16 - The Three Kings of Cologne Read Online Free PDF Page B

quiet, Maria,’ Margaret admonished her and turned back to me. ‘From the moment Isabella could sit astride a horse, she was out nearly every day, in all weathers, riding across the downs. And as she grew older, not always alone. Very often there was somebody with her, thought to be a man.’
    ‘And not necessarily the same one every time,’ Bess Simnel added. ‘As I recall, there were reports of two or three.’
    All this while I had been helping myself, unbidden, to Margaret’s oatcakes, but now cleared my mouth to say reprovingly, ‘Isabella’s lovers were nothing but hearsay, in fact. A case of give a dog a bad name and hang him. Or, in this case, her.’
    The three women exchanged indignant glances.
    ‘If that’s going to be your attitude,’ Margaret said, ‘you might as well leave now – and while there are still some oatcakes left for the rest of us,’ she added waspishly.
    ‘We know what we know,’ Bess Simnel snapped. ‘And we stand by every word of what we’ve said.’
    ‘Danged impudence!’ shouted Maria, banging her spoon on the table, just the way Adam did when he was angry.
    I rose meekly from my stool and fastened the rope leading string around Hercules’s collar.
    ‘We’d better go, my lad,’ I whispered. ‘I think we’ve offended the ladies.’
    We both beat a strategic retreat.

Three
    I walked back to the bridge, pausing only for a brief chat with Burl Hodge, on his way home to dinner from the tenting fields where he worked. We had once been firm friends, but my good fortune in being left the old Herepath house by Cicely Ford had soured our relationship; and even the fact that, two years earlier, I had proved him innocent of a charge of murder and saved him from the hangman’s noose, had not been enough to assuage his envy. Nowadays, it was true, he treated me politely and no longer subjected me to the jibes and barbed comments which had, on more than one occasion in the past, nearly brought us to blows; but the old free and easy manner had been lost for good. His wife, Jenny, and his two sons, Jack and Dick, might show me the same courteous affection they had always done, but I had forced myself to accept that Burl would always begrudge me my luck.
    After a minute or so, the conversation floundered, and more to keep it afloat than for any other reason, I enquired after his mate and fellow tenter, Hob Jarrett.
    ‘Oh, him!’ Burl shrugged dismissively. ‘He’s given up tenting. Too cold in the winter, he says, what with the wind and all them ells of wet cloth.’ Burl displayed his raw, chilblained hands with their swollen knuckles and other painful-looking joints. ‘He’s with a labouring gang now. Out all weathers just the same, but he reckons it’s warmer work than tenting.’
    Acting on a sudden hunch, I asked, ‘Hob’s not by any chance one of the gang clearing the ground at the top of Steep Street?’
    ‘You mean what’s now Alderman Foster’s land and used to be the nuns’ graveyard? Strange you should ask. He was round at our cottage night before last telling me and Jenny and the boys about the woman’s body they’ve found there. Hob was the one who uncovered it.’
    ‘Ah! Do you think he’d be willing to talk to me, then?’
    Burl’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your interest, Roger?’
    I told him, and saw again the flash of malice before he blinked it away and smoothed out his features.
    ‘Friends with the Mayor-elect, are we? Of course! I forgot. Alderman Foster’s a neighbour of yours.’
    I let this go. ‘Remember me to Jenny,’ was all I said.
    I tugged on Hercules’s rope and walked on, stopping only once more to use the public latrine on Bristol Bridge before making my own way home to dinner.
    It was yesterday’s fish stew warmed up, but with some fresh cabbage and a fistful of chopped leeks added to the boiled cod and lentils that had comprised our suitably abstemious Friday fare.
    ‘Sunday tomorrow. Meat,’ Adela promised me, smiling at my