A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel

by Mel Starr

  I pulled the priest to his feet and, together with Simon Osbern, I cleaned his robe of debris.

  “We should,” I advised, “be more prudent in our search. Let us return to the road and spread ourselves a few paces apart, then re-enter the forest at a more careful pace.”

  The others agreed, having no better plan. Our company covered a space perhaps thirty paces in breadth, and we had gone but a few steps beyond the vine which snared Father Thomas when a clerk called out in a high-pitched yelp.

  The urgency in his voice drew us scrambling to him. He stood near a tall beech, and as we gathered about him he pointed to the leaves at his feet. There, nearly obscured in rotting vegetation, lay a shoe. The sole was of wood, and the leather which would bind it to a man’s foot was new and little worn. It was much like the shoes I had seen on the feet of Henry atte Bridge. Of course, it was much like the shoes on the feet of any man who could afford to go shod of a spring day.

  Because the beech tree was not yet in leaf a pattern of dappled sunlight penetrated the naked branches and left bright patterns on the forest floor. The partly visible shoe lay in one of these illuminated places, else its colors would have blended with the leaves so that, had it been in shadow, it might have gone undetected.

  We stood in a circle and stared at the shoe as if it came from the foot of a leper. No other made a move to retrieve it, so I did. There was nothing to be gained from inspecting the shoe. As I have said, it was much like others worn by the commons. Father Thomas broke the silence.

  “A man making his way in haste through a dark wood might lose a shoe.” He peered unblinking at me as he spoke.

  “Had he reason enough for haste, he might not wish to turn and seek a lost shoe in the dark, when ’twould not be easy to recover,” I replied.

  “The shoe points deeper into the grove,” I continued. “Let us resume our places and see what else may be found.”

  We did not go far before the issue was resolved. It was Simon Osbern who made the discovery. A man lay face down in the mould. His arms were thrown forward and extended above his head, with palms flat upon the forest floor. He wore but one shoe, and his chauces and cotehardie were stained with mud. Above the bare limbs of the forest the buzzards circled silently on broad wings. We crossed ourselves.

  I knew who this must be before we turned him to his back. My conjecture was correct, for when we rolled him over it was the face of Henry atte Bridge which stared unseeing at the buzzards.

  The vicars and clerks lifted their eyes to me. I felt my cheeks flush, for I was sure this death was my doing, even though I could plead self-defense. Only Father Thomas knew of my struggle with the dead man, but in my guilt I felt all must suspect.

  Thomas de Bowlegh broke the silence. “What has caused this death, Master Hugh?”

  Without a close inspection of the corpse I could not tell, and told him so. I could see no wound or other mark likely to bring death to one so young and strong. The injury must be, I thought, internal and invisible; a blow to the neck, or perhaps the kick of a horse.

  “We must raise the hue and cry,” said Father Simon, “and Hubert Shillside must gather a jury and bring them to this place.”

  That was done, and before the ninth hour Shillside and his coroner’s jury stood about the corpse. The coroner bent to examine the dead man more closely. I thought he gave special attention to the neck, but perhaps this was my imagination. Shillside stood and turned to me.

  “Master Hugh, have you examined this man?”

  “No. We awaited your arrival.”

  Shillside scratched his head. “I find nothing amiss. He was gathering wood, you say?”

  “’Tis what he told his wife,” Father Thomas replied.

  The coroner peered about into the lengthening shadows. “I see no bundle hereabouts…and why is he so muddied? A man would not be so filthy from falling headlong into last year’s leaves.”

  Muttered agreement followed this assertion.

  “How did you find him?” Shillside asked.

  “Face down,” I said. “Arms outstretched.”

  “As if he was struck down while running,” one of the clerks added.

  “Then let’s turn him and see what may be invisible to us now.”

  Henry atte Bridge was rolled face down again, and I placed his stiffened arms above his head as they were when we discovered him. The coroner knelt beside the body and motioned for me to join him on my knees on the forest floor.

