by Mel Starr
“They are likely all clerks, and tonsured, so will plead benefit of clergy.”
“And the church hangs no man,” Caxton said. “They will go free.”
“The bishop would demand penance of them, which might be severe… but they will not hang for their felonies.”
“But that bailiff, if he is a party to their evil deeds, he would surely hang,” Kate said.
“Aye,” I agreed. “Surely. Unless some mitigating circumstance persuaded a sheriff and judge to leniency.”
“Such as providing king’s evidence against his felonious companions?” Kate smiled.
“Just so. Oswald may be the weak link of this criminal chain. A few solid blows and he might shatter.”
“How will you deliver the blows?” Caxton asked.
“The man must believe that I know all. Or more than I do, at least. If he realizes the weakness of my position his lips will shut tighter than a mussel.
“Monday early, I am off again to Oxford, to Queen’s Hall. The provost will know of Edmund Harcourt’s friends.”
Chapter 18
He did. Early Monday morning Arthur, Uctred, and I set out again for Oxford. I had hope that, depending upon the outcome of a discussion with the Queen’s Hall provost, this might be the last journey I would make to Oxford for many months. Unless news should come to Bampton of my stolen instruments.
We did not pass through Stanton Harcourt, but chose a different road, through Standlake and Cumnor. I did not wish for Oswald or Edmund to see me too often, for fear it would arouse their suspicion that I was close to uncovering the evil they had done. Mayhap those suspicions were already aroused, which might account for the failure of the trap I had laid. If they had done evil, that is. If I was not misguidedly seeking to implicate innocent men with the terrible deeds of others.
Eager to learn what I could from the master of Queen’s Hall, like a hound on the scent I felt reluctant to interrupt the pursuit of felons. But my rumbling stomach would not be silenced until we three had consumed a roasted capon, maslin loaves, and ale at an inn near to Queen’s Hall.
The provost of Queen’s Hall was Henry Whitfield. Likely I would have had difficulty being admitted to his presence, but John Wycliffe was now resident and tutor there while he studied for the degree of bachelor of theology. This hall furnished a logical place for Wycliffe to teach and study, as it had been founded thirty years earlier by Queen Philippa’s chaplain – whence the school’s name – as a hall for lads from Cumberland and Yorkshire. Wycliffe came to Oxford from Yorkshire. I sought Master John first, and asked of him an introduction to the provost. This he was pleased to provide, as I had in years past discovered who had stolen his books and seen them restored to him.
“No man has tried to sell me any of the set books stolen from your father-in-law,” Wycliffe said when he saw me approach. “As I am no longer master at Canterbury Hall, men with books to sell no longer seek me out. As for RHETORIC, the monk who purchased it will not yield it without a suit. I have enquired.”
“’Tis not my stolen book brings me to you. I need to have audience with the provost of Queen’s Hall.”
Master John raised his eyebrows at this request. I hurried to explain.
“You will remember when I was in Oxford several weeks past, I spoke of felonies and murders in the shire to the west of Oxford?”
“I do. Have you discovered the men?”
“I think I may have done, though I am not certain. I suspect a youth hailing from a village ’twixt here and Bampton may be involved.”
“Suspect?”
“Aye. I cannot prove it. Not yet.”
“And Henry Whitfield may help find the proof?” Wycliffe said incredulously. “How could a scholar who closets himself away be useful to you?”
“The youth in question was a scholar at Queen’s Hall. A younger son. His older brother has been slain, so he will now inherit his father’s estate.”
“And the younger need spend no more dreary hours studying to provide for himself as a cleric,” Wycliffe completed the thought.
“Aye. I am wondering who the lad’s friends were while he was at Queen’s Hall.”
“Well, you are right to try Master Henry. Come, we will seek him.”
