Rest Not in Peace (The Chronicles of Hugh De Singleton, Surgeon #6)

by Mel Starr

  I dismissed the sergeant and bid Isobel enter. I nodded to the bench and told the maid to sit. Sunlight, as I planned, came through the slim window and into her eyes.

  In the past, when I found need to ask questions of men who did not wish to answer, I found it advantageous to stand while my subject was seated and required to look up to me. I thought the same procedure would be effective with a maid.

  The lass blinked in the golden sunlight and before I could speak, said, “M’lady sent me to the buttery for wine. But I saw no other but the butler in the screens passage.”

  Here was news which would make my task easier. The maid had evidently been near the pantry about the time Lord Gilbert’s silver went missing.

  “The sergeant told you of the missing silver?”

  “Aye. Said spoons an’ knives was taken.”

  “And you may have been seen in that end of the hall, near pantry and screens passage, when the theft occurred.”

  I saw a tear leave the maid’s eye. I disliked myself for what I was about. But if the deed helped discover a murderer, my conscience would be soothed.

  “Never been near the screens passage alone but that once… to fetch a cup of wine. Only go there with m’lady. Never by myself. Lord Gilbert’s butler was there. I saw no other about, but perhaps he did. Was it he who said I was there?”

  “Never mind. If you saw no other near the pantry, then perhaps ’tis you who made off with the silver?”

  “Nay, I never did so.”

  “Someone did. Did Lord Gilbert’s butler see you depart the screens passage with the wine?”

  “Must have. Filled an ewer for me, an’ I took it to Lady Margery.”

  “I shall ask him. If he saw you leave with the ewer you will be blameless. There is another matter I wish to speak to you about, as you are here.”

  I saw relief wash across the woman’s face as I spoke. But the worried expression returned with my next question.

  “There is gossip about the castle that Lady Margery does not grieve overmuch for Sir Henry’s death. What say you?”

  The lass did not soon reply, but cast her eyes about the chamber as if seeking some escape. I waited.

  “M’lady wept when she heard of Sir Henry found dead.”

  “As might be, but tears may sometimes be false. When she is alone in her chamber, with only you and other of her servants, what does she say? What does she do?”

  “Why do you ask this of me?”

  “Because I am Lord Gilbert’s bailiff, and ’tis my task to discover who murdered Sir Henry whilst he slept under Lord Gilbert’s roof.”

  “M’lady believes your potion ended his life.”

  “She no longer does, and perhaps never did. She and Sir Henry quarreled, I am told.”

  Isobel was again silent, unwilling to report things which a good servant must keep concealed. Again I waited, ’til the silence in the chamber became uncomfortable. For Isobel, not for me. After some time, when I did not speak, she did.

  “Most wedded folk quarrel upon a time.”

  “What were these quarrels about?”

  Another period of silence followed. “Money, mostly,” Isobel finally said.

  “I’ve heard that Lady Margery wished herself free of Sir Henry.”

  Isobel’s eyes grew wide and she sat upright upon the bench, as if I’d thrust a pin between her shoulders.

  “She’d not slay him,” the maid said.

  “I did not say I suspect her of doing so,” I replied.

  “But… you said…”

  “When a woman wishes to be free of her husband it often means she desires another. Who would Lady Margery have preferred to Sir Henry? What does the gossip say?”

  Isobel was again silent, and this time my patience was not rewarded, for although I waited quietly for the maid to find her tongue she remained mute.

  “Regarding Lord Gilbert’s silver,” I changed the subject. “Whoso did such a thing might hang.” I was silent for a moment, then continued. “Sir Roger may wish to speak to you further on the matter of the silver, you being the only person near the pantry, other than Lord Gilbert’s butler, at the time the silver may have gone missing.”

  Isobel became pale again as the implication of my words sank in. But the woman was no fool. She quickly grasped the reason for my changing the subject back to stolen spoons and knives and desired to leave the topic forthwith.

  “M’lady has said often what a fine figure of a man is Sir Geoffrey.”

  “Do you and Lady Margery’s other servants agree?”

