16 - The Three Kings of Cologne (6 page)

‘She was secretive?’

‘Oh, very! At least, where her various swains were concerned. And perhaps in other respects, as well. She appeared open and friendly enough, but I doubt if anyone, especially those closest to her, really knew what she was thinking, not even as a child. Mind you,’ my companion went on, suddenly moving away from the door and beginning to pace about the room, ‘it was easy to understand why. My cousin and his wife were both elderly when Isabella was born – Amorette, I think, must have been over forty, Jonathan even older – and they smothered her with love. The poor child was stifled with it from the moment of her birth. They watched over her every movement, supervised her every action until Isabella must have felt she couldn’t breathe. The only place she could hide was inside her own head, so the need for secrecy was probably engendered in her from a very young age. And when rebellion finally came, and Isabella defied her parents to go out riding every day, sometimes all day, she would never tell them where she’d been or who she’d seen. The habit of silence was too inbred in her by then.’

‘Surely her father could have enforced her obedience?’

Sister Walburga shook her head.

‘My cousin would never have lifted a finger against Isabella. He and Amorette doted too much on her. Along with the all-embracing love went a desire to give first the child and then the girl everything she wanted; everything her heart desired. Isabella grew up spoiled, wilful and wild.’ My informant paused, chewing her bottom lip and looking pensive. ‘You know, Master Chapman,’ she continued after a minute, ‘love can be ugly and destructive as well as beautiful and life-giving. If you have children of your own, never forget that.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ I promised. ‘I’ve been told that Master Linkinhorne and his family lived in the manor of Clifton.’

‘Yes. He and his wife ran, very successfully, a smallholding which they held in tenure from the lord of the manor, Lord Cobham. It was a quarter of a mile or so from Ghyston Cliff, above Rownham Passage. The place is derelict now. It was gutted by fire some years ago. An accident, my cousin said, when a candle flame caught the edge of his bed hangings. Jonathan was old and lonely by then – Amorette had been found drowned in the Avon a year after Isabella’s disappearance – and growing careless. Lord Cobham used his influence to obtain a place for my cousin in the Gaunts’ Hospital, but he never rebuilt the house.’

I thought over all she’d told me, then asked, ‘Did it never cross Master Linkinhorne’s or his wife’s minds that any harm might have befallen their daughter? Was no sort of effort made to find her?’

‘Half-hearted ones. Oh, I realize it must seem very reprehensible to you now, now that we all know the truth of what really happened. But everyone, including myself – I take equal blame – was convinced that Isabella had run off with a man.’

‘But who were these men?’ I demanded impatiently. ‘I’ve heard talk from other sources of three. Surely enquiries could have been put afoot to discover if Isabella had indeed run off with one of them.’

Sister Walburga gave her thin-lipped smile. ‘Easier said than done, my friend. No one knew their names. You find that incredible?’ I certainly did, and let it show. A note of defiance entered my companion’s voice as she continued, ‘So do I – now! Now that I can look back on events from a distance and with my present awareness of what really became of Isabella. But the sad fact is that her parents’ knowledge of these clandestine meetings came to them second-hand, through neighbours’ gossip or anonymous notes slipped under their door or from well-meaning busybodies who thought they ought to know, and so on and so on. Whenever Jonathan or Amorette tried to find out the truth of the rumours, Isabella flatly refused to answer their questions. She vowed it was all malicious lies, an attempt to tarnish her good name by people who were jealous of her. She swore there were no men. When she went out riding, she did so alone. My cousin didn’t believe her, of course. The stories were too rife. But what could he or Amorette do in the face of such flat denials? And now, I really must return to my duties.’ Sister Walburga moved back to the door, laying her hand on the latch. ‘I have already spent far too much time talking to you. Go and see my cousin at the Gaunts’ Hospital, that’s my advice. He will be able to explain matters to you far better than I can. I was at best an observer.’

I felt this remark to be disingenuous, but said nothing. Sister Walburga gave me a brief inclination of the head and was gone.

