Lucifer's Harvest

by Mel Starr

  Afterword

  Prince Edward did not live to become King Edward IV, dying in June 1376, before his father. His second son, Richard, became king when yet a child. Edward was known in the fourteenth century as Edward of Woodstock, not the “Black Prince”. That name was not commonly used for him until the Tudor era, so I have avoided it in this tale. The “Black Prince” sobriquet was supposedly applied to Edward because of his black armor, although there is no contemporary evidence for this. His crest featured an unusual black background, and so may have been the source of the nickname.

  Historians differ as to the cause of Edward’s lingering and debilitating illness. Amebic dysentery and malaria are usually at the top of the list as suspected maladies. Dysentery seems the most likely culprit.

  Jean Froissart, a fourteenth-century writer, claimed that the death toll in the capture of Limoges was three thousand. This slaughter has darkened Edward’s memory, but is almost certainly enlarged from reality by a factor of ten. It is unlikely that the total population of Limoges in 1370 was more than two thousand. A contemporary source from the Abbey of Saint-Martial in Limoges records three hundred civilian casualties, killed and wounded, which was about one-sixth of the normal population, and sixty of the garrison. A recently discovered letter from Edward to the Count of Foix mentions two hundred prisoners taken, but no casualties are numbered.

  Master Hugh and Kate would have been heartbroken about Sybil’s death, but not surprised. About one in five of fourteenth-century infants died before their first birthday, and many more children succumbed to illness before they reached maturity.

  Bampton Castle was, in the fourteenth century, one of the largest castles in England in terms of the area contained within the curtain wall. Little remains of the castle but for the gatehouse and a small part of the curtain wall, which form a part of Ham Court, a farmhouse in private hands. The current owners are doing extensive restoration work.

  Many readers have asked about medieval remains in the Bampton area. St. Mary’s Church is little changed from the fourteenth century, when it was known as the Church of St. Beornwald. The May Bank Holiday is a good time to visit Bampton. The village is a morris dancing center, and on that day holds a day-long morris dancing festival.

  Village scenes in the popular television series Downton Abbey were filmed on Church View Street, and St. Mary’s Church appeared in several episodes.

  The Bampton town library building, now four hundred years old, was transformed into the Downton hospital for the television series. The building needs extensive repairs and the village would surely appreciate contributions to help maintain this historic facility.

  Schoolcraft, Michigan

  April 2016

  Deeds of Darkness

  An extract from the tenth chronicle of Hugh de Singleton, surgeon

  Chapter 1

  Plague has made travel somewhat safer. Many folk have died of the great pestilence in the past twenty-some years, so that those who yet live can find employment where they will and have no need to rob other men upon the roads and risk a hempen noose. Safer, aye, but not always safe. There will ever be those who prefer to live by the sweat of another man’s brow. Hubert Shillside, Bampton’s haberdasher and coroner, learned too late that this was so.

  ’Twas Good Friday, the fourth day of April, in the year of our Lord 1371, that I learned of Shillside’s unwanted discovery. I attended the Church of St. Beornwald alone that day, to see and honor the host as it was placed in the pyx, and thence into the Easter Sepulcher. My Kate had given birth two weeks earlier to our son, whom we named John, in honor of the scholar John Wycliffe, who had been my master at Balliol College twelve years past. So Kate remained at Galen House, with Bessie and the babe, until the time for her churching, and I kept house, boiled pottage for our dinners, bought bread from the baker and ale from his wife, and waited impatiently for gander month to be past.

  I cannot enter the church porch but that my eyes stray to the sod near to the west end of the church, where it is that Kate saw our infant daughter, Sybil, placed in her small grave eight months past, whilst I was away in France, bid to accompany my employer, Lord Gilbert Talbot, at the siege and recapture of Limoges.

  Perhaps one day I will enter the church porch and not remember the child. I pray not. She has gone before her mother and me, escaping early from the land of death and exchanging it for the land of eternal life.

