Deeds of Darkness Read online

  It was too late to set out that day for Oxford. If Shillside had stumbled under his load and fallen into a ditch it would soon be too dark to see his prostrate form. And if he had toppled and struck his head against a rock and was insensible, he would not hear and respond if we called to him. I told Will that he should come to the castle at dawn. I would gather a few of Lord Gilbert’s grooms and instruct the marshal to have palfreys ready. Beasts would speed the search, and several pairs of eyes and ears would be better than two.

  Saturday morn dawned clear but cold. I consumed a maslin loaf to break my fast, and a cup of ale, and told my Kate that, depending upon the success or failure of the search, I might return to Galen House yet this day, or on the morrow, or perhaps not. She nodded and kissed me farewell, being well accustomed to a bailiff’s tangled schedule. I left her with some guilt vexing me. I had a duty to her, but also to Lord Gilbert Talbot and the folk of his manor at Bampton.

  I wrapped my fur coat about me and set off down Church View Street for Bampton Castle. Will Shillside, his face drawn with worry, stood before the gatehouse awaiting me. I came in hope that his father might have arrived home in the night, but one glance at the dark circles under Will’s eyes told me this was not so.

  Arthur and Uctred, grooms in Lord Gilbert’s service, had proven useful companions before when my service as Lord Gilbert’s bailiff required assistance. So I had told them to be ready with palfreys saddled as soon as daylight would make a search possible.

  Lord Gilbert was not in residence at Bampton Castle. He had spent most of the winter at Goodrich Castle, as was his custom. Without the master in residence, life for a groom of Bampton Castle was tedious. A search for a missing haberdasher would enliven dull days.

  Several ways lead from Bampton to Oxford. It would take many days to search them all, but Will assured me his father always traveled by way of Eynsham, crossing the river at Swinford. We four did likewise, calling out Shillside’s name every hundred paces or so, and keeping eyes upon the verge. We got no response to our shouts, nor saw any sign of a man lying ill or injured near the road.

  We passed Osney Abbey and entered Oxford across Bookbinder’s Bridge. I asked Will where his father was accustomed to do business in Oxford.

  “Martyn Hendy is our usual supplier. Shop is on Fish Street.”

  We went there. Arthur and Uctred remained with the beasts whilst Will and I sought the proprietor. Hendy is a moon-faced fellow, with an equally circular belly. His business prospers, I think. He remembered Will from past visits, when he had accompanied his father. His greeting brought us no joy.

  “Ah, Will… is your father well? He has sent you to do his business rather than attend himself, I see.”

  “Has my father not called here a few days past?” Will asked.

  “Your father? Here, in Oxford? Nay, I’ve not seen ’im.”

  Will looked to me with alarm writ across his face. Hendy saw, and spoke.

  “Perhaps he has taken his custom elsewhere. Although he’d not get a fairer price than from me.”

  “Father did not speak of taking his business to another,” Will said, “but perhaps he did so.”

  “Why do you ask this?” Hendy asked.

  “Hubert Shillside was to return to Bampton Thursday,” I said. “He did not, so I and two others have come with Will seeking him. Where might he have sought supplies if he did not do so here?”

  Hendy directed us to three other Oxford merchants who dealt in buttons and buckles and pins and thread and such stuff. We received from these burghers the same answers we had from Hendy. Hubert Shillside had not visited the proprietors. There were no other establishments in Oxford dealing with the kind of goods Shillside wished to purchase. Something had apparently happened to the man while he walked to Oxford four days past. What that might be did not bear thinking about. But bailiffs are employed to consider such things. I must soon earn my wages.

  Four men might search for another between Bampton and Oxford for a fortnight and not find him. If Shillside had met with felons who demanded his purse and then slew him, his corpse might be hid in some wood or dumped in the Thames if he was attacked near the river. We might never find the man. I did not say this to Will, but I did study the river as we recrossed Bookbinder’s Bridge.

  We had passed Osney Abbey when Will said what we all were thinking.