As Master John had intimated, we found Henry Whitfield bent over a large tome, in a chamber so small it gave hardly enough room for desk, bench, bed, and scholar. And Whitfield is not a large man. He is scrawny enough that I conjecture the fellow is often so absorbed with a book that he forgets his dinner. I like books, and fancy myself a scholar. But I am not so enamored of study that I’d overlook suppertime passing. Perhaps that is why I am a bailiff and surgeon, and not a doctor of theology. And, of course, I have Kate. Even with my nose in a book I’d catch the savory aroma of her cooking spreading through the house. It would call to me.
“Edmund Harcourt? Aye. Amiable lad. Not very sensible. No scholar, either,” Whitfield said when I asked of the youth. “His friends? Had Edmund many? Yes. Likeable fellow. He often took friends to his father’s manor, he being from close by and most others of Queen’s Hall from the north. And his closest friends? Hmmm. Roger Chirk, I’d say. And John Bast. And Ivo Bellers. Those three I’d often see with Edmund. Poor lads, all three. Aye, he was thickest with them.”
I listened intently, committing the names to memory and enquiring: “Are the three you named yet enrolled in Queen’s Hall, or have they, like Edmund, withdrawn?”
“Odd you should ask that. Since Edmund left the hall the other three have dropped off in their studies, often absent from lectures and disputations. They seem to have lost their appetite for things of the mind, although in truth none of the four were ever great scholars.”
“Does one of the three have a mole upon his left temple, betwixt eye and ear?”
“Oh, aye. That would be John.”
Goliards! I had heard of such wayward youths being not uncommon in the shire about Oxford. But such evil conduct was thought to be long past, scholars today being more tractable lads, less interested in looting the nearby villages and slaying those who would oppose their rapacious ways. Still, study can be tedious, and is not likely to produce much wealth, at least not in the near future. Those who want great reward for little effort could well be seduced into less noble occupations.
I now possessed names with which to confront Oswald and Edmund and was eager to do so. ’Twas past the ninth hour when my interview with Henry Whitfield ended. I would have pressed on that afternoon to Stanton Harcourt but such a decision would have been a cruel use of our beasts. So, as many times – too many times – in the past several weeks we halted before the gate to Eynsham Abbey requesting lodging and a meal.
We arrived as the monks were at their simple supper. We shared in the pottage and loaves brought to us in the guest chamber, and I was licking my chops when the hosteller returned with a request that I call upon Abbot Gerleys. I thought perhaps his sore had festered. Not so.
“Master Hugh,” he greeted me when I entered his chamber. “I give you good day… or good evening, as the day is well gone. I shall be almost sorry when these felonies vexing us so are ended, for you will then have no reason to pass the abbey. I will miss our conversations. But look, there has been another house plundered. In Northmoor. The village is not an abbey demesne. Sir Ralph Wolford is lord of the manor. His cousin is here, Brother Andrew, and recently had news of the felony. The reeve’s house was plundered of a Sunday, two weeks past.”
“Whilst all Christian men were at mass,” I said.
“Aye – well, a man who will break God’s law to steal will defy His other commands also.”
“Does Sir Ralph’s bailiff have men he suspects?” I asked.
“That I cannot say. If the traveler who brought the news had such inklings, he did not share them with Brother Andrew.”
“Then he’s maybe as
much in the dark as I am.”
“Have you no suspects even now?”
“Suspects, aye. Proof of guilt? That I lack. But I am shaping a scheme to provide the evidence I need. God willing the demands I make on your hospitality will thin out soon.”
“You are on the point of sending the villains to a scaffold?”
“Perhaps not,” I said.
“No? If the felons are seized and their guilt is proven, why will they not hang?”
But the abbot answered his own question. “Ah, they have sometimes been seen wearing scholars’ gowns. They are clerks.”
“Mayhap. If my design succeeds I may know by this time on the morrow who is to be charged with the murders and villainies which have vexed us.”
My design did not succeed. It did not fail of its own flaws, but because the schemes of others succeeded first.
