The Unquiet Bones (6 page)

My mind was so occupied that I neglected the prayers for the living and the dead. Father Thomas sang the mass well, and as I had some little training to do the same, my thoughts returned to the service in time to venerate the host and kiss the pax board. We shared the holy loaf, and as always after mass, I departed the church determined to live better, and in particular, to discover a name for a missing girl. I should attend mass twice each day. Although, come to think of it, there are lords who do for whom the practice seems without benefit.

I am always ravenous when mass is done. Although some break their fast before the sacrament, I hold with those who do not. After the midday meal of a Sunday, it is Lord Gilbert’s custom to invite tenants and yeomen to bring bows to the castle forecourt for practice at the butts. He provides a cask of ale to ensure good attendance, and a prize for the most competent marksman. As the award, usually two pence, is not granted until the last competition, those who rewarded themselves already with Lord Gilbert’s ale seldom stagger home with any coin.

Monday found me unoccupied, so I journeyed to the north again, to Curbridge, Minster Lovell, and Brize Norton. A woman had disappeared from Minster Lovell seven years earlier, but the gossip who told me of this was convinced her disappearance had to do with a band of Italian wool buyers who passed through the area a few days before her husband awoke to a cold bed. And the woman was twenty-six: too old to be the skeleton in my dispensary.

I did not mount Bruce again until Wednesday. I had an earache and a boil to deal with on Tuesday. Truth to tell, the child’s ear was not the only thing in Bampton which ached. My hindquarters were unaccustomed to days spent in a saddle. A day practicing my profession provided sorely needed respite.

On Wednesday I rode through Black Bourton, Alvescot, and Shilton, all the way to Burford. Burford was as large as Bampton, so I tried the strategy I had used at Witney: grandmothers and innkeepers. The second crone stopped my search.

The old lady narrowed her eyes when I asked if anyone was missing from the town. “Who wants to know?” she asked guardedly.

“I am the surgeon from Bampton,” I announced. If I expected this news to impress her, I was disappointed. She stood, a basket of turnips pressed against a hip, and waited for more information.

“A body has been found near Bampton. It cannot be identified, and no one from the town or nearby villages is unaccounted for. I am acting as Lord Gilbert Talbot’s agent to put a name to the corpse.”

“The smith’s girl went missing in early summer. A week after Whitsuntide, it was. Folks thought she’d run off with her lad, but he come back a day later, said he’d took a cart of oats to sell for his father. Moped around for weeks, he did. Still looks like devil’s got him by the ankles last time I saw ’im.”

“What was the girl’s name?”

“Margaret.”

“How old was she?”

The old woman screwed her face in concentration. “She were born afore my John died o’plague…maybe seventeen, eighteen years old.”

“Where can I find her family?”

“Just her father, Alard. Mother died seven, eight years back. His smithy’s down by the river, just across the bridge. Lord Thomas won’t let him set up on town side ’cause o’ fire.”

I found the smith easily enough. The man stood outside his hut and cast a practiced eye at Bruce’s gait as I crossed the river and approached. He seemed surprised as I drew up before him. Evidently he had seen no flaw in Bruce’s pace which would dictate a need for his services.

“You are Alard, the smith?” I asked by way of greeting. The question was rhetorical. One look at his forearms was enough to assure me of his trade, whatever his name.

“Aye,” he replied, unmoving.

“I am told you have a missing daughter.”

His back stiffened and his eyes, once dull, flashed.

“Aye. Four months now. Who are you? Have you news of her?”

I identified myself and told the smith the reason for my visit. But I did not tell him everything. If Lord Gilbert’s skeleton was this man’s daughter, he did not need to know yet where she was found or her condition when discovered.

“Had your daughter any injuries…broken bones?” I asked.

“Nay…She were a strong lass. Wait; when she were small she’d follow me about the smithy near all day. Could hardly get my work done for tumblin’ over her. Tried to pick up my sledge once. She were but seven or eight years old. ’Twas too heavy for her. Dropped it on her foot. Swole up an’ turned black for two weeks an’ more, but she were up an’ runnin’ again in a month or so. Troubles her now and again.”

“She limps?” I asked.

“Aye, a bit, when t’weather turns.”

“She may have broken a bone in her foot,” I remarked.

“Aye…so I thought,” he shrugged.

“When did you last see your daughter?”

The smith’s shoulders slumped as he thought back to the summer. “’Twas soon after Whitsunday.”

“Had she given sign that she might run off?”

“Nay. She were quiet, though, seems to me as I think back on it. Thought at first as she’d run off with her lad, but they’d no reason to do that. Tom’s a good lad. His father has a yardland near Shilton of Lord Thomas. Tom’ll come to it, as he’s oldest.” He paused. “Margaret were my youngest…all I had left. Her brother died at Poitiers, an’ two sisters gone when plague come first time.”

