The Tainted Coin

by Mel Starr

  “Nay, not so far as I could see. But somehow she vexed him. He was in a choler when I saw him this morn, before matins.”

  “Did she return to her home?”

  The hosteler shrugged. “Brother Anselm didn’t say.”

  “How long past was it she left the hospital?”

  “She was gone well before terce.”

  “I must find some other haven for the woman. There are men about who may believe that she knows of treasure, and would threaten harm to her and her children if she does not tell them where it is hidden.”

  “Treasure? The woman knows of treasure?”

  “Nay. But there are men who may think she does.”

  “I could not think so poor a widow could possess knowledge of treasure,” said the hosteler.

  “Let us hope the felons who seek the loot agree with you.”

  “You know where the wealth is to be found?” Brother Theodore asked.

  “Nay. But those who seek it have murdered a man already to have it, and I fear for Amice Thatcher if they believe she can lead them to the treasure.”

  All this time the hosteler had held his stained linen cloth before the ugly fistula which lay aside his nose, high on his cheek. He looked down at the befouled fabric, then spoke again.

  “’Twill be many days before Abbot Peter will permit you to deal with my wound. You are sure you can heal me?”

  “Few things in life or surgery are sure. But I know how to repair the fistula so that God, does He will it, may complete the cure.”

  “There is another matter,” the hosteler hesitated. “I own nothing, nor does any monk. If you are paid for the skills you apply to my face, it must be from abbey funds. What is your fee for such surgery?”

  I thought for a moment of the wealth accumulated in the abbeys of England, then replied, “Three shillings.”

  The monk’s eyes widened at this, and well they might, for I would serve a poor man who suffered so for three pence, which I believe the hosteler knew. But he voiced no complaint; he merely said, “A fortnight, then, when Saturn leaves the house of Aries.”

  “Indeed,” I said, and was about to turn and seek Amice Thatcher in the bury when three monks appeared between the guest hall and the abbot’s kitchen, striding purposefully toward the porter’s lodge and the gatehouse. This path took them straight toward me, Arthur, and Brother Theodore. The hosteler saw my attention diverted and turned to see what had caught my eye.

  “Oh, Lord,” he said softly.

  Since none of the three who approached seemed to resemble the Lord Christ, I took his remark to be a malediction.

  Two of the approaching monks were of normal size and appearance, but the third, who walked, or rather waddled, between the others, was nearly as wide as he was tall. His tonsured head thickened where it sat upon a neck which disappeared into multiple chins and rolls of fat. The monk’s robe billowed before him as if some great gust of wind had filled it like a sail, but ’twas his belly. An ornate cross hung from a golden chain about the monk’s fleshy neck.

  Brother Theodore said nothing more as the three approached. I noticed that his eyes were cast down.

  The three monks stopped before us and waited for Brother Theodore to speak. He did so, and introduced me to the cellarer, the prior, and the rotund abbot, Peter of Hanney. The abbot peered at me through the fleshy slits in his face, and said, “So you’re the surgeon who would treat Brother Theodore when the heavens declare any cure at such a time must fail.”

  “The heavens,” I said, “declare the glory of God, but say nothing of a surgeon’s skill.”

  “No skillful surgeon,” the prior growled, “would defy the stars and planets. Saturn must not be trifled with. ’Twas when Saturn conjoined with Jupiter and Mars that the Great Pestilence, with its choler and noxious vapors, struck down so many souls.”

  “So it was said.”

  Behind the three monks smoke arose from a chimney of the abbot’s kitchen. I wondered if he followed the Benedictine Rule as ardently as an abbot should. His girth said not. Abingdon is on the way between Oxford and Winchester and an abbot has an obligation to serve high-born guests at his table. Rule or not, I suspect that Abbot Peter partakes often of the beef and pork and lamb served to his visitors.

  Abbot Peter dismissed me with a wave of his fleshy hand and turned toward the abbey church. The prior looked back briefly, then followed his superior. His glance said much: a message of dismissal and disdain. The cellarer continued toward the porter’s lodge.

