by Jason Vail
“Morning yourself, Harry,” Stephen called back.
“I’m off to work! I’ve still got a crutch you can borrow!”
“Tomorrow. I’ve got business today.”
“It’s your loss!”
Harry swung across the yard with surprising swiftness and disappeared from view around the corner of the house. Stephen sat on the window ledge for a moment, savoring the morning. Its chill made his damp skin tingle. Smoke issued from the chimney of the kitchen to the right, but fortunately the breeze carried it away to the east. When he was on campaign, he had always liked the early dawn, when no one stirred yet and everything was quiet, except for the twittering of the birds and the murmuring and muted clatter of the cooks. It was so peaceful, a good moment to gather yourself for the exertions of the day. Then in the yard behind, a woman appeared, headed toward the privy. Stephen ducked quickly back so she couldn’t see him and pulled one of the shutters closed.
He got dressed.
Before he went down to breakfast, he paused at the bundle by the door. His lance, a Moorish bow and arrow case, and shield stood there beside it. He bent and untied the bundle. Impulsively, he drew out one of his swords, removed its scabbard and held it loosely, feeling its familiar balance. He turned and executed a few thrusts and figure eight cuts from the wrist. The blade hissed in the air. Then he worked through the guards of the sword as best he could in the constricted space: the ox, the wrath, the plough, the fool, the iron gate, the tail. The sword felt good, like an extension of his arm, as if something that had been missing had been found. He checked the blade and cross for rust at the window, then returned the sword to its scabbard. He had no real use for it now. A cripple like him was not much good at fighting.
He placed the sword back in the bundle, and clumped down the stairway in search of breakfast.
Stephen collected a simple breakfast of cheese and bread from the pantry, which he put in his pack, saddled the older Spanish mare, and headed out Bell Lane to Broad Street. At the city gate down the hill, he saw Harry hard at work, alms bowl on the ground in front of him and hand aloft, beseeching a farmer on his cart who had paused to pay the toll into town. Harry did so well at looking pathetic. Although the sun was hardly a half an hour up, traffic in the street was brisk as people and carts climbed the hill to High Street. There Stephen parted company with most of it, for the corn market, which was just getting underway, lay to the left in the shadow of the castle. Stephen’s route took him to the right toward the Galdeford gate, where he passed out of town into the suburb of Galdeford.
Sir Geoff Randall’s principle manor lay about eight miles away to the east off the road to Cleobury Mortimer. Stephen considered that it should take about an hour to get there, since the Spanish mare could maintain a trot all day if necessary, and the road had dried and firmed up from the recent rains. Stephen kicked his right foot free from the stirrup and rode without them, as he now was in the habit of doing, since he could not get a grip on the left stirrup with that foot. He lay the ring holding the reins together on the high front pommel of his saddle, let the reins go, and rummaged in the saddlebag for his breakfast, which he ate slowly as he and the horse climbed up the shoulder of the Titterstone Clee hill. There was cart traffic on its way to the market here, too, but the mare easily avoided it without any need for him to direct her, other than an occasional nudge with his leg. She was such a sweet horse and always knew exactly what was wanted.
Presently traffic began to trickle off until Stephen had the road to himself. It was quiet and warm, a glorious sunny morning. Before long the warmth, the sheer pleasantness of the ride, and the feeling that in England he was relatively safe from highway robbers, unlike Spain where danger lurked behind every crag and turn in the road, his mind began to wander.
Then on an abrupt turn on the far side of the Clee he came up unexpectedly on a horsecart headed the other way. Its appearance surprised him and he veered the mare to avoid a collision, for the cart took up the center of the road. It was discourteous to hog the road so, and he almost complained about it. But he saw that one of the drivers was the woman from Ludford, Molly, and the figure beside her he had taken for a man was actually the boy who had brought word of his father’s death, handsome enough under a thatch of brown hair. They were hauling wicker baskets full of charcoal.
At the sight of him, Molly spit over the side and reined the cart to a halt.
