Ashes to Ashes

by Mel Starr

  “Kate will lodge in Lady Petronilla’s chamber. It has been empty since the Lord Christ took her from me, but I will see that it receives a good cleaning. ’Tis a large chamber. Plenty of room for Bessie and Sybil.”

  Lord Gilbert had considered that I might object and answered my protests before I could voice them.

  But for one matter.

  “Warfare is a perilous business,” I said. “What if I am slain in battle or captured and held for ransom? Who will care for my family? I am not wealthy. Kate would find few resources if I was taken and held for ransom.”

  This assumed that a French knight would believe that a poor surgeon’s life was worth the trouble of sparing for a trifling ransom.

  “Oh,” Lord Gilbert said, pulling at his beard. “Just so. I pay your wages, so have some thought as to your value. What say you, Hugh? What are you worth?”

  “To you, or to Kate and Bessie and Sybil?”

  “A fair question. Would one hundred pounds serve for ransom if you are taken, and ten pounds each year to Kate if, the Lord Christ forbid, you are slain? Neither is likely, mind you. ’Tis my thought that if this expedition comes to a battle, you will be far from the field, prepared with your instruments and physics to deal with wounds.”

  “What if you also are slain?” I said. “Or seized? Who then will provide for Kate?”

  “I will see an Oxford lawyer and have drawn up a document which will serve as your security in this matter. Does that satisfy you?”

  The tone of his voice told me that Lord Gilbert was becoming exasperated with my objections. I decided that I must make no further protest. If a great lord wishes a man to accompany him to France, it is best for the fellow to see the journey as an opportunity rather than an obligation and make the best of it. After all, France is not Scotland, although priests often assign travel as a penance, and for good reason.

  Sir Martyn was present for this conversation, but he took no part in it other than to turn his head from me to Lord Gilbert as we spoke in turn. Lord Gilbert’s conversation now turned to his visitor.

  “Where are you bound this day?” he asked.

  “I am to seek Sir John Trillowe, then Sir Richard Coke and Sir Ralph Lull on the morrow.”

  “How many knights and men at arms has the prince called for?” I asked.

  “Three hundred knights are bid come to France,” Sir Martyn replied. “With a thousand squires, pages, archers, and men at arms.”

  “We are to assemble at Dover on St. Thomas’s Day,” Lord Gilbert added, speaking to me, “where ships are even now being assembled to carry us to Calais.”

  “This being so,” Sir Martyn said, “I must be away to complete my task. You and the others have but to prepare and make your way to Dover. I came first to you.”

  “Stay for dinner,” Lord Gilbert said. “You can easily travel to East Hanney this afternoon to inform Sir John of Prince Edward’s command.”

  Throughout the realm other messengers were informing knights and their men of this requirement for their services. Many, perhaps most, would welcome the summons. Peace can be boring and war may be profitable – if a rich castle can be plundered or a wealthy French knight captured and held for ransom.

  Lord Gilbert invited me to stay for dinner that day at the castle. The meal was of five removes, regardless of the king’s requirement that two removes be the limit. If Edward should learn of Lord Gilbert’s violation I suspect he will permit the transgression to pass.

  The announcement of my forthcoming journey did not harm my appetite. Very little does. I stuffed myself with parsley bread and honeyed butter, fruit and salmon pie, sole in cyve, aloes of lamb, and pomme dorryse. So when I departed the castle I was well sated. Kate knows that upon occasions when I am called to the castle my return to Galen House is uncertain, so she had fed herself and our daughters rather than await my return.

  Rain had continued, so I shook my cotehardie free of as much water as possible, stamped mud from my shoes, and thereby soiled Kate’s clean floor. Here was no way to begin an account of the morning’s tidings which would likely trouble my spouse. But I thought of this too late. ’Tis impossible to unstamp a foot and replace mud upon a shoe.

  “What news, husband?” Kate said from the kitchen, then appeared in the doorway. She looked from my sodden cap to the muddied flags and frowned. My announcement did not improve her expression.

