by Mel Starr
I digress. I awoke at dawn to thumping on my chamber door. I blinked sleep from my eyes, crawled from my bed, and stumbled to the door. I opened it as Wilfred the porter was about to rap on it again.
“It’s Alan…the beadle. He’s found.”
Alan had left his home to seek those who would violate curfew two days earlier. He never returned. His young wife came to me in alarm the morning of the next day. I sent John Holcutt, the reeve, to gather a party of searchers, but they found no trace of the man. John was not pleased to lose a day of work from six men. Plowing of fallow fields was not yet finished. Before I retired on Wednesday evening, John sought me out and begged not to resume the search the next day. I agreed. If Alan could not be found with the entire town aware of his absence, another day of poking into haymows and barns seemed likely also to be fruitless. It was not necessary.
“Has he come home?” I asked.
“Nay. An’ not likely to, but on a hurdle.”
“He’s dead?”
“Aye.”
“Where was he found?”
“Aside the way near to St Andrew’s Chapel.”
It was no wonder the searchers had not found him. St Andrew’s Chapel was near half a mile to the east. What, I wondered, drew him away from the town on his duties?
“Hubert Shillside has been told. He would have you accompany him to the place.”
“Send word I will see him straight away.”
I suppose I was suspicious already that this death was not natural. I believe it to be a character flaw if a man be too mistrustful. But there are occasions in my professions – surgery and bailiff – when it is good to doubt a first impression. Alan was not yet thirty years old. He had a half-yardland of Lord Gilbert Talbot and was so well thought of that despite his youth, Lord Gilbert’s tenants had at hallmote chosen him beadle these three years. He worked diligently, and bragged all winter that his four acres of oats had brought him nearly five bushels for every bushel of seed. A remarkable accomplishment, for his land was no better than any other surrounding Bampton. This success brought also some envy, I think, and perhaps there were wives who contrasted his achievement to the work of their husbands. But this, I thought, was no reason to kill a man.
I suppose a man may have enemies which even his friends know not of. I did consider Alan a friend, as did most others of the town. On my walk from Bampton Castle to Hubert Shillside’s shop and house on Church View Street, I persuaded myself that this must be a natural death. Of course, when a corpse is found in open country, the hue and cry must be raised even if the body be stiff and cold. So Hubert, the town coroner, and I, bailiff and surgeon, must do our work.
Alan was found but a few minutes from the town. Down Rosemary Lane to the High Street, then left on Bushey Row to the path to St Andrew’s Chapel. We saw – Hubert and I, and John Holcutt, who came also – where the body lay while we were yet far off. As we passed the last house on the lane east from Bampton to the chapel, we saw a group of men standing in the track at a place where last year’s fallow was being plowed for spring planting. They saw us approach, and stepped back respectfully as we reached them.
A hedgerow had grown up among rocks between the lane and the field. New leaves of pale green decorated stalks of nettles, thistles and wild roses. Had the foliage matured for another fortnight Alan might have gone undiscovered. But two plowmen, getting an early start on their day’s labor, found the corpse as they turned the oxen at the end of their first furrow. It had been barely light enough to see the white foot protruding from the hedgerow. The plowman who goaded the team saw it as he prodded the lead beasts to turn.
Alan’s body was invisible from the road, but by pushing back nettles and thorns – carefully – we could see him curled as if asleep amongst the brambles. I directed two onlookers to retrieve the body. Rank has its privileges. Better they be nettle-stung than we. A few minutes later Alan the beadle lay stretched out on the path.
Lying in the open, on the road, the beadle did not seem so at peace as in the hedgerow. Deep scratches lacerated his face, hands and forearms. His clothes were torn, his feet bare, and a great wound bloodied his neck where flesh had been torn away. The coroner bent to examine this injury more closely.
“Some beast has done this, I think,” he muttered as he stood. “See how his surcoat is torn at the arms, as if he tried to defend himself from fangs.”