She looked at Stephen sourly. “Been meaning to come see you,” she said. “Got something you should see.”
Stephen would rather not have stopped, but it would have been too rude to ignore the woman. He waited patiently while Molly dug behind her into a wool satchel. She retrieved a gray linen shirt, which she held out to him. “Here,” she snapped. “Take it.”
“What’s this about?” Stephen asked, mystified and a little repelled at the shirt, for it had obviously spent some time in muddy water and Molly had not bothered to clean it.
Molly waved the shirt in her hand when Stephen was slow to take it. “You said my Patrick drowned. Well, this gives it the lie.”
Curiosity now got the better of his sense of revulsion. Stephen accepted the shirt and spread it out on the horse’s withers. “How?” he asked.
“There.” Molly pointed to a spot on the front left side.
Stephen smoothed the material. At first he didn’t see what she intended. But then he spotted it: a slit about an inch long surrounded by a crusted patch of brown. The edges of the material had curled back from the slit. Stephen’s heart skipped a beat. It was exactly the sort of mark left by the passage of a blade, and the crusted material could only be one thing.
“Was there a wound?” he asked her.
Molly nodded. “Right below the heart. Same size as you see there. We found it when we cleaned him for burial.”
“Did anyone else see it?”
“Edgar here did.”
The boy nodded his brown head.
“And the parish vicar,” Molly added. “Hamo.”
“I see,” Stephen said heavily.
“You were wrong,” Molly spat bitterly. “He wasn’t drunk. He didn’t fall and drown. He was killed.”
“It would seem so.” Stephen could hardly contain his dismay. He had thought he had been so thorough and he had missed this. The mistake was inexcusable.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Stephen felt helpless. “No one saw. The jury made sure of that. Without a witness there’s nothing anyone can do.”
Molly snorted. “I thought so. You’re not interested. You’ve done your bit and now you’re through. The king’s justice. Available only to those who can afford it. Paddy may have been Irish, but he had a soul as good as anyone’s, better even than most, and he’s entitled to justice. Well, you can be damned. I hope you rot in hell — you and my Paddy’s murderer! ” She snapped the reins and clicked her tongue. The horse started forward, and the cart jolted away.
In deep distress, Stephen watched the cart disappear around a bend. Burning with a sense of failure, he folded the shirt and stuffed it in his saddlebag. Then he turned back to the way toward Sir Geoff’s house.
Chapter 4
Stephen had no trouble finding the turn off to Sir Geoffrey’s manor. The track was marked at the junction by a large spreading beech tree with a riot of cow parsley around the roots. Stephen remembered it well. He had been here just three weeks ago, when he had come to receive his commission.
He turned the mare up the track, three well worn parallel paths through the forest, two made by the wheels of carts and a center one scuffed out by the horse, and stopped. He swung his left leg over the horse’s withers and dropped to the ground. He stretched, surprised at how stiff he was from only an hour’s ride. He was getting soft. Town living did that to you.
Leading the horse, he started up the track. The forest pressed in on both sides. He felt as though he was entering a cave. It smelled damp and musty.
Within a few minutes, he e
merged into a broad open field. These fields had recently been harvested and a couple of dozen sheep grazed on the stubble. On the other side of the clearing stood the manor, surrounded by an earthen bank and wooden palisade.
Stephen went through the gate. The manor house was big, solid and impressive — three stories tall, made entirely of gray stone and capped by a blue slate roof. Everything seemed neat and tidy, but there was no one about.
He tied his mare to a post at the foot of the stairs and mounted them to the front door, a great arched oaken thing studded with iron nails half the size of his fist. He pounded on the door and after several minutes, one panel cracked open and a white faced young girl peered out at him.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked timorously.
“I’ve come to see Sir Geoffrey,” Stephen said.
“Oh. Well, he’s gone.”
“Where?” Stephen asked. He hoped Sir Geoff was just out on the grounds somewhere and would be back for dinner.