  “He’s slain, I fear. Some men have seized him and slain him for his purse.”

  “How much coin did he travel with?” I asked.

  “Father usually purchased ten or so shillings’ worth of goods. He said to buy less meant walking to Oxford more often.”

  “Did he speak to others of his journey? That he would set out for Oxford Tuesday morn?”

  “Don’t know. Might’ve, I suppose.”

  We splashed across the Thames at Swinford and a short time later approached the gates of Eynsham Abbey. The days were growing longer. If we pressed our beasts we might reach Bampton by nightfall, but this would be cruel to animals which had already borne us more than twenty miles this day. And I thought the abbot might assist me if he learned of my search for a missing man and his missing shillings.

  Abbot Gerleys owes his position, to some extent, to me. A few years past, whilst I sought the felon who had slain a novice of the abbey, I discovered a heresy among a few of the monks. The leader of this heretical sect was the prior, Philip Thorpe, and but for my learning of his heresy he would likely have become the next abbot of the house. But Philip was persuaded to transfer to Dunfermline Abbey in Scotland, where winter lasts ’til May and each frigid morning will remind him of his sin, and Brother Gerleys became abbot upon the death of the elderly Abbot Thurstan.

  The abbey hosteller recognized me, sent for two lay brothers to care for our beasts, and led us to the guest house with a promise of loaves, cheese, and ale soon to arrive. I told the monk I sought conversation with Abbot Gerleys, and soon after our meal arrived the abbot did too.

  This was an honor I did not expect. When a man wishes to speak to an abbot it is he who must, if granted permission, call upon the abbot. Will and Arthur and Uctred were suitably impressed that a man whose presence was required when King Edward called a parliament would deign to seek his humble visitors.

  Abbot Gerleys requested more ale be brought, and seated himself across the table from me. When I had last seen him he was a spare, slender, almost emaciated monk. His post evidently suited him, for his cheeks were now rounded and his habit offered a slight bulge where it once had draped flat across his stomach.

  “How may I assist Lord Gilbert’s bailiff?” he said.

  I told the abbot of our journey to Oxford and the reason for it. He listened silently, intent, his brow furrowed and lips drawn thin.

  “We four,” I concluded, “will continue the search for Will’s father on Monday, when we return to Bampton. But I have small hope of success. ’Tis a busy season, I know, but if you could assign some lay brothers to leave the abbey and search other roads and byways nearby I would be much obliged to you.”

  “It will be done,” Abbot Gerleys replied, “and not only for your need. There is much amiss hereabouts. Word has come to me that men have made hamsoken on householders in villages nearby. Two of these attacks happened in abbey manors. A man was beaten nearly to death in Appleton when he objected to having his oxen taken, and a man from Wytham has gone missing.”

  “Was he upon the roads – a traveler?” I asked.

  “Aye. Not fleeing a harridan wife, so I’m told, but taking sacks of barley to Abingdon a fortnight past. Man, horse, cart, and barley have disappeared.”

  This was not good to learn. Nothing of the sort had happened near Bampton, at least not that I had heard – and bailiffs are expected to hear of such things – but if theft and murder are but ten or so miles away ’tis likely the affliction will spread, as contagion surely passes from the ill to the
healthy. Why is it, I wonder, that good health does not spread from the vigorous to the sickly, but only the other way round?

  I would have preferred to celebrate the feast of the resurrection in Bampton, at the Church of St. Beornwald, even if my Kate could not accompany me, but duty and desire are oft in conflict. I and my companions heard Easter Mass at the abbey church, rested our beasts and, after a dinner of roasted capon and loaves with honeyed butter, wandered the roads about Eynsham searching for Hubert Shillside. I did not expect to find him in a place with so many folk abroad, who would already have discovered a man injured or dead near to a road, and did not. But Will could not remain idle in the abbey guest house whilst his father might be somewhere near and in distress. So we poked into hedges and climbed over walls and prowled forests with no result but for a sting from young nettles growing alongside the stone wall enclosing an abbey field.

