by Mel Starr
“What? I cannot. A suicide…”
“Thomas atte Bridge did not take his own life, as you well know.”
The vicar was silent for a moment. “How would I know this?” he finally demanded.
“Because you heard Peter Carpenter confess to the felony.”
“But… but…” he stammered, “how can you know this? Did the carpenter confess to you?”
“Aye, in a manner. He has fled the town.”
“Fled?”
“Gone in the night. He knew yesterday of my suspicion, and in the night has stolen away. You knew Thomas was no suicide, yet you allowed him to remain in unhallowed ground.”
The priest was silent for a moment. “How could I do otherwise?” he said softly. “To say I knew murder was done would be to betray Peter’s confession. No matter what course I took, I was in the wrong. And you say you thought him guilty of murder yesterday, but permitted him to escape in the night?”
“I had suspicion only. His flight has provided the proof.”
“Will you seek him and carry him to the sheriff at Oxford?”
“Did you set a penance for him?”
“Aye, as for all who sin.”
“Was this penance harsh?”
“It was, and is, and will remain so.”
“He has not yet fulfilled it?”
“Nay, nor will he for many years.”
“Or perhaps never, should I seek and find him and deliver him to Sir Roger.”
“Blessed are the merciful,” the priest said, “for they shall obtain mercy. He was much provoked.”
“Is it for me to grant mercy, or the King’s Eyre?”
“Mercy is a duty thrust upon us all,” Father Simon replied, “else we would deserve none from the Lord Christ.”
“Aye, but for murder?”
“You must answer as you will. You are Lord Gilbert’s bailiff, not me.”
“Regarding Thomas atte Bridge,” I changed the subject. “Send servants and clerks to Cow-Leys Corner and empty the grave. Bring atte Bridge to the churchyard and bury the man as is his due. Tell Maud of this so she may attend. The man was a knave but does not deserve to rest beneath the vines and bracken at Cow-Leys Corner.”
I had no authority over the vicars of St Beornwald’s Church, but Father Simon did as I required of him. After dinner I stood with Kate on the castle parapet aside the gatehouse and watched five black-garbed men, two with spades and two with a litter between them, as they walked toward Cow-Leys Corner. An hour later they returned, the litter sagging with some lumpen object covered with a black shroud.
Shortly after the procession disappeared across Shill Brook I heard the bell of St Beornwald’s Church toll twice. ’Twas many weeks too late for a passing bell, but some formalities must be observed.
“Will you follow the corpse?” Kate asked.
“I did not mourn Thomas atte Bridge dead. I should be false to myself and to all men did I set foot in the churchyard this day.”
“Do you mourn Peter Carpenter?”
“Aye. I mourn the living, but not the dead.”
“You think he will travel far?”
“Nay. He had a heavy load upon his cart and but one horse to pull it. His wife must carry Jane’s babe, and his own small children will not walk far, I think, before they tire. Soon they must seek another nurse for the babe, else it will perish.”
“So you will not need to travel far to find him?”
“If I seek him he should be easily found. The cart will have left tracks upon the road. They could not travel many miles before dawn, the nights being short. As they passed through a village they would be observed, come the day.”
“Then you have but to find the direction they traveled and soon you will catch them up.”
“Aye.”
“Will you do so?”
I could not reply for a moment. I was at war with myself and sure to lose.
“Nay,” I finally replied.
Kate slipped her arm through mine. “What of justice?” she asked.
“What of mercy? God is just, and merciful, and though His justice is sometimes tardy, it is more sure than any man’s. The prophet wrote that men are ‘to do justly, and to love mercy,’ but he offered no advice when the two seem in conflict.”
“What will Lord Gilbert think?”
“He will return from Pembroke in a month, before Lammastide. He will not be pleased for the town to lose a good carpenter, and another tenant will not be readily found. If he is unhappy with the resolution of this business he may replace me.”
Kate’s face bent to a worried frown. “What then?”
“We will have a fine new house, and I will eke out a living repairing men’s bodies when they are incautious.”