  “By heavens,” Arthur said when the abbot was a safe distance away, “I’d like to graze in ’is meadow.”

  God will forgive a man his sins, if he asks, but his body may not. What other of the seven deadly sins Peter of Hanney may be guilty of I know not, but he is surely guilty of gluttony.

  I was about to bid Brother Theodore good day, when four men stepped from the porter’s lodge at the cellarer’s approach. The cellarer did not break his stride, but passed through the gatehouse into the marketplace. The four men followed. They were not monks, and I saw that each man had a sword slung from his belt.

  Brother Theodore followed the direction of my gaze and explained. “Four years past the town hired a lawyer, up from London, to plead against the monastery’s claims upon the town and market. M’lord abbot bribed the jurors, and the judges dismissed the case. There is much bad blood,” the hosteler sighed, “between abbey and town, so that monks cannot walk the streets unless they are defended.”

  Arthur and I followed the cellarer to Burford Street, and watched as he walked toward St. Helen’s Church. A few men doffed their caps and bowed as the monk passed, but as many, when his back was to them, spat in the street behind him before continuing on their way. No cowl is so holy but that the devil can get his head under it.

  Arthur and I sought the alley where Amice Thatcher dwelt and I soon stood before her door. No bushel topped the pole set there. The woman had no ale fresh this day, but as there was no sign of her or her children, I assumed she was at work brewing a fresh batch, her children perhaps joining in the labor.

  I rapped upon the door, but received only silence in response. I thumped again, louder, so that the fragile assembly of planks seemed ready to collapse, but yet there was no sound from Amice Thatcher’s house.

  The pounding had attracted the attention of a crone who dwelt across the street. “Ain’t ’ome,” she said. “Come ’ome, then went off again.”

  “Amice returned here this morn?”

  “Aye. Didn’t stay. Two fellas come by an’ she went off with ’em. Her an’ the children.”

  Two men? Were these the same who had slain John Thrale? If so, how did they discover she was no longer under the protection of abbey walls?

  “Was one of these men tall, wearing a red cap, and the other fat, with a blue cap?”

  The old woman pressed a finger to her cheek, thought for a moment, then spoke. “B’lieve so. Didn’t pay ’em much mind. Folks often seek Amice’s ale… she don’t water it as some do.”

  I looked to Arthur. He read my mind and said, “Too many folks about. If one of them rides a horse with a broken shoe, the track would be well covered.”

  The crone heard him and said, “No man comes to the bury mounted. Streets be too narrow, an’ men hereabout don’t think much of gentlefolk.”

  “When Amice departed with these men, which way did she go?”

  The old woman pointed a bony finger to the declining sun, where the narrow lane curved around toward the south.

  “Toward Ock Street,” she said.

  Arthur and I elbowed our way through the crowded lane. Or, more truly, Arthur pushed through the mob and I followed. Arthur is well able to clear a path through a throng, and I trailed like a rowing boat drawn behind a great ship.

  Where the narrow path entered Ock Street the crowd thinned, but yet the mud of the street was too trampled for a horseshoe, broken or whole, to be identified. Amice Thatcher was gone, likely now in the hands of
men who sought silver and gold, and who thought she knew where it might be had. She did not, or so she had said. Did she speak true to me? If not, would she tell where John Thrale had found his treasure in order to save herself and her children? If she did not know where Thrale found the cache, what would wicked men do to her or her children to force from her that which she could not give?

  The sun was low in the west and the evening was chill and threatened rain. There was nothing more to be done this day. I told Arthur we would seek the New Inn and a bowl of pottage, and renew our work next morn.

  Sleep did not come readily that night. I thought of what I might have done to safeguard Amice Thatcher. Was not a monastery hospital as secure as any place where she might have found refuge? There was nothing to be gained by questioning now the decision I had made four days past to place Amice in St. John’s Hospital, but I did so anyway, thus forcing sleep from my troubled mind.

