plundered shoes this day and return them to Matilda before nightfall. I knew not if the blue thread might lead me to the thief, but if I found a garment matching the thread I might also find a man who knew more than I of this death.
Chapter 2
Dinner at Bampton Castle was a simple affair while Lord Gilbert resided elsewhere. He permitted the serving of three meats — other than fast days, of course — in his absence. Lord Gilbert was more frugal than most of his class.
I had had no breakfast, so stuffed myself on a roasted chicken, a coney pie, and cold venison. Some might think it strange that I had such an appetite after dealing with the dead all morning. My stomach is seldom discomfited. I would then sooner have had a nap, but a sense of injustice swept somnolence from my head.
I determined to visit the plowmen first, so walked left on Mill Street when I left the castle yard. I found it necessary to pause at the bridge over Shill Brook. I have seldom been able to pass a stream without gazing at the moving water. I attribute this to my childhood along the Wyre at the manor of Little Singleton. The two streams are not alike. The Wyre is slow and muddy and tidal and home mostly to eels. Shill Brook dances between narrow banks, its water pure and clear, a home to trout.
The plowmen were yet at work, their six oxen moving ponderously from one end of the strip to the other. I waited for them near the path, where they would turn for another pass down the field. In the bright light of a warm April day I saw as they approached that neither man wore a garment matching the blue thread in my pouch.
The beadle, they insisted, was shoeless when they found him. I showed them the blue thread. This was a mistake, I realized later. But that is the nature of our errors. We recognize our blunders after we have committed them. If we could see our errors as they approached, we might avoid them.
Neither of the plowmen could identify a garment of that shade. While this fruitless conversation was taking place I saw one of the men peer over my shoulder. I turned to see in the distance Hubert Shillside and eleven others of the coroner’s jury come to inspect the place where Alan lay and question those who discovered him.
I lingered to hear the plowmen answer as Shillside asked much the same questions I had asked. Their responses were the same. I was convinced they spoke the truth. And I was convinced neither had taken Alan’s shoes. The wooden-soled footwear which protected their feet was old and the leather which fixed the shoes to their feet was tattered. The beadle wore similar shoes, as did most who toil in the soil, but he would not wear shoes so worn as these. He was more prosperous than these plowmen.
Shillside and his jurymen turned back along the path to town and I followed behind, uncertain of further measures I might take. I had come to Bushey Row, fifty paces behind the coroner’s men, when it occurred to me that I might speak to the priest at St Andrew’s Chapel. This cleric was probably closest of all men to the scene of Alan’s death. Perhaps he had heard some disturbance in the night — the cry of a man or the snarl of a beast. I turned and retraced my steps.
I had returned to the place where Alan was found when in the distance I heard my name called. I turned and saw John Holcutt waving vigorously and striding purposefully in my direction. He was but a hundred paces away, just turned from Bushey Row on to the path to the chapel. He came puffing up to me a moment later.
“You are needed, Master Hugh,” he panted. “The miller was openin’ the sluice gate this mornin’ when he slipped. Stones there be mossy from the damp. Wheel began to turn and caught ’is arm as he reached to steady himself.”
“The arm is broken?” I asked.
“Prob’ly…an’ near wrenched from ’is shoulder. He’s in great pain.”
“Was he just now beginning his day? ’Tis well past noon.”
“Nay. The injury happened early. He asked ’is wife to arrange a sling and thought to continue ’is work. But he cannot, and so wishes you to attend him.”
I turned to walk back to town with the reeve. The priest at St Andrew’s Chapel would have to wait.
Andrew the miller had suffered a grievous injury. His right arm was drawn from the socket at his shoulder, and his forearm was broken. I was confused as to what steps I must take to treat the man, or more to the point, in what order I must take those steps. Had his arm been whole I would have put his dislocated shoulder right, but to do so requires leverage and tugging on the arm. This I could not do, broken as his was.
But if I should wait for the broken arm to mend, his displaced shoulder might then be so long out of joint that it could not be put right.
I explained this to the miller. I could spare him more pain, leave the shoulder as it was, and set the broken arm. Or, I could attend to the dislocated shoulder, causing him great pain in the break for a few minutes. He could suffer now, and perhaps regain the proper use of his arm, or he could avoid agony now and live his life with the affliction of a useless arm.
“’Ow can I work the mill with but one arm?” he asked.
“You may have two good arms by St Swithin’s Day if you choose to have me make your shoulder right this day. Otherwise I think you will be burdened with a crippled arm from this day on.
“I will set the break first, splint it strongly, and put a heavy layer of stiffened linen all about. Then I will see to your shoulder…but I will tell you now, the hurt will be great. I will make a potion, but it will not suffice to free you of all distress.”
The miller was not a man of strong character. He avoided affliction when at all possible. Come to think on it, so do I. So do most men. I watched the miller’s eyes as they flickered about the dusty room, as if he sought some deliverance from his condition. But there was no escape. Gradually his eyes steadied on me.
“This must be done, an’ I’m to have two good arms?”
I nodded.
“You will make the potion strong?”
“I will…but it will be of but small relief.”
Andrew looked at his arm, resting in a makeshift sling on his ample paunch, and stretched a finger as if to test whether or not his situation was really so desperate. His grimace told us both that it was.
“You will do this today?” the miller whispered.
“As soon as I can procure tools from the castle and return.”
The miller nodded, too choked with apprehension to speak. As the mill was adjacent to the castle, I returned promptly with my supplies. In that time Andrew had grown pale with anxiety.
I secured a cup of ale from the miller’s well-fed wife and mixed a large portion of ground hemp seeds and willow bark into the drink. Andrew watched with enlarged eyes as I did this, but took the cup and drank the potion down when I offered it to him.
It is my experience that, when a potion is administered to deaden pain, it will achieve its effect an hour or two after it is consumed. I told the miller to sit quietly and wait for the palliative to do its work. I would return when the time had come to proceed with my task.
As it was less than half a mile to St Andrew’s Chapel, I set my feet in that direction when I left the mill. I could see the priest there, ask what I might, and return to the mill before the ninth hour. This time I did not linger at the bridge across Shill Brook.
The priest at St Andrew’s Chapel of Beme is a slovenly, unlettered man. He holds his position there only, I suspect, because he will perform the duties of the tiny parish — if parish it could truly be called — for the minimum remittance of one third of the revenues — a requirement laid down by Pope Alexander III 200 years ago. One third of the revenues from a parish so small as that which attended mass at St Andrew’s Chapel was not enough to attract a man who could do better, and any educated cleric could.
Father John Kellet, clerk and priest of St Andrew’s Chapel, had not, I believe, ever been more than ten miles from Bampton, the place of his birth. He had been heard boasting that he had never set foot in Oxford, although I must admit that, in the few conversations I had with the priest, this subject did not arise, and most residents of Bampton and the Weald might make the same claim.
Father Simon Osbern, of the Church of St Beornwald in Bampton, trained John in the priestly duties. But the course of study was too brief for anything but the rudiments. Kellet had no Latin. He merely spoke the words of the
