16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (24 page)

I made no effort to conceal my surprise.

‘I didn’t know you had a daughter, Jack. I didn’t even know you were married.’

‘I ain’t. Not any more. Not for a long time, come to that. My goody died when Cecily were born. She’s married now – Cecily, I mean – to a baker. He has a stall not far from the North Gate. Don’ know why she couldn’t have married a decent Bristol man,’ he grumbled. ‘Plenty of ’em. ’Stead, she has to go off to Bath to live. No thought for me, left all on me ownsome. But that’s children for you, as you’ll find out afore you’re much older, I daresay.’

I thought that if I’d been Cecily Gload I too would have seized the chance to escape and put twelve miles between myself and Jack. If she was a person of any spirit, the idea of spending the rest of her life with her father must have been daunting in the extreme.

Jack went on, ‘I been following you, but you was too far ahead for me to catch up. Good job you fell asleep when you did, and for as long as you did. I’d never have been able to overtake you otherwise.’

I wished I could share his enthusiasm and began to cast about in my mind for ways to shake him off. His next words sent my heart plummeting. ‘We can go the rest of the journey together.’

‘We won’t make it into the city tonight,’ I said. ‘It will be sunset soon and the gates will be closed. I’d guess we have another two or more hours’ walking.’

‘More like three,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘But the North Gate – where my daughter lives, like I told you – has a little gate for people on foot alongside it. That door’s not always locked for a few hours after sundown. Lots of folk use it for getting in and out o’ the city after dark. Or if ’tis locked by any chance, there’s one or two places where the walls are broken down and ain’t been mended for a while. There are gaps in the stonework easy to get through, same as at home.’

Probably the same as every other city in the land, I reflected. Unlike our less fortunate neighbours across the Channel, long centuries free from the threat of invasion had made city authorities everywhere more than a little slack when it came to keeping up their towns’ defences. It seemed a waste of good money that could profitably be spent on other things (preferably the Mayor and Council).

‘I don’t fancy walking in the dark unless it’s necessary,’ I cavilled. ‘There’s sure to be somewhere – a barn or cottage or even a dry ditch beneath a hedge – where I can lie up for the night.’

‘Never thought of you as a coward, Chapman,’ Jack Gload scoffed. ‘Big fellow like you ain’t afraid o’ the dark, are you?’

‘Not at all,’ I retorted, nettled, then heaved a quiet sigh as I accepted that there was no way to shake off my unwanted companion without sacrificing my reputation. I made one last throw of the dice. ‘But perhaps your daughter and her husband won’t want a stranger, as well as yourself, cluttering up their house.’

The lawman guffawed. ‘They won’t care. They got four children, two cats and a dog, so they’m pretty crowded already. Two more – even two more as big as us – ain’t goin’ to make no difference. There’s plenty o’ room in the bakehouse and it’s warm by the ovens.’

My heart sank at the prospect before me, but I could see no way of refusing Jack’s invitation, only stipulating that if either his daughter or son-in-law made the slightest demur about housing me, I was to be allowed to depart in search of other lodgings without any rub thrown in my way by him. Reluctantly he agreed, and it crossed my mind to wonder why Jack Gload of all people was suddenly so anxious for my company. We had never been friends and, at times, had been positive enemies. And I must surely have offended him on many occasions by my lack of respect for both himself and his office. However, he seemed determined at present to stand my friend, and I could only hope that I might find a means of escape before we reached Bath.

But luck was not on my side. After what seemed an interminable walk in the steadily gathering gloom, which deepened into a profound darkness before a half-moon rose to light our pathway, the walls of Bath, twenty feet or so high in places, crumbling in others, rose up before us. We had left the river bank some time earlier and now skirted the walls and the West Gate until we came to the north of the city, where, as my companion had told me, there was a small arched portal set alongside the main gate, the latter by then being locked and barred. And he was correct, too, when he had said that this postern might still be open, although we were not a moment too soon. As we pushed our way through, the night porter was approaching from the opposite direction with his bunch of keys.

He greeted the pair of us with a nod and a grunt and the remark that Jack’s youngest grandchild was giving his lungs an airing.

‘Heard him,’ he said, ‘as I passed the bakehouse not two minutes since. Fact, you could hear ’im right down the bottom of the marketplace.’

