But I could see that he wasn’t exactly displeased by my interest. He was already puffing out his chest preparatory to embarking on an account of his gruesome discovery.
‘As a matter of fact,’ I corrected him, ‘my enquiries are at the behest of Alderman Foster.’ I told him the story.
Hob was impressed, although, in honour bound, he pretended not to be.
‘Working for the Mayor now, eh? Foster’s being sworn in next week, did you know? Mean to say you haven’t been invited? No? Well, well! Come over here, then, and I’ll show you where I found the body.’
He led me across the cleared ground to a low stone wall which marked the boundary of the former graveyard.
‘There were some gert big stones hereabouts that had to be dug out, and a tangle o’ weeds with roots that seemingly stretched right down to Hades. Together, they meant a good deal of digging and some damned back-breaking work. Ain’t that so, lads? You tell ’n!’
Both the other men nodded in unison.
‘Ar, that’s right,’ agreed the taller of the two.
‘I had blisters on my hands the size of apricots,’ complained the other one. ‘My goody said she’d never seen nothing like ’em.’
Hob glared at this second man and waved him to silence. He was the hero of the tale, and resented any attempt to deflect attention from his central role.
‘As I was telling you, Chapman, I was digging away and had got a fair few feet down, when I came across what I thought at first must be a dog’s bone. But I was just thinking to myself that dogs don’t bury their bones that deep when I saw that what I’d uncovered was a bit of a leg with a foot on the end. Lots o’ little bones in what remained of a leather shoe. A woman’s shoe,’ he added.
‘I said as ’ow it were a woman’s shoe,’ the shorter fellow put in. ‘You said as ’ow it looked like a man’s.’
‘I did not!’ was the hot rejoinder. ‘You’re a liar, Colin!’
‘But you eventually found the whole skeleton,’ I interrupted hurriedly in order to prevent the termination of a beautiful friendship.
The tall man shuddered. ‘Ain’t that the truth! It was a shock, I can tell ’ee. There was still some hair attached to the scalp …’
‘Long, black hair,’ the one called Colin amplified.
‘… and a strip of green material that I guess was all that remained of whatever gown she’d been wearing. But it just crumbled into dust as soon as Hob here touched it.’
‘I did not touch it!’ Hob disclaimed furiously. ‘It was the air. A breath of wind caught it and it were gone to nothing in a trice. Anyway, who’s telling this story? Me or you?’ He glared belligerently at the other two, then turned back to me. ‘We thought it must be one o’ the Sisters who’d been buried there and then forgotten about. Because we were given to understand quite definitely that this place had never been used as a burial ground, even though that’s what it’d been meant for. But then, o’ course, when I fetched the Sisters down to look at it — the body that is — they said as how it couldn’t possibly be one o’ them on account of the jewellery the corpse was wearing. Gold rings, gold and amber necklace and what I could see was a girdle made o’ gold and silver links with a jewelled clasp.’
‘What happened next?’ I asked, although I could guess without being told.
The notifying of authority, the ponderous grinding of the law into action, the lifting of the body from its long resting place, the removal of the bones to the city charnel house and the slow process of trying to identify to whom they had once belonged … Then I recollected that identification had followed almost at once.
‘Who recognized the remains as those of Isabella Linkinhorne, and how?’ And although I already knew the answer to my question, it’s always as well to get confirmation of a story when one can.
‘Sister Walburga said it were her,’ Hob told me, sucking his teeth, trying to locate any odd, uneaten bits of dinner that might have got lodged between them. He found a shred of meat and spat it out. (Well, he was lucky. Some of us had dined on yesterday’s fish stew.) ‘Seems this Isabella what’s-her-name was a kinswoman of sorts. Sister Walburga knew the jewellery at once. Seen the girl wearing it, she said. And when Colin — ’ Hob nodded towards his friend — ‘mentioned the strip o’ green cloth, she knew, or pretended she knew, the dress as well.’
‘A green brocade gown is how she described it,’ Colin nodded.
‘And, of course,’ the tall man whose name still eluded me chimed in, ‘Sister Walburga also knew that this girl had disappeared without trace twenty years ago. Shocked, she was, I can tell you, Chapman.’
‘Stunned, more like,’ Hob amended.
‘I think perhaps I’d better go and speak to Sister Walburga myself,’ I said.
I glanced up at the sky where the sun was still struggling to break through the scudding clouds. When it did finally reveal itself for a moment or two, I could see from its position in the heavens that it was not yet noon. If I went to the convent now, I would not be interrupting any service, only disturbing the nuns at their private devotions or going about their daily tasks.
I thanked Hob and his two companions, adding with a sly grin, ‘I’m sorry to have held you up. You must be anxious to get on with your work.’
‘Oh … Oh, ah!’ said Hob, gripping his spade with renewed vigour and attempting to look like a man whose chief pleasure in life was a good, full day’s hard work. Colin, too, swung his pick to the imminent peril of his fellow labourers, though without, I noticed, actually managing to strike the ground. Only the tall man gave a snort of laughter and made no immediate move to resume his digging.
I walked the short distance from the former graveyard to the Magdalen nunnery, which stood at the bottom of Saint Michael’s Hill, opposite the church of Saint Michael-on-the-Mount-Without. Further up the hill was one of the city’s boundary stones and the gallows, which, mercifully, was at present empty of any executed felons whose bodies had been left to the attentions of ravens and crows, as a warning to other would-be criminals.
The Magdalen nunnery had originally been founded as a house of retreat and a seminary for wealthy young women, but had long since dwindled from a thriving community to the three sisters who inhabited it at that time. Fewer women in the modern world seemed to feel the need for a period of quiet reflection on their own and the world’s sins: they were far too busy enjoying themselves and spending their husbands’ or their fathers’ money. The hedonistic example of the court — which I had witnessed more than once at first hand — had permeated all walks of life in all but the remotest corners of the kingdom. And as for learning, girls were increasingly being educated at home, where a private tutor was seen as a badge of affluence.
The Magdalen nuns had never been an enclosed order. (Indeed, there was a story told that during the Great Death of the previous century, several of their number had rowed themselves across the River Avon to take food and medicine to the inhabitants of Saint Bede’s Minster; or Be’minster as the locals always called it.) So the middle-aged Sister who answered my knock and inspected me through the grille of the door had little hesitation in letting me in when I expressed a wish to speak to Sister Walburga.
I was shown into a small, whitewashed room, boasting no furniture of any kind, and illuminated only by a single barred window set high in one wall.
‘Wait here while I find out if Sister Walburga is willing to speak to you,’ the nun instructed me, before going out and shutting the door noiselessly behind her.
Only a few moments had passed when I heard a light footfall in the passageway outside; then the latch was lifted and Sister Walburga came in.
Adela had been wrong about her. She was not the shy, retiring one. I could tell that at once by her face which was strong, almost masculine in feature. She was old and her sallow skin was deeply furrowed. Heavily incised lines ran from the outside of each nostril to the corners of her thin, nearly bloodless mouth, giving her a stern, forbidding expression. But the hazel eyes were bright and full of intelligence, and when she smiled it was easy to see that, in her youth, she had probably been a very handsome woman. Not pretty; I doubted she had ever been that, but with the stern good looks that frighten a lot of men.