Unhallowed Ground (2 page)

A
fortnight after Hocktide, in the new year 1366, shouting and pounding upon the door of Galen House drew me from the maslin loaf with which I was breaking my fast. The sun was just beginning to illuminate the spire of the Church of St Beornwald. It was Hubert Shillside who bruised his knuckles against my door. He was about to set out for the castle and desired I should accompany him. The hue and cry was raised and he, as town coroner, and I as bailiff of Bampton Manor, were called to our duties. Thomas atte Bridge had been found this morn hanging from the limb of an oak at Cow-Leys Corner.

Word of such a death passes through a village swiftly. A dozen men and a few women stood at Cow-Leys Corner when Shillside and I approached. Roads to Clanfield and Alvescot here diverge; the road to Clanfield passes through a meadow, where Lord Gilbert’s cattle watched serenely as men gathered before them. To the north of the corner, and along the road to Alvescot and Black Bourton, is forest. From a tree of this wood the corpse of Thomas atte Bridge hung by the neck, his body but a few paces from the road. Shillside and I crossed ourselves as we approached.

Most who gazed upon the dead man did so silently, but not his wife. Maud knelt before her husband’s body, her arms wrapped about his knees. She wailed incomprehensibly, as well she might.

Atte Bridge’s corpse was suspended there by a coarse hempen cord twisted about the small oak’s limb and his neck. After winding about the limb the cord was fastened about the trunk at waist height. The limb was not high above my head. If I stretched a hand above me I could nearly touch it. The man’s feet dangled from his wife’s embrace little more than two hand-breadths above the ground, and near the corpse lay an overturned stool.

“Who found him?” I asked the crowd. Ralph the herder stepped forward.

“Was on me way to see to the cattle. They been turned out to grass but a short time now, an’ can swell up, like. Near walked into ’im, dark as it was, an’ him hangin’ so close to the road.”

Hubert Shillside wandered about the place, then approached me and whispered, “Suicide, I think.”

Spirits are known to frequent Cow-Leys Corner. Many folk will not walk the road there after dark, and those who do sometimes see apparitions. This is to be expected, for any who take their own life are buried there. They cannot be interred in the churchyard, in hallowed ground. Their ghosts rest uneasy, and are said to vex travelers who pass the place at night.

“Knew he’d be buried here,” Shillside continued, “an’ thought to spare poor Maud greater trouble.”

That Thomas atte Bridge might wish to cause little trouble for his wife did not seem likely, given my experience of the man. He had twice attacked me in nocturnal churchyards, leaving lumps upon my skull. But I made no reply. It is not good to speak ill of the dead, even this dead man.

Kate had heard Shillside’s announcement at Galen House and followed us to Cow-Leys Corner. She looked from the corpse to Maud to me, then spoke softly: “You are troubled, Hugh.”

This was a statement, not a question. We had been wed but three months, but Kate is observant and knows me well.

“I will call a coroner’s jury here,” Shillside announced. “We can cut the fellow down and see him buried straight away.”

“You must seek Father Thomas or one of the other vicars,” I reminded him. “Thomas was a tenant of the Bishop of Exeter, not of Lord Gilbert. They may wish otherwise.”

Shillside set off for the town while two men lifted Maud from her knees and led her sobbing in the coroner’s track.

“Wait,” I said abruptly. All turned to see what caused my command. “The stool which lies at your husband’s feet,” I asked the grieving widow, “is it yours?”

Maud ceased her wailing long enough to whisper, “Aye.”

Another onlooker righted the stool and prepared to climb to the limb with a knife, when I bid him halt. He had thought to cut the corpse down. Kate spoke true, the circumstances of this death troubled me, although I readily admit that when I first recognized the dead man I felt no sorrow.

I saw a man hanged once, in Paris, when I studied surgery there. He dangled, kicking the sheriff’s dance and growing purple in the face until the constables relented and allowed his friends to approach and pull upon his legs until his torment ended. Thomas atte Bridge’s face was swollen and purple, and he had soiled himself as death approached. His countenance in death duplicated the unfortunate cut-purse in Paris. It seemed as Hubert Shillside suggested: atte Bridge brought rope and stool to Cow-Leys Corner, threw the hemp about the limb and tied it to the tree and then to his neck, then kicked aside the stool he’d stood upon to fix cord to limb. All who stood peering at me and the corpse surely thought the same.

