A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel

by Mel Starr

  “What’s this, then?” she asked, and held the object forth.

  Alan wore nothing blue. His surcoat was brown, his cotehardie yellow and his chauces grey. And no doubt his kirtle was as white as Matilda could make it.

  I took the thread from her. It was a faded blue length of coarse woolen yarn, about as long as a finger. Matilda had plucked it from her husband’s scalp near the place where his head was bruised.

  “Have you a garment of this color?” I asked.

  “Nay…though ’tis common enough.”

  I turned to Hubert Shillside. “Did any of those who found Alan this morning wear blue? I think not, but ’twas not full light yet, and my mind was otherwise occupied.”

  The coroner thought back on the discovery and pursed his lips in concentration. “The plowman who remained in the field with the oxen, did he not wear a blue cotehardie?”

  “I paid him no attention,” I admitted. “If you saw this I will take your word for it.”

  Matilda looked from me to the coroner during this conversation. She held the thread before us between two fingers. “I think, Master Hugh, that all is not as you wish,” she said quietly.

  Shillside gave me a look that said, “Now see what you’ve done!” I could not help it. I am not as those who can dissemble easily and hide their thoughts from others.

  “Some things puzzle me,” I admitted. “His shoes…” I nodded toward the bare feet stiff at Bruce’s flank. “Where are they?”

  “I think,” Shillside observed, “they will be discovered on the feet of one of those who found him this morning.”

  “Mayhap, but they should not be a reward for the discovery. They are Matilda’s, to dispose of as she will.”

  “Will you seek them?” the widow asked. “Cobbler could cut ’em down for me, I think.”

  “I will,” I promised, and so began a journey in which I sought one thing and found another. Much of my life has been like that. I have seldom found what I most urgently sought, and only rarely sought what I found. Since much of what I enjoy is then the result of a good fortune which I knew not to seek, I attribute the laudable in my life to the will of God, who, it is written, knows what we need before we ask. He knows, for I have told him often, that I need a good wife, but no matter how I seek such a woman, she will not be found. I must not entertain these thoughts, else my mind will turn to Lady Joan Talbot, now the Lady de Burgh. Such meditations are bittersweet. I prefer to avoid them, but I cannot. Memories of Lady Joan are an itch which from time to time must be scratched.

  John, Hubert and I took Alan from Bruce’s back and laid him on the bed he had shared with Matilda. He was stiffening in death, so that the corpse wished to retain the bend it had assumed while slung over the horse. Inducing him to lay straight and flat on the bed was an awkward business, especially in the presence of his weeping wife.

  Shillside told Matilda that he would return in the afternoon with a jury, for any unexplained death must be examined and pronounced accidental or murder. The coroner had carried Alan’s stave all this time. He propped it in a corner of the house as we prepared to leave.

  I asked the grieving widow for the blue thread. The death troubled me, but at that moment the stolen shoes annoyed most. My sense of justice was violated. It seems a small thing, now. But I was determined to find the plundered shoes this day and return them to Matilda before nightfall. I knew not if the blue thread might lead me to the thief, but if I found a garment matching the thread I might also find a man who knew more than I of this death.

  Chapter 2

  Dinner at Bampton Castle was a simple affair while Lord Gilbert resided elsewhere. He permitted the serving of three meats – other than fast days, of course – in his absence. Lord Gilbert was more frugal than most of his class.

  I had had no breakfast, so stuffed myself on a roasted chicken, a coney pie, and cold venison. Some might think it strange that I had such an appetite after dealing with the dead all morning. My stomach is seldom discomfited. I would then sooner have had a nap, but a sense of injustice swept somnolence from my head.

  I determined to visit the plowmen first, so walked left on Mill Street when I left the castle yard. I found it necessary to pause at the bridge over Shill Brook. I have seldom been able to pass a stream without gazing at the moving water. I attribute this to my childhood along the Wyre at the manor of Little Singleton. The two streams are not alike. The Wyre is slow and muddy and tidal and home mostly to eels. Shill Brook dances between narrow banks, its water pure and clear, a home to trout.

