It was getting on towards late afternoon. The light was beginning to drain from the day and the sky on the horizon was a whitish opalescent glow. Silken shadows inched across the grass and a sharp, salty tang freshened the air, as though to remind us that we had not yet done with winter.
‘I don’ know about justice,’ Jack retorted. ‘P’raps she were askin’ for it.’
‘Who?’ I had momentarily lost the thread of our conversation.
‘’Er! That Issybelly what’s-’er-name. Can’t remember it. Never could. But I remembers ’er all right. A bold piece with a roving eye. The sort who played fast and loose with a man’s affections.’
‘You remember her?’
‘That’s what I said. Why shouldn’t I? I weren’t much more’n a lad at the time, ’tis true, but old enough. She and I were much of an age, I guess. I was a bit the younger in years maybe, but in all other ways, she could o’ been my grandmother. There weren’t no trick known to womankind she didn’t employ, not from the time she were old enough to understand that men and women was different from one another.’
‘When and where did you meet her?’
‘I didn’t meet her, exactly, but I saw her often enough when ’er father and mother brought her to market from Clifton. She were a pretty little thing, even when she were young, and she grew into a beauty. But with a temper and a will of iron. If she’d been mine, I’d’ve whipped some respect and obedience into ’er, but as far as I can remember, neither parent lifted a finger against ’er.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘At least that’s the story everybody tells.’
‘Probably true, then. Mostly, folks’ memories don’t agree on nothing.’
‘There’s a rumour,’ I said, ‘that Isabella had an admirer in Bristol. Do you know anything about that?’
Jack shrugged and narrowly avoided another cart, loaded with turnips, making its way up the track from the city.
‘Never saw ’er with anyone particular that I can recall. She turned heads, mind, wherever she went. Strange,’ he mused, pulling on the reins to slow his horse for a sudden steep descent, ‘I’d forgotten all about ’er. It was like she’d never been. But now people are talking about ’er again, I can picture ’er as plain as though I’d just seen ’er yesterday.’ He drew his breath in sharply. ‘And now I comes to think on it … Get out the way, you blithering fools!’ he shouted furiously at a band of travelling musicians, who were progressing jauntily along the middle of the track, playing their latest catchy little tune.
Without even faltering, and without any break in the melody, the five of them formed a single file, but as the cart passed, the man playing the nakers paused long enough to bite his thumb at us in a highly offensive manner.
‘Ignore it,’ I said to Jack, who showed every sign of wanting to alight and have it out with the man. ‘It’s five against two — well, three if you count Hercules — and just at present I don’t fancy the odds. Besides, brawling on the King’s highway could land us in the bridewell. Go on with what you were saying.’
‘And what was that?’ Jack glanced longingly over his shoulder, still hankering for a fight.
‘I asked you if you’d ever seen Isabella Linkinhorne with a particular man. You said no, but then you seemed to recollect something.’
Jack turned back and settled down, keeping his eyes on the track ahead (for which I was truly thankful). ‘Well, you saying that reminded me all of a sudden about an incident I’d dang near forgotten about. I did see ’er once, kissin’ a fellow. In the porch of All Saints Church, it were. And not just kissin’ neither,’ he added darkly. ‘As I recall, there were a fair bit o’ groping going on.’
‘Did you see the man’s face?’ I asked excitedly, but after a moment’s agonized reflection, Jack reluctantly shook his head.
‘Nah! He were in the shadows. Recognized her, but not him. Pity, but there you are! ’Fraid I can’t help you, Chapman. But as luck would have it, I am going to Stowe the day after tomorrow, so you can travel as far as Gloucester with me.’
Nine
This gave me a free day.
I rejected out of hand Adela’s suggestion — delivered at breakfast as we all came to terms with another sunrise and the prospect of the morning ahead — that I should revert to my usual calling and try selling a few items in the neighbouring streets.
‘I can’t be about my own business while we’re living on Mayor Foster’s bounty,’ I objected. ‘If it came to his ears, he might feel that I was cheating him. But it makes me all the more determined that in the future I shall remain my own man and take money from no one except what I earn by my efforts as a chapman.’
‘We’re like to remain poor folks then,’ my wife retorted, but cheerfully. Passing behind my stool, she stooped and kissed my cheek. ‘But I prefer it that way. I don’t care to be beholden to people either.’
I ignored this lack of faith in my ability as a chapman and, catching her round the waist, pulled her down to return her kiss with interest.
‘Enough of that,’ she reproved me, but giggled like a young girl all the same. ‘What will you do today, then?’ She added in a very wifely spirit, ‘I hope you’re not planning to remain indoors, getting under my feet. I’ve a lot to do.’
After a moment’s reflection, I decided to visit the Magdalen nunnery again. ‘I’ve a fancy to have another word with Sister Walburga. I suppose I could take Hercules with me.’ I glanced enquiringly around the kitchen. ‘Where is he?’
Adela said crisply, ‘There’s a bitch on heat in Bell Lane,’ and seemed to think it sufficient explanation.
Which, of course, it was. Half the dogs in Bristol would be beating a path to the unfortunate creature’s door. I doubted we should see Hercules, except when he was ravenous, for the next few days.
‘Ah, well,’ I said.
‘You can take Adam with you instead,’ my wife decided, ‘in his little cart. It’ll do him good, and Nick, Bess and I can concentrate on their lessons without any distraction. Neither’s reading and sums are as good as they should be.’
The two elder children grimaced ruefully at one another, while I eyed up my son and he gazed limpidly back with the great liquid brown eyes that were so like his mother’s. He was, as usual at breakfast time, smothered liberally with honey, and even as I watched, he put a small, plump arm protectively around the pot, as if in fear of having it wrested away from him.
‘Mine,’ he announced, clearly and defiantly.
‘I can’t take him to a nunnery,’ I protested, but in vain.
‘Nonsense!’ declared Adela. ‘Nuns love little children. And if they don’t, then they should do. He’ll be as good as gold, won’t you, my lambkin?’
The lambkin dipped his fingers once more into the honey pot, managing to smear some of his plunder into his hair before finally locating his mouth.
‘He’ll have to be cleaned up a bit,’ I demurred.
‘Naturally!’ Adela was indignant. ‘You don’t think I’d let him go out of doors like that, do you?’
So it was that, some appreciable time later, a clean and angelic little lad was put into his box on wheels, leaning against an old cushion that Adela had recently pronounced as too rubbed and faded for the parlour, lord of all he surveyed. (This box on wheels, with a long handle for either pulling or pushing the contraption, had been my own invention when Adam was very small, and had proved so useful that I had recently made a second, bigger one for when we were in a hurry and my son’s erratic peregrinations were apt to prove too much of a delay.)
‘Go!’ he shouted, brandishing a little whip that Nicholas had made for him out of a stick and a piece of rope.
‘He’s going to be another Nero,’ I remarked bitterly to no one in particular, but causing Nick and Elizabeth to snigger unsympathetically.
‘He’s a sweetheart,’ my wife chided me. She could afford to be generous with the prospect of an hour or so free of Adam’s disruptive company before her.
I kissed her reproachfully and set out across the Frome Bridge and through the Frome Gate, trundling my son behind me. Edgar Capgrave was not on duty, for which I was truly thankful. I could do without his caustic comments on the subject of legshackled husbands. The smiles of approval I earned from the women we met were bad enough. I felt my reputation was at stake.