by Mel Starr
“Holy mother of God,” Arthur said, and crossed himself. “What has happened here?”
I spoke no answer, for I did not know. All that was sure was that a monk, likely of Eynsham Abbey, had died half a mile from his monastery, and his corpse had gone undiscovered by all but carrion crows.
The abbey must be informed of this, of course. I told Arthur to return to the road, take his horse and hurry to the abbey. There he must tell the porter of our discovery and ask that the abbot or prior come to the place with all haste. I would remain with the dead monk, to keep the crows away, and to learn what I could of his demise.
The man was not old. He wore no cowl, and I saw no grey hairs upon his scalp. He was not tonsured. Here, then, was no monk, but a novice.
He lay upon his back, arms flung wide, palms up. The crows had been busy there as well. I stood and looked about the place. Few leaves remained upon the trees. Indeed, most had fallen some weeks past. If the corpse had been dragged here from some other place, the leaves might mark the path, but they lay undisturbed in all directions.
How long had the novice lain here? No fallen leaves covered the youth, but the squabbling crows might have brushed leaves aside. And how long would it take the scavengers to do the injury I saw before me? Not long, I guessed.
I examined what I could see of the novice’s habit, but saw there no mark or perforation or bloodstain which might betray a wound. Perhaps such a laceration was under the body. I would wait to turn the lad until folk from the abbey arrived.
My gaze fell upon the novice’s feet. They were bare, and the crows had not yet discovered his toes. Would he go about in November with unshod feet? Some monks might, seeking penance for a sinful thought or deed, but it seemed unlikely that a novice would do so. If the youth died of some illness or accident, I was not the first to find him: some other man had come upon him and taken his shoes. If the novice was murdered, the man who slew him may have taken more than his life.
I thought to see if the back of the novice’s skull might reveal some injury, as from a blow. It was a loathsome business to lift the faceless head. I found nothing, and as I stood over the corpse I reflected that if a man was felled by a blow from behind, he would likely fall face first into the leaves.
I heard agitated voices and turned to see Arthur leading half a dozen Benedictines toward me. At first they approached at a trot, their habits flapping about their ankles, but as they came near, and glimpsed what lay at my feet, they slowed and became silent.
Arthur had been leading the group of monks to show them the way, but as they neared the corpse he held back. One by one the monks also hesitated, until at last only one came forward to stand over the body. He gazed down upon the mutilated features and said softly, “’Tis John.”
This monk crossed himself as he spoke, and his fellows did likewise. I saw them exchange glances as they did so. I am not clever at reading faces, but it seemed to me I saw neither shock nor sorrow, merely acceptance of the fact.
“Who are you?” the monk asked.
“I am Hugh de Singleton, bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot on his manor at Bampton.”
“Ah, Abbot Thurstan has spoken of you, and the business of Michael of Longridge and the scholar’s stolen books. When the abbot heard this news he would have come himself, but he is aged and frail and I dissuaded him. We all knew who it must be that you have found here.”
“Who is it?” I asked. “You named him ‘John.’”
“’Tis John Whytyng, a novice of our house. I am Brother Gerleys, the novice-master at Eynsham Abbey. When your man told Brother Stephen of this death, and Abbot Thurstan was told, he sent for me.”
“Had the lad been missing?”
“Four days. Abbot Thurstan thought he had returned to Wantage.”
“Wantage?”
“His father is a knight of that place.”
“John was not enthusiastic for his vocation?” I asked.
“Nay. Oh, he was quick enough at his lessons, and seemed to enjoy study. Perhaps too much. But he found no joy in silence and prayer and contemplation, I think.”
“Too much joy in his studies? What do you mean?”
“The abbey has two other novices, Osbert and Henry. Neither is as clever as John… as John was.”
“Only three novices at Eynsham?” I said.
“Aye. When I was a novice, an abbot could pick and choose from lads whose fathers wished to find a place for them in a monastery. Younger sons, who’d not inherit, and would have no lands – unless they wed a widow or the daughter of some knight who had no sons.
“But now the great pestilence has come a third time, there is much land available, and a habit has less appeal than when I was a youth. John was a handsome lad. Maidens, I think, found him appealing. Although,” he added, “you’d not know it now.”
“And he enjoyed the company of a lass?”
“Aye. So I believe. There is no opportunity within monastic walls to observe whether or not this is so, but he was often incautious when he spoke of fair maids.”
