A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel (23 page)

’Twas Alice atte Bridge, with a mug of ale and a loaf fresh from the castle oven, whose approach caused my clumsy fall.

“Oh!” the girl exclaimed. She set the platter on the flags of the hall and rushed to my aid.

I had set the pole leaning against the wall beside my door. But in my harried state I had set it slightly askew. As the girl knelt to assist me the pole slid from its place against the wall and fell through the open door. I had turned my head toward Alice, so did not see it coming. The club gave me a solid smack across my right ear before clattering off on the flagging. I was become symmetrical. Within the hour another lump, smaller than the first, appeared on my skull above the right ear to balance the bulge behind my left.

Alice assisted me to my feet. She had nearly to do so a second time, for in some heat I kicked at the offending pole. Another error. I was unsteady upon my feet and nearly found the flags again.

The girl propelled me to my bench, uttering solicitudes the while. I suspect she thought me drunk. It was just as well she not know the real reason for my condition. I sat gratefully upon the bench, and gathered my wits while Alice gathered my breakfast. My stomach rebelled at the sight of the loaf, but I needed the ale. I thanked the girl for her aid and bid her notify Thomas that I was unwell and wished not to be disturbed.

When she was gone and the door shut behind her I made my way to my cupboard. I found my pouch of hemp seeds and another of lettuce and mixed a double measure of each into the ale. My gut was not pleased to receive this physic. I feared the first swallow might be rejected. But not so. I drank the remaining mixture cautiously, then found my bed. When I awoke my stomach was growling with hunger and my chamber window was pale in the evening twilight.

My head throbbed, but my step was steady as I made my way to the kitchen. The cook had learned that I was unwell and had the foresight to prepare a basket should I desire a meal. But as this was Friday, and Ember Day, the basket held but a piece of fish and a small loaf of maslin. Alice was completing her duties in the kitchen and pointed me to my dinner. I wonder was it the cook who was so considerate, or Alice? I took the basket to my chamber and ate by candlelight.

I was not sleepy, though ’twas now dark and my stomach was full. My mind was occupied with considering who might have attacked me, and why, while my fingers and mouth were busy at supper.

If my quarry the night before was poaching Lord Gilbert’s coneys, it seemed to me likely that he would be at the business this night also, visiting his snares before some fox might rob him of his catch. As I had slept the day through and my head was yet knobby and sore I thought it probable that I would lay sleepless in my bed. I might as well spend a sleepless night watching the road for a poacher. Who, I assumed, was he who had whacked me across the head.

I roused Wilfred from his bed, and when he had opened the gate and raised the portcullis I made my way to Mill Street. The slender moon would rise even later this night, so I walked in darkness between fields of oats and peas.

My way became even more obscure, the night around me even blacker, when I came to the edge of the forest. If a man followed me this night I should never see him, even did he carry a pale sack over a shoulder. But there was advantage in this. I wore a dark cotehardie and grey chauces. I would also be invisible.

I crept carefully to the side of the road and felt before me as a blind man for obstacles which might trip me. I had no wish to fall on my bruised head. Only a few feet from the road I found a stump. Against the black background of the wood I could not be seen though I was but three or four paces from the verge. A man in the road would be nearly invisible to me, as well, but my advantage was my silence. A poacher, no matter how dark the night or hushed his step, could be heard as he approached. I would be silent upon my stump.

The waning moon rose over the town well past midnight. From my perch on the rotting stump I had a clear view of Mill Street from the castle until it entered the forest. In the darkness of the wood I was sure I was yet invisible. This lunar advantage gave me great satisfaction, but it was the only satisfaction I would have that night. Sitting on a cold, jagged stump provided little gratification and the only living thing I saw was an owl which swooped soundlessly from a tree to capture a mouse at the edge of a field of oats adjacent to the forest. Well, I think it was a mouse.

I watched the sky behind St Beornwald’s spire lighten for the second day in a row. It is pleasing to watch a new day begin, to hear birds twitter as they awaken and begin the business of seeking sustenance. Of course, it is also pleasing to lay in a warm bed in the coldest part of the night, as dawn glows golden in the east. This dawn would have been more profitably spent in bed.

I rose from the stump, stretched my stiffened limbs, and set off for the castle and breakfast. Smoke ascended from the kitchen oven into the still morning air, and a warm loaf awaited me there. As this day was also Ember Day the loaf would not be wheaten, but coarse maslin of barley and rye. I took the loaf and a mug of ale to my chamber and pondered my ignorance while I ate.