“I’m not sure, really. No one tells me anything. Left day before yesterday.”
“What about his wife?” If Stephen couldn’t speak to Sir Geoff, his wife would do just as well.
“She’s gone too.”
That would explain why the place was so quiet. The master and mistress weren’t at home and had taken most of the household servants with them leaving only a skeleton staff at the manor.
A thick-jowled man in a new red coat came up behind the girl before Stephen could say anything more. “What’s going on, Bess?”
Stephen caught the sharp whiff of wine as the man spoke.
The girl ducked back from the door out of sight. Stephen heard her say, “He’s asking after the master, sir.”
“All right,” the man said, “let me handle him.” He turned briskly to Stephen and said, “My lord has gone to Hereford for the sheriff’s court and accounting. Don’t expect to see him for another week, if we’re lucky. I’m Simon, the bailiff here. Any business of Sir Geoffrey’s you can transact with me in his absence.”
Now that Simon was closer, the whiff of wine had become a veritable cloud, and Stephen could see his eyes were bloodshot and he swayed a bit, despite the fact he had the door for support. Drunk and it was hardly the third hour of the day. Stephen wondered if Sir Geoff knew his bailiff had a habit of tapping the wine barrels this early in the morning. He wasn’t about to trust his business to a drunken bailiff. “I’ve a question only he can answer,” Stephen said shortly. “Since he’s not here to answer it, I’ll have to make do without.”
Simon looked unconcerned. “Suit yourself. Shall I tell you called?”
“That won’t be necessary. Good day.”
Stephen went down the stairs, wondering what to do now. Sir Geoff probably would go on from Hereford to Winchester for the Michaelmas reporting of the county’s accounts to the Exchequer. That meant there was a good chance he’d be gone for at least a month. Baynard might be willing to wait a month for his apprentice, but Stephen wasn’t willing to wait that long for his shillings. Well, he thought, I’m really only a part time coroner. The rest of my time is my own.
As he rode out of the gate, it occurred to him that the Bromptone manor was not that far off — just beyond Ditton Priors, which was about ten miles to the north, up the Rea valley. There was a road a mile or so back that went north around the Clee and passed through Ditton Priors. He could be there by noon. With a short break for dinner and a few questions, he could be back in Ludlow by dark. With luck, the family would spill this apprentice’s location. Breaking an apprentice contract was a serious matter, after all, and while crown officers don’t usually take an interest in such matters, the family couldn’t know why he was interested and they should cooperate with his inquiry. That would put him halfway to his quarry. The whole matter might even be concluded by the end of the week.
Smiling, he heeled the mare into her ground-eating trot. He hoped no one died an unnatural death while he was busy.
The one person who knows everyone about is the local vicar, and there’s seldom a person who is more willing to talk to strangers than a vicar, as most country people will give a cold shoulder to a stranger. Vicars, who are very busy persons, are often not at home, but Stephen got lucky. He tracked down the vicar of Ditton Priors in his garden, where he was hoeing at the weeds strangling his late season cauliflower, under the watchful eye of a woman who was sitting on an upturned bucket with a leather tankard on her knee. That cauliflower looked overly ready for harvest in Stephen’s opinion. But he had not come to chat about the state of the cauliflower, so he said nothing about it and got straight to his business, after the obligatory pleasantries. The vicar spat just like any other country person, since that was what he was, and said the Bromptones lived on the road to Middleton Priors, by the brook. You couldn’t miss it: it was the biggest house this side of the bridge. And what, pray tell kind of business did he have with the Bromptones, if you don’t mind the vicar’s asking, as the family were his parishioners.
Stephen didn’t feel like tarrying, but he did feel obliged to say something, since the vicar had been so quick and friendly with directions. “I’ve business with Peter Bromptone.”
“Ah,” the vicar nodded and took off his wool cap to mop his bald brow. “The younger son. What kind of business might that be?”
Stephen wasn’t a particularly chatty person, but there was no harm in saying, “He’s apprentice to a draper in Ludlow.”
