‘That should simplify matters,’ was her only comment. I wasn’t sure that she really meant it, but I chose to take it as a compliment and grinned inanely. ‘Do you intend to walk?’ she asked.
‘If I have to. But I thought I’d call on Jack Nym and see if by any lucky chance he’s going northwards in the next day or two.’
Jack Nym was a neighbour of Margaret Walker, a carter, who, from time to time, travelled to Hereford and the Cotswolds, as well as to London and in more southerly directions.
‘A good idea.’ Adela shifted Adam slightly to ease her aching arms. (Our nearly three-year-old son was, I knew from experience, no light weight.) ‘But what still puzzles me about this business, Roger, is how Isabella came to be buried on that land.’
I sighed. ‘I know. It puzzles me, too. As you said the other day, digging a grave is no easy job. Not something that can be accomplished in a few minutes, nor without making some stir. Ah well! I can’t waste time on that particular mystery just at present. Finding my three kings is the first task.’
‘And if you can’t? Find them, I mean. Or if you find them but can’t prove one of them’s the murderer? What then?’
‘Then, sweetheart, I have to admit defeat and repay Mayor Foster what’s left of his money.’
Adela smiled understandingly at me. ‘You won’t like that. It will hurt your pride.’
I grimaced. ‘It will, indeed. But it might be good for me. I’ve begun to think myself invincible in these matters, and pride is a sin.’
‘Not if you feel you’re doing God’s work. You do still feel that, don’t you?’
I hesitated. Finally I said, ‘Let’s just say that I have to remind myself of the fact more often than I used to. I find myself taking too much credit and not according it where it’s due.’
My wife looked worried. ‘Perhaps you should guard your thoughts more strictly, Roger. I haven’t known you and loved you for over four years without realizing that you hold some …’ She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, as though afraid to speak the words aloud. ‘Well, that you hold some heretical views.’
I couldn’t deny it. There were moments when I even doubted the existence of God; moments when the sheer brutality of what was perpetrated in His name appalled me, or when His seeming indifference to the sufferings of His children denied the claim that He was a God of love. But I would never be irresponsible enough to voice these doubts out loud, not now that I had a wife and family who depended on me. Besides which, if the truth were told, I was far too much of a coward to put my skin in danger. So I smiled reassuringly. ‘That’s all in the past, my love. Being married to you has shown me the error of my ways.’
Adela knew when I was lying: wives always do. But she also knew it meant that I wasn’t going to do anything foolhardy to put her and the children at risk; that I wasn’t even a secret Lollard, like Margaret Walker and so many of Redcliffe’s weaving community. She leaned over and kissed me.
This woke our son, whose roars of disapproval at being squashed between us were accompanied by flailing arms and a face the colour of a crimson rose. For a few seconds outrage threatened to choke him as his breath became suspended and he frothed milkily at the mouth. But nothing could keep Adam quiet for long and he regained his breath to scream even more lustily than before. Adela and I were forced to abandon our fond embrace. She handed him to me — as a punishment for something, although I wasn’t quite sure what — while she began collecting together the dirty dinner dishes for washing.
I was as good as my word, and went to see Jack Nym that very afternoon.
I wasn’t even sure of finding him. The chances were that he was already away from home, carting goods somewhere or other, but it was worth a try. My fears proved to be well grounded, but then his slatternly wife, blowing her nose on her skirt, informed me that he had only gone as far as Clifton, where he was delivering a consignment of soap and sea coal to the manor, and added that, if I fancied a walk, I might either meet him there or on his return journey. Or else, if the matter were urgent, I was welcome to wait until he came home. I declined this latter offer. A glimpse into the cottage’s interior and a strong smell of burning meat reminded me of the Purefoys’ hovel, and I felt that two such experiences in one day was more than any man should subject himself to. Besides which, with the approach of noon, a certain warmth had displaced the chill of early morning, and an excuse for stretching my long legs and shaking off the noise and dust of the city seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
So I went home, told Adela where I was going and why, buckled the old leather belt around Hercules’s neck and, with the excited animal capering around my legs and threatening to trip me up, set off for the heights of Clifton. With the houses left behind as I started on the second of the hills rising to the north of Bristol, the old sense of freedom returned. The grass beneath my feet was dotted with periwinkles, like a galaxy of pale blue stars, and the misty distances shimmered faint and pale like water under the morning sun. Trees and bushes dotted the landscape, spurting like fountains from the softening April ground and I whistled happily to myself until Hercules, maddened by my inability to carry a tune, turned and barked protestingly at me.
‘Sorry,’ I apologized, stooping to pat his head, but he couldn’t wait for such nonsense and was away again, freed from his collar, chasing imaginary rabbits.
There were plenty of people about and plenty of traffic to be met with on the various tracks, but no sign as yet of Jack Nym, not even on the approaches to Clifton. No doubt I had missed him somewhere in all that broad sweep of the downs, but it was no matter. I knew that he was returning home some time later in the day, and could call on him again after supper. I had achieved my real purpose: freedom of mind and body from the immediate problems and clutter of daily life. I wasn’t even thinking about Isabella Linkinhorne or her possible murderer; I wasn’t even really aware of where I was going, only of the general direction, when the ruined house suddenly appeared before me, like a wraith springing from the ground.
I stopped abruptly, looking about me like someone waking from a dream. I realized that I was within, perhaps, half a mile of Clifton village — I could see the first straggling cottages and outhouses in the distance — and also that I was close to that thick belt of trees, known locally as Nightingale Wood, which crowds along the lip of the gorge. I whistled loudly and imperatively for Hercules’s immediate return and approached the ruin.
I could see at once from the blackened walls that the place had been destroyed by fire, and knew that this must be the remains of the Linkinhornes’ dwelling, burned down some years previously, the result of an ageing man’s carelessness. The land that had once surrounded it, the thriving smallholding that had supported the family, had now returned to wilderness, and the house itself was little better. The roof, or what remained of it, had collapsed, allowing oak and alder to burst their way through, reaching slender boughs, green with budding leaf, to the sky. Brakes of hawthorn already stood within the crumbling palings and bindweed and ivy rioted everywhere unchecked. Another few years would see the ruin lost, swallowed up by the encroaching woodland.
But for now, I could still get in. I could see the smoke-blackened door hanging drunkenly on one hinge and, when I had cautiously pushed it open, I saw a flight of stone steps, its balustrade long since gone, rising to the upper floor. A stone-flagged passage, running the length of the house, led to an open doorway at the farther end, crowded now with foliage that flooded the corridor with an aqueous light, like an underwater cave. Other doorways flanked it on either side, but the rooms beyond were all empty, unless one could count the weeds, grass and saplings that thrust themselves between the flagstones, thin and attenuated as they reached for the light filtering through the greening canopy overhead.