Deeds of Darkness Read online

  Deeds of Darkness

  The chronicles of Hugh de Singleton, surgeon

  The Unquiet Bones

  A Corpse at St Andrew’s Chapel

  A Trail of Ink

  Unhallowed Ground

  The Tainted Coin

  Rest Not in Peace

  The Abbot’s Agreement

  Ashes to Ashes

  Lucifer’s Harvest

  Deeds of Darkness

  Text copyright © 2017 Mel Starr

  This edition copyright © 2017 Lion Hudson

  The right of Mel Starr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Lion Fiction

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson IP Ltd

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/fiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 245 9

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 246 6

  First edition 2017

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  For Charis, Meleah, and Elijah

  “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful deeds of Darkness,

  but expose them.”

  Ephesians 5:11

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

  Map of Bampton to Oxford

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Afterword

  Prince Edward's Warrant

  Author photo

  Acknowledgments

  Several years ago, when Dan Runyon, Professor of English at Spring Arbor University, learned that I had written an as yet unpublished medieval mystery, he invited me to speak to his fiction-writing class about the trials of a rookie writer seeking a publisher. He sent sample chapters of Master Hugh’s first chronicle, The Unquiet Bones, to his friend Tony Collins. Thanks, Dan.

  Thanks to Tony Collins and all those at Lion Hudson who saw Master Hugh’s potential.

  Dr. John Blair, of Queen’s College, Oxford, has written several papers about Bampton history. These have been invaluable in creating an accurate time and place for Master Hugh. Tony and Lis Page have also been a great source of information about Bampton. I owe them much. Sadly, Tony died of cancer in March 2015. He is greatly missed.

  Ms. Malgorzata Deron, of Poznan, Poland, offered to update and maintain my website. She has done an excellent job, managing to find time in addition to her duties as Professor of Linguistics. To see her work, visit www.melstarr.net.

  Glossary

  Ague: term used in the medieval period for any illness marked by sweating, fever, and recurring chills.

  Ambler: an easy-riding horse, because it moved both right legs together, then both left legs.

  Bailiff: a lord’s chief manorial representative. He oversaw all operations, collected rents and fines, and enforced labor service. Not a popular fellow.

  Balloc broth: a spiced broth, used most often in preparation of pike or eels.

  Blancmange: literally, “white food.” A mixture of rice, almonds, lard, salt, and perhaps sugar and ginger, cooked to softness and ground to a smooth paste.

  Braes: medieval underpants.

  Bruit: a sauce of white wine, breadcrumbs, onions, and spices.

  Burgher: a merchant of a town – a burgh.

  Candlemas: February 2. Marked the purification of Mary. Women traditionally paraded to the village church carrying lighted candles. Tillage of fields resumed this day.

  Capon: a castrated male chicken.

  Chamberlain: the keeper of a lord’s chamber, wardrobe, and personal items.

  Chauces: tight-fitting trousers, often particolored, having different colors for each leg.

  Chrisom: a white cloth placed on an infant at baptism as a symbol of innocence.

  Churching: four to six weeks after childbirth a mother processed to the church with other women, carrying a lighted candle. She met the priest at the church door, was sprinkled with holy water, then was led into the church for mass. Thus a ritual purification after childbirth.

  Compline: the seventh and last of the monastic canonical hours, observed at sunset.

  Copperas: iron sulfate.

  Cordwainer: a dealer in leather and leather goods imported from Cordova, Spain.

  Corn: a kernel of any grain. Maize – American corn – was unknown in Europe at the time.

  Cotehardie: the primary medieval outer garment. Women’s were floor-length, men’s ranged from the thigh- to ankle- length.

  Cotter: a poor villager, usually holding five acres or less. He had to labor for wealthier villagers to make ends meet.

  Cresset: a bowl of oil with a floating wick used for lighting.

  Daub: a clay and plaster mix, reinforced with straw and horsehair, used to plaster the exterior of a house.

  Demesne: land directly exploited by a lord, and worked by his villeins, as opposed to land a lord might rent to tenants.

  Dexter: the right hand or right direction.

  Dibble stick: a stick used to penetrate soil in planting peas and beans.

  Dredge: mixed grains planted together in a field – often barley and oats.

  Easter Sepulcher: a niche in the wall of a church or chapel where the host and a cross were placed on Good Friday and removed on Easter Sunday morning. Often closed with a velvet curtain.

  Egg leach: a thickened custard, enriched with almonds, spices, and flour.

  Farthing: a small coin worth one-fourth of a penny.

  Fast day: Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Not the fasting of modern usage, when no food is consumed, but days upon which no meat, eggs, or animal products were consumed. Fish was on the menu for those who could afford it.

  Fee (knight’s): a death duty, or inheritance tax. Magna Carta specified 100 shillings for a knight to possess a deceased father’s lands. Also referred to the number of men at arms a knight was to provide in time of war.