  The plowmen were yet at work, their six oxen moving ponderously from one end of the strip to the other. I waited for them near the path, where they would turn for another pass down the field. In the bright light of a warm April day I saw as they approached that neither man wore a garment matching the blue thread in my pouch.

  The beadle, they insisted, was shoeless when they found him. I showed them the blue thread. This was a mistake, I realized later. But that is the nature of our errors. We recognize our blunders after we have committed them. If we could see our errors as they approached, we might avoid them.

  Neither of the plowmen could identify a garment of that shade. While this fruitless conversation was taking place I saw one of the men peer over my shoulder. I turned to see in the distance Hubert Shillside and eleven others of the coroner’s jury come to inspect the place where Alan lay and question those who discovered him.

  I lingered to hear the plowmen answer as Shillside asked much the same questions I had asked. Their responses were the same. I was convinced they spoke the truth. And I was convinced neither had taken Alan’s shoes. The wooden-soled footwear which protected their feet was old and the leather which fixed the shoes to their feet was tattered. The beadle wore similar shoes, as did most who toil in the soil, but he would not wear shoes so worn as these. He was more prosperous than these plowmen.

  Shillside and his jurymen turned back along the path to town and I followed behind, uncertain of further measures I might take. I had come to Bushey Row, fifty paces behind the coroner’s men, when it occurred to me that I might speak to the priest at St Andrew’s Chapel. This cleric was probably closest of all men to the scene of Alan’s death. Perhaps he had heard some disturbance in the night – the cry of a man or the snarl of a beast. I turned and retraced my steps.

  I had returned to the place where Alan was found when in the distance I heard my name called. I turned and saw John Holcutt waving vigorously and striding purposefully in my direction. He was but a hundred paces away, just turned from Bushey Row on to the path to the chapel. He came puffing up to me a moment later.

  “You are needed, Master Hugh,” he panted. “The miller was openin’ the sluice gate this mornin’ when he slipped. Stones there be mossy from the damp. Wheel began to turn and caught ’is arm as he reached to steady himself.”

  “The arm is broken?” I asked.

  “Prob’ly…an’ near wrenched from ’is shoulder. He’s in great pain.”

  “Was he just now beginning his day? ’Tis well past noon.”

  “Nay. The injury happened early. He asked ’is wife to arrange a sling and thought to continue ’is work. But he cannot, and so wishes you to attend him.”

  I turned to walk back to town with the reeve. The priest at St Andrew’s Chapel would have to wait.

  Andrew the miller had suffered a grievous injury. His right arm was drawn from the socket at his shoulder, and his forearm was broken. I was confused as to what steps I must take to treat the man, or more to the point, in what order I must take those steps. Had his arm been whole I would have put his dislocated shoulder right, but to do so requires leverage and tugging on the arm. This I could not do, broken as his was.

  But if I should wait for the broken arm to mend, his displaced shoulder might then be so long out of joint that it could not be put right.

  I explained this to the miller. I could spare him more pain, leave the shoulder as it was, and set the broken arm. Or, I
could attend to the dislocated shoulder, causing him great pain in the break for a few minutes. He could suffer now, and perhaps regain the proper use of his arm, or he could avoid agony now and live his life with the affliction of a useless arm.

  “’Ow can I work the mill with but one arm?” he asked.

  “You may have two good arms by St Swithin’s Day if you choose to have me make your shoulder right this day. Otherwise I think you will be burdened with a crippled arm from this day on.

  “I will set the break first, splint it strongly, and put a heavy layer of stiffened linen all about. Then I will see to your shoulder…but I will tell you now, the hurt will be great. I will make a potion, but it will not suffice to free you of all distress.”

  The miller was not a man of strong character. He avoided affliction when at all possible. Come to think on it, so do I. So do most men. I watched the miller’s eyes as they flickered about the dusty room, as if he sought some deliverance from his condition. But there was no escape. Gradually his eyes steadied on me.

