by Mike Ashley
In the meanwhile, pressing his cloak over his nose and mouth again, he looked around and saw he had been right: there was nothing here he wanted to see, though it interested him that the inside of the carriage was nothing like its outside. Close-woven green wool lined the canvas cover for colour and comfort, there was well-stuffed padding on the wooden side-walls and woven carpets covered as much of the floor as he could see, for the high-piled cushions of all sizes, meant to make for comfortable sitting against the jounce and lurch of travel, with willow-woven hampers, lidded and strapped to the carriage sides near the entrance, the only other furnishing because anything of wood would be an invitation to bruising in this small carriage.
It was what else the carriage contained he did not want to see, but he looked, God help him, because he was a coroner and there, at the man and woman he presumed were Master and Mistress Shellaston, slumped on their backs among the piled cushions in the middle of the carriage. Their clothing and jewelled rings went finely with the carriage’s furnishings and, living, they would probably have claimed they’d rather die than be seen in their present unclean disarray, lying with heads cast back, eyes shut but mouths gaping, arms and legs sprawled, and the place stenching with what their bowels and bladders had loosed in death.
Where was their son?
Stepping carefully, Thomas found him beyond his parents, near the carriage’s front. A solid bulk of a child, maybe twelve years old, burrowed into a pile of cushions and curled tightly in on himself like a small hedgehog into its nest. Or he had been tightly curled before his body went slack in – Thomas pressed fingertips against the side of the throat and found, as he expected, no pulse – death.
They were all, as he had been told, dead. Father, mother, son.
How?
As he made his way back to the carriage entrance, Thomas considered the possibilities. Not by a weapon, surely, though the bodies would have to be brought out into better light and looked at to be certain there were no wounds; but if there had been violence of any kind among them, there would have been some sort of struggle, enough to leave some evidence of it, and there was none, nor apparently any outcry the servants riding on either side or behind had heard.
A person could smother on charcoal fumes, always a winter danger, but even if Master Shellaston had dared to have a brazier among so much cloth – and Thomas had noticed none – a canvas-covered carriage with its constant draughts was nowhere anyone was likely to suffocate except by making deliberate effort.
Poison then? A possibility, Thomas granted but doubtfully. From what he’d heard of poisons, most tended to go about their business with a deal of pain, and people did not tend to suffer quietly, so if it had been poison, why, again, had no one cried out?
He ducked thankfully out of the carriage into the open air, stepped down onto the waiting box and from there began giving necessary orders. Since there was now no hope of him reaching home today and no point to staying where they were, growing colder, he said, “There’s a village and inn a half mile back. We’ll return there and do what needs doing.”
No one argued with him and while they went through the awkward business of turning the carriage around, Thomas learned a little more, beginning with the servants’ names – Battel, who claimed to be Master Shellaston’s body servant and in charge of the others; Jack, whose size had probably recommended him as a guard on the journey because it surely hadn’t been his wits out of which he was presently badly frighted; Godard, the carriage driver who just now had no time for anything but his horses; and Mary, a squawking chicken of a female who seemed more in horror than in grief, saying she was – had been, oh, God save her, what would happen now? – Mistress Shellaston’s waiting woman and sobbing harshly to Thomas’s question of why she had not been in the carriage, too, “Master Shellaston didn’t like to be crowded, didn’t like servants breathing down his neck and cluttering his way, he said. He made me always ride pillion behind Battel and cold it is, too, this time of year and . . .” And probably hard on Battel, Thomas did not say, dismissing her.
He learned something more from looking at the Shellastons’ horses. The servants’ mounts were all third-rate beasts of doubtful worth and dull coats, much like the servants themselves, now he thought of it, while the three pulling the carriage tandem, although a plain lot, shaggy with unclipped winter coats and their harness nothing to boast of- no dyed leather, brass trim, or bells to make the journeying more bright – were nonetheless, like the carriage, solid-built and not likely to break down. It seemed Master Shellaston had not been given to show, Thomas thought: he’d spent his money only on his own close-kept comforts and let the world think what it liked.
