The Huntsman's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 3)

by Ann Swinfen

  Our family farm was a rambling structure, with extra rooms tacked on in those generations when there were many children, so I was confident Edmond could accommodate any labourers I could recruit for him. Unlike some earlier generations, my parents had only three children who survived infancy – myself and Meg, and our elder brother, John, who had perished in the Pestilence like our father. After their deaths I had been unwilling to return there from my life in Oxford, so my cousin Edmond had taken over the farm.

  In truth he was my father’s cousin, not mine, son of my grandfather’s younger brother. Some fifteen years my senior, he had a growing family and would be doing well but for this lack of labour. We had held the land for two hundred years, and both my father and grandfather had gained permission to extend it by clearing uncultivated land as assarts. Even in my boyhood we were still uprooting old tree stumps, for the new land had been carved out of the edge of Wychwood.

  The farm lay about a quarter of a mile outside the village of Leighton-under-Wychwood, our near neighbour being the de Veres’ manor of King’s Leighton, usually known simply as Leighton Manor. I suppose, from its name, it had once lain in royal hands, but had been bestowed as a favour upon some ancestor of Sir Yves de Vere, the last lord.

  It was still warm as I made my way along the High and out of the East Gate, for the weather continued to hold fair, with the promise of a good harvest. Just outside the gate, on the left hand, before the Hospital of St John, stood a row of small cottages, each with a small toft in front. Behind, a croft the width of the building would stretch back, providing room to grow vegetables, with perhaps an apple tree and a pigsty. Beatrice Metford’s cottage, the third in the row, looked, as usual, much fresher and prettier than its neighbours, and the owner herself was on her knees in the front toft, weeding her beds of herbs. As I opened the gate, she rose to her feet, brushing the dusty soil from her skirts.

  ‘Master Elyot!’ She smiled shyly as she dropped me a curtsy. ‘How kind of you to visit us. Will you join us for supper?’

  ‘Nay, mistress,’ I said, ‘I thank you, but I am expected at home. Is Philip not here?’

  ‘He is with Stephen out the back,’ she said, ‘picking beans for salting. I will fetch him for you.’

  ‘Do not trouble. I would not interrupt your weeding.’

  She laughed. ‘I hardly need the excuse, for I do not love weeding, but I am done for this evening. Come away in.’

  I followed her into the cottage, which was small but immaculate, save for the normal detritus of family life. Stephen’s hornbook and Latin primer lay on the table beside the pile of mending every woman does battle with. A savoury smell rose from a three-legged iron pot standing in the hearth beside the fire. Beatrice gave it a quick stir before she led me through to a tiny kitchen, where a door stood open on to the garden at the back.

  ‘Master Elyot is here to see you, Philip,’ she called, and stood aside for me to make my way down a brick path laid along the centre of the garden.

  It went back further than I expected. Philip and Stephen were at the far end, both engaged in picking beans and dropping them into a basket at their feet. Stephen was propped on his crutches, but appeared to be managing the task without difficulty. The whole area was laid out meticulously, as I expected, with beds for lettuce, carrots, leeks, garlic, and onions as well as beans and peas. In another bed, seedlings of winter cabbage and kale had already been planted out, while under two apple trees half a dozen hens were scratching about. There was no pig.

  ‘An excellent garden, Philip,’ I said, by way of greeting. ‘I did not know you were a gardener.’

  He smiled hesitantly. I think he was still not quite sure when I was teasing him. ‘It is mostly Beatrice’s work,’ he said. ‘And Stephen’s. But I help when I can.’

  ‘And a brick path,’ I said. ‘As if this were some noble’s demesne.’

  At that he laughed. ‘Old broken bricks, you will observe. I was able to acquire them when a small outbuilding at the college was pulled down.’

  ‘Acquire?’

  ‘They were dumped over the outside wall, as too broken to be of use. I borrowed a wheelbarrow and trundled them out here.’

  That must have been courageous of him, I thought, for if one of the other Fellows had seen him, he might have been betrayed. Perhaps that was when Allard Basset had first discovered his secret family.

