by Mel Starr
An hour after departing the abbey we came to Stanton Harcourt. At the edge of the village five men were at work trimming back an overgrown hedge enclosing a field newly sown to oats. Edmund was one of the five, supervising the labor of others, as if these men needed a beardless lad to teach them how to cut back a hedge.
As we entered the village I saw Oswald leave his house. He seemed at first on his way to the manor house, or perhaps the church. But he glanced in our direction, hesitated, then turned to us. I thought he intended to hail us. Perhaps he had found the missing wool.
Not so. The rotund fellow hastened past. He nodded a greeting as if his haste was too great to dally in our company.
Arthur, Uctred, and I halted our palfreys at Sir Thomas’s residence, and when his servant answered my rapping upon the door I asked for the lord of the manor.
“Ah, Master Hugh,” Sir Thomas greeted me. “My aching jaw is well healed. Much thanks to you.”
“I am pleased, but ’tis not your health which brings me here this day.”
“You wish to know if Oswald has discovered the felons who slew Henry, then? Alas, he has not, and I expected no better.”
“It is of that I wish to speak to you.”
“You have learned who the villains are?” Sir Thomas said, his features brightening.
“Nay, but I have a request to make of you in that regard.”
“Then come in, for you are most welcome. Walchin, take Master Hugh’s men to the kitchen and fetch them ale. And two cups for us, in the hall.”
Sir Thomas led me to his hall, the ale arrived, and I told him of the theft at Galen House as we refreshed ourselves.
“And now you are homeward bound from Oxford, with scalpel, hinges, hasp, and herbs,” Sir Thomas said when I concluded my tale.
“I have been fortunate to recover some of what was taken. Perhaps my luck will continue, or improve, if the rogues try to sell instruments to some honest Oxford surgeon or stationer who will then seek me and point to the thieves.”
“And so you visit Stanton Harcourt, seeking my aid? How can I be of service to you in such a loss?”
“Nay. My purpose here is of another matter. I am puzzled about the disappearance of the green wisp of wool which I plucked from the oak. Your bailiff claims he last saw it in a chest which lay upon a cupboard table, and has no notion of where it now may be, or why it is missing.”
“Your tone speaks beyond your words,” Sir Thomas said. “I saw the chest. He spoke true. The threads were not there.”
“Aye. I saw this also. This was after he fell and the chest emptied its contents into the rushes.”
“You think the wool may yet be hidden in the rushes of Oswald’s house?”
“Mayhap, but I doubt it so. We do not know if the wool was in the chest before he tripped.”
“He said not.”
“So he did. But you have said that he failed in the past to discharge his duties as you wished. Can you believe all that he says?”
Sir Thomas was silent for a moment. When he spoke it was slowly, his words chosen carefully.
“If the green wisps were in his chest before he tumbled and dropped it to the rushes, but were no longer there when he offered the chest to me to examine, someone must have plucked the threads from the rushes, or they are yet there. Only you and Edmund searched through the rushes for the contents of the box, to replace them within. We will go to the bailiff’s house and search the rushes again. I pray we will discover the wool.”
Arthur and Uctred appeared from the kitchen as Sir Thomas stood and I motioned them to follow. We passed the village well in silence, Arthur and Uctred surely curious as to our destination but confident that patience would reveal all.
Sir Thomas rapped vigorously upon the bailiff’s door. More vigorously than need be to rouse the man. There was choler in the blows, and I thought as his fist struck the door that his knuckles would be tender on the morrow.
“I saw Oswald leave the house as we came to the village not an hour past,” I said. “Mayhap he has not returned.”
Sir Thomas turned from the door to me, seemed to consider some matter, then lifted the latch and pushed open the door.
“’Tis my house,” he explained. “I’ll visit it when I will.”
He left the door open the better to see the place where Oswald’s chest had emptied its contents into the rushes. The place was less than two paces from the threshold, so sunlight bathed the rushes with light. If some trace of green wool had been overlooked three days past and yet remained we would surely find it.