I knelt on the opposite side of the corpse to view in my turn the wound which took the life of Alan the beadle. It seemed as Hubert Shillside said. Puncture wounds spread across neck and arms, and rips on surcoat and flesh indicated where claws and fangs had made their mark. I sent the reeve back to Bampton Castle for a horse on which to transport Alan back to the town and to his wife. The others who stood in the path began to drift away. The plowmen who found him returned to their team. Soon only the coroner and I remained to guard the corpse. It needed guarding. Already a flock of carrion crows flapped high above the path.
I could not put my unease into words, so spoke nothing of my suspicion to Shillside. But I was not satisfied that some wild beast had done this thing. I believe the coroner was apprehensive of this explanation as well, for it was he who broke the silence.
“There have been no wolves hereabouts in my lifetime,” he mused, “nor wild dogs, I think.”
“I have heard,” I replied, “Lord Gilbert speak of wolves near Goodrich. And Pembroke. Those castles are near to the Forest of Dean and the Welsh mountains. But even there, in such wild country, they are seldom seen.”
Shillside was silent again as we studied the body at our feet. My eyes wandered to the path where Alan lay. When I did not find what I sought, I walked a few paces toward the town, then reversed my path and inspected the track in the direction of St Andrew’s Chapel. My search was fruitless.
Hubert watched my movements with growing interest. “What do you seek?” he finally asked. It was clear to him I looked for something in the road.
“Tracks. If an animal did this, there should be some sign, I think. The mud is soft.”
“Perhaps,” the coroner replied. “But we and many others have stood about near an hour. Any marks a beast might have made have surely been trampled underfoot.”
I agreed that might be. But another thought also troubled me. “There should be much blood,” I said, “but I see little.”
“Why so?” Shillside asked.
“When a man’s neck is torn as Alan’s is, there is much blood lost. It is the cause of death. Do you see much blood hereabouts?”
“Perhaps the ground absorbed it?”
“Perhaps…let us look in the hedgerow, where we found him.”
We did, carefully prying the nettles apart. The foliage was depressed where Alan lay, but only a trace of blood could be seen on the occasional new leaf or rock or blade of grass.
“There is blood here,” I announced, “but not much. Not enough.”
“Enough for what?” the coroner asked with furrowed brow.
“Enough that the loss of blood would kill a man.”
Shillside was silent for a moment. “Your words trouble me,” he said finally. “If this wound” – he looked to Alan’s neck – “did not kill him, what did?”
“’Tis a puzzle,” I agreed.
“And see how we found him amongst the nettles. Perhaps he dragged himself there to escape the beasts, if more than one set upon him.”
“Or perhaps the animal dragged him there,” I added. But I did not believe this, for reasons I could not explain.
It was the coroner’s turn to cast his eyes about. “His shoes and staff,” Shillside mused. “I wonder where they might be?”
I remembered the staff. Whenever the beadle went out of an evening to watch and warn, he carried with him a yew pole taller than himself and thick as a man’s forearm. I spoke to him of this weapon once. A whack from it, he said, would convince the most unruly drunk to leave the streets and seek his bed.
“He was proud of that cudgel,
” Hubert remarked as we combed the hedgerow in search of it. “He carved an ‘A’ on it so all would know ’twas his.”
“I didn’t know he could write.”
“Oh, he could not,” Shillside explained. “Father Thomas showed him the mark and Alan inscribed it. Right proud of it, he was.”
We found the staff far off the path, where some wasteland verged on to a wood just behind St Andrew’s Chapel. It lay thirty paces or more from the place where Alan’s body had lain in the hedgerow. But our search yielded no shoes.
“How did it come to be here?” Shillside asked. As if I would know. He examined the club. “There is his mark – see?” He pointed to the “A” inscribed with some artistry into the tough wood.
As the coroner held the staff before me, I inspected it closely and was troubled. Shillside saw my frown.
“What perplexes you, Hugh?”
“The staff is unmarked. Were I carrying such a weapon and a wolf set upon me, I would flail it about to defend myself; perhaps hold it before me so the beast caught it in his teeth rather than my arm.”