  “This must be done, an’ I’m to have two good arms?”

  I nodded.

  “You will make the potion strong?”

  “I will…but it will be of but small relief.”

  Andrew looked at his arm, resting in a makeshift sling on his ample paunch, and stretched a finger as if to test whether or not his situation was really so desperate. His grimace told us both that it was.

  “You will do this today?” the miller whispered.

  “As soon as I can procure tools from the castle and return.”

  The miller nodded, too choked with apprehension to speak. As the mill was adjacent to the castle, I returned promptly with my supplies. In that time Andrew had grown pale with anxiety.

  I secured a cup of ale from the miller’s well-fed wife and mixed a large portion of ground hemp seeds and willow bark into the drink. Andrew watched with enlarged eyes as I did this, but took the cup and drank the potion down when I offered it to him.

  It is my experience that, when a potion is administered to deaden pain, it will achieve its effect an hour or two after it is consumed. I told the miller to sit quietly and wait for the palliative to do its work. I would return when the time had come to proceed with my task.

  As it was less than half a mile to St Andrew’s Chapel, I set my feet in that direction when I left the mill. I could see the priest there, ask what I might, and return to the mill before the ninth hour. This time I did not linger at the bridge across Shill Brook.

  The priest at St Andrew’s Chapel of Beme is a slovenly, unlettered man. He holds his position there only, I suspect, because he will perform the duties of the tiny parish – if parish it could truly be called – for the minimum remittance of one third of the revenues – a requirement laid down by Pope Alexander III 200 years ago. One third of the revenues from a parish so small as that which attended mass at St Andrew’s Chapel was not enough to attract a man who could do better, and any educated cleric could.

  Father John Kellet, clerk and priest of St Andrew’s Chapel, had not, I believe, ever been more than ten miles from Bampton, the place of his birth. He had been heard boasting that he had never set foot in Oxford, although I must admit that, in the few conversations I had with the priest, this subject did not arise, and most residents of Bampton and the Weald might make the same claim.

  Father Simon Osbern, of the Church of St Beornwald in Bampton, trained John in the priestly duties. But the course of study was too brief for anything but the rudiments. Kellet had no Latin. He merely spoke the words of the mass, extreme unction, and other sacraments by rote. Why, I wonder, must this be so? Can it be that God cannot understand English? Must men worship in a language they do not understand, led by a priest who speaks what he does not comprehend?

  Men will say that I spent too much time while a student at Oxford listening to Master John Wyclif. Perhaps this is so. But his arguments made sense to me then and do yet, though I am a peaceful man and chose not to challenge the bishops over the issue.

  St Andrew’s Chapel is an ancient structure. It was old when the Conqueror came from Normandy to wrest the kingdom from King Harold. The wall about the churchyard is now tumbled down in places, so that pigs may wander in and root amongst the graves. The absentee rector should see to the mending, but like many in his position, he cares more for his purse and his living than he does for keeping a small chapel in good repair.

  Those parts of the wall which yet stand firm are covered in ivy and nettles. Soon this foliage will topple more stones, unless it is uprooted. The rector will not pay to have this done, and John Kellet will do no work which may be avoided. The future of the walls of St Andrew’s Chapel yard seems bleak.

  I scanned the building as I approached. It was not so disordered as the wall, but there were slates missing from the roof. I suspected that the worshipers got wet on rainy Sundays.

  The chapel is small; no more than twelve paces long and perhaps seven paces wide. So the tower at the west end of the structure is also small, but it is within the tower that John Kellet lives. The room is convenient, I suppose, as well as cheap. When the priest wishes to call his small flock to mass, he has but to walk to the center of his chamber, where the bell rope passes through from floor to ceiling.

  Slate shingles on the porch were in poor repair, also, and I noted that the door was beginning to rot at the base as I pushed it open and entered the dim interior of the chapel.

