A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel

by Mel Starr

  Caxton peered at me over his tankard, then tipped it and swallowed more.

  “The potion will take effect in an hour or two,” I told him. “Let us hope God will clear the sky so we may proceed with our business.”

  “Amen,” the stationer agreed, and finished his potion.

  The benches upon which we sat were of unequal length. The stationer’s was short. Kate had directed me to the longer of the two. I resumed my place and there lifted my untouched tankard to drink when the girl reappeared from the hidden room behind the shop. She carried a smaller cup. I saw her glance at the two benches, divined her intent, and slid to the end of mine so she might sit. I wondered if she might think this invitation too forward. She did not, and sat primly next to me without a look in my direction. Her father, however, scrutinized us intently. I saw in the firelight his eyes flicker from me to his daughter and back again.

  “Have you lived long in Bampton?” he asked.

  “Two years come Michaelmas. I thought to practice surgery here in Oxford, and set up for a time on the High Street. But Lord Gilbert Talbot invited me to Bampton after I was of service to him.”

  “You hale from Oxford, then?”

  “Nay…Lancashire. My father held the manor of Little Singleton of Sir Robert de Sandford, but as I am the youngest of four sons I was sent to Oxford to study and make my own way in the world.”

  “Hmmm,” he mused. “Most scholars who do business here intend to serve at law, or in holy orders. I know of none who studies surgery.”

  “That was my intent as well…to be a lawyer and advise kings. But a friend gave me a book. ’Twas about surgical practice. I read it through three times and when I completed the course of study at Baliol College I set off for Paris and the university there, where the book’s author, Henry de Mondeville, had once taught.”

  “You were welcomed there?” Kate asked with some surprise.

  “Aye. Even though we held the French king, a student paying his way was accepted though he came from England. And I did not brag of the English victory at Poitiers.”

  “A good friend,” the stationer observed, “to give away a book.”

  “’Twas a dying bequest. Four years ago, when the plague returned, he was stricken. I did what I could to ease him. For that service he gave me his three books.”

  As I spoke I noted a sudden gleam appear between wall and shutter. But it quickly faded. Then the opening to the room at the rear of the shop lightened as a brief flash of sunlight came through a skin-covered window in the rear of the house.

  The stationer looked toward the floor beams above his head. We were silent for a moment, then he spoke: “The rain has stopped.”

  Kate rose from the bench, walked silently to the door, and pulled it open. A few drops yet fell from the thatching. The sky was mostly grey, but dotted with tiny swift-moving patches of blue where the cloud cover was beginning to break.

  I stood in the doorway the better to observe the weather and felt Kate close behind me. Unlike some young women – and older, too – whose presence can be detected by the scent of their unwashed bodies, the girl exuded the pleasant fragrance of soapwort and woodbine with which she had recently freshened her clothes. Crones say that if honeysuckle be brought into a home there will soon be a wedding. I regarded the sky and wondered if the girl had a husband in mind.

  The stationer rose slowly from his seat and glanced between us at the broken clouds. “Think you to proceed?” he asked.

  “Aye. If the table is placed in the toft there will be light enough to see my work.”

  Kate helped me drag the heavy table into the space behind the shop. The door from the small back room into the toft was barely wide enough to serve. Caxton tried to assist, but the exertion caused him to catch his breath and turn red in the face.

  I instructed the stationer to remove his cotehardie and kirtle while I returned to the shop for my instruments. When I returned he was standing beside the table shivering. ’Twas not a warm day. Still, I expect his quaking had more to do with uncertainty about my skill than the chilly air.

  I sent Kate for the wine, then assisted Caxton on to the table. I had him stretched face-first on the planks when the girl returned.

  It is my practice to bathe in wine the place where I intend to make an incision. There is no tradition which calls for this, but it seems to me that if washing a wound in wine after the cut is made will aid healing, then perhaps doing so before applying the knife may be beneficial also.