  Gathering: eight leaves of parchment, made by folding a prepared hide three times.

  Gentleman: a nobleman. The term had nothing to do with character or behavior.

  God’s sib: a woman who attended another woman while she was in labor, from which comes the word “gossip.”

  Goliard: a student who preferred wine, women, and song – and often crime – to study.

  Groat: a coin worth four pence.

  Groom: a lower-rank servant to a lord. Often a youth, occasionally assistant to a valet, and ranking above a page.

  Haberdasher: a merchant who sold household and personal items such as pins, buckles, hats, and purses.


  Hallmote: the manorial court. Royal courts judged tenants accused of murder or felony. Otherwise manor courts had jurisdiction over legal matters concerning villagers. Villeins accused of homicide might also be tried in a manor court.

  Hamsoken: breaking and entering.

  Hippocras: spiced wine. Sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg were often in the mix. Usually served at the end of a meal.

  Hocktide: the Sunday after Easter. A time of paying rents and taxes, therefore getting out of hock.

  Hosteller: also called the guest master. The monastic official in charge of providing for abbey guests.

  King’s Eyre: a royal circuit court, generally presided over by a traveling judge.

  Kirtle: the basic medieval undershirt.

  Kyrtyn: a spiced cream sauce of flour, ginger, cinnamon, and saffron beaten into cream and boiled, then poured over fish or chicken.

  Leach Lombard: a dish of ground pork, eggs, raisins, currants, and dates, with spices added. The mixture was boiled in a sack until set, then sliced for serving.

  Liripipe: a fashionably long tail attached to a man’s cap and worn wrapped about the head.

  Lych gate: a roofed gate to a churchyard under which the deceased rested during the initial part of a burial service.

  Manchets: bread made from wheat flour, salt, sugar, and yeast and generally baked into balls.

  Marshalsea: the stables and associated accoutrements.

  Martinmas: November 11. The traditional date to slaughter animals for winter food.

  Maslin: bread made from a mixture of grains, commonly wheat and rye or barley and rye.

  Michaelmas Term: the academic term from September to Christmas.

  Midsummer’s day: June 24.

  Noble: the first English gold coin produced in quantity, in 1344. Its value was six shillings and eight pence, or eighty pence – one-third of a pound.

  Novice: a probationary member of a monastic community. The novice’s period of instruction and testing usually lasted for one year.

  Page: a young male servant, often a youth learning the arts of chivalry before becoming a squire.

  Palfrey: a riding horse with a comfortable gait.

  Particolored: of differing colors – often used to describe chauces when each leg is of a different color.

  Pork in egurdouce: pork served with a syrup made of ground almonds, currants, dates, wine vinegar, sugar or honey, and spices.

  Pottage of whelks: whelks boiled and served in a stock of almond milk, breadcrumbs, and spices.

  Reeve: the most important manorial official, although he did not outrank the bailiff. Elected by tenants from among themselves, often the best husbandman. He was responsible for fields, buildings, and enforcing labor service.

  Remove: a dinner course.

  Rogation Sunday: five weeks after Easter. A time of asking God to bless the new growing season, accompanied by a parade around the village. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after Rogation Sunday were called “gang days.”

  Runcie: a common horse of a lower grade than a palfrey, often used as a cart horse.

  Sacrist: the monastic official responsible for the upkeep of the church and vestments and also timekeeping.

  St. Beornwald’s Church: today the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Bampton, in the fourteenth century it was dedicated to an obscure Saxon saint enshrined in the church. Church scenes in the Downton Abbey TV series were filmed there.

  St. John’s Day: June 24.

  Shilling: equivalent to twelve pence. Twenty shillings equaled one pound, although in the fourteenth century there were no one shilling or one pound coins.

  Sinister: the left hand or left direction.

  Solar: a small private room, more easily heated than the great hall, where lords often preferred to spend time, especially in winter.

  Stationer: a merchant who sold parchment, vellum, ink, and books.

  Statute of Laborers: following the first attack of plague in 1348–49, laborers realized that because so many workers had died their labor was in short supply and so demanded higher wages. In 1351 parliament set wages at the 1347 level. Like most attempts to legislate against the law of supply and demand the statute was generally a failure.

  Stewed herrings: herring stuffed with a mixture of breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, black pepper, currants, sugar, and onion, all chopped fine, then boiled.

  Stockfish: the cheapest salted fish, usually cod or haddock.

  Stone: fourteen pounds.

  Tenant: a free peasant who rented land from his lord. He could pay his rent in labor or, more likely by the fourteenth century, in cash.

  Toft: land surrounding a house. In the medieval period often used for growing vegetables.

  Trephine: a surgical tool used in trepanning – the removal of a circle of bone from the skull. Usually done to relieve headaches, it sometimes succeeded.

