Gibbous House 17

The coach was trundling through Denwick, little more than a church and three cottages. There remained but a few miles to the Hotspur Tower and Bondgate Within. I planned to alight at The Olde Cross Inn in the Narrowgate and spend a few shillings on a room and board, any plans of John Brown or his catspaw Maccabi notwithstanding. The driver had readily agreed to triangulate the Market Cross and approach it from the Narrowgate, he had not discussed this diversion with the inside passengers and I considered that particular exemplar of Parminter’s coin extremely well spent.

As I came gingerly down from the coach, the driver directed me towards the left hand window of the Olde Cross and he struggedly vainly against his Northumbrian consonants to render himself intelligible to myself:

‘Divvent caal ut the Cross, mind. Caal ut the Dorty Bottles, lookah.’

Harry Hotspur’s short tongued ‘r ‘ fought it’s way through his narrow lips and I had no doubt the man could have passed in the French capital as a native, if all he said were its name.

‘Why, man? Why are dirty bottles kept in the window? I take it not as good advertisement, in a hostelry.’

‘Ivverone caals it that. The laanlaw’ll tell yiz, jus’ gan ask um.’

I took my bag and resolved to ask mine host at the earliest opportunity. It was a curious thing and it piqued my interest, as little had since I had been unable to read the glyphs that had mysteriously appeared on the vellum.

A room was negotiated at half the London rate, which I could have paid in Newcastle too, had I been able to sleep. Slumber comes hard to me after such events; reverie and revision of the glory keep one enervated, I find. The landlord of the Olde Cross - I still could not bring myself to call it by its sobriquet – was narrow-eyed, gap-toothed and possessed of a forehead so low as to admit the minimum of grey matter for locomotion. Appearances proved deceptive, as I then found.

‘Robson,’ I waved a hand at him across the counter top. ‘Porter; a bottle from the window, if you please.’

In an accent as rustic as the coachman’s, if a little less gallic, he replied:

‘Please yoursel, sir. But yiz’ll oblige us and gan geddit yourself, too.’

I had no intention of touching the filthy phials in the window and asked him:

‘Will you not serve me, Robson?’

‘Not frum those bottles.’

‘And why would that be?’

‘Why, thiz corsed, man! Hev bin since Adam Collingwood breathed uz last putting those very bottles in the winda.’

A voice came from over my shoulder: mellifluent, educated and not a little seductive, though it were a man’s.

‘Yes, some fifty years ago, none have touched them since. Utter nonsense of course.’
I turned to see a tall man just leaving the very prime of youth; approaching thirty years as if intent on remaining there. Blond haired, his looks bespoke Viking blood from an earlier England. He proffered his hand and gave the name I least expected:

‘Jedediah Maccabi, at your service, Mr Moffatt’