by Mel Starr
I dismounted and followed the old woman to her house, leading Bruce by the halter. The house was wattle and daub, like most in the town, and showed signs of neglect, as did its owner. The thatching of the roof was thin, and chunks of daub had fallen from the walls, exposing decaying wattles. A widow’s home, I thought.
I tied Bruce to a fencepost and approached the door. It opened before I could raise my hand to knock. The woman saw me standing before her and started back so violently that I feared she would fall.
“Oh — you’ve nearly made me drop me eggs!” she exclaimed.
The woman clung to a basket. From the rear of the decaying house I heard hens clucking. They were apparently a source of income, perhaps along with turnips her only source of cash.
“Forgive me. I had no wish to frighten you. Do you remember me?”
“Aye. You asked of Margaret, the smith’s girl, a few days back.”
“I did, although I did not know her name until you told me. I would ask a few more questions about her.”
“I promised these eggs to the vicar before noon. Father Geoffrey likes his eggs fresh.” The woman’s house was but three streets from the church and vicarage.
“Will you return when your errand is done?”
“Aye, straight away.”
“I’ll wait.”
The woman kept her word. I spent the time observing the house and street. It was a duplicate of hundreds I had seen across England, and France, too, in my travels there. The streets were similar, but the stories of the people inhabiting them all different. The crone; was she a widow? Never wed? Children? Grandchildren? Had she loved and laughed once? The crinkled skin about her eyes said “yes,” but the downturned corners of her mouth revealed sorrow in her life. As I mused, the wrinkled eyes and downcast mouth rounded the corner and limped toward me.
I had not noticed her hobble as she walked away. Now she returned shuffling, nearly halting each time her left foot struck the ground. When she came closer I could see a grimace, too, when her weight shifted to her left foot. Her condition aroused my medical curiosity.
“You walk with pain,” I observed when she approached.
“Aye. Since Easter last I’ve suffered.”
“What is the cause?” I suspected the disease of the bones. She was of the age for it. It was unlikely her diet was rich enough to cause gout.
“It’s me toe. Swole up an’ red. ’At’s right, you be t’surgeon from Bampton. ’Eard of you.”
I wondered what she’d heard, but decided it could not have been too bad, as with her next breath she asked if I might examine the offending digit.
I followed her into her house, but the light there was too dim to properly diagnose either wound or injury. I carried a bench out to the sunlight, bade her sit upon it, and knelt before her to remove her shoe. I could see the swelling through the cracked, ancient leather, and heard her giggle softly behind her hand as I took her ankle to pull off the shoe. The giggle concluded with a gasp as the shoe abraded her toe.
Her pain was due to a badly infected ingrown toenail; one of the worst I’ve seen. The wonder is she could walk at all.
“Can you do aught for me?” she asked.
“Aye. But not now. I’ve no instruments with me.”
“Instruments?” She said it as a question, with a trace of alarm in her voice.
“You have an ingrown toenail. I must trim it back, and remove some putrefied flesh from about it.”
“Can’t you put somethin’ on it — a poultice, like?”
“I could, but that would serve only temporarily. The swelling might subside for a day, and the pain with it, but it would surely return. It does little good to treat pain. I must treat the cause of the pain.”
“I see; sore toes is much like other sorrows God’s children must endure.”
The old woman did not look like a philosopher, but surviving sixty or seventy years of the assorted trials common to mankind must turn all but the most shallow to contemplative thought now and again.
“I will return tomorrow to treat you. Can you find a flagon of wine?”
“You wants your pay in wine?” she said incredulously.
“No…no. I will bathe the wound in wine, to speed healing.”
“Wound,” she said limply.
“A small incision only. But I must tell you that we must do all we can to aid healing. You are not a young woman. The young heal more quickly than the old. And wounds of the extremities in the old heal even more slowly. I do not know why this is, but I have observed it so.”
“What fee, then, do you ask?”
“Some information. Is that reasonable enough?”
“Aye, if I got it.”
“If you do not, perhaps you can get it for me when I return tomorrow.”
“If I can. What you want t’know?”
“Perhaps we should go inside to talk. Here, I’ll help you stand.”
I assisted the woman to her feet. She leaned heavily on me as I helped her into the dim interior of her hut. She sat heavily on the first bench we came to. I went back for the other outside.
“The smith’s girl…Margaret. Had she other suitors than Thomas of Shilton?”
“Oh, la, she were always popular with the lads. But I don’t know as you could call all who gave her a look suitors.”
“What would you call them?”
“Pleasure seekers, maybe.”
“Were they likely to find it with Margaret?”
“Couldn’t say. Rumors ’bout town said maybe yes, maybe no. But folks didn’t gossip much ’bout Margaret ’cause they didn’t want to explain theirselves to her father, if you take my meanin’.”
“Then she was an attractive girl?”
“Oh, aye. A beauty. Could’ve had most any lad hereabouts, but she seemed set on Tom.”
“‘Seemed,’ you say?”
