The Abbot's Agreement (2 page)
Read The Abbot's Agreement Online
Authors: Mel Starr
Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #Historical, #Mystery & Detective
M
y life would have been more tranquil in the days after Martinmas had I not seen the birds. But I am an inquisitive sort of man, and the noisy host caught my attention. It is said that curiosity killed the cat. It can prove hazardous for meddlesome bailiffs as well.
I was on the road near Eynsham, on my way to Oxford. I did not travel muddy autumn roads for pleasure, although I thought some joy might follow, but to seek an addition to my library. In the autumn of 1368 I owned five books:
Surgery
, by Henri de Mondeville;
Categories
, by Aristotle;
Sentences
, by Peter Lombard;
De Actibus Animae
, by Master Wyclif; and a Gospel of St. John which I had copied myself from a rented manuscript while a student at Baliol College.
I sought a Bible, if I could find a fair copy for no more than thirty shillings. Such a volume at that price would not be lavishly illuminated, but I cared more for the words upon the page than some monk’s artistry. If no such Bible was to be had, I would be content with a New Testament, or even a folio of St. Paul’s letters.
When I told my Kate of my intentions she demanded that Arthur accompany me to Oxford. A man traveling alone with thirty shillings in his purse would invite brigands to interrupt his journey, did they know or guess what he carried. Or even if they did not. Arthur is a groom in the service of Lord Gilbert Talbot. A sturdy man, he would make two of me, and has proven useful in past dealings with miscreants. He does not turn away from a tussle, and who would if they generally dispatch any foe? A felon who sought my coins would reconsider if he saw Arthur start for him with a cudgel in hand.
I am Hugh de Singleton, surgeon and bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot on his manor at Bampton. I am the husband of Katherine, and father of Bessie, now nearly two years old, and, the Lord Christ merciful, will be father to a son, perhaps, shortly after
Twelfth Night. Kate is well, so I have hope she will be delivered of our second child safely. Her father, Robert Caxton, is a stationer in Oxford, and ’twas to his shop I intended to go first. That was before I saw the birds.
The road had passed through a wood, then entered fields cultivated by tenants of Eynsham Abbey. No men were at work this day, or not where they could be seen. But within barns and kitchens men and women were at bloody labor, for Arthur and I traveled on Monday, the thirteenth day of November, the time when men slaughter those animals they will be unable to feed through the winter, so that the beasts will rather feed them.
A pair of crows, chattering magpies, and a flock of rooks perched in the bare branches of a large oak, cawing and occasionally flapping from their places to circle down to the ground near the base of the tree. As some birds left the tree, others rose from the earth to alight in the naked branches. This oak was at the very edge of a fallow field where a flock of the abbey’s sheep grazed, unconcerned about the raucous chorus above them. Sheep are not much concerned with anything, being dull creatures.
I reined my palfrey to a stop and gazed at the noisy birds some hundred and more paces distant. Arthur, who had been speaking of the return of plague and his own loss, fell silent and turned in his saddle to follow my gaze.
The man did not remain mute for long. “Birds,” he said. “Somethin’ dead, I’d guess.”
I thought the same, and said so. “Whatever it is,” I added, “must be large. A dead coney would not attract so many.”
“Pig, maybe?” Arthur said. “Swineherds been settin’ their hogs to pannaging to fatten ’em up.”
“Could be, but would a pig-man not seek a lost hog before birds could find it?”
Arthur shrugged. I dismounted and led my beast to a convenient hawthorn which grew beside the road and proclaimed its presence with many red berries. I tied the palfrey there and set off across the fallow field toward the birds. Arthur followed.
An old ewe raised her head, watched my approach suspiciously, then snorted and trotted away. The flock briefly hesitated, then followed.
Whatever it was that the birds had found lay in the dappled shadow of the bare limbs of the oak, so I was nearly upon the thing before I recognized what the birds were feasting upon. And the corpse wore black, which aided the shadowy concealment.
I was but a few paces from the body when the last of the birds, perhaps more courageous than his companions, lifted his wings and flapped to safety in the branches above.