I circled the dangling corpse. The hands hung limp and were cold to the touch. A man about to die on the gallows will be securely bound, but not so a man who takes his own life. I inspected atte Bridge’s hands and pushed up the frayed sleeves of his cotehardie to see his wrists.

Upon one wrist I saw a small red mark, much like a rash, or a place where a man has scratched a persistent itch. No such scraping appeared upon the other wrist, but when I pushed up the sleeve of the cotehardie another thing caught my eye. The sleeve was of coarse brown wool, and frayed with age. Caught in the wisps of fabric which marked the end of the sleeve I found a wrinkled thread of lighter hue. I looked up to the branch above atte Bridge’s glassy stare. This filament was much the same shade as the hempen cord from which the dead man hung. Perhaps it found its way to his sleeve when atte Bridge adjusted the rope about his neck.

I stood back from the corpse to survey the place. I was near convinced that Hubert Shillside must be correct. My life would have been easier had he been so. But my duties as bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot have made me suspicious of others and skeptical of tales they tell – whether dead or alive. It was then I noticed the mud upon Thomas atte Bridge’s heels.

I knelt to see better, and Kate peered over my shoulder. Mud upon one’s shoes is common when walking roads in springtime, but this mud was not upon the soles of atte Bridge’s shoes, where it should have been, but was drying upon the backs of his heels. Kate understood readily what we saw.

“Odd, that,” she said softly, so others might not hear. She then turned to the righted stool and gazed down at it thoughtfully. I saw her brow furrow and knew the cause. I drew her from the corpse to the trunk of the tree where we might converse unheard by others.

“A man who walks to his death will have mud upon the soles of his shoes,” I whispered, “not upon the backs of his heels.”

“And he will leave muddy footprints where he stands,” Kate replied. “I see none on yon stool.”

“Walk with me,” I said. “Let us see what the road may tell us.”

It told us that many folk had walked this way. The previous week there had been much rain, and the road was deep in mud. Footprints were many, and one man who had walked there was unshod. Occasionally the track of a cart appeared. A hundred paces and more east of Cow-Leys Corner I found what I sought. Two parallel lines, a hand’s breadth apart, were drawn in the mud of the road. These tracks were no more than one pace long. Kate watched me study the grooves.

“Did the mud upon his heels come from here?” she asked.

“Perhaps. It is as if two men carried another, and one lost his grip and allowed the fellow’s feet to drop briefly to the road.”

“How could this be? Was he dead already?”

“Nay. I think not. His face is that of a man who has died at the end of a rope. But if he did not perish at his own hand, someone bound him or rendered him helpless so to get him to Cow-Leys Corner.”

While Kate and I stood in the road inspecting suspicious furrows, Hubert Shillside and eleven men of Bampton approached. The coroner saw us studying the mud at our feet and turned his gaze there also. He saw nothing to interest him.

“What is here, Hugh? Why stand you here studying the road?”

“See there,” I pointed to the twin grooves in the mud. As Shillside had not seen Thomas atte Bridge’s heels, he could not know my suspicion. He shrugged and walked on. The coroner’s jury he had assembled followed and would have obliterated the marks in the way had not Kate and I stood before them so that they were obliged to flow about us like Shill Brook about a rock.

There was nothing more to be learned standing in the road. Kate and I followed the jury back to Cow-Leys Corner. Shillside and those with him studied the corpse, the rope, the stool, and muttered among themselves. The coroner had already voiced his opinion that atte Bridge died at his own hand. His companions, thus set toward a conclusion of the matter, found no reason to disagree. When a man has adopted an opinion it is difficult to dissuade him of it, but I tried.

I took Shillside to the corpse and bid him bend to inspect the stained and mud-crusted heels. “The tracks you saw me studying in the road… made by atte Bridge’s heels, I think. Why else dirt upon the backs of a man’s feet?”

“Hmmm… perhaps.”

“And see the stool. If he stood upon it to fix the rope to the limb, he made no muddy footprints upon it.”

Shillside glanced at the stool, then lifted his eyes to atte Bridge’s lolling head.

“The fellow is dead of hanging and strangulation,” he declared. “I’ve seen men die so, faces swollen an’ purple, tongue hangin’ from ’is mouth all puffy an’ red.”