  Isobel blushed. “Aye,” she agreed.

  “Do Sir Geoffrey and Lady Margery seek each other in dalliance?”

  The maid blushed again. “Not since Sir Henry was found dead.”

  “But before, they were oft together?”

  “Not often.”

  “Sir Henry was in debt; did you know that?”

  “Aye. M’lady spoke of it, an’ we who serve her haven’t had silk or even linen or wool for new gowns this past year and more.”

  “Sir Geoffrey might have left Sir Henry’s service and attached himself to a more prosperous knight. Did lady Margery ever speak of him doing so?”

  “Aye, both him and Sir John.”

  “How long past did she speak of these things? Does she talk of it often?”

  “Aye. Says what kind of knight has no retainers to serve him? Soon he’ll have no squires, nor pages, either.”

  “Do Lady Margery and Lady Anne quarrel?”

  Silence once again followed the question, which was answer enough. Isobel, I think, was considering how much she might say. Enough to satisfy my curiosity, perhaps, but no more.

  “Not often. Sir Henry wed Lady Margery soon after Lady Goscelyna perished. Lady Anne thought it unseemly haste.”

  “Not often, you say. What does that mean? Once each week? Once a fortnight? Every day?”

  “Well, not quarrels, really. Disagreements, more likely.”

  “So, then, how often did they disagree?”

  Silence again, and when Isobel did finally speak she replied so softly I barely heard. “Near every day,” she said.

  “What are these disagreements about?”

  “Everything; gowns, how Lady Anne conducts herself, what man may be chosen as Lady Anne’s husband. If Lady Anne wished to light a fire in her chamber Lady Margery would tell her ’twas warm enough.”

  Two of these subjects seemed ripe for controversy with little explanation necessary, but how a fire or Lady Anne’s conduct could cause dissention required some further comment. I asked.

  “Lady Anne is comely, as you, being a man, well know,” Isobel replied. “She’s sometimes not so modest as might be expected of a lass of her station.”

  “Leads men on, does she?”

  “Doesn’t mean to, I don’t think. It’s just her way. But Lady Margery thinks so. And between you and me, Lady Margery’s not the beauty she once was. She resents Lady Anne, I think.”

  “I have heard that Lady Anne is fond of one of Sir Henry’s squires. Is that another matter of contention between Lady Anne and Lady Margery?”

  “Aye… but more like between Lady Anne and her father. Lady Margery only cared if Lady Anne was to wed a wealthy knight who could bring wealth to Sir Henry. She’d be pleased if Lady Anne did wed, and be gone. Of course, did she wed but a squire she’d have no place to go. Probably expect to stay under her father’s roof… except she’s got no father now, and so maybe no roof, either.”

  “No roof? Why do you say so?”

  “Lady Margery weeps. I hear her in the night. Sir Henry’s lands must be sold to satisfy his debts. What’s left, if anything, is to be divided between Lady Margery and Lady Anne. Won’t be much.”

  “She weeps for her poverty more than for the loss of her husband?”

  “Aye,” Isobel said softly. “What knight will wed a penniless widow? A comely face is no match for houses and lands, and Lady Margery will not have the last an’ is los
ing the first.”

  “Has Lady Margery known of Sir Henry’s empty purse for long?”

  “Nay, don’t think so. They were wed three years past. She’d inherited a house and business in Coventry from her first husband, but his will said was she to take another husband the house was to go to his younger brother.”

  “Lady Margery’s father was a cordwainer, I have heard. What business did her husband pursue?”

  “A grocer,” Isobel replied.

  “She had no children of her first husband?”

  “One. A lad. They was wed for little more than a year when plague returned an’ the babe perished, along with her husband.”

  It was well that I was nearly finished with the interview, for in the distance I heard agitated voices. Isobel looked up to me as if she expected me to explain the shouting, but the clamor was too far away to be understood.

  Any such uproar within Bampton Castle walls is likely to be my business, as a bailiff’s duty is to keep the peace upon his lord’s manor. I dismissed Isobel and hastened through the echoing hall to the heavy door which opened from hall to castle yard. When I pushed it open I heard more clearly the tumult coming from near the marshalsea.

