A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel (8 page)

Wilfred had left the gate open and the portcullis drawn awaiting my return. I gave Bruce over to him with a charge that the horse was to receive an extra measure of oats this night. He assured me that the marshalsea would be so instructed and led the animal to the stables while his assistant swung the doors closed and cranked down the portcullis.

I did not wish to show myself to the castle residents in my soiled state. Dark as it was in the castle yard, Wilfred was unaware of the mud which covered me, but the light of a single candle would make my condition clear.

So I was relieved to gain entrance to the great hall, and my chamber, without being seen. There remained some water in a bucket from my morning ablution. I removed my soiled clothes and mopped my grimy face and arms before donning clean chauces, kirtle and cotehardie. When I felt presentable I made my way to the kitchen and procured for myself another cold supper. This was becoming a habit I had no wish to continue. I fell asleep that night pondering how I might confront Henry atte Bridge. I might have saved myself the worry. Someone else confronted him first.

S
unday dawned bright and clear. There was in the yellow tint of the sun’s slanting beams a promise of warmth before the day was old.

I admit that I find it disagreeable to rise for matins on the Lord’s Day. This is especially so when winter holds a dark curtain over all so early in the morning. But this day glistened with the promise of spring. And I was alive. It was clear to me that two men wished it otherwise. I had Bruce to thank for my life, but God also. If he could be diverted from more important matters to see my life prolonged, I would be ungrateful to ignore an opportunity to thank Him for His trouble.

I left the church after matins to await the mass in the churchyard. Many centuries of burials have left the grounds around the Church of St Beornwald lifted above the paths which lead from the church to the graves and the lych gate in the churchyard wall. In this way the church at Bampton is like that of my home in Little Singleton, and every other churchyard in the kingdom. Should Christ delay his return, these burial hummocks will someday, I think, rise to block the sun from the church windows.

I climbed one of these low mounds and sat, my back to the rising sun, to wait for the bells which would announce the next service. No sound but the soft piping of a bullfinch disturbed my reverie. The bird left his oaken perch at the edge of the churchyard and darted, a small orange and black comet, past the church tower and into the wood to the north of the churchyard. A bullfinch! I hoped this fellow had not many brothers hereabouts, for if so, they would soon be feasting on the buds of Lord Gilbert’s apple trees.

Beyond the wood where the bullfinch vanished I saw other birds. In the high, distant sky four buzzards circled in the calm morning air, black against the blue heavens.

St Beornwald’s bell jolted me from my wool-gathering and I joined the flow of worshippers making their way to the porch. The stone building was cold, so when Father Thomas concluded his sermon all present were pleased that they would soon be released to return to the sun, now well up above the town rooftops and making the church windows a blaze of color.

The vicars greeted parishioners at the porch as we filed eagerly from the building. Not that all were impatient to be released from their worship, although surely some were of such a mind. After a long winter a pleasant spring day is much welcome and not to be wasted.

As I walked the path from porch to churchyard I noticed Thomas de Bowlegh in conversation with a woman. Her back was to me, but Father Thomas’ features were visible, and creased with concern. His brow was furrowed, and his lips pursed. Then the woman, in great agitation, turned to point to the east and I saw it was Emma, the wife of Henry atte Bridge. Perhaps, I thought, he came home last night in ill humor and beat her to make up for his loss elsewhere. And now she complained to the Bishop of Exeter’s representative of her husband’s cruelty.

I walked on toward the castle and my dinner but had gone but a few paces down Church View Street when I heard my name called. Thomas de Bowlegh had ended his conversation in the churchyard and was now panting after me. “Master Hugh…a word,” the vicar puffed as he approached. “Henry atte Bridge…you know him?”

I nodded.

“Henry has disappeared. His wife came to me this morning after mass.”

“Is he a reliable man?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer to that question, but perhaps others saw the man differently than I.

The vicar hesitated. “No less than others. He’s not run off before, and does his week work for the bishop with no more prodding than most.”

“Ah, yes, the new tithe barn. I saw him at work on it yesterday as I passed.”

I saw a quizzical expression pass briefly across de Bowlegh’s face, so I explained my mission, the reason for it, and what I had learned. I also told him of the attack. I saw the vicar’s jaw grow tight and his lips draw into a thin line as I completed the tale.

“Think you he has fled…to escape judgment for his misdeeds?”