T
he Gaunts’ Hospital, as I have already explained in one of my earlier chronicles, stands close by Saint Augustine’s Abbey, in the lee of the steeply rising ground to the north of the city. (A series of heart-stopping hills leads eventually to the plateau above the great gorge – whose bed is that of the River Avon – and the manor of Clifton.) The hospital was founded in the thirteenth century by Maurice and Henry de Gaunt, and further endowed by their nephew, Robert de Gourney. Its function is to nurse the sick, feed the poor and educate children, and is large enough to accommodate twenty to thirty inmates. Run by a master and three chaplains, all belonging to the order of the Bons-Hommes, it comprises the church of Saint Mark, surrounded by hall, kitchen, buttery, dormitories, outbuildings, a pigeon loft and an orchard that, to the east, abuts the land of the Carmelite Friars (whose huge cistern has supplied Bristol with water for several centuries, piped as it is across the Frome Bridge to the conduit by Saint John-on-the-Arch).

From Steep Street, I approached the hospital along Frog Lane. The apple trees, already in bud, and soon to be a sea of foaming blossom, raised their tossing heads above the grey stone wall, their branches whispering to the tune of a gentle breeze blowing up from the river.

The porter made no demur when I expressed a wish to speak to Jonathan Linkinhorne, and conducted me to the main hall, where most of the elderly residents were to be found at that time of day. A fire, far too hot for me, burned on the hearth and spread its warmth around the stone benches that lined the other three walls. There were also stools and trestle tables scattered about to provide more comfortable seating and arm support for the frail and very old. The man pointed out to me as Master Linkinhorne was sitting at a trestle as close to the fire as he could get, his chin propped in his cupped hands, staring sightlessly at a half-full beaker of ale in front of him.

Before I could approach my quarry, however, I was intercepted by two old acquaintances, Miles Huckbody and Henry Dando. Like all old people herded together with no one but their own generation for company they were desperate for news of the wider world and the stimulation of younger minds.

‘What you doing here, Roger?’ Miles asked, his long, wrinkled face alight with curiosity beneath the white hair. He slipped one bony hand into the crook of my elbow and stroked the sleeve of my jerkin with the other. ‘You remember Henry, here,’ he went on, when his friend’s attempts to attract my attention became too importunate to ignore.

‘Master Dando,’ I said, smiling into the faded, rheumy blue eyes and wishing their owner at the devil.

Miles Huckbody let out a squawk of protest. ‘You’ve no cause to go a-“master”-ing him, Chapman. Henry ain’t of any importance.’

‘I’m just naturally polite,’ I said; a claim that provoked another cackle of derision from my companion.

‘Who you come to see?’ Miles demanded. ‘Is it one of us?’ He stared up at me hopefully.

‘I’m afraid not,’ I apologized. ‘I want to speak to Master Linkinhorne.’ And I nodded towards the silent figure, hunched over his drink.

‘Oh, ’im!’ Henry Dando sniffed. ‘You won’t get a lot of joy outta him. Miserable old sod, ’e is. Don’t talk to anyone much.’

This was bad news. But then I asked myself what would Jonathan Linkinhorne – provided he was anything like his cousin, Sister Walburga – have in common with Miles Huckbody and Henry Dando, with their constant stream of old men’s chatter? Besides which, at present, he must be suffering from a deep sense of shock, and possibly self-reproach, to think that his daughter had been dead, brutally murdered, for all these years when he had thought her alive somewhere, well and happy.

‘You’re here about that body they dug up in the nuns’ graveyard, ain’t you?’ Miles poked me sharply in the ribs. ‘Jonathan’s daughter, weren’t it? That Sergeant Manifold was here yesterday and spoke to him in private. Old Linkinhorne, he didn’t tell us nothing. But gossip soon leaks out in a place like this. Bound to.’

‘You can’t keep nothing secret in here,’ Henry Dando confirmed, trying to look regretful and failing miserably.

I guessed that such a morsel of news had generated enough excitement to keep the Gaunts’ inhabitants in a ferment for months to come.

There was no point in denying my mission. ‘You’re right. I do want to speak to Master Linkinhorne about his daughter,’ I agreed, disengaging my arm from Miles’s clawlike grip. ‘But alone,’ I added firmly. ‘I’ll wish you both good-day. It’s been a pleasure seeing you again.’ (As I’ve remarked before, we all have to tell untruths from time to time.)

‘We’ll introduce you,’ Miles offered.

‘He knows us, you see,’ Henry added.