“Did you send word to his father at Wantage when he disappeared?”
The novice-master shook his head. “To what purpose? He was not happy with us, and he’d not be the first novice to reject a calling. We assumed he’d gone home, and that his father would send us word of where he was.”
I studied the mutilated face at our feet and it occurred to me that, had the youth lain here under this oak for four days, the crows would have done more injury to his face than I saw.
“What has caused this death?” Brother Gerleys asked. “Your man told me that you are trained as a surgeon.”
“I cannot tell.”
“The pestilence, you think? Two of our house have been struck down since Lammastide… although none since Michaelmas. We pray daily the sickness has passed. We are now but fourteen monks and twenty-two lay brothers.”
“I awaited your arrival before turning the corpse, so you might see it as we found it. I see no sign of struggle or wound, nor is there any sign that the pestilence killed him.”
“Very well, then.”
I knelt beside the body to roll it so as to expose the back. No monk stepped forward to aid me, and when Arthur saw their hesitation he did so. A moment later the cause of John Whytyng’s death was evident. So I thought.
In the middle of his back the novice had suffered several stab wounds. I counted three perforations in his habit. The novice-master saw these also.
“Stabbed,” he said softly.
I looked down upon the fallen leaves which the corpse had covered, then knelt again to examine the decaying vegetation which had lain directly under the wounds. I stirred the leaves gently, but did not find what I sought.
“What is it?” Brother Gerleys asked.
“There is no blood here. No clots of blood upon his habit, nor upon the ground. If he died here his blood would have soaked the leaves, but there is none. There has been no rain these past four days to wash blood away, and even had there been, the lad’s body would have shielded any bloodstains from the wet.”
I touched the back of the dead novice’s habit: it was damp. Indeed, the wool was nearly as wet as if he had a day or so earlier been drawn from a river. I lifted the edge of one of the cuts in the wool of his garment. The wound was also clean. Little bloodstained either flesh or habit.
“What does this mean?” Brother Gerleys said.
“He died elsewhere, I think, then was moved to this place.”
The monk looked about him, then spoke. “Why here, I wonder. He was not well hidden, and so close to the road and abbey it was sure he would be found.”
“Aye,” I agreed. “Which must mean that whoso slew him did not much care if the novice was found, so long as the corpse was not discovered in the place where the murder was done.”
“How long has he lain here, you think?”
“I cannot tell,” I shrugged. “But there is perhaps a way to discover this.”
Brother
Gerleys peered at me with a puzzled expression, so I explained my thoughts.
Abbey tenants and villeins would have butchered many pigs in the past days. I had in mind that the novice-master should obtain a severed boar’s head and set it upon the forest floor somewhere near this place. Then he could daily visit the skull and learn how long it would take crows to find and devour the flesh to the same extent as the injury they had done to the novice. Brother Gerleys nodded understanding as I explained the plan he should follow.
Two of the monks who accompanied the novice-master had carried with them a pallet. Brother Gerleys motioned to them and they set the frame beside the corpse and rolled the body onto it. This left John’s mutilated, eyeless face upraised again to the sky. When the monks saw this, one of them turned aside and retched violently into the leaves. I sympathized. The novice’s ruined countenance brought bile to my own throat.
I knelt beside the corpse again, and once more touched the black wool of the habit. The front was dry, or nearly so. Why was the back of the garment so damp? Dew would have wet the upper side of the habit, I thought.
I, Arthur, and Brother Gerleys led the way back to the road and the horses. The monks, of course, had come afoot to the place.
“Your man,” Brother Gerleys said, “told me that you were bound for Oxford when you saw the crows and found John.”
“Aye. This business has delayed us, but we will still be there by nightfall if we do not dally.”
“Abbot Thurstan asked that you call upon him. He wishes to know what befell John.”
“I cannot tell. But you may do as I suggest with a pig’s head and that may tell you how long past the novice was left in the wood.”
We paced in somber silence to the abbey. There I left Arthur to water the horses and followed Brother Gerleys to the abbot’s chamber while the other monks took John Whytyng’s corpse to rest before the church altar.
The abbot’s chamber door was open when we approached, and I could see Abbot Thurstan dictating a letter to his clerk. The aged monk saw our shadows darken his door and looked toward us. As he did so I heard the sacrist begin to ring the Passing Bell.