“What does his wife think?” I replied.

“Does she know of his transgression? She did not speak of such. But she wouldn’t, would she. No, she fears some harm has come to him.”

“Did she say why he was out past curfew?”

“He had returned from working on the new barn, then told his wife he was off to seek wood in the forest. ’Tis a right the common folk have on the bishop’s lands, as with Lord Gilbert’s estate, I think.”

I nodded, for I know well the ancient liberties. “And he did not return?” I asked, “even with the dawn?”

“Nay. The woman is anxious that he be found. She fears he has suffered some hurt and lays injured in the forest.”

“You wish me to search Lord Gilbert’s woodlands hereabouts?”

“Aye. He should not have been gathering wood on m’lord’s land, if gathering wood was his business, but such as he might seek where they will, rather than where they ought.”

“Did he tell his wife where he might seek wood?”

“Aye. Said as he’d seen many limbs down in the wood near where the tithe barn is new built.”

“And near where I was assailed last night,” I added.

“You think Henry atte Bridge the man who lay in wait for you?”

“What other man wishes me ill?”

“Perhaps ’twas a thief.”

“Perhaps. But as the miscreant plunged into the wood I heard him say to another, ‘He lives.’”

“Hmmm.” The priest pulled at his chin, an action which reminded me of Lord Gilbert Talbot, who does likewise when puzzled. “Perhaps we should begin our search at the place you were attacked. There may be a trail we might follow. Do you think your blow, or the horse’s kick, might have injured the fellow so he could not continue his flight…if ’twas Henry who did this thing?”

“I think he was not so badly harmed as that.”

And then the circling buzzards caught my eye again. They drifted on the wind north of the town, near where I had fought for my life the night before. I watched them silently, and as I did the vicar turned to see what so absorbed my attention.

We stared at the great birds, contemplating their possible significance. The vicar spoke first. “I will gather some clerks. Will you come and show us where we must begin our search? I think,” he sighed, “’twill not be far from where those buzzards now soar.”

“Aye…not far.”

Father Thomas and I returned to the church, where we found Simon Osbern and three clerks preparing for evensong. The priest explained our mission, tactfully omitting any word of the altercation wherein I had found myself.

“Master Hugh,” he asserted, “believes he may have seen a man in the north woods, near to the new barn…is that not so, Master Hugh?”

“Aye, though ’twas near dark. I can show you the place.”

The four men needed no urging to leave their duties and join the hunt. When a man has heard the beginning of such a tale he is not content until he knows the end of it.

I led our party north on the Broad Street, past the bishop’s new barn now standing completed to its frame and thatching. Truth to tell, I was not sure of the exact place along the road where I was waylaid. It was near dark, and I was not concerned at the time with the scenery.

I slowed my pace when we were well past the new barn. The others kept in step, the clerks behind as fitted their station, Thomas de Bowlegh and Simon Osbern at either hand. The priests’ gaze swung between me and the road. They studied me intently while I studied the path.

There had been few travelers on the road that day. No one was about his trade on a Sunday. So I followed the track of a well-shod horse as we made our way north. The animal had been going south, and not so long before. I was sure the horse was Bruce.

It was. We came upon a place where the horse had halted for some time. The drying mud of the road was patterned with the marks of the animal’s great hooves. At the side of the track I saw the verge disturbed where first I, then my attacker, had scrambled in the mire. I stopped.

“This is the place?” Father Thomas asked. “Whereabouts in the wood must we begin our search?”

I pointed to the grove, where the night before I had heard two men scrambling through the dark. Above my upraised finger the buzzards circled over the forest, a hundred paces west of the road. I glanced in their direction. Father Thomas followed my gaze and divined its meaning.

“Come,” he commanded, and plunged into the wood. Father Thomas, Simon Osbern, the clerks and I followed.

Father Thomas is a fine priest, but his skills are not related to either strength or endurance. In but a few moments the priest was winded and staggering from the exertion of pushing through brambles and fallen branches. He is not a young man. After a few stumbles over ground ivy and limbs he tired, so that when his foot caught the next tendril he fell heavily. This did him no great harm. The forest floor was deep in rotting leaves.

I pulled the priest to his feet and, together with Simon Osbern, I cleaned his robe of debris.

“We should,” I advised, “be more prudent in our search. Let us return to the road and spread ourselves a few paces apart, then re-enter the forest at a more careful pace.”

