by Mel Starr
“I have a plan. It will require your help if I am to save him from Sir Philip’s vengeance.”
“You shall have it. Is there no way to compromise with Lord Gilbert?”
“None. Osbert must either be set free of his obligation to Sir Philip, or be returned to certain death. There is no middle way.”
“And you,” Kate smiled gently as she spoke, “are a stubborn man.”
“Principled,” I corrected.
“And Lord Gilbert is stubborn?”
“He is also principled, but not all principled men serve the proper principles.”
“They may be costly, these principles of yours.”
“Aye. We may be required to leave Bampton.”
“I would be sorry to do so.”
“And I, also. I built Galen House to be our home. We will remain within it if we can.”
“What of your plan for Osbert?”
“We will take him from the castle lodgings range to Galen House. If Lord Gilbert learns of it and asks why, I will tell him that Osbert requires constant care, which is no lie, and ’tis inconvenient for me to visit the castle several times each day to see to his wounds.”
“Can he recover?”
“I believe so, but his back will be badly scarred. He may never again bend to touch his toes.”
“What will you do when he is healed?”
“I will tell the man he must flee in the night, and leave Oxfordshire far behind him. If Lord Gilbert asks of his healing I will tell him it goes slowly, so he will not, I hope, require Osbert to be sent back to East Hanney before he can safely escape Bampton.”
“You would lie to Lord Gilbert?”
“To save a life? Aye, I would. But I will not lie to him… I will not tell him the whole truth, that is all.”
“What will Lord Gilbert do when he learns the man has fled? Must you then resign your post?”
“He may require it of me. So be it. I am content, whatever befall.”
“What of the dead chapman and his coin?”
“So long as I am bailiff to Lord Gilbert I will serve him in the matter, and any other. And it may be because of me that Amice Thatcher and her children were taken.”
“You will return to Abingdon to seek them?”
“I must… when my wounds are better healed.”
Before nightfall of that melancholy day I had assigned three grooms to move Kate and me and our goods from the castle to Galen House, and Osbert was placed upon a cart and taken there also. Kate laid a fire upon the cold hearth, and set a kettle of pottage to simmering for our supper. I went to our bed that night strangely content, for a man who had displeased his employer, was in danger of losing part of his income, and had been recently pierced by an arrow.
We had no bed for Osbert, so laid his pallet upon the floor, close to the fire. Even though he slept there upon the ground floor, and Kate, Bessie, and I were in our chamber up the stairs, I heard him groan in his sleep when he shifted upon the pallet and his wounds caused him pain.
Osbert’s appetite was returning, so next morn he ate readily a portion of maslin loaf and cheese, and drank from a cup of ale into which I poured more crushed hemp seeds. He asked why he had been taken from the castle to this place, and I told him where he now was, and why. His face fell as he learned of his peril.
“Sir Philip will send me to my grave,” he said when I had finished.
“So I told Lord Gilbert, but he would not be moved.”
“How long before I am well enough that you will send me back?”
“If all goes as I hope, that day will never come.”
Osbert looked up to me, questions in his eyes. “You think I will not recover from the beating?”
“I believe you will regain your health, though ’tis likely the scars upon your back will always be with you, and will prevent you bending as a man otherwise could do.”
“Then I do not understand. How is it the day I must be sent back to East Hanney may never come?”
“I have a plan. I intend for you to escape this place, when you are well enough to travel.”
“Where am I to go?”
“I will tell you more later, when I have thought more about it. For now, you must regain your health. We will worry about where you are to go when the time approaches for you to flee.”
Truth to tell, I had already in mind a plan for Osbert’s escape, of which I thought he would approve, but I wished to think more on it before I told him, so that, had he questions or objections, I would have answers for him.
Shortly after we broke our fast and I had told Osbert of his danger, there came a loud thumping upon Galen House door. I opened to Arthur’s smiling face, and saw in his hand my sack of instruments and herbs. I bid him enter and tell me of Abingdon. There was much to learn.