Did that evidence solid common sense, Thomas wondered. Or merely a contempt for anyone not him?
He was readying to talk to Bartel while watching Godard and Jack work the carriage and its horses around, when the clop of shod hooves on the frozen road warned that more riders were coming. Beside him, Bartel said with what might be disgust or maybe worry, even before the new-comers were in sight, “This’ll likely be Master Hugh. Thought he’d be along soon.”
“Master Hugh?”
“Master Shellaston’s cousin. He’s Master Shellaston himself, come to that, but to call him Master Hugh has kept things simpler over the years,” Bartel said broodingly and added, as three riders came round the same curve of the road that Thomas had, “Aye, that’s him.”
He looked to be a man of early middle years, well-wrapped in an ample cloak, riding a shiningly groomed, handsome bay, with two well-turned out servants behind him on lesser but no less well-kept mounts. They all drew rein for the time it took to understand what they were seeing, then Master Hugh came forward at a canter, raising his voice to ask as he came, “Bartel, what’s toward?”
There were explanations to be made all over again, Thomas keeping aside, leaving it to the servants, with Master Hugh saying angrily, part way through, “You’re making no sense. They can’t all be simply dead. I want to see them.”
At his order, Godard paused the horses and Master Hugh went into the carriage as Thomas had, though not for so long, and came out to go aside to the verge and dryly heave before, more pale than he had been, he came back to demand past Bartel to Thomas, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I was on my way home when I overtook all this. I’m Master Thomas Chaucer of Ewelme.”
He watched Master Hugh recognize his name and inwardly back off into respect. Doubting he’d have trouble from him now, Thomas asked in his own turn, “How do you come to be here?” peremptory enough that Master Hugh accepted it was no light question.
His look slightly darkening, he answered, “I was following them.”
“Why?”
“Because William – my cousin Master Shellaston – told me to. He’d ordered me to come see him at his manor and we’d quarrelled, as always, over a piece of land he’d taken out of an inheritance of mine, and he finally said he wanted to be done with me once and for all, that if I’d go back with him to Abingdon, he’d hand over the deed I wanted and there’d be an end.”
“So why weren’t you riding with him?”
“Because, as always, my cousin wanted me no more around him than need be. He ordered me to keep well behind him. What business of yours is it to be asking all this?”
“I am a coroner,” Thomas said.
Master Hugh’s lips moved as if he might have been silently swearing but aloud he only said, jerking his head toward the carriage, fully turned now. “That’s your doing, too?”
“We’re going back the half-mile to the inn,” Thomas said for answer. “You’ll of course come with us?” He made it more invitation than order, though he would change that if need be, but Master Hugh merely nodded in agreement.
On his own part, Thomas regretted the need to go back. It would necessitate telling over yet again, to new folk, what was already certain – that the Shellastons were dead – when what he wanted was an answer as to why.
He was already hearing among the servants a muttering of, “Devil come for his own”, and he knew that once the Devil or “God’s will” was brought into a thing folk were too often satisfied not to bother looking further. For himself, profound though his belief in God and the Devil might be, Thomas had never found either one dabbled so directly in the world as this: these deaths were devil’s work, right enough, but a man’s hand had done it, and as the carriage creaked forward, he rode away from Master Hugh and over beside Godard riding the middle of the three carriage horses, guiding them by reins and voice and a short-tailed whip. The man cast him a shrewd sideways look and said, before Thomas could ask it, “Aye, I’m near as anyone but I didn’t hear aught to make me think there was trouble.”
“What did you hear?”
“Naught but the usual and that was never much once we were under way. They always did their bitch-and-bellow before we started, then settled down to drink themselves into comfort. The lurch and jounce . . .” He twitched his head back to the carriage lumbering behind. “. . . unsettled their stomachs.”