The catalog of things I did not know seemed to grow more rapidly than the list of things I did know. Why did Henry atte Bridge kill Alan the beadle, if indeed he did?

Why was Henry struck down in the forest, and who did the deed? Why did John Kellet receive blows from Edmund Smith, and why was the smith so sure the priest would not complain of him? Who struck me down in the Alvescot churchyard? And was the assailant the same man I saw walking the road in the dark? If so, was he indeed a poacher, or did some other interest put him on the road at midnight?

I decided to cease my nocturnal ways, but I wished for some eyes to be alert should a man with a pale sack make another late appearance on Mill Street. I left the castle and walked to Rosemary Lane and the house of John Prudhomme. I found it convenient to walk slowly. A rapid pace caused my head to throb at every step. For all his late-night obligation to see the streets clear, Prudhomme was awake and bright when he answered my knock on his door. I told him of sighting a man with a sack late at night on Mill Street, and of my failed attempt to apprehend this poacher. I charged him to be vigilant in his duty and to report to me any man out past curfew, whether he carried a sack or not.

John pledged that he would do so, and seemed wounded that a miscreant had escaped him. But I assured the new beadle that I attached no blame to him. The poacher, if such he was, had waited past midnight to be sure that even the beadle had entered his house and shut the door behind him.

“You think the fellow may set snares in other places?” John asked. “Perhaps while you lay in wait for him to the west he inspected traps some other place. To the north, along the road to Burford, there is much wasteland growing up from meadow. A good place for coneys, I think.”

“Aye, and in truth Lord Gilbert will not miss a few, be they taken to the west or the north. But ’tis my duty, and yours also, to apprehend a poacher if I can. He who would snare a coney today may grow bold and take a deer tomorrow.”

“I will attend this duty tonight,” the beadle promised.

“Be watchful,” I warned him. “I trailed the man to Alvescot, where he – or some other, I cannot know – lay in wait for me behind the churchyard wall. When I investigated a sound I heard from the lych gate I was thumped across my head for my curiosity.” I rubbed the swollen side of my skull. Gently. “The blow left me sleeping the night away at the base of the churchyard wall, and I will have a headache for another day or two. See that you are more wary than I.”

John peered quizzically at the side of my head. And then at the other. “I see the lump the fellow left you…but there is another, on t’other side.”

“Aye,” I muttered. I did not wish to tell him how I came to be so balanced. Rather, I tugged my hood down to obscure my misshapen skull, bid John good day, and set off for the castle.

Three days later, a Tuesday morning, John Prudhomme asked for me at the castle gatehouse. Wilfred came to fetch me as I swallowed the last of my morning loaf. The beadle waited at the gate with, I thought, some impatience. His eyes darted from the castle forecourt to the gatehouse to the meadow beyond Mill Street. And he shifted from one foot to the other as I approached, as if he stood on Edmund’s coals.

When Wilfred told me who it was that sought me, my first thought was that John had discovered who it was who had taken to the roads at night and smitten me across the head. This was not so, but he did indeed have news of the business.

The beadle tilted his head as I drew near in a gesture that requested me to follow. He then turned and walked slowly from the gatehouse toward Mill Street. I caught up to him halfway between the street and gatehouse.

“You have news, John?”

“Aye,” he said without breaking stride.

Whatever he wished me to know, he wanted it known to no other. The beadle eventually stopped and turned to face me well away from any ears on either the street or at the castle gatehouse.

“I watched the street, like you wanted. Saw nothin’. But last night, I was ’bout to end my rounds an’ come as far as the bridge when I saw somethin’ movin’ in the Weald. Not my business, what goes on there, ’course, but it caught me eye, see.”

I nodded as Prudhomme interrupted his tale to peer about for any who might stroll close enough to overhear his words. Whatever tale he wished to tell, it was for me alone. I said nothing and waited for him to continue.

“’Twas like you said ’twould be,” John said when he was satisfied that we were unobserved and unheard. After all, should any be watching, why would they be surprised that the beadle should be in conversation with the bailiff? Unless they thought themselves the subject of the discussion. I took John’s arm and propelled him toward the gatehouse.

“We will continue this conversation in my chamber,” I said. Perhaps I was overly cautious. A blow on the head will do that to a man.

When the door latched behind us John continued his tale. “I seen somethin’ light in the moonlight. Was well past midnight an’ the moon is past last quarter, but I seen the sack you said t’watch for. ’Course I din’t know then ’twas a sack. Just saw somethin’ movin’.”

