Unhallowed Ground (11 page)

So gossip had prepared this ground before I cast a seed. Why, I wondered, did the woman seem startled to hear from me what she had already learned from others? And how had the rumor got loose in the town? Father Simon’s servant, perhaps?

“Did your words with Maud have to do with the death? Does Maud make accusation against you or Edmund?”

“Nay, wasn’t about that.” The woman fell silent, and looked away, across the crude fence which separated her toft from Maud’s. “Since Henry was kilt in the forest Thomas has been plowin’ into my land. Wouldn’t have done so was Henry alive to say him nay. Maud hired plowmen, an’ told ’em to widen the furrows, as Thomas was doin’.”

“You challenged her about this?”

“Aye.”

“To what end?”

The woman was again silent for several moments. “Edmund told ’er plowmen where they must stop. Maud was angry.”

“Is the plow-land in dispute land that Henry had of the bishop for many seasons, or is it of the land he gained when his father died?”

Emma again seemed startled, and I guessed the answer before she spoke. “’Twas of his father’s land. Henry was oldest, so was to have it. Thomas was resentful. An’ when Henry was slain ’e saw ’is chance to gain what was mine.”

“It may belong to neither,” I advised, and was rewarded with another surprised expression. “Your father-in-law possessed the land as dowry from his second wife, Alice’s mother, so I have learned. Henry seized land which should have gone to Alice.”

“Not so,” Emma declared. “Henry was due the land. Was it not so, the vicars would have denied him.”

“Perhaps they should have done. No bailiff is assigned to direct the bishop’s lands in the Weald, as you know. The bishop expects the vicars of St Beornwald’s Church to do the work. But they are more concerned with masses and keeping God’s house than maintaining order in the Weald.”

“Who says ’tis so?”

“Evidence will be presented when the vicars call hallmote, I am told.”

Emma snorted in disgust and turned back to her cabbages. I left her to her work and set out for Bridge Street and home.

I had but finished my supper when a rapping upon Galen House’s door drew me from my table. As I expected, Maud had been thinking upon what I had told her and now stood in the evening shadow at my door.

“G’day, Master Hugh. A word, if I may.”

I invited the woman into my surgery. Through the open door I could see Kate bustling about in our living quarters, with an ear cocked, I was sure, to the conversation beginning in the other chamber.

“’Ow’d you know Thomas went out to see to the hens two nights?”

“The man who drew him out the first night told me.”

“Man? Wasn’t no fox, then?”

“Nay, nor was there a fox the night of St George’s Day.”

“Then the same man who come the first time murdered my Thomas,” Maud declared. “Why’d the man call him out in the dark of night first time? Did ’e try then to slay Thomas an’ failed?”

“He said not. He wished to speak privily to Thomas, to apologize.”

“Apologize? For what? Doin’ ’im to death next day?”

“Nay. It was another who troubled your hens St George’s Day. The first man wished to seek forgiveness of past transgressions.”

Maud’s eyes widened as I spoke. She knew of Thomas’s multiple offenses against others, or at least some of them, but was at a loss to remember trespasses against her husband.

“Who was this, then, what came to our toft at midnight?”

“That you need not know. The man did not slay Thomas. I have spoken to him and know of his words with Thomas. You must trust me. I will seek whoso murdered your husband, but some things about the search you may not now know.”

Maud’s expression said plainly she was not pleased with this response to her visit, but she knew better than to dispute with Lord Gilbert’s bailiff, even was she a tenant of the Bishop of Exeter.

“You’ll be about finding ’im out, then?” She sought confirmation that Thomas’s death, now fading in the memory of most townsmen, would remain fresh in mine.

“I seek the felon each day,” I assured her.

Maud seemed pleased with my promise. She curtsied, which is not a necessary honor for a mere bailiff. Perhaps she thought that as a supplicant in my home such deference might advance her cause and would cost nothing.

I spent the rest of the evening on Lord Gilbert’s business, but my mind was more devoted to the confusion of death at Cow-Leys Corner than overseeing the care of Bampton Castle and Manor in Lord Gilbert’s absence at Pembroke.

