Read A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel Online

Authors: Mel Starr

Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #Historical, #Mystery & Detective, #General

A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel (6 page)

“A cloth,” I shouted. “A clean cloth – quickly!”

A housewife in the crowd presented her apron. It was flour-dusted but clean enough. I pried the fellow’s hand from his wound and pressed the folded cloth tight against the gash.

I required my instruments, but could not leave my patient to fetch them. From the corner of my eye I saw a youth who had won a footrace last autumn at Michaelmas. I called to him.

“Run to the castle and fetch my instruments.” The youth gazed at me blankly. “Find Alice, the scullery maid. She knows the box where they are kept. My chamber will be clouded with smoke…pay that no mind. Run! Be off!”

The mob parted and the youth sprinted away toward the castle. I returned my attention to the pale form at my knees. Blood seeped from under the folded apron, but not so profusely as before.

“Who is this?” I asked. “What befell him?”

A dozen voices related the news. I could make no sense of their words. By shouting louder than they I managed to quiet my informers. I searched for a face I knew and saw Hubert Shillside’s adolescent son. He was a stolid youth, and perhaps lacked imagination. But in this matter I did not seek invention, but fact.

“William…what has happened here?”

The crowd was restive, and one or two would have answered for the youth, but I silenced them and bid the lad continue.

“There was an argument…many heard.” Heads nodded in agreement. “Philip accused Edmund of something.”

Then it was that I recognized the bloody figure over whom I knelt: Philip, the town baker. And standing before his forge, his arms pinioned to his side, was Edmund, the smith. The smith’s eyes were wide in fright, or amazement, at what he had done. He made no move to escape the grasp of those who clutched his arms.

“Philip picked up Edmund’s hammer, as he’d laid it down when the dispute began,” William continued. “But he swung wide, not bein’ accustomed to swingin’ hammers. Edmund swung back with a piece of hot iron in his tongs. Philip ducked but the edge caught ’im by the throat…an’ there he lays.”

“What was their dispute about?” I asked.

“Dunno,” William offered. “Wasn’t close enough t’hear plain. Just saw when Philip swung the hammer.”

The matter in dispute was of little importance at the moment. I did not press the matter, but rather concerned myself with Philip’s seeping neck. The man began to moan, but in his mouth I saw no blood. I was relieved. If the stroke had penetrated his throat he must die, for the bleeding would continue no matter what I did for his external wound.

I kept the sopping apron pressed close against the laceration and wondered when the runner would return with my instruments. The lad arrived soon enough, and I saw from the corner of my eye the mob part to allow him through. Alice had followed, and pressed in behind him.

I called for a bystander to take my place at the wound while I readied the instruments I would need. The crowd hesitated, and in that moment Alice knelt at my side. “Wha…what must I do?” she stammered.

“Keep this cloth pressed tight against the wound until I tell you to release it. Then be ready to apply it again should I need it.”

She nodded understanding and did not hesitate but took the red, sodden apron in both hands and forced it against the cut.

I opened my kit and prepared needle and thread. As I worked I asked the curious who hovered above me for an egg. A crone lurched wordlessly off down the High Street in response.

I would have liked to repair the torn vein first but knew of no way to do that without releasing a great flow of blood once again. So with needle and thread in my right hand, I held my left above the wound and told Alice to release the apron.

When she did, blood flowed again from the torn flesh, but not so much as before. A clot was beginning to form at the edge of the cut.

I gripped the lips of the wound with the fingers of my left hand. As I did so Philip groaned and twisted in pain. I spoke rather more sharply than I ought, I fear, and told him to be still, else I could not patch his cut. I should be more generous in such situations, but sometimes I lack sympathy for those who need my care because of their own foolishness. Certainly if Philip had not first picked up the hammer he would not now be producing a stream of blood in the street.

One hand was not enough to close the wound. As I pinched one end shut the other opened and poured forth more blood. I needed a third hand. Alice saw my dilemma and provided the extra appendage. She reached red fingers past my hand and pinched the other end of the laceration closed. No words passed between us, but she smiled, then looked back to her work.

With two sets of fingers closing the wound I could work quickly, and in but a few moments was able to stitch shut the laceration. Alice used her free hand to squeeze blood from the dripping apron, then dabbed at the fresh effusions as I worked.

The old woman who had set off for an egg returned as I pulled the last suture tight. I broke her egg in a cup from my instrument box and removed the yolk. The albumen I spread over the stitched wound.