Galen House was near complete when Lord Gilbert, Lady Petronilla, Master Richard, and the retinue of valets and grooms accompanying them arrived four days before Lammastide.
Lord Gilbert was much angered to learn of Sir Simon’s destruction of Galen House, and pleased to learn of its reconstruction. He listened intently while I told him of Peter Carpenter’s vengeance against Thomas atte Bridge and my decision to consider the matter closed.
Lord Gilbert was silent for a moment when I had concluded the tale. His lips were drawn tight across his teeth and a frown darkened his features. I feared for my position.
“Peter was a good man,” he finally said. “Lady Petronilla is with child. If the babe is a lass and some rogue deals with her the way atte Bridge did with the carpenter’s maid, I’ll see him hounded to his grave.”
Nobles and commons feel much the same about daughters.
“Kate is also to give birth,” I announced.
“What? I give you joy, Master Hugh! When?”
“All Saint’s Day, or thereabouts.”
“The children shall grow to be playmates,” he laughed. “Lady Petronilla will be delivered near the same time.”
I left Lord Gilbert chuckling in the solar, found Kate, and together we walked to Church View Street where the tiler and his assistant were completing the roof of the new Galen House. While we observed the tilers at work Father Simon appeared from Church Street, saw us, and approached. I greeted the priest and enquired of his day.
“I am well,” he answered, “and have this day heard tidings you will wish to hear. John Kellet is to return to St Andrew’s Chapel,” he said rapidly.
I made no reply, but stood in the street with my jaw sagging in dismay at this announcement. The vicar saw my regret and explained: “The prior at St Nicholas’s Priory wished to be rid of him. He was near to bankrupting the place. ’Tis not a wealthy house. Kellet could not be dissuaded from seeking the poor and bringing them for succor to the priory. The almoner’s purse is gone, due to Kellet’s zeal. The prior appealed to the bishop, and as no curate has yet been found for St Andrew’s Chapel, it was decided to return him.”
I was prepared to believe John Kellet as Father Simon insisted, a changed man. But I was not prepared to welcome the man to my bailiwick. I spoke a silent prayer as Kate entwined her arm in mine that Kellet was truly transformed, and neither he nor any other would cause me vexation in the future.
The Lord Christ saw fit to honor this request, temporarily. All was peaceful until a fortnight past Martinmas of 1367, when a strange coin was discovered in a strange place.
Afterword
The Bampton Archive has published a booklet, The Story Behind the Naming of Bampton. On page 33, under the heading “Cowleaze Corner”, is the following information:
The name comes from the “Cow-Leys” or pastures… But Cowleaze Corner is better known for the ghost stories associated with the location. Crossroads were traditional places where suicides were buried, being forbidden burial in consecrated ground. [A nineteenth-century author] wrote in 1848 that “all memory of the unhallowed corpses which have there mouldered, would long since have perished, if it were not for the troubled spirits… there are persons still living, who assert that the
y have seen supernatural appearances in the neighbourhood of Cow-Leas Corner.”
An extract from the fifth chronicle of
Hugh de Singleton, surgeon
Chapter 1
I would have preferred to lie abed a while longer. The October morn was cool, my bed warm, but Bessie stirred in her cradle and Kate was already up and bringing the coals to life upon our hearth. I arose, clothed myself hurriedly, and bent to lift my daughter from her cradle. She smiled up at me from the woollen layers into which Kate had tucked her the night before. Elizabeth was now nearly a year old, and beginning to sleep through the night, much to Kate’s joy, and my own. Children are a blessing from God, but not when they awaken before dawn and demand to be fed.
I had placed the babe upon my shoulder and turned to the stairs when from below I heard an unwelcome pounding upon the door of Galen House. When some man wishes my attention so soon after the morning Angelus Bell has rung it can be to no good purpose. A window was near, so rather than hasten down the stairs I opened it to see who was at my door so early in the morn.
My visitor heard the window open above him and when I peered down I looked into the gaunt, upraised face of John Kellet, curate at St Andrew’s Chapel.
“Master Hugh,” he shouted, “you must come at once. There is a man wounded and near dead at St Andrew’s Chapel. Bring your instruments and make haste.”
