“Run back to the castle and explain my absence at dinner to the cook. Ask him to send a meal to my chamber. I will be there straightaway.”
“Aye, sir,” she chirped, and set off as I directed. I watched with pleasure as she hastened away. Well, there was nothing much else to look at; I had already viewed the mill and stream.
Chapter 5
After a cold dinner in my reeking chamber I made my way across Mill Street to the path leading along Shill Brook and the cottages in the Weald. These were the bishop’s tenants. I had not had cause to venture down this lane since I treated Alice’s father, unsuccessfully, for his broken hip.
His hut lay in disrepair, the toft overgrown and the door fallen from its leather hinges. Whatever of the man’s possessions his sons thought valuable enough to keep from Alice, this dwelling was not among them.
I did not know which of the next two huts belonged to Henry atte Bridge. I rapped on the door of the first, which was ajar, and was rewarded for my efforts by the appearance of a disheveled woman of indeterminate age carrying a basin on one hip and a runny-nosed child on the other. Both mother and child appeared to have taken seriously the maxim that winter bathing might cause serious health issues.
Henry, the woman said, lived in the next hut. She was the wife of his brother, Thomas. The wife of a quarter yardland tenant cannot lead an easy life, I reflected, as I gave her thanks and left her to her pot and child.
The next dwelling gave a better first impression. The roof was newly thatched, and freshly oiled skins stretched across the windows. I thumped on the door to no result but sore knuckles. In the silence between my assaults on the door I heard distant voices. After a third attempt at the door I gave up and circled the house to the garden toft in the rear.
A woman was there, spading manure into her vegetable beds. It was her voice I had heard, directing children who were assisting in the work by breaking the clods she turned over. The woman used an iron spade. This surprised me. Most cotters can afford only wooden tools with which to work their land.
This woman was as robust as her sister-in-law was frail. And also the children appeared well fed. She rested a foot on the shovel and eyed me suspiciously as I approached. The appearance of a lord’s bailiff seems often to create that expression on the faces of the commons.
“Good day,” I greeted her in my most cordial tone.
The woman remained silent, as if there was no need to reply if she had no argument about the quality of the day.
“Is your husband at home?”
“Nay,” she finally spoke. “Workin’ on the bishop’s new tithe barn.”
I knew of that project. The Bishop of Exeter, in a fit of abundance, had ordered his old tithe barn at Bampton demolished and a new and greater structure raised in its place.
Beams had been hewed over the winter, and now the framework was rising on the bishop’s land north of the town. I remember Master John Wyclif speaking of a passage in the Gospel of St Luke where our Lord spoke to his disciples about a wealthy man who pulled down an old barn and built a greater one, but died before he could enjoy the wealth he had stored there. I tactfully avoided mentioning this scripture when discussing the new barn with Thomas de Bowlegh, whose duty it is to oversee construction for the bishop.
Master John, I think, would not be so considerate, for I often heard him condemn prelates for their venality. The criticism of an Oxford master, however, is of little consequence to those in Avignon.
I told the woman I would return in the evening to speak to her husband and made my way around the house to return to the castle. As I passed the gable end a gust of wind brought the scent of roasting meat to my nostrils. I looked up to the gable vent. Wisps of smoke, common enough from such a hut, drifted from the opening.
At the front of the house, out of sight of the toft, I stopped at a window and tested the oiled skin which covered the opening. I found a loose corner and lifted it to peer inside.
The hut was dark and my eyes were accustomed to the bright afternoon sun. But eventually I saw in the smoky interior a small child turning a spit over the central hearth. A low fire glowed there on the stones, and an occasional drop of fat from the haunch on the spit sizzled on the coals. The child stared blankly back at me as he turned the spit. I dropped the skin and, guiltily, I confess, hastened to the path and back to Mill Street.
Perhaps, I thought, it was mutton the child was turning. But where would a quarter-yardlander — well, half- yardlander if he now possessed his father’s meager estate — get a roast of mutton? I believed I knew the smell of roasting mutton, and this was not it. And the haunch on the spit was large, larger than a sheep, more closely the size of a deer. A small deer, perhaps, but yet larger than any ewe or even a ram. I knew where a joint of venison would come from: poaching.
From the appearance of Henry atte Bridge’s wife and children, they had eaten well for many months. Most cotters would think themselves fortunate to feed their children an egg, much less a joint. Even if the roast was not venison, I wondered where he got it. As he was the bishop’s tenant, it was not my business to ask, unless the slaughtered animal belonged to Lord Gilbert’s demesne or to one of his tenants in my bailiwick.
I told the cook to keep a supper warm for me, then made my way back to the Weald as the sun dipped behind the leafless oaks and beeches in Lord Gilbert’s wood to the west of the town.
Tendrils of smoke still drifted from the gable vent as I approached Henry atte Bridge’s hut, but I could detect no scent of roasted meat for the family supper. Henry must have been forewarned that I would call, for the door opened before I could rap a second time on it. The man stared at me with unconcealed hostility. I had dealt firmly with the fellow at the time of his father’s death eighteen months before, berating him for his lack of filial observance. He had not forgotten.
The man stood squarely in the door, silent, as if daring me to either speak or enter. I looked from his scowling brow to his feet. He wore wooden-soled shoes with softly tanned leather binding them to his feet. I inspected his footgear for a long moment, then returned my gaze to his face. He blinked. I saw alarm in his eyes, but the look passed quickly.
“You was ’ere t’day seekin’ me,” he challenged. “’Ere I am…what d’you want o’me?”
I decided to brazen my way through the interview, so pushed past him through the door as I said, “I wish to discuss your shoes.”
The interior of the hut was now near dark, lit only by the coals glowing on the hearth and the fading light of the setting sun which managed to penetrate the window skins.
Soon the embers would be covered and the family would retire to bed. As I entered the hut Henry’s wife and three children looked up at me from the table, spoons in hand. Before them sat bowls of pottage. I peered through the smoke into the corners of the darkening dwelling. My eyes could find no roasted meat. But my nose detected yet the faint scent of…what, venison?
I turned to Henry atte Bridge, who stood silent, silhouetted in the door. “Have you owned those shoes long?”
“Not long,” he bristled. “A fortnight.”
“They seem of fine workmanship. Did you buy them of Adam, the cobbler?”
“Nay…he wants too much. Bought ’em in Witney.”
“Witney? Surely a long way to walk to purchase shoes. And the price is controlled…unless the cobbler at Witney is selling at a lower price in violation of the law.”
“They was used,” atte Bridge growled. “Fella bought ’em died. ’Is wife sold ’em back to the cobbler.”
“Oh. And how did you learn of this bargain?”
“Father Thomas sent me an’ two others to Witney with a cart an’ team to get beams for the new tithe barn.”
“And you took enough money on this journey to buy shoes?”
“They was cheap, I tol’ you.”
“Aye, so you did…from a dead man’s feet. How much did you pay for these, uh, used shoes?”
“Thruppence.”
“A bargain, indeed, as they appear little worn.”
Henry made no answer, but stood sullenly, outlined in the door. No doubt he would have liked to throw me
