Death at St. Vedast

by Mary Lawrence

  The road wound around clumps of trees, avoiding a steep incline that could prove disastrous for an overfull dray. Bianca and John opted for the shortest distance and abandoned the road, leaving it for the wagons. Instead, they cut across the fields. Three-quarters of the way there, the two rested next to a stone wall. John took a sip from his skin of ale and offered it to Bianca. “I hope Meddybemps hasn’t gotten the name of the village wrong.”

  “Or the story wrong. Not that I wish ill on anyone,” said Bianca, “but this is a long way to travel for naught.”

  John agreed and picked a stem of grass to chew.

  In the distance, Bianca noticed a ridge of worrisome clouds roiling in the western sky. “Look there. Rain is moving in.”

  John took off his boot and rubbed his toes to warm them. “We’ll be able to stay ahead of it.”

  Bianca studied John relaxing against the wall. His chin tipped back and wisps of golden hair blew loose from his gathered tail. The grass arched from his mouth, and his bristly face needed a blade. She looked out over the field unevenly scythed, at crows feeding on untilled stubble and sheep grazing in the distance.

  Bianca had another drink of ale. “Are you hungry?” she asked, tipping her head at the stalk hanging from his bottom lip.

  “I’m not eating it,” said John, tossing it over his shoulder. “Shall we go? The clouds are moving faster than I thought.”

  They avoided entering the village by the main thoroughfare, following the bank of the river until they came to a stone bridge above a gristmill. They paused briefly to watch the waterwheel turn. Neither of them had ever seen one before; no such contraption existed in London.

  “It looks like there is a stem that goes into the side of the building,” said John, studying its mechanics. “I’d like to see how it works.”

  “Perhaps later,” said Bianca, squinting up at the sky. “I felt a drop of rain on my face.”

  The two hastened across the bridge onto the main road partway down the street. The lane saw heavy use and was churned into a trench of mud just wide enough for two wagons to pass. Thatch-roofed timbered buildings lined either side. Beyond the structures, the remains of an abandoned monastery hid behind the village—a blight on the landscape and harsh reminder of the king’s new policies.

  Bianca looked up the street and down it. A few men hurried along, holding their hats against a stiff wind. The creak of a sign swinging from an iron rod caught her notice. “The Stuffed Goose of Dinmow,” she read. A corpulent goose wielding a tankard of ale winked at them overhead. “We are in the right place.”

  The words had barely escaped her mouth before the rain began falling as if a gate had been opened. They dodged a horse and rider, angled over to the tavern, and heaved open the door.

  Others had a similar idea. The door swung open and slammed, admitting a steady stream of townsmen escaping the downpour. John and Bianca found a spot next to a farrier, the smell of horse manure wafting from his boots. They wedged themselves next to him.

  John waved over the serving wench and ordered up tankards of ale. “I’d rather have snow than the rain at this point,” he said, making conversation.

  The farrier, an amiable fellow, must have been used to seeing newcomers in the village. “Stay that. I don’t agree with ye,” he said. He removed his cap and set it on the table in front of him. “Snow makes for a slippery way of it. It piles up and blocks the doors. Rain needs no shovel.”

  Bianca pulled off her scarf and unfastened her cape at the neck. She gazed around at the crowded tables, at the steam rising from people’s heads and shoulders. The combined body heat and fire snapping in the hearth created a clammy ken.

  “Where are you from?” the horse coper asked.

  Not seeing the sense in lying, John struck up a conversation with the man.

  “There are better places than Dinmow in the winter. The days are short to travel such a distance from London. But you are young. I suppose ye can run if you had to.”

  “We did not have to,” said John as he paid the wench for their ales.

  “Ah! Then you’ve luck on your side. But she smiles only if she wants. More often than not, she is a capricious trug.”

  “We are only passing through,” said Bianca. “Be this Dinmow’s only tavern?”

  “Why do ye ask?” The farrier took a sip of ale.

  “If more arrive, they’ll have to straddle the rafters. For our next meal, I prefer a less crowded ordinary.” As if she had just said the devil was her father, the men seated nearby stopped talking and looked over.

