by Mel Starr
“’At’s right.”
“And you said this happened the night of St George’s Day?”
“Aye. We was abed when Thomas ’eard the ruckus.”
“Are you sure this did not happen the night before St George’s Day as well?”
“Well, it did so then, aye. ’Twas two nights the hens was vexed. ’E was found dead after second time… day after St George’s Day. ’Ow’d you know that? Thomas come back first time. Said as how he’d run off a fox. ’At’s why he thought the beast come back next night.”
I was about to tell Maud there was no fox, at least not the first time her hens were troubled, but chose to hold my tongue. Maud was no adversary in the business, but her wagging tongue might reach a man who was.
I thanked Maud for her time and left her scratching her head before her hut. She was puzzled that I knew that Thomas had visited his toft twice, when she had not told me of the first event. She was not stupid. She would soon deduce that some other person knew of her disturbed hens, and this person had told me of it. She would want to know who this might be, assuming the man, for a man it would surely be upon the streets late at night, would know who had slain her husband. Indeed, the fellow might be the culprit. I expected her to call at Galen House before the day was done.
Kate believes that a man must have no secrets from his wife. Whether the opposite is true I know not. When I returned to Galen House she placed her needle and fabric upon our table and asked of Maud and of my visit.
I had told Kate little of John Kellet, so drew a bench aside her chair and related my conversation with the man. I told her of his nocturnal visit to atte Bridge’s toft the night before St George’s Day, and his claim to have seen the corpse suspended at Cow-Leys Corner before dawn as he departed Bampton.
“You believe he spoke true?” Kate asked when I had concluded the tale.
“Aye,” I replied reluctantly.
“Someone heard him, then,” she said. “Someone who plotted against atte Bridge heard, or learned of, John Kellet’s late visit and used the same deception to draw him from his house.”
“So it seems.”
“Was it then Arnulf Mannyng who slew Thomas? He lives in the Weald, but a few doors from Maud. He might have heard the hens from his house, and thought to see were his own fowls endangered. When he saw how readily atte Bridge might be drawn from his house, perhaps he decided to use the same deceit to get him into the dark of night.”
Kate’s solution was plausible, but hardly enough to accuse a man. If Arnulf was the felon I sought, I must find some evidence of it, for I had none.
“Perhaps,” I replied, “some other man Thomas atte Bridge had harmed, Peter Carpenter, mayhap, lay in wait in the dark near Thomas’s hut, seeking some way to draw him forth. While he hid, seeking vengeance, John Kellet appeared, rattling a stick upon the hen coop. When such a man saw how easily Thomas could be persuaded to leave his house, he worked the same ruse next night.”
Kate pursed her lips, perhaps unhappy that I had so swiftly dispensed with her conclusion. But Kate is not one to hold a grudge.
“You think whoso bothered the hens the second night knew of John Kellet doing so the first night, and decided to try the same trick?”
“Aye, upon that we agree. But who it was I cannot guess.”
“I wonder if there might be some way to draw the man out… or the men, as it seems two have done the murder?”
“Perhaps. I will think on it.”
“We will think on it,” Kate smiled, and returned to stitching a new cotehardie. The one she now wore would not serve by autumn, and Kate is a woman who plans ahead.
Edmund Smith, like most who labor at his trade, is a strapping fellow, broad-shouldered and with forearms as large around as the axles under Lady Petronilla’s cart. He is no friend. I caught him out a year past in dalliance with the baker’s wife, when he was caught up in the plot between Kellet and the two atte Bridge brothers. I had stopped the blackmail against Edmund, but also ended his dissolute behavior with the baker’s wife. For this he did not thank me.
Edmund’s forge is upon Bridge Street, near to the marketplace. After a dinner of pease pottage improved by the remains of yesterday’s capon, I set out to visit the smith. I knew of no recent conflict between Thomas atte Bridge and Edmund, but the smith seemed to me a man capable of nursing a grudge. He also seemed an impetuous sort. Would he nurse his wrath for a year before striking down a foe?
I found the forge cold. Edmund was not at his work this day. I set my feet once again to the Weald and found the smith at Emma’s hut, repairing the door. This door swung on hinges Edmund had made, then given to Henry atte Bridge to purchase his silence in the matter of the baker’s wife. Edmund looked over his shoulder as I approached, then bent again to his task.
“I am told congratulations are due,” I began.
“Why must you be told of it?” he replied sharply.
“I have been away a fortnight on Lord Gilbert’s business. Do you make your home here now?”
The smith had lived alone in a crude shed behind his forge.
“Aye. Can dwell where I like… I’m a free tenant, as you well know.”
“Surely, so long as the vicars of the Church of St Beornwald agree. Emma is tenant of the Bishop of Exeter, and whoso lives with her comes under their authority as his agents.”
“Emma needed a man about the place. Couldn’t pay ’er rent. Vicars don’t care does she wed or not, so long as the bishop gets ’is coin.”
“Hmmm. And now Maud is facing like misfortune.”
“We all got troubles. Maud’ll have to do as best she can. No concern of mine.”
“Did Thomas atte Bridge’s death please you?”
Edmund looked away from his work and studied my face. “I ’eard the talk, how some think ’e din’t hang hisself. No matter to me. Did ’e take ’is own life or did another do away with ’im, the town is well rid of ’im.”
I had been standing close enough to the smith that his odor was overwhelming. I doubt the fellow has bathed since I came to Bampton two years past. Whenever I was in his presence the stink was the same. Emma must surely have faced ruin to accept the fellow. I backed away a step to relieve my offended nostrils.
“What does Emma think of such gossip? I saw her in dispute with Maud some weeks past. Does Emma have opinion?”
“Ask ’er,” Edmund shrugged, and returned to his work.
“I will. Where may she be found?”
“In the toft.”
I found Emma and two of her children drawing weeds from a patch of cabbages and onions. She arose from her knees at my approach and brushed a wisp of graying hair back from her brow with the back of her wrist. When her children also looked up from their work she barked at them to continue. This they did with alacrity, glancing to me from the corner of an eye while they toiled.
“You have now a husband to lighten your labors,” I began.
The woman made no reply, as if my assertion was so foolish that no response was required. The stray locks once more dropped across her forehead and she again brushed them back under her hood, then stood with hands on hips and silently awaited what more I might say. A visit from a great lord’s bailiff often draws such a response from folk. Her stance, I think, was due to apprehension, and apprehension due to ignorance. She did not know why I had appeared in her toft, nor what I was about.
“You had a quarrel with Maud some time past, here in the toft,” I said.
“Hot of temper is Maud,” Emma replied.
My experience of the two women was that Emma better fit such a description, but I saw no reason to voice the opinion. “What disturbed her?” I asked.
“Not a matter for Lord Gilbert’s bailiff… we of the Weald sort our troubles with the vicars.”
“And has the quarrel been settled? The vicars have rendered judgment on the issue?”
“Uh, not yet.”
“Have they been asked?”
“The mat
ter is resolved. No need to trouble ’em.”
“And what was the result?”
“Not your bailiwick,” she muttered.
“Maud’s husband died upon Lord Gilbert’s lands. There is some question as to the manner of his death. So when I see his widow in conflict with another, I make it my business. What was your dispute with Maud about?”
“Me an’ Edmund had naught to do with it.”
I thought this a strange response. “I made no such accusation,” I replied. “Why do you fear I might do so?”
“Folk be talkin’. Sayin’ you don’t think Thomas did away with hisself.”
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.