I did so. Kate had heard Kellet’s appeal and awaited me at the foot of the stairs. She took Bessie from me, and over her shoulder I saw my breakfast awaiting upon our table: a loaf and ale. It must wait. I filled a satchel with instruments and herbs from my chest, unbarred the door, and stepped into the foggy dawn.
“Quickly, Master Hugh,” the skeletal priest urged, and set off down Church View Street at a trot, his bare, bony feet raising puffs of dust from the dry dirt of the street. I flung my bag over a shoulder and followed. I had questions about this abrupt summons, but Kellet was already too far ahead to allow conversation. I loped after the priest, the satchel bouncing against my back.
Kellet led me to the High Street, thence up Bushey Row to the path to St Andrew’s Chapel. ’Tis little more than a quarter of a mile from Bampton to the chapel, and soon the ancient structure appeared through the fog. Kellet plunged through the decrepit lych gate and led me to the porch. There, upon the flags, I saw a man. The priest had placed the fellow upon a pallet so he did not rest upon the hard stones. I bent over the silent form and thought Kellet’s trouble unnecessary, for the man before me seemed insensible, if not already dead.
“Found him here at dawn, when I rose to ring the Angelus Bell. I heard a moan, so opened the door an’ found the fellow under the porch roof, just where he now lies. Put a pallet ’neath him an’ sought you. I could see he was badly off, even in so little light as in the porch.”
The curate lived in the chapel tower, in a bare room but four paces on a side. He need not go far from his bed to ring the bell of St Andrew’s Chapel, for the bell rope fell through a hole in the center of his chamber to the base of the tower at ground level.
The porch lay in shadow, so the nature of the man’s wounds was obscure. I asked Kellet to take one end of the pallet, and I grasped the other. Together we lifted the unconscious stranger to the churchyard, where the rising sun was visible through the thinning fog and his wounds and injuries became apparent.
The man had been beaten senseless. His nose was broken and askew, his scalp lacerated just above an ear, where a blow had found his skull, his lips were purple and swollen, and it seemed sure his jaw was broken and teeth were knocked loose.
“You heard him moan when you rose to ring the Angelus Bell?”
“Aye,” Kellet replied.
“Did he say anything when you found him?”
“Nay. He was as you see him now.”
Whoever this man was, he had used the last of his strength to reach sanctuary, as I think he assumed the ancient chapel to be. I looked closely at the face, but could not recognize him as any man I knew. I asked the priest if he knew the fellow.
“Nay. ’Course, he’s so abused he might be anyone. In his state his own mother’d not know him, I think.”
I silently agreed with the priest, then bent to examine the man’s injuries more closely, in case there was anything I might do to save his life and speed healing of his wounds.
I am Hugh de Singleton, surgeon, trained at the University of Paris, and also bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot at his lands in Bampton. Many would find the work I must do as surgeon disagreeable, repairing men’s bodies when they have done themselves harm, but I find my duties as bailiff the more irksome of the two. Now I took my dagger and cut away the wounded man’s cotehardie and kirtle, the better to inspect his hurts. As I did so I considered that the supine form presented me with two tasks: I must treat his injuries, and also discover who had dealt with him so.
The man’s body presented as many wounds as his head. So many bruises covered his ribs that they might have been one great contusion. I tested one purple blemish and felt the ends of a broken rib move beneath my fingertips.
My examination roused the unconscious fellow. I saw his eyelids flicker, then open. Perhaps he saw my face above him, perhaps not. His eyes seemed not to focus, but drifted about, hesitating only briefly when they turned to me. Did he take me for a friend? Who can know? He surely did not think me one of his assailants, else he would not have spoken as he did.
With pain and effort he opened his swollen lips and said, so faintly I had to ask John Kellet if he heard the same words, “They didn’t get me coin.”
I had learned two things: whoso attacked the fellow had sought a coin, or perhaps many coins, and more than one had done this evil. I would learn no more from him, for as I began to inspect a bloody laceration between two ribs his chest heaved and was then still.
“Dead?” Kellet asked after a moment.