  Father Simon dismissed the congregation after a linen shroud was placed over the pyx, and the velvet curtain drawn across the opening to the Easter Sepulcher. With other Bampton residents – all of us somber, as the remembrance of the Lord Christ’s sacrifice to free men from the penalty of their sins came fresh to mind – I departed the church and stepped from the porch into a cold, misty rain. ’Twas appropriate to the day. Good Friday should not be warm and cloudless. Sunshine should be reserved for Easter Sunday.

  Half way from the porch to the lych gate I felt a tug upon my sleeve and heard my name called. ’Twas Will Shillside who accosted me.

  “My father has not returned from Oxford,” he said. I had not known that he had traveled there.

  “He went there on business?” I asked.

  “Aye. Departed on Tuesday. Was to return to Bampton last eve. Thought perhaps he’d become weary, carryin’ a sackful of goods, an’ sought lodging for the night, mayhap at the abbey in Eynsham.”

  “If he did so,” I replied, “he would surely have returned by now.”

  “Aye. That’s why I’m troubled.”

  Will Shillside was a youth of twenty or so years, his beard in the process of changing from gossamer threads to bristles, and his formerly scrawny body filling out. Last June he had wed Alice atte Bridge, and it was become clear that Hubert Shillside would be a grandfather before this summer was done. Unless some misfortune had befallen him upon the road to or from Oxford.

  “What business had he in Oxford?” I asked.

  “He travels there for the goods he sells here. I told him that I would go, but he insisted that I am unskilled in business matters and would be gulled by the men of Oxford who supply the stuff we sell.”

  “Pins and buttons and buckles and such,” I said.

  “Aye. And ribbons, and spools of linen and silken thread this trip.”

  “Aye. I did mention to your father some weeks past that my supply of silken thread is near depleted.”

  Silken thread is of value to me in my service as surgeon to the folk of Bampton and nearby places. I trained for one year in Paris, returned to Oxford, and found employment as both surgeon and bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot, lord of the manor of Bampton and its castle. When folk lacerate themselves at their work, or drop stones or beams or axes upon their toes, silken thread is useful to stitch them back together again.

  But it was as bailiff that Will Shillside sought me to report his father missing upon the road to Oxford. ’Tis a bailiff’s duty to see to the welfare of those of his bailiwick. ’Tis a great misfortune for those of us who do so that many bailiffs do not.

  It was too late to set out that day for Oxford. If Shillside had stumbled under his load and fallen into a ditch, it would soon be too dark to see his prostrate form. And if he had toppled and struck his head against a rock and was insensible, he would not hear and respond if we called to him. I told Will that he should come to the castle at dawn. I would gather a few of Lord Gilbert’s grooms and instruct the marshalsea to have palfreys ready. Beasts would speed the search, and several pairs of eyes and ears would be better than but two.

  Saturday morn dawned clear but cold. I consumed a maslin loaf to break my fast, and a cup of ale, and told my Kate that, depending upon the success or failure of the search, I might return to Galen House yet this day, or on the morrow, or perhaps not. She nodded and kissed me farewell, being well accustomed to a bailiff’s tangled schedule.

  I wrapped my fur coat about me and set off down Church View Street for Bampton Castle. Will Shillside, his face drawn with worry, was bef
ore the gatehouse awaiting me. I was in hope that his father might have arrived home in the night. The dark circles under Will’s eyes told me this was not so.

  Arthur and Uctred, grooms in Lord Gilbert’s service, have proven useful companions when my service as Lord Gilbert’s bailiff has required assistance. So I had told them to be ready with beasts saddled as soon as daylight would make a search possible.

  Lord Gilbert was not in residence at Bampton Castle. He had spent most of the winter at Goodrich Castle, as was his custom. So life for a groom of Bampton Castle, without the master in residence, was tedious. A search for a missing haberdasher would enliven dull days.

  Several ways lead from Bampton to Oxford. Many days would be required to search them all, but Will assured me his father always traveled by way of Eynsham, crossing the river at Swinford. We four did likewise, calling out Shillside’s name every hundred paces or so, and keeping eyes upon the verge. There was no response to our shouts, nor any sign of a man who might lie ill or injured near the road.