  The din increased as I approached, and not simply because I drew near to the scene of the disorder. When I rounded the corner of the marshalsea I saw a crowd of castle folk gathered about some event which caused their animated attention. From the opposite side of the castle yard I saw Lord Gilbert and Sir Roger appear at the top of the stairs which led from the yard to the solar and Lord Gilbert’s private chambers. I saw my employer scowl and hasten down the steps. Soon his voice was added to the uproar.

  Lord Gilbert and I approached the shouting crowd from opposite sides. I had at the time no sense of what had caused this noisy mob, but Lord Gilbert had looked down upon the throng from an elevated position at the head of the stairs and so knew the source of the tumult. Two men fought, their daggers unsheathed, the blades glinting in the afternoon sun.

  Lord Gilbert and Sir Roger pushed through the mob from one side, and I did the same from the other. We met in the midst of the conflict. With a roar Lord Gilbert commanded the combatants to cease their brawl. When they saw who it was who moved between them they did so, breathing heavily from their exertions.

  It was William Willoughby and Sir John who had so disturbed the peace of the castle. I saw blood issuing from the squire’s nose, and Sir John’s fine grey cotehardie was slashed and a crimson stain was seeping between the fingers of his left hand which he had pressed against the edges of the cut.

  Sir Roger seized the squire’s dagger and Lord Gilbert snatched Sir John’s. “What means this unseemly contest?” he bawled.

  “The knave struck me,” Squire William said. As if to prove his assertion drops of blood fell from his nose to the dirt of the castle yard.

  Lord Gilbert turned to Sir John and said, “Why did you do so?”

  The knight opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came forth. He swayed upon his feet, collapsed to his knees, his eyes rolled back, and he fell face first into the dust, arms outstretched before him. He had evidently received a perilous cut.

  I stepped to the fallen knight, turned him to his back, and inspected his wound. It bled freely. The thrust seemed deep, but I could not know this for certain without a closer inspection. A shadow fell across Sir John as Lord Gilbert knelt opposite me.

  “Is he dead?” he asked.

  “Nay. He breathes, but mayhap ’tis mortal. He must be carried to a table where I can see how severely he is hurt.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Arthur. I motioned to him to approach and when he did I told him to take Sir John’s shoulders whilst I grasped his feet. Together we lifted the insensible knight from the mud and carried him to the hall. This was not an easy task, for Sir John was not a small man. He was a near twin in size to Lord Gilbert, and surely weighed fourteen stone or more.

  Uctred was nearby as well, and I shouted for him to hasten ahead and set up a table under a window. He did so, closely followed by two other grooms who had, moments before, been stunned into inaction but now saw a way to make themselves useful.

  “Put that man in the dungeon,” Lord Gilbert said to John Chamberlain, who had also appeared. He pointed toward Squire William. “We will deal with him later.”

  Sir Roger and Lord Gilbert followed Arthur and me and our burden through the great oaken door and into the hall. Once past the door I heard the clatter of trestles and boards as Uctred and his companions hastily erected a table. Someone would later need to scrub bloodstains from the planks, and from the flags, also, for Sir John bled freely, crimson drops falling even upon my shoes.

  No sooner had the knight been laid upon the table than he blinked and tried to lift his head. He had regained his wits.

  I told him to be still, drew my dagger, and slashed at his cotehardie and kirtle until I had cleared the clothing away from the wound. What I saw gave me some hope for the man’s life. The cut was as long as my hand. Such a laceration is generally the result of a slashing stroke rather than a thrust. The wound bled much, but was not, I thought, so deep as I had feared. A smaller puncture could be the result of a stabbing blow, which might seem at first of less consequence. But if such a wound penetrated to some vital organ the knight would surely die. William’s blade had cut deeply enough that I saw two ribs through the blood and flesh, but the bone had prevented the stroke from doing harm to any vital organ.