“Why didn’t they ride, then?”
“Because he’d bought the carriage, damn it, and damn it, they were going to use it, damn it,” Godard said without heat, apparently giving Master Shellaston’s words and feelings in the matter rather than his own. “Besides, he didn’t like to be seen lifting the bottle as much as he did, and a carriage is better than horseback for hiding that.”
“He drank then?”
“Then and anytime. And she did, too, come to that, though maybe not so much.”
“And the boy?”
“Made him throw up.”
“Riding in the carriage?”
“No. The wine they favoured for drink. It made him throw up. Cider, that’s what he had to have.”
That would have made poisoning them all at once more difficult, with two drinks to deal with rather than one. If it had been poison. Thomas thanked him and swung his horse away and found Giles riding close behind and to his side. Surprised to find him there, Thomas raised eyebrows at him and Giles said, “The Hugh fellow was looking to ease in and hear what you were saying, so I eased in instead.”
Thomas nodded his thanks. “I doubt anything was said he doesn’t already know about his cousin, but I’d rather he not know how much I know.” Or don’t know, he did not add aloud. He and Giles were as alone as they were likely to be this while, riding aside from the carriage, with the three Shellaston servants riding behind the carriage, Master Hugh and his men gone on ahead, and Thomas’s Ralph bringing up the rear on Thomas’s quiet order to make sure they lost no one along the way, Thomas took the chance of going un-overheard to say, “He looks as likely a possibility as anyone for wanting Master Shellaston dead. But why the woman and boy, too?”
“Because he’ll for certain have it all, now they’re dead,” Giles answered. “There’s none others to the family.”
“Servant-talk?” Thomas asked, and when Giles had nodded that it was, asked, “How much is all?”
“The business in Abingdon and a good-sized manor Master Shellaston bought a few years back, and the land they’d been quarrelling over these past five years, too, but they’d nearly settled over that anyway, it seems.”
“How much does this Master Hugh have on his own?”
“He’s not hurting, as they say. He was Master Shellaston’s apprentice a while back, with it understood there’d be partnership when all was said and done, but they fell out and he set up on his own in Henley. Looked likely to rival Master Shellaston soon, by what this lot says.”
“But no love lost between them?”
“Not a drop.”
“Ride here and keep an eye ahead. I’m going back to see what they’ll tell me.”
“Just about anything you ask,” Giles said. “They’re starting to warm to the thought they’re done with Master Shellaston and his wife.”
With that to encourage him, Thomas slowed his horse to the side of the road, letting the carriage lumber on past him, and joined the Shellaston servants. Since he doubted anyone was thinking of anything except what had happened, he forebore subtlety, starting in immediately to them all, with a nod ahead, “So Master Shellaston and his cousin didn’t get on together?”
“Not for above the time it takes to spit,” Bartel readily agreed.
“Ordered him to ride behind, did he? The way Master Hugh said?”
“Did indeed. You always knew where you stood with Master Shellaston.”
“Usually in the bad,” said Jack. “Grudged a man the air he breathed and double-grudged Master Hugh any breath at all.”
Mary crossed herself. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead and them not even cold yet.”
“They’re cold and getting colder and so are we,” Bartel said bluntly.
“We should lay them out decently before they stiffen too much,” she sniffed. “It’s not good, them lying there like that.”
She was right, but Thomas wanted someone besides themselves for witness before anything else was done in the carriage, and asked, to divert her, “Had you served Mistress Shellaston long?”
“Three years last Martinmas.”
“A good mistress?”
“Not very. Nor not too bad, neither,” she hurried to add. “Just . . . a little too quick with her hands sometimes.”
“And sharper than ever, now she was childing again,” Jack said. “No pleasing her ever.”
“She was with child?”
“About five months along,” Mary said. “Glad of it, mind you, but it didn’t sweeten her any.”