“The maid Sybil has returned to her father, who sent men for her. So the abbey hosteler said,” he began.
Here was reassuring news. I had enough to worry about with Osbert and Amice Thatcher and the death of John Thrale weighing upon me. I did not need more worries about the welfare of an irksome maid. I dismissed Sybil Montagu from my mind and asked Arthur of Brother Theodore.
“Told ’im of your hurt, an’ told ’im you’d return to deal with his wound when you could. He said ’e’d pray for your quick healing, as well ’e might. Must be a great trial to ’ave an’ oozin’ sore like that on yer face.”
Arthur looked past me and saw Osbert upon his pallet. I saw the question in his eyes, and hastened to explain why he was here, rather than under Cicily’s care. But I did not tell him all. I did speak of Lord Gilbert’s demand that Osbert be returned to Sir Philip when he was well enough to travel, but I did not tell him of my plan to have the villein escape. The fewer who know a secret the less likely it will be discovered.
Arthur did not respond well to this announcement. He served Lord Gilbert well, and, I think, held his lord in some esteem. But the thought of returning Osbert to a punishment so severe as we had already seen, and from which we had risked life and limb to rescue the man, brought a heavy scowl down upon Arthur’s face. I wished to tell him of my scheme to prevent the carrying out of Lord Gilbert’s wishes, but held my tongue. Arthur would continue to serve Lord Gilbert, I thought, but perhaps not so readily as in the past.
I told Arthur to be ready to return to Abingdon in three days, All Saints’ Day, when I thought I would be enough recovered from my wounds that I might renew the search for Amice Thatcher and John Thrale’s assailants. Kate thought otherwise, but I persuaded her that I should be about the tasks. The sooner I completed them the sooner I would be able to resume a peaceful life as husband, father, and sometime surgeon.
Kate prepared an egg leech for our dinner and I was pleased to see Osbert consume a fair portion. I put another handful of ground hemp seeds into his ale, and when he had downed the mixture I sought to question him more of Sir Philip Rede and his manor at East Hanney. Somewhere in the village Amice Thatcher was confined, of this I was certain.
Osbert, as he had told me some days past, knew of no other person Sir Philip had taken and detained, but I thought he might know of some places on the manor where a woman and her children might be confined without the fact being known to most who lived in the village; a loft in a barn, for example.
“Stores oats an’ hay in the loft, does Sir Philip,” Osbert said. “Though ’is horses get their fill of oats, ’e does keep hay for winter fodder.”
“His horses get their fill of oats? I thought you said he was in some financial plight.”
“’E is, but spends ’is coin on wine an’ horses as if ’e had plenty.”
“Wine and horses… these are Sir Philip’s interests?”
“Aye. Well, an’ a pert maid.”
“How many horses does Sir Philip own?”
“There’s seven in the barn, includin’ two what belong to ’is brother.”
“Are these beasts treated well?”
“Oh, aye. Better’n we who la
bor for Sir Philip.”
“Does he employ a farrier to care for the horses?”
“Nay. Can’t afford that. Uses Sir John Trillowe’s man when ’is horses need shoein’.”
“Have you known Sir Philip to allow a horse to go about with a broken horseshoe?”
“Broken bad enough to maybe injure the beast?”
“Aye.”
“Never. Don’t care whether them who labor for ’im has shoes or not, but ’is horses is always well shod.”
“You never saw the print of a horse with a broken shoe in the mud before the barn?”
“Nay. Sir Philip wouldn’t tolerate that from the lads what serve in ’is stable. Minute they knew of such they’d have the beast to Sir John’s farrier, or Sir Philip would set ’em to work in the fields or herdin’ swine.”
Chapter 12
My theory was shattered. Sir Philip Rede, an impoverished knight, so poor that he captured another knight’s daughter and kept her for ransom, had seemed likely to me to be a man who would beat to death another in an attempt to make him tell of a treasure. And a poor knight might ignore the needs of his horse. So I thought.
