“What was this quarrel about — do you know?”
“Another man,” Edith replied.
“How did you learn of this?” I asked.
“It was me friend, Muriel. Her husband’s a wool merchant, you know.” I didn’t, but I remembered hearing of the wool merchant’s daughter. “She was at the river, comin’ back from t’mill. Margaret an’ her Tom had spoke to her when she walked by the smithy. Reckon her pa wasn’t there, ’cause when Muriel got ’cross the bridge she heard ’em yellin’ at each other.”
“Did she hear what was said?”
“Muriel’s hearin’ ain’t good. She’s of an age for that.” The same age as Edith, I guessed.
“She did hear Tom say as to how she was bein’ a fool. He said, ‘He’s a gentleman. He’ll not take up with the likes of you.’”
“Some screechin’ from Margaret next, but nothin’ she could make out. Not for want of tryin’, I’d guess.” Edith grinned and put a finger beside her nose. “Muriel likes a good story.”
“Then why did she not tell you of this before?”
“Well…” Here Edith looked away for a moment. “I don’t get to see her much any more.”
I waited. I thought the woman too needy for conversation not to tell me more.
“Her man don’t like it. Wants to buy me eggs an’ cabbages himself. I can get more from others than from him. He’s tried to put the guild on me.”
“The grocers’ guild? He’s a wool merchant.”
“That kind stick together. They don’t like folks as horn into their business. Even widows with but four eggs a day to sell.”
“Would Muriel speak to me about this?”
“Oh, aye. You’ll not get her to stop. So long as Theobald, that’s her husband, ain’t about.”
“He’s a hard man?” I guessed.
“Flint. An’ a miser, as well.”
“Where is Muriel likely to be at this hour?”
“At home. Where she should be, anyway. House behind the shop. Her man’ll be countin’ his pennies at his business.”
“Where is that?”
“On t’High Street. First merchant you’ll see past Church Lane.”
I thanked Edith for her discovery and led Bruce back to the High Street. I found the merchant, as Edith predicted, in his shop attending his accounts. I knew no way to assure myself that he was there than to enter and feign interest in a purchase. After a reasonable time spent fingering his wool, I headed south on the High Street, then led Bruce east, around behind the block of timbered, thatched shops.
The merchant’s daughter answered the door. I understood then the miller’s conclusion. She was a plain girl, who had enjoyed a few too many of the offerings of her mother’s kitchen. She was not ugly, but she would attract little attention if standing near a beauty — which all assured me that Margaret, the smith’s daughter, was.
The girl’s mother peered at me over her daughter’s shoulder, and invited me in when I mentioned Edith. Muriel asked about the surgery, and nodded approval when I announced likely success. I think she would have listened to a complete retelling of the procedure had I not diverted the flow of her conversation.
I will spare you the particulars. She confirmed what she had told Edith, but had no more for me. It was clear from her glistening eyes and enthusiastic delivery that she wished she had. The daughter sat silent during the conversation; as quiet as her mother was voluble. I remember wondering at the time if she would remain so as the years passed, or if there was some curious work of nature that loosened a woman’s tongue about the time of the birth of her second child. I decided not, as I have known talkative women not yet wed, and a few — a few, mind you — silent to old age.
I managed to escape the wool merchant’s wife before the sun was over the church spire. I had two more visits to make this day: I must see the miller’s son, and ask Thomas Shilton about the gentleman who had attracted Margaret’s interest — and perhaps more.
I found the miller’s lad assisting his father. One glance, and a few minutes’ conversation, went far to explain Margaret’s lack of interest in the young man as a suitor. He was shaped like the barrels which contained the flour the Earl’s mill produced. He ate well, I decided, from the largesse he skimmed from the tenants who brought their grain to the mill to be ground. I explained that, many months earlier, Margaret and Thomas Shilton had been seen — and heard — arguing on the mill-side bank of the River Windrush. Had he heard them?
The youth glanced over his shoulder at the mill wheel. Its labored groans were accompanied by the sluicing of water off the wheel. “Not likely to hear much, workin’ about the mill,” he replied. Nor had he seen the couple at any time during the early summer.
The track leading back past the smithy to the bridge curved through thick gold and brown autumnal vegetation. The forge was invisible but for a wisp of smoke above the low trees. I heard Alard’s hammer ring but allowed Bruce to amble on toward the bridge. I decided I could learn no more on the north side of the river.
The hamlet of Shilton is but two miles south of Burford on the road to Bampton. I had ridden Bruce through its single street often enough in the preceding days that I might be considered a regular visitor. Always before I had continued on my way, but not this time. I saw a woman at the village well and asked of Thomas. She pointed me toward a house at the south end of the village.
“But you’ll not find ’im there,” she added. “He’s got the oxen for the day. He’ll be ploughin’ a furlong.”
Villagers in a place like Shilton leased strips of land in several locations surrounding the town. Together these parcels might amount to perhaps thirty acres: a yardland. I led Bruce to the appointed home and knocked at the door.
The house was one of the larger of its type in the hamlet. Like the rest, it was made of wattle and daub, with a thatched roof, but this one, unlike a few others in the village, was in good repair. At the rear, filling most of the toft, was a cultivated plot, now barren, which had evidently produced the year’s supply of carrots, cabbages, and turnips.
A woman in a flour-dusted apron answered my knock and directed me with pointed finger over the small rise at the southwest corner of the hamlet where, she said, I would find her husband and son and the team of oxen the villagers owned collectively.
I tied Bruce to a sapling and set off for the designated field. The ground was soft with recent rain, but not mud. Ideal for plowing. The two men looked my way as I crested the hill, but continued their work. The older man led the team, the younger held the plow expertly in the furrow. I met them at the end of the long, narrow field, where they would turn the team.
The field they plowed had been fallow. Sheep droppings indicated the use to which it had been put for the past year. Now the manure was being turned into the soil to improve the wheat which would be planted there in a few days.
“Are you Thomas?” I asked the younger man.
“Aye…as is he.” He nodded toward his father.
I introduced myself and my mission, and asked if he knew that Margaret, the smith’s daughter, had been buried in Burford churchyard the day before.
“Aye.” His eyes dropped to the freshly turned earth at his feet. “Knew of it.”
Thomas Shilton, the younger, was a large man, just grown to his full size, which was considerable. He was half a head taller than me, and heavier than Lord Gilbert. Twenty or so years of hard work and adequate food had produced a man of broad shoulders, strong arms and legs, and straight back. The stubble on his chin indicated that he was needing to shave more regularly now. His hair was fair, and matted in the wind which blew across the field.
“I am told that, early in the summer, you argued with Margaret on the banks of the River Windrush.”
“There, and other places,” he answered with a sardonic smile.
“You argued with Margaret often?”
“Aye. She were easy to dispute with.”
“Yet you wished to marry her, I am told.”
“I did,” he said softly.
“She had some, uh, other qualities?”