“In the Weald, you say?”

“Aye. But while I watched whoso was carryin’ the sack moved across the meadow an’ into Lord Gilbert’s wood.”

“They avoided the road?”

“Aye, they did.”

That might explain why I saw no man while I lay in wait all night at the edge of the wood. If this poacher had ventured to do more of his work that night, and if he avoided the road, he would have entered the forest south of where I sat in wait on the stump.

“Can you show me the place where you saw the fellow enter the forest?”

“Close, like…’twas too dark to see for sure.”

“What then? Did the fellow eventually come out to the road?”

“Nay. Least, not so far as I could tell. I went west on Mill Street’s far as the wood. Saw nor heard nothin’. Dark in the wood, nights, now w’the leaves full out an’ all.”

“You do not know who it was who cut ’cross the meadow and made for the forest?”

“Nay.”

“And that is why you are so apprehensive to tell me of this?”

“Aye. Was the fellow to see us or hear me speak, he might think I knew of him an’ his business.”

“And one beadle is dead these past three months for probing some nocturnal matter.”

“Eh?”

“At night…Alan died at night.”

“Oh, aye.”

“Well, I do not blame you for your worry. I will look into the matter myself. How far south of Mill Street did the man enter the wood?”

The beadle scratched his head and looked to the ceiling beams before he spoke. “More’n a hundred paces…perhaps even 200, but no more’n that.”

“Very well. Be off home, then. I will wait ’til afternoon to visit the wood, so if any man saw us in conversation he will have lost interest when I do not immediately seek a sign in meadow or wood.”

T
he sun was dropping toward the treetops to the west of the castle when I decided I must wait no longer to investigate the beadle’s discovery. I had found much other business to occupy me after dinner. When I consider this now I understand that it was fear of being knocked again on the head which caused me to hesitate, not any desire for stealth. Had you received the blow I took at Alvescot Church, you would be cautious also.

My eyes fell upon the ash pole which had been dropped against my skull as I left my chamber. I had propped it in a corner after it fell against me. Perhaps the staff might this time serve to defend me and so make amends for its previous usage. I took the cudgel with me and set out for the gatehouse.

I watched carefully, when I reached Mill Street, to see if any man observed me set off to the west toward the wood. Two men walked from the mill and turned east to cross Shill Brook. They paid me no heed. In the Weald I saw Emma atte Bridge at work in her toft. If she saw me she gave no sign.

Reassured that I attracted no attention, I strode west and soon entered Lord Gilbert’s forest. I counted 200 paces, then turned from the road. The forest here had not been coppiced for many years. Giant old oak and beech trees sought the sky. They would be worth a small fortune for long beams, did anyone want to build. But since the plague, few did. Their leafy branches so completely blocked the sun that few green things grew on the forest floor. No hawthorn or nettles impeded my way as I counted another hundred paces to the south.

I stopped often while I counted my steps. If a poacher set snares this way I might hear a captured animal as it struggled to free itself. And if I was observed and followed, I might hear a stalker as leaves rustled and twigs snapped under his feet. No, I was not being over cautious. There really was a man who intended me harm. The shrinking lump on my head was proof of that.

A goldfinch twittered in the branches above me. A squirrel dug through rotting leaves for his supper. The breeze set leaves to shimmering and branches to rubbing against each other. I saw the sights and heard the sounds of the forest. And so delightful were they, I came near to forgetting my mission. It would be a poorer world were there no goldfinches singing or squirrels playing in it. In my prayers I do not recall ever thanking God for either birds or squirrels. I must amend my ways and my prayers.

When I had counted 100 paces from the Alvescot road I leaned against an oak to listen and observe my place. I might have been the only man in the shire, for no sound made by man came to my ears. And no sight foreign to a forest fell to my eyes.

I crept another ten paces, found another tree to hide me, and again watched and listened. Nothing, but for birds and the occasional squirrel. Did a man wish to set snares for squirrels, which is allowed, he should surely find success. Although I thought it unlikely such a hunter would require a sack across his shoulder to carry home his prize.

The ground I walked sloped gently down from the road. Each step took me closer to a tangle of ivy and marsh grass which grew about a bog where the forest ended. No man would try to push his way through such a place. The verge of such a marsh would be an excellent place to lay a snare. I became more cautious and observant as I approached this boggy place.

