‘Anyone can be civil if you give them the time of day. Did she ever invite you into her cottage?’ Goody Watkins asked belligerently, one wrinkled hand scratching her equally wrinkled chin.
‘No.’ Her friend was defensive. ‘But then there are a lot of people who live outside the walls who aren’t well known to those of us living within.’ She glanced at the older woman. ‘Are you on visiting terms, Maria, with anyone dwelling in Bristol Without? Because if so, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘I don’t tell you everything, Bess Simnel,’ Goody Watkins snapped back, but the spots of high colour in her wizened cheeks told their own tale.
The rest of the women were becoming anxious to get home. They had done what they came to do; they had inspected the new arrival in their midst, and one more death, even murder, in a city where death was commonplace failed to excite more than a passing interest. The Sheriff’s men would do what was needed to be done, ask all the necessary questions. A woman whom some of them knew only by sight, and others not at all, was soon forgotten. Someone had a grudge against Imelda Bracegirdle, that was certain, but there were very few people without an enemy or two; and when feelings ran high, animosity now and then turned to murder.
Goody Watkins, sensing her companions’ restive mood, said briskly, ‘We must be going. It’s a pleasure to see you again, Adela, but why you had to marry a “foreigner” from upcountry in the first place, I shall never understand, not when there were plenty of good Bristol men for you to choose from.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed Adela’s cheek. ‘Well, well. That’s all in the past. You’re home now where you belong, but next time, pick one of your own kind. Westcountrymen are best. I should know — I’ve married three of them.’
The beady, bright blue eyes, the only youthful features in her ancient face, flickered from Adela to me and back again. I pretended not to notice and stooped to gather Elizabeth into my arms; but my daughter, formerly so flatteringly eager for my embraces, protested vociferously and struggled to get down again. I had interrupted a game she was playing with Nicholas. My mother-in-law suppressed a triumphant smile as she saw her visitors to the door and closed it behind them. Margaret knew better, however, than to remark on Elizabeth’s defection, although she did give her granddaughter an approving pat on the head on passing.
‘You’d best be off, Roger,’ she advised, ‘if you want to get started early.’ She seated herself at her spinning wheel. ‘Adela, my dear, I shall leave the children and the cooking in your charge today.’
Adela was doubtless only too pleased to be able to repay her cousin’s hospitality in this fashion, but she nevertheless looked somewhat resentful at being told what she should do, rather than asked. There was an edginess to the way she responded with, ‘Of course, Cousin, anything you say,’ which made me glad to escape from the house. In my experience, when women fall out, it’s better to be elsewhere. I pulled on my boots, threw my cloak around my shoulders, gathered up my pack and cudgel, and let myself out into the street.
* * *
I retraced my steps of the previous afternoon, over the bustling thoroughfare of Bristol Bridge, with its busy shops and elegant houses, up High Street to the High Cross, where the citizens gathered to hear the latest gossip, and along Broad Street towards Saint John’s Archway, beyond which lay the Frome Bridge and Gate.
In Broad Street, I paused opposite Alderman Weaver’s house, staring up at the three-storeyed building, searching for signs of life. But the door remained firmly closed, and the windows, although unshuttered, had the dead-eyed look of an uninhabited place. Yet somewhere inside was a man either newly reawakened to an awareness of his former existence, or a clever imposter, trained in his deception by one even cleverer than himself. I wished I could get a glimpse of him, thought it would do me little good, for I should not recognize my quarry if I saw him. But no one appeared, not even one of the servants.
As I passed under the Frome Gate, I looked for the Porter, but it was a different man from the one of the previous afternoon. All the same, I gave him good-day and added, ‘There’s been trouble, I hear.’
He understood me at once. ‘Ay! A murder just over the way, one of the houses in Lewin’s Mead. Imelda Bracegirdle. She was strangled, so they say. The Sheriff’s men are over there now.’
There was a temporary lull in the traffic going in and out of the gate, so I asked, ‘Did you know her?’
The Porter shrugged. ‘I’ve seen her about. A widow, but not a woman who mixed much with her neighbours.’
‘So I’ve been told. Was she old or young? Plain or pretty?’
He laughed. ‘Neither. Not young, not old. Not plain, not pretty. A well-looking creature, I suppose, but over thirty. Her husband, John Bracegirdle, died some seven or eight years ago. The house was rented by him from Saint James’s Priory, and after his death, the Brothers let Imelda go on living there.’ The Porter added darkly, ‘Her mother was from Oxford, a woman called Elvina Stacey. But her father’s name was Fleming.’
I smiled inwardly. Although it was over a century since the last King Edward had encouraged his Flemish wife’s countrymen to settle here, and although, in the meantime, Fleming had become a common enough surname, Englishmen in general have never ceased to resent this influx of foreigners who came, as our forefathers saw it, ‘to take the bread from out of our mouths.’ To my way of thinking, the descendants of the Flemish are usually hardworking, diligent and sober-minded people, not much given to the theory that it is a working man’s bounden duty to do as little as possible in exchange for his wages. But in England, both when I was young and still, today, we believe that pleasure is just as important as industry, maybe more so. And who is to say that we are wrong?
According to my mother-in-law, who had it from her father, the Flemings who settled in Bristol had given a great boost to the city’s flagging wool trade, so that Bristol’s red cloth soon became famous not only throughout the land, but on the Continent, as well. This fact, however, had not made them any more popular, and their progeny were still regarded with a certain amount of suspicion and dislike. Those who lived retired, like Imelda Bracegirdle, would inevitably incur more than their fair share of hostility from inquisitive neighbours.
I went out into Lewin’s Mead, once an open meadow but which was now gradually being built over as the town’s population steadily increased. (It was no longer possible for everyone to live within the safety of the city walls, as was witnessed to by the number of houses already climbing up the sides of the encircling hills.) Across from where I stood and a little to my right, I noted a great deal of activity around one of the cottages, much tramping to and fro and in and out, and people busily conferring with each other. A Brother from the Priory, his black Benedictine habit flapping about his ankles, was running agitatedly from one person to the next, and it was all I could do to stop myself from going over to join them. But it was not my business; God had not called upon me to intervene here. (Or to poke my nose in, which would, I suppose, be a more honest way of putting it.) So, reluctantly, I turned to my left and proceeded westwards along the northern bank of the Frome.
It was only then that I paused to wonder why I had not turned left after passing under Saint John’s Archway, and walked along the river’s southern bank. Why had I bothered to cross it at all? The answer, of course, was simple. Because I had wished to see the site of last night’s murder. My natural curiosity would not let me rest until I had done so — but did this also mean that God was directing my feet? I was still pondering the question an hour or so later when I said goodbye to the crew of the only ship I had visited that morning, and strolled down the gangplank on to the quay.