  “Lord Gilbert is called to France,” I began, “and bids me accompany him. He will have you occupy a chamber in the castle to oversee his son and the lad’s nurse.”

  “And leave Galen House? What of Bessie and Sybil?”

  “You and they will have Lady Petronilla’s chamber in the castle. It has remained empty since she died. Lord Gilbert promised to have it put right before you move to the castle. The walls of Lady Petronilla’s chamber are hung with many fine tapestries,” I added by way of persuasion.

  “When? How long ’till this is to happen?”

  “Not long. A week perhaps. We are to be in Dover to take ship for France by St. Thomas’s Day. I think Lord Gilbert will require at least to fortnight for the journey to Dover, or near so.”

  Next morn I was busy with my instruments, sharpening blades with an oiled stone I keep for the purpose, when Arthur again thumped on my door with his meaty fist.

  “Lord Gilbert says we will leave Bampton Tuesday morn,” he said. “I am assigned to help you move Kate to the castle. I’ll bring a cart an’ runcie on Monday at the ninth hour, that bein’ acceptable.”

  “The ninth hour will serve. We will make ready.”

  We did: Kate packed our largest chest with clothing for herself and our daughters, and I filled a smaller chest with my own garments, and bags of crushed hemp and lettuce seeds, and betony. I also placed a jar of St. John’s Wort ointment in the chest, for I was likely to see wounds aplenty before I returned to Bampton. My instruments chest I keep ready for use, so nothing of preparation was necessary but for the sharpening of blades.

  On Sunday, after mass, as this was to be our last meal together in Galen House for many months, Kate used her supply of eggs to prepare an egg leach for our dinner. That night, after dark, when the fowl would be roosting, I intended to send pages from the castle to collect Kate’s hens and cockerel from the coop and add them to the castle poultry, ’till those of us off to restore King Edward’s privileges could return.

  Arthur was prompt, and we soon had the cart loaded. I lifted Kate and Bessie and Sybil to the cart, watched as Arthur led the runcie down Church View Street, then turned to Galen House to affix a lock to the door. The rear door I had already barred from within.

  This was the second house on the site to bear the name of the great physician of antiquity. My first house, a gift from Lord Gilbert, had been burned to ashes by Sir Simon Trillowe, he being furious that I, a slender surgeon with an equally slender purse and a large nose, had won Kate Caxton for my bride. His father had been, at the time, Sheriff of Oxford, and he a handsome young knight who had little experience of failure or denial. When Kate chose my suit over his, he was enraged. Fortunately a new sheriff took office, a friend to Lord Gilbert, and when ’twas proven that Sir Simon had set my house ablaze, he required of the knight ten pounds to rebuild Galen House.

  Last week Sir Martyn was to call Sir John, Sir Simon’s father, to join the force summoned to aid Prince Edward in France. The son would surely accompany his father on this expedition.

  Sir Simon was no longer so handsome as he had once been. His left ear protruded from the side of his skull in a most unbecoming fashion. A brawl upon the streets of Oxford had left the fellow battered and bleeding and with an ear hanging from his head by but a wisp of flesh. I was in Oxford and nearby at the time and was summoned to stitch the dangling ear back to Sir Simon’s bruised skull. I did so, but such a repair is difficult, an ear being all gristle and nearly impenetrable by even the sharpest needle. And I had no experience at such a reconstruction.

  Sir Simon did not lose hi
s ear. My surgery was successful, mostly. But when the injured appendage healed, it extended from the side of his head. For this asymmetry he blamed me, not understanding how difficult it is to remodel an ear, nor realizing that without my effort he might now have no ear at all. Ungrateful wretch.

  To this disfigurement add his choler at losing Kate to me, and his arson is understandable, if wrongheaded.

  As I followed the cart down Church View Street to Bridge Street I resolved that for the next few months I would avoid turning my back to Sir Simon Trillowe. As it happened, ’twas Sir Simon who should not have turned his back to another.