‘And what was the answer?’
‘What do women most desire?’ She widened her eyes. ‘If you haven’t discovered by now, I’m surprised.’
‘The same as what men most desire?’
She shook her head.
‘Shoes?’
‘Actually, no. Women want sovereignty over their men.’
‘Girl power?’
‘It sounds modern, but it goes back to the medieval notion of courtly love, the noble man devoted to his lady and willing to suffer all manner of trials and tribulations even to approach her.’
‘Worship from afar?’
‘Something like that. She is perfection and he perpetually desires her and performs deeds of valour in a vain attempt to win her favour.’
‘Story of my life,’ Diamond said.
‘Come off it. Even in Chaucer’s story, the bloke has his way with her at the end.’
‘With the pretty one?’
‘Yes — and wouldn’t you know it? — instead of insisting on running the marriage her way, she promises, basically, to love, honour and obey. End of story — as written by a bloke.’
‘But is she happy?’
‘Supposedly, but it’s not true to the code of courtly love. The woman is supposed to be unattainable.’
‘If they were, men would give up and watch football.’
‘Very likely,’ Paloma said. ‘Another beer?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On whether I’m to stay the night.’
‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Twenty-first century man. Where did I go wrong?’
He was thinking of something else. ‘The Wife of Bath. I wonder why Chaucer picked Bath, rather than any other town. Is that explained in the poem?’
‘Not that I recall.’
‘Was he from around here?’
Paloma shook her head. ‘Far as I recall, the family were Ipswich people and he was born in London.’
‘So she could have been the Wife of Ipswich.’
Paloma sighed, and it wasn’t a sigh of admiration.
‘But why Bath?’ Diamond said. ‘A random choice?’
She shook her head. ‘No, there’s good evidence that he knew this part of the world. First, he says she was “of beside Bath.” Chaucer used words carefully. There was a city wall from Roman times and there were suburbs beyond the walls to the north and south even in the fourteenth century. It’s believed he must have known about these to have placed her there.’
‘She may even have lived in Weston, where I do.’
‘Or much closer. St. Michael’s church and Broad Street were outside the walls. So was Milsom Street. We think of this area as central now, but it was outside the northern limit.’
‘The slums?’
She shrugged. ‘I expect there was snobbery about who the real citizens were and who came from the other side. And that’s not the only bit of local knowledge Chaucer used. The local source of wealth was the wool trade and when you read the Prologue, as I’m sure you will, you’ll see that Alison — that’s the wife’s name — was an expert weaver. She surpassed the cloth-makers of France and made all her own clothes, which were beautifully spun. So she’s a Bathonian by residence and occupation.’
‘You know a lot about this.’
‘I had to, for the costumes. I could tell you more about what she wore than you’ll ever want to know.’
‘Yet you still say Chaucer didn’t live in Bath?’
‘That wouldn’t stop him knowing the place. People like him, in the service of the king, travelled more than you might suppose. He spent time in France and Italy, so Bath wasn’t any distance at all.’
His thoughts were already moving on. ‘The carving is a West Country piece, apparently, in the local stone. I wonder if it’s a relic from one of Bath’s medieval buildings.’
‘Could be. There aren’t many left apart from churches.’
‘The carving wouldn’t be from a church. You can’t call the Wife of Bath a religious subject.’
‘She was on a pilgrimage,’ Paloma pointed out.
‘True.’
‘A pious woman. Worldly and down-to-earth, but God-fearing.’
‘But she was fiction. Would a church want a piece of carving that wasn’t a Bible story? If it’s fourteenth century, as they seem to think, the church authorities would have to be very open-minded to adopt a character from a modern poem, a fruity one, too.’
‘Put like that, you may be right,’ Paloma said. ‘The carving could have been part of a private dwelling. I don’t know of any in Bath that are old enough. But some fragments of stone from old houses will have survived.’
‘I’m thinking Gildersleeve knew something we don’t, something that ramped up the value.’
‘Maybe he discovered where it came from.’
‘Some old guy in Chilton Polden owned it in the eighteen hundreds, but I don’t think anyone knows its history before that.’
‘Provenance is hugely important in the buying and selling of works of art. And you said the British Museum was bidding, so they must have done some research of their own and decided it was worth a bit.’
‘Yes, I’ll be speaking to them.’
‘And obviously the robbers were also well informed.’
‘Or whoever hired them.’
Paloma was looking thoughtful. ‘Have you examined the back and sides of your lump of stone?’
‘What for?’
‘Mortar — to see if there’s any evidence it was once attached to a building.’
He liked that. ‘When I’m allowed back in my own office, that’s the first thing I’ll check. I can picture it built in, maybe with other carvings from the poem.’
‘A frieze? But do you know of any other pieces that survived?’
‘None that I’ve heard of. I’m no expert.’
‘You will be before you’re through.’
He nodded. ‘I’m already working on it. Do I get that other beer?’
‘In a mo.’ She got up. ‘Or should it be “In a mo, sire?” ’
‘The “sire” sounds good to me.’
‘Let’s have some courtly grovelling, then, and we’ll see.’
He decided as he opened the can that it was a good thing no one in CID had ever heard Peter Diamond spoken to like that.
Next morning he made a detour to Weston to feed the cat. Raffles had been his late wife’s cat and always treated him with disdain after being left alone for the night. They say animals aren’t capable of judging people’s conduct, but this old tabby could give him a guilt complex with one look and a flick of the tail. He was relieved to leave the house and drive in to work.
Manvers Street, the home of Bath police, was definitely ‘beside Bath,’ on the wrong side of the walls. In all his time there, Diamond had never had reason to think about the original layout of the city, but this morning it dawned on him that the Roman heart of the place had once been enclosed by Upper Borough Walls to the north and Lower Borough Walls to the south; street names he’d heard a thousand times without ever realising the significance.
For all its tawdry appearance, a block of lemon-yellow reconstituted stone masquerading as the real thing, the sixties-built police station was where he made his living, and he was comfortable there. Recently he’d been troubled by the Headquarter’s decision to site the custody suite in Keynsham. He could foresee Manvers Street becoming a ghost station. He had long since given up on the decisions coming out of Portishead, known to the lower ranks as ASDA, the Avon & Somerset Dream Academy.
No negative thinking this morning, he told himself. There’s a killer at liberty and it’s my job to find him.