We did not. The four of us, upon hands and knees, sought some greenish tint, our noses a hand’s breadth from the rushes as we sorted through the stems. Sir Thomas sighed and stood, signaling the end of the search and its failure.
“Which way did Oswald travel when you saw him last?” Sir Thomas asked.
I pointed to the north edge of the village, where the road curved beyond the last house and disappeared from our view. “He seemed hurried,” I said.
“Oswald? Hurried? Some calamity must be upon him. The man does nothing more swiftly than need be.”
“He must have felt some need,” I said. “Perhaps he had some message for Edmund.”
Sir Thomas gazed at the place where the road to Eynsham disappeared beyond a house. The hedges being trimmed were no more than two hundred paces farther.
“We shall see,” Sir Thomas said, and strode off in the direction his bailiff had taken.
As we passed the last house and the road straightened before us we saw Oswald returning to the village. His pace was slower than when he had departed the place. Whatever urgent matter had propelled his rotund form away from the village it seemed no longer pressing. In the distance Edmund and his companions were yet at work at the hedges, moving farther from the village as they neared the end of their toil. The tenants were at work, I should say. Edmund stood near the road staring in our direction, hands on hips. He was too far distant to read his expression, but his posture indicated displeasure. I was feeling a bit petulant myself. Few things in my life had gone well in the past weeks, and many had gone awry.
Oswald evidently felt a need to explain his departure from and return to the village.
“Seein’ to the hedgin’,” he said when he drew near.
“What? You think Edmund incapable of the task?” Sir Thomas said.
“Nay. Just seein’ to my duty.”
“Your duty ’til Whitsuntide,” Sir Thomas growled. He fixed the bailiff firmly with his fierce eye. “I don’t suppose you’ve found the green woolen threads you mislaid?”
“Nay. Completely disappeared. I kept an eye out, too.”
“Continue to do so – until Whitsuntide.”
“Whitsuntide, aye.” And with that reply Oswald scurried off toward the village, if a man weighing twenty stone or near so can be said to scurry anyplace.
Sir Thomas cast one last glance to his son and tenants, and I saw the lad turn from his father’s gaze and interest himself in the hedging. There was a message in the brief meeting of their eyes, but I could not discern what it might be. Likely something to do with the incompetent bailiff and his coming departure from Stanton Harcourt.
Sir Thomas turned and stalked after Oswald. Arthur, Uctred, and I followed. Sir Thomas seemed not in a conversational mood, so I held my tongue. I had little to say, anyway. Whether or not the man would challenge his son on his part in the evaporation of the green woolen threads was for Sir Thomas to decide, not me.
And what if the youth denied any involvement? Would Sir Thomas believe him? Likely. I had seen no reason to mistrust Edmund on the few occasions I had met him. Oswald knew more of the missing threads than he would admit. Of this I felt entirely sure. What, then? Demand of the man that he permit a search of his house? I could not insist upon such an inquiry, but Sir Thomas could.
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Oswald cast us a passing glance as he ducked into his house. Was his expression that of a man soon to lose his position, or of a man worried that what he wished to hide might be made known?
I increased my pace and drew even with Sir Thomas. “Have you considered an examination of Oswald’s lodgings?” I asked. “There is some reason we do not have that wisp of wool, and Oswald, for all his protests otherwise, may know what it is.”
“Oswald’s been incompetent, but I’ve not known him to lie to me.”
“Is that because he has not, or because he is proficient at it?”
Sir Thomas was silent, then stopped in the street, studied first me, then the bailiff’s house, and said, “Have you time to assist in a search?”
“Aye. ’Tis not a great house.”
We found nothing. Sir Thomas assigned us each a chamber, and Oswald stood red-faced, arms crossed, whilst we examined his cupboard, his pots and pans, the chest in his sleeping chamber, and sought loose boards and fissures where a bit of fabric might be hidden. Perhaps, I thought, the bailiff had simply discarded it, or set it to blaze upon his hearth fire.