  We passed Osney Abbey and entered Oxford across Bookbinder’s Bridge. I asked Will where his father was accustomed to do business in Oxford.

  “Martyn Hendy is our usual supplier. Shop is on Fish Street.”

  We went there. Arthur and Uctred remained with the beasts whilst Will and I sought the proprietor. Hendy is a moon-faced fellow, with an equally circular belly. His business prospers, I think. He remembered Will from past visits, when he had accompanied his father. His greeting brought us no joy.

  “Ah, Will … is your father well? He has sent you to do his business rather than attend himself, I see.”

  “Has my father not called here a few days past?” Will asked.

  “Your father? Here, in Oxford? Nay, I’ve not seen ’im.”

  Will looked to me with alarm writ across his face. Hendy saw, and spoke.

  “Perhaps he has taken his custom elsewhere. Although he’d not get a fairer price than from me.”

  “The price of such goods is fixed,” I said. “Fair or not.”

  “Aye,” the merchant agreed. “So ’tis.” He winked at Will.

  “Father did not speak of taking his business to another,” Will said, ignoring this, “but perhaps he did so.”

  “Why do you ask this?” Hendy wanted to know.

  “Hubert Shillside was to return to Bampton Thursday,” I said. “He did not, so I and two others have come with Will seeking him. Where might he have sought supplies if he did not do so here?”

  Hendy directed us to three other Oxford merchants who dealt in buttons and buckles and pins and thread and such stuff. We received from these burghers the same answers we had from Hendy. Hubert Shillside had not visited the proprietors. There were no other establishments in Oxford dealing with the kind of goods Shillside wished to purchase. Something had apparently happened to the man while he walked to Oxford four days past. What that might be did not bear thinking about, but bailiffs are employed to consider such things. I must soon earn my wages.

  Four men might search for another between Bampton and Oxford for a fortnight and not find him. If Shillside had met with felons who demanded his purse and then slew him, his corpse might be hid in some wood or dumped in the Thames, if he was attacked near to the river. We might never find the man. I did not say this to Will, but I did study the river as we re-crossed Bookbinder’s Bridge.

  We had passed Osney Abbey when Will said what we all were thinking.

  “He’s slain, I fear. Some men have seized him and slain him for his purse.”

  “How much coin did he travel with?” I asked.

  “Father usually purchased ten or so shillings’ worth of goods. Said to buy less meant to walk to Oxford more often.”

  “Did he speak to others of his journey? That he would set out for Oxford Tuesday morn?”

  “Dunno. Might’ve, I suppose.”

  We splashed across the Thames at Swinford and a short time later approached the gates of Eynsham Abbey. Days grew longer. If we pressed our beasts we might reach Bampton by nightfall, but this would be cruel to animals which had already borne us more than twenty miles this day. And I thought the abbot might assist me, if he was told of my search for a missing man and his missing shillings.

  Abbot Gerleys owes his place, to some extent, to me. A few years past, whilst I sought the felon who had slain a novice of the abbey, I discovered a heresy among a few of the monks. The leader of this heretical sect was the prior, Philip Thorpe, and but for my learning of his heresy, he would likely have become the next abbot of the house. But Philip was persuaded to transfer to Dunfermline Abbey, in Scotland, where winter lasts till May and each frigid morning will remind him of his sin, and Brother Gerleys became abbot upon the death of the elderly Abbot Thurstan.

  The abbey hosteller recognized me, sent for two lay brothers to care for our beasts, and led us to the guest house with a promise that loaves, cheese, and ale would soon arrive. I told the monk that I sought conversation with Abbot Gerleys, and soon after our meal arrived so did the abbot.

  This was an honor I did not expect. When a man wishes to speak to an abbot it is he who must, if granted permission, call upon the abbot. Will and Arthur and Uctred were suitably impressed that a man whose presence was required when King Edward called a parliament would deign to seek his humble visitors.