But Osbert said this was not so. Was it Sir Philip who took Amice Thatcher, or some knight unknown to me who rode a horse with a broken shoe? Was there another impoverished manor in East Hanney?
Perhaps Amice was held in some other place. The wretches who ransacked her hut spoke of returning to East Hanney, but mayhap they confined her somewhere else. Were these scoundrels not the same men who beat John Thrale, or rode a horse with a broken shoe? How could I discover answers to these questions?
I spent the next days nursing Osbert’s wounds and my own, thinking how I might find Amice Thatcher, and pondering a remove to Oxford. The last day of October, a Sunday, was All Hallows’ Eve. Kate had occupied herself for two days baking soul cakes for the children and poor men and women who would beg the cakes before our door on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.
Mornings were worst. When I crawled from our bed it seemed as if the arrow Arthur had drawn from my back was yet there. After an hour or so of cautious movement the aggrieved flesh flexed more readily, so that by the time mass was done on All Saints’ Day I felt tolerably able to mount Bruce and make for Abingdon. As Saturn would soon leave Aries, I took along the sack of herbs and instruments which had already made the journey once.
Osbert could not stay in Galen House while I was away and only Kate resided there with him. Sunday afternoon I had visited the castle and sought Alice atte Bridge. The lass worked in the scullery, a position I had found for her some years past, after the death of her father. She was willing, as who would not be, to leave her duties at the castle and occupy a room at Galen House, there to assist Kate in treating Osbert’s wounds and dissolve any gossip which would surely surface if Kate was left alone to nurse my patient.
I instructed Kate and Alice in the use of salves, and told Kate to continue to dose Osbert’s ale with crushed seeds of hemp and lettuce also at nightfall. I advised Kate that, if Lord Gilbert sent a man to question her of Osbert’s recovery, she was to tell him that many weeks would pass before he could leave his bed. Then I set out for Abingdon, assured that matters in Bampton were in hand.
’Twas near dark when we stabled our horses in the mews behind the New Inn and sought some supper. I was concerned about leaving my sack of instruments with the innkeeper. When Arthur returned the sack four days earlier I noticed that my finest scalpel had a nick in the blade. The innkeeper had used it, I think, to bone a chicken for his stew pot. It was my intent to leave the sack with Brother Theodore, but the day was too far gone to seek him. Tomorrow, after I had concluded some other business, I would find the hosteler and make provision for my instruments. Tonight I would keep the sack near.
While we rode to Abingdon that day I had told Arthur of Osbert’s claim that Sir Philip Rede cared well for his horses, and would not permit one to go lame because of a broken shoe. I did not doubt Osbert, but wished to be sure of the assertion before I sought some other man. That night, as we prepared for bed, I told Arthur that we must rise early, before dawn, and once more travel the road to East Hanney.
All Souls’ Day mass is also obligatory. It was my plan to ignore this requirement, travel to East Hanney, and again approach Sir Philip’s manor through the wood. When the church bell had called all the village to mass we could cross the meadow, enter the stable, and inspect the right rear hooves of the horses kept there.
So when the bell of the abbey church rang for matins I elbowed Arthur awake and together we stumbled down the dark stairs, across the yard, and into the mews.
The stable boy had left a cresset lighted upon a stand, as is common, so he might see to deal with any beast which needed attention in the night. By its flame we saddled Bruce and the palfrey. I tossed my sack of instruments across Bruce’s rump, being unwilling to leave the sack with the innkeeper for even one day, and we set off down Ock Street guided by the light of a quarter moon.
The eastern sky was growing light when we approached the wood north of East Hanney. The path into the forest was yet dark, but we had traveled that way often enough that it was no trouble to find the clearing where we had before left the horses, then make our way to the nettle-crusted stone wall. I was heartily weary of the journey and this place, and breathed a prayer to the Lord Christ that I could soon put East Hanney forever behind me.
By the time we arrived at the wall the new day had grown light enough that we could see Sir Philip’s manor, its house and outbuildings, quite clearly. I was astonished at what else I saw.