‘Ay, he’s a grand little fellow,’ Jack replied proudly.

My heart sank even further, but by the time we had gone a little way down the high street, peace reigned in the two-storey house next to the baker’s shop (now boarded up for the night) and bakehouse with its funnelled chimney.

Mistress Cecily Baker was a surprisingly handsome young woman of perhaps some twenty summers, short and a little on the plump side, but with thickly lashed brown eyes, a sweet, full mouth and a neat, straight nose. I realized at once that she must favour her mother, for she was nothing like Jack. Her husband, Thomas, was as tall as she was short, a thin streak of a man with untidy brown hair, blue eyes and the white, floury complexion of all men of his calling. I soon learned that he spoke seldom but when he did, it was to state his opinions with all the dogmatic forcefulness of the totally uninformed.

My hope of being denied their hospitality was doomed to disappointment. Nothing could have exceeded my hostess’s pleasure at seeing me, and as she obviously ruled the roost, her husband extended an equally warm welcome to both his father-in-law and myself. The dog was inclined to take exception to the presence of strangers, but once he had sniffed Hercules’s scent on my clothes, he seemed to accept me as a friend. The cats, of course, ignored us, as cats the world over do, and continued pursuing their quest for mice and rats, pouncing at every rustle in the straw covering the kitchen floor.

The baby, a fat, red-faced infant of, I guessed, about six months, was breathing wheezily in his cradle which had been brought downstairs and placed next to the hearth, and which Cecily was rocking with her foot. Of the other three children there was no sign, although, now and then, a thump from the upper floor and a quickly suppressed shout of laughter indicated that they might be in bed, but were not yet asleep.

Jack Gload introduced me as his friend from Bristol (a description I secretly took great exception to) and as such I was given the best seat in the room – a simple armchair which I suspected really belonged to the master of the house – and offered two helpings of everything when Jack and I eventually sat down to a very belated supper. Thomas then took himself off to the bakehouse to set the dough to rise for the next day’s bread, while his wife ushered her father and myself into a snug back parlour where she joined us after she had cleared away our dirty dishes. Jack was instructed to fetch in the cradle, the children upstairs were shouted at and threatened with dire consequences if they did not immediately go to sleep, and then father and daughter settled down for a cosy gossip to catch up on family news. I naturally could take no part in this and soon found myself nodding off, drifting in and out of a dream in which I found myself standing on the edge of the great gorge in Bristol, overlooking Saint Vincent’s rocks, and arguing with the hermit about something or another. Unfortunately, although I recognized myself as the taller of the two men, I was also detached from him and unable to hear a word of the conversation. I shouted at myself to speak up – and woke with a cry on my lips that made my two companions start.

‘You been dreaming, Chapman, and no mistake,’ Jack Gload said, grinning, while his daughter looked at me reproachfully as the noise had disturbed the baby, who was beginning to grizzle, flailing his little arms which he had tugged free of his blanket. Fortunately some vigorous rocking from his mother soon quietened him again, and I pulled myself up straight on the narrow window seat on which I was sitting, shaking my head to clear it of the cobwebs of sleep.

‘S’pose you wake yourself up by telling us what you’re doing in Bath,’ Jack continued, the grin becoming slightly more malevolent. ‘It’s got something to do with that there old murder, hasn’t it? That body that was turned up in the nuns’ graveyard.’

Dame Cecily immediately clamoured to know what her father meant by this, and to be told the full story, so I was spared the necessity of replying for the moment. Jack at once puffed out his chest and in his capacity as one of (in his opinion) Bristol’s most important law enforcers told what he knew – which, I was relieved to discover, was no more than, if as much as, I knew myself. I should have hated to think that Dick Manifold was as diligent or as clever as Roger Chapman. On the other hand, honesty compelled me to admit that so far I had found out very little.

‘And you, sir,’ my hostess enquired, turning to smile at me. ‘Do you also work with my father and the Sergeant?’

‘No, ’e don’t!’ guffawed Jack. ‘’E’s nothing but a common pedlar!’

Cecily Baker coloured uncomfortably and glanced askance at her parent, obviously distancing herself from his boorish manners.

‘But you do have some interest in the matter, Master Chapman?’ she urged.