“Oh, she’d flirt with the lads some. You’ll not credit it now, but I were pert when I were a lass. I seen her with men a time or two, an’ I remember how it was.” Her eyes, once fixed on mine, wandered over my shoulder to the window. “A villein’s daughter has little to look forward to. So a little harmless dalliance wi’ the boys…it’s ’bout all she’s got.”
“Harmless?” I asked. “Is it always? Does dalliance sometimes lead to serious matters?”
“Aye, it does that.” She pursed her lips. “I could tell you stories…”
“Of Margaret?”
“Oh, no. I were thinkin’ of times long past, though there be folk hereabout younger’n me who’d remember well enough.”
“So Margaret’s flirting with other young men was not so serious as to lead them on, or cause Thomas to be jealous?”
“Well, I can’t say as what’d cause a lad to be jealous. Margaret was that pretty, I guess a fellow’d get anxious whenever she spoke to other lads.”
“You think Thomas of Shilton the jealous sort?” I asked.
“Can’t say. He don’t live in town, ’course. Seems a quiet lad. I probably heard him speak a time or two, but I couldn’t recognize his voice were he callin’ outside the door this moment. Not very helpful, eh? What you want to know all this for?”
“Lord Gilbert Talbot has charged me with finding Margaret’s killer.”
“Oh!” She sat up straight, eyes wide. “You think her Tom mighta done it, or one of t’others she’d trifle with?”
“I know not what to think,” I answered. “Perhaps you can help me. Can you find answers to my question by tomorrow, or should I wait another day or two?”
“I got friends who know what I don’t,” the woman smiled. “An’ I don’t wanna live with me toe a day longer than I got to. You come back tomorrow. I’ll have somethin’ for you, if there’s anythin’ to be knowed.”
“Don’t forget the wine.”
I intended to speak also to the smith that day. But I was of two minds. Should I interrogate a man, who two hours earlier had buried his daughter, about her friends and activities? Should
I wait until the morrow, when my presence in the town would be bandied about? I’d ridden up and down the streets often enough that many saw me. A stranger in such a place is likely to create questions anyway, particularly one who seems to wander the streets aimlessly. The smith lived on the opposite bank of the river Windrush, but gossip would carry that far soon enough.
I turned Bruce north when I reached the High Street and crossed the bridge. As I approached the smith’s hut, I saw a wisp of smoke rise from his forge. Bereaved or not, a man must earn a living.
I heard the rhythmic pounding of his hammer before I dismounted. I had to speak his name twice before Alard laid down his hammer and turned to me.
“Oh. You have news? I must finish this hinge before it cools.” And he turned back to his work. A few more skilled blows, and the work was done.
“Now, then, you said as you’d tell me soon as you learned what befell my Margaret…” He left the phrase dangling, not as a question, but as an acknowledgment of either my competence or his faith.
“I did, but I do not know that yet. I am here to learn more of her, that I may solve this puzzle.”
“What good will that do? Know what you will of her…won’t tell who killed her,” he said with bitterness in his voice.
“It might. I think most who are murdered are done to death by someone they know, not some stranger or unknown thief on some deserted byway.”
Alard shrugged. “Then ask what you will.”
“Had Margaret any other suitors?”
“You mean more than Tom? Aye, she was one who caught men’s eyes. Like her mother.” He crossed himself.
“Any in particular?”
“None as had a chance with her. She’d set her cap for Tom Shilton.”
“Did the others know that?”
“Yer askin’ did she lead lads on, like?”
Alard was no fool. He saw the answers I sought before I asked the questions. “Yes, that’s what I wish to know.”
Alard looked down at the hammer dangling from his right hand. “We had words ’bout that. A few times.”
I thought, from his manner and tone, that Alard and his daughter might have visited the subject more than a few times. I said nothing, waiting for him to continue on his own.
“She liked the attention, y’see. ’Twas Tom she’d chosen. Most other lads hereabout knew it. Didn’t stop ’em as thought the matter weren’t settled.”
“Did Margaret give them reason to think ‘the matter weren’t settled’? Is that what you had words about?”
“Aye.” He hesitated. “Told her as it wasn’t right, leadin’ lads on. She’d laugh an’ say ’twas but a lark. I told her they might not see it that way.”
“Any young men in particular who thought they might have a chance with her?”
Alard paused and contemplated his hammer again. “’Bout all of ’em, I suppose. Maybe John, the miller’s boy,” he bent his head toward the mill, just in view upstream, “was most taken with her.”
“What kind of fellow is he?”
“Oh, he’ll do well. Inherit the mill with but a small fine to the Earl. His wife’ll not want for bread nor ale.”
Spoken like a true father. I asked again, phrasing my question differently. “What of his appearance? Tall? Short? Handsome? Ill-favored?”
“Oh…well, not so handsome. Short, stocky fellow. Some lasses might not care for his looks, but he’ll get more appealin’ to his wife as the years pass an’ the family grows an’ he provides.”
“Are there girls who are interested in him?”
“I suppose. I think Theobald’s daughter — he’s in trade, wool merchant — would have him.”
“Would have him, or wants him?”
Alard smiled thinly. “All right…wants him.”
“What did the merchant’s daughter think of Margaret?”
