Witness of Bones

by Leonard Tourney

  She ran toward these living men, but Morgan called out before she could speak.

  “Mistress Stock! Thank God you’ve been saved too. At least we passengers have survived if the captain and his brave crew have not.”

  Morgan’s words puzzled her. She was about to ask for an explanation when she caught a look of warning in his eye and then took a closer look at his companions. There were about a dozen of them, coarse-featured men as filthy as beggars. Some of them carried staves and picks and they were eyeing the carnage about them with cold eyes. They stared at her curiously as though she were to be a part of the prize they sought and she was afraid. She realized these were the scavengers Morgan had spoken of. If Morgan had some compelling reason to disguise his identity as a captain, then Joan would not dispute it, trusting he had good reason for the deception.

  Morgan turned and said a few words to him who apparently was the leader of this band and then approached her and spoke loudly with the obvious intention of being overheard. “These good men say there’s a town not five leagues hence where there’s a good inn for travelers. Though we have no money we’ll make our way there now. Perhaps the host will be charitable to stranded wayfarers. There’s no more that can be done for ship or men. What’s left of our brave bird is theirs by rights, since no other party lives to claim her.”

  Morgan drew her away before she could reply to this. They walked as fast as Morgan could with his bad leg. He said in a lower voice, “I didn’t dare let on I was captain. They would have killed me then and there for the salvage, and I’m not sure now but that they suspect the truth. We’ll lay at no inn five miles hence, but under open sky if we must.”

  “Did any other of the men survive?” she asked, wondering still that only the two of them had been saved.

  “Only one,” Morgan said grimly. “The scavengers said they saw him run off as they came down from the cliff. He wore an eye patch, they said.”

  “Simkins.”

  “The cursed dog. I thought I had him with the musket. Would he have died in the sea rather than the others, among whom were several true men. His survival is a bad omen for he has as much reason to hate me now as I him.”

  They came to a place where there was a steep and narrow path up the cliff. Here Morgan stopped to catch his breath. He was obviously in considerable pain. The hose on his left leg was soaked with blood. They turned to look down the beach. The salvagers were picking over the ruin of the ship which they had managed to bring ashore with their ropes. They were tearing the hulk apart, dismembering it the way ants did the corpse of a wasp or fly.

  “Damned villains,” Morgan spat out. “Like carrion birds they feed off the worthier dead. Yet they shall not feed on our carcasses. Come, Mistress Stock, we’ll make our way to London where your husband lies, and I to my wife—and revenge upon the devil Stearforth who has betrayed us both.”

  “But how shall we travel without money? My purse was lost in the sea.”

  “And so was mine, or so I declared to the scavengers, and yet do you remember when I returned to my cabin just before the ship broke up? It was to get the wherewithall to get us home again.”

  With some difficulty, Morgan bent over and reached inside his boot. He showed Joan what he had hidden there, three gold angels. It was the money Stearforth had paid Morgan for her abduction. “There’s enough and more for London,” he said smiling.

  Joan had to help Morgan up the path because of his bad leg. She asked him if they couldn’t rest a while, but he said no. The scavengers could not be trusted, he said. “Now their

  heads are full of treasure, since I told them the ship had just come from the Indies and was laden with Spanish booty. When they find out the crew was poor and the ship empty of cargo they’ll be in a mind for mischief. We don’t want to be around then.”

  Atop the cliff, they rested again, then walked for an hour or more across a high plain carpeted with brown stubby grass. All the while Morgan seemed in a great agony but encouraged her with reports of how much farther it was to the town and how important it was that they get to London as quickly as possible, as if she needed to be reminded of that.

  In late afternoon they came to a road that ran next to a newly ploughed field and shortly thereafter, they saw at the edge of a copse a cottage of clay and wattles where the field’s owner dwelt. Morgan admitted he was not able to proceed farther, and Joan said she was in like condition, for her legs were undone by the walking and she was so hungry that if she saw anything alive she would eat it whether it be cooked or no.

