“What does his wife think?” I replied.
“Does she know of his transgression? She did not speak of such. But she wouldn’t, would she. No, she fears some harm has come to him.”
“Did she say why he was out past curfew?”
“He had returned from working on the new barn, then told his wife he was off to seek wood in the forest. ’Tis a right the common folk have on the bishop’s lands, as with Lord Gilbert’s estate, I think.”
I nodded, for I know well the ancient liberties. “And he did not return?” I asked, “even with the dawn?”
“Nay. The woman is anxious that he be found. She fears he has suffered some hurt and lays injured in the forest.”
“You wish me to search Lord Gilbert’s woodlands hereabouts?”
“Aye. He should not have been gathering wood on m’lord’s land, if gathering wood was his business, but such as he might seek where they will, rather than where they ought.”
“Did he tell his wife where he might seek wood?”
“Aye. Said as he’d seen many limbs down in the wood near where the tithe barn is new built.”
“And near where I was assailed last night,” I added.
“You think Henry atte Bridge the man who lay in wait for you?”
“What other man wishes me ill?”
“Perhaps ’twas a thief.”
“Perhaps. But as the miscreant plunged into the wood I heard him say to another, ‘He lives.’”
“Hmmm.” The priest pulled at his chin, an action which reminded me of Lord Gilbert Talbot, who does likewise when puzzled. “Perhaps we should begin our search at the place you were attacked. There may be a trail we might follow. Do you think your blow, or the horse’s kick, might have injured the fellow so he could not continue his flight…if ’twas Henry who did this thing?”
“I think he was not so badly harmed as that.”
And then the circling buzzards caught my eye again. They drifted on the wind north of the town, near where I had fought for my life the night before. I watched them silently, and as I did the vicar turned to see what so absorbed my attention.
We stared at the great birds, contemplating their possible significance. The vicar spoke first. “I will gather some clerks. Will you come and show us where we must begin our search? I think,” he sighed, “’twill not be far from where those buzzards now soar.”
“Aye…not far.”
Father Thomas and I returned to the church, where we found Simon Osbern and three clerks preparing for evensong. The priest explained our mission, tactfully omitting any word of the altercation wherein I had found myself.
“Master Hugh,” he asserted, “believes he may have seen a man in the north woods, near to the new barn…is that not so, Master Hugh?”
“Aye, though ’twas near dark. I can show you the place.”
The four men needed no urging to leave their duties and join the hunt. When a man has heard the beginning of such a tale he is not content until he knows the end of it.
I led our party north on the Broad Street, past the bishop’s new barn now standing completed to its frame and thatching. Truth to tell, I was not sure of the exact place along the road where I was waylaid. It was near dark, and I was not concerned at the time with the scenery.
I slowed my pace when we were well past the new barn. The others kept in step, the clerks behind as fitted their station, Thomas de Bowlegh and Simon Osbern at either hand. The priests’ gaze swung between me and the road. They studied me intently while I studied the path.
There had been few travelers on the road that day. No one was about his trade on a Sunday. So I followed the track of a well-shod horse as we made our way north. The animal had been going south, and not so long before. I was sure the horse was Bruce.
It was. We came upon a place where the horse had halted for some time. The drying mud of the road was patterned with the marks of the animal’s great hooves. At the side of the track I saw the verge disturbed where first I, then my attacker, had scrambled in the mire. I stopped.
“This is the place?” Father Thomas asked. “Whereabouts in the wood must we begin our search?”
I pointed to the grove, where the night before I had heard two men scrambling through the dark. Above my upraised finger the buzzards circled over the forest, a hundred paces west of the road. I glanced in their direction. Father Thomas followed my gaze and divined its meaning.
“Come,” he commanded, and plunged into the wood. Father Thomas, Simon Osbern, the clerks and I followed.
Father Thomas is a fine priest, but his skills are not related to either strength or endurance. In but a few moments the priest was winded and staggering from the exertion of pushing through brambles and fallen branches. He is not a young man. After a few stumbles over ground ivy and limbs he tired, so that when his foot caught the next tendril he fell heavily. This did him no great harm. The forest floor was deep in rotting leaves.
I pulled the priest to his feet and, together with Simon Osbern, I cleaned his robe of debris.
“We should,” I advised, “be more prudent in our search. Let us return to the road and spread ourselves a few paces apart, then re-enter the forest at a more careful pace.”
The others agreed, having no better plan. Our company covered a space perhaps thirty paces in breadth, and we had gone but a few steps beyond the vine which snared Father Thomas when a clerk called out in a high-pitched yelp.
The urgency in his voice drew us scrambling to him. He stood near a tall beech, and as we gathered about him he pointed to the leaves at his feet. There, nearly obscured in rotting vegetation, lay a shoe. The sole was of wood, and the leather which would bind it to a man’s foot was new and little worn. It was much like the shoes I had seen on the feet of Henry atte Bridge. Of course, it was much like the shoes on the feet of any man who could afford to go shod of a spring day.
Because the beech tree was not yet in leaf a pattern of dappled sunlight penetrated the naked branches and left bright patterns on the forest floor. The partly visible shoe lay in one of these illuminated places, else its colors would have blended with the leaves so that, had it been in shadow, it might have gone undetected.
We stood in a circle and stared at the shoe as if it came from the foot of a leper. No other made a move to retrieve it, so I did. There was nothing to be gained from inspecting the shoe. As I have said, it was much like others worn by the commons. Father Thomas broke the silence.
“A man making his way in haste through a dark wood might lose a shoe.” He peered unblinking at me as he spoke.
“Had he reason enough for haste, he might not wish to turn and seek a lost shoe in the dark, when ’twould not be easy to recover,” I replied.
“The shoe points deeper into the grove,” I continued. “Let us resume our places and see what else may be found.”
We did not go far before the issue was resolved. It was Simon Osbern who made the discovery. A man lay face down in the mould. His arms were thrown forward and extended above his head, with palms flat upon the forest floor. He wore but one shoe, and his chauces and cotehardie were stained with mud. Above the bare limbs of the forest the buzzards circled silently on broad wings. We crossed ourselves.
I knew who this must be before we turned him to his back. My conjecture was correct, for when we rolled him over it was the face of Henry atte Bridge which stared unseeing at the buzzards.
The vicars and clerks lifted their eyes to me. I felt my cheeks flush, for I was sure this death was my doing, even though I could plead self-defense. Only Father Thomas knew of my struggle with the dead man, but in my guilt I felt all must suspect.
Thomas de Bowlegh broke the silence. “What has caused this death, Master Hugh?”
Without a close inspection of the corpse I could not tell, and told him so. I could see no wound or other mark likely to bring death to one so young and strong. The injury must be, I thought, internal and invisible; a blow to the neck, or perhaps the kick of a horse.
“We must raise the hue and cry,” said Father Simon, “and Hubert Shillside must gather a jury and bring them to this place.”