“Why did you think she might have run off with her lad?”

“He were gone, too. I went to see his father when I heard t’boy were gone. Tom’d gone off with a cart of oats to sell. Came back next day an’ seemed confused as t’rest of us.”

As he spoke the smith’s demeanor drooped with his shoulders until I feared he might fall. He seemed to want to talk of the girl, yet paid a terrible price for doing so. News of his daughter’s death would collapse him even more, but I thought it better to disclose what I knew than await a recovery of his distressed spirit, only to strike him down again.

“The dead girl, found in Lord Gilbert’s castle, had suffered a broken bone in her foot,” I told him.

The smith sat heavily on a sack of coals. “Which foot were it?” he asked.

“I cannot tell. I know only that one of her feet received a blow which broke a bone.”

For all his distress, the smith retained a keen mind. He saw the meaning of my answer. “She’s but a skeleton, like, then.”

“Aye. That is so.”

“How did she die?” he whispered.

I told him of the gouged rib, but could not bring myself to tell him where she was found.

“We’ve not buried her. We thought, when we discovered who she was, her family would want to do that.”

“Aye.”

“I have her at my house, in Bampton. Galen House. Will you send someone for her, or would you have me send her with one of Lord Gilbert’s men?”

“Nay. I’ll come for her tomorrow. I can borrow a cart.”

I told the smith where to find Galen House, bid him good day until the morrow, and left him sitting grief-stricken on the sack of coals.

I made my way to Bampton Castle early next morning to report my discovery to Lord Gilbert.

“The broken foot settles the matter, I’d say,” he remarked when I told him the news. I nodded agreement.

“Now you must discover who has done this. And soon. I wish to have this matter cleared before I go to Goodrich for Christmas.”

“I know not where to begin,” I protested.

“You have begun well already. Now you need but to conclude. A job well begun is near done…so wise men say.”

“I sometimes wish wise men would keep their thoughts to themselves,” I muttered.

Lord Gilbert chuckled. “I wish to leave for Goodrich in three weeks, after St Catherine’s Day and the procession. Find the killer in our midst by then, or I must return here on winter roads to do justice when you do find the man.”

A
lard, good as his word, arrived with a horse and crude cart at the sixth hour next day. Together we lifted the box of his daughter’s bones to the bed of the cart. Alard could have done the work alone, but I felt it a last service I could perform for the girl. Surgery is a service for the living. I have no skills to aid the dead. Had I a wish to serve the dead, I might have taken holy orders. But what use was a priest now to Margaret, only child of Alard, the smith? To pray her out of purgatory? What priest would concern himself with a smith’s daughter? If she had not done the work to position herself for heaven, no priest or monk was likely to bother now. A wealthy father might endow a chapel where monks might pray for her soul. Alard the smith could not. So would she remain in purgatory, with no prayers to set her free? Did not our Lord himself say that it was more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye? Margaret was not rich. Would she then gain her soul’s rest more easily than Lord Gilbert? Lord Gilbert could endow a chantry for himself. Would this propel him past Margaret to the gates of heaven? I puzzled over these thoughts as Alard turned the cart and drove north past St Beornwald’s Church and out of the town.

Lord Gilbert had assigned me my next task. That’s what nobles are best at – assigning work to others. They would say in their defense that someone must organize society. I suppose that is so.

After a midday meal I wandered back to the castle. I had no reason. I did not need to see Lord Gilbert again. I saw no path open to me whereby I might discover a killer, but I look back now and think I must have believed proximity to the place of crime might provide some fresh interpretation. It did, to my chagrin.

My presence in Bampton Castle was so regular that no one paid me any attention as I wandered the castle yard and forecourt. I studied the garderobe tower, as I had done the day I was summoned to inspect the bones, and several times since. The garderobe tower had been added to Bampton Castle as an afterthought, some years after Aymer de Valence, Lord Gilbert’s grandfather, had received permission from King Edward II to fortify his house in Bampton. So the tower stood outside the wall, attached to it. But there was no danger of an enemy battering it down to gain entry to the castle. Its only openings were those inside the tower, at each level of the castle, and the opening outside the tower, at the base, now closed with wooden planks, from which Uctred and his companions were at work when they discovered the bones.

Could one man lift those planks? If so, Margaret’s bones might have entered the cesspit there. It seemed to me unlikely that a killer would try to stuff a body through a garderobe. I walked across the muddy yard to inspect the cover more closely. It was near two paces long and as high as my waist, and little more than an inch thick. Its maker had nailed planks together against two backing boards. I bent my knees, pushed my fingers under the cover, and strained at the planks. It resisted, then broke free. With little effort I had the cover ankle-high in its vertical tracks in the tower’s foundation stones. A whiff of the cesspit below persuaded me to let it drop back to its place. One man might lift the cover and push a corpse through the opening. But more likely, it seemed to me, two would be required for the task.