  Trinity Term: the third term of the academic year, from mid-April to the end of June.

  Tun: a large cask, especially for wine, holding up to 250 gallons. A ship’s “tunnage” did not refer to the weight it could carry but to the number of tuns which could be loaded.

  Villein: a non-free peasant. He could not leave his land or service to his lord, or sell animals without permission. But if he could escape his manor for a year and a day he would be free.

  Void: dessert – often sugared fruits and wine.

  Wattles: interlaced sticks used as a foundation and support for daub in plastering a wall.

  Week-work: the two or three days of work per week (more during harvest) owed by a villein to his lord.

  Weld: a plant from which yellow dye was made.

  Winchester geese: prostitutes licensed and taxed by the Bishop of Winchester to ply their trade in his enclave of Southwark.

  Woad: a plant whose leaves produced a blue dye.

  Yardland: thirty acres. Also called a virgate. In northern England often called an oxgang.

  Bampton to Oxford; fourteenth century

  Chapter 1

  Plague has made travel somewhat safer. Many folk have died of the great pestilence in the past twenty-some years, so that those who yet live can find employment where they will and have no need to rob other men upon the roads and risk a hempen noose. Safer, aye, but not always safe. There will ever be those who prefer to live by the sweat of another man’s brow. Hubert Shillside, Bampton’s haberdasher and coroner, learned too late that this was so.

  ’Twas Good Friday, the fourth day of April, in the year of our Lord 1371, that I learned of Shillside’s unwanted discovery. I attended the Church of St. Beornwald alone that day, to see and honor the host as it was placed into the Easter Sepulcher. My Kate had given birth two weeks earlier to our son, whom we named John, in honor of the scholar John Wycliffe, who had been my master at Balliol College twelve years past. So Kate remained at Galen House, with Bessie and the babe, until the time for her churching, and I kept house, boiled pottage for our dinners, bought bread from the baker and ale from his wife, and waited impatiently for her confinement to be past.

  I cannot enter the church porch but that my eyes stray to the turf near the west end of the churchyard, where Kate saw our infant daughter, Sybil, placed in her small grave eight months past, whilst I was away in France, bid to accompany my employer, Lord Gilbert Talbot, at the siege and recapture of Limoges.

  Perhaps one day I will enter the church porch and not remember the child. I pray not. She has gone before her mother and me, escaping early from the land of death and exchanging it for the land of eternal life.

  Father Simon dismissed the congregation after the velvet curtain was drawn across the opening to the Easter Sepulcher. With other Bampton residents – all of us somber, as the remembrance of the Lord Christ’s sacrifice to free men from the penalty of their sins came fresh to mind – I departed
the church and stepped from the porch into a cold, misty rain. ’Twas appropriate to the day. Good Friday should not be warm and cloudless. Sunshine should be reserved for Easter Sunday.

  Halfway from the porch to the lych gate I felt a tug upon my sleeve and heard my name called. ’Twas Will Shillside who accosted me.

  “My father has not returned from Oxford,” he said. I had not known he had traveled there.

  “He went there on business?” I asked.

  “Aye. Departed on Tuesday. Was to return to Bampton last eve. Thought perhaps he’d become weary, carryin’ a sack full of goods, an’ sought lodging for the night, mayhap at the abbey in Eynsham.”

  “If he did so,” I replied, “he would surely have returned by now.”

  “Aye. That’s why I’m troubled.”

  Will Shillside was a youth of twenty or so years, his beard in the process of changing from gossamer threads to bristles, and his form filling out from his youthful appearance of knees and feet, hands and elbows, threaded together by scrawny arms and legs. Last June he had wed Alice atte Bridge, and it was become clear that Hubert Shillside would be a grandfather before this summer passed. Depending upon what may have befallen him upon the road to or from Oxford.

  “What business had he in Oxford?” I asked.

  “He travels there for the goods he sells here. I told him I would go, but he insisted that I am unskilled in business matters and would be gulled by the men of Oxford who supply the stuff we sell.”

  “Pins and buttons and buckles and such,” I said.

  “Aye. And ribbons and spools of linen and silken thread, this trip.”

  “Oh, aye. I did mention to your father some weeks past that my supply of silken thread is near depleted.”

  Silken thread is of value to me in my service as surgeon to the folk of Bampton and nearby places. I trained for one year in Paris, returned to Oxford, and found employment as both surgeon and bailiff to Lord Gilbert Talbot, lord of the manor of Bampton and its castle. When folk lacerate themselves at their work, or drop stones or beams or axes upon their toes, silken thread is useful to stitch them back together again.

  But it was as bailiff that Will Shillside sought me to report his father missing upon the road to Oxford. ’Tis a bailiff’s duty to see to the welfare of those of his bailiwick. ’Tis a great misfortune, for those of us who do so, that many bailiffs do not.