Whatever the reason for the missing wool Oswald now knew we mistrusted his explanation for its disappearance, which was really no explanation at all. Did he expect us to believe some miscreant had learned the fragment was in his possession, crept into the house, and made off with it? Could that have happened? How would such a knave know the bailiff’s chest held the incriminating object?
Edmund and Sir Thomas’s tenants returned to the village for their dinner as we left the bailiff’s house. We joined them, and Sir Thomas invited me to take the meal with him in his modest hall. His chamberlain frowned briefly when told of the additional guests, but quickly made a place for me with Sir Thomas, his wife, Edmund, and a daughter at the high table, setting places for Arthur and Uctred among the grooms and pages.
’Twas a fast day, so no flesh nor fowl was served. The first remove was stewed herrings, the second a pottage of peas and beans, and the third remove was a dish of eels in bruit with manchets. For the void we were served apples and pears with honey and ginger and wafers with hippocras.
From the corner of my eye I observed my companions at the high table. None seemed to have much appetite, although the various removes seemed to me well prepared and savory.
I was seated beside Edmund, and the lad seemed to lack conversation as well as appetite. My efforts to begin discourse met with little success. He answered my questions as shortly as courtesy allowed, and of opinions he offered none.
I thanked Sir Thomas for the meal, bid him and Edmund “Good day,” and with Arthur and Uctred mounted our beasts and set off for Bampton. I turned to look back some way from the village and saw two men afoot following upon the road, but thought no more of them as our beasts soon outdistanced the walkers.
Where Church View Street meets Bridge Street I dismounted and sent my palfrey to the castle with Arthur and Uctred whilst I walked north to Galen House. An hour after I passed through my door there came a knocking upon the doorpost. The two men I had seen leaving Stanton Harcourt stood before me. I recognized them by their garb, for when I saw them leaving Sir Thomas’s manor they were too distant to identify faces.
“You are Master Hugh de Singleton?” one asked.
“Aye. How may I serve you?”
“’Tis we who do you service. We come from Master Wycliffe at Queen’s Hall.”
“Queen’s? He is master at Canterbury Hall.”
“No longer. He is replaced. A monk now serves in his position.”
I knew something of the controversy raging in Canterbury Hall. The hall was founded ten years before as a place where monks and secular scholars might mingle, test, and learn from one another. This blending had not been successful. Monks protested when the master of the hall was a secular, and secular scholars objected when a monk was placed over them.
“What brings you to Bampton?”
“Master Wycliffe has seen your book.”
“RHETORIC?”
“Aye, the book stolen from you.”
“Master John is sure ’tis mine?”
“Aye. It bears the ale-stained pages you spoke of.”
“Did a scholar attempt to sell him the book?”
“Not him. A monk of Canterbury Hall has bought it. He bragged to Master Wycliffe of his bargain. Cost but twelve shillings, the monk boasted, because a few pages were stained.
“Master Wycliffe told him that the book was stolen but a day before, but the monk will not give it up.”
“When does Master John take a room at Queen’s?”
“He has done so this day. We moved his chattels this morning, then set off at his command to tell you of your book.”
All this time I had forgotten hospitality with hearing of the discovery of my stolen book. I remembered my obligation and invited the fellows to take refreshment. Kate had prepared a pease pottage in a new pot, which, I discovered, my father-in-law had purchased in Witney. This we served our guests along with maslin loaves and ale. After dining at Stanton Harcourt I had little appetite. That Caxton had walked all the way to Witney and returned with a heavy pot indicated the speed of his recovery from the frailty of his former self.
“Did the monk who purchased my book speak of the man who sold it to him?”
“Master Wycliffe asked. A poor scholar, the monk said, meanly garbed, his gown tattered and threadbare, his cheeks in need of shaving and his locks unkempt.”
“Had the scholar any other features which might aid in discovering him? What color was his hair?”
One of the men shrugged and grimaced in indication of his ignorance. But the other said: “Master Wycliffe asked the same of the monk, who remembered the lad who sold him RHETORIC had a mole upon his temple, betwixt eye and ear.”
