The Bookseller's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 1)

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘What have the two of you been about? You are no longer students! What mad caper is this?’

  I crouched near the fire and began to pull off my sodden cotte, while Jordain attempted to pacify my sister.

  ‘Nay, it was no caper, Margaret. A tragedy, rather.’

  ‘What say you?’ Fear conquered anger in her expression.

  ‘One of my students has drowned in the Cherwell. Nicholas saw his body in the river as he was coming back from Yardley’s farm. He had to go into the river to pull the body out.’

  ‘Had to?’ Anger was coming to the fore again. ‘Why must it be you, Nicholas?’

  ‘There was no one else about,’ I said. ‘He would have been swept away down to the Thames. It is one of Jordain’s students, so I sent for him.’

  I sat down on Margaret’s chair and tried to remove my shoes, but they clung to my hose and I found that my hands were shaking so much that I could not grip them.

  Margaret clicked her tongue in annoyance and knelt before the chair, easing my shoes off gently. I saw that there was a rip in the foot of my hose. I must have caught it on a stone in the river. Margaret had seen it as well, but made no comment.

  ‘I’ll fetch you dry clothes,’ she said. ‘Take everything off, mind. Everything. There is a towel in the coffer at the bottom of the stairs, Jordain.’

  She hurried away and Jordain fetched the towel. When Margaret returned, I was wrapped in the towel and as close as I could get to the hearth without setting myself afire. She thrust the bundle of clothes at me, then turned her back modestly to lay out bowls and spoons on the table. She had seen me naked often enough as a child, but clearly wished to observe the proprieties before Jordain.

  Once dressed, I no longer felt so deathly cold. Margaret had even brought my academic gown for additional warmth, though it seem incongruous to don it in the kitchen.

  ‘There is a good leek soup keeping warm in the pot here,’ Margaret said, thrusting me aside so that she could reach the hearth. ‘And some cold bacon and bread. I daresay you are hungry as usual, Jordain.’

  He grinned at her. ‘I am always hungry for your cooking, Margaret.’

  Jordain had been stick thin ever since we had first met as fourteen-year-old bejants, lodging at Tackley’s during our early years at Oxford. However much he ate, he never grew any fatter, though I knew that meals at Hart Hall were poor fare at the best of times.

  Margaret laid out an ample supper for us, and I spooned up the soup while it was almost too hot to eat. The warmth drove away the last of the shivering which had come upon me while I waited at the river side with William’s body. As we ate, Margaret warmed some ale with a stick of cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg, then sat down at the table to share it with us.

  ‘And now,’ she said, ‘suppose you tell me the whole tale.’

  ‘Aye,’ Jordain said, ‘I only know part myself, and Nicholas has been keeping something back.

  So I told them everything, from the time I had stopped on the East Bridge until I sent off the two lay brothers from St John’s to fetch help. Then I paused.

  ‘And?’ Jordain said. ‘This, I think, is where we discover what it is that you have not been telling me.’

  I curved my hands around the pewter tankard which Margaret had just refilled, grateful for the comfort of the warm ale. I must tell Jordain what I had found, but was it right to involve Margaret? A sigh, unintended, escaped from me, and I began to cough.

  ‘You shall have a poultice of nettles on your chest before you go to bed,’ Margaret said.

  To distract her from this unpleasant idea, I said suddenly, ‘Where is the puppy?’ I had just remembered it.

  Margaret sniffed with disapproval. ‘I said it must sleep in the pantry, so we shut it in there, but it howled without ceasing. Alysoun wept. Rafe joined in the howling. I could have no peace until I agreed to let them take the creature to their room for this one night only, since it must be missing its mother.’

  I hid my smile. By now, I reckoned the puppy would be sharing Alysoun’s bed, and tomorrow it would find its way there again.

  ‘Puppy?’ Jordain said, momentarily sidetracked, so I explained.

  ‘I knew it would prove a nuisance,’ Margaret said grimly. ‘If there are any messes in the children’s room in the morning, Alysoun shall clean them up herself and learn what it means to keep a dog in the house.’

