There were yet four days before Sunday to announce another season of archery competition. I told as many as I met, advised castle servants to do likewise, and for those few who could read I posted a notice at the door of St Beornwald’s Church.
Thursday of that week was May Day and as always it was celebrated with joy and foolishness. I heard castle residents awake and about before dawn, and before the third hour these youth, Alice atte Bridge among them, returned to the castle laden with blossoms from flowering trees and green sprigs of hawthorn — but without the flowers, for all know it courts misfortune to bring the blossom of the holy thorn into a house.
They erected a maypole before the castle gatehouse and maidens of the town danced around it. Alice, in grace and comeliness, put the others to shame. No doubt Will Shillside thought the same.
On Saturday I purchased a cask of fresh ale from the baker’s wife and drew from the castle storeroom three targets used the previous year. From the castle strongbox, which in the absence of Lord Gilbert I kept in my chamber, I took five silver pennies for prizes and was ready for the competition.
There is joy in resuming a pleasurable activity which one has been compelled to abandon. Add to that sentiment the delights of a warm spring afternoon and you will understand why the resumption of archery competition was a success — for all of Bampton but me.
Men stood contemplating the butts with bow in one hand and a mug of Lord Gilbert’s ale in the other. One might think these fellows would become most accurate as the afternoon wore on and practice brought back skills grown stale over the winter. But not so. Most loosed their best arrows in early practice, before I announced the competition. ’Twas much ale, I think, which rattled their aim.
Women and children stood along the castle wall where they could cheer or heckle the archers as they chose. The sun warmed the stones and soon small children lay dozing at the base of the wall while their mothers, losing interest in the volleys of arrows, knotted together to discuss events of the winter past, both real and imagined.
Older children — but for the boys who neared the age when they also might possess a bow — also lost interest and were soon chasing each other and being caught with joyous shrieks. ’Twas a good day to be alive.
I had dual motives in resuming archery competition. Should war with France resume, I did not wish King Edward to find Lord Gilbert negligent in the training of his archers. And I wanted to find arrows like the broken one I had found in the wood.
I succeeded; to such effect that the success did my investigation no good at all. Most of those who loosed arrows at the butts possessed arrows like the one I found. Grey feathers from wild geese fletched half and more of the shafts I saw that day. And those seemed as well made as the found arrow which Martin the fletcher had so praised. I think that skill in making arrows is not so rare a knack as the fletcher led me to believe. Any one of a dozen and more men at the competition might have made or loosed the arrow I found. I could see no way of determining what, if anything, that man might have to do with the death of Henry atte Bridge.
Alice atte Bridge was among those who watched the archers, when her duties in the castle kitchen were done. She took a place along the castle wall among the other women, but as she was of the castle, not the town, and unmarried, she had little discourse with her companions.
Soon, however, one of the competitors walked near her and the two were promptly lost in conversation. Will Shillside was old enough to pull a man’s bow, and for the first time in his life took part in the practice. I do not remember him showing any great skill. This is to be expected. Surely many years and thousands of arrows are necessary for proficiency.
His competence with a bow might be in doubt, but as he leaned upon it he seemed more the man than the boy he was without it. Alice appeared to note the transformation as well, for her eyes were bright and her conversation animated. Will found this diversion more interesting than the competition, for I did not see him again take his place at the mark. Why this conversation should trouble me I cannot tell, for I knew the girl, howso winsome she was becoming, was beneath my station. No bailiff could wed a scullery maid and expect his lord to retain him in his position. Odd; when Lord Gilbert first approached me about the position I did not want to be bailiff of Bampton Manor. Now that I am bailiff I do not want to lose the post.
The ale was gone and the last arrows of the competition loosed when the Angelus Bell rang from St Beornwald’s tower across the town. I awarded the prizes to the winners; the best was Gerard the forester’s son, Richard, from Alvescot, who put five of six arrows firmly in the center of the butt from 200 paces. I think if this youth desires Lord Gilbert’s venison as a greater reward for his skill he will have it, and perhaps he already has.
I slept well that night, to my surprise. I feared I would lay in my bed and think of corpses and arrows, or perhaps Alice atte Bridge. But my thoughts proved amenable to slumber and I awoke the next morning much refreshed in body and spirit.
My breakfast was a loaf warm from the castle oven and a pint of ale. I consumed this in my chamber while I pondered what I might do to discover the murderer of a man no one liked. If a likeable man be done to death, his killer will surely be one less admired, and so those who suspect him of the deed have little hesitation to tell of what they know. But when a man held in low regard is slain, the mortal stroke is likely to come from one held in greater esteem than the victim. Who, then, will inform the bailiff and send a friend to the gallows? I swallowed the last of my ale, spit out the dregs, and wished myself free of the task.
A knock on my chamber door drew me from these black thoughts. The porter’s assistant was there with a message. An elderly widow of the town wished to speak to me. I followed him to the gatehouse where I found the woman waiting, bent over her stick. She was known to me. She complained of an ache in her shoulders and indeed she suffered much from the disease of the bones. I had treated her for this malady several times but not, I fear, with much success.
“Ah…Master Hugh,” she greeted me from under her bent brow.
“Good morning, Sarah. Are you well?” A foolish question. Who seeks the surgeon when they are well?
“Nay. ’Tis me shoulders again. I’m terrible distressed. Do ye have more of the oil such as you gave me at Candlemas?”
“Did the oil help?”
“Oh, aye, it did. But ’tis gone for a fortnight.”
I told her to wait at the gatehouse and I returned to my chamber. The oil Sarah sought was produced from bay leaves and monk’s hood, and when rubbed vigorously upon a bruise or aching joint will relieve the hurt. I was startled to see how little of the oil remained in my pharmacy. I poured it all into a vial, stopped the vessel with a wooden plug, and carried it to the sufferer.
I gave Sarah the vial with strict instructions that, after rubbing the oil on her aching shoulders, she must not touch her hand to her lips until all trace of the oil was washed clean of her fingers.
The widow accepted my remedy, fished in her purse for the farthing fee, then tottered off toward Mill Street clutching the vial to her shrunken breast. I knew what I must now do this day, and the thought pleased me, for while I gathered bay leaves and the root of monk’s hood I would not have to consider the murder of Henry atte Bridge.
Had I discovered my shortage a month sooner, I would have had an easier time gathering more bay leaves. Sweet laurel is green all winter through and easily identified in a bleak winter wood. But now all the low plants were bursting out in color, from fragile pale yellow-green to darker hues of full summer. These herbs, many having uses of their own, disguised the plant I sought. But some months before I had discovered a thick patch of sweet laurel at the fringe of the wood behind St Andrew’s Chapel, very near the place where the coroner and I had found the beadle’s cudgel. I threw a sack across my shoulder and set off for the chapel.
My route took me past the place where, nearly four weeks before, the plowman found Alan’s corpse. ’Twas well the man was found when he was, for now the place was dense with new growth of nettles and hawthorn. A body lying there now would not be found until autumn.
The wood behind St Andrew’s Chapel was thick with sweet laurel, as on my previous visit. I filled my sack with leaves and had yet enough time to seek the monk’s hood to complete the physic.
I had seen what I thought to be monk’s hood when following the hounds as we tracked the beast which must have attacked Alan and howled in the night. The patch lay south of Shill Brook where the stream turned east toward Aston. I crossed a fallow field to the brook, waded it at a shallow place where the water flowed swiftly over a gravel bed, then set off to the west where I remembered the monk’s hood to be.
It was too early for the purple flowers to be in bloom, so I had to search carefully for the narrow, multi-