  “I see no cause for death. There is much about this I do not like,” Shillside said softly as we examined Henry’s broad back.

  These words were barely spoken when I saw, as I scrutinized the prone form, a mark on atte Bridge’s back which caught my attention. This had escaped me when I first saw the corpse, for the man’s cotehardie was old, frayed, torn in many places, and stained with age and mud.

  I touched the edges of a small tear in the cotehardie. This break in the fabric seemed clean, unlike other rips, the fringes of which were raveled and uneven. I brushed dirt from this opening and saw, obscured by soil and debris, a dim russet oval, a nearly invisible stain against the weathered brown of the garment.

  Shillside saw my interest and bent to examine the torn fabric. “What have you found?” he asked.

  “Perhaps nothing,” I replied, but as I spoke I pulled up the hem of the cotehardie and reached a hand under the kirtle and across the dead man’s back. I felt there what I suspected. When I withdrew my hand the fingertips were dark with congealed, drying blood.

  “He has been stabbed,” Father Thomas said softly.

  “I fear so,” I agreed. Had the vicar not suggested a cause of death I might have been more thorough in my examination. If a similar matter should arise in the future I must not allow others to plant suggestions in my mind, for I am too willing to allow them to take root.

  I turned the body onto its back again, and with the aid of a clerk I stripped off the cotehardie and kirtle. We turned the hairy fellow to his stomach once again, and the wound was plain.

  There had been little bleeding. I believe this was so because the injury penetrated to the lungs and heart, and so atte Bridge died quickly. The blade which struck him down was not large. The wound in his back was the size of my little finger. Perhaps this limited the flow of blood. The wound was just to the left of the man’s spine. Perhaps he tried to run from this attack, but his hurt was too great and he fell headlong where we found him.

  The clerks found several fallen branches, broke them to appropriate lengths, and created a litter upon which we transported the body from the wood. Worshippers had gathered before the porch of St Beornwald’s Church, awaiting evensong. They watched in open-mouthed silence as our company passed. Simon Osbern and two of the clerks left us at the gate to the churchyard, and several members of the coroner’s jury, their duty completed for the moment, dropped away as we made our way down Church View Street and turned on to Bridge Street.

  As our somber cortege approached the bridge over Shill Brook I remembered the shoe I still carried. Its mate was yet fixed to the left foot of the corpse, bobbing in step with the rhythm of those who carried Henry atte Bridge home. I increased my pace, stepped behind the corpse, and slipped the other shoe from the cold, pale foot. Hubert Shillside walked beside me and watched me do this, but said nothing.

  The six men who carried Henry atte Bridge home deposited their burden at the door of his hut in the Weald. Our approach was silent. None of the inhabitants heard us draw near and no face appeared at the door, which was open to the warm spring afternoon. To be truthful, I felt a chill as I stood in the shadow formed by the house as the sun sank low in the western sky. Father Thomas rapped on the doorpost. The knock brought a pale, frowning woman to the door.

  Henry atte Bridge’s widow – though as yet she did not know her condition – was a worried woman. After a long winter we were all a bit waxy, but she was ashen, with dark shadows under her eyes from a sleepless night. There would, I thought, be more ni
ghts like that in the woman’s future.

  Hubert Shillside stood beside the vicar at the door. Neither man held aloof from a dinner table, so Emma did not at first see the object of our visit lying in the dirt behind them.

  Father Thomas came quickly to the point of our call. When his words were complete he stepped back so the woman could see clearly the lifeless form of her husband. She choked out a brief wail, which brought her children to the door, but then became silent. She raised one hand to her mouth, and with the other restrained her eldest son, who would have pushed past her to better view his father.

  Thomas de Bowlegh remained with the woman to arrange her husband’s burial while Shillside and I and the others but for one clerk drifted away toward Mill Street and the town.

  “’Tis a murder the bishop must deal with,” the coroner said as we approached the bridge.

  “Aye, which means the vicars of St Beornwald’s will have added duties,” I agreed. I was relieved. Searching out Henry atte Bridge’s slayer would not be my obligation, for he was the bishop’s man.