  ‘We’ll put the farmer’s hospitality to the proof, then,” Morgan said.

  When they were within calling distance, Morgan halloed the cottage and almost immediately a man came out. He was tall and rawboned. He had a weather-beaten face and was dressed like the farmers in Joan’s neighborhood in a buff-colored smock, loose-fitting britches, and a wide-brimmed hat. But in answering Morgan’s greeting Joan heard a lilt and thickness of speech unfamiliar to her.

  “We’re shipwrecked travelers,” Morgan explained.

  “Pity that. Many they be,” said the man, whose long, leathery face was covered with an unkempt beard, but whose expression was kindly. A woman’s face appeared in the doorway. This Joan took to be the farmer’s wife, for she was about his years. She was as rawboned as her husband and her hair was scraggly, but she had a cheerful look, and had she been crabbed and hostile, the sight of another woman

  would have been welcome to Joan after her sojourn in the ship.

  The wife said something to her husband, which Joan interpreted to mean, “Are they hungry?” for the woman rubbed her hand on her aproned stomach and a wonderful smell came from the house.

  “Oh, we haven’t eaten in days,” Joan said.

  The farmer looked at her uncomprehendingly. Joan nodded her head vigorously and smiled. The farmer’s wife smiled back and the farmer beckoned them to come in.

  The habitation of these folk was more hovel than house.

  The floor was strewn with old rushes and here and there it was bare enough for Joan to see the earth beneath. There was a single room, and in the middle of it was a fire going and above nothing but a hole in the roof for a chimney.

  There was hardly a stick of furniture but for several mats placed near one wall, and on these nestled the couple’s young children, two girls and a boy, although it was difficult , to determine the sex of any since they were all dressed alike and their hair was all unshorn and tangled.

  They were invited to sit down in the straw, while the wife went to stir the pot that cooked upon the fire and the farmer looked on without saying anything. The children, who seemed more wary of strangers than their parents, stared on in silence.

  Joan was too weary to do much more than eat, which she did heartily when presently the farmer’s wife poured some of the pot’s contents into a bowl and handed it to her. She was given no spoon, so Joan merely raised the bowl to her lips.

  Even before she tasted she could inhale the deliciousness of the broth, which is what she had been served. There was no meat within. She detected carrots and leeks and a hint of herbs. The flavor was wonderful after her long fast and the firmness of the ground beneath her was also a delight. She could not remember when she had enjoyed a meal so much, or company, although there was silence all the while they ate and the children on the mat kept staring as though she were some alien creature with two heads.

  After the broth, the farmer’s wife served some little slices of cheese on a plate. The cheese was hard and sharp as a razor and to Joan’s sensitive palate almost inedible and yet she gnawed upon it until it was all gone. Morgan, she noticed, did the like. He had not spoken a word since entering the farmer’s house except to say to her that he felt much better than before. But she thought he looked worried, despite his brave talk along the way about reaching Canterbury by the next morning and London the day after.

  After this humble supper, the farmer said, “Will ye twa have yon’ bed?” and pointed to th
e wider of the mats, which was next to the smaller where the farmer’s children were curled up together asleep.

  Before Joan could explain that she and Morgan were not married to each other, Morgan declined the offer. He said that the bam would do well enough, and when the farmer did not seem to understand, he said it again, but in another way, and pointed out of doors. This the farmer seemed to make sense of and yet his face showed some doubt as to why a couple would prefer to sleep outside rather than on a perfectly comfortable bed. Joan thanked the farmer and his wife and followed Morgan outside.

  It was nearly dark and the air was cold. She looked up into the heavens and saw, for the want of moon and stars, that it was covered with clouds. She wondered if there would be another storm.

  Morgan had walked off into some bushes for a moment but presently returned, and Joan noticed he seemed to limp less than before.

  “There’s a cowshed down in that copse. We can sleep there tonight. Before dawn we’ll be on our way. I know this road and this country. We can’t be a score of miles from Canterbury and from there it is no more than three score to London. We’ll ride the way. You can ride, can’t you?”

