by Mel Starr
The chronicles of Hugh de Singleton, surgeon
The Unquiet Bones
A Corpse at St Andrew’s Chapel
A Trail of Ink
Unhallowed Ground
The Tainted Coin
Rest Not in Peace
The Abbot’s Agreement
Ashes to Ashes
Lucifer’s Harvest
Deeds of Darkness
Prince Edward’s Warrant
Text copyright © 2018 Mel Starr
This edition copyright © 2018 Lion Hudson IP Limited
The right of Mel Starr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published by
Lion Hudson Limited
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Business Park,
Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com
ISBN 978 1 78264 262 6
e-ISBN 978 1 78264 263 3
First edition 2018
Acknowledgments
Cover images © Sandra Schramm/Shutterstock, © Tim Graham/Alamy
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
For John Kwilinski
Welcome to the family
Contents
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Several years ago when Dr. Dan Runyon, Professor of English at Spring Arbor University, learned that I had written an as yet unpublished medieval mystery, he invited me to speak to his fiction-writing class about the trials of a rookie writer seeking a publisher. He sent chapters of Master Hugh’s first chronicle, The Unquiet Bones, to his friend Tony Collins at Lion Hudson. Thanks, Dan.
Tony has since retired, but many thanks to him and all those at Lion Hudson who saw Master Hugh’s potential. Thanks also to my editors, Jan Greenough for the first nine books, and Penelope Wilcock for the most recent, who know Master Hugh as well as I and excel at asking such questions as “Do you really want to say it that way?” and “Wouldn’t Master Hugh do it like this?”
Dr. John Blair, of Queen’s College, Oxford, has written several papers about Bampton history. These have been valuable in creating an accurate time and place for Master Hugh.
In the summer of 1990 Susan and I found a B&B in a delightful medieval village north of Lichfield named Mavesyn Ridware. Proprietors Tony and Lis Page became friends, and when they moved to Bampton some years later invited us to visit them there. Tony and Lis introduced me to Bampton and became a great source of information about the village. Tony died in March 2015, only a few months after being diagnosed with cancer. He is greatly missed.
Ms. Malgorzata Deron, of Poznan, Poland, offered to update and maintain my website. She has done a marvelous job, while working as a university professor of linguistics and also battling illness. To see her work visit www.melstarr.net.
Glossary
Alaunt: a large hunting dog.
All Saints’ Day: November 1.
Almoner: responsible for a lord’s charity, or a monastic official responsible for gifts to the poor.
Aloes of beef (or lamb): meat sliced thin and rolled in a mixture of egg yolk, suet, onion, and various spices, then baked.
Angelus Bell: rung three times each day – dawn, noon, and dusk. Announced the time for the Angelus Devotional.
Babewyns: figures of fun, often of grotesque monkeys, which was likely the case at Kennington Palace.
Bailiff: a lord’s chief manorial representative. He oversaw all operations, collected rents and fines, and enforced labor service. Not a popular fellow.
Banns: a formal announcement, made in the parish church for three consecutive Sundays, of intent to marry.
Baxter: a professional baker, often female, who regularly sold on the street.
Book of Hours: a devotional book, usually elaborately illustrated.
Bowls: medieval bowling.
Braes: medieval underpants.
Burgher: a town merchant.
Burgundy: the eastern section of what is now France – also the wine produced there.
Butler: manorial official in charge of the buttery.
Butt: a barrel for the storage of wine and ale.
Buttery: a room for beverages stored in butts.
Candlemas: February 2. Marked the purification of Mary. Women traditionally paraded to church carrying lighted candles. Tillage of fields resumed this day.
Capon: a castrated male chicken.
Chamberlain: the keeper of a lord’s chamber, wardrobe, and personal items.
Chicken in kyrtyn: poultry in a cream sauce spiced with ginger, cinnamon, cumin, saffron, and sugar.
Complexio: the combination of the four humors (hot, cold, moist, dry) which made up a person’s life and health.
Cormarye: pork roasted after marinating in red wine and spices.
Coronel-tipped: a blunt lance for use in jousting. The lance had generally three or four small projections at the point.
Cotter: a poor villager, usually holding five acres or less. He often had to labor for wealthier villagers to make ends meet.
Crécy: In 1346 an English army, greatly outnumbered, won a victory there in northern France.
Crispels: a pastry made of flour, sugar, and honey, and fried in lard or oil.
Cyueles: deep-fried fritters made of a paste of breadcrumbs, ground almonds, eggs, sugar, and salt.
Demesne: land directly exploited by a lord, and worked by his villeins, as opposed to land a lord might rent to tenants.
Dexter: a war horse, larger than a runcie or palfrey. Also the right hand direction.
Dighted crab: crab meat soaked in wine, then chopped fine to make a paste. Mixed with ginger, cinnamon, and sugar, the mixture was then replaced in the shell and boiled.
Eels in Bruit: eels cut into small pieces, then cooked in white wine with onions, parsley, sage, breadcrumbs, pepper, and cinnamon.