“I’d heard that. Yes, I had.”
“And he’s run away from his master.”
“Oh, now that’s news.” The vicar frowned thoughtfully. He wiped his mouth. “Let me have some of that, Sally. I’m doing all the work and you’re getting all the drink.”
“If you’d switch places with me for a day, you’d know that was a lie,” said Sally, a substantially built woman whose feet were bare and dirty, for most country folk did without shoes in good weather to save on the leather. But she passed the tankard, and the vicar took a swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
The vicar said generously, “Would you like some, your honor?”
“That’s all right, thanks. What do you hear of him?”
The vicar opened his mouth to speak, but Sally beat him to it. “He got married. Although that seems odd. Apprentices aren’t supposed marry. Right?”
“That’s right,” Stephen said. “When did this happen?”
“Sometime last week,” Sally said, slapping her knee. “Told you so, Tim. Told you he wasn’t supposed to get married.”
The vicar looked disgruntled. Stephen thought it was from Sally’s rebuke until Sally added, “He’s just mad because he wasn’t invited to do the honors and didn’t get no wedding fee. Why, none of us was even invited to the festivities.”
“That’s because there weren’t no wedding feast,” Tim the vicar said. “The young fool eloped. Got married without permission of his parents.”
Stephen digested this information, wondering what sort of domestic stew he was about to find. He said, “Who was the bride?”
The vicar curled his brow as if in disapproval, but it was clear he was enjoying himself. “She wasn’t from around here.”
“She was a real pretty piece, I tell you,” Sally chortled, stroking imaginary long hair with her fingertips. She added in a confiding voice. “I saw her when the boy came through on the way home to present her. There was quite a row over it, Benjamin said.”
Stephen was confused. “Benjamin?”
“The Bromptones’ blacksmith,” Tim said. “He’s here often. Sweet on a girl in the village.”
“He’ll get her with child but he won’t marry her,” Sally intoned. “He ain’t the marrying kind. He’s the diddling and run away kind.”
“I’ve warned her, but she won’t listen,” Tim said sadly. “Well, it’s not a fit subject for discussion around this gentleman,” Tim went on with exaggerated dignity. “I’m sure he has better things to do.”
“Right,” Sally said. T
hen she said shrewdly, “Your honor didn’t really say what your business was with young Peter.”
“I’ve a wedding present for him,” Stephen said.
“Ha,” Sally laughed. “That’s rich.”
Stephen shrugged. But then he thought better of treating these decent people so cavalierly. “I have been asked to find him.”
“Why?” Sally and Tim said together.
“You can’t just let apprentices run away,” Stephen said. “He’s got an obligation to fulfill.”
“Right,” Tim said. “An obligation. Matter of contract,” he added knowingly.
There was a pause, as Sally and Tim pondered the majesty of the obligation of contracts, so Stephen saw an opportunity to get in an undisturbed word. “Peter might still be home, don’t you think?”
“He might,” Tim said, “though he didn’t come to church on Sunday.”
“He never came to church when he lived here,” Sally said. “Except when his parents made him. Why should that change now? But he could still be there. Benjamin didn’t say if he’d gone.”
Stephen pondered that for a moment. Then a question popped into his head. “You don’t happen to remember the girl’s name, do you?”
“Amicia,” Sally said. She drew out the name with a hiss. “That’s what I heard.”
“Thanks,” Stephen said. He turned the mare toward the road north. “Good day to you.”
“And you, sir,” Sally and the vicar said together.
The last Stephen saw of them the vicar was reaching for the tankard. Sally pushed him away with a laugh.
Wickley, the Bromptone manor, has a prosperous looking stone house with a squat, round tower attached to one corner. Unlike Sir Geoff’s house, the Bromptones’ had no embankment or palisade. Only a low stone wall marked the manor grounds off from the thatch-roofed houses of its hamlet, which straggled along the road down to the river, where a mill wheel sonorously creaked away.
