large as Bampton, so I tried the strategy I had used at Witney: grandmothers and innkeepers. The second crone stopped my search.
The old lady narrowed her eyes when I asked if anyone was missing from the town. “Who wants to know?” she asked guardedly.
“I am the surgeon from Bampton,” I announced. If I expected this news to impress her, I was disappointed. She stood, a basket of turnips pressed against a hip, and waited for more information.
“A body has been found near Bampton. It cannot be identified, and no one from the town or nearby villages is unaccounted for. I am acting as Lord Gilbert Talbot’s agent to put a name to the corpse.”
“The smith’s girl went missing in early summer. A week after Whitsuntide, it was. Folks thought she’d run off with her lad, but he come back a day later, said he’d took a cart of oats to sell for his father. Moped around for weeks, he did. Still looks like devil’s got him by the ankles last time I saw ’im.”
“What was the girl’s name?”
“Margaret.”
“How old was she?”
The old woman screwed her face in concentration. “She were born afore my John died o’plague…maybe seventeen, eighteen years old.”
“Where can I find her family?”
“Just her father, Alard. Mother died seven, eight years back. His smithy’s down by the river, just across the bridge. Lord Thomas won’t let him set up on town side ’cause o’ fire.”
I found the smith easily enough. The man stood outside his hut and cast a practiced eye at Bruce’s gait as I crossed the river and approached. He seemed surprised as I drew up before him. Evidently he had seen no flaw in Bruce’s pace which would dictate a need for his services.
“You are Alard, the smith?” I asked by way of greeting. The question was rhetorical. One look at his forearms was enough to assure me of his trade, whatever his name.
“Aye,” he replied, unmoving.
“I am told you have a missing daughter.”
His back stiffened and his eyes, once dull, flashed.
“Aye. Four months now. Who are you? Have you news of her?”
I identified myself and told the smith the reason for my visit. But I did not tell him everything. If Lord Gilbert’s skeleton was this man’s daughter, he did not need to know yet where she was found or her condition when discovered.
“Had your daughter any injuries…broken bones?” I asked.
“Nay…She were a strong lass. Wait; when she were small she’d follow me about the smithy near all day. Could hardly get my work done for tumblin’ over her. Tried to pick up my sledge once. She were but seven or eight years old. ’Twas too heavy for her. Dropped it on her foot. Swole up an’ turned black for two weeks an’ more, but she were up an’ runnin’ again in a month or so. Troubles her now and again.”
“She limps?” I asked.
“Aye, a bit, when t’weather turns.”
“She may have broken a bone in her foot,” I remarked.
“Aye…so I thought,” he shrugged.
“When did you last see your daughter?”
The smith’s shoulders slumped as he thought back to the summer. “’Twas soon after Whitsunday.”
“Had she given sign that she might run off?”
“Nay. She were quiet, though, seems to me as I think back on it. Thought at first as she’d run off with her lad, but they’d no reason to do that. Tom’s a good lad. His father has a yardland near Shilton of Lord Thomas. Tom’ll come to it, as he’s oldest.” He paused. “Margaret were my youngest…all I had left. Her brother died at Poitiers, an’ two sisters gone when plague come first time.”
“Why did you think she might have run off with her lad?”
“He were gone, too. I went to see his father when I heard t’boy were gone. Tom’d gone off with a cart of oats to sell. Came back next day an’ seemed confused as t’rest of us.”
As he spoke the smith’s demeanor drooped with his shoulders until I feared he might fall. He seemed to want to talk of the girl, yet paid a terrible price for doing so. News of his daughter’s death would collapse him even more, but I thought it better to disclose what I knew than await a recovery of his distressed spirit, only to strike him down again.
“The dead girl, found in Lord Gilbert’s castle, had suffered a broken bone in her foot,” I told him.
The smith sat heavily on a sack of coals. “Which foot were it?” he asked.
“I cannot tell. I know only that one of her feet received a blow which broke a bone.”
For all his distress, the smith retained a keen mind. He saw the meaning of my answer. “She’s but a skeleton, like, then.”
“Aye. That is so.”
“How did she die?” he whispered.
I told him of the gouged rib, but could not bring myself to tell him where she was found.
“We’ve not buried her. We thought, when we discovered who she was, her family would want to do that.”
“Aye.”
“I have her at my house, in Bampton. Galen House. Will you send someone for her, or would you have me send her with one of Lord Gilbert’s men?”
“Nay. I’ll come for her tomorrow. I can borrow a cart.”
I told the smith where to find Galen House, bid him good day until the morrow, and left him sitting grief- stricken on the sack of coals.
I made my way to Bampton Castle early next morning to report my discovery to Lord Gilbert.
“The broken foot settles the matter, I’d say,” he remarked when I told him the news. I nodded agreement.
“Now you must discover who has done this. And soon. I wish to have this matter cleared before I go to Goodrich for Christmas.”
“I know not where to begin,” I protested.
“You have begun well already. Now you need but to conclude. A job well begun is near done…so wise men say.”
“I sometimes wish wise men would keep their thoughts to themselves,” I muttered.
Lord Gilbert chuckled. “I wish to leave for Goodrich in three weeks, after St Catherine’s Day and the procession. Find the killer in our midst by then, or I must return here on winter roads to do justice when you do find the man.”
Chapter 5
Alard, good as his word, arrived with a horse and crude cart at the sixth hour next day. Together we lifted the box of his daughter’s bones to the bed of the cart. Alard could have done the work alone, but I felt it a last service I could perform for the girl. Surgery is a service for the living. I have no skills to aid the dead. Had I a wish to serve the dead, I might have taken holy orders. But what use was a priest now to Margaret, only child of Alard, the smith? To pray her out of purgatory? What priest would concern himself with a smith’s daughter? If she had not done the work to position herself for heaven, no priest or monk was likely to bother now. A wealthy father might endow a chapel where monks might pray for her soul. Alard the smith could not. So would she remain in purgatory, with no prayers to set her free? Did not our Lord himself say that it was more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye? Margaret was not rich. Would she then gain her soul’s rest more easily than Lord Gilbert? Lord Gilbert could endow a chantry for himself. Would this propel him past Margaret to the gates of heaven? I puzzled over these thoughts as Alard turned the cart and drove north past St Beornwald’s Church and out of the town.
