Adela laughed. ‘You’re probably right. If my cousin or Bess Simnel or Maria Watkins have nothing to say, there’s most likely nothing to tell.’ She added, ‘Take the dog with you. He needs the exercise.’
Hercules was stretched out by the fire and I stirred him with my toe. He opened a bleary eye, farted loudly, rolled over and went back to sleep once more. My wife, however, was having none of that. She fetched the rough leather collar I had made for him and the length of rope we used as a leading string and handed them both to me with an imperious gesture. Ten minutes later, while she and the two elder children settled down with their hornbooks for an hour of lessons, I trudged up Small Street yet again, at my heels a reluctant hound who was making his displeasure plain by dragging at the rope and stopping to investigate every smell that caught his fancy. In the end, exasperated, I picked him up, tucked him under one arm and carried him the rest of the way, down High Street, across the Backs and Bristol Bridge and into Redcliffe.
I was in luck.
My former mother-in-law was not only at home, but was enlivening a dull April morning by entertaining Bess Simnel and Maria Watkins to small beer and oatcakes, the three of them sat around the table, their heads close together, emitting sudden snorts and cackles of laughter as they busily tore some poor neighbour’s character to shreds. Indeed, they were so busy gossiping that they didn’t even hear me knock, and only glanced up when the draught of my entry into the little room fluttered their caps.
‘Dear Lord,’ Maria Watkins grumbled, flashing her toothless gums, ‘look what the cat’s dragged in.’
‘Don’t you mean the dog?’ giggled Bess Simnel and promptly doubled up at her own witticism.
Margaret Walker demanded suspiciously, ‘What’s wrong? Is Adela or one of the children ill?’ With a mixture of pride and ill-usage, she added to her friends, ‘They can’t get along without me, you know.’
The other two exchanged fleeting grins and made to rise from their stools.
‘We’ll be off then,’ Goody Watkins said. ‘Come along, Bess.’
‘No, no!’ I expostulated. ‘I need all three of you. There’s nothing wrong at home, Mother-in-law. I just need some information.’ At the magic word, the two elder women resumed their seats with alacrity, fixing me with their bright, beady blue eyes. ‘It’s about the girl whose body was found in the old Magdalen nuns’ graveyard a few days ago. Isabella Linkinhorne, I’m told her name was. I’m wondering if you know anything of her, or her parents’ history. If you know anything at all, that is.’
If they knew anything! The mere suggestion that they might not was an insult that made them grow pink with indignation.
Maria Watkins gnashed her gums and declared that she’d always known that that girl would come to a bad end. She appealed to her friends. Hadn’t she always said so?
The others nodded solemnly. ‘We all did,’ Bess Simnel amended, unwilling to let one of them take credit over the other two.
‘But did you know her well?’ I asked, frowning and stooping to untie the rope from around Hercules’s collar. ‘I was told she and her parents lived in the manor of Clifton.’
‘True enough,’ Margaret admitted. ‘And she was some years younger than any of us.’
‘Four or five, at least,’ Goody Watkins agreed.
‘Oh, really, Maria!’ Bess Simnel was scathing. ‘In your case, ten or eleven, surely. Isabella would be over forty now, if she’d lived. And you can’t pretend to me that you’re a day younger than fifty-five!’
Margaret Walker intervened hurriedly. ‘Let’s just say that Isabella Linkinhorne was younger than the three of us and leave it at that. And yes, the family did live in the manor of Clifton. But that didn’t prevent us hearing about her and her wild goings-on.’
‘An only child, Alderman Foster tells me, and very spoiled,’ I said.
But mentioning the Alderman was a mistake, and they insisted I inform them of his and my involvement in the search for the murdered woman’s killer. They were, of course, thrilled. They would be first with this news throughout Redcliffe and then the city. They were immediately willing to tell me everything they knew.
Disappointingly, this varied little from what John Foster had already told me, except that they remembered Isabella visiting the city on occasions with her parents.
‘And not just with Master and Mistress Linkinhorne,’ Bess Simnel said, nodding her head and pulling down the corners of her mouth. ‘I recall times when she arrived entirely on her own, without even a maid in attendance.’
‘That’s true enough,’ Maria Watkins agreed, mashing one of the oatcakes to pulp with the back of a horn spoon, then feeding her toothless mouth with the crumbs. ‘Hard-faced hussy she was, in spite of her youth.’
‘She was very beautiful, as I remember,’ objected Bess.
‘Didn’t say she wasn’t,’ her friend retorted, spluttering through a mouthful of crumbs and spitting most of them out over the table. ‘Jus’ said she was hard-faced. And so she was.’
‘You’re both right,’ Margaret said, keeping the peace. ‘Lovely to look at, but wilful with it.’
‘Men,’ Goody Watkins opined darkly. ‘They were her weakness. And her downfall, mark my words.’
‘They’re most poor women’s downfall,’ Bess Simnel agreed gloomily.
They all three nodded and glared reproachfully at me. I knew better than to try defending my reprehensible sex, and looked suitably conscience-stricken. Even Hercules raised his head and gave me an accusing stare.
‘Was there a particular man in Isabella’s life?’ I asked.
Margaret sniffed, Maria Watkins let rip with a raucous laugh and Bess Simnel looked down her nose.
‘More than one, if all the rumours were true,’ my former mother-in-law said disapprovingly. ‘The story was that one of ’em was a Bristol man.’
I was puzzled. ‘Why was it only a story?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t she ever seen with him?’
Goody Watkins guzzled some beer, then smacked her lips together. ‘She was a crafty piece, that Isabella Linkinhorne. She was never actually seen by anyone with any of her lovers. Leastways, not up close, so’s they were recognizable. And if she’d a man in Bristol, she kept him pretty dark.’
‘It sounds to me,’ I said severely, ‘as if this poor girl’s reputation was undeserved. If no one ever saw her with a man …’
‘Oh, she was seen all right!’ Margaret protested. ‘From the time she could get astride a horse …’
‘Or a fellow,’ cackled Goody Watkins, then laughed so heartily she choked on a crumb.
‘Be quiet, Maria,’ Margaret admonished her and turned back to me. ‘From the moment Isabella could sit astride a horse, she was out nearly every day, in all weathers, riding across the downs. And as she grew older, not always alone. Very often there was somebody with her, thought to be a man.’
‘And not necessarily the same one every time,’ Bess Simnel added. ‘As I recall, there were reports of two or three.’
All this while I had been helping myself, unbidden, to Margaret’s oatcakes, but now cleared my mouth to say reprovingly, ‘Isabella’s lovers were nothing but hearsay, in fact. A case of give a dog a bad name and hang him. Or, in this case, her.’
The three women exchanged indignant glances.
‘If that’s going to be your attitude,’ Margaret said, ‘you might as well leave now — and while there are still some oatcakes left for the rest of us,’ she added waspishly.
‘We know what we know,’ Bess Simnel snapped. ‘And we stand by every word of what we’ve said.’
‘Danged impudence!’ shouted Maria, banging her spoon on the table, just the way Adam did when he was angry.
I rose meekly from my stool and fastened the rope leading string around Hercules’s collar.
‘We’d better go, my lad,’ I whispered. ‘I think we’ve offended the ladies.’
We both beat a strategic retreat.