Days grow long and nights brief after Whitsuntide. There was yet a glow in the northwestern sky, beyond the Ladywell and Lord Gilbert’s forest, when Kate and I sought our bed. The day had been warm with the promise of summer, but the eve soon cooled and I closed the window of our bedchamber.

Kate is a light sleeper, so heard her hens while I was asleep. She elbowed me to wakefulness and when she was sure I heard, whispered to me of the disturbance in the darkened toft.

“The hens are troubled… a fox, you think? Or has the man who murdered Thomas atte Bridge visited us to draw you into the dark?”

“Not a very inventive fellow,” I whispered in reply, “to employ the same ruse he tried before… a man intending me harm would seek some new method. ’Tis a fox in the toft, I think. I will see to it.”

“Take care,” Kate said softly, rising upon an elbow as I drew on chauces and kirtle.

“A fox,” I reassured her. “No man would try a second time what he had worked in the past.”

I must learn to listen to Kate’s admonitions. I stumbled down the darkened stairway, yet unsteady from an abrupt awakening. I unbarred the door to the toft and stepped into the darkened enclosure. A waning moon was just rising to the east, but Galen House blocked its light and the toft was in deep shadow. Kate’s hens seemed quieted. I thought, did a fox disturb them, the animal was probably now away, perhaps with the neck of a hen in its jaws to feed a litter of kits. I would count the fowls in the morn, to see were any taken.

I turned to re-enter Galen House as the blow fell. This perhaps preserved my life. Some shape, darker than the shadows of the toft, leaped toward me and before I could recoil I felt a sharp pain in my right arm, between elbow and shoulder.

My attacker grunted with the effort of his strike, and I yelped in pain. ’Twas most unmanly. Kate had already opened the shutters to see what I might be about, and when she heard my cry she shouted for explanation.

I had fallen to my knees. From this position I could see my assailant’s shadowy form crouching to deliver another blow. But when Kate shouted from the window he looked up to her, hesitated, then turned and ran from the toft and disappeared beyond Galen House toward Church View Street.

I put my left hand to my right arm and felt there something warm and wet. I was stabbed. My arm was not the target, I think. My attacker had aimed to put a blade into my back, but when I turned to re-enter Galen House he did not see clearly the movement for the blackness of the place and so plunged the knife into my arm. I did not know who this assailant might be, but I knew who it was not.

As I stood in the dark, stupefied by pain and the sudden attack, Kate burst through the door. She cast about for a moment, then found my white kirtle in the shadows of the toft. The garment had helped my assailant find me as well. She spoke as she approached.

“Was a fox here? Did you frighten it away?”

“Nay. I am stabbed in the arm,” I replied. “You spoke true. Whoso murdered Thomas atte Bridge wished to end my pursuit.”

Kate took my left arm in her hands while I clutched my right. Together we entered Galen House. “What must I do?” she asked.

“Light a cresset… no, two. We must see how badly I am pierced, and you must have light to stitch me whole.”

“Me?”

“Aye. I cannot do the work with but one hand, and you are skilled with needle and thread.”

Kate found and lit two cressets from coals yet smoldering upon our hearth and set them upon our table. With Kate’s assistance I removed my kirtle. The garment was rent and blood-stained, so could be little more damaged. I inspected my wound, then pressed the kirtle against the cut to staunch the flow of blood. ’Twas then I saw that the blade had passed through my arm, leaving a wound to be sutured on both sides, and made a small puncture between two ribs as well. No knife for use at table made the wound, for such a blade would not be long enough to enter my ribs. Whoso attacked me had driven a large dagger home with much force. I think I was not intended to survive the cut, and had it been delivered against my back, I surely would not have. Not for the first time I questioned the wisdom of accepting Lord Gilbert’s offer to become his bailiff. What some men will do for money.

I wrapped the blood-soaked kirtle about my arm while Kate went to fetch my instruments box. I should like to have bathed the wound in wine, but there was none in Galen House. Wine could be had at the castle, but the gate was closed and portcullis down at this hour. Much shouting and pounding upon the gate would be required to rouse Wilfred. I felt in no fit condition to walk there, and would not send Kate. My assailant had evaded the beadle’s watch to enter my toft at such an hour, and might yet be upon the streets. Kate must sew me up as she found me.