A man lay sprawled upon the fallen leaves, dressed in the black habit of a Benedictine. Whether he was old or young I could not tell, for the birds had peeled the flesh from his face nearly to the skull, after plucking out his eyes, which they love most of all. The monk’s nose and lips and cheeks were gone, and he grinned up at us while the birds protested our arrival from the limbs above us.
“Holy mother of God,” Arthur said, and crossed himself. “What has happened here?”
I spoke no answer, for I did not know. All that was sure was that a monk, likely of Eynsham Abbey, had died half a mile from his monastery and his corpse had gone undiscovered by all but birds.
The abbey must be informed of this, of course. I told Arthur to return to the road and his horse and hurry to the abbey. There he must tell the porter of our discovery and ask that the abbot or prior come to the place with all haste. I would remain with the dead monk, to keep the birds away, and to learn what I could of his demise.
The monk was not old. He wore no cowl, and I saw no grey hairs upon his scalp. He was not tonsured. Here was no monk, but a novice.
He lay upon his back, arms flung wide, palms up. The birds had been busy there as well. I stood and looked about the place. Few leaves remained upon the trees. Indeed, most had fallen some weeks past. If the corpse was dragged here from some other place the leaves might mark the path. But they lay undisturbed in all directions.
How long had the novice lain here? No fallen leaves covered the youth. But the squabbling birds might have brushed leaves aside. And how long would it take the scavengers to do the injury I saw before me? Not long, I guessed.
I examined the novice’s habit but saw there no mark or perforation or bloodstain which might betray a wound. Perhaps such a laceration was under the body. I would wait to turn the lad until folk from the abbey arrived.
My eyes fell upon the novice’s feet. They were bare, and the birds had not yet discovered his toes. Would he go about in November with unshod feet? Some monks might, seeking penance for a sinful thought or deed, but it seemed unlikely that a novice would do so. If the youth died of some illness or accident, I was not the first to find him. Some other man did, and took his shoes. If the novice was murdered, the man who slew him may have taken more than his life.
It was a loathsome business to turn the faceless head. I thought to see if the back of the novice’s skull might reveal some injury, as from a blow. I found nothing, and as I stood over the corpse I reflected that, if a man was felled by a blow from behind, he would likely fall face first into the leaves.
I heard agitated voices and turned to see Arthur leading half a dozen Benedictines toward me. When near the road they approached at a trot, their habits flapping about their ankles, but as they crossed the field and glimpsed what lay at my feet they hesitated.
Arthur, too, held back, and only one monk came close and stood with me, looking down at the body. He gazed down upon the mutilated features and said softly, “’Tis John.”
This monk crossed himself as he spoke, and his fellows did likewise. I saw them exchange glances as they did so. I am not clever at reading faces, but it seemed to me I saw neither shock nor sorrow, merely acceptance of the fact.
“Who are you?” the monk asked.
“I am Hugh de Singleton, bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot on his manor at Bampton.”
“Ah, Abbot Thurstan has spoken of you, and the business of Michael of Longridge and the scholar’s stolen books. When Abbot Thurstan heard this news he would have come, but he is aged and frail and I dissuaded him. We all knew who it must be that you have found here.”
“Who is it?” I asked. “You named him ‘John.’”
“’Tis John Whytyng, a novice of our house. I am Brother Gerleys, the novice-master at Eynsham Abbey. When your man told Stephen Porter of this death, and Abbot Thurstan was told, he sent me.”
“Had the lad been missing?”
“Four days. Abbot Thurstan thought he had returned to Wantage.”
“Wantage?”
“His father is a knight of that place.”
“John was not enthusiastic for his vocation?” I asked.
“Nay. Oh, he was quick enough at his lessons, and seemed to enjoy study. Perhaps too much. But he found no joy in silence and prayer and contemplation, I think.”
“Too much joy in his studies? What do you mean?”
“I mean that John was more interested in intellectual pursuits than the meditative life of a monk. The abbey has two other novices, Osbert and Henry. Neither is as clever as John… as John was.”
“Only three novices at Eynsham?” I said.
“Aye. When I was a novice an abbot could pick and choose from lads whose fathers wished to find a place for them in a monastery. Younger sons who’d not inherit, and would have no lands… unless they wed a widow or the daughter of some knight who had no sons.