The others agreed, having no better plan. Our company covered a space perhaps thirty paces in breadth, and we had gone but a few steps beyond the vine which snared Father Thomas when a clerk called out in a high-pitched yelp.

The urgency in his voice drew us scrambling to him. He stood near a tall beech, and as we gathered about him he pointed to the leaves at his feet. There, nearly obscured in rotting vegetation, lay a shoe. The sole was of wood, and the leather which would bind it to a man’s foot was new and little worn. It was much like the shoes I had seen on the feet of Henry atte Bridge. Of course, it was much like the shoes on the feet of any man who could afford to go shod of a spring day.

Because the beech tree was not yet in leaf a pattern of dappled sunlight penetrated the naked branches and left bright patterns on the forest floor. The partly visible shoe lay in one of these illuminated places, else its colors would have blended with the leaves so that, had it been in shadow, it might have gone undetected.

We stood in a circle and stared at the shoe as if it came from the foot of a leper. No other made a move to retrieve it, so I did. There was nothing to be gained from inspecting the shoe. As I have said, it was much like others worn by the commons. Father Thomas broke the silence.

“A man making his way in haste through a dark wood might lose a shoe.” He peered unblinking at me as he spoke.

“Had he reason enough for haste, he might not wish to turn and seek a lost shoe in the dark, when ’twould not be easy to recover,” I replied.

“The shoe points deeper into the grove,” I continued. “Let us resume our places and see what else may be found.”

We did not go far before the issue was resolved. It was Simon Osbern who made the discovery. A man lay face down in the mould. His arms were thrown forward and extended above his head, with palms flat upon the forest floor. He wore but one shoe, and his chauces and cotehardie were stained with mud. Above the bare limbs of the forest the buzzards circled silently on broad wings. We crossed ourselves.

I knew who this must be before we turned him to his back. My conjecture was correct, for when we rolled him over it was the face of Henry atte Bridge which stared unseeing at the buzzards.

The vicars and clerks lifted their eyes to me. I felt my cheeks flush, for I was sure this death was my doing, even though I could plead self-defense. Only Father Thomas knew of my struggle with the dead man, but in my guilt I felt all must suspect.

Thomas de Bowlegh broke the silence. “What has caused this death, Master Hugh?”

Without a close inspection of the corpse I could not tell, and told him so. I could see no wound or other mark likely to bring death to one so young and strong. The injury must be, I thought, internal and invisible; a blow to the neck, or perhaps the kick of a horse.

“We must raise the hue and cry,” said Father Simon, “and Hubert Shillside must gather a jury and bring them to this place.”

That was done, and before the ninth hour Shillside and his coroner’s jury stood about the corpse. The coroner bent to examine the dead man more closely. I thought he gave special attention to the neck, but perhaps this was my imagination. Shillside stood and turned to me.

“Master Hugh, have you examined this man?”

“No. We awaited your arrival.”

Shillside scratched his head. “I find nothing amiss. He was gathering wood, you say?”

“’Tis what he told his wife,” Father Thomas replied.

The coroner peered about into the lengthening shadows. “I see no bundle hereabouts…and why is he so muddied? A man would not be so filthy from falling headlong into last year’s leaves.”

Muttered agreement followed this assertion.

“How did you find him?” Shillside asked.

“Face down,” I said. “Arms outstretched.”

“As if he was struck down while running,” one of the clerks added.

“Then let’s turn him and see what may be invisible to us now.”

Henry atte Bridge was rolled face down again, and I placed his stiffened arms above his head as they were when we discovered him. The coroner knelt beside the body and motioned for me to join him on my knees on the forest floor.

“I see no cause for death. There is much about this I do not like,” Shillside said softly as we examined Henry’s broad back.

These words were barely spoken when I saw, as I scrutinized the prone form, a mark on atte Bridge’s back which caught my attention. This had escaped me when I first saw the corpse, for the man’s cotehardie was old, frayed, torn in many places, and stained with age and mud.

I touched the edges of a small tear in the cotehardie. This break in the fabric seemed clean, unlike other rips, the fringes of which were raveled and uneven. I brushed dirt from this opening and saw, obscured by soil and debris, a dim russet oval, a nearly invisible stain against the weathered brown of the garment.

Shillside saw my interest and bent to examine the torn fabric. “What have you found?” he asked.