“Reasonable. Murderers would not bury their prey in a churchyard.”
I stood to leave and carry out my task, but Lady Joan spoke before I could turn. “Master Hugh, you need a seamstress to repair your cloak,” she remarked, pointing to the undone hem.
“Indeed,” Lord Gilbert agreed. “Master Hugh needs care. We must see that he is kept in good repair, body and soul.” Then turning to me: “You need a wife, Hugh…and there are other compensations than keeping one’s garments mended.” He chuckled, and from the corner of my eye I saw Lady Petronilla blush faintly.
“You keep me too busy seeking felons. I have no time to seek a wife.”
Lord Gilbert laughed again. “There are females about. Many in Oxford of a certainty, who might seek you if you but gave sign you might be found.”
This was news to me. I paid little attention to town gossip, but apparently Lord Gilbert, or his wife, was party to local chatter.
“Shall I wear a notice on my back?”
“That would not be necessary.” Lady Petronilla found voice, looked up from her embroidery, and entered the conversation. “A well-directed smile at the appropriate moment will suffice. You seem so sober and businesslike.”
“M’lord sets me to sober tasks,” I replied.
“I do,” Lord Gilbert agreed. “And for that I am sorry. But I have no other to assign to the work. I will send John to the fewterer, and assign Arthur and Uctred to accompany you for the day.”
“And I,” Lady Joan declared, “will find needle and thread and mend your cloak while John carries out his business. Then you will not catch your foot and stumble in your search.”
The guest, Sir John, who had been a silent listener to our conversation, frowned slightly at Lady Joan’s offer. Then I understood his presence. Another prospective suitor for Lord Gilbert’s sister. I am no keen observer of the human condition, but it seemed to me that, if Sir John was indeed wooing the fair Joan, his suit was not going so well as he might wish.
Lady Joan left the solar for the tools she needed, returned, and demanded my cloak. She was expert with needle and thread, well-practiced in embroidery from her youth, no doubt, and had the hem like new in little time. When she finished her task she rose, held out the cloak, and bade me put it on. She held out the sleeves and settled the cloak on my shoulders with a pat of her delicate fingers. I felt my skin burn through the layers of wool as she adjusted the fit, and my heart burned as she smiled.
“There; we must not have our surgeon going about disheveled. That would reflect badly on us.”
The hounds were confused. A hunt would employ the entire pack, not just the two. Still, they were eager to be off, straining at the leash. Forgive me for feeling superior as we set off; I was mounted on Bruce, the others walked.
The old horse was becoming accustomed to the route. He followed the proper turns, took Church View north past St Beornwald’s Church, and even turned from the road to the tree where he had been tied the day before.
Uctred and Arthur had participated in the previous day’s hunt, so required no explanation of our purpose. I told the fewterer of our previous discoveries, placed the cotehardie before the dogs, and then set off behind them as the keeper put them to their work. Arthur and Uctred followed, shovels over their shoulders.
A weak sun, barely penetrating a hazy, foggy sky, warmed and softened the snow. The dogs ranged far; the keeper was required to call them in often. An hour passed with no signal from the hounds that they had found a scent. I propped myself in the sun against an elm which fringed the coppiced woods, and was near to dozing while standing when from near a hundred paces away, through the forest, I heard first one, then the other, of the hounds bawl out. Over the excited din I heard the keeper shout. Arthur and Uctred followed me as I plunged into the coppicing.
The fewterer had leashed and quieted the hounds when we arrived. The dogs were stiff and alert, their attention focused on a small clearing which they had penetrated in their search. A dense fence of coppiced saplings surrounded this opening, so that to enter we had to pull ourselves through the enclosing scrub. The hem of my cloak caught on a shoot and tore, but not at the place Lady Joan had mended. I resolved to fix the tear myself before Lady Joan might see it and wonder at my careless ways.
I motioned for Arthur and Uctred to begin their work. They scraped snow and leaves from the center of the clearing, then set to work at digging. I traced four lines across the opening with my heel, and directed them to dig along those furrows. The fallen leaves and snow had blanketed the soil, so it was not yet frozen. I could not imagine murderers taking time to bury their victims deeply, so told the men to excavate trenches no more than knee deep.
It seemed Uctred’s fate to uncover bones. He was halfway down his second trench when one of the dogs growled and the hackles stood erect on its neck. A few scoops later, Uctred’s shovel caught on something at the base of his trench. This did not alarm us, for both he and Arthur had found digging through the forest roots an arduous business. But this time, when he yanked the spade from the tangle, it came up with a shred of linen caught in a split at the point. I directed Arthur to cease work on his trench and join Uctred. In half an hour two moldering corpses lay open to the gray sky in a shallow grave. The dogs would not be silenced, so I ordered the keeper to remove them and wait for us at the road.
I turned to Uctred, he being at my elbow as we peered into the grave. “You saw Sir Robert about the castle when he visited; is this the man?”
“I cannot say. They’re too far gone, like…”
I could see he found it irksome to gaze on the decaying bodies. “Was Sir Robert fair?” I asked him.
“Aye, he was,” Uctred nodded in agreement.
Removing the bodies would require more labor, and a conveyance. I asked if Arthur or Uctred would stay to guard the grave while I and the other took the news to Lord Gilbert. The men looked sheepishly at each other and I read in their faces dismay at the thought of spending time alone in an empty forest with unquiet cadavers whose spirits might seek revenge on any who disturbed their rest.
So I sent them to give the account of our discovery to Lord Gilbert and request assistance. My wait at the grave gave me opportunity to inspect the bodies. Flesh was nearly gone, but the clothing was yet whole, though filthy and disarranged. The grave, while shallow, was deep enough that no marauding animal had detected and upset it.
The larger of the two bodies was fair-haired, the smaller was dark. The kirtles of both were of fine linen, once white, now stained with earth and, I thought, blood. Gashes disfigured the kirtles, and it seemed to me darker stains surrounded these cuts. The squire would also have worn a cotehardie, though not so fine as Sir Robert’s. There was no sign of it in the grave. Where, I wondered, was it?
My last word to Arthur and Uctred was to urge them to haste. This they must have taken to heart. One might suppose that sitting on cold, wet ground in a silent forest accompanied only by the dead would cause time to creep. I did not find it so. The sound of voices from the road soon told me that the grooms had completed their mission in good time.
Arthur pushed into the clearing first, Lord Gilbert at his heels. “You have found Sir Robert?” he asked.
“I fear so.”
Lord Gilbert’s eyes fell to the excavation before him. He knelt and peered in. The cold of winter had slowed decomposition, so no stink assailed his nostrils as he bent to look at the bodies. He remained motionless for so long that I began to fear that the sight might cause him to become unhinged.
But Lord Gilbert had seen men slain in battle; some were friends, a few were relatives. This apparition could not disturb him much. He rose slowly to his feet. “’Tis Sir Robert. I have no doubt. And his squire. The lad was slight and dark.”
Lord Gilbert ordered the exhumation of the bodies, and directed that they be taken to Galen House for my inspection when that work was done. I would have objected to this, had I thought of a reasonable complaint. I thought of many reasonable protests while riding Bruce back to Bampton, but by then it was too late to interfere with Lord Gilbert’s command. And he explained himself logically enough as we rode to the town together:
“You are our expert on bones and bodies. This time you will not need to identify the dead. You must tell me and the coroner’s jury what you can of how they died, as you did for the girl found in my cesspit.”
I thought that clear already, and considered telling Lord Gilbert so, but doubted he would be content with a conclusion based on so cursory an examination.
“That may tell us,” he continued, “why they died, though I doubt it. But if you can discover why they died, we