  I parted from Hubert Shillside, and those of the coroner’s jury who remained, at the Mill Street and headed for the castle. I had eaten nothing this day, and hunger burned my belly. But I had another task first, before I could consume a cold dinner.

  I sought Alice in the scullery, and found her finishing her work for the day. She looked up enquiringly from under a stray wisp of hair, which she swept aside with the back of her wrist.

  “Were you told that your brother was missing?”

  The girl shook her head. “Nay…which one? Henry or Thomas?”

  “Henry. He has been found.”

  Perhaps it was the tone of my voice, or the manner of my speaking, but the girl stopped her scrubbing at a pot, wiped her hands on her apron, and watched me intently, waiting for an explanation.

  I told her what had happened, or so much of what had happened as I knew, omitting only the fight along the road the night before.

  “So ’e was murdered, then,” she concluded. This was a statement, not a question, as if the manner of her brother’s death was not a shock to her.

  Although he was not Lord Gilbert’s man and was no concern of mine, I had many questions about this death, and thought I might assist the vicars in their search for a killer. It did not seem to me at the time unnatural to be curious about the fate of one who had tried to do me harm.

  “Had your brother enemies?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer to that question.

  “Had better ask had ’e any friends,” she replied.

  “There were many, you think, who wished him ill?”

  “More’n would’ve wished ’im well, I think.” The girl looked away and silently focused on the scullery window, now glowing bright from the setting sun. “’E learned young ’e was stronger’n most an’ could ’ave ’is way of weaker men…so I’ve ’eard.”

  “Even a weak man is strong enough to plunge a knife into another,” I said.

  “A weak woman, also,” the girl added, and returned to her pot.

  Her assertion got my attention. “Think you there are women who wished your brother dead?”

  “Ask Emma,” the girl sighed.

  “He beat his wife?”

  “Aye. More’n most. When I was with me father, livin’ at the Weald, before you brought me ’ere, I heard ’er yellin’ an’ gettin’ smacked about.”

  “Often?”

  “Reg’lar, like…’specially when ’e was drunk.”

  “He was drunk often?”

  “Ev’ry Saturday, reg’lar like. None in the Weald could sleep ’til ’e had done knockin’ Emma about an’ she stopped screechin’.”

  The killer of a man who has made many enemies may successfully elude apprehension. It is the killer of a man with few enemies who, it seems to me, is most likely to be caught. The vicars faced a daunting task.

  Alice curtsied and smiled thinly as I turned to go. The girl really had grown quite fetching, though far beneath my station. Well, whether a woman is beautiful or not has little to do with her rank. Consider the number of gentlemen who take a mistress from the commons while wed to some ill-favored lady whose attractions of land and dowry could not for long make up for her appearance or demeanor.

  I called next door at the kitchen and requested a meal from the unhappy cook, who until my appearance had thought his work complete for the day.

  Alice was sent with my meal. As I ate I thought of shoes and blue yarn and murder. And, yes, of the child Alice also, who, quite disconcertingly, was no longer a child.

  Hubert Shillside called for his coroner’s jury to meet Monday morning in the church. As I had no pressing business, I attended. All there had seen the puncture in Henry atte Bridge’s hairy back. No other cause of death was apparent. The jury soon decided that the death was murder, though none who voted so seemed much grieved at the loss. As I left the church I saw Hubert Shillside enter into a solemn conversation with two of the three vicars of St Beornwald’s Church, while a flock of clerks circled nearby.

  I had brought with me to the church the shoes from Henry atte Bridge’s feet. I was confident they had once protected the feet of Alan the beadle. As I walked from the churchyard I heard from a distance a thin keening. I stopped and turned to my right where, at the corner where Church View joins Bridge Street, I saw a funeral procession come into view. There were few mourners. A dozen men and women and a scattering of children followed Simon Osbern and the bier.