  ‘Quite right,’ I said, nodding soberly.

  ‘Nicholas,’ Jordain said, ‘you cannot avoid telling us whatever it is that you are hiding.’

  I drew a deep breath and set down my ale. Margaret was a sensible woman, not like to faint or scream or turn sick. I would tell them both what I had discovered.

  ‘William did not drown.’ I said, ‘either through accident or suicide. He was stabbed from behind. It was murder.’

  Margaret gasped, but said nothing. Jordain looked sickened, but not surprised.

  ‘I thought it must be some such,’ he said, ‘from your manner, and your anxiety to say nothing at the church.’

  ‘The constable must be told, of course,’ I said, ‘and the proper authorities – the coroner, the university, the town officials. But it needs must be handled with care. There is no knowing if this is some town and gown quarrel or not. We do not want to start a riot, like those that have happened in the past. If the murderer is a university man, the case will come under the jurisdiction of the university, but if it is a townsman, well . . .’

  ‘Aye. Trouble. There are too many killings in this town.’

  ‘And there is the fact that I was the one to find the body. A graduate and a licensed bookseller, so that I have one foot in the university, but a shopkeeper with the other foot in the town. It has always been difficult to balance my loyalties fairly, so I try to avoid such disputes. And also–’

  ‘Also?’

  ‘One of those lay brothers from St John’s, the lean one, with a nose quivering for scandal – he as good as accused me of causing William’s death. By the time they saw me, I was dragging William to the bank, but I suppose to a suspicious mind it might have looked as though I was trying to drown him.’

  Margaret pressed her hand against her mouth in alarm, but Jordain patted her shoulder.

  ‘Once it is made known that the boy was stabbed, no one could suspect you of drowning him.’

  ‘It will not be easily seen. Most of the blood was washed away by the river. However, there is a faint but wide stain on the breast of his cotte and a larger one on the back, where the slit in the cloth shows where the knife went in.’

  ‘Cold water will wash out blood,’ Margaret said, ‘but it must be done before the blood dries, or it is much more difficult to remove every trace.’

  We both looked at her.

  ‘That means,’ Jordain said slowly, ‘that if William was stabbed next to the river and immediately thrown in, most of the blood would be washed away.’

  I nodded. ‘But if he was stabbed and the blood had partly dried before he went in the water, it would not wash away so thoroughly. But of course we do not know how long he was in the river, or where he went in.’ I remembered what the lay brother had said. ‘It must have been down river of Holywell Mill, or the body would likely have caught in the sluice or the wheel.’

  Jordain nodded. ‘How fast was the river today?’

  ‘Fast. I nearly lost hold of the body. The snow lingered this winter, did it not? The last of the spring melt is still coming down from the Cotswolds.’

  ‘So he must have gone in below the mill, and not very long before you crossed the bridge. How long would it take, from the mill to the East Bridge?’

  I shook my head. ‘We cannot tell. Even while I was watching, it caught for a time on some reeds near the hospital. That could have happened any number of times along the way, although that stretch of the river is fairly straight.’

  ‘There is no good going over and over it now,’ Margaret said. ‘Listen! There are the midnight chimes. Time we were all abed.
Some of us must rise before dawn.’

  Jordain got to his feet. ‘I must go. I have trespassed on your good will too long, Margaret.’

  ‘You will go nowhere tonight,’ she said firmly. ‘If some cut-throat does not slay you, the Watch will arrest you for wandering the streets this late. You will spend the night here.’

  ‘I should go back to the Hall.’

  ‘Margaret is right,’ I said. ‘It is too dangerous to be abroad this late. I am sure your students will bolt the door, they are not fools.’

  We none of us said, but it hovered in the air – since the Death there were many become desperate and lawless, men who might once have been honest workmen, fathers and husbands, young men with a future ahead of them. Why had God inflicted such punishment upon his children? Was there indeed a God? Why should a man try to live a godly Christian life, when all were struck down alike, sinful and innocent? Such men lived by violence now, and the world had become a dangerous place.

