16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (20 page)

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.