Deeds of Darkness

by Mel Starr

  A scaffold rises a few steps from the Northgate in Oxford, where felons meet their end and others who pass by are reminded to avoid evil deeds lest they find themselves upon the planks with no safe way to descend. Walter Mapes perished there for his crimes six days later.

  I offered the pieces of broken dagger to Will Shillside but he would not have them. I can understand why. I keep them in my chest as a reminder of questions I should have asked Father Thomas but did not when he reported to me of his first inspection of Walter Mapes’ chest. If ever again such a felony occurs in my bailiwick I trust I will be more astute.

  Hubert Shillside’s ten shillings were never found. Mapes’ wife and her children denied knowledge of the coins, and although I watched for months for any sign that the woman had discovered some wealth I saw none. The family remained poor as ever. The sons were old enough to do a man’s work, so the greatest change for Mapes’ wife from this matter was that she was no longer beaten when she displeased her husband.

  Likely Walter buried his loot some dark night, thinking to wait until Shillside’s murder was all but forgotten before spending the coins. Mayhap, some years hence, some man with a spade will happen upon the trove and wonder at his find.

  Four days after Walter Mapes did the sheriff’s dance Alice Shillside gave birth to a tiny lass. The babe will have no grandfather to make for her a doll from a broken tree branch.

  Afterword

  Many readers of the chronicles of Master Hugh de Singleton 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 hosts 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.

  Bampton Castle was, in the fourteenth century, one of the largest castles in England in terms of the area enclosed 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. Gilbert Talbot was indeed the lord of the manor of Bampton in the late fourteenth century.

  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 2017

  Prince Edward’s Warrant

  An extract from the eleventh chronicle of

  Hugh de Singleton, surgeon

  Chapter 1

  Our party reached Aldersgate after the curfew bell had rung. We could not enter the city, but rather sought refuge for the night at the Priory of St. Bartholomew. I traveled with Sir Giles Cheyne, his two grooms, Milo and Thomas, his squire, Randall Patchett, and Arthur, a groom to my employer, Lord Gilbert Talbot. That we were too late to pass the Aldersgate Sir Giles laid against me. I accept the blame.

  I had attempted to avoid this journey, pointing out to Lord Gilbert my duties to him and his manor at Bampton. He replied that my duty to my future sovereign transcended obligations to him. Bampton’s reeve, John Prudhomme, could assume my duties while I was away in London.

  Sir Giles had arrived in Bampton with his grooms and squire on the fourteenth day of October on a mission for Edward of Woodstock, Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales. Edward, he said, wished for the services of Lord Gilbert’s surgeon, who had eased his illness at Limoges. I am the only surgeon in Lord Gilbert Talbot’s employ.

  “When the prince commands me to send you to him,” Lord Gilbert said, “your service to me as bailiff here must be dispensable.”

  Edward, Sir Giles said, was weak, in much discomfort, and perhaps near to death. With his father, the king, the prince had embarked in August from Sandwich with four hundred ships, ten thousand archers, and four thousand men at arms intending to retake Edward’s possessions in France lost to the French king.

  For six weeks foul weather prevented a landing in France, and the expedition was compelled to return to England. A failure. A costly failure. Six weeks at sea in storms of wind and rain will tax the healthiest of men, which Prince Edward was not. The experience worsened his illness, Sir Giles said, and he required my service as once before at Limoges.

  I am no physician, but know enough of herbs that when I met Prince Edward at Limoges before he embarked on this disastrous mission, I told him that his symptoms might be relieved if he consumed tansy, thyme, cress, and bramble leaves crushed to an oily paste, then mixed with wine.

  The prince suffered from numerous maladies: a bloody flux, fevers, then chills, and passing wind so foul that folk despaired to be in the same room with him. These ailments had begun whilst Edward was in Spain, winning honor at the Battle of Najera. At Limoges he was so weak he could not sit a horse. The herbs I suggested seemed to improve his health, enough that with his father he embarked upon the ill-fated attempt to reclaim his patrimony in France. But now, in the year of our Lord 1372, his affliction was returned. So Sir Giles said. The duke desired me to attend him at Limoges. He had lost faith in William Blackwater, his physician.

  I was loathe to leave Kate and our children. The last time I did so, when Lord Gilbert required that I accompany him to the siege of Limoges, I returned home to loss and sorrow. Sybil, our second child, perished while I was in France and now with the Lord Christ awaits her mother and me and Bessie and John. The babe was not yet one year old when she died. Might I have saved her had I not been in France? Unlikely. I am a surgeon, not a physician. And if physicians could cure a babe’s fever, few infants would perish.

  But Bessie and John are thriving, and Kate’s father promised to look after my family while I was away upon the prince’s business. A year ago my father-in-law was skin and bones. I thought him ill and close to death. His business in Oxford was failing, and he was near to starvation. I convinced him to leave Oxford and live with us, at Galen House, in Bampton, and Kate’s cookery soon had him hale. His locks are grey, but he is once again strong enough to see to the care of his own.

  Lord Gilbert agreed that I could take with me to London Arthur Wagge, a groom of Bampton Castle who has proven useful to me in Lord Gilbert’s service. Dealing with miscreants does not trouble Arthur. He outweighs most men by two stone, possesses arms as thick as most men’s legs, and although no longer young, can with a scowl convince rogues to give up their felonies when I command them to do so.