  “Well enough,” Joan said, thinking Morgan’s estimate of their travel time was overly sanguine, but as desirous as he of coming to London as soon as possible.

  The place he led her to was somewhat less than what she

  would call a shed. It had been constructed of rough-hewn timber and built into a hollow out of the wind. The rear of the structure was solid earth. Inside, the farmer’s single cow stood in her stall, radiating dependable animal heat and Joan, a country woman, was well used to the strong scent of animal ordure. Morgan removed his jerkin and gave it to her. “Here,” he said. “You may need this.”

  Joan was glad that they had come to the shed before it was completely dark, for the little light of day let her see only enough of the interior to find her way to a pile of straw. Here she laid down the captain’s jerkin and then herself upon it, so tired she was asleep before she could inquire where Morgan was to make his own bed.

  Perhaps it was the cold that woke her, perhaps the rustling noise outside the shed. Inside it was pitch black. She was vaguely aware of soft snoring nearby. That would be Morgan. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she could see his form. He was sitting up in the corner, his head resting on his arms and knees, forbearing the straw that would have conferred too great an intimacy to their sleeping together.

  She heard a crackling sound, for all the world like footfalls. The feet of man, though, not animal. Was it the farmer or his wife? She had no idea of the hour, how long she had been asleep. Was it time for the cow to be milked, then?

  She could dimly make out the cow in her stall; the beast made no stirring or lowing as cattle do for want of milking. Joan moved, slowly and with difficulty since her body was stiff, toward Morgan and shook him by the arm until he snorted once, and then awoke abruptly, seizing her hand in a powerful grip as though she were an enemy.

  “What?” he said in a voice much too loud.

  She hushed him. “Listen.”

  She was still holding his hand and his grip had not relaxed.

  The noise came again. Whoever it was was making his way around the shed, looking, she supposed, for the door.

  But surely he could see that now, now that the clouds had cleared and there was something of a moon to give light.

  Then it occurred to her that whoever it was was not seeking to know how to get in but how otherwise she might escape. Her heart beat at such a furious pace she drew her hand away to hold it to her breast to still it.

  She heard a sound, wood falling against iron. She knew what it was, the bar being placed across the shed door, locking them in. Morgan knew too. He was on his feet in an instant, throwing his weight against the door with a wordless fury.

  She smelled smoke. Looking up, she saw that the thin frame that supported the thatch was on fire, burning at such speed that glowing fragments were falling down all around her, starting smaller fires. Morgan was now beating on the door, cursing and screaming to be let out. Joan stamped out the little fires with her feet. Above Morgan’s roaring she could hear maniacal laughter—like that of the Bedlamites she had mimicked to get Cecil’s attention. No, this was not the farmer’s work. She thought rather of the scavengers. And yet it hardly seemed possible they would carry their vengeance so far.

  There were too many fires now for her to put out and too much smoke. She could hardly see Morgan, only hear his angry protest. He would not give up at the door. The flames had descended to the side wall, consuming the timbers with terrific speed. Then she realized Morgan was beating on the sturdiest part of the structure, the door. The walls were of more flimsy stuff, timbers with mud to fill the chinks. She seized the piece of spar that Morgan had used as a staff, and began to whack away at the burning wall nearest to her. Her poking and the heat of the flames caused the wall to give way easily. Part of the roof collapsed. She called over her shoulder to Morgan and leaped over the ruin, falling on the cool grass beside the shed. She scrambled to her feet, whispering a prayer of thanks for her miraculous escape and at the same moment saw Morgan, his clothing aflame, make

  the same desperate leap, a second before the entire shed collapsed in a blazing inferno.

  Morgan rolled over and over on the grass, until the flames were extinguished, then lay on his back gulping great mouthfuls of air and his chest heaving with such force that she thought his heart would break.