Arthur, Uctred, and I mounted our palfreys early next morn and made for Stanton Harcourt, armed with the names of four young scholars who, I felt sure, were responsible for the mayhem in the shire. Should we present these names to Oswald and press him concerning the disappearance of the green woolen wisp, I thought we stood a reasonable chance of seeing the bailiff’s resolve fail him. Putting the image of a noose before him would likely also loosen his tongue.
I dismounted before Sir Thomas’s manor house, it being a courtesy when visiting a man’s estate to greet him before attending to other matters. And Sir Thomas would surely have called my business that day his affair as much as my own.
He greeted me with a friendly “Good morrow,” and when I told him ’twas Oswald I intended to visit he rolled his eyes and said, “’Tis barely the third hour. You will likely find the indolent fellow yet abed.”
We did.
No amount of pounding on the bailiff’s rattling door or shouting of his name brought the man to his threshold. It struck me that Oswald must be an uncommonly sound sleeper, with the sun filling his chamber through the oiled parchment of his window even before we started pounding on his door.
Arthur and Uctred looked as perplexed as I that the din had not brought the bailiff from his bed, if that was where he was. We three exchanged baffled glances. After several minutes of bruising my fist and abusing my voice proved ineffective at rousing Oswald I began to fear another reason for his failure to appear.
“You s’pose ’e’s about manor business somewhere?” Uctred said.
“Not likely,” Arthur replied, “if ’e’s as lazy as Sir Thomas do say.”
“Mayhap ’e’s ’ad too much ale or wine last night,” Uctred offered, “an’ is sleepin’ off an aching ’ead.”
Possible. But though too much wine of an evening may cause deep sleep, it would have to render a man deaf to make him oblivious to the row we were making.
“Come,” I said. “We will seek Sir Thomas and learn if Oswald may be about manor business of which Sir Thomas is unaware.”
“Not likely,” Sir Thomas said when I asked if the bailiff would be found at his duties. “Most of what’s needful this time of year is reeve’s business. Oswald will not find work for himself if it can be avoided. And since he knows that his days in my employ are numbered he does even less than before.”
“No rapping upon his door or shouting of his name will bring him forth,” I explained.
Sir Thomas frowned, thought upon my words for a moment, then said, “Come,” and walked briskly across the village green, past the well, to the bailiff’s house.
Perhaps he did not believe me. He beat upon the door, calling Oswald’s name, with the same success as I had. None.
There was an iron latch to secure the door, but no lock. To further secure the door Oswald no doubt had a bar to drop when night came. I asked Sir Thomas if this was so.
“Aye. And another closes the door to the toft.”
With that Sir Thomas quickly turned and walked around the house. We three followed. Sir Thomas lifted the latch of the rear door and when it failed to open put his shoulder to it. To no effect.
“Bah… both doors barred. Then he’s not away. No man can bar both doors of his house and then leave it. He must be within.” With that assertion Sir Thomas resumed pounding and shouting. A few folk of the village, curious about the racket, peered from their doorways to see what caused the tumult.
“He is dead,” I said.
Sir Thomas regarded me with an open mouth, startled, as if I had announced that the king and Prince Edward would call this day at the ninth hour.
“Dead?” Sir Thomas said. “He was well enough yesterday. Why do you believe him dead?”
“He is either dead or so ill that he cannot raise himself from his bed. And if you saw him hale yesterday I believe it unlikely any malady would strike him down so quickly.”
“Plague could do so,” Arthur said.
“Aye,” I answered, “it could, but the pestilence has vanished from the shire two years now. Plague does not take lone victims.”
“’Less he be the first,” Uctred muttered, and crossed himself.
“If he is ill he must be attended,” Sir Thomas said. “Soon I will no longer employ him, but while they work for me I will not see my men suffer with no recourse to help. Wait here. I’ll return shortly.”
Sir Thomas hastened off toward his manor house and disappeared behind the dwelling. He soon reappeared, an axe in his hand.