Kate returned with the box, opened it, and found needle and silken thread. Threading the needle was small challenge for Kate, even in the dim flame of a cresset, but I thought I saw her hand quiver slightly as she drew the silk through the needle’s eye.

With my left hand I pressed the sides of the wound together, then set Kate to her work. She may have trembled while preparing needle and thread, but when she plied the needle upon the wound she was all fierce determination and her hand was steady. I saw in the light of the cressets Kate’s brow furrowed and her lips drawn tight in concentration. I wished as small a scar as possible, so instructed Kate to make many tiny stitches. She nodded silently and bent to the work. Twelve stitches later she had closed the larger of the lacerations upon my arm. I dabbed a few remaining drops of blood from the wound, then raised my arm so that she might repeat the process upon the wound under my arm. As this injury was smaller, and would be invisible to most folk, I told her five stitches would suit. The work was soon completed.

There remained but the small gash across my ribs, where the point of my assailant’s dagger had blessedly stopped short after puncturing my arm. Kate closed the wound with three small stitches, brushed a stray wisp of hair from her forehead, and raised her eyes to mine.

“I know,” I admitted. “You warned that the visitor might not be a fox.”

“You think it was he who slew Thomas atte Bridge?” she asked.

“Who else have I angered recently? I think Sir Simon Trillowe is snoring in his bed in Oxford at this hour, and I know of no other who holds a grudge against me.”

The cressets provided little light, but I thought I saw Kate blush as I spoke. Sir Simon had sought Kate’s favor, and lost, which defeat he had taken badly and plotted to do me much harm for interfering with his suit.

“Could you see who it might have been?”

“Nay, but I know who it was not.”

Kate peered at me from under raised brows, awaiting an explanation.

“Hubert Shillside is left-handed. The man who came upon me in the toft held his dagger in his right hand. He would have driven it into my back, but I turned as he swung, intending to return to the house and my bed. This he did not see for the darkness, but my kirtle was white and so he had a fair target for his stroke.”

“If the man is the same who murdered Thomas atte Bridge,” Kate mused, “then Shillside is innocent of the death.”

“Just so. I must take care he never learns I once considered him.”

“He was determined that you see atte Bridge’s death as a suicide. Was he guilty that would be a sign… that he wished to turn you from a path which might lead to him.”

“Well, he was not, and my heart is eased.”

I yet held the torn and bloody kirtle in my hand. The hour was now well past midnight, and I shivered from the cold and the realization that, but for good fortune or the hand of God, Kate might now be a widow. She saw me quiver, took my left arm and pressed it close to her cheek. I felt a dampness there. Kate had begun to cry. She was strong when duty required it of her, but now the crisis was past and her mind could wander through the event and other potential outcomes, she yielded to the emotions which came upon her.

My assailant’s dagger, as I believed, had glanced from the bone of my upper arm as it passed through to my ribs. The ache I first felt grew to a pain which throbbed fiercely. Kate sensed this, I think, and drew her damp cheek from my shoulder.

“You have herbs and potions for others when they are hurt,” she said. “I will pour a cup of ale and you must take a dose of your own remedy.”

I searched through my instruments chest in the dim light of the cressets and found pouches of pounded hemp seed, ground seed of lettuce, and willow bark. When Kate returned to the table with a cup of ale I poured a large measure from each pouch into the brew and drank it. De Mondeville, whose teaching I follow, taught that wounds heal best when left dry and uncovered, with no ointment applied, but in my chest I had a vial of oil of St John’s Wort, which can dull pain and help cleanse a wound in the absence of wine. This oil I applied to my cuts.

When in the past I had prepared such a concoction for patients who had done themselves some injury, or upon whom I worked some surgery, I had assured them the potion would alleviate some of their distress. Perhaps I lied. Kate and I climbed the stairs to our bed, where I lay through the remainder of the night, unable to sleep and reviewing in my mind the attack. Kate’s rooster announced the dawn but had no need to awaken me. Nor Kate. Each time I turned in our bed she peered at me closely. I assured her twice that an arm wound was not likely to send me to meet the Lord Christ, but I would have been more certain of this had I been able to bathe the cuts in wine before Kate worked the needle upon them.

When the Angelus Bell rang from the tower of St Beornwald’s Church I left my bed. If I could find no rest in the night it was sure I would find little in the day.