  ‘Come, Stephen,’ he said, ‘that is enough beans for now. It will take your mother all evening to pod them and salt them, even if we help.’

  He stooped to pick up the basket, but Stephen was before him.

  ‘I can carry it, Papa.’

  With surprising dexterity he managed to carry the basket as well as wield his crutches, setting out ahead of us up the path to the cottage.

  ‘I see,’ I said quietly. ‘The brick path is much easier for him to negotiate than earth or gravel would be.’

  ‘Aye.’

  He said no more as we followed Stephen in through the kitchen to the main room of the cottage. Like Beatrice, Philip urged me to sup with them, but again I said I must go home, and explained why I had come.

  ‘My cousin will be so short-handed for the harvest that he would be glad of your help, if you would think of coming,’ I said. ‘Many of the Fellows will be away from college during the summer. Why should you not come? I’d be grateful.’

  ‘The summer is one time when I am free of university duties and have time to be with Beatrice and Stephen,’ he said.

  ‘But could they not come as well?’ I glanced across at Beatrice. She had her back to us and was sampling the contents of the iron pot, but I could see that she, like Jordain’s students, was listening. Unlike them, she joined us.

  ‘I should be glad to lend a hand,’ she said. ‘I can use a sickle, and I can stook the corn. Thresh and winnow as well, if need be.’ She smiled at Jordain. ‘It would be so good for Stephen to see a little of the world outside this cottage.’

  ‘It would need careful managing,’ Philip said slowly. ‘Lest word get back to Merton.’

  ‘Jordain already knows about Beatrice,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, there will only be his two students from the university with us. They are both decent lads. I am sure we may persuade them to keep your secret.’

  Philip turned to Beatrice. ‘I know it would do Stephen good, and you see little enough of the world yourself, tied here by . . . by everything. But it will be hard work.’

  She laughed. ‘No harder than I did every year on my father’s farm, as you well know. Let us go! I am sure Mistress Farber, two doors away, will feed the hens.’

  ‘Very well.’ He turned to me, and suddenly gave a broad smile. ‘I daresay time away from my books will be good for me as well.’

  As he walked with me to the gate, I asked tentatively whether he knew how to use a scythe.

  ‘Of course.’ There was a touch of scorn in his voice. ‘On my father’s manor I always helped with the harvest, even after I came to Oxford.’

  He paused, his hand on the gate. ‘Beatrice’s father was one of our tenants. I met her one summer, after I was already a Fellow. Helping with the harvest. She was just a young girl then, and I had my feet set on the academic ladder.’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows how different things might have been, had she been nearer my age and we had met before . . .’

  ‘At least on my cousin’s farm you can spend a few weeks without pretence. I am glad you are coming, Philip.’

  He gave me a nod, and turned back to the cottage.

  I did not head at once toward the East Gate into town, but walked the short way to the East Bridge and stood there, looking upriver, where the Cherwell flowed down from Holywell Mill, past the town meadow and the perimeter wall of St John’s Hospital. This evening the westering sun lay golden on the water, where a half-grown family of ducklings followed their mother in and out of the patches of rush and weed that grew along the bank which sloped down from the hospital wall. The air was full of the scent of fast flowing water and
the lush greenery of the water plants. These were probably the self-same ducklings I had seen on that unhappy evening when I had found the body of William Farringdon floating here, but my thoughts were turned further back, to an evening when Elizabeth and I had paused on this very spot.

  We had met by chance. Elizabeth had been sent by her father, the bookseller Humphrey Hadley, to fetch goose feathers for quills from Thomas Yardley’s farm on the other side of the river. I had been rabitting with Jordain and two other students, who had gone ahead with our spoils, to persuade the cook at Tackley’s Inn, where we lodged, to cook them for our supper, but I had stopped to watch the river, as I often did. I must have been about sixteen, and although I had known Elizabeth from seeing her in her father’s shop ever since I had come to Oxford two years earlier, I had never been alone with her before.

  We greeted each other, somewhat shyly, and I expected her to pass on over the bridge, but instead she set down the sack of feathers she was carrying and leaned on the parapet beside me.