  ‘There is a truckle bed in my chamber,’ I said. ‘You are welcome to that, and I will lend you a night shift.’

  ‘Very well.’ Jordain gave in readily, and smiled at us. ‘I thank you both.’

  On our way up the stairs which led to the rest of the house from a corner of the kitchen, I laid my finger to my lips. If the children woke, we would be even later reaching our beds. I pulled aside the curtain which closed off the small chamber the children shared, no more than an alcove, and peered in, holding my rushlight high. Rafe had abandoned his truckle bed and climbed in with Alysoun. The puppy lay curled up between them, cradled under Alysoun’s arm. Jordain looked over my shoulder and grinned.

  Once we were in my chamber with the door closed, he allowed himself a quiet chuckle. ‘So that is the puppy. That little maid has you at her bidding, Nicholas.’

  ‘There is no harm in her having a puppy.’ I was defensive. ‘It will guard the house and shop.’

  ‘Not very easily from the child’s bed.’

  ‘This night only, as Margaret has said.’

  I turned my back on him and pulled the wheeled truckle bed out from under my own. In the weeks after Elizabeth died, Alysoun had slept in it, with Rafe in the cradle beside her. My mother had wanted to take the children to live with her, in her cottage on the farm, but I would not allow them out of my sight.

  ‘Here is a night shift for you.’ I lifted one out of the coffer where I kept my clothes, all but my academic gown, which I now hung from a peg in the wall.

  ‘I can sleep in my clothes.’

  ‘No need to martyr yourself.’ I tossed the shift over to him.

  ‘I do understand, you know.’ Jordain’s voice was muffled as he pulled his cotte over his head.

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘How it is with you. The children.’ He looked for a moment uncomfortable, as if feeling he had said too much, then hurried on. ‘That was no light decision you made, abandoning your future as a lawyer, perhaps even at court, to marry Elizabeth.’

  I climbed into bed and clasped my arms about my knees.

  ‘I could not live without her,’ I said simply. ‘To have taken holy orders and gone into the future alone, that would have been a kind of death.’ I baulked at my own choice of words. ‘We had three joyful years, which I shall never regret. And she gave me Alysoun and Rafe.’

  ‘I should not have spoken,’ he said, stretching out on the low bed. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘If anyone has the right to speak of it, you have. I know you hoped we would carry on together through the university, but we have remained friends, despite following our different paths, have we not? And now, behold! You are a Regent Master of Arts, Warden of a Hall, one of the most popular lecturers in the university, and soon to be a doctor of Philosophy, while I am a jobbing bookseller and stationer.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he yawned hugely, ‘I envy you those children.’ He yawned again. ‘What are we to do about the death of poor Farringdon? Some of my students have a knack for falling into trouble, but not he. Why should anyone want to kill him?’

  ‘There is nothing we can do tonight.’ I leaned over the stool beside my bed and snuffed out the rushlight. ‘God give you rest, Jordain.’

  ‘And you,’ he murmured sleepily.

  A certain shyness had prevented my kneeling to my evening prayers, but I said them now, remembering all those I had loved, wandering now in the dark land of Purgatory. I prayed for the safety of my children. And I prayed for William Farringdon, a boy on the threshold of manhood, snatched away unshriven by some murderer’s hand.

  There was no opportunity the following morning to discuss with Jordain what we should do. The children were excited to find that Cousin Jordain (as he called himself) had spent the night with us. Margaret was tired and cross, having had to rise after little sleep in order to bake the day’s bread. The puppy rushed about barking, entering into the children’s excitement, and must needs be hurried into the garden just in time to prevent another accident on Margaret’s spotless floor.

  ‘I cannot break my fast with you, Margaret,’ Jordain said, ‘though I thank you. I must away back to the Hall. Rumour flies on the wind, and Heaven alone knows what my lads will have heard already about this tragedy. I must reassure them, if I can.’

  He looked from Margaret to me. The children were listening avidly. ‘I will not mention that other matter Nicholas spoke of last night.’

  We had both overslept. My scriveners had already arrived and I told Walter to open the shop while I hurriedly cut myself the usual bread and cheese.