“They wasn’t close. Her bein’ of a different station. She didn’t much like it that the smithy’s daughter could dress plain an’ get more attention than her in fine clothes.”
I thought my next appointment should be with the miller’s son. I bid Alard farewell, took Bruce by the reins, and led him up the path along the river to the mill.
The creaking and grinding machinery drowned out my call, so I walked through the open door and found the miller at his work in the dusty interior. He peered through the haze at me, trying to place me among his circle of acquaintances. He held up a finger to indicate a brief delay, then resumed his work. When he finished he pushed past the sacks of flour recently ground and made his way to me.
“I am Hugh de Singleton, surgeon of Bampton. You know of the fate of Margaret, the smith’s girl?”
The miller motioned me to follow him out the door to the relative quiet of the yard. “Aye…woeful thing.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Watched her grow up.”
That did not answer my question, but I could see that the miller thought it did. I was to learn that he was a man of few words.
“I’ve heard she was likely to marry Thomas of Shilton.”
“So it’s said.”
“Had she other suitors?”
“Nay. How am I to know?”
“I heard your son was interested.”
“More the fool he.”
“Oh…Why do you say so?”
“Always puttin’ on airs. Nose in the air. A smith’s daughter, mind you. Thought she was too good for my John…or most o’ the rest ’round here.”
“But not too good for Thomas Shilton?”
“Even him.”
This was a surprise. “How so?” I asked.
“He’s to come into a yardland an’ hopeful of another. She probably thought he was as good as she could catch. But she made ’im work for it.”
“Work?”
“Followed her about like a slave, he did.”
“So you’d not have been pleased had she set her cap for your John?”
“Nay. I suppose a babe or two would have shifted her mind…but there are those it don’t.”
“Is your son about? I would speak to him before I go.”
“Nay. Gone to Swinbrook.”
“Does he return today?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tell him I will call.”
The miller stared at me, unblinking, and said, “Why?”
“I should have explained. Lord Gilbert Talbot has charged me with the discovery of Margaret’s killer, as her body was found on his land.”
“My John had naught to do with anything like that.”
“I do not suspect him. But perhaps he may know something of Margaret’s friends or activities which might point me to the guilty party.”
The miller shrugged. “I’ll tell him you will call.”
Chapter 6
Bruce knew the way home and would have broken to a trot had I not held him back, so eager was he for oats and a warm stall. I was eager for my own warm hearth. Well, it would be warm after I renewed my fire. I had learned much this day. Whether it would lead me to a killer or was but gossip, I could not know. Such is the way with knowledge; we cannot know when we acquire it when, or if ever, it will be useful to us.
I was pleased to see the spire of the Church of St Beornwald rise above the nearly naked trees when I neared Bampton. The spire is impressive for a town the size of ours but not, perhaps, as graceful as some others. It is solid and substantial, like the villagers who worship under it.
It was near dark when I left Bruce at the castle and made my way to my own door. I lit a candle, built a small fire of the few sticks of wood remaining to me, and made a supper. Days were short. Nights were long. I should have slept well in preparation for a return to Burford, but I did not. Rather, I lay in the dark and reviewed what I had learned. But I could find no pattern.
As soon as dawn gave light I was at the castle gate. I had forewarned Wilfred the evening before, so he was prompt in releasing the bar and swinging open the gate. The marshalsea had
Bruce ready. I swung my bag of instruments over his broad rump and set out for Burford once again.
I had seen several forests along the road to Burford which in the recent past had been coppiced, then left unattended; due, no doubt, to the reduced number of laborers available for the task. As I passed one of these thickets but a few miles north of Bampton, I heard a rustling in the grove and saw through the leafless saplings a sow and two of her offspring, which had thus far escaped the autumn slaughter, rooting for acorns in the fallen leaves. The sow raised her head suspiciously as Bruce and I passed, but determined that we were no threat and went back to plowing the forest floor with her snout. Her passage through the coppiced woods was clearly marked, and I idly scanned the upturned leaves as Bruce ambled past the scene. The pigs were soon lost to my sight, but as I turned to the road before me, I caught from the corner of my eye a flash of color which seemed out of place in an autumn wood.
I halted Bruce, and turned him to retrace our path. I peered into the grove, and there, a hundred feet into the forest, among the upturned leaves, was a patch of blue. I dismounted and made my way through the thick-grown pollarding to the object. One sleeve of a blue cotehardie lay above the fallen leaves where the rooting pigs had left it, and was thus visible from the road. I swept away more leaves with my hand, and uncovered the garment, stained and dirty, but whole. I lifted it from the mold for inspection. It was a gentleman’s cotehardie. A sumptuous one. It was cut short, in the fashion worn by young men who wished to show a good pair of legs. It was of dark blue velvet, woven in a diamond pattern, and lined with light blue silk. The long sleeves were cut in dags, ornamented with a trim of yellow velvet, and embroidered with gold thread. Even through its filthy condition, it proclaimed its owner a young man of pride and station. Its chiefest flaw, besides the earth and leaves accumulated on it, was a small slash, about two inches long, at the front of the garment. Dirt and mold clinging to the cotehardie obscured a dark stain about the tear. Only later did I discover this discoloration.