The same man had stolen RHETORIC twice! Once from Robert Caxton and once from me. It must be so. How many young scholars will have a mole upon their temple? Did the fellow know he had stolen and sold the same book twice? Had he turned over the pages and seen the stain?
It was sure also that the supposedly impoverished scholar did not leave Oxford, as he had told Brother Matthew he must, but had returned. Should I do so also, and prowl the lanes and streets of Oxford seeking a scholar with a mole upon his left temple? I dismissed the thought. There must be a way to find the lad if he had returned to the town.
And the miscreant had not entered Galen House alone, of this I was sure. I might discover the thief who had twice stolen RHETORIC but fail to find his felonious companions.
Master Wycliffe’s servants had walked far this day. I would not send them back to Oxford without rest. I went to Father Thomas to borrow two straw pallets for the night, and shortly after my request his clerks arrived at Galen House with them.
Kate had purchased a pint of honey from Gerard, Lord Gilbert’s verderer, so our supper that evening was maslin loaves with honey butter. Such a repast nearly made a fast day pleasurable.
Next morn at dawn Master John’s servants set off for Oxford. I sent them off with maslin loaves and three pence each for their trouble. Kate, her father, and I did not break our fast before mass, as is the custom on Sunday, but men who must walk sixteen miles should not do so on an empty stomach.
Father Simon’s words failed to hold my attention that day – though, I have to confess, even with no pressing matters to distract me, I do sometimes find my mind wandering in Father Simon’s homilies. I caught Will Shillside’s glance as we departed the church porch and thought I discerned reproach. I had not discovered who had slain his father and he likely despaired of my ever doing so. When dark thoughts overcame me in the night I felt the same.
Kate had prepared capon in kyrtyn for our dinner that day. The meal drove all gloom and despondency far from me. At the ninth hour Arthur and others of Lord Gilbert’s grooms had the bu
tts in place beside Bampton Castle moat, and ’til nearly sunset men of Bampton and the Weald loosed arrows in practice and competition. Will Shillside took part as, of course, the king required him to do, and I noted the fellow was waxing adept with a bow. I tried to avoid his gaze, for failing to do so caused self-reproach to start up again.
Lord Gilbert and his guests were present for the competition, so it was his privilege to award the six pence prize money to Bampton’s most skillful archers. He did so with a grin upon his broad, ruddy face, which it pleased me to see. Since Lady Petronilla’s death his smiles have been rare. Perhaps it was less worthy of me to also feel glad Walter Mapes won no penny from Lord Gilbert this day.
As the archery competition drew to a close ominous clouds appeared in the western sky, and folk hastened home from the castle forecourt to avoid the threatening downpour. The village streets filled with scurrying householders intent on reaching shelter before the rain fell. The throng included Walter Mapes – I saw him dash across the bridge over Shill Brook before leaving Bridge Street for the Weald. But he came from the village rather than the castle. This did not arouse my curiosity at the time, so many were hurrying hither and thither. I should have paid closer attention.
I had raised the hue and cry when I discovered hamsoken done to Galen House, so all folk of Bampton and the Weald knew of my loss. I suppose most must likewise have heard how the thieves gained entry. Few, however, knew of the precaution I had taken to secure the shattered window so that no others might use the same aperture to enter my house. But some did.
I had told my father-in-law that he need sleep under the boarded window no longer after I returned home, but could return his pallet to his chamber off our entrance hall. He refused, claiming my presence might not be enough to deter felons bent on mischief.
I countered his argument by pointing out that few homes in Bampton, and none in the Weald, had glass windows. Oiled skins sufficed, and could be sliced silently in the night to allow rogues entry into a sleeping house. Whereas the glass in those of our windows remaining intact would break with a crash, and the boards I’d nailed across our kitchen window could only be removed to the accompanying squeal of drawn nails. Such a racket in either case would surely arouse both him and me. Still, he would have none of it, and obstinately bedded down upon his straw mattress beneath the window as Kate and I, with Bessie and John, climbed the stairs to our chamber.