  So I poured wine over the exposed fistula and wiped the liquid about with a scrap of clean linen. Caxton winced as the wine touched his sore, but otherwise lay quietly while I set out my instruments. Kate stood in the doorway, uncertain whether or not to stay. She saw me glance in her direction, and spoke: “Must I go?”

  “No. Observers do not trouble me. But there will be blood, and your father may cry out in pain. Should you swoon, I will be too busy to assist you.”

  “May I help?”

  “I think not. This surgery will not require three hands.”

  I scraped pus and crusted ooze from the fistula, then probed the putrid flesh with a lancet. I hoped to feel some resistance just under the skin which might tell me that the wood fragment I suspected was not lodged deep. But I felt nothing though I thoroughly probed the area between two ribs where the fistula lay.

  While I poked at Caxton’s ribs his daughter left her place at the door and stood by her father’s head. She took his outstretched hands in hers and waited, her eyes fixed on me as I laid the lancet aside and selected a scalpel.

  With this blade I enlarged the fistula in a line parallel to the ribs. I took three separate strokes to deepen the cut until I thought it had reached to the ribs, but no deeper. I wished to avoid entering the abdominal cavity, unless such trespass be unavoidable.

  The laceration I thus made was longer than a man’s finger; longer, perhaps, than needful, but I wished no interference with my inspection of the abscess. With the blade I pushed aside flesh and fat to the depth of my incision. There was pus there, and corrupt flesh about the fistula, but no foreign object.

  I stood upright and wiped sweat and a stray lock of hair from my eyes. The day remained cloudy and cool, but I perspired. There was nothing to do but enlarge the incision and continue the search for the root of the fistula.

  A few strokes of the blade added a knuckle’s length to the cut. The stationer, who aside from an occasional gasp through clenched teeth, had been quiet, now twitched and writhed under my knife. Kate stood silent, her hands tight to her father’s. Not once did she look away from the bloody wound I had made in her father’s back.

  I separated flesh from rib with my scalpel in this extended incision and there glimpsed the cause of Caxton’s distress. It was indeed a fragment of broken oak, driven so deep into the fellow’s back it had lodged under a rib, between the bone and abdominal wall, just above a kidney.

  I tried to tease the offending fragment from under the rib with the point of my scalpel but could not. Some hard, white gristle with which I was not familiar had nearly encapsulated the wood and held it firmly in place.

  With the blade in my left hand to open the wound I took forceps in my right hand and found the end of the embedded splinter. The first tug was unsuccessful. The forceps slipped from the gristle. I found the fragment again, grasped the thing more tightly, and pulled.

  A sliver near the size of my little finger came out from under the stationer’s rib. He gasped and his legs jerked, but he did not cry out. He is a person of great fortitude, as is his daughter. She watched the process from beginning to end without blanching.

  I took the offending fragment, still held tight in my forceps, to the end of the table and held it before the stationer’s watering eyes. “This was lodged beneath a rib,” I explained.

  Caxton raised his head to inspect the fragment. “Much thanks,” he whispered.

  “I will stitch the wound and you will soon be good as new.”

 
I requested more wine from Kate, and threaded a needle while she ran to fetch it. I closed the wound with fourteen stitches, bathed the cut in wine, and when I was done assisted Caxton to a sitting position on the table.

  “’Tis improved already,” he exclaimed. “Will you dress it now?”

  I was again required to explain that I follow the practice of Henry de Mondeville, who taught that wounds heal best when dry and uncovered. Aside from the occasional poultice of egg albumin, a wound left open mends most readily. I know that this practice contradicts the ancients and the university physicians, but de Mondeville saw his method work in practice. I am a Baliol man, so I should not write this; perhaps the books are wrong.

  Caxton seemed unconvinced of this, but as I had been successful thus far in dealing with his affliction he made no objection. His daughter helped him into kirtle and cotehardie, we dragged the table back into the workroom, and we were done. And just in time. The sky was clearing as evening drew near, and the sun was dropping behind the rooftops to the west of the toft as I completed the needlework on the stationer’s back.

