Without a Trace

by Mel Starr

  ’Tis little more than a mile from Coleshill to Badbury Hill. There was no need to set out on my mission before the day was near done, even if the wagon would slow our pace.

  The weather had remained cloudy and misty since my travel to Coleshill. Sunset this day would not be observable, and darkness would come earlier than on a cloudless evening. Our beasts were made ready, three runcies joined to the cumbersome wagon, and I was prepared to begin the business.

  The priest of All Saints’ Church attended our departure. I bade him say a prayer for my good success, and we set off toward the darkening eastern horizon.

  The four sacks of coins and the poles to which they were fixed were deposited in the wagon. I saw no reason to be burdened with them until necessary.

  Badbury Hill is visible from far off. I kept my eyes upon the summit as our party came near, but I saw no sign of any soul occupying the eminence. A small copse crowned the hill, in which men might hide and observe our arrival.

  I called a halt to our progress. I dismounted and the others did likewise. I tied my palfrey to the wagon, placed the two poles with their sacks of coins over my shoulders, bade my companions listen and look sharp if I had to call for aid, then set out for the summit of Badbury Hill.

  Rings of earthworks had been raised in four concentric circles about the hill. Broad paths were cut through these hummocks at two places so I was not required to climb over. When I had passed the second ridge from the top I left the path and walked the ditch. The raised earthworks on either side were two or three times my height. If men lurked the other side of the ridges they could be upon me in an instant.

  The day was near done. So, even though the cloudy sky was yet light, the furrow of the ditch where I walked was in shadow. As I approached the eastern side of the summit I looked carefully for some sign that men might have made indicating where I was to leave the bags. I saw nothing.

  A dying breeze sighed through the wood crowning Badbury Hill. I could well imagine why superstitious folk shunned the place. I was eager to complete my task and depart myself.

  I walked thirty or forty paces – who would count at such a time? – to the northeast, but saw no sign of a receptacle or any other man-made object designed to receive the coins. I retraced my steps and in the fading light dropped the bags from my shoulders at what I thought to be the easternmost side of the hill.

  Silence followed the clink of the falling coins. Surely if men were near they would hear and understand. I waited for several minutes, then spoke.

  “I have placed the four sacks of coins as you have demanded. Will you now return Lady Philippa to her home?”

  There was no reply. The eastern sky was now dark and the western horizon becoming so. Clouds would darken the moon, which would not rise for several hours anyway. If I wished to see my way back to the road and my companions I must not linger longer upon the hill.

  I stumbled to the path cut through the ridges and made my way down the hill to the road. By the time I reached the others the road before me was but a pale path cutting through the darkness.

  Giles heard my footsteps and called out: “Sir Hugh! Do you approach?”

  Perhaps he worried that he and his companions were about to be set upon by men who had collected Lady Philippa’s ransom and dispatched me. I answered and eased his mind.

  “Where is Lady Philippa?” he said when I was near enough that he could see I was alone.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I left the coins where I was told, and spoke to whomever might be near that I had done so. There was no reply.”

  “The scoundrels have dealt falsely with Sir Aymer,” Giles said, and cursed them for their perfidy.

  “It may be that they will not release her until they have collected Sir Aymer’s ransom,” I said, “and they will not do that until they are sure they will not be seized when collecting the money. Perhaps there was no man near to hear when I spoke. You said folk hereabouts believe Badbury Hill the habitation of vengeful spirits, and so avoid the place at night. Perhaps the felons know this, and so plan to retrieve their loot in the dark, when no others are likely to be about. Then, after they are assured of the ransom, they will set Lady Philippa and Milicent free.”

  “You believe it so?”

  “I hope it will be so,” I replied. “Meanwhile there is nothing to do but return to Coleshill. At dawn we will come back here. Perhaps Lady Philippa and Milicent will be atop the hill, waiting for us.”