Normally I follow the practice of Henry de Mondeville, who taught that wounds heal best when dry. Therefore I apply few salves to a cut such as Philip received, preferring only to wash the wound in wine. But I thought in this case a poultice might serve, for a few days. I bound Philip’s neck in strips of linen, then assisted him to a sitting position.

Philip’s eyes wandered and I thought he might swoon. His face was white and his lips pale blue. I had thought to ask some of the gawkers to assist him to his feet and see him down the High Street to his home and bakery on Broad Street. This could not be done. Philip had lost too much blood.

I sent Will Shillside to the carpenter’s shop for a plank and two poles. When he returned I instructed two men to lift the baker onto the plank, his feet and arms dangling on either side, and with a pole crosswise at each end four spectators bore him home. I told Philip I would visit him on the morrow and that he must rest ’til then.

As the bearers moved off with Philip I heard another commotion and looked up to see the baker’s wife come panting up to her husband. She had been tardily informed of her husband’s hurt.

I stood aside while three women competed with one another to tell the lurid details, including some particulars of which I was unaware.

When they had done I spoke, and told her to see that her husband did not rise from his bed until the morrow, when I would call. The woman nodded understanding, shook flour from her apron, and wordlessly followed her husband toward Broad Street. She took the news well, I thought. Too well, as it happened.

I turned to Edmund, still standing at his forge. “Release him,” I told his captors, who were holding his arms but loosely anyway.

“What have you to say of this matter?” I asked the smith. He did not reply, but looked to his feet and with a toe began rearranging clinkers on the floor of his forge.

“What did you argue about with Philip that came to this?” I pressed, and nodded to the bloodstains soaked now into the dirt of the street but yet visible.

“Ask Philip,” the smith replied. “’Twas he come to me.”

“What about?”

The smith was silent, and went to stirring ashes with a toe again.

“If he complains of you to the manor court you will be compelled to speak.”

“He’ll not, I think.”

“Why? Because he brought the first blow?”

“Aye…there’s that,” Edmund agreed.

“And there is more?” I waited, but received no reply.

I was sure there was more to this tale but could not get it from the smith. I gave up, waved his captors off, and set out for the castle with my instrument box tucked under my arm. Alice was waiting for me at the bridge, gazing down into the brook. Her hands were free of the baker’s blood. She must have washed them in the stream.

“You did well,” I told her, and joined her at the rail.

“Will the baker live?” she asked.

“Aye. Unless he attacks the smith again before his wound heals.”

“Would ’e ’ave died had you not sewed ’im up?”

“Probably.”

Alice was silent for a moment, staring upstream at the mill and its wheel. I was about to suggest that she would be needed at the castle when she spoke.

“Did you see me brother?”

“Your brother? Where?”

“In the crowd, watchin’ as you sewed up the baker.”

“I paid little attention. Which brother?”

“Henry.”

Alice had two half-brothers, born of her father’s first marriage. These two were angered when their father married a second time, fearing loss of patrimony. What they expected to gain from their father, a poor cotter with a quarter yardland and a scrawny pig, I cannot tell.

Henry, I presume, gained his father’s quarter yardland, the hut, and anything Alice left in it. He is a tenant of the Bishop of Exeter. I am not informed of the business of that manor in the Weald, though the property be but across Mill Street from the castle.

“I was anxious for Philip,” I said. “I remember Will Shillside looking on, and a few others. I did not notice your brother.”

“He was at the edge of the crowd. I saw ’im when I came up wi’ the lad you sent t’fetch the box.”

She looked down at my instrument case. I could not tell where this conversation was going. Perhaps nowhere, for Alice became silent again. I am a patient man. The girl had, I thought, more to say. I listened to the mill wheel creaking as it turned, and to the splash of water through the sluice. We were so still and silent that a small trout ventured out from the shadow of the bridge and positioned itself below us, waiting for the current to bring a meal its way.

“I saw ’em when I was kneelin’…when you asked for help.”

“Saw what?”

“The shoes. I was down close to the ground, like, an’ you notice things down there you don’t when standin’ up.”

“Your brother’s shoes?” I guessed. I had a feeling I now knew what the girl wanted to say, and why she found it difficult.

“Aye. Him as hardly ever owned any, as I remember. Least, not like them ’e wore today.”

“Did he never wear shoes, even in winter?”

“Oh, aye…but made ’em hisself. Never paid cobbler for shoes.”

“And what of the shoes he wore today?”

“Wood soles. Thick, like they was new, an’ leather t’bind ’em to ’is feet. Soft leather, ’twas. Tanned.”

“Like those missing from the feet of Alan the beadle?”