This did not answer my question; it merely raised another. Did the girl’s body enter the cesspit here? Certainly more people had access to the outside of the garderobe tower than to the inside. But this also meant possible witnesses to such a deed. Would a killer risk discovery here in the castle yard?

While I pondered this new discovery, my attention was diverted. A farm cart, loaded with hay, entered the castle forecourt, proceeded with Wilfred’s blessing through the gatehouse, then made its way across the castle yard to the marshalsea.

A stableman appeared from a darkened stall and together he and the carter pitchforked the load of hay to an empty corner of the stable.

I watched this activity because I could think of nothing else to do. I did not intend to eavesdrop on their conversation as the men worked. Indeed, they said little, concentrating on their labor. But as they finished their work the stableman addressed the carter.

“You can leave t’cart right here. Unhitch t’horse an’ put ’im in yon stall. You’ve got a nice soft bed of hay there t’keep you warm tonight. An’ if you ask at t’kitchen ’round back, they’ll have a loaf an’ more for your supper.”

I approached the stableman as the carter strode off to the kitchen. “You’ll be wantin’ Bruce, then?” he asked.

“No. About the hay…Is that fellow,” I nodded toward the departing carter, “a villein of Lord Gilbert’s? I’ve not seen him before, I think.”

“Nay. He’s Sir Geoffrey Mallory’s man, from Northleech.”

“Must Lord Gilbert buy hay from Sir Geoffrey?”

“Aye, an’ oats as well. You’ll remember how’t rained so in t’spring? Hay an’ oats rotted in t’fields.”

I knew that harvests this year had been poor due to the cool, wet weather early in the season, but my occupation required of me little thought about agricultural vicissitudes. So long as I had patients who could pay my fees, I did not concern myself with crop yields. When the price of bread rose, then I gave attention to the harvest. In the past months this I had begun to do.

“Then Lord Gilbert is forced to buy fodder?”

“Aye. Well, not yet, like, but if he waits ’til winter price’ll go higher. Hill country over to Northleech drains better, so they wasn’t so bad off as us. Got enough an’ to sell.”

“So Lord Gilbert is buying now. Is this his first purchase?”

“Nay. See t’loft there?” I peered into the dim stable. The loft was filled with hay. “This’ll be fourth, fifth load.”

“All from Sir Geoffrey?”

“Nay. Got a load of oats from up north. One o’Earl Thomas Beauchamp’s tenants. Back in t’spring it was, just after Whitsuntide. Lord Gilbert saw trouble comin’, the hay bein’ so poorly an’ oats little better.”

Whitsuntide? A cartload of oats? My mind was unsettled for a moment, then I made the connection. Margaret’s lad.

“The oats; did Lord Gilbert send a man for the load?”

“Nay. A lad came with nine sacks. All his cart would carry.”

“Did you help him unload?”

“Nay. T’smith was here an’ we had horses to shoe. Lad said as how he’d take t’sacks to loft. Strong young fella. Didn’t need no help. Went right up t’ladder with ’em easy as you please.”

“You watched him unload?”

“Just the first sack…t’make sure he could manage. Farrier was workin’ on Lord Gilbert’s best dexter. He’s a mean ’un. Took me an’ Uctred to hold ’im.”

“Did the lad return to his home that night?”

“He stayed. Slept on t’straw there like this fella’ll do.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “Left next mornin’ soon as light t’see t’road.”

“I shall need Bruce tomorrow,” I told him.

There seemed too many coincidences. The bones, their location, the missing girl, the sale of nine sacks of oats, and the timing. Perhaps that was all it was: coincidence. But to learn if that was so, I must return to Burford.

I walked from the castle with a warm sun at my back. I had no urgent need to return to Galen House, so I stood on the bridge over Shill Brook and watched the wheel of Lord Gilbert’s mill turn slowly.

What if Margaret and her beau had quarreled? What if the argument had become violent? What if, in a fit of rage, the youth struck and killed her? What if he then took her body to Bampton Castle under the oat sacks? Would he not risk discovery in unloading? Would a distressed young killer think of that? Why not dispose of the body in some forest between here and Burford? There were too many questions. Tomorrow I would return to Burford and seek answers to these riddles. Some of them, anyway.

Bruce seemed eager to take me on my journey, perhaps because I always rode him at an easy pace to spare my rump the unaccustomed abrasions. Or perhaps he grew bored staring at the walls of his stall.

As Bruce shambled along the path north to Shilton and Burford, I observed the countryside more closely than I had on my first journey. Lord Gilbert’s remark about unused, vacant land was accurate. There were many oxgangs of meadow now growing back to woodland. At several places the forest was coppiced, but not so regularly as it would have been before the plague. I saw few travelers on my way, although there might have been more in the summer. Certainly there were many places where a body might be hauled from the road into a wood or overgrown meadow and never seen again, until the beasts of the forest had rendered it nothing but bones moldering in the moss and bracken.