Farrier: a smith who specialized in shoeing horses.
Farthing: one-fourth of a penny. The smallest silver coin.
Fast day: Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Not the fasting of modern usage, when no food is consumed, but days upon which no meat, eggs, or animal products were consumed. Fish was on the menu for those who could afford it.
Fewterer: keeper of a lord’s kennel and hounds.
Fifth hour: about eleven a.m.
Fraunt hemelle: a pudding made of beaten eggs, cream, breadcrumbs (old, dry bread was rarely just thrown out), minced meat, and spices. The mixture was placed in a bag and boiled, then grilled just before serving.
Gaunceli: a sauce made of milk, flour, garlic, saffron, and salt. Simmered until thickened.
Gentleman: a nobleman. The term had nothing to do with character or behavior.
Gongfermors: men whose occupa
tion was the emptying of cesspits.
Groat: a silver coin worth four pence.
Groom: a lower-ranking servant to a lord. Often young, outranking a page but beneath a valet.
Hamsoken: breaking and entering.
Hemlock: also known as poison parsley. Not to be confused with the coniferous hemlock tree.
Hypocras: spiced wine. Sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg were often in the mix. Usually served at the end of the meal.
Infangenthef: the right of a lord of a manor to try and execute a thief caught in the act.
Jelly de chare: a meat jelly. Calves’ or pigs’ feet were boiled for three hours, then the surface skimmed. Wine, spices, salt, almonds, and pork or poultry were then added. The mixture was simmered until the meat was tender. Generally served cold.
King’s Eyre: a royal traveling court, presided over by a visiting circuit judge.
Knight’s fee: the number of men at arms a knight was to provide in time of war. Also the one hundred shillings a knight owed the king to possess a deceased father’s lands.
Knucklebones: a game similar to jacks played with the knucklebones of pigs or sheep.
Lady: a noblewoman. The term had nothing to do with character or behavior.
Lammastide: August 1, when thanks were given for a successful wheat harvest. From Old English “Loaf mass.”
Larder: a room or structure where meat and fish were stored.
Let lardes: a type of custard made with eggs, milk, bacon fat, and parsley.
Liripipe: a fashionably long tail attached to a man’s cap.
Long worts of pork: a meat stew made with breadcrumbs, cabbage or spring greens, and seasoned with saffron and salt.
Lychgate: a roofed gate in a churchyard wall under which the deceased rested during the initial part of a burial service.
Lymer: a tracking hound.
Maintenance: protection from punishment for misdeeds – provided for knights who served powerful lords and wore their livery.
Malmsey: the sweetest variety of Madeira wine, originally from Greece.
Marshalsea: the stables and associated accoutrements.
Maslin: bread made from a mixture of grains – commonly wheat and rye, or barley and rye.
Matins: the first of the day’s eight canonical hours (services). Also called Lauds.
Mercer: a dealer in silk and linen.
Mess: diners were not served individually at a meal. Portions for two to four were placed upon the table – this was a “mess.”
Nine Man Morris: a board game similar to tic-tac-toe but much more complicated.
Page: a young male servant. If from the upper classes, a youth learning the arts of chivalry before becoming a squire.
Palfrey: a riding horse with a comfortable gait.
Pannage: a fee paid to a lord for permission for pigs to forage in his forest.
Pantler: a manor official, usually a valet, in charge of the pantry.
Pantry: a room for the storage of bread, dining utensils, and linens for tablecloths. From the French word for bread: pain.
Particolored: of several colors. Men often wore chauces (tight-fitting trousers) of more than one color.
Penny: the most common silver coin. Twelve pennies equaled a shilling, although in the fourteenth century there was no one shilling coin. Twenty shillings made a pound, although there was no one pound coin, either.
Plate: domestic dinnerware made of silver.
Porre of peas: a pea soup made with onions, olive oil, and saffron – seasoned with salt and sugar or honey.
Portpain: a linen cloth used to carry bread from the pantry to the table.
Privy chamber: a lord’s private room.
Quarter-noble: a gold coin worth eighty pence; one-third of a pound.
Ravioles: pastries filled with cheese, beaten eggs, occasionally minced pork or poultry, and spices. Generally boiled.
Reeve: an important manor official, although he did not outrank the bailiff. Elected by tenants from among themselves, often the best husbandman. He had responsibility for fields, buildings, and enforcing labor service. Also called a hayward.
Remove: a dinner course.
Runcie: a small, common horse, often used as a pack animal or to haul carts and wagons.
St. Edmund’s Day: November 20.
St. Stephen’s Day: December 26.
Screens passage: a narrow corridor which screened the hall from the kitchen, and from which the buttery and pantry were often accessed.
Scrofula: a tubercular swelling of lymph nodes on the neck.
Shambles: an open-air slaughterhouse to the north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, not to be confused with the better-known street of the same name in York.
Shilling: twelve pence. No shilling coin existed in the fourteenth century.
Sole in cyve: fish broiled and served in a yellow onion sauce.