  I made my way through darkening streets to New Canterbury Hall. I hoped Master John might invite me to occupy the empty room which had been my home two nights earlier. The porter recognized me, for it was not yet dark enough that my features were obscured, and sent me unaccompanied to Master John’s chamber.

  A dim glow through the window told me that the scholar was within. I rapped upon his door and heard from the other side a bench scrape across the flags. Wyclif drew open the door, his brow furrowed. Behind him a book lay open on a table, under a sputtering cresset. He was clearly annoyed at being disturbed in his study. But then he recognized me in the gloom and a smile washed the frown from his face. Well, I assume it did. Master John’s beard obscured his mouth quite thoroughly, but his knitted brow relaxed and he greeted me warmly.

  “Master Hugh?”

  “Aye…my profession called me to return to Oxford.”

  “Surgery? Come in and tell me of it.”

  Wyclif shoved the heavy door closed and drew me to the table where he pulled up a second bench and motioned for me to sit. He took his former place, and studied me across the cresset.

  “Now then,” he said, “what work have you done this day?”

  “I took heed of your advice when we last parted, and sought parchment and ink of the new stationer on the Holywell Street.”

  “Ah, did you so?” The scholar’s eyes crinkled. “Did you find the wares agreeable?”

  “Indeed. There is much agreeable about the place.”

  “I thought you might find it so.”

  “The stationer was ill disposed,” I told him.

  “Oh? He seems congenial enough when I call.”

  “Aye. His affliction distressed him but did not cause him to distress others.”

  “And what of this affliction?”

  I told Master John of the stationer’s injury and the surgery I had performed that day. His eyes glowed in the cresset as I related the tale. There are some who dislike hearing of wounds and blood. Wyclif is not such a one. He listened intently, and questioned me twice about the procedure.

  “And Caxton’s daughter stood at his head the while?” he asked.

  “She did…held firm to her father’s hands as I worked.”

  “A remarkable lass,” Master John observed. “Do you not agree?”

  “Aye. And others find it so, as well. It was as you suggested, I should find the stationer’s shop by the students at his door. There were three as I entered Tuesday.”

  “She does no harm to her father’s business, I think,” Wyclif observed.

  “You suggest that parchment and ink are not enough to attract an Oxford youth?”

  “Enough? What is ever enough?”

  “A good meal taken in a hall with pleasant companions,” I asserted. “Is that not enough for a man?”

  “Hmmm,” Wyclif shrugged and pursed his lips. “For a time…but you would not refuse such a feast were it offered again next day.”

  “Then the labors of the mind; are they not enough for a man?”

  “For some, perhaps.”

  “For you?” I probed.

  “Ha. You think me immune to the charms of the stationer’s daughter?”

  “Kate…Katherine?”

  “Yes. I heard her name spoken once. I will tell you, Hugh, were I married I would yet enjoy my books. Now I am wed to books…can I not enjoy the sight of a pretty maid?”

  “Do not carry the parallel too far, Master John.”

  “Nay,” he laughed. “All analogies eventually break down, useful as they may be.”

  “Do not your books grow tiresome?”

  “Sometimes…as I suppose a beautiful woman may also grow tiresome be she of an ill-favored character.”

  “What of the stationer’s daughter?” I asked.

  “Kate?” He smiled. “She seems a pleasant lass…not only to the eye, I mean.”

  “So I think, although I’ve met her only twice.” I laughed then, which Master John must have thought out of place, for he pursed his lips and his brow lowered. “Here we sit,” I explained, “talking of a comely maid as if we sat in the din of the Stag and Hounds. Surely this is a topic in the air of that establishment as we speak.”

  “No doubt,” he smiled, “and perhaps the same lass be under consideration.”