Alice nodded her head and gazed back toward the mill. For all the mistreatment she had endured at her brother’s hands, she no doubt felt disloyal for bringing me this report. And, perhaps, apprehensive that her brother might learn of her disclosure.

The girl remained silent, her eyes on the turning mill wheel but not, I think, seeing it.

“The blue yarn,” she whispered. “Henry once had a cotehardie of blue. ’Twas old and faded last I saw it.”

“Threadbare?” I asked.

“Aye…tattered, like.”

“So that loose threads might fall from, say, a ragged sleeve?”

“Aye.”

“When did you last see your brother wear such a garment?”

“Before I came t’live in castle, sir. I see little of Henry now, so what he owns I know not, but ’twas before father died I last saw ’im wi’ the old blue cotehardie.”

“You have performed two good services this day,” I told her. “I will see to this business of your brother’s new shoes and old blue cotehardie. Rest easy. He will not learn how my suspicion was aroused.”

A look of relief brightened her face.

“Run back to the castle and explain my absence at dinner to the cook. Ask him to send a meal to my chamber. I will be there straightaway.”

“Aye, sir,” she chirped, and set off as I directed. I watched with pleasure as she hastened away. Well, there was nothing much else to look at; I had already viewed the mill and stream.

Chapter 5
 

A
fter a cold dinner in my reeking chamber I made my way across Mill Street to the path leading along Shill Brook and the cottages in the Weald. These were the bishop’s tenants. I had not had cause to venture down this lane since I treated Alice’s father, unsuccessfully, for his broken hip.

His hut lay in disrepair, the toft overgrown and the door fallen from its leather hinges. Whatever of the man’s possessions his sons thought valuable enough to keep from Alice, this dwelling was not among them.

I did not know which of the next two huts belonged to Henry atte Bridge. I rapped on the door of the first, which was ajar, and was rewarded for my efforts by the appearance of a disheveled woman of indeterminate age carrying a basin on one hip and a runny-nosed child on the other. Both mother and child appeared to have taken seriously the maxim that winter bathing might cause serious health issues.

Henry, the woman said, lived in the next hut. She was the wife of his brother, Thomas. The wife of a quarter yardland tenant cannot lead an easy life, I reflected, as I gave her thanks and left her to her pot and child.

The next dwelling gave a better first impression. The roof was newly thatched, and freshly oiled skins stretched across the windows. I thumped on the door to no result but sore knuckles. In the silence between my assaults on the door I heard distant voices. After a third attempt at the door I gave up and circled the house to the garden toft in the rear.

A woman was there, spading manure into her vegetable beds. It was her voice I had heard, directing children who were assisting in the work by breaking the clods she turned over. The woman used an iron spade. This surprised me. Most cotters can afford only wooden tools with which to work their land.

This woman was as robust as her sister-in-law was frail. And also the children appeared well fed. She rested a foot on the shovel and eyed me suspiciously as I approached. The appearance of a lord’s bailiff seems often to create that expression on the faces of the commons.

“Good day,” I greeted her in my most cordial tone.

The woman remained silent, as if there was no need to reply if she had no argument about the quality of the day.

“Is your husband at home?”

“Nay,” she finally spoke. “Workin’ on the bishop’s new tithe barn.”

I knew of that project. The Bishop of Exeter, in a fit of abundance, had ordered his old tithe barn at Bampton demolished and a new and greater structure raised in its place.

Beams had been hewed over the winter, and now the framework was rising on the bishop’s land north of the town. I remember Master John Wyclif speaking of a passage in the Gospel of St Luke where our Lord spoke to his disciples about a wealthy man who pulled down an old barn and built a greater one, but died before he could enjoy the wealth he had stored there. I tactfully avoided mentioning this scripture when discussing the new barn with Thomas de Bowlegh, whose duty it is to oversee construction for the bishop.

Master John, I think, would not be so considerate, for I often heard him condemn prelates for their venality. The criticism of an Oxford master, however, is of little consequence to those in Avignon.

I told the woman I would return in the evening to speak to her husband and made my way around the house to return to the castle. As I passed the gable end a gust of wind brought the scent of roasting meat to my nostrils. I looked up to the gable vent. Wisps of smoke, common enough from such a hut, drifted from the opening.

At the front of the house, out of sight of the toft, I stopped at a window and tested the oiled skin which covered the opening. I found a loose corner and lifted it to peer inside.