‘I’ll introduce myself,’ I said in a tone of voice that left them in no doubt that I was refusing their very kind offices.

They sheered off, muttering together in offended whispers. I took no notice, seating myself at the opposite side of the trestle to Jonathan Linkinhorne and folding my arms in front of me. He glanced up briefly, registered the fact that my face was unfamiliar and looked down again at his beaker, but without making any serious attempt to finish his ale.

‘Master Linkinhorne,’ I said.

He raised his head once more, this time frowning. ‘Do I know you?’

In his youth, he must have been a heavy-jowled man, but the flesh now hung slackly around the jawline, running into his neck and making him appear almost chinless. Like Henry Dando, indeed like a lot of blue-eyed people, the colour of the irises had faded with age, but in his case they were also milky, hinting at incipient blindness. He had pushed back his hood to reveal a bald head, with a few wisps and tufts of white hair growing low down around the ears. I suspected that he had once been an imposing, powerfully built man who found the indignities of ageing more trying than most. When he spoke, his voice rasped with resentment.

I had a sudden vision of him in his middle years; a man used to being in command, used to being obeyed by everyone with whom he came into contact, lording it over wife and servants, confident in all his dealings with the world around him. Then, suddenly, he had found himself confronting a will-o’-the-wisp of a girl, lovely to look at, physically fragile, but with a will of iron, a determination to dominate matched only by his own. He, who all his adult life had known nothing but subservience, would have been confused, bedazzled by this glorious, unpredictable creature he had fathered and blinded by his love …

Jonathan Linkinhorne repeated impatiently, giving equal emphasis to every word, ‘Do I know you?’

I pulled my wandering thoughts together and plunged into my explanation.

When I had finished, there was a lengthy and unnerving silence while my companion drummed with his fingers on the tabletop, a sign of agitation that was in no way reflected on his face, which remained an expressionless mask. At least, so I thought until I was shocked to see tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, then trickling unchecked down his lined and weathered cheeks.

The silence continued to stretch while I gave us both time to recover our composure. I disliked intruding into anyone’s private grief, and silently deplored John Foster’s desire to uncover the truth of past events. The past was dead: let it lie.

This uncharacteristic state of mind did not last long, however, and I was immediately all ears when Master Linkinhorne suddenly roused himself, blinking rapidly like a man coming out of darkness into light – or like a man reaching a decision after a long period of uncertainty.

‘It’s extremely kind of our new Mayor to interest himself in my affairs,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but I doubt if he – or, rather, you, as his instrument – will be able to find out much after all this time. The year that Isabella disappeared was the year in which King Edward won the battle of Mortimer’s Cross and seized the crown from King Henry … It seems like another life.’

And so it did. My lord of Gloucester and I had both been eight years old – nine at the beginning of that October – and Edward of York, now growing ill and bloated from an excess of food, wine and women, had been regarded as the handsomest man in the whole of Europe; over six feet tall and as dazzling as the sun. His badge, the Sun in Splendour, had then reflected his glory: nowadays it was nothing but an empty mockery of what he had once been.

I said gently, ‘The discovery of your daughter’s body must have been a terrible shock for you, Master Linkinhorne. But surely you must have some desire to know what happened to her? Who murdered her?’ He made no response. I hesitated, then went on, ‘Did … forgive me, but did neither you nor your wife ever consider the possibility that some harm might have befallen Isabella?’

He was silent for a moment or two longer, then slowly shook his head.

‘I daresay you think we should have done,’ he said at last, ‘but I’m ashamed to say that it never so much as crossed our minds.’

‘Can you …? Do you know why not?’

Again there was a protracted pause as though he were struggling to come to terms with something that was almost too painful to contemplate.

‘Isabella,’ he murmured at length, ‘was always threatening to run away from home.’ He drew a long, ragged breath. ‘My wife, Master Chapman, was over forty when our daughter was born. I was five years older. We had given up all hope of having a child, so Isabella was … was like a miracle sent by God. And we knew that we should have no more children. Foolishly, we indulged her every whim, both when she was a little girl and as she grew older. Everything she wanted, she had.’

Except her freedom, I thought. Except her freedom! I could see that Sister Walburga had been in the right of it when she’d said that an old couple’s overwhelming love had stifled an eager, high-spirited girl. And when that girl had become a woman, she had rebelled.