Lord Gilbert had assigned me my next task. That’s what nobles are best at — assigning work to others. They would say in their defense that someone must organize society. I suppose that is so.
After a midday meal I wandered back to the castle. I had no reason. I did not need to see Lord Gilbert again. I saw no path open to me whereby I might discover a killer, but I look back now and think I must have believed proximity to the place of crime might provide some fresh interpretation. It did, to my chagrin.
My presence in Bampton Castle was so regular that no one paid me any attention as I wandered the castle yard and forecourt. I studied the garderobe tower, as I had done the day I was summoned to inspect the bones, and several times since. The garderobe tower had been added to Bampton Castle as an afterthought, some years after Aymer de Valence, Lord Gilbert’s grandfather, had received permission from King Edward II to fortify his house in Bampton. So the tower stood outside the wall, attached to it. But there was no danger of an enemy battering it down to gain entry to the castle. Its only openings were those inside the tower, at each level of the castle, and the opening outside the tower, at the base, now closed with wooden planks, from which Uctred and his companions were at work when they discovered the bones.
Could one man lift those planks? If so, Margaret’s bones might have entered the cesspit there. It seemed to me unlikely that a killer would try to stuff a body through a garderobe. I walked across the muddy yard to inspect the cover more closely. It was near two paces long and as high as my waist, and little more than an inch thick. Its maker had nailed planks together against two backing boards. I bent my knees, pushed my fingers under the cover, and strained at the planks. It resisted, then broke free. With little effort I had the cover ankle-high in its vertical tracks in the tower’s foundation stones. A whiff of the cesspit below persuaded me to let it drop back to its place. One man might lift the cover and push a corpse through the opening. But more likely, it seemed to me, two would be required for the task.
This did not answer my question; it merely raised another. Did the girl’s body enter the cesspit here? Certainly more people had access to the outside of the garderobe tower than to the inside. But this also meant possible witnesses to such a deed. Would a killer risk discovery here in the castle yard?
While I pondered this new discovery, my attention was diverted. A farm cart, loaded with hay, entered the castle forecourt, proceeded with Wilfred’s blessing through the gatehouse, then made its way across the castle yard to the marshalsea.
A stableman appeared from a darkened stall and together he and the carter pitchforked the load of hay to an empty corner of the stable.
I watched this activity because I could think of nothing else to do. I did not intend to eavesdrop on their conversation as the men worked. Indeed, they said little, concentrating on their labor. But as they finished their work the stableman addressed the carter.
“You can leave t’cart right here. Unhitch t’horse an’ put ’im in yon stall. You’ve got a nice soft bed of hay there t’keep you warm tonight. An’ if you ask at t’kitchen ’round back, they’ll have a loaf an’ more for your supper.”
I approached the stableman as the carter strode off to the kitchen. “You’ll be wantin’ Bruce, then?” he asked.
“No. About the hay…Is that fellow,” I nodded toward the departing carter, “a villein of Lord Gilbert’s? I’ve not seen him before, I think.”
“Nay. He’s Sir Geoffrey Mallory’s man, from Northleech.”
“Must Lord Gilbert buy hay from Sir Geoffrey?”
“Aye, an’ oats as well. You’ll remember how’t rained so in t’spring? Hay an’ oats rotted in t’fields.”
I knew that harvests this year had been poor due to the cool, wet weather early in the season, but my occupation required of me little thought about agricultural vicissitudes. So long as I had patients who could pay my fees, I did not concern myself with crop yields. When the price of bread rose, then I gave attention to the harvest. In the past months this I had begun to do.
“Then Lord Gilbert is forced to buy fodder?”
“Aye. Well, not yet, like, but if he waits ’til winter price’ll go higher. Hill country over to Northleech drains better, so they wasn’t so bad off as us. Got enough an’ to sell.”
“So Lord Gilbert is buying now. Is this his first purchase?”
“Nay. See t’loft there?” I peered into the dim stable. The loft was filled with hay. “This’ll be fourth, fifth load.”
“All from Sir Geoffrey?”
“Nay. Got a load of oats from up north. One o’Earl Thomas Beauchamp’s tenants. Back in t’spring it was, just after Whitsuntide. Lord Gilbert saw trouble comin’, the hay bein’ so poorly an’ oats little better.”
Whitsuntide? A cartload of oats? My mind was unsettled for a moment, then I made the connection. Margaret’s lad.
“The oats; did Lord Gilbert send a man for the load?”
“Nay. A lad came with nine sacks. All his cart would carry.”
“Did you help him unload?”
“Nay. T’smith was here an’ we had horses to shoe. Lad said as how he’d take t’sacks to loft. Strong young fella. Didn’t need no help. Went right up t’ladder with ’em easy as you please.”
“You watched him unload?”
“Just the first sack…t’make sure he could manage. Farrier was workin’ on Lord Gilbert’s best dexter. He’s a mean ’un. Took me an’ Uctred to hold ’im.”
“Did the lad return to his home that night?”
“He stayed. Slept on t’straw there like this fella’ll do.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “Left next mornin’ soon as light t’see t’road.”
“I shall need Bruce tomorrow,” I told him.
There seemed too many coincidences. The bones, their location, the missing girl, the sale of nine sacks of oats, and the timing. Perhaps that was all it was: coincidence. But to learn if that was so, I must return to Burford.
I walked from the castle with a warm sun at my back. I had no urgent need to return to Galen House, so I stood on the bridge over Shill Brook and watched the wheel of Lord Gilbert’s mill turn slowly.
What if Margaret and her beau had quarreled? What if the argument had become violent? What if, in a fit of rage, the youth struck and killed her? What if he then took her body to Bampton Castle under the oat sacks? Would he not risk discovery in unloading? Would a distressed young killer think of that? Why not dispose of the body in some forest between here and Burford? There were too many questions. Tomorrow I would return to Burford and seek answers to these riddles. Some of them, anyway.
Bruce seemed eager to take me on my journey, perhaps because I always rode him at an easy pace to spare my rump the unaccustomed abrasions. Or perhaps he grew bored staring at the walls of his stall.
As Bruce shambled along the path north to Shilton and Burford, I observed the countryside more closely than I had on my first journey. Lord Gilbert’s remark about unused, vacant land was accurate. There were many oxgangs of meadow now growing back to woodland. At several places the forest was coppiced, but not so regularly as it would have been before the plague. I saw few travelers on my way, although there might have been more in the summer. Certainly there were many places where a body might be hauled from the road into a wood or overgrown meadow and never seen again, until the beasts of the forest had rendered it nothing but bones moldering in the moss and bracken.
I wanted to speak to Alard again, but before I spoke to him I hoped to find the crone with the basket of turnips who had sent me to him. There were things I wished to know about Margaret Smith that Alard might not wish to tell me. And other things he might not know, considering the possible relationship between a man and his daughter.
I rode Bruce up and down the High Street and crosslanes of Burford until folk began to peer at me with furrowed brows as I passed them for the third or fourth time.
I tried to remember what the old woman was wearing, but it was nothing unusual enough to recall. A plain brown cloak and gray wimple, which might once have been white: the habit of every woman her age in every village in England.
I gave up my search, crossed the bridge over the Windrush, and reined Bruce to a stop before the smith’s hut. I saw no smoke from his chimney. To my shout there was no response. The town mill was but fifty or so paces