I found no snares, but the track of a man’s passing was visible to an alert observer. There had been no rain for several days, so last year’s fallen leaves should be dry atop the forest floor. But where the firm ground of the forest began to give way to the soft muck of the marsh I found a place where wet, rotting leaves had been kicked up above the drying surface leaves.

A few steps to the west I found another such place. These overturned bunches of leaves did not create a regular track, but were intermittent. It appeared that some man had stumbled or otherwise tripped while making his way through the forest. The fellow must have been unsteady on his feet. Or perhaps he traveled at night across the uneven ground.

The broken trail of disturbed leaves crossed my path. I thought I knew, should I turn to my left, where the track would enter the forest. I walked that way to assure myself of my supposition. My guess was correct. Nearly 200 paces east of the bog the trail of disturbed leaves ended at a hedgerow to the west of a pasture. The road to Alvescot formed the north boundary of this meadow. Across it to the northeast I saw the castle.

The stacked stones of the meadow wall were overgrown with nettles and hawthorne. I saw clearly where someone had torn nettles away from the wall so he might climb over without earning a stinging rebuke.

The field before me was fallow this year. A flock of sheep munched the grass midway across the clearing, turning grass into wool and manuring the ground for the wheat and barley strips John Holcutt would see planted there next year.

Across the meadow another hedgerow formed its eastern margin. I saw near this wall the remains of the blind where the reeve, the archers and I had looked on this meadow for the return of a wolf. Beyond this far hedgerow lay the huts of the bishop’s men in the Weald.

While I studied the wall, nettles, meadow and sheep, another studied me. I looked up from examining the torn nettles and saw, 200 paces and more to the east, Emma atte Bridge staring over the far hedgerow in my direction from her toft. The hedgerow before me was waist high. Unless her vision failed she could identify me as clearly as I could her. I did not think this important at the time.

The woman went back to her work and I turned from the hedgerow to retrace my steps and follow the trail I had discovered. The occasional patches of disturbed leaves compassed the swamp around its north edge, then, to the west of the low ground it entered again into the higher ground of the forest.

I followed the trail through the wood, but not easily. I lost it several times and only found the path again by circling the last upturned leaves I had found. My search was made some easier because the nocturnal hiker I trailed had gone unfailingly west in a course which only gradually, after nearly half a mile, began to curve north. An hour later the track led me to the road to Alvescot, less than a mile from the village.

I stopped often while I followed the path through the forest, but heard no struggling animal nor saw any snare. Whoever had used this way through the wood wished only to be through to the other side. He had no other business which brought him here. And he had not been through the wood by this path often, for his route was not well trodden, but on the contrary, seemed used but rarely.

I could see no reason to return to Bampton through the forest. And there was no point in walking on to Alvescot. I was sure that whoso made the track I had followed through the wood was the same man who had traveled Mill Street toward Alvescot five days before. And likely was the same man who had bashed my head at the Alvescot churchyard.

If my quarry was a poacher, he did his work somewhere beyond Alvescot. The man had passed many likely places to set snares. Perhaps he had done so, and laid them so cleverly that I did not find them. But I did not think this could be so. Why set snares about a marsh, then continue through the forest to the road? It seemed to me a poacher would set his traps, then return through the wood the way he had come. No, this fellow had business elsewhere, be it poaching, or, as I was beginning to suspect, some other pursuit in mind.

Lord Gilbert’s forest lay within my bailiwick, but was no responsibility of John Prudhomme’s. I resolved to investigate the woodland path and he who trod upon it on my own. I did not wish any other to know what I was about, for fear that gossip might make my work known and my prey cautious. More cautious than he was already. A man would not forsake a road for a forest track in the dark of night was he not already alert and wary.

A large old beech stood over the road near the place where the path joined the road to Alvescot. I marked it so I might find the place on a dark night, then made my way back to Bampton in time for my supper. Unobserved, so far as I knew, but for Emma atte Bridge.

Wilfred was not known for loquacity but I did not want even the porter to know that I left the castle this night. A man will not tell what he does not know. A length of rope over the castle wall had served well. I resolved to use the method again.

When the castle was dark and quiet I stole to the marshalsea for rope, then silently mounted the steps to the parapet. There would be little moon this night, and that would not rise ’til near dawn. The north wall would be especially dark this night. My grey chauces and brown cotehardie would be invisible even if any who spent the night at the Ladywell chose that moment to awaken and examine the castle.