  It is difficult enough to turn a wagon such as Lady Philippa’s in daylight, upon a broad way. In the night, on a narrow, muddy road, with skittish runcies, ’twas doubly onerous. In the process one rear wheel dropped into the ditch, which due to the misty rain of the past day was deep in mud. We were all of us required to put a shoulder to the wheel, with Maurice swatting the horses’ rumps to make them exert themselves.

  Sir Aymer awaited our return before the manor house, and seemed genuinely dismayed to learn that his wife was not with us. I explained my theory that the ransom might be collected in the night, and Lady Philippa found in the morning where I had deposited the coins. If he had to do with his wife’s disappearance, and even now was sending a groom to collect his money, he was a skilled player. Nevertheless, I did not discount the possibility that he had something to do with Lady Philippa’s disappearance. I fear I have become mistrustful of all men. ’Tis due to my post, I believe, for as bailiff of Bampton Manor my dealings are most often with miscreants in whom the truth does not dwell. Honest men seldom have cause to attract my notice.

  Does the Lord Christ serve in the same way, as bailiff of heaven and earth, anxious for His wayward subjects? I must seek Master Wycliffe’s opinion when next I meet him.

  I slept fitfully that night, eager for dawn. Before I sought my bed Sunday evening I had agreed with Sir Aymer that at daybreak we would ride to Badbury Hill. Would Lady Philippa and Milicent await us there? Would the sacks of coins be removed?

  The first grey light of dawn roused me from what slumber I had found. I dressed myself and hurried to Sir Aymer’s hall. The knight was there before me, eager to be away and anxious for what we would find at Badbury Hill.

  We hurriedly swallowed maslin loaves, gulped cups of ale, and assembled Giles, Arthur, Brom, and Maurice. Giles and Arthur would accompany me and Sir Aymer. Brom and Maurice would follow with two extra palfreys. No wagon this time. If we found her, Lady Philippa was not going to walk a muddy road back to Coleshill.

  Yesterday’s drizzle had become showers broken by occasional shafts of sunlight as the sun rose above the eastern horizon. Sir Aymer spurred his beast to a canter and we others did likewise to keep up. We were mud-spattered by the time we came to Badbury Hill. Sir Aymer did not dismount at the foot of the hill, but rode his palfrey up the path cut between the earthen rings ’til he reached the ditch between the topmost and second rings. There he leaped to the sod. I did likewise.

  “Which way?” he said.

  I pointed to the dexter side and said, “Follow me. I will show you where I left the sacks – if they are now gone.”

  I set off for the east side of the hill, with Sir Aymer, Giles, and Arthur close behind. We found no sacks of coins. But where I had left the coins the wet grass was beaten down. More than one man, I thought, had been here in the night to collect Sir Aymer’s two pounds. Even the poles I had used to carry the bags over my shoulders were gone. I had made the felons’ work easier.

  “This is the place?” Sir Aymer said when he saw that I had stopped to study the ground.

  “Aye. See yon flowers. I placed the sacks here, at the base of the ditch, and just below those daisies. See how the wet grass is trodden down. More than one man came in the night, I think, to remove the sacks.”

  “Then where is Lady Philippa? The scoundrels have their ransom. Why do they keep her? Will they demand more of me?”

  “Mayhap. Or perhaps they intend to be far away when she is freed.”

  “How could they be far away if my wife is rele
ased here?”

  “She may be released near to Coleshill,” I replied. “The ransom demand does not specify.”

  Indeed, the message said nothing at all about the lady’s release, but I thought it impolitic to mention this at the moment.

  “I believe,” I said, “that the men who collected the ransom may have been close by, watching, when I dropped the sacks here last evening. Perhaps if we walk the hill we will find some evidence of their presence.”

  I sent Giles and Arthur back to the path which cut through the rings, where we had left our beasts, with instructions to walk the upper side of the topmost earthwork and the lower side of the second ring. Giles volunteered to search the higher ring and Arthur the second.

  Sir Aymer waited until we heard their voices beyond the ridges, then we four began to walk slowly to the north, seeking signs of the nocturnal visitors who had absconded with Sir Aymer’s coins.