  The journey from Bampton to London may be completed in three days, but not if a cold rain pours down upon a traveler as he ascends the Chiltern Hills and a child requires a surgeon’s care. So it was that darkness overtook us before we reached London and we spent Monday night at the Priory of St. Bartholomew.

  The delay disappointed me. The sooner I gained Prince Edward’s presence and prescribed some physics for his ailments, the sooner I could return to Bampton. And I had found Sir Giles an uncongenial travel companion. My rank was beneath him, and he felt it undignified that his prince would send him to bring me to London. A man of lesser station could have done so. This he remarked upon often. Sir Giles talked much on the journey but said little.

  When passing through Stokenchurch a child of no more than three years stumbled in a muddy rut in the road before our party. Rather than drawing upon the reins Sir Giles, with a curse, spurred his beast – to leap over the boy, so he later said. The animal’s iron-shod hoof struck the lad’s arm. I wonder if Sir Giles would have behaved so had he known in how few hours he would greet St. Peter?

  I halted my palfrey and dismounted to comfort the howling child. The lad’s cries drew his parents and siblings from their house
. Indeed, half of the homes in the village emptied, their occupants pressing about me, curious as to what harm I had done to the child. Had not Arthur’s thick arms, neck, and chest been behind me I believe the boy’s father would have thrashed me before I could explain what had occurred.

  When the crowd quieted I told the babe’s parents of the reason for his wails, and explained that I was a surgeon and could deal with the injured arm. Each time I touched the appendage the lad howled anew, but I was able to satisfy myself that there was no broken bone. There was, however, a laceration and red bruise, which would soon darken to purple.

  The cut must be closed. My instruments sack was slung across my palfrey’s rump, behind the saddle. I unfastened it and withdrew from a small box my finest needle and a spool of silken thread. Had I more time, and was I dealing with an adult, I would have asked for a cup of ale and into it poured a mix of crushed hemp seeds and powdered lettuce sap. In an hour or so after drinking this concoction a man would feel less pain as I closed his wound.

  But Sir Giles sat scowling upon his horse, impatient to be away, and I was uncertain how a child might cope with crushed hemp seeds and powdered lettuce sap.

  I instructed the lad’s father to hold his child tightly, and told the mother to grasp the lad’s arm and under no circumstances allow it to move. The parents seemed reluctant to do this until I spoke firmly to them about the calamity which might come to their child if his cut was not closed properly.

  Tenants on a manor such as Stokenchurch will have no wine. I asked for a volunteer to seek the manor house, explain the need, and return with a cup of wine. A village matron bustled off and I set to work threading my needle.

  I made six sutures and with each the babe wailed anew. When I was satisfied that the cut was closed well I took the cup of wine, which had appeared at my elbow while I attended the wound, and bathed the laceration. The lad bawled again as the wine stung his wound. I would have spared him this, but wounds bathed in wine heal more readily than those not so washed. No man knows why.

  Generally I follow the practice of Henri de Mondeville, who taught that wounds left dry and uncovered heal best, but in the case of a child I thought it likely the lad would pluck at the wound and sutures if my work was left open. I asked the lad’s mother for an old kirtle or chemise. She produced one which seemed clean, and I tore it to strips with which I bound the cut.

  I told the child’s father that he could sever the stitches with his dagger and pull the threads free on All Saints’ Day. The fellow nodded and thanked me for my service to his child. I decided as I mounted my beast that when I returned to Bampton, in but two or three days, I hoped, I would travel this way to learn how the little lad fared. This episode is why we came to the Aldersgate too late to enter the city and waited the night at the priory.

  Kennington Palace is south of the Thames, so to reach Prince Edward’s home we had to cross London to approach the south bank across London Bridge. We had passed the Goldsmith’s Hall and turned on to Cheapside when a gathering mob of London’s inhabitants began to impede our progress.

  “Hanging today,” Sir Giles said.

  He was correct. We spurred our beasts through the crowd, receiving black looks as we did so, and came to the Standard as a noose was being draped around the neck of a lad of perhaps sixteen years.

  “Wonder what ’e done?” Arthur said above the clamor.

  “Apprentice to a draper what stole a bolt of silk from ’is master,” an obliging onlooker replied.

  The lad stood in a cart as the noose was placed about his neck, and when the hangman was satisfied, he slapped the rump of the runcie which then drew the cart from under the apprentice.

  He was a slight lad. The taut hempen rope did not break his neck, so he kicked as the tightening noose slowly strangled him. After a few moments the constables relented and allowed the boy’s friends to rush to him and pull upon his ankles to end sooner his agony.

  “Welcome to London,” Arthur said grimly.

  We were welcomed again after crossing London Bridge. Winchester geese accosted us as we entered Southwark, rightly identifying us as travelers upon the road. Sir Giles forgot his impatience and would have dallied with one of these strumpets but I told the knight that whatever he chose to do, I would journey on to Kennington Palace, the ramparts being now visible above the trees to the southwest.

  Sir Giles scowled and apparently decided that if he was to escort a man to Prince Edward he should probably enter the prince’s presence with the man he had been assigned to accompany.

  Mel Starr