upstream along a path which wound through the willows. I went there seeking news of the smith’s whereabouts.
“He’ll be at t’churchyard, won’t he,” the miller answered, “buryin’ his Margaret.”
I remembered seeing a small knot of people in the churchyard as I passed it — several times. Death and burial are common enough that I did not associate this interment with the bones I had puzzled over. I decided not to wait for the smith’s return, but mounted Bruce and made my way back across the river and up the sloping High Street. I turned Bruce east into Church Lane as mourners passed out of the gate. Alard led the procession. Near its end was the old woman I sought.
I dismounted and followed the old woman to her house, leading Bruce by the halter. The house was wattle and daub, like most in the town, and showed signs of neglect, as did its owner. The thatching of the roof was thin, and chunks of daub had fallen from the walls, exposing decaying wattles. A widow’s home, I thought.
I tied Bruce to a fencepost and approached the door. It opened before I could raise my hand to knock. The woman saw me standing before her and started back so violently that I feared she would fall.
“Oh — you’ve nearly made me drop me eggs!” she exclaimed.
The woman clung to a basket. From the rear of the decaying house I heard hens clucking. They were apparently a source of income, perhaps along with turnips her only source of cash.
“Forgive me. I had no wish to frighten you. Do you remember me?”
“Aye. You asked of Margaret, the smith’s girl, a few days back.”
“I did, although I did not know her name until you told me. I would ask a few more questions about her.”
“I promised these eggs to the vicar before noon. Father Geoffrey likes his eggs fresh.” The woman’s house was but three streets from the church and vicarage.
“Will you return when your errand is done?”
“Aye, straight away.”
“I’ll wait.”
The woman kept her word. I spent the time observing the house and street. It was a duplicate of hundreds I had seen across England, and France, too, in my travels there. The streets were similar, but the stories of the people inhabiting them all different. The crone; was she a widow? Never wed? Children? Grandchildren? Had she loved and laughed once? The crinkled skin about her eyes said “yes,” but the downturned corners of her mouth revealed sorrow in her life. As I mused, the wrinkled eyes and downcast mouth rounded the corner and limped toward me.
I had not noticed her hobble as she walked away. Now she returned shuffling, nearly halting each time her left foot struck the ground. When she came closer I could see a grimace, too, when her weight shifted to her left foot. Her condition aroused my medical curiosity.
“You walk with pain,” I observed when she approached.
“Aye. Since Easter last I’ve suffered.”
“What is the cause?” I suspected the disease of the bones. She was of the age for it. It was unlikely her diet was rich enough to cause gout.
“It’s me toe. Swole up an’ red. ’At’s right, you be t’surgeon from Bampton. ’Eard of you.”
I wondered what she’d heard, but decided it could not have been too bad, as with her next breath she asked if I might examine the offending digit.
I followed her into her house, but the light there was too dim to properly diagnose either wound or injury. I carried a bench out to the sunlight, bade her sit upon it, and knelt before her to remove her shoe. I could see the swelling through the cracked, ancient leather, and heard her giggle softly behind her hand as I took her ankle to pull off the shoe. The giggle concluded with a gasp as the shoe abraded her toe.
Her pain was due to a badly infected ingrown toenail; one of the worst I’ve seen. The wonder is she could walk at all.
“Can you do aught for me?” she asked.
“Aye. But not now. I’ve no instruments with me.”
“Instruments?” She said it as a question, with a trace of alarm in her voice.
“You have an ingrown toenail. I must trim it back, and remove some putrefied flesh from about it.”
“Can’t you put somethin’ on it — a poultice, like?”
“I could, but that would serve only temporarily. The swelling might subside for a day, and the pain with it, but it would surely return. It does little good to treat pain. I must treat the cause of the pain.”
“I see; sore toes is much like other sorrows God’s children must endure.”
The old woman did not look like a philosopher, but surviving sixty or seventy years of the assorted trials common to mankind must turn all but the most shallow to contemplative thought now and again.
“I will return tomorrow to treat you. Can you find a flagon of wine?”
“You wants your pay in wine?” she said incredulously.
“No…no. I will bathe the wound in wine, to speed healing.”
“Wound,” she said limply.
“A small incision only. But I must tell you that we must do all we can to aid healing. You are not a young woman. The young heal more quickly than the old. And wounds of the extremities in the old heal even more slowly. I do not know why this is, but I have observed it so.”
“What fee, then, do you ask?”
“Some information. Is that reasonable enough?”
“Aye, if I got it.”
“If you do not, perhaps you can get it for me when I return tomorrow.”
“If I can. What you want t’know?”
“Perhaps we should go inside to talk. Here, I’ll help you stand.”
I assisted the woman to her feet. She leaned heavily on me as I helped her into the dim interior of her hut. She sat heavily on the first bench we came to. I went back for the other outside.
“The smith’s girl…Margaret. Had she other suitors than Thomas of Shilton?”
“Oh, la, she were always popular with the lads. But I don’t know as you could call all who gave her a look suitors.”
“What would you call them?”
“Pleasure seekers, maybe.”
“Were they likely to find it with Margaret?”
“Couldn’t say. Rumors ’bout town said maybe yes, maybe no. But folks didn’t gossip much ’bout Margaret ’cause they didn’t want to explain theirselves to her father, if you take my meanin’.”
“Then she was an attractive girl?”
“Oh, aye. A beauty. Could’ve had most any lad hereabouts, but she seemed set on Tom.”
“‘Seemed,’ you say?”
“Oh, she’d flirt with the lads some. You’ll not credit it now, but I were pert when I were a lass. I seen her with men a time or two, an’ I remember how it was.” Her eyes, once fixed on mine, wandered over my shoulder to the window. “A villein’s daughter has little to look forward to. So a little harmless dalliance wi’ the boys…it’s ’bout all she’s got.”
“Harmless?” I asked. “Is it always? Does dalliance sometimes lead to serious matters?”
“Aye, it does that.” She pursed her lips. “I could tell you stories…”
“Of Margaret?”
“Oh, no. I were thinkin’ of times long past, though there be folk hereabout younger’n me who’d remember well enough.”
“So Margaret’s flirting with other young men was not so serious as to lead them on, or cause Thomas to be jealous?”
“Well, I can’t say as what’d cause a lad to be jealous. Margaret was that pretty, I guess a fellow’d get anxious whenever she spoke to other lads.”
“You think Thomas of Shilton the jealous sort?” I asked.
“Can’t say. He don’t live in town, ’course. Seems a quiet lad. I probably heard him speak a time or two, but I couldn’t recognize his voice were he callin’ outside the door this moment. Not very helpful, eh? What you want to