  We broke our fast next morning with loaves fresh from the abbey oven and cups of excellent ale. I saw Abbot Gerleys speaking to a band of lay brothers while others brought our mounts to us, gesturing to north and south, east and west as he spoke. “Here are the men who will seek your father,” I said to Will.

  The lad had not slept well. His pallor and bloodshot eyes gave him the appearance of a man twice, nay, three times his age.

  The abbot concluded his instructions and sent the searchers off, two by two. I thanked him for this aid, bidding him send word to Bampton if his monks found any clue to Hubert Shillside’s disappearance, then prodded my palfrey through the abbey gate.

  Men, women, even children were busy in the fields this day. Some strips had not yet been plowed for spring crops, so teams of oxen and horses were at work turning the soil. In another field several women were at work with dibble sticks, planting peas and beans.

  Other fields were being sown to oats or barley or perhaps dredge, and small boys found employment slinging stones and clods at birds who would consume the seed before harrows could cover it with soil.

  Several places along the road I stopped and called to laborers, asking them to keep watch for any traveler they might find along the way who had been injured or assaulted. Always these folk readily agreed, tugging a forelock in appreciation of my status as told them by my fur coat. This garment had been of value two days past, but was now too warm. The spring sun warmed our travel, if not our hearts.

  We reached Bampton shortly after noon, having seen no sign of Hubert Shillside nor speaking to any folk who had.

  Wednesday, about the sixth hour, two of Abbot Gerleys’ lay brothers rapped upon the door of Galen House. A corpse was found, they said, stripped of clothing and shoes, in a wood between Eynsham and Farmoor. The body rested now before the altar of the abbey church, and Abbot Gerleys desired me to attend him forthwith to identify the man, for the corpse was putrid and beginning to stink, which interfered with the monks’ observance of canonical hours. I thought the dead man must be Hubert Shillside, struck down by robbers. Not so.

  Chapter 2

  The corpse lay upon a catafalque, covered with a black linen shroud which the abbey must keep for just such a purpose. Abbot Gerleys drew back the shroud from the dead man’s head and I knew before the face was uncovered that ’twas not Hubert Shillside whose corpse lay here. Shillside was bald, or nearly so, with a rim of brown hair laced with silver about his ears. The man whose form now lay in the abbey church had a thick shock of yellow hair.

  I had not told Will Shillside of the abbey corpse, unwilling to have the lad look on his father’s decomposing body. I could identify the man and return him to Bampton to rest in the village churchyard without requiring Will’s involvement in the identification. So I had brought with me to Eynsham only Arthur, who rode upon a cart drawn by a runcie whilst I rode a castle palfrey. A cart would be needed, I had thought, to return Hubert Shillside’s corpse to his son.

  “Is this the man?” Abbot Gerleys asked.

  “Nay. Did you say a man has gone missing from Wytham?”

  “Aye. Wytham is less than a mile from the wood where this fellow was found.”

  “One of your lay brothers found this man?”

  “Nay. They have been seeking your missing man along the roads and venturing into woods and fields along the highways, but ’twas an abbey verderer who found this fellow. He was deep in Wytham Wood, marking oaks suitable for the beams needed when we build our new barn, when he discovered the corpse.”

  “Not near the road to Abingdon?”

  “Nearly a mile from that way.”

  When I did not immediately reply Abbot Gerleys continued. “What are you thinking?”

  “That to carry a man you have just slain for a mile through a greenwood is a thing most felons would find objectionable.”

  “Why so?”

  “You have taken all he possesses, even his clothes, it seems, and if no witnesses saw the crime you will not be identified. Why would you then care if the corpse be found? Why go to the trouble of disposing of your victim in the middle of a wood? It seems to me the felons, if they attacked a man upon the road and slew him, would be content to drag him into the undergrowth and there scatter some of last year’s fallen leaves over him ’til worms and carrion crows have done their work and the remains are no more than a pile of bones.”

  “Still, this may be the man missing from Wytham.”