I wanted to speak to Alard again, but before I spoke to him I hoped to find the crone with the basket of turnips who had sent me to him. There were things I wished to know about Margaret Smith that Alard might not wish to tell me. And other things he might not know, considering the possible relationship between a man and his daughter.

I rode Bruce up and down the High Street and crosslanes of Burford until folk began to peer at me with furrowed brows as I passed them for the third or fourth time.

I tried to remember what the old woman was wearing, but it was nothing unusual enough to recall. A plain brown cloak and gray wimple, which might once have been white: the habit of every woman her age in every village in England.

I gave up my search, crossed the bridge over the Windrush, and reined Bruce to a stop before the smith’s hut. I saw no smoke from his chimney. To my shout there was no response. The town mill was but fifty or so paces upstream along a path which wound through the willows. I went there seeking news of the smith’s whereabouts.

“He’ll be at t’churchyard, won’t he,” the miller answered, “buryin’ his Margaret.”

I remembered seeing a small knot of people in the churchyard as I passed it – several times. Death and burial are common enough that I did not associate this interment with the bones I had puzzled over. I decided not to wait for the smith’s return, but mounted Bruce and made my way back across the river and up the sloping High Street. I turned Bruce east into Church Lane as mourners passed out of the gate. Alard led the procession. Near its end was the old woman I sought.

I dismounted and followed the old woman to her house, leading Bruce by the halter. The house was wattle and daub, like most in the town, and showed signs of neglect, as did its owner. The thatching of the roof was thin, and chunks of daub had fallen from the walls, exposing decaying wattles. A widow’s home, I thought.

I tied Bruce to a fencepost and approached the door. It opened before I could raise my hand to knock. The woman saw me standing before her and started back so violently that I feared she would fall.

“Oh – you’ve nearly made me drop me eggs!” she exclaimed.

The woman clung to a basket. From the rear of the decaying house I heard hens clucking. They were apparently a source of income, perhaps along with turnips her only source of cash.

“Forgive me. I had no wish to frighten you. Do you remember me?”

“Aye. You asked of Margaret, the smith’s girl, a few days back.”

“I did, although I did not know her name until you told me. I would ask a few more questions about her.”

“I promised these eggs to the vicar before noon. Father Geoffrey likes his eggs fresh.” The woman’s house was but three streets from the church and vicarage.

“Will you return when your errand is done?”

“Aye, straight away.”

“I’ll wait.”

The woman kept her word. I spent the time observing the house and street. It was a duplicate of hundreds I had seen across England, and France, too, in my travels there. The streets were similar, but the stories of the people inhabiting them all different. The crone; was she a widow? Never wed? Children? Grandchildren? Had she loved and laughed once? The crinkled skin about her eyes said “yes,” but the downturned corners of her mouth revealed sorrow in her life. As I mused, the wrinkled eyes and downcast mouth rounded the corner and limped toward me.

I had not noticed her hobble as she walked away. Now she returned shuffling, nearly halting each time her left foot struck the ground. When she came closer I could see a grimace, too, when her weight shifted to her left foot. Her condition aroused my medical curiosity.

“You walk with pain,” I observed when she approached.

“Aye. Since Easter last I’ve suffered.”

“What is the cause?” I suspected the disease of the bones. She was of the age for it. It was unlikely her diet was rich enough to cause gout.

“It’s me toe. Swole up an’ red. ’At’s right, you be t’surgeon from Bampton. ’Eard of you.”

I wondered what she’d heard, but decided it could not have been too bad, as with her next breath she asked if I might examine the offending digit.

I followed her into her house, but the light there was too dim to properly diagnose either wound or injury. I carried a bench out to the sunlight, bade her sit upon it, and knelt before her to remove her shoe. I could see the swelling through the cracked, ancient leather, and heard her giggle softly behind her hand as I took her ankle to pull off the shoe. The giggle concluded with a gasp as the shoe abraded her toe.

Her pain was due to a badly infected ingrown toenail; one of the worst I’ve seen. The wonder is she could walk at all.

“Can you do aught for me?” she asked.

“Aye. But not now. I’ve no instruments with me.”

“Instruments?” She said it as a question, with a trace of alarm in her voice.

“You have an ingrown toenail. I must trim it back, and remove some putrefied flesh from about it.”

“Can’t you put somethin’ on it – a poultice, like?”

“I could, but that would serve only temporarily. The swelling might subside for a day, and the pain with it, but it would surely return. It does little good to treat pain. I must treat the cause of the pain.”

“I see; sore toes is much like other sorrows God’s children must endure.”

The old woman did not look like a philosopher, but surviving sixty or seventy years of the assorted trials common to mankind must turn all but the most shallow to contemplative thought now and again.