“But now the great pestilence has come a third time, there is much land available, and a habit has less appeal than when I was a youth. John was a handsome lad. Maidens, I think, found him appealing. Although,” he added, “you’d not know it now.”
“And he enjoyed the company of a lass?”
“Aye. So I believe. There is no opportunity within monastic
walls to observe whether or not this is so, but he was often incautious when he spoke of fair maids.”
“Did you send word to his father at Wantage when he disappeared?”
The novice-master shook his head. “To what purpose? He was not happy with us, and he’d not be the first novice to reject a calling. We assumed he’d gone home, and that his father would send us word of where he was.
“What has caused this death?” Brother Gerleys asked. “Your man told me that you are trained as a surgeon.”
“I cannot tell.”
“The pestilence, you think? Two of our house have been struck down since Lammastide… although none since Michaelmas. We pray daily the sickness has passed. We are now but fourteen monks and thirty-two lay brothers. If plague takes any more we shall not have enough to continue, I fear.”
“I awaited your arrival to turn the corpse, so you might see it as we found it. I see no sign of struggle or wound; nor is there any sign that the pestilence killed him.”
“Very well, then.”
I knelt beside the body to roll it so as to expose the back. No monk stepped forward to aid me, and when Arthur saw their hesitation he did so in their stead. A moment later the cause of John Whytyng’s death was evident. So I thought.
In his back the novice had suffered several stab wounds. I counted three perforations in his habit. The novice-master saw these also.
“Stabbed,” he said softly.
I looked down upon the fallen leaves which the corpse had covered, then knelt again to examine the decaying vegetation which had lain directly under the wounds. I stirred the leaves gently, but did not find what I sought.
“What is it?” Brother Gerleys asked.
“There is no blood here. No clots of blood upon his habit, nor upon the ground. If he died here his blood would have soaked the leaves, but there is none. There has been no rain these past
four days to wash blood away, and even had there been the lad’s body would have shielded any bloodstains from the wet.”
I touched the dead novice’s habit and felt some moisture there. Indeed, the wool was nearly as wet as if he had a day or so earlier been drawn from a river. I lifted the edge of one of the cuts in the wool of his garment. The wound was also clean. Little blood stained either flesh or habit.
“What does this mean?” Brother Gerleys said.
“He died elsewhere, I think, then was moved to this place.”
The monk looked about him, then spoke. “Why here, I wonder? He was not well hidden, and so close to the road and abbey it was sure he would be found.”
“Aye,” I agreed. “Which may mean that whoso slew him did not much care if the novice was found, so long as the corpse was not discovered in the place where the murder was done.”
“How long has he lain here, you think?”
“I cannot tell,” I shrugged. “But there is perhaps a way to discover this.”
Brother Gerleys peered at me with a puzzled expression, so I explained my thoughts.
Abbey tenants and villeins would have butchered many pigs in the past days. I had in mind that the novice-master obtain a severed boar’s head and set it upon the forest floor somewhere near this place. Then he could daily visit the skull and learn how long it would take birds to find and devour the flesh to the same extent as the injury they had done to the novice. Brother Gerleys nodded his head, agreeing to the plan.
Two of the monks who accompanied the novice-master had carried with them a pallet. Brother Gerleys motioned to them and they set the frame beside the corpse and rolled the body onto it. This left John’s mutilated, eyeless face upraised again to the sky. One of the monks saw this and retched violently into the leaves. I sympathized. The novice’s ruined countenance brought bile to my own throat.
I knelt beside the corpse again, and touched the black wool of the habit. It was dry, or nearly so. Why was the back of the
garment so damp? Dew would wet the upper side of the habit, I thought.
I, Arthur, and Brother Gerleys led the way back to the road and the horses. The monks, of course, had come afoot to the place.
“Your man,” Brother Gerleys said, “told me that you were bound for Oxford when you saw the birds and found John.”
“Aye. This business has delayed us, but we will still be there by nightfall if we do not dally.”
“Abbot Thurstan asked that you call upon him. He wishes to know what befell John.”
“I cannot tell. But you might do as I suggest with a pig’s head and that may tell you how long past the novice was left in the wood.”