  I thought also of the coin, and John Thrale’s dying words: “They didn’t get me coin.” Why had he but one coin, and that hid in his mouth? If he had visited his find earlier on his tour of villages and customers, would he not have had more of his treasure with him, hid somewhere on his person or in his cart? Perhaps he did, and his attackers found it. But he said not. And if the felons had discovered his treasure, why did they yet seek it? No, John Thrale had not visited the covert place where ancient coins and jewelry were hid before he was attacked in the forest near St. Andrew’s Chapel.

  But if the cache was yet to be visited when Thrale made his rounds, why had he one coin hid in his cheek? The answer to that question drove sleep even farther from me. The chapman had one coin because it was there, in the wood to the east of St. Andrew’s Chapel, that he had found the hoard. If he had already visited the cache, he would have had more loot in his possession. Buried somewhere in that wood was the treasure Amice Thatcher’s captors sought. Perhaps John Thrale had been surprised as he uncovered the hidden wealth, and managed to hide it, but for one coin, before his assailants came upon him. If the treasure was at some place farther along his route, he would have had no coin with him.

  I had more questions than answers, and slept little that night for considering these matters over and over again.

  Chapter 8

  Arthur and I left the New Inn early next morn, attended mass at St. Nicholas’s Church, sought the baker so as to break our fast with a loaf, then set out for the crooked lanes of the bury. I had some forlorn hope that Amice Thatcher might have returned to her home, or would do so early this day. If not, she would not know about or resent me entering her house to see if there was anything in it which might tell me of her abduction, if that was truly what occurred when she went off with the men who had slain John Thrale.

  The hour was yet early, but the lane before Amice Thatcher’s hut was aswarm with those who lived or labored in that place. It would not do to break down her door, flimsy as it was and easily breached. Inhabitants of such a lane look out for each other, and I saw several sideways glances of suspicion as we stood before Amice’s door.

  I rapped my knuckles smartly upon the decaying planks of the door. There was no response, not even from the crone who lived across the way. She was about some work of her own, no doubt, which was good. Busy with her own tasks, she would not see as Arthur and I left the street and sought the rear of Amice’s house.

  The passages between Amice’s home and those on either side were narrow. But if she earned a living as an ale wife there must be a toft behind her hut where she had vats and tubs for brewing. And if so, there must be a door opening to the toft from the rear of the dwelling. Such a door would not, I thought, be stronger than the door which opened to the street, so might be more easily forced, with the added advantage that doing so would be unobserved by a neighbor.

  The space behind Amice Thatcher’s house was as I expected. The tubs and kettles necessary to her trade were there, and a door did indeed open from the house to this work space. It would be impolite to burst in upon the woman if she was within, so I rapped upon the door as I had earlier at the front of the house. There was, again, no response.

  Oddly enough, this rear door was more stoutly constructed than its fellow at the front. Perhaps Amice believed that if some intruder sought uninvited entry he would be more likely to do so from the privacy of the toft than the street, where his deed might be observed. If so she thought, she was correct.

  No fences separated Amice’s toft from those of her neighbors. I studied both spaces before turning to Arthur and making known my intent. There was no latch or lock upon this rear door – iron is too dear for such folk. The door was simply barred inside. A thin blade, slipped between door and jamb, might raise the bar and gain us entry. With my dagger, while Arthur kept watch, I hacked away at the doorframe until I could slide the dagger between door and jamb. The bar lifted readily.

  Someone had been here before us. Amice Thatcher’s few belongings were strewn about the single room. Even the hearthstone in the middle of the chamber was overturned, and some man had dug up the soil beneath it. Arthur and I stood silently and gazed at the mess. After a moment I walked to the front door and tested it. It opened readily. It was not locked. Either Amice had failed to lock it when she and her children were taken off, or men had come in the night with a key. I chided myself that I had not tried the door the day before.

  Little sunlight penetrated the single window of oiled skin, for the day was cloudy and a light drizzle had begun to fall. But there was enough light that the shambles which was Amice Thatcher’s home was plain.

