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make sense. The house would have been nearer the road – probably where the present bungalow stands.’

Dave scraped away more soil. ‘Looks as if it would have been a good dry floor in its day,’ he said. ‘But if he was a merchant bringing in wine from France, he’d have wanted a decent warehouse to store it in. It must have been tacked on to the back of the house.’

‘People lived over the shop in those days.’

Dave nodded, adjusted his kneeling mat and returned to work. The other diggers, a couple of PhD students and a trio of undergraduates glad of the experience, were working away nearer the bungalow. The late May weather was being kind to them and so far things were going well.

Neil spoke again. ‘I saw Chris Butcher going out before, all dressed up in his medieval finery. They really go for this Palkin thing round here, don’t they.’

‘Any excuse for a party,’ Dave said dismissively. ‘Have you seen that ship moored on the embankment? It’s a replica of Palkin’s flagship the
Maudelayne
apparently.’

‘I know. There were bloody great queues to go on board earlier or I might have treated myself.’

Neil stopped digging and felt a twinge of pain in his back. Perhaps, he thought, it was nature’s way of telling him to be a little less hands-on. Some retired archaeologist had once said that when middle age begins to creep up, you should retreat to a nice warm office to carry out desk-based assessments, write reports, process finds and dispense your expertise to your devoted followers. Trouble was, Neil lived for the thrill of the dig and devoted followers were thin on the ground. Still, there was always the option of paying a visit to an osteopath.

‘Wasn’t Palkin supposed to be some sort of pirate?’ asked Dave.

Neil looked out over the river, teeming with yachts and pleasure craft. Sailing as a leisure pursuit would have been unthinkable back in Palkin’s day. Handling a ship with its rigging and sails, pitting yourself against winds and storms, wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Neil replied. ‘He made his fortune from trade then he was licensed by the King as a privateer, attacking the vessels of enemy countries and getting a share of the proceeds.’ He paused. ‘And he was supposed to have sold his soul to the Devil in return for great riches.’

Dave smirked with disbelief, shrugged his broad shoulders and focused on uncovering the cobbled floor. These were tales to scare the gullible.

Chapter 3
     
John Palkin was the son of Ralph Palkin, himself a well-to-do Tradmouth merchant who first appears in the town records in 1338. Ralph Palkin and his wife, Alice, were granted a piece of land on the shore between Baynard’s Quay and Battlefleet Creek where he built a quay for use by his trading ships, a house referred to in contemporary documents as Palkin’s Hall. There was also a warehouse on the site where he could unload and store his lucrative cargos.
    Ralph Palkin’s cogs sailed up the River Trad to Neston where they would load up with woollen cloth before sailing across the Channel to sell the cloth in France and return with a rich cargo of wine from Bordeaux. It was a lucrative trade and when Ralph died in 1358, John inherited the house and ships and the enterprise flourished.
    However, John’s younger brother, Henry, resented his brother’s success. He too worked in the family business, in charge of the ropeworks, a vital but workaday part of the enterprise. How Henry’s bitterness towards his older brother must have grown and festered as John prospered.
 
 
From ‘The Sea Devil – the Story of John Palkin’ by Josiah Palkin-Wright. Published 1896
     
    An incident room had been set up at Tradmouth police station and Wesley had sent a team of officers out to make inquiries amongst the festival crowds. Others trawled through missing persons reports and attempted to trace the origin of the dinghy that had served as the