  The farrier set his tankard in front of him. “The monastery alehouse sits on the edge of town.”

  “It is less frequented?”

  The farrier glanced around at their tablemates exchanging looks. “It has fallen out of favor.”

  One of the men snorted. “Cuds me, generously worded, Grayson.”

  On the other side of Grayson, a man leaned in front of the farrier. “The devil pisses in the food.”

  Grayson elbowed the man back. “The monastery has been dissolved. The royal commissioners stripped its lead, smashed the saints, and took the relics. They dropped the bells, shattered them, and carted off the metal. The prior is gone. Almost all of the monks are gone—pensioned or fled. When the commissioners rode out of town, the looting began.”

  “Did the town think so poorly of the abbey?” asked Bianca.

  “Nay.” The farrier shrugged and his tablemates agreed. “But why should we ignore what the king didn’t want? It helps no one if it is left to rot.”

  John undid several buttons on his jerkin and loosened the collar of his smock. “There isn’t a monastery on this island that hasn’t fallen to the royal commissioners. The punishment comes by the king’s hand, not the devil’s water.” He had grown warm from the ale and room of packed bodies. He took off his cap and fanned himself with it.

  The farrier grumbled. “Maybe the king holds the devil’s member and aims it where he wants.” He leaned over and fixed John and Bianca with a stern look. “Ye go to that alehouse, ye is playin’ with your everlastin’ soul.”

  A man sitting separately from the others broke in. “Grayson, ye is perpetuating an untruth.”

  “How is it an untruth? Ye seen what happened. There is no explanation for it. Once the commissioners cleaned out the priory and church, there was nothing sacred left to protect it. They are just barren buildings, stripped of everything that made them holy. Weak and falling to ruin. Vulnerable to the devil’s mischief.”

  Bianca spoke. “And that mischief be?”

  “The grounds were plucked clean by a nobleman who owns two others and cares not what happens to the property. A handful of brothers convinced the townspeople to leave the brewery be until they spoke with the man—there being no other source for the quantity of ale to quench the thirst of Dinmow. He agreed to let them stay and keep it as their means. But the brothers raised the price of ale for the Stuffed Goose. Elgin, the owner, balked and planned to start his own brewery.” Grayson took a sip of ale. “The brothers countered. They promised not to raise their price of ale for five years on condition the Stuffed would not pursue brewing. They convinced Elgin that the tavern couldn’t make their own ale for less.”

  One of the men listening to Grayson chimed in. “The brothers couldn’t raise the price of their brew, so they entered into an agreement with the parish church and started serving fare. No one says they couldn’t. They did a decent business. The Stuffed wasn’t happy about the competition.”

  Grayson laid the back of his hand on the man’s chest and looked round at them. “But then they offered their fare for less than the Stuffed. Who wouldn’t choose to eat cheaper if it tasted the same? No one has a penny to spare these days.” His eyebrows lifted as he nodded. “The competition seemed a healthy wager between the two. One week the Stuffed would bring in more, then the next week the church alehouse. Elgin at the Stuffed settled down when he took over the house next door and added more rooms
to his inn. His business balanced out. Everyone got by.”

  “Oh, I thinks the Stuffed took exception. Soon every bench was filled at the alehouse,” one of the men commented.

  “Perhaps the food tasted better,” suggested Bianca. “Besides, a man with more money could buy more ale.”

  The man responded. “The food is the same. The farmers are the same. Neither place could make a better pie than the other. Only difference bein’ the price of the fare.”

  “And maybe something more,” said Grayson, coyly.

  “Like what?” said his mate.

  “Like maybe the brothers promised a couple of Paternosters for your soul every time you ate there.”

  The men laughed.

  The man on the other side of Grayson looked around, then leaned in again to whisper. “Methinks the Stuffed may have contrived against the alehouse.”

  “Naw, ye can’t go accusin’ Elgin of mischief,” said Grayson, pushing him back. “I’ve known him since he was a bump in his mother’s tummy. His mother looked after me when I was a pup. She was a moral woman.”