  We passed the northmost part of the rings and came to another path which cut through the ridges, much like the track to the south which we had ascended. Because this path did not lead to a well-traveled road it was more overgrown and thus ’twas easy to see where beasts had pushed aside the grass. Arthur found dung.

  The sod of the track was too thick and firm to allow horses’ hooves to leave a print, even though the soil was soft after days of mist and gentle rain. But the bruised verdure was easy to follow, so we did, to the base of the hill. Here was a meadow where sheep grazed behind a stone wall. A few of the newly shorn creatures lifted their heads to see if we might be a threat, decided not, and returned to cropping the wet grass.

  There was no sign that horses had leaped over this wall, no soil gouged out by beasts taking flight or returning to earth. Oddly enough, verdure along the wall seemed to indicate that beasts may have approached this place from both directions.

  Not so. I chose to follow the meadow wall to the west, and within twenty paces the crushed foliage ended. Grass, weeds, and bracken beyond this place showed no sign of disturbance.

  We retraced our steps and this time followed the crushed vegetation to the east side of Badbury Hill and beyond, to the road from Coleshill to Faringdon. I saw in the mud of the road what seemed to be the hoof prints of two horses entering the road from the northern verge. These hoof prints soon merged with others recently made, so that following further was impossible. We stopped in the middle of the road.

  “What now?” Sir Aymer said. “We have followed the spoor and learned nothing, but that my money is gone and my wife is not freed.”

  “We have learned two things,” I said.

  “What? That the rogues have escaped with two pounds is one. What is the other?”

  “Three things, then. Aye, they have escaped. For now. But where the miscreants followed the stone wall upon their arrival at the hill, they went past the north track which leads to the summit, passing through cut-out places in the rings, as does the path to the south. It may have been dark, but even so men familiar with Badbury Hill would not likely lose their way and need to backtrack, as I believe they did. ’Tis my belief the men who now have your money are not much familiar with this place.”

  “Not of Coleshill, nor Faringdon either, you think.”

  “Aye.”

  “What else did we learn which escaped me?” Sir Aymer said.

  “There are the ruts made by cartwheels here, in the mud of the road, but not newly made, I think.”

  Sir Aymer, Giles, and Arthur peered at the mud beneath their feet. Sir Aymer looked up, puzzled. “What does this tell you?”

  “The men who took away your ransom had no intention of setting Lady Philippa and Milicent free here. If so they would surely have brought them to this place in a cart or wagon, but even if they were upon palfreys the beasts would have left behind their prints. Look there, to the verge, where the trace we followed enters the road. The hoof prints of two horses are there, no more.”

  “Perhaps,” Giles offered, “Lady Philippa and Milicent were upon one beast and their captor another?”

  “Mayhap. But did one man carry off four heavy sacks? And if Lady Philippa and Milicent were brought here, why were they then carried away again and not released? Nay, they are yet hid somewhere. Perhaps their captors will yet release them, but the rogues had no intention of doing so last night on Badbury Hill.”

  We set off to the west upon the road, toward Coleshill, and soon came upon Maurice and Brom, waiting with the spare horses. We ascended Badbury Hill to retrieve our beasts, then returned, defeated, to Coleshill.

  Chapter 6

  Arthur and I took our dinner with Sir Aymer, and a solemn meal it was. Sir Aymer had mistreated his wife, I had been told, and had an eye for Lady Philippa’s maid. Nevertheless the knight seemed genuinely woeful that paying the ransom had not brought his wife back under his roof. I was nearly prepared to discount any thought that the man might have some part in his wife’s disappearance. Nearly. And was his doleful visage due to the continued absence of Lady Philippa, or the loss of two pounds?

  I bade Sir Aymer “Good day” after dinner, requested that he inform me if he heard again from Lady Philippa’s abductors, then with Arthur set off for Bampton and home, defeated.

  “You told Sir Aymer them scoundrels what’ve got the lady likely didn’t know much about that hill,” Arthur said as we passed Badbury Hill. “Suppose them knaves in Clanfield wouldn’t know much about the place either, ’cept it bein’ close to where the lady lived.”