Two shadowy figures stood beside the decaying hen coop where we had found Sybil Montagu. Someone was once again imprisoned in that shed. Was Sybil there again? If so, the men who were to take her to her father had rather come from Sir Philip. But how would he have known that she could be found at the abbey guest house?
Perhaps another prisoner was in the shed. Amice Thatcher? That seemed unlikely. Or perhaps Sir Philip, his scheme for ransoming Sybil Montagu a failure, had seized some other nobleman’s child, or the heir of some wealthy burgher.
The morn was cold, and my wounds, stiffened in the night, ached as we peered over the wall.
“Two men now,” Arthur said. “Sir Philip ain’t gonna chance ’is prisoner escapin’ again. But who could he have there now? Suppose it’s Sybil Montagu?”
“Mayhap.”
“We gonna free ’er again, then?”
“I have other concerns. If Sir Philip has retaken Sybil Montagu, he can keep her for a time. Serve him right.”
“Aye,” Arthur chuckled.
Only those with good reason may absent themselves from mass on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Would an assignment to keep vigil over Sir Philip’s prisoner be considered good reason?
It was. Less than an hour after Arthur and I took station behind the wall, the church bell called East Hanney’s residents to the church, where on this day would be said prayers for those dead but not yet released from purgatory. If such souls there be, prayers can do them no harm, and if no purgatory exists, prayer is generally a good thing anyway.
We heard the pealing of the bell and watched to see if the guards left their post. They did not.
“Reckon Sir Philip’s got the lass back in that shed?” Arthur asked.
“Or some other prisoner has been taken and is now held there. If it is Sybil in the shed, somehow Sir Philip learned that she was at the abbey guest hall.”
As I spoke the words I guessed how Sir Philip might have discovered Sybil. The abbot was Peter of Hanney. Was he a friend to Sir Philip Rede, and had he learned who was sheltered in his guest hall? This could be, but I would not concern myself now with the possibility. If Sybil was once again held in the shed, the experience could do her little harm. She might even learn humility, which discovery would greatly improve her disposition. When I could, I would send word to her father of where she might be found.
“How we gonna
spy out them horses with men standin’ so near to the stable?” Arthur asked.
I had been considering the same problem, and thought I had an answer. The guards stationed at the shed were in stature much like Arthur: sturdy and squarely built, short-legged and made for strength, not speed. I could easily outrun Arthur, and even but a week removed from being pierced by an arrow I felt recovered enough that I could successfully flee the two men I saw across the meadow.
“If I distract one of those fellows,” I said, “can you take the other?”
“Believe so,” he grinned.
“Here is my plan. All others are at the church. We’ll have but those two to deal with. Walk with me on the road to the village. We’ll not cross the field. They’ll see us coming and be ready for mischief. No honest men would approach them through a wood and across a meadow rather than by the road.
“If they see us approach the village they will likely take us for two simple travelers, unconcerned about who might see them enter the village. We will be too far away to be recognized, I think, if they were among those who witnessed Osbert’s beating and our rescue.
“After we pass behind the first houses, you hold back. I will turn from the road just past the third house, and enter the gate to Sir Philip’s manor. I’ll try to get the guards to chase me. Few men can outrun me — surely not those fellows.
“If they both follow, you open the door to the shed and see who is there. Then go to the stable and inspect the right-rear hooves of the beasts there. You know what to look for.”
“If ’tis Sybil in the hencoop,” Arthur grimaced, “what am I to do with her?”
“Nothing. Tell her, or whoever is there, to flee to the church, and after the mass seek the priest and tell him of her plight. I wish to be done with her.”
“And if both them fellows don’t chase after you, what then?”
“You must overcome the one who remains behind. When you have done so, toss him in the shed in place of whoso may be there now. I’ll allow the one who pursues me to keep close, so he may believe he can catch me, until you have had time to inspect the stable. We will meet here in an hour or so, after I have shaken loose from pursuit.”