“Aye,” I agreed. “So it does seem. But if he stood upon that stool to fasten rope to tree, he left no mark. How could a man walk the road and arrive here with clean shoes… but for the backs of his heels?”

Shillside shrugged again. “Who can know? But this I’ll say: not a man in Bampton or the Weald will be sorry Thomas atte Bridge is dead. He tried to kill you. Be satisfied the fellow can do no more harm to you or any other.”

I saw then how it might be. Shillside drew his coroner’s jury to the verge and they discussed the matter. Occasionally one or more of the group would look to the corpse, which now twisted slowly on the hemp. A breeze was rising.

Father Thomas, Father Simon, and Father Ralph, vicars of the Church of St Beornwald, arrived as the jury ended its deliberations. The vicars looked upon the corpse and crossed themselves. Those who yet milled about Cow-Leys Corner vied with each other to tell what the priests could see: a man was dead, hanging by a cord from the limb of a tree. More than this no man knew. If there was more to know, there were those who preferred ignorance.

Hubert Shillside approached me and the priests and announced the decision of the coroner’s jury. Thomas atte Bridge took his own life, choosing to do so at a place where it was well known that suicides of past years were buried. The stool was proof: Maud had identified it as belonging to their house.

The vicars looked on gravely while Shillside explained this conclusion. The stool and rope, he declared, would be deodand. What use King Edward might make of them he did not say.

Thomas atte Bridge was a tenant of the Bishop of Exeter, but was found dead on lands of Lord Gilbert Talbot. The priests and coroner’s jury looked to me for direction. Lord Gilbert was in residence at Goodrich Castle. As bailiff of Bampton Manor, disposal of the corpse was now my bailiwick. My suspicions remained, but it seemed I was alone in my doubts. Other than Kate.

I saw Arthur standing at the fringe of onlookers and motioned him to approach. While he threaded his way through the crowd I spoke to Father Thomas.

“Will you allow burial in the churchyard?”

The vicar shook his head. Father Simon and Father Ralph pursed their lips and frowned in agreement. “A man who takes his own life cannot seek confession and absolution,” Father Thomas explained. He had no need to do so. I knew the observances well. “He dies in his sins, unshriven. He cannot rest in hallowed ground.”

Arthur had served me and Master John Wyclif well in the matter of Master John’s stolen books. Now I found another duty for the sturdy fellow. I sent him to the castle to seek another groom and two spades.

There was no point in prolonging the matter. Shillside asked if the corpse might be cut down and I nodded assent. It was but the work of a moment for another of the bishop’s tenants to mount the stool and slice through the rope. Thomas atte Bridge’s remains crumpled to a heap at the fellow’s feet. I told the man to unwind the cord from about the limb while he was on his perch. I knelt by the corpse and did the same to the cord which encircled atte Bridge’s abraded neck. I then straightened the fellow out on the verge. He was beginning to stiffen in death and it would be best to put him in his grave unbent.

I knelt to straighten atte Bridge’s head and while I did so I looked into his staring, bulging eyes and gaping mouth. I see them yet on nights when sleep eludes me. The face was purple and bloated, so I nearly missed the swelling on atte Bridge’s upper lip. There was a red bulge there. And just beneath the mark I saw in his open mouth a tooth bent back.

I reached a finger past the dead man’s lips and pressed upon the bent tooth. It yielded freely. I pulled gently upon the tooth and nearly drew it from the mouth. Thomas atte Bridge had recently been in a fight and had received a robust blow. I was not surprised to learn of this. I knew Thomas atte Bridge. I would congratulate the man who served him with a fattened lip and broken tooth.

But did this discovery have to do with Thomas atte Bridge’s death, suicide or not? Who could know? Perhaps only the man who delivered the blow.

Arthur returned with an assistant and set to work digging a grave at the base of the wall which enclosed Lord Gilbert’s pasture. Cows chewed thoughtfully on spring grass and watched the work while their calves gamboled about. An onlooker urged Arthur to make the grave deep so the dead man might not easily rise to afflict those whose business took them past Cow-Leys Corner. Arthur did not seem pleased with the admonition.

Kate left me while the grave was yet unfinished. She wished to set a capon roasting for our dinner and was already tardy at the task. Her business served to remind me how hungry I was. Some might lose appetite after staring a hanged man in the face. I am not such a one, especially if the face be that of Thomas atte Bridge.