Shillside peered at the pole and turned it to view all sides. Its surface was smooth and unmarred. “Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “Alan swung it at the beast and lost his grip. See how polished smooth it is…and it flew from his grasp to land here.”
“That might be how it was,” I agreed, for I had no better explanation.
As we returned to the path we saw the reeve approach with Bruce, the old horse who saw me about the countryside when I found it necessary to travel. He would be a calm and dignified platform on which to transport a corpse.
We bent to lift Alan to Bruce’s back, John at the feet and Shillside and me at the shoulders. As we swung him up, Alan’s head fell back. So much of his neck was shredded that it provided little support. I reached out a hand to steady the head and felt a thing which made my hackles rise.
“Wait,” I said, rather sharply, for my companions started and gazed in wonder at me. “Set him back on the road.”
I turned the beadle’s head and felt the place on the skull which had startled me. There was a soft depression on the skull, just behind Alan’s right ear. This cavity was invisible for the thick shock of hair which covered it. I spread the thatch and inspected Alan’s scalp, then showed my discovery to reeve and coroner.
John Holcutt was silent, but Shillside, after running his fingers across the dent, looked at me and asked, “How could a wolf do this?”
We stood and pondered this new discovery. The coroner moved first to offer an explanation. “See there, amongst the nettles in the hedgerow. There are many rocks, tossed there from the field. Mayhap Alan sought escape in the brambles but fell back and struck his head. That would account for where we found him. And unconscious, he could not defend himself as the beast tore his throat.”
I admit this made a neat explanation for what we had discovered. But I was yet troubled. “Would a man, a strong young man like Alan, fall back so violently that striking his head would kill him?”
“’Twould not have to kill him,” Shillside countered. “If he was knocked senseless the wolf could do its work an’ he would not be able to defend himself.”
“Then where is the blood?”
“Blood?” The coroner was puzzled.
“A living man, even knocked senseless, will bleed much from such a hurt as Alan has suffered. It is only the dead who will not bleed.”
“Then Alan died when his head struck the rock, you think?”
“I do,” I agreed. “Or when a rock struck Alan.”
“But…wolves do not attack a man with rocks,” Shillside said softly. “I think you are skeptical that he died from an attack by beasts. Why so?”
“Have you heard any report of wolves in the shire?” I asked him. “John, have you?”
The reeve shook his head. “Nor have I. I think no man alive in Bampton has ever heard a wolf howl.”
“Some other beast, then?” Shillside offered.
“What? A bear? Even in Scotland they are unknown. Wild dogs? What other ravages have been done? Hounds would take a sheep and leave the remains to mark their work, as would a wolf, I think. No such loss has been reported to me, or on the bishop’s lands either, or I should have heard of it.”
Another matter had troubled me. Alan’s feet were bare. “We found Alan’s staff, but where are his shoes? Would a man,” I asked my companions, “go out of a night to enforce curfew unshod?”
The reeve and coroner looked down to Alan’s feet. Shillside sucked on his lower lip, but neither man spoke. We all knew the answer to that question: not likely.
We bent again to the task of lifting Alan to Bruce’s broad back. The old horse shuffled when he realized what he was asked to bear. But the animal had borne Lord Gilbert in battle at Poitiers and had smelled blood and death. He did not flinch from his task. John took the halter and, at Bruce’s slow pace, our cortege moved to the town and Alan’s house on Catte Street.
The beadle’s home was like its neighbors. Built of timbers, wattle and daub, with a roof perhaps better thatched than most. A wisp of smoke drifted from the gable vent. We found Matilda planting onions in the toft behind the house. There is work which must be done even when a spouse has disappeared. No one had sought her out with the news that her husband was found. No one wanted to be the source of bad tidings or have the responsibility of comforting the disconsolate. So I did it. Hubert Shillside stood beside me as I spoke the words Matilda had feared for twenty-four hours. The knees of her surcoat were stained with earth, as were the hands which first dropped, then came up to cover the sobs which broke from a face new twisted in grief.
