“Master Hugh,” she said softly, as I turned from the door, “I will take it amiss should you visit Oxford some future day and do not call.”
Behind Kate, over her shoulder, I saw her father nod agreement. I promised that I would be obedient to the girl’s command, said a last farewell, and set off down Holywell Street with a heavy stomach and light heart.
Oxford’s streets were crowded. Black-gowned students, set free from study until the new term, elbowed each other through streets and lanes. Late buyers patronized shops before closing. I was become accustomed to the bucolic life of Bampton, but plunging into the noise and smells of Oxford’s streets brought pleasant memories; memories of days when as a student I was concerned only with books and studies and enjoying the life of a fledgling scholar. Days when I had no murders to concern me or poachers to apprehend.
The porter at New Canterbury Hall recognized me. I was admitted with a smile and a tug of his forelock. He had no great esteem for me, I am sure. But I was a friend of the warden. That made me a man of consequence. If a man cannot achieve fame of his own merit, the next most rewarding thing is to be recognized as a friend of the famous and powerful. As if renown might slough off with recognition.
Master John’s life turned about study and teaching. Since classes for the term were ended, I thought I might find him in his chamber bent over some tome. So he was.
I saw him through the small window which looked out from his room to the cloister. If he noted my shadow pass he did not think it important enough to raise his eyes from his book. I knocked on the door and eventually heard his bench scrape back from the table across the stone flags. Eventually. I was interrupting Master John while he was engrossed in some deep study, a thing no man should do lightly. I prayed he would forgive me.
He did. “’Ah…Hugh…I was about to take supper. Have you eaten? Come in, come in.”
Wyclif placed a leather strap between the pages of his book to mark his place, drew up a second bench, and invited me to sit.
“The kitchen will serve soon. A bell will announce supper. Meanwhile, what have you learned of your mysterious deaths in Bampton?”
I had barely opened my mouth when a tinny bell sounded from across the cloister. “Ah, the cook is ready,” Wyclif said with some sorrow. “We will take our meal, then you will tell me the tale…you will lodge in the college this night, will you not?”
This was an offer I had hoped for. I readily agreed, and we set off across the cloister for a supper of barley pottage and wheaten bread. Not that I was hungry. But I was of an age wherein I could eat ’til bloated, then consume another meal an hour later. And soup is not a filling dish.
’Twas twilight when I returned with Master John to his lodgings. He lit a cresset to ward off the night and begged me tell him of Bampton and its mysteries.
I admitted that I was no closer to solving the death of Henry atte Bridge than when I was last in Oxford. Then I told him of Thomas atte Bridge and his late visit to St Andrew’s Chapel. Master John caught the parallel with Alan the beadle’s death along the road to the chapel and Henry atte Bridge’s role in it.
“Tell me, then,” the scholar inquired, “what is it happened the night your beadle was slain?”
“’Tis my belief Alan had seen Henry atte Bridge travel the road to St Andrew’s Chapel before the night he was slain. But he was not careful in his pursuit. Henry knew he was discovered, and lay in wait for Alan another night, and slew him.”
“How was this done?” Master John asked, pulling on his beard.
“I believe Henry hid in the shadow of the hedgerow until Alan was upon him. Then, who can know? Perhaps atte Bridge took a rock from the hedgerow wall and delivered a blow to the beadle’s head as he passed. Or, mayhap there was a struggle, and Henry got hold of Alan’s cudgel and beat him across the head with it. Whatever the source of the blow, it killed Alan. But Henry had planned another stroke.”
“The wooden block with nails?” Wyclif guessed.
“Aye. He slashed Alan’s face and arms and neck so ’twould seem some beast had set upon him there in the lane.”
“But you suspected even when the beadle was first found that this was not so?”
“Aye. There was not enough blood. Living men bleed much when slashed across the neck. Bampton’s baker was so attacked some days later and nearly lost his life.”
“You saved him?”
“I did. A dead man bleeds little, and Alan did not bleed. ’Twas the blow which killed him, not the wounds.”
“And what of the wolf? You heard it howl, did you not?”
“I heard something howl.”
“Not a wolf? Or some other beast?”
“Nay. A man, I think.”
“A man? Ah…I see. This same Henry atte Bridge, you think?”
“Aye. He knew we suspected a beast in Alan’s death. ’Twas what he intended.”
“So he thought to confirm your suspicion?”
“He did, and nearly succeeded.”
“Think you, when he died, he suspected you knew ’twas no wolf attacked the beadle?”
“He knew I went north that day. He saw me pass the new tithe barn as he worked. He surely guessed what I was about, else he would not have set upon me in the road when I returned.”
“But perhaps,” Wyclif wondered aloud, “’twas only shoes he thought you would find out.”
“Would a man strike down another to protect his misgotten shoes?”
“Ah, I take your point. Was it proved the shoes belonged to the beadle, he could still protest innocence of the death, and who could say otherwise? The fellow surely thought you disbelieved a wolf had done the harm.”
“Aye. He feared I saw then what I do not see now…or see but through a fog.”
The scholar was silent for a moment.
“There was an accomplice,” he asserted. “Why else a man waiting while you were attacked on the road?”
“An accomplice who aided in the murder of the beadle, or who knew of the deed when ’twas done and past?”
“What matter?” Wyclif replied. “What matters is what the man did with his knowledge…and perhaps what he yet does.”
“He struck down Henry atte Bridge when Henry failed to kill me, for fear I would know who fell upon me, and when I might confront Henry he would entangle this other, whoso he may be, in the business.”
“Just so,” Wyclif nodded, his beard bouncing against his robe.
“The dead lamb; we watched over it two nights and saw nothing.”
“The fellow atte Bridge again, you think?”
“’Twould make a kind of sense. He wished to put suspicion on a wolf, not a man. And when the hounds were put to the dead animal they knew what we did not…they scented a man, not a beast.”
“The fellow would have used the block to tear the lamb’s throat, then slice off a joint for himself to make it seem a wolf had dined,” the scholar mused.
“And I was taken in. What a simpleton I am!”
“Nay, Hugh. Do not berate yourself so. We must all make judgment with the facts we have.”
“But I had facts I did not read aright.”
“You chose the simplest interpretation of the evidence at hand. This is always best.”
“Is it so?”
“Aye.” Wyclif reached for my arm. “’Tis not good for a man to seek complexity and falsehood where none may be. If the plainest answer prove mistaken, as now seems, time enough then to seek knots to untangle.”
“And there are knots yet,” I agreed.
“You think all these strange events be related?”
“I thought not. I sought the simplest explanation, as you advise.”