I knotted the rope every foot or so to aid my return, tied one end to a merlon, and tossed the other end to the ground. Moments later my feet also found the thin grass at the base of the north wall.

As there was yet no moon above the town rooftops, I saw no need to stumble my way across field and meadow to the forest. I could barely see Mill Street myself when I stood upon it at the southwest corner of the castle. No man, even if he knew I walked the road, could see me more than ten paces away. Of course, if another man traveled the road I should not see him, either. I walked silently, stopping every few paces to listen. My ears are good. Perhaps, if another man chose to be about on the road this night, I might hear him before he heard me. I wished I had remembered to bring with me the club, just in case.

The road through the forest was so dark I occasionally lost my way and stumbled against foliage growing at the verge. I was sure no man would attempt the wooded path I had found on such a night. Not until the waning moon rose to add some light to the tenebrous thickets near the bog.

Stars provided my only light. It was barely enough to locate the great beech I marked to fix the place where the forest path found the road. I settled myself into a cleft between two large roots. This location faced the road and its junction with the path. The seat had but one flaw. ’Twas too comfortable. I had no trouble staying awake when seated on a stump. But now I found myself drifting to sleep. Only when my nodding head with its symmetrical lumps met the smooth bark of the tree was I jolted awake.

This occurred several times before the thin light of a crescent moon brought some feeble illumination to the road which stretched across my sight. The soil of the road was lighter in color than the forest around it. A man walking upon it would produce a shadow against the lighter background. A shadow which would move. In the northeast, a predawn glow added to the light to illuminate the road.

If a man chose to walk this night the forest path I had found, I thought it reasonable to expect that he would wait until the moon could light his way. I found no difficulty in remaining alert for the remainder of the night, for I expected a poacher to step from the forest to the road at any moment. But no shadow moved past me on the way. The eastern sky grew light through the entwined branches of the trees when I finally rose from my seat, stretched, brushed off my chauces, and set off for the castle. The night was a failure.

The pale golden glow in the eastern sky lighted my way through the wood and across the meadowland west of town and castle. Where the road left the forest a gentle breeze caused me to shiver on my way. I had become stiff with cold, sitting at the base of the beech, but there had been no wind there in the forest to compound my discomfort.

I was near the castle wall when the gentle morning wind brought to my nose the welcome smell of roasting meat. It was early for the cook to be at his work in the castle kitchen, and he would not yet be roasting meat for the castle dinner. He would first be about baking loaves for the day when he did rise from his bed. But I smelled meat, not bread. And the breeze blew wrong to bring the scent of roasting meat to me from the castle kitchen. The wind came from the southeast; from the huts in the Weald.

It was my goal to climb the rope I had left tied to the merlon in the north-wall parapet before men rose to greet the new day. But this new scent asked too many questions which needed answers. I determined to seek them quickly, before daylight would make visible my climb up the castle wall.

I walked swiftly from Mill Street down the lane toward the Weald huts. In the twilight of early dawn I saw smoke from the eve vents of two huts, those of Thomas atte Bridge and the widow Emma. The inhabitants of these two dwellings were about their business early, and I knew why.

Few others in the Weald or elsewhere would have meat to roast in June. The flesh from autumn’s slaughtered hog or goat was long since consumed in most men’s homes. These two houses wished to roast their meat when no other would take note. I was convinced again I dealt with a poacher, and now knew who the man was. Although why Thomas atte Bridge would share with his sister-in-law I did not know. In truth, the question did not then occur to me.

I hurried back to Mill Street, hastened to the castle and climbed my rope ladder as the morning sun illuminated the cross atop the spire of St Beornwald’s Church. From atop the wall I saw an old man praying at the Ladywell. His back was to me. I drew the rope from around the merlon, tucked it beneath my cotehardie, and stole down the parapet steps and across the inner yard to the great hall and my chamber.

Wisps of smoke from the kitchen chimney told me that the cook was risen from his bed and at his work. But he and his assistant were busy with oven and loaves. No face appeared at the kitchen door to observe my return.

I went to my bed, intending to rest for an hour or two, but found sleep elusive. I thought I now knew the poacher’s identity. But how to catch him at his work? And Emma atte Bridge had seen me across the meadow from her toft. The thought troubled me. The Angelus Bell intruded upon my contemplation before I could fall to sleep.

I awoke a short time later but little refreshed and no nearer a plan to apprehend either Thomas atte Bridge or his brother’s slayer. I awoke confused, weary, and feeling quite incompetent.