

‘Must’ve been,’ Jack said at last, in answer to my question. ‘I’d’ve taken notice of a stranger, wouldn’t I?’

Probably. Bristolians were used to foreign sailors in their midst and tolerated them as a necessary evil. But landlubbers were a different matter, and unknowns were immediately remarked upon and treated with suspicion until they had either established their credentials or were vouched for by an inhabitant. Mind you, most cities I had ever visited were the same, a wariness of outsiders being always prevalent.

‘All right. So this wasn’t a stranger you saw,’ I agreed, endeavouring to make sense of what Jack was trying to tell me. ‘It was someone you recognized, but without actually registering who it was you were looking at. Well, I suppose that has happened to all of us at one time or another. We catch a glimpse of someone so familiar that we don’t really see him. Probably most of the people you met on your way home to dinner were like that, unless you stopped and spoke to them. So what makes you think that one of those faces prompted your memories of Isabella Linkinhorne?’

Jack was tired and growing weary of the conversation. He lay down again, sticking his elbow so firmly into the dog’s ribs that Hercules gave an angry snarl and took himself off to sleep at the bottom of the bed, curling up by my feet.

‘I dunno,’ he grunted sleepily. ‘It jus’ felt like summat I’d seen made me think of her that day in the porch of All Saints’ Church.’

‘And you thought that, after all, maybe you had caught sight of the man she was with, and had just seen him again. Is that what you mean?’

But a loud snore was my only answer.

With the coming of morning, my companion was even less inclined to discuss the matter further. He was by now thoroughly bored with the subject and obviously regretted having mentioned it in the first place. He was anxious to be off to deliver his cartload of soap and to set out for Stowe as soon as possible.

‘Then promise me this, Jack,’ I said, as we swallowed a breakfast of bacon collops and oatcakes and emptied tankards of small beer, ‘that if you ever remember whose face it was you saw – this face that prompted all these memories of Isabella – you’ll let me know.’

He grunted and I had to be content with that. But we parted on the best of terms and with expressions of mutual goodwill, he going off to the stables to collect his horse and to the barn to retrieve his merchandise, while I went in search of the landlord to enquire if he knew of any goldsmiths in the city.

‘Goldsmiths, is it?’ that worthy echoed, grinning. ‘Thinking of buying something for the goodwife at home, are you?’ He enjoyed the joke, shaking with silent laughter. ‘Well, I daresay you’ll find a trinket or two in Goldsmiths’ Row, lad.’

I thanked him in as dignified a way as I could manage, ignoring his unseemly mirth, and set off, following his directions. Hercules trotted behind me, the belt buckled around his neck thwarting him in his attempts to fight every stray cur who crossed his path and to chase each new and enticing smell that tickled his nose.

‘We haven’t the time,’ I told him severely.

Goldsmiths’ Row, however, turned out to be a disappointment. There was no master in any of the workshops who was anywhere close to the correct age for ‘Melchior’, who must now, I reckoned, be around forty. Most of them were elderly, grey-haired, wrinkled men, all, with one exception, nearing sixty by my calculations. Nor did they own to any sons of the right age, but, like the good people of Westbury before them, grew steadily more suspicious of my intentions. And indeed who was to say they were wrong to be on their guard? A shabby stranger with a scruffy dog, I could hardly have inspired any confidence in workshops where I was surrounded by gems and precious metal. Nor did any one of the greybeards own to having any knowledge of Isabella.

The one exception was a Master Cock-up-spotty who had, as far as I could gather, inherited a thriving business from his recently dead father and was now hell-bent on exploiting his new-found importance by making the lives of his apprentices and workmen as miserable as possible, giving and countermanding orders in quick succession in a way that demonstrated all too clearly his ignorance of a business which must have been a part of his existence from childhood. His dress proclaimed the man, reminding me of a young popinjay I had known in Bristol who had come to an unfortunate end. Parti-coloured hose and tunic, long pikes to his shoes and a codpiece decorated with silver tassels. A self-satisfied youth of perhaps some twenty summers, he listened to my enquiry with a condescension that made me grind my teeth and long to hit him on his superior nose. And I noticed that his workmen – one hammering away to turn a thin sheet of the precious metal into gold leaf, another engraving a piece of amber – looked as if they would be pleased to see me try. A third, lovingly polishing a silver chalice with a rabbit’s foot, grimaced at me behind his master’s back.