  The air was filled with smoke and burning cinders. She heard the farmer’s voice and his wife’s and younger voices, of their children. She knew the farmer was lamenting his burned shed, and worse, his dead cow. She scurried over to Morgan. He was alive, just exhausted, as was she.

  “Who did this?” she gasped.

  “It was Simkins,” he said weakly. I recognized his cackling. I’ll kill the bastard, so help me God.”

  “How is your back? Are you burned?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll need a new shirt, I think.”

  Morgan laughed a little, and she knew he was all right, but still his expression was contorted in anger.

  The farmer and his wife came over; the woman looked horror-struck. It wasn’t clear to Joan what impressed her most—the fire that had destroyed the shed and cow or the fact that she and Morgan had managed to escape. Her husband was angry. He pointed his finger at Morgan, then at the shed, and then back again, all the time sputtering in his rude dialect. Yet it was clear to Joan that he was blaming them both for the fire, and none of Morgan’s efforts to tell him otherwise were doing any good. The farmer had evidently seen no one but them. The shed was sound before they occupied it; now it was destroyed. It all seemed to be a simple matter of cause and effect. Or so Joan was able to decipher of the farmer’s logic.

  Morgan, frustrated by the failure of his efforts to explain, reached into his boot and withdrew one of the gold coins he had showed Joan earlier. “Here,” he said. “Buy yourself a new cow. That should buy a small herd. With what’s left over you can build a new shed too. But do yourself a favor. Make it with two doors, will you?”-

  It wasn’t clear to Joan that the farmer understood this

  counsel but he did understand the coin, which she believed was doubtless a greater sum than he had ever had in his life, and there was nothing more said about the dead cow or the burned bam.

  “If it was Simkins, where is he now?” Joan asked, after they were out of sight of the farm and on their way again.

  “If we’re in luck, he thinks we burned in the fire. If he does, he’s in for a surprise when next we meet, believe me.”

  “I hope he’s not lurking in the darkness,” Joan said.

  In Canterbury, Morgan used the second of the angels to buy a hearty breakfast, new clothes for them both, and a good sword and knife, which he said he would need when he caught up with Stearforth or Simkins. Not far from the cathedral they found a shrewd hostler who said he would gi
ve them the use of his best gelding and mare for the ride to London, providing they would leave the horses with his brother, a butcher, who lived in Eastcheap, near the parish church of St. Andrew’s. Morgan haggled a half hour with the hostler over these terms, much to Joan’s annoyance, for she was eager to continue their journey. But the hostler would not give an inch. “If you will not have my horses, you may have the road, although it’s a long walk to London,” he said.

  Later, the terms reluctantly agreed to by Morgan, he complained to Joan that they might have bought both beasts outright for the charge, but Joan reminded him of the need for haste. Her husband was in peril; Morgan’s wife hardly less.

  There was no time to lose in haggling over horses.

  Morgan agreed. By mid-morning they were on the road to London, riding as hard as Joan had ever rode. Joan did not know this flat, verdant country of Kent, but Morgan knew it well, and he seemed as comfortable on horseback as he had in walking the decks of his ship. They stopped three times in the next eight hours, to rest themselves and their beasts, and each time Joan begrudged the time, although she well understood that exhausting the horses would serve no purpose.

  They spent that night in a village inn, with separate rooms and a good meal. They were on their way again several hours before dawn, galloping through the darkness.

  As she rode, she could think of little else but Matthew; a terrible dread settled upon her. It was a fair, dry day for the ride, but her mood was so dark it might have been dismal midnight. When at dusk the great city came into her view, she almost cried with joy. Now, she felt, the miracle of her salvation was nearly perfect: she had been saved from the tumultuous sea, the burning shed. God knew what other perils might stand between her and her husband, and yet she felt ready for them. If God had carried her thus far, would He not carry her farther?

  Morgan wanted to go at once to see his wife, saying the Eastcheap butcher might wait until morning for his horses, and Joan made no objection. She was eager to see Elspeth herself, thinking that the young wife might provide a clue as to Stearforth’s whereabouts.