we were home, that’s another matter.”
“Did Mistress Shellaston quarrel with him over it? The deed or leaving so suddenly?
“Bit snippy at first but nothing untoward.”
“They didn’t outright quarrel?”
“Nay. They weren’t much for quarrelling with each other. Saved all their ire for other folk.”
Thomas fell silent, considering what he had and asking nothing more until they had reached the inn yard, and while Master Hugh saw to telling the innkeeper what was the trouble, he went aside to his own men and, first, gave Ralph order to find someone to go to whoever was the coroner for this end of the county and bring him here, and added, seeing his look at the snow-heavy sky. “No need to hurry or risk yourself about it. The weather is cold enough, they’ll keep. All I want is to know is he’s on his way.” And turned to Giles to say, “This place is big enough, there should be an herbwife somewhere. Find her for me.”
He would have preferred an apothecary, but a knowledgeable herbwife – and, please God, this one would be – would do as well; and while he waited, he would have preferred to go inside the inn and be comfortable, the way Mary was gone, bustled away on a burst of the innwife’s sympathy and curiosity, and Master Hugh whose men and Godard were seeing to the horses while Bartel and Jack were still to hand, kept by a look and gesture from Thomas while he had sent Giles and Ralph about his business, because he had meant to set them as guard on the carriage. But he had also had a hope the cold and ending day would keep people indoors but that was gone along with hope of setting Bartel and Jack to guard. They were already at the centre of a spreading cluster of folk and eagerly telling all they knew – or didn’t know, Thomas amended, hearing Bartel saying, “Aye, there they lie, dead as dead and not a mark on them and never a cry. It had to have been the Devil, look you, come for Master Shellaston because he was a hellish master, sure enough.”
By tomorrow there’d likekly be a band of demons added to the telling, dancing in the road around the carriage with shrieks and the reek of sulphur, Thomas thought and said, “The Devil maybe came for Master Shellaston, but why for his wife and son, too?”
“They were just there,” someone among the listeners said, eager to help the story along, “and so Old Nick took ‘em, too.”
“I’ve never heard it works that way,” Thomas said dryly. “That the Devil can seize innocent souls just because they happen to be nigh a sinner.”
“Well,” Bartel put in, “she was only half a step not so bad as he was. They were a pair and no mistake.”
“But the boy,” Thomas said.
“Died of fright,” Jack promptly offered.
Bartel, openly enjoying himself, added, full of scorn, “Huh. Likely the Devil decided to save time by coming only once for all of them. They were a matched lot. Young William was shaping to go the same way as his sire and dam and no mistake.”
“Here now,” Master Hugh protested, come up unnoticed from the inn with a steaming mug of something warm between his hands. “Little Will was a good lad.”
“Praying your pardon, sir.” Though it was fairly plain Bartel didn’t care if he had it or not. “You spoiled him some and got on fine with him because you never crossed him. Some of us weren’t so lucky.” As if aside but not lowering his voice, he added to Thomas, “And it set Master Shellaston’s back up to see how well along they got.”
Dragging the talk back to where he needed it to be, Thomas asked, “Today, from the carriage, are you certain there was never any outcry at all?” because he could not believe three people had died without a sound.
“Well…” Bartel said.
He and Jack cast quick, doubtful looks at each other, and more forcefully, impatient, Thomas asked, “You heard something. What?”
“We heard… I heard and Jack with me, so Mary must have, too, we heard young William give a cry,” Bartel admitted unwillingly. “Just once and it wasn’t like we hadn’t heard such other times. See, Master Shellaston had a heavy hand and was ready with it, especially when he was drinking, which was mostly.”
“She could lay one along a man’s ear, too, when she wanted, come to that,” said Jack bitterly.
“When did you hear this cry?” Thomas asked and added, to their blank looks, “Before or after you passed through here?”
“Ah,” said Bartel, understanding. “Before. Wasn’t it, Jack?”
“Aye,” Jack agreed. “Quite a while before, maybe.”
And maybe it had been and maybe it had not, or maybe they were mistook or maybe they were lying – Thomas could think of several reasons, not all guilty ones, why they might be – because the more both men were coming to enjoy this, the less confidence he had in their answers.
“By your leave, sir, she’s here,” Giles said behind him, and Thomas turned away from the men and their eager listeners to find Giles standing with a firm-built woman, neatly aproned, wimpled and cloaked, her sharply judging eyes meeting his as she curtsyed and said, “Esmayne Wayn at your service, Master Chaucer. I’m herbwife and midwife here. Your man says there’s three folk dead and you want me to see.”
More happy with her directness than with anything else he’d encountered these past two hours, Thomas said, “Mistress Wayn, thank you for coming. Yes, if you’d be so good as to look and tell me what you think about their deaths…”
Master Hugh started what might have been a protest, but a glance from Thomas made him think better of it and he subsided. Meanwhile Bartel at Thomas’s nod went to pull the carriage’s end curtain aside and tie it back, and Jack hauled out the chest and set it down for a step. “Some better light would help, too,” Thomas said to Jack because the day was drawing in toward dark, then he offered Mistress Wayn a hand up.
He felt no need to ready her for what was there. As the village healer and midwife, she had surely seen enough of death in various forms and degrees of unpleasantness for this to be no worse. Besides, the cold was doing its work; the smell was none so bad as it had been, and Mistress Wayn went forward without hesitation, making room for him to follow her as she bent first over Master Shellaston, then over his wife, apparently able to see enough for now by the light from the opened window-flaps. The further jouncing of the carriage seemed not to have moved the bodies, already jostled into settled places between when they had died and when they were found, Thomas supposed. “The child is further on,” he said quietly.
Mistress Wayn nodded but took Mistress Shellaston by the chin, moved her head slightly back and forth, then prodded at her stomach and learned close over her face, seemingly sniffing. None of that was anything Thomas would have cared to do and he heard murmurs from the watchers outside and wished the door-curtain could be closed, but Mistress Wayn, ignoring everyone and him, repeated with Master Shellaston what she had done with his wife, before she straightened as much as the low curve of the ceiling allowed her, to look to Thomas and ask, “How long have they been dead?”
“No one is certain. At least three hours at a guess. It’s been maybe two since I first saw them and the bodies were cooling by then.”
“Best I straighten them, if I may? Much longer and we’ll have to wait until they unstiffen again.”
“If it will make no difference to what we might learn about how they died…”
“You’ve noted how they’re lying and can say so if asked? And that their eyes be closed. Nobody did that, did they?”
Thomas far outranked her in life but she had a greater skill than he at this, and they both accepted the equality that gave them. So her interruption did not matter and he said simply, “I’ve noted, and no, nobody closed their eyes.”
“That’s enough then. Cleaning them can come later,” and briskly, firmly, she
