The Tainted Coin (6 page)

Some villeins not engaged in plowing were gathering wheat stubble from the August harvest to mix with hay as winter fodder for Lord Gilbert’s beasts. A few tenants who owed boon work were at this task as well, and would soon be doing the same work upon their own strips. These laborers looked up from their toil as I passed by, and tipped a cap or tugged a forelock in greeting. They needed no advice from me about their work, anymore than I needed their counsel before setting a broken arm.

Darkness was near when I completed my observation of Lord Gilbert’s manor, and herders who had been in the forest with their swine, pannaging, were driving the beasts to their sties for the night. I walked to Galen House well content with my lot. I had wed a beautiful lass, and was father to a healthy babe. I owned freehold a house worth ten pounds, and another of like worth in Oxford, part of Kate’s dower, a gift of her father when we wed, which brought twenty shillings each year rent. I did have an obligation to seek who murdered John Thrale, but the responsibility did not undermine my spirits on this fine autumn evening as I approached Galen House, Kate, Bessie, and my supper.

I suspected some mischief as I came close to Galen House and saw the front door standing open to the chill evening. I broke into a run, plunged through the door, and found Kate trussed upon the rushes of the floor, her mouth stuffed with a gag made of fabric ripped from Bessie’s tiny gown. The rushes were disordered where Kate had thrashed about to free herself, but this she could not do, for her wrists were bound tight together and then to a leg of our table. Our daughter lay beside her mother, unharmed but for the damage to her clothing. As I ran to free Kate I saw, from the corner of my eye, my chest standing open.

I first drew the gag from Kate’s mouth, and she immediately shouted that I must make haste and be after them. I made haste, rather, to free her wrists and ankles from their bonds, then asked what had befallen her.

“Two men,” she gasped, rubbing chaffed wrists, “came upon me unannounced and asked for you. I told them you were at the castle, upon Lord Gilbert’s business.”

“They did not leave to seek me?”

“Nay. They exchanged glances, then one seized me and put a hand over my mouth while the other picked Bessie from the floor.”

“What then?”

“The man who held Bessie approached the hearth and said I was not to cry out or he would pitch her into the fire.” Kate shook as she recalled the moment, and I held her close to calm her quivering.

“My captor then released me, and told me to lie face-down upon the rushes and be silent, else his companion would set Bessie in the fire. I did as he demanded, and from the corner of my eye watched as he moved about the room. He soon saw your chest, opened it, and I heard him tell the other he’d found what they sought.”

“The three sacks?”

“Aye. He set them upon the floor before me when he bound me.”

“This was how long ago?”

“Not an hour past. They were mounted. I heard them ride off.”

I cursed myself that I had not sent Thrale’s sacks to the castle when I first learned from the pepperer’s wife that I was known to men who sought what I had found in the chapman’s house.

“It is nearly dark… too late to follow upon the roads, but I will ask on Church View Street and the High Street if any saw which way they went.”

“Do so. Do not fear to leave me. I am not harmed, but for tender wrists where I was tightly bound.”

“Describe the rogues, so I may ask wisely.”

“One was tall and slender, the other short and stout. The tall man’s beard was trimmed close.”

“And he wore a brown cotehardie and a red cap,” I added, “while the shorter man wore grey, with a blue cap.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “Aye… the one who held Bessie to the fire, he wore a blue cap. How did you know?”

“The same men did hamsoken to John Thrale’s house in Abingdon. A neighbor described them.”

“Are these the men who slew the chapman?”

“So I believe. They tried to learn of the coins and wealth from him, and beat him to make him tell.”

“But if the coins were in his house,” Kate mused, “why not enter while he was away? Why waylay him on the road and beat him?”

“It was not only the coins he had already found that they sought, I think. The chapman discovered some cache of coins and jewelry in his travels, and each time he did the circuit of villages he renewed his supply.”

“What did he do with them?”

“Melted them to ingots in a small iron box, then sold them to a silversmith, I’ll wager.”

“So these villains knew what you found in the chapman’s house, and thought it might be here?”

“Aye. Knew, or guessed. I am a fool. The neighbor’s wife told them the bailiff of the manor where John Thrale was found had visited his house. Men who will beat another to death will not so easily give up the pursuit of the loot they seek.”

“You think they knew it was you, then, who entered the chapman’s house and took away his wealth?”

“Not then, but they knew he died upon Bampton Manor. When they arrived this day the first man they met upon the street could tell them my name and where I was to be found.”

“I am glad you were not here,” Kate shuddered.

“Why so?”

“You would have tried to do some manly thing when they threatened to harm Bessie. They would not have hesitated to beat you as they did the chapman. I might now be a widow.”

I could say nothing, for I suspect Kate spoke true. Fathers do not always behave wisely when wife or children are threatened. There is a field, the Green Ditch, to the north of Holywell Street in Oxford, where a scaffold is raised whenever felons are hanged. I vowed to see the miscreants dangle there. For the murder they did, or for the insult to my house, my wife, my child? I could not say which was the sharper spur.

I left Galen House and found the place on Church View Street where Kate’s assailants had tethered their horses. ’Twas near dark, and the evening Angelus Bell rang while I studied the dust where horses had left imprints of their hooves. Close inspection showed that one beast wore a broken shoe, as if the horse had galloped over cobbles and snapped off a small part of a horseshoe. This shoe was not so malformed as to require immediate replacement, but enough to distinguish the animal from any other.

I cast my thoughts back to the discovery of the chapman’s cart, and the hoof-prints in the road. I could not recall a mark made there by a broken horseshoe, but other matters concerned me at the time, so I might have seen such a print and taken no notice of it.