The hut was dark and my eyes were accustomed to the bright afternoon sun. But eventually I saw in the smoky interior a small child turning a spit over the central hearth. A low fire glowed there on the stones, and an occasional drop of fat from the haunch on the spit sizzled on the coals. The child stared blankly back at me as he turned the spit. I dropped the skin and, guiltily, I confess, hastened to the path and back to Mill Street.

Perhaps, I thought, it was mutton the child was turning. But where would a quarter-yardlander – well, half-yardlander if he now possessed his father’s meager estate – get a roast of mutton? I believed I knew the smell of roasting mutton, and this was not it. And the haunch on the spit was large, larger than a sheep, more closely the size of a deer. A small deer, perhaps, but yet larger than any ewe or even a ram. I knew where a joint of venison would come from: poaching.

From the appearance of Henry atte Bridge’s wife and children, they had eaten well for many months. Most cotters would think themselves fortunate to feed their children an egg, much less a joint. Even if the roast was not venison, I wondered where he got it. As he was the bishop’s tenant, it was not my business to ask, unless the slaughtered animal belonged to Lord Gilbert’s demesne or to one of his tenants in my bailiwick.

I told the cook to keep a supper warm for me, then made my way back to the Weald as the sun dipped behind the leafless oaks and beeches in Lord Gilbert’s wood to the west of the town.

Tendrils of smoke still drifted from the gable vent as I approached Henry atte Bridge’s hut, but I could detect no scent of roasted meat for the family supper. Henry must have been forewarned that I would call, for the door opened before I could rap a second time on it. The man stared at me with unconcealed hostility. I had dealt firmly with the fellow at the time of his father’s death eighteen months before, berating him for his lack of filial observance. He had not forgotten.

The man stood squarely in the door, silent, as if daring me to either speak or enter. I looked from his scowling brow to his feet. He wore wooden-soled shoes with softly tanned leather binding them to his feet. I inspected his footgear for a long moment, then returned my gaze to his face. He blinked. I saw alarm in his eyes, but the look passed quickly.

“You was ’ere t’day seekin’ me,” he challenged. “’Ere I am…what d’you want o’me?”

I decided to brazen my way through the interview, so pushed past him through the door as I said, “I wish to discuss your shoes.”

The interior of the hut was now near dark, lit only by the coals glowing on the hearth and the fading light of the setting sun which managed to penetrate the window skins.

Soon the embers would be covered and the family would retire to bed. As I entered the hut Henry’s wife and three children looked up at me from the table, spoons in hand. Before them sat bowls of pottage. I peered through the smoke into the corners of the darkening dwelling. My eyes could find no roasted meat. But my nose detected yet the faint scent of…what, venison?

I turned to Henry atte Bridge, who stood silent, silhouetted in the door. “Have you owned those shoes long?”

“Not long,” he bristled. “A fortnight.”

“They seem of fine workmanship. Did you buy them of Adam, the cobbler?”

“Nay…he wants too much. Bought ’em in Witney.”

“Witney? Surely a long way to walk to purchase shoes. And the price is controlled…unless the cobbler at Witney is selling at a lower price in violation of the law.”

“They was used,” atte Bridge growled. “Fella bought ’em died. ’Is wife sold ’em back to the cobbler.”

“Oh. And how did you learn of this bargain?”

“Father Thomas sent me an’ two others to Witney with a cart an’ team to get beams for the new tithe barn.”

“And you took enough money on this journey to buy shoes?”

“They was cheap, I tol’ you.”

“Aye, so you did…from a dead man’s feet. How much did you pay for these, uh, used shoes?”

“Thruppence.”

“A bargain, indeed, as they appear little worn.”

Henry made no answer, but stood sullenly, outlined in the door. No doubt he would have liked to throw me bodily out of his house, and was certainly strong enough to do so, as I am of slender build and Henry was short and thickset. There are advantages as well as trials to serving as bailiff to a powerful lord.

I wrinkled my nose and tested the air. “You have enjoyed a joint for your first remove,” I asserted.

“Ha…where would I find meat this time of year? The hog me an’ me brother butchered last autumn is gone, but for a fletch o’ bacon.”

“Hmm. My nose misleads me, then,” I shrugged.

Henry atte Bridge made no answer but to fold his arms and glare. I looked over my shoulder at his wife and children. They sat frozen on a bench, spoons of cooling pottage hovering between bowl and lips.

He was lying about the roasted meat, although I could gain little by pressing him on the matter. Was he lying about his shoes also? I thought it likely. And whereas I had no way to prove his deceit about the mutton or venison or whatever it was his lad had been turning on the spit, I could discover the truth of his shoes. I had but to travel to Witney.