Four deaths instead of three then to the credit of whoever had done this thing, Thomas thought grimly, but asked aloud, “Travelling didn’t agree with her, from what the driver says.”
“Nor did it,” Mary said. “She wasn’t happy with travelling or happy at Master Shellaston suddenly deciding they’d go back to Abingdon.”
“It was sudden?”
“Sudden enough. He and Master Hugh had been yelling at each other off and on since yesterday and then, late this morning, it’s up and on the road, let’s have this over with, says Master Shellaston, and here we are. Liked keeping folk off balance, he did. Whether he’d have given over the deed once we were home, that’s another matter.”
“Did Mistress Shellaston quarrel with him over it? The deed or leaving so suddenly?
“Bit snippy at first but nothing untoward.”
“They didn’t outright quarrel?”
“Nay. They weren’t much for quarrelling with each other. Saved all their ire for other folk.”
Thomas fell silent, considering what he had and asking nothing more until they had reached the inn yard, and while Master Hugh saw to telling the innkeeper what was the trouble, he went aside to his own men and, first, gave Ralph order to find someone to go to whoever was the coroner for this end of the county and bring him here, and added, seeing his look at the snow-heavy sky. “No need to hurry or risk yourself about it. The weather is cold enough, they’ll keep. All I want is to know is he’s on his way.” And turned to Giles to say, “This place is big enough, there should be an herbwife somewhere. Find her for me.”
He would have preferred an apothecary, but a knowledgeable herbwife – and, please God, this one would be – would do as well; and while he waited, he would have preferred to go inside the inn and be comfortable, the way Mary was gone, bustled away on a burst of the innwife’s sympathy and curiosity, and Master Hugh whose men and Godard were seeing to the horses while Bartel and Jack were still to hand, kept by a look and gesture from Thomas while he had sent Giles and Ralph about his business, because he had meant to set them as guard on the carriage. But he had also had a hope the cold and ending day would keep people indoors but that was gone along with hope of setting Bartel and Jack to guard. They were already at the centre of a spreading cluster of folk and eagerly telling all they knew – or didn’t know, Thomas amended, hearing Bartel saying, “Aye, there they lie, dead as dead and
not a mark on them and never a cry. It had to have been the Devil, look you, come for Master Shellaston because he was a hellish master, sure enough.”
By tomorrow there’d likekly be a band of demons added to the telling, dancing in the road around the carriage with shrieks and the reek of sulphur, Thomas thought and said, “The Devil maybe came for Master Shellaston, but why for his wife and son, too?”
“They were just there,” someone among the listeners said, eager to help the story along, “and so Old Nick took ‘em, too.”
“I’ve never heard it works that way,” Thomas said dryly. “That the Devil can seize innocent souls just because they happen to be nigh a sinner.”
“Well,” Bartel put in, “she was only half a step not so bad as he was. They were a pair and no mistake.”
“But the boy,” Thomas said.
“Died of fright,” Jack promptly offered.
Bartel, openly enjoying himself, added, full of scorn, “Huh. Likely the Devil decided to save time by coming only once for all of them. They were a matched lot. Young William was shaping to go the same way as his sire and dam and no mistake.”
“Here now,” Master Hugh protested, come up unnoticed from the inn with a steaming mug of something warm between his hands. “Little Will was a good lad.”
“Praying your pardon, sir.” Though it was fairly plain Bartel didn’t care if he had it or not. “You spoiled him some and got on fine with him because you never crossed him. Some of us weren’t so lucky.” As if aside but not lowering his voice, he added to Thomas, “And it set Master Shellaston’s back up to see how well along they got.”
Dragging the talk back to where he needed it to be, Thomas asked, “Today, from the carriage, are you certain there was never any outcry at all?” because he could not believe three people had died without a sound.
“Well . . .” Bartel said.
He and Jack cast quick, doubtful looks at each other, and more forcefully, impatient, Thomas asked, “You heard something. What?”