  ‘I often wonder what the river sees, as it flows away toward London,’ she said. ‘Imagine what it could tell us if it could talk.’

  ‘All manner of tales,’ I said, too abashed to look at her, and gazing instead at a family of ducks, perhaps the very ancestors of these swimming here now, nine years later. Students were expected to live a celibate life, ignoring the very existence of women, but it was a rule barely acknowledged. I had not ventured into the town’s whorehouses, but I was not so innocent that I did not know of their existence. I was not tempted by them, but the presence of this girl beside me filled me with a mixture of excitement and fear.

  A strand of her red-gold hair, loose in the breeze, brushed against my face, and I trembled.

  ‘Should you like to see London, Nicholas?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, ’tis said to be a wonderful place, with ships travelling afar, and the Tower, and royal palaces, and merchants selling everything under the sun.’

  ‘And more people than you can count.’

  ‘But I love Oxford,’ I said loyally.

  ‘I love Oxford too,’ she said, ‘but I should like to see London, just once.’

  Well, she had never seen London. The Pestilence had taken her, just after Rafe was born, as it had robbed so many, young and old, of their due span of years.

  I sighed, turned my back on the river, and walked home.

  I had learned more about Philip Olney in this evening’s brief meeting than in all the years before that I had known him. I could understand why his life had taken the course it had, although it was not my course.

  At supper I told Margaret that Jordain and Philip would also been coming with us to Leighton-under-Wychwood.

  ‘We agreed that Beatrice and Stephen will travel in the cart with you, but Philip will hire a horse.’

  ‘The cart will be somewhat overloaded,’ she said, ‘even if Jordain’s students ride. There will be Jordain, Mistress Metford and myself, and three children, as well as any luggage we may take, even if it is no more than a change of clothing.’

  ‘It will not be as heavy a load as the Farringdons’ furniture which Jordain and I brought back from Long Wittenham,’ I said. ‘We need not make haste. The horse and cart we can hire from the Mitre will do very well.’

  ‘Shall we manage the journey in a day?’ she said. ‘Stopping at an inn for the night would be an expense.’

  ‘Oh, Aunt Margaret!’ Alysoun had been listening, and her face glowed. ‘Can we stay at an inn? I have never slept at an inn.’

  ‘You would not care for it, my pet,’ I assured her. ‘Poor food and bugs in the beds.’

  Margaret shuddered, but Alysoun looked not a mite dismayed.

  ‘I think we may manage it in a day,’ I said to Margaret. ‘If we make an early start. Perhaps Beatrice and Stephen might come to us the night before.’

  Margaret opened her mouth as if to object, then closed it again. I knew that it would be difficult for her, deciding how to treat Mistress Medford. My sister was warm hearted and tolerant, but the presence of a scholar’s mistress was something she had never had to deal with before.

  ‘How old is the boy?’ Alysoun asked, before Margaret could respond to my suggestion.

  ‘The same age as you,’ I said, ‘but he was ill when he was small and one of his legs is weak. He must walk with crutches.’

  ‘Poor boy.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘So he can’t run and play?’

  ‘He certainly cannot run, but I am sure there are many games he can play with you, when he need not run. Games like chess or tables.’

  These were both games she was newly learning herself, so it would be good if she had an opponent of a like age.

  ‘I think he does not know many children,’ I said, ‘so you must remember that.’

  ‘I will be very kind to him,’ she said earnestly.

  ‘There is no need to be especially kind,’ I said hastily, for fear of what that might mean. ‘Just treat him like Jonathan Baker, except that he cannot walk so easily.’

  ‘May not Jonathan come with us to the farm, Papa?’

  We had already had this discussion. ‘Nay, my pet. His father needs his help in the bakery.’

  Young as he was, Jonathan could undertake simple tasks in the bakery, or serve the shop’s customers when his father was occupied.

  After the children had gone to bed, Margaret and I sat down together, she to her mending, I to stitching the binding of a book which had worked loose.

  ‘This Beatrice Medford,’ Margaret said, tentatively.

  ‘You will like her, I promise you. And she is a respectable woman.’

  She raised her eyebrows at that.