  ‘Take this with you, Jordain.’ Margaret thrust a wedge of the cheese and the end of a new loaf into his hand. ‘You may eat as you go.’

  He kissed her goodbye, swung Rafe in the air, and patted Alysoun’s cheek, then followed me through to the shop.

  ‘I will come back as soon as I may. I have a lecture at seven o’the clock, but if I can I will be here straight afterwards. It is only a step away, in the Schools. I will see you then.’

  He hurried off.

  ‘Mother hen,’ I murmured, but not loud enough for him to hear.

  Oxford is a small place, though it be uneasily divided between town and gown. When something remarkable or untoward happens, news of it flies about – as Jordain said – seemingly on the wind. Perhaps the servants from St John’s had gossiped in a tavern last night or this morning. Or the less amiable lay brother had put the word about. He seemed like a man with a long nose to sniff out trouble. I worried what evil suspicions he might be spreading about me. Once it was confirmed that William had been stabbed, he could hardly claim that I had drowned the boy, though I suppose a twisted mind might suppose that I had stabbed him and then dropped the knife in the river. Though surely any man of sense would question why I should then plunge into the river and insist on dragging the body out and informing the constable?

  So I reasoned, but sadness at the boy’s death and worry over unfounded rumours kept me from my work. All I managed to do was to arrange with a carter to take my valuation of the books to the widow in Banbury. Walter and Roger may have wondered at my distracted manner, but they worked on steadily, clearly not having heard about the events of the previous evening. Not, that is, until the constable Edric Crowmer came into the shop an hour or so after we had opened.

  ‘Well, this is an unpleasant business, Master Elyot,’ he said, clearly seeing no need to speak to me in private. ‘If the boy killed himself, it will mean unconsecrated burial outside the town wall. Let us hope that it was an accident.’

  I noticed that both Walter and Roger had stopped writing and were listening.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said noncommittally. I did not want to discuss the blood I had found on the boy’s body, not now, in the middle of my shop. ‘It will be for the inquest to make a decision. I understand from Master Brinkylsworth that the boy could not swim. There is no reason to suppose that he did not slip on a crumbling bank and fall in. The students sometimes go rabbiting in those fields on the other side of t
he Cherwell.’

  This was irrelevant in the light of my discovery as to how William had met his death, but I was anxious that he should not be held guilty of the grievous sin of suicide.

  ‘Aye, I have reported the matter to the coroners, and they are willing that the body should remain in St Peter’s for the time being. They will call the inquest shortly.’ Crowmer rubbed his chin. ‘Rabbiting, you say? Would he have gone alone?’

  I had no wish to enlarge on this theory, which I had invented on the spur of the moment, so I merely shrugged and turned aside to a group of students who came crowding in.

  ‘You are early,’ I said. ‘Lectures surely cannot have finished yet.’

  They looked shifty and pretended to examine a pot of quills set out on the counter. One, however, was bolder than the rest.

  ‘Master Elyot, they are saying that you found the body in the river. Is it true?’

  My scriveners had abandoned all pretence of work and stared at me open mouthed.

  I cleared my throat. Probably I could not avoid this. I needs must say something.

  ‘Aye. It was I who found poor William Farringdon in the river and managed to bring him to the bank. The matter is now in the hands of the coroners.’

  I hoped that would silence them, but I was mistaken.

  ‘William was worried about something.’ Most of the students were younger than William, certainly still studying the Trivium, but the lad who now spoke was older. ‘I am at St Edmund’s, not Hart Hall, but I know William. We both attend Master Wycliffe’s lectures on Ethics.’

  ‘Do you know why he was worried? Could it have driven him to suicide?’ Crowmer fixed the student with a stern look, so that he backed away.

  ‘Nay,’ he protested. ‘William was very devout. He was to take full holy orders next year. He would never have killed himself. That is a monstrous suggestion!’

  ‘You see?’ I said to Crowmer. ‘Tell me.’ I turned to the student and spoke in a much milder tone than the constable. ‘Have you any idea why he was worried?’