So, reluctantly, I divulged my part in the enquiry and, battered into submission by a volley of questions from father and daughter, Mayor Foster’s interest in the affair, plus a little of what I had discovered and the reason for my visit to Bath.

‘Although,’ I finished lamely, uneasily aware that I had perhaps said even more than I had intended to, ‘I expect very little success here. “Caspar” has no name, no face, no identification of any sort. Even the descriptions I have for the remaining two of Isabella Linkinhorne’s swains could apply to hundreds of men. Furthermore, I have no proof that “Caspar” is living or dead, nor whether, if the former, he is still here in Bath.’

I could tell by Jack’s puzzled expression that he was having great trouble following the bit about the Three Kings of Cologne and was unable to understand my reason for giving the three – now two – unknown men these outlandish names.

‘It helps Master Chapman to identify them in his own mind, Father,’ Cecily explained kindly in the same indulgent tone she might have used to one of her children. ‘Don’t tease yourself about it,’ she added, patting his arm. (She had to take after her mother for intelligence, as well as looks. How on earth, I wondered, had Jack Gload managed to attract such a paragon?) My hostess turned back to me. ‘I fear you have very little hope of success, Master Chapman. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say none at all.’

During the past ten minutes or so, her husband had returned from the bakery and joined us in the parlour, settling himself alongside me on the window seat, sitting down with a thump that sent a fine cloud of floury dust up into the air where the motes whirled around in the candlelight like a miniature snowstorm.

‘Shouldn’t be encouraging the League,’ he announced, fastening on to the one point he had really understood. ‘All this talk of Cologne. Trade with the Rhineland should be outlawed. The King and Council should see to it.’

‘Yes, my love,’ his wife agreed pacifically. No doubt her early years with her father had equipped her for dealing with men of limited intellect without losing her temper. ‘But we weren’t really discussing the Hanse towns. Master Chapman here has a problem.’ She smiled faintly. ‘He’s looking for someone he knows nothing about.’

‘Nonsense! He must know something. He wouldn’t be such a fool as to come searching for a man of whom he knows nothing.’

‘Always thought you was an idiot, Chapman,’ Jack remarked conversationally. ‘Now I’m sure of it.’

I ignored this jibe, addressing myself to Dame Cecily.

‘The only course open to me, as far as I can see, is to make enquiries around the town for anyone who knew Isabella Linkinhorne in his youth. As this is likely to take me some days – and even then, I doubt I’ll have much success – is there a clean, but cheap hostelry you can recommend, Mistress? Somewhere where the food’s good and the fleas don’t bite too much.’

She laughed. ‘There are one or two. But you’ll spend tonight with us. We keep a spare mattress for my father in the little room under the eaves. He won’t mind if you share that with him.’

‘Shan’t mind at all,’ Jack agreed. ‘I snore and fart a bit, Chapman, but then I believe you do, too.’ He grinned more malevolently than ever. ‘At least, you do according to Sergeant Manifold.’

His meaning was clear. Dick Manifold had got the information from Adela and shared the information with his two henchmen. I could feel my temper rising and had to clench my hands in my lap to stop myself from hitting Jack.

Dame Cecily, although ignorant of the cause, was immediately conscious of the rising tension between us, and hurriedly turned the conversation by asking her husband, ‘Is the list of deliveries ready for the boy in the morning? Our apprentice,’ she explained for my benefit, ‘lives nearby and goes home to sleep at nights with his widowed mother. But he’s here at daybreak and needs to know which homes to take bread to before Thomas opens the stall. Some people are too old or crippled to come themselves.’

‘Or too lazy,’ her spouse supplemented. ‘Or think they’re too important to make one of a crowd.’ He snorted indignantly, adding a trifle obscurely, ‘Just because his sister married above her station.’

‘Who’s that, then?’ Jack demanded.

The baby woke up and started to cry again. Cecily lifted the child out of the cradle, loosened her gown and put it to her breast. The noises from upstairs had long since died away.

‘Ralph Mynott,’ she said in answer to her father’s question. ‘Lives opposite the monks’ burial ground, over towards the East Gate.’

‘Who’d his sister marry then, that he thinks himself too good to come to the stall?’ Jack persisted.