The sun was well down behind the western forest when I returned to Bampton Castle and the gatehouse. The cool spring evening was without a breeze, and the sky, bright blue and cloudless as the afternoon wore on, was now black in the east and a faint golden gray through the leafless trees to the west. Brilliant stars speckled the night, like flecks of snow on a parson’s robe.

Alice was waiting for me in the great hall, sitting on the cold flags, her back against the wall. She must have guessed what I was about that evening, but spoke instead of fleabane. She rose, sleepy-eyed, as I approached. It was this movement which told me she was there, for the hall, lit only by a single cresset, was so dark I did not see her sitting near my chamber door.

“Please, sir…you said this mornin’ as I might ’ave some of the flower what drives fleas away?”

“Ah, yes…you may. I will prepare some of the herb. In exchange you go to the kitchen and get me some supper. I told the cook to keep a meal ready for my return.”

“Thank you, sir.” The girl curtsied and scuttled off toward the buttery door, becoming invisible in that shadowed part of the hall.

My chamber still held the scent of burned fleabane. I hoped that the stink would be more objectionable to vermin than to me. If so, I should sleep unmolested this night. I gathered the remainder of the fleabane from my chest and broke a handful into the bowl I had left smoldering on my floor that morning. I spread another handful of broken stems, leaves and purple flowers across my mattress. I was left with but little of the herb should fleas reappear before summer brought another harvest of the tiny flowers. I resolved this summer to gather more than in the past. Just in case.

Alice returned with my supper – cold mutton, cheese, and a loaf of fine wheat bread.

Mutton is not my favorite dish when served hot. Cold, it leaves a thick coating of grease on the tongue to mark its passage. The bread and cheese did little to scour the taste away.

I gave Alice the bowl of fleabane and instructed her in its use: burn half, then strew the other half on her mattress. She should wait, I told her, until the morrow, so that the fumes might have the day to permeate the closet where she slept.

The girl took the bowl, curtsied again, and turned with the fleabane pressed to her breast as if I had given her a pouch of silver pennies. Well, when one is assaulted by fleas, their elimination might be worth a sack of pennies to him who could afford it.

I had business on the manor next day, so could not start for Witney until the morning’s work was done. John Holcutt was to oversee the planting of dredge on one of Lord Gilbert’s fields and I wished to observe the planting of peas on another of the demesne fields. If peas are planted too closely together, rather than increase the yield per acre, the plants will choke each other and produce a poor crop. But if the peas be planted too sparsely, weeds will spring up and produce the same untoward result.

I set the planters to work with their dibble sticks, and instructed them to sow at three bushels per acre, no more and no less. I waited until the work was well begun, then made my way back to the castle for my dinner. I had told the marshalsea to have Bruce ready at noon. The old horse knew he was to travel, saddled and bridled as he was, and was stamping and blowing with impatience when I reached the stables. I did not make the beast wait.

At the north edge of Bampton I passed the place where the bishop’s men were erecting his new barn. Eager for a break from their work, they leaned on their tools and watched as Bruce ambled past. Among the upturned faces was that of Henry atte Bridge. When he was certain I looked his way he spat upon the ground, then returned to cutting a mortise with hammer and chisel.

Aside from Henry atte Bridge and his salivary salutation, I quite enjoyed the ride through sunlit, spring countryside. Low shrubs and plants on the forest floor were popping into greenery. Taller trees had yet few leaves, so the road was not shaded and Bruce and I were warmed with the sun at our backs. Meadows along the way bustled with life. Jackdaws and wrens chirped and flitted about, seeking seeds and the early hatch of unwary insects.

I had ridden this way before. Less than a mile from town I passed the coppiced wood where, eighteen months past, I had watched as pigs, rooting for acorns, uncovered a blue cotehardie. The discovery of that garment led to the identification of bones found in Lord Gilbert’s castle cesspit, and eventually revealed a killer. Now I had another body, and a blue thread taken from it. I began to dislike the color blue.

A few hundred paces beyond the coppiced wood where the pigs and I made our discovery the road split, the left fork leading to Shilton and Burford. Bruce knew that way, and would have followed it had I not pulled on the reins to guide him to the right.

Two miles later we crested the hill southwest of Witney and dropped down into the valley of the Windrush.

I pointed Bruce down the High Street, past the impressive spire of St Mary’s Church, to the Buttercross at the market square. The square was busy of a Saturday, even though Thursday was market day in the town. I was about to ask a scurrying citizen for the location of the cobbler’s shop when I saw on the north side of the market square a house with a shoe painted on a wooden plank which swung from a beam above the door.

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