“Stand aside,” the knight said. Drawing back the axe he laid a vigorous blow on the plank just below the iron latch. The door burst open, banging loudly against the inner wall and springing back.
Sir Thomas pushed past the shattered door, propping the axe against it to fix it in place, and shouted the bailiff’s name. There was no reply. I did not expect one.
The bailiff’s house was modest. No glass windows here. It contained two rooms, with a loft above one end of the larger room, where children might sleep had Oswald a wife to bear him any. This larger room was also provided with a fireplace. The ruined door opened to this larger room and in it I saw a table, two benches, and a crude cupboard. But neither bed nor pallet, and no bailiff.
Sir Thomas glanced briefly about, then stalked through the room to an opening which led to another, smaller, chamber. Here we found Oswald.
He lay abed, a blanket bulging over his rotund form, his unseeing eyes staring at the rafters above him. I held my hand above his open mouth and felt no breath. About his mouth I saw traces of vomit which he had spewed up as he died. His body was cold and stiff with rigor mortis.
Sir Thomas crossed himself, then spoke. “Poor fellow. Died in his sleep.”
“I think not,” I replied.
“Oh? Why so?”
“A man asleep will have his eyes closed, and they will likely remain so if death overtakes him then.”
“Hmmm. What if some pain awakens him before death comes?”
“His eyes would then open,” I said. “But would his bedclothes not be put in disarray as he felt death approach?”
“I take your point,” Sir Thomas said. “What man, even as indolent as Oswald, will lay abed and gaze calmly at the underside of his thatching as death comes?
“But if he did not die in his sleep,” Sir Thomas continued, “what then? Did some man slay him? That seems unlikely. His doors were barred. How could a felon strike him down and then escape the place?”
I shook my head. “This death is odd. The man was not old and frail. He was vigorous yesterday, you said. It is possible some unforeseen malady came suddenly upon him, I suppose.”
“But you think not,” Sir Thomas said.
“Bailiffs are employed to think the worst,” I replied. “Our work causes us to become skeptical of easy answers to perplexing situations.”
“Are not the simple answers sometimes correct?”
“They are. And when ’tis so, I am pleased.”
�
�You are a surgeon. If you examine the corpse closely might you discover the reason for this death?”
“I might.”
“Then do so.”
Some men sleep in kirtle and braes; others prefer to be unclothed under their blanket. Oswald was of the latter persuasion, which made examination of the corpse somewhat easier. Removing the blanket exposed his pallid rotundity to view. ’Twas not a pleasing sight.
I did not expect to find a wound. Wounds bleed, and no blood stained either blanket or pallet. Nevertheless I inspected the corpse for a puncture, even the navel, ears, and anus. I had been tricked once in the past by a murderer who slew his victim by pushing a bodkin into the man’s brain through an ear whilst he slept. I would not be deceived again in such manner.
I asked Arthur to help me roll Oswald onto his belly, and Sir Thomas watched intently as I concluded the examination and then turned the corpse again to its back.
“What have you found?” he asked.
“Nothing. He was not stabbed anywhere by any blade.”
“There are other ways to slay a man.”
“Aye. A hempen rope or strong hands about a man’s neck will strangle him.”
“Is there any way to know?” Sir Thomas said.
“There would be a bruise about the victim’s neck,” I replied.
Sir Thomas moved close to Oswald’s head to examine the fleshy neck. The light in this chamber was not good, but good enough that if there had been red and purple impressions upon the neck they would be visible. There were none.
“A man being strangled will likely thrash about as he attempts to escape death,” I said. “There is nothing amiss in this chamber. But murderers may, I suppose, return things to order which are awry.”
“But you think not,” Sir Thomas said.
“Aye. He was not strangled.”
When Arthur and I had turned the corpse, Oswald’s pillow had fallen from his bed to the rushes of the floor. Arthur had retrieved it, and held it before him as he watched me complete the inspection of the corpse.
“Ho,” he exclaimed. “What is here?”