Free 16 - The Three Kings of Cologne by Kate Sedley Page B

or her.’
    ‘Is that what you think it was, resentment?’
    ‘Oh, yes. I feel certain of it. Isabella had shut them out of her life, even flagrantly lying to them. And they must have known in their hearts that she was lying, even while pretending to themselves that they believed her. They’d given her everything, including more love and attention than one person could cope with. So when, as they thought, she left them without a word for the love of someone else, they only made a pretence of trying to find her. But I think the lack of effort must have preyed on Mistress Linkinhorne’s mind. A year after Isabella’s disappearance, she was dead. Drowned in the Avon.’
    ‘Suicide?’ Adela whispered.
    ‘Not officially. An accident; and maybe it was. But I can’t help wondering if remorse played any part in her death.’
    ‘Poor woman.’
    Adela spoke so softly that I barely heard her, as a sudden squall of rain rattled the bedchamber shutters and wind moaned down Small Street between the overhanging eaves of the houses. I kissed her gently on the forehead.
    ‘Go to sleep,’ I murmured, ‘and stop worrying over matters you’ve no hope of mending. Our lives can never be that bad, not while we have each other.’
    She settled her head contentedly once more against my shoulder, and I thought I caught a half-laughing, disjointed mutter about men and roving eyes and their general untrustworthiness, which I considered it best to ignore. I gave her another kiss, which was received with sufficient, if somewhat sleepy, passion to make me think of assaulting the citadel again, but tiredness won. Before the thought was even half-formed, I was (so Adela informed me the following day) snoring.
    Sunday passed, as Sundays generally do, in a haze of churchgoing, reading of the Scriptures and boredom. There was no sign of John Foster at Saint Giles. It being the Sunday before his swearing-in as the city’s new Mayor, he would have gone in procession with his fellow aldermen and the out-going Mayor to Saint Mark’s chapel at the Gaunts’ Hospital, and I was relieved to be spared his anxious queries as to how my investigation was proceeding. (People always thought that facts just fell into my lap without any work on my part.) It continued raining all day, which meant that the children were housebound and forbidden to play games for fear of disturbing the Sabbath calm and the religious scruples of the neighbours. So I gathered the family around the kitchen table and told them the story of Noah and the flood; although I wondered afterwards, noting the look of rapt attention on Adam’s face, if it had been a wise choice. There was never any knowing what was going on in that devious little head of his.
    But no Sunday, however dismal, can last for ever, and by Monday morning the weather had improved. Daybreak brought sun and gently steaming cobbles, and even the men who rattled into the city on their carts to clear the drains sounded cheerful as they called to one another or returned greetings with people already abroad in the streets. The night-soil man actually made an early appearance, apologizing for his absence on Saturday, which, he said, had been caused by a bad back. I grunted to Adela that I wished I had a groat for every time I’d listened to that excuse, but she hushed me quickly. As a woman, she knew that there were certain people who should never be antagonized.
    I ate my breakfast of dried herring and oatmeal biscuit, then grabbed my cudgel and whistled up Hercules ready for the long uphill trudge to Clifton. The strangeness of leaving my pack behind still irked me and made me feel guilty, but as Adela sensibly remarked, the sooner I found the answer to this particular problem, the sooner I would be free to pursue my rightful calling. I kissed her soundly and told her she had more faith in my abilities than I had, at least in this particular case, but she only laughed and retorted that modesty didn’t become me.
    ‘On