  “Children can turn out differently from their parents,” said John. “Could anyone else resent the church alehouse making a profit?”

  The men grew thoughtful.

  Grayson spoke. “I tell you, it is by the devil’s hand.” The farrier was not to be convinced otherwise. “One night nearly everyone who ate at the church alehouse got sick within a day of it. People started trembling. They lost their gorge. They soaked themselves in their own sweat.” He looked round at the men. “Royson Davis squawked and ran out of the house like his arse was on fire.”

  “If I had to dock that wench of his, I’d run too,” sniped another.

  “It was as if they’d left their wits at home in a jar,” continued Grayson. “But then, some of them acted like they knew the alehouse was to blame for their ailments. They gathered on the monastery cemetery and danced like their spines were made of rope. Dipping and swooping, screeching mad. They gave no mind to stepping and stumbling on the graves; we were sure a hand would reach out and give them a tug. Not one would listen to reason. There be no use in leading them home; they had none of that. They were numb to everything and everyone. So, the families called on Father Paston at the parish church. They found him hiding under the altar. They had to drag him to the cemetery.”

  “All they wanted was his prayers. Cowardly man of God,” said one of the men.

  “I think he worried he’d be blamed for their strangeness,” said Grayson. “He being the last practicing cleric in the village. When they pillaged the monastery, they took something of Father Paston’s faith along with it.”

  “Did anyone recover from the ‘strangeness’?” asked Bianca.

  The men shook their heads and crossed themselves.

  “Not a one. Six died.” Grayson finished off his ale and sat a moment in reflection. “One climbed to the top of the paddle wheel at the gristmill and thought he’d ride it around. The miller was working late that night, grinding flour to get ahead of the orders. By the time someone got to him and told him to turn the sluice gate, it was too late. Stukes rode the wheel down, all right. Got wedged beneath it and drowned before they could pull him out. Davis and another took to the river and drowned. Weston fell off the stone wall and cracked his head open. Bled to death. Fletcher danced until he died. Stomping fierce, he wore the big toe off a foot and broke his leg. The fool danced until he dropped.

  “And Richard Beys was the strangest of all. Makes me think that the devil sits in the ruins. Beys started screaming that a nest of vipers was in his stomach. Said they were eating him from the inside out. He grabbed a knife and begged his brother, Tom, to slice him open and remove the snakes. Tom wouldn’t do it. He wrestled the knife from Richard’s grip and did his best to try to calm him. But then Richard seized the blade and sliced his own hide from navel to sternum. He reached into his belly and pulled out his entrails.”

  The men at the table sat still from the memory of it. The mood grew subdued. Whether the men’s silence was from dismay or superstition, Bianca couldn’t say. But a village such as Dinmow was small enough that neighbors were as close as family. There was a certain shame that came from talking about your crazy aunt to a new acquaintance. They had just overstepped the bounds of decency.

  CHAPTER 22

  From their chamber window at the inn of the Stuffed Goose of Dinmow, Bianca watched the forlorn monastery at the edge of town sulking in the relentless downpour. No one came or went from the parish church next to it or the associated buildings. The rain might have had something to do with keeping parishioners away, but certainly the alehouse was struggling with a battered reputation.

  “We must go have an ale at the brewery,” said Bianca. “We shall talk to them like newcomers and pretend we haven’t heard what happened.”

  John was listening to the patter of rain, dozing in comfort on their feather-stuffed mattress. The inn or, rather, the bed had won him over, and the thought of slogging through mud to sit in an alehouse possibly cursed by the devil did not appeal to him. “We’ll go when it stops raining.”

  “Where is your determination to free Boisvert from Newgate?”

  “It’s somewhere on this mattress.” John flipped over and covered his head with a pillow.

  Bianca pulled the shutter closed against the rain. “Then I shall see you anon.”