Squab: a young dove about four or five weeks old.
Squire: a youth who attended a knight, often in training to become a knight.
Stag: a male red deer, sometimes called a hart.
Stews: a brothel district.
Stockfish: inexpensive fish, usually dried and salted cod or haddock, consumed on fast days.
Stone: fourteen pounds.
Subtlety: an elaborate confection served between courses or at the end of a meal. Often more for show than consumption.
Tenant: a free peasant who rented land from his lord. He could pay his rent in labor or, more likely by the fourteenth century, in cash.
Theriac: a compound of viper’s flesh and other ingredients considered a poison antidote as well as a remedy for diseases caused by melancholy and phlegm.
Tournament: war games. Often lasting three days. Jousting was but a part of the event.
Tun: a large cask capable of holding over two hundred gallons. A ship’s “tunnage” did not refer to the weight it could carry or its water displacement, but the number of tuns that could be loaded.
Twelfth Night: the evening of January 5, preceding Epiphany.
Valet: a high-ranking servant to a lord – a chamberlain, for example.
Villein: a non-free peasant. He could not leave his land or service to his lord, or sell animals without permission. But if he could escape his manor for a year and a day he would be free.
Void: dessert – often sugared fruit and sweetened wine.
Wardrobe: the department of a noble household entrusted with the care of apparel, jewels, and personal articles.
Wattles: interlacing sticks used as a foundation and support for daub (plaster) in forming the walls of a house.
Whitsuntide: “White Sunday,” ten days after Ascension Day, seven weeks after Easter. Also known as Pentecost.
Wimple: a cloth covering worn over a woman’s head and around the neck.
Winchester geese: prostitutes licensed and taxed by the Bishop of Winchester to ply their trade in his enclave of Southwark.
Chapter 1
Our party reached Aldersgate after the curfew bell had rung. We could not enter the city, but rather sought refuge for the night at the Priory of St. Bartholomew. I traveled with Sir Giles Cheyne, his two grooms, Milo and Thomas, his squire, Randall Patchett, and Arthur, a groom to my employer, Lord Gilbert Talbot. That we were too late to pass the Aldersgate Sir Giles laid against me. I accept the blame.
I had attempted to avoid this journey, pointing out to Lord Gilbert my duties to him and his manor at Bampton. He replied that my duty to my future sovereign transcended obligations to him. Bampton’s reeve, John Prudhomme, could assume my duties while I was away in London.
Sir Giles had arrived in Bampton with his grooms and squire on the fourteenth day of October on a mission for Edward of Woodstock, Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales. Edward, he said, wished for the services of Lord Gilbert’s surgeon, who had eased his illness at Limoges. I am the only surgeon in Lord Gilbert Talbot’s employ.
“When the prince commands me to send you to him,” Lord Gilbert
said, “your service to me as bailiff here must be dispensable.”
Edward, Sir Giles said, was weak, in much discomfort, and perhaps near to death. With his father, the king, the prince had embarked in August from Sandwich with four hundred ships, ten thousand archers, and four thousand men at arms intending to retake Edward’s possessions in France lost to the French king.
For six weeks foul weather prevented a landing in France, and the expedition was compelled to return to England. A failure. A costly failure. Six weeks at sea in storms of wind and rain will tax the healthiest of men, which Prince Edward was not. The experience worsened his illness, Sir Giles said, and he required my service as once before at Limoges.
I am no physician, but know enough of herbs that when I met Prince Edward at Limoges I told him that his symptoms might be relieved if he consumed tansy, thyme, cress, and bramble leaves crushed to an oily paste with root of fennel, then mixed with wine.
The prince suffered from numerous maladies: a bloody flux, fevers, then chills, and passing wind so foul that folk despaired to be in the same room with him. These ailments had begun whilst Edward was in Spain, winning honor at the Battle of Najera. At Limoges he was so weak he could not sit a horse. The herbs I suggested seemed to improve his health, enough that with his father he embarked upon the ill-fated attempt to reclaim his patrimony in France. But now, in the year of our Lord 1372, his affliction was returned. So Sir Giles said. The duke desired me to attend him as at Limoges. He had lost faith in William Blackwater, his physician.
I was loathe to leave Kate and our children. The last time I did so, when Lord Gilbert required that I accompany him to the siege of Limoges, I returned home to loss and sorrow. Sybil, our second child, perished while I was in France and now with the Lord Christ awaits her mother and me and Bessie and John. The babe was not yet one year old when she died. Might I have saved her had I not been in France? Unlikely. I am a surgeon, not a physician. And if physicians could cure a babe’s fever, few infants would perish.
But Bessie and John are thriving, and Kate’s father promised to look after my family while I was away upon the prince’s business. A year ago my father-in-law was skin and bones. I thought him ill and close to death. His business in Oxford was failing, and he was near to starvation. I convinced him to leave Oxford and live with us, at Galen House, in Bampton, and Kate’s cookery soon had him hale. His locks are grey, but he is once again strong enough to see to the care of his own.