“Aye. You must think back on finding the fellow. Is there anything you can remember of this morn which might tell who he is and who has done this?”
“I will think on it while I ring the passing bell. I have already offered extreme unction, before I sought you. I could see how ill-used he was, even in the dark of the porch, and feared he might not live ’til I returned.”
“While you do so I will fetch the coroner. Hubert Shillside must convene a jury here before we may do any other thing.”
I heard Kellet ring the bell of St Andrew’s Chapel as I left the churchyard and its tumbled-down wall. I noted several places where someone – Kellet, I presume – had replaced fallen stones so as to halt the decay. My eyes traveled to a section of the wall where, three years past, I had hidden to escape Thomas atte Bridge and the priest, who intended my death. Kellet, for this felony and others, was sent on pilgrimage to Compostela. He returned a transformed man, and was assigned to assist the almoner at the Priory of St Nicholas, in Exeter. There he was so assiduous at seeking the poor that he came near to impoverishing the priory, it not being a wealthy house, and the prior beseeched the bishop to be rid of him. As no curate had been found for St Andrew’s Chapel, Kellet was reassigned to the place. He left it three years past a corpulent hedonist, but returned a year ago an emaciated pauper, who wore no shoes at any season and gave to the poor nearly all of the meager living he was awarded as curate. I have never seen a man so reformed, and indeed, when first I learned of the change, doubted it was truly so. May the Lord Christ forgive me for mistrusting the alteration He can work in a repentant man’s life. All saints were once sinners, and any sinner may become a saint.
Hubert Shillside was no more pleased than I had been to open his door so early, but accepted his duty as coroner when I told him of the death at St Andrew’s Chapel. He set out to assemble a jury while I walked to Church View Street and Galen House.
I told Kate of events at the chapel, hurriedly gobbled the loaf she had set out for me, swallowed a cup of ale, then retraced my steps to the chapel. I arrived with Shillside and his coroner’s jury. Th
e haberdasher asked of the priest what he knew of the corpse, and was told what I already heard. Kellet could think of nothing more to explain the dead man’s condition.
All who viewed the corpse agreed that the death was murder, not misadventure, and so Shillside did readily declare. No deodand was to be found, so the coroner, no doubt hungry to break his fast, absolved himself and his jurymen of further responsibility in the matter and turned the death over to me.
As the coroner’s jury departed the place I told Kellet to once again take in hand an end of the pallet. Together we carried the corpse through the porch, into the chapel, and deposited it on the flags before the altar.
“I’ll say a mass, have a grave dug, and bury the man this day,” the priest said.
I wished to know where this stranger had been attacked, to see if there might be at the place some evidence of his assailants. It could not have been close to the chapel, for he would have cried out when attacked, and Kellet would have heard him. But the dead man had been so badly injured that he would not have crawled far. I searched the grass of the churchyard for blood, and found traces which led to the lych gate. The curate saw, and followed. Beyond the gate was the path, dry from absence of rain for the past fortnight. In the dust it was easy to follow the track of a crawling man back to the east, for the sun was now well up over the fields and meadow which bordered the narrow road. Nearly two hundred paces to the east the path entered a wood, and a few paces beyond that the marks of a crawling man disappeared into the verge.
I studied the place where the man had crawled from the forest. Why did he struggle to leave the place and crawl to St Andrew’s Chapel? In his battered condition this required much effort. Was he familiar with Bampton so that he knew help might be found could he reach the chapel?
John Kellet had followed from the lych gate and with me studied the path where marks in the dust told of the man’s entry upon the road.
“Look there,” the priest said, and pointed a few paces beyond. Between road and forest was a swathe of dry grass and across this patch of vegetation two parallel tracks of bent-down foliage showed where a cart or similar wheeled conveyance had turned from the road and entered a narrow opening which led into the forest. Marks of the cart wheels, a horse’s hooves, and the footprints of men were visible in the dust of the path where the vehicle entered the wood, but although we searched for many paces in both directions from the place, neither Kellet nor I could find any mark where a cart might have left the wood and regained the road. Whatever had entered the forest was yet there.