  Sunlight slanting through the narrow south windows illuminated dust motes floating like down in the still air. The dust would eventually join the layer of grime which covered the flat surfaces inside the chapel. I ran a finger across a windowsill and left a dark streak in the accumulated dust of many years.

  I turned to the stairway which led to the vicar’s room and was about to ascend when I heard the door at the head of the stairs creak open on corroded hinges. The priest had heard me open the door from the porch and was descending to discover who had entered his seldom-visited demesne.

  I was again astonished at the girth of John Kellet. I do not understand how a priest who tends such a meager garden can grow so fat. I had apparently interrupted his dinner, for I saw a grease stain on his long tunic and he licked his fingers as he came into view at the foot of the stairs.

  The tunic was black, as befits a priest. As he approached I saw that it was made of a soft, fine wool. It was wrinkled and food-stained, but of better quality than the tunic that Thomas de Bowlegh, vicar of a larger church, wore.

  “Ah, Master Hugh,” Kellet’s voice echoed off the grey stones of floor and walls. “What…what brings you here this day?”

  I wished to return quickly to the miller’s broken arm, so did not squander time with niceties.

  “A man died along the path to Bampton yesterday…or perhaps the night before.”

  The priest started, and his sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes grew wide.

  “Alan, the beadle,” I continued. “Did you know him?”

  “Uh…aye, I believe so. Along the path, you say?”

  “Aye. Just the other side of the wood beyond the churchyard. Plowmen found him this morning.”

  “Did he have lands there?” the priest asked.

  “No. He’d gone out to watch and warn Tuesday eve, and never returned.”

  The priest pursed his lips. “Tsk,” he muttered. “Such a young man…but death takes us all.”

  “Did you hear any strange, unnatural sound Tuesday eve?”

  “Why, no. This death, does it trouble you?”

  “I think, perhaps. The man’s throat was torn, as if a wild beast had attacked him. His head was broken, I know not how, and his shoes are taken, which no beast would do.”

  “A beast, you say?” The priest frowned, and his mouth dropped open for a moment.

  “Perhaps. His throat was torn. Fangs or claws might be the cause. Do you know of any wild hounds ranging in this parish?”

  Kellet scratched the back of his shaggy head. “I’v
e heard of nothin’ like that. ’Course, there is much waste land between here an’ Aston, since the great death. Beasts could prowl there an’ none the wiser.”

  “Have any cotters hereabout lost animals recently? Sheep, or even fowl?”

  “Oh, a duck or two goes missing every month or so, but I think a fox would do no harm to the beadle.”

  “If you learn of evidence that savage beasts have been seen or heard, you must send word to me. It is my duty to keep Lord Gilbert’s lands free of such marauders…if such there be.”

  “Mayhap,” the priest said, scratching his scalp again, “wolves have come down from Wales. The winter past was cruel. I have heard that wolves still prowl those untamed lands.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. Actually, I did not agree. But having no better theory myself, I saw no reason to challenge the point. Certainly there is now, since plague has struck twice, in England much wasteland, where wolves could live and travel unmolested. But would a wolf make his presence in the shire first known by an attack on a man? I have heard tales of wolves, that they travel in packs and are seldom solitary. And they howl. Wolves are not silent creatures. It seemed to me a wolf would announce his presence with the taking of a sheep, or perhaps a pig rooting for last autumn’s acorns in the forest.

  “I must return to Bampton. The miller awaits, with a broken arm. But before I go, there is also the matter of the missing shoes. Should you see a man wearing good shoes when he has owned recently only poor ones, send for me. This,” I held out the blue yarn, “was found at the scene of Alan’s death. Does anyone hereabouts wear a garment of this hue?”

  Kellet stared at the strand and, I thought, seemed ill at ease. He shifted from one foot to another before he made answer.

  “Wold is grown in most every toft,” he commented. “’Twould make a color much like this. But no, I know of no one of this parish who owns a cotehardie or surcoat of this pale blue.”