  I had no instruments at the castle with which to deal with this injury. I grasped the fragment of kirtle I had cut away from the wound and pressed it firmly against the cut to stop, so much as was possible, the flow of blood. This seemed effective. I told Arthur to hold the linen in place whilst I ran to Galen House for instruments with which I might close the wound. I also requested of Lord Gilbert that wine and a basin of hot water be brought to the hall, to cleanse the wound. I then hastened from the hall.

  I was longer in returning to the castle than I would have been three or four years past. This sluggishness is Kate’s doing. I have enjoyed too many coney pies and egg leeches since we wed. When I lived alone and made my dinner of bread, cheese, ale, and an occasional roasted capon I was more fleet of foot.

  I hesitated at my home only long enough to blurt out the news to Kate and throw instruments into a sack. By the time I crashed through the doors into Bampton Castle Hall I was breathless and unfit for any surgery. Lord Gilbert saw my state and offered a cup of wine from the ewer the butler had provided.

  I drank from the proffered cup whilst I regained my breath, and inspected the knight’s wound. Someone had provided a new cloth. The rag which I had left with Arthur lay red-stained beneath the trestles, and he was pressing a new, larger piece of fabric against the cut.

  Sir John lay quietly during this inspection, but when he saw me produce a needle and spool of silken thread from my sack he spoke.

  “Am I a dead man?”

  “Mayhap. There is no way to know ’til a day or two passes. If you are yet alive come Tuesday, or Wednesday, I think then you will live. But Lord Gilbert’s chaplain should remain close by to shrive you.”

  In my absence another table had been erected, and upon it I saw one of Lord Gilbert’s napkins, missing a fragment which now stopped Sir John’s blood from gushing from his wound. I ripped a length from the napkin, soaked it in wine, and wiped the wound as Arthur lifted the blood-soaked cloth. What good this might do I cannot tell, but it has always seemed to me that if a wound might heal better after being stitched and then bathed in wine, then to wash a cut with wine before any surgery or work with needle and thread might also help a wound to heal.

  Squire William had already made the first cut, so ’twas too late to test the theory fully, but I poured more wine into the empty cup, then poured this directly into Sir John’s cut. He gasped, and clenched his hands into fists, but was otherwise still.

  I cut a length of silken thread as long as my arm and began to stitch Sir
John’s wound closed. The day was near done, and light from the window above my head was growing dim. The day had been sunny and warm. So as I bent over my patient, the better to see what I was about, drops of sweat beaded upon my lip and forehead and I was required to wipe the perspiration away with what remained of Lord Gilbert’s napkin, else I would have dripped sweat upon the knight’s wound.

  The cut was in a place where others would be unlikely to see it, but I was careful to do fine work so that should the man live, his scar would be thin and faint. Perhaps, I thought, should he marry, his bride will appreciate my competence.

  Twenty stitches closed the wound. A few tiny drops of blood yet oozed from the cut. These I wiped away with an unstained corner of the cloth Arthur had used to staunch the flow, then I soaked another scrap of napery in wine and once more washed the wound.

  I could do no more. Whether the knight lived or died was now in God’s hands, not mine.

  I stood away from Sir John, washed blood from my hands in the basin, wiped sweat from my brow again, and placed my hands behind my back to stretch my complaining muscles.

  “Will he live?” Lord Gilbert asked. He, Sir Roger, Arthur, Uctred, and several others had watched as I sewed Sir John back together, but so intent was I on the task that I had taken no notice of spectators.

  “God knows. If the cut is not deep, he will survive, I think. But if the blade went under his ribs, which I think it did not do, he will likely die soon.”

  “What caused this row, I wonder,” Sir Roger said.

  “Sir John is not in fit condition to be asked,” I said. “If he is alive tomorrow we may inquire of him then. Meanwhile, you might send a sergeant to bring Squire William from the dungeon to the solar and we may examine him to hear his account of the business.”

  “After supper,” Lord Gilbert said. I glanced toward the screens passage and saw there the scowling face of Thomas Attewell, Lord Gilbert’s cook at Bampton Castle, peering into the hall. He had prepared a meal and if ’twas not eaten soon it would grow cold.