Abbot Thurstan is an ancient fellow. He was elected to his position when the pestilence struck down Abbot Nicholas, nearly twenty years past. It was no longer necessary for the abbot to be tonsured fortnightly: he had but a wispy fringe of hoary hairs circling his skull above his ears.
The old man swayed to his feet as Brother Gerleys announced my presence. It took some effort for the abbot to do this, and I was cognizant of the honor. An abbot need not rise from his chair when a mere bailiff calls upon him.
Abbot Thurstan looked from me to the novice-master, then spoke. “It was John?” he said.
“Aye,” Brother Gerleys replied.
The abbot crossed himself and sat heavily. “I thought as much. An able lad, with much to recommend him, yet he is taken, while the Lord Christ leaves me here.”
I thought to myself that the Lord Christ had little to do with the novice’s death, but held my tongue.
“Was it the pestilence?” the abbot continued.
Brother Gerleys looked to me.
“Nay,” I said. “The lad was struck down by a dagger in the back.”
Abbot Thurstan was silent for a time, then replied. “I would not wish for any man to die of plague. I have seen the agony in which the afflicted die. But I had hoped that the death was not the work of some other man’s hand. When plague first visited this house nearly twenty years past, I saw Brother Oswalt try to rise from his bed and flee the infirmary, thinking he could escape his torment if he could leave the abbey. I thought perhaps John, crazed by pain, might have done likewise.”
“Had the youth given sign that he was ill?” I asked.
“Nay,” Brother Gerleys said.
“The pestilence can slay a man quickly,” the abbot said, “but so will a blade.”
“I wish you success in discovering the felon,” I said.
The abbot looked from his clerk to the novice-master and then to me. “I remember,” he said, “when you discovered ’twas a brother of this house who stole Master Wyclif’s books. We have no man so skilled at sniffing out felons.”
“Has Eynsham no bailiff or constable?”
“A bailiff. But Richard is nearly as old as me. He sees little and hears less. He is competent for the mundane duties of a bailiff, but seeking a murderer will be beyond his abilities.”
I saw the direction this conversation was taking and sought to deflect its path.
“I am bound for Oxford,” I said, “and hope to arrive before nightfall. The days grow short, so I need to be on my way.”
“I am sorry to delay your travel. You have business in Oxford?”
“I intend to make a purchase there, and then return promptly to Bampton. My wife will give birth to our second child before Candlemas and I do not wish for her to be alone any longer than need be.”
“Ah, certainly. But…”
I saw in his eyes that the elderly monk’s mind was working rapidly.
“Could you not spare us a few days to sort out this calamity? Surely your purchase can wait, and there is a midwife of Eynsham who could be sent to Bampton to attend your wife till this matter is settled. I will pay the woman from abbey funds. What is it you wish to obtain in Oxford?”
“A Bible.”
“Ah, Lord Gilbert must regard your service highly.”
“He is liberal with wages to those whose service he values,” I agreed.
“As am I. In our scriptorium there are many brothers who are accomplished with pen and ink. Brother Robert and Brother Bertran are particularly skilled. The abbey has no important commissions just now. If you will set yourself to discovering the murderer among us, I will put the scriptorium to work upon a Bible. You will have it by St John’s Day, or soon thereafter.”
The youngest son of a minor Lancashire knight, as I am, learns frugality at an early age. I have become modestly prosperous, but not so that I would willingly forego the saving of thirty shillings. I stood silently before the abbot, as if considering his offer, but I knew already that I would accept.
“If I am unable to discover the murderer, what then?”
“The Lord Christ,” the abbot said, “commands only that we strive to do His will. He does not demand that we always succeed. So I ask only for your best effort. If you give the abbey that, it will suffice. You will receive your Bible.”
“Very well. But I must return to Bampton to tell my Kate of this alteration in my plans. When will you send the woman to keep my wife company ’til this matter can be resolved? And will she accept your commission?”
“Agnes is a widow, and since the pestilence few babes are born in Eynsham to provide her a livelihood. She is unlikely to refuse my offer. I will send her tomorrow.”
So it was that Arthur and I returned to Bampton that day, and I spent the evening sitting upon a bench before the hearth with my Kate, considering who might wish to slay a novice and why they would do so. I should have also considered what such a felon might do to avoid discovery.