  * * *

  Slipping in the mud and feeling it squish between her toes reminded Bianca that she had not saved money for a pair of pattens to lift her feet above the slop. The holes in her flimsy boots had gotten worse with their travels, and now she suffered from the disagreeable consequences. There always seemed to be goods she’d rather spend her money on—beeswax, ceramic pots, cadmium ore for her popular salve to tame the French pox. “I’ve no excuse,” she muttered as she held her kirtle above her ankles and hopped about like a rabbit to avoid the puddles.

  Only those whose necessity required them to face the elements were out mucking about. An ostler led a horse out back to a stable for a traveler, but for the most part Bianca was alone on the main thoroughfare, and the only person headed to the church alehouse.

  A stone wall separated the monastery from the rest of the town, and Bianca passed through an arched opening and followed a flagstone path, the remnants of a time when the grounds were well taken care of.

  The monastery was a Norman structure made of tan rubble-stone. Pointed-arch openings gaped to the weather; splintered wood and metal jutted at angles where stained glass had been carelessly pried out. The roof had caved where its metal and gutters had been salvaged. In the cemetery, leaning markers were covered in green and yellow lichen, accumulated from years of marking generations of monks and clerics at their rest.

  The wind blew the rain sideways, and there was no avoiding the deluge as she followed a path to a smaller building nestled behind. This building was annexed to a smaller church, left intact. The parish church sat modestly in the shadow of the greater ruin, serving the needs of the villagers. As Bianca neared the door of the annex, she stepped over the carcass of a raven, its wings spread and body flattened against the ground. Keen black eyes that had once watched mice scamper along the riverbanks were fogged in death. At the entrance, a sign tacked to the door read, “Alehouse.”

  Whereas the Stuffed Goose was literally stuffed with people, the alehouse had an abundance of empty tables and benches. Across the room, a torpid wisp of smoke faltered in a brazier. A lone monk dressed in a coarse-woven robe hunched over his pot of ale. He straightened at the sound of the door yawning open.

  “Is this the church alehouse?” Her voice sounded puny in the empty space.

  “It is,” answered the monk into his drink.

  Bianca ignored the lack of customers and the brother’s disinterest. “I’d like an ale, if I might.”

  The brother swung his head around to look at her, his eyebrows knit with suspicion.

  Bianca’s cordial manner waned,
wondering if she would be refused. The two stared uneasily at each other until a man entered from a back room, drying his hands on a towel.

  “Ye say ye want ale?” he asked. His pleasant face mirrored a similar welcoming manner. He wore a jerkin of black homespun wool of the same fabric as the monk’s habit.

  “Aye. If it is not a trouble.”

  “Well, we are not one to deny ye. It is a fearsome weather. Sit a spell,” he said, motioning to a table. “I shall fetch you an ale of our most fresh.” Before disappearing into the kitchen, he flashed the sullen brother a look of reproach.

  Bianca sat at a table behind the grizzled monk, leaving him alone to nurse his ale and foul mood. Her intent was to strike up a conversation, find out more about the alehouse, but the man had managed to erect an impenetrable wall as surely as if it were made of brick.

  However, after a moment, to Bianca’s surprise, the monk made an effort to engage her. He spoke over his shoulder, avoiding direct eye contact. “I don’t recall your face, my child. You are not from Dinmow.”

  “I am from London.”

  “Ah.” He turned back to his drink. “What brings you here?”

  Bianca had come prepared to lie. Perhaps in good conscience she should have checked herself, but when faced with apathy she responded in kind. “I am only passing through. Once the weather settles, I shall move on.”

  He took another sip of his ale. Apparently, this was the extent of his welcome.

  Soon his counterpart returned with a pewter cup and set it before her. “A traveler might be hungry. Can I offer some fare? We have a fine mutton stew.”

  Bianca tried not to flinch. “Nay, this will suffice.” She paid him his coin and looked around at her empty surroundings. “Should I have not come? Are you closed for an occasion?”

  “No occasion,” he said.

  She heard the sullen monk snort.

  “It is a large enough alehouse. I should think people might prefer coming here instead of the crowded Stuffed Goose.”