  I made my way down Church Street to the High Street, then walked left on Catte Street until I came to the house of Alan the beadle. Matilda was pleased to see me, or pleased to see the shoes, I know not which. She did not ask how I recovered them, and I did not venture to tell her. We made small talk for a time; she was getting on well, thank you; her son missed his father, did not sleep well for many nights after the funeral. Neither did she. But wasn’t it fine weather we enjoyed? And the early onions and cabbages were sprouting nicely.

  I departed Catte Street in a better mood than I had entered. Certainly the warming sun at my face had something to do with my good humor, but a light conversation with an attractive woman had some small part in my rising spirits. I am not well versed in such things, but I believe Matilda might have been flirting with me. Either that, or she had some speck in her eye which caused her to blink uncommonly often.

  I intended to return to the castle and seek my dinner, then be about Lord Gilbert’s business for the afternoon. But as I reached Church View while making my way down Bridge Street, I glanced north and saw a clot of mourners just inside the churchyard wall. I turned and walked to the church.

  The gravediggers had nearly completed their work as I reached the lych gate. Henry atte Bridge would rest just within the southeast corner of the churchyard, a few paces from Alan the beadle. I entered and watched as Father Simon spoke the final collect and Henry was lifted in his shroud from the plank which formed his bier. The shroud was black, as befits such occasions, but ill made and poorly stitched.

  As his brother and another lifted Henry from the plank, the seam of the shroud split, spilling the dead man’s arm from its place. The arm lay in an old, tattered sleeve of faded blue.

  I pushed my way to the front of the mourners, a thing easy to do as there were so few of them. And of those in the group I believe few mourned. Thomas atte Bridge and his assistant set Henry down beside the open grave to repair the shroud and replace the drooping arm. Before they could take him up again I reached between them and seized the badly frayed cuff of the blue cotehardie in which Emma had chosen to bury him.

  This act caused raised eyebrows, but one advantage of being bailiff to a powerful lord is that one may do such things without feeling a necessity to explain. And I didn’t. Although I did later make plain my motive to Simon Osbern.

  My action at the grave produced two threads from the frayed blue sleeve. The tint was familiar. I was eager to compare this find with the blue yarn taken from Alan’s corps
e. I turned from the bewildered assembly and hastened back to the castle. The blue wool from Henry atte Bridge’s burial garment matched perfectly the yarn drawn from Alan’s scalp seventeen days before.

  I compared the woolen fragments and thought that I knew what had happened to Alan the beadle on the path to St Andrew’s Chapel. He had left the town to investigate the howl of a strange beast; a beast I also had heard. Alan had died at the jaws of that animal, or more likely trying to escape its jaws, along the dark lane. Henry atte Bridge had found him there, wearing nearly new shoes for which the beadle could have no further use. Henry had taken the shoes, then perhaps dragged the body into the hedgerow to…to what purpose? That I could not explain. Who can know the mind of a thief who will plunder the dead?

  I thought little more of the matter as I went about my business that day. Lord Gilbert’s sheep were to be moved to a new field, so that the fallow field they had grazed and manured could be plowed. This business took most of the afternoon, for Lord Gilbert has a large flock, and sheep are wont to go in every direction but that which they should. My father thought them the stupidest of God’s creation. When the afternoon was done I found myself in renewed agreement with him.

  I could not sleep that night. My mind wandered back to its earlier conclusions regarding the death of Alan the beadle and Henry atte Bridge’s role in that sorry event. Although my bed was warm and the night cool I rose past midnight to walk the parapet and consider that which caused me such unease.

  If Alan died on the road, and the beast attacked him there, why the dent in the back of his head? There were no rocks in the path. But if he fell into the hedgerow while fighting a wolf, and lay hidden there in death, how was it that Henry atte Bridge found him? Alan’s corpse was drawn so far into the nettles that he was discovered by a plowman in the field which lay inside the hedgerow. Those who passed by on the road for the day he lay dead did not discover him. And why was Henry atte Bridge walking that path? His work at the new barn would take him north out of Bampton, not east toward St Andrew’s Chapel.