  “Didn’t tell ’em where the chapman found ’is coins,” Arthur said.

  “Aye. Doesn’t know, or wouldn’t tell, else they would not have overturned this place seeking loot.”

  “Did they come in the night, I wonder, or did this happen yesterday?” Arthur swept his hand and his gaze about the ruin.

  “We might learn from the old woman who lives across the way. She strikes me as the sort who allows little to escape her notice.”

  Arthur grinned agreement, and followed as I pushed through the front door and crossed the narrow lane to the crone’s hut. Vigorous thumping upon the woman’s door brought no response.

  In the silence after my pounding Arthur heard something which had escaped me. The gentle mist softened other sounds, so when the old woman groaned a response to my knocking Arthur barely heard her and I heard nothing at all. And at the moment he was unsure of what he had heard.

  I saw Arthur raise a finger and frown, then cock his head attentively toward the door.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Dunno… someone in there’s in trouble, I think. Heard a moan, like, just now.”

  I tried the latch and the door swung open. If someone was within they had not troubled themselves to bar the door. They had not done so, I soon discovered, because they could not.

  Rusty hinges squealed when I pushed the door open. When they quieted I heard from within the house a groan, frantic in nature, as if the soul who voiced it feared she would not be heard or discovered.

  The interior of the house was dark, my vision obscured, but when I sought the source of the moaning I saw, propped against a wall, the shape of the old woman who had told me of Amice Thatcher’s departure the day before.

  Rushes were thin upon the floor, and had not, I think, been changed for many months. So when I knelt beside the woman my knees rested upon dirt. She looked up to me and seized my arm with bony fingers when I bent close. Her bed lay nearby, and I wondered why, if she was ill, she had not sought it rather than the uncomfortable place where she lay, her head pillowed by the wall of her house. I soon discovered the reason.

  “Kicked me, the knave,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Them as was pryin’ about Amice’s house last night.”

  The effort to report this to me sapped the woman’s strength. She had raised herself upon an elbow when she spoke, but fell back against the wall, exhausted, when she f
inished.

  Arthur peered over my shoulder. I told him to take the old woman’s shoulders, and I would lift her feet. Together we would lay her upon the bed. Then, when she was more comfortable, perhaps I might learn more of who had kicked her and why they had been prowling about Amice Thatcher’s house. I thought I knew the answer to both questions.

  The crone gasped when Arthur and I lifted her from the floor, but sighed gratefully when we set her gently upon her bed. I placed her pillow beneath her head, and when I did, she spoke again. “Ale,” she whispered.

  Arthur heard, and crossed the small house to a crude table where rested an equally crude ewer. I watched as he lifted it, then turned it upside down.

  “Empty,” he said. “Seen another ale house down toward the marketplace. Be back shortly.”

  “Who was it did you this injury?” I asked when Arthur disappeared through the door.

  “Dunno,” she mumbled. “Heard voices. Opened the door to see who was about so late, an’ saw a light in Amice’s house.”

  The woman fell silent for a moment, as if to renew her strength, then continued. “Thought Amice was come home, so went ’cross the street to see was it so. Wasn’t.”

  Again she hesitated, longer this time, and did not resume until Arthur entered with the ewer filled.

  “Two men was searchin’ her place. Overturned all, they did.”

  “You surprised them?”

  “Aye.”

  Arthur poured ale into a cup, gave it to me, and I lifted the woman’s head from her pillow so she could drink. The liquid seemed to invigorate her. She continued her tale with a stronger voice.

  “I heard thrashin’ about, an’ seen they was up to no good, so left ’em an’ sought me own door, but one of ’em saw me an’ caught me up before I could get home. Knocked me down, ’e did, then kicked me in the ribs. Kicked me again, in the head. I must ’ave swooned, ’cause next I remember is the two of ’em draggin’ me inside. One said, ‘We can’t leave her on the street. Someone will find her, mayhap before we can finish the search.’