  “Aye, it may be so. But I think the fellow was not a traveler upon the roads but caught in the woods at some business, and slain there, where he was found. How did the man die? Is there a wound?”

  “There is,” the abbot said, and drew the shroud down to the dead man’s belly, swollen with decomposition.

  I saw a wound just under the heart where the fellow had been stabbed. The cut was large, made by a sword, or perhaps a large dagger twisted when the thrust entered the man’s body. Here was no accidental stroke made by a thief as his victim gave up his property. This puncture was deliberate, accurate. Its intent was to kill, not to maim. If the same men who slew this fellow accosted Hubert Shillside along the road, he was likely dealt with in a similar fashion. I said this to Abbot Gerleys.

  “Men?” he said. “You believe that more than one man is responsible for this death?”

  “Would one man drag his victim so far from a road, and so deep into a wood, if that is what happened?”

  “They would not,” he agreed. “Perhaps even more than two men did this murder. If the man was not slain where he was found.”

  “And you said men have made hamsoken on homes hereabouts?”

  “Aye. Often upon a Sunday, when folk are at mass. They return from the church to find their homes plundered. You suppose the same felons who did this murder are those who are looting houses?”

  “Did these robberies begin recently?” I asked.

  “Aye, they did. About the time the man from Wytham went missing, or perhaps a fortnight earlier.”

  Abbot Gerleys said he would immediately send lay brothers to Wytham, there to seek the wife of the man missing from the place, and bring her to Eynsham. She could tell us if ’twas her husband whose corpse rested before the altar. I could see the abbot dearly wished the dead man out of his church. But he also promised Hubert Shillside would not be forgotten. The brothers would continue to prowl roads and fields and forest in search of him. Seeking his corpse, that is, for I felt sure nothing more remained of my friend.

  Arthur and I returned to Bampton before dark. Kate greeted me with a kiss, the babe upon her hip and Bessie at her side. I was much pleased to see all three. “Was it Hubert, then, found dead in the wood?” she asked.

  “Nay. Some other. Probably a prosperous tenant of Wytham who disappeared whilst taking sacks of barley to Abingdon.”

  “Probably?”

  “Abbot Gerleys has sent for the man’s wife, to identify the corpse. But the dead man was not Shillside, so whatever happened to him is not of my baili
wick.”

  So I thought.

  Will Shillside came to me Saturday morning to ask if any news had arrived from the abbey. None had but for the corpse which was not his father, and I had related that news to him on Thursday morn. Each day since, he said, he had walked roads and lanes to the east of Bampton seeking his father. With no success. I felt guilty that I also had failed to discover his father, so, after partaking of a maslin loaf and ale, I joined him in his continuing search that day.

  He had already traveled the road to Yelford and Hardwick, but had resolved to search that way again. This was the route we four had followed to Eynsham and Oxford when the search for Shillside began, so ’twould be the third time the route had been examined. I thought this a waste of time, believing that the surest hope of finding the missing haberdasher would be through the efforts of the brothers of Eynsham Abbey. But Will is young, and the young are oft impatient. He no longer hoped to find his father alive, I’m sure; to find him and see that he was interred in hallowed ground was now his purpose.

  The day had dawned clear, with a warm sun to drive away our low spirits. But before we reached Yelford low clouds swept in from the north and so we plodded on toward Hardwick with soul and eyes both downcast. We searched silently. There was no point in calling Shillside’s name. If he had lain somewhere along the verge for more than a week he would be in no condition to answer. When we saw folk at work in roadside fields we stopped to seek knowledge of them. Some of these we had questioned on our return from Oxford a week past. They knew nothing then and knew nothing now.

  I was ready to quit the search at Hardwick and return to Bampton, but Will prevailed on me to walk just a little way farther. To the bridge over Windrush stream, he pleaded. I agreed.

  As we approached the bridge, half a mile beyond Hardwick, I saw two black-clad figures approaching from the east. Will and I met the fellows at the bridge. They were Eynsham brothers sent this way by Abbot Gerleys, seeking but not finding.