I rose from studying the dust and saw Martyn the cobbler peering at me from before his shop. He was surely astonished to see Lord Gilbert’s bailiff on hands and knees in the street. I stood, motioned to him to hold his place, and hurried the hundred paces to where he waited.

“Two men on horseback, not of Bampton,” I began. “About an hour past. Did you see such men?”

“Aye.”

I thought he might, for he has placed his bench before a shutter which, when lifted, provides light and looks out on the street. He sees all who pass on Church View Street.

“Did one wear a red cap, the other blue?”

“Aye.”

“When they reached the High Street, which way did they go?”

“East, through the marketplace, toward St. Andrew’s Chapel.”

I had suspected that, thanked the cobbler for his time, and hastened back to Galen House and my affronted family. Kate awaited me upon a bench by the hearth, nursing Bessie. She looked up expectantly when I entered, but I had little to tell her. The broken horseshoe, which track I intended to follow next day even though it would be Sunday, was my only discovery.

Chapter 4

K
ate heard the news without comment. She had not expected, I think, when we wed, that she would be attacked in her house by those whom, in the course of my duties, I had provoked. And this assault was not the first. Would she have accepted my suit had she known what might follow? I sat beside her upon the bench and, in answer to my unspoken question, she rested her head upon my shoulder.

I awoke in the night to the sound of rain upon our bed-chamber window. I was at first pleased to hear this, but as I collected my wits I realized that the shower would obliterate the tracks I hoped to follow come morning. This was no misty drizzle, but a cloudburst, and it was not over and done with quickly. A gentle rain yet fell when Kate and I left our bed at dawn.

I went immediately to our door and walked out into the street, where the evening before I had discovered the track of a broken horseshoe. No trace of the mark remained. There was nothing to follow, no way to discover where the villains had gone once past the marketplace.

I was sure they were of Abingdon, or thereabouts, and was determined to seek them. But not alone. They had proven what villainy they would do. After mass I would seek Arthur at the castle and require him to accompany me.

Arthur had proven himself a useful companion in the matter of Master John Wyclif’s stolen books, and always seemed eager when I found it necessary to have his aid. He is a groom to Lord Gilbert, but as he is wed he is not required to travel when Lord Gilbert takes residence at Goodrich or Pembroke. I did not seek a violent confrontation with the miscreants who slew John Thrale and invaded my house, but to apprehend such men might require some compulsion. Arthur is a good man to have at one’s side in such a case, thick-set and ready for a brawl.

After mass and a dinner of roasted capon I sought Lord Gilbert, told him of the assault on Kate, and requested permission to take Arthur from his duties at the castle. As is his custom, Lord Gilbert raised one eyebrow as I related the previous day’s events. Three years past, when I was new to Bampton, I had tried to emulate him in this. I failed.

My employer was florid with anger when I completed the tale. His brows were now lowered in a scowl, and he seemed ready to leap from his chair to accompany Arthur and me to Abingdon.

“Take Arthur, and any other you may need,” he said when I fell silent. “No man will threaten your Kate and Bessie in such a manner and escape, if I can do aught about it.”

“Arthur is worth two in a scrap,” I said.

“Aye, he is that. And he’s no dullard, even so he is low-born.”

Arthur, as I suspected, was eager to leave the drudgery of castle labor and set off for Abingdon. I told him to arm himself with a dagger, and be ready to leave next day at dawn. My warning that violence might find us, or we might find violence, did not seem to trouble the man. He raised his head, grinned, and promised to be ready at the appointed time. Men who generally win their fights do not much fear being drawn into another.

I visited the marshalsea and told a page to have Bruce and an old palfrey ready next morn, then set off for Galen House. I was through the gatehouse and crossing the castle forecourt when a disagreeable thought came to me. What if the men I sought learned of my pursuit before I found them? Might they seek vengeance upon me by returning to Bampton, knowing I was in Abingdon, and do harm to Kate and Bessie? I could not leave my wife and daughter alone.

Lord Gilbert was in the solar, with Lady Petronilla, when I returned to the castle. I explained my worry, and he readily agreed that Kate and Bessie should remove to the castle until I had discovered the men who murdered the chapman and assaulted Kate.

When I was a bachelor I went where I would, when I would. It is difficult to learn a new manner of living, to think of others before making a decision, but after nearly two years since I wed Kate under the porch of the Church of St. Beornwald, I was beginning to consider new obligations before my own plans.

After a supper of bruit of eggs I told Kate she must leave Galen House and lodge with Bessie in the castle, in my old bachelor chamber. She was not pleased with the move, as I knew she would not be, and her lips drew tight across her teeth while I told her what she was to do. But when I pointed out that the men who had attacked her and threatened Bessie might return in my absence, she rubbed her chafed wrists absent-mindedly and reluctantly agreed to my decision.

I told Kate to prepare what she wished to take to the castle, and that next day she should expect a cart from the marshalsea to move her thence. I reminded her to lock the door to Galen House upon leaving, to which admonition she rolled her eyes. Such advice was probably unnecessary, but the longer I am wed, and the more I consider my responsibilities to Kate and Bessie, the more cautious I seem to become.

Next morn I kissed my Kate farewell, and was pleased that her embrace did not betoken so much displeasure as I had feared. At the castle I found Uctred, another of Lord Gilbert’s grooms, and told him to take a horse and cart to Galen House, there to load what Kate wished taken to my old chamber off the Bampton Castle great hall. Arthur and I then mounted our horses and set off across Shill Brook.

The journey took us past St. Andrew’s Chapel, where I saw John Kellet at work, his robe drawn up and tucked into the cord he used for a belt, mending the tumbled-down wall about the churchyard. He looked up as we approached, sucking upon a thumb as would a babe. Nettles grew in profusion against the wall. I believe the priest had found one as we came into view.