I saw a bench at the rear of the house and brought it to the woman. She sat, or rather, collapsed, gratefully upon it. Her sobs must have penetrated the house. Matilda had no sooner sat than an echoing wail arose from within. She had been trying to get work done before her son awoke.
The child’s cries brought Matilda’s to an end. She rose, brushed past me and the coroner, and ran to comfort her babe. She reappeared with the sobbing lad a moment later. The child blinked in the sunlight under sleep-tangled hair and peered suspiciously at me from the safety of his mother’s arms.
Matilda knew grief. She had renewed its acquaintance four months earlier, just before Christmas, when a newborn daughter died before ever seeing the light of day. The midwife, Katherine Pecham, was known by all to be competent. There was no fault in her work. Rare indeed the mother who sees all her children past the graveyard to maturity.
The woman stood in the doorway, then leaned heavily against the jamb. I felt compassion for her, but knew her sorrow would not endure long. There were in Bampton and the Weald five men under thirty-five or so years who were widowers or who had not yet taken a wife. One had lost a wife in childbirth. After a decent interval for her mourning, some would call. And as they cast jealous eyes on each other, the period allotted for Matilda’s mourning might become indecent. Well, she would have something to say about that.
Matilda was no more than twenty-five years old and prettier than most tenant’s wives who, by that age, are already worn with work and worry. And she would bring to a new marriage a half-yardland. She would be required to pay a heriot, and an entry fee for her son and heir when he was old enough to assume his father’s land. But these would not be burdensome. I knew this because, in the absence of Lord Gilbert and his steward, Geoffrey Thirwall, I would determine these fines.
“Where was he found?” Matilda asked.
The coroner told her, and explained that Alan’s death seemed likely caused by an attack of some wild beast, perhaps a wolf. Her eyes grew wide at this revelation.
I asked if she knew of any reason why her husband would leave the town on his rounds.
“Perhaps,” she whispered, “he saw the wolf and tried to drive it away.”
If indeed a wolf killed the man, that explanation was as good as any I and Hubert Shillside had contrived. I asked if I could s
ee Alan’s shoes. Matilda was no fool.
“’E wore ’em, din’t he,” she retorted. “’E wan’t daft…t’go ’bout at night w’out shoes. ’Oo knows what a man might step on in the dark?”
I was properly silenced. But that was the answer I sought and expected. I traded a glance with the coroner. We exchanged raised eyebrows. At such moments I often try to raise but one eyebrow, as does Lord Gilbert Talbot. But I have been unable to master the pose. I am convinced it is an ability to which only the gentry are born.
“What ’appened to ’im?” she asked.
There followed a pause as Shillside and I each waited for the other to speak. The coroner looked away, as if he found some unusual event down Catte Street which required his attention. So I told her.
“We have brought him to you,” I concluded. “He is at your door, in the street. John Holcutt waits there with him. You may make arrangements with Thomas de Bowlegh to bury him tomorrow.”
The next day was Good Friday, but it would never again be good for Matilda, wife of the beadle. Each year at the remembrance of our Lord’s death she would recall her own loss and the day would be doubly distressing. I recall my own loss each time I see a pear or smell cloves or eat a Christmas feast.
“I will see him,” she said with some firmness, and turned to walk from the rear to the front of her small house. ’Twas but a few paces. The coroner and I followed.
John Holcutt stiffened when he heard the front door squeal open on winter-rusted hinges and saw Matilda and the child approach. Matilda stopped, staring at the horse and its burden for long minutes. None dared break the silence. Passers-by averted their eyes, crossed themselves, and silenced their steps.
Matilda stepped softly to her husband, shifted the child to her hip, and reached out a hand to sweep unruly hair from Alan’s cold forehead. She caressed her senseless husband and bent to whisper in the unhearing ear. I made it my business not to listen.
The spring sun was now well up over Bampton’s rooftops, shedding bright golden light on the scene. In this brilliance, as she stroked her dark-haired husband, something caught Matilda’s eye. I thought at first she had discovered the dent at the back of Alan’s skull, but this was not so. She parted his locks and drew forth a blue thread.