  I could not say why at that moment, but the thought of Kate Caxton as a subject for discussion in the Stag and Hounds caused me some unease.

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. “’Tis safer to speak of a lass than politics or religion.”

  “Aye. Few have lost their heads for commenting on a lady’s face or form.”

  “Unless a noble husband or father be near and take offence,” I offered.

  “Just so,” the scholar smiled.

  Wyclif had pushed his book aside to clear the table before us. I glanced at the volume, still open, and saw that it was a book of Old Testament prophets. Master John followed my gaze and answered my unspoken question.

  “Habakkuk…a minor prophet not often studied. But I find all scripture profitable. It speaks to those who will listen.”

  “I have never read this prophet,” I admitted. “What does he say?”

  “He lived in troublous times…much like our own. Listen as he speaks to God.” Wyclif bent over his book, turned back a page, and ran a finger down the lines. “Why do you show me iniquity, and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; there is strife, and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore perverse judgment proceeds.”

  The scholar raised his eyes to mine. “God speaks to me in this passage. Does He not to you?”

  “Aye. Iniquity, trouble, plundering, violence, strife, contention…such is the world. My position requires me to deal with these ills. Does God supply a remedy for the prophet? Has he a word from God?”

  “He does, though not what a man might expect.” Master John turned a page and squinted at the script through narrowed eyes. “Ah…here…‘Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith.’”

  “Is this the antidote to evils? That a just man live by his faith?” My bewilderment was evident in my voice.

  “Ah, Hugh, do you not see? All these evils perplexed the world then as they do now. How can a just man fight them? Can a man reform the world?”

  “Unlikely, what I’ve seen of it.”

  “True. Yet a man must do battle against wrong when and where he can, if God grants him courage for the struggle, as He has you, I think.”

  “But I will not win that fight, will I? See all those of the past who fought valiantly against wickedness, but evil yet grips the world and shows no sign of letting go.”

  “It does,” Wyclif agreed, “and will until God sends His Son to return.”

  “What, then? Must a man strive and yet know
he will face defeat in the end?”

  “What is defeat? When a man comes to his grave, having done all he can to serve God and man, will he not inherit an eternal place with God? Is that not victory?”

  “Aye,” I agreed, “but long delayed.”

  “Well,” Wyclif laughed, “most men hope ’twill be long delayed.”

  “So until that final victory a virtuous man must live in an earthly struggle he will surely lose?”

  “Not so, Hugh. Do not be so melancholy. ‘The just shall live by faith.’ The apostle Paul says much the same thing in his letter to the Ephesians. Though the devil and his minions do their worst, the just man will live because of his faith.”

  “Even should one of satan’s minions slay him?”

  “Even so. His faith will grant him life on earth, and in the world to come.”

  “What of a man’s deeds?”

  “The prophets all speak of righteous living. ’Tis expected of a man.”

  “Will a man then live also by his deeds?”

  “Perhaps,” Wyclif mused. “But actions seldom bring a man to faith.”

  “Whereas faith will spur a man to act,” I completed his thought.

  “Aye.”

  “’Tis my faith in you has brought me to your door,” I added. “I have faith you will provide me a place to sleep this night, as you did two days past.”

  “Your faith will be rewarded. Have you supped?”

  “No. I thought to seek an inn before I retire.”

  “The streets are dark. Best I send you to the kitchen. The cook will have something for you.”

  He did, and a loaf for my breakfast, as well.

  I slept well, and in the morning retrieved Bruce from the stable behind the Stag and Hounds. I had set out for Bampton when a thought caused me to pull on the reins and turn the old horse toward Holywell Street. I should visit my patient before I depart. This duty was made more satisfying with the knowledge that the stationer’s daughter might be present. She was, and greeted me when I entered the shop. Her father was not at hand.

  “I have come to see your father before I return to Bampton,” I announced. I looked about the empty shop, worried that the man was suffering ill effects from the surgery. “Is he yet in his bed this morning?”