  “True enough,” I replied. “But which of them could write a ransom note, and in a skilled hand?”

  “That bailiff… Skirlaw?”

  “True again. But the demand was written upon parchment which was scraped clean of ink from a passage of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Where would Clanfield’s bailiff come by such a fragment?”

  “Why would some man scrape away what was wrote there?”

  “Mayhap an error was made in copying, or the copyist made a smudge,” I said. “Some error rendered the parchment worthless for its intended purpose.”

  “A monk, then, wrote Sir Aymer demanding ransom for ’is wife?”

  “I doubt that. But ’tis likely that scrap was first put to use in a monastery, or perhaps a stationer’s shop, before it was later fixed to the door of All Saints’ Church.”

  We passed through Faringdon and were halfway to Clanfield, near to Radcot Bridge, when we met a train of carts and packhorses. Two men led the train, mounted upon matching grey palfreys and attired in linen chauces, fine woolen cotehardies, and silken doublets. Their beards were trimmed short, in a “V”, and as we passed I heard a fragment of their conversation. The men were Italian wool buyers, the carts and runcies behind laden with sacks of Cotswold wool bound for Portsmouth or Southampton or some such port.

  I did not count the carts or packhorses. There must have been a half-dozen carts and ten or twelve beasts. The animals seemed fatigued under their loads. Doubtless the group would seek an inn in Faringdon.

  The packhorses were tied together in groups of three, two beasts following a third, upon which the driver rode, with a smaller sack of wool fixed to his saddle behind him. I paid the travelers little attention as they journeyed south and we to the north. But the last rider caught my attention. His companions ahead of him had worn short cotehardies of grey or brown or black, but this fellow wore blue. An uncommon color for a man of low rank.

  The shade of blue seemed much like the wisp I had found tangled in the bramble and the fragment of blue torn from Lady Philippa’s garment with her brooch. I drew my palfrey to a halt and peered over my shoulder at the departing beasts, carts, and riders.

  Arthur looked to me, puzzled. “What are we stoppin’ ’ere for?”

  “The last rider… did you note his cotehardie?”

  Arthur then also turned to follow my gaze. “What am I supposed to see?” he said.

  “How many drovers and suchlike folk wear blue?”

  “Not many. Ah, I see your point. That fellow’s
wearin’ a cotehardie much the same color as that we found seekin’ for Lady Philippa.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What you going to do?”

  “Learn where he came by the garment, if I can.”

  I turned my palfrey and with Arthur close behind I spurred the beast to a trot. We soon overtook the pack animals and carts, and received astonished glances from riders as we passed. We had but moments earlier been seen traveling in the opposite direction.

  When we drew alongside the men who led the procession I slowed my palfrey to a walk and bade the fellows “Good day.” They nodded, puzzled, but did not halt.

  “Whence do you come this day?” I asked.

  “Burford,” one replied. The man was surely Italian, here for Cotswold wool. His accent proclaimed it so.

  “I am Sir Hugh de Singleton, bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot at his manor of Bampton.”

  The wool buyers looked to each other as if each thought my announcement might be of significance to the other. Eventually both men shrugged, then the nearer spoke.

  “I am Antonio Benedici. How may we serve the bailiff of Bampton?”

  “Halt your band for a moment. There is a matter I wish to discuss with you.”

  The man turned in his saddle and with a raised hand indicated to those who followed that they would stop. He then turned again to face me.

  “The last man of your company,” I said, “wears a blue cotehardie. It does not seem defiled with mud and dust of the road. How long has he possessed the garment?”

  Benedici looked to his companion as if silently asking whether or not he should answer. He received another shrug in reply.

  “Why must you know?”

  “A felony has been done near this place. A blue garment of much the same hue as your drover wears plays a part in the crime. Lord Gilbert has charged me to seek those responsible.”

  “What crime has been done?” the other man said.

  “A woman has been carried off. When she was last seen she wore a cotehardie of the same dark blue that distant fellow wears. How and when did he come by it? Your other carters and drovers wear brown and grey, as do most of the commons.”