  Abbot Gerleys requested more ale be brought, and seated himself across the table from me. When I had last seen the abbot he was a spare, slender, almost emaciated monk. His post evidently suited him, for his cheeks were now rounded and his habit offered a slight bulge where it once had draped flat across his belly.

  “How may I assist Lord Gilbert’s bailiff?” he said.

  I told the abbot of our journey to Oxford and the reason for it. He listened silently, intently, his brow furrowed and lips drawn thin.

  “We four,” I concluded, “will continue the search for Will’s father on Monday, when we return to Bampton. But I have small hope of success. ’Tis a busy season, I know, but if you could assign some lay brothers to leave the abbey and search other roads and byways nearby, I would be much obliged to you.”

  “It will be done,” Abbot Gerleys replied, “and not only for your need. There is much amiss hereabouts. Word has come to me that men have done hamsoken in villages nearby. Two of these are abbey manors. A man was beaten nearly to death in Appleton when he objected to having his oxen taken, and a man from Wytham has gone missing.”

  “Was he upon the roads, a traveler?” I asked.

  “Aye. Not fleeing a harridan wife, so I’m told, but taking sacks of barley to Abingdon a fortnight past. Man, horse, cart, and barley have disappeared.”

  This was not good to learn. Nothing of the sort had happened near to Bampton, at least not that I had heard – and bailiffs are expected to hear of such things – but if theft and murder are but ten or so miles away, ’tis likely the affliction will spread, as a contagion passes from the ill to the healthy. Why is it, I wonder, that good health does not spread from the vigorous to the sickly, but only the other way round?

  I would have preferred to celebrate Easter and the resurrection of the Lord Christ in Bampton, at the Church of St. Beornwald, even if my Kate could not accompany me. Duty and desire are oft in conflict. I and my companions heard Easter Mass at the abbey church, rested our beasts, and after a dinner of roasted capon and loaves with honeyed butter, wandered roads about Eynsham searching for Hubert Shillside. I did not expect to find him in a place where so many folk are about, who would already have discovered a man injured or dead near to a road, and did not. But Will could not remain in the abbey guest house whilst his father might be somewhere near and in distress. So we poked into hedges and climbed over walls and prowled forests with no result but for a sting from the nettles which I found atop a stone wall enclosing an abbey field.

  We broke our fast next morning with loaves fresh from the abbey oven and cups of excellent ale. As lay brothers brought our beasts I saw Abbot Gerleys spe
aking to another band of lay brothers, gesturing to north and south, east and west as he spoke. “Here are the men who will seek your father,” I said to Will.

  The lad had not slept well. Dark circles under his bloodshot eyes gave him the appearance of a man twice, nay, three times his age.

  The abbot concluded his instructions and sent the searchers off, two by two. I thanked him for this aid, bid him send word to Bampton if his lay brothers found any clue to Hubert Shillside’s disappearance, then prodded my palfrey through the abbey gate.

  Men, women, even children were busy in the fields this day. Some strips had not yet been plowed for spring crops, so teams of oxen and horses were turning the soil. In another field several women worked with dibble sticks, planting peas and beans.

  Other fields were being sown to oats or barley or perhaps dredge, and small boys found employment slinging stones and clods at birds who would consume the seed before harrows could cover it with soil.

  At several places along the road I stopped and called to laborers, asking them to keep watch for any traveler they might find along the way who had been injured or assaulted. Always these folk agreed to do so, tugging a forelock in appreciation of my status as told them by my fur coat. This garment had been of value two days past, but was now too warm. The spring sun warmed our travel, if not our hearts.

  We reached Bampton shortly after noon, having seen no sign of Hubert Shillside nor spoken to any folk who had.

  Wednesday, about the sixth hour, two lay brothers rapped upon the door of Galen House. A corpse, they said, was found, stripped of clothing and shoes, in a wood between Eynsham and Farmoor. The body rested now before the altar of the abbey church, and Abbot Gerleys desired that I attend him forthwith to identify the man, for the corpse was putrid and beginning to stink, which interfered with the monks’ observance of canonical hours. I felt sure that the dead man was Hubert Shillside, struck down by robbers. Not so.