  ‘To all intents and purposes, she is Philip Olney’s common law wife, and has been these seven or eight years. He may not own to it or he would lose his fellowship, and how could he provide for them then?’

  She looked troubled.

  ‘The Church would not approve.’

  ‘There are a good many similar arrangements amongst men of the Church,’ I said dryly. ‘Even amongst popes. Are they committing a mortal sin? Probably. But is it our place to judge? As for Beatrice spending a single night here, I think no harm can come of it. It will give you the chance to get to know her, and for the children to meet before the journey.’

  ‘Very well.’ She said it with reluctance. ‘I suppose it will make an early start the easier.’

  The next day was Sunday. Before we attended Mass at St-Peter-in-the-East, I sent a note to Philip at the cottage, inviting the three of them to sup and spend that night with us, so that we might make an early start on Monday. As we were turning up Hammer Hall Lane to the church, a lad caught my arm and handed me a scrap of paper, on which Philip had hastily scrawled: ‘We thank you. We will come around six o’ the clock.’

  After Mass, when we reached home, I said, ‘I will go to the Mitre now to hire Rufus and the horse and cart for tomorrow.’

  ‘It will be an expense to keep them the whole while we are there.’ Margaret frowned. ‘Should you not find some means of sending them back to Oxford? One of the stable lads could come with us, drive the cart home, with Rufus hitched behind.’

  ‘Nay, it will be useful to have them with us. The cart can help with carrying the harvest, and if I have Rufus I shall be of more use to Edmond.’

  She smiled. ‘You are looking for reasons to ride about on that horse, as if you were a gentleman.’

  I laughed. ‘Rufus is no gentleman’s horse, though he is a useful beast.’ I paused. ‘After I have been to the Mitre, I may go to St Mildred Street.’

  ‘You haven’t told her that we are going away?’

  ‘Nay.’ I shook my head. ‘Why should it matter?’

  ‘You know very well why.’ But she said no more.

  At the Mitre I was, fortunately, able to hire both Rufus and a horse and cart that I had used before. There would be no alarming ferry this time for the cart horse to endure, as Edric Crowmer’s horse had faced so
me weeks before. This beast was big, slow, but well muscled, so I was certain he would make light of the load, though his ambling pace would be an irritant to Jordain’s students. It seemed that Guy had his own horse stabled in Oxford, and Giles had hired a lively beast from the Cross Inn. If they became too impatient, I would send them on ahead.

  My business concluded at the Mitre, I stood hesitating outside, on the corner between the High and St Mildred Street. When I had brought Emma Thorgold to Oxford in her boy’s clothes, we had been at ease with each other, totally caught up in the escape from her stepfather and his vicious dogs. Then Margaret had clothed her in a fine gown and my eyes had been opened. Emma was a lady, an heiress to a considerable estate, far beyond an Oxford shopkeeper in rank. I had been avoiding her ever since, for I could not resolve the confusing conflict in my heart. It was my wife Elizabeth I still loved, though she was lost to me forever. Yet Emma had also touched something in me.

  This was foolishness, lurking on the corner like a lovesick boy. It was no more than simple politeness to tell Mistress Farringdon and her girls that we would be away for two or three weeks. I did not know whether Emma was still with them, or whether she had already left for her grandfather’s manor.

  I made my way slowly up St Mildred Street. They would be home from Mass long since, for their parish church, St Mildred’s, was but a few houses away, My tentative knock on the door of the small cottage, leased to Mistress Farringdon by Merton College, was answered at once, as the door was thrown open by her daughter Juliana.

  ‘Mama, it is Nicholas!’ she cried. ‘Come in, Nicholas. We have not seen you for weeks!’

  Mistress Farringdon came up behind her and put her hands on Juliana’s shoulders.

  ‘My dear, it is Master Elyot to you. And it has not been weeks.’

  ‘Nicholas will do very well.’ I smiled at them.

  ‘Will you dine with us?’ she said, curtseying and urging me into the main room of the small cottage. Every woman in Oxford seemed bent on feeding me.

  ‘Nay,’ I said. ‘I cannot stay. I came only to give you a message.’