Alexander of Leith was a tiny man, yet he rode a large palfrey which would have better suited his acolyte. He sported what seemed to be a long kilt, the fabric of green-and-red tartan falling down to his calves, pleated sufficiently to enable him to sit astride his horse. Alexander's upper half was enveloped in a loose tunic of dirty white linen, on which were embroidered many cabbalistic signs associated with alchemy. His puny shoulders were shrouded in a scalloped leather cape which sported a hood that came to a sharp point above his head. Like Jan the Fleming, he had a peculiar face, but in a quite different way. An abnormally high forehead, fringed by white hair, rose into his hood, but his dense, bushy eyebrows were jet black. Wizened features, which suggested that his age was well past three score years, were relieved by a pair of little gimlet-sharp black eyes. This visage was rounded off by a soft-lipped, purse-like mouth under which was a white beard confined to the tip of his chin but which nonetheless fell down his chest like a dog's tail.
As they jogged along, he mumbled continuously to himself, perhaps to compensate for the permanent silence of his tongueless servant. They were strangers to this area, having jogged slowly for the past week from Bristol, which, in spite of his Scottish origins, had been the home of Alexander of Leith for the past ten years.
Now, hopefully, they were on the last lap of their journey, if only they could find their destination. The retainers of Prince John, Count of Mortain, who now spent much of his time at his restored possessions in Gloucester, had given Alexander a crude map drawn on parchment, which he studied every few miles and which provoked new bursts of muttering. Earlier that morning, they had awoken in a barn where they had spent the night, rode to a village where they bought bread and ale and received some more directions to Bigbury, alleged to be about ten miles distant. Now the little man turned in his saddle and yelled back at the Fleming in strangely accented English.
'Another couple of hours should see us there, you great useless oaf!'
Abuse was his normal form of address to his bodyguard, given and received without any apparent rancour. When he twisted to face Jan, however, the Scot fancied he could hear a clinking from the load carried by the sumpter horse, and he came to a stop.
'Did you pack those flasks well enough this morning, you dumb animal?' he snapped. 'If any of that glassware gets broken, I'll whip you within an inch of your life!'
The Fleming grinned amiably and made some finger signs that only Alexander could interpret. Then he got off his horse, an easy task as his stirrups were already almost touching the ground. Walking to the patient packhorse, he rummaged around in the panniers and rearranged something, which gave rise to a muted rattling of porcelain and glass. With more signs that must have meant satisfaction, he climbed aboard his nag again and they set off, hoping to come across some local who could confirm that they were on the right track for this Bigbury.
After another half-hour, the monstrous Fleming spied a boy herding goats near a thicket away to their right, and he attracted his master's attention by clashing a small pair of brass cymbals that hung on a leather thong around his neck. When Alexander turned, Jan pointed, and the little alchemist turned his horse off the track and walked it the few hundred paces to within speaking distance of the lad. The Fleming watched the youngster staring slack-jawed at this apparition, but the Scotsman seemed to get a satisfactory response, for he came back to the track and waved at his servant to continue.
A mile farther on through the undulating countryside, the alchemist saw the smoke from a village some distance ahead, which he assumed was Bigbury, but following the goatherd's directions, he turned left on to a path that meandered through trees. These became more dense as they went much deeper into the forest, but hoof marks in the damp ground showed that the track was still in use, though it was in a very remote area. After another half-dozen furlongs, they came into a large clearing that was dotted with scrubby bushes and some saplings. In the centre was a small hillock, standing about twenty feet high. It had a flat top and was obviously artificial, some blackened and rotted wooden foundations indicating that this must be the remains of an old 'motte and bailey' castle, now abandoned and derelict. Around the base of the mound was what was left of the bailey, an overgrown bank and ditch with the ivy-covered remnants of a stockade extending out to surround an egg-shaped enclosure. A few derelict huts still remained within this compound, and from one of them some thin smoke escaped from under the edges of the dilapidated thatch. Alexander of Leith came to a halt to survey this dismal place, then took from his belt a small pewter horn shaped like a trumpet. Putting it to his flabby lips, he blew a series of discordant blasts which sent birds flying in alarm from the nearby trees. A moment later, a rickety door scraped open and a figure appeared from the hut — a tall man, well dressed and with every appearance of a gentleman. He stared across the clearing, recognised the pair and beckoned energetically as he shouted, 'You have arrived on the very day we calculated, Alexander! Come on in, this place is not as bad as it looks!'
Just before noon that morning, the coroner went back to Martin's Lane for dinner, resolving once again to try to be more pleasant to Matilda. Their relationship seemed to get more strained by the week, and he was aware that he himself was far from blameless in this respect. Regularly, he would try hard to appease her, only to be rebuffed by either indifference or outright abuse. Then his short temper would flare up and make the situation worse than it was before.
Since her brother had been dismissed as sheriff, largely because of John's accusations of corruption, Matilda had been more difficult, and nothing he could do or say was acceptable in her eyes. She blamed him not only for Richard's downfall, but also, as the sister of a disgraced sheriff, for her own loss of face and prestige among her peers, mostly the snobbish wives of rich merchants who were her cronies at St Olave's church. John had bouts of conscience and compassion over her grieving for this brother who turned out to have feet of clay, but his repeated efforts at reconciliation were constantly rejected.
Today, his attempts at conversation at dinner-time were met only with grunts or stony silence, especially when he told her of the new sheriffs departure for Winchester and unwisely mentioned that the despised Thomas had travelled with him.
'We should never have married,' he groaned to Nesta, later that afternoon. 'Neither she nor I wanted it — we were pushed into it by our parents. Old Gervaise de Revelle wanted his daughter married off to the son of a manor-lord — and my father saw a chance to get his younger son into a rich family, for the de Revelles have lands at Revelstoke, Tiverton and in Somerset and Dorset — not that I have a cat's chance in hell of seeing a penny from them!'